At 05:28 PM 12/26/2012, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
Interesting read, Abd. Thanks!
As always, you are meticulous in your personal analysis -
relentlessly and obsessively so! I suspect it's one of your
endearing traits that terrified Mr. Krivit so much. I don't think he
knows how to handle: meticulous scrutiny, particularly when the
cross-hairs are focused on his own investigative work. One would
think that a self-proclaimed investigative reporter would to be able
to handle being under the lime-light himself, but there you go. ;-)
One would think. The trick is detachment. If the reporter is merely
reporting observation, there really isn't a problem. However, that's
not what some do, and they mix observation with analysis, which
includes suspicion, what we like and dislike, all the rest,
attachment to conclusions, etc. It's normal and practically
unavoidable, to some degree, but if we don't realize we are doing
this, and confuse our stories with the truth, that's when we can get
seriously lost.
Krivit seems to be dedicated to an image of himself, he's got a tight
concept of his own identity. It doesn't leave a lot of room for
anything really new, outside of his box. It's a shame, he's very
likely trashed his career through this. At one time he was widely
trusted, but he wrecked that.
And investigative reporters need trust. Yeah, criminals aren't going
to trust an investigative reporter, but Krivit alienated scientists, real ones.
It wasn't that he reported "the truth." In fact, it was that he mixed
up truth with speculation, blame, innuendo, etc., etc. Just reporting
facts would never have done this. Scientists make mistakes. It's how
they are reported that makes all the difference.
A favorite contemporary writer/speaker who discusses such topics,
including Descartes (briefly) is Eckart Tolle.
http://www.eckharttolle.com/
Eckhart's most popular book is "The Power of Now".
"The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp.
When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of
thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are."
Crucial: "When you no longer believe everything you think."
From Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/c2x8bnb
More on that later.
> My own training is that the "I" is illusory,
I suspect so too.
It's not like it's a recent idea.
> it's how the
> brain refers to its own activity, but that activity is
> automatic, patterns of neurons firing. There isn't any self
> there, just a sense of identity that is only a pattern of
> patterns. That actually can't be specifically identified or
> found.
I suspect it's might not be inaccurate to say the "I" we personally
experience is the hive-mind of the entire neural network that
comprises our brain activity.
Well, *who* experiences this? The training is to keep identifying
*all of it* as IT. IT creates the concept of self, and we believe it.
Or IT believes IT. Yes. The "I" that IT experiences is the hive-mind
of the entire neural network that comprises IT's activity.
The ancient technique is to keep identifying IT. At some point there
is a release, a freeing, a disconnection. IT doesn't go away, IT
won't, and it shouldn't. IT is necessary for survival. But the game
of survival will be lost. There are more inspiring games to play.
> Yet that same training does point to something else. We can
> experience something else, yet that "something else" is still
> experienced, we might think, through the brain. Or is it? And
> there is no answer to this question, not really. From my
> experience, there is a different quality to this "something else,"
> it is not personal, it is not individual, even though it's a
> well-spring of inspiration and self-expression.
>
> Again, the training: all these questions are invented, made up,
> by the brain, as part of our survival mechanism. Yet there is
> something other than the world of survival, and, in fact, it can
> be plainly experienced. It's "palpable." In this work, it's called
> the Self. Experience of the Self seems to be universally possible,
> indeed it appears to be *instinctive.* The Self has obviously been
> around for a long time, for once one recognizes the Self, there is
> plenty of reference to it, back to the oldest writings we have.
Getting back to Descartes, I suspect the speaker, Eckhart Tolle,
would say something to the effect that one does not have to "think"
anything at all in order to inculcate the "...therefore I am" experience.
I'm not particularly familiar with Tolle, but I did a quick search,
and many, many people have connected his work with what I've been doing.
It's entirely possible to be overcritical, because words are not
necessarily perfectly chosen, but *this* IT suggests avoiding "I" in
the "I am" experience. It's just "is." And "I" can be identified as
the activity of IT. It's discriminable.
I suspect Eckhart would simply suggest that we learn to stop
thinking thoughts altogether.
