--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@>
> wrote:
>>
>> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote:
>>> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
>>> <anartaxius@> wrote:
>>>> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote:
>>>>> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jr_esq@> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was thinking that if a person had transcendental dreams,
>>>>>> then the solutions to problems in the waking consciousness
>>>>>> would be rehearsed and reenacted during the dream state in
>>>>>> a blissful way. He or she would then actually perform a
>>>>>> creative solution during the waking state to fix the
>>>>>> problem, whether it be in relationships or work issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sometimes John's cluelessness amazes me, even after
>>>>> all this time. There can never be any such thing as
>>>>> a remembered "transcendental dream," because if it
>>>>> had any attributes you can remember, it wasn't
>>>>> transcendental.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you disagree, describe a period of "transcendence"
>>>>> that you experienced in TM for me. In detail. I'll
>>>>> wait... :-)
>>>>>
>>>> Okay, I'll start, but it might be a while before you hear anything,
>>>> perhaps forever, so in the spirit of anticipation, hold your breath until
>>>> you hear from me.
>>>>
>>>> This tread got me thinking 'is anything transcendental'? The mind imagines
>>>> that there is a 'transcendent', but is there? Whatever we might think
>>>> about the nature of consciousness, we all have experiences, which in
>>>> aggregate is just experience. If we define experience in general, as a
>>>> field, nothing happens outside experience in general whether the
>>>> experience is something like a coffee pot, or what we call transcendence
>>>> in meditation. But transcendence is not outside experience, it is just
>>>> another flavour or qualia of experience.
>>>
>>> If you want to *redefine* experience as a "field,"
>>> maybe you could get away with this. But by the normal
>>> definition of "experience," transcendental pure
>>> consciousness in meditation (no thoughts, no mantra)
>>> isn't "an experience," it's the *absence* of experience,
>>> beyond experience. As Barry points out, it's
>>> attributeless, qualia-less.
>>
>> I was kinda playing with the words. We use these words a lot, but exactly
>> how do all these words that we refer to consciousness, being, pure
>> consciousness, transcendence, relate to one another, and that depends on how
>> we define them, and understand those definitions.
>>
>> Does 'pure consciousness' equal 'being' or is there some subtle difference?
>> Is the absence of experience conscious or not? Is there such a thing as
>> non-existence as opposed to existence if were are on the level of being?
>>>
>>> By "transcendental dream," John was most likely
>>> referring to witnessing the experience of dreaming,
>>> not having a dream of the transcendent. Barry could
>>> have figured that out, but he preferred to ignore
>>> what John wrote ("problems...rehearsed and reenacted
>>> during the dream state in a blissful way") so he
>>> could put John down.
>>>
>> My first comment was primarily aimed at Turq's last paragraph.
>>
>> As for dreams, I was thinking if one has a vision, is that real, or just a
>> dream one had a vision. Was it an hallucination? Are spiritual experiences
>> just hallucinations?
>
> Define "real."
Is the the hard question in another form? For me experience is real, but the
quality of experience and thought about experience is subject to distortion
shall we say (or not say if you disagree). By quality of experience I mean
sensory experience, which is sometimes misleading or incomplete because of the
way the brain fills in to interpret the data stream (I am not talking about
thinking here). As for thought, this is a representation of all else that is
experienced, but as a representation it is not what that all else is, though
the thought itself is an experience. Memory is another problem, as research
seems to show that when we retrieve a memory, it gets rewritten, and the memory
can change in this process, so it becomes a poorer representation of whatever
event we once experienced. If you can come up with a better way to defines
these terms I would like to hear it, at least we might eventually be on the
same page as to the definintion of words, or maybe in the same book somewhere.
>
>> Because individual minds seem so different and interpret the world with such
>> different perspectives, are we just local realities in a larger reality, or
>> hallucinations in a larger reality?
>
> Whose hallucinations?
This is another question of interest. My thought on this is there is the field
of experience, but there is no one, no who, that has them. There is no entity
that has experience, it just simply exists that way, unadorned. So I think of
this question as not the right question to ask, though at some stage of
pondering what reality might be, it is probably a very useful question.
>
>> I tend to think that thought creates a reality or the appearance of reality,
>> if the thoughts are taken at least as seriously as what they point to.
>>
>> I also think most take thoughts more seriously than what they point to and
>> mask the underlying reality, which while it seems to have a texture, so to
>> speak, is undefined, except when we think. No thoughts, no mantra in
>> meditation gives an experiential clue as to that undefined reality, of which
>> one cannot speak, but that is just the beginning step in the process of
>> attempting to discover what that 'what one cannot define' is. The real goal
>> is to apprehend that undefined value when wide awake and in activity in
>> every aspect of experience.
>
> Er, yes, TM 101.
Well, I am a simpleton.
>
> But also throughout the range of nonwaking state, including
> dreaming and deep sleep. John was speculating about whether
> "apprehension of the undefined value" while dreaming would
> enable solutions to waking-state problems. Barry didn't get
> this, or chose to misunderstand John as referring to a dream
> of transcendence, i.e., a dream of the absence of experience
> as that state occurs in meditation when there are no thoughts
> and no mantra, an impossibility by definition (but not what
> John had in mind at all).
>
Gotta go. Family intervenes.
