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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality
#17494925 - 01/04/13 12:12 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Some quick historical background:
I had an interesting off-topic exchange with Ped in another thread here so I decided to move the idea into its own post. The original exchange is as follows: 
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Ped said:
Quote:
deCypher said:
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Ped said: There is no state in life that is free from suffering. There is however a state that is neither lifeless nor deathless, it goes beyond birth and death, pleasure and pain, renewal and decay.
What the heck does this even mean? One has to be born to experience this state, presumably, so it's not beyond birth, and I assume you don't mean to imply that this state guarantees immortality, so it's certainly not beyond death. Do you mean that while in this state I won't feel either pleasure nor pain? Seems kinda meh, really... and I'm sure that no matter what mental state one is one will always continue to experience the process of continual renewal, both physical and mental (not to mention decay), so overall your post, although poetic, seems literally contradictory and meaningless. 
How would you define a clearness that exists both eternally within and eternally around all states, whether states of matter, matters of state, states of energy, states of civilizations, states of consciousness, and so on and so forth. How would you convey that? With flowery, poetic language, highly technical language, or maybe dramatic language, like a short-story, or maybe music perhaps?
Inspired by some long-standing role members in this forum, I originally started whipping up a snappy one-liner response to Ped's question with a minimum expenditure of typing energy, when I realized that this is actually a pretty interesting question. How would one convey such an experience? After some deliberation I came up with the following argument, and would appreciate anyone to take the time to read it and let me know what you think.  
(To Ice & whoever else hates long posts, just skip to the bottom for the snappy one-liner. )
The Question Proper & Answer Attempted:
Question: How would you convey a mystical experience such as Ped's state of "clearness" and "beyond life and death"?    
Answer: I wouldn't. Language is useless to convey such experiences if they exist because using words to communicate implies that both the speaker and the listener understand what the words mean; they have to have had some prior experience that enables them to label a certain event with that word. If the speaker has had an experience that is utterly unlike any experience that the listener has had, words will not help the communication, and may even further confuse matters, to the detriment of all those involved. 
Now, to be sure, one may attempt to use similes, analogies and metaphors to convey a novel experience to someone who's never had it by comparing the experience to something related or similar--but one is always left wanting more and left with an incomplete understanding of what the speaker was trying to communicate. An example of this would be the psychedelic trip reports common here on the Shroomery; words are used to convey such phenomena as colors becoming sounds, one's sense of self dissolving into the Cosmos, and literally feeling as if one has become a garage door (which actually happened to me on Salvia once). But because of the fact that similes, analogies, and metaphors are incomplete translations of the actual event, a trip report will never completely and accurately communicate the actual psychedelic experience someone has had: the only way to truly know what taking LSD is like is to take it.  
But to get back to my original point: you're attempting to use words (with the aid of poetic metaphors and artistic language, of course) to describe something that simply cannot be understood in its entirety without actually experiencing it yourself. And it makes matters worse when the traditional language used by mystics who try to do actually such a thing is that the language they use is almost always literally contradictory; it violates such basic axioms like the reflexive property of equality (A = A) and incorporates basic falsehoods like infinity = 1, found in the popular New Age teaching that that a collection of many objects such as the Universe is just a single, indivisible monistic thing: "All is One, mannn..."
A Primer in The Laws of Aristotelian Thought, or Common Sense, Axiomatized:
Take the three classic Aristotelian Laws of Thought: 
1. The Law of Identity: an object is equal to itself, i.e. A = A. 2. The Law of Noncontradiction: contradictory statements cannot be simultaneously true, i.e. "A is B" cannot be true if "A is not B" is also true. 3. The Law of the Excluded Middle: for any logical proposition, either that proposition is true or its negation is true, i.e. there is no third possibility.
Seems pretty self-evident, right? Well if you're a mystic, or adhere to one of the primary spiritual systems that incorporate mysticism like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism or Gnosticism, then you must reject all three of these laws. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself:
Prolific Paradoxes, or Why Buddha Should Have Taken Philosophy 101
Buddhism, just for an example from a particular mystical system, violates these self-evident axioms right and left. Take Madhyamika, a Mahāyāna Buddhist school of philosophy founded by Nāgārjuna, who is known for rejecting both that (1) all things (dharmas) exist, and that (2) all things do not exist in a resounding violation of the Law of the Excluded Middle. Buddha himself refused to answer whether the Self exists or whether the Self does not exist on the grounds that to hold either view would be to fall into extreme forms of wrong view. In other words, both of these statements are false according to Buddha and we've just abandoned the Law of the Noncontradiction and the Law of the Excluded Middle. 
According to Ajahn Chah, a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition (a tradition of Theravada Buddhist monasticism), for an enlightened being, there is neither self nor not-self. He states: "really, in the end there is neither atta nor anatta." Again we are forced to hold two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously if we choose to follow one of these spiritual paths. The White Queen may have been able to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, but even two impossible beliefs gives me indigestion.  
Take this quote from the famous canon Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā, also written by Nāgārjuna: 
"Everything is real and not real. Both real and not real. Neither real nor not real. That is Lord Buddha's teaching."
and this excerpt from Majjhima-nikāya, attributed to the Buddha and his disciples, where Gautama is responding to a monk's question concerning the doctrine of rebirth:  
