what are you?

[Legba]

i like this analogy...

im a driver with a horse, carriage and master.

Carriage represents the body.

Horse is feelings, desires.

Driver is Mind.

Master is I, Consciousness, Will.

The way things are at present,

Carriage, is a machine, an automaton working by external influences.

Horse recieves desires produced by automaton.

Driver has thoughts proceeding from those desires and

Master is different, contradictory "wills" created by desires.

The situation to strive for is...

Master is a single "I"; Consciousness and Will. The result of Enlightenment.

Driver obeys Consciousness and Will.

Horse has emotional powers and desires obeying thought and intelligence and

Carriage obeying desires and emotions which are subject to intelligence.

"Work on oneself must begin with the driver. The driver is the mind. In order to be able to hear the masters voice, the driver, first of all, must not be asleep, that is, he must wake up. Then it may prove that the master speaks a language that the driver does not understand. The driver must learn this language. When he has learnt it, he will understand the master. But concurrently with this he must learn to drive the horse, to harness it to the carriage, to feed and groom it, and to keep the carriage in order - because what would be the use of his understanding the master if he is not in a position to do anything? The master tells him to go yonder. But he is unable to move, because the horse has not been fed, it is not harnessed, and he does not know where the reins are. The horse is our emotions. The carriage is the body. The mind must learn to control the emotions. The emotions always pull the body after them. This is the order in which work on oneself must proceed. But observe again that work on the "bodies" that is, on the driver, the horse, and the carriage, is one thing. And work on the "connections - that is, on the "drivers understanding", which unites him to the master; or the "reins", which connect him with the horse; and on the "shafts" and the "harness" which connect the horse with the carriage - is quite another thing." - G.I. Gurdjieff

[phloom]

I am not you, that being the most important observation.

There is non-symmetry everywhere, yet lately i'm getting some glimpses of the 'joke'....

....that is, everything is symmetrical all the time, somehow?! i dunno, i see hallways and reflectors.

Hallways are action, change etc...less information but faster; scale, time, context.

reflectors are confusing, but they reveal; you, me, this, that etc they are depth, contrast, thickness.

Doesnt make sense?? make you own sense, its a little like when neo starts to be able to read the matrix. LOL i know

[Vertmorpheus]

And here I am without even the most basic of big words to chuck around I'm just me... I guess if you want to get specific "pagan without the more make believe parts or silly rules that assume life works out to whole numbers, and no belief in an actual pantheon to speak of,and no belief that things will Just Happen no matter how much I imagine this or clench and release that".

maybe we should stop poking holes in the universe for awhile...ever notice how the cars of weekend mechanics tend to sound funny half the time, and be either off the road or getting them tickets the other half?

clear as mud eh? take care guys

GD

[ENtiTY]

Who is to say who I really am?

My opinion of myself is biased and no doubt a lil on the rosie side.

On the other hand other people can't possibly know what your thinking or doing all the time so who are they to judge.

I guess I'm a mystery

My girl friend is prolly the closest to the truth and she'll prolly tell you I'm an idiot.

She's prolly right

Mystery solved!

Who or what am I?

I'm an idiot

[komodo]

the ego wants to believe that we are all separate so it can protect itself from other ego's.

but if it's all one machine, there are no 'other egos' or 'the ego', there cannot be even the illusion of seperation without a distance between the illusory play and the subject observing it.

all the evidence of our impulses and awarenesses are contrary to this idea; everything we are aware of is a subjective experience of otherness. we are humans, not universal mush.

Edited May 30, 2007 by komodo

[chilli]

We are the reflection.

[No_One]

The ego ensures the survival of your biological being, it is your concept of self rooted in physical reality.

This part of the self has taught itself to see particles arranged in certain fashions as either friends or foe, it's the nature of the beast - fuck or be fucked - flight or fight.

If your sense of identity or concept of reality is solely rooted in this "region" that's your reality.

Somewhere along the way we've developed the ability to plan/strategise alternate ways to support the survival of our biological being.

You know have a biological being that can kill (deprive another arrangement of particles of it's consciousness/life-force/daemon), be killed (have it's own consciousness/life-force/daemon taken from it) and also explore other ways it could do it.

