this is fantastic. I think your idea about being dependant on the "environment" in the way that up can only exist because there is a down and humans only exist because there is an "environment" is very important. Maybe people would stop trying to "overcome" nature if they realised this, as watts has already pointed out.
A perspective~the air we depend on so intimately is a creation of the whole universe~just as there's no ego independent of all, there's no planet independent either.There is no out there out there..Our space Trekker visionaries are exploring our local galactic backyard.At present it appears we'll be much like the idiots presented in Avatar?
i like what your trying to explaine. listening to Alan Watts i ended up finding Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass who later i found all talk about each other in their lectures i think its possible that we are all a collective in one way or another and are a part of the world not on it like you said.
I think you are over analyzing and getting caught up in concepts. its much simpler than that. As Douglas Harding points out its in the direct seeing not the understanding of words. I know alan watts has said about being reliant on everything ie air etc , this is confusing, what YOU are gives rise to everything and is everything so is not reliant on anything, but knows itself because it gives rise to objects. For example in deep sleep "IT" is but no knowing itself. No rudeness intended, sincerely
Have you read Heaven and Hell / Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley? He talks about the "antipode of the mind", this area of consciousness that ascetics aspire to reach by abstaining from the world. I think this aligns with Carl Jung's conception of the collective unconscious, or the platform for all the symbols we come to affiliate the world with.
I think, therefore I am. I am and so is the world. I walk upon the world only because I define the worlds reality. I keep thinking of the matrix.How do you define real? If real is something that can be seen and touched, then real is electrical impulses interpreted by your brain. My brain can be fooled very easily. Only by comparing this mass-delusion with others can we try to define real. I do not like it that MY reality can only be defined by other people, after all, I think therefore I am. Eh?
When the mind first comprehends this insight it is like an awakenning from a dream state. But that worldly identity that we attatch our egos to is just as real and we are left with the challenge to co-inhabbit both worlds - the eturnal and the dieing - and to do that without undermining or taking for granted the significance of iether.
I'm curious about how you are employing the expression "world". I feel that at times this term slips into very different senses. Heidegger's discussion of "world" in Being and Time seems quite close to your position. "Being the origin of a world" in some kind of Heideggerian sense would mean something quite different than what would perhaps be straightforwardly understood in other ways.
@MuhakgreetsWonhyo Yes. Heidegger, and the phenomenological tradition, address world as something that EXISTS (is not a mere extant standing before us).
Don't limit this to the world, because the earth is just a part OF the universe/cosmos. Breaking these things down into parts and identities is just a human thinking process. The categories don't actually exist AT ALL, they are imaginary.
We come from the material world, but we impose our conceptualizations upon the world, and more live in that invented world, than we do in the objective. The ego, the illusion of self, and separation of self from the world, is also something we invent and impose, upon an ever changing mind, and upon on our identification of self with our bodies, which are in fact just organic conglomerations, which have no absolute point of origin, which is separate from the flux and change of the material world.
Heh, or infinity. That much must be infinity! Nope I can go a little bigger. Okay what about now? Nope I can double that much? What if I take that much and make it a little black dot on a page, take 500 pages and put them side by side? Nope still no infinity. Damnit!
One feel lonely as a human because he evolved as merely an element of a larger mechanism, a universe, an ecosystem, a family etc. Then all of a sudden he finds himself self-possessed and if feels wrong.
It's making an anthill out of an ant. YOU DO NOT OWN YOURSELF!
THE WORLD IS A PRODUCT OF OUR 'SELVES' is a proposition. And as such, it can be asked whether it is true. In the context of subjectivity it can be taken as true, to degree, but he goes much further in his implication of SELF as a singular entity. This implied meaning FAILs and causes the proposition to be found FALSE on many levels not least Neurobiology. Demonstrably he fails if the literal assertion is taken as true, as some do, since if made my world - IT WOULD BE BETTER !
Hey, Sage. Don't you think it's about time that the Prof just bit the bullet & came out as what he actually is; a pantheist. (which he reveals in vids like this)
Come on, Prof; one week you're a 'kind of deist', then another time, 'God is language', then 'God is gravity' ... & then 'something like The Q' lol.
Stop carving it up! Who are we to say what is more important?
But I agree that God/The-Universe is a 'special kind of nothing' because All That Is, is not a thing
@TWITfromURANUS I am OK with the Prof not putting a flag down on any specific position. After all, can there truly be a solid unchangeable position within an ever changing imagination?
