Todd

I was hoping you'd share your experience(s), and what about your experience(s) in particular lead to a questioning of the brain as the source of awareness.

Some of the tendency of others to argue with you might have to do with the fact that you are arguing against physicalism instead of for what is. There might be assumptions in your argument that they detect, even if they cannot easily verbalize them. I do agree that sincere interest in truth, beyond convention, is still a rather underground phenomena. Even with people who go rather deep in their explorations, interest tends to go underground at some point and very little apparent progress is made. The biggest impediment, in my view, is that people don't know that there is more to be realized. At some point they just accept it at face value, inconsistencies and all, despite a certain covert uneasiness with this situation.

I'm not sure that this interest is such a special quality. I think that it is more or less inherent, and that it just is not talked to very often, and so it lies dormant. Potentially two people could have a deep interest in reality but never talk about it, for they both hide it to abide by convention. Scratch people and you'll find some fairly not-usual stuff. I remember a survey where something like half of the respondents reported a non-ordinary experience of consciousness, and so something in their consciousness is interested in more than just the conventional experience, or else they would not have noted or remembered it.

No, it says that awareness is necessary for objects to be known. You have not shown that non-awareness cannot be a source of awareness. You have only shown that if that were true, we would not be aware of this source as a source. I have left open the possibility that it could be inferred through various means, such as there being more than one non-awareness source of awareness, which we could observe and then by analogy consider to be like our own, or through using other means, such as mirrors, to reflect back on this non-awareness source. So your "argument" is that because we cannot know if matter is behind awareness or not, let's just assume that it is. No, it isn't. We must be very clear about this. I am not making a positive statement, except that your argument does not demonstrate what you say it demonstrates. All of the stuff about the brain is to show that there is another possible outcome from the assumption that we agree to. You make other assumptions that are unsupported, and I want to call awareness to those assumptions, so they can be understood, and other options using fewer assumptions might be developed. If matter is what generates awareness, then it's not matter that you're aware of, Just as we are not directly aware of our own brains. unless the matter is self-aware. If you claim that matter is self-aware, then we need to get rid of the word "matter" and just call it mind. Matter does not need to be self-aware to generate awareness. This is an assumption. ... At no point do I venture into an unknown or take something on faith. My own awareness is self-evident to me so no faith is necessary there. My only act of faith is to assume that you are as real as I am. I have no proof of this. Other than that, I make no assumptions. You also assume that everything is in principle directly knowable, that there is no unknown or unknowable factor influencing our experience. It's not an assumption per se, it's what I refer to "this is what I am willing to consider." It's a pragmatic consideration. If something is fundamentally beyond knowing I 1) don't bother looking for it, 2) do not include it into my considerations and 3) do not base my life on it in any way and relate to it as irrelevant. This is your right. Such a choice does not make a good argument, since the whole argument depends on this choice, which has no basis other than preference. Knowing that there is something fundamentally beyond knowing, at least on the basis of verbal arguments, is quite valuable to me. It helps me to have more philosophical humility, and it inspires me to look for other means to knowledge. I am open to a better verbal argument, but what you are presenting is based on assumption and preference. I don't operate on blind faith and don't recommend it to others. Neither do I, but your assumptions have a quality of faith to them. Without this faith, then one must admit to an unknown. It actually makes no difference what the source of awareness is as long as I understand that whatever appears to awareness is not the source of it. From then on I am free. If the source of awareness is flurobompax or fetrof-complex, who cares? Simply understanding what happens within awareness is enough to lead a good life and to properly react to every possible occurrence with wisdom and fearlessness. This may be true, but it does not make a valid argument that awareness has no source outside of itself. Concrete objects are waves because no concrete object is self-apparent. Instead all concrete objects are only apparent to the extent they are supported by a larger context. In other words, concrete objects are always smaller than the whole "thing." Your argument does not show that awareness is this whole "thing" and is not a part of this whole "thing". If it is a part, then it could in turn arise from another part, and hence from an object in this whole "thing". awareness cannot perceive its source. If this is true, then based on awareness, we can make no definitive positive statements about its source. The source of awareness could not be a result of the function of awareness. In other words, the effect of awareness cannot be its cause. Concrete objects are all, without exception, fundamentally, in principle, effects of awareness. So an example of this relationship is fire and smoke. The smoke is an effect of fire. The smoke cannot thus be the cause of fire. Being an effect is a subservient, weaker position. You have once again assumed that awareness is the source, despite saying above that awareness cannot know its source. You don't really understand my usage. That analogy was to distinguish crucial from generative. I was pointing out how something can be crucial without being generative. Once you agree that something can be crucial and yet not generative, you need to prove that the brain is not merely crucial for the world-perception to be what it is, but that it is generative. The same argument applies to awareness itself. You cannot infer the brain at all. If you think you can, then go ahead and try to infer it. I'll be here laughing and watching you fail. How hard is it to infer a brain? I have seen brains in formaldehyde, pictures of brains and brain scans, videos of brains in open skulls, etc, and so I infer that brains exist. This does not mean that inference is true, but I do have some basis for making that inference. More than mere existence can be inferred about the brain. This is not a major interest of mine, so I won't go into it, but to claim that such inferences can't be made, is to be willfully ignorant. Whatever you observed in the movie would not be indicative of the true nature of the movie projector. That was the whole point of my example there. You're praying for a lucky meaningless coincidence that the movie projector will miraculously project its own function onto the screen and not just the movies plugged into it. It's not going to happen. And yet, you yourself have said that brains are observable. If we are going to make an analogy between a movie theater and our experience, and the putative projector is the brain, then we need to include them in the movie, since they are observable in our experience, even if we cannot observe our own brains except indirectly. I fail to see it. Sounds like nonsense. I can't even understand what you're talking about at all. Tracing the light? Movie theaters? I have no idea what it all means. You're losing it. Do you have anything to offer but an emotional reaction? What part is so difficult to understand? Tracing light is possible by blocking the light and seeing the direction that the shadow is cast and then extending back in line from the hand to the projector. Its not really that difficult. Right, I know you'd talk about that. This is why I differentiated crucial-to-meaning from generative. For us the brain needs to be the way it is for the world as we know it to make sense. That doesn't mean the brain actually generates awareness. If you still believe in generative ability of the brain, you pretty much have to assume that ability without any evidence. All the evidence you have is that the brain is crucial to the meaning of what it means to be a human being in this realm. There is an impossible to cross logical chasm between "crucial" and "generative." I assume nothing more than you. I am not arguing for the brain as the source of awareness. I am only showing that it is a logically valid as your description, if we start with the same assumptions. And thus we cannot claim to know either way based solely upon logic. I've had many dreams where I was shot straight into the brain, in the dream. Instead of permanently dying I simply woke up to find myself safe in bed. The physicalist explanation to this is that the "real" brain is in bed, while the dream brain is "fake". When the fake brain is shot in the dream, the real one is fine. Of course I can extend this line of thinking further. I can say this brain that's involved in typing this post is a fake brain. If you shoot me, my body will collapse from your point of view, but from my point of view, I will wake up safe in bed again. It all makes sense because during dreams we don't know our dream brains are fake. We only realize that after the fact. I do not deny this possibility. I only deny that it is logically supported by what you have presented. I ask if you have better arguments. My arguments are as air tight as any on this Earth when it comes to awareness. I'm afraid this might be true.