"Gautama, where is the monk reborn whose mind is thus freed? Vaccha, it is not true to say that he is reborn. Then, Gautama, he is not reborn. Vaccha, it is not true to say that he is not reborn. Then, Gautama, he is both reborn and not reborn. Vaccha, it is not true to say that he is both reborn and not reborn. Then, Gautama, he is neither reborn nor not reborn. Vaccha, it is not true to say that he is neither reborn nor not reborn."
By the Law of Identity, everything that is real is real, and everything that is reborn is reborn, but if one accepts Mahāyāna (and most other commonly practiced forms) of Buddhism, one must deny this tautology and throw the Law of Identity out of the window as well.  
But OK, so there's some irrationality in Buddhism. What about the rest of spirituality? 
Flush with Fallacies, or Trying to Describe the Indescribable in Hinduism and Taoism
Well, Hinduism is almost as bad in terms of violating the Aristotelian foundations of rational philosophical thought, given the ideas that Maya both exists and does not exist and that of "neti, neti" (literally translated as not this, not that), which is intended to communicate that Ultimate Reality can have no descriptions, concepts or labels attached to it... even though the sentence you just read IS a description of exactly that.  
Taoism too runs into a similar problem: the very first line in the Tao te Ching tells us right off the bat that "the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao", and then goes on to ignore this rightful wisdom to offer EIGHTY ONE poems telling us what the Tao is. Seems like a whole lotta words to talk about something that can't be talked about in the first place. 
Innumerable Inconsistencies, or How Contradictory Evidence Can Even Strengthen the Faith of a Believer
From Cutting Down The Dissonance: The Psychology of Gullibility by Christina Valhouli: 
"As Leon Festinger and colleagues discussed in When Prophecy Fails, holding two contradictory beliefs leads to cognitive dissonance, a state few minds find tolerable. A believer may then selectively reinterpret data, reinforcing one of the beliefs regardless of the strength of the contradictory case. Festinger infiltrated a doomsday cult whose members were convinced the earth was going to blow up; when the date passed and the earth didn't explode, the cult attributed the planet's survival to the power of their prayers. 'When people can't reconcile scientific data with their own beliefs, they minimize one of them--science--and escape into mysticism, which is more reliable to them,' says Dr. Jeffrey Schaler, adjunct professor of psychology at American University."
But don't get me wrong: I didn't just write this to bash anyone who considers themselves a member of these religions. For all I know, Buddhism could be true, Jesus could really be the Son of God, or Nirvana really could both exist and non-exist simultaneously. What I did write this for, however, was to emphasize my point that using words to talk about a mystical experience can do nothing but promote confusion among those who misinterpret you, rejection from those who believe in the self-evident Laws of Aristotelian Thought, and a feeling somewhat akin to a kid spinning round and round in circles to amuse himself: it's satisfying to occasionally was poetic , but the end result will probably be linguistic vomit everywhere and a sort of metaphysical dizziness at the prospect that although you know exactly what you want to express, the act of expressing what you experienced somehow missed the target utterly.  
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent." --some philosopher/mystic who chose NOT to write about his mysticism, and is perhaps all the wiser for it.  
Abundant Absurdities and How You Probably Think I'm Going to Hell for Dissing Your Faith
I couldn't even begin to cover all the convoluted contradictions and paradoxes inherent in Christianity without writing an entire book. Standard traditions like Catholicism are bad enough with such beliefs that a piece of eucharistic bread is human flesh (i.e. the communion wafer literally becomes the Body of Jesus), or that 1 = 3 (i.e. the three persons the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct, and yet are simultaneously one "substance, essence, or nature", not to mention the myriad of other inconsistencies found in the Bible. But even Gnostic Christianity, favored by more on this forum, isn't free from denial of basic rationality: 
From The Gospel of Thomas by Anonymous: 
"Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
In other words, the only way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is to abandon all logic and accept that something is the same as something else that it is not equal to (the inside like the outside and the above like the below). This is extremely similar to a common theme among advanced Buddhist meditators who equate duality with non-duality: there is neither form nor non-form, they are equivalent... there is neither good nor evil, instead they are equivalent... etcetera. Unfortunately, not only basic logic but also such ideas as compassion and morality must be rejected by anyone who holds such a view.  
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:
"But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up."  
In addition, if life is considered to be fundamentally filled with suffering as per the First Noble Truth, one possible solution for an aspiring Bodhisattva would be to painlessly kill all sentient organisms, leaving no one left for rebirth into. Voila presto! Nirvana for all. I wonder why every Buddhist who truly believes in liberating all beings from suffering isn't busy synthesizing painless biological weapons to release the tortured human race from this repetitive cycle of desire, attachment, and pain.  
Although, for all I know a secret society of shaven-headed monks might already be plotting the complete fulfillment of their ideology, given the following actual respective quotes from the Rinzai Zen Master Nantembo and another famous mystic who heard a daemon spirit talk to and guide him since childhood: "There is no bodhisattva practice superior to the compassionate taking of life," and "death may be the greatest of all human blessings."     
tl;dr, or A Snappy Punchline for Those With Short Attention Spans
Maybe O'Brien from George Orwell's 1984 was right: to become truly enlightened all one must do is really believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Maybe this is the True Secret of the Illuminati: if you want to prove anything, just assume p and not p. From any contradiction you can validly infer q, any other proposition.
"And God said, let there be P and let there be not P. And behold, there was Everything. And because God is all-compassionate and wished to prevent anyone from ever suffering again, he then shrugged, snapped his fingers and lo, Everything was Nothingness once more."
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Enantiodrome
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17494996 - 01/04/13 12:35 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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.
-------------------- Enantiodromia - The process by which something is transformed into or revealed as being the same as its opposite.
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Enantiodrome
Wanderer



