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Post by laughter on May 15, 2024 20:06:45 GMT -5
L and ZD. Came across this quote by Nisargadatta. I hear it speaking to the chord the video struck in you guys. "The witness is merely a point in awareness. It has no name and form. It is like the reflection of the sun in a drop of dew. The drop of dew has name and form, but the little point of light is caused by the sun. The clearness and smoothness of the drop is a necessary condition but not sufficient by itself. Similarly clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind, but by themselves they are not sufficient. There must be reality beyond it. Because reality is timelessly present, the stress is on the necessary conditions." His explorations of a quiet mind were quite exquisite, even if there are sometimes translation issues. The refinement between witness, witnessing and witnessed is fodder for much of his poetry, because, poetry, is exactly what it is. Once a guy asked him (paraphrasing from my memory) if the witness was the ultimate, and his reply was "you don't build a house on a bridge".
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Post by laughter on May 14, 2024 16:19:32 GMT -5
Dilullo interviews people who suddenly wake up, like the man above, as well as people who follow a progressive pathway more like the one pointed to in the video. The one thing that's becoming increasingly clear via social media and youtube videos is that there are an infinite number of ways that people discover "what's going on." I liked his presentation in this one, although I'm not a fan of the deliberately hypnotic elements (even if he meant "OBEY" ironically ):
I can relate to both of the experiences he described. The "boredom" of meditation .. but for me, by then, the people at the Tolle forum had turned me onto RM, and it was instantly crystal clear when the thought of "boring" popped up "who is it that finds this boring?". As for the monkey-mind banging cymbals for attention, for me that eventually all coalesced into a one-pointed focus on the existential question, with ideas about Quantum Mechanics at the center of the hyper-mind tornado. All the while, I knew that the answers didn't lie in thought .. but still, they cycled .. Thanks for the recommendation.
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Post by laughter on May 14, 2024 12:30:37 GMT -5
Hey, feel free to share what you mean about your daughter, but I can understand if you'd rather not do that out here in public. Sounds interesting. I once had a teacher who swore his job was to help heal broken people. Believed that a healthy ego (mind) was better suited to the pathless path than an unhealthy one. My daughter was raised by her mother. A manipulating narcissistic character who loved to party. I don't want to go into the details but will say that my daughter's first several years of meditation involved examination of countless unconscious assumptions and unforgiveness' that would spontaneously bubble to the surface for resolution. She apparently needed that because these days are different. Her mind is far more docile and she is able to and often does enjoy meditating in long periods of silence. Thanks for sharing that, and I wish the best for her. As I alluded, I rezz'd with most of the vid. Meditation is the gold standard of advice for all sorts of situations, reasons and people. And then there's a flip side where if our perceptions aren't too distorted it's easy to tell whether someone we're listening to is sane and free of guile or venality in what they're saying to us. On the other hand, it's easy to become confused out at the extremes far past the conventional consensus mind states, for even the most well adjusted individual. The vid is well produced, and appeals to a response out beyond emotion, but every coin in the world, has two sides, always up in the air, end-over-end.
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Post by laughter on May 12, 2024 17:16:42 GMT -5
It wasn't any one particular thing that the narrator said, just a cumulative understanding based on the content to that point. Ironically, he uses the term "brutally honest" a few seconds after I stopped watching the first time. If I were to pick one turn of phrase that reveals a fixed attachment on the part of the creator(s) of the content, it's at 12 min : "to stabilize and integrate samadhi requires countless awakenings, countless humblings of the mind, countless little deaths". What I wrote here was about someone who realizes the existential truth, but without having first done what the narrator referred to as "shadow work". The vid is about doing that work before having realized the truth. I'm sure it can happen similar to the way the narrator describes it, and I'm equally as sure that the realization can happen without having done that first. "Stabilization" isn't really a thing. There is no predictable process out past the gateless gate. Just things we can say that are not true, and, in the case of narcissism (as one example), things we can acknowledge are at least cause for an adverse inference as to what the individual has actually realized. Someone can understand, quite deeply, this terrain of the seekers mind. But it has to happen completely differently "afterward". A caterpillar might have some decent advice for a butterfly on how to flap its wings, but it's still all just conjecture, and not based on direct experience. Also, the kind of constant vigilance he talks about after that other quote isn't something I'd recommend to a seeker without a pound of salt, and then only to someone at a particular point, in a particular state. Ok. I hear you. In the end anything can happen at anytime. A bolt of realization could strike a potential murderer seconds from a kill. I use to question the whole shadow work thingy. My daughter would come to make me realize that there are as many paths as there are people, and each path to the gate as unique as a fingerprint, so I leave it to others to be true to themselves. Hey, feel free to share what you mean about your daughter, but I can understand if you'd rather not do that out here in public. Sounds interesting.
