Philosophy Now Forum

Greta wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:It's just that I don't think romantic notions of what we want things to be have any place in rational philosophy, and my view on that won't be altered.

There are two ideal scenarios at death that can be infected by wishful thinking:

One is the impossible-to-explain but highly positive afterlife hinted at by about 15% of near death occurrences. The other is your preference, hinted at by around 85% of near death occurrences (not really an experience) - to simply go into a deep sleep, end of story.

The beauty of the latter scenario is there are no consequences for our actions in life; the cause and effect that dogs us throughout life ceases at death. A non-existent slate is a clean slate. Each option looks preferable to reincarnation (although the first may include it) or the sadistic ideas in Iron Age myths.

I agree, Greta. Besides, Nirvana and Moksha are supposed to be the goal of Eastern enlightenment, ending the cycle of rebirth. Antinatalism just beats them to the punch, ending birth in the first place, through abstention from procreation. No birth, no rebirth.

SpheresOfBalance wrote: Just for you dalek, just for you!

Yippee! I feel special!

Dalek Prime wrote:Besides, Nirvana and Moksha are supposed to be the goal of Eastern enlightenment, ending the cycle of rebirth. Antinatalism just beats them to the punch, ending birth in the first place, through abstention from procreation. No birth, no rebirth.

That's an option. I think of it as the "lights out hypothesis" and it appears to be favoured by most educated people. Bear in mind that falling into a nothingness of a death sleep prior to reincarnation is still congruent with Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. One minute you're nodding off into oblivion, the next you're sitting in a pram (first self aware moment?).

I have a weird hypothesis about NDEs that is vaguely logical - at least until the final extrapolation that's way out there :) People who have NDEs often report massive time dilation, which is not so unrealistic given the time dilation experienced in some dreams. However, researchers have run tests on dreamers and found a 1:1 correlation between dream events and regular time.

The difference is that mental states largely unaffected by visual stimuli tend to "skip the graft" - you jump from event to event without the travel time. Have you ever scratched your bum, picked your nose or applied deodorant in a dream? If you did, some slime monster would probably emerge lol. The point is that dreams tend to skip time-consuming details and have a fairly singular focus.

Space disappears as you jump from meme to meme, and it usually only features when falling (endlessly!). This makes the time dilation is ultimately a form of data compression; in a dream you'll tend to skip the long drive through traffic and simply find yourself at a new place as if by magic because not much internal tends to happen when commuting, and experientially it just tends to be sequences of limited and fairly similar activities. Accelerate, brake, turn, indicate, change lanes, merge lanes, pedestrian 10 points, etc. That repetition is compressed into just about nix.

So a high level of "dream event compression" results in the perception of time dilation, with a number of major events (and almost no minor ones) happening in a rush. Now, back to death. Logically, a mind on the verge of death is probably not wildly interested in trifles and ephemera. To what extent can that compression go? Could a subjective sense of eternity be felt in the compressed final minutes of life? Or the crazy extrapolation ... perhaps the compression can reach a threshold where it changes state ... into ... ? *cue Twilight Zone theme*

One day we'll find out, or not.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada mas;
Caminante, no hay camino
se hace camino al andar.

.....Antonio Machado.

Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.

The Theory of Everything

Lacewing wrote:
I don't understand the statement below.

Dontaskme wrote:We are the invisible manifest as every piece of dead matter.

Yes indeed, both death and life are just part of the illusion as knowledge known... but consciousness itself is not known or seen, consciousness is absolutely everything, so there is no room in there for another one to know and see it. It can only see and know itself by reflection, as evidenced by object seen.

I'm saying the object is dead matter as a way to illustrate how the one living subject seer knows itself ...it knows itself in, as, and through it's reflection as an object seen...any object is the looked upon by the seer, and not the one looking. The object cannot know or see itself, it is the known and seen. This relationship is how life and death are known in there opposite appearances....facing each other in the mirror. The one reflected in the mirror cannot see itself, it is the seen, the looked upon, it is a mirage image of it's unseen self.

From this perspective we have opposing opposites mutually inclusive entangled within each other like the yin yang symbol; a necessary knowledge for the rational function of this mind body organism...which is only ever consciousness experiencing itself subjectively appearing to itself as object of it's desire....consciousness is the weaver of it's own dream...appearing as many of itself everywhere at once.


