I have Realized the Infinite

[David Quinn]

I think it's a great skill to be truly grounded, but expand your emotional and passionate territory - taking risks with them and really LIVING.

Of course, this is completely different from feminine emotions, which aren't tethered to the ground.

It's hard to know what you mean by any of this. Are we back in the seducer's realm here? Or is it more a case of wanting to lose oneself in a dionysian orgy?

However, in another sense, humans are emotional beings. It's so obvious that everyone is having emotions at all times. Sometimes they're nice, and other times they're a pain in the ass. But call this a product of an unwanted and illogical ego and you effectively take an enormous black dildo and shove it up your ass.

Not a big swinging one, I hope.

I would be interested to hear how you have determined that everyone is having emotions all the time.

Understanding logic does not mean you try to control yourself to always act logically. You are human. Trying to act totally logically all the time does not make you perfect. You are HUMAN. You are MESSY. You are not and you never will be "logically perfect". If you try that you will become dissociated from yourself and the world, losing all natural skills and instincts while interacting with it. Do violence to your emotions and you will suffer. And hopefully you won't then say it's in the name of truth (stupidity more like it).

The way you describe it here, it does sound like stupidity. Violently suppressing the emotions for the sake of trying to lead a "clean" logical existence is definitely very foolish, at least as a long-term policy. One might have to do this occasionally - e.g. in pressure situations which require a cool head - but as a principle for guiding one's life it can only lead to disaster.

A person who is genuinely on the rational path doesn't have to attack his emotions at all. Indeed, he barely has to think about them. They will naturally fade away of their own accord in the light of his increasingly greater consciousness, like dew evaporating under the morning sun. He won't even miss them as they fade away, so little attention does he give them.

It's an entirely different process.

It sounds as though you are currently trying to break free of a sterile prison that your over-controlling mind has created yourself, which is a perfectly worthwhile thing to do, but does it really require such an over-the-top justification of your use of the emotions in this struggle?

A complete human is someone who can feel out their emotions, embrace them, and create them. It is also someone who WHEN THE TIME COMES can see the situation totally logically.

Is this a pipe-dream driven by the emotions? Or one of those times when the situation is viewed logically?

It sounds a bit like being the perfect man (as viewed by women). He can be sensitive and cuddly and helpful around the house, knowing how to read her moods and how to listen and whisper sweet nothings when she desires it, but then, when the situation calls for it, he can be strong and ruthless as well. A veritable hunk of a man.

I wonder what creating an emotion means? "I think I'll whip up a jackson pollock type emotion, with three parts anger, one part depression, four parts happiness, and two parts angst, topping it all off with a sprinkling of bliss. Sounds like a useful thing to do."


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[jupiviv]

Violently suppressing the emotions for the sake of trying to lead a "clean" logical existence is definitely very foolish

This would lead to what Weininger would call "hysteria." Instead of changing one's own nature, the subject tries to impose an entirely foreign nature on oneself. Women like Elizabeth I and Margaret Thatcher were probably hysteric. In fact, many famous Anglo-Saxon women seem to be of a hysterical nature, probably because of the Puritanical tradition in that culture.

[Jason]

David, I asked for your definitions of "form" and "formlessness" and you responded:

"Form" is synonymous with thing, object, process, phenomenon, etc. That is, any portion of the Totality.

"Formlessness" refers to the way in which the Totality isn't a thing, object, process or phenomenon. It isn't something which can be experienced directly as a distinguishable phenomenon in the way that, say, a tree or an emotion can. Even though it comprises all distinguishable phenomena, the Totality, taken as a whole, isn't a distinguishable phenomenon itself.

I asked for these definitions because I thought you'd contradicted yourself when writing to dejavu, and now it seems certain that you did:

Dejavu wants to live in the world of immediacy, like a child, and thus all he ever experiences (and wants to experience) are forms.

You criticize what you see as dejavu's experience of forms and his desire to experience forms, yet experiencing forms is the only type of experience that is possible given your definitions of form and formlessness.

[David Quinn]

He doesn't experience the formless aspect of forms, nor the the knowledge, insight and wisdom which this experience triggers.

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[Jason]

He doesn't experience the formless aspect of forms, nor the the knowledge, insight and wisdom which this experience triggers.

I think you might just be trying to weasel out of what I proved to be a contradictory post, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt(and, I'd also suggest that you should be more consistent in your use of definitions, because you seem to quite routinely confuse terms and definitions in this way, and I'm suspicious that the confusion is intentional because you think it helps further your agenda.)

Anyway...what's this so-called "formless aspect of forms"? It sounds like another potential contradiction given your recent definitions of formlessness and form.

[David Quinn]

He doesn't experience the formless aspect of forms, nor the the knowledge, insight and wisdom which this experience triggers.

