VincentRJ

9 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

If we can accept that consciousness is at the basis of all things, including us, and that consciousness, in its most fundamental definition, is "All That Is", it follows that we are always part of this consciousness, right now.... on the physical level, on the level of the mind and on the "super-mental" level (the level that transcends and includes the mind and the body). 

This point of awareness that we call "I"....where is it?
The first reaction of most people is "Here, this body. That's me."
Where exactly in your body?
Well...here, in my eyes...in my brain!
Can you pinpoint the exact location?
Ok, maybe it's not the brain but the mind. That's where the "I" is. Memories, thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes....that's me.

But when you were born, you didn't have any of those. Was it still you?
Well, of course it was me, but.... errr, I don't know....

If I take away all your memories right now, will there still be a "you"? Or will you slump down dead like a sack of potatoes? Feelings come and go. You see them rising, you see them falling away. They appear on the screen of your consciousness. The same with thoughts. You are the "I" that observes them all.

 

Now it gets interesting.

So where is this "I" that comes before the first memories, thoughts, feelings?

 

In meditation I strive to first relax the body, then the mind. The mind is then prepared like a horse. I put the mouthpiece on, the blinders and hold the reins. Everyone can do it. You train your mind to stay focused on one thing and not fall pray to the wild monkey thoughts. Every time a monkey takes hold of you, you simply come back to your anchor, which in my case is a mantra, but can be a multitude of other things. And so, the monkeys will come less frequently and finally leave you alone. What you're left with is a calm, open mind...and silence. This state of mind is the best conductor towards revealing the true "I". The rational mind is not at work here. The true "I" lies beneath the mind, behind our thoughts, memories and feelings. This must be practiced and experienced first-hand. It can not be understood on an intellectual level, because the mind is the very thing that covers the observer behind it. When the mind subsides, the observer becomes stronger and we are able to widen our perspective (climb the tree trunk). 

For those rare people that have taken this to the final stage, a radically different world becomes evident. They may appear the same on the outside, but their "I" identification is no longer in the body-mind, they are now speaking from the perspective of the One Consciousness. "I" is for them the One Consciousness. 

To come back to enlightenment. What is meant by enlightenment is simply that first moment when consciousness realizes (remembers) itself completely and permanently. You can have several mystical experiences, many insights and awakenings before, but those are not permanent. You cannot be "un-enlightened" however. And why would you? You can still chop wood and carry water, while effortlessly resting as that One Consciousness.

 

I don't know if this is how Vedanta or any other philosophy or religion explains it. This is how I explain it.
 

What an amazing amount of confusion over a simple concept of 'what and where' is the "I". Do we have such confusion about 'what is a car', or 'what is a house', or 'what is a tree'?

The quality of consciousness in humans, and our capacity for abstract thought, gives us the ability to name both objects and subjects, and make distinctions between them, which is a necessity for all scientific enquiry and all human activity.
Can you imagine anyone being able to function and survive if they were not able to distinguish between a house and a car, or a rock and a tree, or their arm and their leg, or themselves and someone else, and so on?

The reason why this issue of 'who am I?' becomes a problem, is due to greed, and attachment to things which or not "I". Because people usually 'feel' attached to their beautiful house, for example, they consider it a part of themselves. They are the owner. When the house is destroyed during a flood or cyclone, the owner will probably suffer emotionally, even though they themselves have not been injured in any way. If they are not the owner, and are just renting the house, they will probably not suffer nearly as much, unless their material possessions (which are not them) were left in the house when it was destroyed.

What's the point of suffering because a material object has been damaged or destroyed? Oh! I see! You think material objects have consciousness, just like you do. 

12 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

 

And your point is?

 

Are you trying to understand what the Seth material is via parapsychology treatises on mediumship?

Well, one of my points is that Seth is a fictional character created by a female author who suffered a very traumatic childhood, and who had many health problems throughout her life, dying at an early age of 55.

I'm no expert on 'Seth', and I have to admit that until I searched the internet for information about him, I assumed he was a real person rather than a 'fictional' character created by the female writer, Jane Roberts, whilst she was in many states of some type of trance, communicating with the paranormal.