The knower and the seer is this invisible consciousness - that which is looked upon aka the body cannot know or see anything, the body/mind is the seen and the known...the manifest. ..but we the body mind have been taught to say, I am the body mind, this is my body, this is me, I am the one who is seeing and knowing...but this is simply not true...however, it cannot work any other way...this body mind is the vehicle for expression and only knows this one, not the one driving it, and so the belief in such gives the illusion it's power of existence...lifting the veil to reveal the truth is what's known as awakening to real self, and the death of the ego....but even as this is seen through, the illusion continues, the ego still has to function in the world.

What this seeing and knowing is cannot be known by body/mind mechanism, only that IT IS the seeing and knowing...IT KNOWS it is, but does not know what or why or how IT IS.....just that it is.


We are consciousness generating a world inside our consciousness...similarly, during nightly sleep the same one consciousness is generating a world of dreams inside our consciousness....during waking periods, this consciousness is working exactly the same way as it does during sleep, except the waking period is working in a reverse effect...we are the dream of ourself.

So, everything is literally this one consciousness, we've all got it, it is everything and everywhere....we can call this the invisible light or energy or God, ....seen and known in it's effects...ie: the objects of it's desire which are IT as well .....does this make sense to you Lacewing?

There is only this one acting and appearing as and through the character Lacewing...and as this pinprick perspective of Lacewing character is perceived and lived, nothing else in the world is happening, through the lens of this particular experience, nothing else exist....and the idea that there are others out there is the illusion...for it is the same one consciousness experiencing itself from every aspect of itself simultaneously from the perspective of each character....and that is why we can never know what another person is thinking, because they only exist as a dreamt character by consciousness ALONE

If there were others out there separate from us, they'd all be experiencing different realities....but if you've ever noticed, we all see the same things, know the same things and feel the same things, and think the same things, hear the same things, and so on....internally we are one consciousness experiencing itself externally.... external beings can appear to look quite different, but our internal being is all the same.....we are dreams within dreams and cannot know another or what another is feeling, seeing, or thinking, except what this one consciousness projects...at assumed other, reflection inference....there simply is no other one but this. The other one over there is you wearing a different body that's all.

Dontaskme wrote:Think...does a tree know it is alive?

Not in the sense of 'know' as in knowing one knows.

Does a baby know it is alive?

No.

Yes, aliveness is...knowledge tells us what aliveness is.

No, rationality tells us what 'aliveness' is.

But my point is and I'm sure you will agree...no thing was ever born therefore there is no death for the unborn

Lots of things are born?
Er!? Obviously the unborn cannot die as they do not exist.

The only thing that is born is the mind, the mind say's yes I'm alive, but don't you see how absurd that is? the mind conjures up a separate I that is alive.

Only bodies are born and some have minds and some don't, depending upon what you mean by 'mind' that is. I think it the existence of others, the development of the body and language that allows the creation of a 'self' other than just the being of this body.

This I is a phantom, think ghost in the machine.

There is no ghost in the machine, there is the machine but even this is incorrect.

Another way of looking at this ....when the human being body dies...where has that person gone? if that person knew it was alive, then why can't it know it's died?

Er! Because they are dead?

When the human body dies..the one animating that body vanishes, so who was the person that knows it was alive, and where has that person gone now it appears dead?

Nowhere, the body is dead and therefore no person alive.

The truth is there is no such thing as life and death...except as concept/knowledge which is illusory.

Well there's definitely no actual 'life' and 'death', just living and dying things and that's not illusory.

The animating force is the one that is alive....this one is the same one in every one....the one driving your body engine is the same one driving my body engine, the body is just the vehicle for the one energy that is neither born or dead.

Well the 'soul' is an old idea and the 'buddhist'-techno-hippies have always liked Physics for the idea that it's all 'Energy' but 'Energy' in Physics just mean 'No Idea' but we can measure real things behaving in ways that we can predict that 'If....Then...'

That's what's being discussed here...

Nice of you to clarify.

You know the idea of birth and death via the knowledge you have of such, knowledge is illusory....without knowledge who is there to know such concepts as birth and death.

You'll have to say what you mean by 'know' here? As without humans there would probably be no concepts, although some of the other animals do seem to have behaviors that appear best explained by a comparatively rudimentary conceptualizing ability(and some may be much more that this, the Cetaceans for example )

You know only from memory, the memory is the only place where the phantom spends it's allotted time, ...

Could be even stronger than this, there is no 'phantom' and it is memory, plus being this body with a language in an external world or is that what you meant?

and it is from here that the continuity of life continues...

