The seer and and the seen

[sealchan]

Wow. There is a lot you touching upon in this densely packed post. I could spend a few days unpacking it. Nicely done! For the most part I think you make some incredibly valid points. I differ on a few points, and I could see having a whole conversation or more on those, which I'm sure we'd find mutually rewarding (different perspectives and all). I may grab one of those points later for discussion. I'd enjoy hearing your perspectives.

Sure, this post has triggered a bunch of stuff for me...would be glad to discuss further.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

I did not say this, nor would. There is something there. However, what we imagine a thing to be, and its actual reality are not the same thing. What we see, is a reflection of our minds overlayed on top of it, which we then misake as the truth of it, rather than simply a convention of how to perceive and talk about it.

There is nothing convoluted or wordy about that, is it? The only reason I add so many words is to attack it from multiple angles in the hope that the simple statement I just made can be understood. Do you understand the above? If so, that's all that needs to be said.


I did not state this. You misinterpreted what I said. It's plenty real, but what we imagine it is, is not its actuality. It's a projection of our minds, shaped and molded through language and culture. And the reason I think you don't see this, apparently, is because they are the set of eyes you see reality with, and don't realize the illusory nature of that. To you, what you think about it, is what it is. A "tree" is what you perceive a tree to be. But from another perception, it is not that at all!


Oh pish! Is it truly necessary to try to make me look at fault here? There is nothing like that going on here.


Okay, this is what I am saying. But, do you then take it to the next step and recognize that there is in fact more than one valid perception of truth and reality, even when they seem to contradict each other? Do you believe that collectively, there is only one "right way"?


What I hear in this appears to expose an assumption that there is supposedly a "right" perception of reality. Note your use of the words, "But less-so" from the blind and deaf person. Why is this "less"? You see, inherent in this is pure bias of one's own perception as reflective of the reality of things, or that it is "better" or "closer" to the truth of it you can get. This is inherently flawed and deeply self-biased, assuming the truth of it is something just laying around out there for "better minds" to be able to figure out.

Do you not see this? Maybe the deaf-blind person is closer to the truth than the sighted person? How would you know otherwise? Maybe, there is another way to approach all this that avoids that pitfall you exposed through your wording?


What about sensory deprivation techniques? There is plenty of awareness going on there, without the benefit of the senses. What do you think meditation does? What do you think its technologies are aiming towards? In reality, the senses, like emotions, can obscure our perceptions. Meditation exposes how this is going on in this way.


I wouldn't word it as "only", but I do accept they are in fact partial truths. Why do you call that "only"? To recognize the limitations of our perceptions, does not negate the value of them. If you think I am saying that, then you in fact do not understand what I am saying. I am saying we need to take the truths we perceive, as a partial, limited perspective, and hold our beliefs of what is reality with an opened hand. The problem I have with all this talk of science can tell us the truth of reality, is the blinding of oneself to the fact that it too is a perspective of truth, partial, limited, and at best a two-dimensional model of an actuality vastly beyond our ideas of what it could possibly be.

There is a limit to the perspectives gained through the intellect. There is an endpoint to reason that moves into a "deficient phase", which Jean Gebser detailed in his work on the structures of consciousness. That is all this is to point out. It is to basically, blow a gaping hole straight into the side of logical positivism. All of this is something which postmodernity has already exposed, say whatever you will about how I labor to explain these things. The Existentialists certainly saw the flaw in it as well.


Yes, it very much is false and dishonest. I didn't say that. What you just said is not true of my perspective on this.

I would however say that anyone can step outside of their normal modes of seeing and translating the world and be informed by Reality herself without words, thoughts, ideas, concepts. Clearing these out of the way, allows truth to be held by the mind much more lightly, as impressions of reality. Anyone can access this, and pretty much everyone has at some point in their lives, albeing most bury or repress that since it threatens the world of truth as they know it, creating instability and insecurity, "Others might think me mad!".

Being able to see all of that at play in ourselves, not holding it as the reality of things, allows us to be open, to be receptive to the many and varying shades of truth that move over our the fields of perceptual awareness all the time. It opens us to "more". Whereas the closed mind, the linguistic mind, is constrained and limiting to truth. It filters out Reality and only allows that which fits into the frameworks themselves to be seen as truth. That is the core problem. That is what I actually am saying.

Is this making more sense now? Or does this still sound "convoluted" to you?


Actually, that's not true. Any human can see themselves from outside of themselves. What do you think psychotherapy allows to happen? The person can step outside the narrative streams, the structures of reality that have been created in themselves that obscures other truth to enter in, illuminating their experience of themselves and the world at large. This action of stepping outside of themselves, transforms their being. This is exactly what meditation does. And in a metaphorical sense, yes, it can become a "God perspective".

When someone realizes the Self, all perspectives are dissolved and you simply "are". In that state, every perspective becomes clear as to its "relative reality". It is truth, but relative truth, not absolute truth. Absolute Truth, is not a proposition truth. It is "no truth", in that it cannot be stated as a truth in itself, apart from all other relative truths. It embraces all perspectives, and none at all. And yes, I know that sounds convoluted, but that is because it is inherently paradoxical in nature, since it goes beyond what language can express in its dualistic terms.


Correct. I never said we should not make use of our perceptions. We all need structures or frameworks of reality in order to navigate the world. But it's when we take those and say they are reality itself, then we collapse reality into that framework, limiting ourselves to that framework. We move from Reality, into an artificial construct of reality and shut Reality out. One can in fact, and what I am saying in all of this, make use of and live within these frameworks, as a matter of convenience and practicality. But not limit ourselves to the world that is defined by them. The mystical experience, liberates us from that prison of words that most of us, certainly myself included, find ourselves trapped within.


Nothing makes me think that. I don't think that. Also, I don't believe the squirrel exists in a state of formlessness. They too are taught what the world is through others that adopt whatever map of reality it is that squirreldom came up with in deep history. We all do the same thing, to one degree of sophistication or another.


Correct. If you read what I reposted in what I said in the other thread, you'll see I explicitly stated just this view you agree with. Enlightenment is not regression to an infantile state, as Freud saw it. I addressed this in that post.

​

So you do agree that our sense organs are actually sensing reality, period? From our subjective perspective there is only ONE actual reality. It is the physical reality, not the mental reality. We DO NOT imagine reality, we perceive reality. Imagining things require zero sensory input. There are only those things that we can perceive as being physical constructs. And, those things that we create as mental construct. Our senses do not REFLECT reality as such. Our sense can only provide information/signals to the brain, which is compartmentalizes and represented to our conscious mind, as the brain's best guesstimate. This is only a fragmented composites of reality, not its true reflection. I have no idea why you have entered the term "truth" in your comments. It is not relevant to this issue. We are talking about levels of existence, not levels of truth. The only reason you are purposely obfuscating your use of language, is to create a veil of ambiguity and confusion to avoid exposing just how un-falsifiable your claims really are.

Do you not agree that a one-armed person will have more disadvantages than a two-armed person? Do you think that a blind-sighted person will have LESS disadvantages than a blind-sighted deaf person will? This is not rocket science, this is just common sense. Do you think that a Blind-sighted person will have the same perception of reality as a sighted person? This was only about how closely our perception of reality is connected to our senses. This has nothing to do with being "better" or closer to the "truth", or being inherently biased, or having the "right" or wrong perception of reality.

Around 1/3 of the cerebral cortex is interconnected into what is called the "default mode network". This network includes regions primarily at the front and side of the brain. The activities of this neural network is NOT "stimulus-locked,". That is, it is not driven by sensory input. In a sensory deprivation environment, the brain receives no concrete input on which to ground the stream of consciousness. Without any sensory anchor, the brain's free association processes have only themselves to build on. The brain has no point of reference to stabilize its association processes. The brain's perceptual machinery, which tries to construct a model of reality, has no "ground truth" to use as a filter. This will result over time, in anxiety, "bazaar" thoughts, depression, hallucinations and eventually delusions. This is due to the "default mode network" reaching faulty conclusions about reality, with nothing external to cross-validate it with. Many mental illnesses are related to faulty sensory inputs. So NO, sensory deprivation techniques is truly the last thing that you want to use to validate a truer perception of reality. But in the short term, meditation and sensory deprivation do have some beneficial therapeutic value. But certainly NOT in the long term. Probably not the best example to use that demonstrates an unobscured perception of reality.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

I did not say this, nor would. There is something there. However, what we imagine a thing to be, and its actual reality are not the same thing. What we see, is a reflection of our minds overlayed on top of it, which we then misake as the truth of it, rather than simply a convention of how to perceive and talk about it.

There is nothing convoluted or wordy about that, is it? The only reason I add so many words is to attack it from multiple angles in the hope that the simple statement I just made can be understood. Do you understand the above? If so, that's all that needs to be said.


I did not state this. You misinterpreted what I said. It's plenty real, but what we imagine it is, is not its actuality. It's a projection of our minds, shaped and molded through language and culture. And the reason I think you don't see this, apparently, is because they are the set of eyes you see reality with, and don't realize the illusory nature of that. To you, what you think about it, is what it is. A "tree" is what you perceive a tree to be. But from another perception, it is not that at all!


Oh pish! Is it truly necessary to try to make me look at fault here? There is nothing like that going on here.


