The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Pincho Paxton
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Pincho Paxton »

Dan Rowden wrote:
Pincho Paxton wrote:Every input to your view of the world is translated in the mind.
Since you know everything, where does mind begin and end, specifically, definitively?
The mind doesn't begin, and end, it is a circular message. Most electronic devices are called circuit boards, that means that the energy is circular. Our energy flows in a circular pattern. No beginning, and no end.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Robert wrote:Haven't we been here before? And by we, I mean either Dan or David having this exact conversation with Alex? It's almost become an annual event at this point it seems to me. I predict a few more pages of back and forth, Alex will get upset umpteen times, and it'll end in his announcement of a temporary retreat from the forum, by which we can all set our watches to his return in five months time.
If you are going to preach the Dharma, Robert, become accustomed to doing so over long, long periods of time. Literally forever. If there is a constant at the interior of Buddhist 'philosophy' (it is not a religion, it is not! No No No and NO!), it is one of constant and unceasing effort to communicate the Truth. Indeed, to literarily sacrifice oneself to that purpose.

I do now and will always interweave all communication with ironies and wee sarcasms. There are worse things I could be doing with my sense of humor!

I want to clarify something important. I never get upset with you or anyone here. Ah, there is one exception. Dennis. But Dennis offends my 'literary sensibility': the way I think ideas should be structured and presented. It is 'you' who get upset with me and when I 'leave' it is not out of anger and frustration but because it seems that 'you' wish to preserve the space for purposes of the sort of conversation you enjoy. Even if you think I don't, I do respect this space. (I also make money contributions regularly to help it run, which is another means of 'respecting' something).

I do sometimes wish that I could discover another forum like this one in seriousness of focus but with a wider or more eclectic means of communicating its message. I have tried and numerous times to find one. There is something about finding a forum that depends on supernatural forces. (Wink, wink). I actually did join a Catholic Forum set up in the same phpBB format, and there were some intelligent people there (and no drooling troll-like creatures), but I just couldn't function there. (Makes sense: I am not Catholic!)

That is where I am heading, even if you cannot understand it: a wider and more eclectic way of handling and communicating a 'deeper spiritual orientation' but one that doesn't cut itself off from itself. To understand what I mean by that would require more effort and research than you are willing to put into it. (IMO).

I have told y'all a couple of hundred million times, possibly more, that I am not opposed in an essential way to 'your project', I am opposed to certain notable reductionisms with which 'it' is deeply involved (but I always add 'IMO'). And as you know I do see ASPECTS of the use of this 'philosophy' (I can't call it a Philosophy, and calling it a 'philosophy' implies that I am mocking it, and I am not, y'all got a nomenclature problem on your hands as I see it) as being problematic for a continuity of life lived in this plane of existence: no possibility of statecraft, no philosophy with which to establish social relations, no means to educate children, and no ethic for living for families, the basis of society, the basis for living on this planet now and through time.

What I desire for you to see is that European 'Christianity' in the 'pan-Mediterranean' sense I describe, and in the Medieval sense of combination of Aritoteleanism, Platonism, Judaism and other currents of thought MOST CERTAINLY DID. And that we are the products and the 'outcomes' of that, as well as our sciences, our political systems, the way that we define relatedness between people, and in short in literally ever conceivable way and category of our existence. What is 'disturbing', and yet I am not at all 'disturbed', is the ease with which 'you' chuck EVERYTHING out the window when you establish this radical position of 'delusion' and also 'samsara' as your unique focus. But what 'you' do is to me an overt example of 'ignorance' and in its way is an expression of a 'samsaric' lack of comprehension! I feed back to you the same terms you randomly and mechanically employ, and this quickly becomes INTOLERABLE. Not to be tolerated. I move with these ideas in an area of which you are willfully ignorant!

Don't call three or four exclamation points! being upset. I am now and I have been since day one engaged with the main ideas presented here and yet I do not submit myself to being 'instructed' by 'you'. There is no part of the ideas we are now discussing that is foreign to me, or incomprehensible, or 'too rational for my romantic, bubbling brain'. Those are 'your' designations, by and large, and I do now and have always played within them. If you can *see* some of this, Robert, we may say that progress has been made.

