contact - do you love your father?

Varuna

Occam has spent 30 years looking.
As a generalist. This is his path.

What he sees is ORGANISATION.

If you wish to use this to support obsolutist morality/love.
Or the existance of the contradictory/absurd deities religion describes.
That is your choice..[desire]

Unlike 4 out 5 human beings on this planet.
What occam 'believes' is not a question of desire or want.
But METHOD.

Emotion/Love..is a driving force for action.
It drives us to know.
But it should never be applied to the method of understanding
the workings of reality. When it is...you get 4 billion people believing
in 200 different gods. All who think they 'know'
When in fact..they simply DESIRE.

Occam

 

When it comes to understanding the fundamental nature of reality, science wonders how and what it is, religion wonders why and who it is.

It simply is.

 

Varuna, how can say if I agree with you or not when I have no idea what you're talking about? You've introduced a whole bunch of concepts such as "looking at reality without ego" (without consciousness?), Universal Inspiration, Truth itself, and a few others that start with capital letters. I'm also wondering if you know what you're talking about. These ideas seem incredibly fuzzy to me, especially when you devote only a short paragraph to them. Also, is this a reply to my last post, or just a sidenote to consider while you're writing your real response?

 

Oh, come on now.

First of all, you are not your ego. The particulars of your identity simply do not define who you most truly are. When it comes to the most commonly regarded terms of identity (such as: gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, political affiliation, sexuality, educational level, and so on, there are probably hundreds of catagories) and the more personal features (such as facial features, skin color, hair color, height, weight, the sound of your voice, your particular habits, facial expression, body language, the sound of your laughter, your sense of humor, etc.), you know perfectly well that you could name your "identities" for the rest of your life, and still, who you most truly are would remain undefined. So why let any of these relatively superficial identities define your relationship to reality as it most truly is.

Then,

The only reason I capitalized anything was because I think it is a good idea to look at each one of these for what each one really is and not just as another item on a list. I hope I may presume that you know what love is, what truth is, what consciousness is, what wisdom is, what each of these things - creativity, compassion, bliss (joy), harmony, unity, benevolence, peace, etc. - are. One may certainly know more deeply what each of these is, but I am sure you are, at least, acquainted with the "thing" represented by each of these words.

And I hope, if not every waking moment or at maybe once every day then at least once in your life, you have been, or are, or will be qenuinely inspired. Think of the first time you really connected with the person you love the most, think of the first time you saw your favorite movie, heard your favorite song or read your favorite book. That was inspiration.

Real inspiration is priceless, but it may very well be the actual currency of every spiritual experience and every religious tradition. Each of those "things" on the list (you know, love truth, creativity, harmony, etc.) are inspired states of being. They are all expressions of inspiration.

Now, please consider this. When you are inspired, you recognize inspiration in others, regardless of the particulars of the year (1,500 B.C., 500 B.C., 30 A.D., 622 A.D., or 2005 A.D.), the place (India, Jerusalem, Mecca, or your house) or the cultural setting. Now, that is a mystery.

And yes, I know what I am talking about. I am not just making this stuff up.

Both, apparently.

Peace and Love

 

If "relationship to reality" means "how I interact with the world," then I think I'm starting to understand what you're saying. Also, I've been thinking about the question of identity recently, so maybe we could go over it together. It seems that you are quite right in saying that if I were sitting one metre to the left of where I am sitting right now, I would still be me. Likewise, if I was one day older that I am right now (if my birthday was November 3rd instead of November 4th), I would still be me. But if I was a 12-year-old Puerto Rican girl named Marena Sanchez, then it seem very unlikely that I would still be me. My best friend wouldn't recognise me if he saw me walking down the street. If we struck up a conversation, I would be speaking in Spanish, not English, I'd have a higher voice, I would only be able to talk about things that 12-year-old Puerto Ricans talk about. I wouldn't be able to speak in much detail about topics such as, say, snow (I, by which I mean the real me, live in Canada but I hear they don't get much snow in Puero Rico) or philosophy. The problem reminds me of Sororites' Paradox in which he drops a single kernel of grain and asks, "Is this a heap of grain?" "No," you say. He drops another, asks the question, and so on and so on. There's also another one about replacing the planks of a ship one by one. I forget the name of the particular Greek who invented it.

In ordinary speech, usually when we are upset, we'll say something like "I don't know who you are anymore" when we've noticed a change in another person's personality (as opposed to other qualities like colour and spatio-temporal relation). But this is obviously just an exageration we use to change people's behavour. We still know very well the identity of the person we're talking to. If we didn't, then we wouldn't be able to identify that person and tell them we feel their personality has changed. Schizophrenics are also interesting, not in terms of Freudian pseudo-scientific theories or even the causes of schizophrenia, but rather in how a normal person would identify a schizophrenic. How do we tell the difference between "Fred" and "there is no Fred here, only Bill"? Obviously, Fred looks a lot like Bill, and Bill and Fred are never seen in the same room together. Also, Fred's doctors and close friends know very well that Fred and Bill are the same person, and it seems that their opinions are to be better trusted than Bill's. Another crazier and more complicated example I just thought of right now is Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde, since, as the wisdom of animated parodies tells us, they look nothing alike.

