11-25-2017, 12:00 AM
Julio Juliopolis wrote:
Le_Regard wrote:
It could also be a lot like sitting down to play a videogame and it turns out the videogame is so much fun you never get back up again.
If we change that a little bit, say add that you forget it's just a video game and start calling it "reality", and that you occasionally do get up and leave the game for a short time before returning to it but call that "dreaming" and say it isn't real, then it's a pretty fair analogy.
I also don't know if INTENT can be responsible for everything that "occurs", now that I think about it.
That's because you don't know that everything has consciousness and intent. When an apple falls off a tree, it's a result of the combined intents of the apple, tree, ground, earth, air, all the atoms and molecules that make up all those things, and the intents of whatever beings decided for the force of gravity to be at play in this dream-world, (aka reality).
I could also say responsible for everything we experience. "occurs" seems to give it some measure of reality, like it occurred "for real" and not in an MMORPG.
Defining reality as what "we experience" seems to be very human-centric. Other animals have experiences which includes colors we don't see, and sounds that are too high-pitched for us to hear. Ever try to combine hundreds of images into 1? Insects with compound eyes do this. Their experiences are no less real than ours, and their reality probably looks considerably different. As Don Juan told Carlos, what people call reality is just a description. When you see, (and I hope someday you do), that everything has consciousness and it's own perceptions you'll realize just how much these descriptions can vary.
This is very substantial.
What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will". He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation". Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.
Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water. I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.
But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water. Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like. Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences. We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know. We can't know. But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun. That's what Kant says. We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL. And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that. We are that.
However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic. The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only. We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation. So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated. But that doesn't leave us anywhere.
Le_Regard wrote:
It could also be a lot like sitting down to play a videogame and it turns out the videogame is so much fun you never get back up again.
If we change that a little bit, say add that you forget it's just a video game and start calling it "reality", and that you occasionally do get up and leave the game for a short time before returning to it but call that "dreaming" and say it isn't real, then it's a pretty fair analogy.
I also don't know if INTENT can be responsible for everything that "occurs", now that I think about it.
That's because you don't know that everything has consciousness and intent. When an apple falls off a tree, it's a result of the combined intents of the apple, tree, ground, earth, air, all the atoms and molecules that make up all those things, and the intents of whatever beings decided for the force of gravity to be at play in this dream-world, (aka reality).
I could also say responsible for everything we experience. "occurs" seems to give it some measure of reality, like it occurred "for real" and not in an MMORPG.
Defining reality as what "we experience" seems to be very human-centric. Other animals have experiences which includes colors we don't see, and sounds that are too high-pitched for us to hear. Ever try to combine hundreds of images into 1? Insects with compound eyes do this. Their experiences are no less real than ours, and their reality probably looks considerably different. As Don Juan told Carlos, what people call reality is just a description. When you see, (and I hope someday you do), that everything has consciousness and it's own perceptions you'll realize just how much these descriptions can vary.
This is very substantial.
What you're describing as the combined intent of apple, tree, earth, etc., etc., Schopenhauer called "will". He wrote a book about it, in German, called "The World as Will and Idea" or "The World as Will and Representation". Or whatever the German for that is, I don't really know.
Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule combine in true love and ecstasy because it is their will to be water. I'm assuming the Carlos Castaneda books have been translated into German, but I don't know the word they use for Intent, so I don't know... maybe it's the same thing.
But Schopenhauer's "Will" doesn't just inspire hydrogen and oxygen to be water. Will is "the thing-in-itself", "das ding an sich" if you like. Schopenhauer writes this way because in the philosophy of KANT, we only know our own experiences. We definitely know that a world is out there a real one, at least ONE real thing or maybe real THINGS, because we don't know. We can't know. But we know it as a brute fact because otherwise it would be like seeing a shadow cast by a tree but not believing in trees and not believing in the Sun. That's what Kant says. We know it's there because we infer from its effects, which is the fact we experience ANYTHING AT ALL. And blahblahblah Space is just the absolute form of geometry and Time is just the absolute form of arithmetic and blahblahblah, but what's relevant here is that Schopenhauer was a bit more optimistic and thought that, in a certain sense, we COULD know the the thing-in-itself, quite directly, because it is Will, and we have that. We are that.
However, Schopenhauer's project is generally considered pessimistic. The only way to realize the Will of the universe is to basically suspend the individual Will that animates our own lives only. We know the world by "willing it" to appearance or representation. So if we just DON'T... if we just suspend all appearance and representation, "stop the world" if you like, stop THINKING the world into appearance, WILL shines out as self-illuminated. But that doesn't leave us anywhere.