And now I will get back to the Conversation. (Wink, wink). And PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE SLANTED CAPITALS! (I got them, by the way, from Hubert Selby, Jr. in Last Exit to Brooklyn. Everyone in that novel is always SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER).
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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John wrote:lol, does anyone actually know Leyla is attractive at all? Or is it all a result of a philosophy forums greatest fantasy? may as well be honest, the concept of a hot philosopher girl is hard not to cling to.
Me like how you mind work, l'il bro! There is no sense in dreaming about a tight pussy if you don't have evidence of what it is attached to. Imagining in that way becomes a dangerous, internally-referented fantasy and only feeds into a deluded Metaphysical Dream. There are acute practical matters that have to be attended to before I will dream on strange strange. Would you lift the 'no photos' rule in this one instance, Dan?

Leyla, in the dimension where your consciousness is occurring do they have scanners?
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Dan wrote:That's hard to say at this time. I see John as a literary neophyte. i.e. he's pretty new at trying to express his understanding in text and he's got a way to go to be really effective at it, or indeed in properly delineating arguments. But he's getting better. I'm not prepared to make a judgement, overall, as to how much I agree or disagree with him. I think he relies on scripts sometimes, but that's a symptom of the inexperience of expressing his mind. In the end I don't see why the comparison is necessary or useful. I'm speaking to you. Concentrate on what I'm saying. I see this post as typically tangential.
While I do not intend to allow myself to get side-tracked from a focus on what you are writing, there do occur a couple of question marks even at this initial point. And also: What you consider tangential and what I do, do not coincide. Try to remember, of at least pretend to remember, that you do not *direct* this conversation. I know that this guru-like directive tendency must arise from out of your viewing-system, but at least try to understand that I don't see it that way.

By using the term 'literary neophyte' you imply that what he needs to do is to perfect his language. One assumes you feel his 'vision' is essentially correct. I have at times wondered if yours is not a language-based, a rhetorically-based, system of organizing perception through verbal signs. I am not sure if you recognize how certain people come into the space, note the style of the rap, imitate it even to the point of getting pretty successful at it, and are accepted with no question. Dennis seems one of those but I think expressing such a thing is contrary to your sense of propriety.

The nature of the 'system' as a compound of descriptions, classifications, and as I say 'reductions', does lend itself to misuse. And the same is true with other 'thinking systems'. Are you aware of the existence of reductive thinking systems? (A rhetorical question). I am curious to know if you recognize a danger in the ease by which the thinking system you describe ['Not a philosophy and not a religion and not a way of organizing perception, but a way of explaining the ultimate of what it is possible to perceive'. How's that?] can be used by minds inclined toward or in need of reduced thinking systems. I ask this because I have never observed you speaking about things in these terms, nor being critical toward your own 'system'.

The reason I focus, conveniently, on John is quite simple. If ten 'enlightened' are assembled in a room, and each one proposes an 'absolute' understanding of reality and possesses an 'absolute' description of it, it implies an 'absolute' group of praxes and ethics, and must hold to far less choice or randomness in behavior but importantly in definition. When one has made an absolute definition of something as grand as Reality, it predicates normative values, strict parameters of behavior, and so much more. So, even between you and David and Kevin there are some notable differences. David for example seems to have a strong inclination toward mystical understandings that you might not share. For example he speaks of a mysterious, causal principal that operates out of the chasm of the void (or some such thing). It is easy to describe Reality as 'just one thing' and also to describe its characteristics (insubstantiality, 'emptiness', etc.) and most can easily follow your arguments. Indeed, 'you should not flatter yourself since what you write is easy enough to understand'. ;-) But still, it seems to open into wide areas of interpretation.
Death and dying are illusions, in part, for the same reason that being born (beginning) is an illusion.
Well, here you may be saying with your own terms pretty much what he is saying. And since these notions arise right at the beginning of such a conversation (about samsara and maya), it follows that they are deeply interrelated. And thus I desire more information. While I see that there are no specific beginning points or ending points, and in this limited sense may see birth and death as undefined, I cannot see death as being an 'illusion' in the sense that may be implied by what you write. While gestation is complex and lengthy, death is abrupt and 'final' and those dead who venture into
  • The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
    No traveler returns
Do not ever return to finish their conversations. Nor to sort through their boxes of documents. Nor to clean out the fridge. My impression, Dan, is that you merely allude to an indefinite but would you in fact propose a deathless state of consciousness (as John proposes, in indefinite terms) from which arises 'the world' as a sort of hallucination or dream? If so and at that point you would I think find yourself smack in the middle of the basic Hindu-Sanskrit description of the 'world', which of course arose through a vast interpretive endeavor.
He can address that perception of his thought himself.
Why can't you address it? Or anyone who deals in this system of view? Of understanding? Why should such an important thing be left vague? Shouldn't it be 'utterly simple'?
I suggest you try and get through a 24 hour period without feeling wounded or set upon by something.
You misread me, Dan. I take a basically ironical view of all ideas. To imagine that I feel 'wounded' is crazy. I am only having fun. There are worse ways to spend one's time.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Larry Flynt wrote:A woman's vagina has as much personality as her face.
I don't want to let the question, or the problem, of Leyla's pussy fall by the wayside. I really really agree with Larry on this question. If I were to attach a face to [my imagined vision] of Leyla's pussy...

