Passage ...... Where do you go after you die

We're working on it.

truth
As I see it, ultimately there's no problem. We live, we die. If we want to make a problem of it--which we always do--we shouldn't complain about the nature of things; we should complain only about our own misguided behavior. I think this is in agreement with Edgar.

Re: truth


Well that certainly agrees with how I feel also.

MY GUESS: Most people agree with what you said here.

truth
Yes, Frank, I knew that was also your perspective. I believe that we disagree only on a few things.

Re: truth


JL, I get the feeling that you think I have somehow acted in an egregious manner in my attempt to have a discussion with Edgar re: the subject of the thread.
Have I and if so could you tell me where so that I might correct my behaviour as I have no intentions of impeding conversation on the thread. I have been enjoying the exchange and will recluse myself rather than stifle the conversation..

Thx

I didn't intend to have a breaking effect on the conversation already underway. Please don't anybody be disrupted by that.

truth
Not in the least, Gel. You've read too much into my babble. In any case, any abuse of Edgar can be ignored by me; he can take perfectly good care of himself. Let me also say, that you drop some beautiful gems on a regular basis. Some of your comments indicate that you are not averse to the non-dualism that some of us A2Kers are hawking on these threads.

Gel is one heck of a great guy. I admire him tremendously.

No self; no death. No space; no time. To be torn apart by dream tigers only hurts so long as the dream lasts. Bubbles in a stream.

truth
Asherman,

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.

A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste--
And Lo!--the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The NOTHING it set out from--Oh, make haste!

Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About THE SECRET--quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False from True--
And upon what, prithee, may life depend?

I believe that, to be taken seriously in this discussion, one must rhyme.

Ahem,

When my bod' ist down in muck
and I'm like a trodden duck
waiting for the light all-seeing
Or for some immortal being
all I know is what I feel
And visions which seem very real
come inward, spiraled past and present
like a tortured christmas pheasant
whose grouse is cooked and stuffed with weeds
that once it ate from fields.

Although it seems these taunting dreams
come from shining heaven streams
it may be static costume party
thrown by neurons in black lace.
But, if that be the case, I am content -
For this human race will go on
spinning, weaving, swimming,
sent through the muck of end/beginnning,
so worried about saving/sinning,
not knowing what I see,
not wanting to be free,
from their singular perspectival reality.

-M.

Just look at all that Buddhist poetry! The transendental experience is not uniquely Buddhist, or Asian at all. We in the West just express it differently.

Muslim.... I believe Khayyam was Muslim .... he grew up in Persia as a muslim.

Good morning Asherman, pleased to see you here. The subject is not really concerned with 'organized religion' as much as a quest into the disposition of life after death, if there is 'death' in the classical sense as in no fog on the mirror. There appears to be a hang up in that death can only be discussed in regard to the cessation of this life's activities. While in reality that does occur, it is my belief that it (life) can best be described as a symbiotic relationship between varying levels of consciousness with the human body incapable of ascension to the level of a soul. Souls cannot expierence our third dimensional level of sensory existence, without the unique set of circumstances of the human journey .... souls being pure consciousness have no sensors ..... it is hard to taste a butterscotch milkshake without 'taste buds'.

It's late, I'm tired and getting silly ..... to bed for now will talk later in the day after the talking heads.

Havin read what I wrote earlier this morning I immediatly thought 'huh?'.
Please re-read my prior post as I have edited it for clarity.
thx

truth
Gel, I was talking to a Hindu the other day. He believes that the entire universe is "conscious." I asked if he meant "like human consciousness." He said yes, but only human "pure" consciousness, a consciousness that differences from AWARENESS which is always OF something and, as such, requires taste buds, ears, eyes, etc.. I find that very interesting. I just don't know how one can confirm or falsify that belief scientifically. One can't, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean that it is not so. Yogis, he said, who achieve a certain level of consciousness, realize the same "state of mind" experienced by the non-organic (AND organic) world. What a wonderful religion. If only it did not manifest (or was not used to justify) the inequities of the caste system.
P.S. I suspect there is some similarity between the yogi's cosmic consciousness and the "no-mind" or "original mind" of zen buddhism, but I have no idea how that similarity could be demonstrated.

Re: truth

I wish I knew JL .... all we can do is talk about what if. A lot of the problem in discussing consciousness is semantics .... definitions are hard to agree on for instance, describe the difference between 'alive' and 'dead' what is or is not there. A far simpler task would be in explaining life as we are familiar more or less with that side of the gate and know nothinng of the death sde. Then again how many have guessed the true secret only to say in ignorance ....naww.
I would say that to percieve that there is more is to be aware and what we do with that awareness makes the difference in our level of consciousness.

Aristotle on the Soul
Matter and Form

1. Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question "What is soul?" At the beginning of of De Anima II.1, he says that there are three sorts of substance:

1. Matter (potentiality)
2. Form (actuality)
3. The compound of matter and form

2. Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These - plants and animals - are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things.

3. Since form is what makes matter a "this," the soul is the form of a living thing. (Not its shape, but its actuality, that in virtue of which it is the kind of living thing that it is.)

