Guest guest Posted September 6, 2001 Report Share Posted September 6, 2001 Rob, > Hi Gary, > > Okay, I understand your point of view except > for one detail: I don't know what he would > have needed to write to satisfy you. For purposes > of illustration, could you write for us a brief > intelligible account of a hypothetical state of > sleeping awareness? > Sleeping awareness isn't unique. Any claim of pure consciousness has the same problem. If you had a pure consciousness experience, how do you know you had it? Very briefly, the most plausible explanation is that the embodied you had the experience, which was therefore encoded in your memory. After the experience you then remember having it. The problem is, what was encoded in memory if the experience was pure consciousness and therefore had no characteristics? Something like this could account for Wilber's sleeping awareness. What explains nothing is to say he had a purely transcendental experience unrelated to his body. If it is unrelated to his body, in what sense is it HIS experience? And if we can meaningfully say it was his experience, then to relate it to his body through memory seems to be the most plausible explanation. >> You are focusing too much on the " whether X occurred " >> and not enough on " what is the X that occurred " . > > I do that because I don't believe that I would be > satisfied by any answer he could give to the second > question, any more than a description of redness > can tell a blind person what it looks like. The redness analogy limps badly. If you tell the blind that you perceive red through your eyes, they can understand by analogy with their other senses. All are somehow related to the body. But the sleeping awareness claim is completely different when it is said to be a transcendental experience of pure consciousness. On the other hand, though I have not had the experience and have been given no good reason why I should want to have it, I can understand the claim if Wilber is saying that he was conscious in some way of himself sleeping. Then all he's claiming is that he is having a very unusual experience, but it is OF something ‹ himself sleeping. > Gary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 6, 2001 Report Share Posted September 6, 2001 Hiya Gary, <SNIP> Wilber reminds me of San, who in turn reminds me of a guy in my class ingrammar school. He was notorious for saying something insulting to someoneand then, when threatened with a punch in the nose, claimed he was onlykidding. San: When San kicks the nose back in, San is still kidding.<LOL> Either words mean something or they don't. They don't. Either they are helpful tools to throw out other deeply embedded beliefs, assumptions, conclusions, all of which are again "words", or they are not. Either these specialexperiences are somehow related to ordinary experience, so we canmeaningfully talk about them even if haltingly. If a so called "special" experience can be talked about (whether meaningfully or nonsensically), it means it can be objectifed. If any experience can be objectified, it is no difference from the experience of getting your butt kicked. Or these special experiencesare so radically different (das ganz Andere, as Karl Barth said of God) thatthe honest and unconfused are reduced to literal silence. Indeed so. And yet what often happens, is the arrival of a desperate miserable seeker in front of this "silence", beseeching for succor, desperate for a lifeline to come out of his/her misery. And the "silence", knowing that any extended lifeline is an immediate corruption, sometimes, offers one, out of compassion, knowing that even in this act of compassion, there is no "individual" involved, neither as a seeker nor as the one in whom silence has descended. The act of compssion is also a movement of Impersonal functioning and for such an act of compassion to come to be, there has to be the conceptual manifestation of one who seeks compassion and a notionally separate one, who offers the same. Such a "lifeline", offerred to a seeker, in the moment, is appropriate to the state of the seeker's seeking. But subsequently all such "lifelines" are recorded, collated, to form gospels and the gospel becomes an icon of is worship. Such hilarities also part of the Impersonal functioning. All the above is not to dismiss the possibility that Ken Wilber, NOT cosmicconsciousness, was awake for 11 days while the rest of Ken slept. It is justto say that Ken's account is not altogether conceptually coherent. I have not seen what KW has prattled, but the question to you Gary, is why is "coherence" and by that I mean, what appears coherent to "Gary", necessarily, the bedrock on which all "prattlings" is to be seen against? By all means "Gary" may say, at this moment, a particular "prattling" is not understandable to "Gary". That's all, "Gary" can affirm, in the moment. Next moment, what "unwiring" make take place of the way Gary is "wired", who knows? Incidentally, Gary, you may search for coherence all your life and I do promise you, "Gary" will never find coherence. The end of "Gary" is the coherence of perfection. Some two-bit coherence. <LOL> Cheers Sandeep Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 7, 2001 Report Share Posted September 7, 2001 Howdy Sandeep, > When San kicks the nose back in, San is still kidding.<LOL> Jolly violence is the best kind! >> Either words mean something or they don't. > They don't. lol. > Incidentally, Gary, you may search for coherence all your > life and I do promise you, "Gary" will never find coherence. You are being very kind and generous today, putting Gary in quotation marks! "I" can never get enlightened! I can never get enlightened! Grammar-Yoga! Cheers, Rob - Sandeep Chatterjee Realization Thursday, September 06, 2001 11:07 PM Re: Awareness during sleep Hiya Gary, <SNIP> Wilber reminds me of San, who in turn reminds me of a guy in my class ingrammar school. He was notorious for saying something insulting to someoneand then, when threatened with a punch in the nose, claimed he was onlykidding. San: When San kicks the nose back in, San is still kidding.<LOL> Either words mean something or they don't. They don't. Either they are helpful tools to throw out other deeply embedded beliefs, assumptions, conclusions, all of which are again "words", or they are not. Either these specialexperiences are somehow related to ordinary experience, so we canmeaningfully talk about them even if haltingly. If a so called "special" experience can be talked about (whether meaningfully or nonsensically), it means it can be objectifed. If any experience can be objectified, it is no difference from the experience of getting your butt kicked. Or these special experiencesare so radically different (das ganz Andere, as Karl Barth said of God) thatthe honest and unconfused are reduced to literal silence. Indeed so. And yet what often happens, is the arrival of a desperate miserable seeker in front of this "silence", beseeching for succor, desperate for a lifeline to come out of his/her misery. And the "silence", knowing that any extended lifeline is an immediate corruption, sometimes, offers one, out of compassion, knowing that even in this act of compassion, there is no "individual" involved, neither as a seeker nor as the one in whom silence has descended. The act of compssion is also a movement of Impersonal functioning and for such an act of compassion to come to be, there has to be the conceptual manifestation of one who seeks compassion and a notionally separate one, who offers the same. Such a "lifeline", offerred to a seeker, in the moment, is appropriate to the state of the seeker's seeking. But subsequently all such "lifelines" are recorded, collated, to form gospels and the gospel becomes an icon of is worship. Such hilarities also part of the Impersonal functioning. All the above is not to dismiss the possibility that Ken Wilber, NOT cosmicconsciousness, was awake for 11 days while the rest of Ken slept. It is justto say that Ken's account is not altogether conceptually coherent. I have not seen what KW has prattled, but the question to you Gary, is why is "coherence" and by that I mean, what appears coherent to "Gary", necessarily, the bedrock on which all "prattlings" is to be seen against? By all means "Gary" may say, at this moment, a particular "prattling" is not understandable to "Gary". That's all, "Gary" can affirm, in the moment. Next moment, what "unwiring" make take place of the way Gary is "wired", who knows? Incidentally, Gary, you may search for coherence all your life and I do promise you, "Gary" will never find coherence. The end of "Gary" is the coherence of perfection. Some two-bit coherence. <LOL> Cheers Sandeep ..........INFORMATION ABOUT THIS LIST..........Email addresses: Post message: Realization Un: Realization- Our web address: http://www.realization.orgBy sending a message to this list, you are givingpermission to have it reproduced as a letter onhttp://www.realization.org................................................ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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