The observer cannot be observed

[Dontaskme]

In answer to your question, the “who”doesn’t exist, except as a conceptual appearance, or put another way, as a thought.

Does that compute with you?

Not even close. It doesn't compute with anybody.

I'll try again: every action verb must have a "doer," someone or something that performs the action. "Be observed" is an action verb, because "observe" is an action. But in your sentence, it's not said who is doing that "observing."

Who is it?

You’re only pointing out the obvious that any kindergarten kid can understand.



But this topic is more to do with what’s not readily obvious and yet is obviously the most obvious realisation.

If I’ve already stated the observer cannot be observed, then why state a WHO?..unless you say the observer can be observed?

[Immanuel Can]

In answer to your question, the “who”doesn’t exist, except as a conceptual appearance, or put another way, as a thought.

Does that compute with you?

Not even close. It doesn't compute with anybody.

I'll try again: every action verb must have a "doer," someone or something that performs the action. "Be observed" is an action verb, because "observe" is an action. But in your sentence, it's not said who is doing that "observing."

Who is it?

You’re only pointing out the obvious that any kindergarten kid can understand.

Then you should be able to answer it.

And the answer is...?

[Dontaskme]

Not even close. It doesn't compute with anybody.

I'll try again: every action verb must have a "doer," someone or something that performs the action. "Be observed" is an action verb, because "observe" is an action. But in your sentence, it's not said who is doing that "observing."

Who is it?

You’re only pointing out the obvious that any kindergarten kid can understand.

Then you should be able to answer it.

And the answer is...?

The question “who” can only arise to the sense of a separate self.

There isn’t a separate self, the question is who is the questioner and that ONE who question already holds all the answers...

And that’s the answer ..tada!

Are you satisfied with the answer?

[Immanuel Can]

You’re only pointing out the obvious that any kindergarten kid can understand.

Then you should be able to answer it.

And the answer is...?

The question “who” can only arise to the sense of a separate self.

No, you invoked the word "observe." I did not. You implied a "who," because you chose the word "observe." That's an active verb, which means somebody has to do it, or it's not being done.

But now you want to play coy games, and say that nobody's doing it. Well, to put it bluntly, "nobody's" never been able to do anything. Therefore, there is not only no "observer," but no "observation" either.

How silly. I can be bothered with this no more.

Apparently, according to you, nobody's speaking anyway, and thus nothing is being spoken. So no-you has no-point.

[Dontaskme]

Not even close. It doesn't compute with anybody.

I'll try again: every action verb must have a "doer," someone or something that performs the action. "Be observed" is an action verb, because "observe" is an action. But in your sentence, it's not said who is doing that "observing."

Who is it?

You’re only pointing out the obvious that any kindergarten kid can understand.

Then you should be able to answer it.

And the answer is...?

Another answer to the one question WHO?

Goes like this....it’s obvious that what is observed is inseparable from the observer, and that there is no division between the apparent two.
So how could or would this ONE undivided observing ever be seen or known...?

The answer is...it can’t, it would have to split itself in two into seer and seen, knower and known...but the seen and known that apparently does arise here are appearances only, they are empty reflections aka this empty fullness.

.

[Dontaskme]

Then you should be able to answer it.

And the answer is...?

The question “who” can only arise to the sense of a separate self.

No, you invoked the word "observe." I did not. You implied a "who," because you chose the word "observe." That's an active verb, which means somebody has to do it, or it's not being done.

But now you want to play coy games, and say that nobody's doing it. Well, to put it bluntly, "nobody's" never been able to do anything. Therefore, there is not only no "observer," but no "observation" either.

How silly. I can be bothered with this no more.

Apparently, according to you, nobody's speaking anyway, and thus nothing is being spoken. So no-you has no-point.

Bye bye IC.., nondual speak doesn’t have many followers. But thanks for dropping by, it was a shock to see you on my nondual thread to be honest, but it was not a shock to read the no one is speaking or no point point.

[Immanuel Can]

nondual speak doesn’t have many followers.

That's because it's utterly incoherent, even on its own terms. That's to be expected, then.

[Dontaskme]

I can be bothered with this no more.

