Why I Am So Clever

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Tomas wrote:Hmmm, hints of 2 and .. more probably 5.
Hey Tomas! How are you these days? Still digging through the piles? Better than pushing up tulips :)

As for intoxication, at the core it's always some social passion play, some emotion running wild in the basement, kept in check with substances, things in mind or in hand. That reminds me again of some passages the Sufi dude Inayat Khan wrote, which I'll quote just because I think it's clever stuff. Perhaps the first spiritual text I read in my young years, not counting bible studies and science fiction books... and this bit aged well perhaps, like good wine...
  • There are many things in life which are intoxicating, but if we considered the nature of life we would realize that there is nothing more intoxicating than our life itself. We can see the truth of this idea when we think of what we were yesterday and compare it with our condition today. Our unhappiness or happiness, our riches or poverty of yesterday are like a dream to us; it is only today's condition that counts.

    Every stimulus that one experiences through food and drink is really a small intoxication. But it is not only the food that one eats, the water that one drinks, and all that one sees and hears and touches that has an influence, an effect, on a man's being and intoxicates him; even the air that he breathes from morning till evening is continually giving him a stimulus and an intoxication. If this is true, is there then one moment when a man is not intoxicated? He is always intoxicated, only sometimes more so than others.

    This is, however, not the only intoxication. A man's absorption in the affairs of his life also keeps him intoxicated; and besides the intoxication of his work and affairs in which his mind is absorbed, there is a third intoxication, and that is the attachment that a nun has to himself, the sympathy he has with himself. It is this intoxication which makes him selfish, greedy, and very often unjust towards his fellow-men. The effect of this intoxication is that a man is continually feeling, thinking, and acting with the idea in mind of what would be to his interest, what could bring him an advantage;' and in this idea his whole life and all his time become fully involved. It is this intoxication that makes him say, 'This one is my friend and that one is my enemy; this one is my well-wisher, but that one is against me'; and it is this intoxication that builds the ego, the false ego of man.

    Just as an intoxicated man does not really know what is profitable to him, so a selfish man in his selfishness never knows nor understands what is really to his advantage. In moments of soberness a man wonders, 'If this is intoxication, then what is reality? I would like to know what reality is.' But to know reality not only the eyes and ears are necessary, but soberness too is needed to hear and see better. One might ask why all this should be called intoxication if it seems to be the normal state of every person. It can be called a normal condition only in so far as it is indeed the condition of everyone; but intoxication remains intoxication; it is not satisfactory. There is an innate longing for a certain satisfaction which man does not know, and this satisfaction he seeks. No active person with any wisdom will deny the fact that often an effort he makes for happiness seems to result in disappointment; this shows that the effort was in the wrong direction. But apart from the making of an effort to find reality one must first realize what this intoxication is;in order to do this the first step on the path of truth is to know that such a thing as intoxication exists.

    The intoxication remains as a person goes on in life; there is only a change of wine. The wine of childhood is different from the wine of youth, and when the wine of youth is finished some other wine is taken. Then, according to what walk of life a man follows, he drinks that wine which absorbs his life, either collecting wealth or acquiring power or seeking a position; all these are wines which intoxicate man. And if one goes even further in life, intoxication still pursues one. It may be one is interested in music or fond of poetry, or one may love art or delight in learning; it is all intoxication. If all these different occupations and interests are like different wines, what is there then in the world that can be called a state of soberness? It is wine indeed from beginning to end. Even those who are good and advanced, spiritual and moral, they also have a certain wine. One has to take wine all the way; but there are different wines. A highly advanced artist, a great poet, an inspired musician will admit that there are moments of intoxication which come to him through his art as a joy, as an upliftment, and it makes him exalted; it is as if he were not living in this world.

