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Post by laughter on Nov 18, 2013 19:17:48 GMT -5
When we look at physical forms, say a table or a bottle of water, do these things fall within the scope of the real? On the one hand I say yes, because they're readily experienceable. However, I know enough basic science to know that these are mere perceptions based on light, neural activity, and, ultimately, patterns of probability clouds. It's not much to go on actually. So is reality then just what it appears to be? --- a set of experiences which actually aren't there upon (very) close inspection? The scientific models that are the source of the distinction about appearances and what underlies them are, of course ideas about reality. They are a conceptual screen. This is where I see an opportunity for mind to inform mind: by questioning and investigating what makes a solid surface appear solid, for instance, the thinking mind encounters the idea that this phenomenon of solidity is due to a set of counterintuitive factors. In this case, specifically, that the entities responsible for the force underlying the solidity are physically separated and it is an electrical field extant in empty space that results in the phenomena. So mind is then on notice, by way of the conceptual screen of the scientific models of the molecule and the atom, that appearances are deceptive. At this point it's interesting to note that not everyone needs to investigate the world rationally, skeptically and empirically with the mind to come to this conclusion, and that as a matter of fact, human intuition is a very powerful thing. Based on the power of faith and motivated by awe we have the ancient Hebrews intuiting a creation myth that sounds sorta like the big bang long before Hubble, and the Hindu's coming to the conclusion that nothing that appears to us is independent of the observation of it thousands of years before Young's double-slit experiment. The upside to investigating reality with the rational mind is that we can rule out speculative superstition -- we can turn our telescopes skyward and see for ourselves that there is no Mt. Olympus. In the looking we note the distinct absence of a dour, white-bearded man in the sky alternating between throwing lightning bolts at us and bathing us in the nurturing glow of his paternal love. While we can't rule out the possibility that there's a labyrinth of underground fire-tunnels where demons with goat-heads subject the dearly departed to endless physical torture, our knowledge of geology renders the idea as a childish nonsense. Another upside is that unlike self-inquiry, rational empirical inquiry can be done collectively and over time. We don't need to repeat all the experiments in the past that led to our current understandings, we just have to trust that the shoulders of the giants that we stand on aren't a lie. Ultimately though, the point that mind informing mind is limited has to be acknowledged. With respect to rational empiricism, this can be recognized in the fact that the process is one of replacing older, less perfected beliefs with newer ones based on novel insights, incremental refinements of understanding and advancements in the technology used to perform experiments. The current rationalist worldview is a rather implacable beast in that it is built on a set of precepts that have stood the test of centuries of skeptical scrutiny. Here we see the irony of skepticism morphing into blind, unquestioned belief. The seeds of the dark are contained in the light, and as the wheel turns, the fruits of open-minded and sincere awe are fermented into the bitter wine of dogma. Is the idea that these ideas are ideas only ... can that be enough? This question seems to me to present us the limit on mind informing mind in a way that makes it available subjectively, in the context of self-inquiry. That type of inquiry, unlike science, isn't something that anyone can do for us, and it's a process that's going to happen over and over again, and never in exactly the same way twice, as long as there are people to ask a question similar to it. The way toward the personal answer to this inquiry is clear: set aside the rational thinking mind, and observe any idea about the common denominator underlying every unique perspective for what it is -- simply an ephemeral structure of the mind. Watch the thinker, attend the actual, feel the sense of being, look with clarity, and in the stillness, simply know. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2013 19:43:06 GMT -5
When we look at physical forms, say a table or a bottle of water, do these things fall within the scope of the real? On the one hand I say yes, because they're readily experienceable. However, I know enough basic science to know that these are mere perceptions based on light, neural activity, and, ultimately, patterns of probability clouds. It's not much to go on actually. So is reality then just what it appears to be? --- a set of experiences which actually aren't there upon (very) close inspection? The scientific models that are the source of the distinction about appearances and what underlies them are, of course ideas about reality. They are a conceptual screen. This is where I see an opportunity for mind to inform mind: by questioning and investigating what makes a solid surface appear solid, for instance, the thinking mind encounters the idea that this phenomenon of solidity is due to a set of counterintuitive factors. In this