2009.04.28 19:00 - Words for Felt Experience

The Guardian for this meeting was Eos Amaterasu. The comments are by Eos Amaterasu.

    

Prelims 

Pema Pera: Hi Eos and Peer!

Pema Pera: Eos, I hope that it's okay with you that we scheduled a theme meeting for your guardian slot tonight?

Pema Pera: With Geo and Threedee

Eos Amaterasu: That's fine!

Pema Pera: Hi Strannik!

Strannik Zipper: greetings

Eos Amaterasu: Someone stated the theme as How can the experiential be formally communicated to another using the experience of peace and happiness as examples

Pema Pera: yes, the someone was Geo, who proposed that title

Pema Pera: Hi Threedee!

Peer Infinity: hi Three :D

Threedee Shepherd: hi folks

Pema Pera: (Peer, I sent an email to the group, about your mediawiki experiment; we'll start a discussion in a day or so on the pabwiki google email group)
Peer Infinity: (ok)

Pema Pera: Hi Pila!

Pila Mulligan: greetings everyone

Threedee Shepherd: Geo sent an e-mail saying he could not make it

Pema Pera: that's too bad

Pema Pera: I didn't see the email yet; haven't gone through my email this morning

Pema Pera: I guess we'll have to reschedule

Eos Amaterasu: "I will be unable to make the Tuesday (today) 1900 SLT PaB session. I hope this message gets to all interested parties in time. It would certainly be ok with me if the theme was discussed anyway. - Geo"

     

 Topic: how, to what extent, can words such as those we type here communicate felt experience to others?

Threedee Shepherd: Or we could start on the more general topic of how, to what extent, can words such as those we type here communicate felt experience to others?

Pema Pera: yes, that's a good topic, Three!

Pila Mulligan: Threedee, I assume felt experience includes subjective perceptions?

Pema Pera: (and by the way, for those new here: if you click a blue cushion, you cycle between two positions -- in case you wonder why Pila and I sit differently from Strannik and Peer)

Threedee Shepherd: We all agree that "the word is not the thing" and that the "map is not the territory"

Threedee Shepherd: Pila I doubt there is anything ELSE but subjective perceptions

Strannik Zipper: can you seperate felt experience from subjective impressions?

Pila Mulligan: :)

Pila Mulligan: just wanted to be sure

Strannik Zipper: but when two people are clearly able to communicate and talk about their subjective impressions, then Habermas calls that "intersubjectivity"

Threedee Shepherd: Math is even subjective, but is then discussed in an agreed upon, unambiguous language. Words are not like that

Threedee Shepherd: Yes, it "appears" that two people are able to clearly communicate, but that may be a shared illusion or adequate approximation.

Threedee Shepherd: The one new neurological fact that enters the conversation is the existence of "mirror neurons"

Eos Amaterasu: Yes, maybe the child learns personal subjectivity from mirror-neuroning its mother

Strannik Zipper: regardless of how the neurons do it, the mind can be experienced as a big mirror of experience

Pila Mulligan: in litigation, evidence comes from several sources, inlcuding what is called a percipient witness -- percipient meaning they perceived something ... but listening to several eye witnesses describe the same accident can sometimes be like reading Kafka, unrelated to the degree of being bizarre

Threedee Shepherd: WiKip:

A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another animal (especially by another animal of the same species).[1] Thus, the neuron 'mirrors' the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself acting.

Threedee Shepherd: Wikip:

Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the perception action coupling (see the common coding theory). These mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills,[4][5] while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities

Strannik Zipper: interestingly specific

   

Pila Mulligan: so courts use some standards to weigh evidence and reach an opinion as to what is real -- and what is decided is thereafter legally true (regardless of what may have actually happened)

Threedee Shepherd: I am convinced that all perception (and eyewitness report) is an approximation that gets us usefully through the day as long as it is not examined too closely.

