Karl

LOL :-) Go study the seven liberal arts as the Trivium method Nikolai. Anyone can do it and the effort required is worth it. It will take you around 2 or 3 months working in your own time. It's estimated a further 2 years is needed before it becomes a natural part of reasoning. You cannot be brainwashed or compromised because it's this process which is how we naturally think and not as we have been taught to think. That you have embolded 'obviously inadequate' is a clear indication that you still have a long way to go. Your ego stands out like a raw potato in a plate of chips. you feel you are enlightened, but you are not, you are following a process which may take you there. Doing a study of the seven liberal arts right now would give you a leg up which I didn't have the advantage of discovering.

Yes, in general I do. Children are innocent, uncomplicated, curious, imaginative and open. They are, by nature, incapable of discernment. This is why they must have responsible guardians. They give back but are not radiant in the sense of wisdom. Children in harsher environments can be persuaded to rape, murder and steal just as easily as they can be found as loving innocents in better conditions. For too long children have been regarded as almost a separate species, an empty vessel which is to be filled with facts and behaviours. Children are in the same process as the rest of us. There is no magic point of adulthood, but a continual process as you pointed out. This does not mean that all adults achieve wisdom, I would think perhaps there are fewer every year. Those that are looking for wisdom-enlightenment-are on a natural path. They know that the shell needs to be broken and are trying to discover the way to accelerate it. Unfortunately this path has been co-opted by new agers and psycorps propaganda. It leads people to either a life in a forest (back woods style hair shirtism) or the more esoteric occultism. Both lead back towards the destruction of enlightenment. This isn't something of an ad hoc anecdotal statement, but a description of definite social design. The same thing was applied to the hippy movement when it was over run with free love and drugs. Those that are trying to break out find themselves trapped like insects in Amber, by the very practices that they sort to free themselves by. As I said, I would consider myself an example of enlightenment. Basically, despite the winds trying to bend and stunt my awareness I've managed to come through it relatively unscathed. I think that was because of fortitude and stubbornness. I was always ant-authority, but never so much as to stand out for a hammer to be applied to the protruding nail. I can remember myself as a young boy. I was a dreamer, but most certainly not enlightened, I had not experience of life.

Brian, was this a novel about scientific engineering. I read something similar where each chapter was a story of engineers overcoming some weird problem. One was a world full of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. It was a really good read, but I cannot find the title.

I think it's generally but not specifically the case. Someone can be jump started into enlightenment, but not prior to 14 years. It's like a genius. The brain can be very different in certain individuals. Children that get an illness which they know will kill them in a few years develop some of this wisdom as a result of the knowledge. I can't say if the drop in testosterone is a result of or a cause of wisdom. It's invariably related to the ability to live in a monogamous relationship for several years. There was a thread about this I read recently. Men who choose partners and stay faithful do begin to lose testosterone. Again, this is true in my particular case. Perhaps some are born with low testosterone to begin with ? I've never studied it so that's a guess.

FWIW and here I cannot adequately claim the definitions are correct. Bud got it closest. It is just a natural human development like puberty. However, modern education techniques have created 'forever adolescents' which have halted a natural progression. In a sense this was also the case when our ancestors died earlier and worked so hard that they had little time for any expansion of awareness. Awakening is the first stage and can happen spontaneously at quite a young age. I have read some evidence that the brain is wired in 'series' until puberty in order that it absorbs experience without a great deal of discernment. Then the brain matures into more separated areas and can begin processing the stored information more carefully. The awakened can go through increasingly permanent periods of lucidity-like when the voice breaks in males. Enlightenment is just the end point of the process of awakening. I've heard it described as being analogous with a star which radiates energy (indeed one of the AYP sutras was 'radiance'). It is the end of the ego that demands more power, women, control, wealth, novelty etc and the enlightened begin to radiate wisdom like the Sun. They have nothing left to achieve. In men this is related to the reduction in testosterone (55 years)-it's very interesting that people like Trump, politicians and crooks are still very virile even way past 55 years so they should not be regarded as enlightened people. Women at 55 years are the opposite and begin to lose estrogen and become more active (perhaps this is a result of the body clock in which the natural requirement to nurture children is no longer required ). It's also likely that the wisest ancestors were regarded as enlightened because they lived a life in which they could live longer than the average peasant, servant or warrior. I would describe myself as somewhat emerging into enlightenment and that completely fits with my age. This is how it seems to be. An ego that is no longer requiring as hedonistic lifestyle as it once demanded, more at peace, wiser and a lot, lot more confident. I'm no longer concerned about how people see me, or any form of taunting. It no longer registers with anything other than a mild amusement of an adult watching a child at play. It doesn't produce animosity or anything competitive but an appreciation for life as it is and I am as I am.

Brian Cox :-/ There is an asteroid with our name on it is pretty much code for a cheque for research with his name on it. The constant hot air of the lobbying machine for scientific state funded tax handouts is probably a greater cause of climate change than anything else.

RTFL or busted photo copier.

Proof of proof cannot be provided. It is axiomatic in any argument. Existence, self, consciousness and awareness cannot be proven by non-existence, non-self, unconsciousness or non awareness. I certainly didn't say it was a scientific question, but we can study the phenomena of self, consciousness and awareness.