Okay, this is what I am saying. But, do you then take it to the next step and recognize that there is in fact more than one valid perception of truth and reality, even when they seem to contradict each other? Do you believe that collectively, there is only one "right way"?


What I hear in this appears to expose an assumption that there is supposedly a "right" perception of reality. Note your use of the words, "But less-so" from the blind and deaf person. Why is this "less"? You see, inherent in this is pure bias of one's own perception as reflective of the reality of things, or that it is "better" or "closer" to the truth of it you can get. This is inherently flawed and deeply self-biased, assuming the truth of it is something just laying around out there for "better minds" to be able to figure out.

Do you not see this? Maybe the deaf-blind person is closer to the truth than the sighted person? How would you know otherwise? Maybe, there is another way to approach all this that avoids that pitfall you exposed through your wording?


What about sensory deprivation techniques? There is plenty of awareness going on there, without the benefit of the senses. What do you think meditation does? What do you think its technologies are aiming towards? In reality, the senses, like emotions, can obscure our perceptions. Meditation exposes how this is going on in this way.


I wouldn't word it as "only", but I do accept they are in fact partial truths. Why do you call that "only"? To recognize the limitations of our perceptions, does not negate the value of them. If you think I am saying that, then you in fact do not understand what I am saying. I am saying we need to take the truths we perceive, as a partial, limited perspective, and hold our beliefs of what is reality with an opened hand. The problem I have with all this talk of science can tell us the truth of reality, is the blinding of oneself to the fact that it too is a perspective of truth, partial, limited, and at best a two-dimensional model of an actuality vastly beyond our ideas of what it could possibly be.

There is a limit to the perspectives gained through the intellect. There is an endpoint to reason that moves into a "deficient phase", which Jean Gebser detailed in his work on the structures of consciousness. That is all this is to point out. It is to basically, blow a gaping hole straight into the side of logical positivism. All of this is something which postmodernity has already exposed, say whatever you will about how I labor to explain these things. The Existentialists certainly saw the flaw in it as well.


Yes, it very much is false and dishonest. I didn't say that. What you just said is not true of my perspective on this.

I would however say that anyone can step outside of their normal modes of seeing and translating the world and be informed by Reality herself without words, thoughts, ideas, concepts. Clearing these out of the way, allows truth to be held by the mind much more lightly, as impressions of reality. Anyone can access this, and pretty much everyone has at some point in their lives, albeing most bury or repress that since it threatens the world of truth as they know it, creating instability and insecurity, "Others might think me mad!".

Being able to see all of that at play in ourselves, not holding it as the reality of things, allows us to be open, to be receptive to the many and varying shades of truth that move over our the fields of perceptual awareness all the time. It opens us to "more". Whereas the closed mind, the linguistic mind, is constrained and limiting to truth. It filters out Reality and only allows that which fits into the frameworks themselves to be seen as truth. That is the core problem. That is what I actually am saying.

Is this making more sense now? Or does this still sound "convoluted" to you?


Actually, that's not true. Any human can see themselves from outside of themselves. What do you think psychotherapy allows to happen? The person can step outside the narrative streams, the structures of reality that have been created in themselves that obscures other truth to enter in, illuminating their experience of themselves and the world at large. This action of stepping outside of themselves, transforms their being. This is exactly what meditation does. And in a metaphorical sense, yes, it can become a "God perspective".

When someone realizes the Self, all perspectives are dissolved and you simply "are". In that state, every perspective becomes clear as to its "relative reality". It is truth, but relative truth, not absolute truth. Absolute Truth, is not a proposition truth. It is "no truth", in that it cannot be stated as a truth in itself, apart from all other relative truths. It embraces all perspectives, and none at all. And yes, I know that sounds convoluted, but that is because it is inherently paradoxical in nature, since it goes beyond what language can express in its dualistic terms.


Correct. I never said we should not make use of our perceptions. We all need structures or frameworks of reality in order to navigate the world. But it's when we take those and say they are reality itself, then we collapse reality into that framework, limiting ourselves to that framework. We move from Reality, into an artificial construct of reality and shut Reality out. One can in fact, and what I am saying in all of this, make use of and live within these frameworks, as a matter of convenience and practicality. But not limit ourselves to the world that is defined by them. The mystical experience, liberates us from that prison of words that most of us, certainly myself included, find ourselves trapped within.


Nothing makes me think that. I don't think that. Also, I don't believe the squirrel exists in a state of formlessness. They too are taught what the world is through others that adopt whatever map of reality it is that squirreldom came up with in deep history. We all do the same thing, to one degree of sophistication or another.


Correct. If you read what I reposted in what I said in the other thread, you'll see I explicitly stated just this view you agree with. Enlightenment is not regression to an infantile state, as Freud saw it. I addressed this in that post.

​

Since I am limited on how much I can write, this is the second part of my response;

I'm afraid astral projection is not real. Humans cannot extend their senses onto any person or thing, in order to see themselves. You can certainly develop a mental construct of what your 3 dimensional image would look like. But I guarantee you, that it would not be very accurate. Testing this assertion is simple. What do you think the results were? Since you keep asserting that any human can step outside of himself, then prove it? How do we achieve this objective perspective of ourselves? What is "relative reality"? I thought there was only ONE reality. I realize that there are parts of reality that exists beyond our senses, but it is still reality. "It is truth, but relative truth, not absolute truth". "Absolute Truth, is not a proposition truth. It is "no truth", in that it cannot be stated as a truth in itself, apart from all other relative truths". This is sheer obfuscation and complete gibberish. But to use this to imply an inherent paradox in nature, is just intellectually dishonest. There are no paradoxes in nature. There are only cause and effect, and objective and subjective perspectives. That's it.

Reality, including the laws of nature were here long before we were. All living creatures on the planet are trapped within the framework of reality and the laws of nature. We can no more shut reality out, then we can stop seeing what our eyes see, or stop hearing the sounds that our ears hear. This evolutionary hard-wired connection has evolved for a purpose(survival). Not as an inconvenience. Therefore, if you wish to mentally liberate yourself from reality by creating your own "artificial reality, then that is certainly your right. But, unless you can demonstrate that another reality can exist, then using acid, or other hallucinogenic can also liberate the mind from the shackles of our own perspective, but the body will still be trapped like the rest of us. ​

 

[Truly Enlightened]

To finish with a few more points of clarification.... (yes, I do use a lot of words, but they aren't unnecessary).


No I don't. Of course they do.


Chaos does not exist. The Formeless, is not chaos. It is the Ocean, and within that Ocean all forms emerge. The piece of page we write words on, is not chaos. It is "formless", not a jumble of unorganized letters.

Now, as far as there never being a state of pure unfiltered awareness in our development, that's not entirely correct. Satori or Kensho, or Enlightenment, or Awakening experiences can happen at any time during anyone's development. However, they are not a developmental stage themselves. Anyone can have what Maslow termed a "Peak Experience", which is in essence stepping outside all of that to a place far beyond or outside what is developmentally exposed. After that brief experience, we then fall right back into wherever we were at developmentally.

I assume you are familiar with these peak experiences?


We don't conceive of them. We simply allow them to arise and manifest themselves into our waking consciousness. They are they all the time, but suppressed by virtue of the "thinking mind", full of it's linguistic structures of this and that. As I said, we mostly live inside this world of thoughts, ideas, concepts, and don't see what the rest of the mind actually sees. This is the reason for things like meditation, or psychotherapeutic techniques, and such. To get access to this.


Through meditation, yes. Of course. It's a world full of images and symbols. Carl Jung, as well as many others wrote quite a lot about it, not to even mention the mystics of the ages.


Not mentally control, in the sense of imposing an active thought upon them. But we can in fact change how they are compartmentalized and communicate with each other. There are many psychotherapeutic techniques that do just that, such as EMDR, or Brainspotting, which remapps the neural pathways that became disconnected from each other through trauma, for instance. Meditation practice rewires the brain as well, as is well researched. We can in fact rewire our brains. I can tell you from personal experience, that certainly is true.


Yes, conceptual reality is a product of the thinking mind. Do you believe that it is only that which shapes, influences, and defines ourselves and reality? I actually doubt you do.


Oslo? I don't get the reference.

To clarify this last point, I do not believe that to deny the thinking mind is the key to a fully awakened reality. I believe the first step is to gain perspective which shows us, which allows us to recognize that the thinking mind is not the true measure of all truth. That recognition, is a first step in liberation. But liberation without integration, is not truly a liberation, but risks instead a dissociation. We still think. We still live in a conceptual world. To escape into God from the world of thoughts and ideas to find truth, is just as bad as escaping God, or the Self into the world of thoughts to find truth. Integration requires a recognition between the Absolute and the relative, and living with an opened-eyed awareness of both. That, is nonduality. That is a paradoxical reality.

What role do you think our genes play in the understanding of self and reality?

Chaos does not exist. The Formeless, is not chaos. It is the Ocean, and within that Ocean all forms emerge. The piece of page we write words on, is not chaos. It is "formless", not a jumble of unorganized letters.

Chaos represents the maximum number of possible choices, randomness, and probability. In a since it can be considered formless. Everything in the universe obeys the Chaos Theory. It might be better to speak about amounts of order and disorder, or entropy and enthalpy instead.

When you speak of developmental stages, which stages are you referring to? There is social growth, physical growth, mental growth, psychological growth, and intellectual growth. At what stage in the combination of these developmental growth, can we reach pure thought, or pure unfiltered awareness?