    Soberness is very difficult to find. The intoxicating effect of life is overwhelming and keeps man from a clear understanding. Therefore, however far advanced a person may be in the spiritual life, he can never be too sure that he will not become intoxicated; for he experiences intoxication in everything he does. That is why one cannot be too conscientious, ever. There are many who are confused, who do not know what they are doing; but a conscientious person does not hesitate. He is always wide awake, and he always knows whether he has done right or not. He does what he believes is right, and when that happens to turn out wrong, he will see to it that it is right next time.
-- fragments from The Alchemy of Happiness, The Intoxication of Life 1 & 2
User avatar
jupiviv
Posts: 2282
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by jupiviv »

Thanks for reminding me of Inayat Khan, Diebert. He was a big influence upon my nascent philosophising. Unfortunately, as with the rest of Sufi philosophers, his mysticism was an end in itself. I like their music, though.
Bobo
Posts: 517
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Bobo »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Hey Tomas! How are you these days? Still digging through the piles? Better than pushing up tulips :)
Haha tulips, that's both cliche and funny for a dutch to work with the first cause of a market crash in history. Back on intoxication:
  • How can a man ever find it wearisome to live at leisure? Free from surrounding cares, it is good merely to be alone.
    If you lead the life of a man of the world, your heart is captured by its defilement and you are easily led astray. Mixing with others you are influenced by their worldly conversation and lose your own individuality; for you make merry with one and quarrel with another, one moment you feel anger and the next delight, so vacillating are your impulses. Your powers of discrimination grow confused with endless business transactions; and, intoxicated with delusions in a kind of drunken dream, you hurry hither and thither almost delirious and forgetful of everything else. And thus is it with all men.

    To my mind, even though you remain ignorant of the true Way, yet, if separated from the influence of the world you spend your life in tranquillity, and if your heart untroubled by business is at ease, you will for the time being be happy. It is written in the Maka Shikwan, 'Sever all connexion with earning a living, human affairs, social accomplishments, and book learning.'

    -
    Once, those left behind by one who died invited a certain holy man to perform the forty-ninth-day cerimonies. So beutiful was his exposition of the Buddhist law that everyone shed tears. After he had left, the congregation showed their warm approbation by saying, 'This day we have heard a singularly elevating discourse.' Whereupon someone replied, 'Why, of course - since he's so like a Chinese dog.' Meaning that the priest was so like a Chinese dog that he must have all the Chinese learning. Whereupon their feeling of wonder vanished, and they could not help smiling.

    What way of praising a priest! But was that a fit kind of commendation for an officiating priest?
    Again, somebody once said, 'To encourage a man to drink sake by first drinking yourself and then urging him to do the same is like wounding him with a sword; but the blade has a double edge, and, as soon as you raise it, it will cut off your own head before it harms him — when you fall down intoxicated he will drink no more.' This sounds almost as if the fellow had tested it by cutting off his own head with a sword. Had he made a trial with a sword, I wonder.
- Yoshida Kenko
Nick Trekils wrote:Do you believe it's impossible to know that A=A, and that at best one can only assume it?
And from Weininger it seems that one can only know psychologicaly A=A as P(A=A), not (A=A).
Weininger wrote: to pronounce judgment on the identity A = A, or on the opposite proposition that A is not equal to A, for that proposition also requires a continuous memory of A to make the comparison possible.

I have been making no mere joke, no facetious sophism or paradoxical proposition. I assert that the judgment of identity depends on conceptions, never on mere perceptions and complexes of perceptions, and the conceptions, as logical conceptions, are independent of time, retaining their constancy, whether I, as a psychological entity, think them constant or not. But man never has a conception in the purely logical form, for he is a psychological being, affected by the condition of sensations ; he is able only to form a general idea (a typical, connotative, representative conception) out of his individual experiences by a reciprocal effacing of the differences and strengthening of the similarities, thus, however, very closely approximating to an abstract conception, and in a most wonderful fashion using it as such. He must also be able to preserve this idea which he thinks clear, although in reality it is confused, and it is memory alone that brings about the possibility of that Were he deprived of memory he would lose the possibility of thinking logically, for this possibility is incarnated, so to speak, only in a psychological medium.

