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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 04:35pm PT
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Maya is our perceived reality according to the Vedas and Upanishads.
Our nervous sytems are where and how we perceive reality and could be agued the manufacturer and archiver of Maya.
This is where the models meet. Are they right? I don't know. The neurological modeling is very compelling, but then I'm a sucker for the mystical, too.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2016 - 04:57pm PT
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You need to go read the Upanishads again ....
You're not even close.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:03pm PT
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Our nervous sytems are where and how we perceive reality and could be agued the manufacturer and archiver of Maya.
--------
And where do you figure you, who wrote the above, figures into this? Did your nervous system write it? If so, does your nervous system monitor itself, separate from you? If so, are "you" your nervous system?
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:16pm PT
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The "I" is an interesting idea. I may or may not have an "I."
John, How did you perceive what I wrote? How did your "I" get the message? Magic? Though, there is so much that is delightful, joyful, wondrous, and even magical about the phenomenology of perception I bet your nervous system did it!
Werner, If my understanding of the Vedas, Upanishads, and the concept of Maya is so far off, please elucidate.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:22pm PT
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You definitely havn't read the Upanishads .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:30pm PT
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MF: Language is a conceptual construct. It's not a big deal. Some use the tool with precision; most don't. Thoughts, concepts, language, observations, metrics, models, theories are tools. Tools are only as useful as your knowledge about their use and skill in using them.
You missed the message.
Fossils, physical, evidence animals, plants, long, time, paradigm, mythology are all concepts. They are concepts, abstractions, models, frameworks. They are constructs. What is real cannot be expressed with words. Words have no precision.
(I wouldn’t be citing Morpheus as a source of scientific credibility, BTW.)
Models don’t meet, ever. People only make the assumptions that they do.
I’m not the one who’s saying what things are as if there was no question. I’m not the one who claimed (further reinforced by your vote) that rocks (fossils) provide overwhelming evidence for “an indisputable fact”—reality. It’s a theory, my friend . . . a well-supported theory, but it’s hardly a fact. No model has ever been proven. They are all working approximations. What model completely and accurately explains any phenomenon?
Awareness of the imperfection and working toward narrowing the gap is sufficient.
Sure, even the scientific method itself is a tool that narrows the gap—but which gap? (You only see one?) There is no other method that “narrows the gap?”
I see reality is infinitely richer.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:32pm PT
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In that I doubt concept of Atman, the "I" that I am unsure about having?
Just because I have read about and understand the concept doesn't mean I necessarily believe (in) it.
MIkeL, I get it the conceptual is not the 'real.' So, a hammer is not a screwdriver. You waste too much time on that stuff. It gets in the way.
Gap between perception and reality. Does that need to be pluralized? OK. Gaps between perceptions and realities. There.
"I see reality as infinitely richer."
I understand that what you see makes you happy. It just doesn't interest me.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:36pm PT
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You don't understand at all.
If you did then you would really have read Upanishads.
It's not a concept or academics that one can just simply read, understand and then believe ....
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:41pm PT
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I don't think you *do* get it. You don't write like you get it.
EDIT: Like Werner says, I don't see that it's an understanding that can be understood conceptually because conceptuality cannot appear to see itself. It's not a concept. It's what Rumi said: "Seeing, seeing, seeing!"
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 05:44pm PT
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That's your call. Get in line, you won't be the first person who felt I didn't get it. A lot of the time my wife is at the head of the line!
Werner, help me understand the Vedas and Upanishads. Or at least be precise about the nature of my misunderstanding.
Love Rumi! And delight in him regularly!
Just because the Vedas and Upanishads are doesn't mean the concepts in them are real or true. They are constructs after all. ;-)
Is this what you mean? I get that. Been there; get back occasionally. That this might or might not be real is interesting. It's fun to experience. Does it have importance? It was transformative for me - I believe. Is it useful? Is it real? Discuss.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jan 15, 2016 - 06:01pm PT
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I don't see that it's an understanding that can be understood conceptually because conceptuality cannot appear to see itself. It's not a concept.
Words have no precision.
That's okay. It's enough if they have accuracy.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2016 - 06:04pm PT
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Vedas and Upanishads are not read.
They are sound vibrations.
The gross materialists mental speculators think they are written words .....
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 06:06pm PT
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I don't see that it's an understanding that can be understood conceptually because conceptuality cannot appear to see itself. It's not a concept.
Do you realize that doesn't make sense? Are you attempting to communicate that it is an understanding that can only be had through direct experience?
An impassioned personal account is not a conclusive argument. Or, just saying so don't make it so. And, yes, that rule is true for all of us.
Is experience enough evidence? Discuss.
Werner, Thanks for that last post! It really cleared things up for me! Yeah, I get the gist - specifics please.
Sycorax, Welcome to Ashland. Nothing wrong with a good metaphor and the Bard is the champ! Drop an note. It would be fun to break bread. Would offer a house, but we don't have one yet - it's being built. In the meantime, traveling around. The skiing at Bozeman was great today! Next ice climbing in Hyalite.
