Freedom

Richard Rose: Zen and Death

Do we want the Truth or do we want to be "educated"? There is a tendency of people in control, whether in universities or in governments, to want to "educate". Not for the Truth, but for the convenience of the moment, thinking they are the prophets of the zeitgeist, and by their manipulation of the public mind the will bring people around to the "right" direction.
- Richard Rose

Richard Rose talks on everything. He talks about the four categories of mystical experiences, how society conditions us to believe lies regarding who we are and what death is, the near death experience, and the importance of finding the Truth and who we really are. We exist before we are born and continue to exist after we die. The purpose of life is finding this Truth out for ourselves through direct experience. Runs 1 hour 10 minutes.

What Drives Radical Islam?

Why do all these really hardcore jihadis come from the West? "Jihadi John", the man in all those beheading videos, is from Britain, all the 9/11 terrorists were educated in Western universities. Why? All of a sudden, in a flash of insight, it makes sense. The West is so empty of meaning, so narcissistic, so apathetic, so materialistic, suffused with extreme relativism and leftism that despises religion, despises family, despises community, worships sin. When I see Westerners practice other religions – Hinduism, Buddhism – about 90% seem to me to be fake, empty. Most Christians seem fake, most Jews seem fake, but there are still millions of Westerners who are authentic Christians and Jews, but when they practice other religions it comes across as nothing but feel-good-ism. These people hate Christianity and authentic Western values, the values that led to a few backwater kingdoms in Europe to dominate the entire world in a couple of centuries, to rise above everything all other empires had created, to develop modern science, to develop industry, to delve into the depths of space and microscopic physics, these people hate the values that built all that. They want to get together, to practice "religion" with no strings attached: no sin, no morality aside from progressivism. They're all hippie leftists. Occasionally you'll get a Westerner to adopt religion fully, like Muho Noelke, the German man who became a Zen abbot, but most are just cafeteria style "spiritual but not religious" leftists. Disgusted by the lack of values, the lack of true religion in the West, the men who become jihadis latch onto the one system that promises them the rigor and authenticity they seek: radical Islam. It reaches its hand out to them, beckoning them to kill the Western world that has embraced everything they despise. Ken Wilber says that these people reject modernity, but they don't, they reject boomeritis, they reject the diseased version of modernity, not the healthy version of modernity that existed up until the 1950s. To defeat Jihad we need a rebirth of religion in the West. No military solution will do. Bombing jihadis will solve the problem for now, but they'll always keep coming back, just like the tumor that you cut out will keep growing back. Jihad is a disease of the mind, and no pill, no surgery can cure the mind, only right thinking can cure the mind. The only cure for bad religion is good religion.

Creative Education

Orson Scott Card talks about how the public education system is designed to kill creativity and children's ability to enjoy learning. He mentions how homework is counterproductive and evil, which alone makes this worth listening to.

Runs 18 minutes

Dean Radin's Extraordinary Synchronicity Story

Dean Radin wanted to create a psi laboratory many years ago. So did Jon Krakower. This is the fascinating story of how they met. Runs 7:40.

Building a Civilization of Love

Catholic priest Rev. Jeffrey Mickler explains what love really is, what it is not, why every society in history has built itself around the natural family, and what horrors result from modern societies breaking with fifty thousand years of common sense. Runs 30 minutes.

Mind over Matter

Another 5th Dimension documentary. This one rates a solid A. There is a nice history of psychical research, including Ted Serios, Nina Kulagina, and Uri Geller. They talk about the work of J. B. Rhine and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program, then move on to the random event generators of the Global Consciousness Project and the work of Dean Radin. Unlike the last program this was not a debunking exercise. Overall this was a much better, more honest work that presented data and asked the viewer to draw one's own conclusions.