"i" am not an illusion

[motherengine]

[been a while/computer problems]

 

is there any intelligent life out there? i ask because i have discovered the phenomenon that is u. g. krishnamurti. this is the name of an indian philosopher who apparently has impressed the hell out of many otherwise intelligent people with statments concerning the self as an illusion and anti-spiritualism. not very original ideas but krishnamurti is concidered quite the enigma. if you have no clue what i am talking about yet are interested here is a web site for more detailed information concerning this "anti-guru" guru: http://www.well.com/user/jct.

 

krishnamurti's view of the mind as an illusion is something i thought of in my college days when i was quite arrogant and in need of a sense of control and self worth by impressing others with my (believed) superior awareness concerning the human condition. i had many such ideas and soon discoved that none of them were revelations to the species. my concern is just that i see this man as a manipulator of language, darwinian theory and neurological philosphy [via daniel dennett] and not a representative of fact or 'truth' though i can find no information of voices raised in protest of his deceptively arrogant discourse.

 

one main bone to pick is the idea that "i" do not exist. i feel that by describing the mechanism of a human personality krishnamurti incorrectly dismisses its reality, as in 'that is not a tree, you silly monkey, it is a collection of molecules'. "i" is a symbol which represents a complexity of elements that are influenced by experience and in turn is me. but this does not negate the fact that i exist as an "i" and a distinct personality. i am not an illusion created by elements and actions that occur outside of me but a sentient entity that was born such. this is my belief though i feel that enough evidence exists to insure its correctness.

 

so how about it? am i crazy (or is this temporal illusion of self somehow incorrectly asserting an untruth)? are you there, or are you not?

[alxian]

are you there, or are you not?

 

for all practical purposes and because there is no proof otherwise

 

yes i am here.

 

is there any intelligent life out there?

 

there might be, however our ability to make contact with them would require that they be very very very close to us.

 

we can't go faster than light, and mostly likely neither can they

 

we can't even communicate FTL, meaning communication once its established will transcend our lifetimes.

 

even in the most idealistic situations there would have had to have been visitations before. if we are the result then we aren't likely to find our extraterrestrial ancestors as we are they.

 

should that not be the case then you are still looking at a transit and communication problem. we have possible solutions but no practical means of developing them, neither any need to. should that proclaim their world to be paradise and we load up generation ships and when we finally get there find out they had a civil war and obliterated the place we'd prolly feel pretty silly.

 

i however don't think there would be wars between the worlds as so far we have yet to find any neighbors. if they were as advanced as us we'd prolly have spotted their noisey worlds by now, if they were more advanced they wouldn't be able to hide for long. especially if they were more advanced why would they hide? there is much more to be gained from sharing knowledge and resources.

 

we may be alone here in the cold nethers of the spiral arm, nearer the gallactic core where its warmer their might be life, in more ideal locations. but without heavier metals minerals and rocks how advanced could they possibly get?

 

one main bone to pick is the idea that "i" do not exist.

 

it may not, we are subject to manipulation and individually amount to very little

 

the "I" exists only in that each individual for a few days weeks or months can remain so, but once they communicate that distinctiveness to the species the species absobs that distinctiveness adding it to the whole, which most individuals can then tap into.

 

we are a fraction of that whole, retaining within is a healthy amount of unique knowledge but if the species is never appraised of it then our distinctivness, that which makes us individually unique is lost.

 

maybe if we had a more hivelike society of shared thoughts people could claim that "I" was not transient, but since we are lone vessels passing in the night then yes, you are you and i am i, we share similarities but you will never be me and i never could pass as you.

 

i am not an illusion created by elements and actions that occur outside of me but a sentient entity that was born such.

 

pretty much sums up your argument.

 

the system and not the sum of its parts is important. i could hand this fool a drum full of water and the chemicals necessary to create a fully functioning human but unless its given the spark of life and necessary trainging food and maintenance it wouldn't even make a good soup.

 

people who think that we are biological cogs in a wheel need to sit down and actually take a second look instead of making fools of themselves.

[Little Bang]

The possibility exists that everything outside of you could be an illusion. You think therefore you are.

