Should Anything Exist????Says Who???Should Nothing Exist?? Says Who?

by frankiespeakin 106 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Narkissos

  MaF:

  Sorry for the headache. Actually Lacan didn't mean his "teaching" to be read, he gave most of it orally in his "seminaries". However the latter were eventually handed down in transcripts, and he also left a number of interesting writings (Ecrits) which are admittedly a difficult read. I had to get through some dozen of pages with less than half-understanding before I became used to his very peculiar style, and I found it fascinating in the end (which still doesn't prove that I understood it correctly).

  Interesting. I can't quite see why it has to be non-existent, as opposed to merely inherently unknowable. In fact, if it must be non-existent, then it can only be a human construct or artifact, and wouldn't that defeat the purpose?

  As poppers pointed out very well, any concept is a linguistical (i.e. human) construction. Acknowledging that means barring the concept as soon as you build it. Whence the importance of negation IMO, even though "no" is never the last word on anything.

  An existent God would be just another part of reality, leaving it as a closed whole just as in positivist rationalism. Realizing that was a big step out of the WT (and of any full-fledged belief) in my case. Our ever self-enclosing, imaginary, "reality" needs to be splitted again and again, by unexpected happenings, by the experience of the Other in other people, but always through language.

  I would love to use the word "God" as a metaphor, but I find this impossible as long as some people take it "for real". It can be done in some European circles, from the discussions on this board I feel it doesn't suit the US context, where you have to take sides as a "believer" or "unbeliever". The Greek deities like Venus or Apollo became available as metaphors when nobody believed they were "for real" anymore.
• 

  poppers

  Narkissos,
  
  What the word I points to is wordlessness when it refers to what you actually are.

  You said, "Thinking that I can settle in wordlessness is delusional IMO". Yes, thinking is dulusional. The delusion (in the context of discovering what you really are) is in thinking and believing that you are something other than wordlessness. I can't settle into wordlessness because it is wordlessness. With awakening there is a seeing beyond/behind the words and concepts from wordlessness.
  
  Most people's reaction to this is similar to what you are expressing. One of the main tricks of the ego is to bring to bear every argument it can come up with - in doing this it ensures that it remains as a personal reference point through which everything is filtered. To be awake is to live in the unknown, and the ego/mind does everything it can to understand/know everything - what can be understood can be controlled, what isn't understood can't be controlled, and ego/mind doesn't like lack of control.

  Being awake means every moment is viewed as if for the first time without reference to past (mind) or future (mind) and without judgment (ego).
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  Narkissos

  poppers:

  If the "awakened I" is wordless, (how) does it speak?

  Or, who speaks when you do?
• 

  frankiespeakin

  My thoughts on wordless communication or experience are that it is possible but may not be accurately discribable(with words).

  Say a person is born without one of the 5 senses and has never experienced this missing sense. Say it is the sense of sight,,how could you with words discribe what blue is to such a person who has never seen. We could come close but never fully cause that person to experience seeing the color blue. If we developed enough technology we could perhaps make a hook up to the optic nerve and transmit a signal that would make the blind person experience seeing the color blue.

  So I leave open the possiblity that we could quiet the mind enough to experience communication that doesn't use word metaphors that doesn't use electrochemical processes and may use what is know in the quantum circles as instant form of communication that is not bound by space time. I think einstien called it "spooky action" or some have called it "voodoo communication". The Bell theorem gave mathimatical proof and later experiments have shown this to be true.
• 

  Terry

  Frankiespeakin says:

  Say a person is born without one of the 5 senses and has never experienced this missing sense. Say it is the sense of sight,,how could you with words discribe what blue is to such a person who has never seen. We could come close but never fully cause that person to experience seeing the color blue. If we developed enough technology we could perhaps make a hook up to the optic nerve and transmit a signal that would make the blind person experience seeing the color blue.

  Knowledge has no meaning without a sense referent, pure and simple!

  If you cannot point to a thing as existing in SOME FORM perceptual to at least one of your senses it does not exist as knowledge for you.

