I am suggesting that our very perception distorts it. There is the fact of human existence. And here we both are in the middle of it. When you look at me and I look at you, whose perception is it?
By perception do we mean whats happening in the eyeballs, on the skin, on the eardrum, or do we mean the predictions/projections/best guesses of the brain of what the electrro-chemical (?) impulses itâs receiving probably signify?
You read what I have written and give back how you understand it. You will understand it if you can relate the first sentences of my post to the idea of conditioning. And as you now try to interpret the further in relation to this idea, you lose the thread. So you express the lack of understanding about not being able to assess anymore what my contribution is about.
The conditioning thing is one of those things. How does one come to speak of conditioning at all? One observes behavior. Thereby one determines repetitions. In the general repetitions one recognizes patterns. These patterns seem to cover the whole life. This circumstance is called conditioning. If now again something happens and in it a pattern is recognized, then one says, this is the conditioning. This means first only that one refers the observed to something, which one recognized before as a general phenomenon. But in this saying something else is implied. The abstract concept of conditioning suddenly becomes an independent subject that produces the observed behavior. One now asks where it comes from, finds reasons in biological or social necessities, relates it to a stimulus-response context, etc. The main argument is always the so-called âsurvivalâ and evolution, which has ensured that the appropriate course is set in the brain. However, it is important for us to note that the moment the behavior is related to conditioning, the behavior is judged and interpreted according to external reasons. However, we only become aware of this by the fact that we always refer to these external reasons only when something has happened, i.e. when what has happened is " handled ". But when just the pattern is formed, we do not think about pattern and conditioning. We have nothing to do with it. Because we act out of the immediate relations, as we just perceive. So there is a division in the consciousness according to which we judge the action and the immediate relations out of which the action is formed.
Take a simple example. You are walking along a forest path. Suddenly you notice a black broken line that appears across the path. On closer inspection, you notice that there are ants forming a road, so to speak. The road forms the pattern of the antsâ movement. And you are inclined to say that they orient themselves along the road. This is how we interpret. But you can also see it in such a way that the individual ants run exactly where they already see another ant, which either moves away or comes towards them, so that the ants donât know anything about a road, donât care about it at all. They run there, where they see another one coming from or running to, but for us outsiders it appears in such a way, as if they would be led by a form-forming external system.
Both of them together.
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The relation of âsubjective activityâ to conditioning?
I think youâre saying that our conceptual understanding of conditioning is just further conditioning (?)
You seem to be trying to explain a mystery by appealing to a bigger mystery.
Q : What is flobadob?
A : Its basically Brrinshoo.
If I donât know what Truth (or God, or the Ultimate) is, or whether it exists (outside of my confused imagination) how can I say thatâs what something else, that I have not defined, is? If I donât know what this is, what basis have I to say that its that.
Why are we calling Spirit/Heart, Truth? Ultimate Reality is Spirit? What makes us say this - other than : the idea exists in my head? (the idea that there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter is also in my head, so are unicorns and fairies)
There is no need to respond, only consider what is being said - and also be aware of our reactions (that may be using up energy - tiring us out) - must we be slaves to what we believe? Defend our confusion at all cost?
It doesnât matter whoâs got the best beliefs.
Maybe! But the only reason I tried to explain âspirit and heartâ is because you asked me to. Normally Iâd leave it unexplained. At some point in some inquiries I cross over from thought/analysis to feeling. The former Iâd happily share with anyone anytime, the latter I keep mostly for myself.
Yes. That is tough for me, because Iâm drawn to interaction.
What is the fruit an unanswered question yields?
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Perhaps part of the problem we are having in communication is that you have not been (heretofore) very clear about your âWeltanschauungâ?
Looked at in detail, there does not seem to be a lot of actual classical advaita (i.e. Gaudapada and Sankara) in your world-view, nor a lot of actual Buddhism (i.e. Nikaya, Madhyamaka, Chan, or even Tibetan as far as I can make out). There are some vague correspondences, but nothing exact. And you clearly donât share Krishnamurtiâs understanding of the nature of thought - correct?
What about panpsychism? I actually studied this quite a bit at university: Schopenhauer, William James, and more recently David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Christof Koch, and Bernardo Kastrup - have all developed different shades of panpsychism, neutral monism and cosmopsychism (or idealism). But I havenât seen you develop any of their arguments (as far as I recall). I havenât studied Whitehead, so I canât tell if you are faithful to his presentation of panpsychism (if you have mentioned it); but I have read about David Bohmâs treatment of mind and matter (which is supposed to share at least some Whiteheadian features).
