The eye and the mind

Not too swift, What, exactly, is Mozart's Funeral March? Did they play that at Kennedy's funeral?

0 Replies

NotTooSwift. I like your phrase regardilng the "I": "it is more akin to a form of inner cosmology than anyone's philosophy." I hope it means the same for both of us. To me the true Self (notice the upper case as opposed to the lower class "self" or ego) is the actual Cosmos whatever that may be. It's the actual, not just the inner world.
Also, it seems to me that if the self has bookends they are the "I" and the "me." "I" always has reference to the benefits it can attain for "me".
That was a good, evocative, post. I enjoyed it.

0 Replies

Sorry for interrupting, JL. Call it a cognitive AHA moment.

Actually it was Chopin not Mozart that I was thinking of.

Now back to the eye and the mind.

0 Replies

Francis

É, sim. Obrigado pela correcção.

0 Replies

JLNobody

If you cease overlooking
the Nothing at your center
it will explode into Everything

If you realize the
Nothing at your center
you will also recognize
you're Everything.

************

Yes.nice wording JLN

Nothing awake to itself as Nothing.Beyond Incredible.

Quote:

"for now let me just respond to your response to my statement that:

"I've made the argument many times that consciousness "of the world" depends on an infinite set of circumstances. To have visual consciousness, or awareness, of some "object", there must exist, eyes, brain, heart, skin, etc., and there must exist air, gravity, oxygen, air pressure, temperature within a certain range, etc. There must be a planet to stand on; it must have a sun; there must be a solar system, with galaxies, ad infinitum."

You responded as follows: "I completely disagree,
Consciousness is not dependent on anything, i.e. it's not an emergent property."

My comment was intended to suggest, not a series of causal links, i.e., of the conditions that "lead to" (or give rise to) the experience or consciousness or sight; I was suggesting the holistic or monistic thesis that experience (e.g. consciousness and all sensorial experiences) are EMBEDDED, or perhaps intrinsic to its infinite context. Everything in that sense is simultaneously cosmic and local--depending on one's frame of reference.

Thanks for the clarification JLNobody.

We know that our perspectives vary but at the root I think they are identical as; The nothing that you and I are; the nothing that miraculously observes is the Nothing that we all are. It is Our Only True Life as Tennyson puts it.

Your comment above suggests an atemporality, a kind of holographic universe in which the whole is reflected in the parts, and in that sense there are no parts. All Nows are reflected in every now, or the one and the only now.

Quote:

I've been saying repeatedly that the ego is illusory but a functionally necessary illusion.

As necessary as a chair perhaps.

I think we were at odds on this point before.

Question:
Can there be (so called) living without an ego?

I think so. Non-volitional, doerless living. Actions without actors...Accordingly it's always the case.

The recognition of dualism is necessary perhaps, but a dualism without an ego.

0 Replies

val you wrote to fresco

Quote:

The observer "I" can be an object in the world if "I" think about myself. I see myself doing something yesterday: but is it still "ME" that I am seeing? Or an "It"? I project my reality as a thing between things.
But still remains the "I" that observes.

If the I that observes is not an it, nor a thing, or object then it is not observable to itself. It knows itself as nothing or no'thing' in relation, in juxtaposition to some'thing', and also, I believe, knows itself without a corresponding object.

It remains, you know it by being it.

Quote:

Like the eye. I can look at my eye in the mirror: then, we have two different situations: the eye reflected in the mirror, an object, a thing, and the eye that sees it and is not an object.

Right, The eye that sees is not an object and therefore not an eye.

Quote:

Good to "see" you again, since the last discussion - that I enjoyed so much!

Yes val, and good to "see" you as well.

We are second and third persons to each other and when we see our selves as others see us; as visual images for example, we see ourselves as third persons not first.

Most of us have a third person self image, i.e. I am the face, head, ears, eyes etc. that you see but that I do not see.

Seeing myself as first person is to see nothing. And that's the beauty.

Quote:

As Fresco suggested - and in fact, Heidegger - there is always an eye behind an eye.

And another eye behind that eye (or I) ad infinitum.

Quote:

There are causes, as relations we make between the external stimulus. If you don't accept external stimulus, you don't accept anything, except your mind.
But then you say that "all is one". All? All is, in that case, you.
So, please explain better that last part of your thread.