I agree that the plasticity of the brain allows it to rewire itself, due to trauma, disease, genetics, or drugs. But it takes time for the brain to rewire itself, and it can't control itself. This would imply sentiency, which would be insane. Also, certain parts of the brain simply can't be rewired. The brain is also subject to cause and effect. It doesn't simply rewire itself without cause. It can only responds to the input, or the lack of input it receives. You only have indirect control not direct control. Otherwise, you should be able to explain/describe exactly what mechanism is being used. Maybe you can explain which neural network you are actually directly controlling. How we communicate with each other has nothing to do with directly controlling how the brain re-writes itself.There is no paradox here, except in your mind..

How do you know that meditation gives you access to your subconsciousness?. Prove it. How do you know that a developmental epiphany, or peak experience, will occur? We use our subconscious mind all the time. Especially, when we try to access our memory(names, phone numbers, places, etc.).

 

[Windwalker]

So you do agree that our sense organs are actually sensing reality, period?

I have never stated otherwise. Why have you assumed this?

From our subjective perspective there is only ONE actual reality. It is the physical reality, not the mental reality.

But yet, we navigate the terrain of mental thought with great ease. The imagination can fly into the world that does not exist yet to our senses. There is now here at this point TWO realities to speak of; the physical and the mental. Each are respective domains for exploration, while of course they are not fully independent from each other. But they are distinct enough to merit being viewed as different categories.

We DO NOT imagine reality, we perceive reality.

So, you believe that if I hold an image of my mother in my mind, that I am perceiving a physical reality? Am I seeing her in actuality as she is right now? What if I imagine her with wings and legs 20 miles long? Yet, that image now exists in my mind. It therefore has a reality in the mental domain. It really exists there.

Imagining things require zero sensory input. There are only those things that we can perceive as being physical constructs. And, those things that we create as mental construct.

So you are agreeing that there are now two distinct domains we are talking about here, the material and the mental spheres?

Our senses do not REFLECT reality as such. Our sense can only provide information/signals to the brain, which is compartmentalizes and represented to our conscious mind, as the brain's best guesstimate. This is only a fragmented composites of reality, not its true reflection.

You arguing on my side of the fence here. I don't think there is anything I have said that this disagrees with. It's not actually a physical reality. It's a mental construct of reality. It is an image of a rabbit held in the mind, not an actual furry critter standing out there looking at us.

I have no idea why you have entered the term "truth" in your comments. It is not relevant to this issue.

Because people interpret "truth" and "reality" and "fact" as the same thing. I disagree with that, incidentally. I see "truth" as a symbol for something which has an efficient functionality within a given system. Truth in one context, may be untruth in another.

We are talking about levels of existence, not levels of truth.

Interesting. You cite levels of existence. Such as? Can you elaborate?

As far as levels of truth, why not? We are talking about "reality", which most people equate with truth.

The only reason you are purposely obfuscating your use of language, is to create a veil of ambiguity and confusion to avoid exposing just how un-falsifiable your claims really are.

Honestly, why is it you feel a need to stoop to this level of discourse? Is there something wrong with your thoughts you need to distract from conversation with these paranoid assertions from your imagination? Please consider this the next time the urge arises in you. You have no idea what my actual reasons are, and I can only say, this is not close to the actual reality. I suppose this proves my overall point, as well.

Do you not agree that a one-armed person will have more disadvantages than a two-armed person? Do you think that a blind-sighted person will have LESS disadvantages than a blind-sighted deaf person will? This is not rocket science, this is just common sense.

Well, as you should know, "common sense" often does not reflect reality. Reality is a lot more convoluted and complex, a lot more "fuzzy" than what appears to the mind, or rather what the mind reduces it down to in order to hold it mentally. And THAT, is exactly what this discussion is about. The reality of it is, it depends on the context. Someone with a disadvantage in one context, may be advantaged in another.

But in the short term, meditation and sensory deprivation do have some beneficial therapeutic value. But certainly NOT in the long term. Probably not the best example to use that demonstrates an unobscured perception of reality.

You think meditation has a long term negative effect??? I'm sure everyone in the world would love to see your supporting evidence for this claim. Do you have something we can refer to? What studies have you looked into on this? Everything I and everyone else is aware of says the exact opposite.

I'll finish my responses to your other posts in the next day as time permits.

 

[sealchan]

It is naive from a neurobiological point of view to think that our sense organs are anything like a pure reaction to the external world. As an interconnected network supporting an attentional system which must quickly determine what sensory stimulus requires our attention and which does not (quick intuition and feeling), our nervous systems are effectively evaluating, interpreting and even anticipating or guessing, at the lowest levels of neural processing, the character of the world based on the needs, expectations, experience and even cultural habitual cognitions as expressed by the later levels of neural processing.

Even the human retina fills in (makes us and sometimes incorrectly) its own blind spot in the world.

.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

I have never stated otherwise. Why have you assumed this?


But yet, we navigate the terrain of mental thought with great ease. The imagination can fly into the world that does not exist yet to our senses. There is now here at this point TWO realities to speak of; the physical and the mental. Each are respective domains for exploration, while of course they are not fully independent from each other. But they are distinct enough to merit being viewed as different categories.


So, you believe that if I hold an image of my mother in my mind, that I am perceiving a physical reality? Am I seeing her in actuality as she is right now? What if I imagine her with wings and legs 20 miles long? Yet, that image now exists in my mind. It therefore has a reality in the mental domain. It really exists there.


So you are agreeing that there are now two distinct domains we are talking about here, the material and the mental spheres?


You arguing on my side of the fence here. I don't think there is anything I have said that this disagrees with. It's not actually a physical reality. It's a mental construct of reality. It is an image of a rabbit held in the mind, not an actual furry critter standing out there looking at us.


Because people interpret "truth" and "reality" and "fact" as the same thing. I disagree with that, incidentally. I see "truth" as a symbol for something which has an efficient functionality within a given system. Truth in one context, may be untruth in another.


Interesting. You cite levels of existence. Such as? Can you elaborate?

As far as levels of truth, why not? We are talking about "reality", which most people equate with truth.


Honestly, why is it you feel a need to stoop to this level of discourse? Is there something wrong with your thoughts you need to distract from conversation with these paranoid assertions from your imagination? Please consider this the next time the urge arises in you. You have no idea what my actual reasons are, and I can only say, this is not close to the actual reality. I suppose this proves my overall point, as well.


Well, as you should know, "common sense" often does not reflect reality. Reality is a lot more convoluted and complex, a lot more "fuzzy" than what appears to the mind, or rather what the mind reduces it down to in order to hold it mentally. And THAT, is exactly what this discussion is about. The reality of it is, it depends on the context. Someone with a disadvantage in one context, may be advantaged in another.


You think meditation has a long term negative effect??? I'm sure everyone in the world would love to see your supporting evidence for this claim. Do you have something we can refer to? What studies have you looked into on this? Everything I and everyone else is aware of says the exact opposite.

I'll finish my responses to your other posts in the next day as time permits.

Let me try again. What exists in our mind is a zero-dimensional representations of our 4-dimensional reality. When you are imagining an image of your mother, you are not perceiving an image of your mother. She is a mental/psychological construct of your mind, created through cognitive and other mental processes. This image DOE NOT exist outside of the brain. And since the image is dimensionless, it can be anything you want it to be, except real. An easy way to explain this, is that the image is real from your subjective perspective, but not real from anyone else's perspective.

I agree that there are mental and physical constructs. One represents something that is unobservable and not real, and the other represents something that is observable and real. When you look at an apple sitting in a bowl, you are perceiving the apple using your visual, and possibly your olfactory senses. Without the use of your senses, the apple would be only a mental construct. It could be anything you want, since it is not real, and exists only in your mind. Clearly, the apple exists outside of our senses to be perceived by our senses. What you are trying to claim, is that if we look past our senses, we can somehow become the apple, and see our true self. We cannot navigate through a terrain of thoughts and mental processes, considering that over 95% of our mental functions are not accessible to the conscious mind. And, for good reason. Also mental constructs are not observable, they are created BY the mind.

Because people interpret "truth" and "reality" and "fact" as the same thing. I disagree with that, incidentally. I see "truth" as a symbol for something which has an efficient functionality within a given system. Truth in one context, may be untruth in another.

nteresting. You cite levels of existence. Such as? Can you elaborate?

As far as levels of truth, why not? We are talking about "reality", which most people equate with truth.

Again, we were not talking about truth. I was speaking about how the perception of reality is different in people with sensory handicaps. You then stated that, "What I hear in this appears to expose an assumption that there is supposedly a "right" perception of reality.", and "Maybe the deaf-blind person is closer to the truth than the sighted person?" This is an obvious straw man, and has nothing to do with my examples. Truth will always be relative, and our senses can be fooled in reality. The argument is not about how people relate truth with facts and reality.

You think meditation has a long term negative effect??? I'm sure everyone in the world would love to see your supporting evidence for this claim. Do you have something we can refer to? What studies have you looked into on this? Everything I and everyone else is aware of says the exact opposite.

