Richard Dawkins Facepalms at Deepak Chopra

[Rick O'Shez]

Are you seriously claiming you have no ego? Seriously?

One doesn't have to look far to find evidence of it in this thread.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

....Emptiness a doctrine.

Sheer nonsense, again. It amazes me that you persist with these shameless misrepresentations.

Sunyata directly contradicts your pseudo-Hindu reification of consciousness. Sunyata directly contradicts your notions of "Pure Consciousness" and "Cosmic Consciousness".

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Universal Consciousness is the most exciting thing to catch a glimpse of.

Not after 85 pages of your preaching, it's become a tired religious cliche. If you want to experience "reality" go for a nice long walk by the sea or in some hills, and spend some quality time in the present. Or do some stargazing. Get a real sense of infinite space, infinite form, and infinite movement.

Stop clinging to tired religious beliefs and open your mind! Cool, baby, yeah!

 

[Rick O'Shez]

What the word 'Brahman' points to is beyond Time and Space. Stop acting as if you know what it is; you don't, and that is obvious from your comments about it.

I was thinking exactly the same about you.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Universal Consciousness is real, and while it is beyond Reason, Logic, and Analysis, and therefore , proof, it is also as intimate as your breath. In fact, it IS your breath, but you have to PAY ATTENTION! Then, at some point in your inner experience, you will realize that you are not breathing it, It is breathing you. It is alive and conscious, but it is not your personal egoic self, which is pure fiction. Make the discovery.

Lordy, what a horrendous muddle! Again you are trying to conflate sunyata and Brahman, these are mutually exclusive. Sunyata just doesn't fit into your Brahman-based belief system. Neither does quantum mechanics for that matter, but it seems you just can't resist throwing everything into the cake mix.

 

[Runewolf1973]

It would be interesting to look at some practical examples of that interaction at the human level.

I think pretty much all of our senses which when combined form our consciousness, would offer us examples of that interaction. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch are all interactions...chemical, vibrational, electromagnetic...

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I think pretty much all of our senses which when combined form our consciousness, would offer us examples of that interaction. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch are all interactions.

How a practical example? Say I am out walking and I see an ice-cream van, then I decide to walk over to it in order to buy an ice-cream. One way of describing this is to say that it begins with visual consciousness, ie seeing the ice cream van. How would you express that as an interaction?

 

[YmirGF]

The ego is an illusion, so no one actually has one. Once found out for what it is, it puts up a horrendous fight to stay alive, playing every dirty trick in the book, but at last, must finally just dissolve away into oblivion. It's not so much that you have an ego as that the ego has you.

I feel a profound sense of sorrow in your post. I am so sorry to hear what you may well have done to yourself. This single post explains volumes to me about why I never sense a hint of compassion or empathy in your words. So sad. For what it's worth, I wish you well.

 

[Runewolf1973]

How a practical example? Say I am out walking and I see an ice-cream van, then I decide to walk over to it in order to buy an ice-cream. One way of describing this is to say that it begins with visual consciousness, ie seeing the ice cream van. How would you express that as an interaction?

Exactly the way you put it..."visual consciousness". Visual interaction comes first. The primary interaction here is that of our eyes being able to interact with light (electromagnetism). Without that ability to interact with light, would we be "conscious" of that van? Perhaps we could still hear the van so we could still in a way be aware that there is a van. Now take away both our sight and our hearing...our ability to be "conscious" of that van is further reduced. Perhaps we could walk over to that van and use our sense of touch, so we could still in a way be aware of that van because we are still in a way interacting with that van. Now take away all three of those senses...sight, hearing and touch...what awareness of that van is left? If we remove all ability to interact with that van whatsoever, we will no longer be "conscious" of that van. Interaction is key.

 

[godnotgod]

Exactly. It's a horrible muddle, but as I said it looks like new-age Hinduism with some pseudo-science mixed in.

What you just said is mumbo jumbo. Be specific. What is 'new age Hinduism'? Something you invented?

 

[godnotgod]

Now take away all three of those senses...sight, hearing and touch...what awareness of that van is left? If we remove all ability to interact with that van whatsoever, we will no longer be "conscious" of that van. .

And what remains is consciousness itself, which is both the beginning and ending point of our perceptual reality, as determined via our five senses. You can take away the five senses and still be conscious, but you cannot take away consciousness and still have sensory awareness. Consciousness is the fundamental reality. Everything else follows.

 

[godnotgod]

Lordy, what a horrendous muddle! Again you are trying to conflate sunyata and Brahman, these are mutually exclusive. Sunyata just doesn't fit into your Brahman-based belief system. Neither does quantum mechanics for that matter, but it seems you just can't resist throwing everything into the cake mix.

Everything is Everything.

('Lordy'? Are you getting religious now, are you?)

 

[godnotgod]

Exactly. It's a horrible muddle, but as I said it looks like new-age Hinduism with some pseudo-science mixed in.

Well, DUH! If there is no doctrine, then I am neither religious nor preaching.

(BTW, did you know that Zen is called 'the doctrineless doctrine'? Come away from that stagnant backwater of Hinayana to the refreshing bubbling mountain spring of Zen)

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Exactly the way you put it..."visual consciousness". Visual interaction comes first. The primary interaction here is that of our eyes being able to interact with light (electromagnetism). Without that ability to interact with light, would we be "conscious" of that van?

