Epoche - Dismantaling your belief in the physical world around you!

Hello all, I'm curious in something and would like some feed back, that is if you would be willing to help. This thread is not intended to be pro or con the concept of Epoche, except how one would go about going through such a process mentally, without the use of "outside stimulants"

Epoche - the systematic procedure of phenomenological reduction, one is thought to be able to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world, and thus examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness.

en.wikipedia.org...

Basicaly, this is basically Ego-loss, trying to enter into Super-Ego.... that is if your familiar with Sigmund Freud. I hope this to be a fruitful topic, with many Idea thrown around, if you have any idea, regardless of how stupid it may sound, throw it out there, it may be useful to someone, sometime!

for those who wish to just criticize that Epoche is technically unatainable, Do us both a favor, as this is a message board, and make a counter topic on why Epoche is unable to be obtained....

And just remember anything is possible in the realm of the mind!

[edit on 15-10-2009 by clever024]

I know its like 2:00am but I just wanted to bump the thread so someone will hopefully contribute.... look forward to getting your responses!!!

I have found that it is best to just surrender. Anything else is trying to do something which defeats the purpose and automatically attaches the ego. I learned to be the observer of my thoughts.

Thank you! hope more is to come, this is more about theories on how to convince yourself that in fact nothing is what it seems and everything is technically nothing, and how to get to the point of nothing..... but that is very good advice nontheless for MAINTAINING the super-ego! you gave me the last piece of the puzzle first!

This is old ground you're walking on. It sounds like you are a nihilist

how to convince yourself that in fact nothing is what it seems and everything is technically nothing, and how to get to the point of nothing

I don't know what you mean by "everything is technically nothing". On what evidence do you base that claim? If you want to see things clearly, you should start with locating yourself relative to your claim. If you are starting out with fundamental assumptions like this, what are your grounds for them?

There has been a crisis of representation ever since the first thinkers started questioning reality. For a more modern take on things, check out Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Ferdinand de Saussure. They examine this problem from a linguistic /semiotic perspective because after all, you can't even talk about this stuff without using language, which as a system of symbols is inherently subjective. They'll really make your head spin when you start to see that signifier and signified, beholder and maker blur and detach themselves from the referent, and that the world can be thought of as a huge metaphoric collective.

[edit on 15-10-2009 by John_Brown]

That seems quite difficult since we are subject somewhat to our own neural pathways and chemical systems. A completely untouched examination of this experience is therefore improbable especially considering natural coping mechanisms of the mind that affect formation of undrstanding from early childhood. Ultimately a higher or external perspective would still be viewed through the human scope of existence that you are.

Like watching a car pass you can see the shape, speed, direction and can formulate an idea and vivid image of driving the vehicle, but the drivers experience and perspective is not available to you. To now have not only the drivers perspective, but to do so unaffected by all past and present stimulus is how much farther out the possibility really is...

Aside from that critique it may be possible if a human was raised in a scientifically controlled manner managing external inputs and resulting emotions. For oneself I have no clue other than possibly some psychedelic experience.

[edit on 15-10-2009 by SmokeandShadow]

Thank you for bringing this up. I extracted a concise and authoritative description of Husserl's method of meditation from

www.iep.utm.edu...

Once settled in this comfort, the “inquiring back” into consciousness may begin; it is the having of the self as the only object of meditation that makes this a self-meditation. Since what we are after is a self-meditation, the focus of attention is on the self and the radicalization of this meditation consists in one relentlessly pushing back and forcing the self onto itself. This can be done by repeatedly affirming, not merely saying, “I am” to oneself while trying to experience or “catch” the “I” in the present instead of remembering it. In the attempt to experience the “I” in the present, one will be forced to feel the I-ness of it; this is why Fink says the performance of the technique encompasses the “entire man” and speaks of the “pathos of the one who is philosophizing.”

You can hardly read this without being reminded of Tennyson's self-meditation. This is from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience,

etext.virginia.edu...

(click on the Lecture 16 link, and search for "the two voices" on that page.)

but Tennyson's report is also reproduced elsewhere. It is famous.

[226] The Two Voices. In a letter to Mr. B. P. Blood, Tennyson reports of himself as follows: --

"I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of waking trance -- this for lack of a better word -- I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words -- where death was an almost laughable impossibility -- the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?"

Professor Tyndall, in a letter, recalls Tennyson saying of this condition: "By God Almighty! there is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind." Memoirs of Alfred Tennyson, ii. 473.

These are "mantra meditations," the mental repetition of a phrase while in a relaxed state. There is also a hint of "thought naming," which is another technique widely used in relaxation and meditation exercises.

The basic altered state of consciousness is fairly common in human experience, sometimes even occuring spontaneously.

I have had the experience spontaneously, and have more-or-less reproduced it several times in meditation, using no particular "method." Although I am not a fan of mantra meditation, I did use the Tennyson method at least once in order to discuss it. It seemed promising enough, but it was not obviously more effective than other meditative methods (of which there are too many to count).

I hope these comments are helpful. Good luck with your explorations.

reply to post by eight bits


Thank you for your input, It will be put to good use, I assure you that, I'm just waiting for more information, before i delve deeper "in" sanity....