Philosophy Now Forum

Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.

It's the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here's a happy one for you.

Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.
Happy trails to you,
Keep smiling until then.

Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song, and bring the sunny weather.

Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.

roydop wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:15 pm Bye bye.

You leaving us already? Ok, seeya.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:18 pm

roydop wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:15 pm Bye bye.

You leaving us already? Ok, seeya.

No I'm not leaving, I'm just not responding to you on this thread any longer. Starting... Now.

roydop wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:52 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:18 pm

roydop wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:15 pm Bye bye.

You leaving us already? Ok, seeya.

No I'm not leaving, I'm just not responding to you on this thread any longer. Starting... Now.

I see, just exercising that super power you have for avoiding unwanted thoughts. Sadly that inoculates you against all the worthwhile ones.

roydop wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:26 pmI and a man named Gary Weber have both adopted Ramana's practice (I simply paid attention to the space between thoughts as often as I remembered to and remained thought free as long as I could). Both Gary and I have experienced an 80% reduction in thought, and don't suffer.

So yes, it is possible to transcend the thought process completely, and I am suggesting that this is the next evolutionary step for consciousness. Consciousness that remains focused on it's own Absolute existence will not require anything relative to it for it's existence (like thought, or even sensations) and the need for all of those thoughts to be relative to will no longer be required. Not even the world will be required, in Ramana's case. So He's done.

I know this sounds crazy because you've probably never heard anyone talk about this before, and it is exactly because everyone is under the same delusion. The catch 22 is that this will be very hard to accept without first experiencing deep thought free awareness, and if one doesn't accept this info, they probably won't adopt a practice to investigate the thought free state.

There's an infinite sea of peace available now, always, underneath all this noise. Happiness is our true nature.

O...kay...

(What do you do when you don't think? Please name the actual physical activity you partake in.)

(Were you thinking when you wrote this and other posts of yours? I am not being facetious or sarcastic. I do mean, were you involved in thinking when you wrote your posts.)

(What is the transition process from not thinking to thinking? What seeds your thinking in a non-thinking mode?)

(What do you do when you don't think? Please name the actual physical activity you partake in.)

Instead of seeking entertainment (screen time, reading, music, etc) I sit in stillness/happiness. Also, I'm a wildland firefighter in Canada and am off for six months of the year. So while fighting fire I don't need to think much, and for 6 months I don't have to think at a job.

(Were you thinking when you wrote this and other posts of yours? I am not being facetious or sarcastic. I do mean, were you involved in thinking when you wrote your posts.)

Yes I am thinking right now, insofar that my mind is reading the words as I type them. Very little pre-planning/thinking however.

(What is the transition process from not thinking to thinking? What seeds your thinking in a non-thinking mode?)

Exactly! What is the mechanism that brings a thought from the stillness? I have spent thousands of hours specifically watching that "event horizon", like a cat watching a mouse hole. I feel it's a self-enforcing feedback loop where a thought precedes an action and then that action propagates another thought, and if that thought is acted upon the process will continue (it's a ponzi scheme. That's why thoughts and actions/movement of humans are increasing in tandem at an exponential rate). However, if most or all of those "I..." thoughts are not acted upon, but merely witnessed and let pass, this "I..." process slows and fades. When one engages in such a practice it can be seen, upon the new perspective, that most if not all of that internal dialogue was unnecessary for survival.

roydop wrote: ↑Mon Feb 25, 2019 3:23 pm thought is the cause of humanity

Yeah, exactly.
We think, therefore we are.
A kind of generalised Cogito.
Descartes 2.0...
Well done!
EB

roydop wrote: ↑Thu Feb 28, 2019 2:29 pmYes I am thinking right now, insofar that my mind is reading the words as I type them. Very little pre-planning/thinking however.

When an average person drives a car, he does not actively think on following the speed limit, stopping at stop signs, watching out for pedestrians, checking the blind spot.

This must have a name, a thinking that is so automated, that old times "think" efforts become automatic.