[alxian]

the flat holographic universe theory (imo bunk)

 

that depth (the x/y/z) is an extrapolation made by the brain

 

i don't like the theory because it implies that our perception of the universe is skewed based on our limited senses and limited grasps of physics.

 

i'd rather believe in string theory and theories that hold that there are many more dimensions to the universe. more quantifiable aspects and domains of the universe where energy is store and released... seemingly generated and lost.

 

would be funny if in the next few hundred years our fundamental understanding of physics allows us to be like magicians generating and seemingly destroying energy, pulling it from the nether and storing it in tiny space time pockets.

[motherengine]

the system and not the sum of its parts is important. i could hand this fool a drum full of water and the chemicals necessary to create a fully functioning human but unless its given the spark of life and necessary trainging food and maintenance it wouldn't even make a good soup.

 

people who think that we are biological cogs in a wheel need to sit down and actually take a second look instead of making fools of themselves.

 

who is this fool you speak of and what do you mean by 'biological cogs'?

[motherengine]

The possibility exists that everything outside of you could be an illusion. You think therefore you are.

 

an illusion is a misconception so what exists outside of the 'mind' can be illusory. my problem is in labling the mind or persona itself an illusion because, regardless of the complexities that make it up, it is an existing force. the supposed connections between entities are related to theoretical and not factual science. we may all be interconnected but if we are not individuals by natural law then it is not a case of 'non-thought' incorrectly thinking that it exists but more a case of a universe that is illusory in its very construction and so we are self maintaining illusions. but then how is it possible for a misconception to pre-exist the concieving mind?

[infamous]

I believe it would be a safe statement to utter the words, "everyone has a fear of death" even when one can accept it's inevitability there remains a certain degree of fear. I would suggest that this fear is proof that "i" am not an illusion. To fear one's own demise affirms the reality of their existence.

[alxian]

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

his view that people are mere biological processes. like a single human can accomplish everything the society can accomplish. it is to laugh.

 

his approach is too radical, people aren't imo able to govern themselves or educate themselves to the point we take for granted now without the societies we've been building up for millenia. knowledge is a powerful and dangerous tool. societies require that enough of the population doesn't question the authority of its gov't. the more people that do it the more impotent that gov't becomes. millions of people living in close proximity will not live as well as they can now without a focal point. it required imo that populations break up the work load and knowledge amoung the people so that no one is able to bring too much of it together to become powerful enough to challenge the government. though in modern times that is no longer much a problem the point is he wants everyone to know as much as possible, that would disturb some industries that require labourers, how can you have phds mowing grass? there needs to be that division of "classes", individuals thus may seem familiar but must be different, expressing their own personalities thoughts ambitions etc. its up to the society then to shunt people into those available roles.

 

 

authority in whatever form—religious, psychological or political—is a hindrance to seeing the truth; man has to be his own guru to bring about psychological transformation.

 

this is dangerously antisocial thinking that undermines all we've built up thus far.

perhapshis vision is meant only to empower the individual and thus better society through their enhanced abilities, but if he trully wishes to destroy authority by making each person a state then i think we should consider how much more his teachings should be dsitributed before they cause irreparable harm.

 

 

the truth is we each have unlimited potential

the truth is that as societies we can achieve much more than we do

 

however we know what lies down many roads having millenia of experience to back up our judgement (society, not individual), we've (the race) been there or can extrapolate what will happen if people are allowed unlimited freedom to govern themselves.

 

but they take it too far, saying that because we have lost individual freedom that we are lost. we are not lost we just see that this is the best way for as many of us as possible to survive into the future. we can go back to being villages of a few thousand fighting to the death over goats and wheat, or we can continue our current course. building up the populations and mean intelligence health education etc.

 

without question people live longer lives, are more intelligent than ever before. the subject of are we suffering from the lack of personal freedoms? impossible to tell. the solution is not bucking authority as Jiddu Krisnamurti suggests. not all of us at once anyway.

