Matter or consciousness?

[3bob]

Btw MH,

 

That must be a heck of big brain the Tao has tucked away somewhere?

[Apech]

[Marblehead]

Btw MH,

 

That must be a heck of big brain the Tao has tucked away somewhere?

 

You mean that 'universal consciousness' one?

 

You know I don't buy into that.

 

The laws of physics rule. An apple has no option but to fall to the ground (or on someone's head).

 

(No free will for the apple, sorry.)

[Marblehead]

Careful with that pet rock .. it has feelings you know.

 

Well, water does have something going for itself. As far as we know there would be no life on this planet without it.

[Apech]

Well, water does have something going for itself. As far as we know there would be no life on this planet without it.

 

I know we have done this before but I am going to ask anyway. If the objective world comprises insensate material (like rocks) then were and when does consciousness arise? And I mean sentience and not human consciousness. How can something that is not sentient become sentient ... explain this with the laws of physics ... its genuine question not rhetorical ....

[3bob]

You mean that 'universal consciousness' one?

 

You know I don't buy into that.

 

The laws of physics rule. An apple has no option but to fall to the ground (or on someone's head).

 

(No free will for the apple, sorry.)

 

3bob: "Dear MH, are you saying the dear trees are not consious (to whatever degree possible for a tree)"

 

MH: "Okay. I admit defeat on that one. Hehehe. A tree is a living thing and it contains the life energy of Chi.

 

How about I use the rocks that slide around in that one area in Death Valley? They move but yet I suggest they have no consciousness because they are not living things.

 

3bob: If Tao is not 'universal' and conscious (in ways beyond human circumscription) and thus can be nailed down by intellect then game over.

[Marblehead]

 

3bob: If Tao is not 'universal' and conscious (in ways beyond human circumscription) and thus can be nailed down by intellect then game over.

 

I understand why you made that statement but I think you are trying to simplify things too much here.

 

All we can know is the manifest. That is less than 5% of the totality of Tao. Everything else is guesswork. Yes, science is trying to understand what they call dark energy and dark matter. No harm in trying. If it is ever proven that dark matter and dark energy exist there will still be the question: "Why?"

 

 

The game is never over because the end of one thing is the beginning of another. The cycles are likely infinate. We can never catch up. All we can do is try to understand what was.

[Birch]

Careful with that pet rock .. it has feelings you know.

 

 

Thanks Apech. Nice to see an actual word for my current affliction of perspective and that there's a philosophy for everything:-)

 

How's about 'entropy' as a throw in :-) ?

[Apech]

Thanks Apech. Nice to see an actual word for my current affliction of perspective and that there's a philosophy for everything:-)

 

How's about 'entropy' as a throw in :-) ?

 

Entropy is the degree of disorder in a system - which tends to increase over time unless energy is put in to give structure. Thus the earth because of the input of the sun's light/heat is in a reverse entropy phase ... this energy is captured by plants and put into the chemical structure of their metabolisms ... animals eat the the plants and so on ... feeding energy up the food chain to allow more and more complex structures to be formed (e.g. human brain). You could even argue that rocks on being subject to heat and cold ... causing exfoliation etc. form the basis for soil ... feeding the bacteria which feed the plants also ... so your pet rock may one day be sacrificed as part of this great enterprise.

 

PS.. I still want to hear from the materialists ... where they say sentience/consciousness comes from ...

[Marblehead]

PS.. I still want to hear from the materialists ... where they say sentience/consciousness comes from ...

 

That's not a fair request. Even the masters of the field are up in arms arguing with each other as to what it is and where it comes from.

[Birch]

I'll go ask the rock :-)

 

Edit: rock said I'm a young fool who knows nothing and it was a stupid question (me, not the rock).

Edited November 14, 2011 by -K-

[3bob]

Entropy is the degree of disorder in a system - which tends to increase over time unless energy is put in to give structure. Thus the earth because of the input of the sun's light/heat is in a reverse entropy phase ... this energy is captured by plants and put into the chemical structure of their metabolisms ... animals eat the the plants and so on ... feeding energy up the food chain to allow more and more complex structures to be formed (e.g. human brain). You could even argue that rocks on being subject to heat and cold ... causing exfoliation etc. form the basis for soil ... feeding the bacteria which feed the plants also ... so your pet rock may one day be sacrificed as part of this great enterprise.

