Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment process

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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David Quinn
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by David Quinn »

Sphere70 wrote:Well, I don't know about love-letter. I mean, it's clearly written by a man who has deep respect and awe for this enigma of a man.
Consider the many writings from devotees about the various gurus and sages of the times and this is nothing. Or even in our western parts, let a deep admirer of Nietzsche write about him and it will surely sound sweet (or even so - read Nietzsche's own salute to Schopenhauer in Untimely Meditations, a beautiful love-letter indeed - even though the admiration changed later).

True enough. It may be that the author of the essay was young and thus still in the thrall of romanticism. We can certainly forgive him that.

It was my impression reading it that the author was middle-aged, or at least 35, but I could be wrong about this.

I don't think he thought UG consciously escaped it by a certain method - more that it happened when the escape stopped. Not as another trick, another jump to reach a certain goal, but as a pure and honest stop, full-stop, a giving-up in its purest form. When the running that never occurred finally ended, lightning hit.

When there is no separate sense of self (the illusion) there is only events in nature. I think the article clarify this well. The difference between a person with a strong identification principle and one without is then uninterrupted events in nature. No ponderer, no one to build rational structures, no one who feels different emotions - only emotions, thoughts & actions - blowing like wind through an empty corridor.

I don't find this kind of thing very believeble. For one thing, if there is no self, no ponderer, then how could emotion possibly arise? The emotions evolved as defense mechanisms to protect the self. If the self is absent, then what is there to protect?

If a person gives away all his possessions, then what need does he have for keeping the burglar alarms?

From all reports, UG was known to get impatient and angry at times. Why? He also liked to read detective novels in his old age. If he truly had no one inside him, then what was it that seeked regular amusement in ordinary worldly dramas?

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Sphere70 wrote:In the end all these fellas / gals that supposedly abide in the stateless state talk kinda the same language - it's not a handful of different states, so the reports won't differ much other than in the symbols that will package it.
That's pretty obvious. Some particular form of "realisation" has been handed down over the ages, and all descriptions of it are therefore similar to each other. But my point was that the realisation itself is not enlightenment, i.e, in the sense of being non-attached and perceiving the true nature of the universe. It's clear by the way he uses words like "existence", "universe", "consciousness" etc. in an ad hoc fashion, and without providing any clear, solid definition of them. This, to me, makes him appear like a clown who's juggling all these meaningless words to entertain other people, and possibly gain their praise and applause.
He wanna hint and dress in taste that which Huang Po clarified here: “Let me remind you that the perceived cannot perceive” - and which makes all words and definitions mere illusionary symbols.
The statement "the perceived cannot perceive" is self-contradictory if it is held to be a principle applicable to all things.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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jupiviv wrote:Why does it seem to you that the whale is making comparisons with its memory? To me it just seems like purely instinctual behavior, and with good reason.
How could anything be recognized or compared without invoking some kind of memory first? The reaction which follows might be called instinctual or perhaps "curiosity", that doesn't say anything about memory. Neurons by themselves are not "instinct".

Before a memory laps might occur on your side, you speculated earlier: "I think it perceived the woman as some kind of fish."
We've been over this before, but you can't seem to grasp the gist of my definition of consciousness. But I can't help you understand it if you insist on keeping on asserting your own ideas every time the issue comes up.
Your definition of consciousness is very contradictory and therefore not to be understood by anyone at all.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:How could anything be recognized or compared without invoking some kind of memory first?
Did I say anything to the contrary?
Before a memory laps might occur on your side, you speculated earlier: "I think it perceived the woman as some kind of fish."
Viz., its sense organs perceived the woman as some kind of moving object, and connections were made in its brain, triggering the actions which followed. It's painfully clear that when I talked of "it" perceiving, I did not mean that it was conscious, or I would be flatly contradicting what I said in the same post. If I say that a rock is falling down a cliff, I wouldn't actually mean that the rock is conscious of the fact that it's falling down.
Your definition of consciousness is very contradictory and therefore not to be understood by anyone at all.
It is only contradictory if you try to project your own inhibitions onto it. Why do you think it is contradictory?
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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David Quinn wrote:How can you describe everything that has ever happened and will ever happen?

