Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:01 am Atla wrote:

----Alan Watts, ------ He too says that the subject-object duality is an overlay / a way of thinking / an everyday convention, but when you try to find the separate subject, or its separation from the object, or a separate object, you can't find them. In fact Watts is perhaps THE go-to person to learn Eastern nonmonistic nondualism from.

Alan Watts is saying that there is no I , no you or no it, but that there is no essence of a person such that what we usually take to be the individual is naturally differentiated from other individuals and the entire environment.

After realizing that the individual I is illusory and continuous with everything else that's going on, and there are no separations, the world keeps happening, going on all the same. So if "you" were not the individual human I, then what is the "real you"?

Atla, I should of course have written "what is not naturally differentiated---" . You read what I intended.

I'd say that the real I exists as a function of social reality and not a function of nature as a whole. However human social reality is itself a function of nature as a whole. Human social reality is reflected in human language ; human language also determines social reality as for instance the personal pronouns which are usually taken so much for granted that we mostly think they indicate essential somethings that pertain to nature.

How do you explain 'the real 'I' ?

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:03 am Atla, I should of course have written "what is not naturally differentiated---" . You read what I intended.

I'd say that the real I exists as a function of social reality and not a function of nature as a whole. However human social reality is itself a function of nature as a whole. Human social reality is reflected in human language ; human language also determines social reality as for instance the personal pronouns which are usually taken so much for granted that we mostly think they indicate essential somethings that pertain to nature.

How do you explain 'the real 'I' ?

By "real I", I was referring to the sense of being in general. That we exist, that we are here, that the world is here, that there is always this happening going on on. That there is always "subjective" experience. Do you have a sense of being, sense of existence?

Or another way to look at it is that, if "you" are ultimately a function of nature, and "function" is just a metaphor, then what are you?
If a wave is a function of the ocean, then is the wave something other than the ocean, separate from it?

Atla wrote:

By "real I", I was referring to the sense of being in general. That we exist, that we are here, that the world is here, that there is always this happening going on on. That there is always "subjective" experience. Do you have a sense of being, sense of existence?

I am sentient and conscious ,yes. Or maybe I should say "sentience and consciousness are happening" which I know from direct experience. You too, when you are in a state of waking awareness , directly experience sentience and consciousness.

States of sentience and consciousness are parts of nature. Nature as a whole gives rise to states of sentience and consciousness. Those states of sentience and consciousness cannot not have been. Your state of sentience and consciousness cannot not have been although it is transient it is necessarily so and when you have passed away your sentience and consciousness will have been necessarily so and cannot have been otherwise than what it was.

Nature as a whole gives rise to all the events that have happened and will happen.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 6:44 pm Atla wrote:

By "real I", I was referring to the sense of being in general. That we exist, that we are here, that the world is here, that there is always this happening going on on. That there is always "subjective" experience. Do you have a sense of being, sense of existence?

I am sentient and conscious ,yes. Or maybe I should say "sentience and consciousness are happening" which I know from direct experience. You too, when you are in a state of waking awareness , directly experience sentience and consciousness.

States of sentience and consciousness are parts of nature. Nature as a whole gives rise to states of sentience and consciousness. Those states of sentience and consciousness cannot not have been. Your state of sentience and consciousness cannot not have been although it is transient it is necessarily so and when you have passed away your sentience and consciousness will have been necessarily so and cannot have been otherwise than what it was.

Nature as a whole gives rise to all the events that have happened and will happen.

That's not what I meant, that's still about the individual I, or rather more generally, the individual "mind". I meant it in the hard problem of consciousness sense. That there is this happening / experience going on in the first place, which is the central theme of philosophy.

Another way of expressing it is that whatever is happening, whatever experience is happening, is always happening on an invisible "screen" that's always there but can't be found when we look for it. So what is the screen?

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 6:05 am

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:08 pm Reality is dual by definition since reality is the interaction between subject and object.

That's one definition, I use reality in the broadest sense, "all there is".

But you can't logically have the box containing all boxes because it would have an inside, but no outside.

If you'd rather hear Alan say it, fwd to 2:30 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbc0qQnc4sU

Imo reality can't have a subject-object interaction definition in nondualism.

Why not?

That's a dualistic misunderstanding of nondualism. The subject-object duality isn't split in half, instead it's transcended and it collapses. So the object isn't singled out and the object doesn't remain.

