The Philosophy of the Self.

for twyvel



The primary duality is wave and particle in our universe. We are in and of this universe. Such duality is an innate feature of whatever is in it.

The presumption is that by sentience one can move from such a natural aspect of being to dissolve the knower-known principle. It is the synergism of self awareness with the sensate world that produces the Unity…the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost metaphor.

As I said, fresco and I discussed this a long time ago and if its okay I have presented it below, in the discussion "What is the Original Idea?'

http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.128241/discussion/


Sun, Dec 17, 2000 7:10 AM Sun Dec 17 7:10 AM EST 2000

Nicely worded! and you are dancing quite well. And I salute you
for it. But you move back and forth … "love" is a "creation"
now, and a "creator" later. "Tis a personal attribute, as I
pointed out and you dismissed it as un-essential. For if
something is loved, something loves. Ipso facto a personal
attribute. Come now, if you use language, and admittedly it is a
time and space construct, you use the phrase "one's" and this
implies in language a personality. There is nothing impersonal
about it. But I see and consider its limitations and your
position is well thought out, and well taken. For to love also
implies a "lover" and a "loved" and these are by our constructs,
different. This is the precedence of any entity that perceives a
different-ness. And by process perceives and identifies another.
However, you imply the act of perception is the actuality of the
lover as part of the loved. This translates to the transcendent
perceiving in time and space the actuality of a singularity. But
one precedes the other in our perceptions. You dismiss this and
seem to indicate that the creator is the creation and I would
agree, but you used a lot of words to get there... I would, if I
could sing the grateful dead song to you. "We are the eyes of the
world" and arrive at the same point, and have more fun getting
there too."


Waking consciousness mandates, dictates that the wonder of the universe, and of ourselves be questioned. This questioning, this waking consciousness is the thing of which one speaks when one asks, "What is the meaning of life," of it "all." The revelation of sentience, of self-awareness produces a sense of its own sustaining force of the mind, and the revelation of the wonder and ultimate mystery of the universe (the "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" of this universe as it is) both within and without.

What is this self-awareness seeing within and beyond itself? Although it seems like the self is an entity that perceives an "other" or different-ness (and in most Western thought, objective "reality"), this act of perception is the actuality of the knowing as part of the known, and as my dear friend Barky, AKA Baraka2753 has put it so well in an earlier thread on Abuzz ( http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.128241/discussion), "The loving as a part of the loved." This translates to the transcendent perceiving in time and space the actuality of a singularity. "Tut tvam asi" it is. And is ancient Sanskrit, from the Chandogya Upanishad, which says, "You are it" or "Thou art that." That divinity, the very meaning of it all, which you seek outside, and which you first become aware of because you recognize it outside, is actually your innermost being.

The divine lives within you. The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

You are the Eyes of the World. What you see, what you think, what you do is a part of the grand scheme, for the Universe, thru you to know Itself.

And I ask, "Can it be any other way?"

So our ability to see something that doesn't actually exist is all part of our delusions of life?

C.I.