There is essentially nothing to describe.
How can you experience everything that has happened and will happen?

The experience of it must be something.
There is nothing to describe only if there is no experience of it.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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David, (and the rest if you're interested)

just listen to this link, the guy is explaining the "enlightenment" with such accuracy, clarity and intelligence. And he speaks like someone who lives what he speaks, you can hear the immediacy and the truth in his words.

I'll linked this earlier but I link it again.

http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_aud ... gstaad.ram


What I term enlightenment is a biological shift, either sudden or gradual. This shift is perfectly explained in this link, specially in the first parts of it.

Anger and reading a comic book has nothing to do with it. It's from our viewpoint of how this sculpture of perfection should be that we don't like it. His actions was never anger based, never violent. His tonality was but that's just part of his earlier body/mind makeup. Psychological fear and sadness he never showed. Even though he might have felt some sadness if he were around someone who felt that emotion, sure, who knows. But listen to the recording, his explanation of the State! is on point and simple.
And looking at a comic book? It has colorful and contrasty images which attract the eyes. There is no one there to say "No, don't pick that up, this is unworthy!". If that voice dictates you then, sorry, you're still a slave.

Psychological / philosophical perfection is not enlightenment, the biological shift which makes the mind into the servant is.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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UG is an eastern version of Nietzsche - seemingly contradictory but always wise. Though I don't think Nietszche underwent the perceptual shift which would have rid him of the clouds of identification. And of course UG wasn't a literary artist as Nietzsche was.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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jupiviv wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:How could anything be recognized or compared without invoking some kind of memory first?
Did I say anything to the contrary?
My impression was based on your phrase: "sensually perceived her as some kind of marine animal". Not sure what a "sensual" perception is to you but such thing sounds like rubbish to me. Perception has everything to do with interpretion of sensory information, creating awareness of some kind, registering something which is not the actual thing but only its registration. There's of course a thing like sense stimulation or sensory data, maybe that was on your mind?
It's painfully clear that when I talked of "it" perceiving, I did not mean that it was conscious, or I would be flatly contradicting what I said in the same post. If I say that a rock is falling down a cliff, I wouldn't actually mean that the rock is conscious of the fact that it's falling down.
It doesn't matter for now if we regard the whale as conscious or not. The rock is a nice red herring though! The question is why you believe perception is possible without some "object of perception", which is necessarily the same as any concept in the funda-mental sense. Even when one would claim there's only processing occurring, then there's no reason not to apply the same model to human "conscious" minds as well.
Why do you think it is contradictory?
When I asked if you still regard consciousness as merely conceptualization or "all concepts" you replied: if "concept" is defined as "something that appears to mind", then yes.

But even when a whale would perceive an object as a marine animal through senses and neuron activity, you appear to conclude that no appearance and no mind was involved here. It's speculation at most but so is of course any conjecture about what consciousness would be in any other but oneself. And this has been perhaps your contradiction from the start: your assertion of a consciousness as something seperate from the whole of mental or neurological processing leading to some behavior. You are just like the whale swimming with fish while thinking you are thinking about it!
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Bobo wrote:
David Quinn wrote:How can you describe everything that has ever happened and will ever happen?

There is essentially nothing to describe.
How can you experience everything that has happened and will happen?

The experience of it must be something.
There is nothing to describe only if there is no experience of it.
Dan Rowden wrote:At bottom, one experience has the same essential character as any other. One single experience is all it takes to become wise; it's just a matter of how one thinks about the nature of that one experience.
Experiences come and go. They are impermanent.

The particulars of experience are superfluous. The essence of a particular experience is the essence of all experiences.

That essence, which can supplant an egocentric identity and become identity, is awareness.

Awareness remains awareness, only the details change.

Awareness of thirst and hunger is the same awareness that is the awareness of eating and drinking. Awareness of physical pain is same awareness that is the awareness of physical pleasure.

Awareness of experiencing stepping into sunshine, is the same awareness of experiencing stepping around an overflowing rubbish bin, is the same awareness of experiencing speaking to a neighbor, is the same awareness of experiencing singing a happy song, is the same awareness of experiencing emotions, is the same awareness of experiencing thinking.

