http://forums.mydigitallife.net/images/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by sid_16 http://forums.mydigitallife.net/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png Yen sir, is not "you" a construct of the brain, a program, a collection of tendancies, desires and fears, the sum total of a bundle of memories...the brains interface with the external world? If you read and understood anything in the Tree falling thread, they are saying that everything else is an illusion except the self. I would like Yen to explain to me if this theory is correct how come you need ears and eyes etc. Yen said this It is YOU that sees and hears by using your senses. Of course you'll lose the ability, because YOU cannot use them anymore when cut off. This is a contradictory statement to everything he has said before. If everything is an illusion including the body, as has been clearly stated in the Tree Falling thread then you DO NOT need eyes to see and ears to hear. The Self should be able to bypass all that and create the sound or image by itself. Which is why I said cut off the ears and eyes to see and hear better. Ref Post Perception: To me perception does not need obligatory one of the 5 senses. (Which are actually in one's mind also, btw.) Yen if you are going to say that everything is an illusion except the self then you will raise one big problem. You should not need a body since you only really exist in the self so you don't need body parts, nothing is physical everything is created in the self. So why now say you need ears and eyes etc ? Saying you need those infers that you think there is a process involved in the hearing or sight rather than it all just being in the mind. You are basically flip flopping. As I said before my idea is that there are two realities, the physical one that functions on laws and goes on whether you are there or not to interpret it NOT create it. And the second is your personal reality, your interpretation of the physical one. This all happens in your brain. We hear because vibrations leave an object and enter our ear and the brain ascribes a meaning to what it receives. At least this fits to what we observe! And please if you are going to reply to this do so in a fashion that doesn't engender things that are magical in nature. Otherwise the whole thread loses value similar to what has gone on before. And I will stop posting in threads like these since it loses all meaning whatsoever! Simply explain to me why you need ears and eyes when in your opinion everything is an illusion ! @R29k "Simply explain to me why you need ears and eyes when in your opinion everything is an illusion ! " One needs ears to hear and eyes to see. I don't get the question. Hence the one who thinks to be his body has his ears and his eyes to perceive his world his sound of the falling tree. The Self is not another body idea. The individuals illusion is to be the body which has 5 sense organs. The illusion of hearing is the complete idea of it. Since this illusion requires an ear, the illusion don't exist anymore when the ear has been cut off. "everything is an illusion" This is that generic that it loses content. Illusionary doesn't mean non-existent. Most think to be the body, right? They have an idea who they are and so they can say: I am female. After the idea of that 'I' is created the idea of non-I is also determined, right? Because of this wrong identification the world becomes illusionary. This core illusion makes everything that is perceived by an individual ( 'I' idea is existent) illusionary. Examples: I am here, the world is there, outside. Illusion--->( One compares 'I' to non-'I') Those ideas are caused by the wrong identification. The world outside exists without me. Illusion----> (the creation of the 'I' idea caused the idea of non-'I') hence both only exist 'together' I live in the world. Illusion---->see one line above. The world is within me! So now when this illusion resolves what is then? There is still the same world, yes the same world. But the world has lost its illusionary character. The 'one' doesn't perceive the world to be apart of 'him'. That's all. He is the world and the world is him. There is no-body (own) watching it! There is only being. And therefore one has not his body (anymore) and hence no own eyes and ears. There is nobody seeing because no-own-body sees, there is nobody hearing because no-own-body hears. The one remains the 'Self'. I am sorry to describe that there are no words. I can try if you want, though. It's like no individual---> no own matters. The idea to be an individual is the core illusion. And yes to exist nobody needs a body. There is existence without the body. Your real identity. And this needs neither a body nor ears. It simply IS. That what makes you say 'I am' is your Self. Give it an object / meaning and all becomes illusionary. I hope it's a bit clearer now. I guess it's the major attribute of such topics, because the mind likes rather to stay in 'common' topics and not topics which unveil the mind's seemingly perfect illusions. It other words when your head is hurting then it is starting to work. Sid_16 it reminds me of my past exam time long long ago. I had learned that and most I have forgotten already. Let me call it 'deferral of the actual matter of science' Most think consciousness is in the brain or happens there. And I had posted a black spot in science is consciousness and the brain. Scientists arrange the brain to have different parts, they give them nice Latin names. Consciousness cannot be located somewhere at objects and hence neither at the