Karl

Cause and effect are within the universe. The universe is the totality of all instances of cause and effect but is not itself the result of cause.

That would be correct Bud if I was making a faith based leap. I've said this to Atheist friends when the subject of God comes up. They don't 'believe' in God, but they haven't reached the conclusion that there is no God. Well, not in the sense of an omniscient creator of everything. It does not matter than your perception is limited. For instance you can look at a pen in a glass of water and it appears bent. When you learn basic physics it is discovered that it is an illusion created by the diffraction properties of water over air. However, even when you know that to be true, the pen doesn't miraculously straighten out. If your senses had not been able to pick up this difference and explore it, then we may never have learned about the refractive qualities of different materials. We aren't limited by our perceptions. We used the knowledge of refraction to build powerful microscopes and telescopes to extend our senses. The most powerful tool we have is the capacity to reason. There have been short periods of time where reason was allowed to flourish, but today it's previously open nature has been comprehensively shut down by the creation of compartments of specialisation.

No God, that is correct. The universe has no source, it had no creator and no cause. It has always existed and will always exist.

For what purpose? Im not going to be shutting off my mind unless I'm sleeping. I want it fully up, on defence and sharp. I'm never going to mistreat it again, no more junk concepts and lazing on a sofa naval gazing for my mind, no siree. :-)

They aren't. There is no 'source'. You have been sold a lie by those that wish to keep you disconnected from reality, in order that you will readily accept government and commercial propaganda. It's mind control. Remember the soldiers scrubbing miles of floors with just a toothbrush ? Same thing. Get you to do an idiotic task, over and over again until you will finally do any task you are told to perform. Once you accept a major conflicting proposition as being true, then-just like the Soldier with the toothbrush-you will believe everything else you are told without any resistance on your part. This is how society works. It's designed to produce compliance to authority. China and India were huge empires that had few resources with which to keep the citizens in check. They devised methods around a religious methodology and a caste system which kept men's minds pliable enough for royal commands to be accepted without hesitation.

Objects exist independent of conscious awareness of them. Existence exists. The object is perceived in conscious awareness and a subjective response is in the same place. Existence and no existence are not the same. You are making a claim that directly contradicts the method used to make that claim. If there is pie and not pie, then there is argument and not argument. You are invalidating your argument by making that argument.

Again this is incorrect. We agree the definition of a colour and not an 'absolute'. We can use colour temperature and wavelength if we wish to avoid subjectivity. Subjective judgement doesn't stop a pie existing regardless of the flavour it imparts.

You don't just touch, there are five senses for a reason. The major sense is sight-we tend to see memories and recover objects as pictures and not kinaesthetics. The downfall of western civilisation are large governments and state schooling.

Logic is just reasoning which sifts out unexplained or erroneous premesis. Concepts are the only way you can hold so much information apparently effortlessly. You can't imagine a light year, but it's possible to hold that concept.

But nice.

I believe there are different levels of consciousness and awareness, but I'm not a psychiatrist or neuro scientist so I'm unable to confirm it. There is any need to have an implanted concept that spiders are to be feared. It's natural to be wary of things not previously encountered, particular strange looking creatures which move rapidly and can climb on the body. Once a child decides it doesn't like spiders and associates them as an unpleasant experience then that's how it remains. You can't move awareness around if you are unconscious but there is still a residual degree of awareness present. Enough for something to bring you awake. Fully conscious you can move awareness around easily. Pranayama is clearly the moving of awareness along the spine. You can also expand and shrink awareness. It's one of the reasons that it's possible to expand awareness to seemingly locate it in other people. I spent some time believing I was fallen trees, grass, people and birds ( crazy, crazy stuff ). I'm not stuck anywhere. I'm just an ordinary guy, with an ordinary nervous system and I'm more than happy to leave it that way. I can expand awareness when riding my motorcycle to prevent target fixation and help me relax, then move the visual field of visual focus around to produce a better overall picture of the road ahead. Everyone does it to some extent, but learners can narrow focus and awareness when they feel in danger. Causes them to freeze, target lock and steer into whatever thing they are trying to avoid. That's my laymen experience and not a professional assessment of what's going on. However target lock = crash.

Prolonged orgasm then ;-)

Exactly like a panic attack in a high stress situation.

Knock yourself out, it's going to be somewhat of a struggle to discuss anything. You may as well be telling me you are going to check out my internal unicorns, but I shall humour you anyway.

There is a degree of unconscious awareness or you wouldn't wake up when the alarm goes off. There are loads of things operating in your body that you aren't necessarily conscious of but awareness is retained. There are no symbols painted on reality. If you fear a spider it doesn't mean that I fear it, even if we regard it at exactly the same time. A fear symbol hasn't been painted on the spider, the internal representation of the spider is connected with an unpleasant feeling which you can perceptually recognise as fear. In other words the reverse of what the crackpot scientist has claimed. Awareness is something you can move around. Sitting there on your chair you can find that you can effortlessly become aware of your feet, then your toes and the surface on which your feet are resting. You are doing the viewing, the awareness of self is primary (the 'I' feeling as the Mystics call it). Objects appear in your mind. Think of a wine glass and spin it around in your minds eye. You are viewing the glass, you have not become the glass.