Hmmmmm. Let's all think on this. While not transcendental in import it is not unimportant.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Pincho Paxton »

Alex Jacob wrote:
Larry Flynt wrote:A woman's vagina has as much personality as her face.
I don't want to let the question, or the problem, of Leyla's pussy fall by the wayside. I really really agree with Larry on this question. If I were to attach a face to [my imagined vision] of Leyla's pussy...

Hmmmmm. Let's all think on this. While not transcendental in import it is not unimportant.
A Cheshire pussy.. Alice In Wonderland... The Mad Hatter.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Yes, I see your point, Pincho. Thank you. While we are discussing this I hope that we can clear up the following: I wish it to be clear that as it pertains to presence on the GF forum that I am the undisputed Bull Goose Loony of the forum, to borrow a trope from McMurphey in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest'. Now, some say that your 'doing physics with no maths' qualifies you for the title and with this, sadly, I must categorically disagree. You may say, 'Well, John proposes bodily existence without a body, and does this not put him in the running?' With that I am embarrassed at how to respond. Except in this way: It is insinuated that I 'do philosophy without reasoning' (with which I am completely in disagreement), and with my reasonability I can recognize certain problems with doing physics with no maths, but that it is possible to posit a body from a 'plane of consciousness' that is not our physicality seems to me the truly gross and 'romantic' error, you may suppose I would HAVE to place John in the Bull Goose Looney seat. But, since I imagine---can imagine---Leyla's pussy meowing, so to speak, up in a tree at the base of which I have placed an open tin of kippersnacks, in a gentle moonlight with an inquisitive wind blowing, I declare that I have the most defective mind and core orientation, revealed through word, sentence and paragraph, and so the title should go, and should remain, mine. If you have a problem with that, take it up with administration!
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Diebert,
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It's interesting though that you distill this all from Samadhi's point of view because you are one of the few as far as I know who has some information about the potential implication of his rather serious confusion with regard to Sam's very own life [and his long history of schizophrenic participation and incarnations here]. As your own experiences might confirm: thinking without surrendering to its very anchor will lead to very serious suffering and delusion over time. G.K. Chesterton didn't get the whole picture when he wrote: "a madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason". But the true madman is the one who has not lost everything but hangs on to one thing or the other. They can manifest as an idea, belief, theory but underneath is attachment, an emotional memory, an unspoken unfulfilled desire, frozen and crystallized in a labyrinth of thoughts and feelings.
What interests me most in that quote is your suggestion that my psycho-spiritual malady, psychiatrically labelled against my desire more than a decade ago, is a result of "thinking without surrendering to its [thought's --Laird] very anchor". By "anchor", I presume you mean "causality" aka "causation". What interests me further is that abstraction is a key part of philosophic thought, and that this (the anchor: causality/causation) represents a type of "ultimate abstraction": it's hard to imagine anything more abstract than the notion that "everything exists in relation to everything else" - which is my personal wording of the house's conception of causality (and yes, I'm aware that it leaves out explicitly the house's notion of "dependency", so it probably would not be a wording acceptable to the house). Really, the only more abstract truth one could get is that "reality exists" - using a standard definition of "to exist" rather than that of the house.

(Incidentally, in his own way, Alex is a particularly (ha!) abstract thinker in that he considers the house philosophy not in terms of its specific tenets but more generally in terms of its context and direction. This is just not the type of abstract thinking valued by the house.)