Sure it does. If you say reality is "all that exists", then you've made a box with an inside (object), but no outside (subject).

In fact Watts is perhaps THE go-to person to learn Eastern nonmonistic nondualism from.

I'm glad you think so. I regard Watts as one of the smartest persons to ever leave evidence of himself on this planet and I've endeavored to hear everything he has ever said at least 30 times repetitively. I'm almost as proficient at quoting/referencing Watts as I am the bible.

35:06 https://youtu.be/TyL5-rpPZzM?t=35m6s

So, you see, you couldn't have the experience you call being a "voluntarily acting self" without the contrast of the involuntary happening. Now, do you want to be without the involuntary happening? You want to get rid of that? Alright... if you get rid of it you won't have the experience of the voluntary self.

Or would you like to turn it the other way around? Would you like to have the experience of no voluntary self and, on the other hand, everything just happens to you? Then you say "well I'm not sure about that because then I would feel at first that I was floating, see, that I've no further responsibilities as if walking on air." And we do get that feeling sometimes if we take the ideas of determinism and fatalism to their final conclusion, you do have that sense of freedom from all responsibility, freedom from worry and care, and you float along for a while but it wears off. You don't somehow seem to be able to follow-out that philosophy consistently, especially if you have children and society begins to push on you to be responsible as it pushes on children to be responsible.

And so this nagging duality keeps coming back, that I cannot realize the nice irresponsible condition of involuntary behavior unless I have the contrast of the possibility of the voluntary and vice versa. And what does that mean? Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other. And when that state of affairs arises you know at once that there's a conspiracy, that two things which look as different as different can be, for that very reason, the same.

Dualities are not one because they are the same, but because they are codependent (one cannot exist without the other).

In another lecture he talked about fences/borders: https://youtu.be/4bCtjDE14j8?t=45m57s

Yang and Yin are quite different from each other, but just because they are different, they're identical. This is the important idea of the identical difference. The saying goes, in both Taoism and Buddism: difference is identity; identity is difference. The Chinese word for "is" is not quite the same as our word. This word, which is usually used, has rather than meaning of "that", so they would say, "difference that identity; identity that difference", and so this doesn't mean quite "is exactly the same as", but it means rather "is in relation to" or "goes with" "necessarily involves". Difference necessarily involves identity; identity necessarily involves difference. So Yang and Yin: there is no Yang without Yin no Yin without Yang.

When I was first studying these things I was terribly bothered by how on earth I was going to see this multiple-differentiated world of the unity. What was going to happen? What would it be like to see that all things are one? The sages keep saying "all things are one" and they all look to me so different because here was all those "tttttt" going on a round one and it was doing it in different ways and all these people came on in different ways and they had all their houses and all their cars that all their this and that, the whole world looked full of the most bony prickly differences and I thought, "well what's supposed to happen? Is there supposed to be a kind of, as if, your eyesight got blurred and all these things flowed together? What is it? So what is this experience of nirvana and liberation supposed to be? Because so many of these, especially Hindu, sages write about it as if it was just this kind of dissolution of everything; that it all becomes like slug with salt on it.

Well, it took me a long time and suddenly one day I realized that the difference that I saw between things was the same thing as their unity because differences: borders, lines, surfaces, boundaries don't really divide things from each other at all, but they join them together because all boundaries are held in common.

Let's think of a territory which has all been divided up into property: your property, my property, etc, etc by the fences. If I live next to you, your fence is my fence; we hold the boundary in common. We may make up silly arrangements as to who is responsible for the maintenance of this fence, but nevertheless we hold our boundaries in common and we wouldn't know what my plot of land was or where it was unless we knew the definition of your plot of land and your plot of land that is adjoining so boundaries are held in common. And I could see then that my sense of being me was exactly the same thing as my sensation of being one with the whole cosmos. I didn't need to get some other weird sort of different odd kind of experience to feel in total connection with everything. Once you get the clue, you see, that the sense of unity is inseparable from the sense of difference, you wouldn't know yourself or what you meant by self unless at the same time you had the feeling of something other.

