Guest guest Posted March 3, 2000 Report Share Posted March 3, 2000 > >The mental process is such a tremendous addiction. I know that *any* > contents of *any* thought is unreal. > > >To cope with this * unsatisfying situation*, the mind keeps on saying not to > make any distinctions anymore which in itself is just another distinction ! > > This is nice! And it is so, not only for apples, bosses and schoolbusses, but > also for thoughts. If, like you say, any content of any thought is unreal, > then thoughts themselves aren't real! What's unreal? Is thought unreal? Perhaps it's more specific to say that the observer's assumption that he IS THOUGHT is what is false. The senses report information to the brain. The senses are limited bandwidth channels. In other words the information they report is only a limited representation of the external world. Sight only reports a range of the electromagnetic spectrum, hearing has frequency limits, touch/smell/taste are all limited: your dog or the hawk in the sky have far superior smell & sight interfaces. Furthermore some animals have sense interfaces that humans don't even have: the shark & platypus (trying to play to the crowd down under!) sense the nervous system electrical activity of their prey. And apparently the goose has a built in magnetic compass for navigation. So there's no argument: the senses are limited, but saying that sense reports are "unreal" is an overstatement. When the brain processes sensory input it attempts to match the incoming data to stored patterns in memory. So the rope on a dark night may first fit the general pattern of a snake and be reported as such. But we shouldn't generalize this presumptive pattern matching as "unreal". The rope was there, only the initial report was presumptive. Having had a close encounter with a poisonous snake recently, I am quite pleased with the build-in sensitivity we have for snake detection! An occasional false report is acceptable in achieving a more rapid response in an emergency! Memories are limited, they are only partial electro/chemical representations of some past event, never a complete representation, how could the brain even receive a complete report when the senses are limited? Furthermore, memories can drift, degrade, merge, combine with time or sprout from imagination. But we can't generalize all memory as "unreal", let's understand it for what it is, a recording media with limitations. Each human unit comes with a built in biological computer and it's programmed to ensure the survival & prosperity of that individual unit. Scientists have located various areas of the brain responsible for these functions: it's all biological, chemical, electrical. You accomplish something that furthers the biological goals of the organism and as a reward pleasure causing chemicals are released by certain centers in the brain. But this computer can only act on the limited inputs from memory & sense reporting: garbage in, garbage out. Thought is part of the operation of this biological computer. But, I don't think we can jump to the conclusion that "thought is unreal", it might be garbage but that's different than being unreal. Thought can be measured electrically, so it does exist. Thought has it's place, it's part of the biological organism. Enlightened people still think! right? So thought is not the problem, it's our relationship to thought/emotion that's the key issue. Our assumption is that we (if I may use 'we' & 'our' presumptively) are thought/ego/emotion, our assumption is that we are biological. But that's false: chop off your foot and you're still you right? Remove even major portions of the body and you're still you at least before the biological organism shuts down down due to the damage. As a child in a developing body you were the same 'you' that you are now? right? You were 'you' before cultural, religious, economic indoctrination, and before the arrival of adult responsibilities, before you were told that Jesus is going to save you... We observe the workings of the biological organism: thought, emotion, senses, pleasure, pain... How can you be what you observe? If you can observe it, you can not be it, because by definition there is separation between the observer and the object under observation. Pain & pleasure are chemical & electrical. But that does not mean that they are "unreal". Thought/emotion are biological events in the organism. They aren't 'unreal', they are biological. The key seems to be: our essence isn't biological. Can we understand this truth so deeply & thoroughly that the false identification with the body ceases? Roger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 3, 2000 Report Share Posted March 3, 2000 Greg, chiming in with Hans, wrote: >> This is nice! And it is so, not only for apples, bosses and schoolbusses, >> but also for thoughts. If, like you say, any content of any thought is unreal, >> then thoughts themselves aren't real! Roger writes: >What's unreal? Is thought unreal? Perhaps it's more specific to say that the >observer's assumption that he IS THOUGHT is what is false. > >The senses report information to the brain. The senses are limited bandwidth >channels. In other words the information they report is only a limited >representation of the external world. Sight only reports a range of the >electromagnetic spectrum, hearing has frequency limits, touch/smell/taste >are all limited: your dog or the hawk in the sky have far superior smell & >sight interfaces. Yes, this is the pre-quantum physics view of scientific realism. According to it, the world really exists, and really causes our ideas of it. In short, perhaps innacurately so, this view says that mind activity is the result of brain activity, which is the result of biological and physical processes. This view itself is being abandoned by scientists these days, partly because of results of quantum mechanics. Scientists are seeing that the process of observation itself actually affects the observed