To the point: the way I personally read that phrase of yours, Diebert - the one about surrendering to thinking's very anchor - is that "liberation" comes through viewing reality through the most abstract lens possible; it is in a sense "dissolving away the specific to reveal the generic", which dovetails nicely with notions of QRStianity's "acid": the acid that strips away the particulars to leave only the most universal.

Three questions arise then: firstly, what might it mean to "anchor" thought in the (second-)most universal; secondly, and more relevantly, what are the consequences of performing (or not) this "anchoring"; thirdly, finally, and most relevantly, could my own psycho-spiritual malady be such a consequence?

Re the first question, I can think of two possible meanings: firstly, that it is a "logical" anchoring, that in which the (second-)most universal becomes the primary axiom in one's chain of reasoning; secondly, a "contemplative" anchoring, in which, no matter what one was thinking and experiencing, one kept one's mind/intellect focussed on the fact that the thinking/experience, the thinker/subject-of-experience and the objects of thought/experience are all subject to that (second-)most universal of principles.

Here, we are due a quote from the book Alex has recommended and which I have started reading:
Richard M. Weaver, in Ideas Have Consequences, on page 12 wrote:Naturally everything depends on what we mean by knowledge. I shall adhere to the classic proposition that there is no knowledge at the level of sensation, that therefore knowledge is of universals, and that whatever we know as a truth allows us to predict. The process of learning involves interpretation, and the fewer particulars we require in order to arrive at our generalization, the more apt pupils we are in the school of wisdom.
Weaver clearly has a lot of respect for the universal, but would he agree with the notion of "anchoring" all thought in a single, (second-)most universal principle? I don't know. In any case, we really ought to turn to the other two questions, and I think we're best positioned to answer them by slightly adjusting the final one so that it asks: is it conceivable that my own malady could have been avoided by "surrendering (?)" to this anchoring?

I have canvassed the empirical factors which I believe led to my problems elsewhere, and I don't want to go over them again here, suffice it to say that none of them were a type of problematic thought in themselves; rather, they caused problematic thought: problematic thought that for the most part was related to empirical specifics rather than to philosophical universals, but also related to the metaphysical - I certainly "imagine a metaphysical dream of the world" when I "go mad".

Could the first, "logical", anchoring be a force for preventing such thoughts? I don't really see how, because neither the specific, empirical thoughts/world-view that arise(s) in "madness", nor the alternative thoughts/world-view of "sanity" are or even could be logical extrapolations from this universal principle, and yet they are, in part as affirmed by the topic of this thread, an inevitable aspect of one's being. To put it bluntly, this "logical anchoring" is only possible for a certain category of existential thought, and doesn't (can't) have much if any effect on thoughts about "everyday" empirical reality: how does or could one extrapolate from "everything exists in relation to everything else" a conclusion as to whether or not, for example, other people can read your mind? You just can't; the former is of no consequence to the latter.

OK, but how about the second, "contemplative", anchoring? Could it "stave off delusion"? I would suggest that the only sense in which it could be useful in staving off the sort of "delusions" that I experience is in the context of "practising mindfulness": by steadfastly keeping one's focus on a single notion, one might retain some sense of stability - a calm centre of the storm, and conceivably even a stilling of the storm - yet this would not necessarily be a result of the particular notion (universal or not) with which one practised mindfulness; it might equally be some sort of mantra or concentration on the breath on which one focussed. So, again, I would suggest that the sense in which you might intend this "contemplative" anchoring - i.e. specifically tied to the universal principle of causality - is not the sense in which it might stave off my "madness".

We are left, then, with the second question: that of the consequences of this "anchoring", and, thankfully, in the previous two paragraphs we've partially answered it: the "contemplative" anchoring might be useful in a contemplative practice of mindfulness, but so might other "anchors"; as for everyday living, the "logical" anchor is fairly unhelpful - it does not help us much if at all to decide what to eat for breakfast, which school to send our children to, what our political stance should be, or, more abstractly and metaphysically, and as related to this thread, what our overall world-view is or should be, at least beyond the principle itself - an "empty" world-view indeed!