What I did say was, "that in the short term, meditation and sensory deprivation do have some beneficial therapeutic value. But certainly NOT in the long term.". I can understand the confusion. What I meant to say was that long periods of sensory deprivations will produce the negative effects that I mentioned. So if you deprive the brain of its sensory inputs for long periods of time, you will suffer the consequences. Do you really think that common sense does not reflect reality?
​

 

[Truly Enlightened]

It is naive from a neurobiological point of view to think that our sense organs are anything like a pure reaction to the external world. As an interconnected network supporting an attentional system which must quickly determine what sensory stimulus requires our attention and which does not (quick intuition and feeling), our nervous systems are effectively evaluating, interpreting and even anticipating or guessing, at the lowest levels of neural processing, the character of the world based on the needs, expectations, experience and even cultural habitual cognitions as expressed by the later levels of neural processing.

Even the human retina fills in (makes us and sometimes incorrectly) its own blind spot in the world.

.

Since all biological systems are interdependent in some way, they will never be pure or perfect. Different sense organs require different thresholds to fire their action potential. Sense organs are also sensory specific. Sense organs age as well. We lose brain cells as we age. Therefore, so does our perception of reality change. All biological systems are dynamic.

From a neurobiological point of view, our senses are all that we have to connect us with our external reality. We do have our internal senses and genes, that allow the brain to control our autonomic functions. But we can't sense these organs directly(referred pain).

What I am saying is that the brain can only represent to the mind its best-guess composite of what the senses are sensing(stimulated). It is obviously not the total picture, but it will just have to do.

 

[sealchan]

Since all biological systems are interdependent in some way, they will never be pure or perfect. Different sense organs require different thresholds to fire their action potential. Sense organs are also sensory specific. Sense organs age as well. We lose brain cells as we age. Therefore, so does our perception of reality change. All biological systems are dynamic.

From a neurobiological point of view, our senses are all that we have to connect us with our external reality. We do have our internal senses and genes, that allow the brain to control our autonomic functions. But we can't sense these organs directly(referred pain).

What I am saying is that the brain can only represent to the mind its best-guess composite of what the senses are sensing(stimulated). It is obviously not the total picture, but it will just have to do.

I can agree that our individual active engagement with reality is fully mediated through the sense organs. But very quickly how that gets interpreted at even an unconscious level is very much a function of the design and function of the human body/brain.

If we were a mirror, we would be very accurate in our "reflection" of visual reality. But instead we are instinctually driven, very needy mirrors, created by evolution, who see things in ways that our minds/bodies unconsciously guide us into seeing.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

I can agree that our individual active engagement with reality is fully mediated through the sense organs. But very quickly how that gets interpreted at even an unconscious level is very much a function of the design and function of the human body/brain.

If we were a mirror, we would be very accurate in our "reflection" of visual reality. But instead we are instinctually driven, very needy mirrors, created by evolution, who see things in ways that our minds/bodies unconsciously guide us into seeing.

Above all things, we are basically animals. We have four basic drives(to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend), which tends to insure our survival. As we mature, we rely less and less on our instinctual drives, and more on our genetic, social, environmental, cultural, language, and physical drives. We are the product of evolution, NOT design.

It is our genes that our conscious mind is competing against for the control of self/body. One side(mind) only needs answers to win, and the other side(genes) only needs the absence of the mind to win. For example, everything that we can see through our eyes is really turned upside down. But it is interpreted as right-side up in our mind. This can be easily demonstrated by wearing specialized glasses, and then observe how the brain corrects this anomaly over time.

We are simply creatures, whose behavior, language, actions, emotions, and personalities, are all dominated by pattern recognition, visual, social, language, and repetitive positive and negative reinforcement cues. This IS the human condition. It is our GENES that make us human, not our brain.

 

[atanu]

I believe that in the dream state what we have is the brain operating without the high energy input of the senses.

Is the brain seer or seen? That is the only question we need to answer.

Inspired by my study of C.G. Jung's method of dream analysis and some other techniques that other Jungians have developed,

Jung wrote that consciousness is not epiphenomenon of body-brain. I just mention this.

Spiritual knowledge is a biased form of perception in that it favors intuition over sensation. In that way it provides us with a "dream-like" sense of being separated from the material world or, alternately, of the material world being an illusion from which we might be awaken. To counter this our practical knowledge of the physical world provides us with a "solid-sense" of a reality that is there as much as we are mortal. This can render the spiritual as wishful-thinking or "airy-fairy" fluff as opposed to the more "grounded" reality visible all around us.

Spiritual base can only be discerned by discriminating between the seer and the seen. It is same as discriminating between the subject “I” and the delusion of “I am this”. Body or its parts is never the subject “I”.

In my view neither the spiritual nor the material world views are superior...each teaches us our truth even as they provide a mutually inhibitory (enantiodromatic) influence on each other as complementary opposite cognitive experiences.

Well. I agree. We always need to take care of our body-mind (of the seen) to be free of pain. Yet, these will not give us the knowledge of self, the ultimate knowledge that leads to freedom.
...

 

[Windwalker]

Let me try again. What exists in our mind is a zero-dimensional representations of our 4-dimensional reality. When you are imagining an image of your mother, you are not perceiving an image of your mother. She is a mental/psychological construct of your mind, created through cognitive and other mental processes. This image DOE NOT exist outside of the brain. And since the image is dimensionless, it can be anything you want it to be, except real. An easy way to explain this, is that the image is real from your subjective perspective, but not real from anyone else's perspective.
​

Alright, I think it is a good idea to narrow the focus on some key parts here as opposed to exploding all the sub points into full discussions in themselves.

I am taking note of your use of the word "real" here in how you call a physical object "real", but a mental object as "not real". I think this is where the major disconnect is occuring. How is it you qualify what is "real"? Is it because it has shape and form and dimensionality? Is it because others can perceive it and comment on it? Is only so-called "objective" reality real, and "subjective" reality is unreal? Is it only real because more than you can interact with it?

If so, then may I ask how you don't see our thoughts, and ideas, and mental constructs as in fact something that does have form to the person thinking it? What are they looking at in their minds, if it isn't really there? What are others looking at when we talk with one another about those mental objects? You are sharing them with me, I'm looking at those with you, and you are looking at mine with me. So something real, is actually there. We are interacting with them, both subjectively, and objectively, meaning more than just the individual.

What is culture, if not a shared non-material reality of agreed about mental objects from individuals? That intersubjective reality, has real substance and objective existence. It is shared mental spaces, which have actual, substantive, and to a great degree an actual independent existence because it is greater than the sum of the parts. None of it, has material form, until it moves from the mental into the physical, such as created infrastructures of society supporting the very real cultural reality.

Do you agree or disagree with the above? Is only "real" that which you can physically access?

If however you believe that mental constructs are not real, then you have to recognize that when we look at the world, all of us are translating what is seen directly through those filters of metal constructs. If the mental world is unreal, and the material world is real, then everything real becomes unreal a nanosecond after it is experience and enters into our minds through the unreal constructs of mental objects. The entire world then, all of reality, to the human mind is an illusion. No one can claim what is real, or unreal. That is the conclusion of logic, and it is also the conclusion of mystics who awaken and see just that.​

 

[Truly Enlightened]

Alright, I think it is a good idea to narrow the focus on some key parts here as opposed to exploding all the sub points into full discussions in themselves.

I am taking note of your use of the word "real" here in how you call a physical object "real", but a mental object as "not real". I think this is where the major disconnect is occuring. How is it you qualify what is "real"? Is it because it has shape and form and dimensionality? Is it because others can perceive it and comment on it? Is only so-called "objective" reality real, and "subjective" reality is unreal? Is it only real because more than you can interact with it?

If so, then may I ask how you don't see our thoughts, and ideas, and mental constructs as in fact something that does have form to the person thinking it? What are they looking at in their minds, if it isn't really there? What are others looking at when we talk with one another about those mental objects? You are sharing them with me, I'm looking at those with you, and you are looking at mine with me. So something real, is actually there. We are interacting with them, both subjectively, and objectively, meaning more than just the individual.

What is culture, if not a shared non-material reality of agreed about mental objects from individuals? That intersubjective reality, has real substance and objective existence. It is shared mental spaces, which have actual, substantive, and to a great degree an actual independent existence because it is greater than the sum of the parts. None of it, has material form, until it moves from the mental into the physical, such as created infrastructures of society supporting the very real cultural reality.

Do you agree or disagree with the above? Is only "real" that which you can physically access?

If however you believe that mental constructs are not real, then you have to recognize that when we look at the world, all of us are translating what is seen directly through those filters of metal constructs. If the mental world is unreal, and the material world is real, then everything real becomes unreal a nanosecond after it is experience and enters into our minds through the unreal constructs of mental objects. The entire world then, all of reality, to the human mind is an illusion. No one can claim what is real, or unreal. That is the conclusion of logic, and it is also the conclusion of mystics who awaken and see just that.​

Lets clear up a few things that you are again falsely equivocating. It is very easy to keep making unsupported truth claim, especially when you avoid clarifying and addressing any of my issues and questions. This demonstrates just how weak and reality-detached your argument really is. Simply creating more terms, and giving them new meanings, seems more desperate than composed. Misrepresenting, deflecting, redefining, and distorting my comments seems to be the practice, rather than the exception to the rule. So lets begin.

I use the term real, to mean ANYTHING(within our 4 dimensional reality) that can be PERCEIVE through our senses directly or indirectly. This means anything that is capable of causing a stimulus-response in our sense organs. This includes all the different forms of matter(liquid, solid, or gas) OUTSIDE of our brain, and the electro-biochemical processes and signals INSIDE of our brain. Real things also exist whether we do or not. In short cause and effect.

