---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
snip .....so easy to forget who pissed me off last week. progress. fresh air ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Curtis, we've done this dance before, and my toes still hurt! Please believe me when I say I had to read Nisargadatta's "I Am That" three times before my intellect felt like he was logically consistent. Each page seems to say the same thing again and again, and yet, it turns out every page has some substantive purport that's unique. You're smart...might only need two readings! He had good schtick. Same with Ramana. I disregard most neo-Advaitists, though, as not-ready-for-Divine-time. Aaaaaaaaaaaand, "word salad." Ahem, dude, you're wounding me like if I'd said, "What worth could a gasoline can guitar have?" I make my salads very carefully.....always with an eye on usage and definitions while trying to be as poetically free as I can be. Me: I was using that phrase for his words not yours! The gas can guitar has no worth on it's own. It is only when hands bring it alive to serve its divine purpose as a blues machine that kills fascists. When the hands put it down, it becomes just a gas can that can't hold gas again. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I'll take a crack... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : If all the buzzings of a brain are 100% obedient to the laws of chemistry and physics, where's the free will? Old question. Still bothers me. If it's all determined, then it's moot to suss out individuality. We're all "of a piece." If two atoms don't "know" each other, why would two "separate nervous systems" pinging back and forth with each other be said to be a stronger example of consciousness? More complex. Yes. But seemingly the same kind of phenomenon. And it's endless....the Ved has this story of some Goddess who made HER SHADOW go do stuff for her. IT'S ALL ALIVE! This is why I cling so to Nisargadatta's concept that awareness is prior to consciousness. With that POV, everything is a direct emergence from the Absolute, and the only hint of "real" about any of ALL THIS is the witness....which is said to be merely half real. Here's something I posted twice already: Nisargadatta Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be. Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active. Me: Believing that we are not the body is refuted by death itself. What he is describing sounds more like clinical dissociation than an exalted state worth pursuing. N:G: This is the heart of the problem. Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself -- and in full control of every event. Me: This is a grandiose claim isn't it? Who is in full control of every even and who is pompous enough to WANT to be? Many of life's delights are in being surprised by stuff we have not control over for good reason. NG:Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no 'me' in it. I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond. I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even. Me: Does this odd language appeal to you really Edg? It sounds so full of himself in the oddest way. It is like getting into an infinity plus one contest with another kid. He has run out of superlatives to describe his own mental state. Aren't we all a little tired of this kind of bloviation? NG: Questioner: In that case you are without name and shape. What kind of being have you? M: I am what I am, neither with form nor formless, neither conscious nor unconscious. I am outside all these categories. Q: You are taking the neti-neti (not this, not this) approach. M: You cannot find me by mere denial. I am as well everything, as nothing. Nor both, nor either. These definitions apply to the Lord of the Universe, not to me. Q: Do you intend to convey that you are just nothing. M: Oh, no! I am complete and perfect. I am the beingness of being, the knowingness of knowing, the fullness of happiness. You cannot reduce me to emptiness! Me: I guess whatever turns you on is all I can say about this condescending word salad. I am mystified by people being impressed with this kind of hypnotic language that refers to nothing other than a person's inflated view of their own inner state. I guess the manta I would give a guy like this is "getoveryourselfnamah." Wouldn't even charge him but I would make him bring me a side of North Carolina Ribs instead of the fruit flower and handkerchief. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Seems to me there's never not total consciousness. Heh. Two atoms "know" of each others existence -- this is seen when their motions change in strict correspondence to the others motions. They're "in touch." No true independence of each other. I would be willing to call this interaction "consciousness." I wouldn't be. In what way do they "know" anything? Surely to know something there has to be an inner sense that a presence has been detected and understood in some way even if it's just to ascertain whether it's a threat or not. This takes a lot of wiring, a lot of nerve and the accumulation of data that is passed on genetically - in the case of simpler life forms - or assessed individually as we can. We can do both two as we have two basic nervous systems,a spontaneous and a cogitative one. Two inanimate objects bumping into each other or neutron shells adjusting to each others presence isn't anything but blind action/reaction they don't have anyway of either registering the experience or adjusting the outcome. It's all down to the laws that explain the physical world and if they stop working we won't be around long enough to register it. Consider, too, that scientists can tell "what you're thinking" by inserting a probe into your brain that solely registers one single cell's activity. The cell is in a known-area of the brain, and if it lights up, well, we know you're dealing with, say, "thinking about walking." This is today's science. Crude, but coming along nicely. Yes, it's very impressive. Dreams have been recorded too. But it's not the same thing as your example above because brain cells are part of the most complex system in the known universe. And as the photons enter ones eye -- stars that died billions of years ago yet still affect our streams of consciousness. Blows my mind every time. So tired of trying to figure all this out. Easy to just relax and sip my fruit juice and not ever know anything for sure again, cuz certainty's a bitch. No harm in trying though... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Amazing, an animal of just one cell has a functioning eye. That puts the birth of consciousness right back to the beginning. Stimulus/response, a sensitivity to light. Start from there and work your way up. Select for improved vision by dying if you get caught and before you know it - OK a couple of billion years - you'll have a system of nerves and a processing unit to tell you what you're looking at so you don't have to run from everything. The evolution of complexity in a nutshell... This single-celled bug has the world's most extraordinary eye http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27730-singlecelled-creature-hunts-with-its-complex-eye-like-a-sniper.html#.VYp2RPlVikp http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27730-singlecelled-creature-hunts-with-its-complex-eye-like-a-sniper.html#.VYp2RPlVikp This single-celled bug has the world's most extraord... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27730-singlecelled-creature-hunts-with-its-complex-eye-like-a-sniper.html#.VYp2RPlVikp It doesn't even have a brain, but a type of plankton seems to use the smallest camera-like eye to catch nearly invisible prey using polarised light View on www.newscientist.com http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27730-singlecelled-creature-hunts-with-its-complex-eye-like-a-sniper.html#.VYp2RPlVikp Preview by Yahoo