brain nor at parts of it. To locate it you would need to objectify the not-objectify-able. So there is never a anatomical and physical reason for it. Every scientist who tries that has absolutely no clue of the matter. There is no place where consciousness is created. Why? Consciousness creates the brain, consciousness is responsible that there can be a brain at all. Some twist the fact, they say the brain creates consciousness. Consciousness is responsible that one is able to hear, see, smell.... OBJECTS like the sense organs and the brain cannot hear, see, smell, though. So consciousness 'is prior to the brain'. Body-consciousness is responsible that 'we' can have a brain. YOU are consciousness. The one who is looking out of your eyes IS consciousness. Consciousness IS, ever was, will be. Hence consciousness is prior to the brain. How can one imprison consciousness, lol??? There is only 'one' consciousness, Being-consciousness. The idea one is the body creates the body and the assigned own consciousness. This assigned consciousness appears as body-consciousness and the 'I'-consciousness and the 'rest' object-consciousness (non-I consciousness). Together they are rising-consciousness. Raising means it has an start and will have an end. rising-consciousness always is created when being-consciousness is assigned to objects. Now one tries to find a place for this own rising-consciousness by thinking about. But consciousness is beyond thoughts. And finally assigns it to the brain. This is one of the best examples of stupidity of scientists. So one assigns that what one thinks he is to the brain. But one is not the brain! There is no 'I', no core. Scientists dismember the 'one' being-consciousness and assign the pieces to different objects and are stating later that one of that object (the brain) is the reason for it. But the wrong identification is responsible for that raising-consciousness, not the brain. Hence one can say I have own consciousness. This rising-consciousness last as long the 'I' idea lasts. being-consciousness is eternal and not different to yourSelf. Without that 'one' being-consciousness no one would be able to assign own consciousness to the brain! So how can the brain be a reason for consciousness or its origin??? being-consciousness can never be aware of itself. Means the one who tries to locate consciousness is oneself a part of this consciousness.
My dear sid_16, now I'm seeing slowly-slowly that all medicine, physiology and anatomy thought in school and medical school is bulls**t. Everything! I'll stop posting in this thread and every thread that will be related to this. FYI: watch one more time MATRIX 1999 and AVATAR 2009 and if you still don't get it...then, that's it. PEACE!
with respect, my friend, very drastic, and a loss to the thread.. may i ask you to sleep on it? thanks..
The easy problems of consciousness include the following: How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately? How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behavior? How is it that subjects can verbalize their internal states? Although all these questions are associated with consciousness, they all concern the objective mechanisms of the cognitive system. Consequently, we have every reason to expect that continued work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience will answer them. The hard problem, in contrast, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. This puzzle involves the inner aspect of thought and perception: the way things feel for the subject. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations, such as that of vivid blue. Or think of the ineffable sound of a distant oboe, the agony of an intense pain, the sparkle of happiness or the meditative quality of a moment lost in thought. All are part of what I am calling consciousness. It is these phenomena that pose the real mystery of the mind. For more reading please click the puzzle of conscious experience . EDIT(I thought I would add one more post with a link to a really good source of papers on consciousness from a wide variety of contributors, including everybody who thinks the hard problem is mislabeled or incoherent, alongside Chalmers.) Any body interested to read it or explore more about consciousness then click here online papers on consciousness
Mmmmmm i have to agree with my friend nodi this time ... SOCRATE_MMXII your one of the main characters in this thread,it will be a big lose for the conversation and the whole thread if you leave Please sleep over it a night and then make a wise decision regarding this and simulare threads. In my heart you´ll always be a winner guy,no matter what you do,i´ll always stand behind you Peace out SOCRATE_MMXII
SOCRATE_MMXII. Your experience and opinions match mine. It happens really rarely that I have the chance to talk to people who share my experience. sid_16 has a big affinity to science. There he feels comfortable and hence he tries to reflect theories coming from science. That is the best he can do and it is nothing but absolutely reasonable. I did that at the past and I am still doing it today. sid_16 has fun when reading scientific articles it is fascinating and exciting. And that is the main purpose, to have fun. I guess he will consult scientific knowledge and theories as long as he has his personal sense in it. And nothing else are doing other humans, they consult contents from a special subject to extract what they think is personally right and important. Medicine, physiology and anatomy thought in school and medical school are no bulls**t. Your idea of them appear to you as