My comment was actually more of a reaction to his recent suggestions about pantheism, which included the idea that we think the sun is conscious... I mean, what is the point in that anyway? Pulling ideas like that straight out of your ass in order to deride them is the essence of a strawman argument. The point is to realise that things like the sun, the moon, & the earth beneath us, are as essential to our existence as our internal organs.
@TWITfromURANUS Watching these videos: Pat Condel's video about the Sun God and PA suggesting that perhaps gravity is a better God concept... there's something amiss. To move towards the galactic consciousness that PA refers to, people must let go of labels and the need to identify a God with something in our frame of reference. The concept of God is only useful if you relate it to something you think is finite and separate from yourself. Without such, there is no distinctions.(continued..)
This is why Pantheism is misunderstood and perhaps outmoded; an idea that God is the universe suggests that there is nothing outside a finite universe. It comes close but misses the mark. To understand all that is "out there" we need only look within. If people really need a God, then they should explore the idea that God is EVERYTHING; an infinity of oneness; all that is inside and all that is outside; and this everything that is, just is; and it's a nothing wherein everything is.
@SageBodisattva I think we're pretty much in agreement here; it's a language thing.
I actually only started calling myself a pantheist since I became a regular YT user (to roughly communicate by basic position), but for virtually half my life now I've used the word 'God' to refer to Everything -the totality of being. So in one sense it's a unifying concept (if 'God' can't mean that then I have no interest in it).
Pantheism is a very broad term, there are many types, & mine is very eastern-influenced & ultimately nondualistic ('I go beyond' all dichotomies including mind/matter & finite/infinite, etc). God is everything & nothing (& both & neither) to me... it is a signifier that is utterly unlike all others. & when all is said, I cling to nothing (consciously anyway), but words can be very useful...
So out of everything you wrote, I would only really disagree with: "The concept of God is only useful if you relate it to something you think is finite and separate from yourself."
I'm in the process of reading a new book by Alva Noë called, "Out of Our Heads"...
I ordered it after reading an interesting blog about Noë's new book in a consciousness blog I read on a regular basis. It's called consciousentities[dot]com.
The idea that thought and identity are not limited to exclusively to the workings of the brain machine are becoming a part of mainstream thought lately.
Since PA didn't mention 'new age', I'm interested in what &/or who you are referring to; why you felt the need to bring it up(?
"The term New Age was used as early as 1809 by William Blake who described a belief in a spiritual and artistic "New Age" in his preface to Milton: a Poem." ~from Wiki
For me, it's important to be able to support contention with fact, but I agree that in theory an idea is an idea...and if it is a simple assertion, then fine...but it's important to consider whether or not it translates into real world applications and whether or not it can be falsified IF it is given scientific significance....
I was making a general statement. I was not thinking about PA in particular when I used the NA wording...
this is fantastic. I think your idea about being dependant on the "environment" in the way that up can only exist because there is a down and humans only exist because there is an "environment" is very important. Maybe people would stop trying to "overcome" nature if they realised this, as watts has already pointed out.
lukemathiesen 2 months ago
A perspective~the air we depend on so intimately is a creation of the whole universe~just as there's no ego independent of all, there's no planet independent either.There is no out there out there..Our space Trekker visionaries are exploring our local galactic backyard.At present it appears we'll be much like the idiots presented in Avatar?
summondadrummin 2 months ago
i like what your trying to explaine. listening to Alan Watts i ended up finding Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass who later i found all talk about each other in their lectures i think its possible that we are all a collective in one way or another and are a part of the world not on it like you said.
hometown555 8 months ago
Liked, favourited, and subscribed. :)
Mike209000 9 months ago
This idea makes me think of graveyards and green grass, but in a good way.
TDP788 9 months ago
I think being too intelligent is something of a curse.
bubbagogo 9 months ago 2
I think you are over analyzing and getting caught up in concepts. its much simpler than that. As Douglas Harding points out its in the direct seeing not the understanding of words. I know alan watts has said about being reliant on everything ie air etc , this is confusing, what YOU are gives rise to everything and is everything so is not reliant on anything, but knows itself because it gives rise to objects. For example in deep sleep "IT" is but no knowing itself. No rudeness intended, sincerely
me1we1 1 year ago
Have you read Heaven and Hell / Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley? He talks about the "antipode of the mind", this area of consciousness that ascetics aspire to reach by abstaining from the world. I think this aligns with Carl Jung's conception of the collective unconscious, or the platform for all the symbols we come to affiliate the world with.