I could write more but this post is long enough! Peace to all.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Alex Jacob wrote:Yes, I see your point, Pincho. Thank you. While we are discussing this I hope that we can clear up the following: I wish it to be clear that as it pertains to presence on the GF forum that I am the undisputed Bull Goose Loony of the forum, to borrow a trope from McMurphey in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest'. Now, some say that your 'doing physics with no maths' qualifies you for the title and with this, sadly, I must categorically disagree. You may say, 'Well, John proposes bodily existence without a body, and does this not put him in the running?' With that I am embarrassed at how to respond. Except in this way: It is insinuated that I 'do philosophy without reasoning' (with which I am completely in disagreement), and with my reasonability I can recognize certain problems with doing physics with no maths, but that it is possible to posit a body from a 'plane of consciousness' that is not our physicality seems to me the truly gross and 'romantic' error, you may suppose I would HAVE to place John in the Bull Goose Looney seat. But, since I imagine---can imagine---Leyla's pussy meowing, so to speak, up in a tree at the base of which I have placed an open tin of kippersnacks, in a gentle moonlight with an inquisitive wind blowing, I declare that I have the most defective mind and core orientation, revealed through word, sentence and paragraph, and so the title should go, and should remain, mine. If you have a problem with that, take it up with administration!
When I say I don't use maths, I let the computer self build the maths. I just reverse the cause, and effect. So scientists would create a Universe simulation using formulas...

F=G*m1m2/r^2

..and I use particles...

Sphere radius = 0.6, If sphere 2 < 0.6 then gosub overlap

And I allow the particles to do whatever they do naturally, so my version self builds. If you want the maths from my theory you would have to look for the particles that are creating Gravity, and then test them to get a formula from them.

It's easier just to say that I use fractals, because the particles will create fractals without me doing anything.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Hmmmmm. I will take it that you are agreeing with me. No problem therefor! Do you have a way of talking about 'energy'? Why must energy remain unexplainable?
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Alex Jacob wrote:Hmmmmm. I will take it that you are agreeing with me. No problem therefor! Do you have a way of talking about 'energy'? Why must energy remain unexplainable?
Energy is nothing more than passing a message. The best example is the Newton's Cradle. The balls bump together, the message is passed along, and so each ball swings out on the wire in turn. When you see a huge explosion it is just particles bumping together, and passing the message along. We see a bright light to warn us of danger, but the bright light doesn't really exist.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Sure, but what's the message being passed? How would you *explain* energy? I thought that was the one thing unknown and possibly *unknowable* by physics.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Alex Jacob wrote:Sure, but what's the message being passed? How would you *explain* energy? I thought that was the one thing unknown and possibly *unknowable* by physics.
Well I re-wrote the book on physics. I started from scratch. If you have infinite sphere, they take up infinite space. So they can't move. So they bump together. The bump is an overlap of infinite regression. Infinite particles trying to share the same spot, like Russian dolls trying to shrink infinitely. When the shrinking size gets small enough the particles fold inside out. The feedback is then to reverse the flow back towards the biggest Russian doll. And that is a bump, and that is the message that is passed along. It is the message of an infinite regressive feedback loop.

If particles could share the same position as each other nothing would exist. So the evidence is in the Universe existing. That particles must map outwards. And the proof of the sphere is in that sphere have no design.

Science reduces particles to waves, which suggests that the Universe has logic, because waves are logical. I don't accept that the Universe is logical, and waves are too complicated for a Universe to imagine from the beginning. That's why science doesn't know how energy works.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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You did ask, Alex.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

John wrote:You clearly have no idea what it means to attempt a clear representation of ultimate reality through language. To actually say something that is true, something that accurately reflects the universe or consciousness, rather than to throw out hundreds of opinions.
It is not so much that I 'don't know what it means' as that I don't attempt it. The reason I don't attempt it is because I have noted that all attempts to do so, if they are couched as 'absolutes' and set up to function that way, mirror all absolutist formulations about life and existence, and any area in which they operate. The absolutes that you desire to propose are, quite frankly, religious absolutes. What I mean is that they are most common in that area and that when 'you' use them, very unfortunately for you, you enter immediately into the peculiar realm of proposing and also defending religious absolutes. Perhaps if you knew more of history and how absolute ideas of this category have functioned you would better be able to appreciate my chary reaction.

