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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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the physical mind will go to any length to maintain dominance by denying the existence of the spiritual mind
I think you got that one backwards. Whoops! I jus read it again. Ur rigtht. What is it, our unnatural nature?
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Perfect!
Also perfect:
I've found this thread coming closer and closer to providing diminishing returns...
Yes, that’s perfect, too, Ed. Perfect description of the inevitable conclusion of every experience in the lower worlds. Have examples of exceptions? Just wait.
And here, it’s geometrically expanded, given a focus of attention like digging for ‘what the mind is’—executed and directed by no less than the mind itself. Somewhat akin to the proposition of John Sessions investigating Donald Trump.
There is one, and one only, exception to this destiny of experience down here. And that’s devotion to soul, its awakening and liberation, the Master, and the Sound Current. Simply because they are not indigenous to this world, but are composed of the same substance as the Divine Itself. Your soul, my soul, all souls. This is the only experience in the lower worlds—where we’re all living—that will continually expand, accelerate to breathtaking speeds, again and again, flood us with a love beyond imagining—so overwhelming that one begs for relief. And smother us in bliss until we're making fools of ourselves. There is no fading, no petering out, none of the familiar ‘diminishing returns’, no disappointments. The Master carries the Sound Current, and soul responds.
But this is all just something some guy said on ST. Isn’t it?
Only the bold and courageous, the sincerely desirous find out. We alone can prove the veracity of this journey.
Post Script: To insure I'm not misunderstood, the journey I'm referring to is not for the masses. It may not even be for anyone on this forum. I'm simply putting it out there on the off chance that one soul hears something that helps them on their path.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2017 - 09:02am PT
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Ed, you don't have to remind me of the many things I don't understand.
But I'm curious - did you ever get your head (er, make that your brain) around the phenomenon of awareness sans content, including the belief that "it's really your brain doing or not doing (fill in the blank)?"
Say we junk all thoughts of causation. Is is possible for you to imagine an ontological, of if you will, a conscious dimension, sans particles, stuff, forces, etc. that you could not reverse engineer back to the brain, and would not be independent OF the unified whole of experience?
My sense of your personal beliefs on consciousness is that we are under some false impression that what we are experiencing is not what is actually happening, which is a physical something we misinterpret.
What I'm saying here is to go beneath any and all that is "happening," including interpretations, notions of woo, et al.
What is left?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Larryhorton: Truth is simple. Always. To find it, one must guide one's attention in the direction opposite of mind. If mind is NOT our central reality, then what IS?
Perhaps nothing at all, Larry.
One cannot say what things are. All any of us have are displays, phenomena, manifestations (and even these words are woefully inadequate). On the one hand, there are practices (sutra) that focus on whether or not any thing has existence or not. Later approaches (latter yanas) focus on whether mind exists.
What these conversations here in this thread *can do* is expose conundrums, paradoxes, incommensurabilities, indefinites, indescribabilities, indeterminacies, mysteries, ambiguities, uncertainties, provisionalities, etc. that seem to be all around. Within those spaces, one might come to look more closely, wonder, and doubt.
There may be no need to produce answers. It’s the questions and glitches that are more durable. Questions seem to present more insight than answers from what I can see.
I’d suggest that mind is not the enemy. Mind seems to be one complex among an apparent infinite set of complexes. (Its substantiality has been compared to fleeting images / displays / manifestations in a mirror.)
Be well.
Ed: And he [Ted Chiang] reminds us that there are multiple quantitative descriptions of physical phenomenon, . . . .
But not qualitative descriptions? (Why only quantitative?)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Post Script: To insure I'm not misunderstood, the journey I'm referring to is not for the masses. It may not even be for anyone on this forum. I'm with the masses on this one (they're good company).
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The raising the arm miracle is pretty strong proof that consciousness does have an immediate effect on physical reality. The mind-body connection is not just hippy jive, but a simple fact.
Seriously, 15k posts and this is supposed to pass as news, an argument or a significant point? Crikey.
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Perhaps nothing at all, Larry.
Soul, in its seemingly endless incarnations through the lower worlds, must experience all things—ALL things. All of them have value, no matter how incremental. Nihilism is one of those experiences, Mike, and it seems a perfect fit. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
We must go through the mind to get to soul. But one day, many incarnations from now, having finally exhausted mind’s love of digging itself deeper into its own hole through posturing, cynicism, and endless circular questions, you too, will be able to know with absolute certainty that soul is indeed the central reality, because you will also have accumulated the good karma to request a meeting with the living Master of the time, and He will have awakened the slumbering soul within. You’ll soon be rushing through the ethers at Godspeed, blissfully on your way home. How will you know? Because life, as you’ve known it for eons, is forever changed, and you’ll never look back, approaching Mastership in your own universe with laser focus.
So no, mind doesn’t really exist. But that’s for another time. In fact, when time ceases to exist, mind goes with it. Something to chew on.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dingus asked a question I want to get to but have to work till 6. Maybe later. It's a good one. (JL)
I, too, find the "window-reflection" phenomenon intriguing. What can that tell us about reality & the mind, beyond the purely physical? Metaphor, allegory, ...? C'mon, Wizard.
