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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 27, 2016 - 08:28am PT
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JL,
I think your difficulty has to do with baggage attached to the words 'machine' and 'mechanical'.
I like what MikeL says:
I’d argue that what the “thing” (a conceit) is, can’t be said. It can be expressed-in-action, though. (I seem to be arguing this point in a number of places around here.) What a thing is and how it shows up in-action are different, but the same. It’s not possible to articulate the archetype, a universal model, a real framework. That’s why language is slippery. It’s only a description, but incomplete at that. Once one divorces themselves from theory and definitions and disciplines, then the words are like colors on a canvas.
Substitute machine for conceit in the above.
There are machines whose behavior cannot even in principle be predicted,
And on the other hand, how do you know that your own behavior is not automatic? Refusing to act on an impulse could be as automatic as responding to the impulse.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 27, 2016 - 08:35am PT
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MH2: And on the other hand, how do you know that your own behavior is not automatic?
:-)
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Dec 27, 2016 - 08:54am PT
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That's when things start to open up beyond machine behavior. Sufism is built on these mechanical pattern interrupts. Few people realize the extent of their mechanical mode of living till awareness to the impulses is "unstuck," or defused in a kind of individuating process akin to early child development, when virtually everything is unconscious and running on autopilot.
Estranged from all things Spiritual
Being raised on religion and science (the Nazarene Church and the the California public school system), religion was my primary belief system (nurture & comfort) and science was my backup belief system (logic & reason). At the age of twelve, religion traumatically became no longer nurturing or comforting to me. In my need to find an explanation for upheavals in my family life and core belief system, I tried to hold on to various spiritual beliefs for many years.
It was only after the recent loss of a close family member followed the catastrophic illness of my spouse that I finally saw the merit (IMO) of choosing to rely solely upon science to explain the known, and to look to the future of science to explain the unknown. Sufism, spirituality, metaphysics; they have no place is my world view or my understanding of consciousness, cognizance, or any kind of subconscious psychological workings of the brain.
Meditation, upon occasion, has been a solely therapeutic exercise for me, but has never revealed to me any portals to the soul or the metaphysical idea of the 'mind' as is discussed in this thread. Perhaps if I were to undergo another dramatic psychological upheaval as I have experienced on more than one occasion in my life, I might once again become more receptive to the idea of believing in something spiritual. Obviously, this is not something one would normally desire or wish for, and I would prefer to avoid any such experiences.
In the interim I shall remain a soulless, atheist anarchist. Perhaps Werner might chime in here and point out my cluelessness, to which I would probably have no response.
-bushman
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 27, 2016 - 09:38am PT
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if you had turned away and reported that house to us here, we would believe your "testimony" of having witnessed this scene...
in that case you would have reported your subjective observation (as it is unlikely that many others would have had the same response to the stimuli you had upon seeing "the house.")
so it starts a process... were it interesting, others would have gone out and looked for themselves... and you could then start the conversation about what you saw vs. what they saw... who was right, who wrong?
and you too could have gone back and looked again, and even in identical conditions you might not confirm your own initial "vision."
Lacking any understanding of this, what might you conclude?
In a physical model of perception, for instance in the functioning of neural networks, many neurons "vote" on the stimuli and the majority determine your response... its statistical... so there are outliers, etc... but in the end the process results in a pretty good answer, meaning that such networks tend to convey advantage to the individual and the species over the long haul (also a statistical statement).
Though there is obvious bias, and often the answer is "wrong," you saw a house where there was none.
A group of human "voters" can also go through a similar process, often coming to a better result than a single human judgement, but the possibility of getting something "wrong" is there too.
MikeL has been pointing this out for all groups of humans, including scientists, that the consensus view is not immune to such biases. Yet, interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a "better" way. That is because there is no such judge of "better or worse" in our physical view of the universe.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 28, 2016 - 04:19pm PT
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On a number of occasions I have caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye and thought it to be a bear or a human, only to find it was a tree stump. The mind always tries to interpret and accommodate, demonstrating the probabilistic nature of perception. The same thing happens conceptually to mathematicians from time to time when they feel their "proof" is adequate, only to review it the next day and find glaring flaws - things that seem so obvious. The mind tries so hard!
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 28, 2016 - 05:16pm PT
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The mind tries so hard!
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Though I've seen the occasional exception.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 28, 2016 - 08:21pm PT
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I said this years ago here that the mind and consciousness is faster than the speed of light.