Memory, then, is a necessary part of the logical faculty. The propositions of logic are not conditioned by the exist- ence of memory, but only the power to use them. The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be Ati = At2. Of course this is not the case in pure logic, but man has no special faculty of pure logic, and must act as a psychological being.
User avatar
Nick
Posts: 1677
Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:39 pm
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Nick »

Qualifying the knowing with the term psychological doesn't diminish that it can in fact be known.

The simple act of defining something proves A=A in each and every moment.

Still, as fundamental a conception as A=A is, it does not transcend consciousness; it is merely an artifact of it.

I think the main reason so many struggle with A=A is that our brains do most of the leg work of shaping the world around us without even realizing it as we're constantly bombarded with endless perceptions, conceptions, and the emotions they ignite. It takes great focus and a lose attachment to the world to turn all that noise down enough before one can begin to get down to the nitty gritty.
Bobo
Posts: 517
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Bobo »

I think he writes somewhere in the book that A=A is nothing but the proposition I am. This proposition I am would be psychological, or limited by it. A=A without the psychological component then would be a proposition of I am that affims the totality, or is the totality, which by it's turn does not have an existance so it is not something, and then it would be transcendental to counsciousness (or to counsciousness it would appear as nothing).

Im not so sure that the act of defining something proves A=A because if someone defines things to be contradictory A=not A is also not proved.
User avatar
Nick
Posts: 1677
Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:39 pm
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Nick »

Bobo wrote:I think he writes somewhere in the book that A=A is nothing but the proposition I am.
Stating that I am isn't any different than stating it is what it is. I am does feel more powerful though because consciousness is the one thing that appears to be the constant in all of our experiences.
Bobo wrote:This proposition I am would be psychological, or limited by it. A=A without the psychological component then would be a proposition of I am that affims the totality, or is the totality, which by it's turn does not have an existance so it is not something, and then it would be transcendental to counsciousness (or to counsciousness it would appear as nothing).
Yes, A=A, like all things, has no meaning outside our consciousness, but that doesn't mean it can't be known.
Bobo wrote:Im not so sure that the act of defining something proves A=A because if someone defines things to be contradictory A=not A is also not proved.
A=A is actually what allows people to hold contradictory thoughts in their head. The words, symbols, ideas, emotions, and everything else that goes into shaping one's thoughts are all predicated on A=A whether they realize it or not.

For example, if I said that some apples are apples, but some apples are pears, or that 1+1=2 but sometimes 1+1=3, A=A still underpins these statements even though they are illogical. I'm still drawing this contradictory conclusion because I have created a distinction between an apple, a pear, and the numbers 1, 2, and 3 (A=A).

This doesn't automatically mean that I'm smart enough to stay consistent as the logical structure becomes more complex though :-)
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Nick Treklis wrote:Stating that I am isn't any different than stating it is what it is.
It isnt' at all! (You did see that coming no?) First of all "I am" has only subject, no object. If reflection is needed it becomes: "I am I am" which is also, remarkably, the best translation of how the old Judaic God introduced himself (the "what" being considered untranslatable by some: and isn't it always?).
I am does feel more powerful though because consciousness is the one thing that appears to be the constant in all of our experiences.
The constant is what is appearing constant in all of our experiences. It's however consciousness that seems fleeting, for example every night it appears to escape, with most of the experiencing. But our body doesn't stop experiencing, that much seems clear.
Yes, A=A, like all things, has no meaning outside our consciousness, but that doesn't mean it can't be known.
Does it ever possess meaning at all? That what supplies logically meaning does not have to be very meaningful by itself, like a shadow doesn't need any substance. And yet it's that shadow indicating light and a source one could never stare directly into.
For example, if I said that some apples are apples, but some apples are pears, or that 1+1=2 but sometimes 1+1=3, A=A still underpins these statements even though they are illogical. I'm still drawing this contradictory conclusion because I have created a distinction between an apple, a pear, and the numbers 1, 2, and 3 (A=A).
Arbitrary distinctions. Things never turn out to be as they appear although it has little consequence since appearances are what matters in most of our dealings.
User avatar
Nick
Posts: 1677
Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:39 pm
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Nick »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It isnt' at all! (You did see that coming no?) First of all "I am" has only subject, no object. If reflection is needed it becomes: "I am I am" which is also, remarkably, the best translation of how the old Judaic God introduced himself (the "what" being considered untranslatable by some: and isn't it always?).
Reflection is implied even if it doesn't have the extra I am!
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The constant is what is appearing constant in all of our experiences. It's however consciousness that seems fleeting, for example every night it appears to escape, with most of the experiencing. But our body doesn't stop experiencing, that much seems clear.
No matter what I do or where I go, I'm always there... I creep myself out sometimes...
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Does it ever possess meaning at all? That what supplies logically meaning does not have to be very meaningful by itself, like a shadow doesn't need any substance. And yet it's that shadow indicating light and a source one could never stare directly into.
No thing has meaning 'by itself'.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Arbitrary distinctions.