When identity and awareness become inseparable then the details of particular experiences become superfluous. Equanimity prevails, not as a practice, but as a description of what happens when naturally unattached to any particular experience.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Sphere70 wrote:UG is an eastern version of Nietzsche - seemingly contradictory but always wise.

They are both flawed in their various ways. Nietzsche never really focused on the "essential matter" all that much, even though his entire mentality was shaped towards it. It was really only during his Zarathustra period that he plunged into it, but given the evidence of his subsequent books (where he dived back into a more academic mode) and his descent into madness, it is clear that he couldn't really hack it.

UG did dive into the essential matter more fully, but I contend that he didn't really cope with it all that well himself, as shown by his cartoonish personality and his meglomaniac and false belief that he had actually attained the perfection of being entirely without self.

In other words, Nietzsche tried to protect himself by staying within the conventional world of academia (and enjoying the egotistical thrill of playing the "iconoclast" within that realm), while UG protected himself by playing the role of the anti-guru and, through skill in mental compartmentalizing, ignoring the existence of his ego which hadn't really died.

Though I don't think Nietszche underwent the perceptual shift which would have rid him of the clouds of identification.

Neither did UG. Not really.

Sphere70 wrote:David, (and the rest if you're interested)

just listen to this link, the guy is explaining the "enlightenment" with such accuracy, clarity and intelligence. And he speaks like someone who lives what he speaks, you can hear the immediacy and the truth in his words.

I'll linked this earlier but I link it again.

http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_aud ... gstaad.ram

There is no question that his insight was authentic. What I question is his subsequent belief in the strength and scope of his attainment. I think he used mental tricks to deceive both himself and others about the strength of his attainment, but was probably unconscious of doing so.

Sphere70 wrote:Anger and reading a comic book has nothing to do with it. It's from our viewpoint of how this sculpture of perfection should be that we don't like it. His actions was never anger based, never violent. His tonality was but that's just part of his earlier body/mind makeup.

Exactly. The residual egotism of his previous life, prior to the "Calamity" (an egotistical badge of honour, if ever I've seen one), still continued to make an impact.

Sphere70 wrote: And looking at a comic book? It has colorful and contrasty images which attract the eyes. There is no one there to say "No, don't pick that up, this is unworthy!". If that voice dictates you then, sorry, you're still a slave.

I am assuming that this is your version of "reading detective novels" and reflects your own habits and likes. It is one thing to pick up an object out of curiosity because it is colorful and another to keep going back to such objects for the sake of experiencing distraction and enjoyment. The only reason why UG kept reading detective novels was that he sought relief from anxiety or boredom. That is what distractions are for, to distract the mind from inward feelings of lack. This conflicts with UG's boast that he was entirely without self.

This issue has nothing to do with being a slave or not, or having to discipline oneself or not. It has to do with our examining what exactly constitutes the "natural state" (yet another badge of honour that UG, the selfless one, liked to stick on himself). It would never occur to a person who was truly enlightened and entirely without self to struggle with conflicting desires over whether to read a comic or not. The egotistical desire to lose himself in the comic would never be there in the first place, and thus no conflict would ever arise.

UG chose to resolve the conflict by submitting to his desire to read detective novels, as opposed to facing up to the reality that his ego was still alive and well and still needed addressing.

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Bobo wrote:
David Quinn wrote:How can you describe everything that has ever happened and will ever happen?

There is essentially nothing to describe.
How can you experience everything that has happened and will happen?

The experience of it must be something.
There is nothing to describe only if there is no experience of it.
We are always experiencing it. There is never a moment when we are not experiencing it. But, numbskulls that we are, we like to overlay the experience of it with false concepts and imaginings, on account of our desire to seek and grasp hold of certainty or enlightenment within a particular experience. That's when we lose sight of it.

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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David Quinn wrote:There is no question that his insight was authentic.
Whatever insight he had, it was not into the "essential matter". Rather, I think he had enough insight to know that any more insight would be harmful to his well-being, and also how to avoid any kind of further thought yet appearing like a person who knows something which others don't.