If it was well ripe it has a flavour which must take a lot of getting used to. My friend tried it and didn't mind it, but then he ate a kind of sausage in France that really was quite nasty. The Chef told him it was only on the menu because the locals wanted it, but ever stubborn Dave had to have it. It was a kind of tripe sausage full of some vile smelling fatty concoction. I'm not normally that squeamish and have had the usual snail, frogs legs, Zebra, antelope, alligator, snake etc, but the sausage I couldn't even try. He managed two mouthfuls then gave up. We had to watch him devour a guinea pig in Peru- it was splayed out on the plate. That tasted all right- bit chickeny

Depends how long the grouse is hung. I once ate a very ripe one. Too much for me. Please, please take it away and bring me some mouse or river rat shrieked I. It's usually served with bread sauce- that's the grouse not the mouse. There should also have been a mild warning about shot from the gun. It's not the done thing to shout 'what the hell is this in my grouse I've just broken a tooth.

They most certainly do. It doesn't hurt that the NWO has enacted its plan to flood Europe with cheap labour by pushing everyone out of the Middle East and Africa. Next comes the global crash and world bank, cashless society. None of this stuff is even half secret. They have gotten so brazen they no longer care who knows. Below is the CIA analyst report which has been declassified saying how they can use ISIS. http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

Kind of limiting but it's your thread.

Anyone heard of the the Fourth world wilderness conference. You know, that one the nice Mr Rothschild and all his merry egomaniacs is trying to impose on the rest of us ?

It's dead Jim. :-) It is an ex person, deceased, dead, clapped out, squawked its last. You have been spending too much time with that blokes cat in a box.

Kant isn't one of my jailers, he is just a guy who wrote a book. I have no desire to read it because it holds nothing beyond what I can know for myself. I'm already liberated, I don't need some book to do that. People were liberated before Kant began writing and they will be liberated long after his book is discarded. We have always had liberation we just refused to see it.

Ha, no, unless I've misunderstood you opening sentence- I most definitely am sovereign, self-identified and existent. I don't regard mysticism as bad. It's simply a fallacy. Thats like saying the eggshell is bad because it prevents the bird escaping. Eventually the shell does break because it must, that's the way of things. You can go on about me if you wish, do your psychoanalysis or whatever and I'm happy to go along for a spin :-) it's not asking questions of reality though.

Brainiac. I doubt it. I'm more like a plumber who knocks pipes to find the blockage. This forum is full of extra clever people and I don't put myself in that group. I'm awed by their abilities in science, technology and the breadth of reading. It's a good job we have people like that. I think I have the Plato cave story in my book I think. It's been a while since I wrote it, but I had intended to include that one. Particularly as I spent my formative years in caves it would have been appropriate :-) It's not necessary for you to have read lots of Plato either, or to know any back ground as such. There are a lot of things that appeal to us. I always used 'be the change you wish to see in the world'. That seemed to mean something once, but it doesn't now.

I don't just think it's possible I know it absolutely for what is and how it works. Study the Trivium method and see for yourself.

This quote or that quote is just an appeal to authority. You believe it because you believe the authority that spoke those words. You have not considered that you might possess the power to refute them absolutely. Accept nothing on face value or you will become a fool, a Pinocchio puppet who will dance for another. Plato was a manipulator and he manipulates even now. He taught how to harness men and he was of an elite that split men into metals. Iron, copper, Gold. Worker class, warrior class, priest class, ruler class. This is the caste system which is in all modern societies. It persists because of an adherence to Plato and Aristotle, then later to Hegel and Kant. We have all been subject to a grand experiment throughout history, but the means exists to exit. It is not a utopia, a nirvana or some magical way of seeing, it is instead a birthright which has been systematically denied to you by making you deny its existence. Thus you have cultivated a false self, a brutal psychological duality designed to keep you from seeing through your own deception. In effect we locked ourselves in the box just as surely as Pavlov taught an animal to fear food by repeated pain.

I can relate very easily :-) There is nothing wrong with anyone but what they think is wrong with them-isn't that the subject under discussion right now ? I'm replying to the arguments as they are presented and then it is for you to apply reason and make your own decision about the logic of the argument. It is no different to the arguments you read in your books and courses. You should apply reasoning no matter what.

Death is there, the thought of it cannot be suppressed because it is the engine that drives life. If you think about it or don't think about it then it makes no difference to the fact that it will happen. Why try and think about it in any particular way ? Do you think how you should feel about hunger or thirst ? No. You are hungry and thirsty and that is that. You do not put some imaginary 'you' in the place of the need for food or water. This is the false self. It is because you refuse to use reason to know reality directly. Then when the time is right it will become clear for you, but first you must make a start.

Do you doubt your existence and your experience ?

You still dont understand. It is not about 'bravely' accepting death. It is about not accepting death until the time when death strikes. It is the driver for action because there is a limit. Dont look forward to death and know that it is always waiting for you.

Identity is identity, you only have to know it. Death cannot be known. Why quote Plato? find out for yourself. Do not take other mens words for your own unless you have developed the ability to know if those words are true.