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An honest critique of Scientology

Vinaire

Sponsor
I think you may have it backwards, i.e. space is a property of awareness. Or, dropping considerations of cause-and-effect, that space and awareness (among other complements) arise together, spontaneously. In Buddhist terms, I think it is, "this arises, that becomes" ... subtly different from cause-and-effect thinking, implying more of a complementary manifesting.

Well, this is an area I am still trying to comprehend. The most accurate expression of what it appears to me is as follows:

...

Thus, existence comes about with a manifestation. A manifestation basically means that “something is being.” This fact of being, or existing, may be referred to by a new word BEINGNESS.

The fact of manifestation makes it immediately knowable. The fact that something can be known implies AWARENESS. Thus, beingness and awareness occur together. They are the essence of existence.

BEINGNESS AND AWARENESS MAY BE REGARDED AS THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF THIS UNIVERSE.

The awareness of beingness comes about in terms of space, energy, matter and time as described below.

A manifestation imposes a distinct awareness of itself in terms of its scope, extent or dimension. This overall sense of a manifestation may be referred to as SPACE.

...

The above quote is from the essay:

THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE

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Vinaire

Sponsor
You know the ID you've adopted makes it tough to know if you are ever really rationally interested in looking this over. For now, I'll say no.

OK. Whatever makes you happy.

And yes, you are right, of course. :)

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Vinaire

Sponsor
"You can only be aware of your own consideration. "

Untrue in many contexts (and apologies if off the mark here too), it is by making one's self aware of the considerations of others, especially a variety of them, that you gain further knowledge and viewpoints for your own musings, or for that matter to find things that may solidify your own point of view via agreement/disagreement.

"Others"? Isn't that a consideration?

How do you know what is there, whether its "I" or "others"?

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Ogsonofgroo

Crusader
Usage of any English term comes from an assessment of what you think is there, isn't it? :)

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No, usage of a word usually means that word's definition best fits what you are trying to explain, and if there isn't a word for it then the put several together to explain said thought, it really has not a thing to do with 'what you think is there', it is communication, and as such I've always found that simple is better.
G'nite Vin, pleasant dreams mon! :cheers:
 

paradox

ab intra silentio vera
Well, this is an area I am still trying to comprehend. The most accurate expression of what it appears to me is as follows:

...

Thus, existence comes about with a manifestation. A manifestation basically means that “something is being.” This fact of being, or existing, may be referred to by a new word BEINGNESS.

The fact of manifestation makes it immediately knowable. The fact that something can be known implies AWARENESS. Thus, beingness and awareness occur together. They are the essence of existence.

BEINGNESS AND AWARENESS MAY BE REGARDED AS THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF THIS UNIVERSE.

The awareness of beingness comes about in terms of space, energy, matter and time as described below.

A manifestation imposes a distinct awareness of itself in terms of its scope, extent or dimension. This overall sense of a manifestation may be referred to as SPACE.

...
The above quote is from the essay:

THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE

.

I'm personally ... comfortable ... with all that you've stated there.
 

Vinaire

Sponsor
I'm personally ... comfortable ... with all that you've stated there.

I am glad about that... the only new thought I have is that the awareness must reside in the manifestation itself since there is nothing else there who or what is being aware of that manifestation.

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Vinaire

Sponsor
No, usage of a word usually means that word's definition best fits what you are trying to explain, and if there isn't a word for it then the put several together to explain said thought, it really has not a thing to do with 'what you think is there', it is communication, and as such I've always found that simple is better.
G'nite Vin, pleasant dreams mon! :cheers:

Good morning.

It seems to me that a word itself, in its definition, expresses some kind of assessment. It is a symbolization of thought. The most accurate expression of what it appears to me is as follows:


... one may only speculate upon what is not manifested (unknowable). These speculations immediately become knowable as manifested thoughts. To know the unknowable, one seems to visualize the possibilities of what could be there.

In general, thought is imagination of what might be there when one lacks direct perception. It is the forming of mental images or concepts of what is not present to be sensed. Language is not necessary for thought to form. Language simply provides symbolic expression to thought.

Thought is visualization. The purpose of thought is to give form to the unknowable.

...


The above quote is from the essay:

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT

.


.
 

paradox

ab intra silentio vera
I am glad about that... the only new thought I have is that the awareness must reside in the manifestation itself since there is nothing else there who or what is being aware of that manifestation.

.

I agree that there is awareness co-incident with manifestation; now - as I compose this reply for instance - I am aware of my nominal, cognitive "I" sensation (personal ego of "who" I am as a living, breathing embodied awareness with focal consciousness). I am aware of its essential illusory nature because I can experience it's actual broader context of nothing ("the emptiness that is full") when I stop intellectualizing for a moment and let my focal mind clear of thoughts, like letting a glass of muddy water become clear and settled by simply not disturbing it and *allowing* it to become clear and ... luminous, like sky.

