Books of Love
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
Not far from where I live there used to be a second hand record store. It has sort of closed down about a year ago. But the store is still there and sometimes the owner is there and opens the door. Last Friday he had placed some boxes with books outside, all 25 cents each. I bought four books.
I am especially pleased with the small booklet with the lecture that Daniel Dennett gave in 1997 in Maasstricht on Artificial Intelligence. I find Artificial Intelligence a fascinating subject, although I do not know very much about it. But we all have a brain, intelligence, consciousness and creativity, which are some of the main aspects that this subject is about, so we all are experts in a way.
Daniel Dennett believes that consciousness is a product of the brain, and that the brain is a product of mechanical evolution. In other words, Daniel Dennett doesn’t believe in the existence of consciousness-outside-a-brain. I do. But I also think that you cannot proof the existence of consciousness-outside-a-brain, so the whole discussion seems pretty useless to me.
I try to avoid discussions anyway, and especially on subjects like these. But I do like to read or hear what people like Daniel Dennett have to say on these matters. What he says is sure more interesting than what many of the believers say.
One such believer is Baird T. Spalding. His book ”Life and teachings of the Masters of the far East” is one of the earliest New Age books , and I am happy now to have a complete edition; in the early editions the words of the Masters were abridged.
By he way, I belief that Baird T. Spalding made it all up himself. But that doesn’t mean that the idea’s that are expressed in this book are untrue. In fact, the way that Baird T. Spalding describes these idea’s is still among the best that I have ever read. Only in some love soul songs in the Hall Of Records are these Truths expressed more clearly. Like in this great esoteric classic by The Top Notes.
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