Hi you all, from what you were writing about, some questions occured to me:
Would you not call hallucination a process? A process of the brain?
Rick if you say that “‘Objective world’ also sometimes points to that which exists independently of observers”, how do you know? Would you not have observed it yourself or read about it, which means there is a reference. Being able to say or write that is not independent of someone realizing it.
Would we not have to clarify what we mean with mind first and also what we mean with process, before we can go into a question if processes exist independent of thought or anything exist independent of mind?
Instead of using the notion “objective world”, would it not be more adequate to use the notions space and time? Because in there everything would be a process, not only thinking as it spans the physical world.
And finally can that which has brought space and time into existence, you were using the word ground, be part of it? But I think we would have to go first into the above questions before exploring the last one.
Greetings, Erik
Rick if you say that “‘Objective world’ also sometimes points to that which exists independently of observers”, how do you know? Would you not have observed it yourself or read about it, which means there is a reference. Being able to say or write that is not independent of someone realizing it.
Yes, and therein lies the rub. There might be no way to think ourselves ‘beyond’ thought, though that doesn’t stop some of us from trying! (Enter Sisyphus.)
Would we not have to clarify what we mean with mind first and also what we mean with process, before we can go into a question if processes exist independent of thought or anything exist independent of mind?
Yes! Mind, thought, and process need to be understood in the same way for a conversation about them to really make sense. Anything, exist, and independent too. We assume we agree what words mean when we discuss them, but that might be a mistaken assumption and the result: Dialogue of Babel!
Instead of using the notion “objective world”, would it not be more adequate to use the notions space and time? Because in there everything would be a process, not only thinking as it spans the physical world.
That’s a question for James, our Stammphilosoph.
And finally can that which has brought space and time into existence, you were using the word ground, be part of it? But I think we would have to go first into the above questions before exploring the last one.
Dear Rick, you answered the second question for yourself. There is no rub. It is obvious that one cannot think oneself beyond thought, because that is what thinking is. The question therefore would be in what way do we observe ourselves. Is it thinking or perception? And what is the difference? And as James earlier mentioned, where does the self, the ego come in and what is the self?
Dear Rick, when you die, does the earth and the others still exist? Definitely you and your mind would not know, would it not? But looking on the fact of the universe and the earth which exist, there will be something existing, but you would not know.
Apologies for having not replied 'til now, I am a bit busy with work.
As this is a speculative thread, might I attempt a speculative answer?
Physical time and physical space - and all those processes of material transformation taking place within time and space (including the fever, the cloth, and the hallucination of a horse) - have their own (provisional) objectively and order because they are the meditations (or spontaneously yet continually created contents) of a universal mind.
This is why the universe has a continuance even when the particular mind or brain dies.
Our own ‘individual minds’ (or brains) can be ‘of’ that universal mind (or universal meditation) when the particular psychological contents - put together by thought and psychological time - are no longer existent: that is, when the mind or brain is empty of all psychological content, and so is in a state of pure attention or pure awareness without self, without ‘I’, without thought.
Only then could it be said - although there would be no-one to say it, and no reason for it to be said - that there is no object and no subject. There would just be universal meditation.
A good story! That’s a compliment from me, since I consider all views to be stories, but not all stories to be good ones. It definitely resonates with me, rings possibly true. Your universal mind sounds somewhat like a God process. Am I projecting or is that a little bit what you’re thinking?
It might be a good bet, but you will never know. That is a fact. And even if something continues existing it is never like that you have known. It is something new. The Rick of tomorrow is not the Rick of today even physically.
Hi, would you say that there is a difference between “natural” destruction like an earthquake and destruction caused by thought because of self-centredness of the mind? Even though both springs out of the universal mind, to me, it is not the same.
The word God is too personal for me. But perhaps what K and Bohm called “mystery” (in their 1975 discussions, which are the topic of Wim Opdam’s recent thread on the subject) would be a better fit:
K: Every religion has talked about that mystery – Judaism said the nameless, Hindus have called it brahman, others, Christians, haven’t gone very deeply into that matter, they called it God. But there is something really tremendously mysterious.
I don’t know if you have heard some of those 1975 discussions between K and Bohm? (some of them are admittedly a little tedious and difficult to follow, but there are others - as Wim Opdam has said - that verge on the revelatory). At one point they distinguish between the mysterious and the strange:
By strange they apparently mean parapsychological happenings, such as levitation, telepathy, synchronic fatalisms, unusual physical transformations (such as, in one example, turning plain water into sugared water without using saccharine; and, in another, of making a newspaper shrink in size until it almost disappears!) - and extra-sensory perception generally.
By the mysterious they seem to have meant the true great mystery of the world, of the universe; the order of creation, the unfolding of world-history - or that the world even exists; also what may be implied by the word “sacred”; and also the nature of destiny, of what takes place when a brain becomes a vessel of another dimension than the one we are privy to already.
So by strange I understand K and Bohm to have meant ‘mysterious things that can occur in life’ (or ‘mysteries’ in the plural).
While by mysterious I understand them to have meant ‘the true mystery of all things’ (in the singular).
It definitely resonates with me, rings possibly true. Your universal mind sounds somewhat like a God process. Am I projecting or is that a little bit what you’re thinking?