bulls**t. Hence you are creating your own BS and then you complain about. Each special subject covers limited matters, science is made for matters in time, spiritual stuff for matters beyond time. Each subject has his right to exist and can have benefit there where it has it's relative truth. Besides of that each individual has its predispositions. I and sid_16 have one in common. We are fascinated from science. I started to find my answers at science and later I had to notice I need to look somewhere else. Sid_16 will do the same if he thinks one day science has reached it's limits there and he has answers left. Then he will look somewhere else. There are individuals who need to study multiple different subjects before they can leave their stuff back and come to the Self. SOCRATE_MMXII it would be a loss if you would stop contributing. sid_16 The greatest mystery of the mind is that one cannot accept that there is something without an start and an end. The mind is a slave of the time and the mind and cannot break free. And the mind is responsible therefor that one has a false identity. Since a human cannot accept that a human simply exists, the mind tries to create an idea of existence. But that what is you cannot see itself. So any idea that is created by the mind about what you are is never yourSelf. This is a fact. So every attempt to do it anyway will fail. Those who haven't got that will try and try it anyway. It's their destiny. Consciousness 'was' there before you have been born. Without it you would not exist. 'You' exist NOW without your own body. Your idea to be the body limits your original free being. It also causes the illusion that when time is right and the body will stop its functionality your existence will end. Can your existence really end? There is 'something' that had been 'before' your birth (of your body idea) and this something will stay after 'your' death. And that is yourSelf. raising-consciousness is the idea your body and mind have own consciousness. Kids until the age of about 3 are not able to recognize them as own individual. Hence they have no own raising-consciousness. When you go back in time and try to recall events of your childhood, you are not able to go further than your 4th or 3rd birthday. Why? Those events which happened happened, but not to you. Got it? You had no idea of yourself yet.To recall events there must be 'somebody' who has had those events. Only events perceived by 'somebody' can be somebodies events. Later when the 'I' idea has become manifest one can say the first time I have own consciousness. And when the 'I' idea vanishes again then raising-consciousness will end. There is nobody to whom consciousness could araise. When you die, your body has to 'go' then there is that consciousness 'left' which ever was had been and IS. When 'you' get a new 'I' idea it will raise again as own consciousness. Every moment there is a mechanism which constantly lets us think to be the body. But in deep sleep the 'I' idea vanishes. There is no body identification. There you exist in your 'true' nature, but you are not aware of it. When becoming awake your mind arises and thoughts start again to confuse the Self with your idea of it which is body and mind. So the Self survives the 'body-less' state every night, because the body is not needed to exist. That what you really are is eternal.
SOCRATE_MMXII IMHO you should´t stop contributing just because sid_16 has a other way of viewing things than you or Mister Yen. So what is science,well imo it´s basically the effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works. A scientist becomes famous for discovering new things,for example:New dinosaur or how atoms bond in a new way... Many of these scientists have a joy in discovering new stuff that explains something previously not explained, or that overturns some previously accepted idea. Well i don´t believe much of the things that we get to see today about science and discoveries that where made or still being made. They talk about the big bang and how it looks below our earth in depths that they can´t even reach with modern technology and they explain these stuff on TV and how great the humanity has advanced... So now i´ll make a example what i´ve seen on TV few weeks ago: They take about the big bang that was way million and million years away how it happened,how dinosaurs died,how the earth changed it shape... but they can´t even explain how the Egyptians mummified the mummies,they said those mummies look even today so good that you can even close say how that person looked like,but even with there modern technology they still don´t know what they did to the dead body to keep it in such good condition over so many years(3000-4000 years ago),so how can they basically know what happened to dinosaurs or earth that was even 200-300 million years away? Humans want answers so they make up theories of what they think is closest to the truth,but some things will be undiscovered and we will never be able to get the right answer because there is no right answer. Like did the chicken come first or the egg? How was the earth made? Why did dinosaurs die and did they really die the way we are being told? These are just a few questions that will never be answered,how much we even try to explain them. Everyone needs to find a way to look at things his own way and find answers on his own,so there is no point in listening to scientists that know as much as we know. P.S. SOCRATE_MMXII please rethink again and join us here because we can´t afford ourselves to loose one more rare contributor to these threads.