Now, the secret is that "the other" eventually turns out to be you. I mean, that's the element of surprise in life when suddenly you find the thing most alien... We say now what is most alien to us? Go out at night and look at the Stars and realize that they are millions and millions and billions of miles away. Vast conflagrations out in space and you can lie back and look at that say "well, surely I hardly matter, I'm just a tiny tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot of dust called earth and all that going on out there billions of years before I was born, billions of years after I will die", and nothing seems stranger to you than that; more different from you. There comes a point, if you watch long enough, when you will say "why that's me!" It's "the other" that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front. And when you know that, you know you never die.

Existence is conditional/relational. Self needs other and because of that conditionality/codependency, they can be regarded as one process which we call reality.

You must pay careful attention to Watts that you do not confuse what he advocates with what he is simply teaching of what other schools advocate. It's easy to get the two conflated.

Here is an example: http://www.organism.earth/library/document/24

Also, remember this: although I have constantly used in this talk the word ‘one’ to apply to the Self—and ‘central’—the Hindus don’t use this word except speaking poetically and loosely. The Self is not one. The Self is called ‘non-dual’—because, you see, the idea of one has an opposite. The opposite of one is many—or none. But the "which than which there is no whicher" has no opposite; there’s nothing outside it, so you can’t call it ‘one.’ Because ‘one’ is an exclusive idea, it excludes ‘two.’ So they call it, instead of ‘one,’ they call it ‘non-dual,’ which is advaita. This is from the word, you see—dva is the root meaning ‘two;’ the ‘v’ becomes ‘u,’ so we get ‘dual;’ and ‘a’ is the meaning—in Sanskrit, often—‘non.’ Non-dual, advaita.

And so it doesn’t exclude anything. ‘One’ is an exclusive word. Advaita is meant to be a totally inclusive kind of unity. Now, of course, this word itself—when you look at it from a logical standpoint—is a dualistic word, just like ‘one.’ It’s the opposite of dvaita. Dvaita and advaita. But the idea here, in Indian philosophy, is to use this word in a certain way. Now, you know that on a flat surface you can’t draw three dimensions. Anything you draw will be in two dimensions. But why do we see three dimensions? Because of an artistic convention called one-point perspective, which will give you the illusion of a third dimension.

Now, in other words, a two-dimensional line is being used to imply a third dimension which can never be expressed on a flat surface. So, in exactly the same way, advaita is a word used specially to designate what lies beyond all logical categories.

There he was simply teaching what Indian Philosophy teaches and nothing more. Did he really believe there is logic beyond logic? Maybe, but it's tough to say. He has described himself as "semi-buddhist, semi-hindu". And since "buddhism is hinduism stripped for export", according to Alan, I have to wonder why he considered himself any buddhist at all... unless it was to escape the nondual in favor of the Middle Way.

Alan can be a tough one to pin down and sometimes I wish he just be forthcoming rather than all these mental gymnastics. Although, he once played god for 10 minutes and took questions.

Belinda,
A lot has been said since yesterday... anyway, I will pick up from our last post.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:01 am I accept your invitation.
What is this 'I' that is to do the investigating? When Belinda introspects she finds emotions, feelings, ideas, practical abilities, and memories as symbolic forms. She finds no 'I'. I've done a lot of introspecting and have found that reason is my best chart to accompany me when introspecting.

Thats great! I agree, reason (as well as honesty) are your weapons of choice.
You said that when investigating you find "emotions, feelings, ideas, practical abilities, and memories" - I would like to go one step lower and focus on your primary senses - seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touch. They are your gateway to the world and are as such your primary source of information. Everything that is added to this basic information is an interpreted of experience (appearing as thought). Agree so far?

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:01 am If your invitation to me to "know more about how to investigate " is to teach me a time-consuming practice such as TM then thanks but I must refuse in proportion as it would be time-consuming

I am not here to teach you anything. All I offer is to guide you on your own investigation - I will only ask you questions. Teaching would only add another belief to your repertoire - its the last thing I would like to do (and don't worry, there is no personal stuff involved - its only about this direct experience - nothing else).

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:01 am Alan Watts is saying that there is no I , no you or no it, but that there is no essence of a person such that what we usually take to be the individual is naturally differentiated from other individuals and the entire environment.

It would be better if you would forget about all this - at least for now. If there is an I or not (or in which way it seems to exists) can be revealed by doing the investigation.

