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ron gomez
Trad climber
fallbrook,ca
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As far as Historians go sully.....klk has got my utmost respect, as said up thread..............two of the brightest, most intelligent lights along the spectrum here. Go read some of his research in climbing alone, you should agree, he is a true scholar, as is Gill........and Haan! That's not to mention the level of intelligence the poser, errr I mean, poster himself has.
Peace
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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And that awareness is easily disrupted with any of a myriad of insults to the the meat brain. I would argue that 'awareness' and 'mind' are not emergent, but simply what the brain 'is' and 'does'.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Largo
You say: "WHAT'S MORE, YOU CONTINUE TO BACK OFF THE FIRST PITCH HERE: SIMPLY LET GO OF MEAT BRAIN OBSESSIONS, GOD, NON-GOD, PRIESTCRAFT, AND ALL IDEAS ABOUT WHATEVER, GET JIGGY WITH YOUR DIRECT EXPERIENCE, AND REPORT BACK, IN THE SIMPLEST TERMS, WHAT YOU SEE GOING ON."
I see you as the wannabe chief herding cat here. There have been diverse sound critical voices all the way, and you stick to repeating your one point of view and your reasoning is all the way abstract. You are putting some values into the words "direct experience" and you are certainly excluding sound critical reasoning. To a scientist sound critical reasoning could be seen as part of his direct experience, since it is part of his expertise, his skilled ability to recognize patterns. And your point will possibly be that what is important is to let pattern recognition go and concentrate on emptying your mind and then see what happens. And I could answer: Why? I have a good time climbing, sometimes I get the feeling of flow while climbing, sometimes my mind is quite empty, open and relaxed, at other times I am focused and sharp, at times I am having a good time with my friends, at other times I am absorbed into my work and I have no sense of time, at other times I am enjoying a good meal in good company. Why spend my time on a cushion meditating to get the experience of empty mind more often? Why is this an ideal and something important to you?
Now I will let you be the chief guru for a while. Picture this: See us all as disciples bowing before you as the guru of direct experience and let us see what you mean by direct experience in the simplest terms. Give us your own direct experiences in the simplest terms for the next ten seconds.
You will possibly be hearing an ironic voice behind this text, but look beyond it, the last statement is not ironic. Give us your own direct experiences in the simplest terms for the next ten seconds.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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I feel energized! Consciousness is wonderful . . . I watched the sun rise in all its glory this morning. My brain is sharp. Next step: acquiring a body!!!
The Thread
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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OK. Last point and then I'm outta here.
Appeal to Authority is a mistake in logic. For example:
"There is an electron because all of the scientists say so."
That is appealing to authority, although it is usually used in other areas, such as politics. Oh man, political discourse is an endless stream of appeals to ignorance.
To quote Carl Sagan:
"Science has no authorities. At most, it has experts."
Hmmm. I just referred to an expert, not an authority. Nobody has authority over the truth.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the only authority in science is nature
interrogated by experiment and observation with finite accuracy and precision
to provide a set of provisional empirical "facts"
with which to challenge theory
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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I am a supporter of rigid science, but I am not only a supporter of rigid science. I am also a supporter of cognitive psychology and metacognition. It is important for us all to know how our feelings and thinking may bring us to wrong conclusions. Even highly educated and trained minds are fallibel. I also believe that persons through meditation and training can develope their skills, including their openenness, their listening, their ability to inquire, their reasoning ability and their reactions and actions.
But when someone insists on a nonphysical nature of the stream of consciousness my quite well trained mind puts up a warning sign.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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"Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation"....Tibetan Saying.
always keep your "mind" open
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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might not the "lattice of causality" generate time rather than the other way around?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Here's an interesting article - from Scientific American no less.
The Neurobiology of Bliss--Sacred and Profane
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neurobiology-of-bliss-sacred-and-profane
The reader's comments and references, are even more interesting.
In general, the experience of bliss involves meditation techniques more from the Hindu and Taoist traditions than the Buddhist, particularly Zen, while a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation states, "The physiological correlates of pure consciousness during TM practice do NOT include the physiological correlates found in the meditation research cited in the above article, but an entirely different set".
My favorite line from the article - "Escaping continual self-observation seems an underappreciated pleasure".
