Well, teh buddhist idea is that when you peer deeply into your own mind, you'll see that "sense of self" is an illusion, and in fact, they are correct:
if you practice mindfulness and concentrative practices long enough, the disconnect between self-centers and the rest of teh brain that occurs during such practices should become outside of such practices, and tada! you find that "self" is an illusion because it has gone away. Some of the interviews of people in Rick's Buddha at the Gas Pump series seem to be claiming this, and I've seen interviews with other people who say the same thing. The long-term practice of TM and the long-term practice of most techniques other than TM (or Zen or Ch'an meditation) seem to be diametrically opposed in their outcome. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : She needs first to realize she's making a gigantic cognitive error in saying consciousness and the sense of self are an illusion. She can't possibly get anything else right (including TM pure consciousness research) if she doesn't see that the "illusion" idea is self-refuting. Doesn't really have anything to do with TM; it's just an incredibly stupid mistake about the nature of ordinary waking-state consciousness. As I said, she doesn't see any value in the TM Pure Consciousness research so she doesn't take it into account and consider the implications of a state of alertness in the brain without any content to be alert about. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote : Who has the "false idea" of the persisting self? Who is deluded by this illusion? Susan Blackmore has a new essay about consciousness research on her website. Food for thought: "Consciousness is not some weird and wonderful product of some brain processes but not others. Rather, it is an illusion constructed by a clever brain and body in a complex social world. We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will." http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25457 http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25457