Unfortunately the gross materialists are so locked into their narrow minded sterile world and suppress all except their limited little worldly view
which is no better than "their own flat earth knowledge" masquerading as science .......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 29, 2016 - 01:28am PT
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Refusing to act on an impulse could be as automatic as responding to the impulse.
---
You're still considering all of this from a stimulus response or machine model, imagining that I am somehow "struggling" to "get" that machine registration and sentient awareness are not selfsame, that machines are so powerful (per data processing) that what they Do is now beyond predictions. But this in no ways is even one step toward sentience because no amount of content or processing will ever be the same as being aware of that content. Believing otherwise is IME the blind sport afforded by a staunch 3rd person POV of mind. The observer independent model allows only to see and frame things consistent with that model. How can it be otherwise?
But there is still hope...
Try and imagine being where there is no "refusal" to act, and no automatic response to act either, both which require effort or action, even negative action The way you have it - a common miscue with early meditation students - is that abandoning all effort is in fact a kind of negative act or procedure or function that a machine could impose on itself. Not at all. In actual practice no-mind meditation is the radical allowing of the brain to do whatever it wants to do, automatically, totally on auto-pilot, while the aware subject makes no effort to change, alter, influence, or to move toward or away from whatever the brain is doing.
Trying NOT to do an automatic brain task or function is what leads beginning meditation students to attempt to "not think," strenuously efforting to squash thought, to hold it off with willpower or some technique - a tactic that never works, and also requires crazy effort.
Imagine stepping totally out of the mechanical acting or refusing to act cycle, where you get right down to the ground in which all automatic happenings occur and where observing same can be experienced as categorically different and prior to the acting/refusing to act merry go round.
More on this later, but understand that this cannot be grasped from a 3rd person perspective. A possible worm hole in for you might be to review what you said:
There are machines whose behavior cannot even in principle be predicted....
Look at the words "behavior" and "predicted." Simply note that both pertain to DOING something, some action, function, act or behavior that can be witnessed or measured from the outside, some result or response that we can grasp with our sense organs or measure by some means or at any rate describe as something we are DOING or NOT DOING. That is not it.
And DMT (wonderful post) and Ed, what you both are talking about is content, stuff that appears in our field of awareness. In my experience, the real shift occurs when awareness itself is finally experienced as basic, NOT the content, which will always be open to various interpretations.
There is a lot to be said per peer review, to what thousands of people say about something over hundreds of years. There is also something to be said for Honest Abe's words that you cannot fool all the people all the time.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 29, 2016 - 06:51am PT
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JL,
As in DMT's story, your brain molds what it finds into patterns it is familiar with.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 29, 2016 - 07:54am PT
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your brain molds what it finds into patterns it is familiar with.
That's why you can't trust the mind ever.
That's why meditation is so important.
But meditation has to be done correctly otherwise you're just fooling yourselves even more .......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 29, 2016 - 08:11am PT
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^^^^^^^
The Force is strong with this one.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 29, 2016 - 09:54am PT
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^^^
My opinion, too, but don't trust it.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Dec 29, 2016 - 11:03am PT
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Absolute Trust
by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.” (Job 13:15-16)
The patriarch Job was, according to God’s own testimony, the most perfect and upright man in all the earth (Job 1:8), yet he was subjected to the most severe testings that anyone (except Christ Himself) ever had to endure. He lost all his great possessions and his large family in a single day, then was afflicted for months on end with a most loathsome and painful disease. He lost the respect of all who had once honored and followed him, and was even accused by his closest friends of being a wicked sinner and arrogant hypocrite. Worst of all, the God whom he had loved and faithfully served all his life had apparently completely ignored his prayers for deliverance or even for understanding of what was happening to him. Finally, a presumptuous young religionist related what he (falsely) claimed was a divine message that even God had accused Job of sin and hypocrisy.
Yet, despite all this, Job never once lost his faith! “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” he insisted. “For I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25), and “he also shall be my salvation” (today’s verse).
What an example has been provided us by this ancient patriarch, whose knowledge of God’s Word, God’s love, and God’s great salvation through faith in Christ was only a small fraction of what we know now, with God’s complete revelation before us. The apostle James well reminds us of “the patience of Job,” probably the greatest example of all “the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience” (James 5:10-11). We can, like Job, know that He who created us deserves absolute trust. HMM http://www.icr.org/article/9681/
...we don't have to know everything to get it!