Since all of our senses are host-specific, everything that we sense as real, is real only to ourselves. Of course our sense of what is real can be fooled, modified, or changed(magic, drugs, injury and disease, etc.). If I touch a wall or feel pain, only I can feel the wall or the pain. No other person can perceive what I am perceiving, period. This is also the subjective perspective. What this perspective perceives also represents our subjective reality. This perspective only requires our being consciously present. However, the objective perspective of reality does not require our being present or consciously aware. Of course this perspective would require our being able to sense everything, everyone, and be everywhere. We can never see reality from this perspective, unless we are a God, or could telepathically "mind meld" with everything in the entire Universe. Hopefully we are clear on this point. Communicating with another is a perceptual interaction, based on the exchange of language being spoken or seen as symbols. Unless you can demonstrate some method of telepathic communication, this interaction CAN'T be objective and subjective.

Mental constructs are NOT OBSERVABLE OR PERCEIVABLE!!! They are CONCEPTUAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL constructs. So when you look at an apple on the table, your senses create a PERCEPTUAL CONSTRUCT of the apple's existence within your mind. This does not necessarily mean that the apple in fact does exist, but our perception of it does. We would need to verify its existence by using our other senses. But I do know for certain, that a real apple does not exist within the mind. All mental constructs are conceptual. Logic, theories, values, cognition, ethics, assumptions, beliefs, planning and modelling, are ALL conceptions. And yes, we do CONCEIVE that our conceptions are real. But this is an illusion since this representation is zero dimensional. Anything that exists outside of our 4 dimensional reality is an illusion, and not real from our perspective. How do you measure or represent love, logic, decisions, emotions, or morality, in the physical world? Are you suggesting that what exists in the mind is real and has real properties? What are they?

What is culture, if not a shared non-material reality of agreed about mental objects from individuals? That intersubjective reality, has real substance and objective existence. It is shared mental spaces, which have actual, substantive, and to a great degree an actual independent existence because it is greater than the sum of the parts. None of it, has material form, until it moves from the mental into the physical, such as created infrastructures of society supporting the very real cultural reality.

Culture, represents the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular group of people or a society. It only represents the collective behavior of a group. How does defining the actions and customs a group, have anything to do with mental and physical constructs? Please give me an example of any mental construct can move from a the mental construct, to a physical construct? Not the ideal of a house, and the actual building of the house.

If the mental world is unreal, and the material world is real, then everything real becomes unreal a nanosecond after it is experience and enters into our minds through the unreal constructs of mental objects. The entire world then, all of reality, to the human mind is an illusion. No one can claim what is real, or unreal. That is the conclusion of logic, and it is also the conclusion of mystics who awaken and see just that.

The mental world IS an illusion, and the physical world is not. How you conclude that all of reality would be unreal, only demonstrates how easy it is to misuse the word "real", to justify your assertions. We can ignore our thoughts, but we can't ignore our senses. It is evidence that prevents this kind of self-serving logic, and deceptive sophistry. Otherwise, you are only saying that if water is composed of two gasses, that water is only being construed as a liquid, because of filtered mental constructs. This is silly, and reality doesn't care in the least how you choose to interpret it. Oh, and reality is not sentient.

 

[Windwalker]

Lets clear up a few things that you are again falsely equivocating. It is very easy to keep making unsupported truth claim, especially when you avoid clarifying and addressing any of my issues and questions. This demonstrates just how weak and reality-detached your argument really is.

Are you done with this posturing? Okay, let's apply a critical eye once again to your many points of confusion.

I use the term real, to mean ANYTHING(within our 4 dimensional reality) that can be PERCEIVE through our senses directly or indirectly. This means anything that is capable of causing a stimulus-response in our sense organs. This includes all the different forms of matter(liquid, solid, or gas) OUTSIDE of our brain, and the electro-biochemical processes and signals INSIDE of our brain. Real things also exist whether we do or not. In short cause and effect.

In other words, the material world only. Only something with physical form. The fallacy of this of course is you define reality based on your subjective idea of it. It was defined in the mental space, not defined by the exterior world itself. It is instead your subjective, non-material idea puting a wrapper of its own assumptions, it's own imaginations, around the exterior world and calling that "reality". It then seeks for external confirmation of its assumptions to support its mistaken perception that it's not the origin of its own assumptions.

The mind of course will naturally block out anything that doesn't fit that assumption as "unreal" to protect its investment in truth, and you end up with you calling my challenges to this "unreality" of yours as all manner of obfuscations, world salads, or whatever other thing you can think to push back against this, even trying to insult my personal integrity. Make it about me personally, that always seems to work for you when something is too uncomfortable to look at...

Ideas in our head do have actual existence, whether or not they have any external referent. The images in the mind, are actually in there. We actually see them. They have actual form. They have actual existence. We consider them. We process them. We interpret them. There is most assuredly something there existing in the mind. You cannot say it does not exist. It is being "thought". They are real thoughts. They create what is perceived to be reality to us.

I think maybe what you are hoping to say is that only the material world is "valid", or "true". This is why I have brought "truth" into this. Because underlying all your talk about "reality", it seems you define that as "true reality", or a "valid interpretation of reality". All of this is reality, even complete fictions in the mind. That defines reality for the person thinking it. Just as "reality" to you is defined by your subjective mind as "only physical".

Once you start to see this, it puts these mental assumptions on the hot seat, and that makes the ego mighty upset that it's all important authority is being called into question, and it lashes out to preserve itself. But to really critically examine it, as I have been doing, will expose the ultimate fallacy of it's own self-referential logic. "Reality has nothing to do with what I think!," thinks the thinking itself.

BTW, what you call obscuring, I, and many others, call deconstructing the fallacy. Nagarjuna famously would do this, so insult this all you want if it helps distract from examining it.

Since all of our senses are host-specific, everything that we sense as real, is real only to ourselves. Of course our sense of what is real can be fooled, modified, or changed(magic, drugs, injury and disease, etc.). If I touch a wall or feel pain, only I can feel the wall or the pain. No other person can perceive what I am perceiving, period.

No problem with this.

This is also the subjective perspective. What this perspective perceives also represents our subjective reality. This perspective only requires our being consciously present.

And here's where it gets interesting, and I keep hoping you'll come along with me to this point. You said, "being consciously present". That is the real caveat there. We aren't 99.9999% of the time! 99.9999% of the time we are in our thought worlds about the world. We are not actually seeing the world, but our ideas about the world, even as we are looking right at. We make judgments about it, and call that reality.

This is exactly what you are doing in your idea that only the material world is actual reality. You're not seeing actual reality. You're overlaying your thought about it, and then it blends away right into the thing itself and the mind doesn't recognize its own image in.

However, the objective perspective of reality does not require our being present or consciously aware.

I'm sorry, what? How do you have any perspective at all, if you aren't present in it? Any perspective at all, requires a subjective seer.

Of course this perspective would require our being able to sense everything, everyone, and be everywhere. We can never see reality from this perspective, unless we are a God, or could telepathically "mind meld" with everything in the entire Universe. Hopefully we are clear on this point.

This God perspective you detail, would still be Subjective. It's not independent from the Seer. And that is, and has been my point from the get-go here. It's all Subjectively held. That its God's perspective, simply means that it is a "clear" perspective, not one obscured by the normal illusions of the mind. Overcoming those obscurities, gives you God's perspective, or that of the Seer. We see reality as it is, without judgment of what it is. There is no thought ideas wrapping its image of itself around that which is seen.

Communicating with another is a perceptual interaction, based on the exchange of language being spoken or seen as symbols. Unless you can demonstrate some method of telepathic communication, this interaction CAN'T be objective and subjective.

I explained why it can be called objective, but I think you didn't follow it. I'll try again in perhaps simpler terms. Intersubjectivity, a "we space" you could call it, is something that is not any one of the individuals creating it, but has an existence that is a collective reality in and of itself, greater than any one individual participating within it. To the individuals, this reality is both outside of themselves, and within themselves. They can talk about that "space" between themselves as something objective. Culture is an objective reality, even though it is created by the individuals participating in it.

That is what makes it objective reality. It plays that role in our lives just as the tree is objectively there for our car to hit. It does not need physical form for it to be an objective reality. Make sense?

It's in understandings like this, where you will begin to have the context in which to understand everything else I am talking about. Hence why I chose to focus on some key points, rather than burden our discussion with "wordy" replies, as you put it. Let's clarify things first. So, do you have issues with this point still?

Mental constructs are NOT OBSERVABLE OR PERCEIVABLE!!! They are CONCEPTUAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL constructs. So when you look at an apple on the table, your senses create a PERCEPTUAL CONSTRUCT of the apple's existence within your mind.

First, not only are you wrong in believing that this "style" of writing in all-caps adds value or weight to your points, you're also wrong in what you stated. Mental constructs absolutely are observable. If you are examining your thoughts, you are observing them. They are objects of thought and have an objective reality for you to look at them.

If you are thinking, that is a 1st person experience. If you pause to look at the thoughts that arise from thinking, those are now objective realities being the thinking mind can examine, no different than picking up a rock and looking at its stridations from a 3rd person perspective.

