---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote :
Sal, re your "I convert for evidence": As you are reading this post you are conscious of the screen in front of you, the sensation of your chair beneath you and the ambient noise. Glance across at another person sharing the room with you. Do you believe that they too are conscious of their surroundings. Yes, indeed, you do. But can you prove that they are aware? No you can't. But accepting that other humans are self-aware individuals is hardly a trivial fact. It structures your entire life. Yet it is not susceptible to scientific proof. Other people look and act like you so you assume they share your self-awareness. Sounds reasonable - but what scientific experiment can prove it? I'm conscious because of what's going on neurophysiologically in my brain. Given that everyone else - indeed all other vertebrates to varying degrees - has the same internal apparatus I don't need to prove that everyone else is conscious, not only because the onus for extraordinary claims is on the one making them but because it would have too profound a meaning for my - and therefore my alone - view of the world if they weren't. The fact is, somebody wrote the post I am responding to. Luckily I understood it, because if you aren't conscious then you must be a zombie and a damn clever one because you've been paying attention enough to have your own opinions and have attempted to come up with a meme that supplants my assumptions, which is clearly highly conscious behaviour. If I thought there was any chance you were a zombie I'd disregard your posts entirely. So you'll never be able prove to my satisfaction that you aren't conscious. In fact, the harder you try the less convinced I'll be! Maybe if you regularly appear on the Jeremy Kyle show.... Down the ages many people have claimed that the idea of a Transcendental Self (which we all participate in) has philosophical reasoning and personal, subjective experience to back it up and they have structured their lives around that belief. It can't be demonstrated scientifically, but so what? The evidence I would require to believe it must be attainable if this phenomena exists. To start we'd need to prove that the brain on its own is incapable of accounting for our conscious experience. Perhaps we'd also need a science of mind that cannot account for visionary experience, but if we have the capability of being amazed at ,say, new scenery or a profound idea then how can we prove that awe at transcendental experiences isn't a similar hormonal reaction to a shift in how we normally perceive things? Somehow we see a stereo image of reality with surround sound. This takes a bit of doing, it's also an illusion because there's no central processing unit in our heads where every sense joins up and a thing called "us" sits there and observes and decides what to do. We kid ourselves majorly about how our conscious experience works and about how much control we actually have over what responses we make to what is in front of us. Clearly, it's a highly sophisticated balance of functions involving a lot of different areas of the brain from basic reptilian stimulus/responses that all creatures have, to higher thoughts and ideas about the self which are exclusive to us (well, to me if you lot are zombies) it surprises me not one jot that it sometimes goes a bit haywire when we sit with our eyes closed and say funny words to ourselves over and over again. After all, it didn't evolve to do that or to be mindful. My idea is that when we meditate we separate the different parts of our brain that join up to contribute to our overall experience and we concentrate on,say, the bit that gives us the illusion of space when we aren't meditating. Extrapolate from that and we might get an explanatory science of mind that includes all experienced phenomena from day-to-day tedium to our subjectively awesome spiritual experiences. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : No wonder you need to claim an Emerson quote. Damn yanks were always confused but it must make perfect sense across the pond in the local parish. The quote was from Walt Whitman. But Emerson could have supplied a choice sentence. As could Thoreau or William James or Emily Dickinson. All Yanks and making perfect sense. If "we is all one" then why isn't there confusion of memories and identities between all these "apparent" individuals? That's the million-dollar question. Sometimes the wires do get crossed and there is just such a confusion - as when individuals claim to suddenly experience a previous life - as Barry has so claimed on FFL. Why should it be a previous life of Barry's and not the life experience of another man entirely as seen by The One, the transcendental self which is witnessing everything? As memories belong to our lower self they are localised to each individual brain/body. Normally each of us is locked into our own apparent and separate personalities. If we weren't the game of life would be a cacophony that would leave everyone paralysed so the seeming separation has a survival benefit. And this way we can love and hate each other. Exciting huh? If true. I suspect there's a rather easier way of explaining it. How about this "transcendental self" not actually existing and the reason we think it does is because we can occasionally attain states of mind where our normal cognitive apparatus is changed so that what we usually see as background space becomes all we see thus giving rise to the idea that this transcendental vastness is ever present but we don't normally see it? After all, the only evidence we have is down to experiences gained via drugs or meditation, it is thus very interpretation dependent - we have a good trip and look around for explanations, so far the only ones we really have are all of the "cosmic" variety, I'm expecting something that fits in with our knowledge of evolutionary processes. It's not as much fun granted, but a proper science of mind is going to have to take into account all experiences we can possibly have and the breaking up of normal functioning in meditation is going to be rather revealing as it's a quiet systematic process, I'm sure the correlation between areas of the brain are going to change at each claimed "level" of consciousness. Apart from the lack of something to re-incarnate, my main objection is an evolutionary one; if we could remember past lives it would be so amazingly useful we'd use the skill all the time, but we can't. That makes me suspect that all claimed experiences of such or flashes of other lives however gained are something else entirely. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emptybill@...> wrote : S3 Each of us is that One Self. Oh ... I get it. The great shruti of the Brahmarishi-s. "Us is One". No wonder you need to claim an Emerson quote. Damn yanks were always confused but it must make perfect sense across the pond in the local parish. If "us is one" then when my current thought "I am Emptybill" suddenly ends, as all thoughts do, why isn't my next thought "I am Bhari2"? And then my next thought ... "I am Willy the Moron or "Us Chanuchistani's need to stick together"? If "we is all one" then why isn't there confusion of memories and identities between all these "apparent" individuals?
