sweep

While you're about to read a lot of negative comments, and some cynical ones in the second post, there's also some good in this. My aim is to offer a different slant on life as a whole; on the extremely long term future of all conscious beings, so that you, as an individual, will develop a wider appreciation of life. Hopefully, you will then consider the implications of your actions on others now, and forever.

First of all, let me explain, in as many words as my vague experiences will permit me, what it means to lose your mind, and to experience consciousness, unlike what you are comfortable with. At some point in my life, I started an honest inquest into truth, and now that the journey is welll under way I can see that truth is a gift, but it is also a heavy burden, and sometimes a nightmare. The universe was opened to me by ingesting strong hallucinogens- effectively, many drugs temporarily impair your short term memory. This I can describe, is probably close to being a newly born baby. Over the years, the pursuit of hallucinogenic substances, have made even the most mundane encounters new, exciting and even frightening. You might have heard of pyote, a drug common to parts of middle america, the shamen, and power animals. Well, in my experience I have never seen a power animal, but I have felt like a powerless one.

Constitutionally, my form is and has been human for nearly thirty years. When my memory is impaired, all recognition is gone. There is no human, no sky, no house, no names: I have experienced the consciousness of a small frightened animal. When all things are new, in this sense, the bodys natural reaction is fear. Fear, is protective, for without recognition, there is no telling what is dangerous, and what is safe. I asked for the barriers to be broken, and they were. Beyond this comfortable charade of recognition, outside of my tiny peanut head, the universe is nothing short of bewildering, and that is an understatement. Now, I am a prisoner-- behind the walls of this reality that has been constructed for me, is my final freedom.

Do you consider mortality to be a curse, or is it a gift? * Oblivion is an imagined thing. For some reason, humans have a habit of thinking dualistically. In terms of mortality, my life and your individual life, depends upon a non-life, which is imagined, and not real. In this way, your existence does become truly and absolutely finite. When you cling on to yourself, as a permanent fixture, you also cling on to your non-self. Based on the assumption that there is no soul, doing away with your tenuous cartesian philosophy, there is, in fact, no residence beyond your body; there is no time, no place, no finity or otherwise.

No conscious entity has any guarantee of oblivion. No-one resides in oblivion, no-one is waiting to live. To me, suicide is a joke. Fine. In some cases you are getting away from a constant pain, and mortality is your freedom. But there is no telling what wall you will bump into next. Now- there is the snag: There isn't any way of phrasing the probable you, and the possible you in another form. Me is me. And that is final. But what is me? Imagine thousands of candles. Each candle has a separate body, but they all share one common factor: the flame. Essentially, assuming the flame is consciousness, its existence relies upon the body, and it appears wherever there are bodies. But the flame never dies- it was never there in the first place. With the candle, there is no question of duality. There is the potential of a flame, but never the notion of no flame, once the body has expired. The flame belongs to nobody

Consciousness appears wherever there are bodies. And there are so many billions upon billions of bodies created that the problem is not that your only permanent constitution, the one you have grown so attached to, will break, but the fact that you can become- again, and yet again. There is no doubt- there is no prerequisite dictating that you can only live, if you were not before. For if you were something else, then how can that be you. It cannot: but, this is only due to the limitations of our language. I iterate, there is no other way I can phrase this. You are bound only by your constitution, and that can feasibly be transformed. Just as you were born and grew, so can the process be reversed, in the same body; in the same 'you'.

The internal world, which is your mind, is no longer real. It is a vision of the past. Everyone you hold dear relies upon a world that has died. This is the same duality that yields permanence, even when your existence, has already gone. This is no mere insubstantial assertion. Look no further than the Alzheimers patient, and your views as to what constitutes you will change that assertion. Our substance is based upon a lack of substance. Our constitution defines our consciousness.

In the next post I will outline some of the implications of this view.

Heathen Dawn

Brudda,

Taking hallucinogens is like playing with fire.

Magic Primate

Sweep,

If I've understood you correctly, I agree with you to some extent: subjective death is not a thing that is experienced and thus cannot be said to exist. You've also said something along lines I was already considering, and provoked a new idea. So I thank you for that. If there is no oblivion to be experienced, what happens subjectively when we die? I tend to think of life as finite yet boundless - the same shape as the universe according to relativity. Life is always experienced from a point within life. Life is now.

