--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In [email protected], "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: <snip> > > Why should I think that my perceptions are all that hot? > > You are free, of course, to live your life any way > you want. However, I might suggest to you that by > taking this stance you are setting yourself up to > never realize enlightenment. Enlightenment (thus far) > is a *completely* subjective experience. No one you > have access to on the planet can "verify" or "validate" > the experience for you. So if/when it happens for you, > you've just said that you won't trust your own experience. > Talk about setting up a subtle level of intention to make > sure you never have to deal with the situation...
Except, of course, that two very different kinds of "experience" are involved here. It's one thing to doubt that one's sensory perceptions are in accord with physical reality, and quite another to doubt one's state of consciousness. Or to put it another way, to doubt that one's sensory perceptions are in accord with physical reality is not to doubt one's perceptions themselves. I can doubt that someone is actually levitating without doubting that I *perceive* them to be levitating. Perception itself is a wholly subjective experience, just as enlightenment is. Ultimately there's no way to tell whether one's perceptions are in accord with reality. Even if James Randi awards the putative levitator the million bucks, *his* perceptions might not be in accord with reality either. And one's state of consciousness isn't a matter of sensory perception anyway. But to doubt that one is having a particular "experience" of one's state of consciousness is akin to doubting that one has perceived someone to be levitating (as opposed to doubting whether they are actually levitating)--it's a contradiction in terms. One never doubts one's experience of one's subjective state, by definition. In the case of enlightenment, the question is, what is the "reality" that corresponds to the physical reality of someone levitating, such that one might ask whether one's experience of one's state of consciousness is in accord with that reality? But that question is fundamentally meaningless. The only reality in that case *is* one's experience of one's state of consciousness. So your formulation above involves some pretty massive confusion, on several different levels. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
