This started out as an email conversation. A friend of mine, delightfulsoul and I email each other everyday while we’re working. Nothing lengthy, usually a quote or a tidbit or…you get the picture. After not having contact for a day and a half I get one email and the converstation proceeds as follows:
delightfulsoul: Are you there?
liquidangel: No, I’m here.
delightfulsoul: No, I am here.
liquidangel: Well I’m also here.
delightfulsoul: We can’t both be there…can we?
liquidangel: Ah but we are both there.
delightfulsoul: Hippy!
I guess this is about not trying to bend the spoon but recognising that there is no spoon.
How is it that we are both in the same place at once?
The seeming difficulty of this is eliminated, isn’t it, if we consider the idea that space is merely a human construct, arranged by our minds in a way so as to make sense of the world?
That’s a little solipsistic though don’t you think?
Let’s just assume for a sec that the world exists pretty much the way we see it, a rock is a rock and the computer I’m typing does, in fact, exist.
The reason we can be in the same place at once is because we as humans have the ability to imagine ourselves in another temporal-spatial location. We’re not in fact in the same place, it’s just that we press ‘send’ we have this idea of our thoughts traveling to ‘ILP’ instead of imagining it more as a change of the screen before us. Imagine someone reading ILP in China through a translator - still the same place?
This type of stuff, lying, umm… I forget the rest but they’re part of Chomsky’s 7 human characteristics if I’m not mistaken. Animals don’t have the ability to do these things as far as we know. Heh, or at least as far as Iknow, which isn’t saying much
Well, yes it is solipsistic. But it’s interesting to contemplate, no? The net provides a perfect symbol or metaphor for this idea of a universe existing in our heads. Liquidangel has an email conversation with delighfulsoul and where, exactly, does this conversation take place? Extending the thought, where does any conversation take place?
That’s the thing though, no conversation ever actually takes place.
It’s just the arrangement of different molecules etc. But this takes place outside of the observer (consciousness). Art or sex probably comes the closest to conveying an actual thought, but this never in fact happens. We brush fairly close to each other’s thoughts sometimes, but they never cross.
When it comes to writing things get so blurred. So like I said. There are words on my screen right now, likewise on yours. But that’s it. This conversation is happening in two places and is in fact two conversations.
Let me ask you something, would it matter at all if my personality you’re talking to right now was in fact created by your computer? I don’t think so, because for all you know it could be.
Still though, we know it’s futile in a certain sense… but yet we try anyways. This brings me back to ‘the game’ that me and you have disagreed about in the past.
Ok. So the world exists ‘pretty much’ the way we see it. But what are we seeing? I mean your computer does actually exist. You are reading the words on the screen right now, but what is it? Essentially it’s a thought. Not the thought itself but the manifestation of the thought. Everything that exists in our world has been created from a thought. This computer is a very real proof of this phenomena. So we can deduce that our thoughts create our reality. So if our thoughts create our reality, then surely we are able to change this reality by changing what sort of thoughts we are having. Jerry is correct, that the way that we ‘see’ the world now is a construct, only not constructed in order to understand our world but rather because we have not understood it to begin with. In our efforts to understand, we have only been able to create three dimensionally. So, since there is no spoon to begin with because it is made up of the same stuff that the thought is made of, we begin to be able to bend the spoon using our mind. All these things are simply tricks that we are learning along the way.
We are both here at the same time outside of time and space. I’m thinking that the internet is a technology that is modelled on the very nature of our existence.
They say that enlightened beings are omnipresent. How is this possible in reality? There is no space, there is no time. There is only thought. We just haven’t worked out exactly what to do with these powers. I would imagine that an enlightened being has no trouble being in the oneness of the world, I would imagine that an enlightened being is able to travel on the light of a single thought. Not even that, there is no separation.
I actually had no idea of the direction when I started the thread, sincerely the idea came from my exchange with my friend. Also I thought it was psychological to start with but it appears that it might be philosophy/metaphysics or quantum physics for that matter. In any case they overlap and I’m thinking psychology is a fine starting point.
But yes, I’ve watched the ‘Bleep’ movie. It confirmed a few things for me which delighted me no end as you can imagine. What did you think?
I thought it was pretty cool, I mean the general thoughts the speakers were giving all seemed to ring familiar and make sense. Some of the examples they used were a little out there. Like the natives not seeing the boats one was one I found a little bizarre.
In a certain light it’s almost subtle propaganda for JR Knight’s mental school who is supposed to actually be channeling Ramna or Rama, I don’t know but supposedly he is some soul without a physical body.
All and in all I liked it and took a lot away from watching a couple times.
Exactly. Our life experience is nothing more than a never-ending sequence of choices. A random walk.
[i]The simplest random walk is a path constructed according to the following rules:
* There is a starting point.
* The distance from one point in the path to the next is a constant.
* The direction from one point in the path to the next is chosen at random and no direction is more probable than another.
Suppose we draw a line some distance from the origin of the walk. How many times will the random walk cross the line? The following, perhaps surprising, theorem is the answer: for any random walk, every point in the domain will be crossed an infinite number of times almost surely. This problem has many names: the level-crossing problem, the recurrence problem or the gambler’s ruin problem. The source of the last name is as follows: if you are a gambler with a finite amount of money playing a fair game against a bank with an infinite amount of money, you will surely lose. The amount of money you have will perform a random walk but it will, almost surely, reach at some time 0, and the game would be over.[/i][size=59]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk[/size]
This is why I like Nausea…because the infinite number of choices we face every moment of our lives makes a person want to vomit. It is easier to disregard this overwhelming responsibility of choosing our own possibilities by sinking into something unchanging…like music…or history… Our history is our past, and many people stay there because it feels safe.