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Post by laughter on May 12, 2024 14:53:07 GMT -5
Great vid right up until about 10min. What did you see happening after 10 mins? It wasn't any one particular thing that the narrator said, just a cumulative understanding based on the content to that point. Ironically, he uses the term "brutally honest" a few seconds after I stopped watching the first time. If I were to pick one turn of phrase that reveals a fixed attachment on the part of the creator(s) of the content, it's at 12 min : "to stabilize and integrate samadhi requires countless awakenings, countless humblings of the mind, countless little deaths". What I wrote here was about someone who realizes the existential truth, but without having first done what the narrator referred to as "shadow work". The vid is about doing that work before having realized the truth. I'm sure it can happen similar to the way the narrator describes it, and I'm equally as sure that the realization can happen without having done that first. "Stabilization" isn't really a thing. There is no predictable process out past the gateless gate. Just things we can say that are not true, and, in the case of narcissism (as one example), things we can acknowledge are at least cause for an adverse inference as to what the individual has actually realized. Someone can understand, quite deeply, this terrain of the seekers mind. But it has to happen completely differently "afterward". A caterpillar might have some decent advice for a butterfly on how to flap its wings, but it's still all just conjecture, and not based on direct experience. Also, the kind of constant vigilance he talks about after that other quote isn't something I'd recommend to a seeker without a pound of salt, and then only to someone at a particular point, in a particular state.
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Post by laughter on May 12, 2024 7:18:42 GMT -5
I agreed with tenka recently that some conditioning is bound to fall away after realizing the truth. I can't imagine how a narcissistic personality could still exist on the other side of the gateless gate, but then again, perhaps that's just a failure of imagination on my part. .. even allowing for that, I'd discount the "realization status" of anyone exhibiting those sorts of characteristics. But these "DSM" type abstractions are always a matter of degree, and situational / relational (someone might be perfectly normal with certain specific exceptions based on topic or individual/group ). Great vid right up until about 10min.
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Post by laughter on May 12, 2024 6:53:56 GMT -5
Twitter link
twitter links sometimes don't appear -->
Please. Excuse the politics here. This has got to be the cute/funniest thing I've seen all year. .. I .. .just ...... kant ............
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Post by laughter on May 12, 2024 6:22:50 GMT -5
I used to conceive of existential unity through the filter of the interconnected nature of the material world. It's a common perspective. It's also a stage of "arrested development". Not that the realization that clears that up is really any sort of progression, mind you. But I still think it a good metaphor, "arrested development". It's a useful perspective from which to answer the question of "can a machine be conscious?" These machines are as interconnected as any other object that we perceive. But the source of that connection to "consciousness" is always going to be human, regardless of whether or not the machines can continue on indefinitely after all the humans are long gone. Deeper water is found out beyond the point of inquiring as to the distinction between humanity and the mechanics of the situation. Depends on what you mean by machine. In Federico's book he talks about classical machines (which include normal computers), and he agrees with you, their only connection to "consciousness" is via the humans. However, he also talked about "machines" like the body/brain that appear to me more than classical. They have one foot in the quantum world, and consciousness. And potentially, an artificial system ("machine") could also be like that, instead of being like the classical machine. He's not the first to posit a theory of consciousness based on QM. Here's another example. There's a Stanford philosophy page on the topic. Curiosity is a beautiful thing, it really is. The nature of the known and unknown seems to be that for every question we answer we open up a door to .. more questions. Certainly, there's always at least the possibility of some way forward for intellectual exploration that accounts for the existential truth. A way that recognizes the nature of the subject/object split, even as it employs it. But there is a pitfall. If that employment isn't done consciously then we simply replace material realism with a version of idealism. Instead of consciousness emerging from the activity of the brain, we have the brain forming as a phenomenon in/as consciousness. This is all very well and good, it's all fun and games until someone get's an "I" poked out, after all. But resting the mind on an objectified monism simply is .. what it is. The existential truth is that no boundary is real. That's why your dialog with ZD about Fredrico's experience is important. I haven't read the guys book or watched his vids, so I can't comment on the specifics of his ideas. But that combination of an intellect that can do original work on that frontier along with significant existential insight is a perhaps a promising potential. I also haven't read that particular Stanford article yet, but the use of the word "correlated" there, is significant.