Please don't go learning from me, that is the very last thing I wish. Take the stuff and go figure out if it's any use. This is precisely what I advocated on AYP and for any other practice, technique or whatever else. Don't go accepting things without examining them. If you are happy to go ahead then do that. What I am offered here on a consistent basis is things that have no definition, cannot be proven and are not accepted as reality by the vast bulk of the population. When I'm not compliant then I'm told I'm resistant, can't be helped etc-well being resistant is normal practice, asking for proof and defining terms is also a normal occurrence. Show me what you are selling is all I'm asking. The barrage for questioning for the use of everyday reasoning is quite astounding. If you were selling a car to me it would be far easier.

Well now you have learned something new :-) Label something 'chicken pox' then it can be investigated. There is fever, itchy spots and the blood contains an identifiable virus. You certainly wouldn't wake up one day and announce you felt chicken pox. You feel awful, feverish, hot, itchy. These things are palpable and a diagnosis can be made that chicken pox is the cause. However if you say you have 'rising damp' or 'woodworm' then you get odd looks and possibly a nice ride to the psyche ward. If you say you are in Love, then that's what you are, but you haven't analysed the emotions that are present. It's possible then to make those perceptual. Maybe you have a sensation of butterflies in the stomach and feel light headed and faint. A doctor can't take a blood sample and diagnose love virus. It's purely an emotional feeling that translates to physical effects which register in awareness. That you are in love and have these sensations is true for you and that you have them is true for the doctor. However this isn't what's going on with the term Kundalini. No one thinks twice if you say you are excited, in love, happy, sad etc, everyone has a rough idea what you mean, but to say you have Kundalini is giving an impression that you have something akin to chicken pox. It isn't just a feeling but a diagnosable reality. Yet you must know this is untrue. It hasn't a concrete form it's just another group of sensations and symptoms in awareness. What's more I suspect you are coming to that conclusion of your own volition, which is the only way of doing it.

So you can't define that either? You can't define Kundalini, or spirit and yet you hold two concepts, just noises which are backed by no more than a patch of mental fog. You are building a ton of floating concepts which are insubstantial. I know such places exist where you can find people that have a host of things they cannot explain but are very certain of their existence. The more of these you add, the less stable becomes your reality. If you are just intellectually noodling, playing, turning things over and around then there isn't much harm. I think you already admitted you have one foot on the ground in any case. The problems start when you pull up the foot and it goes from harmless play to something much grimmer.

No I wouldn't. I would tell you if you were coming in one direction it would be on the left and from the other direction the right. Bloody hell, this isn't difficult. I don't need to go producing syllogisms and concepts over and over again to know where the nags head is and direct you to it. You might see the problem here, because if you go on like this you will never, ever find the pub because it exists, but doesn't exist. I can tell you from experience that this kind of thinking can quickly go from a bit of intellectual noodling to problematic if it leaks into everyday life.

That's not correct Apech. Thoughts and sensations are totally real the the person experiencing them, they are also real from the perspective of onlookers. If you say you have a pain in your leg then either you are lying for effect, or you do feel a pain in your leg. I cannot validate you have it, but I have no need to, you as a person are valid as an object in awareness. If you say you are having Kundalini symptoms then who Can argue ? It's only when asked to define Kundalini as a concept that the truth comes out. Its a feeling, it's real to you and it's real to me that you tell me you have it, but giving it a label is an attempt to make a concrete object out of nothing. If you are in Love it's the same thing. I can empathise a bit from my own understanding, but I cannot know precisely what love is, or if what you describe as love is anything like I experience. Kundalini then is a feeling or sensation that gives rise to a number of non specific symptoms.

There you go providing definitions which are patently incorrect. Man is not body, mind and spirit. That is equally attributable to any animal you care to mention - provided we define spirit. You cannot define spirit as immortal if you have not first defined what spirit is. You do not know yourself as spirit either, because you haven't defined it. I could say it was a three legged Martian, some cloud hooks or the bloom on a peach. We wouldn't have a clue. You are defining yourself by what you feel you are that's all. Then you are applying warped logic which does not rely on definitions to confirm the error. It's exactly like a scientist who falsifies the results to fit his theory. Logic will not serve you well doing that, you are simply confirming your own bias.

They aren't, we have a concrete understanding of the pub being on the street we are walking down. It doesn't arbitrarily disappear for want of your awareness, it exists despite that. When you go to sleep you are unaware of your body but it persists, if it did not then you wouldn't exist. You are pedalling rubbish to your own consciousness and one day you will discover this to be true. Playing both sides is almost worse than playing just the idealist. He at least isn't inwardly contradictory where as you are explicitly contradictory. You should take care of your consciousness.

We keep at it until we agree. If we cannot find agreement then we have to shake hands, bid each other well and walk away. The aim isn't to persuade the other person to accept a point of view, the aim is to discover reality. If you begin with the idea that everything is illusion it's pointless to even enter the discussion. That's where we are. I have no interest in persuading you at all, there is no value in it. It's far more rewarding if you picked up the sword you dropped and started to fence. Otherwise we just stand there looking like hapless half wits. I should really know better, but my previous indoctrination with this stuff makes me an indulgent idiot.

Ah well now you see, you have stepped on the solid floor of my hut in which definitions and fallacies get a horrible stamping on. You bring stuff like that to me and I'm going to test until destruction. Just like the guy who told me his light switches were unbreakable-they weren't. A blue nose dolphin is a mammal. There is no contradiction and could never be one. A blue nose dolphin is part of the genus Dolphins, mammals, living entities. That's a very poor example of equivocation which definitely smacks of desperation.

You seem to be getting bent out of shape with all that clever jargon. If you don't exist, then send me all your non existent money. Let's check to see how real you think things are. Have you an illusiory house/ car I could have ?