The hunt for Pete's brain / Dan

[Guest guest]

Dan

 

I am interested in making a careful reply to this last post of yours.

However, I would like to seek clarification on two terms.

 

ONE: " phenomenon "

 

I wrote:

 

> When's the last time you experienced a brain as a phenomenon?

> That means you had direct sensorial experience of a brain.

 

You wrote:

<<

You think an apple is concrete, you can touch it, so you think

it's a phenomenon, and something else isn't, like an idea

of justice.

 

Both of them are constructs. The apple just as much as the idea

of justice.

>>

 

But Webster wrote:

phe·nom·e·non

n. pl. phe·nom·e·na (-n)

An occurrence, circumstance, or fact that is perceptible by the senses.

 

[Note that Webster doesn't say *object*.]

 

As I understand the term, " phenomenon " does not refer to a concept, or

(in your parlance) a " construct " , because such is not perceptible by

the senses.

 

 

TWO: " registration "

 

You use the term " registration " . What do you mean by that term?

 

I will reply more fully to your post as am interested in your

comments on " emptiness " , but first would like to hear your responses

re the above two terms.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

-

dan330033

Nisargadatta

Friday, April 30, 2004 2:06 PM

Re: The hunt for Pete's brain / Pete

 

 

Nisargadatta , " Bill Rishel " <plexus@a...>

wrote:

 

> When's the last time you experienced a brain as a phenomenon?

 

When I took anatomy class.

 

> That means you had direct sensorial experience of a brain.

> [Am picturing someone holding a human brain in his hand.]

 

Yes, I've done that. Sorry you've been deprived.

 

> As for a collection of cells working cooperatively, you couldn't

> have experienced it as cells except via a microscope, and even

> then you couldn't have experienced it as cells working

> cooperatively in a phenomenal sense. The working cooperatively

> is necessarily an inferred abstraction.

 

Man, are you always this picky? When you get this involved,

then I have to give an explanation. Are you always so

greedy for explanations? Okay, Bill, here it is:

everything we think of as phenomena are constructions.

Immediacy, now, has no objects in it, or to which it is

what it is. So, every object is a past impression, involving

time, being constructed. There is no actual past.

 

It doesn't matter whether it's a second ago, a millisecond ago,

or ten thousand years.

 

You think an apple is concrete, you can touch it, so you think

it's a phenomenon, and something else isn't, like an idea

of justice.

 

Both of them are constructs. The apple just as much as the idea

of justice.

 

If I hold a brain in my hand, that is just as much a construction

as is a more abstracted idea of what a brain is -- which is

experienced as a thought.

 

A thought about a brain being a collection of cells is every

bit as phenomenal as a brain you hold in your hand.

 

A memory of an elephant with pink skin that you imagined

when you were five is just as phenomenal as the immediate

sensation you have of pain if you are pricked with a needle.

 

<I read other stuff you wrote, and enjoyed it, but am snipping

for the sake of brevity, hope you don't mind.>

 

> You have clarified your position for me in this post.

> I continue to be on the fence on this topic.

 

Okay, it's a chicken and the egg thing, anyway.

 

To me, it's more important to understand that chicken

and egg mutually co-determine and interpenetrate,

than to try to figure which came first.

 

> A question that comes to mind is this:

> Is the " emptiness " that I experience now the same

> emptiness that I experienced a few minutes ago?

>

> How could I possibly compare?

 

Right.

 

What is involved with " registration " ?

 

There has to be comparison, there has to be movement

in time.

 

If you understand comparison and time as constructs,

then registration depends on those constructs.

 

This opens up the unconstructed truth as nonregistering,

not recalled, not of time, not mine.

 

> Similarly with " silence " . As I write this there is a

> deep silence that pervades. Is the silence as I write

> this sentence the same as the silence when I wrote the

> previous sentence? It seems that to ask if the silence in

> the two case is the same is a grammatical error.

 

Okay.

 

In other words, the silence is the now, the now is the silence,

there is nothing existing outside, upon which the now

could register.

 

> Also, and this may be a digression, it seems that

> at times the silence gets deeper somehow. It is not

> that it gets " more quiet " .

 

That has to involve the comparative mind, the self-reflective

mind that knows it is having an experience and uses

memory to compare.

 

In other words, construction within and of constructions.

 

What isn't constructed can't be reflected about or upon,

can't be compared, is this timeless now undivided.

 

Not the teddy-bear concept of it, as Pete might say,

but as it is, naked now.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that if I self-consciously know

that I'm experiencing silence, that isn't the same thing

as the silence in which I'm swallowed, which I can't have

as mine, which I can't reflect about, make comparisons

about and so on.

 

-- Dan