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Post by laughter on May 10, 2024 14:48:25 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure he thinks they can be conscious. I could dig up some quotes if you're interested, but they get a bit dense. It wouldn't be "creating" consciousness like creating another God or Universe or "THIS", as you say. Yes, I agree, that is impossible, or absurd. It would be more like the artificial system becomes connected somehow, like humans are, to this Ground of "quantum consciousness" or Awareness or Love or ??. In other words, humans might be able to build something "artificial" that has the same status of spirit/consciousness/intelligence as a "natural" human being. Perhaps you never denied that idea, that possibility. But there are people who do deny it -- they are convinced that humans have a kind of magic ingredient that no artificial system could ever have or participate in. No, I wouldn't claim that humans have "a kind of magic ingredient that no artificial system could ever have or participate in." What I'm suggesting is that humans, like everything else in the universe, are aspects (for want of a better word) of an unfathomable and aware intelligence that IS the whole show, and that awareness/consciousness/sentience is a fundamental aspect of that ISNESS that is not replicable because there's nothing other than that ISNESS. IOW, there is no separation of any kind, and this can be realized. From this POV it would be like asking, "Can the Infinite create awareness when all there is is the Infinite's awareness." In the case of Federico, he was contemplating how to build a conscious computer, and his contemplation apparently triggered a cosmic consciousness experience that revealed the impossibility of that endeavor. From what I remember, he stated that pretty explicitly in a particular YouTube video. In that video he pointed out that most scientists regard consciousness as an epiphenomenon that arises spontaneously when evolution reaches a certain level of complexity and intelligence. What he discovered via the CC event is that this idea is totally false, and is based upon a mechanistic interpretation of reality. He speculated that the intelligence manifested via all living creatures probably includes inanimate material to such a degree that consciousness is "built-in," so to speak, even at the quantum level. I remember discussing with some friends fifty years ago the possibility that even a rock might be conscious in some unimaginable way, and Federico seemed to be pointing to the same thing. After a CC in 1984, I remember thinking, "OMG, everything is alive, even the space between physical objects!" There didn't seem to be any boundary between animate and inanimate things, and it was "turtles all the way down." I suspect that's what Federico was pointing to, but I'd have to look at that video again to make sure he said what I think he said.
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Post by laughter on May 10, 2024 14:43:09 GMT -5
Humans have already created intelligent machines, and in the future they'll be super-intelligent compared to the existing machines. No argument there. I think Federico's point is that we'll never create a computer that is conscious. The issue is that there's nothing separate from All There Is, or THIS, and although THIS can do anything, can it create anything equivalent to Itself without being Itself--a thingless thing that is incomprehensible to the human mind and beyond space and time? Federico talks about seeing a light come out of his chest and realizing that the light was pure love and that all of reality was composed of that love and light. Any human who sees into the true nature of THIS will come away in a state of awe because it will be immediately obvious that no microscopic aspect of THIS will ever come close to creating anything remotely equivalent to THIS. I suspect that this has to be directly seen to be fully appreciated. It would be like asking, "Can a human create anything that is beyond space and time and not dependent upon anything physical?" A particular realization makes it obvious that awareness would still exist even if the manifested universe disappeared. How would a human create something like that? I'm pretty sure he thinks they can be conscious. I could dig up some quotes if you're interested, but they get a bit dense. It wouldn't be "creating" consciousness like creating another God or Universe or "THIS", as you say. Yes, I agree, that is impossible, or absurd. It would be more like the artificial system becomes connected somehow, like humans are, to this Ground of "quantum consciousness" or Awareness or Love or ??. In other words, humans might be able to build something "artificial" that has the same status of spirit/consciousness/intelligence as a "natural" human being. Perhaps you never denied that idea, that possibility. But there are people who do deny it -- they are convinced that humans have a kind of magic ingredient that no artificial system could ever have or participate in. I used to conceive of existential unity through the filter of the interconnected nature of the material world. It's a common perspective. It's also a stage of "arrested development". Not that the realization that clears that up is really any sort of progression, mind you. But I still think it a good metaphor, "arrested development". It's a useful perspective from which to answer the question of "can a machine be conscious?" These machines are as interconnected as any other object that we perceive. But the source of that connection to "consciousness" is always going to be human, regardless of whether or not the machines can continue on indefinitely after all the humans are long gone. Deeper water is found out beyond the point of inquiring as to the distinction between humanity and the mechanics of the situation.
