Just who and what ARE we?

reply to post by NewAgeMan


There definately is more to us than our reptilian brains but only because we don't have to use it like we were made to. All our needs are easily met without us having to get "physical" over it. However, it's amazing how easily we can descend into primitiveness under certain conditions. You just have to look at the black friday shopping craziness for instance. Relatively well educated, enlightened people fighting over gadgets in limited supply at a steal price.
So I guess that's what I mean. We're constantly trying to transcend our reptilian brain but it's still there and under the right circumstances for you (or me which might not be discount gadgets but something else) activates without any thought on our part.
I guess we can run but we can't hide from it. So it's probably best to give it due respect instead of trying to suppress it or ignore that it's a part of who we all are.

Just wondering if you're religious? Not everyone, but a lot of people get their answers for their existence via their beliefs.

reply to post by Flighty


I am indeed a believer, but I am also very scientific, and rational, and have come to conclude that our consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of matter, but the other way around. There is also felt experience or gnosis of an eternal self, a higher mind, which is not and cannot be reduced to a 3 dimensional localized space-time event. We have a free self, a chooser, and a knower, who plays a role, but who isn't the role we play.

This re-frame may be called "Monistic Idealism" (consciousness is primary) as distinguished from Materialist Monism (matter is primary). In fact, it is only within a Monistic Idealist framework within which all the quantum paradoxes are resolved. The implications of this is that our REAL self, the one who is aware and may freely choose, collapsing the wave equation of existence, is a non-localized free causal agent, residing outside of the material world, or if within it, in the WHOLE of it, all, from end to end.

I will post more on this, with references to the work of people like Roger Penrose, to show that the mind has as much a non-localized, quantum holographic nature, as it does a localized material, or classical one.

We are much more than we THINK we are, including the conception of the self aware self as an epiphenomenon of matter espoused by the atheistic, materialist monist POV, which is no longer workable as a scientific method to explain consciousness, or just who and what the human being REALLY is as something other than just a machine, but having the capacity for self awareness, and free will.

If replying please don't assume to already know the answer, thank you.

If I might, let me use a religious symbol and allegory then (whether a myth or historical fact is irrelevant for our purposes). It's something I've picked up and borrowed if you will, from another poster here by the name of Michael Cecil, who talks endlessly about two two aspects of human being that have taken over our minds and our being, our imagination and therefore our very existence/ They are "the self" and "the thinker", who Michael suggests, rather poignantly, may be seen represented as the two thieves on either side of the cross of Christ, who in this case would represent the knower, or God-consciousness, oneness, unity, whatever you want to call it. The "self" is just an amalgam of our personality and who we THINK we are, the "thinker" the one who analyzes, and thinks ABOUT life and reality, and the self and others, but never accesses the real thing, always being one step away from an authentic experience, or awareness.

Who we are not, is our inauthentic self and/or the inauthentic thinker who analyzes.

Our true self, if there is such a thing, and I think there is, is the one then who simply observes, unmoved, but not without curiosity and awareness, and deep understanding, of the authentic experiencial variety, what some call Gnosis, or what Terrance McKenna calls "felt experience". The one who comes "to bear witness to the truth".

As I pointed out to Michael Cecil, within that context, is that it was (is) surely the self-thief who mocked the Lord, and who said something like "if you are who and what they say you are, then you'll be able to get yourself out of this predicament". Selfishness is at the root of most of our problems, as well as all our distortions and illusions. It cannot access authentic self awareness, since by its very nature, it is blind to itself. The thinker OTOH, as an analyzer and evaluator, was able to correctly discern through rational processes, the inherint injustice in his midst, and said to the other thief something like "shame on you, can you not see and recognize that we are getting our just desserts, while this man here is innocent, having done nothing wrong" and then turning to Jesus he says "remember me when you come into your kingdom", to which Jesus is reported to have said to him "this day you will be with me in paradise" - which represents the transformation of the thinker, into knower. Once differentiated from the self, the thinker will acknowledge and be transformed by the presence of the Knower, of the God in his midst, and will ask to be included, or re-integrated.

