The Void and the Absolute Oneness of the Universe

http://www.oikos.org/vonobserv.htm

The metaphor is one which seeks to differentiate between "the descriptive" and "the experiential". The latter involves coalescence between observer and observed...it has a dynamic emotional/visceral dimension as well as an intellectual one. It is ineffable in the same sense that our involvement with a piece of music is transcendent of a physical description of the sound.

What is "intended" is a gentle, yet simplistic assertion that "either you get it or you don't". You get it if "you've been there"...in which case it is "self evident".

Yeah, Razz...this is Fresco saying about his religion what fundamentalist Christians often say about theirs. You either know that GOD exists...or you don't. But once GOD reveals himself to you...it is self-evident!

Nothing is "revealed" in an understanding of non-duality.

I suggest that the difference is that meditators know of these criticisms and understand the transient facets of "self" from which they arise.

fresco wrote:

What is "intended" [by the metaphor] is a gentle, yet simplistic assertion that "either you get it or you don't". You get it if "you've been there"...in which case it is "self evident".

So yours is a revealed truth? Non-dualism is based on faith, right?

As you well know, we are all stuck with words to try to point to what is essentially "ineffable". If you want to interpret a common experience of understanding as "religious", that is your privilege based on your intellectual search agenda.

"either you get it or you don't". You get it if "you've been there"...in which case it is "self evident".

I tried to make clear that my allusion to "epiphany" was a simile intended to to express my understanding of those who use that word in a religious sense. But I also tried to make clear that the concept of "self as illusory" rather than "self as submissive" was where I departed from "religious experience".

Finally, I don't know what you mean by "revealed truth" other than a religious epiphany. Nothing is "revealed" in an understanding of non-duality.

Nothing is "revealed" in an understanding of non-duality.

It is a vantage point from which the "trials and tribulations" of what we call our lives are seen as passing perturbations in the cosmic flux.

Of course, if you wanted to, you could describe it as a method of attempted insulation from involvement. The cynic might call meditators "monks without monastries". But I suggest that the difference is that meditators know of these criticisms and understand the transient facets of "self" from which they arise. Do you?

Have you analysed why you might want to interpret some writers as "profit motivated" ? .. surely a simplistic one-liner ..a posture for purposes of what ?

...after enough divisions they can no longer be called "boards"; their nature changes to something on the molecular and later atomic levels

Who said somewhere above that a number can be divided infinitely?

Understood. I've always felt, however, that the mathematical study of the physical world is a way of managing our thinking process. Math describes more our thoughts about the world rather than the world itself.

Nothing and zero are abstract concepts and in their use should never be misconstrued or misused as real tangible entities.

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Understood. I've always felt, however, that the mathematical study of the physical world is a way of managing our thinking process. Math describes more our thoughts about the world rather than the world itself.

I totally agree with your assessment. I was just saying that beyond the peripheral scope of math or any abstract tool, that which we can apply to the real world becomes necessary and the rest for that instance become superfluous. I say the rest may be good fodder for conversation or for future endeavors. We should be aware of the line where it is useful for practical purposes and where it becomes excessive and know the distinction.

I think that too often, even with our best intention in mind, we confuse or blur the line.

I had responded to the post about "Does nothing Exist and was only using my explanation as a way of pointing this out.

A writing in his description of a scene may write for example:

" I entered the room and it was completely bare. Yet I heard that nature abhors a vacuum." A week later I entered that same said room and a single chair stood staring at me. It seem to beg for me to sit and take a load off my feet."

What could be surmised from the lines above is that at one point nothing, as a noun, was referred to directly. Nothing is used as a qualifier to denote the absence of something. It is that something or lack there of that is the concern. It isn't about the nothing. It is about the something or lack of the something in the room. The nothing, which is essentially abstract, helps us to see that.

In the next visit to the room there is a chair and that is what commands our
attention. We have something and is definable by its'mass and the space that surrounds it. A great deal can be deduced from this. a single chair (something as opposed to nothing) identified? There isn't anything else? Nothing more?

The nothing like zero in math helps us gives us a picture of reality that we can work with to achieve some goal. I am not talking on a subatomic level. Nothing and zero are abstract concepts and in their use should never be misconstrued or misused as real tangible entities. From my own observations I believe it is here where I think that confusion starts.

Just curious, Frank...it there a reason why all of your posts are in bold. It "sounds" like you're shouting, ya know?

Somebody should tell that to the "physical" theorists who present "string theory" as "science," eh, Arg? The same goes for many other branches of what is presented as "physical science" these days, which is really just math combined with speculation about things with no empirical basis whatsoever.