[MD] atheistic and content

[MarshaV]

Greetings Ham,

On Mar 19, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Ham Priday wrote:

> On Mar 18, 2010, at 12:25 PM, Marsha wrote:
> 
> 
>> Greetings Ham,
>> 
>> How about if I concede a bit.  I might consider there is individual
>> experience/existing, but it is not anything like an independent,
>> controlling self who is in-charge of its experiences.
>> It would be more like seeing would be unique from your individual eyes
>> and point-of-view, and different then the experience of seeing from my
>> individual eyes and point-of-view.  But still no self.  This is always
>> where I want to agree with you.   So that's no to the 'I', but yes to the
>> individual.   What would you say about this?
> 
> I would say that 'self' is undeniably the seat of consciousness.  As such it is the locus of awareness, experience, knowledge, sensibility, and every other aspect of the individual's relation to the world.  The self is, as you say, a "point-of-view".  That view is unique to each individual self.
> 
> [John injects]:
>> What means this "biologically bound"?  "Binding" seems disparaging to me,
>> as if poor, poor intellect... TRAPPED in this filthy biological shell.
> 
> John is right.  To describe the individual self as a "patterned piece" of nature, quality, intellect, or anything else is a misconception.  The individuality of conscious awareness is as "absolute" as any division can be.  We each exist as a POV; it is our valuistic connection with the essential Source.


That there is an experience is a fact. That there is an experiencer and an experienced is surmised.   I am trying to go lightly at trying to describe types of experiences: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, thinking, and an experience that has some kind of a watchful awareness.  That these experiences are linked to the inorganic and biological patterns seems obvious, and that they are extended in meaning to social and intellectual patterns also seems understandable, but that fact is that experience is the only fact and the rest of it is patterns based on mental construction.  


> You have an aversion to the term "I", which is often equated with "ego" and has a deprecatory inference.  I think this is why you have adapted the Buddhistic notion of 'no-self'.  But, Marsha, if all consciousness is proprietary to the individual self, and we are all self-aware, then "I" is how we identify that self.  This is not to deny the influence of society and language on the thinking individual, or the dependence on organic beingness for our existence.  Rather, it's a denial that the self is biological, social, or even experiential in nature.  The "essence" of selfness is proprietary awareness, or what I call "sensibility".

The Buddhist have it correct.  There is no inherently existing self.  The individual is mostly a flow of conceptual and perceptual patterns with some responding to unpatterned experience.  There is nothing unchanging and independent to be found in the individual.  The 'I', 'self', 'me' and 'mine' are conventional inventions, and should not be confused as being absolutely real.  There are no real boundaries, only conventional boundaries, patterned boundaries.  

> 
> The reason I put so much stress on that definition is that we cannot logically be "free agents" of Value if we are bound to physical reality or the so-called "collective consciousness".  Value-sensibility is independent of the "otherness" it experiences and intellectualizes.  Epistemologically the self MUST be independent of the phenomenal world in order to serve as the measure of Value in existence.

Epistemology is a conceptional system, rationally constructed.  What if freedom lay outside the boundaries of a rationally constructed epistemology?  I will say that the YOU exists, but within a conventionally constructed reality.  That's the best I can do.  -  But it does nothing to help me get deeper into this witnessing experience.  


> Your admission of this truth is not a "concession" to me, Marsha.  It's an important first step to understanding that without a self there is no realization . . . which means no awareness of otherness, no appreciation of Quality/Value or Morality, and no experience of things in process.  Stir that into your metaphysical stew and see if it doesn't improve the flavor.

I can stir it into a metaphysical stew, but only a conventional one.


Anyways, this won't leave me alone at the moment.  It's like having a filling in a tooth fall out, I cannot seem to stay away.  

Thanks, Ham.  I do pay attention to what you write; it's just that I cannot always find acceptable words to use in response.
 
 
Marsha
 
 



 
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