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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2015 - 10:08pm PT
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Largo, you avoided the question:
To the extent that I have no idea what goes on in you to give you the appearance of consciousness, and vis-versa, we somehow can come to an agreement that we both do exhibit the property of having consciousness.
How do we come to that agreement?
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 17, 2015 - 10:08pm PT
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So you can calculate,
After so many years the whole universe will be destroyed.
Your body will be annihilated also.
Then you will take rebirth and calculate again only to be annihilated again.
And thus you just waste your time in the prison house cycle of birth, death disease and old age calculating.
Only the insane do that .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2015 - 10:11pm PT
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I am inviting you to delve for a moment into human being (as in being, sans tasking or doing or thinking or efforting or wanting this and not that, etc.), which is the direct experience of the open space of the sentient field in which our every thought and feeling and objective function arises. The fundamental nature of this field is "emptiness."
I don't need your invitation, I do that on my own... I agree that it is not easy.
However, I apparently do not interpret that "moment" the same way that you do.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 17, 2015 - 10:21pm PT
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Yes the materially condition soul will interpret the "moment" where as the meditator "sees" the "moment" as it is .......
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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Jun 17, 2015 - 11:13pm PT
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^^ It really is a beautiful racket, explaining the unknown. Never seems to end... People will always be wondering, and looking to others for answers. science and religion
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2015 - 11:23pm PT
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whatever, Werner...
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STEEVEE
Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
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Jun 18, 2015 - 10:28am PT
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The Japanese truly live by the Golden Rule rather than a set of laws. Jan, I believe you have forgotten WWII. Imperial Japan was as fanatical as any religious group with devastating outcomes to millions of people. Your argument is flawed, plus Japan has the highest suicide rate of any first world nation.
Fanaticism is a result of pin point focus and pursuit of an idea without regard to the larger picture. Religion and capitalism can all breed fanaticism. Fanaticism is the result of losing one's mind.
I had to respond to your post because you packaged up a group (Japanese) into a nice, neat little box. We all know people are much more complex than that. There's no black and white, but everything in between.
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STEEVEE
Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
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Jun 18, 2015 - 11:07am PT
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jstan, thanks for posting that link. I started watching and have found it very intriguing. It's easy for us to forget history and to lose our minds. We can't imagine, those of us living as present day 'Mericans, what it was like when the whole world went mad.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 18, 2015 - 11:52am PT
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In math research I found that frequently I made progress through a sequence of mistakes and errors, with that sequence ultimately converging to a decent and accurate result. I believe JL is doing the same as he gropes toward a functional perspective of sentience or awareness. I suggested some time back he might look at fields and he is doing so. However, he hasn't struck upon a definition/concept that works yet. But he may do so.
Keep plugging away, Big Guy.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 12:37pm PT
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I am inviting you to delve for a moment into human being (as in being, sans tasking or doing or thinking or efforting or wanting this and not that, etc.), which is the direct experience of the open space of the sentient field in which our every thought and feeling and objective function arises. The fundamental nature of this field is "emptiness."
I don't need your invitation, I do that on my own... I agree that it is not easy.
However, I apparently do not interpret that "moment" the same way that you do.
First, just notice the phenomenal resistance people have once we edge off the known terrain of a metaphorical X/Y axis, so to speak, where objects exist and we can still calculate and evaluate and "know' in the normal sense of the world. MH2 is back to wisecracking sans content, Dingus harkens back to some wonky preacherman - even though what we are saying has no doctrine, no higher power, no beliefs, and is merely an invitation to empiracally find out for yourself. And instead of acknowledging the common use of common scientific terms to point the direction to the slippery field of inquiry, I am now "appropriating" sacred scientific terms, vastly misusing them to bolster "my" case.
As Mike said many posts back, the only thing that is "mine" in all of this is my delivery and language. No-mind, borderless field of awareness, open awareness, no-thing, emptiness - all of these have been the basic tenets of the experiential adventures for ages. And now we are looping back to scientism, in that what those unfamiliar with said terms quite naturally think is that what the experiential adventures were actually trying to do - and continue to do - is science without the math and instrumentation and theories and experiments.
This, I can assure you, is 100% bass-ackwardes.
If I have learned anything in this thread, it's people's do-or-die attachment to the classical "objective" world, and the maxim, "What's not physical?"
What we have seen, explained a thousand different ways from Zen interpretations to Copenhagan interpretations to Suffi breakdowns to investigations into quarks and photons and other "non-things" is that A), there is only one reality, and people use their awareness and intelligence in various ways to probe same, and B), both experiential and scientific camps seem to agree on the concepts of fields; a slippery, intermediate realm of no-things, where phenomenon have effects and footprints but no dimensionality, no physical extent, phenomenon that are NOT objects and have no mass. They are, or appear to be, inherently "empty." Not to be confused to having no qualities, but rather, there is no object with qualities.
I am told . . . '
Definitions of mass often seem circular because it is such a fundamental quantity that it is hard to define in terms of something else. In fact, matter has many definitions, but the most common is that it is any substance which has mass and occupies space (ie, a physical object. A ‘thing.”) All physical objects are composed of matter, in the form of atoms, which are in turn composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Returning to "not-things," the classic example are photons, which have no mass, so they are an example of something in the physical world that is not comprised of matter. Photons are not considered "objects" in the traditional sense, as they do not exist in a stationary state (no “rest” mass).
