Greetings Mark,
If I had before me a pail of water from the seashore would I be so foolish as
to start describing the Pacific Ocean? No! I had a few unpatterned
experiences. They were kind of visual. I was aware but there was no visual
recognition or conceptual recognition: no shape or no color or no definition or
no meaning. I might say that what was before me was a field of twinkling
light. I was seeing something, then it was gone for a while, then I was seeing
something again. (Makes my want to sing a chorus of the song by Donovan.)
Have I described DQ? NO! I have tried to describe the nature of three,
separate unpatterned experiences I had. I know nothing about DQ, which still
to my mind remains unknowable, undivideable and undefinable. What do you think
I learned about the patterns that were there, then gone, then there again?
That is what seems significant. Not this; not that. No-thing. Cognitive
constructions based on patterned expectations? ?!?
I started meditating in the early 80s, and could seem to watch the thoughts
(patterns) move through my mind, consciousness,,, whatever. That was a
different perspective. It is like a flow of patterns, but not some whole,
complete, concrete pattern; just bits and pieces. Sometimes they twisted off
to a totally new topic altogether. I thought that 'thoughts through mind' was
the funniest process I could imagine and the stories we make from them were
hilarious. But I couldn't make sense of what I was experiencing. I did
recognized there was an aspect of me that seemed separate from the flow of
thoughts; that was aware of them. That's why I am interested in 'conscious
awareness' as "subjective" awareness. I find no autonomous, independent 'self'
that is the locus of control.
Lately I've been thinking about mindfulness/awareness which seems yet another
kind of experience. I find it to be like as the Romantic mode described in
zAmm. I don't find it like an unpatterned experience, and I'm unsure why
anyone equates it with Dynamic Quality. It seems to be selfless, but not
unpatterned experience. It seems the "cutting edge of experience" BETWEEN the
static and Dynamic. When practicing mindfulness, one is present and on the
"leading edge" before explanation, but perceptual pattern are not gone. It is
like Albahari describes "attentive awareness". Or as Hagen states "it is
direct perception itself. It’s seeing before signs appear before ideas sprout,
before falling into thought." Hagen also writes " “When the Buddha was asked
to sum up his teaching in a single word, he said, “awareness.”
Another description of mindfulness is 'bare attention'. Nyanaponika Thera
writes "By bare attention we understand the clear and single-minded awareness
of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of
perception. It is called "bare" because it attends to the bare facts of a
perception without reacting to them by deed, speech or mental comment." It's a
magnificent openness. In 'Mindfulness In Plain English', Ven. Henepola
Gunaratana describes mindfulness "very much like what you see with your
peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision.
Yet this moment of soft, unfocused, awareness contains a very deep sort of
knowing that is lost as soon as you focus your mind and objectify the object
into a thing." In Wiki it states, "_we could very well render samma sati
[mindfulness] in the noble eightfold path as "right noting" or "right
witnessing" or "right attention_".
It is mindfulness that opposes noncaring and promotes Quality like RMP's
description "When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and
objects it shuts out Quality, and when you're really stuck it's Quality, not
any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go." In LILA's
CHILD (Annotation 69) Dan asks "Could you please clarify the meaning of
"understanding" as in "a Dynamic understanding"? Can we use the term
"understanding" in the context of Dynamic Quality?" RMP answers, ""Awareness"
can be substituted if that sounds better." Awareness - mindfulness - bare
attention. It's also what I take RMP to be saying when in chapter 32 of LILA,
he writes:
While sustaining biological and social patterns
Kill all intellectual patterns.
Kill them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served.
It's not the unpatterned he's suggesting, but bare attention without the
intellectual chatter. When wondering how to pursue the freedom addressed in
"To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality
it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality,
which is undefinable, one's behavior is free.", it's through awareness as
developed in a mindfulness practice.
Sorry, Mark, for the rant and moving away from such wonderful topics like
neutrinos, entanglement and superposition. I love physics and wish I was one
of those children that at nine-years-old knew they wanted to grow up to become
a theoretical physicist like Michio Kaku did.
Marsha
On Oct 1, 2011, at 1:26 AM, 118 wrote:
> Sure, I can your question in a thousand ways, and I will just choose
> one for now. Just remember, all I can provide are words.
>
> To begin with "faster" neutrinos do not violate Einstein's equivalency
> of energy and mass. He simply says that energy "is" mass, they are
> just expressed in different units. That is why one needs to multiply
> the units of mass by a very big constant (number). This of course
> falls out of current math, which as such is a static theory of this
> day and age. Einstein stated that the speed of light can be held
> constant, which means that time must change for the mathematics will
> work out. The relativity of time has been supported with empirical
> experiments, and is of utmost importance in things such as position
> determination through satellite triangulation amongst a number of
> other useful things. This does not make it True, it just makes it
> useful (big difference). In terms of "faster", that is all up to
> debate in terms of how to present the results. The math dominates
> here, and could be extremely naive. Let me ask you this: can anything
> go slower than zero? If not, why not?
>
> Let me first address your triage of definitions for DQ. The
> undefinable nature of DQ simply means that there are not enough words
> to define DQ. I have said that the same applies to "dog" in that
> there are not enough words to define your conception of dog. There is
> nothing mysterious about something being undefinable since the
> applications of static quality to dynamic phenomenon (such as a dog)
> are impossible.