Sure, a blind person wouldn't be able to see the ice-cream van. I'm still struggling with the language of "interaction" here though. What seems to be happening is that the retina in our eyes is sensing the light rays, which means we are then aware ( conscious ) of a visible object. That awareness ( consciousness ) then leads us to interact with our environment.

 

[Runewolf1973]

And what remains is consciousness itself, which is both the beginning and ending point of our perceptual reality, as determined via our five senses. You can take away the five senses and still be conscious, but you cannot take away consciousness and still have sensory awareness. Consciousness is the fundamental reality. Everything else follows.

What we call "consciousness" is not just our external interactions, but also the complex array of internal interactions that occur within our brains and our bodies. If not for the electromagnetic interactions in our brains, we would not be "conscious" either.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Sure, a blind person wouldn't be able to see the ice-cream van. I'm still struggling with the language of "interaction" here though. What seems to be happening is that the retina in our eyes is sensing the light rays, which means we are then aware ( conscious ) of a visible object. That awareness ( consciousness ) then leads us to interact with our environment.

The retinas in our eyes are reacting to the light rays and that is an interaction. That "sensing" is a form of interaction. We are interacting with a visible object...IOW responding to stimuli.

 

[godnotgod]

I feel a profound sense of sorrow in your post. I am so sorry to hear what you may well have done to yourself. This single post explains volumes to me about why I never sense a hint of compassion or empathy in your words. So sad. For what it's worth, I wish you well.

Heh..heh...as the world famous Tibetan Lama, Kalu Rinpoche once said:

"Nostalgia for Samsara is full of sh*t!"

 

[godnotgod]

The retinas in our eyes are reacting to the light rays and that is an interaction. That "sensing" is a form of interaction. We are interacting with a visible object...IOW responding to stimuli.

The response and the stimuli are a single reality, and not two separate events. There is no agent of interaction with a visible object; there is only a single event in which the 'two' have merged as one. It is the conceptual mind that separates the event into 'this' and 'that'; into 'observer' and 'observed'.*

You see, the reason you see 'interaction' everywhere you look, is simply because your mind is immersed in duality. You see 'this' interacting with 'that', and so on. But when you are seeing things as they really are, there is no such duality. All is merged as One, and no, I am not suggesting a formless blob. So when Chopra tells us that: "the observer, the observed, and the entire process of observation merge into a single Reality", what he is reflecting is the Law of Interdependent Origination, in which all things co-arise simultaneously, not as two or more, but always as One. To the mind still immersed in the dual world, it only SEEMS as if there is 'this' interacting with 'that', because such a mind is only detecting superficial appearances. Underneath the hood, so to speak, what you see as two or more, is always One. There is never, at any time, any separation from the One or division into two or more. All dualites co-arise together; "this' always implies "that", and vice-versa. No relative opposite can become manifest without its relative opposite also being part of the equation. We know that 'change' is a relative opposite to 'no-change', and so the change that is seen in interaction cannot exist in and of itself as a fundamental reality. It can only exist against the background of its relative opposite, 'no-change', and both must exist against the absolute background of The Changeless, for which no opposite exists. Just as light cannot exist without darkness, and vice versa, change cannot exist without no-change. Part of the problem is that our attention is always captured by the active foreground of existence, while ignoring and even forgetting the passive background, in this case, the active foreground of change as contrasted with the passive background of no-change, to the point that the passive background is not even recognized as real any longer. This is the problem with most of the people on this thread who cannot see that what I am saying makes any 'sense' to them. They only see what is on the surface, the outcroppings, the appearances, which can be tested for consistency and predictability. That is science. But what is not realized is that all of these phenomena cannot exist without the background of no-phenomena, or the unmanifested world. Quantum Physics would call this unmanifested world 'possibility', and because of possibility, there is superposition, and the rest. In simplistic terms, we think of the light of a light bulb as real, but it is real only because of a condition of not being manifested, which is potential. IOW, when the light switch is off, there still exists potential for light. All that is necessary is that the switch be flipped, and we have actualization, which we call 'light'. Same is true for consciousness, where all potential lies. Nothing that man does, or actualizes, is possible without the primary condition of consciousness. Likewise, nothing that is any aspect of the universe can have become manifested without the potential that exists within Consciousness. Hence, The Big Bang, which is an event in Pure Consciousness (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

"Sat Chit Ananda is the pure, undifferentiated state of non-duality. It is the most perfect expression of our primordial Self. which is energetically inseparable from the power of Love creating the universe. To reside in this state is the experience of pure Bliss, the essence of Life Itself, ..."
Deepak Chopra


Thank you very much.

*eg: 'frogpondleapsplash'

 

[godnotgod]

What we call "consciousness" is not just our external interactions, but also the complex array of internal interactions that occur within our brains and our bodies. If not for the electromagnetic interactions in our brains, we would not be "conscious" either.

Again 'Emergent Theory' emerges, which is merely an assumption, with no real basis. You are a materialist. Show me how the material brain creates non-material consciousness.* At what point does the magic occur, and how?

If not for consciousness, there would be no electromagnetic interactions.

Some materialist scientists even claim that there is only the material world, and consciousness does not even exist; IOW, it is an illusion, but an illusion created by what? the material brain? Illusions require consciousness.

 

[YmirGF]

Heh..heh...as the world famous Tibetan Lama, Kalu Rinpoche once said:

"Nostalgia for Samsara is full of sh*t!"

Nostalgia, compassion and empathy are quite different things you realize. I feel so sad for you.