To Mr Nero100; As a vivid reader and a science lover my views of science is this. I'm very much in agreement with current descriptions of science and scientific method as consistent with current views of methodological naturalism . I would argue that the reason we have so much disagreement is that there is a significant misunderstanding as to what science is, and what it can accomplish. It is the social organization of heuristic , which is an individual activity of problem solving.
Yen sir, your idea of 'you' are never exactly like 'you' from moment to moment. There are inherit tenancies that may persist over a lifetime, and are probably determined by our genetic makeup. But as our experiences change the content of our consciousness, we, our personality, our thoughts and feelings, our 'self' is changed by experience. The 'self' is not static, it is a process.
OK! I'm back! <I should have said "I'll be back!" like T2>. "The self is not static, it is a process." Yes, there's the process of knowing the SELF, that's why "sees" it as a process, but once you revealed yourself...you realize who YOU are. My first trip down memory-lane is when I was 2-2.5 years old when my mother said to my baby brother (a few months old) that he's so cute how he sleeps. Then I felt something inside, like a rupture inside my very fabric, I had no idea what that was, later to discover it was jealousy. Then I asked myself "why do I feel like this? What's this?" 'cause I loved my baby brother and my mother, but that feeling was there and thus my EGO was born. I forgot about this incident until a few years ago when I started to ask myself WHO AM I? WHY AM I HERE? Slowly through meditation I discovered <MYSELF>. Now I'm in the process accepting others as they are because WE ARE ONE. I have to realize every second that the "individuals" around me are divine seeds not yet blossomed. After saying that I'm done I realized again that MR.EGO was pushing in to get the front seat again. But no! He's packing... Thank you every1!
The only thing that changes is your idea of who you are. That what you really are is ever the same and unchangeable. It is being. That what changes is never the Self. So I refrain from to use the word Self (capital) to use for the 'I'-idea of an individual. Yes sid_16 you are right the idea of 'I' and hence non 'I' changes constantly, in fact every split second. This change appears as time in a realitve world. In that 'moment' where 'yourself' has stopped to change 'you' have found your real identity, which never can be thought (creating an idea of it). So the only way is to 'find' the 'place' from where the 'I' idea arises. Remaining there at the source means to remain at one's Self. Therefor one needs to have awareness.
A very interesting reading The Twelve Sacred Principles of Karma by Steven L Hairfield The story of the elephant: A man came to Buddha and said: in my village the is a debate among scholars. Some say that the world is infinite and immortal; the human spirit is immortal and eternal and the others say that's exactly the opposite: that the world is finite and mortal and the humans die and nothing remains just a corpse. Master, what can you say about this. Buddha said: a long time ago lived a powerful king and one day he ordered that all blind men from the kingdom should be gathered into the main square and the king will show them the elephant. After gathering all the blind men, the king presented the elephant to each blind man. They were asked to describe the animal so the blind man who was presented the head said it was like a pot; the one who was presented with the ear said it was like a basket of fruits; the one presented the fangs said it was like a plow; the blind man who was presented the legs said it's like the pillars of a temple; the one who was presented the tail said it was like a brush. And soon they started fighting who was right. In the same way are those men who speak theoretically about things they have not seen. Because of their ignorance they are just like blind men in the story...deforming their reality in one way or another.