This exploration of alternate ways to support our biological beings has been going on for ages and probably will continue to go on for ages still, apparently having protection from predators and the elements is not enough for some biological beings and they need to create problems to give their lives meaning, for example, that arrangement of particles sorrounding that eternal being over there has more money than the particles sorrounding my eternal self so I'm gonna convince myself that I need that amount of money aswell.

When we create these problems i.e. you need this amount of money, what is the meaning of life, where do we come from etc. our eternal self changes in proportion to the changes we make to our the mind/understanding of reality.

If we didn't create problems what we do? Probably what we're supposed to do? What would doing what we are supposed to do feel like?

Buddhist's and Hindu's speak of the concept of samskaras or sanskaras, basically the concept describes the "changes for the worse" our eternal-selves have suffered through all the "bad-action" our biological beings have carried out. They believe by putting the right things into your mind you will negate all the wrong things you are storing in there and the flow on effect is your biological being performing right actions and hence your eternal-self returns to it's original "pure" state.

but if it's all one machine, there are no 'other egos' or 'the ego', there cannot be even the illusion of seperation without a distance between the illusory play and the subject observing it.

I see the mind and body as two separate entities, there's a pool of consciousness and a pool of matter and my matter is no different to your matter just as my consciousness is no different to your consciousness - in this sense yes we are part of the same machine.

However, your biological self needs to see itself as separate from my biological self as I might kill it/harm it in some way, If it didn't see itself as separate how would it know what it is meant to be protecting.

When you don't need to protect your biological self form other biological beings and when your not trying to create events in the physical realm you stop seeing yourself as separate.

Look what happens when you sleep, if your tucked up in bed with and all external factors that determine the qulity of your experience of reality are under-control (i.e. no external potentially dangerous events are on the horizon/you are totally anxiety free sort of thing) and you are not consciously creating anything i.e. movement, speech, etc. you slip into a state called dreaming - speaking with only my own experience of dreams to draw upon I would say that seperateness doesn't exist in dreams.

"In the middle, there is a riddle, you only exist when you sleep"....Dave McCormack (Custard)

Peace

[komodo]

ok, i guess i'm coming from a different point of view as i dont see the mind and body as separate, or believe in an eternal being that has any kind of 'it' status.

[No_One]

i'm coming from a different point of view

What are the co-ordinates of this point of view?

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it"...Einstein

i dont see the mind and body as separate

Why do you use two different terms to describe them then?

The interaction of the mind and the body gives rise to what we call a "singular being" but we still acknowledge this "singular being" has a mind and it has a body - our usual undersatnding is that one calls the shots and one takes the orders.

The only vantage point from which I can see them being the same is from the "we're all connected vantage point" i.e. they are both creations found within this thing we call the Universe and all that is and all that ever will be is connected through the fact that that creation calls the Universe home.

The unique properties of each just make it too hard for me to say at this time, from an anthropic viewing platform, that they are not seperate phenomena or separate tendrils branching off of the juice-line that drives all creation that is contained within the Universe.

[komodo]

coordinates are some lat/long on earth planet, round freo, in front of desk in apartment

Why do you use two different terms to describe them then?

because it's convenient and easy to? i'm not sure exactly where i did (other than referring to your post just now, which was in your terms not mine), if it's important you can quote me and i'll check it out.

our usual undersatnding is that one calls the shots and one takes the orders.

only if you're a dualist. i dont think the body is just a lump of meat that takes orders, i think our consciousness is distributed throughout it, part of it's life force and sensorum. this is why humans have chakras and energy systems, the 'energy body' if its a handy term is not just a brain function.

you use the word creation, but it isn't a given, just your assumption i'm not at all sure anything is created, i think things move around, taking part in various events, like the ocean, and these 'currents' or 'waves' or bits of froth are outcomes of countless interacting chaotic life impulses (butterfly wings etc).

[No_One]

Komodo, sorry if I came across as nasty, I'm not trying to pick at your stitching, probably more so trying to pick at my own.

Now let me explain myself - or atleast try.

Take away all the terms we use to master reality and what is there?

We are forced as children, well I know I was, to know how to read and write, to know what things are called etc. and we do this because if we don't "you'll end up living on the streets", by doing this, atleast to some degree, we reduce the probability of ever coming up with our own system/undertsanding of reality.