Good to have you on the thread, Larry. Another perspective.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Ed, your comments about the calculus of variations triggered my memory of J. D. Mancill, who was department chair at Alabama in 1962 when I began graduate work there. I knew him only slightly, but my father mentioned that he was a leading light on the subject at that time and it was unfortunate he didn't offer a course in the subject, at least that's what I recall. He was a very nice gentleman and talked me into providing a beginning stat course in the Business School, when regular faculty weren't interested.
Number three here
I know very little about the subject.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2017 - 01:24pm PT
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Thinking out loud is good for the conversation, Dingus. Listening without judgement is an art form once one shifts attention from WHAT you are listening to, to the listening itself. What the hell does that mean? That most all of the "folk" knowledge we have about who is listening and the agency of listening and what we are listening to etc. shifts to the fundamental difference between the sound sensor found on one of the gadgets in my house, to the fact that Dingus IS consciously aware of the voices on his phone and his thoughts and the background noise and all the rest.
The comment: I know its been suggested here before, that awareness, attention, focus, consciousness, largo's 4-pillars (I may be mischaracterizing them, not purposely though) - are 'nothing more' than the brain's communication centers hard at work ---- all this underscores the point that communication (brain) centers ALL deal with WHAT is heard (in this regards) in the same manner as that sound sensor in my gadgets. They register sound. They deal with an input, audio signals, sound waves, and process that data for an output (action, like turning something on or off) but don't in any way imply or even hint at a conscious Dingus being aware of, and conscious of, any sound, whatsoever.
That is, the gadget registers sound. Dingus not only registers sound by way of "communication centers," he is consciously aware of those sounds. A sentactic engine registers and nothing more. No one is going to say that the gadget in my house is consciously registering sound. The idea is absurd - we can easily see why.
The only bigger folly that not realizing the difference between said gadget and Dingus himself, is to attribute Dingus' listening to some magical "thing," which is just shifting the imagined source of listening from the brain to some other mechanism, this one magical.
Here we have the core of functionalism, which is always an attempt to figure the consciousness process from the outside, from a 3rd person perspective.
While you might argue with Dingus on his take per what he just presented, it is derived from a direct 1st person perspective OF experiencing, and if nothing else will give us another perspective on what we all experience all the time, but typically try and render in the 3rd person.
And IME, separating the mind (what registers the sounds etc.) from the brain IS impossible. But noticing the difference between the appearance of sound, and the fact that you are aware of it, is something you CAN do. And Mike commented here:
Ed: And he [Ted Chiang] reminds us that there are multiple quantitative descriptions of physical phenomenon, . . . .
But not qualitative descriptions? (Why only quantitative?)
--
Because when Ed looks at mind he is doing so not form the inside, but from the outside, from a 3rd person perspective. This has always worked when he has been looking at various models and interpretations of the same dancing particles (which I don't understand), and so quite naturally, he approaches the mind/consciousness questions the same way, looking for a mechanism.
Simply note that with an external mechanism, or POV or anything, including the entire pathway of (fill in the blank), a quantitative appraisal is all that is needed. There IS no more to it. With mind, as we know, there is an subjective/ontological dimension - known in the philosophy he demeans at all possible junctures - that Ed would probably swear to is is in fact, itself, also just another physical dimension, but which we mistakenly believe is something it is not. Pretty much a case of a person never finding what he is not looking for in the first place, then, from his fixed vantage, saying we are mistaken about what we are seeing, since we don't understand the physics ...
Grrrrrrrrrrr That's a type A materialist, ladies and gentleman. Won't change perspectives and won't change his mind. Never had to before, so why change now?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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This sound system comes with an elaborate feedback mechanism. Neurons do more than just relay signals forward into the brain. They also signal back down the line, reaching out to neighboring neurons tuned to nearby frequencies, exciting some and muzzling others. These feedback controls allow us to sift through incoming sounds for the most important information, so that we are not overwhelmed by meaningless noise. In young brains, the neurons and their feedback controls grow and link up to each other. Even in adulthood, experiencing new sounds can rewire the auditory cortex. If a rat is trained to recognize sounds at a particular frequency, the corresponding region of the tone map will get bigger.
Tinnitus arises when this flexibility goes bad. Things may start to go awry when toxic drugs, loud noises, or even whiplash cause damage to the nerve hairs in the ears. The injured nerve hairs can no longer send signals from the ear to the tone map. Bereft of incoming signals, the neurons undergo a peculiar transformation: They start to eavesdrop on their neighbors, firing in response to other frequencies. They even start to fire sometimes without any incoming signals. As the brain’s feedback controls get rewired, the neurons end up in a self-sustaining loop, producing a constant ringing. That is why tinnitus often doesn’t go away when people get their auditory nerve surgically cut.
