It's quite simple, an absence of anything, everything. There are no bananas or thingamajig, it's quite simple. In fact it couldn't be simpler.
— Punshhh

Don't you see though that they are one and the same thing? You don't KNOW what an absence of anything is because you can't ever experience it. It is simple because you just aren't looking at it deeply enough.

Yes, I know this distinction, I know that we as limited beings can't conceive of the reality of no existence. But we are discussing intellectualisation of the life we find ourselves in. So just as we can come up with the idea of 1+1 =2, or infinity, we can come up with the idea of nonexistence.

I bring it up though, because it might well be the case following death, so it is potentially an option for action in life, just take an overdose and you're there, in a state of absolute nonexistence, the purpose is then clear, there is none.

I'm very happy for you, that you are exploring these ways of breaking the rigid conditioned thinking patterns we are given by society. At some point it will feel the right time to start building your own narrative, your own unique perspective and self.

I think it's important to break out of the linear narrative etc.. to quest, as I used to say. But once free of it I find that one is required to focus back on the empirical world again to find ones path And to look to how ourselves as a witness is present or enthralled in this world.

I think its time to listen to some Leonard Cohen.

https://youtu.be/nZqq-zAkGy4

Perhaps if one views the physical body as a vehicle for the self. A vehicle whereby the self does some self-ing. I would personally add another tier of vehicle, the vehicle of the soul, wereby something like being does some being-self. With memories in both tiers,

In the physical vehicle, memories of experience and living in the physical world. In the soul vehicle, memories of soul business.

I thought the soul entered at the quickening.

"Please note this is not a pessimistic viewpoint but a realistic one. I am not saying the glass is half empty but saying what does it matter at all?"

This about finding purpose, nothing to do with depression.

Ahh, so your question is about purpose. Then what is all that stuff about meaning, or why you should carry on with living etc? That is all about what we are doing in this world we find ourselves in, which includes meaning, but nothing to do with any purposes in existence. It's true that people have purpose in their lives, but that is due to them having agency, hence purposes in action, reasons for action.

Any purposes in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in are a different issue and can only be coherent in reference to any agency who, or which, is responsible for its existence.

So there are two seperate purposes here;

The purposes of human agents.
The purpose of agents responsible for the existence of the existence we find ourselves in.


So it seems that you are asking about the purpose of life, well this is in the first category, the purposes of human agents. Well there are many answers to this, but none of them answer anything about the second category. That is a category error.

I have given purpose a lot of thought and have concluded that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere. Is that not a worthy purpose?

What the hell does that even mean?

How could I even guage or calculate with approximation if it would be more appealing if I have no idea what it is like?

That is like asking which pocket you want to choose from, in the right... would you like this plastic banana that is electrified at 250v? or in the left... would you like this something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig.

It's quite simple, an absence of anything, everything. There are no bananas or thingamajig, it's quite simple. In fact it couldn't be simpler.

Does absolute none existence seem more appealing to you?

Because if you're not alive, this is the alternative. If you're alive, you have at least two choices, either to make the best of it, or to languish in one of various depressive states.

So you've got three choices;
Absolute none existence.
A depressive, or aimless opt out( while continuing to live).
Making the best of it.

Which do you prefer?

But the point that I want to make, is that the Pythagorean theorem can only by known by a mind. So it's not mind-dependent, in the sense of being reliant or this or that mind, but in the sense of only being perceptible by a mind. So, what is, includes or implies a mind capable of grasping the truth! But that is what had been bracketed out of the scientific method by Galileo and his successors; this is where the idea of 'mind-independent' came from. So I think Einstein's conception of realism is at fault. Essentially, it doesn't want to recognize the limitations of science; saying that science sees 'things as they truly are' is a conceit.

Nice summary. I never understood all the confusion around CI, surely it's obvious that what will be observed is a facet determined by the capacities of the instrument being used to do the observing. The fact that those facets appear inconsistent is only due to it being a random snapshot of the facets.

To jump from there to a waveform collapse etc etc is assumption upon assumption while wearing blinkers. None of it follows.

Yes, it might also be implanted like a seed, which develops and grows through "right action".

I guess it depends on how you define "normal state of consciousness". Is the normal state of consciousness a state of skepticism or openness. The heightened state you allude to may just come to a person, I believe, without them having previously cultivated intuition and faith; but it is more likely to come to someone who has cultivated those things.

Yes if it's cultivated perhaps. What I am referring to is not a heightened state, although that might accompany it. Rather it is a transformation in the consciousness of the witness. This in my experience involves a change, development, or journey in one's intellectual state, this probably involves a realisation of something not previously thought to be possible, again, something is revealed. So for example in the case of the Buddha this transformation revealed the reality of a transcendent state and realm, by the removal of a veil in his being. The removal of an impediment, so rather than seeing only the impediment, the Buddha saw the true reality.