For instance, when I type this, I don't have to think where the keys are on the keyboard (I touch-type) and the words come out right, without thinking which keys to hit.

Can you take this somewhere, RoyDop? Because I suspect that when you are in a non-thinking mode, some brain functions are still present. For instance, you are able to observe and process mentally the reality around yourself.

For this, you also need to separate other forms of brain-functions from thinking. I believe that thinking is a precursor to automated brain-functioning. Thought, language and an internal dialogue are all automated in an individual who has become a normal adult. Eventually, after you regurgitate a thought enough times, your thoughts become automated. That's why it's very hard to give up thinking. You can give up breathing, or driving a car, or going to do a job, but when yo do live, drive, and work, you can't give up breathing, driving, and working. So... the upshot is that automation of brain processes with humans is such, that if you make it part of your life, you can only give it up by giving up your life....

RoyDop, you say that is not true, which I accept, because I can't be judge over your experiences, over your life and how you live it and what you sense and how you process stimuli. I know I can't do it, and showed you why; you say you can do it, and it's a funny thing, because you can only prove your ability to not think to another person who also can stop thinking, since it's an experience that is new to most humans, that is alien to most humans, so the experience can't be described.

More like how you can't describe colours to someone who has been born blind, or musical harmony to someone else who has been born absolutely deaf, or the joy of existence to someone who has been born absolutely dead.

When an average person drives a car, he does not actively think on following the speed limit, stopping at stop signs, watching out for pedestrians, checking the blind spot.

Putting it in a simplified analogy, one's entire life can run on this "auto pilot", without the need for the "I..." thought monologue process.

For this, you also need to separate other forms of brain-functions from thinking.

When I use the word "thinking" I mean the "voice in your head", especially the "I...".

you can only give it up by giving up your life....

Ultimately, we have to give up our life at death, and especially when we go extinct. As the "I..." fades so does all of the stuff it thought it needed, and needed to accomplish. The big point here is that all experience within this realm is fundamentally as unsubstantial as a scene in a movie. No matter how interesting or realistic a movie is, at any moment a person can bring awareness back onto the three dimensional realm and the body sitting in the chair. Shifting one's awareness away from thoughts and sensations and placing it on the awareness itself is the equivalent of doing that. There is no reason to develop the analogy any deeper, but the tendency is for mind to continually make things increasingly more complicated simply to keep the thought process going (because ego knows it exists only while thinking).

This realm is not fundamental reality and "your name here" is not true self. But your ego believes it to be real and will fight against it's death as viciously as a wild animal. This is why this message is so difficult to get through. If one take the mind to be the ultimate authority or your primary source of relative existence (I think therefore I am) then the ceasing of that process seems like death and/or non-existence. It can be frightening to the ego (the part that knows it exists in relation to thoughts) and it will defend and reject any notion of ceasing thought.

This misinterpretation of true self and reality is the source of all suffering.

roydop wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:49 pm

When an average person drives a car, he does not actively think on following the speed limit, stopping at stop signs, watching out for pedestrians, checking the blind spot.

Putting it in a simplified analogy, one's entire life can run on this "auto pilot", without the need for the "I..." thought monologue process.

For this, you also need to separate other forms of brain-functions from thinking.

When I use the word "thinking" I mean the "voice in your head", especially the "I...".

you can only give it up by giving up your life....

Ultimately, we have to give up our life at death, and especially when we go extinct. As the "I..." fades so does all of the stuff it thought it needed, and needed to accomplish. The big point here is that all experience within this realm is fundamentally as unsubstantial as a scene in a movie. No matter how interesting or realistic a movie is, at any moment a person can bring awareness back onto the three dimensional realm and the body sitting in the chair. Shifting one's awareness away from thoughts and sensations and placing it on the awareness itself is the equivalent of doing that. There is no reason to develop the analogy any deeper, but the tendency is for mind to continually make things increasingly more complicated simply to keep the thought process going (because ego knows it exists only while thinking).

