A Discussion Of Non Dual "adviata" Philosophy.

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by Meagain, May 29, 2017.

  1. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    My dog can pretty much read my mind and 90% of the time I know what he wants when he comes up to me for something specific. can't pin it down to a thought transfer, I just "know".
    and yes, research has shown that plants do communicate with one another, but thus far as we know it is via chemical clues and not "psychic power" and no, they don't "feel pain", that research was debunked long ago.
    but they do appear to posses some form of awareness of their surroundings act can alter growth patterns, flowering. etc in response to cues in their environment and from other plants.
     
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  2. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Yes. The noosphere.
    Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

     
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  3. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    Teilhard De Chardin's work is very interesting. I read a couple of his books some years ago. He's another one like Sri Aurobindo who tried to integrate the idea of evolution with the spiritual.

    Recently heard some discussion of his work (can't remember where unfortunately) where the internet was mentioned as a component or extension of the noosphere. I'm not sure though that there's much resonance between Teilhard's ideas and Advaita. Maybe there is in a wider sense that when the omega point is reached all will be one in Christ.
     
  4. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    did you guys check the link I posted?
    interesting because they have done experiments with random number generators placed around the world and supposedly the generators "act weird" whenever there are major events in the human world.
     
  5. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    I had a look. It's interesting and maybe shows that things are inter-related in ways we don't really understand.
     
  6. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    I don't quite understand the results of their measurements.
     
  7. machinist

    machinist Banned Lifetime Supporter

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    The correct scientific attitude to apply is skepticism and to wonder if things are true. And that attitude is applicable even to science itself most importantly. Just because science may tell you something, once you let that knowledge use you instead of you using it, you have become deaf dumb and blind.

    Just because science says one thing, that isn't necesarrily THE answer in this case. Plants may well communicate in ways we don't understand or are so far undetectable. It doesn't mean all other unimagined possibilities are nullified and that you should stop wondering about other things.
     
  8. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Here we enter into the realm of the logic of the Buddhist Nagarjuna. Which I won't get into here in depth.

    Briefly, if something changes then it's different, if it's different it's not the same, if it's not the same it's something else, if it's something else it has no relation to what existed before. If it's the same as what came before, then it didn't change. Therefore nothing changes, what existed before and what exists after are two different things.

    To say that one thing caused another is merely to say that we associate an effect with a cause. But just as there can be no effect without a cause, so too there can be no cause without an effect. The two are never observed together and can only be separate occurrences. If they are the same, then they can't be different and the one can't lead to the other.
     
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  9. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    People do not normally realize that the self is not a continuous entity. During dreamless sleep and other forms of unconsciousness, it disappears.
    This is because they relate consciousness to the perception of objects. As they don't consider the realm of dreamless sleep and other forms of unconsciousness, but only sense perception, they miss part of the experience of being alive.
    The remembrance of object perception overwhelms the remembrance of periods of dreamless sleep.

    But memory is nothing more than another thought, similar to the thought of a perception of an object.
    As two thoughts can't occur at the same time, neither memory nor object perception can exist together. Just as two objects can't be perceived at the same time (remembering the rapidity of thought which makes it appear so) memory of an object and the perception of a separate object can't occur together.

    If two objects can't exist at the same time, how can they be related?
    If they aren't related, how can one effect the other?

    Surely someone will contest this view or express their own opinion?​
     
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  10. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    I'll probably get back to this in a few days. Currently I'm not well, and not feeling very deeply philosophical.
     
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  11. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    As we know, space and time are related, if not the same thing, as in Einstein's space/time continuum.

    Time as we perceive it is not fixed in that subjective time can vary in regards to objective time. The same objective time can be experienced differently by two subjective minds.

    However all objective time can only be known subjectively, so no clear distinction can be drawn between the two.

    Further, if we consider time in relation to the now moment as we continuously experience it, no past or present need be granted at all. If all our experiences are always in the now moment, neither the past nor the future ever exists and the flow of time can be seen to be an illusion.
     
  12. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    I'm wondering how this applies to language. We think in language, not in objects in the sense of 'things' we see 'out there', and we have to assume some kind of continuity, perhaps even a causal link, between one word and the next. Let's say words are in one sense objects, it requires a connected string of them to form a coherent sentence. As well as saying words themselves are objects, we might say a complex sentence is an object. A concept expressed in language is an object. And within that object exist relationships between words that define the form. If we change the relation of the words, or the words themselves, the sentence may become unintelligible.

    Also if the words in our heads - our actual thoughts coming to consciousness as linear ideas expressed in language are objects, and yet we still see the world all around unchanged, then it might seem we are aware of more than one object. But I think we're coming back here to the same point as before about the thoughts creating the world we perceive by moving rapidly vs. unconscious mental processes.