Then I am poignantly aware - connectively so - of a broader, permeating presence of awareness, non-"I" or non-"me" but of with which "I" am part and parcel. The closest I have ever come to grasping this - which CANNOT be grasped, particularly with reason or rationality - but CAN be experienced is through the metaphor and actual experience of sleep and dream states. The completely UNKNOWN, nothing-that-is, I can only describe (as others long before me) as an abiding deep, dreamless sleep; which, while it *is* "sacred mystery" aka UNKNOWN and is completely free of any being, thought, manifestation etc and so on it yet *is* complete wholeness, utter unmanifested potential, empty yet completely full in its potentiality and utterly incapable of symbolic representation such as NAMING or IMAGING.

Yet ... somehow, this perfect formless potentiality has a capability of ... oh boy, words, words ... somehow it "stirs" from deep, dreamless sleep into focal awareness, like a spotlight. Or like overlapping raindrops on a puddle of water ... that's sort of a metaphor (for me) of how consciousness is; and how *I* can go to sleep and yet there are myriad other awareness points of focal consciousness keeping the overall physical manifestations of the consensual universe going; kinda like shift work :). So I can wake up to my regular programmed, consensual world that "everyone" and everything else has kept going while I zoned out for a "while" in the ineffable timeless unborn-and-undying. "'Everyone' and everything else" in the preceding sentence pointing to all-that-is-manifested.

The thing is, now in my consensually-awakened, manifested temporal state of "I" ... thing is, that I have for the past few years carried with me, even in this temporal KNOWING state, the awareness of that timeless unborn-and-undying permeating presence ... best I can think of to represent it is as the unmanifested CENTER of all things, *even* amongst that which is presently manifested in the now awareness. This CENTER is the common connection every manifested thing shares - whether animate or inanimate - within the unmanifested UNKNOWN. I describe the center as the UNKNOWN because you can never manifest the center of anything; Watts (Alan Watts) told a story of how one of his kids asked about god, where is god, and Watts said something to the effect that the best he could do would be to point to the center of things and say words to the effect that god was inside everything. Which, in the context of his other words, I can perfectly understand. He demonstrated to his child by having him look inside an apple to see if he could find god, if he could locate the inside of this living (or, for that matter, non-living as well) manifestation. Cut the apple in half. You are left with 2 smaller things, both having a non-physical, unreachable, unlocatable [spatially] or unknowable [intellectually] "essence," inside - coincident with the physical center of the pieces, yet "itself" non-manifest but, paradoxically, present. Again, these are just words so to get it one might have to not think or intellectualize about it or try to analyze it but simply meditate on it (particularly out in nature, but even if only your yard if that's the only acess or whatever).

It hit me one bright morning as the sun was creeping up, sitting on my back porch drinking morning coffee. I just got it; no big flash or buddha in the clouds or anything. Just a very quiet, personal "a-ha" moment.

I - not the little, thinking, sensational "I" - but the whole enchilada, permeating all-that-is, "I-am-ness" awoke to itself even while the little "I" beheld. :happydance: Little "I" couldn't grasp it but in it's little realm of personal knowing, it knew. :) That's when little "I" understood that timeless, encompassing "I-am-ness" was ALWAYS there all along. Unborn, undying, never absent, always present and PARADOXICALLY perhaps UNKNOWABLE, yet experience-able as long as a little "I" was manifested. It's from where little "I" gets it's bits of grasped knowledge and understanding - for a time, just so long as little "I" is around. During deep, dreamless sleep as also [shortly] after death little "I" is no more (including no "surviving" personal thetan[soul]-continuity, at least not in the context of the same named, little "I" experiencer); the difference being that there is, of course, sameness of personal-experiencer-continuity coming out of night-to-night deep, dreamless sleep. It's my own speculation that there is likely no personal-experiencer-continuity of the personal "I" that just died, in an instance of death. In terms of death, the personalized little "I" is no more until the next little unique right-now-moment stirring of raindrop-like little "I" focal experiencer-consciousness borning from the non-manifest "ocean of potential being," and resuming newly the game of ... hide-and-seek. :wink2:

And, yeah, for the more prurient amongst us, hide-the-salami might work as a partial metaphor. :eyeroll:

You know, I have no idea whether any of this is coherent or just drivel; I'll have to take a look at it later because there's a good chance I made a bigger fool of myself in public than usual; but s'okay, I'll take any incoming potshots.

tl;dr version: Like the man said, "The tao that can be named [or spoken of] is not the true tao" - "S/He who knows does not speak; s/he who speaks does not know." That oughta tell you somethin'. :whistling:
 
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Vinaire

Sponsor
I agree that there is awareness co-incident with manifestation; now - as I compose this reply for instance - I am aware of my nominal, cognitive "I" sensation (personal ego of "who" I am as a living, breathing embodied awareness with focal consciousness). I am aware of its essential illusory nature because I can experience it's actual broader context of nothing ("the emptiness that is full") when I stop intellectualizing for a moment and let my focal mind clear of thoughts, like letting a glass of muddy water become clear and settled by simply not disturbing it and *allowing* it to become clear and ... luminous, like sky.