Why is that..is it because you prefer to idolise images of the imageless, and mistake it for actual reality...tada!

[Dontaskme]

nondual speak doesn’t have many followers.

That's because it's utterly incoherent, even on its own terms. That's to be expected, then.

No it’s not incoherent, it’s only incoherent if you are looking for coherence, else how would you know?

[Immanuel Can]

nondual speak doesn’t have many followers.

That's because it's utterly incoherent, even on its own terms. That's to be expected, then.

No it’s not incoherent, it’s only incoherent if you are looking for coherence, else how would you know?

Of course it's incoherent. You promised no coherence, I see, and you have delivered. I cannot much fault you for that, as you have delivered what you promised.

[Dontaskme]

That's because it's utterly incoherent, even on its own terms. That's to be expected, then.

No it’s not incoherent, it’s only incoherent if you are looking for coherence, else how would you know?

Of course it's incoherent. You promised no coherence, I see, and you have delivered. I cannot much fault you for that, as you have delivered what you promised.

Hope you continue to enjoy the show. But just remember you don’t have to show up to your own show.

[Dimebag]

The Light seemingly comes and goes in a form that I can Experience, but I know that when it is there it is still what I am. In the Physical world I can look at my Hand and say that is Me, but if I look away and don't see my Hand anymore it doesn't mean my Hand is not part of my Physical existence. By the way I talk pretty boldly about being the Light because that is the state of my understanding at this time. I could be wrong, but it seems right to me right now. It's a work in progress.

I can't become Nothing because I am not Nothing.

That might be your experience Steve, and I don’t disagree with you. But I don’t think it is most people’s experience or belief about themselves. Most people when they feel pain, don’t think they are the feeling of pain, they think they are a separate entity that “has” pain, or is “in” pain. The normal state of being is to being a subject to whom experiences belong or happen to.

This subject is ultimately this observer we refer to. But it is the root construct of the mind that it uses to represent our organism in a world created by our own mind (I am referring to this internally created world, not any possible external worlds to which they represent).

It is also associated with conceptual thought and overt planning of action, I.e. intentionality. So selfhood is tied to thought and future oriented behaviour (as well as rumination in the past). It acts as a central “controller”, yet it is like a micro-manager, who thinks they do everything in a company, but who really has no bottom up control, only top down alteration, which it uses conceptual thought and “knowledge” to achieve. But this knowledge is not its own, it is fed information to which it takes ownership, whatever is the most appropriate information pertinent for a situation will “occur” to it, and it takes this as its own.

What I am describing is analogous to the ego structure of Freudian psychology. It develops with the organism as the brain develops. Sometimes it is active, other times it becomes passive and “observes”, letting the built in intelligence of the brain take the lead. But it has its roots everywhere in the mind. This passive mode is something like “flow state” that people describe. The ego goes silent and actions happen wherever necessary. Why is this? Because evolution has dictated that whenever an external situation is demanding enough, the ego needs to back off and let the brain do its thing, stop micro managing and allow the most appropriate responses to occur, unhindered. But once such a flow inducing state subsides, the ego takes the imaginary reigns again and reinstates itself as self declared master of the mind.

The “observer” is the root of the ego, the conceptual centre of experience, the subject to which experiences happen. Without this observer, the ego cannot take root. There can be no controller. Control is of course illusory, but the sense of control is still different to no control. The ego has many defences, and so those typical defences are no longer elicited. It’s interesting that these kind of “spiritual” experiences usually happen later in life, maybe the organism knows it has already served its necessary reproductive protocol and thus allows a greater freedom to emerge, one which allows the possibility of contentment, and therefore wisdom which might serve a different purpose to the wider community. After all, we are nothing without each other, and if the removal of self enables the group to work more cohesively then it makes sense that this would happen in evolutionary terms.

A well thought out post.

But I am my body as well as being my thoughts and my sensations. It's just that the body will go away someday, and all that might remain are my sensations. The Colors, the Sounds, the Tastes, and etc. were always something non Physical. We don't know what existence can be like with only those Sensations remaining. Maybe I will be able to send Light and Sound messages to other entities that have lost their bodies. Maybe these other entities will contact me first and show me how to project my Sensations. It will probably be a whole new form of existence. There will probably be no Time and no Space to constrain us. This is pure Speculation but we need to thing in different ways.