The theory of reality I had arrived at after years of listening/observing other peoples bullshit had me tied up in knots, I got the shits one day and began analysing my understanding of reality, looking for a crack in the plan that what liberate me from the restrictions imposed upon me, it just so happened that this day was the same day I experienced a Divine Moment of Truth .

Getting to know the self has been a process of trying to unlearn all the bullshit I've had drummed into me over the years in the hope of replacing it with ACTUAL Truth. Truth to me is reality as experienced in Divine Moments of Truth i.e. when the ego fucks off for a while and you have a direct experience of reality and not one as seen through distorted eyes.

This to me is the epitamy of a pure state of being, I would love to live in that state but I have a biological being that has needs so to maintain it's health/support it there are some parts of consensual reality the ego needs to hang on to, i.e. how to talk, how to write, etc.

you use the word creation, but it isn't a given, just your assumption i'm not at all sure anything is created

cre·a·tion (krē-ā'shən) n.: An original product of human invention or artistic imagination.

My meaning of the word creation is anything external to your mind that it has measured and given the title of "something" as opposed to "nothing". This creation occurs in the mind - it's an amulgum of previously unrelated thoughts or concepts given new meaning. Wether or not that mind then has the ability to manifest a physical representation/symbol of that creation in the physical realm depends on wether or not it can steer the meat sack it is responsible for in the appropriate fashion i.e. get it to paint that picture you see in your imagination.

What you see of reality depends on what your mind tells you you are seeing i.e. are you talking to sacks of meat, phenomena unlike your self, a dead-shit, a cocky little fucker that thinks he knows everything, etc.

The sack of meat is merely a vessel that houses your true SELF. The meat sack reports what external forces it is being influenced by and your mind then tries to determine what course of action your meat sack should take given the inputs it is receiving, repeating the same course of action for the same inputs builds muscle memory and your meat-sack finds itse;f on auto pilot whenever those inputs are received.

How your mind comes up with decisions regarding appropriate courses of action is effected greatly by the creations/understanding of the external world it has at it's disposal, the more incongruent they are with ACTUAL Truth usually the worse the course of action taken by that meat-sack (unless of cause that meat-sack has a mind that doesn't generate it's own thoughts through thinking for itself and simply mimics the behaviour of other meat-sacks).

From this I hope you can see why I reckon our experience of reality is filtered through the creations our minds have attached atached themselves when attempting to understand/master external reality.

coordinates are some lat/long on earth planet, round freo, in front of desk in apartment

That's where your consciousness is roughly rooted but where is it precisely? Assuming your consciusness is your SELF is it in agreeance with what your ego has learnt to see or with what is really there, what is there when you let go of the things your ego uses to define "out there"?

A better question is who are you when you're floating in a pool in a dark room that is dead-quite with a peg on your nose after having your sense of feeling anaesthatised/numbed up? I'm thinking that all there is is your intuition/imagination/possibilities (and a taste in your mouth - - can't think how you'd get around that one)?

i think our consciousness is distributed throughout it, part of it's life force and sensorum. this is why humans have chakras and energy systems, the 'energy body' if its a handy term is not just a brain function.

These energy systems are all gradations of the one colour though i.e. "white". A balanced/centered/pure/harmonious form of consciousness is apparently "white" hence the term enlightenment - balance out all these gradations and your energy will be "white".

The question then arises - what is illuminated by or receives this light?

Using my logic there has to be a "center of your being" - sort of like a nucleus. As to where this "center of your being" is, the juries still out but I do have a hunch that its the sweet-spot where your mind, matter and life force intersect - possibly the medula oblongata?

Anyway, that'll do for now.

Peace.

[ThunderIdeal]

well, in hinduism, which is where we get the chakra system, the supersoul resides in the heart.

[komodo]

"As inumerable cups full of water, many reflections of the sun are seen, but the sun is the same; similarly individuals, like cups, are inumerable, but the vivifying spirit, like the sun, is one." The Shiva-samhita I.35 II.42-43

the idea that our human forms are 'meat sacks' is pretty vile. if i thought of my body in that way i'd probably not associate myself with it either!

shiva, if you have an idea of a 'self' that isn't the body, is rather 'the mind', that raises a whole lot of difficult questions for me, such as: what is it made of, how does it have continuity over time, what defines it's limits (ie. 'yours' is not 'mine')?