We discussed integral theory on a previous thread - but to a large extent whether we accept it or not depends upon other aspects of our worldview (for example, the place we give to conceptual knowledge, psychologically speaking).
So Seth seems to be an important missing piece in this worldview that is so far not accounted for. Perhaps it might be a crucial piece? Therefore it might be worth highlighting a few key ideas from Jane Robertâs books to give a sense of Sethâs (Jane Robertâs) worldview - inasmuch as it relates to the self.
I have of course heard of Jane Roberts and her âchannelâ books - and its putative non-physical author Seth - before, but I had not read anything by her until today.
From what I can make out from the first dozen or so pages of her book Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, the worldview Seth conveys seems - at first sight at least - to share a lot in common with the New Age worldview we are generally familiar with today (from works like The Secret, Abraham, and so on). The outlook here is somewhat captured in the phrase âCreate your own realityâ.
Fundamentally, the message of the book is that we literally create the physical world (and everything that happens to us) out of our consciousness:
You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it. This is not meant symbolically.
However, because we only identify with the more superficially conscious part of ourselves - what we might call our thinking selves (which Seth calls our âouter egoâ) - i.e.,
the part of you who watches television or cooks or works - the part you think knows what it is doing
we miss out on the much deeper intelligence of the body, which is our truer self (our âinner egoâ):
I call this seemingly unconscious the âinner ego,â for it directs inner activities⊠It is the inner perceiver of reality that exists beyond the three- dimensional. It carries within it the memory of each of your past existences. It looks into subjective dimensions that are literally infinite, and from these subjective dimensions all objective realities flow.
Furthermore, this âinner egoâ is highly intuitive if we let it be, and is
natively clairvoyant and telepathic, so that you are warned of disasters before they occur, whether or not you consciously accept the message.
Beyond the superficially conscious âouter egoâ and the more intuitively conscious âinner egoâ, there is a yet deeper consciousness that creates both of these egos in the first place. This is the part of consciousness
who decided that you would be a physical being in this place and in this time. This is the core of your identity, the psychic seed from which you sprang, the multidimensional personality of which you are part.
Indeed, all these different personalities combine to make what Seth calls
the fact of multidimensional personality
However, the âouter egoâ
is a jealous god, and it wants its interests served. It does not want to admit the reality of any dimensions except those within which it feels comfortable and can understand.
And so Sethâs mission is to point out the value and validity of the deeper parts of ourselves - both the âinner egoâ and the deeper, one might say âsourceâ or âcoreâ ego - which is infinite and multidimensional:
There are no limitations to the self. There are no limitations to its potentials. You can adopt artificial limitations through your own ignorance, however. You can identify, for example, with your outer ego alone, and cut yourself off from abilities that are a part of you. You can deny, but you cannot change, the facts. The personality is multidimensional, even though many people hide their heads, figuratively speaking, in the sand of three dimensional existence and pretend there is nothing more.
Would you say that this is a fair - if necessarily brief - overview of the Seth Material?
Does this perspective greatly inform what you believe about the nature of the self?
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If a model of reality is adopted or believed that psychologically something is âwrongâ in oneself and others, that belief triggers the need to make the situation ârightâ somehow. A âpathâ is followed that will hopefully bring that ârightâ situation aboutâŠthe imagined âunfreeâ mind trying to become free. Time then is necessary to bring about this âfreedom resultââŠIf I ask how can I get out of this trap, the question implies that the imagined situation of âunfree-nessâ is real.
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Let the question take care of that. When we plant the right seed, tend the soil with care, the fruit follows. Do we love one another? This is the seed.
But what are we interacting with? Our own conditioning/beliefs? Meaning : what is reaction? Is it an interaction with my own beliefs, ie my conditioning responding to what I believe? If so, is it really interaction/relationship?
Surely, for there to be interaction, relationship with the speaker, there needs to be space/freedom to receive what is being said - where the speaker is coming from. Are we afraid of the speakerâs stories? Afraid they will affect our own stories? Then we are a slave to stories (despite what we tell ourself)
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Staying with the question is bringing up strange fruit. Sorrow, largely, which is not something I normally feel.