 

PS.. I still want to hear from the materialists ... where they say sentience/consciousness comes from ...

 

methinks the white cat is barking up the right tree...

[Apech]

That's not a fair request. Even the masters of the field are up in arms arguing with each other as to what it is and where it comes from.

 

That's right keep dodging my bullets ... metaphorically ...

 

I'll go ask the rock :-)

 

Edit: rock said I'm a young fool who knows nothing and it was a stupid question (me, not the rock).

 

Is it a sage rock?

 

methinks the white cat is barking up the right tree...

 

This cat is barking all right ...

[dwai]

Ah OK I was just wandering becouse your friend asked you the same question and you started to explain about Rishis going to samadhi .

 

I don't like advertising this much. It's better for people to experience and make their own decisions. Spiritual practice should not be advertised like any material object up for sale...it is an internal process to even start on a path, and there are many enfolded circumstances that aren't obvious that facilitate an environment for this.

 

imho, all that can (and should be) done is to point the way and then it's up to the individual (the decision to either embark or not). Too much promise based on dubious (or not) personal attestations can potentially lead to devastating results. One should not aspire to have that kind of karma accrued.

[Birch]

That's right keep dodging my bullets ... metaphorically ...

 

 

 

Is it a sage rock?

 

 

 

This cat is barking all right ...

 

 

Well it seemed like the right thing for it to say so it said it. Nitpicky

Actually, it really was the first thing that popped into mind when I tuned into it. So whether that's to do with the actual sagacity of the rock or whether I'm attributing such to it isn't all that obvious IMO.

 

What would make it more plausible that I'm "attributing" (sorry for bad grammar) would be if you took an entirely materialist view, what would make it less plausible would be if you took a less materialist view. So depending on the prevailing view, ah well. Reality must be in there somewhere and the more you argue from a view IMO/IME the less likely you are to get anywhere else (given the view is where you already are.)

[doc benway]

That's not a fair request. Even the masters of the field are up in arms arguing with each other as to what it is and where it comes from.

What do you mean not fair?

You don't know what it is but you know that it couldn't possibly be what underlies it all...

In fact, whatever underlies it all will certainly be beyond anything we can "know"

[dwai]

One cannot "know" without having consciousness. And true, if one were not conscious nothing would matter.

 

I do disagree with your second paragraph. I think it is important to know that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that our solar system is 4.5 billion years old and that what is called man, in whatever form, has been here for about 4 million years.

 

Therefore it can be said that "we" sentient beings are not the center of the universe and its existence does not depend on us. We just happen to be the most evolved species at the moment. Wasn't too long ago it was the dinosaurs.

 

And yes, that a road exists outside my driveway is important to me. Now true, the road wouldn't matter if there were no one to drive or walk the road. Kinda' like that program on TV, "Life Without People". Yes, life would go on. And everything we have done would be destroyed. And no, that wouldn't matter either.

 

In fact, after I die I am sure that nothing will matter to me anymore. I will not even be for anything to matter. But there will be people still here after I die. I am sure things will matter to them.

 

Have I said anything? I don't know.

 

Human sentience is just an aspect of sentience. Without sentience, not necessarily human sentience, there would be no knowledge. So a lifeless piece of rock floating in space may or may not exist, but without a sentience being aware of it, its existence will be unknown, in fact unknowable.

[dwai]

This koan isn't meant to disprove that things exist or don't exist when you cease to view them, but rather that you can only know what you experience yourself and that everything that you view is derived from your own experience. It doesn't necessarily infer that a tree only exists so long as you are their to view it, because in fact the tree can exist if I was there to view it, unless of course you're saying I don't exist when you do not view me.

 

Now if what you're saying is true, then it would be logical to assume that since things only exist so long as we perceive them, then there is no reason why we can't alter our perception of things and thus change their actual shape and appearance, yet if those shapes and appearances are static and do not change, then it seems to be logical to assume that they do exist, or at the very least, if we use the quantum consciousness model, they exist so long as something conscious views it, rather than just your own individual consciousness.