To yen sir; The theory of mind has more commonly been used to refer to a specific cognitive capacity: the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own; Simon Baron Cohen is a known "expert" on Theory of Mind. I'm sorry to say Yen sir , you're going here with a gut feeling with no testable hypothesis and no evidence to back your claim. Set up a falsifiable experiment and we may have something to talk about. As it stands, your argument is nothing more than “That’s the way I feel therefore I believe it is true. It is just a substitute for god, it has no evidence, no supporting theory, makes no predictions and has no support from the scientific community... it is religious or spiritual belief and ultimately is a plea for ignorance. Correct me if my understanding of consciousness from the biological point of view is wrong. All signals between the cortex and the rest of the body, including the all the senses, are routed through the reticular formation in the midbrain. Furthermore this axis of the thalamus/hippocampus/amygdala/hypothalamus/etc acts a kind of network gateway/firewall/router for these signals. This filtering process makes use of the basic primal emotional and motivational memories known to be stored in this area. Thus, whatever information is stored in the higher cortex is totally dependent on the input/output signals which get filtered through here. Does coherent thought/reasoning require these midbrain structures? Conventional wisdom says yes. The reason is that any thinking requires a physiologic response: the brain needs more oxygen, more nutrients, etc. Also, the midbrain structures provide many of the parameters or biases needed to sift through competing decision trees. Signals must pass through and be conditioned by this area. Now, for the sake of argument I will say that I think neuroscience is beginning to provide evidence that what you are calling consciousness is an illusion. We feel that there is a focal self unitary in time with a consistent narrative that is aware of the moment and has memories of the past and so on. But just as the Buddhists say (and whence Tolle gets a lot of his stuff), when you go looking for this it isn’t there. Say, for example: people with brain lesions that prevents the making of new long-term memories can meet the same person, shake hands and introduce themselves, and us on every day, and they will always experience the meeting as new. No memory they are aware of that they’ve done the same before. But if you meet them and shake hands with a little mischief (joy buzzer) that startles them, the next time they meet you, they won’t remember any of it, but they also won’t shake hands with you. And they confabulate great and varied reasons why. But what’s happening is one subsystem in the brain has formed an association between the experience and your face even while the part that “consciously” remembers and talks about the experience isn’t in the loop. To me, this makes it clear that the braini doing lots of things at the same time, and only some of them are things we have a feeling of awareness about. I can point you to lots of other examples. Many of them illustrate that we make decisions at one level and then make up stories for why we did what we did at another, so our awareness doesn’t reflect the reality even in our own heads. My point is that you’re starting with the assumption that your meditative experience has identified something real. So far, nothing you’ve presented to support this is anything other than your feelings and experiences. It seems self-evident to you, but it sounds wrong to us/me, so without some more intersubjective evidence, there’s not really anywhere to go from here. That's all from me on consciousness.
SOCRATE of MMXII ; a blind assertion or generalization and non sequitur. I'm sorry for sounding rude here. I will do you the favor of granting the possibility that your failure to understand this matter is not due to any intellectual deficiency of yours. Rather, speaking as or on behalf of a spiritualist. And abandoning one of those closely-held, cherished beliefs of yours can be psychologically traumatic, so you're compensating with symptoms of what's known as "cognitive dissonance" - sort of a mystic blind spot which prevents you from thinking about these issues in any meaningful/scientific depth. And for the story you presented is the problem I have with it is that touching/smelling/feeling/interacting with something is the definition of "subjective" not "objective". I know that we have to use our subjective experiences in order to decide whether or not we believe that an Objective Reality like an elephant exists, what those blind people feel is exactly what their brain tells them, what their brain tells them is based upon the information received from their sense organs. Therefore color means nothing to those, who can't see , texture means nothing to those, who can't feel and sound means nothing to those , who can't hear. Never heard or never felt. I'm not saying that your story's blind men's elephant is a figment of their imagination. I'm saying that how they feel ( an experience) it is a construct of their mind based upon the information their mind receives. that's all from me to this thread and i would refrain myself from further creating any thread and lastly i apologize to socrate mmxii for this post.