Before we get started it is essential to establish a common understanding of what I mean with direct experience. Differing interpretations of basic concepts used during an investigation are more often than not the reason for failure. So what do I mean when I ask you to focus on your direct experience? Lets kick this off with a little exercise. Please fetch a small piece of food, a nut, a raisin, an apricot or a piece of apple, really anything you enjoy eating. Put it on the table in front of you and look at it. Now imagine how it will taste. This is important, so please take a minute or two to imagine the flavours as they unfold in your mouth.
Once you have a pretty good idea about the taste that will result from eating the food, please pick it up and put it into your mouth. Chew it slowly and consciously. Be aware of the texture, the flavours as they explode in your mouth — immerse yourself in the experience.

Now note the differences between thinking about eating the food and really eating it.
What about the flavours? Did thinking about taste come even close to the real thing? Or is memory of taste something completely different than taste itself? Please let me know the findings of your investigation in some detail.

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:18 am Alan can be a tough one to pin down and sometimes I wish he just be forthcoming rather than all these mental gymnastics.

A good teacher adapts to his audience - he may say something that an audience that is new to the topic will understand the way it was meant to be understood, while a more advanced student will see the fault in the statement thinking that the teacher is not a good teacher as he took a step away from truth... Truth has to be approached step by step until you are ready to see that there really are no steps at all and that the only thing that changed during the teaching were the concepts used to explain the un-explainable.

By the way...

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 12:37 am Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other. And when that state of affairs arises you know at once that there's a conspiracy, that two things which look as different as different can be, for that very reason, the same.

Codependent arising is a crutch we can use before we are ready to walk. It is a step into the right direction, not truth.
I believe Alan uses this (ofter referred to) idea because it is easier to accept than that there is NO voluntary (or involuntary) part of experience at all. There are no parts and as such there is no room for these ideas.
But: What does that mean for volition? Who is responsible for his actions? No one??? That's impossible!!! Or is it...?
Many teachings are full of half truths, not because the teacher doesn't know better, but because he would be crucified if he told the truth.

AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:36 am

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am I don't think seeing requires thought.

Agree - but the interpretation of seeing does.

Then why call it "seeing" in the first place? Perhaps call it "conceptualizing".

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am A reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus

Yes, but instinctive responses are not the issue - its the reactivity based on concepts/beliefs we have acquired.

Are those concepts/beliefs artificial?

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am Fish define their worlds, birds create theirs, plants create yet something different. Surely they are not "thinking" their worlds into existence.

There are two "worlds" - the one fish, plants etc inhabit - this is a world of simple, direct experience without a conceptual overlay to experience. They inhabit reality. Then there is the world you create on top of reality by shaping your direct experience based on acquired knowledge and belief. These worlds are very different. One is real, the other, while generally accepted and as such practical, fundamentally flawed (at least as long as we believe in the wrong set of basic rules - eg separation - and thus see/interpret the world wrongly).

I don't see the two worlds. I see one world specific to each organism that is created by that organism as a function of the organism's senses of perception. Cognition is just another sense-organ and not something artificial to nature.

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am I can't find it because I can't see myself and that's the point I've been trying to convey. The origin of conscious attention cannot be the focal point of that attention.

You can see yourself - actually all you ever see is yourself.

Then show me how the origin of conscious attention can be the focal point of that attention. How can you make a gun shoot into its own barrel?

Your mind says this is not so because there is the idea of a separate subject looking at different objects, but in reality there is only consciousness looking at itself.

In addition to making that claim, you also insist logic itself cannot verify it and neither is it empirical. You may as well be advocating Jehovah, Zeus, the Easter Bunny. You can't see that is what you're doing? How can you know there is only Brahman?

Actually this is also not really correct - as there really is no looking happening at all. There is only the seen.

How can there be "seen" with no "looking"?

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am That reminds me of my interpretation of the garden of eden story: it's not that we suddenly came into possession of knowledge of good and evil by eating the fruit, but we gained the arrogance to think we could tell the difference.

I like this interpretation.
I have thought about this as well and think it might point to the loss of non-dual knowledge and the veiling of truth with dualistic concepts. Good and evil don't exist in reality - the concepts are mind-made and only work once we see ourselves as separate subjects.

Good exists only in relation to evil and the nondual unity of good/evil (the concept itself of good and evil) exists relative to society. Good/evil does not exist abstractly, since nothing can. Abstract existence is like orange up as if a direction could have a color.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 9:36 am Is it reasonable to think I've looked at the cup before since I devoted time and effort into transcribing the video?

