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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 10:34:51 GMT -5
The article didn't mention anything about screaming in agony and finally hanging themselves in their cribs. It said they died. The alleged study was about the significance of 'love and nurturing' which I see as the need to engage with the world that the child just entered. Everybody needs a reason to live. We commonly see old folks peacefully dying when that reason is no longer there. Well, having no reason to live isn't that the definition of hopelessness? And the comparison with old folks is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The article also didn't mention anything about dying peacefully. Fine, then I'll make another comparison. For many, prison is a fate worse than death, and when you want to punish a prisoner you put him in solitary confinement. Maybe he misses the love and nurturing of his mommy? Life must be engaged. It's a matter of life and death.
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 10:55:17 GMT -5
Well the thing is that there are some things that are known that you have to go out of your way intellectually NOT to know them. I'm not saying that that makes these things unquestionable, but equally, the nature of life is such that we can question the as.s out of some things, and we are still going to know them. In this case, if you hear a baby screaming, you can't NOT know that it is suffering. (There are certain other things that you also can't not know....ahem....) Precisely. Spiritual thinking, as you say, or trying to live a concept in my vocabulary. I'll ask you the same question; what does this have to do with spiritual thinking?
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 10:59:12 GMT -5
I remember seeing a documentary about that when I was a child. It was quite horrific to me then, and really, not all that different now. Well, what would the brown bear say here? Only you can prevent forest fires?
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 11:22:17 GMT -5
The article didn't mention anything about screaming in agony and finally hanging themselves in their cribs. It said they died. The alleged study was about the significance of 'love and nurturing' which I see as the need to engage with the world that the child just entered. Everybody needs a reason to live. We commonly see old folks peacefully dying when that reason is no longer there. I stayed at a friend's house in America once, I was quite young, but he and his wife had just had a baby. He went off to work early, around 5. The baby started crying at around 6.30. I expected Mom to get up but I think she was struggling to handle motherhood, and so left the baby. By 7 the baby was wailing. By 7.30 the baby was screaming. I was suffering, and was in dilemma over choice of going to Mom's bedroom to get her up, or go and get the baby myself and try and calm her...but I didn't feel I had much experience of babies, and I didn't want to insult the family. The baby was suffering. In the end I prayed and called on angels. Amazingly enough the baby calmed in about 5 minutes and THEN Mom got up. You just can't really compare old folks being at peace with impending death, and a baby not being given love and affection and dying as a result.
I'm not making that comparison. I'm not talking about making peace with death. I'm talking about dying because there is no reason to live. I'm also not talking about not being given love and affection. I'm talking about the baby not engaging with life.
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 11:26:37 GMT -5
I stayed at a friend's house in America once, I was quite young, but he and his wife had just had a baby. He went off to work early, around 5. The baby started crying at around 6.30. I expected Mom to get up but I think she was struggling to handle motherhood, and so left the baby. By 7 the baby was wailing. By 7.30 the baby was screaming. I was suffering, and was in dilemma over choice of going to Mom's bedroom to get her up, or go and get the baby myself and try and calm her...but I didn't feel I had much experience of babies, and I didn't want to insult the family. The baby was suffering. In the end I prayed and called on angels. Amazingly enough the baby calmed in about 5 minutes and THEN Mom got up. You just can't really compare old folks being at peace with impending death, and a baby not being given love and affection and dying as a result.
Actually, in some nursing homes for old folks, conditions are even worse, they not only not get any affection, they are not even kept healthy. So the comparison is a dud no matter how you look at it. Love and affection is great, but that's not what keeps babies alive. It's about engagement with life.
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 11:30:02 GMT -5
Some critters work collectively to support the group, like bees and ants. I don't believe there's some kind of biological communication going on, so it must be happening on another level. It makes me wonder if they are somehow self aware as a collective, and this somehow translates into individual self awareness. I've talked about the starling clouds before. I don't know how it's done, but it's not choreographed by bird brains. Wonderbeauty: Impressive. Some fish do the same. Actually, humans too. But it requires a high degree of alignment which means the inner being is taking over. One of Papaji's stories comes to mind, about driving a car to a nearby city and having no recollection of it when he arrived because he fell asleep at the wheel. He then used to ask: "I was asleep. So who was driving the car?" Right, so "if two or more are gathered together in my name", is there self awareness?
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Post by enigma on Mar 6, 2018 11:41:52 GMT -5
I'd be careful of putting too much faith in the mirror test. It just seems to be the best we got. It's the best you've got if you have to rely on external instruments (and external evidence). Which means the limits of understanding (or proof) are identical to the limits the consensus trance sets. Seth talks a lot about this dilemma of modern science. Right, dream evidence. That's why I point out the limitations of video evidence. However, for the most part I'm equally unimpressed with peeps intuitive evidence.