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Post by laughter on May 10, 2024 14:35:48 GMT -5
I read Federico's book, and he doesn't say that humans can't create a truly intelligent system. He said he thinks that our current computer systems won't do it, because they operate by the rules of classical mechanics [*] and a classical system (according to him) can't be truly intelligent or creative like a human. But he doesn't preclude the possibility of constructing an artificial system that taps into the quantum realm, in the same way that he thinks true human intelligence also does. [*] by classical, he means that while the circuits have quantum properties and effects, they don't effect the outputs -- the overall behavior of the circuit follows completely deterministic rules, of the macroscopic world, without quantum "weirdness". Humans have already created intelligent machines, and in the future they'll be super-intelligent compared to the existing machines. No argument there. I think Federico's point is that we'll never create a computer that is conscious. The issue is that there's nothing separate from All There Is, or THIS, and although THIS can do anything, can it create anything equivalent to Itself without being Itself--a thingless thing that is incomprehensible to the human mind and beyond space and time? Federico talks about seeing a light come out of his chest and realizing that the light was pure love and that all of reality was composed of that love and light. Any human who sees into the true nature of THIS will come away in a state of awe because it will be immediately obvious that no microscopic aspect of THIS will ever come close to creating anything remotely equivalent to THIS. I suspect that this has to be directly seen to be fully appreciated. It would be like asking, "Can a human create anything that is beyond space and time and not dependent upon anything physical?" A particular realization makes it obvious that awareness would still exist even if the manifested universe disappeared. How would a human create something like that? Isaac Asimov wrote a story about this. The Last Question. But by my memory it still expressed a perspective limited to the mechanistic, defining reality in terms of the functional. One of my college roommates met Isaac, and said he was a jerk.
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Post by laughter on May 8, 2024 17:20:25 GMT -5
I agreed with tenka recently that some conditioning is bound to fall away after realizing the truth. I can't imagine how a narcissistic personality could still exist on the other side of the gateless gate, but then again, perhaps that's just a failure of imagination on my part. .. even allowing for that, I'd discount the "realization status" of anyone exhibiting those sorts of characteristics. But these "DSM" type abstractions are always a matter of degree, and situational / relational (someone might be perfectly normal with certain specific exceptions based on topic or individual/group ).
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Post by laughter on May 8, 2024 10:45:49 GMT -5
Sadly though, for some folks, at some times, the severance can be more like when a lizard loses it's tail or cutting a dandelion stem rather than, well, .. never mind. So the purifiers can have a point about getting to the roots of various matters. Of course, as always, it depends. It seems that you hoped to cover quite a spectrum in your point, but you knowingly ran out of steam.. Who is it sad for? And why would you Nevermind about the regrowing of a perfect tail on a lizard, or a dandelion flower regrowing to feed a bee just coming out of hibernation in Spring? Dandelion wine is a sweet buzz, for sure, and lizards are as perfect as any of God's creatures, no doubt. Mind weeds and brain tails ... not so much!
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Post by laughter on May 7, 2024 0:40:07 GMT -5
Recently Ludovic Fontaine interviewed me for his Youtube channel, on which he has conducted a series of interviews focusing on non-duality, meditation, spirituality, and related topics for a largely French-speaking audience. The interview is in English with French subtitles and ranges over many issues to do with Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry, surrender, and awakening. Good job. Of course the guy asks the question about practice. Because. Gotta' luv French aesthetics .. the hipster street shot set to the cool jazz music, the flattering tile pic, etc ..
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Post by laughter on May 7, 2024 0:10:37 GMT -5
I don't equate purification and a magical mystery tour, although either of the two can certainly lead to the other, and it seems that they often do. However it happens, is however it happens. In the biggest of pictures, in the widest of contexts, there is no wrong way to exist, and that's what the pointers to the absolute are expressing. The pointer that there is nothing to do, nothing to get and nowhere to go is one that not everyone might benefit from. It's meant for someone who is right on the edge of the cliff. Certainly, in the converse, there are those who would benefit from it that reject it. I would agree the magical mystery tour can lead to purification and vice versa it's the domino in effect. I would also agree there is no wrong way to exist but in regards to alchemy or transformative workings of energy certain results are attained depending on what one does or doesn't do. This is why at a point there is a process that works. S.R. is the result of getting the right process engaged. There is no time limit, there are no limits to how many goes we can have at trying or not trying to attain the answers to all our questions. Something from each lifetime even if not remembered adds a string to our bow. The thing is for some they have a spontaneous realisation out of the blue and say there was nothing to do. S.R. does just spontaneously fall on a peeps lap despite how it might look. It's undeniable that there is change, flow and transformation going on, all the time, everywhere, constantly. I can rezz with the notion of "energy work", The potential for point and counter-point on the dichotomy between realization of the absolute, and how it relates to that flow, is just as endless.
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