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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: Enantiodrome] 1
#17494998 - 01/04/13 12:36 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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^ Noble Silence
-------------------- Enantiodromia - The process by which something is transformed into or revealed as being the same as its opposite.
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Withinity
Untitled


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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: Enantiodrome]
#17495461 - 01/04/13 05:30 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Yes
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Middleman

Registered: 07/11/99
Posts: 8,399
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17495967 - 01/04/13 09:42 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Nope.
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jivJaN
yes



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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17502753 - 01/05/13 04:24 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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--------------------- All my posts in this forum are strictly fictional. They are derived from an acute mental illness , from which i am forced to lie compulsively. I have never induced any kind of mind altering substance in my life and i have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything illegal. If I have ever suggested such a thing it would have most likely been , due to my personality disorder and i probably do not remember it at all..
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: jivJaN]
#17503745 - 01/05/13 07:48 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Enantiodrome said: Noble Silence

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Withinity said: Yes
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Mr. Middle said: Nope.
The length and breadth of your replies are exceeded only by the quality of that which did you not speak. 
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jivJaN said: http://www.wimp.com/machineedition/
Alas, brevity carries with it its own pitfall of ambiguity: Are you implying that using words to talk about how using words to convey mystical concepts is masturbatory? (lol) Or are you implying that such an action done by the machine in question is equivalent to trying to answer malformed linguistic tokens as if they were meaningful philosophical queries? Or are the previous two explanations merely the finger I've mistook for the Moon you're actually pointing to (namely, fuck this long thread & that machine is pretty cool)?   Anyways, irrationality and madness, although required for mysticism IMO, are not necessarily bad things--I simply chose those descriptive terms as a bit of provocation to hook you into enjoying the mental experience I am trying to convey, Dear Reader.
To get right down to it, rationality is simply a term that describes a specific succession of mental states, and is usually fairly predictable to the conscious mind (of course depending on the complexity). Irrationality, or madness, is a term that describes another specific succession of mental states, this time fairly unpredictable to the conscious mind yet rife with subconscious meanings, anxieties, desires, regrets, and the occasioal random tomfoolery mixed in. Perhaps another analogy to better illustrate this dichotomy would be left brain vs right brain, but this neat division of neural processes according to symmetry has been shown to be somewhat false in later years even if it aids learning the intellectual difference between the two categories.
...
 So again, for anyone willing to give more than a one- or two- word ironical answer: How would you convey a mystical experience such as Ped's state of "clearness" and "beyond life and death"?(the next person who solely responds with a smartass comment such as "Mu" will hereby be condemned to Death by Delusional Eristisomnolence; a pathological condition whereby one's painstakingly-attained knowledge of the ultimate laws to one's reality tunnel is slowly but surely replaced with an increasingly unstoppable vague uncertainty about the being and purpose of it all, finally culminating with radical agnosticism as to the possibility of either being a human or an asymmetrical side of onion dip. Usually comes with a varying sense of mild impending doom, and may be simulated by sufficient application of Salvia extract to one's pulmonary alveoli.)Greater Poop: Is Eris true? Malaclypse the Younger: Everything is true. Greater Poop: Even false things? Malaclypse the Younger: Even false things are true. Greater Poop: How can that be? Malaclypse the Younger: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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c0sm0nautt

Registered: 05/19/08
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher] 3
#17504501 - 01/05/13 10:22 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, you cut right to the point - albeit with a very long sword; Language is inept in transferring the mystical experience. For the reasons you describe, it's a fairly shoddy system for portraying any experience.
For example, the phenomena of "out of body" experiences is ridden with misnomers. A lot of the smarties on the cutting edge of these explorations now theorize that consciousness supersedes the physical reality system, and we are never really going "out of body" but rather simply expanding our consciousness or tuning into different "reality frames" as nuclear physicist Tom Campbell calls them. But, for reasons of transferring the information in a way people will understand, these metaphors have to be used.