I prefer, generally, to stay out of such grand speculative endeavors and to remain within the tangible reality that is before me. It is not that I do not respect Grand Absolutes---say of the Hindu cosmological ilk---it is that what seems most important to me is the specific ethical systems that we derive from our speculative visions, or stories, about 'reality'. In at least an initial sense I regard 'your' attempts to define an absolute as attempts to pull together and organize a 'theology'. After the vision, the process of interpretation. But in this camp y'all are astoundingly weak. You have not progressed to that point nor do you recognize that point as being important. If you are going to define a 'theology' (and by this I mean a description of absolute reality that you can communicate to others), it has to be able to order human life in large and in small details.

Just some guys---stoned on their own experiences, perhaps uninterested in the hustle and bustle of life, perhaps deeply afraid of it or incapable of it, perhaps inept with women, perhaps deeply resentful of women and all that women represent as the vessel of flesh and blood wherefore we have come into this 'world of woe'---do not have the 'right' to propose what sounds merely like a little escape-club from all the facts and problems of terrestrial life. This is what 'you' are utterly unable to take in.

And the reason 'you' can't take it in is cruelly simple: you are functional illiterates! When I say this 'you' seem to react and respond: "That's bullshit! I can read AND spell!" But you have no real concept of what literacy means. Hence, in major ways, you are on the outside of an already on-going conversation about Life. This is tragic. IMO.
Already admitting you are only describing your personal attachment to certain imaginations, rather than attempting to communicate lasting truth. (That which isn't only true for you)
What Carlyle said in his quote I elaborated on. And even if you do not see it, and have no mechanism by which the idea can be grasped, all human beings (including yourself) organize their perception of 'the world' and 'reality', and quite probably at a pre-rational point (possibly before language is installed), and 'relate to' if you will their 'metaphysical dream'. That a person has being, and that such being has consciousness or consciousness-of-sorts, implies that he is in a relationship to his guiding structure of *where* he is.

And then further: It is also true that we organize our perceptions of the world we understand we exist in through conceptualizations, through linguistic usages, through myths and quite a bit more.

I would say the following: 'you' see the people of this world organizing their perception of their world through metaphysical dreams that are deluded and 'samsaric', and that you propose an alternative, and you assert that you have achieved this unmediated means of perception or understanding. [There is one small problem: the 'enlightened' will never come out and say 'I Am Enlightened' and 'enlightenment' is alluded to, abstractly, or alluded to in historical figures like the Buddha of Hakunin (sp?) and others.]

Produce the Enlightened Man so he can be questioned!
It isn't true, how could you know what each of us 'lives in accord with' ? You only know that you have an imagined understanding of the world and cling to it.
I know that when you think of me you refer to an imagined image of me, on some level or other. When I say 'world' you likely imagine the sphere of the earth as seen from space. Same if I mention any object. You hold 'the world' within your imagined space. Memory and imagination, that sort of thing. When I say 'we' or 'you' I mean humanity generally.

Although I do quite well understand the notion of suggesting the possibility of a 'direct view' or 'perception' of reality, the reality of your experience, I have no reason to accept it as valid, or as ultimately true, and you have no way of convincing me of any of that. I take a practical stance in regard to all grand ideas: skepticism. I don't care much what people say, I care about and am influenced by what they do.

