Spirituality might work if it wasn't so stupid.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: Itisnowagain

I'm not sure I believe that. You say you enjoy watching the game immediately after complaining about it.

I have not complained. I have pointed stuff out and asked some questions about statements made.

I do not wish to enable your suffering by providing you a cause for it.

You do not cause me any suffering - it's amusing.

I welcome these threads because they are a platform for expression for those who consider the spirit.

a reply to: TzarChasm

Ethics and virtue is a philosophical endeavour. Intelligence rarely leads to philosophy, however.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: TzarChasm

Ethics and virtue is a philosophical endeavour. Intelligence rarely leads to philosophy, however.

many of what we consider to be our most intelligent minds have dabbled in philosophy on multiple occasions. edison, franklin, einstein, and hawking have all commented on the likelihood of a higher power and the nature of ethics both with and without one. one can hardly be a pioneer in any field and not ponder the consequences of their studies and the applications therein. revolution and ethics kind of go hand in hand.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: bb23108

There is no reality to unity, plain and simple. There is no container in which things "arise". There is no such thing.

And this is your absolute certain conclusion having invested your entire life, being, and energy altogether to openly discover if this is true? Or are you just rattling off more materialistic notions? You don't even know what a single thing is and yet you can make such a statement?

Why don't you at least admit that you do not know rather than making such statements with no accompanying consideration? LesMis, your online character needs some help!

a reply to: bb23108

And this is your absolute certain conclusion having invested your entire life, being, and energy altogether to openly discover if this is true? Or are you just rattling off more materialistic notions? You don't even know what a single thing is and yet you can make such a statement?

Why don't you at least admit that you do not know rather than making such statements with no accompanying consideration? LesMis, your online character needs some help!

No I fully admit that we cannot know nor ascertain whether reality has a boundary, or is enclosed, and is thus a whole. What I do know is that the idea that reality is a whole is an assumption on which every single one of your statements up until now are rested upon, and thus I consider your base principles in a like manner.

I am considering a variety of things and objects, which we can confirm with simple observation and reason. You are considering a whole, one thing, yet you have never observed that everything is contained within something called a reality, that it is indeed one thing. You've rested everything precariously upon this notion, without rhyme nor reason, and are asserting it as wisdom. This is dangerous thinking in my mind, and might suggest that your online character needs some help.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: bb23108


No I fully admit that we cannot know nor ascertain whether reality has a boundary, or is enclosed, and is thus a whole. What I do know is that the idea that reality is a whole is an assumption on which every single one of your statements up until now are rested upon, and thus I consider your base principles in a like manner.

I am considering a variety of things and objects, which we can confirm with simple observation and reason. You are considering a whole, one thing, yet you have never observed that everything is contained within something called a reality, that it is indeed one thing. You've rested everything precariously upon this notion, without rhyme nor reason, and are asserting it as wisdom. This is dangerous thinking in my mind, and might suggest that your online character needs some help.

You are trying to fit reality into an objective category, like any other apparent object. This cannot work because reality is not conditional - it is non-separatively prior to all conditionality. This is tacitly obvious once our materialistic notions are examined in depth and understood to be at best a useful enough approach for some scientific study, etc. - but hardly the right basis for an actual understanding of reality.

We typically assume that the individual exists in an objective world and many of us even presume some objective God exists. On the basis of these two or three presumptions, materialism, religion, and philosophy get created. And yet, if you truly consider this foundation, it has an error at its core - as there is no separate individual in reality.

The only experience we ever have is awareness or consciousness itself. Everything else is a construct of the apparent mind based on the fundamental error or presumption of a separate other existing in an objective world.

Our only self-evident reality is awareness, nothing else can be rightfully said to be our direct experience. We experience a perception of objects, not the objects themselves.

Examine what awareness actually is, and the whole construct that our views typically are based upon, at best holds some conventional usefulness in communicating to one another, in science, etc., but it is not our actual reality.

