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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 10:11:09 GMT -5
For sure. We have to jump through mental hoops to believe in solipsism. I can see value in it to the extent that it invites us to challenge conditioned beliefs, but it strikes me as very fussy about what beliefs it challenges, and I think can potentially leave us with a deeper sense of separation than before we started. Solipsism as a precursor to self-inquiry could be good, because the result should obviously be the dispensing of the mental hoops. In the context of philosophy, solipsism has its place. In the context of spirituality, it's just a rigid mental position (to borrow one of your terms, hehe). Yeah, it never goes beyond 'I perceive you', the distinction between I and you is never challenged, so we are left with that fixed position.
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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 10:28:55 GMT -5
As Reefs said....by definition, a rock or shoe lace is neither alive nor consciious (but equally, the person you see walking down the street is). But that is just the small context of thingness. There is a more transcendent context in which it can be seen that 'all' is conscious and alive. This 'all' is non specific. You can't take this 'all' and then start picking out individual things. It is a realization, or a CC (I don't care which), and once you've had it, you don't lose it. I cant explain to you exactly what 'alive' means or 'conscious' means....I could only give you other similar words....but their meaning is intuitively known and felt. I thought the topic was about whether or not those other individual person things were conscious perceivers. Isn't that the solipsist issue being referred to? I am addressing that topic. You have to decide if perceiving is an appearance or is prior to appearances. If it is prior, then the whole question is misconceived unless you want to postulate eternal viewpoints like gopal. If it is appearance, then the people you perceive are known to be sentient and perceiving, just as the person you are is known to be sentient and perceiving. Hence you dont look at Marie and see a mannequin, corpse or programmed robot or dream character. I wouldnt totally rule out the possibility that the knowing is wrong and that it is all an elaborate simulation or something, but this is not a spiritual duscussion it is a different discussion.
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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 10:50:00 GMT -5
No, a conscious 'shoelace' cannot be recognized, because a 'shoelace' is defined and known by its inertness. But again, the experience of 'thingness' doesn't constitute our whole experience. A shoelace is defined by it's utility in tying shoes. The inertness implied is what's being questioned. If peeps will stop saying everything is conscious, I can stop asking about Mr Shoelace. To take the statement 'everything is alive and conscious' and then to ask about a shoelace is mixing contexts because the 'everything' doesnt refer to the seemingly objective things, it refers to the intuitively known essence of the seemingly objective things. And when it is seen that these seemingly objective things are not actually objective things, then there is no 'shoelace' to question whether it is conscious/alive or not. The question becomes misconceived. Also, if you are saying that you know that a shoelace is not conscious, then equally, you know a person is. So why are you asking?
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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 11:03:25 GMT -5
It is the difference between the objectifying/conceptual/distinguishing level and the non-conceptual/intuitive level. Both levels are natural...I am not saying the first level is wrong, You can feel the truth that all of life is alive and conscious. Many have felt and known this truth. But of course, that doesn't mean that 'my grandma' is alive and conscious. That also doesn't totally negate the question of whether there are other perceivers, it just puts the question into a small context. A solipsist has no interest in intuition, spiritual realization and cosmic experience, so for him that larger context doesn't exist or is irrelevant. For the solipsist, the small context is the be all and end all. There are no solipsists here so lets put that straw man away. The issue is that it can't be known whether another individual that is not you is an experiential point of perception. That question doesn't seem to relate to aliveness of Being in it's wholeness. If we stop pretending it does the issue will go away. What individual are you talking about? The shoelace? Or my dog? Or Jenn? The question you are asking is from within the context of seemingly objective things, and within that context I do know that dogs and people perceive, and shoelaces and chairs do not. By definition this is true...I see the dog and dont confuse it with a toy, a robot, or a corpse. If you know a chair isnt perceiving, then you know a dog, or cat or human is perceiving. It isnt complicated. Theres an outside chance of some weird conspiracy theory, and to that extent, i agree that maybe what i know about appearances is wrong, and the people i perceive are holograms or something. One reason it is important to bring aliveness of Being into it, and also the idea that perception is creation, is to show that the question has no spiritual significance, and from within this context, it is misconceived.
