Adding to my previous post:

"Death" is the most peaceful experience one can experience while "living". Had it not been so, the body won't be programmed to slip into it every night. Surely more or less we understand biological death. But have we understood...for convenience, let's call it psychological death. Have we even asked such a question. Have we questioned if death and life are co-existent. Maybe two sides of the same coin.

But how can you question, if you lack the backbone needed to question your bias towards this thing you call living. Wherein, like some form of the Stockholm syndrome, you have fallen in love with your limitations, begging, beseeching life, to give you one more ounce of what you call "fun"/pleasure. Therefore to you, death is a terrible thing. A thing of fear and oblivion. So, you aren't really living life....but rather your fear. You are corrupted.

Death is incorruptible.

A "view",

is usually a flowering of..well.. a view. Indicating some sort of understanding of the entire picture. Taking into account all sides of the story. Usually such a view isn't a reaction or a grasping of any one side.

One may start by inquiring what is this thing we call living. As if you have choice, HA. Freakin' mechanical robots. In any case, it seems that's where the inquiry begins.

Mystery can create various effects: from despair to frustration to wondering to interest to thurst for knowledge ... The mystery I mentioned had nothing to do with any of them. It was just a figure of speech. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, i had figured. But it is usually better to ask. It also gives the other a chance to process more.

Well, you did mention it! :grin: It's too late now. You must tell us about it and not just leave us in mystery! — Alkis Piskas

First, i couldn't care less for the "us". I could care about 'you', but that depends.

Does mystery bother you? Or does it move you?

I don't understand what "being a weasel" means because I am not Anglo-Saxon. I don't have a problem in language or comprehension.
If I use sayings in Spanish I guess you would not understand it. Not because you lack of comprehension but you are used to spanish language. — javi2541997

Don't sweat it.

You have said it is better to be careful. But what is the point of starting this OP then?
I have debated with Alkis Piskas and he pointed out that Gnosis and Gnosticism could be two different aspects. Even the original poster, @Bret Bernhoft, said that is related to shamanism.
You call us "weasels" because we jump on one argument to another. But I think this is what is about. To debate each other.
I do not see the effectiveness of being careful of answering if the OP is asking for our opinions (I guess) — javi2541997

Well, if you don't understand what the expression "being a weasel" means then you can Google it. If you don't understand what a collaborative "inquiry" means, you can Google it as well as see some my older posts. And if you don't understand what "healthy Skepticism" means, you can read my previous posts on this very thread.

I can't help you with your language or comprehension issues. You will have to work on it yourself.

But now that you have clarified, clearly your questions need to be directed at op and Alkis. So sort it between yourselves.

What is the clue of this OP then? — javi2541997

Not sure what you are asking.

So it looks like the author wants to play with us and he is reading our posts in the shadows and he is changing depending on our opinions. :chin:
That's what Gnosis is about — javi2541997

No, that's what weasel-ness is about. I doubt anyone here knows what gnosis is about. But yes, a weasel, will not hesitate to make an absolute sounding claim of "what it is about"/ or what it isn't. Maybe it is best to be careful, eh. A healthy skepticism is good for inquiries.

But @Alkis Piskas has correctly noted the possibility of a distinction between Gnosticism and Gnosis. And in interest of letting you folks continue i'm not even going to mention Un-Gnosis.

In the highly unlikely (since i had read all prior posts before posting) event i may be mistaken (or someone else chooses to edit trier posts), yours truly was the first poster to use the word 'gnosis' on this thread. It seems op has taken that word and some of what i have said, to change the title as well as the OP.

I just checked the OP has changed the title and subject. — javi2541997

Right. Weasels jump on any leads given to them. That was one of my original points.

Give me a break. Are you going to produce your offer or not? — Metaphysician Undercover

That's what i thought. So long then.

I'm game. What's this offer to Praxis? — Metaphysician Undercover

Go to my profile and keep scrolling back my post history until you find it.

You're no fun. Every time you think you see a weasel you run and hide. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not really. After i see a weasel, i first slap them a bit. ya know, kind of put them in their place sort of thing. After that i usually go about more pressing business. I mean this is not hard to see, right? Its all over my profile.

But if you want more fun, you know where to find me. The offer made to 'Praxis' is open to anyone who wishes to take me up. He couldn't, but maybe you can? let's have some fun on neutral grounds. Don't let me stop you. Maybe you can learn the many ways weasels squirm, eh. Alright, now run along. Dad has other things to do.

I assume that everyone I converse with here is a person, so "I" is very relevant because a person has personality. And if you are a bot, or in some other way not a person, then "I" in that case, is even more relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok. And i just showed it to you, and others, that you have a weaselly "I". You're welcome, adios.

