How does that preclude it being relative?
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Hindu idea of "unchanging" self
- Thread starter PolyHedral
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PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
What could it possibly be relative to?
Everything?
To answer from a much simpler perspective, the answer is not that the Self does not need to change, but simply that it does not. What is, is.
Also, Consciousness is not 'external' to the body. If anything, I'd think about it symbolically as internal, the core Self (the Self within the self
). This is why meditators look 'within' in order to seek understanding of Self.There is an unchanging Self, the true Self, that is eternal, never being created and never being destroyed. That Self is the 'I', the perceiver. The external body and mind is material and matter is subject to constant change. It forms a superficial identity, grows old, dies.
Think about it this way: imagine that you were adopted by parents in a completely different culture, were brought up with a different religion and political views, different values and attitude. This person might have been who you became in this different set of circumstance. What is the constant? The 'I', the consciousness, the perceiver. Your physical identity could be anything, depending on your particular experiences; fickle, subject to continual change. But 'your' consciousness is neutral and constant.
The difference between the self and the Self is Spirit/Consciousness/life-force. According to Vedic philosophy, matter is changing, impermanent. But Spirit is eternal, its nature vastly different from Matter.
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I agree. And it ledas to infinite potential for forward and backward integration. What the PolyHedral person is part of then?
Yes surely. But the surrounding also is presented in two perspectives and there can be many. There may be no surrounding but homegeneous water/air/vacuum etc.. Further, unlike the sensually graspable surrounding, our manifestation has ungraspable elements, akin to 'nothingness'.
No. When we talk of meditation and drilling down through mind, it leads to silence and not to computations. The process is called involution. Mental perturbations and efforts to compute, create layers that superimpose their effects on the timeless-actionless-changeless substratum. Most confuse the effect as the cause.
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Yeshe Dawa
Lotus Born
Hi Madhuri!
Thank you for this explanation. This explains what I've been trying to grasp so clearly!
Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:
Everynight we (minds) go to sleep in a place which does not change at any time. We need not go to Turya consciousness, that we have no experience of, now. But, the unchanging consciousness (prajna) that is support of all is within everyone's experience/memory as deep sleep. Some will ignore it willfully though.
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Show me an integer. Not the symbol of one, for that would already be demonstration of (apparent) change.
Good luck.
Consciousness is not 'external' to the body. If anything, I'd think about it symbolically as internal, the core Self (the Self within the self
There is an unchanging Self, the true Self, that is eternal, never being created and never being destroyed. That Self is the 'I', the perceiver. The external body and mind is material and matter is subject to constant change. It forms a superficial identity, grows old, dies.
The difference between the self and the Self is Spirit/Consciousness/life-force. According to Vedic philosophy, matter is changing, impermanent. But Spirit is eternal, its nature vastly different from Matter.
Tis like my better half is speaking through 'you' to Me. :cloud9:
Namaste
Paraprakrti
Custom User
Kujastha. This notion comes about by the process of stripping away the mutable layers to reveal the "steady" conscious entity underlying. It is the realization of meditative sages. I don't know that the self "needs" to be unchanging as if there is some string of logic that necessitates it. The realization comes out of observing or meditating upon one's own nature devoid of considerations of the fleeting material world. It is a quieting of the mind. And If one can make that distinction, then one is certainly different from the wavering mind.
I'm not sure I'm following, PolyHedral.. Consciousness just is. An individual is just a sort of pinched-off, blinkered spark of the single consciousness that is the Universe.
I'm not sure what you mean by logic. Change, well, it just happens -- in waking and dream states. Ultimately, however, this is an illusion. Reality is different at different levels.
Different levels, different levels. We're always subjectively real, just not ultimately, objectively real.
If I dream I'm being chased by a bear, that bear is real to me, I'm real, the danger is real. If I wake to 3rd state, ie: waking state, the whole dream reality collapses and becomes unreal to me in my expanded consciousness.
If I'm chased by a bear in waking state it's again subjectively real, but were I to wake to a higher state the illusion would again be shattered.
Ultimately there is no change. There's no time, no space, no duality, but that's not what we perceive, and we must live in the reality we see.
