This post refers to the Philosophy Project.
The purpose of this post is simply to provide a holding area for ideas.
We shall be looking around at all different kind of stuff to digest it. The ideas shall first be discussed under the COMMENTS section. Anything pertinent will then be added to this post.
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A self (being) seems to be simply a “center of considerations” that it holds and continually outputs.
As the perception point identifies itself with knowledge through considerations, it gets fixed in its place, and loses it fluidity. Thus, “I,” or the self, is generated.
All knowledge, regardless of its source, should be consistent. When there is inconsistency, there must be something unresolved that is underlying that inconsistency. Spiritual progress occurs when one starts to spot inconsistencies as they come up naturally and applies mindfulness to them until they dissolve.
As one starts to look mindfully at an inconsistency, it may lead to a chain of inconsistencies. Just keep looking more closely at the inconsistency that is at the “top of the stack.” It is very important to follow the 12 points of mindfulness.
“I” generates considerations (assessment, speculations, judgments, justifications, assumptions, etc.). These considerations are capable of filtering whatever “I” looks at. Taking responsibility means not letting one’s considerations color one’s perception and seeing things as they are.
Considerations seem to bring in the factor of “preservation,” whether it is the preservation of self, or the preservation of property. Justice seems to be concerned with such preservation.
Everything about this universe is in flux. Nothing stays the same. Everything is impermanent. Yet this whole system made up of impermanence seems to be permanently there. How can this inconsistency of “impermanence being permanently there” be explained?
Perception is there as long as manifestation is there. When manifestation is not there, there is no perception either. Thus, there can never be a perception of the state of non-manifestation. We would always perceive manifestation to be there. Ha ha… Q.E.D.
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(1) An “identity” may simply be a tight “knot” of considerations that needs to be loosened up.
(2) The self is the “center of considerations” analogous to the “center of mass.”
(3) An identity may not affect the self if it is somewhere at the periphery of considerations.
(4) If the identity is closer to the center, it may appear as if the self is stuck with it.
(5) But there are simply a bunch of considerations knotted together, which needs to be loosened up.
(6) Being stuck is simply “some considerations locked into each other.”
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There seems to be two different levels of knowledge:
(1) A level of knowledge before SELF comes into being.
(2) Another level of knowledge, which is generated when SELF starts to react to the previous level of knowledge.
Such a reaction may occur in chain resulting in ballooning of considerations. The only way to stop and reverse such ballooning of considerations would be to look non-judgmentally and see what is actually there.
Then one is no longer reacting to what is there. Instead one is now continually realizing what is there. This starts to deflate the ballooning considerations. In other words, the ego, or self, gradually starts to dissolve.
One can never predict where this process might lead to. 
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At death, the body disintegrates into its particles, and the identity that was the body is dissolved. Similarly, the observing and thinking part of the person (the living soul) also disintegrates into its particles (considerations), and the identity that was the person is also dissolved. That is my current understanding.
However, the particles remain and they can recombine into another “body plus living soul” combination. There is infinity of such recombination.
What are the ultimate laws underlying this disintegration and reintegration, I don’t know the details at the moment. But this seems to be going on forever like complex cycles of some eternal wave according to Hinduism.
Nirvana is something different altogether. It happens to a live soul. In my opinion, nirvana is like exteriorization from CONSIDERATIONS. It is the separation of perception-point from all its considerations. This is called giving up of all attachment in Hinduism. One then sees things as they are without any filters as in Buddhism. There is no individuality in terms of considerations. A perception point is the same as any other perception point. It does not add anything to what is observed or experienced.
Nothing arrives at Nirvana. it is what remains after all attachments are dissolved. I call it a perception-point. But even the perception-point dissolves at parinirvana by merging into its own manifestation… something like electron merging into positron.
Parinirvana is probably what occurs at death, where the live soul, that was already reduced to a completely detached perception-point, merges back into its own manifestation, extinguishing both. The laws of disintegration and reintegration are thus bypassed. But this is only my speculation.
The basis of this speculation is removal of all inconsistencies that I am aware of at this level.
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Comments
According to Gurdjieff, everything an “average man” possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative. A common everyday ordinary man is born a machine and dies a machine without any chance of being anything else. This belief seems to run counter to the Judeo-Christian tradition that man is a living soul. Gurdjieff believed that the possession of a soul (a state of psychological unity which he equated with being “awake”) was a “luxury” that a disciple could attain only by the most painstaking work of over a long period of time. The majority—in whom the true meaning of the gospel failed to take root—went the “broad way” that “led to destruction.”
In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Gurdjieff expresses his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt (by and large) for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His discussions of “orthodoxhydooraki” and “heterodoxhydooraki”—orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from the Russian word durak (fool)—position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.
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At death, the body disintegrates into its particles and the identity that was body is dissolved. Similarly, the thinking and observing part of the person (the living soul) also disintegrates into its particles (considerations), and the identity that was the person is also dissolved. That is my current understanding.
