When you talk to yourself, who's talking and who's listening

I think that my thoughts have been mainly directed to my insides--but I didn't think of them as 'talking to myself.' I don't know what I thought of them as, before I considered them, at all. Which was only recently.

I didn't think of them as 'thoughts', because just plain old thinking of the sort required to function with mundane everything, are not so much internally verbalized to the point I considered them talking at all. But when constructing thoughts in the semblance of speech, unspoken words--those I perceive as definitely being for some other purpose than my own operations, since I seem to feel they require construct and form.

The way I see it is that I have two main self oriented cognitive functions--operational and delusional. And the delusion we don't detect as being cognitive process since it hides, usually behind the operational type.

So I'm left with wondering, who is this conversation with? And mostly it was, and still is, composed of inquiry, rather than declarations. For all necessary declarations self-directed, I usually just say them out loud. Like, 'You dork, you locked the keys in the house,' and such. But to ask questions, and wonder about the whys and wherefores of what I observe, I think I must have been talking to that which I call God.

I never looked for a reply, then--because I didn't lend myself to that sort of madness. I did listen to my gut, though--and began to understand that was God answering me, because if it had been me, it wouldn't have served me so flawlessly in myriad situations.

I think I've had a running dialogue with God, in my head, all my life. I just didn't take it as anything unusual, until a time came when it seemed that my wishes and deepest desires were suddenly all coming through--in a way that was mystifying and unprecedented. I thought to myself 'but I NEVER pray.' And it's true, or so I thought. I think that I have been praying all along, which I think is nothing more than 'meditation' in the way of 'thinking on.'

<<"Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says 'I.' And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole. In actual fact there is no foundation whatever for this assumption. Man's every thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract as a concept. Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I's, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking 'I.' And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.>>

G. I. Gurdjieff

I tend to dominate any conversation i'm in.

Interesting. Kind of like a cast of characters of which only one can take the "I" podium at a time. The podium lives vicariously through it's actor for a brief period of time, only to be replace by another.

I can see that.

Martin Buber

The life, then is collective and interdependent, but never really belongs to the actors. Their life depends and exists upon the podium.

Circular logic, but doesn't it seem to make sense?

Dualism, from Plato to the present is the bugaboo of human reasoning. A or B, in or out, I or Thou, reality or non-reality. Lets try to intergrate folks, it's not that hard.

I don't think that it is that simple.

Unity is something hidden by the deceptive singularity of ego.

And one does not = unity or even the 'whole.'

Further to the Gurdjieff view quoted above, he suggests that "unity" is obtainable by "work on self observation". This is in essence a claim for higher levels of consciousness in which the mundane internal chatter dies away.

The Gurdjieff "work" attracted several intellectual celebrities early in the 20th. century including Katherine Mansfield and Kenneth Walker. Many derivatives still operate world wide inlcuding the "School of Practical Philosophy" in the US which attempts to obscure its origins. This smoke screen is understandable...Gurdjieff was a semi-Rasputinesque figure.....and since the goal of "the work" tends to change individual's normal personality (persona = Greek actors mask), such organizations have had to contend with occasional accusations of "cult" by concerned relatives.

http://www.gurdjieff-internet.com/links/gurdjiefffoundation.html
http://www.practicalphilosophy.org/

That is sound, IMO and also from experience. Because I think that, just as all things worth attaining, 'unity starts at home.' Meaning a soul that is not united in and of itself cannot truly understand the larger ultimate unity with other souls. Once we can observe self-- in total honesty and neutrality, a task which first requires loving (accepting) and forgiving (letting go) one's self--then we can begin to discover our fragmented framework built for purposes of social interaction and acceptance, and the love and mercy we have for ourselves enables us to begin to unify our self into a consistent and pure whole. Once the homework is done, we can venture outside of ourselves and truly observe the world around us.

In the words of Albert Einstein: 'A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.'

"ultimate unity" ooh ooh ya, now it's getting exciting, when we turn the page will we find "forms' and "ideals"?
It is what it is baby, it just is what it is and that's all it is. Plato is dead and so is Descartes, it's time for them to be buried.

Dyslexia,

You are correct in your prediction that Plato is considered to be a "good guy" by some "Higher Consciousness" movements.

However to simply dismiss such fundamental thinkers as irrelevent to the modern era is to ignore the crisis in scientific rationality that has been brought about by developments in partcle physics and the life sciences. We now have a situation where "naive realism" doesn't work. Second order cybernetics (or the observation of observation) has evolved a "systems view" of the relationship between observer and observed. The "world as we know it" and "self knowledge" could merely be co-existent reflections of some ineffable unity. The claim that "consciousness" could ever ascend to a vantage point from which to observe such a unity is semantically problematic.

The key issue in all this seems to be whether

(a)"consciousness" is an epiphenomenon of "life" which can now be accounted for as a spontaneously occuring process requiring no "causation"
or
(b) whether "consciousness" is a spiritual aspect of some holistic unity, from which we derive our knowledge of "science" itself.

The jury is out !

My vote is (b).

q.a.

I guessed :wink: !

Your "whether" seems a bit short.

It's just about asserting that consciousness is a non religious or a religious issue.

If there were only such options, I naturally would go for the first.

Francis,

I think there is a valid separation between "religion" and "spirituality". I consider myself to be an "atheist" with no need for a deity. However from a meditational point of view I can understand a concept of "selfless universal harmony" which may be a basis for my "humanity". This for want of a better word I would call "spiritual". On the other hand I also appreciate the valid arguments that such a position may be self delusiary, or the result of some "altruism gene" involved in natural selection.

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

I would venture that the very process of evolving toward consciousness inherently demands reciprocal withdrawal from religion.

Religion is a selfish pursuit, IMO--the ritual and praxis most use to 'get close to God' puts them in a very distant location to the whole, but very close to their own creation (god).