It doesn't need to be anything. Why does mass warp spacetime? Why do fools fall in love?
That's just the way it is.
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PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
The statements that lead to arithmetic don't depend on reality, so how is anything, let alone everything, relevant?
But then what is? Can you describe it uniquely?
But seeing the colour red is equally constant,Also, Consciousness is not 'external' to the body. If anything, I'd think about it symbolically as internal, the core Self (the Self within the self
There is an unchanging Self, the true Self, that is eternal, never being created and never being destroyed. That Self is the 'I', the perceiver. The external body and mind is material and matter is subject to constant change. It forms a superficial identity, grows old, dies.
Think about it this way: imagine that you were adopted by parents in a completely different culture, were brought up with a different religion and political views, different values and attitude. This person might have been who you became in this different set of circumstance. What is the constant? The 'I', the consciousness, the perceiver. Your physical identity could be anything, depending on your particular experiences; fickle, subject to continual change. But 'your' consciousness is neutral and constant.
Some things, but none of them are in my head, as it were.
But how do you know if the elements are ungraspable?Yes surely. But the surrounding also is presented in two perspectives and there can be many. There may be no surrounding but homegeneous water/air/vacuum etc.. Further, unlike the sensually graspable surrounding, our manifestation has ungraspable elements, akin to 'nothingness'.
Well, of course meditation cannot take you down to computation, since meditation can't even show you how something as fundamental as language processing works. It can't show you the logical inferences your brain is making, distinct from the language that is used to express them. It can't even tell you the structure of your own knowledge. The only way to understand those is to look at the mind's hardware.
The successor of 0. Note I'm not referring to the string, "the successor of 0", but the entity named by the string. That is an integer.
But why do you think this?
The logic of how you arrived at you previous paragraph, and what evidence you used.
That seems an unreasonable assumption, since nobody has ever reported "popping" out of reality to something greater. Also, in the case of "this" reality being dream-like, what's the generator? The generator of the dream is your own brain, but there isn't a corresponding entity in reality.
It doesn't, AFAIK. There isn't a distinction.
Because they're too foolish to not listen to the chemicals?
Some things, but none of them are in my head, as it were.
But you did not answer what you are part of? This question arose sine you said that PolyHedral the mathematician is part of PolyHedral the person.
I know it, the way you know that you exist.
What determines that something is relative?
I do not know, why you get this idea as Hinduism teaches that external-internal is a sensual artifact. And from this top end view, there is no reality other than consciousness, which however is different from what you consider consciousness to be. To Vedantist, consciousness is the immutable base whereupon "I Am (Self)" awareness sprouts and then the "I Am" is full of consciousness. Some teachers have used an analogy with a cinema show, as below.
- The lamp inside the projector: The Self.
- The lens in front of lamp: The pure uncolored Mind (this is omniscient)
- The film-- a series of photos: The stream of latent memories, tendencies, subtle thoughts.
- The Lens, the light passing through it, and the lamp together: The mind, its illumination from light of Self, which together form the living being or the Seer.
- The light falling on the screen and appearance of apparent continous pictures: Illumination of Universe and its objects and movements.
- The mechanism which sets the film in motion: The Law.
Can you explain this further? "The statements that lead to arithmetic"?
Yes. But in describing it, the plausibility of 'is not' (or absence of that which is) arises in a, how you say, relative way.
Not in my experience. Perhaps you could elaborate.
I would suggest meditation does show these things, but may not enable the interpretative analysis of mind to 'think' beyond observing. And is where contemplation comes in to understand, grasp, draw (reasonable) conclusions.
You have not shown an integer and are making an inference. Actually, you aren't even making it, but are between asking and demanding it be made. Your "that" is not shown here. When you show me an integer, I will honestly provide you with credit of evidence.
In a mindful way, I would say this is most reasonable. It is the 'thing' that (great) discoveries are made of, and even little discoveries, by say students. We can shift in perception, just as perception can shift in us. Discoveries are one example and have overlap to the other examples. For self discovery and greater degrees of self awareness 'pop' reality into not just different understandings, but different ways of seeing things. The 'greater' the self awareness, the 'greater' the sight, or put another way, the 'greater' the popping of (so called) reality.