Ok, your argument begins from this: "Nothing can be known outside of awareness". I agree with this, and I believe that it is one of very few a priori statements that I can accept for the purposes of discussion. Most of your argument was detailing the implications of "Nothing can be known outside of awareness". My argument was that even with this being true, this argument alone tells us nothing of the source of awareness. Awareness could be the source and substance of all, or awareness could be interdependently originated with matter, or awareness could be produced by priorly existing non-awareness (let's just say matter for simplicity's sake), which remains outside of awareness. This is not an argument from ignorance, since I never made a positive or negative statement. I denied that your positive statement that awareness is the source and substance is logically valid, at least based upon the arguments that you have presented, and I presented an alternative possibility that is equally logically valid. I said that we cannot know what you say we can know through the arguments that you have presented. From the link that you generously provided (my emphasis added): "Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or "appeal to ignorance", is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to satisfactorily prove the proposition to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, (1) true, (2) false, (3) unknown between true or false, and (4) being unknowable (among the first three).[1] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof." Your criticism of this stems from another assumption, which is more of an aesthetic position than anything else, that all things must in principle be knowable, or at least the fundamental source of our experience must be knowable, and hence any explanation that does not allow this is not acceptable to you. This is not a logically valid argument, and I was asking if you could provide another, actually logically valid argument for the statement that awareness is primary, or not produced from non-awareness by means that are unknown/potentially unknowable to us. What I have shared above is the crux of this discussion. I want to explore a few of the implications below. In the ocean and waves example, you assume for awareness the position of ocean, and this assumption is not supported by your argument. With reference to the brain, which would be the most likely non-awareness source for awareness, it is not just like anything that appears in awareness, in that we are not able to perceive our own brains, the ones that putatively are producing our awarenesses, except by indirect means. Those means include recognizing their effects (i.e. our awarenesses), or using machines to image them, or pick up activity from them, or the testimony of others, or through a mirror if our skulls happen to be open, which would jeaprodize the continued operation of those brains. The brain is actually just like the unknowable source that you referenced toward the end of your post, so don't pretend that we can see our brains like any other object. We can only easily see other brains, and even this is relatively rare, especially while they are still producing awarenesses. Your analogy with the word and the sentence is not valid. The brain is not like a word in the sentence, since it is not easily available to perception. The brain is like you typing the sentence, a not easily perceivable, but potentially inferrable source. Your analogy with the movie projector is a good one. Except, imagine in the movie that there were images of a movie theater, which then traces the light back into the projection room and revealed a movie projector in all of its details. Lets say that in this movie, there were images of many movie theaters, and every time the light was traced back, and there was another movie projector. This would not tell us for certain that the movie we were watching was the result of a movie projector, but we would have a good reason to infer that perhaps our movie is indeed the projection of a movie projector. This is not a good analogy in some ways, since we have no rays of light to trace back, but there are pieces of evidence that point to the brain as being the source of consciousness, such as changes to consciousness corresponding to changes in the brain. Personally, I am not really predisposed to feel that consciousness, or awareness arises solely, or even necessarily at all from the brain. If I were to say that it arises from matter, I would give it a much less localized source, and I am not all that inclined to assume matter in the first place. I am just asking for a logically valid argument that supports this predisposition of mine, and apparently, yours. I want something that not only shows that something is possible, but that shows it is far and away the most likely explanation. If it can't be shown logically, I am fine with that, but we should not pretend that we have airtight arguments when we do not.