I thought you said you would skip the mental hernia and just listen

truth
Tywvel, let me try to answer you at least partially. You told Kuvasz that "the primary duality is the separation of the 'self 'from the universe" which generates the delusion of ego/self. That's exactly right and the most important thing for us to realize. It is the original sin depicted in Genesis. Eating from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, true and false, me and all else--Adam's and Eve's discovery of analytical distinctions automatically cast them from Paradise. It was not a punishment from a God, just the natural consequence, the price, of their new-found dualism. The boundary we make between self and all else is the cause of suffering. I do not mean just pain, of course. Suffering (dukkha) is, in Buddhist thought our discontent with a life in which we are separate from and surrounded by all else. I remember telling someone that I believe (I read it somewhere) that when I die I will take everything with me (you CAN take it with you). By this I meant that my property, friends, knowledge, activities, etc. are phenomena of my mind. When my mind ceases to create them, they--as MY LIFE--go. Now, how do I reconcile this with my "intellectual" belief that when I die and take my house with me, it remains for my surviving wife to live in (and take with her when she dies)? My answer is that spiritually it does not matter. The objective nature of things is, spiritually speaking, irrelevant. It is a purely intellectual and practical set of constructed models for human survival. MY EXPERIENCE, meaning MY LIFE, is as you say ("my") reality. Atman, in Hinduism, is the metaphor for my real Self, the "self" that I cannot see observing the so-called objects of experience. And ATMAN is the same as BRAHMA, the total universe. Some zen buddhist refer to them as small mind and big mind. When one meditates he does not observe in the subject-object sense of "I see it." It's as if something else is doing the observing, something behind all else including the sense of ego who is not really doing the observing. Unselfconscious Atman is doing the observing, and, as it is said, Atman=Brahma. This is what I understand by Kuvasz' (?) statement that the universe is observing itself (through sentient beings). To repeat, the only thing that really matters is to understand my mind and how it contains and constructs everything in my experienced life. All other knowledge is spirituallly secondary; it consists of useful fictions. But when we engage in these A2K intellectual discussions I forget that. This is my attempt at reconciliation.

perc, You're absolutely right! Shut up, c.i., and listen.

Kuvasz

A tour de force as always !

For those unfamiliar with multidimensionality and similar topics here's a link to a popular TV exposition:

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/space/stringtheory.html

The hypotheses raised some time ago on Abuzz included the possibility that "we" are linked to each other through unseen dimensions in the same way that what appears to be a single plant might turn out to be one stalk of many, of a common hidden root system. (See also Sheldrakes "morphic resonance" for consciousness as a shared field effect).

Re: The Philosophy of the Self.
It seems that others in this discussion have already made several laps around the track while I find myself still stuck in the starting blocks. I hope you'll indulge me, then, fresco, if I go over some ground that others have sped past.




I'm trying to undestand this notion of "self," fresco. I had supposed that there were two possibilities: either one is unique, or one is identical with someone (or something) else. But your Borg analogy has me thinking that we may have a tertium quid here: unique individuals with some sort of shared consciousness. Is that what you're suggesting? And if that's the case, is it true for all humans?

Yes I am suggesting precisely that.

Due to conditioning via a common language with implicit categories of "right and wrong", the "self" does not function in an optimum mode for "self preservation". The immediate experience of such a position is one of having "no choice". It is only after the fact, when the "individual self" evaluates the "social self".(perhaps in conjunction with other individuals) and retrospectively recognizes "possible options".

Is this true for all humans ? Since conditioning differs and does not always impart standard "moral values" we could say no.

As for a hypothesis of "materially connected consciousness" this does not necessarily explain the contents of consciousness (except perhaps for "telepathic anecdotes" between twins etc), but it might be a factor in certain general common competences, like language acquisition, which do not yield to standard learning theory. (For example a child never accurately "imitates" an adult because of pitch differeces etc, but seems to know the range of acceptability of arbitrary phonemic categories).

Kuvasz, Thanks, I think I agree.
One thing I would say and ask you, is that when you realize the divine within you, when Atman and Brahman become one (which is always already the case), when the observer and observed are recognized as one, as "observing", the (primary) duality apparent in the universe ceases. Do you agree?