There is only one I, so Yes all is I.

I = all others
All others = I

0 Replies

Perhaps the extremely enlightened individual can manage to navigate through the practical and social circumstances of life sans ego, but the average member of our species needs it (indeed, needs it as an evolutionary survival tool), and, as I observed before, that's why it is universal. The illusion of the "ego-self" has been essential for the coordination of individuals and their relations to "objects" (which make no sense without "subjects"). An enlightened person sees though the ego; he sees that it is no more substantial than the image on a movie screen, but he's able (for the sake of living with others) to act AS IF it were real.

0 Replies

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:

With sight, light is the carrier, as air is for sound. You do not see light, but the vision is made up of it. With sound, you do not hear waves, even though sound travels in that manner to your ear.

But all visions are made up of light, so then light is in fact the only thing the eye can see. All descriptions of objects you see are in reality descriptions of light, not the actual object.

Light then, is a mental construct. Do you agree?

0 Replies

fresco wrote:

Quote:

I( ) tend to take this fundamental issue at least four ways.

1. Such an "I" is absent most of the time but is evoked at times of potential perceptual choice. (Heideggar and/or 2nd order Cybernetics)

2. Such an "I" represents an intersection of interaction paths beteween organism and environment leading to a concept (or schema) of "self as an origin of action". (Piagetian view)

3. Such an "I" is an illusion in everyday life ....there is no "unity" only a committee of discordant "little me's" (the Gurdjieff view)

4. Such an "I" is a reflection of a transcendental "non-self" or "cosmic consciousness" (achieved according to Gurdjieff by "work" but according to Krishnamurti by "silencing the mind")

Views 1 and 2 tend to look to mathematics for potential coherence, whereas 3 and 4 encompass the seeking of "ultimate truth", or at least the rejection of dualism on the grounds of "incoherence."

Yes and as Ramana Marharshi said if you can't see your true self, who the hell can?

0 Replies

Hi, moss man. That's the most that I have ever seen you write since Cav started the ladder thread.

0 Replies

I'm reflecting on it JLNobody.

Does a lion have an ego?

Perhaps not, yet there is the recognition of dualism.

There's killing, loving, eating etc. yet no ego.

I think you posit ego as necessary because you cannot image some actions, events, behavior etc. taking place without an ego. Is that the case?

It may be that all and any action, behavior can take place without an ego, after all it does.

0 Replies

Hi Letty

Well OH!

0 Replies

Twyvel, I guess I'm thinking of all those actions (mental as well as physical) that involve manuvers such as planning, deceiving, calculating, cooperating, etc. All the kinds of actions that Lions do not need to do because of the size of their claws.

0 Replies

Not to mention our symbolic dimension, i.e., culture, logic and language, all of which include agency, subjects, goals, purposes, etc., all the things involving constructs, distinctions, and EGO vs. ALTER.

0 Replies

twyvel

Yes, you are right, it is not observable to itself. I would call that "I" the Being.
But since I know I am, and since I can only know of my self in the world - because I am always in the world, interacting with it - the quest for my Being must be made in the world, in the ways I am in the world. Even if I see myself in the world as an object of the world.

The most I distance myself from the world, the most I "veil" the Being. When I speak of THE STONE, and not this stone I have in my hand, I fall in the kind of dualism I most reject: the subject/observer in one side, the thing/category/object in other side.
In order to unveil the Being I must see the stone I interact with. Because we don't deal with things being ourselves things. We interact with given things that are "out there", but the interaction has to do with us, not the things. In fact things are related to us. I eat a fruit - or don't eat a fruit - I am frightened by an earthquake, I feel the beauty of a sunset, I suffer from the cold, I see my death in others death.
Do you see what I mean? In science, a fruit is not something to eat. A sunset has not beauty in itself. There is no cold, only degrees in a temperature scale.
But since we exist only in our presence in the world, the Being is behind the eatable fruit, the cold, the beauty. Because all those things are in us (I don't mean that the fruit, the sunset, don't exist by themselves; but our interaction with them starts in us).
Eating a fruit, it is Val/object eating a fruit/object. But behind that Val there is my Being, what I am but cannot reach.
There is only an "eye" that sees the eye in the mirror. Not the eye
/organ, but what makes me notice that I am seeing the eye/reflection/object.