I think you might just be trying to weasel out of what I proved to be a contradictory post, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt(and, I'd also suggest that you should be more consistent in your use of definitions, because you seem to quite routinely confuse terms and definitions in this way, and I'm suspicious that the confusion is intentional because you think it helps further your agenda.)

"Weasel", "suspicious", "agenda" - such nice friendly words from a kindred spirit.

A cow spies a patch of grass and sees potential food, while an ecologist can look at the same patch of grass and see the whole biosphere at play. There are many, many different ways to experience forms.

Anyway...what's this so-called "formless aspect of forms"?

Loki explained it well enough. But repeating what I said earlier in this thread:

[Things] certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

I've always liked the Buddha's illustration of this, in which he twirled a flame around and around in a circle so that it formed a ring of light. The ring of light certainly appears to exist and can be perceived by observers, and yet at the same, it doesn't really exist at all. It is merely an illusion of circumstances.

All things are fundamentally like this. They appear to exist from certain angles, but they are not really there.

This has no end. You could chase a thing forever and you would never find it.

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[jupiviv]

Things certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

If everything is an illusion, isn't that itself reality? When you see things as they are, they are no longer illusions.

[Steven Coyle]

the lamb fires through

[Gurrb]

isn't something that is realized--that is understood--simply finite. the infinite is the unfathomable, once we have fathomed, it is merely finite like all other things we know. with this, we can never truly understand that which is infinite. if nature is infinite, nature is ever-mysterious.

[Tomas]

Face facts: you guys preach an ideal that not one of you is capable of living up to. If you haven't by now recognised that the reason that none of you is capable of living up to it is not that it's a challenging ideal, but that it's a false one, then you're just not paying attention.

Laird,

"A dishonest man said, 'That is what I chose to believe at that time. You must, at least, show respect for my sincerity!'"


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[Pincho Paxton]

isn't something that is realized--that is understood--simply finite. the infinite is the unfathomable, once we have fathomed, it is merely finite like all other things we know. with this, we can never truly understand that which is infinite. if nature is infinite, nature is ever-mysterious.

Nature doesn't start off as infinite however. Most embryos look the same, most of our body parts look the same. The differences are quite tiny, and then get exaggerated by scale. Just a nose job / boob job shows how receptive we are to scale.

[David Quinn]

Things certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

If everything is an illusion, isn't that itself reality? When you see things as they are, they are no longer illusions.

When things are no longer grasped at, the entire question of their reality or illusoriness falls away into meaninglessness.

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[David Quinn]

isn't something that is realized--that is understood--simply finite. the infinite is the unfathomable, once we have fathomed, it is merely finite like all other things we know.

That is only a problem if you still make the mistake of seeking the infinite within the finite (i.e. of upholding an appearance to be the ultimate truth).

with this, we can never truly understand that which is infinite. if nature is infinite, nature is ever-mysterious.

On the contrary, the moment that you are insightful enough to stop seeking the infinite within the finite, the infinite is understood in its entirety and its true mystery is revealed.

Alas, you have allowed the cult of postmodernism to persuade you to stop half-way, in the belief that you have reached the end.

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[David Quinn]

Face facts: you guys preach an ideal that not one of you is capable of living up to. If you haven't by now recognised that the reason that none of you is capable of living up to it is not that it's a challenging ideal, but that it's a false one, then you're just not paying attention.

Laird,

"A dishonest man said, 'That is what I chose to believe at that time. You must, at least, show respect for my sincerity!'"

"Only the impossible is worth attempting. One is sure to fail at anything else." - Celia Green


"God can involve himself with the human race on one of two conditions, either in such a way that individuals are found who are willing to venture out so far in hating themselves that God can use them as apostles, or in such a way that the true situation is honestly and unconditionally admitted. The latter is my primitivity.

As far as the former is concerned, this is certainly the instruction of the New Testament. But with respect to venturing out so far, the following must be noted. This is something so dreadful for a human being that it is permissible to say: I dare not." - Soren Kierkegaard

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[Jason]

When things are no longer grasped at, the entire question of their reality or illusoriness falls away into meaninglessness.

When you say that things are "grasped at", are you referring to people believing(and grasping to that belief) that reality(as a whole) is a particular limited thing? For example, people believing that reality(again, as a whole) is an illusion?

[Jason]

David Quinn: He doesn't experience the formless aspect of forms, nor the the knowledge, insight and wisdom which this experience triggers.

Jason: I think you might just be trying to weasel out of what I proved to be a contradictory post, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt(and, I'd also suggest that you should be more consistent in your use of definitions, because you seem to quite routinely confuse terms and definitions in this way, and I'm suspicious that the confusion is intentional because you think it helps further your agenda.)

David Quinn: "Weasel", "suspicious", "agenda" - such nice friendly words from a kindred spirit.