If God appeared as a human person (as He is supposed to have done 2000 years ago) then presumably some would believe on the basis of intuition, others might experience a profoundly convincing vision and many would be skeptical and even disbelieve. Two thousand years ago, if undoubtable miracles were witnessed, many might have judged it to be case of witchcraft or possession by demons. Ironically a performance of genuine miracles would probably be far more convincing today in our scientifically skeptical age.

Yes, although there were some witnesses who experienced a revelation as I described it above, principally the disciples, along with some of the people who were healed. Regarding miracles, yes they might be more convincing today, but what would they be convinced of I wonder. Most people would suspect, I expect that the miracle is some kind of extraterrestrial technology and that God is some kind of alien. So we are confronted with regression, maybe it isn't God, just a more advanced being, and God is still hidden, but maybe it is a far more advanced being than that, with a far more convincing miracle, but maybe God is still hidden and this is an imposter and so on.

I suppose what I am homing in on is that in a person there is a process in the mind, which happens when a belief is formed. Resulting in a held belief, a conviction of the truth of something. It is a psychological process resulting in a persistent or deeply held conviction in someone's mind. This might also be accompanied by a process in which information(which may seem fantastical) can be implanted in the mind which is persistently or deeply known, or understood.

So the notional advanced being coming along and telling us the truth of reality, might just simply manipulate these capacities in us, transfer the information, or conviction and we would be in possession of the truth. There are many testimonies of such events in religious material.

And this might be what happened to Colin, the OP.

Yes, it does come down to intuition and faith to a large degree, I think. And yes miracles, or signs would be more convincing. As I see it while the receiver or witness of the information is in a normal day to day state of consciousness, there would not be conviction in what was being conveyed, there might be some intellectual understanding, or flash of insight. But this is in contrast to what is understood in revelation of the witness being in some way, transported, or transformed by the experience, such that there is no doubt of the truth, or reality of was is witnessed.

I can illustrate the problems around this with a thought experiment. Say God appeared to humanity in person, there would be a problem of identification, that it is God, wheather the experience of the witnesses is sufficient that they believe it themselves, such that there is no doubt. If someone did doubt it, how would the purported God, prove, or convince the witness? Etc... The God, might well be an imposter etc.

Yes, I agree, while humanity remains in isolation. However if someone who knew the nature of reality came along and told us, I don't see any impediment to our understanding it and communicating it discursively. Although we might well doubt what we were told, determining whether we are being told the truth, may require demonstration, rather than information.

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.

It "makes sense" because "someone" is, by definition, a creature developed to survive over time. Creatures or things which aren't developed to survive, or persist over time, have already ceased to exist, long ago. This is a world of the persistent. Creatures persist longer when they develop behavioural strategies derived from analysis of experiences.

It looks as though you are also asking something along the lines of Karma, or being, independent of a creatures current instantiation of behaviour. Well like some of the other posters I don't see how we can address it in any real sense apart from our common conditioned knowledge and understanding. This is not to say there aren't other ways of knowing, but rather that all indications are, around us, that there is none. So karma (or its equivalent) and reincarnation (or its equivalent) are human ideas and sentiments present in the face of clear evidence(on the surface at least) to the contrary.

Interesting, actually I thought I was replying to mongrel, but I'll carry on with what I was thinking anyway. Yes it's a distortion of spacetime. I have come across the idea in some science literature before but I can't find it now. It was described as an ooze and the way I see it is if you imagine at the point of the Big Bang, at the initial stage of expansion space and time might have been distorted and contorted with extreme curvature. So that there is extension and physical activity, but not in an external manifold of time as we understand it as spacetime. But within many small isolated bubbles, incorporating their own space and time and self perpetuating, extruding, or oozing. As I am writing this, I am thinking of quantum foam, which seems to have equivalence.

So the idea is that there might be a material that can exude its own time and space independent of any other manifold of spacetime.

Logically, God cannot exist if they are Real. To exist is to be an illusion, only a finite state. It would take away what makes God God.

Yes, I know the rationale, I just don't buy it. Logic is a human invention. It works in reference to the world and the known and the known unknown, but not in reference to beyond the world and the unknown unknown. We just can't presume to say anything about that.

For us to suggest God exists is like arguing the transcendent is worldly. The point of God is they are the infinte beyond the finite world. For God to exist, to be of the finite flux, is to reduce God to man. God becomes not the Real beyond the world, but just another material actor.

Yes, I understand your point and it is rational, but I have considered this at a deeper level of complexity. Namely, one can consider god to be outside the world, but also in it in the being of the beings in the world, imminent, the transcendence of being and the transcendence outside the world.So is both outside the world and inside the world.

