Our existential situation is always one of finitude. The horizon of conscious awareness is life. Therefore, death is unknowable in itself. Our personal death is only inferred from the death of others. “Post-death” is an inherently contradictory notion. Only a life after death can be thought and there is no incontrovertible evidence for that. Death is antithetical to life and only life is conscious according to our experience. Therefore, we will never experience death itself. Dying yes but death no. What we are left with is our present life, for better or for worse.
Your sentence structure has confused me a bit, so I want to clarify.
Are you saying that I lack the ability for a qualitative return from temporal reduction since temporalness is more heavily a default position for me than someone else who is seeking to achieve more temporal state of mind than their average?
Not at all. You stated you identity is not aware , therefore the regressive nature of your reflections are not so much a particular state. It is the word average which caught ny attention, wherein your current temporality is inquiring. It is not that it is average, as a matter of fact, this ability sets you apart, of not having to go through the slide. I sometimes forget i am not in the philosophical forum.
Quite…and one of the things I run into is that, for me, my personal spiritual philosophy that is of value to me is pretty much an inverted Buddhism; in that it values tying into family and what is essentially Buddhisms “Samsara” as the highest endeavor as for me, I learn more about myself from examining what pulls at me…that is, what pulls at my emotions and what I don’t want to lose.
So for me, it is more gainful in self exploration to become more attached rather than less attached, as if I were to become less attached than what I was years ago, I would probably be on some psychological list for a sociopath.
But, if your inverted Pyramid used to rest, in Nirvana, your buddhism is of a higher character, Your relationship to Your family is an altruistic attachment. Funny that this is where I think you are at, because this is in many ways where I am. Of course this may not really the case. And I wouldn't want to press you or validate this view any longer.
If that’s the case, then it would mean we will always aspire to move to the inverse of our samsara binding to find reflection of our movement and may neurologically need such to see (create) the nature of our image of our image.
you guys seem to be talking from the afterlife.
What? 0.o
I think so. The image as in the beginning of consciousness s very literal. I don't want to get overly philosophical, but Narcissus saw himself in the mirror as someine else. So if we inverse this process, we will see the image of our image, hence we would be born with self consciousness(consciousness). This would, indeed require a neurologic transformation. It's possible,that before the fall, this is the way we were wired.
What is, “Before the fall”?
[quote=“Jayson”]
What is, “Before the fall”?[/quot
Before the fall is where the self was not understood in terms of self image. That’s the closest I can come to within the above train of thought. There was no differentiation between the self and the other as far as self image goes. The implication is, that judgment of others was not done as a matter of image, or appearance. There may have been direct derivation of the self as per the self through God.
This interpretation is by implication only as regards to identification with the persona of god by the word, only.
Ah, I don’t have much feedback on that portion.
Again,Jason, I was putting it in as a possible explanation for what may have happened. It’s personal, and I understand Your position. Thanks.
If you came to Believe in past lives, this would make post-Death consciousness seem more likely, if not inevitable.
Moreno: in reality, all lives are concurrent, because there is no objective measure of time. I conceive lives as looking into a microscope (well strong enough), and seeing cells duplicate in cell division. There may be re integration going on as well, and it's all maybe within a simultaneous process.
This is why past life doesn’t seem sensible.
Unless someone can render the notion of consciousness without life coherent, “post-death awareness” is synonymous with the idea of life after death. There is still no evidence of consciousness without life. AI research hasn’t produced artificial consciousness yet. So traditionally there had to be a soul that was conscious. An energy field might be conscious, or at least I can imagine such a thing. Our tendency to see life, consciousness and personality where it isn’t as when we accept robots as persons argues for a reductive explanation for consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is an epiphenomenon which results from language. To the extent that ideas like that are plausible, the notion of disembodied consciousness are less plausible. It’s no different for past lives. They require an entity, be it soul or energy field or some such, to travel from one body to another. Right?
Right, unless life is seen as the one brought out above Your reply, vis. As cells seem to behave under a microscope. Their behavior seems goal oriented, and hence structurally-can be said to be motivated to function in certain ways to attain theory goals can be said to be an elemental example of how consciousness operates, the cell may be said to be conscious of it's activity by it's goal oriented activity. It, so, cosmic events can be said to be conscious of the many stellar events going on.
I am emboldened to redefine consciousness in this way, based on Your thin definition, Von, of consciousness being some kind of force field. I think the idea of a force field analogy to consciesness is no closer to the idea then observed patterns of seeming behavioral change: both on elemental particle levels of organic/inorganic matter; or on the cosmic scale- the behavior of planets, stars, galaxies and so on. We can even presume the thought that everything has some level of consciousness, if we carry these assumptions to their conclusions.
OK. But I’m not claiming pan-psychism, only to the prevenience of life to consciousness and maybe the dependence of consciousness on life. A.N. Whitehead has an interesting theory of experience that goes all the way down preceding consciousness. But, what I’m suggesting doesn’t entail that. What I’m claiming is based on conscious experience as such.
To say they are concurrent is to invoke objective time. Subjectively, if one has past lives, then they would be, relatively or objectively, in my past, just as my childhood is. And then also there would be no such thing as post Death in your worldview.
Well, there is some evidence in the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, for example. There are other researchers. But you are presuming that there is no Life after what we call Death. If consciousness continues, then this would be a form of Life.
I don’t really accept the physicalist paradigm, so it is hard to answer in the way it seems like you would want.
But I am not to make an attempt demonstrate that past lives are the case. However there are ways one can come to Believe, via experience. If one underwent experiences that convinced - rather than disembodied arguments - one would then have a different take on the continuation of consciousness.
For centuries arguments were made that animals were Machines - here science aligned with Christianity. One could spend a lot of time trying to convince someone via abstract argument. But if it was a Victorian lady, I might suggest she take off her clothes in front of a chimpanzee while maintaining Eye Contact. She might find she does not Believe what she Thinks she should given her paradigm.