Cory,
I find that you genius forum elites make it very easy to turn what are essentially separate issues into one. For example, understanding cause and effect is not hard and is one matter, whereas, on the other hand, there is applying causality so rigorously that you realize nothing inherently exists, including causality.
Well, to my mind, casuality is not properly understood until that deeper realization is reached.
Not only that, but there is also the importance of being careful that your cause and effect abstractions match actuality. Like I mentioned in a previous post, my dog understands cause and effect. Human’s, unlike a dog, are conscious that they understand the concept of cause and effect. Why do you genius forum people always insist that humanity doesn’t understand cause and effect?
It comes from long years of experience of observing and dealing with people.
As you say, most people have an intuitive understanding of causality. It is pretty hard not to, given that it is constantly unfolding all around them and underlies everything they do in life. But very few people explicitly bring it into their consciousness and investigate its nature thoroughly. And as a result, very few people become aware of its philosophical significance.
For example, it is always interesting trying to discuss these matters with scientists. You would think that, out of anyone, they would be the ones who are most receptive to it. And yet when you explain to them the basic principle of casuality and its philosophical implications, they either stare at you with blank faces or scoff at you as though you were peddling some kind of old-fashioned airy-fairy fantasy. So even though they implicitly deal with causality in every aspect of their professional and personal lives, they still have little or no knowledge of it. It is still a foreign notion to them.
I think what you should be emphasizing is that humanity isn’t interested or is afraid of 1) being sure that their fancied causal concepts match actuality, and 2) applying the concept of cause and effect so rigorously that it destroys the notion of there being anything at all.
1) you have the basic logic of cause and effect (which a dog can understand), 2) you have the challenge of making sure your abstract causal concepts match the cruelty and tragedy of actuality, and 3) one must apply cause and effect wholly/totally.
You people seem to be down-playing the significance of being aware of these distinctions.
I'm sure if you observe proceedings more carefully, you will see that each of these aspects are stressed at the appriopriate time.
For example, one of the biggest hindrances to people applying causality more rigorously and widely in their lives is their attachmnents. As a result, a lot of time and effort on this board is directed towards undermining people's attachments.
Would you say that Einstein didn’t understand causality? That would be too silly, surely Einstein had a relatively advanced conception of causality. However, it would be reasonable to say that Einstein didn’t apply his understanding of causality so rigorously that he realized nothing inherently existed, which is a whole other matter altogether, and is the real area of importance.
One of the reasons why Einstein didn't apply his understanding of causality rigorously was because his understanding of it was still very naive and limited. He wasn't a stupid man. It would have been natural for him to explore the logical consequences of casuality had he the opportunity, but because he never really recognized what causality was in the first place, he didn't do so.
Indeed, his understanding of causality was so limited that he actually thought quantum theory posed a threat to it. He spent the
last thirty years of his life trying to defend causality from this phantom threat, which has to be classed as sustained idiocy.
It was nice to have David clarify the enlightenment and perfection question, however, I think he needs to realize that he is (perhaps unconsciously) making it seem like 1) a sage is perfect and 2) David Quinn is a sage. This goes back to the problem of confusing two separate issues, as one issue.
Perfection gets associated with sagehood. David Quinn calls himself a sage, and thus, he influences people to think he is perfect.
I don't know, Cory. Most people would immediately pick up that I am not perfect. After all, I have an overly-high opinion of myself, no sense of humour, fixed repetitive views, a pathological hatred of women, a weakness for engaging in character assassination, a fear of intimacy and love, a lack of shame in bludging off the backs of Australian workers, a callous indifference towards the suffering of others - the list goes on and on. So I don't think there is much danger in misleading people on this front.
Hopefully, whatever influence I have with people will ultimately come from the quality of my thought. If someone examines my thought and considers it to be significant and flawless, then that could inspire them to improve the quality of their own thought.
This is why I am always trying to challenge the QRS, and largely Quinn, because the impression was that Quinn was selling himself to be perfect. I am not trying to reduce Quinn, the QRS, the genius forum down to the level of the herd. I understand that higher levels of quality exist. By challenging the QRS and giving them a hard time, ultimately I am trying to improve the quality of the board. Although I realize that some attempts at challenging, confronting and criticizing the QRS are more feeble and imbecilic than others, sometimes amounting to nothing more than spam (and thus diluting the quality of the board)
You're asking pointed questions and challenging the proclaimed wisdom of the board - that's good. You are performing a service.