 

Just my point of view.

 

Aaron

Exactly...you articulated what i meant

[Apech]

Human sentience is just an aspect of sentience. Without sentience, not necessarily human sentience, there would be no knowledge. So a lifeless piece of rock floating in space may or may not exist, but without a sentience being aware of it, its existence will be unknown, in fact unknowable.

 

K's pet rock has an astronaut cousin!

[dwai]

What a conversation! No wonder you had to walk away and talk about something else.

 

 

What about the underlying consciousness you spoke of?

And how do you know that it exists forever ? How do you know?

 

Hi Sun, I think I was abrupt in my explanation of what the logic behind considering Consciousness as being existent forever. So, here's mho of Why underlying consciousness exists forever.

 

 

 

Once the unity of consciousness is established (via meditation), it is clear that everything is connected to everything else (or rather the whole universe is in fact One consciousness). While it is true that different people/groups give different interpretations of this, the fact of the matter is that such an experience does establish the fact that a state of "Non-duality" does exist.

 

If such a Non-duality does exist, how is it possible that such a Consciousness can begin or end?

 

Because the existence of the corporeal being changes at different instances of time and space (ie living things come to life and cease to live at various random instances of space and time), it is therefore logical to surmise that either the state of Non-Duality is a delusional state or the state of Non-Duality is eternal.

 

Experience tells many practitioners that Non-Dual state is not delusion and that it can be reproduced by anyone at anytime with the proper practice of specific techniques (eg meditation). In that case, since Non-Duality is a valid experience, then the Consciousness that is encountered has to have existed forever and will never cease to exist.

 

By stating it as such (as I did), I did run the risk of applying a limitation to it by space and time (or at least by time). But Non-Dual consciousness is atemporal and non-spatial. ie, it is neither bound by space, nor time. So one might argue that the very statement that it is eternal is moot (since it exists outside of space and time), and I personally am amenable to that position (aka The Dao that can be named is not the real Dao or Brahman is silence).

 

I think that more often than not, we revert to applying conditioned labels and descriptions to something that is beyond labels, descriptions and rational comprehension. That is precisely why we find Buddhists positing the theory of Alaya Vijnana (or interconnected streams of consciousness which are an infinite series of point-in-time consciousness' dependently co-rising forever), while Advaitins stating that "That verily is Brahman, an ocean of existence-consciousness-bliss or Sat-Chit-Ananda".

 

 

[Marblehead]

That's right keep dodging my bullets ... metaphorically ...

 

Well, Shucks! There are some things I just don't know and don't even have enough knowledge of to form an opinion. So, yes, sometimes I will dodge your bullets. Hehehe.

[Marblehead]

What do you mean not fair?

You don't know what it is but you know that it couldn't possibly be what underlies it all...

In fact, whatever underlies it all will certainly be beyond anything we can "know"

 

Hehehe. A horse isn't a turtle. Okay, yes, it is easy to state what something is not. It is a little more challenging to state what something is. As soon as we start defining a thing we are in fact limiting that thing.

 

What we can know is limited; what we cannot know is unlimited. Know when to stop!

[Marblehead]

Human sentience is just an aspect of sentience. Without sentience, not necessarily human sentience, there would be no knowledge. So a lifeless piece of rock floating in space may or may not exist, but without a sentience being aware of it, its existence will be unknown, in fact unknowable.

 

Okay. Now you have said it in a manner I can agree with. To know requires the ability of knowing. If there were no knowing nothing would matter.

[Apech]

Well, Shucks! There are some things I just don't know and don't even have enough knowledge of to form an opinion. So, yes, sometimes I will dodge your bullets. Hehehe.

 

Ok here's an easier one ... what is matter?

[Marblehead]

Ok here's an easier one ... what is matter?

 

Hahaha!!!

 

Matter is energy.

 

Continuous cycles; energy to matter and matter to energy, etc. No energy is ever lost. Yea!!!!! Eternity!!!!