>
> When the concept of unknowable simply means that DQ cannot be known
> through static quality. That is, it is not something that you can
> read about and intellectually know. As stated before by somebody: We
> all know what Quality is. This is not the intellectual form of
> quality, but the real form of it. I am sure you can apprehend this
> through your meditation. So, DQ cannot be intellectualized. This is
> nothing new, God cannot be intellectualized either. God is presented
> through ones own experience, not though a book. If you don't like the
> static word God, then let's use Nature. Nature cannot be
> intellectualized, it is known through our direct relationship with it.
> The same can be said for Love; love cannot be intellectualized
> either. In fact greater than 99% of the things that we experience are
> outside of our simple intellectualization.
>
> Indeterminate means that it can not be determined. If we use
> measurement as a form of determination, then we could say that DQ is
> outside of science's capabilities. Most of what we experience cannot
> be measured, since measuring it would not make any sense. Speaking of
> senses, our senses are very narrow; in terms of what there is they
> cannot almost detect nothing. Our vision is restricted to such a
> narrow portion of wavelengths, that mathematically this puts this
> range pretty close to zero if the actual wavelengths available are
> from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. Sound is another
> example, we can hear a very narrow range of frequencies. The senses
> of touch are biophysically confined by size, and the sense of smell
> and taste are restricted to specific chemical interactions; only those
> which are needed for survival. The number of theoretically possible
> sensations in these areas are, of course close to infinite. So the
> fact that DQ cannot be determined simply puts it in the same category
> as most everything else around us.
>
> My question to you here is: Is DQ unimaginable?
>
> Now I will get briefly to the concept of entanglement and DQ. You
> yourself have touched on this topic in the past, so I am not sure why
> you are asking me. Intuitively you seem to know how entanglement
> plays a part in our experience here.
>
> One example would be the absence of time in entanglement. That is,
> entangled particles are such that each changes instantaneously
> accordingly across a distance. (Of course Einstein had another way to
> express distance in terms of gravity, but I will not bore you with
> that). As you may have experienced from your meditations, time
> disappears. It is not uncommon to be aware of this. In fact, though
> simple meditation, it is possible to live completely in the present.
> Of course memory does not exist in this state so it is impossible to
> relate the experience afterwards except though some new age-like
> presentation. Egotists such as Eckhart Tolle have tried to explain
> this as living in the moment. This form of understanding may have its
> positives, but it is also misleading. If people have a fixed idea of
> what it is to live in the present, then they will never find it since
> it is not intellectual and one cannot point to "living in the moment".
> DQ must reside outside of time, otherwise it becomes static, or
> subservient to time. DQ creates time as our static representations of
> such, it cannot be created in time just like the painting cannot
> create the landscape.
>
> Carl Jung's concept of synchronicity comes close to entanglement and
> may both be metaphysically somewhat equivalent. He did not seem to
> take it to its obvious conclusion, that being that everything is
> entangled and happens simultaneously. Cause and effect therefore
> disappear while in DQ. Some have likened Jung's synchronicity to the
> Tao. I would agree that if one understands one of these, they can
> form an understanding of the other. Pirsig himself saw this when his
> intuitive understanding of Quality could fit in and replace the
> sections where Tao is written in the Tao te Ching. Explaining all of
> this understanding of his is of course difficult, and he obviously
> falls short as can be seen by where some posts on this forum go with
> the subject, and how Lila was not understood by most people. Improved
> analogies are important for MoQ to catch on. Any analogy of DQ which
> is not what it is not, from you, would be most welcome here. Remember
> these are all analogies used for the purposes of rhetoric. Nothing
> can be ultimately proven (since there is nothing to prove), but people
> can come to agreement.
>
> So there we have it, entanglement led to synchronicity which led to
> Tao which led to DQ; I hope what I write strikes some bell within you.
>
> I am not sure if you meant that DQ should be discussed on Science
> Friday. We are a long way from that. Physics is much more confining
> than it is liberating. I could say that I am Anti-Science (said in the
> same provocative way that Pirsig stated that MoQ is Anti-theist). But
> this would only be in relationship by our current infatuation and
> bewitchment by science. Many people think that science is real rather
> than just a creation of ours. Again, science is the painting and not
> the landscape.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 8:46 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Mark,
>>
>> DQ is unknowable, undivideable & undefinable - unpatterned. I wonder how
>> you think entanglement relates to DQ? The announcement is interesting.
>> Such excitement! I hope there are more programs addressing it. Maybe it
>> will be a topic on npr's Science Friday.
>>
>>
>> Marsha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 30, 2011, at 10:52 AM, 118 wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Marsha,
>>> I heard parts of it while I was working. An interesting little bit on sq.
>>> Use it for what it is worth to you. The idea of entanglement already shows
>>> "influences" outside of time. This "spooky action from a distance"
>>> suggests that an action on a particle here is matched by a change, in
>>> particle light years away, instantaneously. This concept has more
>>> relevance to MoQ and the "nature" of DQ, IMO.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:04 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> --- On Point with Tom Ashbrook ---
>>>>
>>>> E=mc2 is the one piece of physics everybody knows. Einstein’s special
>>>> relativity theory. 1905. Says nothing can travel faster than the speed of
>>>> light. It’s the basis, the bedrock, of modern physics. And last week,
>>>> out of the big CERN facility in Europe, the stunning news that some speedy
>>>> little neutrinos have been clocked traveling faster. Faster than the
>>>> speed of light.
>>>>
>>>> To physicists, that’s more than an earthquake. Most are skeptical so far.
>>>> Waiting for confirmation. But if it were true? Time travel fans, start
>>>> your engines.
>>>>
>>>> This hour On Point: speedy neutrinos rock Einstein’s world.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/09/29/tracking-neutrinos (Audio available
>>>> shortly after broadcast)
___
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
