Well, I am not sure what rubbing the lamp means to this thread, but, Justin, I certainly appreciate the way you lead us along the lines of philosophical reasoning to arrive at the poignant place that connects us all in a thread. Completely meaningful.
On Mar 26, 1:18 pm, Justintruth <[email protected]> wrote: > Reality is that it is there and that it is not me. > > I look at a teacup. Is it a teacup or is it just my seeing a teacup? > If it is a teacup it is real. If it is just my seeing a teacup then it > is not real. > > This is the typical way of looking at reality. > > The problem with this is revealed in the mystic traditions. If > abstraction is the process of thinking of something that cannot exist > without something else, as existing without that something else, then > the idea of reality becomes an abstraction. The experienced is not > conceivable apart from experiencing of some kind and reality and to > the extent that it is conceived of that way, becomes the illusion of > worlds behind the scenes. > > Now this abstraction lies so deep in our ideas that all of us are > capable of imagining the universe with no one in it, no one > experiencing it. We do that easily and we ascribe the term reality to > that abstraction. That is "the universe" and the fact that it is > experienced is considered a contingent fact that might have been > otherwise. It is just luck that we experience the universe. If > evolution had gone the other way then .... Its simple, just imagine > the world before people or sentient beings evolved or imagine it after > they are gone. We are almost completely unaware of the how our real > absence (not just a temporal structure with a point that has us arrive > and end - but complete absence) would erode the hypothetical nature of > "it". It is easy to see how its color would be undefinable but much > harder to see how its spatial material structure, the stuff of set > theory and mathematical modeling, would become equally meaningless. > > Only in the mystical traditions are the notions of reality appreciated > and the presenting of already-merging-originally is experienced. The > world is correctly experienced as a verb and the meaning of its > reality -or perhaps better "reality-ing" becomes clear. Here the > notion of reality is seen as being meaningful, as having meaning and > therefore is not separate from, nor reducible to, mind. It is meaning- > ing itself around us and throughout us. This does not then exclude our > temporalizing and spatially abstracting the essent, of recognizing > material structures and of understanding the relationship of those > structures to our own incarnation, but all of this becomes essential > material and is not the One reality at the center. It is just > contingent structure. > > Those states of conscious are hard to come by but their insight is > invaluable in comprehending the meaning of reality. > > While the notion of reality as being that which is "other than > thought" has uses the problem with it is that it cannot handle the > mystical experience of reality. It is ignorant of the Tao. > > Consider these two statements: "When we say something is a fantasy, we > mean that it isn't a part of the world of our natural senses. It > exists soley in the subjective mind." "When we say something is real > we seem to be implying that the object is perceived through senses > other than pure thought" > > The first problem is that reality as it is usually meant is not > ascribed to something that is seen sensually as opposed to > cognitively. For example if I induce the sight of a cow electrically > by stimulating the right neurons (or even by projecting light in a > realistic way into our eyes, we would usually say that the cow that I > experienced is not real even though I saw it. Alternatively we may say > that it was a "real experience" but not a "real cow". My "just seeing > it" means that it was subjective and therefore not real. So the > distinction between mind and senses is not the key. It is the > distinction between that which is "purely subjective" and that which > is not that is the key. > > However, the problem is that in reality itself the meaning and being > are kind of the same thing. It is the meaning-ing of being and the > being of the meaning-ing of being originally as one experience. > Otherwise being becomes roughly "that which is not meaning", or at > least "that which is not just meaning" - something again other to pure > meaning - and becomes something other, something necessarily > meaningless. > > I am sure that I am being clumsy here but the essence of my comment is > that a notion of reality that makes distinction between either sensory > vs cognitive content or objective vs subjective entities will not work > because of its failure to realize the Tao. > > Being in reality is completely meaningful. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. 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