Besides, if his insight was genuine, he wouldn't have the kind of followers he did have. They were all watered down versions of him - people who couldn't tackle all their problems and desperately wanted a person who would deny the very existence of those problems, and relieve them from their misery. It may be said they were a bit more intelligent than the animal-like people who cling to the more mainstream kind of guru, but ultimately it all comes down to the same thing. Now compare him with someone like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard or Weininger - there really can be no comparison.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Can't really argue with you here. I think his insight was genuine as far as it went, but as you say, it remained narrow, compartmentalized, undeveloped, etc - for the usual reason that it enabled the deeper parts of his ego to be protected from the demands that truth makes. It's not an uncommon story in the guru industry.

Compared to UG and Eastern gurus in general, men like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Weininger were definitely far more honest with themselves and more determined to feret out and expose the deeper parts of their ego. They didn't pretend that these parts didn't exist. On the other hand, they balked at approaching enlightenment directly (the protection mechanism kicking in at this point), which was reflected in the way they wrote so indirectly about it.

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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David,
UG did dive into the essential matter more fully, but I contend that he didn't really cope with it all that well himself, as shown by his cartoonish personality and his meglomaniac and false belief that he had actually attained the perfection of being entirely without self.
Again, idiosyncrasies and traits of the person do not disappear (but the identification to the traits and hence their action regarding them).
This is how I see it work in this state. When there is discussion, one reacts quite autonomously from the memory - these memories and their coloring is what you call the self (the ego), though the self is an identification with these memories as a separate doer and entity. This I don't think he experienced. When silence recurred, he didn't think about the discussion. If he left the room, whatever was in that room was his reality. No thinking and emotion-laden continuity. Somebody engage one in conversation; memories / self responds (no identifier though) - conversation stops; no coloring lingers on. The same when one reads a detective novel in this state (though I think he said this just to contrast all the importance people put on scriptures and philosophy-like books in terms of enlightenment - the same contrast implied in naming what he went through as a calamity), not as an escape from some thought-induced anxiety / boredom, but just like one does anything else in this thought-servant state; the weight of the book is measured with total attention, the soft sharpness of the pages, the fantastic effect of the combination of words on the body, the breeze from the open window, the changing of illumination of light from a sun covered by a gentle cloud, as so forth. Not registered as a separate feeler of these things but events get experienced without unnecessary limitations of an illusionary entity claiming and dissecting them, deeming them as insightful, worthy, egotistical, enlightened or not - and so forth in silly, constant, continuation.

Jupiviv,
Whatever insight he had, it was not into the "essential matter". Rather, I think he had enough insight to know that any more insight would be harmful to his well-being, and also how to avoid any kind of further thought yet appearing like a person who knows something which others don't.

Besides, if his insight was genuine, he wouldn't have the kind of followers he did have. They were all watered down versions of him - people who couldn't tackle all their problems and desperately wanted a person who would deny the very existence of those problems, and relieve them from their misery. It may be said they were a bit more intelligent than the animal-like people who cling to the more mainstream kind of guru, but ultimately it all comes down to the same thing. Now compare him with someone like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard or Weininger - there really can be no comparison.
He didn't have any insight, first of all. If whatever shift occurred to him, and that has occurred to others (that is a shift back to ones natural function with thought as a tool instead of a constant claimer and conductor) can be branded as 'Insight' then this shifted his being into the total understanding that there is no one to have any insights. There is no more need to accumulate with this separate concept in mind. You are everything you're surrounded by. The insights, if you wanna call it that, is constant, alive, wordless and ever so fresh. When thought comes in unnecessary and puts everything in their tiny little brown boxes called academic insight (or rational insight), then true living insight of thought-less actuality and doer-less present is covered with heavy dust and a gray, drifting, breath.
And watch out for the devotees of Niet, Kierk & Wein - they go by the name of Scholars (or even worse - 'Thinkers', there is nobody who thinks!) , and they actually believe in a true worth of their accumulated words and concepts, branding it insightful intelligence.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

