Cory,
DQ: You really shouldn't be picturing the Totality as anything at all.
Cory: I'm not, as I realize perfectly well that a totality that extends in all directions infinitely does nothing but render meaningless any notion of 'center'. You can only picture the
totality relative to a center, and my definition of totality wipes out a center just as effectively as yours.
DQ: I meant picturing it as having any fixed form or objective existence "out there".
Cory: Well 'it', the totality itself doesn't have a fixed form or objective existence, but there are objective unfathomably bizzare topographies of some sort which the totality is comprised of, one that consciousness can never know completely, but only incompletely. It's because of these interconnected topographies existing independently from human thought, that we make accidental discoveries about reality. We discover fossils or like Rutherford we accidently experience alpha particles get ricocheted off of what was not included in the original hypotheses. It's true that there is only subjective reality insofar as consciousness can never see things as they really are but rather, consciousnes percieves only a mere distortion of the actual objective world.
Well, that's certainly the conventional viewpoint which we are all raised to believe in.
DQ: The perception of an infinite chain of worlds extending infinitely in all directions is still just a dualistic illusion existing in the moment, as is the hidden void.
Cory: A 'perception' of an infinite chain of worlds extending infinitely in all directions is impossible. You know as well as I do that percieving infinity, as well as conceptualizing it, is not possible.
DQ: The objective reality of an infinite chain of worlds extending infinitely in all directions is also impossible. It can only ever exist as a perceptual reality
Cory: Says you. I don't see any reason why what I percieve with my senses, cannot continue to act beyond. For instance, bread that I forgot about in the cupboard now has mold on it. The last time consciousness cast itself on the bread (a week ago) there was no mold. Now there is plenty of mold. Obviously there was something happening to the bread during the time when consciousness was not cast upon it. In other words, we take what our senses tell us, we reason about that empirical data, and we use logic to extrapolate our way to the conclusion that objective reality continues beyond the senses.
Imagine you are having a dream at night, wherein you place a piece of bread on a table and then come back to it some time later to find there is mold on it. Are we to conclude from this that the dream-bread slowly accumulated mold outside of the dreaming state while you were away doing something else?
DQ: The form of the Totality cannot be found in any dualistic illusion.
Cory: Of course not. It's not conceivable by thought, nor can it be percieved.
DQ: Well, it can be perceived, but only when you stop looking for it within dualistic illusions.
Cory: What do you mean infinity can be percieved? Perceiving is empirical, it's always limited in scope.
I mean directly perceiving its essential nature. When a person perceives the essential nature of what is before him, he immediately perceives the essential nature of all things in the Universe. He literally sees the whole of infinity in the limited perception before him. He is suddenly free of all forms and becomes omniscient in the purest sense.
I agree that the totality is not an object, it is not objective, subjective, a thing, etc. This is because it extends infinitely in all directions - INFINITELY. Thus we really can't hold it in our minds, we cant think about it, its not an object, its not experiencable. However within its infinite expanse is the objective reality that we can percieve in a way that is so highly incomplete and distorted, that we can say that we are limited only to subjective sense impression that will never be entirely real.
Again, that is a limited, conventional outlook you are expressing. It is a ziliion miles away from the kind of deep perception and amazing wisdom that I am talking about.
DQ: Since existence is equivalent to appearance....
Cory: So why are we equating existence with appearance? Perhaps you are taking one false step at the very begining and from there fabricating on and on superfluously, creating all sorts of unnecceary confusion.
This is one of those points which are very difficult to articulate in words. All I can really do is point your attention to it and hope that you will see it.
A thing only finds its existence in the perspective generated by an observer. As soon as you try to think of an objective world existing beyond the mind, you are immediately generating a perspective for such a world to exist in. Even things like "the topography of an objective world" requires a perspective to provide shape, definition and existence to it.
Can anything exist without this perspective? That is the question you need to ponder deeply. I have concluded that it is impossible. The idea of a thing existing without a perspective generated by an observer is meaningless to me. I place it in the same same category as a square circle. You can conceive of it in a loose sense, but at its core it is too self-contradictory and incoherent to be meaningful.
DQ: Consciousness is not really a mystery because we know that it is caused, just like anything else is. It's true that we can't really follow all the precise causal pathways which lead to its
existence, but then we can't really do that with anything else either. So at root, it is no more mysterious than anything else.
C: I do agree that we can diffuse the mystery to a degree insofar as we can say that there was always somethingess. Any sort of question which asks: "Why something instead of nothing?" is a wrong question. In that regard, mundane, inert matter is not very mysterious. However, what lies beyond the limits of consciousness is mysterious, and how exactly the universe becomes conscious of itself is really quite incredible and mysterious, and according to your logic David, no sort of objective scientific explanation will suffice, because scientific explanations are based on an objective world that causes subjective experience.
It would only be a mystery if consciousness sprung into being out of nothing whatsoever. But since we know it has causes, just like anything else, then it isn't a mystery - at least not in an ultimate sense. Yes, it is true that we can't scientifically or empirically join the dots between consciousness and the hidden void in any detail, but that isn't a big issue for me. I accept it as being part of the truth about Reality.
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