Yahzi

"Intuitively" is another word for "making things up." The difference between intuition and fantasy is that with intuition, you follow it up, check it out, and it turns out to be true.

Intuition that is not verified by empirical checks is just... fantasy.

Yahzi

Hoo-boy. Time to bring out the patented Yahzi Baseball Bat Test (TM).

Step 1: Obtain a baseball bat.

Step 2: Fix your mind firmly on the notion that the rational mind is a self-created principle and creates its own standards.

Step 3: Strike yourself forcefully in the head with the bat.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 until step 2 is no longer possible.

The nice thing is... it's gauranteed to work. Eventually.

danrael

How do you jump from "intuitively" to "making things up"? You are implying that intuition involves a preconception, as does a fantasy. I am not talking about having a "hunch" about something that might be true. I am talking about approaching reality with no preconcieved notions about it. It is having an intuitive approach, not an intuitive idea.

danrael

You could try answering the question: What is the source of the rational mind?

danrael

Good. Not having an idea is a good place to start. But you really need to stop holding onto the way of the world in order to make the second step.
Before you get in line, drop your empirically conditioned mind at the door. That way, there will be nothing to stand in the way between the observer and the observed.

"In the end, you will know nothing."
Carlos Castaneda

danrael

My apologies. Please see next post.

danrael

Re: intuition:

Closer to what I mean:

ZEN INTUITION AND INSTINCT

Zen Master Yuanwu proclaims:

"If you can give up your former knowledge and understanding, thus making your heart open, not keeping anything at all on your mind, so you experience a clear empty solidity where speech and thought do not apply, you will directly merge with the fundamental source, sinking into the infinite, spontaneously attaining inherent wisdom that has no attainment." (Zen Essence, p37)

The world as it is presented to us is too contextually real, too substantial, too consuming‑ we cannot see past the barrier of facts and words presented in the barrage of society's digressions; we cannot see beyond the mist of given interpretations; which is to say, we see only what we believe we will see, and only the way we are told to see*, and because of this we are mostly blind; we see nothing but what we think we shall see, and then we call that form of conceptual myopia ...vision.
It is only at the point where the mind comes undone- realizing perfectly that it does not understand what it thought it did, and therefore the way it had always seen the world is wholly wrong- that thought can end, the heart can open fully to lead us forth, and we can forge on towards a better day.
Cioran offers another quick jab: "...when the knowledge of the mistake of living becomes common property and unanimous truth, where shall we seek resources in order to engender or even to sketch out an action, the simulacrum of a gesture? By what art survive our lucid instincts and our perspicacious hearts?" (Decay, p91)
How shall our hearts, instincts, and intuitions survive? But that is too easy. We must only go mad to the world of reason, or we will never be sane in unreason. We must lose the mind in order for the heart to expand, it is a very simple equation.

* eg: "empirical methods"

BadBadBad

Not by any approach other than fantasy and imagination.

The only thing you know about this other reality is through fantasy and imagination. Normally, we just don't look at that as if it were reality. If that's not true, tell me what you know about the supernatural, and tell me how you know that to be reality as compared to fantasy. How can you distinguish any knowledge of the supernatural from fantasy? How would you apply that method to other claims of the supernatural?

How would you apply that approach to other claims of the supernatural?

The mind isn't a principle, and it wasn't self created. It does create it's own standards and the mind tests those standards against the reality that can be perceived by the mind.

Test? Test what? Silly claims? I test it the same way you test it. Tell me, I claim the IPU exists. How do you test that claim? Seems pretty simple doesn't it?

danrael

How would you know? You live in a one-horse town and all you see is black and white.

You're now going to tell me what I know and don't know? I did not say there was another reality; there is only one reality. I said there is another dimension to reality other than what is perceived by the senses, and that dimension can only be accessed when one drops his analytical, thinking mind. This allows one to see reality as a whole, not just the physical aspect.

When an aware person fantasizes, he does so from the basis of reality; he knows that he is fantasizing, but is still anchored in reality. A person who holds unsupported beliefs treats those beliefs as if they were true. A person who lives in a fantasy world which he believes to be real has lost touch with reality. I am aware of these conditions. What I am saying is that the natural world and the supernatural world are not two. They are the same. There is no "other" world, only two aspects of the same reality. We are only mostly aware of one aspect because that is what we can perceive with our sensory apparatus. Most of us have lost touch with the other mode of consciousness, the intuitive, which allows us access to that dimension of reality which we cannot see, touch, taste, hear, or smell. Part of the reason we are not aware of it is because it is part and parcel of ordinary reality. It is like a fish who was born into the sea; the sea was never an object for him; it was just always there, like a second nature, from the beginning. We keep looking for it by over-reaching with our thinking mind, so we never see it. When the thinking mind becomes quiet, one is able to have insights into the nature of reality which the thinking mind cannot. Thought ceases under these conditions; there is only seeing. One is able to discern fantasy and illusion from what is real since the vision is now clear, unadulterated from the noise and clamor (and fantasizing) of the thinking mind. Also see previous post, above: Zen and Intuition

One of the dictionary definitions of the word "principle" is that it is a "basic source." If it creates its own standards, then it is, essentially, self-created. It is judge, jury, and hangman. If this is not so, as you say, then from whence does the mind originate? (Please look at your own statement about the nature of mind: you said that the mind creates its own standards, and then tests them against the reality that it essentially decides is true.) So it creates reality as it sees it, not as it exists. This is fantasy.

Well, I don't know ThreeXBadBoy: you are the one who was talking about the mind "testing" its own standards. See your own quote just above. ..........and then you go on to say:

No.

ThorsHammer

Mere rehashing of words. "Above/Supernatural/Irrational" - all the same to me. Prove me wrong.