You John do very little that is impressive or that influences me. How could you? Your ideas, your vision, conduces to acute abstraction, to devaluation of life itself, and to non-involvement in it. And yet you call this the 'highest' stance. To be quite truthful with you, I merely laugh. You guys hate to hear this but you are like irresponsible, vain children! You really have not ENGAGED in life to be really able to say much about it. Well, that is certainly my impression of you, John.
Conversation about topics such as emptiness is not a reflection of certain conceptual clinging, it is a reflection using language to communicate the fundamental nature of conscious experience.
I am sure you could convince the choir but I do not, at face value, pay any attention to such declarations. And I have explained a little why that is.
Here you make the personal assertion that you believe everyone else has no choice but to live in accord with a dream of how things are, because that's what you do.
I have a basic understructure within me that is the sum-total of my relatedness to 'reality', yes. I guess you might say that I have a 'state of realization'. But I tend to think that man---all men---have a sort of 'passive' relationship to the Greater Reality. They don't create themselves, and heaven only knows how creation and existence have come to be or how we are here even thinking about it, and so they are not quite the active players. I think that all mystical traditions, in all cultures and temporal circumstances, reflect on their 'inner relationship to Being' and make an effort to say something about that. We have all sort of evidence, in scriptural language, of that endeavor. Every culture and time throws up a Vision, a cosmology, a basic underlying description of reality. And those descriptions are then interpreted and life is lived according to those interpretations.
You have clearly made the same mistake here based on your own lack of awareness. It seems as if you are clinging to the delusion that there is an external inherently existing reality, perhaps one that we only see a reflection of and hence cannot experience directly.
The 'you are lacking special awareness' route is the stuff of cult arguments, brother. Certainly the way YOU use it. And by venturing into assertions that there is not an 'inherently existing reality' of events and details of importance, I think YOU are in a tough spot. And yet this is exactly the 'area' y'all do most clearly work in: perfection of an 'acid' that you can pour on anything, anyone and any sort of terrestrial achievement. And essentially this is where and why I take issue with you. I won't go there with you. Period.
  • [*]All appearances/formations are transient, constantly changing.
    [*]Consciousness is experienced as the universe. All references to objects, people, places, concepts, are references to appearances of consciousness. (Varying appearances can be differentiated and described in various ways, some examples: thought, sensation, mental formations).
    [*]Attachment to particular concepts leads to delusion. (You should take note of this one, some examples of delusion caused by conceptual attachment: The idea of death or the end, which creates anxiety and fear. A delusion which cannot exist without another major one that you have not yet grasped; the attachment to a 'belief' in an inherently exiting world/self.)
    [*]Realization of emptiness is the realization of the delusion of an inherently existing world.
    [*]Experience of the body, or an individual and continued ego, is made up of transient appearances in consciousness, one valuable inference is that experience of the body or ego is not necessary for continued consciousness. (This may help toward lessening clinging to false imaginations)
    [*]Non-attachment through awareness of emptiness lessens the natural identification with certain appearances such as pleasure and pain, moving one toward overcoming suffering.
    [*]The actions and thoughts of 'self' are also dependently originated and are not under any individuals 'control'. It is very possible for one to reside in awareness of these appearances as they arise and fade, this is part of non-attachment.
I say that most of this is ideation at an abstract level and that you and others who abstract in this way will never fully be able to live in this ideation.

However, if some of these ideas are modified and expressed perhaps a little differently, I do not see them as functioning against a 'sane' ethic for living of life, here and now, in this plane of consciousness.

I do appreciate that you took the time to express yourself. I am 'sorry' I guess that we don't have more points to agree on. Yet I do not see my opposition as deluded, nor 'samsaric', in fact more the opposite. In some sense I see you operating from 'delusion', but I recognize that at the base we are talking about different systems of valuation.
Ni ange, ni bête
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Tomas
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Tomas »

Alex Jacob wrote:Would you lift the 'no photos' rule in this one instance, Dan?
Just send a click on, Alex. I love my wife and don't need any extra activities crossing my mind.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Alex, of John,
I know that when you think of me you refer to an imagined image of me, on some level or other.
Alex, to John,
You John do very little that is impressive or that influences me. How could you? Your ideas, your vision, conduces to acute abstraction, to devaluation of life itself, and to non-involvement in it. And yet you call this the 'highest' stance. To be quite truthful with you, I merely laugh. You guys hate to hear this but you are like irresponsible, vain children! You really have not ENGAGED in life to be really able to say much about it. Well, that is certainly my impression of you, John.
The left hand's gotta know what the right hand's doin'.
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Tomas
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Tomas »

guest_of_logic wrote: Here, we are due a quote from the book Alex has recommended and which I have started reading:
Richard M. Weaver, in Ideas Have Consequences, on page 12 wrote:Naturally everything depends on what we mean by knowledge. I shall adhere to the classic proposition that there is no knowledge at the level of sensation, that therefore knowledge is of universals, and that whatever we know as a truth allows us to predict. The process of learning involves interpretation, and the fewer particulars we require in order to arrive at our generalization, the more apt pupils we are in the school of wisdom.
Yes, I ordered it from our public library. Jerry said it will be in by next weekend.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Naturally everything depends on what we mean by knowledge. I shall adhere to the classic proposition that there is no knowledge at the level of sensation, that therefore knowledge is of universals, and that whatever we know as a truth allows us to predict. The process of learning involves interpretation, and the fewer particulars we require in order to arrive at our generalization, the more apt pupils we are in the school of wisdom.
All he's saying is:

This ceases, that ceases,
This arises, that arises.
dependent origination.