I suspect a large part of our issues are a matter of vocabulary. I read the post on ego that you linked to and I must say that a lot of what you said there is much more reasonable than what you have been saying here. You even referred to cold moist Yin compressing to give rise to heated Yang, which expands to give rise to Yin! I'm not saying your other views have no place, but at least there you were speaking an understandable language. If you want to offer alternative viewpoints, you would be well served to first demonstrate an understanding of the common viewpoint and then present a case for the alternative viewpoint, instead of just declaring the alternative as some kind've absolute truth, without building any kind've bridge over which to approach it. If people don't see it as relevant to their lives, then they will dismiss it. One of the best ways to build bridges is to refer to common experiences. Truth is actually the most common thing, so this should not be too difficult. I saw you as ignoring relative truths when you dismissed them as irrelevant and called for only seeking the absolute. They are only to be given attention so that they might be seen through, and the absolute thereby revealed. They have no value in themselves. They can only distract us from what truly is. The human is merely a temporary aberration, which must be transcended and left behind for truth to reign supreme. You almost seemed to suggest that the human played no role whatsoever in the recognition of truth. That is what I heard you saying, and I still hear notes of this. It may be true that every recognition of Wholeness goes beyond the skandhas, but you ignore that every recognition of truth also arose out the context of the skandhas. I am not familiar with the exact definition of skandha, especially as you are using it, but my understanding is that it is an aggregate, a kind've experience field of various things that arise within consciousness, including the experience of consciousness itself, all of which we tend to identify with. My understanding is that seeing through the skandhas is seeing through this identification, such that one no longer clings to the any of the skandhas and thus Wholeness might be revealed. The experience fields do no disappear, except perhaps temporarily, and the loss of this clinging allows them to function more clearly. You mentioned this, I believe, when you spoke of the Tathagata going and coming at the same time, such that there is appearance without becoming lost in it, without leaving the fulcrum. You even say that you have experienced this. You say that it was thinking that pulled you out. I would disagree with you there, and I can point to a moment of clarity in your "ego Trapper" post where you acknowledged this: "There is still thinking, but the thinking, as the ego, becomes an ally of the undivided self. " You may not have been referring to the same moment, but I will assert that it was not thought that pulled you out, but clinging or identification with thought that pulled you out. Thought has no power on its own. It can go right along, and as long as you do not invest it with belief, then it cannot pull you off of the fulcrum. The lever is an inherent aspect of the fulcrum because it cannot be separated from it. There is no fulcrum without a lever. The people who realize truth tend to emphasize that it is always so and never truly obscured. Given that there is the appearance of time, motion, desire, humanness, confusion, thinking, etc, then these appearances must have no power to obscure truth. Looking past them may be vital, absolutely vital to realizing truth, but we are compelled to return to the appearances, in part to find out, as you said, what is not true, but also to recognize that no appearance actually can obscure what we are. In fact, every appearance is a gift of what we are to ourselves, and without any appearance, we would not be complete. This does not mean that we might not do our best to manage appearances, such that conventionally unpleasant stuff doesn't needlessly continue, but there is none/very little of that ego-self clinging/illusion driving it. Thats the essential point that I want to make. I want to mention your understanding of opposites, balance and imbalance, even though it is not as essential. 4 An example? Allow two bar magnets to come together,...what seems to the sensory apparatrus as two opposites merging, is actually magnet ends cancelling each other out at the point of union, and the pole ends are still opposite. ... Although 19 + (-19) = 19 + (-19) can be expressed that way,...in nature, 19 positive elements added to their 19 negative anti-mass = 0. This is an addition, not a cancelling out. The magnets do not cease to be, and though I am not a physicist, I would be greatly surprised if the two poles did not become stronger when the magnets joined, and the strength of the total magnetic field did not remain the same. Matter and Anti-matter joining do not equal zero (I think Informer mentioned this earlier in the thread). They equal a large amount of energy, which is not separate from matter, but actually equal, according to the equation E=mc^2. Please correct me if I am wrong in this. Also, they don't tend to join very often, despite theories that they are balanced. I can give you hundreds of examples of a balance between seeming opposites not only persisting, but perpetuating itself in a way that no imbalance can. Can you give me even one example of balanced opposites in life instantly dissolving? How about hundreds? Fundamentally, duality consists of an equal interchange of positive and negatives. Most all positives in nature are visible or detectable,...whereas most negatives are not so detectable. Presumably this duality of positives and negatives sums to zero, and as such, they are in balance, but they continue to appear, so saying that the negative are not visible does nothing for your argument that balance equals dissolution or destruction. Great art is considered to have a creative tension,....Perfectly balanced art would be something the senses could not see. How are you defining balance? Yes, the word harmony would be much better. In the Secret of Light book I mentioned,...he used the term "harmonic balanced interchage." Which to me says, a balanced harmony,..not a balanced polarity. I have not read that book yet (and it will be awhile before I do, since I have an interlibrary loan book to read and other calls on my time, some of which I have been putting off while reading and writing these posts!). I see why you might prefer the word harmony, since it does not require equal sums. But you still have not shown that balance causes dissolution, or even stillness. All of the sums can add up in the bigger picture, and it can still be a very complex, constantly moving/changing panorama. "Interchange" suggests polarity to me, especially if one recognizes no separation.

What inspired this shift, if you don't mind my asking?

Please share. "Valid". I edited my post when I looked over it and realized I wasn't conveying what I meant.

I pretty much agree with this, though there is a continuum between abstract and concrete objects, where there is never really a separation, so no object is not abstract, and to the extent that any object is really concrete, then no abstract object is not to some degree concrete. In terms of what gives rise to what, I don't think this can be known by the logic that you are presenting. If concrete objects give rise to an awareness that has no memory of its arising, then it would have no basis to know this, and if it then followed your line of reasoning, it would conclude that it gave rise to objects! The objects that give rise to it likely would not be easily available to awareness, and the processes by which this happens could only be teased out by inference, if at all. This is more a comment on your logic than a metaphysical statement. Is there a more valid way of approaching this?

If you don't mean it literally, then why use such an particular number. Why 0.4, instead of 0.5? Besides, life experiences are quite questionable. You are quite aware of how experiences tend to match expectations. My interest is not so much the number, or the proportion, as the basis on which one makes one's claims. Is it based on another's authority? On one's experience? If it is your experience, then I would rather have the most relevant aspect of your experience, than your conclusion. You can share your conclusion too, but without the experience it doesn't really do me much good, other than to tempt me to take other's assertions as truth and adjust my life accordingly.

Not in an objective way. I pretty much equate objects and experiences. I am not referring to an existent "out there" when I say object.

How is that experience not another object?

So you were being optimistic in your appraisal? 0.4% instead of 0.2%? I am also still curious how you came to have faith in this number.

Have you considered that maybe those on this forum who appreciate posts on uncertainty aren't disposed to use the ranking system for forum posts?

How did you come up with this number?

How?