case, specifically, that the entities responsible for the force underlying the solidity are physically separated and it is an electrical field extant in empty space that results in the phenomena. So mind is then on notice, by way of the conceptual screen of the scientific models of the molecule and the atom, that appearances are deceptive. At this point it's interesting to note that not everyone needs to investigate the world rationally, skeptically and empirically with the mind to come to this conclusion, and that as a matter of fact, human intuition is a very powerful thing. Based on the power of faith and motivated by awe we have the Hebrews intuiting a creation myth that sounds sorta like the big bang millenia before Hubble, and the Hindu's coming to the conclusion that nothing that appears to us is independent of the observation of it thousands of years before Young's double-slit experiment. The upside to investigating reality with the rational mind is that we can rule out speculative superstition -- we can turn our telescopes skyward and see for ourselves that there is no Mt. Olympus. In the looking we note the distinct absence of a dour, white-bearded man in the sky alternating between throwing lightning bolts at us and bathing us in the nurturing glow of his paternal love. While we can't rule out the possibility that there's a labyrinth of underground fire-tunnels where demons with goat-heads subject the dearly departed to endless physical torture, our knowledge of geology renders the idea as a childish nonsense. Another upside is that unlike self-inquiry, rational empirical inquiry can be done collectively and over time. We don't need to repeat all the experiments in the past that led to our current understandings, we just have to trust that the shoulders of the giants that we stand on aren't a lie. Ultimately though, the point that mind informing mind is limited has to be acknowledged. With respect to rational empiricism, this can be recognized in the fact that the process is one of replacing older, less perfected beliefs with newer ones based on novel insights, incremental refinements of understanding and advancements in the technology used to perform experiments. The current rationalist worldview is a rather implacable beast in that it is built on a set of precepts that have stood the test of centuries of skeptical scrutiny. Here we see the irony of skepticism morphing into blind, unquestioned belief. The seeds of the dark are contained in the light, and as the wheel turns, the fruits of open-minded and sincere awe are fermented into the bitter wine of dogma. Is the idea that these ideas are ideas only ... can that be enough? This question seems to me to present us the limit on mind informing mind in a way that makes it available subjectively, in the context of self-inquiry. That type of inquiry, unlike science, isn't something that anyone can do for us, and it's a process that's going to happen over and over again, and never in exactly the same way twice, as long as there are people to ask a question similar to it. The way toward the personal answer to this inquiry is clear: set aside the rational thinking mind, and observe any idea about the common denominator underlying every unique perspective for what it is -- simply an ephemeral structure of the mind. Watch the thinker, attend the actual, feel the sense of being, look with clarity, and in the stillness, simply know.Yes, nicely put... I would only add the message that nobody wants to hear, that all that watching, thinking, attending, feeling, looking and stillness, isn't happening to someone... We find it easy to see the objective world as not being what it appears to be, yet we never see the subjective as not being what it appears to be... Both being very much real and unreal at the same time... There is just Being and it's very much like seeing something that is there that you think you can’t see. |
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Post by laughter on Nov 18, 2013 22:01:20 GMT -5
thanks! I would only add the message that nobody wants to hear, that all that watching, thinking, attending, feeling, looking and stillness, isn't happening to someone... Happening is for the seeing -- if we look, we see happening. Happening-to is an inference on top of that, but in there being a happening, once we've taken the subjective position of the looker, then there is, as a matter of course, an object that appears to the subject. In saying that there is "noone" we unravel the mistaken tangled heirarchy of the subject taking itself to be an object that appears to itself. We find it easy to see the objective world as not being what it appears to be, yet we never see the subjective as not being what it appears to be... Yes. that's what I take all of the snake/rope melodrama based in distinctions to be about -- from what nowhereman called "gossip-knowledge" of Advaita Vedanta, for example, I take it that the power of distinction is something that a student of it taught to cultivate. Is it an irony or a paradox that the seeker is encouraged to disentangle the subject-object split through the very means by which that split occurs? ... hmmmm .... even the question is TMT!  Both being very much real and unreal at the same time... Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. There is just Being and it's very much like seeing something that is there that you think you can’t see. yup.  ... well said! |
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... well said!