Pila Mulligan: inconvenient inconsistencies are formally eliminated

Strannik Zipper: I think that one can communicate felt experience in words, because we tend to have common experiences - to communicate something which has NOT been experienced by the other, I have a hard time seeing, unless that communication is "pointing out instructions" to get the other to the experience

Eos Amaterasu: perhaps similarly to how "self" is construed to be consistent

Threedee Shepherd: I think that a key core issue of this conversation is dealing with words that related to non-physical abstractions, such as peace, love, happiness

Pila Mulligan: the self seems so desirous of consistency as to be resistant to learning some uncommon expereinces

Threedee Shepherd: I cannot tell you what vanilla or alligator taste like, so why can I tell you what peace is?

Pila Mulligan: but I can taste vanilla and alligator (yuck) :)

Pema Pera: I think Strannik put his finger on it

Pema Pera: we can only point out

Threedee Shepherd: Are you saying Peme, that I can say look at how those two communities are co-existing, that is peace?

Eos Amaterasu: Pointing out followed by confirmation => language?

Pema Pera: no, Threedee, that would be rational arguments

Pila Mulligan: I bet we have all had the expereince of being warm (in varying degrees)

Pema Pera: I would start with direct experience

Pema Pera: and then, yes Eos, confirmation

Threedee Shepherd: so what is "it" that we can only point out?

Pema Pera: to check that we're talking about the same thing

Pema Pera: we recognize that we share the experience when we talk about it, Threedee -- like in math

   

Pema Pera: in math too, the only way I can check whether someone has "gotten" a proof, is to let them tell me or show me

Pema Pera: and I'll recognize whether they really "got" it

Strannik Zipper: pointing out instructions might be like tutoring in math - showing the thing until the "ah ha" of getting it sinks in

Pema Pera: yes

Threedee Shepherd: but in math you agree totally on the meaning of the symbols. In language you do not

Pema Pera: not so simple, Threedee

Pema Pera: the axioms are the meaning of the symbols

Pema Pera: the theorems and proofs are the creative part

Threedee Shepherd: Wait, I tell you that I have observed the new behaviorial phenomenon of ZURP, and you say Huh?

Pema Pera: to follow a proof may be very hard, even if you completely understand the meaning of the symbols

Pema Pera: I don't see the connection, Threedee

Pila Mulligan: (zurp is a vanilla alligator)

Strannik Zipper: Threedee, how can I come closer to experiencing ZURP?

Threedee Shepherd: I give you stories, examples and pictures, and suddenly you go Ah, I get it! HOW do I know you mean the same as I do when you then use the word ZURP?

Pema Pera: if you have really experienced / seen / felt it, and someone else has too, chances are high you recognize it in each other

Pema Pera: nothing is foolproof -- even mathematicians make mistakes

Strannik Zipper: at some level of precision, you don't exaclty, and some level, you can confirm by intersubjective confirmation

Strannik Zipper: if you say you get math, I'll give you a test :)

Pema Pera: yes

Pema Pera: a test, or more friendly: compare notes

Pema Pera: work together

Pema Pera: try to prove a new theorem together

Pema Pera: see how far you get together

Pema Pera: as we do here :-)

Pema Pera: we're not testing each other, there is no teacher

Threedee Shepherd: Yes, but in the end it is all words

Pema Pera: no

Pema Pera: words are words

Pema Pera: and words point to something beyond words

Pila Mulligan: I appreciate the underlying thought that words without a shared or common expereince are not always helpful

Threedee Shepherd: OK, sounds like you are putting appropriate weight on common experience. So is everything we can agree about either a physical (matter or energy) reality and/or an observed behaviorial "doing" or its physical outcome?

Pila Mulligan: agreement can be arbitrary and capricioous

Pema Pera: asking that question is like putting the cart before the horse

   

Pema Pera: instead of "everything" let us take one thing, and find out!

Pema Pera: What kind of answer could possibly be given to your question, and on what grounds, other than speculation?