TaterTyphoon 1 year ago
I think, therefore I am. I am and so is the world. I walk upon the world only because I define the worlds reality. I keep thinking of the matrix.How do you define real? If real is something that can be seen and touched, then real is electrical impulses interpreted by your brain. My brain can be fooled very easily. Only by comparing this mass-delusion with others can we try to define real. I do not like it that MY reality can only be defined by other people, after all, I think therefore I am. Eh?
bubbarmybubbarmy 1 year ago
When the mind first comprehends this insight it is like an awakenning from a dream state. But that worldly identity that we attatch our egos to is just as real and we are left with the challenge to co-inhabbit both worlds - the eturnal and the dieing - and to do that without undermining or taking for granted the significance of iether.
amabodie 1 year ago
I'm curious about how you are employing the expression "world". I feel that at times this term slips into very different senses. Heidegger's discussion of "world" in Being and Time seems quite close to your position. "Being the origin of a world" in some kind of Heideggerian sense would mean something quite different than what would perhaps be straightforwardly understood in other ways.
MuhakgreetsWonhyo 1 year ago
@MuhakgreetsWonhyo Yes. Heidegger, and the phenomenological tradition, address world as something that EXISTS (is not a mere extant standing before us).
Professoranton 1 year ago
"I am an aperture through which the universe is looking at itself."~Alan Watts
DANanINHABITANT 1 year ago
ur a genius or sth...
TheWandgirl 1 year ago
uhm, this was the most profound thing i've ever heard!!!
did anybody really hear what this man just said... LMAO!
TheWandgirl 1 year ago
@TheWandgirl Aw Shucks
Professoranton 1 year ago
I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
invanorm 1 year ago
Don't limit this to the world, because the earth is just a part OF the universe/cosmos. Breaking these things down into parts and identities is just a human thinking process. The categories don't actually exist AT ALL, they are imaginary.
feedtherich 1 year ago
We come from the material world, but we impose our conceptualizations upon the world, and more live in that invented world, than we do in the objective. The ego, the illusion of self, and separation of self from the world, is also something we invent and impose, upon an ever changing mind, and upon on our identification of self with our bodies, which are in fact just organic conglomerations, which have no absolute point of origin, which is separate from the flux and change of the material world.
Untemperedsteel 1 year ago
@Untemperedsteel We will never be able to conceive of this reality, it's like trying to think of a number that is 'close' to infinity.
feedtherich 1 year ago
@feedtherich Its kind of like looking at one of those pictures of a hand which is drawing itself.
Untemperedsteel 1 year ago
Try to picture the world before life arose, with nothing to sense it! Trippy!
StabbyRaccoon 1 year ago
@StabbyRaccoon Haha you think that's trippy, try to picture absolute nothingness, no time, no space, no light, no dark.
feedtherich 1 year ago
@feedtherich
Heh, or infinity. That much must be infinity! Nope I can go a little bigger. Okay what about now? Nope I can double that much? What if I take that much and make it a little black dot on a page, take 500 pages and put them side by side? Nope still no infinity. Damnit!
StabbyRaccoon 1 year ago
@StabbyRaccoon Picture? From what angle? Good stuff! Thanks!
Professoranton 1 year ago
One feel lonely as a human because he evolved as merely an element of a larger mechanism, a universe, an ecosystem, a family etc. Then all of a sudden he finds himself self-possessed and if feels wrong.
It's making an anthill out of an ant. YOU DO NOT OWN YOURSELF!
Gesmehod 1 year ago
THESUNSHON SAYS KNOW! CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR PEACE!
thesunshon 1 year ago
THE WORLD IS A PRODUCT OF OUR 'SELVES' is a proposition. And as such, it can be asked whether it is true. In the context of subjectivity it can be taken as true, to degree, but he goes much further in his implication of SELF as a singular entity. This implied meaning FAILs and causes the proposition to be found FALSE on many levels not least Neurobiology. Demonstrably he fails if the literal assertion is taken as true, as some do, since if made my world - IT WOULD BE BETTER !