Her life and writings should be a fascinating subject for parapsychologists. Following are a couple of articles which address her beliefs and her background, which seems quite awful, and which must have influenced her later writings.

https://sethresearchproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Cunningham_Contribution-to-the-Study-of-the-Possession-Trance-Mediumship-of-Jane-Roberts_Journal-of-Parapsychology-2019-832-248-267.pdf

"Dorothy Jane Roberts was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, on May 8, 1929, the only child of Delmer and Marie (Burdo) Roberts. In 1931, when Jane was two years old, her father and mother divorced. For the next five years, Jane lived on welfare with her mother in half of a rented house shared with her mother’s parents in a relatively poor neighborhood of Sarasota Springs. It was during this time that Jane’s mother began to develop a long-standing rheumatoid arthritis condition that eventually made her bedridden—the same disease of which Jane would die in 1984 at the age of 55. Being raised a Catholic, priests in the parish regularly visited the house to offer help to the family. The sexual overtones of these visits is disclosed in Jane’s recollection about “how the one priest who put her to bed when she was but 3 or 4 years old would ‘play’ with her sexually, and how Marie finally figured that out” (Roberts, 1997, p. 222).
My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in. She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats . . . One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she’d scream that she was sorry I’d ever been born—that I’d ruined her life . 
To escape this unhappy childhood, Jane wrote poetry. By the testimony of those who knew her during these early years, Jane always wanted to become a writer and devote her life to writing poetry, novels, and short stories."
 

This next article addresses her psychic, mediumship processes. It's very convoluted. 

https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/9856/ShawA0516.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

"Writing from the 1960s through the early 1980s, Jane Roberts claimed to channel the teachings of a discarnate energy personality named Seth.  My purpose in this project will be to show that the Seth material, even as a product of the New Age movement, can be read according to the same principles that scholars have developed for approaching the channeled texts of previous eras.  
Because the Seth material comprises dozens of works over thousands of pages, I have focused my investigation on a single text: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto.  Written by Roberts, the book is a memoir which describes her experiences as a medium.  Through various close readings of the manifesto, and by situating the work in a historical and cultural context, I demonstrate that The God of Jane functions as an interpretive guide for reading New Age channeled texts.  In addition, I find that Roberts is not only a literary medium, she is also a literary theorist, who translates the tradition of mediumship into the latter half of the twentieth century."   
 

20 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

 

No. 

 

 

Yes.  Consciousness creates form.  Form does not create consciousness.

 

 

What is consciousness?

I don't see how that question debunks the theory of evolution in any way.

'Consciousness' is a very broad term. The simplest definition is 'awareness', that is, 'the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings'. According to this definition, it seems reasonable to assume that all forms of life, including plants, must be conscious to some degree and in some way.

However, because there are numerous types, levels and degrees of consciousness, one has to clearly define what type and level of consciousness one is referring to when examining consciousness from a scientific perspective.
A unique quality of human consciousness is our higher capacity for abstract thought, which allows us to develop complex languages and make distinctions between numerous 'forms', and label them, using language.

Form is created by 'human consciousness', because 'form' is a word created by humans. Every idea, concept, thought, word, scientific theory, non-scientific theory such as a creator God and all the other Gods throughout human history, are creations from human consciousness.

However, the issue that's most relevant to any life-form, including microbes and bacteria, is the accuracy of its 'conscious creations' and its ability to adapt to a changing environment, and avoid accidents and mistakes, for the purpose of survival and reproduction.

All life is in a constant competition for survival and reproduction. There are no exceptions that I'm aware of. If you know of any, please enlighten me.

A Buddhist monk might be stting peacefully in a temple or cave, pleased that he avoids all activities that can kill life, such as digging the soil whicn can kill worms and insects.
Yet he is probably not aware that within his own body there's a constant battle between competing microbes and bacteria and the human immune system.

The number of 'killings' each day within just one human body is astronomical; far too numerous to count.

2 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

 

2 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

Evolution is a great lie.  You just need to question it.    Question everything.  Especially, most especially when it agrees with you. 