The only self-evident presumption that can be made is that awareness or consciousness is. Nothing else is self-evident. Once our false notions are undermined, reality as awareness or conscious being itself becomes self-evidently obvious.

a reply to: bb23108

You are trying to fit reality into an objective category, like any other apparent object. This cannot work because reality is not conditional - it is non-separatively prior to all conditionality. This is tacitly obvious once our materialistic notions are examined in depth and understood to be at best a useful enough approach for some scientific study, etc. - but hardly the right basis for an actual understanding of reality.

We typically assume that the individual exists in an objective world and many of us even presume some objective God exists. On the basis of these two or three presumptions, materialism, religion, and philosophy get created. And yet, if you truly consider this foundation, it has an error at its core - as there is no separate individual in reality.

The only experience we ever have is awareness or consciousness itself. Everything else is a construct of the apparent mind based on the fundamental error or presumption of a separate other existing in an objective world.

Our only self-evident reality is awareness, nothing else can be rightfully said to be our direct experience. We experience a perception of objects, not the objects themselves.

Examine what awareness actually is, and the whole construct that our views typically are based upon, at best holds some conventional usefulness in communicating to one another, in science, etc., but it is not our actual reality.

The only self-evident presumption that can be made is that awareness or consciousness is. Nothing else is self-evident. Once our false notions are undermined, reality as awareness or conscious being itself becomes self-evidently obvious.

You would not be aware of anything if there was nothing outside of yourself on which focus your awareness. If there was no objective world, there would be no subjective view of it. It’s like saying we see sight, or we feel feeling. It’s redundant. There is simply no bag, no wrap, no container called “perception” or “awareness” containing the objects you perceive. If so, finally settle it and show me this container, this “reality”, so that I may examine it.

We don’t assume we are individuals, because it takes an individual to make any assumption. It’s a self-exploding assertion. The individual is there before every single assumption ever made. One can not assume one is an individual without first being an individual. Only an object can assume itself to be a subject. This is the failure of Descartes—his idea that he can doubt his objectivity, his body, his physicality (based on the most frivolous of arguments), but not doubt that he was doubting. But who was it that was doubting? Not his doubt, but the real objective physical Descartes. He doubted what was primary to doubting, but nonetheless continued doubting.

There is nothing called “consciousness itself”. You’ve drawn a circle around nothing, and told me it is all we experience. I cannot accept that. Only objects can be conscious. “Consciousness itself” is secondary to the conscious object. Like the individual, an object is primary, necessary, in order for it to exude or display any qualities such as “consciousness” or “awareness”.

It’s self-defeating, not self-evident, to say there are no individual objects at the exact same time you go to an individual object, namely the keyboard, to make your claim. Why not type on other areas of your perception, maybe your arm or a door knob, to type your message? Why do you differentiate between separate objects to make the point that we can not nor should not differentiate between separate objects? Why type on a keyboard and not on a coffee mug?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
Objects change and are not the source of self-evident awareness. Awareness never changes, never ages, and is self-evident as all that we ever experience.

Awareness is not dependent on objects for its existence. It is only when awareness becomes associated with an individual body-mind through the mechanism of attention does it seem to become dependent on objects and individuation. And so the materialistic argument ensues only after this association between awareness and the body-mind.

Of course this mechanism must be discovered and transcended through profound reality consideration given how enveloped the apparent individual is in terms of identifying with a separate body-mind.

I never said that individual objects do not exist. What I said was that we do not actually experience any object - we only experience a perception of the object.

So why is there any question about whether awareness or objects are self-evident when it takes awareness to even have a perception of an object? Perception is dependent on objects - but is not awareness itself. Awareness does not need objects to exist whereas perception does. Awareness is prior to objects and perception and attention.

That awareness arises as a result of an object is untrue, as objects come and go but awareness never changes. This self-evidence is as obvious as awareness itself - it just is. But granted, it must be discovered to be the case by releasing the materialistic presumptions, etc.

a reply to: bb23108

Objects change and are not the source of self-evident awareness. Awareness never changes, never ages, and is self-evident as all that we ever experience.

Awareness is not dependent on objects for its existence. It is only when awareness becomes associated with an individual body-mind through the mechanism of attention does it seem to become dependent on objects and individuation. And so the materialistic argument ensues only after this association between awareness and the body-mind.

