Comment

Comment by Mark Kusek on March 3, 2015 at 4:05am

You said:  >> The longer we spend with a fixed (or nearly fixed) perspective, the more dependent on it we become, the more we "know".

That was more or less my point too. What we know becomes or is our perspective or our interpretive views. II agree they can be more or less relatively "fixed" at times, especially when we grasp at them, cling to them as when we think or say things like "My way or his way is the only way", "this is THE TRUTH", the whole truth and nothing but the truth, etc."

I also believe that in the same breath with which we can acknowledge the relative and potential "fixity" of knowing, we can equally acknowledge that the same knowing has grown and come to be what it is (for us), i.e., that it had a beginning and a course of development as any compounded thing does.

To me that implies that knowledge is not an isolated "thing in itself" that has any absolute or intrinsic existence, but rather that it has arisen in dependence on other causes and conditions which have helped to influence it, bring it into some apprehension of our attention whereby it comes into view to us in such ways, shapes and forms that can be grassed and held as objects (of knowledge or belief etc.)

We all have them and make them. They are our respective forms of idea and feeling about ourselves, each other and the so called "external world (the Not-I) including cosmos, the universe, all that is, truth, etc. - even intelligible ideas like those referred to by the three glyphs "god."

The creative, psychological objects and formations of apprehension and knowledge. We create them (and ourselves in relation to them) and then often relate to them by how we think of them and feel about them, as if they are things in and of themselves: independent of us or our subjective participation in maintanance and support of them.

Contents in our respective Not-I's: conscious to us in a relative way. The "other" parts of the fluffy dough that make up our psychic doughnuts -  that complement what we are by becoming whatever WE AREN'T.

In order to be individual at all, or hold individually distinct views that are in some ways unique formations compared to someone else's, we necessarily depend on and need these psychic others and sometimes apparent, sometimes not so apparent "that which we are not conscious of" (i.e. the unknown of our experience).

>> This can be seen directly in the neural connections in our physical brains. The more we use a neural pathway, the more we find ways to use that pathway for everything, We end up with areas, or regions of the brain being identified as this or that (this is where god is).

Yes, exactly. I agree and tried to say the same thing in my way, using certain other particular forms of language. None of which are absolute in any way.

Your use of the word "identifications" in the above, is I would say, another way to talk about what I have been referring to as the "I."

"This's" and "That's" are a way to talk about the mental formations or psychological objects in the Not-I: the contents of consciousness.

From an experiential perspective these are the things we know.

A relationship we largely mediate through our use of the power of language.

"In the beginning as the word", etc. "By him all things were made" etc, the word as creative power, IOW. our use of language is the heir to that power in the same sense of "nama-rupa" "vach" or "nada" for example, to borrow some complementary terms from Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

>> What is happening, is we our limiting ourselves, we are shrinking our awareness of consciousness.

We are also defining it, individualizing it, causing it to appear and manifest in forms that can be apprehended, evaluated, sensually encoded and both perceptually and experientially shared with others.

It doesn't mean that the boundless, illimitable is not present within as well as around and underneath the surface meanings so formed, nor absent from being similarly present in the subjective identity of that which forms.

Depends on how one views these phenomenon, and encodes those views in the shared descriptions.

The universe while manifest has the appearance of multiplicity and diversity in interdependent relationship with we who participate in it, but this appearance is also not quite what it seems.

Comment by Mark Kusek on March 3, 2015 at 1:14am

Hi Again, David.

I agree with what you've said and understand the way you've expressed it. As I said, I was trying to throw out connectors and elements with which we might try to erect some form of mind scaffolding in some way. In that we succeded I would say, so kudos for your reciprocal effort. It was a good exchange.

As far as interesting ideas about the individual in society -

lately I find myself fond of saying:

"you gotta show up!"

I also agree with you that any utterance once said, or expression or communication once made manifest, in a certain sense limits. Knowledge limits in a similar way and it applies equally, IMO, to knowledge of self, knowledge of others, as well as knowledge of things.

Depending on how one views phenomenon will determine whether there is penetration past the limit of surface meaning or experience in relationship to or with it. There is both conscious and unconscious creativity IOW.

Comment by David Allen on March 2, 2015 at 10:45pm

Mark,
Sorry for the metaphors, I'm not picky, I'll use whatever works. Most people have had a little exposure to the bible, I try to stick to those most likely to be included in a little exposure.