Well, not possible, at least that's the general suggestion. Rather,
what is *very* possible is recognition of thinking as thinking. And
sometimes, with practice, IT shuts up for a while. And just is.
At least for brief spells of time at first in order to begin
sensing the totality of nothingness. Later, as one gets the hang of
experiencing "nothingness", learn to expand on it. Eckhart would
simply say something to the effect of: "Be still, learn to be here
in the now, experience the simplicity of the present moment."
Right. Trap: considering "thinking" as Wrong or Bad. That would be IT
doing one of IT's favorite activities, blaming. Blaming itself, only,
with the common misindentification, it feels like "I'm being blamed."
Wrong and Bad are judgments, not facts, not direct experience, they
are clearly the activity of IT, geared toward survival, according to
our early training.
Such deceptively simple suggestions can drive certain individuals
up the wall, particularly those who tend to be impatient, or
perhaps those who feel they need complexity cluttering up their
lives. It was reported that one disgruntled reader of Eckhart's
books mailed one of them back ripped to tiny shreds. It was
accompanied with a brick too.
Well, I've seen the most amazing responses. That one doesn't really
surprise me. It could have been a sign to him or her that, hey, there
is a leetle problem here! Many people really are attached to their
suffering! It's *them*. It's their identity.
As for me, I have often found the contents of his writings useful
& helpful. To each his own.
Sure.
Eckhart claims he had an interesting transformational experienced
early in his life - a transformation which I can appreciate. I
suspect I experienced a similar kind of transformation at around the
same age that he experienced his, which was around 25 years of age.
Unfortunately in my case I did not fully comprehend the implications
of what had just happened to me. I had no one to talk to that could
have helped me better inculcate the ramifications in a more
effective and practical manner. It has taken me decades to
understand the utter simplicity of what had happened to me.
It's great that you get it was simple, though.
I've mentioned that I just went through an intense training, an
8-month program. Several times during the training, and several times
after, I've been faced with really upset people. Now, they were not
untrained, they had some background. It was easy to deal with it, in
a way that left them empowered, free, with peace of mind. And it was
incredibly simple. No complex analysis. If there was a trick, it was
to just listen, and keep pointing to the upset as a phenomenon of
mind, being maintained by the brain, being resisted by the brain, the
brain blaming itself because it was upset, wanting to stop being
upset -- that doesn't work! -- and on and on, and each time that
question was asked, "And what is this?", gradually, the person would
start to smile a little. By the end, one man asked me, "Is it that
simple?" "Yes," I said. "It's that simple." And he was free. That
particular man went on to trashcan his terrible job, that he was so
upset about -- they'd basically said, we are going to continue to pay
you peanuts and there is nothing you can do about it, because you'll
lose your visa if you lose your job -- he found his dream job, with
the compensation he deserved (he's a world-class expert in his
field), and what dropping the upset meant was that he could now think
clearly, without all the attachments and chatter entangling him.
> The story of Ahmadinejad, here, in the Jojo dialogues, was a
> demonstration of the Self, my suspicion. Ahmadinejad probably didn't
> realize this, his comments don't show an awareness of the human Self,
> he ascribes his experience to the divine. Maybe. But what he
> describes is simply what I might call the Presence. He seems to have
> taken it personally. Or not. I'm not his Judge.
In my own experiences... what I have inculcated so far, it would
seem that one does not need to take any of this "personally." To
take any of it "personally" is to lose sight of the fact that a
sense of Presence, of Awareness has no use for the seductive
trappings of personality, or what some would actually call "false
personality". False Personality constantly attempts to take front
stage, claiming to be the true "I".
Yes.
It does so by encasing itself within the armor of opinions and
belief systems, all of which is temporal by nature. As such, "False
Personality" is constantly in fear of its own pending annihilation
due to the fact that it is made up of nothing more than temporal
opinions and belief systems. In order to survive from
minute-to-minute it must defend its existence - often by arguing
incessantly about this or that topic for which it has strongly
identified with. It has good reason to fear its own animation
because when one learns to experience a sense of Presence, found in
"nothingness" the need to constantly encase one's "self" within a
collection of opinions and beliefs begins to lose its allure.
