Here is a second draft, which is little changed, except for a reordering, merging, and splitting of paragraphs, and the omission of the statement about being "depressed" (because an extreme state of mind outside "normal" coping mechanisms does not imply either irrationality or a physical malfunction of the brain, and I don't want to plant either of these misleading and stigmatised images of me in readers' minds).
Is this version likely to work better as an introduction to a philosophical forum? Here goes: In a word, I suppose I'm a mystic: a budding one, an extremely undeveloped and confused one, lost in a world that seems dark, strange, and threatening. In spite of this darkness, I believe in a God who is immanent in each of us, universally loving, and an absolute moral authority; however, I have no knowledge or opinion as to whether this God created the universe, or is omnipotent. I don't think I have ever believed in any supernatural events, not since I was a small child, and still believed in Santa Claus. I think I have always, since then, been inclined to believe that no supernatural events occur or ever have occurred, although, as with God's supposed attributes, I don't claim total certainty about such matters. I was for all practical purposes an atheist between the ages of about 8 and 54, and am only gradually changing my views. I do, however, believe in the existence of paranormal phenomena, and I think that Jung's concept of synchronicity provides ample room for such phenomena to occur, within what is called coincidence. Philosophically, I believe that human beings are minds, not bodies; and that it is not only a error, but damaging to human self- confidence, to imagine that any amount of expert knowledge concerning human bodies will ever give any human mind even the smallest knowledge of another human mind, or of itself. This belief about psychology is independent of my belief in paranormal phenomena (which is something of an intellectual embarrassment to me, but nevertheless doesn't seem irrational). What little education I have is in pure mathematics, although even that is incomplete (in a more damning sense than that in which everyone's education is always incomplete). I have also done a fair amount of unsystematic and sporadic reading, over the years, on the subject of mental illness (so called) and psychotherapy. I'm pretty much open to suggestions of what to read in philosophy, although for some reason it is quite a struggle for me to get through any books at all these days. I haven't studied philosophy formally, but I think I would like to learn something about about Plato, Meister Eckhart, Locke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Emerson, Bergson, William James, Mill, Freud, Jung, Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, Popper, Feyerabend, and Chomsky.
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