Simply a material configuration our senses can detect and which we call “tree”.
Is not the first step to see the conditioning, however great or small, and to understand its nature and its power? It is useful to consider that the observer is the observed is not a thing as such, so much as it is a negation of the notion that the observed is separate from any observer, which is why that needs looking at, at what is generating and sustaining it as a reality.
Ok, so we arrive at the senses and the notion of a configuration being, but there is a question of where that configuration lies here, whether it is in matter apprehended by senses, or in the brain, as a movement it is, and where the notion of contact, as in detection, comes in, and whether the brain is in fact in contact with anything outside of itself.
Do you doubt it?
(adding some more caracters to be able to post it)
Of course. Is there certainty about it, and if so in what does the certainty exist, and what is there which then rides on the fact of it being certain?
If you are not certain then do a test: next time you are crossing a street and a bus is coming towards you just stay there and wait for the bus to crash you. You will know if you are in contact with something outside you.
First of all there needs to be a slowing down of thought to look at things very carefully and close up. Then there needs to be a contending with certain fear and anxiety to enable the freedom to look at what is without distortion, to see how things actually are, and not how I want them to be.
There is no requirement here to test anything. I recently undertook a long clifftop walk in which I watched carefully every step of the way. Likewise I did not plunge a knife into anyone, and I did not take to destroying several hectares of Amazonian rainforest, all of which brains convinced they are in contact with an objective reality do each day.
All that is required here is for the brain to understand what it is certain of, and what depends on that certainty. I am looking here at certainty, not doubt, and I am not suggesting you subject yourself to any test.
At issue here is the fact of the illusion of observed separate from observer as a reality which is both immediate and compelling, and what there is at the back of all that driving it. A question arises, am I having consciousness, or is consciousness having me?
Looking into this as to what it is that generates and sustains the sensation of a ‘me’ being separate (psychologically) from what is being seen say, There is a looking at the scene in front of me. The eyes are taking in the ‘information’ in front of them and the brain is translating it. It is familiar. the activity seen is familiar, etc. In this way, there is probably little difference between this body sitting here and any other animal. Then it struck me that there is a difference. While watching the scene in front of me, there was something additional happening: an awareness that this watching was going on…There was a ‘reflection’ that this watching was taking place, not just the watching itself as it could be with all the other creatures, but this ‘new’ brain could also be aware of the fact that it was there watching, thinking, feeling, judging, etc. about what the senses were experiening…This may mean nothing but I think it is useful to look into whatever in us is maintaining this split, as you and others do. Is it in part the ability of our new brain to reflect on itself?
I sense what is being experienced here is what I would call a slowing of thought as set against the mad rush that is quite often the case.
Ordinarily, I conceive of myself coming into my room, which while I’m in it is my reality, and I consider it there to be apprehended by me, and then thought about or corresponded with in some way, moved around it and all the rest of it. So I as the observer, the operator am in the driving seat as it were, doing the perceiving and the processing of the thing which is just there. Now what I want to explore is, is there in fact a movement, like a vast river in spate, which is swollen, and which is as old as time, with a momentum driving all before it, which I as an observer am at the head of, such that I and what I am given to see, are being laid down together. That is, this movement is standing on ground it has laid itself, as an observer looking at an observed which is experienced as separate from itself?
Dominic this is metaphysics or worse solipsism and I’m not interested in them both.
We are considering this new brain and whether it has inadvertently taken a ‘wrong turn’ because for the first time in the animal kingdom, governed by ‘instinct’, a ‘wrong turn’ became a possibility. The observer split off from what was being observed was a possibility. And it has created a lot of chaos for us as well as our animal and plant neighbors. Can we see how it manifests in ourself? I suggested this quality of ‘reflection’ as one possibility…another occurs to me and that is, our prodigious ‘memory’. This storehouse of experiences ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stretching back to early childhood…With that expanse of memories available in the brain, was it almost impossible to not invent a central figure, a ‘me’ or ‘I’ that ties them all together in a bundle? An observer separate from what it observes? An experiencer separate from the experiences?
