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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 12:35am PT
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I donno I'm a stone with no real home.
My heart is cold stone.
I live in a stone prison.
I'm dead stone matter.
Bullwinkle put me in a stone book.
Life's all stoned up.
Until I started the car .......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 12:46am PT
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I am less and less sure that that how and what goes on in my mind, and in my consciousness, is universal.... although we communicate in a universal manner, largely through language. When we share a language, we have a good chance of communicating, but there is room for confusion even in that instance.
If the authority is based on a shared experience of "spiritual" we may actually not be experiencing the same thing. How do we know?
You are also jumping to conclusion that I don't think this is important even if it is and individual construction. These ideas, as I have said before, can be so compelling as to motivate us to act on them, giving them reality in this physical realm.
Our empathy for other people, for the world around us, can be a strong director of behavior even if there is not risk of retribution from an absolute authority. "Do unto others as you would have done onto yourself" is good advice independent of what book it's written in, in what ever language... I think that understanding how consciousness works in detail (e.g. the answer to the question what exact thought am I having [i[right now?) may be beyond a mechanistic explanation, ever, but certainly plenty of opportunity to explore without needing to ascribe it to some outside forces... except where those forces may be ideas, passed around ideas from the ancients, from other cultures, from visionaries...
I agree that the action is probably more important than the actual construction, because in the end, whatever way it breaks, it is the end of this particular stage... and contrary to your previous post, whether or not you believe that there are any other stages, life is special and should be for living. So an atheist can rock climb even if it would risk the only chance they would have at life, I don't see any contradiction there... we all die at some point.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 12:52am PT
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Werner, maybe a carbonaceous stone... so your car burns carbonaceous fuel, the same that you eat... carbonicious no doubt!
I think your explanation shows a lot of imagination... the one where everything is "just matter" shows imagination too... it doesn't start out to try to explain everything, it just starts out trying to explain "little things" but as those little things build up, more and more is explained.
The motivation of responding to curiosity is not hubris.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:19am PT
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Ed writes
I am less and less sure that that how and what goes on in my mind, and in my consciousness, is universal.... although we communicate in a universal manner, largely through language. When we share a language, we have a good chance of communicating, but there is room for confusion even in that instance.
Let me first say that even though there is a source of awareness that in universal, that it manifests in humans in vastly different ways. We all have our own levels of conditioning, and "evolution." We can be sheep. It's possible to turn an ordinary person into a Nazi and Hitler did so. Still, just as every human has a physical heart, no exceptions, every human has a Spirit which is the ultimate subject of the contents of their minds. The experience of that could be vastly different depending on the qualities of that mind and the density of the manifestation of consciousness in the guy in a meat suit. I'd be the last to say we all experience things the same, it just that the experiencer, however obscured and unnoticed, is the essence of Life itself.
Think of consciousness like water. It can be clean or dirty, frozen, liquid or gas, and things can be juicy or dry.
Peace
Karl
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:23am PT
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"there is a source of awareness that in universal," ?
Don't assume that is a given, without further elaboration. My milege has varied.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:25am PT
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Hitler did so
Yes, they say there's no God.
So then they get a Hitler imitation God.
They became his sheep and made little Nazis.
So you see God and sheep can never be eliminated.
Both are always there.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:27am PT
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Werner, I think you've exceeded your quota of generalization...
..wtf?
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:28am PT
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hahaha
But Ed someday you'll remember this .....
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:53am PT
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"there is a source of awareness that in universal," ?
Jaybro wrote
Don't assume that is a given, without further elaboration. My milege has varied.
You assume that it is based on an assumption. Just as many aspects of our physical physiology are universal among humans, there can only be one source of awareness. All lightning is electricity, you can't get around that.
Varied mileage is still mileage.
Peace
Karl
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:55am PT
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Karl, you assume a lot! I don't discount experience, just the interpretation of a posibilly shared, or at least similar, event...
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:56am PT
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Very good Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 24, 2009 - 02:23am PT
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Jaybro
Karl, you assume a lot! I don't discount experience, just the interpretation of a posibilly shared, or at least similar, event...
I'm getting the impression we are talking about different things. No matter. This thread is full of things that are tough to align with what others are thinking about
peace
Karl
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 24, 2009 - 03:56am PT
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I'd like to go back to an idea I introduced about 4,000 posts ago and that is the view from Hinduism and Buddhism, that there are four major paths to the same place, and that we make more spiritual progress if we use the path that suits our personality. These paths will work for an atheist too and have been widely picked up by psychologists and even management theory.
Left Brain:
Knowledge
Selfless Action
Right Brain:
Love and Devotion
Inner Psychic exploration
Clearly Ed has chosen knowledge as his primary path and Karl and I deal with psychic exploration. In fact, most of us have a major and a subsidiary mode and we can rank all four in the order in which we have developed ourselves. The least developed aspect of ourselves is sometimes called our shadow side.