Cognitive dissonance is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.
Am I wearing the shirt or seeing the shirt? Is the shirt I'm wearing real or the one I see on the floor real? Is the shirt on the floor real? Is any of this real? Have I had enough beer yet?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 15, 2016 - 10:07pm PT
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Those are some good highjinx Mark 8D
But reality doesn't necessarily necessitate what's real.
Like i've said here once or twice before, "Reality is an allusion brought on by the shortage of beer". i'm startin to believe that's real :(
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 15, 2016 - 10:39pm PT
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I’m not the one who’s saying what things are as if there was no question. I’m not the one who claimed (further reinforced by your vote) that rocks (fossils) provide overwhelming evidence for “an indisputable fact”—reality. It’s a theory, my friend . . . a well-supported theory, but it’s hardly a fact. No model has ever been proven. They are all working approximations. What model completely and accurately explains any phenomenon?
certainly no model is complete and accurate. For some models we have an ideas of where they are incomplete, and we usually have a good idea of how accurate the models are, so we can search for those incomplete bits, and push the accuracy of the tests to the point where they challenge the models.
In many areas of physics, this is a rather mind boggling exercise... the level of accuracy of the model is so high one wonders what is left...
for instance, the famous measurement of the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron is accurate to one part in a trillion... and agrees with the theory...
a = 0.00115965218073 experiment
a = 0.00115965218178 theory
where the difference is consistent with the accuracy of the calculation, and of the experiment.
We expect that these will disagree at some point, and that we will learn about "new physics" when it happens... we don't know what the new physics will be, but we understand enough to know that it will manifest itself in this measurement.
So we can say, and even believe, that the theory is "incomplete" and that we test it at a finite accuracy.
With all this equivocation on the definiteness of this particular theory, looking at the accuracy and knowing about the incompleteness one wonders at MikeL's protest that this is not a fact in any practical meaning of the word.
But perhaps it is the art of being a physicist that allows one to keep both the idea of accurate understanding and the knowledge of incompleteness together, and be able to make progress expanding the understanding and knowledge on the foundation of what is known.
That's my experience...
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 15, 2016 - 11:51pm PT
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Wonderful post, Ed. Thank you. Love your stuff!
This, in particular, is beautiful!
But perhaps it is the art of being a physicist that allows one to keep both the idea of accurate understanding and the knowledge of incompleteness together, and be able to make progress expanding the understanding and knowledge on the foundation of what is known.
I'm going to play with it a bit...
Perhaps the art of being conscious is to keep both the idea of accurate understanding and the knowledge of incompleteness concurrently, and be able to make progress expanding the understanding and knowledge on the foundation of what is known.
I'll bring the beer, Blue! ;-)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 16, 2016 - 01:55pm PT
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MF: athough one can know reality, it's not a thing that can be figured out or resolved. Any interpretation is limited and hence wrong. What this is cannot be said or defined. How could it?
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 16, 2016 - 02:23pm PT
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Yes, and?
Did you read Ed's last post?! It was quite brilliant and deserves to be read a few times, contemplated, and absorbed.
The point that perception is inherently imperfect is one note of a symphony. Essentially no one is arguing against that position. You appear to be getting hung up in a semantics loop.
Now that you've got that one note down move on to the rest. Your focus on that particular issue is making you myopic.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 16, 2016 - 03:13pm PT
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The gross materialists measure the inferior material energies but can't for the life of them even begin to measure the very energies that drive these inferior material energies ......
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jan 16, 2016 - 04:02pm PT
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In practice I use an ohmmeter to measure the electrical balance of acupuncture meridians. That data is fed into a computer that analyzes the balance of the five elements based upon a traditional oriental medicine model. The graphs from analysis then guide my acupuncture treatment. The beauty is that I can re-test on the next visit to asses the effect of the last treatment.
In the East Indian model of the chakra system there are the individual chakras and the Nadis (sushumna (spinal cord), Ida, and Pingala). Ida refers to what in the west we call the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and Pingala refers to what in the west we call the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).
We can measure the tone of the PNS by subtle variation in the heart rate at rest over time (heart rate variability, or HRV). Most people have too little PNS tone and this causes problems due to impaired digestion, absorption, elimination, sleep, body repair (anabolic/catabolic balance), and regulation of hormones (too much cortisol, too low anabolic hormones). There are many programs for analysis of HRV and there are a lot of peer-reviewed articles in Index Medicus looking at the meaning and import of HRV and its' relationship to other parameters of body function.
HRV is an indirect measure of the functions of the cardiac plexus of nerves (heart chakra (sanskrit - Anahata)) and the Vagus nerve (Ida).
HRV testing can be used for measuring which forms of meditation and/or yoga are most effective for a given individual in increasing PNS (Ida) tone.
So, a scientific model and clincal application has been useful for determining the effect of meditation and yoga on functions associated with the chakra system.
I find that cool!
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