[MD] atheistic and content

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
But there is an awareness, that is separate from the five sense and 
patterns, that does not cling to such imaginings.  This 
awareness/experience sits in the present.  Witnessing.  It seems to 
be as proprietary as my eyes.

[Arlo]
I'm not sure what I can respond to here, except to maybe say I'd 
restate this to read "This awareness/experience IS the present". When 
you say "witnessing", it seems to me to play right into the SOM way 
of thinking. I'd say that this apart-from-the-world witnessing thing 
is the "optical delusion" Einstein was referring to. It is to give 
into the proprietary biological boundedness by carrying this 
"uniqueness" all the way the through the entirety of the "self". The 
"you" that "witnesses" is the result of a merger between your unique 
sensory trajectory and your appropriation of the shared narratives of 
the collective. By forgrounding the "proprietary", you turn the 
"self" into what Pirsig called "this autonomous little homunculus who 
sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass 
judgment on the affairs of the world", which he calls "completely ridiculous".

[Arlo previously]
Prior to the appropriate of a shared, cultural consciousness, the 
human organism has a sense of the world exclusive to its sensory experiences.

[Marsha]
So the books say.

[Arlo]
Well I don't privilege "the books", but I don't ignore them either.

[Marsha]
No offense Arlo, but this is all analogy, patterns, 
storytelling.  I'm trying to discover what is going on from the 
experience point-of-view., and why I find this witnessing-awareness 
so interesting.

[Arlo]
Fair enough, although I don't know how we can talk about things apart 
from "analogy, patterns, storytelling". Of course what I say is all 
these things. It HAS to be. It can't be anything else. But the same 
goes for what you say. Viva la narrative!

[Marsha]
That is really sick!!!  Sick experimentation by sick patterned individuals.

[Arlo]
No disagreement here. There was (and continues to be) a lot of very 
low quality things done in the name of "research". Nonetheless, they 
were done. And I suspect (right or wrong), the motivations were to 
shed light on the fact that some biological patterns DO 
self-cannibilize. And since this contradicts very strongly the idea 
of an "awareness of self" apart from sensory input (in pre-social, or 
pre-dialogic biological patterns), I find it supports the idea that 
the "self" as understood by humans is a social phenomenon, not one 
based in biology. As such, I refer to it only as these findings, 
however distasteful the experiment, support Pirsig's statement that 
"20th century French culture exists, therefore [Descartes] thinks, 
therefore [Descartes] is".

[Marsha]
Boooooooo to you for replicating, even through writing, such 
monsterous patterns.

[Arlo]
Fair enough.