what is spirituality?

Cryacuz, your English is impeccable.

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Thank you JL. Smile

Means a lot to me when you say it.

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Cyracuz wrote:

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Mental activity is a result of neurons firing in the brain, and electrical signals travelling through neural-net pathways.

So you're saying that it's impossible that neurons firing and electrical signals through neural net pathways are results of mental activity?

Scientist working in the field cannot say for sure which is a product of which.

You seem to be suggesting some sort of model where our thoughts cause our physical brain activity? For that to work you have to assume some sort of 'puppetmaster' that controls our body through some unknown means. I assume you fill that role with this putative magical entity called 'the spirit'.
I'm sorry, I just can't take that seriously. It is too far divorced from rational thinking.

Please, direct me to ONE serious scientific study that suggests this might be the case. Do that, and I'll eat my hat.

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I share Dok's reservation about the mentalist notion that "mind" (existing on its own) causes "body" actions. But I find equally unsatisfying the physicalist notion that "body" generates thoughts. Neither has priority. To me the dualistic description of mind AND/OR body overlooks the reality of their mutual dependence: they are--like ying and yang--aspects of a unity. No mind=no matter, and no matter=no mind.

"Spirituality" requires the transcendence of this, and any, duality--as a start.

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To me the dualistic description of mind AND/OR body overlooks the reality of their mutual dependence: they are--like ying and yang--aspects of a unity. No mind=no matter, and no matter=no mind.

A brain can exist, dead. A dead brain has no mind. Nobody will argue that. Nobody sane anyway.

Can the same be said in reverse?

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Dok, I think it can be argued that a dead brain is no more than a lump of matter. Brain is its function not just its structure, and mind is the living brain minding.
But more importantly, minding is always OF something, like the notion of brain. "Brain" is a thought that you and I are sharing (well that our entire language community shares). But so is "mind" no more than a thought. This is the argument of the mentalists. But they could not make such a "sane" argument if they lacked "brains." We are like a snake swallowing its tail. Not to see that is a form of UNsanity.

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dokS wrote:

You seem to be suggesting some sort of model where our thoughts cause our physical brain activity? For that to work you have to assume some sort of 'puppetmaster' that controls our body through some unknown means. I assume you fill that role with this putative magical entity called 'the spirit'.

As JLN, I too believe it is a case of mutual dependence. Neurons firing may cause thought, but that doesn't negate the possiblillity that what you think has a direct effect on how the neurons will fire.

As for a serious scientific study...

http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Neuroplasticity Here's a place to start.

http://home.att.net/~meditation/monks.brains.html And this is very interesting

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I do not see "neurons firing causing thought"; I see firing neurons as a corollary of thought--two sides of the same coin. Even the "cause" in your formulation suggests a temporal sequence that I find questionable. The firing neurons and the thought occur simultaneously, aspects of the same event.

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JL

You are right. As usual Smile

But some claim depressive thoughts cause altered neuron activity. Others claim that manipulating neuron activity can alter depressive thoughts.

What I am saying is that I believe that what we think decides how neurons fire, not the other way around.

Unless we believe that mental illness that is measurable in the neurons are caused by some mental virus, we have to assume either that altered neuron activity causes mental illness, or that mental illnes alters neuron firing.

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Cryacuz, can't your statement, "depressive thoughts CAUSE altered neural activity" be phrased, "the neural activity labeled "depressive thoughts" coincides with other neuron activity" not as separate things--one "causing" the other--but more like events occuring at two ends of a single stick or at the beginning and end of a single book?
Now a brain virus or drug may be conceived as interacting with the brain such that that very interaction IS (not causes) an altered neural activity.
I don't know; I'm just trying to think out loud (a bit drunk) non-dualistically.
I hope the perspective I take here is challenging if not convincing.