However, the particles remain and they can recombine into another body plus living soul combination. There are infinity of such recombination.
What are the ultimate laws underlying this disintegration and reintegration, I don’t know at the moment. But this seems to be going forever like complex cycles of a wave according to Hinduism.
Nirvana is something different. It happens to a live soul. In my opinion, It is like exteriorization from CONSIDERATIONS. It is the perception-point separating from all surrounding considerations. This is called “giving up of all attachment” in Hinduism. One then sees things as they are without any filters as in Buddhism. There is no individuality in terms of considerations. A perception point is the same as any other perception point. It does not add anything to what is observed or experienced.
Paranirvana is probably what occurs at death, where the live soul, that was already reduced to a completely detached perception-point, merges back into the primary manifestation, extinguishing both and moving beyond the laws of disintegration and reintegration. But this is only my speculation.
The basis of this speculation is removal of all inconsistencies that I am aware of at this level.
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It is not what arrives at Nirvana that matters, it is what remains after all attachments are dissolved. I call it a perception-point. But even the perception-point dissolves at parinirvana by merging into its own manifestation… something like electron merging into positron.
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In my opinion, all the above is apparency only. In truth, “cause” is the result of interactions between considerations at various levels as in a fractal.
The universe is what it is. “Cause-effect” and machine-like “action-reaction” are simply two different theories to explain it. These theories take the black and white approach. I see those two theories to be different points of an interminable fractal scale. So, there is neither absolute self-determinism as postulated for thetan, no is there absolute other-determinism, as postulated for a machine.
Thetan and “cause-point” are more of a part of black and white approach. The reality seems to be a lot more sophisticated. There seem to be a whole spectrum of considerations and interactions between them that have not been explored. There is a lot more that Buddha says here: THE STRUCTURE OF “I”
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All abilities are appearances only. They need to be looked at more closely.
What is ability? What is potential? I think these are much finer considerations (for the lack of a better term), or phenomenon, that needs to be explored.
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Yes, it seems that “something” is there. By the time we name it potential, we are already on our way to bias. Because by the time I called it, “it” in the previous sentence, I was already on my way to bias.
Maybe any structure is bias.
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Yes. I think that ability and potential have finer structures.
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Each consideration, when kept, influences subsequent looking.
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That’s an important statement.
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I was reviewing the scientific method and noticing that “interested looking” or maybe just “looking” is missing as a first or “zero” step coming before 1. It doesn’t make sense to me to assume that it is occurring.
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Yes, the conjecture must be based on the best effort to harmonize some inconsistency. So, there is a lot of looking already in progress.
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“is” or needs to be?
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Well, there can always be a better looking.
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LOL!
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I find the dictionary defs of “ability” to be tautological.
It seems that there is first something there, and then one re-arranges that something. If one rearranges that something in such a way to to attract admiration, then that arrangement is said to have been accomplished with ability; or talent; or capacity; etc.,.
Now I don’t know what admiration is.
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So, your attention is now going to an earlier layer of the fractal. Ha ha!
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It is always a fantastic ability to set up a puzzle. And it is another remarkable ability to solve that puzzle. Just take a look at what it takes to set up a puzzle, and then for a totally fresh viewpoint to solve that puzzle.
It requires quite an ability to set up a trap.
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Yes it is. I have been looking at this for a number of weeks and the sense of it has given me quite a bit of relief from the stress of the natural and routine inconsistencies of MEST.
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I’ve been trying to understand Godel’s uncertainty and the question comes to me to wonder if the fact of “seeing ourselves within a set” and then wondering if “there is something outside that set” is important to resolving the question.
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I mean “the question” of will.
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I am not composing this question very well.
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Have another look at
Gödel and Determinism
One needs a datum outside the set to evaluate the set fully. How you go about finding it is another story.
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Yes, well I am sitting here within a set. But I am conjecturing about there being “outside the set” without a purchase to leverage the thought.
This is inconsistent to me. Does this inconsistency point to something “outside” or is my thinking just very flawed.
I can see this going either way but overall I am wondering whether this fact of maundering about there being “outside” something that cannot manifest . . . if it manifests then it comes “inside” and the moment is lost. Or else, there is nothing “outside.” This paradox points me to there being something basically wrong with the question that I am asking and possibly something wrong with the sense of “inside” and then “outside.”
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Does “unknowable” ring a bell? 🙂
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No. Unknowable is a dagger into the heart of looking. It is the linchpin which holds this mental trap together. I live in the knowable where everything is. Nothing is unknowable. Everything is knowable.
What I ask is, “Does the “flatlander” conjecture about “up?”
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“Unknowable” is the challenge. Keep looking. 🙂
I don’t think everything is knowable. The day you think everything is knowable, you may stop looking and start taking things for granted.
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Yes, I think this may be my point. I know that you are joking with me but if everything is knowable, and we totally take things for granted, and we can’t get one foot outside what we say is inside, then it seems to follow that our TOE’s — our explanations are tautologies.