I would also say the "infinite" is also a human invention, and can not be applied to the beyond the world, or the unknown unknown. So this so called infinite transcendence, might not be infinite at all, just eternal( relatively transcendent). I don't see why eternity cannot be in the world, even if infinity cannot.

Yes I agree with your reading of Augustine and Aristotle. I have a way of thinking of time which might add another twist. It's around the idea of an ooze, so if you imagine there is something, quite simple going on somewhere where there is no timespace bubble. It is a self perpetuating changing thing, which provides its own time and space within itself, perhaps contorted dimensions, like the surface of a lava flow.

But why do you relegate God, or it's equivalent(which we can't conceive) to beyond existence? We can't make this presumption.

No, it happened. I wasn't expecting you to believe me though.

Yes, you are lifted out of your normal self and hosted by another being, thus being as you say gifted other capacities.

That's the exact problem

Yes, I agree, well apart from the assumption that god does not exist, for these reasons. We cannot say this, we just don't know. Also yes the atheists may be right, while naive.

Anyway, this is irrelevant if one is considering what actually exists, rather than what we can say exists, or conceive of as existing. What actually exists and what form it takes may be entirely unknown to us, or inconceivable to us. Thus, we cannot determine what difference God makes, or not, from our limited position. It doesn't follow that because we can't find a difference, that it is not there.

I understand your point, but what I am suggesting that it I didn't experience the content of the revelation, but witnessed it(which was bolded). I know this doesn't make sense either. But what I am suggesting here is that my mind (and body) was temporarily enabled by the mind of the other being to increase its capacity and enable it to witness what it can't witness on its own. Actually one could say that I did experience what the being experienced by being a part of him. This is why it is called revelation, because something inaccessible is revealed, through this process.

I think that this can be criticized in the same way willow criticized the notion of "supernatural explanation". The same way the supernatural explanation is, in fact, always a natural explanation, albeit a different (weird, irregular, less common) one, the same way the content of your experience was not beyond human conception or unrelated to your senses. It could be a form of synesthesia or something like that. At any rate, I agree that such experiences can be utterly transformative.

Yes I agree the Willow's point about the supernatural. The grey area here is in the word"natural", or nature. Nature can be a catch all phrase for the supernatural, the empirical and the scientifically understood and an infinity of the unknown. So it should be specified how it is being used. Also the divine, or spiritual in all its glory need not be supernatural, it's just nature.

I don't think you covered the point I made about the transformative nature of epiphany, or perhaps I should say revelation here. My point is that the experience includes phenomena beyond the capacity, and conception of the human mind and body, it is an intervention from something else(a superior mind and body), so cannot be generated by the body or mind, even though such effects may appear to be replicated through the use of hallucinogenic substances, or in mental disorder.

Let me explain, in the experience I had which I discribed in which I transcended time. This is not the only thing that happened. In the vision, I was lifted up by a being who I interpreted as the Christ. This is the key to my point. I was lifted up in reality(not my physical body, it was in a dream), metaphorically, subjectively. So was taken out of my/this world and hosted by this being, in his/her world, this world, or phenomenological reality was transcendent in time and space. So I was a witness to a greater, transcendent, but also orthogonal reality for the duration of the hosting in the world of this other being.

So what this illustrates is;
I experienced something beyond what my body and mind is equipped to experience.

I was a witness to something which I could not conceive of, or conceptualise with my intellectual mind.

I had a vivid experience of being lifted out of this world in the presence of a being.

I experienced the presence and phenomenological world of this being.

Materialistic naturalistic explanations of what happened are inadequate to explain this, or to consider it as evidence, because, it can't be understood external to the experience itself.


Yes, Robbie Basho was a deeply spiritual artist. For me his music is transcendent similarly to my experience of this being I mention above. He has channeled, or revealed a deeper sense of being in this piece of music.

(I will link it again, if anyone else want to hear it, http://youtu.be/83GgOhBhxqI)

I like the other piece you linked to, this kind of country music is new to me, an exiting new direction to explore.

Thanks, it's seems it was adopted by early Americans(U.S. citizens(God this is a minefied)). I always thought it was a Yorkshire dialect word, because my gran used it a lot, and she barely travelled outside the county of Yorkshire, well except when she went to Bognor Regis.

Maybe, the word travelled back over the pond, because folk over here thought it was one of their words.

comeuppance

I was shocked to see you use this word. Are you from that part of the world, or did you know someone from those parts?


(I come from there and even I would never use that phrase)

Postmodernism alert!

Is that like abstract expressionism?

Is it like we're discussing a Jackson Pollock?


How deep does the humour run in the dribbles of paint on canvas?

He was playing the crowd.