It is mind. You cannot see brain without mind, and as you are essentially making the case, you cannot see mind with brain. Brain therefore is not capable of seeing. Nothing in the physical truly is. The mind is capable of great feats of imaging. Undeniably great and grandiose. Worlds have been made, and selves that are 'not me' have been manifested. Even finding something outside of 'me' (in another) is made manifest to correlate to that which 'must be' doing the thinking for me (i.e. brain). But within the dream where is that to be found? Do we see 'brain' at work from within the dream? No, nor do we see 'the generator' immediately upon awakening, even while we attribute it to 'own thoughts' rather than, as is basis of the dream, to 'reality around me then.' And so 'reality around me now' in consciousness of the physical seems very convincing that brain is central to generating all my thoughts / movements. And as long as I rely on physical sight, and only physical sight, I will refuse to believe it could be otherwise. Even if reality were to pop in and show me otherwise (through meditation). I would need interpretative analysis and shift in perception that is consistent, before I deem the observation to be something other than what physical sight has told me to believe.
And for some of us among you, we are telling you that the shift to a consistent way of seeing things within you / as you, is plausible. Quite logical. And I would say natural. The price of admission? Do not rely only on physical sight for the concept of self awareness.
There is a fear associated with this, and it runs much deeper than intellectual curiosity can properly give it credit. That fear has something to do with belief in sacrifice, that you would give up something very valuable. We might call it mind, or sanity, or what have you. But if you do believe, with high conviction right now, that 'brain is real,' then I would tell you that sacrifice is not the underlying fear, even while it will appear that way for several steps of deepening self awareness. The actual fear is in vein of "how great is 'I am'?" The popping of this reality leads to a release that intellectually I would put into perspective of saying, you will realize that the only thing you must sacrifice is the belief in sacrifice. The belief in lack.
Intellectually that sounds pleasing and who wouldn't want that. But go deeper within consciousness, in a deliberate way, put aside physical sight / interpretations and if you are anything like the umpteen billion humans that have gone before you, fear is likely to tempt you to be an adequate guide in the process. Screaming at you, "no! Turn back! This is NOT the way, to truth. You'll go crazy, and all will know you as crazy. Turn back!"
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
The person isn't part of anything that is in my head. I'm part of groups, though, such as the interaction of this forum.
I know I exist because the alternative is a contradiction. Have you tried all possible ways to grasp the ideas?
Is there an electricity in this metaphor?
(Also, omniscience is not well-defined. I think you mean something else.) Names refer to things. Surely you can't be suggesting that all names refer to the same thing?
Arithmetic is built on a series of definitions and axioms that are unquestioned. These include "There is an entity called 0," and "There is an succession operator." They aren't connected to reality in any way, and so aren't influenced by any real-world idea. They just exist on their own.
Of course it does. "Everything" is not well-defined in a mathematical sense, and so it's impossible to refer to absolutely everything.
I mean that if you imagine all the different possibilities of my life, then although all possible "me"s are conscious, they also capable of seeing and understanding the colour red. The logic earlier suggested that means seeing-redness is a "special" thing, on the same level as consciousness is a special thing in Hinduism.
So how is knowledge structured? Because even the best gurus in the world can't seem to provide any concrete information on that. This seems rather strange, if meditation can show you the underpinnings of your mind and isn't just a sandbox that has things running outside of it.
Then you're asking impossible questions. I can't write entities on this board. You equally can't show me red, or a pipe, or even electricity.
No, I mean that nobody has left reality in the way that someone can leave a dream.
But we can realise we're dreaming. We can even lucid dream, which would necessarily mean we'd know where it's coming from.
But we know the mind to be unreliable in some circumstances. How do we verify that "true reality" is not one of those circumstances?
I cannot parse this. I simply do understand the point you are making. Could you use more rigorous language?
But fear of the unknown as, as mentioned, yielded 100% correct results so far.
How do you know?
Why?
Is there an electricity in this metaphor?
You did not see the law?
Ha Ha. You are short memoried. Just as PolyHedral the Person and PolyHedral the mathematician are same but have different roles/names.