Grades of Actuality and Potentiality

1. Aristotle distinguishes between two levels of actuality (entelecheia). At 412a11 he gives knowing and attending as examples of these two kinds of actuality. (It has become traditional to call these first and second actuality, respectively.) At 412a22-26 he elaborates this example and adds this one: being asleep vs. being awake. But he does not fully clarify this important distinction until II.5 (417a22-30), to which we now turn.

2. At 417a20, Aristotle says that there are different types of both potentiality and actuality. His example concerns different ways in which someone might be described as a knower. One might be called a knower in the sense that he or she:

1. is a human being.
2. has grammatical knowledge.
3. is attending to something.

A knower in sense (a) is someone with a mere potential to know something, but no actual knowledge. (Not everything has this potential, of course. E.g., a rock or an earthworm has no such potential.) A knower in sense (b) has some actual knowledge (for example, she may know that it is ungrammatical to say "with John and I"), even though she is not actually thinking about it right now. A knower in sense (c) is actually exercising her knowledge (for example, she thinks "that's ungrammatical" when she hears someone say "with John and I").

3. Note that (b) involves both actuality and potentiality. The knower in sense (b) actually knows something, but that actual knowledge is itself just a potentiality to think certain thoughts or perform certain actions. So we can describe our three knowers this way:

1. First potentiality
2. Second potentiality = first actuality
3. Second actuality

4. Here is another example (not Aristotle's) that might help clarify the distinction.

1. First potentiality: a child who does not speak French.
2. Second potentiality (first actuality): a (silent) adult who speaks French.
3. Second actuality: an adult speaking (or actively understanding) French.

A child (unlike a rock or an earthworm) can (learn to) speak French. A Frenchman (unlike a Frech infant, and unlike most Americans) can actually speak French, even though he is silent at the moment. Someone who is actually speaking French is, of course, the paradigm case of a French speaker.

5. Aristotle uses the notion of first actuality in his definition of the soul (412a27):

The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive.

6. Remember that first actuality is a kind of potentiality -a capacity to engage in the activity which is the corresponding second actuality. So soul is a capacity - but a capacity to do what?

7. A living thing's soul is its capacity to engage in the activities that are characteristic of living things of its natural kind. What are those activities? Some are listed in DA II.1; others in DA II.2:

* Self-nourishment
* Growth
* Decay
* Movement and rest (in respect of place)
* Perception
* Intellect

8. So anything that nourishes itself, that grows, decays, moves about (on its own, not just when moved by something else), perceives, or thinks is alive. And the capacities of a thing in virtue of which it does these things constitute its soul. The soul is what is causally responsible for the animate behavior (the life activities) of a living thing.

Degrees of soul

1. There is a nested hierarchy of soul functions or activities (413a23).

1. Growth, nutrition, (reproduction)
2. Locomotion, perception
3. Intellect (= thought)

2. This gives us three corresponding degrees of soul:

1. Nutritive soul (plants)
2. Sensitive soul (all animals)
3. Rational soul (human beings)

3. These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. All living things grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals not only do that, but move and perceive. Humans do all of the above and reason, as well. (There are further subdivisions within the various levels, which we will ignore.)

Soul and Body

1. A key question for the ancient Greeks (as it still is for many people today) is whether the soul can exist independently of the body. (Anyone who believes in personal immortality is committed to the independent existence of the soul.) Plato (as we know from the Phaedo) certainly thought that the soul could exist separately. Here is what Aristotle has to say on this topic:

. . . the soul does not exist without a body and yet is not itself a kind of body. For it is not a body, but something which belongs to a body, and for this reason exists in a body, and in a body of such-and-such a kind (414a20ff).

So on Aristotle's account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body. (When it comes to the intellect, however, Aristotle waffles. See DA III.4)

2. Aristotle's picture is not Cartesian:

1. There is no inner/outer contrast. The soul is not an inner spectator, in direct contact only with its own perceptions and other psychic states, having to infer the existence of a body and an "external" world.

There is thus no notion of the privacy of experience, the incorrigibility of the mental, etc., in Aristotle's picture.

2. The soul is not an independently existing substance. It is linked to the body more directly: it is the form of the body, not a separate substance inside another substance (a body) of a different kind. It is a capacity, not the thing that has the capacity.

It is thus not a separable soul. (It is, at most, pure thought, devoid of personality, that is separable from the body on Aristotle's account.)

3. Soul has little to do with personal identity and individuality. There is no reason to think that one (human) soul is in any important respect different from any other (human) soul. The form of one human being is the same as the form of any other.

There is, in this sense, only soul, and not souls. You and I have different souls because we are different people. But we are different human beings because we are different compounds of form and matter. That is, different bodies both animated by the same set of capacities, by the same (kind of) soul.

Ok, in the spirit of discussion, let's ask the hard question...

Is it possible for the human mind to accept the idea that it can cease to exist completely?

Throughout history and probably as long as the human mind has existed, people have speculated on the afterlife in an attempt to find a way to believe that when you die, you (whatever that is) still go on. All this speculation and belief and hope bears with it the distinct ambiance of desperation.

Let's step back for a moment, and ask ourselves, just how reasonable it really is to think that life endures (in any form) beyond death. Are the cracks of reality really revealed with mysticism and belief, or are our minds just incapable of accepting the possiblity of cessation of thought?