There is however no place for the selfish self, blinded by self, and therefore excluded from an ongoing learning process of differentiation and re-integration.

We are not who we were or think we are still, but infinitely moreso who and what we are becoming, imho. That's where all the fun is anyway, leaving self behind, with rational faculties still in tact, to have a novel experience, and be moved or changed by it in the process. Not unlike becoming like a little child, to enter into the awareness of eternal life and happiness, and all manner of new fun things to see and do.

Life and existence isn't just WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). There's more to it than that.

The spirit fills the earth.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I agree with that.
As for the other posts above, I've now got some more reading up to do. Thanks.

i can't stress this enough!!!- GET THE BOOK- The Power of Kabbalah- by Yehuda Berg!!!!!

don't be put off by the title. i'm not religious in anyway, but the book was very enlightening!!

i think they've got it at amazon for a fiver. get multiple copies and hand them out to your friends.

if you've not seen it, checkout- The Esoteric Agenda, on youtube or google video!!

peace out.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by Flighty

 

If replying please don't assume to already know the answer, thank you.

edit on 3-12-2010 by NewAgeMan because: typo

Applying allegory of the cave, I think people including myself are trying to describe the answer to your question in terms that we can all understand, that is assuming we are all in the same cave.

For example, I said we are the dreamer dreaming the dream. That is the closest of words that I can use to describe the level of consciousness I have "experienced". It may not be that we don't know, it may be that we don't know how to explain it.

Obviously in this thread, when asking then question "just who and what ARE we"? we're referring to one or two apsects, one, our physical nature as an evolved sentient being-organism, and two, our own sense of being as a subjective observer and as a type of self, which knows "I am", and who is aware even that there is a thinking self, and who may therefore observe his/her own thought processes, or simply, some sort of transcendant self ie: that sense of being and awareness cultivated during meditation or contemplative prayer, or by simply just being, without forming any thoughts or distinctions, something very few people can do, or if so, do it for very long.

There are two ways of looking at this "system", the whole thing, where one view - sees "it" (the human being) as nothing but an evolved organism, who's own consciousness or self awareness is but an epiphenomenon of matter, like an emergent phenomenon arising through some bifurcation in complexity and two - within the quantum framework of an actualizing reality, born of free will, who chooses what to see and experience and how to experience, as an agent of personal subjective experience ie: a personal "me", the human being that is me, and you, our "self" as a human being. Furthermore, the findings of quantum mechanics and the measurement problem, states quite emphatically, that we have it all backwards to begin with in thinking purely from a materialist monist, matter is primary POV. It turns out that things are not only stranger than we suppose, they are stranger than we can imagine, whereby the world around us, as it presents itself to our senses and our mind, while perhaps not entirely a byproduct OF our mind, like some sort of mind projector, nevertheless is realized only when the choice, the measurement, the judgement, the distinction is made, and so we "see" the world, but that phenomenal world, which we THINK we "see" and experience, is something else altogether more mysterious, and is something which simply cannot exist absent our participation. We are then like the glue which holds up and which binds reality together into a pattern, completing it, making it whole. From the QM perspective, the human being is of great value to the creation, completing it in an act of awareness, causing it to manifest from the unmanifest, or so it would appear to be the case for a measuring human being who sees, unable to view either himself or the world around him, impartially, as if from a separate POV. We all know now that it doesn't work that way. We know we cannot remove ourselves from the entire reality equation. We are very much IN IT, intimately interconnected and interpenetrated with the reality itself (whatever that might be).

For the purpose of this thread then, I think everyone has already assumed correctly, that we are talking about the latter, or the "I am" that is "me", or in your case, you; the "qualia" of personal consciousness which cannot be measured from the outside, nor quantified in terms of a scaled up complexity. It's distinct too, and an experience of being an individual human being that we all share, regardless of our unique circumstances, or our own unique personal experience of what it means or feels like, to be "me".