The problem with identifying with your body is, the borderline between your body, your environment, and the resources your body requires to survive is an arbitrary one.

Your body exists only because of your parents, yet we separate ourselves as distinct entities from them.

Your body requires certain balances if nutritional resources to be taken in and assimilated into it for it to continue to survive. It requires a certain temperature range. It requires a certain combination of gases present in its surroundings, being oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other trace elements in certain ratio’s. What’s more, to become a conscious entity, you need to be learning about an environment, you need to be immersed in a social structure, arguably you need a language or symbol system to develop awareness of your self and your environment.

The boundary we draw between our environment and our body is arbitrary in this sense. In another sense it is meaningful, as your neighbours feelings are not your feelings, however you also have systems built in to feel all sentient beings feelings, that being theory of mind and empathy. Although you don’t feel the exact feelings others feel, your mind can guess the most likely feeling and allows you to feel that, connecting you to others, not necessarily in a literal collective mind, but in a surrogate collective mind. Then culture also connects you to all others connected to culture, feeding memetic constructs and concepts.

Additionally, we also share the same information feeding our perceptual systems, depending on our location, variations occur, but the source is the same.

Lastly, we all share the same state of being awareness. When all differentiations are stripped away, every human if they are functional contains this same light of awareness from which their entire world emerges, memory, personality is overlaid, different experiences, thoughts, desires, etc.

Pragmatically, the conceptual boundary of your individual body is a useful concept, especially for survival, but beyond that, having a restrictive identity to your own body or even holding an identity at all means you will overlook this ground of awareness.

[AlexW]

It doesn't seem you detect a difference between the senses (see, touch, taste, and so on) and the "observer," the entity "behind the eyes," so to speak, who is making sense out of the external stimuli.

Yes, in a way.
Have you ever found (and with this I mean: directly perceived/experienced) this "entity "behind the eyes"?
If not, could it be that it is not more than an idea? Simply a thought that arises and states "Hey, I see this apple over there!"
Could it be that this thought is not an "observer" but rather a simple commentary issued by ... no one?

I do see a problem there. A rudimentary sensor, a mechanical device, can be created to indicate a difference in things like colour or texture. So in the senses sense, the sensor can "detect" the difference. But it is utterly devoid of potential to interpret, categorize, relate or process the difference it detects. It is not an observer.

Agree

So if experience is no more than the externals of taste, touch, feel, and so on, then experience is what a rudimentary sensor is having. But I don't think anybody reasonable wants to say that's what the sensor is having.

Well... direct experience is not limited to sensory input, but also consists of thought.
Thought provides the interpretation - and this is very helpful in many ways.
But it also "invents" certain entities that are not based on (or derived from) what is directly experienced via these "sensors" - for example: it invents an observer, or a separate ego-self, which no matter how much one looks, will never be found (via the senses), but can only be thought of...
This is an interesting realisation... and one can either ignore it or dig deeper (and see what else is actually only imagined).

Well, I see a problem. It's the one above. If the five senses are all that are necessary to constitute an "experience," then there is no need for an observer. But if an observer exists, then something different from Materialism is true. And something more than the five senses is required for an "experience" to happen.

I tend to stick with what I can experience directly. I see, hear, taste, smell and feel (sense of touch) - and then there is conceptual thought.
If the conceptual interpretation of the experience comes up with an entity that I have, so far, never experienced (eg: this observer), then I would put it into the "imaginary"-box.

It's not merely a difference of quantity, though, but a difference of quality. No matter how "complex" the stimuli picked up by the five senses are, they don't even constitute an "experience" without an observer processing them and making them into something. An experience is qualitatively different from sensors being stimulated. It's actually a different thing.

I am well aware that in the physical sense, there is a certain process of conversion happening - maybe a bit like an analog to digital conversion in a computer system and then there is a certain program/algorithm interpreting this converted data.
But where is this separate observer? As I see it, the observer is not more than another output of the algorithm interpreting sensed data (meaning: a thought).