And this realization is a very early part of differentiating the subjective self, from the content of thought itself, mistakenly perceived as an extension of the reality of the self, confusing the seer with the seen. We see our thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. The error is when we embed our sense of self within our thoughts. We "think" we are our thoughts, which is the illusion of the mind.

If thoughts are not observable, then how do you do any form of self-reflection? If you've ever meditated, you can witness your thoughts rising and falling like waves on the ocean. You realize they are "its", not "you".

This does not necessarily mean that the apple in fact does exist, but our perception of it does. We would need to verify its existence by using our other senses. But I do know for certain, that a real apple does not exist within the mind. All mental constructs are conceptual. Logic, theories, values, cognition, ethics, assumptions, beliefs, planning and modelling, are ALL conceptions. And yes, we do CONCEIVE that our conceptions are real. But this is an illusion since this representation is zero dimensional. Anything that exists outside of our 4 dimensional reality is an illusion, and not real from our perspective.

And yet, you interact with your thoughts all the time. Sounds plenty real enough to me, despite you artificially defining reality as that which occupies space and time, using that illusion of the mind to define truth and reality. You recognize conceptions as illusion, and yet you use them to define what is real? This just will not do.

How do you measure or represent love, logic, decisions, emotions, or morality, in the physical world? Are you suggesting that what exists in the mind is real and has real properties? What are they?

Oh yes, certainly they have real properties, and yes they do manifest in the physical world. It's very simple. How do you measure love in the physical world? Look at its effects. Does it lead to the modification of behaviors? Then it has an existence in reality, that manifests in form.

Here's a simple explanation that can be found in what Ghandi said,

"Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your values.
Your values become your destiny."​

It's a little mind boggling in a way how people call thoughts and beliefs not reality, when they have such a very, very direct cause and effect relationship with the world. Being non-material, does not make them non-real, as you have explicitly stated on several occasions.

Culture, represents the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular group of people or a society. It only represents the collective behavior of a group.

No it doesn't. I represents the collective beliefs of a group. Their behaviors are manifestations of those non-material beliefs in material forms.

 

[Windwalker]

How does defining the actions and customs a group, have anything to do with mental and physical constructs? Please give me an example of any mental construct can move from a the mental construct, to a physical construct?

I could give endless examples. In this context, society is what is a physical construction, systems of law, infrasture, defense, symbols, etc, are all material manifestations of the mental constructions of truth and values that a culture collectively have created from shared subjectivity. It all begins with a thought, and manifests into the world of form. You do it every single day. You think "I will go to the store", and that thought moves into physical form when you get up and bodily go there. Your subjective thoughts, co-created a physical reality. And, then that reality feeds back to the mental domain in support of it. There is interaction in these domains, not isolation. That's where you appear to be confused about reality.

Not the ideal of a house, and the actual building of the house.

Without the thought, the house would never exist. It doesn't grow itself.

The mental world IS an illusion, and the physical world is not.

The physical world is held in the mental world. What you think it is, it becomes its reality to you. You construct what you perceive it to be.

How you conclude that all of reality would be unreal, only demonstrates how easy it is to misuse the word "real", to justify your assertions.

How you mistate what my thoughts, ideas, and beliefs are, demonstrates you cannot perceive what I'm saying, which I would attribute to exactly what I'm trying to point out in all of this.

What I actually believe is that what people such as yourself claim to be really real, is itself a product of the mind which you dismiss as unreal. This illusory reality, is for all purposes actual reality to us. That is what makes it illusory. You demonstrated this by saying only the physical world is real, using "unreal", which you called them, thoughts to conclude this with. It's a self-blindness of the mind to not see its own self in its assessment of "objective reality".

This is the problem of the seer and the seen. The eyes seeing, ignores itself in what is seen!

We can ignore our thoughts, but we can't ignore our senses.

How have you been ignoring your own thoughts? Are we now talking about meditation? Please explain to me how you have and are setting them aside in your assessment of what is reality?

It is evidence that prevents this kind of self-serving logic, and deceptive sophistry.

Oh, "evidence"? You don't seem aware of what confirmation bias it? What if others see them same thing? You think that is what gets us past this? Any group can collectively both create the criteria of truth for themselves - which you absolutely have been doing here, and then device the means to confirm it as valid. This can been seen in any culture and any system of thought. Validating a thought, or an idea, is self-referential. It's not genuine objectivity. It's a reflection of a consensus reality, comprised of subjective viewpoints.

BTW, please try to reign in your personal snipes at me. I'm not willing to do this much further with you if that continues. Thank you.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

Are you done with this posturing? Okay, let's apply a critical eye once again to your many points of confusion.


In other words, the material world only. Only something with physical form. The fallacy of this of course is you define reality based on your subjective idea of it. It was defined in the mental space, not defined by the exterior world itself. It is instead your subjective, non-material idea puting a wrapper of its own assumptions, it's own imaginations, around the exterior world and calling that "reality". It then seeks for external confirmation of its assumptions to support its mistaken perception that it's not the origin of its own assumptions.

The mind of course will naturally block out anything that doesn't fit that assumption as "unreal" to protect its investment in truth, and you end up with you calling my challenges to this "unreality" of yours as all manner of obfuscations, world salads, or whatever other thing you can think to push back against this, even trying to insult my personal integrity. Make it about me personally, that always seems to work for you when something is too uncomfortable to look at...

Ideas in our head do have actual existence, whether or not they have any external referent. The images in the mind, are actually in there. We actually see them. They have actual form. They have actual existence. We consider them. We process them. We interpret them. There is most assuredly something there existing in the mind. You cannot say it does not exist. It is being "thought". They are real thoughts. They create what is perceived to be reality to us.

I think maybe what you are hoping to say is that only the material world is "valid", or "true". This is why I have brought "truth" into this. Because underlying all your talk about "reality", it seems you define that as "true reality", or a "valid interpretation of reality". All of this is reality, even complete fictions in the mind. That defines reality for the person thinking it. Just as "reality" to you is defined by your subjective mind as "only physical".

Once you start to see this, it puts these mental assumptions on the hot seat, and that makes the ego mighty upset that it's all important authority is being called into question, and it lashes out to preserve itself. But to really critically examine it, as I have been doing, will expose the ultimate fallacy of it's own self-referential logic. "Reality has nothing to do with what I think!," thinks the thinking itself.

BTW, what you call obscuring, I, and many others, call deconstructing the fallacy. Nagarjuna famously would do this, so insult this all you want if it helps distract from examining it.


No problem with this.


And here's where it gets interesting, and I keep hoping you'll come along with me to this point. You said, "being consciously present". That is the real caveat there. We aren't 99.9999% of the time! 99.9999% of the time we are in our thought worlds about the world. We are not actually seeing the world, but our ideas about the world, even as we are looking right at. We make judgments about it, and call that reality.

This is exactly what you are doing in your idea that only the material world is actual reality. You're not seeing actual reality. You're overlaying your thought about it, and then it blends away right into the thing itself and the mind doesn't recognize its own image in.


I'm sorry, what? How do you have any perspective at all, if you aren't present in it? Any perspective at all, requires a subjective seer.


This God perspective you detail, would still be Subjective. It's not independent from the Seer. And that is, and has been my point from the get-go here. It's all Subjectively held. That its God's perspective, simply means that it is a "clear" perspective, not one obscured by the normal illusions of the mind. Overcoming those obscurities, gives you God's perspective, or that of the Seer. We see reality as it is, without judgment of what it is. There is no thought ideas wrapping its image of itself around that which is seen.


I explained why it can be called objective, but I think you didn't follow it. I'll try again in perhaps simpler terms. Intersubjectivity, a "we space" you could call it, is something that is not any one of the individuals creating it, but has an existence that is a collective reality in and of itself, greater than any one individual participating within it. To the individuals, this reality is both outside of themselves, and within themselves. They can talk about that "space" between themselves as something objective. Culture is an objective reality, even though it is created by the individuals participating in it.

That is what makes it objective reality. It plays that role in our lives just as the tree is objectively there for our car to hit. It does not need physical form for it to be an objective reality. Make sense?

It's in understandings like this, where you will begin to have the context in which to understand everything else I am talking about. Hence why I chose to focus on some key points, rather than burden our discussion with "wordy" replies, as you put it. Let's clarify things first. So, do you have issues with this point still?


First, not only are you wrong in believing that this "style" of writing in all-caps adds value or weight to your points, you're also wrong in what you stated. Mental constructs absolutely are observable. If you are examining your thoughts, you are observing them. They are objects of thought and have an objective reality for you to look at them.

If you are thinking, that is a 1st person experience. If you pause to look at the thoughts that arise from thinking, those are now objective realities being the thinking mind can examine, no different than picking up a rock and looking at its stridations from a 3rd person perspective.

And this realization is a very early part of differentiating the subjective self, from the content of thought itself, mistakenly perceived as an extension of the reality of the self, confusing the seer with the seen. We see our thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. The error is when we embed our sense of self within our thoughts. We "think" we are our thoughts, which is the illusion of the mind.

If thoughts are not observable, then how do you do any form of self-reflection? If you've ever meditated, you can witness your thoughts rising and falling like waves on the ocean. You realize they are "its", not "you".


And yet, you interact with your thoughts all the time. Sounds plenty real enough to me, despite you artificially defining reality as that which occupies space and time, using that illusion of the mind to define truth and reality. You recognize conceptions as illusion, and yet you use them to define what is real? This just will not do.