Why bother mentioning this? Not to try and vouchsafe some far out and remote preacherman" claims about the experiential realm, but rather to use a tangible example about an intermediate realm sans objects but nevertheless where phenomenon (waves, energy, etc) still arise. According to my friends, where people get lost here is in thinking - in the case of a photon - that there is a thing or "object" called a photon that has so and so properties, when in fact there is no object (no rest mass), just the phenomenon. Sure, you can call the phenomenon a thing, but it is a thing sans material, stuff and mass, so it cannot be called an object. I use the term "nothing," or "No-object." Perhaps someone else has a better term.
Now if we were to look at mind, or sentience, we cannot say with any real assurance that this intermediate realm between void and object has any direct bearing or relevance to sentience or consciousness; but it gives us a starting point for conversation, and some mental pictures and concepts to start working up some common language. And we can agree that this is slippery terrain. Like mass, definitions about sentience are often circular because it is such a fundamental quantity to our life (and yes, John G., we do live IN it. Try and escape it to an purely objective place. You will still be embedded inside your experiential bubble) it is hard to define in terms the non-thing itself. So we go to something else - normally brain function - to try and define sentience, believing that what is does is selfsame with what it is.
Now that brings us back to Ed's contention that he is delving into sentience on his own (he doesn't need my invitation), that he finds it difficult and that his experience in the "moment" renders him an interpretation, or evaluation, and that his evaluation is different than that universally posited by the wisdom traditions, from Zen to the Suffis to Tibetan paths to Mindfulness to Taoism to every last contemplative discipline out there. Fair enough. But we can't stop there.
First, it would be useful for Ed to put into words what his interpretation (in the moment) IS, and how it differs form mine. Second, can we agree that experientially, there is a phenomenon we all encounter we can provisionally call "self awareness?" We don't need to objectify it as yet and try and hold self-awareness "out there" so we can collectively evaluate it as an object. Rather for the time being, let us be satisfied with a merely experiential take on self-awareness, not trying to "prove" anything, rather just trying to find a few words that we can agree on that point to what self-awareness itself (NOT the objects of awareness) is on an experiential level.
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 18, 2015 - 01:49pm PT
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. . . a few words that we can agree on that point to what self-awareness itself (NOT the objects of awareness) is on an experiential level (JL)
That's better. However, I would argue that self-awareness has an object: one's self.
And now we are looping back to scientism, in that what those unfamiliar with said terms quite naturally think is that what the experiential adventures were actually trying to do - and continue to do - is science without the math and instrumentation and theories and experiments (JL)
OK, this means no defined experimental processes, no evaluation of any kind, just sitting and staring inward. So how do you expect to relate this to the mysterious realm of QM? You seek to convince others that there is only one reality and it is encountered while sitting or while experimenting. Prove this, please, and we all will become your disciples.
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STEEVEE
Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
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Jun 18, 2015 - 02:35pm PT
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One "reality"? I have a hard time believing that. There may be one "consciousness" that exists, but reality is in the eye of the beholder. There are as many realities as there are people in the world that's is when "mind" becomes a weak force, but when the masses believe in one "reality" then "mind" becomes a powerful force. "Mind" is not "consciousness".
If a "consciousness" exists that we are all a part of, a so called "field" or "water" that we are all swimming in, then there is no discussion to have. Once the discussion begins then the "water" turns to atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. Drops of "water" I can deal with because it's still water, but hydrogen and oxygen (of course I'm speaking metaphorically here) are trying to be something else. I suppose we're all drops of "water" and in the end we all go swimming in the same "pool". Stupid metaphor, but it's all I got.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 18, 2015 - 02:45pm PT
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Well, Steevee, at least it's a step up from Abrahamic mythology.
Chopra's the man, eh?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 18, 2015 - 03:31pm PT
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Is there a neural network that experiences raw awareness?
How would we know?
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STEEVEE
Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
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Jun 18, 2015 - 03:35pm PT
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Chopra's the man, eh? Absolutely not! That dude is crazy. He offers false hope to people who don't understand or except the impermanence of life.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 05:24pm PT
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OK, this means no defined experimental processes, no evaluation of any kind, just sitting and staring inward. So how do you expect to relate this to the mysterious realm of QM? You seek to convince others that there is only one reality and it is encountered while sitting or while experimenting. Prove this, please, and we all will become your disciples.
Not remotely so. That is why you are warned not to try and do the experiential adventures alone, but rather in a group. Each discipline has many ways to evaluate and test and deepen the process, but what I suspect you are looking for is confirmation about content, rather than deepening your understanding of sentience.
For example, your belief that self-observation always has an object. In this model, you have divided in your mind WHAT (content) is experiened from the agency ("I") that is appaqrently experiencing. Now there are two ways to probe into this directly.
One - jump into trying to discover the fundamental nature of this "I." What, exactly is it? You say it is an "object." When you detach from content, in what way is this "I" an object. Is it "out there" for you to objectify? Meaning you have somehow wiggled out of your own "I" and can now "see" it out there? If so, who, and what, is now watching? Or do you mean that your "I" is a SUBJECT of experience? Big difference.
But this is getting ahead of ouselves. I was before just asking for people's experiential take on observing. Ed says his experience and evaluation of observing is different then my own. I would be curious to see how observing itself is experienced by Ed and others. And even more important, when you detach from the articles of observation - the people, places, things and phenomenon - then what is the experience of observing, that is, observing witout an object.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 18, 2015 - 05:30pm PT
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And even more important, when you detach from the articles of observations - the people, places, things and phenomenon - then what is the experience of observing, that is, observing witout an object.
Simple unfocused awareness.
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