What's the problem exactly David? Don't you think I was being nice and friendly enough?

A cow spies a patch of grass and sees potential food, while an ecologist can look at the same patch of grass and see the whole biosphere at play. There are many, many different ways to experience forms.

That's not what you were originally criticizing(you're making a straw man argument.) What you originally said was "all he ever experiences (and wants to experience) are forms." You didn't say "he has a limited way of experiencing forms."

Jason:Anyway...what's this so-called "formless aspect of forms"?

David Quinn:Loki explained it well enough. But repeating what I said earlier in this thread:

[Things] certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

I've always liked the Buddha's illustration of this, in which he twirled a flame around and around in a circle so that it formed a ring of light. The ring of light certainly appears to exist and can be perceived by observers, and yet at the same, it doesn't really exist at all. It is merely an illusion of circumstances.

All things are fundamentally like this. They appear to exist from certain angles, but they are not really there.

This has no end. You could chase a thing forever and you would never find it.

That's a non-explanation. No reasoning given, no argument, no proof - nothing of substance.

[Kelly Jones]

Poetry in prose is an excellent way to communicate a logical argument about formlessness, Jason. You have to read it deeply. Don't fall for the illusion of the ring of fire (the illusion of substance).

[Kelly Jones]

You (and Kelly) refer to this type of process:

Break through into understanding of Absolute Truth => work this understanding into the core of your being => attain perfect enlightenment and stop experiencing emotions.

The thing is, you guys change your tune whenever it suits you. Take, for example, what David wrote in his opening statement in The Larkin Debate:

:The core delusion of the mind, which forms the basis of all other delusions, is the belief in inherent existence. [...] As soon as this core delusion is eliminated, every other delusion concerning the nature of existence naturally falls into a heap - like the sudden collapse of a stack of cards - and it is here that the mind experiences enlightenment.

[...]

The enlightened person is one who is fully conscious of Ultimate Reality. He has completely abandoned the idea of a permanent, fixed self, and fully accepts the reality that his very own existence is nothing more than a momentary, illusory whim. Such a person is utterly beyond the emotions (there being nothing to get emotional about), and utterly beyond religion (he no longer depends on blind faith).

Here David describes a sudden breakthrough into enlightenment: as soon as the core delusion of inherent existence is eliminated all other delusions collapse like a stack of cards, resulting in immediate enlightenment and transcendence of emotions. Here there is no transitory state of working the understanding into the core of your being.

Laird,

A drop of 100% acid is pure. It's immediately and absolutely pure.

If you squeeze a small drop of this pure acid onto a wooden desktop, it will instantly burn into it. But a small drop will not be enough to burn the whole desk away. Drop by drop, moment by moment, the absolutely-and-immediately-pure acid will gradually be able to erode the wood.

And, at the point where the wood has been converted to a kind of ash, that will be an immediate "breakthrough" - a sudden and total, complete end.

Can you parse the analogy? Can you see the subtleties involved?

The understanding on which enlightenment rides is immediate, but the process of becoming perfectly enlightened is gradual. Notice that David wrote "as soon as this core delusion is eliminated" and "fully conscious" and "completely abandoned" and "fully accepts". The sudden breakthrough into perfect enlightenment is indeed sudden, but only after gradually developing greater faith in the mind and in what reason reveals to be instantly and perfectly true.

But also, the thing is, everything is already "acid". So it's really just a matter of accepting what is, instead of being blockheaded.

So Nick, before expecting me to work harder to understand you, you and your truth buddies need to work harder to express yourselves more consistently. You'll claim enlightenment as a "sudden" process of breaking through into Absolute Truth when it suits you, to distinguish yourselves from the everyday unenlightened mob, but when it comes to living up to the ideal, well, then you'll throw in this new distinction of not yet being totally de-habituated to past egoic delusions - enlightenment is no longer "sudden": instead it can be divided into "intellectual understanding" and the later state - after practice - of total lack of delusion, and until that total lack of delusion is achieved, the pure intellectual understanding is insufficient to prevent the arising of emotions. This way you get to justify emotions in an otherwise supposedly rationally enlightened being, whilst simultaneously claiming that enlightenment is a breakthrough all-or-nothing affair - you're either enlightened or you're not. Cake tastes nice, doesn't it? Pity you can't have it after you've eaten it.

Face facts: you guys preach an ideal that not one of you is capable of living up to. If you haven't by now recognised that the reason that none of you is capable of living up to it is not that it's a challenging ideal, but that it's a false one, then you're just not paying attention.

Don't get too uptight about it. Enlightenment can be defined in various ways, Laird. So long as one gives a context, then one is being utterly consistent, even in using the same word. It can be defined as a virtually perfect intellectual understanding, which is already intellectually reliable, and only needs the experience of the way things actually exist to become truly perfect (in the way David's usage refers to). Or, it can be defined as the perfect understanding, which has altered every part of one's mind. In this case, it's the Buddha, the irreversibly enlightened one, without any doubts or subtle delusions.