Is there any other kind?
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Things never turn out to be as they appear although it has little consequence since appearances are what matters in most of our dealings.
On the contrary; things are exactly what they appear to be!

Excuse me while I go scratch my eyeballs out of their sockets...
Bobo
Posts: 517
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Bobo »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
I am does feel more powerful though because consciousness is the one thing that appears to be the constant in all of our experiences.
The constant is what is appearing constant in all of our experiences. It's however consciousness that seems fleeting, for example every night it appears to escape, with most of the experiencing. But our body doesn't stop experiencing, that much seems clear.
Let's make a thought experiment. Take person A and B, divided into mind and body A, and mind and body B:

O m(A)
/|\ b(A)
/ \

O m(B)
/|\ b(B)
/ \

If we swap mind A with mind B we get [mind(A) body(B)]. And if we swap body A with body B we get [mind(A) body(B)] the same thing (swapping bodies or minds) and vice versa.
As long as constancy is concerned we would have the constancy of the mind and the constancy of the body as being the same. You could have both different minds or bodies to be the same (be constant), so neither mind or body is more constant than the other.
You would have either a mind in a different body or a body with a different mind. Or as the question puts it "Does a dog have Buddha nature?"
Nick Treklis wrote:Qualifying the knowing with the term psychological doesn't diminish that it can in fact be known.
It messes up with what can be know. The picture of an apple is not an apple, for example.
The simple act of defining something proves A=A in each and every moment.
Hmm, I guess the problem is that then A=A doesn't prove shit. The fact of A=A is a triviality. Maybe it still has importance in discourse but not as a proof as we trade the proof of A=A to a skeptcism of everything else.
Stating that I am isn't any different than stating it is what it is. I am does feel more powerful though because consciousness is the one thing that appears to be the constant in all of our experiences.
Take the introduction of the judaic god by diebert. One thing is the Word that 'is' because the Word is. Still there is what 'is' besides anything the Word can be, something that 'is' besides the word.
Bobo wrote:This proposition I am would be psychological, or limited by it. A=A without the psychological component then would be a proposition of I am that affims the totality, or is the totality, which by it's turn does not have an existance so it is not something, and then it would be transcendental to counsciousness (or to counsciousness it would appear as nothing).
Or I should say that consciousness is always finite. So besides P(A=A), A=A is not part of consciousness.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Nick Treklis wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I am" has only subject, no object. If reflection is needed it becomes: "I am I am"
Reflection is implied even if it doesn't have the extra I am!
So things ultimately are just being implied what and that they are? No disagreement then.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:No matter what I do or where I go, I'm always there... I creep myself out sometimes...
When you'd look back upon your day, it's just implied that you were always conscisously there with what happened. All you have now is some kind of "re-insertion" into a memory rehash. It's a somewhat retroactive insertion of oneself in all the situations but I seriously doubt how that would lead to a logical argument. Unless we lable the body as "I" and make some general safe assumptions on what it has been doing and not been doing during the day. But the mind is not one and doesn't equal itself at any stage.
On the contrary; things are exactly what they appear to be!
Truth is that things aren't at all anywhere, in any way, appearing like anything at all, least of all like themselves. They don't have any self or self-nature and cannot appear as such in any circumstance. Same thing for their circumstance or appearance, all lacking self-nature ar any logically valid self-reflection.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Bobo wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote: The constant is what is appearing constant in all of our experiences. It's however consciousness that seems fleeting, for example every night it appears to escape, with most of the experiencing. But our body doesn't stop experiencing, that much seems clear.
You could have both different minds or bodies to be the same (be constant), so neither mind or body is more constant than the other. You would have either a mind in a different body or a body with a different mind.
But there's no good reason to suggest any artificial split between mind and body. Both are part of one collection of interactive, interrelated processes and only a few of them might reach the stage of self-reflection or memorization and as such abstraction. The constant however is more like self-consistency in memory, only possible by its impossible abstraction and tentative relation to the absolute. Only after understanding the fleeting nature of all existence, as mind or body, since it is never steady or self-same for a single illusive moment, the constant becomes clarity --not as some mode or effect of consciousness or personal experiencing but as a timeless principle, beyond existence itself. And since it cannot be grasped it can only arrive as the end of grasp.
Bobo
Posts: 517
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Bobo »