I thought you said there is no 'life'? Which I agree with, there is no 'Life' per se, just living things.

the phantoms only way of continuing it's illusion is from retrieving dead memory and paying it forward into the present of the living moment of now...which is constantly being swallowed by the past by the forward flowing flux of life.....therefore life and death walk the razors edge simultaneously...being neither one nor the other....if you research this you will understand what I am saying...I know this sounds weird but it's because you have never been taught this by anyone in your life or at school....Lacewing understands it and so do millions of others.

Er!? This idea is as old as the hills, it just gets updated to fit with whatever are the cultural metaphors and current state of theories and beliefs at the time.

Can the mind grasp this profound realisation...yes it can.

Profound in the sense of being true? There are doubts.

You have no idea who this you is that believes it is alive, you think the body dies but you have no way of knowing what death is.

Er!? Obviously because one cannot experience death by definition. One can only experience dying.

This 'me' is the me created by being this body with senses and a language in an external world and by there being at least two of them. I don't believe I'm alive I know I'm alive, which does make me slightly different from the great bulk of the other animals.

It's all illusion.

Depends what you mean by 'illusion' I guess, as me and the squirrel both see the same sodding tree when wolves are about.

Lacewing wrote: I realize that a lot of people may think all of this is pure babble...

it's an open secret...everyone can know this, if they so choose...it's up to the chooser, it's their dream...we create our own dream, we have already the ultimate gift of consciousness....the rest is up to us, consciousness is nothing at all without a dream to cling to....

Dontaskme wrote:... consciousness is nothing at all without a dream to cling to....

Not nothing at all, just a tad more perplexing often to the point of redundancy.

You have no idea who this you is that believes it is alive, you think the body dies but you have no way of knowing what death is.

Arising_uk wrote:Er!? Obviously because one cannot experience death by definition. One can only experience dying.

Thank you for taking time out to write your comments Arising-uk ...appreciate your feedback.

The you that you only think you are, aka the body mind mechanism, is a thought. A thought become a thing, a thing thought, apart from the thought, there is no thing... Of course the Buddha was right. Every one is a Buddha, which is prior to thought..thought is superimposed other ..conceptually laid over what already exists as one. If not for this conceptual overlay..There is no image or knowledge of you.

Therefore, there is no such thing as an experience....for there to be an experience there needs to be an experiencer of the experience. This would mean that oneness would have to split itself in two...this apparently is what's appearing to happen, but that is the illusion. Oneness wholeness cannot be divided, for any division is still the whole. No matter how many time you cut a piece of stick off the end of a stick the stick will still be a stick.....there is no experiencer, or thinker of thought. There is only thought....and it is the thought that is the apparent experience.

There is only knowing.

There is only experiencing.

There is only living.

There is only dying.

There is only seeing.

No one has died.
No one has lived.
No one has known.
No one has experienced.
No one has seen.


The you that you think you are is a thought. Thoughts have no knowledge of life or death, except the meaning attached to them. No one is doing this, it is just happening appearing as if there is, but there is no one there...there's just the sense sensing itself.

Reality is a VERB all the way down to base level.

Balance is the great leveller.

Dontaskme wrote:

Lacewing wrote: I don't understand the statement: We are the invisible manifest as every piece of dead matter".

...consciousness itself is not known or seen, consciousness is absolutely everything, so there is no room in there for another one to know and see it. It can only see and know itself by reflection, as evidenced by object seen.

I'm saying the object is dead matter as a way to illustrate how the one living subject seer knows itself ...it knows itself in, as, and through it's reflection as an object seen...

Oh, I see. Thank you.

Dontaskme wrote:...the objects of it's desire which are IT as well .....does this make sense to you Lacewing?

Yes. Most of what you say rings familiar to me... and you express it to further degrees than I ever have. I think I tend to accept this dream... like a willing dreamer. I do enjoy probing the paths of "logic" to dispel manmade obstructions (which everything is)... but I do not feel the need to know what the answers ARE... and I actually don't think there are any standing still. It's as if I'm a dreamer telling other dreamers to keep their contrived creations out of my way, all the while knowing that it's all ONE interacting with itself! So it's a dream of wrestling with myselves and our creations -- all of which I want to love (maybe because that just instinctively feels, to me, like the most aware and natural state to be in).