And that Being is in me, not in the "all" or other metaphysical delusions.

I know you don't agree with this. Nor does JL Nobody. But I can only speak of the Being without any metaphysical reference. Kant in the first "Critique", Wittgenstein in his "Tratactus" and Heidegger in "Sein und Zeit" rejected metaphysics. I agree with them.

0 Replies

Val, I enjoyed struggling with your well-presented (what to me is an existentialist) model of the human condition. I do not reject it just because it differs from my model. Models of Reality are formulas designed in the end to make us feel good (existentially or metaphysically). Reality is a word for that which is the case, whether or not we realize it (I guess that makes me a metaphysical objectivist, but only with regard to Ultimate Reality). I do believe that ultimately neither of our models realizes the case. I take pleasure from thinking that the "Being" which you say is you but that you cannot reach, is the "all" in the sense of the Hindu notion of Atman. That notion simply rings a bell in me; I would not present that subjective sense as evidence for you to accept; it is my evidence. As they say in Mexico, "cada cabeza es un mundo" (every head/mind is a world/reality) (that makes me a metaphysical subjectivist). By metaphysics I do not intend the study of a realm beyond physical or observable reality; I refer to the study of our most fundamental presuppositions)
By the way, it is the Stone and the Being that I most firmly reject. They sound too Platonic or "metaphysical" (otherworldly) if you ask me. The Hindu Brahman and Atman are to be taken only as metaphors, not as metaphysical Idea-things. The Stone, like Beauty, Truth, Chair are reifications of terms evolving etymologically from pointings and grunts to refined concepts, but not givens from the pen of Plato's Grand Architect. Real rocks are all different; Stone is unitary. You may agree. I'm not sure I understood your point there. But "objects" as "beings" trouble me. To me "things" of that nature are purely abstract. Abstract the color, taste, weight, shape, texture and all other sensible "properties" from an apple and you remain, according to popular thought, with a bare "thing." Thingness exists only in the mind, not in the world.
I do like your interactionism, however. All my experience is a function of the interaction between me and the stimuli of my environment. But that is only a way of thinking about the field of experience. Ultimately, "me", "stimuli" and "environment" are one. To me that is not a metaphysical notion; it is experienced; it is a perspective.

0 Replies

JLNobody

The ego is a belief not an action and even though the ego-belief appears to run concurrent with certain actions it cannot be said to do anything to make those actions, behaviors, events etc. come about.

We only observe one ego, our own, and the assumption of the universality of the ego is born when we see ourselves as ego-bodies. As Nissargatadda says, "When you see your self as a body other bodies appear"

As Katie Byron said upon attaining(?) nondual awareness, "Everyone appears to be awake, which is contradicted when talking begins". (paraphrased).

If the ego can come and go the ego is not necessary.

As to which behaviors can occur and be observed from the witness state, that is unknown, though we would assume that the daily activities of the body of a sage (or whomever) that are just being ?'observed', would not include activities such as attempting to acquire vast monetary wealth or political power, because the sage knows there are no others to have power over, and there is no wealth to be acquired in an illusion. Though since the sage it not the body or its activities anything can take place. Meaning there is no behavior that is indicative of a sage or someone who is awake or where there is no ego. All is just the play of consciousness, as Belsekar says.

Thoughts and emotions appear to come from no where; they just arrive to awareness, and then actions are taken with no casual link between the thought and the action. The ego makes no difference, though it sure as hell seems to, to it. But how could it?

That the ego makes a difference is just another idea arriving on the scene.

I understand that you mean, when consciousness (or whatever) identifies itself to the body, and a sense of separation sets in, the belief of ego is born as that separation. Which learns through the observation of supposed others that it is not them, and in fact is in competition with them. That process appears to be universal through the passing on ignorance. Though I doubt ego identity is necessary to discern distinctions in order to get through a day, or for that matter, a life.

We are in the process, of unlearning that ego-lie,.and then Bang goes the door of the gateless gate.

0 Replies

val

Quote:

If the I that observes is not an it, nor a thing, or object then it is not observable to itself.

Quote:
Yes, you are right, it is not observable to itself.