    One further thought is that if we were to say that any meaning derived from language and its internal and external relationships is invalid because reliant on a false sense of cause and effect, we are lost indeed IMO.

    The only way to resolve this is I think to recall that the experience at which advaita aims is a non-verbal experience. Pure consciousness reflecting on itself with no other object, or something like that.
     
  13. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    There are studies out there about language and object formation...but all the ones I found you have to pay to see:
    I've seen stuff on this and I think I have something around here.

    If I find it, I'll post it.
     
  14. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Meanwhile:

    When in an unconscious state, we can't experience the passage of time. Even though upon regaining consciousness we seem to have experienced a passage of time, the only way for us to "know" that time has passed is to think about what may have transpired while we were unconscious. We must entertain a notion of a past in which we were unconscious and in which time continued to flow.

    During consciousness we must have a concept of past, present, and future in order for the notion of time to exist.
     
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  15. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    We can only know of the past, in the present moment. And we can only project the future, in the present moment.

    Any past memory must be experienced in the present and no longer exists. In other words, there is no past in the present moment. And any projection into the future also always occurs in the present, the future never arrives.
    So neither the past nor the future exist, yet without a notion of a past and future, the present has no meaning.

    All that really exists is a conscious thought of past, present, and future.
     
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  16. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Thoughts are consciousness recognizing an object. When the object is cognized it is done so by thinking about it. Thus a thought and an object are inseparable.
    As we must think about time in order to recognize it, it order to have a notion of past, present, and future; then time too is inseparable from thought and being inseparable from thought the two are one.

    There is no time without thought.
     
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  17. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Time is motion.
    Motion is the remembrance of objects in different relationships to each other.
    The remembrance of objects and their location can only occur through mental activity. As such, time is merely a mental activity. When mental activity ceases, so does time.

    The cessation of mental activity occurs outside of time, it can't endure, arise, or cease as any of the three states of time don't exist when mental activity is not present.
    Pure changeless being is all that exists as the background for thought, space, and time.
     
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  18. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Anytime an object is cognized, thought is required. Once it is cognized, or thought of, separate thoughts are required to place it in context spatially and temporally.

    This action seems to take place in the present, but as one thought must follow another it is obvious that the initial cognition of the object has already past by the time it is located spatially and temporally.

    All thought; past, present, and future occurs only in the present.
    Nothing can be experienced outside of thought as there is no one to experience (I think threrefore I am) and nothing to be experienced.
    Objects can only be said to exist, or be experienced, when a subject, or thought, is present to cause the object to arise.
     
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  19. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    There's no denying the logic of all this. The problem is that it all rests on the idea that mind or thought is the fundamental thing that creates our awareness of the world, which I don't think is correct.

    It comes down to this: Prior to the emergence of mind on the earth, long ages went by. So it would have had to have been something like the mind of God that was giving rise to the cosmos prior to the appearance of human beings. Unless I suppose we say that the universe has always existed and that somewhere on other planets were thinking beings similar to us. But that really doesn't appeal much.
    I'd say that rather than mind being the underlying 'cause' (not sure if I can legitimately use the word here) it is actually something like a final product, at this stage, of cosmic existence.

    I see that I'm just repeating the same objections I mentioned before.

    A secondary problem though occurs to me. If there is indeed no cause and effect, then surely to enunciate this philosophy is a mere pouring from the void into the void, and actually, no pouring taking place.
     
  20. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    All good objections.

    My take on it is that mind, or thought, or the thinking process, doesn't produce anything.

    The universe has always existed, as it's outside of time. Time has been proven to be relative, and Levy contends it's also a human construct, there is no time outside of human thought.
    Now as the universe is outside of time, the arrival of the human brain and it's thought process has only allowed us, through the use of that brain, to interpret what is always ongoing in a certain way.

    The mind doesn't cause anything (the brain does regulate bodily functions), it's not a final product as that implies time, it merely "filters" or "senses" certain aspects of the continuing ongoing flow.
    Rocks are hard because the mind compares them to the density of the body, etc.

    As to there being no cause and effect. Certainly if I don't put gasoline in my lawn mower, it won't start. If I then add gasoline and it starts I can say the reason, or cause, that it didn't start was a lack of gasoline. But if it still doesn't start after I added the gasoline...then I need to find another cause. And now I have two causes, (no spark, no fuel). And if it still doesn't start then I need to find another cause (no compression), now I have three causes, etc.

    And with that I'm going to stop as I'm having trouble figuring out my point in all explanation and I'm a little tired!!!!!

    More later.

    Maybe I'm trying to say that if we except cause and effect, then any effect can be traced back ad infinitum to an ultimate first cause. And then what caused that?
    (But I still need gasoline in that mower engine.)
     

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