Know....See.....Hear

[lupusFati]

I still don't know what you're saying. And I used to read non-stop.

 

[twinc]

wit in limits except that I am deadly serious, but how could you know this for most people think that the mind must dwell within the confines of the skull.But if mind is the secret manufactory of space, how can it be itself tied to spatial limits ? How can it be limited to this or that point in space ? How can it be placed only in each man's head ? We look in vain for a plummet which shall fathom the mind's depth or a rod which shall measure its breath and length.
There confronting us is a world of hard realities,a panoramic procession of solid objects and substantial things.He who comes like Socrates,to persuade us to call into question their "outsideness" which seems so certain and so irrefutable has no easy task.He is quite unwelcome,for even were his queer ideas to be true they are most distasteful.They appear to remove the very ground from beneath our feet.There are inherent properties in such ideas which render them chemically repulsive to the crowd mentality,which flies from truth to take refuge in self-deception[Brunton] - more later - twinc

contd - The fact that every surrounding thing is known only as an integral mental construction rather than an outside material one,that it is seen as an image produced in the mind,will appear to be a miracle to untutored people and utterly beyond belief,just as popular uneducated thought naturally and inevitably assumes the earth is flat. It holds firmly to such an opinion and deems the contrary statement that antipodean lands exist as sheer madness.How then has it been possible to establish this and other startling astronomical truth among men ? It has been possible only by supplying them with certain related facts,and then by persuading them to use their reasoning powers courageously upon these facts until deeper significance stood revealed.Precisely the same problem confronts us in the popular belief that every material thing exists outside,apart and seperate from the mind.Philosophy refutes this naive overwhelming belief and removes this misapprehension,but it can do so only if men will look at the facts it offers and then study them deeply and impartially with inexorable logic to the very end.Without such absolute rationality it could never hope to triumph over such a powerful and primeval instinct of the human race as materialism,which is not truth but rather a travesty of truth[Brunton] - more later - twinc

 

[twinc]

contd - The fact that every surrounding thing is known only as an integral mental construction rather than an outside material one,that it is seen as an image produced in the mind,will appear to be a miracle to untutored people and utterly beyond belief,just as popular uneducated thought naturally and inevitably assumes the earth is flat. It holds firmly to such an opinion and deems the contrary statement that antipodean lands exist as sheer madness.How then has it been possible to establish this and other startling astronomical truth among men ? It has been possible only by supplying them with certain related facts,and then by persuading them to use their reasoning powers courageously upon these facts until deeper significance stood revealed.Precisely the same problem confronts us in the popular belief that every material thing exists outside,apart and seperate from the mind.Philosophy refutes this naive overwhelming belief and removes this misapprehension,but it can do so only if men will look at the facts it offers and then study them deeply and impartially with inexorable logic to the very end.Without such absolute rationality it could never hope to triumph over such a powerful and primeval instinct of the human race as materialism,which is not truth but rather a travesty of truth[Brunton] - more later - twinc

so it seems we do in reality live and move and have our being in a mental and spiritual world and not a physical/material world as the devil and some others would have us accept - this is really the Fall of man,fallen from spiritual and mental to physical and material - twinc

 

[Eudaimonist]

Precisely the same problem confronts us in the popular belief that every material thing exists outside,apart and seperate from the mind.

Are you suggesting that there are no material things? I'm not really certain what your point is.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[twinc]

Are you suggesting that there are no material things? I'm not really certain what your point is.


eudaimonia,

Mark

what is illusory is the world's materiality not its existence - philosophy cannot accept a dualism of Matter and Spirit[Brunton] - twinc

 

[Gadarene]

If philosophy cannot accept dualism, that might be because it is nothing but arguments from ignorance.

 

[Eudaimonist]

what is illusory is the world's materiality not its existence[Brunton] - twinc

If the materiality of the world is an illusion, then what is its nature? Is it just mind? Or mind and something else that is non-material?

philosophy cannot accept a dualism of Matter and Spirit

Why not? Descartes is a great philosopher, and he had no qualms about dualism.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[twinc]

If the materiality of the world is an illusion, then what is its nature? Is it just mind? Or mind and something else that is non-material?



Why not? Descartes is a great philosopher, and he had no qualms about dualism.


eudaimonia,

Mark

of course you should have realised,if not do so now,that there are philosophers and their philosophies ad infinitum and ad absurdum - twinc

 

[Eudaimonist]

of course you should have realised,if not do so now,that there are philosophers and their philosophies ad infinitum and ad absurdum - twinc

What is your refutation of dualism?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Ana the Ist]

hardly vague - just worn out and weary,at 83, trying to get the unacceptable accepted as stated and thr reason/s why etc - still I plod on for the sake of some hopefully - twinc

You're 83? Honestly, this was the biggest shocker out of all of your threads I've read...

I must ask, and I apologize ahead if this is a thread derailment....

Are these threads a sort of coping mechanism for the big inevitable? Has it been on your mind much and you're seeking some sort of deeper intellectual confirmation that what you fear to be true isn't true? That before long you will be as you were before you were born?

 

[twinc]

You're 83? Honestly, this was the biggest shocker out of all of your threads I've read...

I must ask, and I apologize ahead if this is a thread derailment....