I'd like to address a couple of points:

There is no assumption that there is no soul. People used to believe in souls (and apparently some still do), but there is no evidence for them and there are far more powerful explanations. The soul has become a redundant concept. It is always up to the assertor of an idea to prove the case.

Also, you seem to be one of these people who associates skepticism/rationalism/atheism with cartesian philosophy. Descartes believed very much in the soul (and God) - he believed in two fundamental substances - mind and matter, which is why he is referred to as a Dualist. Most modern scientific-thinking types don't believe in a separate soul, so in terms of the philosophy of mind they are generally monists.

Primate

EDIT: stupidness corrected

livius drusus

I believe this discussion is better suited to Philosophy.

sweep

Wise words hd- a short post, but fitting

Thanks for your comments MP: I better have a think about them before I reply. Now, as promised here is my second post.

Bear in mind that the following does contain elements of truth, but relies upon half-baked philosophy. The ideas presented may reflect this, and some of it may come across as esoteric, or mystic. This is because I’m going to relax my style a little and toy around. For the most part, you’ll hopefully be able to see what I am reaching for, in the long run, and you’ll get an impression of my attitudes towards humanity, and in particular, the rich and the powerful.

First of all lets assume that there is a link between lives. To me, the only link I can think of is a sexual one. We pass on our genes, as we pass on our legacy. Legacy can be defined as a bundle of property, spiritual, verbal, genetic or otherwise that affects other people in our lives. With respect to the genetic factors, there are certain kinds of people in this world that invest their genes, contained within their gametes, without any other consideration to other aspects of legacy. One of my favorite comedians, the late Bill Hicks, conveys this idea very well in one of his comedy sketches:

"Where'd this idea that childbirth is a miracle come from? I missed that fuckin’ meeting, Ok?
It’s a miracle! childbirth is a miracle. No it's not. It’s no more a miracle than eating food and a turd coming out of your ass, alright? It’s a chemical reaction. That’s all it fuckin’ is

And just in case you haven’t seen the single mom statistics lately, the miracle is spreading like wild-fire

Haa-le-luya! trailer parks and council flats all over the world just filling up with little miracles:

Thunk, thunk- like frogs laying eggs - thunk – look at all my little miracles- thunk - filling up my trailer like a sardine can- thunk- you know what would be a real miracle? if I could remember your daddys name- hhnng- thunk- I guess I’ll have to call you lorry driver junior- tttthunk- that’s all I remember about your daddy- was his fuzzy little pot belly ridin’ on top of me and shooting his caffeine-ridden semen into my belly to produce my little water head miracle babies- whoop!- thunk- there’s your brother pizza boy delivery junior haaaleluya!

Just hang on a minute, lets figure out this food/air deal OK? Okay.

How about a neat world for kids to come to?"

How about a worst case scenario? Man screws ‘crack whore’. Crack whore give birth nine months later. (Whoops! Accidents will happen) Child grows up. Runs away from home, gets into drugs and lays men to pay for her drugs habit…Etcetera. Alright, you’re getting a basic idea of legacy, if you didn’t have one already. Without babbling on you can see the logic here, I hope. I don’t have to go through every step to avoid being accused of a logical jump. Now if genes do connect lives then give it a few generations and you have one giant breeder cocktail. Breeders fucking other breeders: breeders fucking themselves. If there’s any justice in the world, anything at all to the notion of karma, or the clique: what goes around, comes around., then that same guy who begun the cycle will be sucking cock for a living, in the long run, courtesy of some distant relative. Far fetched perhaps, and quite possibly a way of getting my Jollies from a cycle of gutter depravity, but you can’t argue with breeder legacy.

And that’s about the size of it: a whole menagerie of ‘hellraisers’, quite literally fucking a whore called Pandora. And in case you haven’t seen the film their manta goes thus: ‘you opened the box: We came! Hey people! Are you sure it’s wise to let your groin do the driving?

Of course, not all breeders are like this. There are some nice families. I saw one the other day: a lovable family unit of eight! The couple can’t have been married more than ten years. This guy must have been waiting in the delivery room, ready to empty his billowing sack. I wanted to pull this man to one side, and show him some stats. There are half a million asylum seekers flooding this country every year. England is overcrowded, and there aren’t any jobs. These children were no budding brain surgeons- they’ll need a degree just to clean toilets in this country. Oh well more slaves to cater for the middle classes.

What’s next? This is even worse, and even more far fetched, but slightly worth the consideration if you can be bothered. (After this paragraph, there comes a point, and a moral.)