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:~:

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Quote:

can't your statement, "depressive thoughts CAUSE altered neuron activity" be phrased, "the neuron activity labeled "depressive thoughts" coincides with other neuron activity" not as separate things--one "causing" the other--but more like events occuring at two ends of a single stick or at the beginning and end of a single book?

I think so. I thinkwhat you're getting at is that thoughts and neuron activity is essentially the same thing.

If we couple that with the new discovery that the brain's grey matter grows and develops in accordance with what the mind is centered around (even in adults) we can say that the brain is actually an organism capable of self-guided evolution.

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wow.
I have been gone for two and half days (sickness, birthday), and I have to read so much! I am truly amazed.
so many things I have read, and they are all very wise.

for myself, I know that my thoughts (and feelings, whenever I write thoughts I mean both) alter my physics in a way. if I feel sad, or think sad thoughts, my body feels worse. when I have good thoughts- I feel better. that simple.
sometime I can control my thoughts, and sometimes I do not manage that good. you can put it that way- spirituality, or taking care of my spirit is having good thoughts.
because I am not my thoughts, it is possible.
have a nice day Smile

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Kim, I'm being such a contrary, I know, but it's my view that your ARE your thoughts (and your sensations--all your experiences). There's no YOU, no subject, of those "objects" of experience. "They" are not happening to "you"--they ARE you. The Hindus say "Tat Tvam Asi" (Thou art that). That realization is part of what I consider central to a "spiritual" life. Remember, the term "religion" consists of "re" and "ligio" or "ligare" (as in ligament): religion means to "reconnect" you with the Cosmos, Reality, God, Brahma, the Living Everything, etc.. Zen is the practice of realizing (most easily in meditation) that your feeling of separateness from everything are illusory. Right now "you", our computers, "me" and everything else are, in a sense, expressions of a SINGLE process (or at least they are not distinct and isolated multiple "things").

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in a way i agree with JLN. who you are is based on the inside. your body is nothing but a mask that can change how it appears to suite how you feel. it is your experiences, emotions, feelings and thoughts that makes who you are as a person. the sum of these equals your spirit. and as a Christian i will argue that God placed that spirit in you before you were born and that God has a plan for everyone, which is why every spirit is different.

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Rockpie, my "pitch" is VERY different from yours. Smile

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JLN wrote:

Rockpie, my "pitch" is VERY different from yours.

Just goes to show the universal nature of your ideas, JL.

In a way, I see self as a survivalinstinct made neccesary by our biological nature.
In more simple minded mammals this self manifests as fear, sexual drive, or the feeling of hunger, each leading directly to an action of response.
In humans, there is a function between the self as an emotional manifestation and the action an individual takes. This is the awareness of self. We feel hunger, but unlike those animals we can refrain from eating no matter how hungry we get. And the more hungry (or miserable in general) we get, the more consumed by sense of self we become.

Based on this I find autism to be an interesting subject. After reading a little about it I found that it is not unreasonable to state that an autistic mind can be an example of an intelligence functioning without a sense of self.

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Cryacuz, I agree that the self--the illusion of an ego-self--has been critical for our human species survival, which explains, I guess, its universality. How could we be social animals (which we had to be for survival) without having a point of reference ("I") in relation to other social objects ("you")? The world of processes (becomings) we treat as if they were things and categories of things (beings), and we see ourselves as one of those thingy-beings among others. The self is a critically useful fiction, and in everyday life I usually orient myself as an ego-self to everything else. But when I look I know better.
Notice that if you are right about the selfless autistic mind, you and I--unlike the autistic person--have a sense of self, but, with a shift of perspective (usually enabled by the practice of medication) we can see it for what it is.

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Quote:

. . . usually enabled by the practice of medication . . .

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JLNobody wrote:

Kim, I'm being such a contrary, I know, but it's my view that your ARE your thoughts (and your sensations--all your experiences).

if you allow me, I will take the roll of the Zen student:
then who is the one listening to the thoughts running in my head?

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what is spirituality?

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