sid_16 you don't have to apologize, I find you to be "the brainiac". You quote this and that, but your direct experience is limited. You have to take the books for granted truth 'cause you can't verify all those wonderful theories. "cause that's all they are...theories. On the other hand me, Yen and other people like us, WE LIVE WHAT WE SAY. Huge difference! Sleep over it. Try. Experience. Live. peace.love.harmony
To me the mind is simply a container of thoughts. Every perception needs to be thought to individualize. No thoughts, no mind. (deep sleep). Hmmm. The fact that the seer never can see itself is pure logic and pure scientific. It is the most 'scientific' point in the row of arguments. Show me 'yourself' and we can go on. “That’s the way I feel therefore I believe it is true." contra “That’s the way I find in books therefore I believe it is true." There is no-body who has felt what 'I' write here. Threre is existence without the body. This is experience. Your trauma that everything must have evidence still limits you. Support of a scientific community is of no value. The one who measures never can measure oneself. End of science! Yes it is an illusion to have own consciousness. Never stated different. YOU are consciousness but you don't have own. When you looking for it there is nothing. Hence you can never see yourSelf. You assign a lot of functions / things to your brain. An object that you never have seen by yourself, yes an object that even doesn't exist per se. It reminds me of a kid assigning powers to its chimera. Take a brain and say: This is a brain. Now cut off a little piece of it. Then you have the brain and a little piece of it. That what was brain before is now a little piece of it. Go on cutting: Where is the brain??? Isn't that evidence that 'the brain' does NOT exist per se? The same you can repeat with your body. Go to a hairdresser. sid_16 goes to a hairdresser. After he has finished his work, sid_16 leaves the hairdresser and has left 'his' hairs. That what was sid_16 before are now sid_16's hairs he's left there plus a new sid_16!!! And a 'new' sid_16 leaves the hairdresser. So who are you? You have just changed your body illusion without to be aware of the change. I refer on things I have experienced. You post theories only. The Self is Self-evident but not to someone. It's no problem. It sounds wrong to you because it never could sound right to someone! Before you claim for something you should evaluate if it can be possible at all. You claim for something nobody can deliver. That what I write here loses its truth as soon as I start to type. So we never could fight. Hence the wise say truth is pure silence. To describe who you are you need 'one' who describes 'you' so anything what one is describing is never oneself. Because there are no two selves the one who describes 'the other' The other is never yourself, it is always an idea of yourSelf. This is logic and a pure scientific way to analyze. So no excuse. Talk about yourself. It will always be an idea of you what you are talking of. I have found happiness, you have to find happiness in that what you think is right. I have written anything already. That what 'hurts' gets ignored by the mind. As long one makes not the effort to question the illusions, the claim for evidence will persist. sid_16 What happens if one gets a new brain? I mean transplantation, let's say it is possible already.
Btw: There are millions of people who experience the same as we. Far more than scientific theories about exist. Please read the director's comments... http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/valtari/videos/rembihnutur-arni-kinski/ This video is dedicated to those. The woman with tears IS experiencing the body-less existence in meditation. There are moments in life at which it simply happens (without the extra effort to meditate). This is life, this IS. Books are for theoretician and one must leave objects back when going...
Unfortunately, there are a lot of "braniacs" out there which don't want to try a simple meditation. That's all it takes. One simple 5 minutes guided meditation was enough for my wife to change 180 degrees. Before that she was "all realistic" like sid_16. Dear sid_16, I urge you to try only once, just for the sake of the argument.
sid_16 reminds me of when I was younger. I would have denied anything which is not scientificially underpinned. So it's OK. The time will come when it's right, or not.....I am in the middle of 'my' lifespan I had time already... To be tolerant is the first attribute to cultivate. To be open for any idea. There are experiments. One is in deep meditation and the one's brainwaves are recorded.....the 'scientist' said: That cannot be possible what I see there....(source a book of Ken Wilber)...those wave patterns are typcal for deep sleep state but something is different.......Ken Wilber did that to 'shock' the scientists....measuring instruments to measure 'consciousness'...laughable... Here is one of his experiments. Ken Wilber Stops His Brainwaves http://www.transpersonalscience.org/vidwilb2.aspx