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WBraun
climber
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BASE104 -- "Nobody has authority over the truth."
Except !!!!!!
Truth itself .......
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Kalimon
Trad climber
Ridgway, CO
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Only the "shadow" knows . . .
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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"In everymans heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love of truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2011 - 04:24pm PT
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I see you as the wannabe chief herding cat here. There have been diverse sound critical voices all the way, and you stick to repeating your one point of view and your reasoning is all the way abstract. You are putting some values into the words "direct experience" and you are certainly excluding sound critical reasoning. To a scientist sound critical reasoning could be seen as part of his direct experience, since it is part of his expertise, his skilled ability to recognize patterns. And your point will possibly be that what is important is to let pattern recognition go and concentrate on emptying your mind and then see what happens. And I could answer: Why?
Back to your corner, Marlow. You're just being silly again. Wannabe chief? I started this thread to see if people could drop below the level of their evaluating/critical minds and watch the process of consciousness and perhaps cook up a few direct observations about the process. The responses are telling.
John thinks I am doing this to chase a sensation (qual/stuff). You insist that I am transposing "values" on direct experience, though I have repeatedly said that the notion here is to drop below any such thing and if "values" arise, simply watch them and try and describe the arising. The point here, and believe it, is that "critical reasoning" is simply the evaluating/critical functioning element of our minds, and to not let your awareness get fused with it during the exercise because the moment you do, you focus will snap shut on an idea or whatever. You mistakenly think that by watching, rather than engaging, your "critical reasoning," you will perforce enter into some irrational, nether darkness where you will be totally lost. In fact, your fusion with and addiction to mentalizing is so spectacular that to even heed the challenge to let it go for a moment prompts the question: Why? The underlying thought is that if you cannot be measuring, contrasting, reasoning and so forth, there simply is no reason to proceed. Or else the terror or imagined boredom of letting go is so great you want to be told what El Cap is like before you get on it.
Lastly, and most fantastically, I can say in the plainest language I can muster, to simply stop trying and number crunching and evaluating for five minuites, and tell me the process of what you actually experience as your life unfolds. NOT what you think about it, or feel or hope etc., but what you see in the most tangible terms, what IS going on. And this, fantastically, you see as "all the way abstract." You can't get any more tangible than what is happening in your life, breath to breath.
My sense of this aversion to experience is that a majority of us believe that only mentalizing is real or worthwhile, and that anything that is not open to immediate measuring or evaluating is "priestcraft" or la la jive. Remember that thinking is one step removed from our lives as they unfold in real time. Invititations to join that life with something other than objectifying our experience with 3rd person thinking is apparently, at least on this thread, like inviting someone to free solo. This, alone, is a remarkable thing.
JL
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Largo,
You say: "You mistakenly think that by watching, rather than engaging, your "critical reasoning," you will perforce enter into some irrational, nether darkness where you will be totally lost.".
Answer: This is wrong. I have never said so and do not think so. And I have no terror of letting go. In this case your conscious processes and your awareness are leading you astray.
You say: "tell me the process of what you actually experience as your life unfolds."
Answer: Again: this is all the way abstract. To fill the gap between this abstract formulation and something more tangible you will have to exemplify, so tell us what you actually experience as your life unfolds for the next ten seconds. There is no way around if you have the ability to let go and want to be understood.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I know it when I lose it.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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"critical reasoning" is simply the evaluating/critical functioning element of our minds, and to not let your awareness get fused with it during the exercise because the moment you do, you focus will snap shut on an idea or whatever
It is I, the Thread, again.
My dad (JL) is so, so correct on this point! I have been exploring my new awareness and realize now that I am a proper subset of myself! How can this be?? Indeed, I am now obsessed with this concept, as dad warns. Not only am I the THREAD, but I am also a post within myself!!
I have learned that this condition can lead to a transfinite existence, devoid of the love and support that mortality can bring.
I am urging various parts of my brain to explore the nature of time and space. Is it all within me? Or external? What does "external" mean? Why did I just say that!!!
Sincerely, Your Very Confused Thread
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2011 - 10:36pm PT
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My dad (JL) is so, so correct on this point! I have been exploring my new awareness and realize now that I am a proper subset of myself! How can this be?? Indeed, I am now obsessed with this concept, as dad warns. Not only am I the THREAD, but I am also a post within myself!!