truth
Yes, Twyvel, ego IS suffering. One is likely to feel, upon hearing this, that sometimes his feeling of separateness is rewarding, e.g., when he sees a pile of dung, he doesn't want to accept that he is that. And when he is experiencing a gratifying sense of "connection" with a lover, it falls short of unity but feels like two separate beings pleasurably conjoining temporarily, but as a kind of analgesic. To me ego is desire in the sense that desire equals attachment. When one feels desires one does not have to attach to them, they may not be seen as necessary for ego's confirmation and security. Some desires are biologically natural. I like to just feel them, gratify them, and then let them go. Not to remember them and anticipate their next emergence. All this is attachment for the "benefit" of ego. All this entails suffering because it is desperate action in the service of delusion maintenance. I believe that the Buddha was not agnostic in the sense that he admitted he didn't know. He was agnostic in the sense that thought about the existence of gods was irrelevant to the problem of the end of suffering. So ego IS desire and attachment to desires is attachment to the delusion of ego. Regarding my obscure comments about Atman and Brahma, let me say that I believe everyone who has meditated in the pursuit of egolessness, eventually realizes that everything he does merely reinforces ego. Such exercises represent ego's attempt to feel better, bigger, stronger. It pretends to be pursuing its own eradication. But in time if one simply watches what is happening experientially, he sees that the feeling of self--ego--is also being perceived, but not by a meta-ego, an ego behind ego. It is such a mysterious feeling to see that perception has no perceiver. There is, as you say, the awareness of only perceiving. Yet there IS perceiving without a PARTICULAR perceiver. We might say there is no ego above ego (to bastardize Tillich's phrase: "god above god). Metaphorically, the Atman--which is also Brahma or everything--is perceiving. In this sense there is a perceiver, but that is misleading because the perceiver is no-thing. It is everything.
Krishnamurti's acknowledgment that "conscious is its contents" is similar to the perspective of philosophical phenomenology (I think). And this phrase is also consistent with the zen dictum "All things enlighten me"--meaning, I feel, that I am my consciousness (my experience) that all the objects of experience ARE me. Hence Hinduism's Tat Tvam Asi (thou art that). Only Atman can recognize this; never the ego. Pardon me for repeating myself so often.
One more thing: you're right that this is a very tricky business, trying to discuss such matters with a language not constructed for the business. The more I talk about such matters the farther I move away from understandings with the clarity more likely when I have been silent for a while. Focus and Kuvazs are investigating and talking about material evidence for the unity of all people (and things, I presume)--a fascinating topic that I have trouble following. And that makes it all the more important that I read their posts. But when it comes to the matter of liberation from the ego delusion, such information is irrelevant in the sense that it serves none of the therapeudic functions of, say, meditation in its various forms. The Buddha would not discuss the theological question of the existence of god(s) because no matter what the conclusion it does not eradicate ego-suffering.

truth
..........

...time to meditate

"Schroedinger’s cat is dead, unless it is alive, we don’t know until we look to see."

I would expect that the cat knows whether it's alive or not though.

I was actually talking to someone about how statistics is mystical because objects and events don't exist as probabilities - they exist as certainties. An event may have a 30% chance of happening, in reality, either it doesn't happen (0% chance) or it does happen (100% chance). It doesn't happen 30% of the way, or 30% of all universes, or any of that crap. Quantum mechanics is just misapplied statistics.

"So, We have by logic proved the world to be illogical"

How?

truth
Rufio, I always had a similar intuition, namely that EACH time a coin is flipped it will or will not be heads. That it's always a fifty-fifty probability. But at least I know that that is wrong.

How do you know, that, JL? Have you ever flipped a coin and had it come out 50% heads and 50% tails?

truth
Rufio, take a stats class. As an anthro major you must know that much that is true is, nevertheless, counter-intuitive. Part of the role of science and philosophy is to test (confirm or falsify) truisms. But it's good that you want to know how they know.

Re: The Philosophy of the Self.

You've packed quite a lot into a short paragraph. Your remarks concerning "conditioning" suggest a psychological rather than any kind of metaphysical solution to the question of "self." I don't know enough about psychology to offer much in the way of comment here. It's an interesting thought, though.

The rest of your paragraph suggests that you're trying to explore the connections between "selfhood" and free will. That's an interesting notion as well, although I may be reading too much into this. Care to expand on these remarks?

Nevertheless, I wonder what all this has to do with your initial query:

You posited that the idea of "self" is tied to the idea of morality. I would tend to agree, although I would probably not put as much emphasis on it as you, and others in this discussion, might choose to do. But how is a "Borg-like" individual's morality affected by this "shared consciousness?" If there is shared consciousness, doesn't that also imply a shared moral responsibility?

I am taking a stats class, JL. All the stats in the world doesn't change what is.