I have some trouble with the terminology you use, But that is okay. The terminology you use is part of your language. As your language, it describes you. It helps us to find similarities (common ground) that enhances our ability to communicate. If we are successful enough, if we find enough common ground, then together we see more than either of us alone. In doing this we start with each of us "chained" to our own perspective ("I"), stuck within our own language, limited by it. As we increase our ability to communicate with one another, what is happening is your language, and my language, merge and becomes our language. This generates our common perspective (awareness of consciousness), which is greater than our individual "I"'s. In this way our individual "I"'s are exposed to more awareness of consciousness which allows our individual "I"'s to expand, which expands our shared perspective. The pattern repeats itself, we grow together. To me, that is what society is.

If we insist on individuality, then our individual "I"'s expand slowly at best, and usually through pain and suffering.

Here is the really interesting part.

The longer we spend with a fixed (or nearly fixed) perspective, the more dependent on it we become, the more we "know". This can be seen directly in the neural connections in our physical brains. The more we use a neural pathway, the more we find ways to use that pathway for everything, We end up with areas, or regions of the brain being identified as this or that (this is where god is). What is happening, is we our limiting ourselves, we are shrinking our awareness of consciousness.

Here is the really interesting part

The pattern repeats itself.

Each repetition represents a level of consciousness, a level of awareness, (I have another one that goes here)

If you can see through my story how perspective becomes habit, and habit limits what we see (perspective), that is a downward spiral.

If you can see how something non physical becomes physical in our brains.

If you can see the different language areas or regions on a map of our world.

Then you can see what I left out in my story 4 sentences above, and that is (a stage of) evolution.

Our insistence that we "know" anything, separates us, our separation is latterly driving us to extinction

We are creating our universe unconsciously.

If I am able to communicate this concept successfully, and the means by which to do this was the limited discussions (descriptions) we shared here.
Then imagine what we all (as one) can see. Imagine what we all as one could say. I think it would be a solo, a duet, a choir, all rolled into one, it would come out as a sound that none of us can hear alone. That sound, that vibration is the vibration that resonates in the strings of string theory, is the probability wave of quantum mechanics. That makes us the particles that almost seem to be there, only to disappear and reappear somewhere else. We are all entangled.

That is the part of truth I have found so far, my perspective, my opinion, my contribution to society.

I have no idea how accurate it may be, after all, in our current society, I'm just one perspective.

Comment by Mark Kusek on March 2, 2015 at 12:10am

Comment by Mark Kusek on March 1, 2015 at 11:46pm

Hi David, 
Christianizing metaphors aside (btw, I actually also like the myth of the trees in the garden, although I likely would interpret them somewhat differently), you didn't quite understand what I meant.

What I was trying to say was more about "I" and "Not-I" as an interdependent pair: i.e., that it is with the arising of the consciousness of our own sense of "I" (however we choose characterize or describe it) that simultaneously arises whatever is "Not-I" as a consequence. IOW, they go together and mutually define the cosmos for us, our identities within it and our respective individualized views.
I was speaking more about the things we are aware of and the ways we define them, but what you said is also true, I believe, in that what we are aware of is always in relation to what we are not aware of.: known to unknown, conscious to unconscious. Although we do not know what we do not know. Jung called it unconscious for a very good reason, LOL, in that we simply do not know it.
I do agree with you that we can "become aware" of things we don't presently know. Just as we can forget things we might have once known. There are "contents of the (to us) unconscious that can be somewhat made conscious (to us) or conscious to us again 
But epistemologically speaking, we cannot know things absolutely, only relatively. Relative to our individual view, IOW. That has been my point as well.
"Toroidal formation" is a way to model or speak about consciousness: consciousness in relation to the unconscious as well as consciousness as an individual in relationship to the world that we are aware of as "Not-I" (i.e the phenomenal environment and other I-s, other subject/objects). In a sense, our knowledge or awareness (consciousness) is a bit like a psychic doughnut, or can be profitably illustrated in that way. We live our life of consciousness within the fluffy dough. Our individual identity (our I or our ego is you prefer) rises up from the unconscious within and accretes along the inside edge of the torus. We engage experientially with 'the wake-a-day world" through our intuition and our senses, essentially "looking" out, projecting our awareness of what we are NOT into and across the rest of dough toward the outer edges of the torus, where we again come to another "fuzzy edge" between the known and unknown, as in when our knowledge of others or the phenomenal universe falls apart and we simply have to honestly admit we DO NOT KNOW.
So in this view, what we do know, or IOW consciousness, is a bit like what would be equivalent to the dough within a "psychic doughnut" if we were to describe a torridal "field of awareness" in that way. Both we ourselves (i.e our respective "Is" as well as all others and everything else we are aware of seem to exist as knowns within it. These "appearances" of epistemological knowns are not at all complete or absolute, but are conditionally dependent upon and related to/influenced by each of our respective, subjective views.
We are each of us, as it were, similarly psychic doughnuts or torus fields appearing in each other's respective views. Where we overlap, have some meaningful exchange of mutual agreement, consensus or shared understanding ... in those areas, we form the bonds of relationship that mutually define and reinforce our sense of who and what we are, so again, there is an epistemological interdependence. IOW, we do not "know" in isolation, even consciousness is interdependant. We all co-condition and co-determine one another, by our own individual, interpretive participations including those which form our agreements, disagreements, memberships and affiliations as well as those that we reject. The forms of conscious awareness are a lot like chemical or electrical bondings in that way, a lot like those kinds of patterns and formations.