jupiviv wrote:Besides, if his insight was genuine, he wouldn't have the kind of followers he did have. They were all watered down versions of him
This argument is null and void when considering one probably cannot list a "genuine article" with the kind of followers which would somehow substantiate the point. One could actually make the case that by definition followers will be watered down versions, like any bunch of predecessors might be as well. It's the very nature of the peak.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Sphere70 wrote:David,
UG did dive into the essential matter more fully, but I contend that he didn't really cope with it all that well himself, as shown by his cartoonish personality and his meglomaniac and false belief that he had actually attained the perfection of being entirely without self.
Again, idiosyncrasies and traits of the person do not disappear (but the identification to the traits and hence their action regarding them).
This is how I see it work in this state. When there is discussion, one reacts quite autonomously from the memory - these memories and their coloring is what you call the self (the ego), though the self is an identification with these memories as a separate doer and entity. This I don't think he experienced. When silence recurred, he didn't think about the discussion. If he left the room, whatever was in that room was his reality. No thinking and emotion-laden continuity. Somebody engage one in conversation; memories / self responds (no identifier though) - conversation stops; no coloring lingers on. The same when one reads a detective novel in this state (though I think he said this just to contrast all the importance people put on scriptures and philosophy-like books in terms of enlightenment - the same contrast implied in naming what he went through as a calamity), not as an escape from some thought-induced anxiety / boredom, but just like one does anything else in this thought-servant state; the weight of the book is measured with total attention, the soft sharpness of the pages, the fantastic effect of the combination of words on the body, the breeze from the open window, the changing of illumination of light from a sun covered by a gentle cloud, as so forth. Not registered as a separate feeler of these things but events get experienced without unnecessary limitations of an illusionary entity claiming and dissecting them, deeming them as insightful, worthy, egotistical, enlightened or not - and so forth in silly, constant, continuation.

This can just as easily describe a person on drugs. An acid trip, for example.

When a particular kind of person (e.g. one who isn't carrying around too much emotional baggage from the past) goes on a good trip (no anxiety, paranoia, etc), he can experience all the things that you describe above. The drug is firing up all sorts of new, or rarely used, neurons, the old neural pathways are temporarily suspended, the normal cares fall away, the old, fixed concepts dissolve, the world seems fresh, jumping in and out of different perspectives becomes easy, every moment seems like a world unto itself. And so on. A magical state of mind, in other words.

But is this really wisdom? Not really. It could well become the beginnings of wisdom, if the particular person experiencing this mindset has a philosophic bent and a desire to focus his mind on truly resolving the ultimate matter. But short of that, it remains little more than a child-like mindset.

Place a person who has become child-like (but not wise) into a nice, comfortable, guru-friendly environment where he doesn't really have to think about anything and he can get away with playing the child all he likes. He can live in the moment, forget about past and future, frollick about in a spontaneous fashion, bamboozle those who come seek answers from him, and never be found out. Meanwhile, the egotism underlying his every action, which he has by now entirely lost consciousness of, continues to tick away like a time-bomb.

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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This can just as easily describe a person on drugs. An acid trip, for example.

When a particular kind of person (e.g. one who isn't carrying around too much emotional baggage from the past) goes on a good trip (no anxiety, paranoia, etc), he can experience all the things that you describe above. The drug is firing up all sorts of new, or rarely used, neurons, the old neural pathways are temporarily suspended, the normal cares fall away, the old, fixed concepts dissolve, the world seems fresh, jumping in and out of different perspectives becomes easy, every moment seems like a world unto itself. And so on. A magical state of mind, in other words.
Not at all. Very ordinary. Aligned with the words of Buddha When you walk, just walk, when you eat, just eat.
But is this really wisdom? Not really. It could well become the beginnings of wisdom, if the particular person experiencing this mindset has a philosophic bent and a desire to focus his mind on truly resolving the ultimate matter. But short of that, it remains little more than a child-like mindset.
Nietzsche, Zarathustra: Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by David Quinn »

Sphere70 wrote:
This can just as easily describe a person on drugs. An acid trip, for example.