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Post by Reefs on Mar 6, 2018 12:07:33 GMT -5
Precisely. Spiritual thinking, as you say, or trying to live a concept in my vocabulary. I'll ask you the same question; what does this have to do with spiritual thinking? It's Andrew's wording and that's how I understood it. Maybe I'm wrong.
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Post by Reefs on Mar 6, 2018 12:10:40 GMT -5
Actually, in some nursing homes for old folks, conditions are even worse, they not only not get any affection, they are not even kept healthy. So the comparison is a dud no matter how you look at it. Love and affection is great, but that's not what keeps babies alive. It's about engagement with life. And why isn't the baby engaging with life? Why is there no reason to live? I say because the circumstances are such that the the minimum requirement in terms of life quality just isn't there. And when that happens, that's what is called suffering. Is that really so difficult to understand? I'm surprised we are still talking about this. I mean I get your point about taking a step back from oversentimentality but I think you are overdoing it. It's really not that complicated. Everything comes with a purpose into being. When that purpose has no chance of being realized, consciousness withdraws and tries another approach.
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Post by laughter on Mar 6, 2018 12:23:42 GMT -5
I remember seeing a documentary about that when I was a child. It was quite horrific to me then, and really, not all that different now. Well, what would the brown bear say here? "There is no baby monkey, there is no cage, and there is no wire mother with a bottle. There is only the always present unlimited and constantly moving vastness of space time appearing in ever changing impermanent waves of ephemeral form. There is no sad face, suffering is only an illusion created by your mind. "
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Post by Reefs on Mar 6, 2018 12:26:32 GMT -5
Impressive. Some fish do the same. Actually, humans too. But it requires a high degree of alignment which means the inner being is taking over. One of Papaji's stories comes to mind, about driving a car to a nearby city and having no recollection of it when he arrived because he fell asleep at the wheel. He then used to ask: "I was asleep. So who was driving the car?" Right, so "if two or more are gathered together in my name", is there self awareness? I'd expect the driver to reveal Himself.
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Post by Reefs on Mar 6, 2018 12:35:40 GMT -5
It's the best you've got if you have to rely on external instruments (and external evidence). Which means the limits of understanding (or proof) are identical to the limits the consensus trance sets. Seth talks a lot about this dilemma of modern science. Right, dream evidence. That's why I point out the limitations of video evidence. However, for the most part I'm equally unimpressed with peeps intuitive evidence. The dreamworld, or the realm of the psyche or the unknown reality as Seth sometimes calls it has little to do with what we usually mean when we use that word. What we usually refer to as dreams or dream content or dream experience is already an interpretation into the physical consensus trance format (or else we couldn't remember it). So the way Seth uses the term, it is basically what A-H call the non-physical which is basically what we used to call the impersonal.
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Post by laughter on Mar 6, 2018 13:43:38 GMT -5
Yes, thanks. Reef's link is much worse, it discusses a similar experiment with human babies. Yup, sick. I just hope that the fact that they called it off half way thru means the babies at least taught them a lesson. The article mentioned that it is difficult to verify where and when the experiment happened, only that it repeatedly shows up in older psychology text books. Could this mean that they've later scrubbed any evidence because it was so unethical? In all fairness, unlike the monkey experiment, what happened to the babies could be nothing more than an urban legend. I followed the link and didn't see a cite to anything corroborating the story as told by the writer.
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Post by andrew on Mar 6, 2018 13:46:21 GMT -5
Well the thing is that there are some things that are known that you have to go out of your way intellectually NOT to know them. I'm not saying that that makes these things unquestionable, but equally, the nature of life is such that we can question the as.s out of some things, and we are still going to know them. In this case, if you hear a baby screaming, you can't NOT know that it is suffering. (There are certain other things that you also can't not know....ahem....) When you say you can't not know something, you have made it unquestionable. The only thing you can't not know is that you exist, which is something you question on a regular basis. No, you can know something unequivocally and it still doesn't mean it is true, or unquestionable, or absolute. There's a lot of stuff that you know unequivocally....that a screaming baby is suffering, that you love Marie, that Marie is perceiving. All these things CAN be questioned, but that won't change the knowing of them. In the case of 'you know you exist', the solipsism discussion has revealed the problem of not investigating this statement. After all, you would say that you know you exist, but you don't know that I exist, right? Whereas I would say that I know I exist AND I know you exist. OR I would say the knowing that I exist and the knowing that you exist is equally illusion. I don't see my knowing that I exist as more or less unquestionable than my knowing that you exist.
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Post by andrew on Mar 6, 2018 13:49:04 GMT -5
My point is that you can't think your way out of a feeling when it happens. In this sense, the feeling has something to say, and doesn't give a monkeys what the thinking mind has to say. With the right thought, the feeling will change, because the thoughts are what trigger the feeling and hold it in place. (I'm not saying that thought will occur) If the 'right thought' occurs, it means that the feeling has said what it has to say. For example, maybe the sadness is tapering off, the anger is spent. There is no 'right thought' in the middle of strong emotion.
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