Thanks for the dialogue. Although there is much confusion describing some fundamental principles regarding the nature of duality's reality, the continued welcoming of the subject is a very noble characteristic. Truth waits only on welcome. Yes, and thank you for your continued welcoming of dialogue. It is a noble quality. 1What aspect of reality am I ignoring? Appearances, relativity. 2I can understand sone initial confusion regarding the term separation and its relationship with Undivided and Divided Light. I prefer discussing things within a non-dualistic framnework. ACIM suggests: "The best response is within a non-dualistic framework, and thus will hardly satisfy an intellectually inquisitive mind that demands an answer on its own terms. However, within the dualistic framework that we experience as our reality, the question is really a statement masquerading in question form, "asked" by an ego mind in order to establish its own reality and unique identity. Therefore, the questioner is really saying: "I believe I am here, and now I want you to explain to me how I got here." Consciousness, being the first split introduced into the mind of the dreamer, is an ego state where a perceiver and a perceived seem to exist as separate "realities." Consciousness results in a concept of a limited false self that is separate and uncertain. This false self believes it is "here" and "asks" the question about its own seeming origin, thereby seeking to verify it. In truth, however, imperfection cannot emanate from perfection, and an imperfect thought of separation and division cannot arise from a perfect Mind, in which opposites cannot exist. Only in a world of dreams can these absurdities, and the beliefs that foster such uncertainty lead to musings like this. The question therefore can only be asked by those who believe and experience that they are indeed separate and distinct, and it can only be answered by someone who agrees with this premise that the impossible has in fact happened, and therefore requires and even demands an explanation. Thus, only a dreaming ego would ask such a question, for the Mind (not to be confused with intelect/brain) could not even conceive of the separation which is the basis for asking the question in the first place. And obviously, if in reality the separation never happened once, how could it possibly happen a second time? Therefore, once again, it is a trick question, much like the comedian's question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" which, if answered, can only incriminate the person responding." The question can also arise when someone, such as yourself, makes a claim of separation between two things, and another person, such as myself, wants to clarify where this statement is coming from. I do not postulate separation. I only inquire how you manage to at once claim that separation exists and also that it does not exist, and then fault me for asking about the origin of the separation that you claim exists by saying that my question presupposes separation where none exists. Can you recognize this? Do you even know what I am asking? The term fulcrum is a good one when speaking within a non-dual framework. Does a fulcrum "know" when a lever is upon it or not? The lever surely relizes it is separate from the fulcrum as long as it continues to move, in an attempt to rejoin with the fulcrum, which it can never do, because it was never separated from the fulcrum, even though the motion makes it seem that way,...because the moving lever (the skandhas) cannot recognize stillness. We're kinda close here, except for the bolded parts. The lever is never separate, moving or not. All separation is seeming, and a deeper gnowing can pervade even in the presence of motion. The lever and the motion appear to be an inherent aspect of the fulcrum. It may be that the fulcrum, as an aspect of this motion at times manifests realizations of stillness without the appearance of motion, but this not actually an escape from motion since it arises from the context of motion and eventually returns to motion, as even your narrated experience shows. Is this not your experience? There is an aspect of existence which never moves, despite all apparent motion, but this motion is never actually separate from the stillness. 3Unon the moving lever, everything are opposites,...the opposited of hope is fear. If one wishes to dissolve all fear, then all hope must simultaneously be dissolved. Hope and fear are not opposites. They are the same thing. They are different phenomenal manifestations of the same underlying insecurity, and one always exists in potential and actuality within the other. It is inbalance that allows appearances. Any two opposites in balance cancels out the opposites. Life abounds with apparent opposites that do not cancel one another out. They actually support one another in the manifestation of experience. I have given examples. Take even your example of hope and fear, which are apparent opposites to some: together they allow the experience of hope and fear (fear is always present in hope and vice versa). Could you please provide an example of opposites canceling out, other than mathematical sums, or waves (which as far as I know only appear to cancel out locally but not absolutely)? Even in mathematics, opposite sums can exist on on opposite sides of an equation, as long as they balance, such as: 19 + (-19) = 19 + (-19). There are infinite equations such as this one that could be written and still be true, despite perfectly balanced opposite values, according to the rules of mathematics. The tendency to abstractly reduce them all to the solution of zero, is just a tendency and it does not negate the fact that this infinity of expressions can be conceived of and expressed. 4 Buddha's Noble Truth said, Suffering is a consequence of the desire for things to be other tham they are. So yes,...suffering arises from imbalance,...but no object, no skandha, can be in balance. How can anything be out of balance? I am curious how you conceive of this. Perhaps the term harmony could be used to describe various social acceptances. The point being, what if we flowed through life based upon the most honest views of life that can be uncovered. That is to say,...can our perceived lives accept the irrefutable non-dualist framework,...such as, There is no Present in Time. I was with you until the last statement. "There is no Present in Time" is a dualistic statement. The surface understandings of non-duality are intensely dual, when one tries to separate out the non-dual from the dual. True non-duality abandons nothing and includes all. 5 Surely appearances are perceived,...that's the nature of the skandhas, to perceive motion. Yet from Undivided Light's point of view, nothing has moved, even a millimeter, in all etenerty. Although what I'm about to say is far beyond this post,....what we perceive as movement is reorganizing itself 186k mps, like a pile of still pictures flashed quickly gives an appearnce of motion. The image of the world that appears in the brain is very different from the actual physical world. What value do you see in giving a number to the "speed" at which the universe reorganizes itself? To me it just adds a barrier to understanding, since it does not appear to be relevant to my life or to what we are talking about. Can it be understood without reference to such numbers? If it can't how does the number help? Also to say 186k mps doesn't have much meaning to me when talking about the rate at which still pictures flash. A more appropriate term would include the number of flashes per second, instead of the number of meters per second. How do you equate a rate of flashing with a measure of speed across distance? 6. I refer back to 2,... "For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is" Albert Einstein Many of these questions are answered in that book Secret of Light. Not only did Russell know Einstein,...Walter Russell is said to have had an influence on all the Manhattan Project participants. Supposedly, Nikola Tesla advised Dr. Russell to lock all his knowledge in the Smithsonian for one thousand years or so, or until man is ready for it. And that is partially where were are at,...we are discussing things beyond current ego's comprehension. There are ways however, to bridge the ignorances and clinging to the skandhas for ones identity,...but a proper language is needed. For example,...gnowledge does not arise from the head,...knowledge arises from the head. Thus to gnow, is much different than to know. Gnowledge occurs from beyond the skandhas,...whereas knowledge is predominately an accumulation of object-ive memories. Such as the memory of encountering gnowledge? Or of developing theories that satisfy ego based upon gnowledge? How? As I had mentioned,...Transformational triggers that uncover gnowing can flow from connected breathing, hypnotherapy, sound (Shurangama Sutra) and color meditations (S. G. J. Ouseley), Ki practices, etc. One of my favorite triggers is called the supermarket task, an activity of the "Just Because Club" developed by what Claude Needham calls, "a contemporary inner-work group." http://www.thetaobum..._1entry276730 It is interesting that all of the means to uncover gnowing that your have shared occur within time. The past never left the present? That a tricky statement. The Present, to ego's chagrin, has no need for the past,...nor any need for ego. It would be correct that the past never left the present,...but the past can NEVER enter the Present,...just as a condition can never enter the unconditional,...or duality ever reaching the so-called speed of light. That is a somewhat extreme statement. I do not know how you can possibly say this, since there has never been a instance of gnowing the Present that has occurred except within the context of the past. And if it did, then how could we know of it? If you know of one, then I can only ask if you have ever had an experience of the past. The Present manifests... no, I would say includes the past. The past need not enter the Present, since it is already Present. I agree that efforts to do so are ultimately futile. I say that as a betting man, and not as an absolute statement of truth. Yes,...the truth is a HUGE blow for ego. That really depends on the ego. There are many forms of ego. There is ego in ego. There is ego in the absence of ego. It is a shapeshifter. How do you define ego?

