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MarkostheGnostic
Elder


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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Silversoul]
#7747274 - 12/11/07 09:54 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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It also tells us that there is a perceiver of the mental experiences - the 'I' which sees, but which cannot be seen. THAT [TAT] is the Awareness that I am positing - the Witness of our inner and outer experiences - and our Real identity. "Tat Twam Asi" (That Thou Art).
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Silversoul
Rhizome


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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7747318 - 12/11/07 10:03 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: It also tells us that there is a perceiver of the mental experiences - the 'I' which sees, but which cannot be seen. THAT [TAT] is the Awareness that I am positing - the Witness of our inner and outer experiences - and our Real identity. "Tat Twam Asi" (That Thou Art).
It's an interesting question that I've often pondered: If someone can learn to control their brain functions, such as with meditation, then who is the one doing the controlling? It doesn't seem to make sense if we are our brains, as reductionists would have it. I'd actually be interested in hearing a materialist's response to such a question.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder


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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Silversoul]
#7748091 - 12/12/07 05:48 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I WAS a scientific materialist until LSD. Even years later when I was studying neurophysiology and neuroanatomy at U. of Maryland, and learned of new materialistic theories of memory (like Hebb's resonance), I understood that the die-hard scientific mind-set does not accept Mystery. This is because scientists identify with the rational mind and the sense data upon which the rational mind operates. Rarely do strongly identified thinkers learn to detach from thinking and identify with the formless consciousness. This reminds me of Mark Epstein's book title: Thoughts Without a Thinker. If one is fortunate, a prolonged deep state of meditative samadhi will reflect Being. The Witnessing formless consciousness can then get a more clear 'reflection' of itself in a mind uncluttered with thoughts/feelings/sensations. The light in a movie film lies not in the film itself, but in the lamp behind the film which illuminates and projects the image. Similarly with consciousness which illuminates the formation of thoughts in our carbon-based computer-brain. The 'I'- sense, called Ahamkara in Yoga, has falsely identified itself with the mind-body as a necessary survival mechanism, while the true identity of the 'I' is not the embodied ego but Consciousness itself - the Biblical "I AM" comes to mind here.
"And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live," says Exodus 33:20, and indeed, the Witness 'stands' behind all of our mental functions and perceptions. It sees, but cannot be seen by the ego. If there was a 'turning about of the seat of consciousness' - when The finite ego encounters the limitless Consciousness, it dies, is annihilated as Semele, the mother of Dionysius was when she made Zeus reveal his true nature to her in the myth. To the willing and prepared individual ego, I like to hope that it is a blissful merging rather than bolt of lightning, however, the path is to identify with that Vastness now, in the midst of embodied existence, not be shocked at the moment of death. Hence the imperative to experience Being, Nirvana simultaneously with our psychophysical mundane lives of 'chopping wood and carrying water.'
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7749569 - 12/12/07 02:13 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: 'IT' isn't about 'what' we're experiencing. It is 'What' is doing the experiencing - the Awareness - colorless, Clear Light the Buddhists call it, Being. We are Awareness, Being. Everything else is irrelevant here because we project or identify with form constantly, being Self-forgetful in the process of life. The Reality of Being is the Witnessing Awareness, not the 'objects' of Awareness.
Your existentialist quotation is just another mentally constipated perception - unable to see the forest for the trees. Actually, unable to discern the Seer from the seen.
You like to call names when you get challenged and I like to give em back to you. Your beliefs are just your personal self aggrandizing, death fearing mythology not different then all the other true believers here. But your ego could never even entertain that and you prove it here over and over.
I haven't given up on you yet Marko's. Sometimes I think you're almost there but then you go off on yourself again. There's still time dude but you aren't getting any younger.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
Edited by Icelander (12/12/07 04:02 PM)
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vigilant_mind
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7749623 - 12/12/07 02:24 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: I WAS a scientific materialist until LSD.
What about your LSD experience(s) changed your mind? I mean, I've used LSD and my materialistic view of the world has remained unshaken. I'm interested in hearing your story.
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Icelander]
#7749628 - 12/12/07 02:24 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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And YOU - YOU just like to pump up this thread so that you can get the little flamey icon thingie and feel proud that your thread is #1.
I refuse to add to this silliness any longer.
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Lion
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
#7749641 - 12/12/07 02:27 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said: And YOU - YOU just like to pump up this thread so that you can get the little flamey icon thingie and feel proud that your thread is #1.
I refuse to add to this silliness any longer.
I refuse to do that as well. It's absurd.
-------------------- “Strengthened by contemplation and study, I will not fear my passions like a coward. My body I will give to pleasures, to diversions that I’ve dreamed of, to the most daring erotic desires, to the lustful impulses of my blood, without any fear at all, for whenever I will— and I will have the will, strengthened as I’ll be with contemplation and study— at the crucial moments I’ll recover my spirit as was before: ascetic.”
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Lion
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Lion]
#7749644 - 12/12/07 02:27 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Absolutely absurd.
-------------------- “Strengthened by contemplation and study, I will not fear my passions like a coward. My body I will give to pleasures, to diversions that I’ve dreamed of, to the most daring erotic desires, to the lustful impulses of my blood, without any fear at all, for whenever I will— and I will have the will, strengthened as I’ll be with contemplation and study— at the crucial moments I’ll recover my spirit as was before: ascetic.”
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OrgoneConclusion
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Lion]
#7749675 - 12/12/07 02:33 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Exactly. It is totally stupid.
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Veritas

Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7749937 - 12/12/07 03:55 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: The experiences in question were not sensory experiences to be interpreted by the rational mind, they were entirely inner experiences. Facticity, for you, more than likely, means demonstrable phenomena. Inner experiences are subjectively experienced within the locus of one human being. Only the effects on that being can serve to manifest the experience[s] to others. I suggest reading Abraham Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being if you ever become truly interested in mystical experience considered from a psychological perspective.
Yes, I've read quite a few of Maslow's books, and I appreciate many of his ideas. I don't recall any claims by him that mystical experiences are evidence of factual aspects of reality, however.
Again, my objection is to your insistence that your interpretation of your inner experiences is a correct representation of the nature of reality.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Icelander]
#7750044 - 12/12/07 04:21 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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You're the one dealing with death anxiety and attributing it, Freud-like, to any and all spirituality. The only thing I prove is your failure to comprehend the position that I support. You're projecting your own issuesonto me with your comments, since there is nothing self-aggrandizing about the inevitability of our death, neither is the a priori assumption of Consciousness even remotely related to a mythology (no players, no story) it is a purely intuitive stance which emerges from the experience of simple awareness (as in Vipassana meditation).
Matter and form are emergent properties of a primal energetic matrix. This is true of particles and bodies forming at the dawn of creation, and it operates in present evolutionary processes which unfold in increasing complexity in The Great Chain of Being. In Victor Frankl's "Dimensional Ontology," identification of a human being as a mind and a body alone, fails to take a higher dimension into acount from which these seemingly separate incomplete dimensions are projected. I don't live in 'Flatland,' and neither do you.

In the words of Frankl:
"Dimensional ontology is far from explaining the mind-body problem. But it does explain why the mind-body problem cannot be be solved. Of necessity the unity of man - a unity in spite of the multiplicity of body and mind - cannot be found in the biological or psychological but must be sought in the noological dimension out of which man is projected in the first place."
The noological (from nous) is Consciousness.
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Veritas

Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7750126 - 12/12/07 04:45 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Matter and form are emergent properties of a primal energetic matrix. This is true of particles and bodies forming at the dawn of creation, and it operates in present evolutionary processes which unfold in increasing complexity in The Great Chain of Being. In Victor Frankl's "Dimensional Ontology," identification of a human being as a mind and a body alone, fails to take a higher dimension into acount from which these seemingly separate incomplete dimensions are projected. I don't live in 'Flatland,' and neither do you.
Hmmm...so the fact that form is composed of energy means that we are pure awareness? This sounds like supposition and the projection of cherished beliefs onto what we know about the physical nature of the Universe.
I don't KNOW whether or not energy is composed of awareness, and neither does anyone else. To state otherwise is to glorify guesswork.
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vigilant_mind
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7750297 - 12/12/07 05:24 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: The experiences in question were not sensory experiences to be interpreted by the rational mind, they were entirely inner experiences. Facticity, for you, more than likely, means demonstrable phenomena. Inner experiences are subjectively experienced within the locus of one human being. Only the effects on that being can serve to manifest the experience[s] to others. I suggest reading Abraham Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being if you ever become truly interested in mystical experience considered from a psychological perspective.
But how does a subjective interpretation of a subjective experience (e.g. LSD trip) translate into being a factual representation of the external world? In my opinion, to do so is pure speculation.
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Lion
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: vigilant_mind]
#7750316 - 12/12/07 05:28 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
vigilant_mind said:
Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: The experiences in question were not sensory experiences to be interpreted by the rational mind, they were entirely inner experiences. Facticity, for you, more than likely, means demonstrable phenomena. Inner experiences are subjectively experienced within the locus of one human being. Only the effects on that being can serve to manifest the experience[s] to others. I suggest reading Abraham Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being if you ever become truly interested in mystical experience considered from a psychological perspective.
But how does a subjective interpretation of a subjective experience (e.g. LSD trip) translate into being a factual representation of the external world? In my opinion, to do so is pure speculation.
nice avatar
-------------------- “Strengthened by contemplation and study, I will not fear my passions like a coward. My body I will give to pleasures, to diversions that I’ve dreamed of, to the most daring erotic desires, to the lustful impulses of my blood, without any fear at all, for whenever I will— and I will have the will, strengthened as I’ll be with contemplation and study— at the crucial moments I’ll recover my spirit as was before: ascetic.”
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vigilant_mind
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Lion]
#7750345 - 12/12/07 05:33 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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What can I say? I'm a fan of Mr. Harris's books.
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Dagnus
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Icelander]
#7751565 - 12/12/07 09:52 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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My friend thought he couldnt get to work by 4 after school yesterday. Im absolutely positive that he could have walked in that amount of time. Well he begged me and i kept telling him im against the entire principle of inconveniencing others just to pamper your own life.
So he beleived that he couldnt get there by 4, meaning that he needed a ride. When i refused because it messes up my plans he thought i was being a bad friend and screwwing him over. The entire situation fell victim to the man who mistook his belief for a fact.
-------------------- Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter -Dr. Seuss
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gbeatle
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Icelander]
#7752210 - 12/13/07 12:28 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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the only reason we were put on this earth in the first place was to love. people are to ignorant and brainwashed to understand, life is short and theres no time for fussing and fighting my friends
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder


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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: Veritas]
#7752623 - 12/13/07 05:43 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I was not equating physical energies with Consciousness. I was comparing emergent phenomena, and also suggesting that the actuality of human consciousness emerges from the Infinite potentiality whence ALL phenomena originate.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: vigilant_mind]
#7752630 - 12/13/07 05:54 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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That's because "external world" and internal world are still separated by a wall of skin in your point of view.
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Silversoul
Rhizome


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Re: The man who mistook his belief for a fact. [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#7752793 - 12/13/07 07:47 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: I was not equating physical energies with Consciousness. I was comparing emergent phenomena, and also suggesting that the actuality of human consciousness emerges from the Infinite potentiality whence ALL phenomena originate.
Wonderful theory, but again, do you have any proof of this?
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