A belief in (knowledge of) 'spirit' means an acceptance that disembodied* intelligence exists ...
I suppose when we use terms like 'disembodied intelligence' we should be mindful we are using an analogy?
The common idea of intelligence is framed within the totality of the human faculty, so when we speak of a
spiritual being, we run up against a certain logic which regards the common terms within a physical context and thus cannot accept the idea.
For those with 'a sense of the spirit', the terms 'mind', 'intelligence', 'intellect', etc., present no problem. They are adequate terms to refer to that which we have a sense of, even if now we see 'as through a glass, and darkly'.
-- that mind exists outside of the appearance (to us natural creatures) of a concrete reality...
Yes, the common stock of all the Traditions.
That's what biocentrism seems to hint at — an Architect. Emergence, I'm not so sure, but in some views of it, again, an Architect.
It implies a belief in life-after-death.
Well things imply all sorts of things. It doesn't necessarily imply that to me.
The reality which natural creatures are able to perceive depends on natural senses...
Aquinas said, "There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses." I think the Greeks said it before him ...
*Disembodied from a 'normal' material form perceptible to our natural senses and instruments ...
Well I've said here before I believe 'mystical' experience, especially that of the ecstatic type, can result in the inability of the sensory cortex to comprehend and process an influx of something 'from above' as it were ... even the 'experience of bliss' can be emotionally overwhelming, and that's not necessarily a spiritual event.
Ezekiel used to go into trances. A number of ecstatic mystics were thought to be epileptic, and therefore their experience was put down to epilepsy, but supposing it's an authentic spiritual experience that overwhelms the faculties and triggers an epileptic fit?
On the other hand, something quite mundane can be equally as effective. Bishop Kalistos Ware of the Orthodox tradition was converted when he heard a choir singing; Cardinal Dulles when he saw a rose through a rain-stained window ... the Anonymous Author of Meditations on the Tarot had an epiphany when he was looking through the stained glass windows at Chatres Cathedral.
Someone I know changed someone's life simply by opening a car door for them.
The architecture of a church, or any sacred space, is quote often precise, and conducive to contemplation. But if you haven't got it, you won't get it, won't feel it, and the whole things a waste of effort. I love the complex and the simple in equal measure. I love the cloister of a cathedral, I love the idea that the Moslem can draw a line in the sand and the space beyond it is immediately consecrated, I delight in the idea that a famous Zen temple in Japan is right next to a power station. I knew a Brit who visited and listened to those visitors who complained about the background noise. The Abbot gave them a gentle telling off for wanting waterfalls, etc. If you can do zazen, you can do it on a traffic island in the middle of the freeway. If you need trees and water and natural beauty, you're a bit of a hothouse flower.