.

Comment by David Allen on February 26, 2015 at 1:00pm

Mark,

"It's the developed formation of conscious, individual, personal (egoic) selfhood that simultaneously results in the sense of separation from what IT IS AWARE IT IS NOT as a consequence."

If I understand this correctly, you are saying that as we become aware of new things, we also gain an understanding that there are things we are not aware of. I agree with this, I would like to point out that the significance of what we are not aware of is exaggerated when we demand proof (or demand that we be made aware of it). This, to me, is the message of the tree of knowledge within the garden.

As for toroidal formations and psychic hyperspheres, I have little understanding of them, but they look to me as a complex way of saying forgot. I would like to apologize for my use of forgot, it implied we had an awareness of being one, and we did not. We were one, but not having experience as anything else, there was no awareness of it. That does bring up an important point though, it does not take our awareness of something for it to have an influence on us.

I completely agree that the "oneness" has always been within us, but our foray into demanding proof (or understanding) allowed us to exaggerate or put other things out of place or above it. This is corruption, or sin, and changes our path from one of life (that we are products of, to one of death or extinction.

We do, however, have two ways of avoiding this agonizing end, we can learn to understand correctly and return to the path that is life (a road full of pain and suffering), or we can again have faith in the truth that grows within us, and give control back to it.

Again my lack of understanding of the terms you use only allows me to "feel" my way along what you are saying, but I think we agree.

Comment by Mark Kusek on February 25, 2015 at 9:37pm

IMO, It's the developed formation of conscious, individual, personal (egoic) selfhood that simultaneously results in the sense of separation from what IT IS AWARE IT IS NOT as a consequence.

It isn't that the "oneness intuition" isn't there, it is just that individual consciousness becomes a toroidal formation in that way: (like a psychic hypersphere) - there are fuzzy edges and thresholds to unknowing both within and without it's boundary conditions: the known and unknown of our conscious experience.

The original awareness or "oneness intuition" only appears to disappear. It continually supports individual consciousness throughout our lives. But in order to develop conscious individual egoic awareness we need to, in a sense, become unaware of it (i.e. Jung's unconscious) until we reach object constancy as an ego.

It continually supports us and is the ground from which we have all emerged and in which we live, move and have our individual being and relationships. It doesn't go anywhere else.

We need to wake up to that, both in our own identity and in phenomenon that IS NOT US.  It is ego awareness which needs to be opened back up and re-rendered transparent to it's own source and support. That's the path.

Otherwise we exist in the illusion of separate independence that is a consequence of our own developed awareness as subjective/individuals and think we are discrete inherently existent entities and unrelated.

IOW, individuality has its roots, causes, conditions and consequences.

Where is the individual daffodil in a field full of them? Humans are the same way in that regard. Our vaunted individuality is always interdependently relative, ever-changing and because of that, subject to transformation. It is dependent on causes and conditions that bring it into existence. Watch a child develop and you can see it happen. We are given our names and identities and memberships. Separation as an individual is an illusion of thinking you are a "defined in some way" self, distinguishing other selves and other things: I and Not-I.

That doesn't make being human inherently bad or a mistake or a sin. It's just the way it is. The way of interdependent individualization. My $0.02

Comment by David Allen on February 25, 2015 at 2:17pm

John,

I would suggest we do, only we call it different things now. Maybe intuition is that consciousness we all share bleeding through cracks in the walls of separation  we create and have named self.

Moderator Comment by John on February 25, 2015 at 2:10pm

having experienced oneness at birth, why is it so hard to experience it again? It should just be a dormant experience. i.e. not difficult.