Can I assume that you are joking? Is there a better explanation for the development of millions of different species on the planet? What sort of questions should be asked that would show, or imply, that 'evolution is a great lie'?

On 10/28/2023 at 12:05 PM, Neeranam said:

“Happiness is not something that happens outside of you. It’s something that happens inside of you.”

Everything we experience and think about, occurs inside of you, including all the emotions of happiness, hatred, depression, anxiety, and all the experiences of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing.

However, everything is connected, and therefore the conditions of the outside will always influence, to some degree, what happens inside of you.
 

11 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

Now what rubs me the wrong way with both Lao Tze's quote and Brainly's interpretation is the use of the word 'true'.  I will insist that it's an inappropriate word as it must imply that anything other that true is false.  I would replace 'true' with 'greater' wherever possible to make it more accurate.  Whilst it is certainly true that language has it's limitations then once aware of the fact it then becomes even more important to use this limited tool as accurately as possible.  Which means using those words which most accurately convey the meaning intended and are less prone to be interpreted other than the intended meaning. 

That's is a good point. The precise meaning of the words we use is a very significant issue. When one searches the dictionary for the meaning of any word in common usage, there are often many variations and synonyms, and the meaning often changes with the context.

However, the numerous scientific disciplines have to create words that are much more precise.
According to my search on the internet, the average English speaker knows, or recognizes, about 40,000 different words, but around half of those are only partially understood, and not understood well enough for active use, so the average English speaker uses only around 20,000 words.

The full Oxford English Dictionary list about 500,000 words, but it's estimated there are another half million technical and scientific words that are not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. The field of Biology alone has over 70,000 precise terms, which is almost twice the number of words that the average English speaker has stored in his/her memory.

However, there appears to be hundreds of 'branches' of the major scientific disciplines. The following Wiki article lists them, but doesn't provide a total number. Perhaps someone has the time to count them. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_branches_of_science

16 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

This one is for you @thaibeachlovers

 

 

Did you paint that, Sunmaster? That's an excellent painting,  but it looks as though you changed your mind and added a second painting of additional clouds above the original painting.

Perhaps you bought the painting, then decided to improve it by adding the additional sky and clouds which you painted yourself. 

1 hour ago, Tippaporn said:

 

• Epistemological dualism, the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by neural processes in our brain

The above quote from Wiki is the most relevant to the issue of 'reality' which is often discussed in this thread.

Here's the definition of Epistemology: "The theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion."

'An internal perceptual copy of that world, generated by neural processes in our brain', is equivalent to 'an individual interpretation, in the brain, of everything a person experiences through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.'

Since all individual humans are both genetically different to some extent, and have different 'early' experiences embedded in their subconscious, which 'unknowingly' affect their opinions and motives, and have different experiences during their education and development, which also affect their 'path' through life, their likes and dislikes, and so on, then it's no wonder there is such a wide range of different beliefs and opinions, amongst humans, which sometimes result in devastating conflicts and wars.

In other words, everyone has  at least a slightly different sense of 'reality'. Even Buddhist monks who strive to experience a reality which is free from the influences of the 5 senses, have disagreed on many issues during the past 550 years or so, and continue to do so.

3 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

While your response to TBL does not flat out say "I believe in a single reality" it is, however, implied.  It is impossible to express such sentiments while holding to the belief that other realities exist for the two are contradictory.  Your nous would tell you that, correct? 

Of course there isn't a single reality. There are trillions of life forms on our planet, and they are all different to some extent. Even creatures of the same species are all slightly different, so I would estimate, as a very rough guess, that there are around 500 quadrillion realities on our planet, and possibly much more.

Each lifeform has its own reality, although the reality of members of the same species tends to be very similar.

As I've mentioned before, reality is an inseperable combination of the environment and the subject experiencing the the environment.
The reason why science tends to focus more on objectivity than subjectivity is because the environment is absolutely essential for life to exist. However, life is not essential for the environment to exist, although it's true that the existence of life does change the environment to some extent.

A Buddhist monk sitting in a cave, meditating 16 hours a day, for 20 years, and imagining another reality, still needs the environment to survive, the air to breath and the food to eat. But the air and the plants and the oceans do not need the Buddhist monk.