Yes.
> Experience of the Self makes those ancient references intelligible.
> From some level of contact with this, I was, in my twenties, able to
> translate the Heart Sutra from the Sanskrit, and I sent my translation
> to Edward Conze, probably the world's foremost Buddhist scholar of his
> time. I later found out that Conze had a reputation of biting the head
> off of students. He didn't bite mine off. Maybe I'd have been better
> off if he had! No, he acknowledged my translation, sent it on to the
> Buddhist Society of London for use -- it was designed to be chanted
> -- and he acknowledged that part of his own translation, which I'd
> questioned him about, was not based on the Sanskrit text, but on
> Chinese interpretation. I was actually translating from experience
> with the subject, which is why I noticed the discrepancy.
... which I would speculate is why Conze didn't bite your head off!
;-) No matter how inexperienced or fleeting the experience might be,
direct experience always trumps a translation of someone else's
experience. Hands down.
Conze wrote to me, "It is for people like you that we have undertaken
all these scholarly labors."
> The brain wants, out of its long-established (and necessary) habits, to
> "own" this "other." So we "explain it," perhaps. But the explanations are
> not the Self. The explanations are just another part of "IT," which is
> what we call the brain activity. A newcomer to this work said it well,
> "Other than IT, there is nothing." Yup. But, ah, that nothing! And he
> knew that, after one weekend. He hadn't been told. It's a standing joke.
> In that three-day seminar, it's commonly asked, the last day,
> "And what did you get for your $500?" And the room shouts,
> unprompted, "Nothing!" And they are overjoyed. No wonder they
> call this a cult!
>
> People have *no right* to be so happy over getting "nothing"
> for their money. Right?
Heh! But what a great bargain! Something from nothing! ;-)
And "they can't take that away from you."
> The leader will also explain that "Nothing we have told you is
> the truth." Basically, "we made it up." Again, obvious cult,
> eh? Nothing is the truth? What a scam! So they feed people a
> load of crap, and the people walk away smiling!
>
> Except it isn't *exactly* a load of crap.
No, it's certainly not a load of crap. However, it is so easy to
lose site of the simplicity of it all. All too often we transform it
into a genuine pile of shit. I'm still constantly learning to
appreciate the value of experiencing "nothingness". I'm sure I'll
have to continue practicing experiencing "nothingness" to the day I
die... and then some. ;-)
It does reframe the concept of death. Maybe death isn't so bad after
all! Someone who doesn't recognize what we are talking about could
imagine this to be some sort of idea that death is better than life.
No, life is *spectacular*. More so, as it happens, from the
perspective we are engaging here.
> What is conveyed are
> called "distinctions," and they are not "truth." If one thinks
> they are, one is led into some severe contradictions. No, they
> are *inventions.* As are all our explanations that we so naively
> imagine are "truth." The only difference is that perhaps these
> are distinctions that are empowering, ideas that effectively
> and efficiently transform, that actually *work.* Or they would
> not continue to be presented!
>
> (More seriously, I had long experience with various techniques
> for reaching that goal. Some of them seem to be free. But you'll
> spend many years in practice, to get what these people routinely
> and with high reliability get in one weekend. Even 12-step programs
> -- which are fantastic! and free -- can *actually cost* more. The
> realization can be transient, if not anchored with practice, that's
> well known about all the old traditions for reaching this state,
> and that hasn't changed, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.)
Expanding a little more on this topic, it seems to have taken me
most of my life to realize how important it can be to become aware
of "nothing."
Better late than never. Some people never get there, you know.
FYI, very early in my life, as early as 15-16 I wanted to be on "the
path". In my 20s, (this was back in the 1970s), I took the
Transcendental Meditation course in college. I became almost
fanatical in my desire to reach some indefinable "spiritual" state
of existence. Fortunately, as I've gotten older, having just turned
60, it would seem that I've managed to mellow out a bit. It slowly
began to dawn on me that it's ridiculous trying to obtain some
enlightened state of consciousness, particularly when one is already
there. We are ALL already "there." It's just that most of us don't
realize the fact that we are ALL already "there" because it's so
easy to lose ourselves within the camouflage of opinions and beliefs
we build around our "selves" which False Personality luxuriates in.