1. Why does it matter? Do you think the first brush stroke of a painting would somehow disclose the essence of the painter? What it matters is that there is an aspect of reality that you are ignoring, and this has its outcomes. There is a time at which this might be very useful, but there is a time at which it is harmful. It also matters because you claim that appearance and Undivided Light are separate. If this is so, and Undivided Light is the only thing that is real, then how is it that appearance arises? Your account does not take into account an aspect of everyone's experience, including your own, and so it is very partial, which is kinda opposite of your claim to Wholeness. 3.No,...the confusion appears to be that you do not understand opposites. The sum of opposites is always zero,...just as all negatives added to all positives is 0. In the reality of duality, the inbalance of opposites is the condition for endless manifestation. What would occur if a see-saws lever was in balance,...motion would cease. All phenonena is in motion. Stop the motion, and all phenomena ends. Opposites in life are not like abstract opposites. They are not like mathematical sums, in which there are only two types of values. Zero in life is all that we see, all that we have seen, all that we might see, and beyond. It is many dimensions, many dualities, many ways that balance can be explored. It is appearance. Now in appearance there are local variations, local imbalances, and this causes motion in many levels of existence, if any motion can be said to happen, which it can. The motion is not ultimate, but it is apparent. Overall balance in no way denies local imbalance, and in no way denies appearance. It is the balance that allows the appearance. Lets take another example. Humans have many different desires. I would say we have many different desires, but I can't speak for you. There are desires for food, sex, acceptance, survival, control, peace, love, friendship, to express compassion, to know, to gnow, for truth, for energy, for death, for happiness, for the ending of desire, to desire more... it goes on and on. Not all of these desires oppose one another, but at times they appear to be opposed, such as a desire for sex and a desire for social acceptance, if that sex is not socially acceptable. Indulging in the sex can lead to loss of social acceptance, which then could reduce the sex. In other situations, indulging in the sex can increase social acceptance, and lead to an increase in sex. Some desires are pretty much directly opposed, such as the desire for survival and the desire for death. As long as these desires are all operating and keep themselves relatively in check, then a human can live a "normal" life. They don't die early, and they can have a variety of experiences. If one desire becomes out of balance and dominates the others, such as a desire for alcohol to the exclusion of all else, it usually has a very negative effect, and the person can die early, and then that particular manifestation, that particular appearance, is ended early. Imbalance ends the appearance. The greater the imbalance, the quicker the appearance ends. Balance maintains it. In this sense every desire can be said to serve the others, because they give the context within which the others can be experienced. Some people like to try and boil all desires down to one of the desires, and for most of them you could have a compelling argument that all of the other desires are really just forms of that one desire. This is not because they really are just forms of one given desire, but because they interpenetrate and make one another possible. So, in life, balance is essential for appearances. It is imbalance that ends appearances. Conceptually, and experientially, it seems that all of this revolves around nothing, but I haven't known all aspects of all things individually, or done the sum of them all, so this is just another seeming as far as I'm concerned. Even if everything seems to to disappear, or it just directly is "gnown" to be nothing. More seeming, more "gnowing". 4 Yes, the idea or concept of the Unconditional is thought (ego), but that does not deny the reality of the Unconditional. Nor does the idea of the non-separation of the conditional and the Unconditional being thought (ego) deny the reality of the non-separation of the conditional and the Unconditional. Quantum cosmologists, Steven Hawking and Jim Hartle said that since time loses characteristics that separate it from space, the concept of a beginning in time becomes meaningless. That is to say, there was no Big Bang, no singularity, no creation, no Creator, no beginning nor end, because there is no time. Enlightened Bodhisattva's been saying that for a few thousand years through understanding the Unconditional. And this in no way denies the appearance of time. Or else how could Quantum cosmologists talk about any of this at all? 6. Why are humans so arrogant to believe that the universe would not be without them. Were there humans before dinosaurs? Will there be an earth if Christian Fascists (Tea Party patriots) take over the planet and annilate everyone for Jesus. Is non-sentient consciousness depended on humanity. I never mentioned the universe. I asked if Quantum Physics could be without a sentient being. Quantum Physics is not the universe. It is a model for how particular aspects of the universe work. It is a particularly successful model in some domains, but not in all domains, not even all of the scientific domains, let alone the non-scientific domains. For example, can Quantum Physics make meaningful predictions about compassion or love? Even if it could make accurate predictions in all known domains, it should in no way be construed to be the universe. There is a viewpoint, however, that the universe as a whole has a wave function and that this could never have collapsed into an observable universe without an observer. This observer, or consciousness can be viewed as an inherent aspect of any wave function, which explains the universe's ability to collapse itself into the big bang (assuming I have any idea what I'm talking about. I got this from a youtube clip with physicists talking. ) It is one view. It wouldn't be dependent on humanity, though perhaps you could say more about the apparent division between sentient and non-sentient consciousness, and explain if sentient consciousness can actually be separated from non-sentient consciousness. 7. Yes, Unborn Awareness can be observed, just not through the skandhas. The 6 senses can only observe motion,...so obviously, the observer of the Unborn Awareness, that is, awareness beyond belief, is not of the 6 senses. Nothing can be GNOWN through the skandhas,...but only KNOWN. Gnowledge does not arise from the brain,...only knowledge arises from the brain. And no,...time is not needed to recognize the Present,...although through time, the absence of the Present can be recognized. So it cannot be observed in any of the ways that we normally use the word observe; it cannot be known, but it can be gnown. I'll go along with that as long as we both recognize that no formulation of that "gnown" can be owned, grasped, or in any other way held onto, except in a weird twisted way that appears to reduce the "gnowing". With regard to Present, how do you know that time is not necessary? How can something be recognized if there was not a time at which it was not recognized? Re-cognize. Sure there is gnowing before time, but to re-cognize, there must be a moment in which it is not cognized... hence the necessity of time. 8 First,...I'm not into beliefs. Beliefs deny, suppress, disconnect, and disempower. Generally speaking, I'm with you there. Fixation of beliefs eventually does not serve, if it ever serves. One can live passionately without fixation. Through awakened consciousness, the dream of the skandhas is still there, just as the stars continue to be above us during the day,...awakened consciousness is like standing on the lever of a see-saw over the fulcrum, versus anywhere else on the lever. Those that can stand on the lever above the fulcrum 24/7 or called Buddha. We're getting close. That fulcrum can be seen to be the entire lever, without leaving the fulcrum. Or so my experiences are suggesting. I am not at the point where this is my conscious experience 24/7. This is the source of unlimited depth of potential realization, despite the fact that everything is inherently realized, just as it is. 9 I view the Short Path from a different perspective,...somewhat like this: http://wisdomsgolden...s/23/5#section1 That is a long article that you linked to. Could you summarize your position? I am familiar with the Short or Direct Path. It has been my primary approach, especially in the last several years, and also before I knew anything much of Spirituality. A fairly decent summation of the Short or Direct Path as I experience it can be found in this verse: Chapter 22 (Red Pine's translation of the Taoteching): Partial means whole crooked means straight hollow means full worn-out means new less means content more means confused thus the sage holds onto the one to use in guiding the world not watching himself he appears not displaying himself he flourishes not flattering himself he succeeds not parading himself he leads because he doesn't compete no one can compete against him the ancients who said partial means whole came close indeed becoming whole depends on this The last line is essential, but so is the first, and all the ones inbetween. The only words that I don't like so much are "holds onto", but I guess they can have their use in my experience too. 10. Undivided Light is not separate from appearances,...appearances are separated from Undivided Light, which precipitates their motion to unite with Undivided Light, although it NEVER can, because the unreal can never enter the real. Energy is simply the unbalanced, dissymphonic continuum of the desire to return to source, which it never really left. I would agree with the first part if you phrased it as "appearances can appear to be separated from Undivided Light". You judge energy and desire harshly, but, yes it never really left. What occurs, conceptually speaking, when one crosses the threshold of the so-called speed of light? It's helpful for perspective,...because from Light's point of view (which travels no distance, in no time, and thus has no need for speed) we are relatively 186k mps slower than the Stillness of Undivided Light. In other words, everything in duality's reality is in the past. The perceived present, as in your looking at these words, is the past. No object can be seen in the Present, because no objects exist in the Present. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Its not bad news. As per what you said above, the past never left the Present.