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/26-ringing-in-the-ears-goes-much-deeper
And in the words of neurosurgeon Dr. Jack Kruse:
Tinnitus is the brain trying to heal itself but it cannot. Tinnitus arises when this flexibility goes bad inside of the mitochondria. It’s mitochondria in Ammon’s horn looking for the right frequency so mitochondria can increase tunneling speeds and become better able to use beta oxidation for fats and the TCA cycle for glucose. The key to understanding neuronal function is understanding how a reflex organizes the entire nervous system. This goes back to the work of Sherrington in the 19th century. Bereft of incoming signals, the neurons lose the feedback control and they begin to do things they usually would not. This is what gives the phantom sounds of tinnitus. Neurons tuned to the tinnitus frequency in the auditory cortex became less active, thus this alters the reflex arc between the cochlea and the auditory cortex and brainstem. In all of these places, their is wide spread energy deficits in mitochondria that reduce the activity of neurons. Calcium efflux is usually behind this secondary effect of lower energy out put of tissues. It turns out out of the 5 senses hearing using the most energy because of its ability to distinguish waveforms is so sensitive. For example all humans can tell the difference between a sound that is 30 Hz or 60 Hz. The same is not true about our eyes and vision. Few people can sense the difference between a pulsing light at 30 cycles a second versus 60 cycles a second.
You want a take-away Dingus?
Get the phones out of your ear. They are impairing the ability of your mitochondria in that part of your body from functioning properly. Good thing is that your body is telling you so.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dingus: What I mean is the faculties needed to really and truly listen.
What IS that? (Largo beat me to the question.) It seems to me that listening points to the dharmakaya . . . the inherent emptiness of space, which the Buddhists believe is absolute potential. My friends in this thread and in the "Science vs. Religion" thread find that difficult most of the time. What kind of insanity believes in nothing so that it could be open to others’ interpretations . . . or even no interpretations? As Bryan has suggested on the other thread, if you believe in nothing, then it’s a sign of psychosis . . . one must need help.
I like your post. Very much. Cheers.
Larry:
(Can I just call you Larry here?)
You’re bringing in some new perspectives—mainly, soul. Good.
(As you might have noticed, I seem to be into nihilism.)
I also agree with you that we seem to be addicted to experiences—if that’s what you *are* implying.
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WBraun
climber
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As you might have noticed, I seem to be into nihilism.
That is terrible and you will suffer more terrible than any atheist .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2017 - 05:13pm PT
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I was watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, from 1979, when the Voyager 6 space probe "amassed so much information that it achieved consciousness."
This is one of the most insidious Sci Fi themes of them all: That quantifications, information, data, and the shuffling, layering, and interpolation of a physical data stream, and all of it phases, invariably leads/gives rise to, or sources, being consciously aware of same.
Another Sci Fi theme is that if you only understood how specific patterns of matter and forces can give rise to multiple outcomes, all "true," you'd understand how 3rd person phenomenon (external objects, phenomenon, and processes) might birth 1st person experience that really are physical functions we misinterpret as "experience."
What confuses people, IMO, is that normal consciousness has a mechanistic dimension that feeds it content, but the arrival of that content "postulates consciousness" a priori, and that's the rub.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What confuses people, IMO, is that normal consciousness has a mechanistic dimension that feeds it content, but the arrival of that content "postulates consciousness" a priori
What shows confusion to me is when people try to use philosophy where biology would be a better choice, and vice versa.
Same with the soul, which we are never going to put in a weighing pan. Soul is a wonderful concept, very important, and no one can be called wrong if they believe that some part of us continues to exist after death. But if you insist on soul as a fact, your credibility is diminished, IMO.
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WBraun
climber
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The spiritual soul within every living being is an absolute fact.
The consciousness of the spiritual soul is the source of life that animates the entire material existence.
The clueless modern materialistic scientists are always ultimately in poor fund of knowledge.
Tough sh!t for my so called illusionary credibility as it never ever depends on YOU ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2017 - 06:47pm PT
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What confuses people, IMO, is that normal consciousness has a mechanistic dimension that feeds it content, but the arrival of that content "postulates consciousness" a priori
What shows confusion to me is when people try to use philosophy where biology would be a better choice, and vice versa.
Of course, MH2, you are never confused. And I invite you to how biology is ANY choice, offers any explanation whatsoever, or any indication is any way shape or form, that it mechanistically sources your awareness.
Sourceing WHAT you are aware of ("mind" in the model I follow) is a biomechanical process, governed by physical laws.
But content and being aware of same are vastly different phenomenon.
And as Mike pointed out, attempts to reckon emptiness or no-thing from a 3rd person perspective will always give you wonky results. But note that the discursive mind will always try and interpret nothingness in terms of some effect, phenomenon or content, including "psychosis," which again is just twisted content. Remove the phychosis and what is left?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think you misunderstood the different ways of describing the universe, the variational calculus is not "mechanical"...
and it actually provides a very nice possibility for incorporating individual experience as a part of the description... if you stretch a little (but you're not going to).
Maintaining the view that everything is "physical" is very much the opposite of being closed minded, it actually is quite expanding. But I'll let you all to puzzle that one out, perhaps you can see past your well worn prejudices.
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