I would have to say this isn't so. After all, the same apple may taste bitter to one person and sweet to another -- say if one has just been eating a sugary dessert, and the other just had a steak. So it's not the "taste" itself that is being "true." It's variable. Rather, the difference is being marked by two different observers of exactly the same object.

1) Bitter and sweet are only conceptual interpretations.
2) Of course every experience is unique - there simply is no experience like any other.
This still doesnt mean that there are two "observers of exactly the same object" - in direct experience there are neither objects nor observers.

This almost sounds Platonic. Plato thought there was a "realm of ideal forms" where the "truth" about things like the taste of apple sort of floated about eternally. I'm sure you don't believe that, but what you just said sounds a lot like Plato.

You are right, I don't believe in a "realm of ideal forms" (or an ideal anything)

You can think of an apple, but you cannot experience "apple" directly.

This is true.

Great! I agree! So if you cannot experience "apple", then you cannot experience any object, right?
Is the observer an object? If yes, then you cannot experience it... If no... then what is it?

I guess I could sort of agree with this, if I was sure I understood what you mean by "made up."

With "made up" I mean thought into objective existence. As you said: One cannot directly experience "apple" - yet we believe that this separate object "apple" exists in its own right. While this is handy thing for communication (and many other areas of daily life) its actually "made up" - not directly experienced.

Kant said there were two real things in play: one was the external world, of which we have no absolutely correct experience, and the experience that is occasioned by the external world, but is really the observer's processed version of the impressions from the senses. So we have a sort of relatively correct experience that we get from reality. But even Kant did not separate the external world entirely from the internal observer; after all, with no external world, there would be no internal experience. And the internal experience is largely stimulated by the actual activities of the outside world.

Well... this might sound a bit unusual, but... according to direct experience there is no inside or outside, there is no external world - there is just the experience.
This might be hard to swallow, it runs against all conventional belief - but then again... there are certain parts in life (eg night time dreams) where this realisation is commonly accepted...

What I'm saying is that the truth is a bit of a tightrope walk between two incorrect beliefs. On one side is the falsehood that we observers see the world as it actually is, in all cases; on the other is the error that nothing we see is real, and reality itself is entirely a matter of interpretation.

To me, everything that is directly experienced is real, while, on the other hand, all interpretations are only real within the conceptual world that thought has created. Reality is non-dual, while the conceptual world is dualistic. These two realities seem to meet - we tend to believe that our relativistic interpretations correspond to base reality - , but they actually never do.

[Belinda]

Exactly, and is why the observer cannot be observed.

But a regress is not a good reason to found a belief on. I feel sure I know what you mean however.

I think it would be better if you would discuss the practical benefits , if any, of idealism.

It’s not a belief.

I’m baffled as to what idealism has got to do with this subject.

In idealism the observers is all that there is. This is like the observer is existence itself, and all else is what the observer thinks or imagines. If all else is the stuff the observer thinks and has no substantial existence then all else cannot cannot observe the observer.

As Immanuel Can put it

What I'm saying is that the truth is a bit of a tightrope walk between two incorrect beliefs. On one side is the falsehood that we observers see the world as it actually is, in all cases; on the other is the error that nothing we see is real, and reality itself is entirely a matter of interpretation.

[Dontaskme]

But a regress is not a good reason to found a belief on. I feel sure I know what you mean however.

I think it would be better if you would discuss the practical benefits , if any, of idealism.

It’s not a belief.

I’m baffled as to what idealism has got to do with this subject.

In idealism the observers is all that there is. This is like the observer is existence itself, and all else is what the observer thinks or imagines. If all else is the stuff the observer thinks and has no substantial existence then all else cannot cannot observe the observer.

As Immanuel Can put it

What I'm saying is that the truth is a bit of a tightrope walk between two incorrect beliefs. On one side is the falsehood that we observers see the world as it actually is, in all cases; on the other is the error that nothing we see is real, and reality itself is entirely a matter of interpretation.

Thanks, and I agree with what you’ve said.

It’s almost as if everything known boils down to one thing only and that is an idea.

What exactly is an idea, I have no idea.