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

God isn't a whom, and we will all find out when we pass over to the other side as to why. I doubt God cares if we know or not while we are here.

Would knowing make any difference to your life?

Surely, in order to 'find out when we pass over to the other side as to why', there must be a thinking and conscious mind that continues to exist after the body has died. That is, a mind that functions without a brain. Wow! How miraculous! 

What seems more plausible to me is that death is like going to sleep without ever waking up. It's the end. It's all over for the individual. There's nothing to worry about and nothing to think about any more. It's equivalent to perfect and everlasting peace, which is why I prefer this idea, in the absence of any sound, contradictory and scientifically valid evidence..

5 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

 

I gave you a thumbs up for the clarity with which you express your reasoning.  And given your beliefs your reasoning seems quite solid.  Seems.    Seems because you're missing much data in the mix of your current data set upon which your reasoning is based.  Also, you presume that your assumptions are correct.  And in the context of this discussion your prime assumption is the idea that our dear old mother earth, the entirety of our precious physical universe, and the 'you' that you see in the mirror is all there is.  All of the data that you pull from the massive data set which exists and is currently available to you you then attempt to fit to make your assumptions true.  Data which does not fit is discarded.  Other assumptions which would show your assumptions to be false you reject as well.

 

I think you should begin by making a specific reference to what I've writtem that you interpret as my having a prime assumtion 'that our dear old mother earth, the entirety of our precious physical universe, and the 'you' that you see in the mirror is all there is'.

Perhaps we should start with the definition of 'assumption'. The following definition is the most common.
"a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof"

Didn't I give two examples in my post that you are responding to, which distinguish between an estimate of probability, that Dark Matter and Dark Energy exist as an explanation for the observed accelerating expansion of the universe, and the certainty of religious people that God exists?

Perhaps the problem is the paradoxical way we sometimes use language. I recall stating in a previous post that 'I believe in the true methodology of science, which requires repeated experimentation that produces consistent results before something can be accepted as true, but true only with a high degree of probability.'

However, the word 'believe' is a synonym for 'assume', which is to accept that something is true without proof. Therefore, if I say, 'I believe in a methodology which requires proof', it's equivalent to saying, 'I assume without proof that there exists a methodology which requires proof.' 

Also, I don't know why you are accusing me of cherry-picking data that fit my assumptions, and discarding other data which do not fit my assumptions. I agree that many people do this, but I am not one of them. I try to consider all sides of the argument that are availabe to me, and use my nous (capacity for rational thinking) to assess what seems most probably true.
 

5 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Yes, that's fine. The problem is that a lot of people equate the non-detectability with non-existence, which I'm sure you'll agree, is a giant logical faux pas.

 

Not quite. We have to make a distinction between a logical and rational inference that something, which cannot yet be detected, might exist, because it's the best explanation for certain observed phenomena; and an illogical claim of certainty that something which cannot be detected, does in fact exist.

An example of the former, is the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. It's existence is inferred from observations of the behaviour of distant galaxies. However, it's existence cannot yet be confirmed because Dark Matter and Dark Energy cannot yet be detected. There are other explanations for the observed accelerating expansion of the universe, but they are more problematic and flawed than the hypothesis of Dark Matter and Energy.

An example of the latter is the certainty (or belief) that God exists, despite no confirmed and proven detection. This is an example of the 'giant logical faux pas' you refer to.

2 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

When we talk about the material world, that includes things we can not touch like the electromagnetic spectrum, which is not the same as the subjective world. 

Science (the soft sciences at least) try to dab into the subjective world but don't go very far and their findings are shackled by the materialistic paradigm they stem from.

 

Again, science is a tool to make sense of the material world, including non-material forces like electricity, gravity, magnetism etc. It's a very useful tool when applied in that context. 

However, when applied to the inner subjective reality, its usefulness leaves much to be desired. The analogy of the katana sword I mentioned in my previous post is very fitting here as well. 

As I've mentioned before, science can only investigate what can be detected. If a berieved woman claims she is seeing her deceased husband at the dining table, then other people at the dining table can determine whether or not the deceased husband exists in reality, by applying the most basic methods of sight and waving their hand through the claimed location of the deceased person.