Edited June 5, 2007 by komodo

[No_One]

The heart chakra is like the fulcrum in a way hey i.e. smack in the middle, I can see how once all the colours are balanced this could be the chakra your spirit naturally operates from.

[ThunderIdeal]

yeah. what is the medula oblongata by the way?

[No_One]

Sorry Komodo, must have posted at the same time.

that raises a whole lot of difficult questions for me

If your already happy with the theories you have then please don't listen to mine.

the idea that our human forms are 'meat sacks' is pretty vile. if i thought of my body in that way i'd probably not associate myself with it either!

What we call "Meat" is an arrangement of atoms/matter. Change how you think of "Meat", think of "Meat" rationally and not in accordance with the instinctual feelings the thought of meat conjures up in you.

if you have an idea of a 'self' that isn't the body, what is it made of?

I can't know what it's made of unless I step outside it i.e. die. The I AM can't see the I AM.

how does it have continuity over time

Time is a creation of the mind, I am time. It's more a question of how does it stay in the moment for which the answer would be keeping the meat sack occupied and focusing my attention on what the meat sack is doing.

what defines it's limits

The point at which my left brain tells me we are different i.e. that bundle of matter is not connected to mine or my right brain senses that there are parts of your left brain at play convincing you that we are seperate.

[komodo]

What we call "Meat" is an arrangement of atoms/matter.

no, the term for that would be "an arrangement of atoms/matter"! it's not instinctual to read words according to their meaning and useage. meat is a specific term referring to "animal flesh as food". seems to me that to look at the living human body as a sack of food/meat doesn't account for it's many amazing and beautiful qualities and potentials.

q. about time and limits was to examine how we can have seperate experiential 'I'-dentity. eg. i occupy a certain location relative to other things and have certain qualities. also, i can learn and change, progressively/regressively. if i don't exist in a timeframe, this change cannot occur. from your replies shiva, i gather that you think the differences are just tricks of the body, so in fact we are not distinct selves at all?

my basic reasoning is that without identity, there is no self, and identity is given to us by virtue of being embodied in space and time, these terrains in which we can be said to have qualities and form. without this vessel, we have no identity/difference, ie. are everything/nothing.

[No_One]

Words are words, I used the term meat-sack cause it was used previously in the thread and I've just ran with it, we can go back and call it something different if you want, let's call it Apples from now on, it still doesn't change what it is.

I AM using Apples to perform tasks, I will continue to do so for as long as Apples stays on the winning side of the atrophy/entropy battle.

What reality is like without Apples I can't remember cause all my memories involve Apples, I have a hunch though that when Apples can't hold me anymore I'll probably merge back into the "stuff-from-which-I-came" and who knows, perhaps down the track the combination of "stuff-from-which-I-came" that makes Apples and I the entity you are talking to know i.e. "Shiva" could re-manifest?

Peace

Oops, left a bit out.

my basic reasoning is that without identity, there is no self, and identity is given to us by virtue of being embodied in space and time, these terrains in which we can be said to have qualities and form. without this vessel, we have no identity/difference, ie. are everything/nothing.

Exactly! Identity is a construct that helps you create events co-operatively with other Apples.

Edited June 5, 2007 by Shiva

[komodo]

sure i guess so. some fractional probability over infinite time and all.. monkeys writing shakespeare thing. thing is, it wouldn't be shiva, because shiva is NOW as well as Apples. identity is a time function as well as a location and combination of what say buddhists call 'aggregates' (i dont see this 'grain' idea of reality but its a handy example). tomorrow, you'll be someone else, but there will be a link to who you were yesterday. that's form, the body. without that link, no identity over time, no identity.

without identity/form, there is no experience... and to me, life is all about experiencing being alive, so embodiment is the whole mystery and purpose; not merely a mechanism but life itself. the alternative is a kind of all-life, which has no experiential component as there are no senses/difference.