Your brain can make it that for yourself, but it is not that at all. There are two concepts here, two notions, which like two images that once seen cannot be unseen, cannot now be ignored. One is the observer is the observed, and the other is the observed is not the observer. In play all around is the reality the brain is having to be certain, and any challenge to that certainty is naturally a threat.
Yes, but an observer separate from what is observed is a reasonable proposition when a technical measurement is being carried out. Measuring out a metre, or a mile, doesn’t bring about any conflict or harm.
But it’s not just my childhood memory, or indeed my memory, it is the racial memory, it is the entire edifice of the senses, and what it is to see, to hear, to touch, to taste etc. It is human seeing, human touching, with the human brain.
Are you asking why has the brain generated a permanent observer, separate from what is observed, even when not carrying on technical measurement, and why has it created an elaborate story about itself as that observer?
Yes. That is what we are inquiring into. What is behind the coming about of a ‘self-image’ that has psychologically divided itself from the world?
Was it this new brains ability to create images mentally…not only of things past as memories but to be able to ‘imagine’ events that hadn’t happened? If there is the image of this body being attacked and being eaten by a lion say, wouldn’t there be a reaction to that image by the ‘old’ brain that that is actually happening?
Yes, if I am a hunter-gatherer, I can gather two days worth at a time, and have a day off practicing my fire making skills, or instead of having to hibernate like a bear I can build a log cabin, and gather in firewood, then kill the bear and steal its coat, and carry on all year round. So an observer with a notion of itself as past, present and future, can step out of chronological time, for the purpose of extending capacity, which is then a nascent psychological time of a proto-self. So then there is a technical observer, and a time-shifting observer. So where has the pitfall entered in?
That’s what we have to be clear about now. That the accumulation of knowledge has been behind the extraordinary success of the ‘technical’ brain where new discoveries, inventions seemingly without end come about each day. But knowledge being the past has no place in the psychological realm where it acts as a limiting intruder. The self-image with all its baggage restricted the potential of the psyche. Rather than resonate with what K called the “immensity”, it confines itself to a narrow corner in order to protect an imaginary frightened ‘entity’, the ‘observer’, the ‘self’.
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Is the next question, what is there that generates an observer of any kind, and how does an element of measurement become a dangerously irrational entity like the self?
Let’s take the ‘easier’ one, the ‘thinker’ that is separate from ‘thought’. Separate from the material process called ‘thinking’. K. has called it a “trick” of thought. If so what is the point of playing such a trick? Without the ‘thinker’ there would just be thought. Thought about this or that but no ‘thinker’ to react to what was being thought about. So what is the role of this imaginary thinker? The thinker is me. I’m the one ‘having’ ‘my’ thoughts…But if there is in fact just the thinking process and no actual thinker, then what happens to me? Without me, none of it makes sense. I’m the one who records, experiences, enjoys, likes, dislikes, suffers etc. So if I am fictional, don’t exist, then what ,as you ask, is generating this fiction? Is it the fear of being ‘nothing’ and if so, why should such a fear exist in the brain at all,if it is a fact?
Is the moment thinking makes the thinker akin to nuclear fission of itself in that everything of self happens at that point - God, omnipotence, worship, conflict, strife, fear, alienation? And is it the case that once thinking comes into being a thinker is then inevitable?
What is generating this ‘I’? Fear and sensation generate thoughts of a ‘me’ as I’m seeing it. K described the young child who experiences pleasure with a toy. When the mother wants to take the toy away to feed the child or to put him/her to sleep the child yells out, ‘NO…it’s mine!’… ‘I want it!’. I had this experience with a 1 1/2 year old in a toy store. When it was time to take her home, she had a major fit and became almost hysterical. 'I don’t want to go home!’ she screamed over and over. I had to pick her up and carry her out. And if there’s an external stimulus that creates fear…then thought creates the ‘I’ to try to deal with the pain of the fear. It’s an important question Dominic is asking and I’m not sure I understand it totally…it’s worth discussing here,imo.