So, it seems to me that it's not only that religious experiences are not epistemically on the same level as other regular experiences, but there's also a gradation of testability among the religious experiences themselves

Quite, there is no way to establish the presence of God even when you are the one experiencing the epiphany. However having experienced epiphany of various kinds myself, it is clear to me that some such experiences are utterly transformative, transformative to an unnatural degree(I do realise that there can be the same transformation in the development of mental illness). Also the nature, or content of the message can be considered. For example in the case of St Francis, the nature of the epiphany resulted in Christ like behaviour (following the epiphany) and the gift of communion with animals. The content can often contain information which is beyond human conception. An example of this is an experience I have had of a transcendence of time, time becoming viewed like a landscape, in which as I turned to look, I was looking into the past, or future. Such phenomena imply the existence in some unknown way of differing mental and experiential states, to what are provided in the world of the senses.

Thanks for your appreciation of Robbie Basho, I came across his music many years ago, through a chance and fortuitous event.

Quite, trickle down is a myth. The rich get richer and pull up the ladder behind them.

As a nominalist, I don't believe that an identical brain state in someone else, or in the same person at a different time, is possible.

But the OP is asking about whether someone is alive, brain states are besides the point. The point is in reference to the state of being alive. I agree that a person does not have an identical brain state as one they had in the past(although in an infinite universe, it is inevitable that it would happen somewhere else). But they do have life, they are alive as they were in the past. So the OP is asking about either being alive, or not being alive, brain states are irrelevant to this.


What about uploading someone's mind into a computer, or into a replicant, surely provided the same computation that is going on in the nervous system, is going on, the person would remain alive?

So if an identical brain state, of someone who is alive, developed somewhere else in the universe, or at a different time. That same person would experience that brain state, wherever it is, like a continuity of consciousness?

My perception is that it's a fight back against the effects of globalisation. I don't know what he will do about that, protectionism perhaps.

Yes I found that it is better to work with aporia, rather than on them, by changes in one's perspective. Or to take a metaphorical microscope to it, as an explorer rather than a scientist. To approach from many different angles, to become acquainted, to use it as stepping stone into the self. I agree about the issues with those philosophical splits, I find them tedious. Although they might be a feature of forums as a means to generate discussion. Personally, I come to the table with a library of ideas I have collected, none are right, or wrong and all are ready to be improved.

Looking to the OP, my first thoughts are that one's identity is on two levels, the subjective identity and the objective self. I think that the OP is referring to the objective self, but doesn't make this distinction, or recognise it and probably only thinks about it in the subjective sense.

Also, as I take an interest in mysticism, my approach is largely apophatic.

Yes, well I view this world of the soul as in this world, such that this world is all there is(locally at least), as it is the world of the soul which is this world, with the physical world as a crust, or husk on the surface, including all its spatiotemporal states and phenomena. For example I consider light to be a pale reflection of the light of the soul, which is in a sense a transcendent(multidimensional) emanation.

But I have spent a fair amount of time considering time as discontinuous. It appears to me that the consequences are that All arises from nothing and returns to nothing. Why exactly the whole thing appears to repeat over and over... I don't know. Maybe it's just how our consciousness is wired.

I do largely agree, but it occurs to me that I tend to think of our world as an artificial construct (including spacetime, matter etc) and reality is on another level, like a world of the soul, perhaps in an eternity, or a manifest world, more real than this world.

This may allow me to consider that the progression of moments and the emergence and return to nothing are artificial perspectives caused by our finding ourselves in this artificial world and experiencing only that appearance.

Peace man, nice poetry.

Some people make the effort and enjoy lengthier discussions. Even try to reach out to the understanding of others, to exchange ideas. I have been looking forward to a discussion of the OP, but I have found this topic intractable in the past for the reasons I gave in my last response to you. I used to post on a forum where threads would go on for thousands of posts and last for years. I miss those days, threads seem to burn out to soon around here.

That's what I thought when I came across it. Someone who knows Buddhism better might be able to explain I'm no expert.

Miracles and magic are entirely possible, but they are always only "nature": the world acting how it does. What logically follows is that if a "naturalistic"explanation is not accurate (e.g. it's a hallucination), then a different "naturalistic" explanation will be (e.g. an experience which is an ad hoc reduction of the world to a concept of "God," an entity of God speaking to someone, etc., etc.).

The trouble with this discussion is that if there is a God, the world would be identical in every way as it would if there is no God, namely as we find it. So if there is a God, some people who experience revelation or epiphany might well be experiencing, or witnessing god. Alternatively if there is no God, those same people are mistaken. There is no way to determine if someone claiming to know god, actually does know God. So the only alternative solution is to say there is no God. But this also fails because it can't be proved that there is no God either.

So as has been pointed out repeatedly through the thread, Colin's experience has to be taken on faith. Either in the acceptance of God, or in the denial of God.

It's called Punch, or should I say Punch and Judy.