Look, Sam Harris leaves the door wide open to research in consciousness like TM does. Read the article. In fact in meditation even he, Sam Harris does science on 'introspective' woo-woo that way too! You guys must be very disappointed to have lost what you have seen as your champion against meditating from the public arena. A pitiable thing here is that you guys quite evidently do not use your nervous system very effectively that scientific way Harris does whilst yous even got a human nervous system on this planet. Take for instance a hypothesis based on observation: Make haste, make use of your time in meditation and then you'll know more. Harris is even urging you saying that effective modern spirituality is very scientific practice in so many ways. Quite evidently an effective spiritual practice scientifically is at: http://www.tm.org/ http://www.tm.org/ Your own science methodology in spirituality evidently seems must not be very good for some reason to experiment with. You quitters ought to get your meditations checked so you could be a credible part of a modern spiritual discussion. Unless you are really satisfied being in the control group. According to the research your spirituality might even do everyone some good if you would work on it. The experience of an effective meditation might well help you with what seems an angry entrenched mood about your poor experience, like Harris mentions in form like around the vasana of anger in your systems. Do some more science of your own experimenting. Meditating in the field effect of effective spiritual practice groups is found to be useful, may be look for that too to help you in your research. Have a really wonderful day today on planet earth, after meditating this morning I got to unload 300 bales of hay. 300 more coming this afternoon before meditation, -Buck “In “Waking Up,” I argue that spirituality need not rest on any faith-based assumptions about what exists outside of our own experience. And it arises from the same spirit of honest inquiry that motivates science itself.” -Sam Harris
turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> Good article, I get an idea of where he's coming from. Nothing to do with mystic woo woo at all. In fact, he's a man after my own heart. Mine, too. He manages to bring concepts that most people get all hazy and Woo Woo about into crystal clarity. Of course consciousness isn't reducible. loads of things aren't, life itself for instance. Reason is they depend on advanced structures, a rock isn't conscious but it's made of the same stuff as my brain is, therefore it must be the organisation inside my head that gives rise to awareness. This is quite obviously born out by experiment. No there isn't a central place in the brain where the sense of self resides, evolution teaches that isn't a likely prediction because it would have to be a very ancient biological structure and yet it acts all modern with its feelings etc. Seems obvious that all parts of the brain from the ancient reptilian parts that gives us instincts and simple motor function responses, the mid brain or limbic system we share with most other mammals that gives us emotions, desires and learned responses like fight or flight. On top of that is the neocortex that gives us higher mammals reasoning and episodic memory, all these things are interconnected and we experience and use all of them with the top, most recently evolved bit, wondering where all the inner stuff comes from. You can also tell there's no inner "self" when the brain gets damaged, in severe epilepsy the two brains halves are sometimes separated by cutting the connecting nerves. People can still function but if you place a screen between someone's eyes so they can't see what's on the other side your left eye will see things but you won't know what they are even though your right hand can draw them! This means there must be two "selfs" one in each side! How weird is that? I think the hard problem is really the easy bit, the tricky task is working out exactly what everything is doing and when. I've never understood those who go on and on about the "hard problem." It's simply a non-issue to a pragmatic Buddhist. Who CARES about the "Why" of consciousness or "Where it comes from?" No one has ever known and no one ever will, and 'knowing' would do them no good even if they found what they thought was a suitable "Why" or "Where." The pragmatic spiritual approach is to leave all the figuring and the posturing about the "Why" of life to those who feel they have time to waste on such self-indulgent shit, and focus instead on the obvious -- that *something* we call consciousness exists, here and now, and that we have the ability to work with it. The only thing that seems to have any pragmatic value -- for us or for others -- is learning how to make the best use of whatever we consider consciousness to be. Then again, I fully admit to being underwhelmed by the silly shit that "philosophers" spend their lives pondering. I think the world would have been a better place if they'd all been forced to go out and actually DO something of benefit to other people instead of sitting on their asses feeling self-important about a self that never existed. :-) The inner minds eye has been there since the dawn of complex animal life even though it must have improved via evolution, it's the way we know to respond to threats, simple stimulus/response but so useful it got improved rapidly. This understanding of conscious correlates is proceeding well but the brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. So it's a bit early to say that consciousness is impossible or must be some sort of "other" thing from the rest of the stuff we know the universe is made of. And it's quite a relief that Sam Harris isn't a mystic he just has a different sense of the importance of inner experience than most scientists. I still see no evidence for quantum consciousness. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <wayback71@...> wrote : Sam Harris's Vanishing Self http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/? Sam Harris's Vanishing Self http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ Sam Harris's Vanishing Self http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ The well-known New Atheist makes a case for the value of “spirituality,” which he bases on his experiences in meditation. View on opinionator.blogs.ny... http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ Preview by Yahoo Sam Harris's Vanishing Self http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ The well-known New Atheist makes a case for the value of “spirituality,” which he bases on his experiences in meditation. View on opinionator.blogs.nyti... http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/ Preview by Yahoo