Some of what he said about thought resonates, strikes me as quite possibly true. More of what Bohm said. But, at best, these contribute to my take on thought, I donât âsubscribeâ to any view (afaik).
My approach is quite different from yours, methinks. You are like a bee that stays with a flower until youâve gotten all the nectar it has to offer. I flit from flower to flower staying just long enough at any one flower to get a good taste, at which point I go off into a field and sit in solitary contemplation. I read just enough of a view to get a creative process going in me, then I go off on my own and run with it.
Now that Iâve had some time to explore integral theory, its flaws (for me) have been revealing themselves. In particular, the neat little package of staged development is not very appealing to me. I think thereâs a real danger when you portray something as complex and exquisitely nuanced as a human life-evolution as a set of well-defined stages, where moving up from stage to stage is kind of like leveling up in a video game, mechanical and dismissive of subtlety. (I might be misinterpreting the integral theory development model.) That said, certain things appeal strongly to me, for example the holonic and integral approaches.
Not Seth âhimselfâ or his teachings rather my relationship with the woman (a student of Jane Roberts) who introduced me to Seth. We worked together for a decade on all manner of outrĂ© things: altered states, past-life regression, self-hypnosis, channeling, usw. I donât talk about these things here because ⊠well itâs obvious, right? 
Yes, good overview. (As far as I remember, though I havenât had much to do with Seth in quite a while.) And you were careful to present your summary in neutral tones, which I appreciate, since Seth is an easy target in a Krishnamurti forum.
To be honest, I rarely think of Seth anymore. There was a time when Seth Speaks seemed an Enlightened Human Userâs Manual to me, an illumination of The Truth ⊠but that was quite long ago! Because it was so powerful for me I probably internalized a bunch about the self, reality, death. But if I did, those things are so deeply interwoven into me that they are effectively hidden from view.
Since you seem interested to find out what makes me tick (as I am in finding out what makes you and others here tick), Iâll share my pet theory about why my relationship with self is as it is: I have a weak sense of self. (Emotionally absent parents.) When encountering others, I sometimes feel like I disappear, which might be freeing if I had a strong sense of self, but with a weak sense can feel terrifying. To make up for my weak sense of self I focus on it and (over?)value it.
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Maybe, this can be said, but is not my interest to say so. If this would be important to you, you would be left in a paradox. And then your concerned with the limitation of thought and are looking for a way to go over. My interest is not conditioning. You brought in this term into the discussion.
As human we act in relation to reality. Aware about this relationship we are through perception. My question is: What takes place within this relationship by thought?
You may question how things are to be conceived, how they can be described and judged. I am asking what this means for our relationship to reality, that we do this at all.
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If Thought judges itself to be âlimitedâ, whatever the source of that judgement, that image of itself as âlackingâ puts it in conflict with itself and creates an image of being âless limitedâ that it will endeavor to âbecomeâ. (In time)
The âjudgementâ that I am separate from you , from the world (whatever itâs source) creates the gulf that then must be âgone overâ if we are to âbe oneâ? And the search for the Way to bridge this âgulfâ reinforces its validity?
Perhaps thatâs because you are reacting to the word âloveâ based on what you know about it. And what do we know about love apart from an image of what it might look like?
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It is definitely a reaction to the known, knowing Iâve had little love for members of my species.
Oh, I donât know - you seem to have a pretty healthy sense of self in these discussions, at least from what I can see! 
We all have our baggage from the past - I know I certainly do - and âweakâ and âstrongâ are comparative terms, right? Maybe what you call a âweakâ sense of self has given you a certain facility to take on other peopleâs points of view? And perhaps what we call âstrongâ personalities are in fact those who are the least self-aware, those who are the least troubled by doubts of self-reflection. After all, all of us are an amalgam of other peopleâs voices - near or far - who have come before us and have influenced our minds in so many different ways. To make us who we are today. We cannot avoid that - but perhaps we can be aware of it? to some degree at least.
I think this is what I am beginning to value the most. Living with myself as I am (and not as I would like to be); being aware of what is going on in the âwithinâ - indeed, finding out what it means to be aware of the âwithinâ. Remaining - passively aware - with uncomfortable feelings or emotions; and seeing what it means to live with whatever comes up in the course of relationship (without bringing so much ego into everything!).
I would say this is my chief interest (in regard to these matters) - and anything that contributes to that.