It's not that fuckin' hard.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

Can someone give me a good reason not to close this cesspit down? Is there anyone posting nowadays, including myself, that isn't doing so merely because they have nothing better to do? i.e. to alleviate boredom?
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Dan Rowden
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

Alex Jacob wrote:
Dan wrote:That's hard to say at this time. I see John as a literary neophyte. i.e. he's pretty new at trying to express his understanding in text and he's got a way to go to be really effective at it, or indeed in properly delineating arguments. But he's getting better. I'm not prepared to make a judgement, overall, as to how much I agree or disagree with him. I think he relies on scripts sometimes, but that's a symptom of the inexperience of expressing his mind. In the end I don't see why the comparison is necessary or useful. I'm speaking to you. Concentrate on what I'm saying. I see this post as typically tangential.
While I do not intend to allow myself to get side-tracked from a focus on what you are writing, there do occur a couple of question marks even at this initial point. And also: What you consider tangential and what I do, do not coincide. Try to remember, of at least pretend to remember, that you do not *direct* this conversation. I know that this guru-like directive tendency must arise from out of your viewing-system, but at least try to understand that I don't see it that way.
Cosmic sigh.
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Pincho Paxton
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Pincho Paxton »

Dan Rowden wrote:Can someone give me a good reason not to close this cesspit down? Is there anyone posting nowadays, including myself, that isn't doing so merely because they have nothing better to do? i.e. to alleviate boredom?
That's what all Forums are for. This site is No1 Genius Forum on Google. That's hard to achieve nowadays, you got in there early. The site might be worth a fortune in a few years. When people get as intelligent as me.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

The alleviation of boredom is not what all forums are for, even if most are. But trust you, when I've asked for reasons not to close the board down for a while, to come along and give me the precise opposite.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

My gosh Alex, going to say it one more time, the reason you should listen is because of how much of a lunatic you are. Clingy as fuck.

In case you haven't noticed, thought this was clear, almost everyone you have ever met is delusional, egotistical, angry, or depressed, and they hide these issues by deflecting and distracting, they also argue with themselves constantly. Lunatics. This isn't a complaint, should be obvious right? If you don't know this you've got a problem.

Though you are correct, non-involvement in such 'ordinary' ways of thinking is exactly the reason you should be taking notes.

To be more specific with a reason, I can tell you that most members who recognize these facts, and these issues, in others and in their previous selves, are much closer to sanity than you.

So think of the way your partner, father, and friends act, then believe it or not, when I say I am never self-conscious, I never get angry, I never feel fear, I never dwell on the past, I never blame people for issues, I never yell, I never try to assert control on others, I never associate with delusional thinking caused by a belief in a 'real' world/self. Here's how dumb you are:
Alex Jacob wrote:
Just some guys---stoned on their own experiences, perhaps uninterested in the hustle and bustle of life, perhaps deeply afraid of it or incapable of it, perhaps inept with women, perhaps deeply resentful of women and all that women represent as the vessel of flesh and blood wherefore we have come into this 'world of woe'---do not have the 'right' to propose what sounds merely like a little escape-club from all the facts and problems of terrestrial life. This is what 'you' are utterly unable to take in.

Nice clingy opinions, horrible attempt at deflection. Also I speak less than 50 words a week aloud. Not on purpose, though, it's actually cause I'm an idiot with little knowledge and am focusing on trying to write like you but can't do it,
no it's cause I'm scared, of women.

Sorry, it's because I'm trying to show off to you.

You sound like Pinch "When people get as intelligent as me.".



And dw Dan everyone knows its become a cesspit, though it is true I know more enlightened people here than I do in RL.
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Kunga
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Kunga »

Dan Rowden wrote:this cesspit

“in the universal womb that is boundless space
all forms of matter and energy occur
as flux of the four elements,
but all are empty forms, absent in reality:
all phenomena, arising in pure mind, are like that.

just as dream is a part of sleep,
unreal in its arising,
so all and everything is pure mind,
never separated from it,
and without substance or attribute.

experience is neither mind nor anything but mind;
it is a vivid display of emptiness, like magical illusion,
in the very moment inconceivable and unutterable.
all experience arising in the mind,
at its inception, know it as emptiness!”
― Longchenpa
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