Gold, Another issue is that in a lot of the texts like the Huangdi Neijing, a lot of the meaning in conveyed via a system of associations that are not immediately apparent. So Rabbit represents Metal represents Lung, represents 3-5am, represents Yin in relation to some things and Yang in relation to others, represents the corporeal soul, represents contraction and descending motion of Qi, represents particular times of year and particular years, etc... I by no means am privy to a lot of this stuff, such that I would understand what the text means immediately, and its not really easy to put in a translation, or even notes, though a really interested person could find ways.

If you are interested, the Chapter links that I provided lead to the translation of the main text (unfortunately missing the translator's notes). It doesn't have the line breaks of the original and there are some mistakes in the text, in comparison with the printed book, but its a decent start. It should be available by Interlibrary Loan, if your local library does that. Yeah, its not like it is only nothing. It is a nothing with all of the qualities of the world that we observe and limitless potential below that. I would prefer the view of potential vs only nothing, or only empty. I'm not sure where "infinite" is coming from, other than interpretation, which obscures the commonly accepted meaning of empty (which implies infinite, in a way), but I can see the interpretation of "its use is never exhausted". It doesn't completely explain the use of "again", but this meaning seems valid, if interpretive.

Yeah, it would be nice if more works were translated well. I think the website that you linked to gives some of the reasons why not. Also, there doesn't seem to be as much of a market for these, in comparison to Buddhist texts. Also, I think it is a lot harder to make a translations of these that will be of use to people. Zhuangzi in particular is known as being very difficult to understand, even in the Chinese. Apparently, many of the characters that he used are only known to have been used by him. If you look them up in a dictionary, the only definition is "used in Zhuangzi". Apparently he had a thing for neologisms. A lot of the works that are listed at the bottom of your link have been translated, though I can't say anything about the quality of most of the translations. Sometimes the translations are hard to find, since they don't come up by simply searching for the name of the text. For example: The Huangting Neijing Yu Jing. and The Cantong Qi. Some of them are also only available as expensive academic translations (reflecting the limited audience). In particular the Huainan Zi, and good translations of the Huangdi Neijing, the best of which apparently can only be gotten through contacting the author and it is in the $100-200 range (the author is Henry C. Lu, though I do not have it to comment on. Seems some people don't like this translation either.). I guess its roughly analogous to the situation for non-English speakers and science. There is some available, but to really participate in the discourse, one needs to learn English. The main difference is that many/most people in the world have some exposure to English instruction, especially if they might pursue science, but very few outside of Asia have exposure to Chinese instruction. Learning to read Chinese is doable, if you are willing to devote some time to it (like 2-4 hrs a day for a year or two), though to get to a near native level might take a long time.