Anyway, it seems to me that personal names are just words community uses to refer to other people who may or may not be a part of that community. Our friend Bill, for example, is not a member of the community, while Fred is. If Bill was a member of the community, then he'd know that he was really Fred. It also seems that any quality Fred himself chooses to ascribe to his identity is arbitrary. In other words, when Fred is Bill, he's still Fred. Why? Because everyone else in the room knows he's Fred. A consequence of this, for better or worse, is that private thoughts don't make up a person's identity, since the other people in the room can't see them.

I can honestly say that I have no philosophical understanding of what truth or consciousness are. I have an ordinary, vulgar understanding of those things, and that's a good start anyway. If any philosophical hypothesis concerning truth or consciousness should severely violate my ordinary understand, then it seems reasonable to conclude that that philosophical hypothesis is not the way things really are. Unity is another tough one. As for benevolence, there's probably no such thing. Anyway, I understand to a certain degree what each of those "things" (in the loosest sense of the word) are.

Here we go with the metaphysics again. Slow down. First, exactly how many inspired states of being are there and what are they. Second, it can be said that the orbits of the planets are in harmony, but I wouldn't call that an inspired state of being. Planets can't be inspired. Thrid, maybe I can abstract in my head what may have been going through, say, Isaac Newton's head when an apple hit him on the head or when Archimedes got in the tub, but I can hardly know. Newton wasn't even hit on the head with an apple, for example. Even if he was, knowing the laws of motion isn't going to tell me what that was like.

I didn't say you didn't know what you're talking about. I said I don't know what you're talking about. If, on the other hand, you can't tell me what you're talking about, then that would suggest that you don't know what you're talking about.

 

Varuna..well met.

Not so. [answer to red]
Occam is probably a synergy of 50 or so dominant personalities and agents.. In us all. The largest 'agent'.
Is EGO. [another dominant control 'agent' is instinct]
That is mind.

This is why occam calls himself occam.
Thanks [for explaining it to others]

Occam

 

Good. I know you know this, but "How I interact with the world," contributes greatly to the way the world interacts with you. Of course, all too often, the world follows its own course which may be less wise than yours (even the most gracious human beings are sometimes met with violence), but you always have the freedom to respond wisely. It is surprising how the world is transformed when one habitually seeks a wise response.

Well, that all depends on where you and little Marena Sanchez place your identities. Yes, there are obvious differences between you and a 12-year-old Puerto Rican girl. But once again, who you most truly are is something much deeper and far more primal. I have been playing with the idea that everyone's innermost identity is that of a point of consciousness. I think it is possible to think of that point of consciousness as the subatomic partical, the superstring, if you will, of our world of personal identities.

Yes, of course, that point of consciousness is informed by the lenses it looks through, such as (the list is endless) culture, language, gender, age, experience, and even the particulars of our species. The perspective of each point of consciousness may be more or less different, like the images that are seen through your right and left eye are slightly different but that point of consciousness itself is essentially the same in every person, whether it answers to Marena Sanchez or Common Sense or Varuna.

A funny thing just occured to me, none of these are our real names.

Hi, my name is Daniel.

You know, I also have a hard time referring to these as "things." I guess it is just an odd limitation of our quirky English language.

Anyway, I agree with you about most of what you have written in this paragraph. In fact, my only disagreement, if you want to call it that, is that I am inclined to believe that benevolence actually does exist. I think it is closely related to compassion, which, in turn, is related to love.

Sorry. It's my nature to run with the abstract.

That is a question I have been asking for years.

It has been suggested that the classical mythologies of Greece, India, the Norsemen, and the Native Americans are populated by personifications of these inspired states of being.

Well, THAT is an interesting philosophical idea. Can planets be inspired? Who knows?

I am sure you have encountered the philosophical idea of the Gaia principle. It states that all life on earth interacts as one, in a way that resembles the cells of an organism. In a sense, the biosphere may be thought of as a living organism in its own right.

Yes, but there is no doubt that he was inspired.

Well, the past week or so has been educational for me. I have really had to work this mind of mine in order to put this stuff into understandable English. I want you to know that the fact that you have not let me get away with anything less than clarity is something for which I am eternally thankful.

Which brings up another humorous observation that has recently occurred to me, what I have been doing with you for the past week or so pretty much sums up the story of my life - Daniel argues with Common Sense. If ever I write an autobiography, that would be a suitable title.


Peace and Love