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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 11:04:30 GMT -5
If you are going to say that a shoelace is not a conscious perceiver, we have to say a person is a conscious perceiver. The first is defined by its inertness, the second is defined by its sentience. I'm saying I don't know any of that and you do. I'm asking how you know, and you're giving me transcendent aliveness that doesn't translate to individual appearances. Hopefully i have answered you now then.
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Post by andrew on Sept 10, 2017 11:10:00 GMT -5
If you are going to say that a shoelace is not a conscious perceiver, we have to say a person is a conscious perceiver. The first is defined by its inertness, the second is defined by its sentience. I'm following along loosely over here, and the crux of the issue seems to be whether objects are conscious and alive and the difference between saying an animal is conscious as opposed to a book or what we think of as non living non biological systems. My first thoughts were to look at this idea of consciousness itself. It is through humans, or at least through human mind function, that consciousness creates identification. Mind function allows consciousness to suppress energy and project through the compensation mechanism leaving an unconscious identity (an unconscious identification complex) intricately linked to a facade or ego, that which compensates for truth through distortion of reality. Whether consciousness can create the identification complex through more primitive forms is seemingly up for debate. This distortion of reality skews a singular movement into something it 'was not' such that it is perceived as something it 'is not', and this misperception is causally forced by unconscious energy, or better yet, the creation of unconscious energy. The suppression and compensation through projection run simultaneously, even though as the facade is structured, we can seemingly isolate them from one another. From within the movement of ego structuring, it then makes sense to differentiate between change in form and the unchanging formless dimension. Not to say one exists separate from the other, but that the idea of consciousness gains meaning through the creation of the unconscious, and more pointedly, the identification complex. In this sense, in one way, you could say nothing, objectively speaking, is conscious, only unconscious, or everything is consciousness and unconscious identification seemingly is happening to some things, and these things, humans and perhaps even other creatures, are only introduced as separate through conceptualization. There are some distinctions to be made, of course, among points of apparent perception and whether or not other folks are having the same type of experience you are. If you're saying a shoe lace is comprised of, or animated by, an intelligence not separate from the intelligence at the root of both conscious and unconscious thinking, your own experience, I don't have an issue with it. In my book, the idea of a conscious person doesn't compute until we first introduce the unconscious person, not just a biological system unconscious of its connectedness with all that is, but a system running on a program that distorts truth, distorts consciousness, the singular movement, so that the conscious observer 'has something' to become conscious of. And it is in the wake of becoming conscious that some new contexts arise, most of which logically can at best be conjecture. Amazingly, given this has been a discussion for at least two years, you have somehow introduced a new angle on it hehe....I didnt find myself disagreeing with anything you said.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 18:34:14 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm on the list of confused. It sounds like yous guys are saying everything is alive and conscious, except for Andy who doesn't really think a shoe lace is conscious except on the Donald Trump level, and I don't know where the quote came from. In any case, what does it mean to be a conscious shoe lace? It seems to mean something entirely different from being a conscious animal. Universal animation isn't intellectually explainable nor intellectually defensible. The misapplication of mind to the idea of literally conscious things is, of course, quite comical. That the science of Physics had to inevitably discover a hint of it is a fantastically wonderful irony. Relating what's meant by it can get quite subtle, and there's two ways to do it well: poetry or mathematics. All the stuff in between can get rather muddled quite easily. Okey dokey.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 18:59:31 GMT -5
What does it mean to say a shoe lace is conscious and alive? You don't seem to me to chasing an answer to the existential question. But do you see how this distinction between a live object and an inanimate object is the basis for a particular form of the existential question? The distinction references what we mean when we say a given form experiences. There are many forms that don't seem to have a way of interacting with the world to create an experience.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 19:28:22 GMT -5
So a CC 'experience' is actually a realization? con·scious·ness the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. "she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later" the awareness or perception of something by a person. plural noun: consciousnesses "her acute consciousness of Mike's presence" the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world. "consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain" Sorry, not what I mean when I say Consciousness. There's more than one way of realizing oneness, CC is one of them. If you don't like to call CC a realization, that's fine. The fact remains though, CC will leave you with a realization. I already gave you my definition of consciousness, and I'll give it again: consciousness refers to the state of being conscious (and Webster for one agrees with that definition). Now, it would be mighty cool if you could return that favor and finally tell us your own definition so that we can make sense of what you are saying. For the most part, Consciousness, Awareness, Being, Self all refer to same non-thing. Not just me, but all of us, have talked about them that way for a decade.