In looking for a constancy we could get it in two ways. One is based upon the inconstancy of the mind, like changing opnions while remaning the same. The other on the inconstancy of the body, bodies can change while you associate yourself with principles and things like that. It is the difference between abstractions and what makes abstraction possible. That would be a fundamental dualism as is the difference between the finite and the infinite. Then we would have something like the soul that is both finite and infinite, and the beyond that is neither. So the beyond is not only arrived as the end of grasp, because of the soul and because it is neither.
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Leyla Shen »

Nick Treklis wrote:
Leyla Shen wrote:Logic relies precisely on the assumption that a thing is what it is (A=A).
Do you believe it's impossible to know that A=A, and that at best one can only assume it?
Well, my earlier reply (which has now been deleted from the annals of the genius asylum by the appointed lunatic admin) was actually a perfect piece of knowledge.

No, it's not impossible to know A=A. It's possible not to know A=A.

I don't see how you can argue for or against anything, logically, without assuming the subject, to be a subject at all, necessarily conforms to the law of identity. Even if you were to disagree with someone in an argument, you would be doing so on the very same assumption since if you did not assume a thing is what it is and were just arguing that nothing is what it is, you'd never make any sense to anyone - and least of all to yourself! And that, of course, wouldn't be logical by any stretch of the imagination.
Between Suicides
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Leyla Shen »

Nick Treklis wrote:Qualifying the knowing with the term psychological doesn't diminish that it can in fact be known.

The simple act of defining something proves A=A in each and every moment.

Still, as fundamental a conception as A=A is, it does not transcend consciousness; it is merely an artifact of it.

I think the main reason so many struggle with A=A is that our brains do most of the leg work of shaping the world around us without even realizing it as we're constantly bombarded with endless perceptions, conceptions, and the emotions they ignite. It takes great focus and a lose attachment to the world to turn all that noise down enough before one can begin to get down to the nitty gritty.
In the quote preceding this reply, Weininger argues that memory conditions the power to use the propositions of logic. He is distinguishing between sensory consciousness and logical consciousness -- the difference between knowing how you feel and knowing what you think.
Between Suicides
SeekerOfWisdom
Posts: 2336
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:23 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

How old were you when you joined this forum Leyla? 20?
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Leyla Shen »

Much older than I am now, and nevertheless not old enough.
Between Suicides
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Welcome back, all-too-clever girl.
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by Leyla Shen »

Why, thank you Diebert. Yes, we shall see whether or not this Dionysian wine has yet refined your palate. Remember: start with small sips and never, ever, ever swallow - and only spit into the bucket.
Between Suicides
User avatar
amerika
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 6:14 am

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by amerika »

jupiviv wrote:But why do humans seek human greatness in unreal things?
Because it fools other people, and therefore conveys power, which is not greatness but leads to more immediate personal comfort.
FreeTheGenius
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:22 am
Location: Europe

Re: Why I Am So Clever

Post by FreeTheGenius »

I liked it. Thank you very much.
Are you insomniac? Contact me.
Locked