Hi Jason,

Thanks for taking the time to lay that out. I recognize the mix of resonance and dissonance you’re describing.

A couple of clarifications first. I haven’t been following Marius. I looked at his page a couple of times after he commented on something I wrote. I just read his most recent essay, and it sounds like things I might say.

On the broader point, I wouldn’t frame my position as simply “anti-spiritual.” I don’t find the division between the sacred and the profane useful, and I’m critical of the move that creates that split and then treats “spiritual” language as conferring a kind of authority or special access to truth. As far as I can see, it adds a layer of interpretation that obscures what is actually being experienced.

In that split, we have experience on the one hand, and unverifiable interpretations on the other. I prefer to stay with phenomena rather than move into conjectured explanations.

When I push back on spiritual frameworks, it’s not the experiences themselves I’m questioning. People have all sorts of experiences, and I don’t doubt that. But I see no basis for the interpretation that turns those experiences into claims about what reality is, especially when that involves things like channeling or hidden agencies. I don’t see a way to ground those claims in anything but just belief.

Since you mentioned A Course in Miracles, that’s a good example of what I mean. It presents itself as channeled material from Jesus, but as far as I can see, there’s no independent way to verify that claim. Historically, it emerged through a specific individual and was written, edited, and published like any other book. Then people squabbled over its control and ownership. That doesn’t invalidate the experiences people have with it, but it does mean the authority it claims rests on a story that can’t be substantiated.

The “meat radio” line was aimed at that kind of interpretation, not at the fact of experience itself.

You mention the pull toward feeling like you’ve seen through something others haven’t. That’s a familiar move, and it can be compelling. As far as I can see, it’s just another position the mind can take up, and it tends to reinforce itself.

On your point about map and territory, I don’t see a clear way to definitively separate them. Phenomenology is as far as I can go. I don’t have a way to step outside experience to verify what anything ultimately is, so beyond that, it becomes speculative. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it does put it outside what I can reasonably claim to know.

So I’m not trying to replace one framework with another. I’m just not making claims beyond what I can actually account for.

All the best, Robert