Hi Marblehead, The translation is by Red Pine. It is a translation and not just an interpretation. He compared several different Chinese texts, including two earlier versions (older versions) that were recently discovered in the Mawangdui tombs. Some of the departures from your chosen translation are due to variations that he included from those earlier texts. Some of the departures are due to your chosen text's tendency to insert meaning that does not belong in the first place. Some of the departures, I will admit, are due to Red Pine's interpretation. But in my experience Red Pine's translation is as faithful to the Chinese as any that I have encountered. I won't get into all of the variations, but mostly those that are vital for what I was trying to show. The first point is not vital, but I will address it. Most translations are like your translation "great virtue", instead of Red Pine's "empty virtue". The Chinese is 孔德 kong de. De is virtue. Kong is a hole, or very. Perhaps in the Chinese of Laozi's time this was used to mean great. One might wonder why "hole" means "great". Of course there are a lot of good reasons for this, especially to us guys, but that doesn't change the "hole" nature of kong. The second point is vital. Red Pine's translation is "Tao as a thing", which can also be read as "Tao as things". Henrick's translation is "As for the nature of the Way". The Chinese is 道之为物 dao zhi wei wu. Dao zhi wei, is translated as "Tao as", wu is translated as "a thing". It can also mean substance or creature. Nature, in the sense of one's character, is a completely different character: 性 xing, which also means sex. Later on, Henrick translates 物 wu as "things" where Red Pine translates it as "a creature". Either way, we've got an aspect of Tao that is a thing or things. As to "waxes and wanes" vs "Formless! Shapeless!", I don't need to tell you that there are no exclamation marks in classical Chinese. Red Pine follows Mawangdui texts here, reading the usual 恍huang as 朢wang. Wang means the 15th day of the Lunar month, which is the day of the full moon. 沕wu means something like can't be seen, or formless. Taken together the give an image of a full moon, and a new moon (can't be seen), and thus "waxes and wanes". Not super important, but instructive of the way that Red Pine has really done his homework in making these translations. In Chapter 4, both translations agree that the Way/Tao is empty. Henrick's translation of the second line is "Yet when you use it, you never need fill it again." Red Pine's is "Those who use it/ Never become full again." The Chinese is 而用之 。又不盈 er yong zhi, you bu ying. "Er" is a conjunction, which can mean "and" or "but", or a particle indicating causality. "Yong" is "to use". "Zhi" is a particle. I don't see much difference in meaning in the first part, though Red Pine interprets it as indicating causality, and so he says "The Tao is so empty / Those who use it"-- the "so" indicates causality. Both translators add a subject. For Red Pine "those", for Henrick "you". The second part is rather different, "Never become full again" vs "you never need fill it again". The Chinese: you=again, bu=no, ying=full or filled. The simplest translation is "Never again full". This doesn't make sense in English without a verb: Red Pine chooses "become", though "are" might be less interpretive, though neither changes the meaning much. Henrick adds a subject again "you", and he adds "need", while changing the adjective "full" to the verb "fill", then for good measure he adds an "it". I'm sure he has his reasons, but on the surface it sure seems like more interpretation to me. Not only is it more interpretive, but it doesn't make any sense. If the Way is empty, then how is that after one has used it, one does not need to fill it again? When was it filled in the first place, such that it would need to be filled again? I'm not understanding that, but maybe you can do better. The bare bones of my point, however, is that in Laotzu's Taoteching, there is a level of Tao that is equated with things, and Tao is also stated to be empty, hence things are empty. It might be worth reconsidering your understanding of the Taoteching, though I think that you would rather abandon it than change your views. The emptiness of things does not change their very real appearances, it just opens a world of possibilities.

They need not enter, since they are an aspect of it. If your account is true and the only real is the Unmanifest, then by what means is there an appearance? If you say delusion of divided light, then where does that come from? If you say it doesn't exist, then how are we talking about it? Yes. Appearances happen. Your confusion is that you see balance of opposites as dissolution. Balance of opposites in life is the condition for endless manifestation, as in the edges between infinite and finite portions of the mandlebrot set. Dissolution is the result of separation, as in the separation of Yin and Yang. This is the result of imbalance. The Yang becomes too powerful and it abandons Yin and flies up, or else the Yin becomes too powerful and it kicks out Yang and sinks down. You can also just see it as the separation of elements. All of this is relative. The idea of the Unconditional is thought (ego) seeking a permanent state. I watched it the first time you linked to it in another thread. I enjoyed seeing it. Learned some new stuff. I do not see what your history with fractals has to do with what we are discussing. My history is rather shallow and not particularly long (except that I was first exposed over twenty years ago, but that isn't worth much, since i didn't have much involvement with them during that time). If you feel that the way that I am using them as analogies is flawed, please share how. This is one viewpoint. Is there quantum physics without humans? Or without a sentient being? Stillness, the Unborn and unconditioned Awareness cannot be observed. Senses, or experience, is necessary to give the context by which it may be gnown. Or else please give an example of an instance in which this gnowing has occurred without experience. There is always experience, before, during and after any conscious arising of gnowing. There is gnowing before it consciously arises, but it is inseprable from experience, even though it is itself not an experience. Which arose from the context of divided light and the skandhas which crystalize from it, which did not prevent the spontaneous surrender or that which it revealed. Do you believe that there is no manifestation if we see through the self delusion within the five skandhas? If there is manifestation, then how does it hinder a recognition of Wholeness? Hiding skills is a separate issue that I do not want to get into. The point that was being made was that he was suggesting one not try to make one side of duality supreme (by taking from the short to give to the long), as most everyone seems to want to do, but that there should be a coming together. When one finds the long, one brings it to the world (the short in this case). Thus he does not advocate abandoning the world, by dismissing it as illusion, though I think that he definitely had the perception that causes people to say that the world is an illusion. It doesn't really matter what duality you choose to favor one side of. All such favoring is more of the same and very common, even if it takes on "spiritual" hues. The version that you seem to have chosen is Undivided Light vs divided light. Absolute vs relative. You are saying, the only thing worthwhile is the absolute; the only thing that exists is the absolute. I am saying the absolute is worthwhile, but it is not really all that absolute, and trying to ignore the relative in favor of only the absolute is just more crazy making in different clothing. If you define Undivided Light as separate from appearances, then you have set up a duality. Undivided Light is as crossing the human-centric delusion of the speed of light,....where time ceases and space dissolves to nothing. What do you mean by "is as crossing"? Does this mean "can be roughly cognized in the human-centric notion of the speed of light?" I get the time ceasing and space dissolving into nothing thing. Time and space are both thoughts, or the result of thoughts. What is revealed in their absence is in no way separate from the thoughts that give rise to the perception of time and space. What is essential about what is revealed in their absence can be just as clear when they are present as when they are absent.