From that perspective, we can hardly refer to the human being, apart from ourselves, as an "it", is the point I'm driving at here. That does doesn't pass muster, based on our own experience of being a human being.

So, where do we go form there, in addressing the question?

I think it now becomes obvious that the question simply cannot be answered from the perspective that we are asking it. Within that framework I just described, it is, unanswerable. It's a koan. It has no solution.


at the very least however we can describe a couple of attributes.

We, as human beings are:


Perfect


Whole


Complete



everything else is just baggage, delusion, false assumption, misunderstanding, even an outright lie.

And we don't need to have understanding, spiritual practice, or a miriad of terms to come into a gnosis of this.

Fundamentally, at core, we're ok, more than ok, something else, something that we can only begin to explore as a new possibility and even as something novel, and never before experienced, except to a degree, as children and even then lacking in any way to describe it, and therefore it was an unconscious thing, but, when it's finally made conscious (through the present moment, as a reminder), well then it's a whole new ballgame for the human being and the "self", and this new way of understanding, which embraces reality and is enveloped by reality in turn, without any flaw or error, this is the perennial philosophy come to life again, not in the odd "guru" here and there, but within and among us, everywhere.

I think it's inescapable and unaviodable, given the simplicity and according to the old addage that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

And so I think that in order to figure out just who and what we REALLY are, we need to first become fully present to our fear, and to our inauthenticity, and then in understanding that, we realize that there was nothing missing, and nothing to add, and nothing to be rid of in the first place, no flight into, or away from, anything, whereby our natural state of mind, is acceptance. Only then can love be free to freely express itself authentically, as a humorous creative action, without any fear, or any hindrance or constraint of any kind. We are a transcendant boundless, unlimited expression of something amuzing, something interesting, something that is worthwhile, or simply, love, that's our natural state of mind, with nothing to "get", and nothing we "should" do "in order to" be something else, something better than or different from, what we really are. We cannot and are helpless to "change", we can only transform and be transformed in acceptance of the sheer magnitude of the utter mystery, where we can no more pinpoint just who and what we are, than we can who anyone else is. If anything is to be discovered in this "quest" to know what it is and means to be human, it can only be discovered in relationship, through a process of mutual discovery or sharing, in a deeper devotional frame of reference one for another through something called koinonia or communion by intimate participation.

We are afraid of who and what we really are, afraid of discovering others and of being discovered. That's our problem. Because in the realm of who and what we really are, there is no separate self, which can be pinpointed, and we are terrified, or I should say our "self" is terrified, of God, which as Adi Da states, is our true condition, in love, where that is the only thing that is going on, since nothing other than that is of any consequence or significance whatsoever.

Thus, we are not merely machines or an "it", and, LIFE isn't meaningless and aburd, it is only who we THOUGHT we were, that is absurd, ridiculous, and inauthentic, or dead. We cannot get this joke however, and laugh at ourselves and then apply ourselves with creative mirthfullness, until self willingly allows "it"self, to dissolve in the love that we really are. Our own limitation in love, re-cognized, sets us free to love, and then we know who and what we really are.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

We are afraid of who and what we really are, afraid of discovering others and of being discovered.

edit on 9-12-2010 by NewAgeMan because: (no reason given)

We are not afraid, but our minds are. Our minds are afraid of losing control. I think it is important to distinguish the true self from the mind. I posted in another thread that the mind is a crowd of thoughts. These thoughts can be dispersed when watched (not stopped) and you will be left with your true self. It is not until there is no mind, that you will truly know your true self. The seeker will never find, it will only seek. I really like what you have said in your post, and appreciate the effort. Try and contemplate the phrase "same difference" in relation to anything you want to truly understand. It helped me.

I felt that this talk from Adi Da was somewhat telling regarding what the state of being and activity of a self actualized person might look like or be like, and I've had SOME experience in this mode, this humorous creativity, this mirthful and fearless loving kindness.



And I don't think it's mind that is the problem, but the contracted separate self..