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Taking things for granted is what makes things knowable. The point is that you cannot know anything in the absolute sense.
Things are always changing at infinity of levels. Nothing stays totally still to be known in an absolute sense.
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ah, right.
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Does the fact of “wondering” whether there are dimensions outside the obvious ones play any important part to resolving the question? And what does this “wondering” tell us about ourselves?
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There is nothing wrong with wondering as long as one knows that one is wondering.
Obviously it is a conjecture one is starting out with, and one should not lose sight of that.
Wondering is natural. It helps one try out various fits until one finds the one that really fits. The liability comes only when one gets attached to one’s conjecture, or even to theory.
One should be willing to throw away one’s conjecture or theory at a moments notices, if consistency requires it.
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I am willing. I am pledged to this.
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Considerations (thoughts, ideas, assumptions, expectations, suppositions, conjectures, speculations, etc.) seem to get stored in space somehow. They emerge as one’s attention goes to those locations in space.
That space may just be concentrated around one in the form of the mind. But one may be able to put attention beyond that space and find ideas that seem to be coming from elsewhere.
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Vin: That space may just be concentrated around one in the form of the mind. But one may be able to put attention beyond that space and find ideas that seem to be coming from elsewhere.
Chris: Then I need to know more about “attention.”
BTW, you handled your exchange with Marildi beautifully. I really want to congratulate you on both your demeanor and full answers. It was a tip top example of “how to blog” maybe ever. Each moment that I thought you would snap — give up — you did not. You seem to have found your second-wind for dealing with garrulous and aggressive blogging.
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Yes, looking at “attention” is next on my list.
Well, Marildi is teaching me a lot. 🙂
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Today I got a wonderful win from India from self-application of KHTK.
Few weeks ago I had gotten another wonderful win from Mexico from self-application of KHTK.
It is happening finally. 🙂
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What advances a person is not the accumulation of knowledge, but the resolving of inconsistencies in knowledge that one comes across.This way one can handle any amount of knowledge without feeling overwhelmed.
Thus, one need not accumulate any knowledge in one’s head, but simply be able to reference knowledge as required. This is how one would be able to survive in this information age. One needs to spot and resolve inconsistencies rapidly. KHTK trains one to do develop that ability through mindfulness..
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One is stuck with that, which one considers valuable.
Check on these things:
“How are you doing with that nervousness right now?”
“Have you ever made use of that nervousness?”
“Suppose you let go of that nervousness, what might happen?”
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Thus, one may meditate on those things one considers valuable and look at them for what they are.
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We also respond to our own responses (what we thought). For example, we may hear a noise and we start to imagine all kind of scenarios.
The instant we get the facts straightened out all these things are gone. Such dreamed up things are what we are dealing with.
We get the facts straightened out by actual looking, and not by thinking.
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Anything one clings to keeps one, to some degree, in the past.
This is the case with people who continually recite their past successes or wins. They are stuck with them.
This is the case with Scientologists who fiercely defend Scientology instead of discussing the subject.
Unwanted conditions come from being stuck in the past.
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One may meditate on an unwanted condition, or something that one is clinging to as follows (use mindfulness):
(a) Is there something of value or importance?
(b) Is there something that must be preserved, continued, kept going, maintained, etc.
(c) Is there something that must be defended or protected.
(d) Is there something that must be prevented?
(e) Is there something that must be suppressed?
(f) Is there something that must be rejected or pushed away?
NOTE: If something comes up then look at it more closely. If nothing comes up then accept that.
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2ndxmr commented: http://isene.me/2012/12/30/happy-new-year/#comment-27580
“A lot more needs to be said and developed around that concept of sharing space (affinity) and enlarging space.”
That which is sharing space is itself a phenomenon of space. Terminals are there due to a condensation of space.
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“The bit that we tend to exteriorize around our bodies now is likely just a weak echo of the previous ability we had to exteriorize across vast distances.”
True exteriorization is actually a decondensation of space.
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If we can grasp that our interpretation of what is occurring around us is the only experience that we will ever have of the universe, then we can begin to be ready to know something about the universe.
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That is an astute observation. Beyond that are simply considerations.
“See things as they are.” ~ Buddha.
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Buddha’s comment is fine but we can go a level deeper than that.
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When you go a level deeper, you are still supposed to
“See things as they are.” ~ Buddha.
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Of course, but as they are is inconsistent person to person. The level deeper would be to see ourselves as we are.
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But these “selves” are things too… they are clumps of considerations floating around in metaphysical space.
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I am only going one layer deeper. Of course selves are clumps of considerations. But I am thinking that before there is any RWOT to “see as it is,” there is first a self that should be “seen as it is.
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To see things as they are without filters would seem to reveal the mechanic of perception.
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Which might in turn be another perception. This is neither simple nor quick but I believe that understanding is fractal in its primal nature. Every philosopher of every generation may or may have worked this out.
The thing is, and this may be the greatest secret of all: the discover is personal and may ever be so.
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