 

--

 

meanwhile

 

"fear of death"

 

i don't fear death, sure sometimes one fears for ones presonal safety but fearing death is silly, people fear the pain of death, you won't feal anything once its comes. doesn't religion hold that once you die you go to heaven? isn't fearing death in itself admiting that you have something to fear, a guilt that perhaps you have sin and thus don't belong in heaven? if that is not that case then when don't people expect death? i mean heaven is such a banging place isn't it? what is their to fear? there is the pain of loss should you get to heaven and leave everyone behind, but i'm sure the place is nice enough that you'll get over it. but even then there is that guilt again, ascending to heaven and forgetting everyone you left behind while you "live" it up in heaven.

 

some aspects of society are so silly.

 

personally i find death is be an avoidable inconvenience. a tax for living in society. people in this day and age shouldn't die. practical life extention therapies have been proposed that could make us all virtually immortal. however i doubt people could stop making babies and the world would become over crowded fast.

 

"you can be immortal but we have to sterilize you, sorry, but hey you could adopt?" the gene therapist says shrugging. i bet she'd get 100% negative responses.

 

one could almost say the gov'ts of the world use statecraft as pruning sheers to keep population levels just right. they do it with education and the media why not in hospitals and with wars?

 

individual deaths is part of life.. not from where i stand.. predation emergency and disease being the only times gov'ts step in to save the peoples lives. but individual losses are par for the course.

 

i'd like to think our generation will have the real option to live longer (sunstantially) lives.

[motherengine]

"fear of death"

 

i don't fear death, sure sometimes one fears for ones presonal safety but fearing death is silly, people fear the pain of death, you won't feal anything once its comes.

 

maybe off subject but i think a consious entity fearing a state of permanent non-consciousness is not only not silly but completely understandable. ever have a panic attack. it is like the ultimate moment when awareness realizes its fragility and feels on the verge of cessation. it is existential terror. a chemical life force that centralizes itself should not be aware of its own mortality. human awareness is a bad thing, in other words, but here we are so we better find some way of working it out. there is religion, the occult, science and "the power of distraction" though i personally find immersion in the natural world and atmospherics to be of great help in battling dispair. not that i know what this death thing is beyond the tactile and perceptable reality of corpses and such. anyway, a living organism that comes about from the process of biological procreation should have a natural fear of "death". it is this fear that lends to the need for control that spawns some great art as well (slasher films aside).

[jerryo]

[been a while/computer problems]

 

is there any intelligent life out there? i ask because i have discovered the phenomenon that is u. g. krishnamurti. this is the name of an indian philosopher who apparently has impressed the hell out of many otherwise intelligent people with statments concerning the self as an illusion and anti-spiritualism. not very original ideas but krishnamurti is concidered quite the enigma. if you have no clue what i am talking about yet are interested here is a web site for more detailed information concerning this "anti-guru" guru: http://www.well.com/user/jct.

 

krishnamurti's view of the mind as an illusion is something i thought of in my college days when i was quite arrogant and in need of a sense of control and self worth by impressing others with my (believed) superior awareness concerning the human condition. i had many such ideas and soon discoved that none of them were revelations to the species. my concern is just that i see this man as a manipulator of language, darwinian theory and neurological philosphy [via daniel dennett] and not a representative of fact or 'truth' though i can find no information of voices raised in protest of his deceptively arrogant discourse.

 

one main bone to pick is the idea that "i" do not exist. i feel that by describing the mechanism of a human personality krishnamurti incorrectly dismisses its reality, as in 'that is not a tree, you silly monkey, it is a collection of molecules'. "i" is a symbol which represents a complexity of elements that are influenced by experience and in turn is me. but this does not negate the fact that i exist as an "i" and a distinct personality. i am not an illusion created by elements and actions that occur outside of me but a sentient entity that was born such. this is my belief though i feel that enough evidence exists to insure its correctness.

 

so how about it? am i crazy (or is this temporal illusion of self somehow incorrectly asserting an untruth)? are you there, or are you not?

 

'mind'is an active and functional pretense of the living organism (memory in resonance)

"I' is just the way the world works..it cannot be removed

...simpy stated...'I' is just too much fun :)

[MEL555]

If "I" is real,

 

time is real, and we know better than THAT.