Let us assume there is NO link between lives. I do, now and again. Sometimes I look at my little dog, and I am thankful to be human. He isn’t me, why should I care that he stinks of stale sweat and eats horse offal? Then I wonder how many fat cats there are out there, repeating the same comfortable philosophy. How about Abattoir managers? Safe within their private estate, wife in the luxury sauna, a thousand miles away from the scream of cogs, bone cutters and the bustle of immigrant workers, standing knee deep in blood, carving flesh and sawing through arteries. What about the consumer- a happy little kid chewing into his cheeseburger? He doesn’t care. It wasn’t him on the slab. He’s safe in his little reality. He has a window of at least sixty years. That is if the arteries don’t pack in once he reaches three hundred pounds.

Alright- you’ve heard enough. Cows are cows, pigs are pigs. There’s nothing we can do about it. Well, yes, and no. What we can do is to start right now and appreciate conscious beings other than ourselves. We can think more about the bigger picture and make sure that we’re not fucking the future for all the beings in that future. We have to stop clambering over each other and rushing around like there’s no tomorrow, because there is. If you do step on others, there’s always a chance you’ll end up being stepped on, if you set the standard.

We have to change this trend of grasping; of hording. It’s far too easy to be comfortable and not to care. It’s easy to see why some people have this whole, ‘it isn’t happening to me, so why should I care?’ philosophy. If you think there is a link, and that legacy plays a part, then perhaps there is a greater incentive to horde and to preserve. Even so, if this continues, the rich and mighty will have nothing left to reap, and their progeny with be born with nothing.

Secular Elation

I don't follow this.

The flame is to the candle as consciousness is to the body. If the candle is gone, there there is no flame. If the body is gone, then there is no consciousness. The flame belongs to the candle in that the flame cannot survive without it. Just as our consciousness cannot survive without our bodies.

sweep

think of the time before your son was born (I saw your picture). where is he? what was he? It's not possible to think how you did at the time? There was no son waiting to be born? Even when our bodies are fully formed there is no guarantee of life, which is the opposite of this threads title. Consciousness is not tangible: (At least not yet- Even when a loved one has expired, there is a need to be in touch with the body, even though that is not the life we loved. There needs to be a sense of finality; a chance to rub ones hands of the receptacle and to let go.)

Thereby your question, I am suggesting, can be better understood by considering that death is not just the domain of absence of the body, nor the presence of body. Only that consciousness does not belong to anyone in particular; it is a spark common to all beings. But we do need something tangible in order to see life and death. Where we draw the line, is anyones guess. I hope this helps. In the meantime, take good care of your family.

what does that look like?

very good point. It is unhealthy to rub oneself out in favour of other formulations and definitions, since we have this life to lead. Inversely, at the other extreme, it is also unhealthy to think of eternal nothingness, when life is for the living.

the only god I saw had red eyes and many voices- it wasn't a pretty site (I won't do it again. *fingers crossed*). Then again, witnessing your own reflection on paper, or desktop, is equally disturbing.

You write some interesting stuff by the way. Look forward to future input!

sweep

secular elation: you perceive ab-sense, because you are here. the cause of 'a lack of sense' depends upon existence, but not the inverse.

lets say you see a light during the night. It disappears, then another light occurs at another point 'in space'. Do you conclude that the first light is not, and the second light is, and more-so, different?

no matter the form, the light remains- only when you try to point it out, it moves. you can't grasp it, because you believe it isn't there.

before you reply, just think about what you want to achieve? The only way out of this, is to lead, in which case, be my guest! I'm happy to surf. Even better, take a big dose of pyote, and we'll surf together!

What I am not happy with, is this burden- take it- if you want. Change my mind; it has already been warped beyond recognition. fix it! help me understand! I beg you! (take the gun, and pull the trigger!)

Magic Primate

Mu.
Where did you see our picture?


Like the surface of a sphere - finite in size, yet without boundaries. To be precise it's a hypersphere - a sphere with more than three dimensions. Note that its space and time which are supposed to be shaped like this, meaning that there may be no boundaries to the universe's time either (see Hawking's No Boundary Condition hypothesis).

Only life exists.

A product of your mind I think.

Secular Elation

Either I am dumb, or you just aren't getting your point across.

Anyway, regarding the light analogy, it is irrelevant when discussing consciousness. Our bodies may always exist in some form, even after they decompose, but our consciousness exists now, does not exist in our sleep, and will not ever exist again after death.