  When we reference the color "blue" as a blind person it exists, for us, as some inference on hearsay that we accept on faith. There is no way possible within ourselves to verify that blue is anything at all other than what people tell us.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Terry,

  Knowledge has no meaning without a sense referent, pure and simple!

  Actually the knowledge you get from the 5 senses is not reality it is just impulses and thoughts colored by the minds interpretation.

  But another thing to consider is that there may be more than 5 senses.

  If you cannot point to a thing as existing in SOME FORM perceptual to at least one of your senses it does not exist as knowledge for you.

  To the egoic mind the 5 senses seems to be reality,,but if one had another sense that transcended the 5 senses wouldn't that change things.
• 

  poppers

  The ground of everything is being/awareness/consciousnesss - everything arises out of it and is a modification of consciousness, just as a wave seems separate from other waves. But all waves arise from the ocean and are the ocean in reality.

  Who speaks when poppers speaks? Seemingly poppers. But poppers' identity isn't a fixed and separate thing which exists independently at all times - it comes and goes. How can I be something that comes and goes? For something to come and go there must be a background of permanency to compare it against. I can only be something which is permanent.

  Have you ever woken up in the morning and just lay in bed for a few moments without thoughts running through your head, feeling peace and clarity, and then suddenly the 'story of you' surfaced to remind you of all of your concerns? Where were 'you' in that moment of clarity and peace? And in that moment of clarity and peace wasn't there a sense of existence/being? So obviously, there must be 'something' there prior to the arising of the idea of 'me'. So which is more real, that which comes and goes or that which is always here? If it weren't for awareness there wouldn't even be awareness of the identity which you believe yourself to be.

  Or perhaps there have been moments when looking at nature when the mind dropped away, and with it the storyline of your life. During those moments there is simply beingness/awareness, and the experience when remembered it is with words like peace and serenity. That awareness is always there, and that's what you really are.

  Or when you wake up in the morning after a great night's sleep. What is it that lets you know that you've had a great night's sleep when 'you' were asleep? You don't conclude you had a great sleep because there's no memory of waking up throughout the night, and therefore it was a good sleep. There is an immediate knowing that it is so. It is this awareness which is always here which has witnessed the sleep. This witnessing is awareness itself and it's always here, and that is what you are.

  There is knowledge of 'things' which can be analyzed by the mind and there is 'knowingness' itself. Even with knowledge of things, ask yourself 'how is it that I know this?' if not for awareness. So yes, knowledge of things requires a referent, but knowingness itself doesn't. When you read these words on the screen there is also awareness of things on the periphery to which the mind isn't paying attention to, but still there is a knowingness that they are there. The sensory input is the portal for information to enter but it is awareness that knows it's there. Even if nothing arises in awareness how could there be a knowing that nothing is there if not for awareness.

  This awareness is so common, so ordinary, that people overlook its existence. Because it is so transparent and without form it doesn't stand out. People notice what changes, what moves, and awareness doesn't change or move so its not easily noticeable, but because of it nothing else could be.
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  myauntfanny

  Poppers

  So it's like we think we're the words, but we're really the page the words are typed on?
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  poppers

  Yes fanny. Or it's like watching a movie - we are so absorbed in the moving images and the action that we never notice the screen upon which the images are dependent. Nothing could happen if not for the screen, and who notices that?
• 

  Narkissos

  poppers:

  Perhaps I should have italicized the verb speak in my previous questions.

  Believe it or not, I am not fighting at all against what you say. I "know" the wordless experience of "just being", of "being a part of it all", of what I call the real (which is however not reached by any word or concept). I "know" how shattering (to the imaginary self) and wonderful (per se) this experience may be. I "know" how it overcomes any feeling of separation, guilt, or death, and I hold it as the true core of any genuine mystical experience.

  Still, and here we perhaps depart, I wouldn't wish, as long as I am, to be completely absorbed into it. For this could only mean complete and definitive silence. Real as it is, I have to stand out of it into what you may well call unreal: just to play my part as a grammatical subject in the symbolic game of language, as an imaginary character in the imaginary world of "reality". And although my words and concepts necessarily obscure and betray the real, the real paradoxically shows through them (as a visible veil shows the invisible wind, sub specie contraria).

  I guess I am a desperate Westerner.