It's just a matter of time, luck, and - most importantly - courageous application. So, if a person is already somewhere along the path, then they've experienced enough of the process to have evidence that it works.


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[David Quinn]

When things are no longer grasped at, the entire question of their reality or illusoriness falls away into meaninglessness.

When you say that things are "grasped at", are you referring to people believing(and grasping to that belief) that reality(as a whole) is a particular limited thing? For example, people believing that reality(again, as a whole) is an illusion?

Fundamentally, I mean any kind of grasping at all, in regards to anything, either externally or internally, in the hope of finding an ultimate basis or refuge. The above is an expression of this, the ego seeking its own security, but it can be expressed in many other ways as well.

Jason:Anyway...what's this so-called "formless aspect of forms"?

David Quinn:Loki explained it well enough. But repeating what I said earlier in this thread:

[Things] certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

I've always liked the Buddha's illustration of this, in which he twirled a flame around and around in a circle so that it formed a ring of light. The ring of light certainly appears to exist and can be perceived by observers, and yet at the same, it doesn't really exist at all. It is merely an illusion of circumstances.

All things are fundamentally like this. They appear to exist from certain angles, but they are not really there.

This has no end. You could chase a thing forever and you would never find it.

That's a non-explanation. No reasoning given, no argument, no proof - nothing of substance.

Oh well, you either see it or you don't.

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[Jason]

David Quinn: [Things] certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

I've always liked the Buddha's illustration of this, in which he twirled a flame around and around in a circle so that it formed a ring of light. The ring of light certainly appears to exist and can be perceived by observers, and yet at the same, it doesn't really exist at all. It is merely an illusion of circumstances.

All things are fundamentally like this. They appear to exist from certain angles, but they are not really there.

This has no end. You could chase a thing forever and you would never find it.

Jason: That's a non-explanation. No reasoning given, no argument, no proof - nothing of substance.

David Quinn: Oh well, you either see it or you don't.

Oh please. It's just an unbacked statement/claim couched in a wordy poetic metaphor. At its essence it's no more than a bare proclamation that "the existence of things is an illusion."

+

[Jason]

the moment that you are insightful enough to stop seeking the infinite within the finite, the infinite is understood in its entirety and its true mystery is revealed.

I'm not sure that people do seek the infinite within the finite. Can you give me a specific example of how people do this.

=

[David Quinn]

David Quinn: [Things] certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

I've always liked the Buddha's illustration of this, in which he twirled a flame around and around in a circle so that it formed a ring of light. The ring of light certainly appears to exist and can be perceived by observers, and yet at the same, it doesn't really exist at all. It is merely an illusion of circumstances.

All things are fundamentally like this. They appear to exist from certain angles, but they are not really there.

This has no end. You could chase a thing forever and you would never find it.

Jason: That's a non-explanation. No reasoning given, no argument, no proof - nothing of substance.

David Quinn: Oh well, you either see it or you don't.

Oh please. It's just an unbacked statement/claim couched in a wordy poetic metaphor. At its essence it's no more than a bare proclamation that "the existence of things is an illusion."

As I say, you either see it or you don't.

I can push the buttons in people, but I can't always guarantee that they'll work.

the moment that you are insightful enough to stop seeking the infinite within the finite, the infinite is understood in its entirety and its true mystery is revealed.

I'm not sure that people do seek the infinite within the finite. Can you give me a specific example of how people do this.

Some people seek it in the Big Bang or in the quantum realm. Others seek it in a personal God or in a "universal consciousness". Some seek it in beauty and mystery. Some seek it in artistic genius or in a woman. Some seek it in the idea of emptiness or the Void. Others, more subtly, go no further than formlessness.

All of it the chasing of a mirage within the realm of appearances.

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[Nick]

Jason,

shhhhhhh...

[jupiviv]

Things certainly have existence, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

If everything is an illusion, isn't that itself reality? When you see things as they are, they are no longer illusions.

When things are no longer grasped at, the entire question of their reality or illusoriness falls away into meaninglessness.

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Well, I grasp at things all the time(like the apple I'm eating now), and I call them real and illusory based on how I perceive them. None of these things are meaningless to me, and I doubt they are to you.

[skipair]

Hi David,

I would be interested to hear how you have determined that everyone is having emotions all the time.

The way I see it, I am having emotions all the time. And I think it's part of the human condition to feel where other people are emotionally in social situations. For example, if two friends go for a walk, it's very easy to feel each other's aura and that they feel good.

Everyone I know or have every met has a certain feel about them. And while I can step back and analyze it until the cows come home, that intuition never leaves.