Oh yes, certainly they have real properties, and yes they do manifest in the physical world. It's very simple. How do you measure love in the physical world? Look at its effects. Does it lead to the modification of behaviors? Then it has an existence in reality, that manifests in form.

Here's a simple explanation that can be found in what Ghandi said,

"Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your values.
Your values become your destiny."​

It's a little mind boggling in a way how people call thoughts and beliefs not reality, when they have such a very, very direct cause and effect relationship with the world. Being non-material, does not make them non-real, as you have explicitly stated on several occasions.


No it doesn't. I represents the collective beliefs of a group. Their behaviors are manifestations of those non-material beliefs in material forms.

Rather than me wasting my time presenting intuitive logical, and realistic explanations, to explain natural commonsense ideas and understandings, let me just ask a few questions that require only simple non-obfuscated answers.

How many realities do you think exist? So far you have mentioned five(5).
Can we define reality from a non-subjective perspective? If so, what is your evidence?
What is the difference between conceptual and perceptual?
Can a non-material mental construct, also appear as a physical construct in a material reality? If so, what is the mechanism or its properties?
Are you suggesting that all our sensory perceptions, are just mistaken assumptions, and differ from our mind's assumptions of reality?
Do you think that the mind is sentient, and the "I am" is only in the narrative(observer) perspective?
Do you believe that reality is not the represented product of electro chemical array of neural activities, created throughout the physical brain?
Can you sense anything without using your senses? Close your eyes, what does red look like? Hold your breath, what does a rose smell like?
Do you know the difference between subjective and objective perspectives?
Do you believe that the mind, brain, and neurons, produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts?
What is the practical value of the metaphysical understanding of "Seer" and "Seen"?

The answers to these 11 questions will give me a good idea of how far I am prepared to go down this metaphysical rabbit hole. It is becoming very difficult to keep up with your changing equivocations, and usage of terms. If any of your claims have any merit, submit them for peer review. If you are convinced, then I'm sure your peers will also be convinced. Who knows, there might even be a prize waiting for you at Oslo. I apologize if I have offended you, it was never my intention.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

I could give endless examples. In this context, society is what is a physical construction, systems of law, infrasture, defense, symbols, etc, are all material manifestations of the mental constructions of truth and values that a culture collectively have created from shared subjectivity. It all begins with a thought, and manifests into the world of form. You do it every single day. You think "I will go to the store", and that thought moves into physical form when you get up and bodily go there. Your subjective thoughts, co-created a physical reality. And, then that reality feeds back to the mental domain in support of it. There is interaction in these domains, not isolation. That's where you appear to be confused about reality.


Without the thought, the house would never exist. It doesn't grow itself.


The physical world is held in the mental world. What you think it is, it becomes its reality to you. You construct what you perceive it to be.


How you mistate what my thoughts, ideas, and beliefs are, demonstrates you cannot perceive what I'm saying, which I would attribute to exactly what I'm trying to point out in all of this.

What I actually believe is that what people such as yourself claim to be really real, is itself a product of the mind which you dismiss as unreal. This illusory reality, is for all purposes actual reality to us. That is what makes it illusory. You demonstrated this by saying only the physical world is real, using "unreal", which you called them, thoughts to conclude this with. It's a self-blindness of the mind to not see its own self in its assessment of "objective reality".

This is the problem of the seer and the seen. The eyes seeing, ignores itself in what is seen!


How have you been ignoring your own thoughts? Are we now talking about meditation? Please explain to me how you have and are setting them aside in your assessment of what is reality?


Oh, "evidence"? You don't seem aware of what confirmation bias it? What if others see them same thing? You think that is what gets us past this? Any group can collectively both create the criteria of truth for themselves - which you absolutely have been doing here, and then device the means to confirm it as valid. This can been seen in any culture and any system of thought. Validating a thought, or an idea, is self-referential. It's not genuine objectivity. It's a reflection of a consensus reality, comprised of subjective viewpoints.

BTW, please try to reign in your personal snipes at me. I'm not willing to do this much further with you if that continues. Thank you.

You seem to be a master of half truths. It is what you don't say that is important. We can't ignore our thoughts, anymore than we can ignore our senses. What we can do, is not action our thoughts, or not respond to our senses. This is our true power, and separates us from most other mammals. You are not suggesting that all the physical creations resulting from our thoughts and ideas, are also the material manifestation of those thoughts and ideas, are you? So when you have an zero-dimensional image of a building in your mind, it is materially the same as the actual building itself?. This is nonsense. There are many processes that must happen before the building can exist. You can imagine the building until you pass out, but it will never exist in reality. The act of imagining the building is very real(another use of the word "real"). Therefore your cultural analogy is just a false analogy. Can you demonstrate using these "endless examples", any mechanism where you can think of something(mental construct), and it will appear as a physical construct? That will then be able to be perceived by the senses? Of course not, only a God could do this, so I personally wouldn't waste my time. You are correct, if I have no thoughts of building a house, it won't be built(at least not by me). But even if I do have the thought of building a house, it may STILL not built. There is NO direct connection between the two, as you are trying to imply. So yes the house does not construct itself, but neither do thoughts alone. How do illusions manifest themselves physically?

Again mental constructs are not perceptual, they are conceptual. Please learn the difference. Denial is only an avoidance option. Our senses do not perceive mental constructs. They receive sensory constructs from the external environment. They can't sense the brain itself. I have already conceded that this environment, is not a true representation of reality. But it is reliable enough for our species to have avoided extinction. I have already defined what I call real, what do you think real is? I will also keep this simple as well.

What our sense organs perceive is real, since they can't self-stimulate themselves. There must be some outside stimuli.
The representation of sensory information sent to the brain, interpreted, and represented to the mind, does not physically exist within the brain.
Mental constructs created by the mind, do not exist physically within the brain.
One represents abstract reality(conceptual), and the other represents physical reality(perseptual). But neither are physically real within the brain.
Objective reality exist outside of our subjective perspective. We can't perceive what is happening in China, but China is objectively real.
Our reality is limited to our subjective perspective. This perspective is limited by our senses. Our mind is also limited by this perspective since we are not telepaths.
.
Again, please learn and understand the meaning of the terms conceive, perceive, mental and physical constructs, real and reality, and subjective and objective perspective. It is annoying reading all the false equivocation of terms. Also I don't create my own truth criteria to validate my comments, I simply use common sense, facts, and definitions. Creating my own metaphysical word-salad, and falsely equivocating terms, and blaming others for not understanding the changing meanings of words in different context, would be intellectually dishonest.

 

[Windwalker]

Rather than me wasting my time presenting intuitive logical, and realistic explanations, to explain natural commonsense ideas and understandings, let me just ask a few questions that require only simple non-obfuscated answers.

What seems "common sense" is more often than not an optical illusion of sorts.

How many realities do you think exist? So far you have mentioned five(5).

I've mentioned five? Not recalling that at the moment. To answer your question. In the context of human existence, there are as many realities as there are humans. In a very real sense, each of us live within our own realities, and we find common language in order to talk to each other across the expanse in a created shared reality dependent on common expressions. So currently on the planet there are around 7 Billion realities.

That's on the relative plane though. There is however only One absolute Reality, which is expressed in as many realities as there are individuals. Sort of like multiverses as expressions of a single Existence. In fact, very much like that.

That answer may seem obfuscated to you, but it's both actually. Paradoxical reality, is that which our minds can't put into it's overly simplistic categories. I can't give a black and white answer, because a black and white reality, isn't real.

Can we define reality from a non-subjective perspective? If so, what is your evidence?

That's a bit of a trick question. First part of a response to that is that non-subjective perspectives are a non-reality. Perspectives don't exist outside the subjective. Second part is that the act of defining reality, makes it non-reality. You cannot draw a boundary around something and exclude the surrounding environment, which in reality includes everything in the universe, and think that represents reality. A circle drawn on a wall, is nothing without the wall. It only exists in relation to the non-circle.

Are you asking can we perceive reality outside of dualistic frameworks, outside of divisions between subject and object? If so, the answer to that is yes. The evidence is experience, of myself, and others which you'll find in the various mystical traditions of the various religions throughout time. Does that then become a "definition" of reality? No. The best word to describe that is Openness. No boundaries. No divisions. If you define, you divide. The mystic sees nonduality. The rationalist, the intellect, sees divisions, which are a product of the mind which we then mistake as actual reality.

To me, and others who have experienced this, this is not an obfuscation of reality. It's a clarification.

What is the difference between conceptual and perceptual?

I think how I might answer that is along the lines of what William James pointed out, which I believe to reflect the truth of it, is that when we experience something, the first thing that occurs is simple awareness. You could call that perception. There is only raw experience, without thought as to anything about it. Then in a seeming intanenous event, that awareness of experiences splits into two parts; objective and subjective. The mind divides it into two questions, "What was that" (objective), and "What does it mean" (subjective).

Conception occurs in both answers to those question. How experience becomes translated, and that is a good word for it, is through conceptual frameworks, based on linguist and cultural conditionings. Prior to this, in the non-verbal world, it's just raw experience floating around in a sea of perception, without being attached to this mental object or that mental object.

BTW, if you consider this an obfuscation of reality, then your argument isn't with me, but entire schools of modern and postmodern research.

Can a non-material mental construct, also appear as a physical construct in a material reality? If so, what is the mechanism or its properties?