My awareness/sense of these concepts we're speaking of is like slightly familiar music playing in the background of a dream... or like a memory just below the surface that I get glimpses of every now and then. Even though I don't "know" it such that I can define it, it remains a constant influence in everything I think, say, and do. Maybe this is why I'm so baffled by people who continually insist that they know their god in such detail... because how can we know that which surely has such a different scope and frequency than our human forms? Our human limitation and delusion is SO OBVIOUS everywhere we look, within and without... and yet, many people love to insist to others that they are uniquely and righteously associated with a god, while they act anything but. I think this might reflect the greatest ignorance of all. It seems much more true and aware to say "I don't know". And I like it even better to say "I don't need to know".

I think we humans are threatened by the word "illusion". It is scary when we believe everything is (and must be) solid and particularly meaningful. I remember my moments of terror upon realizing that I could not ever "go back" from what I'd seen/realized... and for a short while, I wished I could! Like running back inside the familiarity of a cave because the larger world was just too much. But I came to feel comfortable and accepting of the concept of vastness in all directions... even invigorated by it.

It seems that accepting freedom takes a lot of courage and love. Maybe it even makes a person MORE responsible and conscientious in some regards... because one cannot blame or tie responsibility to ANYTHING else. There is no god telling me what to do... there is no god supposedly sanctioning what I do... there is no god telling me to tell everyone ELSE what to do. What I create is all on me. Furthermore, by accepting that there is no real separation between myself and another, I recognize that I am interacting with myself. And I can be kind or vicious... but I cannot claim that the other is making me do that, because there is no other.

It's natural for people who haven't thought along these lines to wonder: Then why even live this life... if it's all just one interacting with itself? Well, why not? Why do we dream? Why do we have great adventure and entertainment in our dreams? And do they not seem real when we're in them? Does that make them a waste? Is there any lasting agenda or point to them? Is it bad that there isn't? If we look at all the other living things on this planet... are they not simply vibrating because they can? It is enough for them... why can't it be enough for us? We can still use our consciousness to create and play... but must we seemingly entangle (and potentially immobilize) ourselves and others with it? Might there be a completely different way of utilizing and expanding our awareness and energy?

Thanks "Dontaskme" for inspiring/sparking this kind of discussion which I, personally, love.

Dalek Prime wrote:SOB, can we have a longer post next time, please?

I agree. There is just not enough to not read through.

Obvious Leo wrote: Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.

The Theory of Everything

Love that, Leo!

Lacewing wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote: Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.

The Theory of Everything

Love that, Leo!

I quoted the verse in honour of the late Francisco Varela, philosopher, Taoist, Buddhist, non-believer, evolutionary biologist and all round saint. "Caminante no hay camino" was one of his favourite poems and he quoted this verse often in his public lectures to illustrate a deep truth about the nature of physical reality. Varela's world was not something which was simply "out there" to be understood but a dynamic reality which was continuously being made by the behaviour of the physical entities within it.

Francisco was not a physicist, however, and thus never came to realise that he was the keeper of the key which the mathematicians were unable to find. We cannot travel faster than the speed of light because we can't walk on a road which hasn't been made yet.

Lacewing wrote:
I think we humans are threatened by the word "illusion". It is scary when we believe everything is (and must be) solid and particularly meaningful.

Thanks for all your comments which I enjoyed reading.

Yeah, I tend to agree, the ego is fragile, the word illusion is a bit daunting to hear.

But, it's not that existence doesn't exist full-stop, it's that existence is not what we think it is.
Illusion simply means no separation between you or I...this or that, here and there.

The thing is, we can be walking down the high street and accidentally bump into an other person, who seems at first to be a complete stranger; and yet, that same person could be our biological brother or sister without our knowing....especially if our parents have gone their separate ways, remarried and had more children...which does seem to happen more and more these days....and not all parents keep in daily contact with their original offspring, some just do a complete runner.

The point of what I'm trying to say is... any one walking the street can be your biological relation without you ever knowing....we are basically all one human species really, no one is separate from someone else, that is just what we've been taught to believe...and yet we often treat ourselves with such disrespect and violence. But I guess this is just the human condition, in that we are thinking creatures with a mind; a mind full of intention to hurt ourself by the will to defend ourself...is like a catch 22...intention is always there as part of our DNA make-up.

Separation is the illusion. Life is real.

Obvious Leo wrote:. We cannot travel faster than the speed of light because we can't walk on a road which hasn't been made yet.

Everything is Light. Light is not travelling; it is everywhere. This is the meaning of the speed of light.

There is only light therefore we are travelling at the speed of light; meaning nothing is moving. Nothing moves, only the mind moves, which is the illusory relativity. There is nothing related in Life. It is one seamless phenomena.

Please don't bash me.