They stay in the future for the same reasons; I will stay in this job/marriage/situation because of the benefits it may provide in the future…I’m not happy now,but I will be happy when (fill in the blank)…
Whatever we do or think right this second affects the next, and so on…into our life span. There are an infinite number of possibilities…an infinite number of possible futures.
Exactly…time is relative. Matter is energy. A Nerve Impulse is energy…and so is a thought. One affects the other,and this now influences all the other nows of the future. Our thoughts travel at the speed of light…think of a dream that seemed like years when in “real” time it was only 10-20 minutes. Only our thoughts transcend time and space.
I posted something that touched upon this in the Natural Science thread, then I came upon this. Very cool.
Well I’m not sure about this Rama entity, I’m sure it exists or whatever, but it’s very new age and for myself I would prefer to seek out what is most practical.
The story about the shaman however, seeing the ships is the most exquisite expressive depiction of what the seer’s role in our society is. Anyone is capable of seeing/healing etc, it’s simply that the shaman is more able to read the signs because his mind is open to them, trained on the ability to see what others cannot see. It’s no different from the role of the spiritually adept like Jesus or Buddha as just two examples. If one human being practices spiritual awareness, there is no doubt that they will begin to be able to read the signs of nature, etc. An alchemist would have been respected for his ability to change base metal into gold. Why could he do this? It’s not magic, it’s simply that he understands and utilises his ability to manipulate the material world using his (and our) inherent ability to change the way we think about the world, thus changing the world. Actually that is the least of the alchemist’s abilities. His real secret is his ability to transform himself into pure spirit, not unlike Jesus or Buddha but it’s not really a secret, it’s simply that he is the only one that is able to see it. We can infact witness the secrets of the universe by observing nature. Not just looking with your eyes but experiencing with our heart. The way that others interact with our world to the observer, provides a clue as to where they are at mentally, emotionally and spiritually. When human beings use more than their 6 senses to interact with the world, when they use their wisdom, they experience the world in a very different way. Those that do not use their wisdom have no understanding, they have no way of knowing what the wise man is experiencing and expressing. The wise man is then seen as something odd, a dreamer. We no longer respect our shaman preferring instead to believe only what we perceive from our 6 senses. Only the consciousnesses that arise from our six senses seem so real to us that we are unable to bend our mind around them anymore trapped in the world that we created. What is referred to in Buddhism as ‘attachment’.
Also, there is a certain course our lives are moving along, heading towards events because of past choices. How we interact with these ‘pre-determined’ events are the tools we possess.
I love this. Our dreams are still thoughts and hold the same power. It is said that an enlightened person has no dreams because he is conscious of all his thoughts, responsible for each and every thought, be it a waking thought or a dream. Consider the average man/woman. Mostly we are unaware of our thoughts. Thus we are ever creating our world chaotically. We say the world is chaotic but it is simply a reflection of our minds.
Last night I went to a party. I was having a philosophical conversation with delightful soul again…about thought…and I went off to the toilet. There was some packaged toilet paper in the corner, I reached over opened it, used a bit and then was about to put the toilet paper in the holder when I realised that there was already toilet paper in the holder. (I had only looked in front of me, I did not notice what was plain to see, because I had already seen what was in front of me.) Anyway, I said to myself; 'stupid!" I caught the thought and changed it in the moment, repeating to myself that I am most intelligent and hardly stupid. How many times did I unconsciously tell myself how stupid I am before I became aware of how I have been berating myself for the simplest things…probably all my life.
If our reality is a construct of our thoughts (perhaps collectively but I’m thinking now about an individual’s thoughts) then a larger question might not be where somebody is, but who somebody is.
What are you seeing when you’re having a conversation, even a face-to-face one, with delightfulsoul? The conversation, comprised of thought, transcending time and space, points one towards a perception, also comprised of thought. Who is delightfulsoul? Would your answer be the same as somebody else who knows delightfulsoul and had a conversation with him/her? Could it be? Would it be the same answer as delighfulsoul him/herself would give?
I think reality is a construct both individually and collectively. This is presented as a complex idea, perhaps too complex for us to grasp, so much overlapping, like a spider’s web, only mulitplied by 6 billion. A web of thought. Original thought and their consequences, although I’m unsure that any of our thoughts are original at present. As far as the ‘who’ somebody is, that much is much easier. We reflect each other.
Deep questions and I think the answer is dependant on what part of me is perceiving delightful soul.
Two aspects of myself:
My mind
My wisdom
If I use my mind, then I am projecting my thoughts on to him. So my perception of him is nothing more than my own thoughts. A reflection of my own self. This must be the gift of relationship, that our own image is reflected in the other. An opportunity for us to introspect ourselves and to begin to gain wisdom from the interaction.
If I use my wisdom, then there is no difference between who he is in truth and who I am in truth. The essence of who we are is the substance of our world and our thoughts are what we use to create it. Perhaps the difference is in our position as spiritual entities, you know, our roles and our purpose in the world. We are created in the image of God and so we are like God who is in everthing. We must therefore be in everything including in each other.