I was never fully aware of my means to realize this nothingness (this is because cause and effect thinking is such an unconscious habit in humans, or at least in me - not that i havent had my irrational blunders since I had my first few satoris)
I had always attributed the drastic change in perspective that I had undergone to so many causes, that I realized there ultimately was no cause.
Carl Jung's Synchronicity as an 'Acausal' Connecting Principle had came into my life around the time I started to go deep and around this time I had been having strange experiences (synchronicities, telepathy, clairvoyent, shared ecstasies with others - no, i'm not trying to show off)
So naturally, because I was having experiences that seemed to confirm Jung's theories, I regarded 'cause&effect' thinking to be limited, infantile and too academic'
Later, i would discover the work of David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, Terrence Mckenna, Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Peat, all of which served to strenghten my suspicions that there was something important beyond cause and effect.
Yes, this is one of those iron-clad dichotomies embedded in society that I have to bump my head against every day - the false idea that causality is a dull worldly, academic notion, and that spirituality necessarily involves the rejection of it. Society is full of these iron-clad dichotomies which makes it so much harder for people to pursue philosophy more deeply and fluidly
DQ: In this period of abject despair, in which the spiritual person no longer has anything to fall back on - either egotistically or spiritually - it can be very tempting for him to cry out to God: "Why have you forsaken me?".
C: Why do you use the word 'spiritual' David? I also caught you using the word ‘holy ghost’. Why? What good does it do? Why not just say what you mean in less flakey terms? Even (or perhaps I should say 'obviously') using the word 'god' seems silly and ineffectual. Isnt history a good enough lesson to avoid that sort of language?
It is important to know how to speak about the Truth in different languages - athiest, scientific, Christian, Buddhist, New Age, etc. One is constantly dealing with different kinds of people who harbour different kinds of mentalities.
Sometimes using atheistic language isn't all that effective when dealing with, say, Christians. Rather than simply opposing their beliefs with atheistic arguments, it is often more effective to use their own language to trigger deeper lines of thought inside them. If you can turn, say, their concept of God back on itself or stretch it out of shape a bit, it can trigger insight and a fresh approach to philosophical issues.
It's a bit like using stealth to steal into their minds and invert some of the furniture and structures from within. The changes can trigger some new life in there.
It's also good, as a teaching technique, to keep mixing up the language in order shake people out of their complacent lines of thought and free them up so that they can continue broadening and deepening their understanding of things. The goal is to become independent on all language-forms. It's a sign of wisdom when a person's understanding of Reality is so advanced and flexible that he can talk about it in a thousand different ways and is just as comfortable using Christian language as he is about using Buddhist or atheistic.
David, how can one spiritually fall back on something? Give me an example of a spiritual fall-back in contrast to an egotistical fall-back.
The primary spiritual fallback is enlightenment itself. That is, as soon as one pierces the veil of Maya (i.e. the core delusion of inherent existence), one automatically goes beyond a thousand pitfalls and can never re-enter them again. One goes up to another level, as it were, and all the dangers of the previous levels are left behind.
The most inimical tendency I’ve noticed on this forum is the common tendency to create distinctions where and when it is unnecessary to do so, and to neglect making distinctions where it is responsible and useful.
Not that I havent been guilty of doing it, but I think are a few words we ought not to bother using, and maybe start making distinctions in areas where we settle for sloppy generalizations.
As I say, it is important to keep mixing things up. Sometimes it is important to make sharp distinctions between things, while at other times it is just as important to dissolve them again. The critical thing to keep in mind that none of the distinctions we make are really "there". We mentally create them and they either serve their purpose effectively or they don't.
In Buddhism, you can find all sorts of distinctions being made. Depending on what text you read, the path to enlightenment will consist of six stages, eight stages, ten, twenty-five, or a hundred stages! Take your pick. If it is a Zen text, it will probably say there are no stages at all. All of these views are perfectly correct, when properly understood.
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