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What Does “Doing the Work” Really Mean?
Martin LeFevre: For uncounted millennia, humans have been externally oriented. During indigenous times and in previous ages, being externally motivated was necessary for survival. Now our survival as a species depends on enough people doing the inner spadework. Even after the Industrial Revolution, when more and more people had the leisure for reflection, self-examination was […]
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Children Don’t Need To Be Conditioned
Martin LeFevre: Meditation can be defined as the process of freeing the brain from its enslavement to conditioning. I don’t practice any system of meditation for doing so, since systems, techniques and methods are themselves forms of conditioning. While still in my teens I stumbled upon passive watchfulness and active questioning, which are the […]
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AI’s Quantum Leap Demands a Quantum Leap in Human Intelligence
Martin LeFevre: The surreal hype, false hope and potential harm from AI are flooding the field with would-be philosophers. Even pundits are saying things like, “To make good on its promise, artificial intelligence needs to deepen human intelligence.” But how can intelligence be deepened when people don’t know what it is? There is the idea […]
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The Ending of Psychological Thought
Martin LeFevre: The afternoon is hazy, probably from the huge wildfires in Canada, and Sentinel Rock in the canyon beyond town is partially obscured. The reasoning mind chooses not to drive to Upper Park, but when upon reaching the deciding point, I continue driving from a deeper place without choosing to do so. I […]
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Teleology Without Goals and Ends
Martin LeFevre: Science, which is rightly and necessarily based on materialism, has discounted and dismissed teleology. It has been simplistically viewed as a doctrine explaining phenomena in terms of goals or ends, but philosophically, it’s much more subtle. Though it is not in the purview of science, it’s philosophically valid to ask (irrespective of […]
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The World Is Not the Earth
Martin LeFevre: Back when I taught preschool children, or was often around little ones, I would sometimes point to a tree, a bird in flight, a flower – and ask, did people make that? They would laugh and say no. Then I’d point to a building, a car or an airplane – and ask, did […]
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Why Science Can’t Save Us
Martin LeFevre: Though I’m sometimes accused of it, I’ve never understood why anyone would try to save this mad, dark world. It’s not about saving the world; it’s about saving oneself and humanity, which are essentially the same thing. And science cannot do so. Why? Because knowledge, however accurate and extensive, still requires application, and […]
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Beyond Nihilism and Civilization’s Collapse
Martin LeFevre: It’s easy to become nihilistic when subjected to the deathbeat of this country’s daily mass murders. But nihilism is a runaway reaction to man’s destructiveness and evil. The nihilist comes to believe that the meaninglessness of so-called civilization extends to nature and the universe. Over the weekend, this college town joined the long […]
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Is Humanity Doomed?
Martin LeFevre: If scientists make poor philosophers, journalists make terrible theologians. Take this metaphysical and eschatological declaration by Janna Levin, a cosmologist at Barnard College for example: “There will be a last sentient being, there will be a last thought.” Such false certainty is full of assumptions and rife with projections, not to mention being […]
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If You Choose, You Lose
Martin LeFevre: There is a perniciously false, foundational idea that has a chokehold on the Western mind. It has spread like a viral meme around the world. It is the idea of there is a separate self that chooses. It’s underwritten by the belief in free will, and gives rise to the notion that freedom […]
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Concerning Discernment and Difference
Martin LeFevre: As a philosopher and writer, some sentences instantly strike me as true, and some sentences instantly strike me as false. How can one be sure one is seeing the true as true, and the false as false? After all, as a famous physicist once cracked, “Don’t fool yourself. And you are the easiest […]
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Perception and the Movement of the Heart
Martin LeFevre: The meaning of the word ‘perception’ has deteriorated in English. Its small scope at present extends from ‘my perception,’ implying everyone has different perceptions, to the pejorative ‘immaculate perception,’ implying that unmediated perception doesn’t exist. Even so, a question I heard recently has stayed with me: “Can perception and the movement of the […]
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The Human Brain and the Cosmic Mind
Martin LeFevre: Man is dead and human consciousness has become synonymous with darkness. Can human beings and a new global civilization emerge? The widely held popular belief, and the consensus conclusion of academic philosophers is that there is no intrinsic meaning to life. “Man is the measure of all things,” and humans create meaning in […]
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Mystical Experiencing Is Our Birthright
Martin LeFevre : I dislike the term ‘mystical experience.’ What happens during true meditation is neither mystical, nor an experience. It’s an event, a phenomenon that is new each time. The brain has the capacity of gathering, through passive observation, awareness that is quicker than thought. When awareness is faster than thought, the observer ends, […]
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A Mystic’s Understanding of Jesus’ Crucifixion
Martin LeFevre: The rain came down in sheets as the sun shone brightly low in the western sky. To the east, the most vivid rainbow I’ve ever seen arced 180 degrees across the sky, the prismatic bands of color almost too intense for the heart to bear. Never was the insight, “color is God” more […]
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