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Post by preciocho on Sept 10, 2017 20:14:14 GMT -5
I'm following along loosely over here, and the crux of the issue seems to be whether objects are conscious and alive and the difference between saying an animal is conscious as opposed to a book or what we think of as non living non biological systems. My first thoughts were to look at this idea of consciousness itself. It is through humans, or at least through human mind function, that consciousness creates identification. Mind function allows consciousness to suppress energy and project through the compensation mechanism leaving an unconscious identity (an unconscious identification complex) intricately linked to a facade or ego, that which compensates for truth through distortion of reality. Whether consciousness can create the identification complex through more primitive forms is seemingly up for debate. This distortion of reality skews a singular movement into something it 'was not' such that it is perceived as something it 'is not', and this misperception is causally forced by unconscious energy, or better yet, the creation of unconscious energy. The suppression and compensation through projection run simultaneously, even though as the facade is structured, we can seemingly isolate them from one another. From within the movement of ego structuring, it then makes sense to differentiate between change in form and the unchanging formless dimension. Not to say one exists separate from the other, but that the idea of consciousness gains meaning through the creation of the unconscious, and more pointedly, the identification complex. In this sense, in one way, you could say nothing, objectively speaking, is conscious, only unconscious, or everything is consciousness and unconscious identification seemingly is happening to some things, and these things, humans and perhaps even other creatures, are only introduced as separate through conceptualization. There are some distinctions to be made, of course, among points of apparent perception and whether or not other folks are having the same type of experience you are. If you're saying a shoe lace is comprised of, or animated by, an intelligence not separate from the intelligence at the root of both conscious and unconscious thinking, your own experience, I don't have an issue with it. In my book, the idea of a conscious person doesn't compute until we first introduce the unconscious person, not just a biological system unconscious of its connectedness with all that is, but a system running on a program that distorts truth, distorts consciousness, the singular movement, so that the conscious observer 'has something' to become conscious of. And it is in the wake of becoming conscious that some new contexts arise, most of which logically can at best be conjecture. Amazingly, given this has been a discussion for at least two years, you have somehow introduced a new angle on it hehe....I didnt find myself disagreeing with anything you said. Always happy to shine a new way of looking at things, and appreciate when others do the same for me. Hope things are well across the pond. Actually working with a couple Brits that keep things fresh with that bloody English sarcasm.
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Post by preciocho on Sept 10, 2017 20:17:12 GMT -5
You don't seem to me to chasing an answer to the existential question. But do you see how this distinction between a live object and an inanimate object is the basis for a particular form of the existential question? The distinction references what we mean when we say a given form experiences. There are many forms that don't seem to have a way of interacting with the world to create an experience. Jung once wrote about the spirits in the cooking pots, and while this may be slightly off topic, if we look at how (or more pointedly where and when) dualistic experience is compartmentalized by the mind, there is a mechanism to imbue seemingly lifeless objects with spiritual power. Lesson of the week, don't tip over gravestones of the dead.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 20:43:00 GMT -5
Everyone knows this state of interconnectedness, it's what flow is about and flow is the state of being that is most typical in the early years. It's how most of us spent their childhood. It's what some call alignment or a state of grace. Shock, I don't know. More like awe. The awe is common -- like realization -- while the shock is subjective -- experiential. The shock is surprise. The two re-alignments that surprised me the most were the facts of perfection and non-volition. Perfection didn't require any informing of mind, while nonvolition did. These conditioned beliefs might seem common among groups of people but they're ultimately subjective. I'm sure some people aren't surprised at all by what they find. Peeps orientation to interconnected material oneness has been a past tell on these forum dialogs, so I've written critically about it in the past because of that. But overall, there's alot positive that I could write about it as well. "♪ the rock-bone's connected to the ♫ .. ground-bone .. ♫ the ground-bone's connected to the ♪ .. shoe bone ♪ .. the shoe bone's connected to the ♫ ... " Interconnectedness, or interdependence, is inherent in an expression of oneness, it's just not proof of such, which I think is the 'tell' you're referring to.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 21:50:03 GMT -5
A shoelace is defined by it's utility in tying shoes. The inertness implied is what's being questioned. If peeps will stop saying everything is conscious, I can stop asking about Mr Shoelace. To take the statement 'everything is alive and conscious' and then to ask about a shoelace is mixing contexts because the 'everything' doesnt refer to the seemingly objective things, it refers to the intuitively known essence of the seemingly objective things. And when it is seen that these seemingly objective things are not actually objective things, then there is no 'shoelace' to question whether it is conscious/alive or not. The question becomes misconceived. Also, if you are saying that you know that a shoelace is not conscious, then equally, you know a person is. So why are you asking? So, 'everything is alive and conscious' means 'the essence of appearances is alive and conscious'? I'm not trying to be argumentative, just trying to understand.