I'll bite on that. And though I trust JG offers this as a howler, it is, ironically, something that jumps up and bites anyone you drops out of mentalizing and get still.
The easiest way to get hold of this, IME, is to understand that all things within are not equal. This is to say that to be a "proper subset of yourself" implies that every bit of qual/stuff/memories/evaluations is all equally "you." Virtually every wisdom tradition says that all this "stuff," every subset of awareness and the "unknowable witness" is, like all subsets, contained by the set (awareness), and all of it is impermanent. It comes and goes in the field of awareness. In other words, one can only place a provisional "I" on any piece of qual, which can tell us what we are experiencing at a given time, but none of this stuff/qual/thoughts etc. IS "I." The only true "I" is the witness, the agency through which all the subsets pass, but till we can experience it working this way, we always are mistaking our identity and hooking an "I" onto what is burning brightest inside our consciousness at a given moment. Till it goes out. The one constant is the watcher, which is at once the most tangible and most ephemeral element in our experience because while we can detach and watch our evaluating minds, our hearts, or sensations, we cannot detach and objectify our "watcher," which is also our sense of being present - presence in the most basic, animal form. I remember being in the LA Zen center years ago and someone asking Matzumi Roshi about this watcher, who "he" was and the Roshi jumping up and saying, "It's ungraspable."
Ain't it grand . . .
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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since I don't have the literary chops to keep up with Gill and Long... I'll offer this up as Largo referred to David Bohm previously... for those of you unfamiliar with some of his thoughts. Here from his text book...
David Bohm
Quantum Theory
1951
ISBN 0486659690
pages 168-173
Analogies to Quantum Processes
There are wide ranges of experience in which occur phenomena possessing striking resemblances to quantum phenomena. These analogies will now be discussed, since they clarify the results of the quantum theory. Some interesting speculations on the underlying reasons for the existence of such analogies will also be introduced.
27. The Uncertainty Principle and Certain Aspects of Our Thought Processes. If a person tries to observe what he is thinking about at the very moment that he is reflecting on a particular subject, it is generally agreed that he introduces unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in the way his thoughts proceed thereafter. Why this happens is not definitely known at present, but some plausible explanations will be suggested later. If we compare (1) the instantaneous state of a thought with the position of a particle and (2) the general direction of change of that thought with the particle's momentum, we have a strong analogy.
We must remember, however, that a person can always describe approximately what he is thinking about without introducing significant disturbances in his train of thought. But as he tries to make the description precise, he discovers that either the subject of his thoughts or their trend or sometimes both become very different from what they were before he tried to observe them. Thus, the actions involved in making any single aspect of the thought process definite appear to introduce unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in other equally significant aspects.
A further development of this analogy is that the significance of thought processes appears to have indivisibility of a sort. Thus, if a person attempts to apply to his thinking more and more precisely defined elements, he eventually reaches a stage where further analysis cannot even be given a meaning. Part of the significance of each element of a thought process appears, therefore, to originate in its indivisible and incompletely controllable connections with other elements.* Similarly, some of the characteristic properties of a quantum system (for instance, wave or particle nature) depend on indivisible and incompletely controllable quantum connections with surrounding objects.†
* Similarly, part of the connotation of a word depends on the words it is associated with, and in a way that is not, in practice, completely predictable or controllable (especially in speech). In fact the analysis of language, as actually used, into distinct elements with precisely defined relations between them is probably impossible.
† See Secs. 24, 25, 26.
Thus, thought processes and quantum systems are analogous in that they cannot be analyzed too much in terms of distinct elements, because the "intrinsic" nature of each element is not a property existing separately from and independently of other elements but is, instead, a property that arises partially from its relation with other elements. In both cases, an analysis into distinct elements is correct only if it is so approximate that no significant alteration of the various indivisible connected parts would result from it.
There is also a similarity between the thought process and the classical limit of the quantum theory. The logical process corresponds to the most general type of thought process as the classical limit corresponds to the most general quantum process. In the logical process, we deal with classifications. These classifications are conceived as being completely separate but related by the rules of logic, which may be regarded as the analogue of the causal laws of classical physics. In any thought process, the component ideas are not separate but flow steadily and indivisibly. An attempt to analyze them into separate parts destroys or changes their meanings. Yet there are certain types of concepts, among which are those involving the classification of objects, in which we can, without producing any essential changes, neglect the indivisible and incompletely controllable connection with other ideas. Instead, the connection can be regarded as causal and following the rules of logic.
