--- In [email protected], "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" > > <anartaxius@> wrote: > > (snip) > > > For unity, the inner and the outer cease, inner life will go > > > down the tube, come to an end, and be replaced with something > > > more interesting, more connected, more seamless, contiguous, > > > and mysterious, because there is no way to understand it. > > > > If there is no longer any inner life, how is this "something" > > that replaces it found to be interesting and mysterious? What > > is it that does the finding? What is it that is interested? > > The human mind still functions, but it is just like other > things we could describe as objects in the field of experience, > for example, a thought is essentially experienced the same way > one experiences a potato.
Well, but you said the mind was *replaced* by this "something." What does the experiencing of a thought? I get that it's hard to describe and understand. At a certain stage of explanation, it becomes pointless, I think, to attempt to resolve contradictions. It may be that your explanations here have reached that stage. > > But the sense that there is an inside and outside to experience is gone, all > experience is contiguous, consciousness is not located in any particular > place, like a glob of peanut butter spread evenly over the surface of a piece > of white bread, filling in all the holes of the texture of the bread. > Consciousness is not observing, it is the very things experienced. The > dualistic model of consciousness is no longer applicable, the idea that > anything or any experience is transcendent is out the window, but the monist > model of consciousness really doesn't work either. > > There is a focus, in that there is a POV related to sensory input converging > on the body, but the sense of a 'me' that this is happening to is > extraordinarily diminished, a vague sense of confluence. It is really hard to > describe and understand because thought is no longer the moderator of the > sense of what is real. > > There are still thoughts and emotions, and they float in the field of > experience, so the experience of some aspect of experience being interesting, > more attended to than something else in experience still occurs just like > before one got into spiritual pursuits, but the whole effect of experience is > much more homogeneous. > > I recall reading something about Taoism in which the natural primordial state > is described as like an uncut block of wood, before the sculptor imagined and > realised a scene in that wood. Like a mental image of Michaelangelo imagining > the statue of David in the block of marble. No one else imagined this for > that block of stone. It is interesting that he did not fully finish some > works, left them only partially realised. Perhaps he was experiencing the > virtual nature of thought, something of its unreality. >
