Namaste all,
I am quite surprised I have some followers. As you can see my last entry was last year in June. Since that time I have been rather busy with things in regular life, so I have not had much time to blog. I have a bit of free time now, so I can add some more entries. I think in the last year my knowledge in philosophy and spirituality has definitely increased, as much of my reading has been focussed in that. However, knowledge certainly has its limitation and I can feel that limitation everytime I read something new. Has my knowledge actually really increased, or have I simply reorganized old information? I feel it is the latter case. The great Greek philosopher Socrates once said that he knows nothing, and I feel exactly the same, that despite reading tons and tons of literature on philosophy and spirituality, I still feel like I know nothing.
Of course, it would be wholly inaccurate to say I know absolutely nothing, I know something at least, otherwise how could I talk about it? What Socrates really meant is that we cannot know anything in its totality or its noumenal reality, but all we can know is just empirical or intellectual knowledge of something. Knowledge is something transcendental. To truly know something is not just to look on it from outside, but to enter the being of that something and know it from the inside. Just as I cannot know you by simply looking at you, because you have an entire mental universe I am not privy too. Likewise everything has an entire inner universe that we are not privy too. We cannot know anything by analysing it, breaking it up into parts and looking at it, because it will never reveal the inner dimension of that thing.
What is the inner dimension of something? I am going to submit to the reader that it is none other than the mental dimension. This mental dimension is not just limited to us human beings, this mental dimension is in fact an objective dimension in its own right, and all things have a mental dimension. In spiritual traditions this is known as the astral and mental plane. We humans want to believe only we have an inner mental dimension and everything else in the world is just inert matter, but if we look closer we will see this is just an arrogant assumption humans make. The famous philosopher Betrand Russel has proven that is only an assumption through the argument on whether other minds exist. We only have evidence that our mind exists because we have intimate experience of our own thoughts, sensations, desires, but how do we know that anything out there has a mind because we cannot see their thoughts, sensations, desires. All we see are bodies. If we are going to draw the inference that all other human bodies have a inner mental dimension , then we should not object at the induction that all bodies in general have an inner mental dimension.
Of course there is an inner dimension of reality. There is no question about it today in science. In quantum physics it has been proven that reality at the quantum level is metaphysical. What do we already know that is metaphysical? Mind. We humans already know this reality quantum physics talks about because we have an intimate access to it. If you think about it we humans are very impressive detectors, not only can we detect the outer reality through the 5 primary senses, but we can also detect the inner reality through our internal 6th mental sense. If it was not true that there was no inner reality, then why can we not find mental content in the outer reality? Why can't I look inside your body and find your thoughts and feelings? The answer is clear, because they exist in another dimension of reality, much more subtle and fundamental than physical reality.
There is an axoim in the spiritual tradition which says, "Everything is mind" Surely enough this is what we are coming to discover in 21st century science. This world is not made out of a physical stuff, but it is a mental stuff - a spiritual stuff if you may. It is not hard and rigid like a solid substance, but it is soft, fluidic liquid-like substance intimately connected with minds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I just saw your philosophy and spirituality forum
ReplyDeleteThe better feel I get for your use of terms, the more I feel I understand you and you should understand me without going through philosophy since Socrates. I suspect we may be talking about much the same thing, at least as far as the phenomenal world goes. Ontological disagreements aside, the main difference in our views is, you hold with certainty, rather through probabilistic reason, personal experience, or simple faith, or some combination, a view about the nature of the universe that I also entertain as the culmination as a series of hypotheses, but am much less certain about.
The hypotheses I am entertaining are, that information is noumenal in the same way the objects that impinge on our “5 senses” are noumenal. Subsidiary to that, information is awareness (alternatively, it may be “negative energy”, an “objective dimension in its own right”, or something I haven't hypothesized yet)
If information is awareness, everything must be reassessed. This implies animism, for instance. I'll mention one piece of evidence. Increasingly elaborate experiments with photons and slit screens indicate photons know/have known/will know if they are/have been /will be observed.
I suspect the major difference in our thinking apparatus is I have been conditioned against such views by my exposure to my mother's Christian science, and my own trial of Xianity, which was contingent upon accepting the Platonic ideals and believing that most unontolgical der Teufal im Himmel in my head was Plato's god (I really had to suspend by bs sensor for that one.) That was only cured by medication. While I feel that it is rational for people in general to entertain these hypotheses, if I myself “believe” them, I worry about my sanity, and more specifically my bs sensor. I will admit that the dysfunctionality I perceive in these beliefs may be familiar and personal. I have no reasons to believe your holding the unified theory of these hypotheses as your belief, or even your considering them to be “knowledge”, would be dysfunctional to you. Please hold my fears in mind, especially if I give offense, or seem illogical.
You may have noticed I use the term “knowledge” to refer to the probabilistic calculations of the left brain, while I have been, partially for simplicities stake, lumping all the rest of epiphenomena together as “beliefs of the heart”.
I don't believe in the reality of epistemology or classes, but I will nonetheless attempt a little further parsing. I have noticed that I at least, have three loci of thought.
My left-brain is my time – binding ego, that which knows by deducing probabilistically, and in my case at least has been trained in that direction.
My autonomic nervous system handles the chimpanzee with certainty and often without needing my left brain at all, when I am in danger, and in certain aspects of “Zen” states. It is called the heart, but I suspect it is the gut, and it is the loci of the original form of awareness, instinctive certain “Belief”. As an anorexic, I starve this.
Then there is the left brain, which, in shorthand or metaphor, is the loci of something like Freud's subconscious, which in some individuals (myself included, and you also, I grok) evolves into something more like Jung's anima)
This is my inner awareness, or “dimension” as I perceive it. The anima, by the way is the instrument of one of the many epiphenomenal (noumenal) senses, our highest developed means for apprehending inner dimensions of a thing in itself “grokking”. I suspect you grok that.
This bugs me. It suggest the distinction between noumena and epiphenomena is false, and instead the universe should be parsed into simply the noumena without and the noumena within. It suggests Robert Heinlein may have been on to something when he suggested the fundamental particle was the ficton. It suggests my mother was right.