When a particular kind of person (e.g. one who isn't carrying around too much emotional baggage from the past) goes on a good trip (no anxiety, paranoia, etc), he can experience all the things that you describe above. The drug is firing up all sorts of new, or rarely used, neurons, the old neural pathways are temporarily suspended, the normal cares fall away, the old, fixed concepts dissolve, the world seems fresh, jumping in and out of different perspectives becomes easy, every moment seems like a world unto itself. And so on. A magical state of mind, in other words.
Not at all. Very ordinary. Aligned with the words of Buddha When you walk, just walk, when you eat, just eat.
When you block out the existence of your ego, just block it out. When you deceive others, just deceive them.

Sphere70 wrote:
But is this really wisdom? Not really. It could well become the beginnings of wisdom, if the particular person experiencing this mindset has a philosophic bent and a desire to focus his mind on truly resolving the ultimate matter. But short of that, it remains little more than a child-like mindset.
Nietzsche, Zarathustra: Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
I don't think UG did much of the camel and lion thing. He just tried to become a child (thus, ending up as a limited child) without picking up the wisdom and knowledge and levels of consciousness that come with going through the camel and lion stages.

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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by jupiviv »

Sphere70 wrote:If whatever shift occurred to him, and that has occurred to others (that is a shift back to ones natural function with thought as a tool instead of a constant claimer and conductor) can be branded as 'Insight' then this shifted his being into the total understanding that there is no one to have any insights.
This statement contradicts itself. If he didn't have any insight, then he remained ignorant, and couldn't make any statement about whether he was in his natural state or his artificial state, and all the rest.
You are everything you're surrounded by.
If I don't exist to begin with then how can I be everything I'm "surrounded" by?
academic insight
None of my insights have come from reading anything, or listening to anyone. They've all come from my own reasoning.
true living insight of thought-less actuality and doer-less present is covered with heavy dust and a gray, drifting, breath.
There is both thought and doing where I live, and they are all "actual", since they can't be any other way.
And watch out for the devotees of Niet, Kierk & Wein - they go by the name of Scholars (or even worse - 'Thinkers', there is nobody who thinks!) , and they actually believe in a true worth of their accumulated words and concepts, branding it insightful intelligence.
Their insight was genuine, unlike that of Krishna, so they had every right to consider that insight valuable.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
jupiviv wrote:Besides, if his insight was genuine, he wouldn't have the kind of followers he did have. They were all watered down versions of him
This argument is null and void when considering one probably cannot list a "genuine article" with the kind of followers which would somehow substantiate the point.

I can list the good kind of followers - those who choose the right teacher, ask the right questions to that teacher, and ultimately want to attain the understanding of the teacher rather than follow him forever.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But even when a whale would perceive an object as a marine animal through senses and neuron activity, you appear to conclude that no appearance and no mind was involved here.
Right there is the problem in your reasoning. You are automatically projecting a consciousness on the whale, and therefore concluding that there is whale-consciousness that perceives marine animals etc. as sensory data etc. I need to see more evidence that such consciousness does exist, e.g, the whales trying to communicate the fact that they are conscious.
It's speculation at most but so is of course any conjecture about what consciousness would be in any other but oneself.
Consciousness is the awareness of things. That is all.
And this has been perhaps your contradiction from the start: your assertion of a consciousness as something seperate from the whole of mental or neurological processing leading to some behavior.
Mental and neurological behaviour are themselves phenomena which appear to consciousness, so the appearance of these things would be part of consciousness.
David Quinn wrote:I don't think UG did much of the camel and lion thing. He just tried to become a child (thus, ending up as a limited child) without picking up the wisdom and knowledge and levels of consciousness that come with going through the camel and lion stages.
....a child? He doesn't seem like a child. Rather, he seems like a bitter old man, or a ghoul.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

jupiviv wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But even when a whale would perceive an object as a marine animal through senses and neuron activity, you appear to conclude that no appearance and no mind was involved here.
Right there is the problem in your reasoning. You are automatically projecting a consciousness on the whale, and therefore concluding that there is whale-consciousness that perceives marine animals etc. as sensory data etc. I need to see more evidence that such consciousness does exist, e.g, the whales trying to communicate the fact that they are conscious.
You appear to be unable to understand my point which has nothing to do with a whale being conscious or not. My aim always has been your definition of consciousness and what I think is limiting and self-contradicting about it.