Originally posted by kirkspuppet9
Hey man, you bring up a good question. And I think your right. You don't see a star, a planet, a tree or a mouse assigning meaning or attempting to explain the workings of the universe. We are an example of the universe coming to life and attempting to understand itself. 'Meaning making machines' are what we are, although is that really why we are so successful as species or is it merely bi-product of our intelligence? It seems as though by pure accident we have come to be aware of what is going even if its just for a brief moment while alive.

I like how you have the intelligence and the proof to assume that A STAR, A PLANET, A TREE OR A MOUSE doesnt assign meaning or attempt to explain the universe. Do you reach your conclusions because of what you have been taught or think you know about the world? Or is it because the tress and mice dont talk to you in english to explain just what they percieve??

Either way what you said is just total sh*t...no one can presume to know what is going on because you dont see another part of existence display meaning in the "human way"...

Try thinking outta the box, it helps in these threads...try to escape your "human" thoughts, because they are most likely wrong...

reply to post by jrmcleod

You must be having a bad day.. ?

It is conceivable, however, that the whole universe is a quantum computer with non-local information exchange occuring through the Akashic Field, and that the human mind may be thought of as a type of holographic chip off the old block so to speak which is only now beginning to catch up with the larger consciousness within which it emerged, like a seed planted by an original tree, now understanding that it's the same tree.. that is what I think is happening ie: that man is beginning to understand that the Biblical phrase "made in the image of God" is about consciousness, and doesn't mean that "God" has arms and legs and hair.

Edit: I can understand your revulsion, to a degree, towards human ego-centrism. All these other things are probably already always aware, without the need to think ABOUT themselves, or in terms of self/other/world separation.
I know that birds, for example just LOVE sunrises and sunsets, and cannot contain their joy..

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
And I don't think it's mind that is the problem, but the contracted separate self..

I would like to hear more about this separate self. Is it not all mind? What do you mean by contracted?

Originally posted by label

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
And I don't think it's mind that is the problem, but the contracted separate self..

I would like to hear more about this separate self. Is it not all mind? What do you mean by contracted?

Go to Youtube and watch the videos of a guy named Adi Da. He will explain. I don't accept everything he says as gospel mind you, but he's helped me to see some things.

Let me put it this way - the highest form of love, is acceptance, and there is nothing we can be rid of, or in opposition to, nothing we need, to be completed, no practice, no seeking, neither attracted to anything, or repelled. In Da's view/no view, there are only two movements, one, towards what he calls "the bright" which is undifferentiated conscious light, or, into self contraction, separation, differentiation. And all seeking, either within, or without is pointless. There is nothing to be gained which is not aready always.

I realize this sounds like one of those "new age" cliches, but I do think it's fair to say that

"we are the universe, and the creator of the universe (what difference that is if any we cannot say) becoming conscious of itself or "re-cognized" in eternity.

It seems to me that God had faith in us, and in himself, that we would eventually rediscover and embrace one another, in eternity, worked out, in such a way, that it would be a pleasent surprise and homecoming, a cause for rejoicing and celebration, where he who was lost, is found, who was dead, is alive again!

Best Regards,

The Prodigal Son

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Adi Da is one crazy guy. I could appreciate some of his stuff, if only he lived his life with the values that he taught. He hurt a lot of people with his cult like antics, and I don't necessarily agree with him that the only way to enlightenment is through him.

Originally posted by label
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

Adi Da is one crazy guy.

I could appreciate some of his stuff, if only he lived his life with the values that he taught. He hurt a lot of people with his cult like antics, and I don't necessarily agree with him that the only way to enlightenment is through him.

edit on 1-1-2011 by label because: (no reason given)

I'm with you there, read up on him, and have studied him, seems like he became narcissus himself by trying to BECOME the mirror, while making himself the center, while at the same time, absurdly anti-Christian, so he made himself or tried to make himself into something greater than, which means he was only human after all!

However, that said, this guy Adi Da had a phenomenon mind, and a powerful argument worthy of consideration, except the Adi Da himself part.

I think he was just lonely and wanted company, like anyone, and the guru "gig" is probably a good one, very relaxing probably!