GENIUS FORUMS

Sue wrote:

I presume, Cory, that when you say, “some people long for a more functional perception” of things, that you are one of those people. If that is the case, Dan has provided just that – for he described succinctly the truth about how we experience all things as “appearances”.

Appearances can change when you look behind them. To penetrate one appearance is to be presented with another.

The difference is that the second appearance is more advanced.

To borrow from Nietzche:

All truth is simple? Is that not doubly a lie?

Sue: Consider, for one moment, how you experience things. Let’s say you get up and go to the fridge for a cool drink. Now, where did all those things take place? How did you experience them? The answer is that you experienced them all in your mind – that is, every sensory perception, thought and emotion occurred as mental concepts – as appearances.

I understand what you are saying, its really quite elementary. The perspective you are pushing is a great way to approach science and learning in general.

However, You see, I am also capable of seeing how nature is a proccess - - - that throwing up my hands and saying "its all just appearance" doesnt cut it.

For instance, if you are going to leave earth and start a colony on the moon - "functional perception" going to be a tad bit important. An understanding of neuroscience and genetics is important too.

Likewise, if you are going to stay on earth and live off of the land, you are going to need to understand nature quite subtlely - - chemistry, biology and, botany, composting, crop rotation, natural selection are all useful 'appearances'.

Likewise, understanding the brain and consciousness might be helpful. Knowledge about the relationship betwen circdian rythms, waking hours and sunlight has helped me re-establish a healthy sleeping routine.

Some appearances cannot be percieved without going behind the initial ones.

Sue: If you don’t think that this is the case, try with all your might to hop outside your mind to take a look to see if things exist away from these mental constructs. Can’t do it? No, it's impossible. All we have are the appearance of things.

That doesnt mean that I not going to carefully sift through appearances in detail, discrmiinating one from the other.

It often seems on the surface that a woman is a great oasis in the desert of life. But I've looked behind the appearance.

This truth allows us to understand the illusionary nature of all things, which in turn allows us to stop fooling ourselves into believing things are more than what they are.

People and things can be more than what they are.

Matter is the karmically interdependent residual result of the desire for beings to inhabit a realm in which individuated awareness/existence results in the vivid dream of seeming particular temporal and spatial location.

In other words, matter is a projection of awareness. It is both real and fictive, and therefore neither one nor the other, nor in-between.

That said, red is not blue even though neither of them have any independent existence as such.

Neither matter nor awareness has independent existence.

Do no harm,
clyde

Since matter is a form of energy (energy condensed to an extraordinary degree), we can restate the question as: what is the relationship between energy and consciousness? Is consciousness a particular form of energy? Or is it of a fundamentally differerent character.

But consciousness in its own right is somewhat overrated, after all what is consciousness without the corresponding ability to ACT UPON THE INPUTS? Therefore Purpose or Intent i.e. Energy Directed, seems to be equally important.

The Quantum Theory of Awareness, coming soon to a theater near you.

Anyway, the source of any characteristic can only be either extrinsic (of external origin) or intrinsic (arising from the very nature of the thing). The extrinsic is the more popular form in terms of explanation i.e. God acting as an independent agent. However as the Hubble Deep Field photograph IMHO shows clearly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field), there is no Out There.

If you take a rock, add some sunlight, water, and air, and wait a billion years, it will turn into a bird. So, the bird quality is an intrinsic characteristic of the combination of the 5 elements.

reedsch,

I don't see how you can infer from this that there is no "out there." There is a patch that does not show much, but that can either indicate that there isn't much in that one area (and then there would be the interesting question of "why not?") or it could indicate that the light coming from that region just has not gotten here yet. Even if there isn't much in that patch, it doesn't indicate to me that there is no "out there" because there are plenty of other areas where there is a lot of stuff "out there." Plus, there is plenty of space out there, and who knows what that we can't perceive.

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:reedsch,
I don't see how you can infer from this that there is no "out there."

Perhaps it is more accurate to state that it is all "out there":

"The Cosmological Principle means that the universe, when viewed on sufficiently large distance scales, has no preferred directions or preferred places. Or, in other words, on a large scale the Universe looks the same in all directions for an observer at any place. This principle is consistent with observations of the universe from the Earth. In regard to the observations, the principle states that Earth is nowhere special (the Copernican principle)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

Fundamentally you are not incorrect, it seems logical that there is an edge to the material universe and the fact that we have not found it yet is not conclusive. Matter is by nature finite. But is God out there beyond the edge?

IMHO the Hubble Deep Field photographs are the closest thing I have ever seen to an actual picture of God.

I stand by my right to use Wiki in this forum ;-)