There are two principal reasons for changing one's position, one is the "weasel" reason, the other the open minded reason. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's what i just said. You don't have to stand on my shoulders. Broaden yours.

Ever think that perhaps you misinterpret the situation around you? You see people all around you changing their positions, and you conclude that they are all weasels, because you have some predisposition to judge them this way. The weasel changes its position, therefore the person who changes position is a weasel. But in reality many of them are just open minded people.

What would cause you to see these people in this way? Is it because that's the reason why you would change your position, you are a weasel? — Metaphysician Undercover

"I" am not relevant. One makes a deduction based on available facts. As to your 'personal' question : i don't change positions. That should be evident from my history here, as you well know. The reason for me not changing positions is like i said before, i don't have one to begin with.

To jump from a topic or a point, to the person, (Or to fixate on someone) is, clearly, a reactive weasely action, not to mention an unhealthy habit. Don't be a weasel.

Why do you think that one who is constantly changing positions, would think that they "have it down"? Wouldn't the person who thinks oneself to "have it down", never change positions? And the one who is always changing positions does so because that person does not assume to "have it down". — Metaphysician Undercover

Good.

The measurement of what you are saying ( a response to what i had said) is determined by the motive behind any 'amendments'. If the amendments are done to upgrade one's weaponry, or to create a patched blanket to weather the assault of debate/regimentation, or to create a mental intellectual crutch etc.....which are the usual reasons why weasels amend.... are usually done to strengthen the image that one has it down. And to project that image outwards.

However, if there is genuine doubt,a healthy skepticism (which means no positions), a desire to know 'what is' the fact, a willingness to 'learn' ( which is not the same as 'accumulation') then yes, the possibility of genuine amendments do arise.

However, considering the rarity of the second possibility, as evidenced by observing what is going on around us (an observation available to all), the likelihood of the second possibility was discarded in light of the common occurrences of the first possibility.

What? — Paine

Duh?

Lame response. — Paine

I suppose, the above, is an original response then.

You cloak yourself in mystery. — Paine

I'm not responsible for your image formations.

I don't know what I am reacting to. — Paine

I' ll take your word for it. You may keep walking now. If you will excuse me, there are more important things that need my attention.

Your hand sweeps broadly against your perceived opponents. You seem to claim a gnosis of your own against all others. — Paine

Donn't be silly. I'm not responsible for your reactions. You have to deal with them.

....... Un-Gnosis......maybe... — skyblack

So, one is skeptical of any fuss (for or against) about Gnosis. After all it is in the un-gnosis there is any possibility. .... and perhaps then it doesn't really matter....

The ego seems to be out of control. The audacity of the egoists to think that their assessment of what is/what isn’t gnosis is accurate, and to think of passing value judgments, with the laughable implication that their assessments matter (or have some kind of value), is mildly interesting in a comical way.

These assessors, thinking they “have it down”, lack the insight, to see, their entire life has been a compromise of integrity, values, ethics: bereft of any standards that a true gnostic will hold themselves to. living an entire life essentially of failures (various kinds) stepped in deceit, lack of love/affection, consideration, violence (all kinds : a life plagued by all kinds of insecurities and failed attempts to mask it…

so these assessors with their many diseases, physical and mental : broken, fragmented, compromised… think they can just put together bits and pieces of collected information from here and there, shifting their positions like weasels, as they glean from others and change their vocabulary, have the audacity to think they “have it down’? lol. And all this is skepticism? Really? Or is all of this conformity to the highest degree? You have confirmed to everything. Your society, to ideologies, to your flag, to religions ( or its opposite), to narratives, to your philosophies, to your world views, to your prejudices and biass, to the apathy of your old age, to your lack of integrity, to your experiences, to your knowledge.

In any case, that’s that.

....... Un-Gnosis......maybe...

The interesting turn here is infantile amnesia - that we cannot remember what it was that happened to us prior to a certain point in our development. — Ennui Elucidator

Perhaps because i'm in a 'good' mood, will concede that this is a very interesting point. However, a very technical one. An investigation into which requires an extremely fine and subtle awareness.

I consciously avoided to touch on this earlier for fear it may take the stream in a different direction. But i appreciate you bringing it up, as this is something i'm experimenting with.

The brain is a wonderful recording instrument. Especially in the first 2 years it is almost, as the expression goes, on steroids. So it has definitely recorded the experience of this 'child-consciousness'. There is no reason why that memory cannot be retrieved. However, :wink: it won't be, naturally, in the form of more "knowledge". Rather, the memory being beyond the frontiers of individuation, may be felt as an absence of a 'self'. In other words, it cannot be bottled.

