New Thinkin • Dec 15, 2024 Charles Upton’s first books of poetry were published in 1968 and 1969 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Light Books in San Francisco. He was then considered the youngest member of the “beat generation” as he was still in high school. He has subsequently written many books associated with the traditionalist school of spirituality including The Science of the Greater Jihad, Folk Metaphysics, Alien Disclosure Deception: The Metaphysics of Social Engineering, Day and Night on the Sufi Path, Dugin Against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory, System of the Antichrist and Vectors of the Counter-Initiation. His website is https://charles-upton.com/. Note: There is a GoFundMe page for Charles Upton who is dealing with colon cancer. See https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-charl… Here, Upton observes that there is a prejudice against looking at spiritual claims as literal, factual truths. This is a prejudice that is shared by both atheistic deniers of the spiritual and enthusiasts of symbolic interpretations of spiritual truths. Both groups tend to believe literal interpretations are somehow primitive. Upton offers some solutions to this impasse. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:02 The Peterson/Dawkins debate 00:17:32 The paranormal as taboo 00:30:23 Truth value of religious claims 00:37:28 Traditionalist view of the paranormal 00:43:29 The paranormal and theology 00:51:17 The paranormal and spirituality 01:03:40 How to symbols and facts fit with each other? 01:10:24 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He serves as Co-Director for Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on November 29, 2024)