It is reasonable to speculate that the woman is hallucinating, but suppose she is lying. Science doesn't have sufficiently sophisticated technology to detect a picture of the deceased husband in the woman's mind, but the technology is sufficiently developed to detect her degree of berievement.

This is not a shackling of science by a materialistic paradigm. Science recognises the enormous complexities of the variations within each individual. We are all different, to some degree. Even identical twins are not really identical. A very carefully researched drug used to treat a particular ailment, can be very effective on some people, and perhaps most people, but not all people. Some people, because of their genetic conditions, life-style, and diet, might respond negatively to the same drug.

Likewise, the individual experience of a particular Guru, resulting from certain practices, might be similar to the experiences of other people employing the same practices, but not similar to everyone's experience employing those practices, because of the differences in each person's background, genetic condition, past experiences, previous lifestyle, previous medical conditions, and so on.

1 hour ago, Tippaporn said:

 

The placebo effect, the schmacebo effect.  As long as it works what's the complaint?

 

Because such a belief system can also have harmful effects, known as the Nocebo effect, which is the opposite of Placebo.
When two different religious groups engage in war, it's at least partly because each group has a Nocebo effect on the other group.

Why?  Tough nut to crack in a singular objective world.  Might it have anything to do with that other world?  You know, that subjective one?  The one that you ignore?  Question:  What is a belief and what are a belief's effects? 

I don't know why you think that scientific enquiry ignores the subjective world. The subjective world and the objective world are inseperable. This is why it is impossible to be 100% objective and unbiased, because everything we experience or think about is fundamentally related to, and influenced by, our basic characteristics as a Homo Sapien species.

Every experience, smell, taste, feeling, sight, hearing and thought process, is an interpretation in the human mind. Some interpretaions are considered to be correct, when they work consistently, and many are considered incorrect because they don't work consistently.

The so-called spiritualists, often claim that science in general focuses on the material world, and ignores the non-material world. This is obviously not correct, because the Electromagnetic Spectrum, is non-material, that is, it has no mass. The Photon has no mass, yet everyone with eyesight experiences the effects of this non-material, massless energy, which science has been investigating for centuries.

Of course, science cannot investigate things which it cannot detect, but it can examine the processes that take place in the mind using techniques such as 'Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)', and Electroencephalography, or EEG. Such proceses are limited, but will presumably improve in the future.

41 minutes ago, Tippaporn said:

 

Obviously not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally.  But some do anyway.

 

But that's just a side issue to the important part of Mark Nothing's post, which deserves the focus.  Which is that he found success with it.

 

The placebo effect has been scientifically confirmed. It is estimated that about 30% of the efficacy of all pharmacological drugs is due to the placebo effect, that is, the belief of the patient that the drug will be effective.

There have been experiments with two groups of people suffering the same problem. One group is given nothing, and the other group is given a placebo. The group given the placebo shows some improvement in their condition, whereas the other group shows no improvement.

In light of this, I now have to admit that I shouldn't be making fun of the 'placebo' stories in the Bible. They are not literally true, but a belief in them might have an advantageous effect in curing some problem, if the belief is strong enough.

2 hours ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

My google search found this. He is a christian after all. 

 

Later in John 7: 37-39 Jesus once again speaks of living water, saying, “'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. ' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

 

 

My google search also revealed many religious references like the one you quoted, but I'm reluctant to propagate nonsense. 

My belief is in the true 'methodology of science'. This methodology, as I understand it, requires at least some degree of skepticism on all theories, so that any flaws in a theory can be investigated, using a method of enquiry and investigation which is as objective and as unbiased as possible.

Unfortunately, being biased and acting in accordance with an established, politicised, agenda, is normal human behaviour.

Sorry! I was being sarcastic. A Google search revealed the following:

"Exceptional purity from pristine wilderness artesian water with a balance of minerals filtered through the best system that exists. Uncontaminated Nature."

https://gtglivingwater.com.au/

1 hour ago, Sunmaster said:

Sorry, what is living water?

Water which is full of life, such as bacteria and microscopic organisms.