If one is an expert musician, then he or she may take this to a higher octave, challenge themselves, and say, so whatt?? The recording is still an image, not the thing! :smile:

I.m now going to leave this one alone.

Is one capable of coping with the valley of bewilderment?

This will seem unrelated, but so it goes.

I was driving a little while ago and thinking on the way in which Buddhism imagines suffering to be the core condition of existence in ways that Judaism does not - that to live is to suffer and from the moment we emerge we have desires that we must thereafter seek to satisfy. Completeness, as such, is never our state. The contrast here is merely the impetus to contrary thinking, and so I was reminded of the child's mind as Buddha's mind - that somehow a young child can seem utterly satisfied and contented as if they are without suffering. What is interesting is that this Buddha mind is lost through successive experiences rather than enhanced - that suffering is made manifest not merely by its existence but its perseverance.

If we accept for a moment that the notion of Buddha's mind approaches the non-self, then the child's mind approaches the non-self. This is to say that development from a lump taking succor at a nipple finding the end of want to a child wishing for something it does not have is simultaneously a move towards individuation (these are my hands, this is my stuff, you are not a part of me, your stuff is not my stuff, etc.) and away from non-self. The interesting turn here is infantile amnesia - that we cannot remember what it was that happened to us prior to a certain point in our development. While it is convenient (and perhaps true) for there to be a biological/anatomical explanation for the inability to remember that young, it could very well be that the child's mind as the non-self does not attach to unindividuated memories, i.e. that the self hasn't sufficiently emerged from the non-self to either suffer or to attach experience to itself.

It isn't so much that one must be non-self to be in the world, but the experiencing of the world as non-self does not survive the present (the moment of experience). This comes close to the metaphor of the last bit of awareness being just before sleep and the first moment of awareness being just after - that your body is able to simply exist in the world (with all experiences) and yet be attached to none of them.

I wonder if suffering doesn't actually begin until the non-self ceases to be. Differently, until the moment the illusion reduces the non-self to self, there is no self to suffer. — Ennui Elucidator

Very much related :up:

So the focus has now to shift from whether the self / non-self is real, to, what is the nature of suffering.

Is it possible to reclaim the innocency of the....let's call it the 'child -consciousness' (for convenience) ?

Since the paradise is now lost, and because it is uncharted, how does one find one's way back? Is that it?

To travel from the cloud of knowing to the cloud of unknowing?

Passion is energy — skyblack

Energy is not mine or yous, its is just....well, energy.

Now, if someone asks, is there a self or a non-self that isn't conceptual or an idea?

How would one find out? Naturally that would take a lot of passion, work, and discipline, to find out, wouldn't it? After all we are not talking about cheap theories or merely a half ass curiosity.

When we talk about discipline, clearly we aren't talking about an enforced discipline, but as a loose example, a loving discipline as seen in an athlete training for the Olympics.

skyblack isn't wrong when speaking of the passions (absurdism by any other name), but it is curious that there is a suggestion that proper something driven by passion (an inherently self based thing) will somehow bring the non-self to actualization in a non-still way. Understanding of the non-self as something reserved for not now (i.e. for another "life" or "after-life" or...) has its merit for intellectual consistency (and ball hiding), but it fails to satisfy my pragmatic concerns. If understanding is the ability to do something (perhaps the correct application of a rule), what thing can be done that might demonstrate understanding of the non-self? How can the self ever act in accordance with its non-self essence?

Even as I imagine what you might be thinking, I am not thinking your thoughts. The "disembodied" us finds no fusion. My mind wanders here. I reject it and find no more thoughts than when I started. When I stare at the screen and time passes, your thoughts do not impress themselves upon me. I wait for you and find nothing, but that is not who you (we) are. — Ennui Elucidator

:-)

As has been said many times, the 'non-self' is a conceptual idea, created by the self, as another coping crutch. Having seen the futility of the rest of the crutches ( offered by the arts, the sciences, philosophy, religion, worldly security and so on), , , and how they have miserably failed, the self is now trying to enter the field of the sublime, with the nefarious motive of controlling it and bottling it up for its own present and future use. To **eff the ineffable.

To see the numerous failings and flailings of the self in action, is insight. The motive to look, to investigate, comes from passion. Passion is energy, and just like a breeze, or a beautiful morning, has nothing to so with the Self and is definitely not "self-biased". Though popular narrative, and the change of the meaning of words over time, has conditioned you to believe, on the incorrect narrative.

Your sand castles are all along the circumference, hence they are repeatedly being washed away by the tides of time.

When the circumference is reduced to the center, where everything is tethered to, well....you won't be running around like a dog on a leash along predictable circles.