Yes and by this it is not meant only intellectual or theoretical, it is meant actually, i.e. as experience.

If it is the case that consciousness cannot observe itself, then that which is looking at these words, this screen, and their environment is not observable. There is no seer in the field of vision, it is opened ended, so to speak.

Working backwards, there is the scene.>.the space.>....and nothingNothing is where an observing self is supposed to be.

And when Harding ( in the quote to JLNobody) says;

"If you cease overlooking the Nothing at your center"

with the word ?'Nothing" he is referring to the absence of a seer.

So the seer or that which is taking in the scene, transcends what it observes, and if we are this observing or this ?'I' as you call it, then we transcend the manifested world, or world of being.

Quote:

In order to unveil the Being I must see the stone I interact with. Because we don't deal with things being ourselves things. We interact with given things that are "out there", but the interaction has to do with us, not the things. In fact things are related to us. I eat a fruit - or don't eat a fruit - I am frightened by an earthquake, I feel the beauty of a sunset, I suffer from the cold, I see my death in others death.
Do you see what I mean? In science, a fruit is not something to eat. A sunset has not beauty in itself. There is no cold, only degrees in a temperature scale.
But since we exist only in our presence in the world, the Being is behind the eatable fruit, the cold, the beauty. Because all those things are in us (I don't mean that the fruit, the sunset, don't exist by themselves; but our interaction with them starts in us).

Yes I understand what you are saying. Interpretation and meaning are not IN things or objects. Objects or what appears as observed 'things' are a function of and determined by what we are. They are in this sense, us.

Quote:

Eating a fruit, it is Val/object eating a fruit/object. But behind that Val there is my Being, what I am but cannot reach.

Yes, and Val/object does not taste the fruit any more then Val/object sees the fruit. That which tastes and sees etc. the fruit, is, in your words, your Being, "what you are but cannot reach"

(And of course Val/object, or Twyvel/object cannot ?'reach anything.)

Quote:

There is only an "eye" that sees the eye in the mirror. Not the eye
/organ, but what makes me notice that I am seeing the eye/reflection/object.

That's what's baffling when looking into a mirror. The reflection is not the reflection of what is looking.

I've heard that some schizophrenics are afraid to look into a mirror for the fear of seeing nothing reflected. They are afraid of their own non-existence. Maybe they are more in touch then most with their true nature,.....but fail to recognize it.

Quote:

And that Being is in me, not in the "all" or other metaphysical delusions.

Unfortunately (or not) if you follow your reasoning val apart from being the entire universe, or ?'everything that is observed', there is no ?'you' for Being to be in. I.e. If that which smells or tastes cannot be smelt, tasted or observed, then so goes any body, brain or any housing of being.

0 Replies

Twyvel, two thoughtful and powerful posts. Before I comment on your remarks to me--in a later post--let me respond to the following statement made by you to Val:
"Unfortunately (or not) if you follow your reasoning val apart from being the entire universe, or ?'everything that is observed', there is no ?'you' for Being to be in. I.e. If that which smells or tastes cannot be smelt, tasted or observed, then so goes any body, brain or any housing of being."

I have stressed the intuition repeatedly that my (and your) true Self is BOTH "everything that is observed" and the "everything that constitutes the observer (or phenomenon of observation)". There is no specific subject of observations; that there seems to be an "I" who observes is merely a CONCEPTUAL as opposed to empirical observation. In a sense, I am agreeing with what I understand to be a central tenet of your argument. We both hold that there is no specific or concrete subject of experience, but we seem to uphold this thesis differently. You say that instead of a "me" there is NOTHING. I say that instead of a "me" there is EVERYTHING. But we still agree: If I am everything (my position), I am no-thing (your position); if I am nothing (your position), it is because I am Everything (my position). This is a very crude way of putting it, of course, because there are no "things" in the world, only in our heads. I can only strive for approximations. Indeed, when we attempt to grasp such issues conceptually or intellectually we are doing liitle more than mythologizing as usefully as possible.

One last related point. Nissargatadda's observation that , "When you see your self as a body other bodies appear," can be extended to the observation that when you see yourself (abstractly) as an object, other objects appear. Ego is the way we characterize ourselves as objects interacting with a world of other objects. Lions also interact with "objects" instinctively, but our processes of interaction are so complex and subtle and extra-instinctual they require a false but useful symbolic presumption of objects. As the central or master object, we presuppose ourself to be a subject/ego/self.