Hythloday71 1 year ago
you pronounce Melbourne funny
TehShadower 1 year ago
@TehShadower yeah "Mel-bourne" - rather, it is typically pronounced 'Mel-bin'.
lxvlx 1 year ago
Well, Watts would say that we are the world, because everything is so tightly interrelated it cannot really be distinct from anything else.
pazomblez 1 year ago
Greatly articulated. The subject matter that this video deals with is really what people should be looking into.
SageBodisattva 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva
Hey, Sage. Don't you think it's about time that the Prof just bit the bullet & came out as what he actually is; a pantheist. (which he reveals in vids like this)
Come on, Prof; one week you're a 'kind of deist', then another time, 'God is language', then 'God is gravity' ... & then 'something like The Q' lol.
Stop carving it up! Who are we to say what is more important?
But I agree that God/The-Universe is a 'special kind of nothing' because All That Is, is not a thing
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@TWITfromURANUS I am OK with the Prof not putting a flag down on any specific position. After all, can there truly be a solid unchangeable position within an ever changing imagination?
SageBodisattva 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva
Yeah, totally...
My comment was actually more of a reaction to his recent suggestions about pantheism, which included the idea that we think the sun is conscious... I mean, what is the point in that anyway? Pulling ideas like that straight out of your ass in order to deride them is the essence of a strawman argument. The point is to realise that things like the sun, the moon, & the earth beneath us, are as essential to our existence as our internal organs.
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@TWITfromURANUS Watching these videos: Pat Condel's video about the Sun God and PA suggesting that perhaps gravity is a better God concept... there's something amiss. To move towards the galactic consciousness that PA refers to, people must let go of labels and the need to identify a God with something in our frame of reference. The concept of God is only useful if you relate it to something you think is finite and separate from yourself. Without such, there is no distinctions.(continued..)
SageBodisattva 1 year ago
This is why Pantheism is misunderstood and perhaps outmoded; an idea that God is the universe suggests that there is nothing outside a finite universe. It comes close but misses the mark. To understand all that is "out there" we need only look within. If people really need a God, then they should explore the idea that God is EVERYTHING; an infinity of oneness; all that is inside and all that is outside; and this everything that is, just is; and it's a nothing wherein everything is.
SageBodisattva 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva I think we're pretty much in agreement here; it's a language thing.
I actually only started calling myself a pantheist since I became a regular YT user (to roughly communicate by basic position), but for virtually half my life now I've used the word 'God' to refer to Everything -the totality of being. So in one sense it's a unifying concept (if 'God' can't mean that then I have no interest in it).
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva [2]
Pantheism is a very broad term, there are many types, & mine is very eastern-influenced & ultimately nondualistic ('I go beyond' all dichotomies including mind/matter & finite/infinite, etc). God is everything & nothing (& both & neither) to me... it is a signifier that is utterly unlike all others. & when all is said, I cling to nothing (consciously anyway), but words can be very useful...
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva [3]
So out of everything you wrote, I would only really disagree with: "The concept of God is only useful if you relate it to something you think is finite and separate from yourself."
Cheers.T
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@SageBodisattva Thanks Sage
Professoranton 1 year ago
2nd comment!
joshuamyler 1 year ago
I'm in the process of reading a new book by Alva Noë called, "Out of Our Heads"...
I ordered it after reading an interesting blog about Noë's new book in a consciousness blog I read on a regular basis. It's called consciousentities[dot]com.
The idea that thought and identity are not limited to exclusively to the workings of the brain machine are becoming a part of mainstream thought lately.
It does NOT need to be new age.
2bsirius 1 year ago
@2bsirius
Since PA didn't mention 'new age', I'm interested in what &/or who you are referring to; why you felt the need to bring it up(?
"The term New Age was used as early as 1809 by William Blake who described a belief in a spiritual and artistic "New Age" in his preface to Milton: a Poem." ~from Wiki
TWITfromURANUS 1 year ago
@2bsirius
Don't understand the distinction you're making. What do you mean it does not need to be 'new age'? Surely an idea is an idea?
gerontodon 1 year ago
@gerontodon
OK..."New Age" was likely a poor word choice...
For me, it's important to be able to support contention with fact, but I agree that in theory an idea is an idea...and if it is a simple assertion, then fine...but it's important to consider whether or not it translates into real world applications and whether or not it can be falsified IF it is given scientific significance....
I was making a general statement. I was not thinking about PA in particular when I used the NA wording...
2bsirius 1 year ago