What we sense and what we percieve.

This has been a very frustrating thread to read, until the last page, wherein Rosborne, AllThisBeauty, Ray, and Thalion have had some interesting things to say.

Great fun to look in the mirror like this..

AllThisBeauty. I will not have you calling us names here thank you. I'm not tounge-tied. No one here are.
Otherwise I have no argument.

Another thing occured to me. We've established that there is no boundary between our physical beings and the rest of the world. We are in it and of it. But in our carcasses there rests a spiritual fire wich is animating us. We call it life.
The spiritual fire wich rests in all humans is the same spirit that animates all living things. It is a ghost, posessing matter, manipulating it according to it's "intent". A flower is the same spiritual force as a human being. It is only that the matter possessed manipulates differently. It turned into a more complex being. Basically it is all about input/output. If the latter is greater, then it is a success. True in business and true in evolution. That's why we dominate the planet, not the flowers. (Although that can be debated)

So, in the same way that all material creatures all come from the same initial matter, the same is true of our spirits. But I'm not saying the three letter word.

Care to share why JL?

I find it interesting that you and I have the converse observation. I have no clue how to proceed from a discussion that pressuposes that we are the universe. It appears our emperical observations do not support this - and by supposing ANY conclusion after you has presupposed that our senses our lying to us seems just as good as any other. I think the conversation must die at this point. We have left rational discussion and entered a form of mysticism.

It does seem, however, rather Buddhist - and perhaps that is why you are saying it is interesting.

Thalion:

Isn't this presupposing that humans are merely observers upon birth - and thus making human existence inherently monistic.

TTF, no offense, but you sound full of your own humanity.

How does our empirical observations fail to support the supposition that "we are the universe"?

Incorrect. I am tongue-tied. I embrace that and I proceed.

Yes. Consciousness's observations create matter, while at the same time the matter defines what consciousness is. Consciousness is consciousness of self, as it becomes aware that what appears to be an other is really only an extension of itself. What is actual is rational, and what is rational is actual. This is Hegel's dialectic, which moves toward the Absolute.

TTF, I think that much of the spiritual difficulty in western cultures (everywhere for that matter) is the presupposition that each of us is separate from and surrounded by the universe. That's part of the heritage from Descartes that must be overcome, frankly, by "mystical" insight. This insight IS empirical, but it's a radical empiricism, not one that looks solely for answers to questions that presuppose a dualism between a self and all-else. As I see it, it's not sense experience that deludes us; it's our culturally constituted automatic interpretion of sense "data" that does so. Buddhist meditation is extremely empirical with its precognitive attention to how reality presents itself, on its own terms, to us moment by moment. What I find interesting is that so many people are expressing taoist and buddhist-like insights without identifying themselves as taoists or buddhists. Subtle culture change?
I grant that the mystical perspective does not conduce to stimulating intellectual discussion, but it can be done. Monists like Nietzsche and William James have managed to find much to talk about despite their anti-dualism.

Perhaps the insights we are expressing are neither Taoist or Buddhist, but simply insights which have previously been arrived at by Taoists and Buddhists.

Point taken.

Let me explain why I think what I think TTF.

It is a rational argument which I try to present. Clearly to think that we are "separate" from the universe would mean that we are separate from the reality outside of us. Whereas we are interdependant with reality outside of us, such an argument that we are separate is untrue, because to be separate, there would be no interaction between a matter and another matter. It does not mean that there is no space in between particulars, but that there is no disconnection between particulars and that rationally we are a part of the universe.

What we are observing is the Universe, and we are inherently a part of it.

That's what I'm talking about, Ray. But you are intuiting that conclusion; it is not merely a rational product of analytical thought. Someone is bound to find it "counter-intuitive" and contrive to repudiate it analytically.

A very ancient human insight: Tat tsam asi. You are that.

We dismiss it at our peril.

Yes, the Upanishadic maxim, Tat tvam asi (that art thou), is an expression of Hinduism's and Buddhism's view of the unity of all reality. In meditation a goal, if there can be said to be one, is the realization of one's unity with the floor before one, the thoughts passing through one's mind, the sensations and sounds experienced, etc. As such, thoughts, sensations and perceptions do not happen TO "you"; they ARE you--tat tvam asi.
I'm glad you brought that up, AllThisBeauty.

JLN and others:

I have argued elsewhere that the mystical experience is an emperical experience so I am with you there. I have not experienced this 'I am the universe' thing being discussed but I know that it is an emperical experience. (So please do not hear me as being the mere rationalist that discounts anything 'non-rational' - for lack of better words)

Here is the problem I am trying to bring up - if we use these subective experiences as our emperical evidence and this evidence is not repeatable or independantly verifiable - all mystical experience must be taken as equal.

Christians, then, who have an experience that they are seperate from the universe but that another being loves them must be held equal to a 'one with everything' type mystical experience.

When a thread gets to this point - it seems to become deadlocked with my mystical experience vs. your mystical experience and it becomes fairly moot (beyond the sharing of our exeriences).

Thoughts ?

TTF

A very good post, TTF, one which moves the discussion forward.

To put it crudely (all I am capable of), mystical union with Big Daddy isn't "it." That's a metaphor for "it." What is "it"? Unspeakable bliss and unspeakable pain.

TTF, your argument is reasonable. But it simply leaves me with the assertion that a mystic's experience of his reality is HIS business. It is a private value, not a verifiable public value. I do think, however, that more philosophers, not all by any means, but important philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and many practicioners of the New Physics feel that mysticism (in the Eastern sense of the term) is at least not inconsistent with science, while belief in a supreme creator, especially an anthropomorphized one, IS.

Good points JL -

Could it be JL that these subjective mystical experiences are actually the same objective reality simply filtered through experiential lenses?

TTF

TTF, this seems to have been Aldous Huxley's conclusion, as expressed in The Perennial Philosophy. In this classic he argues that an "oceanic vision" has arisen throughout history in different cultures, a kind of independent emergence, not accounted for by a process of cultural diffusion (viz., the passing of traits from one society to another). The essentials of this vision have been shared but expressed by means of different culture-bound metaphorical systems.

I am trying to understand this subjective/objective line of thought, but it keeps slipping on me. Isn't objective reality merely the sum of all subjects? The way I see it perspective is the issue, once more.

To clarify, is a tree a subject or an object? I'd say that by virtue of it's precence it is an object, claiming space. But by virtue of it's skills it is a subject, battling the elements to grow and prosper. In short, I see our objectivity as what unites us, and our subjectivity as what divides us. But we are both.

My point is that I doubt that a mystical experience can be either subjective or objective. It has to be both since, in my experience, mystical experiences deal primarily with the relationship between the two, although the terms often differ.

One might ask just what is a mystical experience, and I am tempted to say that to a man who has forsaken all religion and ideology, life itself is a long mystical experience.

Cyra -

You are right to pull that out of my thread.

Here is how I distinguish Objective / Subjective / Relative.

Objective - the matter in itself (whatever that is) - let's say we are talking about quarks - Whatever Quarks are in reality is the objective truth of quarks.

Subjective - What we think quarks are - even if we attempt to be objective. We know observation of matter this small changes the matter - as well as our point of view, historical background and the like.

Realtive - has no objectivity and the man becomes the measure of all things.

A lot of people use subjective and relative to be the same - I am using them differently. I also think your distinctions above do not contradict my definitions.

Nice...

TTF