This realm is not fundamental reality and "your name here" is not true self. But your ego believes it to be real and will fight against it's death as viciously as a wild animal. This is why this message is so difficult to get through. If one take the mind to be the ultimate authority or your primary source of relative existence (I think therefore I am) then the ceasing of that process seems like death and/or non-existence. It can be frightening to the ego (the part that knows it exists in relation to thoughts) and it will defend and reject any notion of ceasing thought.

This misinterpretation of true self and reality is the source of all suffering.

Yes the I is illusory and technically not our real self, but this is fundamental reality and that sensation of awareness is just in your head. You don't have access to any other realm and the ego is NOT the cause of all suffering.

Didn't your ego invent a fundamental realm of awareness or whatever, so it can hide there?

"Yes the I is illusory and technically not our real self, but this is fundamental reality..."

Maxwell Planck: "I consider consciousness to be fundamental. I consider matter to be derivative." A much much smarter man than most everyone who has ever lived.

"Didn't your ego invent a fundamental realm of awareness or whatever, so it can hide there?"

No, that which is now noticed was not created because there was no doing involved. Thinking and doing things is the manner in which creation takes place. Belief systems are just a bunch of individual thoughts consciousness strings together like a connect the dots game. Such systems can not develope if there aren't enough repeating thoughts.

roydop wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:35 pm "Yes the I is illusory and technically not our real self, but this is fundamental reality..."

Maxwell Planck: "I consider consciousness to be fundamental. I consider matter to be derivative." A much much smarter man than most everyone who has ever lived.

"Didn't your ego invent a fundamental realm of awareness or whatever, so it can hide there?"

No, that which is now noticed was not created because there was no doing involved. Thinking and doing things is the manner in which creation takes place. Belief systems are just a bunch of individual thoughts consciousness strings together like a connect the dots game. Such systems can not develope if there aren't enough repeating thoughts.

Planck interpreted the quantum observer problem in a dualistic way which is probably nonsense. There has never been any sign that the realm of consciousness and realm of matter aren't one and the same.

As such consciousness is simply the world and it doesn't "do" anything. And thinking and doing has no magical creation power whatever that's supposed to mean.

Looks like your ego invented a realm of awareness so it can hide there. Once you awaken from this illusion as well, you will realize that our "true self" isn't all that great at all.

Looks like your ego invented a realm of awareness so it can hide there. Once you awaken from this illusion as well, you will realize that our "true self" isn't all that great at all.

Thoughts can be incorrect, and are inherently incomplete in their ability to describe reality.

The mind is what invents things, correct? So a still mind does not invent anything. Mind creates the illusion. Pure, uncontaminated observation dispels it.

How can thought free awareness be incorrect?

roydop wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:15 am

Looks like your ego invented a realm of awareness so it can hide there. Once you awaken from this illusion as well, you will realize that our "true self" isn't all that great at all.

Thoughts can be incorrect, and are inherently incomplete in their ability to describe reality.

The mind is what invents things, correct? So a still mind does not invent anything. Mind creates the illusion. Pure, uncontaminated observation dispels it.

How can thought free awareness be incorrect?

That's what every fool believes. But a still mind still does invent/distort/make up/misunderstand/hallucinate etc. things all the time, even if the "I.." thought process has ceased.

Our nervous systems aren't perfect, even though things usually do become much clearer in meditation. And there is this particular illusion, that comes up so many times in Eastern philosophy, about mistaking the sensation of human self-awareness for a universal self-aware consciousness.

"But a still mind still does invent/distort/make up/misunderstand/hallucinate etc. things all the time"

If no thoughts (internal monologue; words "in the head") arise how could it possibly make things up? What you just
described is an impossible paradox.

"invent/distort/make up/misunderstand/hallucinate etc". All of that is exactly movement of mind. Hello?

And there is this particular illusion, that comes up so many times in Eastern philosophy, about mistaking the sensation of human self-awareness for a universal self-aware consciousness.

The sensation of human self awareness is thought and sensation. I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about the unchanging awareness that is experiencing those things.

"That's what every fool believes." Defensive much?