Karl

Something is either A or B or neither. The experiments are inconclusive and theoretical. We got turned around and scrapped reasoned philosophy and now science is going up its own tail pipe. Anyway, in time it will be revealed. No one sees the whole picture, that's the point of life and the ability to explore and comprehend the universe. We are so much greater than we can even imagine we can be. John asked what those contradictions revealed. What do you think they reveal ? If you hold that something is an elephant is also a cream puff then what can you learn ? That's a straight contradiction and nothing more complex is required for an example. Except you cannot hold a simple contradiction because you know it is one and so your mind will reject it. Only a contradiction that isn't obviously a contradiction can be brought into mind and so it can be applied that finding the contradiction is the point of the exercise.

Intellect is holistic. The reason you haven't fully understood this is precisely because of modern methods of specialisation. Our education system trains us to think specifically in a silo. It is not so much education, as skills training, to which is applied a tiny portion of the potency available. You are yourself. If you get a brain injury, or Alzheimer's then all bets are off. It doesn't matter how much meditation or intellectual reasoning is applied- getting hit by a high speed express train will end it all pretty comprehensively in my experience. However you are off probing all possible futures when it's more effective to stay in the moment and plan loosely.

Yes, I can, how many more times do I have to tell you ? AYP does not teach one pointed concentration which is why I said Yogani wasn't my only master. I brought it up because you have suggested in previous posts that I couldn't possibly have practiced correctly because I was following AYP. I don't want 3 hours to fly by in a state of dead minded bliss, I have few enough hours left and prefer to live them.

Physics: if the light wave is considered both wave and particle, then, the physicists are wrong and must check their premises because they have missed something. The poem is asking you to discover where the contradictions are and remove them (ask what they are trying to tell you). It is the beginnings of analytical discriminatory thought. I did not realise the depth and quantity of contradictions are I had been holding until I studied logic. It's an ongoing process. The thing I cannot know, is, had I not learned to hear my thoughts and moods, would that have made a difference ? I think possibly that it wouldn't. That I would have sorted myself out if I had found the Trivium first-but then I suspect it would not have remotely attracted me in the way that esoteric practices did.

The intellect has to be trained. It is not good enough to simply state that the intellect alone is good enough. An untrained intellect is a loose canon and is swayed by all manner of falsities and experiences. However, the intellect is all you have and it is more than sufficient for the task. It is unbelievably powerful once trained, far more than you can conceive. If you don't attend it, or make the mistake of thinking that it is unnecessary, then you give up the most precious gift. The intellect is only brought into play when new experiences are encountered and when it is necessary to make deductive/inductive operations and in order to sift the wheat from the chaff. Once the new insights/concepts are gained, then they can be tucked into memory. The more those concepts are used, then the less conscious access is required and things become second nature.

Agreed. It was certainly a meaningless analogy.

reality is reality we do not create it. Our job is to determine what it is not to create a simulacrum.

....takes a second....is exactly what I said in the previous post. I can do it at will and stay in that state for as long as I wish. It's a dead end. It was TI that insisted I must do it his way. I have been able to observe thoughts and more subtle nuances that I suspect you are not yet even aware of as yet for a long while. I was an advanced practitioner, a very diligent and conscientious student. Of course TI won't accept that because he thought Yogani was wrong and he-TI-was right. However, Yogani was not my master.

What happened to the 10 minutes ? Now doesn't count unless it's 3 hours ? I'd probably get hungry and my wife would hit me with a stick for not doing the housework. :-) I'm liking this Samahdi stuff less and less as you move the goalposts. Your practices would end with a divorce.

I edited my reply before you posted.

Its a compound of the elements hydrogen and oxygen, but that's semantics as far as the discussion is concerned. Human beings do not merge like droplets of water.

You can judge if you want, but then you have to prove that what I say isn't true. If everything I say is true, then where is the arrogance ? If I am saying something is true, but I believe otherwise, or doubt what I say, then that wouldn't be arrogance, it would be a lie. As that lie would only damage me-bearing in mind that you do not believe what I say to be correct-then no arrogance is apparent either. I go back to the analogy with the Apple. The taste is not in the Apple. You cannot blame the Apple for being arrogant about its taste, or always being right about its flavour. if you say X is Y then I will notice and comment on it. I can only notice the conflict in the argument. That is all I can do.

I see existence directly Manitou. I choose to see it. You are seeing it how you wish to see it-as airy, or light. I approve of it, just as it is and do not add to it. There is no 'tearing each other down'. This is in your mind, it isn't real. That there are bad operators in the world is just reality. They have to be resisted-not just by a passivity which wishes them away and hopes for a life of death, before death even takes the body. The young have egoic gratification, the old have no time left for it ;-) I am my own master.

Of course I come into conflict with other objects, just so as I don't come into conflict with my own thoughts. This is what you don't understand and a performing mental somersaults to try and create harmony. The sweetness of the Apple is not in the Apple. It is our thoughts which are conflicting and not the objects outside of thought. What you are trying to do is to make the real world conform to your conflicted thinking. It is no surprise to me that we disagree, but for you this is in direct conflict with your beliefs, because you have, yourself, come into conflict with an object-me. That poem is wonderful by the way. It points out exactly what I have been saying. That the contradictions are internal disputes, or disputes between existence and the minds experience of existence. If you hold two contradicting concepts then one must go. That is what logic is about and that is what your poem reflects. The taste of the Apple is not in the Apple. That was the clue that was left in Buddhist philosophy. If you think that means that you should dispute the seperate existence of the Apple, or yourself, then you got it wrong.

But we are here Manitou. No matter how much you try to intellectually dismiss your existence. There is no illusion except the one you are creating for yourself. There is nothing to stop there being a 'world full of people', but you don't believe there is anything anyway, that it's all illusion, so why are you thinking about perception of senses, or the world of physics ?

Childs play. I can do that at any time without any need for nostril breathing, it's a pointless dead end, but enjoy.

Except you haven't come to one conclusion. As shown by your conflicting conclusions. Either you are alone and have independent identity (as has everything else), or you believe you are alone because there is anything apart from you (letting go of identification). You cannot logically be both alone and not alone. I am alone, self identified and interacting with other beings and objects that have identity. No conflict occurs.

The irony is strong here.

What are these 'certain specialisations, independent aspects and possibilities' then ? ;-) You are holding two conflicting concepts.

Water, is an element and therefore homogenous. Humans and not.

Or negative and positive.

I find pop music ever more mundane. If you really wanted to go back to the inner child I would be embracing teething rings, pacifiers and goo goo eyes. Move on is my motto. Leave all that stuff behind like manure on a garden. I appreciate age as the price of wisdom and the decline of endless desire. Funnily enough, when I think back, I was never enamoured with my childhood playmates. I preferred to seek adult company and learning to sand pits and toy cars. I don't wish to revisit it :-)

http://youtu.be/E4Kx-jqDgRo

I found the same thing. I've got several hundred or maybe more than a couple of thousand records and CDs but I listen to a tiny fraction and hardly listen to anything new. Last time that happened I had a 5 year hiatus before hearing Nirvana, RATM and Metallica which got me going. I seem to be sliding slowly towards classical music and have been listening to a lot of Bach for organ. I hear a lot more than I once did. Old age eh.

If you had a billion dollars would you go to work ? In the end you can only do what you think you can do. You have a life, therefore you already have the greatest gift possible. How you utilise it and what grace you can muster to realise his truth is down to you and no one else.