-edited

0 Replies

JLNobody

Thanks JLNobody.

Quote:

I guess I'm thinking of all those actions (mental as well as physical) that involve manuvers such as planning, deceiving, calculating, cooperating, etc. All the kinds of actions that Lions do not need to do because of the size of their claws.

Quote:

Ego is the way we characterize ourselves as objects interacting with a world of other objects. Lions also interact with "objects" instinctively, but our processes of interaction are so complex and subtle and extra-instinctual they require a false but useful symbolic presumption of objects. As the central or master object, we presuppose ourself to be a subject/ego/self.

Interesting JLNobody.

The bigger your claws the smaller your ego, Very Happy

And of course we don't know whether or not lions have egos, though they can certainly observe dualistically*. And I guess that was the point; to make a distinction between observing duality without an ego and observing duality with an ego. Maybe there's no difference as you are suggesting, i.e. no ego no duality. But if lions, cockroaches (and trees) and sages etc. don't have egos, yet there is dualistic distinctions made by them indicated by our observations of them, then what is being contrasted that creates the dualism and allows for the distinctions? And since they are ?'our' observations, that they have ego's may be more about us then them. That is to say, they ?'are' us,...though not as egos.

If they, as ?'body-mind mechanisms only', are on auto-pilot, are puppets (with no one pulling the strings), are a mechanism for pure observation, pure witnessing to 'happen', then so are we. If this manifestation is being created form moment to moment and we, as Consciousness/Atman are the center and source of that creation then there is absolutely zero volition and no one to have it. We are the stage, the play and all the characters,.(yet also none of them as they are not really there).

Maybe lions and other animals have an ego but it is so removed from our understanding of what an ego or identified self is that we wouldn't recognize it as such.

As you say in your last post, "there are no "things" in the world, only in our heads.".

If duality can be observed without an ego it would appear that it cannot do without ?'things'. If dualism = things; no things no dualism... Can dualism be observed without the 'ego thing'...?

The lion is the central or master object, as well, but what Atman or Consciousness is attach to of the lion is the question. We say Consciousness is attached to sensations that appear to constitute a body, and to mental phenomena. That is, the ego-self is a belief supported by sensations understood as a body. But I don't think we know what we're talking about. We don't know how ego identify comes about, why it happens and what it actually is. If we did, dropping it might be a tad easier, Smile

Human complexity doesn't presuppose symbolic representation, but rather is that.

*Of course lions don't observe any more then egos or humans. Yet in order for Consciousness or Atman to observe dualistically via the lion, Consciousness has to be identified, to some degree, to the sensations and thoughts that are understood to constitute the ?'individual' lion. According to your theory and my partial agreement, if Consciousness is attached to the lion-body there would seem to be a necessity for some semblance of an ego to identify and attach to..

Quote:

We both hold that there is no specific or concrete subject of experience, but we seem to uphold this thesis differently. You say that instead of a "me" there is NOTHING. I say that instead of a "me" there is EVERYTHING. But we still agree: If I am everything (my position), I am no-thing (your position); if I am nothing (your position), it is because I am Everything (my position). This is a very crude way of putting it, of course, because there are no "things" in the world, only in our heads. I can only strive for approximations. Indeed, when we attempt to grasp such issues conceptually or intellectually we are doing liitle more than mythologizing as usefully as possible.

Yes we're just stressing different aspects.

Quote:

Nissargatadda's observation that , "When you see your self as a body other bodies appear," can be extended to the observation that when you see yourself (abstractly) as an object, other objects appear.

Right.

And that is odd because the ego is imagined to be the subject not an object. I.e. I am the subject of my experience. As subject I hold objects and stand in relation to them. Etc. Of course the ego is an object and when seen as such so called awakening occurs. So I guess it can be read both ways....

But that is also my understanding of Nisargadatta's (previous spelling was incorrect) statement. The image (or non-image) held ?'here' at first person, of first person (so to speak) determines (to some extent) how so called ?'others' and the world are viewed, understood, interpreted etc.

0 Replies

The eye and the mind

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know