Another huge problem that comes to mind is that of belief and especially the belief we attach to words. IMO, most of "philosophy" is semantic-arguing word games people play to "out wit" each other or what have you. The best (the only?) way to get at the nature of this reality is through personal experience, and then if we choose, we can attempt to transfer such experientially-aquired knowledge with others through language. Unfortunately, the majority of people mistake the language for the real thing and then we get dogma and wars and what have you.
Like fuck, look what they did with Jesus' message.
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jivJaN
yes



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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17504885 - 01/06/13 12:09 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Sorry, did i just post a video and get you thinking about some deeper meaning without even knowing that there is one ?

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--------------------- All my posts in this forum are strictly fictional. They are derived from an acute mental illness , from which i am forced to lie compulsively. I have never induced any kind of mind altering substance in my life and i have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything illegal. If I have ever suggested such a thing it would have most likely been , due to my personality disorder and i probably do not remember it at all..
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r72rock
Maybe so. Maybe not.




Registered: 01/06/09
Posts: 1,327
Loc: Chicago
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher] 1
#17506484 - 01/06/13 11:04 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Nicely written. That was a really cool break down of comparing western philosophy and major religions.
When you posed your original question, how would you convey a mystical experience, it got me thinking on another point. Why would we try to explain it?
I haven't really formed an answer for myself on this question, but the way I think about it could be something like this: Is their a point in trying to explain color to a blind man? A blind man isn't missing out on it because it was never a part of his reality, and the same could go for someone if they've never had a mystical experience. If a person has never had a "mystical experience," why would we try to explain it to them? They aren't missing out on it because they don't even know what it's like.
I also think about it like... if there was an extra sense beyond my 5 regular senses that I didn't know about, it's not like I'm missing out because all I know are these 5 senses.
-------------------- Current favorite candy: Peanut Butter Kisses
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: r72rock]
#17506765 - 01/06/13 12:07 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Nice post cosmo, and I completely agree. 
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jivJaN said: Sorry, did i just post a video and get you thinking about some deeper meaning without even knowing that there is one ?
Yeah, dammit. 
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r72rock said: Nicely written. That was a really cool break down of comparing western philosophy and major religions.
Thanks!
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r72rock said: When you posed your original question, how would you convey a mystical experience, it got me thinking on another point. Why would we try to explain it?
Hmm, maybe because we humans are a curious species and always have a hankering to know the unknown? Also I think and some studies have shown that mystical experiences can be really positive and beneficial (possibly because of the expanded perspective provided), so people who haven't had them could truly BE missing out. Good question!
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Enantiodrome
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17507225 - 01/06/13 01:52 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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They're only missing out when they think they are. ignorance is bliss from this perspective. But then again the journey into new experience can be blissful too. So whats the difference? its only when we compare things that we become dissatisfied with what we have, and its only when we become attached to what we have that we block ourselves from inviting change. The alternatives seem opposed. this is duality. Duality is reflected in the way we as humans think, speak, and behave. And we speculate that it pervades perhaps down to the source of our existence. Thus trying to convey anything will have a scent of duality. No wonder we feel like we're missing something.
see Nonduality
But again we see that even our notions of what is beyond duality is made dual by the very act of thinking of it.
Theres not much to say. There only is what is. Can you dig it?
-------------------- Enantiodromia - The process by which something is transformed into or revealed as being the same as its opposite.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: Enantiodrome]
#17507246 - 01/06/13 01:56 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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I guess my original intention in creating this thread was to argue that the idea of nonduality is irrational because the idea violates basic logical laws. Now, does this mean that nonduality is bogus? Not necessarily, but at the same time should we reject basic logic and reasoning?
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Enantiodrome
Wanderer