:)

[sinewave]

Jiddu Krishnamurti

without question people live longer lives, are more intelligent than ever before. the subject of are we suffering from the lack of personal freedoms? impossible to tell. the solution is not bucking authority as Jiddu Krisnamurti suggests. not all of us at once anyway.

 

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti did not suggest bucking authority, in fact, he said much more on the topic of the importance and necessity of order and orderliness in all aspects of human inter-relationship.

 

What he did point out was that authority does not exist, whatsoever, unless one allows it to become ‘real’ for 'I', via fear, which creates the objective of coercive conformity to said authority (which in almost all cases is not necessary).

 

The freedom he spoke of was not about social rebellion or becoming simply wilful, (that is a very poor understanding of it indeed) it was about not creating your own artificial cages, via obliging those who would try to cause you to remove your own freedom for them, a freedom which already exists, for all people, in all places, at all times.

 

Which is totally different to the picture you've painted, via interpreting according to the NET conditioned responses of your personal ‘I’.

 

:)

 

Wonderful to be all gung-ho for the state, but the cold-war conformity to a state almost killed the lot of us in short order. :)

 

Might need to re-think/re-condition there. May I suggest you watch the, "Fog Of War" (Robert S. Mac Namara's life-long lessons on the topic of state power and what a terrible mutual desaster awaits us if that power is not reined in).

[MEL555]

Jiddu Krishnamurti did not suggest bucking authority, in fact, he said much more on the topic of the importance and necessity of order and orderliness in all aspects of human inter-relationship.

 

What he did point out was that authority does not exist, whatsoever, unless one allows it to become ‘real’ for 'I', via fear, which creates the objective of coercive conformity to said authority (which in almost all cases is not necessary).

 

The freedom he spoke of was not about social rebellion or becoming simply wilful, (that is a very poor understanding of it indeed) it was about not creating your own artificial cages, via obliging those who would try to cause you to remove your own freedom for them, a freedom which already exists, for all people, in all places, at all times.

 

Which is totally different to the picture you've painted, via interpreting according to the NET conditioned responses of your personal ‘I’.

 

:eek:

 

Wonderful to be all gung-ho for the state, but the cold-war conformity to a state almost killed the lot of us in short order. :)

 

Might need to re-think/re-condition there. May I suggest you watch the, "Fog Of War" (Robert S. Mac Namara's life-long lessons on the topic of state power and what a terrible mutual desaster awaits us if that power is not reined in).

STAY !!

:eek: :) :eek: :) :)

Gen. Mc. Arthur

said

we cant continue to solve problems this way

 

ho ho ho

:rant:

[jerryo]

> "i" < is irrelevant

 

:)

[MEL555]

> "i" < is irrelevant

 

:)

JO, All

 

If You havent

 

click the superwisdom link...bottom of page

whenever avail. :rant:

.

.

[infamous]

May I suggest you watch the, "Fog Of War" (Robert S. Mac Namara's life-long lessons on the topic of state power and what a terrible mutual desaster awaits us if that power is not reined in).

Power will never be reined in, only transfered from one owner to another. Better in my hands than yours is my motto.

[sinewave]

Power will never be reined in, only transfered from one owner to another. Better in my hands than yours is my motto.

 

Well, this is OT, but in reply:

 

The power Mac Namara referred to was the ability of one human being, a complicated, sometimes quite confused, certainly prone to gross-error, and even periodically incompetent or entirely deluded due to misreading and misunderstanding in particular areas and events, to have the ability to wreck the entire global human enterprise, with a rash, though otherwise rational, and also logical action of said power.

 

That's what Mac Namara sees as critical to rein in, as the lessons of what we have seen occur thus far, requires that such power be taken away from a singular rational individual, who otherwise will eventually screw-up, unless made much more difficult to do so.

 

According to Mac Namara, this very nearly occurred on three occasions over four years, whilst he served as US Secretary of Defense, so he knows directly of that which he speaks, with regard to the implications of such power.

 

All power ultimately comes down the barrel of a gun, even within any democracy, the question is, how much of it is it safe or wise, for one democratic head of state to wield in said democracy?

 

(we now return you to your usual conditioning)