phenomena. There are others on this list (maybe you too, Roger) who have much more information on this topic than I. But part of the investigation into freedom, nonduality, etc., is the investigation and questioning of presuppositions and habitual ideas. So then this realist world-view is a great candidate to question. The notions of reality and unreality are other good candidates to throw into the hopper as well. Usually, advaitic non-dual approach uses the word "real" to mean "unchanging, permanent, independent" and uses the word "unreal" to mean "changeable, impermanent, dependent upon something other than itself for existence." It comes out that consciousness is real, and everything else is unreal if seen separate from consciousness. So -- sensory modalities, biology, physics, thoughts, information, external objects, all that stuff. We do science with it. But how can any of it be any more or less real than any of the rest? --Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 3, 2000 Report Share Posted March 3, 2000 "Roger Isaacs" <RIsaacs > >The mental process is such a tremendous addiction. I know that *any* > contents of *any* thought is unreal. > > >To cope with this * unsatisfying situation*, the mind keeps on saying not to > make any distinctions anymore which in itself is just another distinction ! > > This is nice! And it is so, not only for apples, bosses and schoolbusses, but > also for thoughts. If, like you say, any content of any thought is unreal, > then thoughts themselves aren't real! What's unreal? Is thought unreal? Perhaps it's more specific to say that the observer's assumption that he IS THOUGHT is what is false. The senses report information to the brain. The senses are limited bandwidth channels. In other words the information they report is only a limited representation of the external world. Sight only reports a range of the electromagnetic spectrum, hearing has frequency limits, touch/smell/taste are all limited: your dog or the hawk in the sky have far superior smell & sight interfaces. Furthermore some animals have sense interfaces that humans don't even have: the shark & platypus (trying to play to the crowd down under!) sense the nervous system electrical activity of their prey. And apparently the goose has a built in magnetic compass for navigation. So there's no argument: the senses are limited, but saying that sense reports are "unreal" is an overstatement. When the brain processes sensory input it attempts to match the incoming data to stored patterns in memory. So the rope on a dark night may first fit the general pattern of a snake and be reported as such. But we shouldn't generalize this presumptive pattern matching as "unreal". The rope was there, only the initial report was presumptive. Having had a close encounter with a poisonous snake recently, I am quite pleased with the build-in sensitivity we have for snake detection! An occasional false report is acceptable in achieving a more rapid response in an emergency! Memories are limited, they are only partial electro/chemical representations of some past event, never a complete representation, how could the brain even receive a complete report when the senses are limited? Furthermore, memories can drift, degrade, merge, combine with time or sprout from imagination. But we can't generalize all memory as "unreal", let's understand it for what it is, a recording media with limitations. Each human unit comes with a built in biological computer and it's programmed to ensure the survival & prosperity of that individual unit. Scientists have located various areas of the brain responsible for these functions: it's all biological, chemical, electrical. You accomplish something that furthers the biological goals of the organism and as a reward pleasure causing chemicals are released by certain centers in the brain. But this computer can only act on the limited inputs from memory & sense reporting: garbage in, garbage out. Thought is part of the operation of this biological computer. But, I don't think we can jump to the conclusion that "thought is unreal", it might be garbage but that's different than being unreal. Thought can be measured electrically, so it does exist. Thought has it's place, it's part of the biological organism. Enlightened people still think! right? So thought is not the problem, it's our relationship to thought/emotion that's the key issue. Our assumption is that we (if I may use 'we' & 'our' presumptively) are thought/ego/emotion, our assumption is that we are biological. But that's false: chop off your foot and you're still you right? Remove even major portions of the body and you're still you at least before the biological organism shuts down down due to the damage. As a child in a developing body you were the same 'you' that you are now? right? You were 'you' before cultural, religious, economic indoctrination, and before the arrival of adult responsibilities, before you were told that Jesus is going to save you... We observe the workings of the biological organism: thought, emotion, senses, pleasure, pain... How can you be what you observe? If you can observe it, you can not be it, because by definition there is separation between the observer and the object under observation. Pain & pleasure are chemical & electrical. But that does not mean that they are "unreal". Thought/emotion are biological events in the organism. They aren't 'unreal', they are biological. The key seems to be: our essence isn't biological. Can we understand this truth so deeply & thoroughly that the false identification with the body ceases? Roger geovani> And the brain itself is what Roger? Is it diferent from sense inputs? Through what chanel do we "perceive" the brain that would not be through the senses? No. There is not a "another" real world "out there". This assumption is the basic duality of man. regards -geo- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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