It's quite funny, I know a guy who is a religion psychologist, and he has conducted many studies of New age beliefs. One of his many findings, it that there are several groups of "New agers" who believe their beliefs are based on very old Eastern mysticism and wisdom, whereas in fact the ideas largely come from modern Western society.fable wrote:This is a holdover myth from the 19th century Age of Romanticism. Dumas, Poe, and countless writers inferior to both used it on a regular basis. And it's a subset of that whole Destiny myth, which still clogs our cultural arteries--as witness the endless games, fiction, and movies (as that Star Wars mess demonstrates) that emphasize how *your* life should be filled with color, drama, and defeats that always turn into victories. Is it any wonder so many attempted relationships end in failure, when both parties are intent on realizing their own dreams of 24/7 fun with themselves as the destined center of the universe?
I know little of any modern religion except European New age, but that itself is quite hetereogenous. There are some core features which are similar, but those core features are actually the same as in a majority of religions or spiritual "schools". Factor analysis of what New Agers themselves report that they believe, show that they vary on very fundamental issues, such as what you discuss above regarding full integration or not. Despite this, there are strong commercial interests that present the view that "New Age" is one big group who share views, and are distincly different from all other religious views.But I want to emphasize that people who follow newer religions--or religions that attempt to revive old beliefs--don't necessarily believe in these myths. Transcendence in itself implies that part of each human survives death, but this doesn't mean that we're not fully integrated people, here and now.
It depends whether you define love as I and Chanak did above; ie as a mulitfaceted behaviour who also includes both evolutionarly and genetic level, biochemical level, a personal, private experience level and sociocultural evel, or if you define it operationally, like for instance "attachment" or other observable phenomena.Science can describe love and measure the physical processes linked to it, but I doubt science will ever figure out what love is.
Consciousness research is a field of science where speculations is about as fruitful as speculation regarding how the universe came to be, ie at this stage of human knowledge, it is poetry and fantasy with only pieces of controlled, empiric knowledge. I don't know what will happen in the future, but the "mind" part of human behaviour, ie the level of subjective, private experience loaded with all the indivuals unique learning history and experinces, is simply not possible or even meaningful to study scientifically.