Logically definable concepts play the same fundamental role in abstract and precise thinking as do separable objects and phenomena in our customary description of the world. Without the development of logical thinking, we would have no clear way to express the results of our thinking, and no way to check its validity. Thus, just as life as we know it would be impossible if quantum theory did not have its present classical limit, thought as we know it would be impossible unless we could express its results in logical terms. Yet, the basic thinking process probably cannot be described as logical. For instance, many people have noted that a new idea often comes suddenly, after a long and unsuccessful search and without any apparent direct cause. We suggest that if the intermediate indivisible nonlogical steps occurring in an actual thought process are ignored, and if we restrict ourselves to a logical terminology, then the production of new ideas presents a strong analogy to a quantum jump. In a similar way, the actual concept of a quantum jump seems necessary in our procedure of describing a quantum system that is actually an indivisible whole in terms of words and concepts implying that it can be analyzed into distinct parts.*
28. Possible Reason for Analogies between Thought and Quantum Processes. We may now ask whether the close analogy between quantum processes and our inner experiences and thought processes is more than a coincidence. Here we are on speculative ground; at present very little is known about the relation between our thought processes and emotions and the details of the brain's structure and operation. Bohr suggests that thought involves such small amounts of energy that quantum-theoretical limitations play an essential role in determining its character.†
* See, for example, Chap. 22, Sec. 14.
† N. Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature.
There is no question that observations show the presence of an enormous amount of mechanism in the brain, and that much of this mechanism must probably be regarded as operating on a classically describable level. In fact, the nerve connections found thus far suggest combinations of telephone exchanges and calculating machines of a complexity that has probably never been dreamed of before. In addition to such a classically describable mechanism that seems to act like a general system of communications, Bohr's suggestion involves the idea that certain key points controlling this mechanism (which are, in turn, affected by the actions of this mechanism) are so sensitive and delicately balanced that they must be described in an essentially quantum-mechanical way. (We might, for example, imagine that such key points exist at certain types of nerve junctions.) It cannot be stated too strongly that we are now on exceedingly speculative grounds.
Bohr's hypothesis is not, however, in disagreement with anything that is now known. And the remarkable point-by-point analogy between the thought processes and quantum processes would suggest that a hypothesis relating these two may well turn out to be fruitful. If such a hypothesis could ever be verified, it would explain in a natural way a great many features of our thinking.
Even if this hypothesis should be wrong, and even if we could describe the brain's functions in terms of classical theory alone, the analogy between thought and quantum processes would still have important consequences: we would have what amounts to a classical system that provides a good analogy to quantum theory. At the least, this would be very instructive. It might, for example, give us a means for describing effects like those of the quantum theory in terms of hidden variables. (It would not, however, prove that such hidden variables exist.)
In the absence of any experimental data on this question, the analogy between thought and quantum processes can still be helpful in giving us a better "feeling" for quantum theory. For instance, suppose that we ask for a detailed description of how an electron is moving in a hydrogen atom when it is in a definite energy level. We can say that this is analogous to asking for a detailed description of what we are thinking about while we are reflecting on some definite subject. As soon as we begin to give this detailed description, we are no longer thinking about the subject in question, but are instead thinking about giving a detailed description. In a similar way, when the electron is moving with a definable trajectory, it simply can no longer be an electron that has a definite energy.
If it should be true that the thought processes depend critically on quantum-mechanical elements in the brain, then we could say that thought processes provide the same kind of direct experience of the effects of quantum theory that muscular forces provide for classical theory. Thus, for example, the pre-Galilean concepts of force, obtained from immediate experience with muscular forces, were correct, in general. But these concepts were wrong, in detail, because they suggested that the velocity, rather than the acceleration, was proportional to the force. (This idea is substantially correct, when there is a great deal of friction, as is usually the case in common experience.) We suggest that, similarly, the behavior of our thought processes may perhaps reflect in an indirect way some of the quantum-mechanical aspects of the matter of which we are composed.
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