Surely is
What did you find when looking at the cup?
I would be really interested to know the result of your observation (not what Alan has to say about it).

I can only detect EM radiation within a narrow band and I wonder how much more is there that I cannot detect.

Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:25 am I figured you'd agree that the cup doesn't exist, but we call it into existence with our senses. So you think the cup objectively exists (independent of observers)?

We call it into existence with our mind, not our senses.
The cup only exists as an interpretation of perception, as an idea.

If that is true then it's also true for an atom perceiving the cup.

Ideas are made of thought - just like the thinker of thoughts is made of thought.

But thoughts are made from matter. My mind is in my head, but my head is in my mind, but my mind is in my head, but my head is in my mind, etc forever. There's the circularity that produces the idea of infinity.

There is as such no independent observer (there is no act of observing either - there is only the observed, which is not, an can never be, an independent object).

How do you know? How CAN you know?

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am I can only detect EM radiation within a narrow band and I wonder how much more is there that I cannot detect.

Thats about as far away from direct experience as you can get...
I sometimes wonder why it is so hard for people to simple describe their direct experience of seeing while the most complicated conceptions come easy over our tongues...

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am Then why call it "seeing" in the first place? Perhaps call it "conceptualizing".

Because conceptualising is thinking and seeing is seeing. One is (apparently) able to change/enhance the other while the other one cant.
All I am pointing to is the direct experience of seeing while discounting all thought about it - what is there if you stop believing in the conceptions that pop up in your mind?

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am Then show me how the origin of conscious attention can be the focal point of that attention. How can you make a gun shoot into its own barrel?

Simple, honest looking will tell you the answer. Focal points, attention - are both concepts that we use when we try to explain - doesn't mean that there really is something like attention in reality.

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am How can there be "seen" with no "looking"?

Look at a cup (or anything really)! Now please find the looking. Also, please find the one looking. Can you find either?
What do you find?

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am If that is true then it's also true for an atom perceiving the cup.

As I said, there really is no perception - only the percept (which is not a thing). The idea of perception is a stepping stone - not truth.

Sorry, forgot this one:

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:47 am Are those concepts/beliefs artificial?

Depends how we define artificial... For me everything that is mind-made (and as such a concept) that stands in opposition to truth is artificial.
I wouldn't call everything that humans create artificial - it depends on the mindset applied when we create. We really only create (like nature creates) when we are in tune with reality - otherwise we only manufacture using invented ingredients. Creation is meaningful - its meaning is defined through being - while manufactured things have no real meaning (they only hold an artificial meaning). Eg. money is artificial - it has no real meaning. An artist creating a painting as an expression of life is meaningful - but once it becomes a commercial good it loses its meaning.

AlexW wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:41 am By the way...

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 12:37 am Obviously it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience which we can call the voluntary and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other, although appearing to be two, are indeed one, because you can't have one without the other. And when that state of affairs arises you know at once that there's a conspiracy, that two things which look as different as different can be, for that very reason, the same.

Codependent arising is a crutch we can use before we are ready to walk. It is a step into the right direction, not truth.
I believe Alan uses this (ofter referred to) idea because it is easier to accept than that there is NO voluntary (or involuntary) part of experience at all.

How can there be no voluntary or involuntary?

There are no parts and as such there is no room for these ideas.
But: What does that mean for volition? Who is responsible for his actions? No one??? That's impossible!!! Or is it...?
Many teachings are full of half truths, not because the teacher doesn't know better, but because he would be crucified if he told the truth.

If the teacher understood that there is no teacher, then why would he fear crucifixion? That is how the Buddhists took the temples from the Brigands.

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:13 am If the teacher understood that there is no teacher, then why would he fear crucifixion?

Don't know... I guess not everyone thinks it is necessary to suffer for getting across a teaching...

Serendipper wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:13 am How can there be no voluntary or involuntary?

Because both are ideas. Both exist in the way we navigate the conceptual world, but reality knows nothing of such ideas.
I found that the world works perfectly fine without worrying about ideas of voluntary/involuntary.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:03 am How do you explain 'the real 'I' ?

I am a lens used by the universe to look at itself with the intention of either: having fun or futilely trying to know itself by becoming progressively more conscious of itself through fundamentally random and therefore exhaustive angles of attack, which are the only means possible to discover that which is absolute lest the means be contaminated by presumption.