Are these threads a sort of coping mechanism for the big inevitable? Has it been on your mind much and you're seeking some sort of deeper intellectual confirmation that what you fear to be true isn't true? That before long you will be as you were before you were born?

what you should have observed was that, on my own,and against stiff and relentless opposition I have tried - I am tired and weary for I have waited long and lonely on the silent shores of mind to try and pass on what I have learnt and accepted and realised that we live in a spiritual and mental world and not really in an illusory physical and material world of dust and rust -

btw it admittedly hard to believe that we are aware of thoughts of external things only,when all these years we have fondly believed we were aware of the things themselves.Most folk are inaccessible to this tenet.It sets them down beneath a sky that is strange,cold,unfamiliar. It will be hard to divest ourselves of the familiar conventional outlook - that is to say,the materialistic but our bondage to popular ignorance need not last forever[Brunton] - twinc

 

[Loudmouth]

can something be known,seen or heard without the presence of a knower,se'er or hearer - twinc

Depends on how you define the observer.

For quantum mechanics, the observer need not be an intelligent being. Any apparatus or piece of matter that is capable of interacting with other particles is, in effect, an observer. So as soon as you have particles interacting with one another you have information being produced by observers, as far as quantum mechanics is concerned.

To put it another way, there is nothing special about humans as observers.

 

[pjnlsn]

what you should have observed was that, on my own,and against stiff and relentless opposition I have tried - I am tired and weary for I have waited long and lonely on the silent shores of mind to try and pass on what I have learnt and accepted and realised that we live in a spiritual and mental world and not really in an illusory physical and material world of dust and rust -

btw it admittedly hard to believe that we are aware of thoughts of external things only,when all these years we have fondly believed we were aware of the things themselves.Most folk are inaccessible to this tenet.It sets them down beneath a sky that is strange,cold,unfamiliar. It will be hard to divest ourselves of the familiar conventional outlook - that is to say,the materialistic but our bondage to popular ignorance need not last forever[Brunton] - twinc

I'm sure it's of value to you to believe this, but if you want to believe that no opposition to these beliefs exists, you'll pry want to keep it to yourself, at least on the internet.

In any case, it's not likely that reality itself is, in essense, some sort of illusion. More likely is that the mind is capable of interposing fantasy onto sensory information. The previous is actually pretty darn obvious, but to phrase it indirectly......

 

[Eudaimonist]

btw it admittedly hard to believe that we are aware of thoughts of external things only,when all these years we have fondly believed we were aware of the things themselves.Most folk are inaccessible to this tenet.It sets them down beneath a sky that is strange,cold,unfamiliar. It will be hard to divest ourselves of the familiar conventional outlook - that is to say,the materialistic but our bondage to popular ignorance need not last forever[Brunton] - twinc

My lack of belief here has nothing to do with idealism being "hard to believe" because it is "strange, cold, and unfamiliar". I am quite familiar with variations on that concept.

I don't believe in idealism because there is no good philosophical reason, IMJ, to believe that it is true. My opposition is philosophical, not emotional.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Ana the Ist]

what you should have observed was that, on my own,and against stiff and relentless opposition I have tried - I am tired and weary for I have waited long and lonely on the silent shores of mind to try and pass on what I have learnt and accepted and realised that we live in a spiritual and mental world and not really in an illusory physical and material world of dust and rust -

btw it admittedly hard to believe that we are aware of thoughts of external things only,when all these years we have fondly believed we were aware of the things themselves.Most folk are inaccessible to this tenet.It sets them down beneath a sky that is strange,cold,unfamiliar. It will be hard to divest ourselves of the familiar conventional outlook - that is to say,the materialistic but our bondage to popular ignorance need not last forever[Brunton] - twinc

What a pleasing thing to accept and realize...

But can you show it?
Demonstrate it?
Prove it?

If not, might I suggest that perhaps you're no longer (if you ever were) objective on this matter.

Where was your spiritual/mental self before your physical/material self existed?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

The only king of idealism I ever believed was solipsist phenomenalism. There is only me and my experiences and memories of them.

 

[twinc]

What a pleasing thing to accept and realize...

But can you show it?
Demonstrate it?
Prove it?

If not, might I suggest that perhaps you're no longer (if you ever were) objective on this matter.

Where was your spiritual/mental self before your physical/material self existed?

no problem to me but a huge problem to you and most others it seems for you and I do not nor have existed as physical/material which we have fallen into as maya[illusion] and have accepted as reality - and stamping your feet in outrage to prove this merely proves that the sensation of hardnesss and firmness and solidity is in you and not where you are trying to prove it is - twinc

 

[Ana the Ist]

no problem to me but a huge problem to you and most others it seems for you and I do not nor have existed as physical/material which we have fallen into as maya[illusion] and have accepted as reality - and stamping your feet in outrage to prove this merely proves that the sensation of hardnesss and firmness and solidity is in you and not where you are trying to prove it is - twinc

83 years of soft pillows and comfort? Believe me when I say I've had days I wished I did not exist in the physical...hard for me to even imagine a life so easy that you could believe you don't. Perhaps in your case, your passing will be a small change, since a life so easy must be something not like existence at all.

 

[twinc]

83 years of soft pillows and comfort? Believe me when I say I've had days I wished I did not exist in the physical...hard for me to even imagine a life so easy that you could believe you don't. Perhaps in your case, your passing will be a small change, since a life so easy must be something not like existence at all.

Ana,believe me even my fellow Catholics,are enmeshed and engulfed by materialism and duality when the teaching is body[material] and soul but truly one - this is absolutely misunderstood by most imho - twinc

 

[Ana the Ist]

Ana,believe me even my fellow Catholics,are enmeshed and engulfed by materialism and duality when the teaching is body[material] and soul but truly one - this is absolutely misunderstood by most imho - twinc

It seems to me that if you're going to deny all which is obvious and claim reality is actually hidden behind some "illusion", you had better come up with some reasoning which is stronger than "I think it is so".