Most people lean toward either right or left brain and are unbalanced that way. Intuitively we know it. That's why we usually marry a person who is the opposite of us. In discussions such as this, it's the opposites who dance around each other (Ed and Karl for example) , not those who are similar.
Now I can say that I will never view the world through mathematical formulas, but I don't deny that it can be done. It's just that when I explore the knowledge realm, it's not by that method. Likewise, it seems pretty clear that Ed is not going to be a mystic, though it seems that he now agrees that world exists and might even be valuable?
Trying to understand the opposite of our personality is not easy. I struggle with people who think in absolutes whether through science (there is no God) or fundamentalism (there is a God and everything about Him is in one book) and of course people like me drive the left brain types crazy with non replicable feelings and intuitions.
Maybe the Taoists captured it best with the symbol of the yin and yang meshed together making the complete unified Tao?
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 04:30am PT
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"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing (vain)." 1 Cor 13:1-2
VAIN, a. [L. vanus; Eng. wan, wane, want.]
1. Empty; worthless; having no substance, value or importance.
The Gift of Christmas
"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Luke 2:10-14 (KJV)
Merry Christmas Everyone!!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 12:54pm PT
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It would depend on your definition of existence.
The mind and the way it works exists, and I don't have any doubt that it can be explained scientifically without resorting to any supernatural, mystical, spiritual realm. However, those places exist in our thoughts, and they may have a sense of universality because of the common inheritance, and common function. I don't think that this is unique to humans, either... though it may be a very elaborate manifestation in humans.
That thought can be a motivator of action isn't surprising either, since that is what it's all about, that's why it's there in the first place. So acting on an idea that has no physical basis certainly happens. And acting on commonly held thoughts also happens. Thoughts have power through animating our behavior.
When John Nash, the subject of the wonderful biography by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (read this book!) was asked how he could have succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia episodes and have wonderful mathematical insights, he replied "they both came from the same place."
The study of these mystical, spiritual, religious topics to me are all about understanding that internal sense of reality, in a trite way I'd say it was about understanding the programming of the mind... which is not trivial, and not unimportant even though it may not be real in a physical sense.
In that way these two vast universes are reconciled.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:07pm PT
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But you forgot all about the soul.
This is the key missing understanding of modern science.
The soul not the mind or brain is the actual source and intelligence of all living beings and what animates matter.
Jagadish Chandra Bose made an instrument to measure the response of plants.
When he approached the plant with intent to cut or harm it the meter immediately started to respond without ever coming in contact with it.
When he approached the plant with intent only to water it and nourish it the meter did not react violently.
This all was done without any physical contact with the plant and the plant reacted according to the degree Bose had in his mind as to what he wanted to do to the plant as he came within close proximity to it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:15pm PT
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no, I don't forget the soul, but what is described as soul I think I see as the empathy of sentience
and sentience is a result of our awareness, which includes our consciousness.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 01:41pm PT
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Thanks Ed for very nice clarification.
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MH2
climber
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Dec 24, 2009 - 04:45pm PT
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It is very possible that different people perceive things differently, and have a quite diverse experience of consciousness.
People demonstrably perceive things differently. But how important is that? Is it any more important than skin color? Which of course has been and can be considered extremely important in certain times and places. But I think we have made some progress in figuring out that people who look different are more similar than our ancestors took them for.
My guess would be that people's perceptions and experience of consciousness are also quite similar, but for such a statement it is hard to agree on a valid test. How different is a frog from a human? To us, quite a lot different. To a hypothetical ET, maybe barely perceptibly different.
some excerpts from Mind from Matter?
"We traced the cognitive roots of physics to our intuitive capacity for measurement.
Since I have mentioned the word intuition rather freely in this essay, I should say a few words about what I mean by it. There is a vast philosophical literature concerning this particular word, which suggests that its meaning is vague enough to cover a multitude of sins. I have been using intuition to refer to any easily accomplished concrete mental operation. Examples of such mental operations are the reconstruction of three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional perspective projections and the "seeing" of the equivalence of two sets whose members can be paired, and then, from memory, visualizing the cardinal number 7 as a set of seven objects. It is somewhat arbitrary where one sets the boundary between intuition and logical inference.
...the theory of relativity, which demanded an abdication of our intuitive, a priori, or evolutionarily developed, space-time mode of perception. Here "abdication" does not mean discontinuing our intuitive mode of perception in everyday affairs, but merely admitting that we can account for the facts of physics by a scheme that ignores intuition and replaces it with a logically consistent, albeit counterintuitive, four-dimensional world. It is essential to realize, however, that to have standing as a physical theory, the theory of relativity must be connected in a well-defined manner to actual observations of the real world, stated in a language based on our ordinary intuition."
Max Delbrück
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