Mental constructs are representational of not only physical domains of reality, but of mental and spiritual domains of reality as well. My point however in all of this has been to point out that the mental construct of whatever it is we are drawing a box around and naming it, is a collapse of reality into something the mind can process conceptually. That changes its nature to a reflection of the mind's ability to conceive of reality. What it now perceives, or experiences as the reality of the thing observed, be that physical or mental or spiritual, is not the objects actuality. It's not real reality, or really real in other words. It's a face we draw on the object itself, and call it reality.

Are you suggesting that all our sensory perceptions, are just mistaken assumptions, and differ from our mind's assumptions of reality?

As stated above, what we perceive through our senses is just raw data, unprocessed through the filters of the mind, yet. Then in a split second it goes through those filters into the mind's categories of "what was that", and "what does it mean", or subject/object duality. To recognize that is different than not recognizing that, and assuming how we think of a thing defines its actuality. Not recognizing that, is what is the mistaken assumption.

Do you think that the mind is sentient, and the "I am" is only in the narrative(observer) perspective?

This is a challenging question to look at. If I am understanding correctly what you're asking, the sense of "self" is inherent in the state of being itself. Where it goes from here get's unavoidably complex. I think I'll not dig too deeply at this point, but will offer a brief thought.

There is the saying I heard years ago which says, "We are not who we think we are. We are also not who others think we are. Rather, we are who we think others think we are". There is some profound truth in this statement. Our ideas of who we are, and what we subsequently tie our innate sense of self into, when we develop an "egoic self" in early development, is very much written in the narratives of cognitive thought.

However, when we can strip away all these narrative structures that we tie our self-sense into, we find, as I said elsewhere before, "We have thoughts, but we are not those thoughts", and that what instead is left is such "being" itself. I have a personality and a history, but is that the whole of my existent "self"? The answer to that is no. That is not what is experienced when you strip away the egoic self. What is experienced is "no-self", or Self, with a capital S, which has no beginning or end. Self, without the egoic self.

Do you believe that reality is not the represented product of electro chemical array of neural activities, created throughout the physical brain?

I'm not sure what your question here is in the way it's worded.

Can you sense anything without using your senses? Close your eyes, what does red look like? Hold your breath, what does a rose smell like?

Short answer to this, no. And yes. The no answer is that anything that is sensed, is using our senses. The yes answer is that not everything we sense is tied to what people have categorized as the "five senses". Those are rather crude and somewhat arbitrary assignments of "sense" to certain types of sense. But they are incomplete. Nowadays, they are saying there is over 20 some odd senses, which you can look up for yourself. But I think it's improper to take that look at how things work as defining an actual number.

I think sense can know plenty about existence, without those blunt categories. It's all sense, but where and how that exists, is much more than what we reduce reality down to when we take the metaphors of science (which they really are), and make the definers of reality. That's what this whole discussion is aiming to deconstruct here.

Not an easy thing to address, and certainly unavoidably complex and difficult once you pull back the covers that hid everything underneath "five easy pieces".

Do you know the difference between subjective and objective perspectives?

I know what other people's perspectives of those are.

Do you believe that the mind, brain, and neurons, produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts?

I believe everything does. I believe in emergent levels of reality which cannot be reduced down to the component level, such as the reductionism of philosophical materialism in their defining reality.

What is the practical value of the metaphysical understanding of "Seer" and "Seen"?

Great question. The value of this is everything the mystics have extolled throughout the ages. Knowing yourself truly, behind, before, and beyond all the masks of reality we create obfuscating the truth of our own existence. The value is Peace, Joy, Freedom, Compassion, Love, and so forth.

The answers to these 11 questions will give me a good idea of how far I am prepared to go down this metaphysical rabbit hole. It is becoming very difficult to keep up with your changing equivocations, and usage of terms. If any of your claims have any merit, submit them for peer review. If you are convinced, then I'm sure your peers will also be convinced. Who knows, there might even be a prize waiting for you at Oslo. I apologize if I have offended you, it was never my intention.

Great, apology accepted. I still don't get the reference to Oslo. BTW, I liked this approach of asking questions for clarification. The other way wasn't work so well for us.

 

[Windwalker]

You seem to be a master of half truths.

Does anyone know the whole truth? Maybe I'm just offering the other halves you don't yet see.

You are not suggesting that all the physical creations resulting from our thoughts and ideas, are also the material manifestation of those thoughts and ideas, are you?

Why not? Maybe another way to put it would be to add things like will, desire, and intention to thought. The building taking form is a material manifestation of all of these, created from the mind, through the hands, working with material substances. It didn't 'create itself' without the human mind behind it.

So when you have an zero-dimensional image of a building in your mind, it is materially the same as the actual building itself?

Of course not. Just as our mental image of reality is not the same as actual reality itself.

This is nonsense. There are many processes that must happen before the building can exist. You can imagine the building until you pass out, but it will never exist in reality.

Of course not. But the building would never come into existence without it either.

The act of imagining the building is very real(another use of the word "real").

I completely agree with this.

Therefore your cultural analogy is just a false analogy.

If I agree with what you just said, then how can what I said about culture be false? The exterior aspect of culture is society, which has its physical or material realities; laws, services, infrastructure, protection, economics, etc. Think of it in terms of interiors and exteriors. The interior of a society is its culture. The exterior of culture is its society.

Can you demonstrate using these "endless examples", any mechanism where you can think of something(mental construct), and it will appear as a physical construct?

Where did you get the ideas I was thinking in terms of magic? I am not in any sense of the word thinking in terms of "think it and 'poof' it into existence". Absolutely not. What I have been saying and nothing but this, is that we think of something in our minds, and the then make it come into being through an act of will and action and tools. We're not talking Merlin the Magician stuff here.

You are correct, if I have no thoughts of building a house, it won't be built(at least not by me). But even if I do have the thought of building a house, it may STILL not built. There is NO direct connection between the two, as you are trying to imply.

I am not implying any such thing. You are assuming such, reading things into my words that are not, nor ever have been thoughts in my head.

Again mental constructs are not perceptual, they are conceptual. Please learn the difference.

I have never stated they were. Again, you are wrong about what I am thinking, which is why I'm glad you asked that series of questions in the hope of getting the truth of what I am saying.

I have always claimed mental constructs are conceptual. What I have also claimed, that I don't think you've heard yet, is that we mistake what we think about a thing, the mental construct, as reality as it is. In other words, it's reality, is how we perceive it through the mental construct. The mental construct is the filter through which reality becomes translated into what we have already predefined it to be. That is the trap of the mind, the illusion.

Does what I bolded above here make sense to you? Do you agree with that statement, or disagree with it?

Denial is only an avoidance option. Our senses do not perceive mental constructs. They receive sensory constructs from the external environment.

We sense thoughts arising in our minds don't we? What about the sense of time? That's not part of the five senses either, nor is the sense of balance, the sense of agency, or familiarity, etc.

I have already conceded that this environment, is not a true representation of reality. But it is reliable enough for our species to have avoided extinction.

Which is what I find so odd here. If you recognize this, then why do you find what I am saying to obscure? It should be obvious if you can recognize the mistake of the mind interpreting its perception of the world, translated through the filters of language and culture that colorize it, as the actuality of reality itself. Why are you disagreeing?

I have already defined what I call real, what do you think real is? I will also keep this simple as well.

What our sense organs perceive is real, since they can't self-stimulate themselves. There must be some outside stimuli.

Sure. The only thing I would do is qualify this to say what the sense organs "sense" or are "aware" of, which is what that really is, is really, really there. It's the "raw data" of experience I mentioned in the last post, and in here too I think. But what we then think about that, now THAT is what is filtered and becomes imposed back upon reality, and mistaken as the truth by the mind, as the reality of the thing perceived. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

The representation of sensory information sent to the brain, interpreted, and represented to the mind, does not physically exist within the brain.
Mental constructs created by the mind, do not exist physically within the brain.

That's an interesting thought. Some would argue that they exist in various memory stores, wherever those may be. Most reductionists would of course like to say these are physical "places", but others see it as "fields" non-local, and such. Which are you suggesting? I have no dog in that fight myself, though I would lean more towards non-local.

One represents abstract reality(conceptual), and the other represents physical reality(perseptual). But neither are physically real within the brain.

Are you questioning if I imagine an actual tree is in my brain when I think of a tree? That's ridiculous.

Objective reality exist outside of our subjective perspective.

Our experience of it is conditioned by our subjective interpretation of it. It therefore becomes objective reality to us. It becomes what we think it is, because we experience it through our thoughts about it. In this sense, reality is co-created by us. Our beliefs will affect the exterior world. Do you deny this?

Again, please learn and understand the meaning of the terms conceive, perceive, mental and physical constructs, real and reality, and subjective and objective perspective.

I think I understand these quite well. That I challenge the limiting understanding of these things doesn't mean I don't understand them. It probably means I understand something you don't.

 

[atanu]

The point is that the self, the seer, is closer than an apple on one’s palm. What is the seer? Is apple on the palm the seer?

Some folks hold on to the notion that graspable objects of the senses are real and the cognising self the illusion. They assert correctness of their idea that the physical objects are only true, forgetting that their ideas are mere ideas.

The indisputable fact is that the very cognition of objects — material or mental— are contingent upon the seer of the objects.

Even to deny a self-seer, self-seer-consciousness is required.