What makes the self center so important that you have to repeat its importance?
The use of the words conscious and awareness are in the vein of knowing. There is a different experience, if that is the word, where there is no self center. and the whole undifferentiated world, is all of a beingness, “So that’s how it really is!” This discovery makes it clear, knowing is the self center, and the self center is knowing.
Don’t you get it? The self, so stuck in thought, can only react to words, and not get the point, except to ridicule the speaker. .
Not ridicule, I saw the speaker fall into a trap and pointed it out. Just as others have pointed out my traps to me. It might sting, but it’s an edifying sting.
Ridicule:
That is, maybe thinking there is some point, but only intellectually, and maintain and repeat the separateness. Not seriously looking carefully within oneself, but making it external. Ridicule, as in not understanding it is all self, not individual selves, and the reaction to misunderstanding is to make it the absurd, and contemptible.
I would not equate knowledge with regard God to knowledge with regard a spoon. One thing I have seen, used, experienced and understood, while the other is a mere idea to me.
Whilst it is true that we cannot ‘know’ anything, in some ‘total’ sense, we can know what a spoon is in the practical, experiential and experimental sense. If you don’t know what a spoon is, how will you eat your soup?
I think you fall into an error when putting the two in the same bracket. The error is in thinking that knowledge can only be true when it is complete and absolute. In that case, anything that falls short of the absolute would not be knowledge.
Whilst K often pointed out that knowledge can never be complete or absolute, this did not lead him to reject knowledge. Instead, he pointed out that knowledge can be used in practical ways, but not in the search for God or any other absolutes.
Personally, I have never entertained any belief in anything absolute, but I do see the difficulty for those who do deal in such concepts. In which case, they generally attempt to cross the inevitable void between the limited and the absolute by means of faith and imagination.
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Let us suppose that factually this is not happening. Further, let us acknowledge as a fact that it is not happening. We return to the question. What kind of question is it now?
In asking this question, am I not dangling a carrot in front of my nose? To be frank, I only have an idea of what effortless observation may be. So, what am I asking? For example, it is not the same as asking whether I can get down to the shops and be back by three. I can judge the possibility of that based upon knowledge and previous experience.
So, I situate your question amongst all other questions which ask me to give an answer to something that I have no knowledge of. I ask, can I find an answer to this? I find I cannot so I move on.
Why do you call it an addiction?
Many people seem to use their knowledge of God in practical ways.
If I have an idea of a spoon and an idea of God (and even a subjective experience with both) is one more truthful than the other? Why do we we think there is an important difference that must be pointed out?
The instinctive answer is of course that my idea of the spoon is a true representation of reality.
I feel the urge to continually experience pleasure (and avoid pain) is similar to the urge driving physical and psychological addiction.
There is no spoon.
Let’s leave aside whether or not your ‘idea’ of the spoon is a ‘true’ representation of the actuality of the spoon. At least we may agree that it is a representation of an actuality, accurate of not. Your idea of ‘God’ on the other hand may not be backed up by any reality at all. Your idea of God may simply be a representation or a personal interpretation of other people’s ideas of God that you have heard of. We may agree about that too.
We are dealing with two sets of things. In both cases, on the one hand we have the idea and on the other the actuality. We are dealing with the relationship between the idea and the actual.
In the case of the spoon, I can test my idea out. My idea, besides everything else, may be that the spoon is made from hard metal and tends to be pointed at one end. If I want to check the validity of that humble claim I might poke the sharp end into my eye.
How could one test the validity of an idea about God? You can’t poke God in your eye. A huge number of the most colossal claims are made about God and not one of them is subject to any possible test of validity.
Similar to this, how would one test any claim about the possibility of ‘effortless observation’ of another human being? How would one even know that one is observing that person effortlessly?
Well test it. Poke it in your eye and find out.
Let’s stop at that point and question it. Is that what the urge is? Is the urge for pleasure ‘continual?’ You see, I disagree. Urges come and go. They are seldom continuous. It seems to me that we always come back to a point of rest, a point of zero stimulation, a stasis.
It also seems to me that we have a number of drives. For example, when we lack nutrition we feel a disturbance which we call hunger and this hunger is a driver. It drives us to seek food. As we eat, the disturbance lessens and we call this lessening by the name ‘pleasure.’ We experience pleasure as the relief from pain and from disturbance. But the pleasure ends when we are sated. To continue eating at that stage becomes pain and disturbance again. So we stop eating. What we feel now is satisfaction, which is the mark of stasis.
In many people, this experience of stasis is overridden and they don’t know how to stop. Maybe that is similar to an addictive state. It seems to be a big issue with some people that they have this wrong notion that pleasure is a thing in itself and that you can continually improve on it, add to it without end. And what does it bring but pain?
Superficially, most people are caught up in this because it has become prevalent in our culture, which becomes more consumerist and individualistic all the time. But, it seems to me, that most people, while being caught up at a superficial level, are not truly addicted. We step in and out of it. Most of us, most of the time, seek stasis, it seems to me.
Lots more could be said on this I think. It’s very revealing to look around one.
Right, the urge for pleasure is not continuous (occurring without interruption), it is continual (occurring at regular intervals).
Yeah I’m fond of reducing things to: Seek pleasure, avoid pain. But like all reductions, it only tells part of the story.
Not necessarily. For some, there is pleasure in feeling over-sated.
Well it brings pleasure too. I think you can optimize pleasure, think and act in a way that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. Just ask an epicurean! But I don’t think you can eliminate pain, except perhaps by following the Buddhist (or similar) path.
What would qualify as true addiction for you?
When there is no sating of the desire and no stepping in and out of it. A drug addict, for example, feels intense suffering when s/he withdraws but in relapse the highs are ever harder to find.
We step in and out of the urge to feel pleasure (and not feel pain). There are gaps in the pleasure-seeking stream. But, in my experience, these gaps invariably give way, sooner or later, to more urges. So it might not qualify as an addiction, but it’s definitely a trap that we all seem to be caught in.
The more we study reality, the harder it is to get away from the fact that all my beliefs are brain dependant - All that I believe about the spoon is just my interpretation of it. I am not saying that nothing exists.
The more we (humanity/scientists) study the spoon, the less familiar it becomes.
As for God - sounds like a crazy story to me. (but this is just a judgement I hold about my subjective experience)
Hello Paul. I think we need to rewind a bit here. My first questions would be, do we ever really observe anything or anyone with full attention? When we are listening to a family member, partner, colleague etc, are we listening closely with full attention or is thought wandering all over the place? When we are sitting in a bus or train (if we travel this way), do we ever closely observe the people and things around us? Or are we distracted, our minds full of thoughts? The answer to these questions are surely observable in our day-to-day lives. I think that to talk about the “effortless” element, we need to look at the aforementioned questions first. As observation with a silent mind was, as I understand it, an essential part of K’s teachings, I would say this is worth exploring this.
I would question whether we are trying to get away from that fact, Macdougdoug. But you have put it in a one-sided way when you say only that beliefs are ‘brain dependent.’ The brain is only one determinant. The brain has developed as a sensory organ, the control centre of the senses. But its performance is totally reliant on its relationship with everything that is not the brain. The brain itself is dependent upon its environment. So what we have is co-dependency or multi-dependency or, in other words, relationship. The beliefs emanating from the brain are dependent on the brain’s relationship with its environment. That relationship is commonly known as experience.
Beliefs then are determined by and dependent upon relationship.
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