Then I am poignantly aware - connectively so - of a broader, permeating presence of awareness, non-"I" or non-"me" but of with which "I" am part and parcel. The closest I have ever come to grasping this - which CANNOT be grasped, particularly with reason or rationality - but CAN be experienced is through the metaphor and actual experience of sleep and dream states. The completely UNKNOWN, nothing-that-is, I can only describe (as others long before me) as an abiding deep, dreamless sleep; which, while it *is* "sacred mystery" aka UNKNOWN and is completely free of any being, thought, manifestation etc and so on it yet *is* complete wholeness, utter unmanifested potential, empty yet completely full in its potentiality and utterly incapable of symbolic representation such as NAMING or IMAGING.

Yet ... somehow, this perfect formless potentiality has a capability of ... oh boy, words, words ... somehow it "stirs" from deep, dreamless sleep into focal awareness, like a spotlight. Or like overlapping raindrops on a puddle of water ... that's sort of a metaphor (for me) of how consciousness is; and how *I* can go to sleep and yet there are myriad other awareness points of focal consciousness keeping the overall physical manifestations of the consensual universe going; kinda like shift work :). So I can wake up to my regular programmed, consensual world that "everyone" and everything else has kept going while I zoned out for a "while" in the ineffable timeless unborn-and-undying. "'Everyone' and everything else" in the preceding sentence pointing to all-that-is-manifested.

The thing is, now in my consensually-awakened, manifested temporal state of "I" ... thing is, that I have for the past few years carried with me, even in this temporal KNOWING state, the awareness of that timeless unborn-and-undying permeating presence ... best I can think of to represent it is as the unmanifested CENTER of all things, *even* amongst that which is presently manifested in the now awareness. This CENTER is the common connection every manifested thing shares - whether animate or inanimate - within the unmanifested UNKNOWN. I describe the center as the UNKNOWN because you can never manifest the center of anything; Watts (Alan Watts) told a story of how one of his kids asked about god, where is god, and Watts said something to the effect that the best he could do would be to point to the center of things and say words to the effect that god was inside everything. Which, in the context of his other words, I can perfectly understand. He demonstrated to his child by having him look inside an apple to see if he could find god, if he could locate the inside of this living (or, for that matter, non-living as well) manifestation. Cut the apple in half. You are left with 2 smaller things, both having a non-physical, unreachable, unlocatable [spatially] or unknowable [intellectually] "essence," inside - coincident with the physical center of the pieces, yet "itself" non-manifest but, paradoxically, present. Again, these are just words so to get it one might have to not think or intellectualize about it or try to analyze it but simply meditate on it (particularly out in nature, but even if only your yard if that's the only acess or whatever).

It hit me one bright morning as the sun was creeping up, sitting on my back porch drinking morning coffee. I just got it; no big flash or buddha in the clouds or anything. Just a very quiet, personal "a-ha" moment.

I - not the little, thinking, sensational "I" - but the whole enchilada, permeating all-that-is, "I-am-ness" awoke to itself even while the little "I" beheld. :happydance: Little "I" couldn't grasp it but in it's little realm of personal knowing, it knew. :) That's when little "I" understood that timeless, encompassing "I-am-ness" was ALWAYS there all along. Unborn, undying, never absent, always present and PARADOXICALLY perhaps UNKNOWABLE, yet experience-able as long as a little "I" was manifested. It's from where little "I" gets it's bits of grasped knowledge and understanding - for a time, just so long as little "I" is around. During deep, dreamless sleep as also [shortly] after death little "I" is no more (including no "surviving" personal thetan[soul]-continuity, at least not in the context of the same named, little "I" experiencer); the difference being that there is, of course, sameness of personal-experiencer-continuity coming out of night-to-night deep, dreamless sleep. It's my own speculation that there is likely no personal-experiencer-continuity of the personal "I" that just died, in an instance of death. In terms of death, the personalized little "I" is no more until the next little unique right-now-moment stirring of raindrop-like little "I" focal experiencer-consciousness borning from the non-manifest "ocean of potential being," and resuming newly the game of ... hide-and-seek. :wink2:

And, yeah, for the more prurient amongst us, hide-the-salami might work as a partial metaphor. :eyeroll:

You know, I have no idea whether any of this is coherent or just drivel; I'll have to take a look at it later because there's a good chance I made a bigger fool of myself in public than usual; but s'okay, I'll take any incoming potshots.

tl;dr version: Like the man said, "The tao that can be named [or spoken of] is not the true tao" - "S/He who knows does not speak; s/he who speaks does not know." That oughta tell you somethin'. :whistling:

Well, what you have written here has given me some ideas. Thank you.

.
 
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