Ok, please read Chapter 21 in light of Chapter 4 (read chapter 4 first). Please pay particular attention to the first line of Chapter 4, and remember that in Chinese, "The Tao as a thing" can just as easily read "The Tao as things". Still just the spaces between things?

You may pop into realization of wholeness by denying Yin and accepting Yang, or vice versa, but this is only because within both Yin and Yang is the Whole. You do not succeed in escaping either Yin or Yang, but eventually truly fail, and cannot escape admitting the inescapability of Wholeness. You might then call this Wholeness "True Yang" or "True Yin", but this would only be an arbitrary word choice and not reflect an actual state. There is a point of view in which nothing ever happened, but this is only one side of a duality, the other side being that there is only things happening. The point of view in which nothing ever happened can be thought of as a fulcrum, but inherent within this fulcrum is the happening. So for your analogy to be correct, the fulcrum would need to be within the see-saw and the see-saw would need to be within the fulcrum. The Unconditional depends on conditions for context, or else we could not know it as Unconditional. Conditions are implied by the Unconditional and the Unconditional is implied by conditions. They cannot be separated, and determinations of within and without don't actually apply, since there is no separation by means of which one could say that one is within the other. To say they are within each other is to speak of their interpenetration-- inseparability. Turns out I was wrong about what the colors represent in the Mandlebrot set. The black represents starting values, or locations, that remain bounded, or finite, as they are continually fed back into the equation that is used to determine the colors of the set. The colors represent different speeds at which given starting values escape to infinity as they are continually fed back into the equation. I actually like that arrangement a little bit more, with different grades of approaching infinity on the outside, but it still really boils down to the same thing, an interaction between the infinite and the finite, or the bound and the unbound, or Yin and Yang, if you will. (For anyone who isn't familiar with the Mandlebrot set. The title of the video is not meant to be a dig, Vmarco, just happens to be the best short clip I could find ) The infinite is an implication of zero (a/0=infinity, where a=any non-zero number. To be simple, 1/0=infinity.) I believe elsewhere you have equated zero with Undivided Light, which you call the fulcrum. You say that this fulcrum cannot be found anywhere in the set, but is only suggested, such as when the set "repeats" itself. The set only "repeats" itself at the borders of the finite and the infinite, where they meet and mingle. Time can be thought of as an experience of the finite, and eternity can be thought of as an experience or "gnowing" of that which gives rise to the infinite (i.e. zero). Zero implies the infinite, and the infinite implies the finite, so there can be no experience, or "gnowing" without all of the above. By analogy to the Mandlebrot set, one cannot find the fulcrum without either the infinite or the finite, since the infinite gives context to the finite and vice versa, and it is only through their interaction that we might recognize the deeper fulcrum. This gets back to the question that I asked you before, and you did not respond to: If it were not for human-centric appearance, how could you have recognized something non-human-centric? Or, if it were not for time, how could you have recognized eternity? Don't you find it interesting that you happened upon it in a moment of surrender, and not a moment of denying divided light? Apparently the divided light did not obscure it then, since it arose right in the middle of the divided experience. Is that not so? Yes, it is beyond, but it also includes. If it did not include, how could "gnowledge" of the Whole arise during an experience of any of its parts? If it "gnows" on its own, independent of the parts, then how is it that parts appear? If the parts are an appearance within it, then how is it separate from the appearance? To say that they don't exist is only a point of view and makes no sense, since there is something that we are talking about, even if it is only an appearance. The appearance or the concept or the illusion exists, or else we could not talk about it. Existence is the Dao, which cannot be named. But more concretely, with that caveat, existence is the capacity to experience. The dream of life is an aspect of existence. Balance does not dissolve. It unfolds. See the Mandlebrot set example above. It is the extremes that dissolve into fixed meaninglessness, non-life, though not really. Can Undivided Light really be covered? By what? How did it get separate? If you will, please check out this chapter from the Daodejing, for more from Laozi, pertinent to our conversation and efforts: Chapter 77. The eleventh word should be "down", not "sown". Finding the long and giving it to the world is a good analogy for the going and the return, don't you think? Its non-existence is an extreme view, as discussed above. --- After all the points have been made, let me paint a simpler picture. It often happens that we spend the bulk of our lives fixated upon the divided light, and when we relax this fixation (when we surrender, as you said, or when we let go of effort and remain interested in what is) then the Whole rushes into consciousness. The way this often happens is there is a strong shift to the opposite polarity (the Undivided Light) and that dominates experience for a time, and then something more balanced arises, something more in keeping in with the Whole, from and in which it can express itself quite freely. A very common mistake is to assume that the opposite polarity is where truth is, and what we had seen before was untruth. We then try to shift our experience to this opposite polarity. This can be useful, if we are not too forceful, but only shift our attention to that which we had been ignoring. It helps us to include more of the Whole. But what usually happens (which isn't really wrong) is that we end up ignoring the Whole just as much as before when we try to fixate on the opposite pole of a duality. And then where did our surrender go? And where did the whole go? And where did this struggle come from?