Of course this mechanism must be discovered and transcended through profound reality consideration given how enveloped the apparent individual is in terms of identifying with a separate body-mind.

I never said that individual objects do not exist. What I said was that we do not actually experience any object - we only experience a perception of the object.

So why is there any question about whether awareness or objects are self-evident when it takes awareness to even have a perception of an object? Perception is dependent on objects - but is not awareness itself. Awareness does not need objects to exist whereas perception does. Awareness is prior to objects and perception and attention.

That awareness arises as a result of an object is untrue, as objects come and go but awareness never changes. This self-evidence is as obvious as awareness itself - it just is. But granted, it must be discovered to be the case by releasing the materialistic presumptions, etc.

Awareness changes all the time. A bottle of tequila will prove that for you, friend. A brain injury, or dementia, blindness, sleep, or any environmental factors upon the object changes its awareness, and significantly alters it.

Awareness is dependent on objects because only objects can be aware. To say that nothing is aware is to negate awareness altogether, given that adjectives describe things and not nothings. It’s a self-refuting statement, bb. I cannot agree with it, and I see no reason why you should either.

We do not experience a perception. The only way we could be aware of awareness is if the body was aware and we were the body. We do not experience the ability to see and hear—once again, we do not see seeing, and we do not feel feeling. If so, what does seeing look like? What does feeling feel like? What perceives perception? What perceives the perception of perception? What perceives the perception of perception of perception? What is aware of awareness? What is aware of the awareness of awareness? It is illogical. It is without grounds. Rather, we see; we feel. That’s it. There is no reason nor evidence to assume something between oneself and what one sees. We have the capacity to see and hear and be aware of our environment. I cannot see any reasonable reason to conclude we are passive observers watching our capacities. The eyes are in direct relation to what they are viewing, not to anything called perception.

Profound reality consideration...any empty series of words can sound profound. Awareness just isn’t. If you’re in the business of releasing presumptions, release first the spiritual ones before the ones you can still use.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
There is no reason nor evidence to assume something between oneself and what one sees.

I don't know, that whole "white and gold or black and blue" dress thing might be proof against your claim.

a reply to: daskakik

I don't know that whole "white and gold or black and blue" dress thing might be proof against your claim.

How so?

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
How so?

People looking at the same picture and seeing different things might imply that there is something going on between the seen and the seer.

ETA: The spinning dancer would also be an example of this.

a reply to: daskakik

People looking at the same picture and seeing different things might imply that there is something going on between the seen and the seer.

Like what?

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Like what?

I don't know, but it isn't a bottle of tequila.

The point is that something makes people see one thing while others see something else.

Maybe that is why science makes such a big deal of double blind tests.

a reply to: daskakik

I don't know, but it isn't a bottle of tequila.

The point is that something makes people see one thing while others see something else.

Maybe that is why science makes such a big deal of double blind tests.

Would you say it is something other than the people themselves that makes them see something else? It seems very likely that there is an optical or neurological basis.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Would you say it is something other than the people themselves that makes them see something else? It seems very likely that there is an optical or neurological basis.

But wouldn't either of those be something "between oneself and what one sees".

a reply to: daskakik

But wouldn't either of those be something "between oneself and what one sees".

Not if we are our eyes.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Not if we are our eyes.

Maybe these things show us that perception isn't just about the eyes.

a reply to: daskakik

Maybe these things show us that perception isn't just about the eyes.

It definitely isn't. Eyes detached from the body cannot see. The object that perceives is the human body.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
It definitely isn't. Eyes detached from the body cannot see. The object that perceives is the human body.

Some may say that what percieves is the brain. That doesn't include the whole body. So maybe the eyes capture but there seems to be something between the eyes and the brain that can cause a different perception.

Who has the final say in what was actually percieved? Does that even exist?

A couple years ago I was standing on a balcony with my brother-in-law and my father-in-law and I would swear that a sweet red 70's muscle car passed below us. My brother-in-law said "check out that red car" my father-in-law said "it's orange". We all had eyes well screwed into their sockects, but it seems that we didnt see the same thing, which brings us back to your claim, if there isn't something, then why the difference?