I ask again: can an organism "perceive" anything without having at some level "appearance", that is representation occurring?
Consciousness is the awareness of things. That is all.
Then lets talk about what awareness is. Oh no I get it! Awareness is consciousness of things. :-) Are you just pretending to say wise things in short sentences? Being one of those watered down followers perhaps?
Mental and neurological behaviour are themselves phenomena which appear to consciousness, so the appearance of these things would be part of consciousness.
We were talking about some supposed other organism's capability to demonstrate object awareness, memory or mind, etc, following your definitions. Now you quickly retreat into a comfortable yet true: "all is part of consciousness". That's right of course, your consciousness, but with that knowledge there's still nothing known about what arises elsewhere.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by jupiviv »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I ask again: can an organism "perceive" anything without having at some level "appearance", that is representation occurring?

"Perceive", in the non-philosophical usage of the word, means sensory perception. It may not have anything to do consciousness. There are things which may not appear as sensory perceptions to our minds.
Then lets talk about what awareness is. Oh no I get it! Awareness is consciousness of things. :-) Are you just pretending to say wise things in short sentences? Being one of those watered down followers perhaps?
OK then, consciousness is the awareness that a thing is itself, and not other than itself.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:We were talking about some supposed other organism's capability to demonstrate object awareness, memory or mind, etc, following your definitions. Now you quickly retreat into a comfortable yet true: "all is part of consciousness".
I said that all appearances are part of mind.
That's right of course, your consciousness, but with that knowledge there's still nothing known about what arises elsewhere.
We can guess whether other beings are aware or not. I am guessing that the whale is not aware, because I can't find any reason why the whale would act that way if it was aware of the situation.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by cousinbasil »

jupiviv wrote:We can guess whether other beings are aware or not. I am guessing that the whale is not aware, because I can't find any reason why the whale would act that way if it was aware of the situation.
How would it act if it were aware? I will give you this much, you are consistent. If the whale pulled out an iPhone and dialed the coast guard to complain, you would say that proves it is not conscious because it didn't have a Nokia!
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

jupiviv wrote:"Perceive", in the non-philosophical usage of the word, means sensory perception.
It only means such thing in your attempt to quickly back-pedal. Any non-philosophical reference I double-checked talks about "direct" awareness of something, consciousness, understanding or apprehension. Are you sincere or is English just not your first language? I could relate in the latter case.
It may not have anything to do consciousness. There are things which may not appear as sensory perceptions to our minds.
I propose to understand all perception as an issue of the mind and not only of sensory input. Some perceptions might relate or resonate more than others. This process feeds our feeble picture of reality.
OK then, consciousness is the awareness that a thing is itself, and not other than itself.
Consciousness is perception then because to be perceived at all, it first has to contrast even for the senses. See here one example where you are contradicting instead of clarifying.
I said that all appearances are part of mind.
Where there are appearances, there also appears to be mind.
I am guessing that the whale is not aware, because I can't find any reason why the whale would act that way if it was aware of the situation.
Your guessing appears to be based solely on a flawed philosophical conception of awareness. The interesting element in that is not the whale but the nature of the flaw I try to point out.
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Re: Steven Norquist - Audio lecture on his enlightenment pro

Post by jupiviv »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Any non-philosophical reference I double-checked talks about "direct" awareness of something, consciousness, understanding or apprehension.
What do you mean "talks about"? How did the people who defined "perceive" or "consciousness" know what I meant by them? These are just words, and in this case I am trying to follow the common definitions of those words as closely as possible. Perception is often defined as sensory awareness, i.e, seeing, hearing etc., and that is what I meant by the whale perceiving the woman as a fish. But the awareness that I am talking about is not mere sensory awareness. You are just wallowing in semantics at this point, because what I meant is more than clear.
Consciousness is perception then because to be perceived at all, it first has to contrast even for the senses.
I don't understand what you mean by "contrasting for the senses".
Where there are appearances, there also appears to be mind.
Yes, mind is a thing, therefore it can appear. But there is not just one mind, and a particular mind cannot be aware of itself, for the reason that an eye cannot see itself. Even a single person's mind isn't the same from moment to moment, so when a person thinks of his past and his future, he is thinking of other minds.
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