"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it
exists." [Tractatus 6.44]
and
To view the world sub specie aeterni ["from the viewpoint of
eternity"] is to view it as a whole - a limited whole. Feeling the world
as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.
6.45
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
6.522
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1921
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
<anartaxius@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Susan" wayback71@ wrote:
> > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
<anartaxius@> wrote:
> >>
> >> Sam Harris is writing a book, with the working title 'Waking Up: A
Scientist Looks at Spirituality' due to be finished sometime near the
end of the year. This one should be interesting.
> >>
> >> http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/look-into-my-eyes
> >
> > The video segment on Osho speaking on the link is a reminder of how
especially young people can follow and adjust their their own beliefs to
those of someone who really has only basic wisdom to offer, and combines
that with being exotic, having an accent, and being a touch different or
odd or provocative. Osho never blinked in the few minutes that I watched
it!! Creepy, really.
> >
> > I will read this new book when it comes out, because this is the
stuff I think about and care about - the science of those experiences.
But a part of me misses the mystery of it all that went along with the
sureness of faith. I have some trouble reconciling the two ways of
looking at awakening - scientific and mystical. I think ignorance of the
mind is where the bliss is. What I wish for is that on the other side of
that understanding of exactly where and how our brains create spiritual
experience, there is a Reality or Presence that causes the brain to
behave in that way. That that Reality is the cause, not simply some
shift in brain functioning and that is it.
>
> I do not think the mystery goes away; instead of believing it, or
looking for it, one eventually just lives it, not thinking about it so
much. The philosopher Wittgenstein put it that the mystical is 'that the
world is, not how it is'. These spiritual practices we engage in are for
the purpose of closing the gap between faith, which is believing in
something we do not experience (in other words, pretending to say we
know something when we do not), and our experience. If that does happen
eventually, believing and faith is redundant. I have always thought
people have had it backwards: if you could actually know something, then
you have faith, if you just believe something, you are acting on
ignorance. The real question is, 'is there anything we can really know?'
We tend to think this is possible.
>
> In the early 20th century Bertrand Russell was talking about mature
sciences, that they do not deal with causality, they deal with
relationships. I think this is like the idea behind meditation.
Meditation gradually simplifies our experience of relationships until
there are none left. Very much like how physicists attempt to discover
how all things are related in a single equation, which would be a
unified field theory.
>
> I always thought Maharishi, in using the word 'wholeness', was
employing a cop-out to hide the religious nature behind TM, but in fact,
I now think it is an elegantly simple and accurate description, much
better than the metaphysical claptrap that accompanies spiritual
movements.
>
> As for the scientific and mystical. It is like a recipe and the
wonderful meal that it may become. You need both, but not necessarily at
the same time, and they are not in conflict with one another, they both
represent the same thing.
>
