The long living ghost of the death and rebirth cycle which is created by the deluded mind of man and causes his suffering, disappears when it is recognized for what it is.
What is it? Is it a delusion to observe that everything in nature recycles itself?
No. Because you’re referring to everything in nature which is a product of the finite mind. Nature is phenomena.
Science teaches us that things are not as they appear. We are not individuals. The sun doesn’t rise. The sky isn’t blue.
Nature is what Gibb calls “epistemic consciousness”, if I’ve read him right. In reality it’s all consciousness all the way down. That’s what you are.
Nature is the illusion. It’s what eyes and ears and noses and tongues and skin and brains do on a human scale. Vibrations.
Multiplicity is an illusion. The absolute is.
ummm… huh?
If we are not individuals, why do you use the plural “we” and “individuals”?
On the phenomenal level in which we are communicating the world appears as a multiplicity.
Do you think contingency is mere appearance?
Do you think you are the absolute and “exist” the merely apparent(ly contingent) universe—which apparently did (¿not?) precede [and will (¿not?) outlast] you?
This question is completely separate from whether or not there is a beginning and end to the physical universe. Or your body.
But here’s another question. Do you identify as your body, or do you identify as the entire physical universe? ESPECIALLY if neither, please keep that in mind when you answer my question(s).
…and all of your criticisms of Ecmandu ;^)
Contingency is what happens, but it is a representation of something that we can’t manipulate.
We are an expression of the infinite within a finite body, and consciousness extends throughout all we see, but our brains filter this consciousness in our restrictive sheath, allowing us to feel distinct for survival purposes. We have a split brain that allows us to concentrate on the food we are after and stay vigilant at the same time, and we have the ability to temporarily suspend the inhibitive functions of the brain to gain an even wider perspective and imagination to envision what we can’t see.
But I think what Felix is stating is that there is no real infinite because all things are ultimately a one thing, giving off the illusion of being different from each other or multiplicity. (Correct me if I am wrong Felix)
I can agree to this partially but just because it gives off a sort of an “illusory” image, does not make it any less real than the absolute of which we cannot see and this is the paradox, especially since we operate directly on this level of infinite/finite and not the absolute level.
If we all dissociate into the undifferentiated, then how in the heck did the undifferentiated ever subsume us? How does one spring out of the quit function?
NEITHER
Consciousness is being itself which is not quantifiable. Eternity is not extended time. It isn’t a countable series. Multiplicity is a product of the finite mind.
Yes and the brain is a product of the mind not vice versa.
If multiplicity is a product of the mind, how is it it existed before a mind was there to perceive it?
It didn’t. And it doesn’t. The multiplicity is a mental projection. What “preceded” the mind is pure consciousness. It cannot be thought. I put the word preceded in quotes because really time is a product of the mind too so there’s literally no preceding it. Time, space, causality, quantity, substance, matter are all mental. The universe as such is mental.
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Why are you distinguishing between consciousness and mind?
Well you have supported what I had said previously about the facets of consciousness effecting reality and preceding materialism so I’ll take that. Perhaps multiplicity really is illusory due to perception then. It’s an interesting topic.
For clarity. Mind and consciousness are often conflated.I differentiate them according to experience. Mind I take to be the stream of thoughts and images that appear—the objects of consciousness. Mind is often thought of as the container of thought, etc. But that too is an image and an object—a metaphor. Consciousness itself never appears. Everything appears to it.
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You are not your thoughts.
(“Thinking thing” is not the same as the “thoughts thunk”. That was an intentional spelling variation.)
I agree. Nor are you your body.
And you are not the entire substance from whom you came.