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 29, 2016 - 12:27pm PT
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the real shift occurs when awareness itself is finally experienced as basic
This has been your theme over many pages of this thread, JL. I think what you are saying is valid, and that by meditating one gains a different perspective on awareness. The state that you attain, however, is wholly dependent upon neuron activity in the brain affected by your subconscious, embedded goal of reaching this point of perception. We have seen in recent posts how the mind attempts to interpret what we perceive in various ways and present pleasing results like a djinn out of the bottle, accommodating our wishes. I think that is marvelous and makes the mind seem so much more than the sum of its neurons. I wish you well in your meditative journeys.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 29, 2016 - 02:17pm PT
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The map is not the territory. An apple is not an orange.
But if we reversed the names an orange could be an apple.
But we would still be saying, "An orange is not an apple."
Here is a story complementary to the one Dingus told us about seeing a house where there wasn't one:
This morning I went to the library to pick up a DVD I had placed a hold on. The library puts items on hold on a shelf where you can find them by your name on a paper printout.
I walked up to the shelf and reached out for AN CAIRNS, then noticed that the name was stuck inside a book, not on the outside of a DVD. I also noticed the DVD just to the left, also with AN CAIRNS. Okay, there were two of us. As is my won't, I took pictures of both items, then went to check out the DVD. As I got to the desk a librarian on the phone said something which caught my attention.
I checked out the DVD, walked to the grocery store, and then headed for the sauna.
On the way to the grocery store I realized I had forgotten what it was the librarian had said. At the time it had sounded significant: an unlikely coincidence, made more impressive by the coincidence which had preceded it.
I set myself to trying to remember what the librarian had said. I was pretty sure that it was one word, beginning with the letter 's' and having several syllables. Not a lot to go on, but the word should also have significance for me in connection to some recent experience. I was pretty sure of that.
I ran through a lot of words beginning with the letter 's', and other letters, having several syllables or not. Although some of the words I tested fit my conscious criteria, none of them felt right.
Somewhere between an hour and two after starting the search, the answer came. It was, "Golden Spruce." That is the title of a book written by the same author who wrote The Tiger, and who I saw giving a talk, thanks to my daughter, who is visiting us for Christmas.
The point I wish to make, here, is that the brain may be beguiled by pleasant suggestions, but can recognize fact in a forest of fancy, in addition to mistaking fancy for fact.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Dec 29, 2016 - 02:41pm PT
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I think that is marvelous and makes the mind seem so much more than the sum of its neurons.
Or of its bacteria.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151021135616.htm
Everyone must know by now that mitochondria were once independent bacteria confiscated and put to work in the slave galleys of our cells. They communicate with other organelles within the cell including most importantly the nucleus where chromatin is located.
As mitochondria they are already responsible for some of the amorphous chatter going on in our species most coveted possession, our brains.
The brain, like the heart, is very,very rich in mitochondria.
Now it could get easier to blame things we don't like about ourselves on the germs whispering in our ears.
Do we own our micro biome or does it own us?
Btw You recreational breath counters (like myself) might be interested in this piece:
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2016/12/rhythm-of-breathing-affects-memory-and-fear/
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 29, 2016 - 05:39pm PT
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Jgill: The state that you attain, however, is . . . .
A mere technical note:
If I understand what Largo is pointing to, it’s not a state that is unitary or singular. It’s all states. it’s just seeing them for what they are. What are they? We cannot say.
In my experiences, it’s the understanding just how far that stretches and reaches is the realization at-hand. There seems to be infinite mystery that one gets exposed to. Things don’t narrow down into an understanding. The understanding is ever-broadening and reaching. There is no singular understanding. That’s the seeming conundrum and paradox that one wrestles with.
EDIT: That is, if you care about such things, if those "issues" are what shows up in front of you. You know, none of us have hardly any say or control in what shows up in front of us. From my view, it seems pretty much as a done deal.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 29, 2016 - 07:47pm PT
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You know, none of us have hardly any say or control in what shows up in front of us.
Like these poor guys, eh?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 29, 2016 - 09:59pm PT
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When I engaged in the Art of Dreaming over forty years ago the most important aspect of the practice was forming intent. You simply told yourself you would have an adventure, without any sort of detail. Then you didn't think of that as you entered the state. I suspect the same is true of Zen practices. You form a vague intent to have an experience, then let go of it and proceed. The mind, like a djinn, creates that which you desire.
None of which has anything to do with physical reality, but gives you an exciting new perspective. Don't read too much into it. Awareness without a object may seem profound, but like much in life it doesn't go anywhere. Saddle up and go climbing instead.
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