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Post by enigma on Sept 10, 2017 22:00:15 GMT -5
There are no solipsists here so lets put that straw man away. The issue is that it can't be known whether another individual that is not you is an experiential point of perception. That question doesn't seem to relate to aliveness of Being in it's wholeness. If we stop pretending it does the issue will go away. What individual are you talking about? The shoelace? Or my dog? Or Jenn? The question you are asking is from within the context of seemingly objective things, and within that context I do know that dogs and people perceive, and shoelaces and chairs do not. By definition this is true...I see the dog and dont confuse it with a toy, a robot, or a corpse. If you know a chair isnt perceiving, then you know a dog, or cat or human is perceiving. It isnt complicated. Theres an outside chance of some weird conspiracy theory, and to that extent, i agree that maybe what i know about appearances is wrong, and the people i perceive are holograms or something. One reason it is important to bring aliveness of Being into it, and also the idea that perception is creation, is to show that the question has no spiritual significance, and from within this context, it is misconceived. I agree that the question seems to have no real significance, and as I've already said, it is likely misconceived. As such, I don't feel a need to pursue it further. It's only when I hear answers stating that it can be known that appearances are conscious that I get interested in how this is known. From what you're saying, those answers are in a different context and are irrelevant to the question, and I agree with that also.
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Post by laughter on Sept 11, 2017 3:55:40 GMT -5
The awe is common -- like realization -- while the shock is subjective -- experiential. The shock is surprise. The two re-alignments that surprised me the most were the facts of perfection and non-volition. Perfection didn't require any informing of mind, while nonvolition did. These conditioned beliefs might seem common among groups of people but they're ultimately subjective. I'm sure some people aren't surprised at all by what they find. Peeps orientation to interconnected material oneness has been a past tell on these forum dialogs, so I've written critically about it in the past because of that. But overall, there's alot positive that I could write about it as well. "♪ the rock-bone's connected to the ♫ .. ground-bone .. ♫ the ground-bone's connected to the ♪ .. shoe bone ♪ .. the shoe bone's connected to the ♫ ... " Interconnectedness, or interdependence, is inherent in an expression of oneness, it's just not proof of such, which I think is the 'tell' you're referring to. The tell I was thinking of specifically is the sense of identity from thinking of reality as a sum of it's different parts, and oneself as one of those parts. This is a basis of the common consensus trance. Some people take this a step further, but away from the old consensus, based on recognizing how interconnected that world is. This leads to "both/and" as mental confusion: "I am the whole, and I am a part of the whole". The expression is duck/bunny because "both/and" can also be used to point away from a different mental confusion: "the world is within me, I create my own reality, therefore, I am God". But yes, I remember that during this particular round of identity poker I thought I could prove "both/and" based on the fact of material interconnectedness. The prognosis on that particular disease seems to me to be quite grim given the rise to prominence of the scientific method in the current cultural context, especially among the educated.
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