Karl

Pasta is good. Mind you I have a LOT of tomatoes, seriously dude, tons. :-) TaoMaow got the sense of this and I added the label 'moral courage' . In other words this is self confidence which means you are impervious to the manipulations of others-heroic man. The heroic man is not concerned by what others think of him, he doesn't need prestige, nor wealth, nor fame, nor fair weather friends. He may have all of these things, but they don't define him as a man. That does not mean there is no fear. Fear of death is a primary, our lives are our primary value, so losing our lives is to be very much feared and practical action taken to prevent that occurring. Our lives are the primary value around which all other values circulate like orbiting planets around a star. The closer these values are, the more we regard them as necessities in supporting the primary value. For instance I regard my wife as a very high value and totally necessary to the quality of my life. I fear losing my wife. I do not wish not to fear it, nor not to fear for my life.

I'm going to save that up for a rainy day filed under Sexist abuse. :-) sweetie

I'm glad you took it that way neti neti. All tomatoes gathered and one day maybe a good soup ? ;-) People tell others to sacrifice in the same sense that you opined. I find that kind of talk highly dangerous, especially as the people who say these kind of things have no proof to offer and rely on the naivety and ignorance of those to whom they charm.

I presume you are asking a question ? However, to ask you must first provide the context. In what sense 'supporting vision' ? Do you mean biologically, or in some other way ? If you mean biologically I only have a rudimentary knowledge, a doctor or neuroscientist would provide a better answer. If you are asking the fundamentals: what is life ? What is consciousness ? What is existence ? Then this can be answered simply enough. We can define what life is but we cannot get beyond how it is. It is another axiomatic corrollary to existence and it's twin consciousness. We can break down the components of life into DNA strands and atomic nuclei and such, but we can't find life itself-the spirit/soul. Existence exists and consciousness is conscious of it, these are irreducible primaries. We cannot ask questions beyond these primaries. Those that attempt to do so find themselves in an infinite regression- If a God made this, then who made God ? If the answer is that no one made God, then it stands to reason that no one made this. As no God has been found, nor is one needed, we can go with what is already and have no further regressions.

:sigh: philosophy is the general and science is the specific. Philosophy is the soil and science the trees. Science has begun to enter the age of mysticism and humanities has long surpassed it.

LOL since I have been on this forum the number of explicit and implicit retorts of that nature have been both regular and numerous. Duck and back come to mind, people are welcome to judge me and I them. If you want to call my rhetoric rot BES then be my guest, infact join the bloody Q :-) I really can't get much more covered in rotten fruit than I am already, so one or two more or less really won't make much difference. I will note your intended insult of 'small boy behaviour' as been a low level attempt to get me to bite :-) not going to happen, but good try. So, it's not OK to rubbish Hindu philosophy, but fine to rubbish objectivist philosopy. Get a life.

It's not insulting language it's a condemnation of their arguments. Try removing the emotion from the argument BES. Insulting language would then be any criticism of any idea. I'm not, neither is anyone else, forced to offer a beautiful rhetorical argument in rebuttal. We can say it's rot, rubbish, silliness.

That's why Jihadhists blow themselves up. 40 Virgins. Still, not one of them has returned to tell the world of their progress. It's also interesting that those that spread this rot of delusional reality have no basis at all on which to prove it, neither do those acolytes often experiment with their lives in order to show that they have the conviction. Hmmmm I wonder why that is ? Could it be that they don't believe the rot they like to spout ?

No you weren't. If you had, then you would have used the word chemistry, which is a modern science. You used the word alchemy which is a philosophical proto science.

exactly what I said, your argument merits no reply, I have no interest in spelling it out.

It's apparently still quite popular at Hogwarts.

Alchemy ? Hardly worth the effort of a reply

Your confusing science with philosophy. Science cannot talk about souls and philosophy doesn't talk of biology.

You are talking about concepts of wisdom, but you cannot develop wisdom if you don't have the confidence to own it. You already have the faculty that you are trying to find. Our minds aren't limited, this is the crux of the problem-you believe that to be true. The blurred image you see is not because your eyes don't work, but that you steadfastly refuse to focus them and then declare yourself blind. You are pronouncing yourself mentally disabled because you have a mind. You are blind because you have eyes and deaf because you have ears. The mind isn't a prison, this is a conceptual deception, your mind is your only means of survival and the only means of happiness. Define prison and it's obvious. This is the same old weary false body mind dichotomy that has plagued man for hundreds of years and provides a good excuse for those who latch on to it. That the soul is trapped in a fleshy prison and needs liberating. There is only way to liberate it, to give up. This is the eerie lake which beckons and in it's cool depths awaits oblivion. Running towards oblivion won't avoid it.

That's intrincisism. I told you that it's the philosophers stone that you have to somehow feel and merge with. This is to deny reason and deny the mind. It is a trick that has been used for thousands of years to own the souls of men. If you could see it you would run as fast as you could away from it. It's a magnetic attractor for those that doubt the power of their own minds, like the lure of an angler fish it promises salvation and an end of all doubt-and those who swim close enough are assured that they get exactly what they most desired. "Look inside my mouth he cried, and all you children lost down many paths, you bet your life you'll walk inside. Hand in hand, gland in gland, with a spoonful of miracle. He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man"

How can you discuss something if you have no knowledge of it ? These are basic questions because you have assumed knowledge of something and then deny that you have any ? What's it to be ? It cannot be true to say one has and has not any such knowledge. This isn't new. It's called faith. Denying the mind because it's the mind and relying on feeling, intuition, or divine revelation.

then you must consider integral to equally imaginary ? That if you regard seperate from the universe imaginary, then equally it follows that you cannot consider yourself part of the universe. Concepts have consequences :-) fiddle with the differentiation and you fiddle with integration. So, now you must explain how you are speaking to me because I don't want to be caught chatting to myself :-)

Moral courage :-)

what has nothing to do with knowledge ?

sounds just like my caving expeditions when the carbide lamp stopped working.

Try walking down the centre of a busy highway and see if anything kicks off ;-)

Everything is a choice and must be a choice. I find it difficult to believe anyone could stumble upon knowledge, but certainly there maybe some very strange routes to getting there.

You cannot examine awareness, all you can do is point it at what that you wish to examine. All consciousness is an active process, but thinking is optional, it is entirely volitional. Consciousness is not the content, it is the faculty to grasp existence. Unless existence is being grasped then consciousness is absent- we are said to be unconscious or incapable of consciousness. The fact that you sense a 'deeper identity' is another one of your levels. That you grasp identity as a concept proves the formula : Existence is identity;consciousness is identification These transitory thoughts I have already described as floating abstractions and by asking the question 'who is it that feels such and such' or 'who am I' it sets off a mental chain reaction which results in an circular argument. This is because the concepts and integrations are bad and have not been anchored in reality. The Buddah by the river is the philosophy of the Skeptics. Its not simple to debunk because we would have to approach fundamentals and concept formations. It would take too long to do this here, but it's possible.

True fear is the loss, or inability to gain a value deemed necessary to a person. The primary value of ones own life under threat of extinction is the root of all fear. Therefore to end fear one must be unafraid of death. That can be done in two ways. The first is that your current life is so unbearable that extinction is preferable-one fears life more than death. The second is to evade reality, which isn't really fearlessness. However, many people are not experiencing true fear, they fear that they don't fit in, or that people don't like them, that they aren't pretty enough, they aren't rich enough, that they will be shunned and rejected. This is irrational fear. To overcome this false fear and to do this in full conscious awareness is to become the hero you were potentially born to be.

That's choice though. Its like alcohol, you can choose to drink or abstain.