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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17508145 - 01/06/13 05:11 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: should we reject basic logic and reasoning?
This is a statement which questions whether statements should be used. a statement about statements. Many would go so far as to say that every statement is a statement about statements. Just using different ways to talk about the same thing, or nothing.
we are trying to express through statements that there is something totally outside and disconnected from statements(nonduality). yet as soon as we achieve this, it is then connected to the system of statements and the search continues. an exercise in futility. when people recognize this futility, they might conclude that logic and reason are just as fallible as any other system of statements. so then they see no difference between them. what was once dual becomes nondual. A scientist becomes a mystic. Enantiodromia. see Crazy Wisdom
Why else should we do things but for no reason at all? What better reason to exist than for nothing.
-------------------- Enantiodromia - The process by which something is transformed into or revealed as being the same as its opposite.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: Enantiodrome]
#17508202 - 01/06/13 05:22 PM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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The last two lines of your post reminded me of this passage from Trainspotting: 
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Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
Also, interesting link about Crazy Wisdom; hadn't heard of that term before. I particularly liked the quote by Chögyam Trungpa:
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Instead we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. [...] We don't make a big point or an answer out of any one thing. For example, we might think that because we have discovered one particular thing that is wrong with us, that must be it, that must be the problem, that must be the answer. No. We don't fixate on that, we go further. "Why is that the case?" We look further and further. We ask: "Why is this so?" Why is there spirituality? Why is there awakening? Why is there this moment of relief? Why is there such a thing as discovering the pleasure of spirituality? Why, why, why?" We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer. [...] At that point we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. [...] This hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom. It is hopeless, utterly hopeless.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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r72rock
Maybe so. Maybe not.




Registered: 01/06/09
Posts: 1,327
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Re: On Mysticism and the Mandatory Madness of Irrationality relating to Spirituality [Re: deCypher]
#17510321 - 01/07/13 01:06 AM (11 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: Hmm, maybe because we humans are a curious species and always have a hankering to know the unknown? Also I think and some studies have shown that mystical experiences can be really positive and beneficial (possibly because of the expanded perspective provided), so people who haven't had them could truly BE missing out. Good question!
Yeah, I've read similar (or I assume) studies. I agree with you, but I always find it weird how we have a hankerin' for the unknown (like you put it), and at the the same time, we're frightened of the unknown. 
Quote:
deCypher said: I guess my original intention in creating this thread was to argue that the idea of nonduality is irrational because the idea violates basic logical laws. Now, does this mean that nonduality is bogus? Not necessarily, but at the same time should we reject basic logic and reasoning?
And this... this is something I've been wrestling with for a couple of years. If something like nonduality makes "sense", does that mean it's wrong? It's not logical, but at the same time, I totally follow it... so does that mean it's logical? 
I guess from thinking about it I've kind of come to something like this. When we try to make overarching meta-type arguments, such as the nature of reality or universals, that's when things like nonduality make sense. But for particulars, I think logic is the best way to think things through.
-------------------- Current favorite candy: Peanut Butter Kisses
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