If you rip the minute and the hour hands of the clock, what time is it right at the center?

f someone else deserves it more if it is just scarce enough. If it is common like water people generally don't question if a person deserve not to go thirsty — TiredThinker

Assuming you are talking about drinking water, water is common? You should talk to people from countries where water is severely commodified. The entire world is heading in that direction.....where people without money to buy water will have to ration it. Water is "common"? Except without water there would be no life?

What does it mean to deserve something? — TiredThinker

You were gifted water for free. That's plenty deserving. One questions if we are deserving of it at all.

Money, happiness, life, praise? — TiredThinker

Insignificant, in contrast to water.

I see, like the Delphic Oracle once warned her clients - the citizens of Delphi - temet nosce (know thyself). — Agent Smith

Yet, if you consider the silliness of the people listening to said oracle, isn't it funny? They are listening to an outside source when you are the book you want to read? I suppose it has to do something with an absence of integrity, and fortitude. We are not going to start psychoanalyzing this your way and sound ridiculous, in our worship of quack/codpsychology in support of our shortcomings. That is the same sh**, right?

That out of the way, as you so rightly pointed out, language is just a tool and how good/bad it is as one reflects upon its creator's (us) ingenuinity/stupidity. Let's stop shifting the blame and own up to our own (silly) follies, oui? — Agent Smith

Agreed. It will sound much more authentic and sincere if i will take the liberty of changing your last sentience to be read as - "i will stop shifting the blame and own up to my own (silly) follies, oui?". Doesn't it sound better? Now the measure of this insight is obviously going to show in conduct, both in public and in private. Now that will remain to be seen.

Hats off to you sir/ma'am, as the case may be! — Agent Smith

What do ya say, shall we call it a day now that the point is clear and school is over? But see, got ya to speak, instead of your usual emoji. Ciao

One shouldn't assume the flaws in language imply imperfections in reality. That would be, to my reckoning, sawing off the very branch one sits on and lectures the world. We're, in a sense, projecting our own shortcomings onto the world. — Agent Smith

On the contrary. It was said , the flaws are in the very real imperfections in oneself, Language is doing what it is supposed to do. Language is a trivial matter, simply a tool. Just one link in the chain.

So, It is when one loses sight of these real imperfections within oneself, tires to conceal one's own shortcomings by the cunning use of language (weaving supporting philosophies), or any/all tools available in said edifice : always on the defense of one's fragile house. then it may serve well to do a reality check, as suggested in previous post. That being said,take it easy.

Not to rain on anyone's parade.......definitely not on birds of the same feather (or, feathers of the same bird), or on the admirer and the admired, no ruffling of feathers is intended, however the following:

Like how crime is the price of capitalism.

Like how homphobia is the price of Christianity/Islam.

These are what I've dubbed The Siamese Twin Conundrum: Keep one, keep both; Lose one, lose both! — Agent Smith

will only hold true, as it indeed does, when the undefinable experience which we call life, is attempted to be boxed and organized into words, language, concepts, theses, popular/unpopular narratives, and then into organizations. These organizations (most kinds, if not all), as can be seen, are in the business of serving capitalistic motives/masters.

But when the above is observed to be true, as it is (so simple a caveman/woman can see it), and one strikes at the foundation of the word (or at the root of human thought- either one will do) then the entire house of cards will fall. But that's dangerous for the person as well as for "society". The price of alone-ness, and/or poverty (of all kinds) may be too much to handle. Therefore one welcomes the compromises, the hypocrisy, the double standards, and the rather comedic appeals to righteousness (several on this thread) when it suits one's purpose.

Otherwise, a lover of wisdom, if there is one, will be quite content, in understating/experincing the undefinable behind the word, and in understanding the word is not the thing : therefore rejecting the entire edifice, can easily stay with "one", (instead of "both")

@Jamal@Wayfarer

:ok:

:up:

I heard it through the grapevine how the toothless "make up" imaginary meat to chew on. I suppose it is like having imaginary friends eh

But an image is still an image...It is not the thing!

An image or a symbol is quite different from a belief : it implies neither belief nor disbelief, it is of another, and certainly higher, more disinterested order.

Maybe some arses are liked more than others. Or perhaps they are strategically useful, and therefore pampered and encouraged, it seems.

In any case who knows what goes on behind closed doors and nor is it that important. Just happened to see this and decided to check on the well being of the central committee members, and say hello so to speak. Bye

Ah, some of them averaging 100's of posts, it seems.

The reason i ask is because of this member , https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/720/deletedmemberzc

evidently an ole timer, and not a word was spoken about it by anyone. From multiple posts everyday, this fella suddenly stopped. Naturally one will wonder. Thanks for the responses.