I think I'm finally beginning to learn how to experience the present
moment, to smell all the roses more appreciatively on the endless
path one walks.
Yes. I'll tell a story. I was in the training I mentioned with a
woman who had been advanced in this work, a recognized leader, about
thirty years ago. She told me about one day with her boyfriend, back
then, and he'd asked her what she *really* was. And she said
something like "I am the possibility of infinite possibilities." He
said, "That's just wishful BS. What are you, really?" She started
yelling, "I am the possibility of infinite possibilities. Damn it!
Eff you, asshole!" And then she got it, and started laughing. She
went on to go to seminary, to become an ordained minister, to marry
and have children, etc., and I met her as she was getting re-involved
after having been away for so long.
I should mention the fact that I experienced a lot of chronic
depression in my life, particularly in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. Much of
that depression I can attribute to having an obsessive "A" type
personality combined with pinches of dyslexia and ADD (the latter
runs in the family). I also wrestled with a plethora self-perceived
social norms that often made me feel as if I didn't fit in. As such,
I often felt terribly isolated. In other words, I was a pretty
normal young adult in the throes of his own self-made world filled
with angst. It would seem that one of the major lessons that I have
been learning in this particular life-cycle is that "normalcy" is
just as much an illusion, like everything else in this universe, so
why beat myself up over it.
There is no "why." It does it. It will continue to do what it did for
so long, very likely, but ... you said it above:
"When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of
thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are."
We don't have to "believe" *anything we think*. We can choose to act
without believing, it's not necessary to believe. We can try things
out, for example. If we "believe" our ideas, we become resistant to
shifting perspective, loyal to our "beliefs," which is a pale
substitute to being loyal to our "stands."
I actually was in training when I was dealing with my last WikiMedia
Foundation episode. Conflicts would arise. I got that I could take a
stand without "believing" I was right. It's just a stand! And I want
*everyone* to take their own stand! As a stand, chosen, I can change
it. Indeed, the purpose of taking a stand might be to discover
something, such as there being a better way.
I'm pretty commonly in conflict with my ex-wife about our two adopted
children. If I hold the idea that she's wrong, it will exacerbate and
perpetuate the conflict. No, she's taking a stand for her daughters,
she wants them to be safe, to eat nutritious meals, to follow
authority, especially her, to stay away from all the harmful
influences so common in this world, and I'm taking a stand for their
development of independence, their ability to make choices in
difficult situations, to deal with the world-as-it-is, to be fully
self-expressed, and to stand up for their own power.
We can, and should, both take our stands, and the girls will benefit.
Back to something on the purpose of this list. I'm taking a *stand*
for cold fusion research, because I've concluded that the evidence
for cold fusion is convincing, solidly so. Taking that stand will
lead, I anticipate, to research to confirm some of the basic
findings, and, in particular, this could be, as a major possibility,
to measure the heat/helium ratio in the Fleischmann/Pons Heat Effect
more accurately. Storms estimated (2007) 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4, from a
number of studies. (Krivit and Larsen challenge some of this, but
Larsen actually has confirmed, as to his opinion, some SRI work that
came up with 30 MeV.)
Now, here is the scientific game. Suppose cold fusion is bogus. The
FP Heat Effect has been widely observed, and it can be observed
again, the experiment described is to reproduce that and measure
helium more accurately. The experiments don't need to be "reliable"
for this, it's a enough, in fact, that heat is only occasionally
observed, in a series of experiments. One of the characteristics of
pathological science, as defined by Langmuir, is that results
disapper with more accurate measurement. If an artifact is involved,
this work will reveal it.
That is, if cold fusion is bogus, taking a stand for it, a stand that
is also a stand for the scientific method, will reveal that.
And instead of complaining about those problematic DoE reviews, we
will be using them, requesting that what had by 2004 become their
*unanimous* conclusion, more research, with modest funding, be *realized.*
