The eye and the mind

"…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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.