Edited June 5, 2007 by komodo

[No_One]

Seems like we haven't progressed anywhere from Bacchants horse and cart analogy so I'm gonna stop now.

Shiva = Apples + I AM = Ego

Apples = Physical Self

I AM = True Self

without identity/form, there is no experience

Yep, that's actual reality for ya. Give it up for the Nothingness!

Peace

[komodo]

to talk about reality as actually being nothing doesnt make sense; there is clearly something taking place here. i am experiencing things, therefore things happen. whether or not they are as i imagine is an open question, but that reality is not nothingness is obvious.

[chilli]

I've been hesitating adding my thoughts to this thread because I really am unsure about this topic. Plus, komodo and Shiva are here and I will probably start arguing with them

One aspect of something komodo said ties in with one persistent idea that I've had that has remained with me in one form or another over time, and that is the interconnectedness of mind/body. Growing up, I either absorbed or was taught a basic dualistic approach to mind/matter, but it was complicated by the addition of spirit: a tripartite being consisting of a spirit which was some kind of ethereal thing, a body which was the physical form, and a mind or soul, which was a kind of by-product of the body. The idea was that the spirit was an immortal individual self, the body was an Apples sack and the mind-soul was sort of an interface between them. The particular brand of Christianity my parents subscribed to seemed to hold to the horse/carriage idea, with the complication that the spirit could also drive the soul, so it went spirit>soul>body.

As I grew up, this all began to seem untenable to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, how did the control alternate between spirit and soul? How did a spirit operate or think? It kind of seemed like a dumb fundamental impulse deterministically driving everything I did, over which I had no control, yet was somehow supposed to be more 'me' than me... how was it I could experience thinking about my spirit as a mind, but not the reverse? It also seemed superfluous to have two incorporeal identities involved in the whole process. At this point I began to suspect the spirit and soul were kind of intermingled, but still accepted that they somehow controlled the body and were independent of it. Then I started to wonder why people with brain damage behaved differently to those with healthy brains, and the obvious conclusion was that the physical properties of the brain determined the state of that person's mind, which kind of got me back to wondering about whether there was a difference between the mind and the spirit after all, so maybe there was a spirit-mind and a body-mind. Further questions were raised as I pondered my experiences with artificially induced alteration of the brains chemistry, which sort of swung me back towards a more holistic approach that the mind and body are interdependent, but I still kind of suspected there might be some kind of other-dimensional individual mind or principle that is manifesting itself as this particular individual mind-body, so I guess back to the spirit-mind continuum interacting (controlling?) my body-mind continuum. However, I also have suspicions that what I consider the spirit-mind might really just be nothing more than the subconscious impulse workings of my brain.

This was where I got to by the time I was 19 or 20, and the same basic idea has remained with me as a working model over the intervening 10 years with fluctuations here and there, but in the last couple of years I've been thinking about this stuff a lot more as I've become more aware of the changes in my own mind, and again experienced the way that physical brain chemistry, whether it is altered by drugs, diet, sex, meditation, exercise, music, genetics, weather or just a hard knock to the head can unavoidably affect the functioning pattern of my mind. On the other hand I have also experienced an ability to apparently bypass the control of my brain chemistry to a degree, so that even though my brain is pushing me towards anxiety or depression I seem to be able to supersede this with some kind of rational impulse, and as a result lead or force my body to do things and think things that change its chemistry to more wholesome outcomes.

Anyway that's kind of where I'm at.

[komodo]

if there is a spirit/mind, whats it made of?

[chilli]

"if there is a spirit/mind, whats it made of?"

I wouldn't have a clue... certainly nothing quantifiable by our current methods. I took a bit of a guess when I said "..some kind of other-dimensional individual mind or principle that is manifesting itself as this particular individual mind-body..." so I guess the nearest approximation would be a non-material energy functioning in another dimension fundamental to our own... the whole flatlander thing I guess.

Edited June 12, 2007 by IllegalBrain

[komodo]

yep, it raises a few questions like that though. i think we are connected to our body in all phases and perspectives, or else we aren't 'we'. so maybe there's a different vibrational energy field associated with the body, that isn't conventionally detectable yet, but i've never seen evidence or good basis for the idea of an identity-thing that is totally separable from the body.