Pema Pera: but instead of an answer, I *can* propose a hypothesis

Pema Pera: a working hypothesis, and that can be useful, to actually work with

Threedee Shepherd: Yes, that is sensible, but if we are using an inadequate method to "find out" that is useless. So method seems important to discuss

Pema Pera: to guide experimentation

Pema Pera: so we start with hypothesis, like "it may make sense to talk about Being, as beyond all dichotomies"

Pema Pera: and then: let's find out whether that can make a difference in our lives

Pema Pera: let's explore

Pema Pera: let's stop every 15 minutes for 9 sec

Pema Pera: let's try to appreciate the presence of appearance

Pema Pera: and compare notes

Pila Mulligan: I think I initially misunderstood the question Threedee, my second answer would be no, not all common expereince is physical reality or observed doing

Pema Pera: while suspending judgment about how it may or may not fit into our received categories of thinking

Threedee Shepherd: yes, but I started this chat by asking what is the meaning or usefulness of talk about

Pema Pera: to help the exploration move along

Pema Pera: refining it

Pema Pera: seeing more, more clearly

   

Strannik Zipper: can we find any sense of being that ISN'T beyond dichotomies?

Threedee Shepherd: I "agree" on what we are trying to do.

Pema Pera: well, if a chair is red, being red is part of a dichotomy red and not-red . . . but that may not be what you mean, Strannik?

Threedee Shepherd: I note we use words to discuss it.

Pema Pera: I use "Being" as different from everday being as in being red.

Strannik Zipper: that might work, although the poor platonic chair might need a rest

Threedee Shepherd: I note words are often ambiguous (even rock and pebble are not unambiguous)

Pema Pera: yes, Threedee, but we also sit here in an environment, and we sense each other's presence in some way

Eos Amaterasu: the "beyond dichotomies" is the cutter differentiating Being from being-this-or-that (dichotomous)

Pema Pera: we are doing something different from pure chat

Threedee Shepherd: So, I ask, how can or do we use words to come to agreement that is really agreement, and not just two people using the same word for different subjective experiences?

Pema Pera: Being shows itself in the midst of dichotomies, which are all, too, Being :-)

Eos Amaterasu: :-)

Pema Pera: <- Eos

Pema Pera: by trial and error, Threedee, how else?

Eos Amaterasu: Our subjective experiences can be diff - women see more colour than men

Threedee Shepherd: how do you know that Eos

Eos Amaterasu: thus have I heard :-) (more rods and cones)

Threedee Shepherd: more may mean greater sensitivity, not different color

Strannik Zipper: or you can just try to go furniture shopping with one

Eos Amaterasu: Ie, women can distinguish finer color distinctions....

Eos Amaterasu: So agreeing on cerulean blue can be approx, good enough

Threedee Shepherd: Eos, I don't think so, but it is the field I worked in (vision) so I can look it up later.

Eos Amaterasu: Ok, if I'm wrong I'd love to know

   

Pema Pera: Three, you are asking about checking, confirmation, right?

Strannik Zipper: how about the fountain right in front of us - what can we say about it that does not involve dichotomies

Pema Pera: nothing

Pema Pera: Perhaps I can give an example of confirmation, that may address your concerns, Threedee.

Threedee Shepherd: More than that, I am asking about the basis of communication

Threedee Shepherd: Here, let me put together the sentences I wrote earlier: I "agree" on what we are trying to do [using the 9 sec exercise]. I note we use words to discuss it. I note words are often ambiguous (even rock and pebble are not aunambiguous) So, I ask, how can or do we use words to come to agreement that is really agreement, and not just two people using the same word for different subjective experiences?

Strannik Zipper: in an absolute sense, you can't

Pila Mulligan: if someone has never seen Iowa, I can describe it to then -- my words are useful to the extent that they help them recognize Iowa should they see it or hear of it again or if they have a need to describe Iowa by hearsay

Strannik Zipper: in a relative sense, you can both be in the same "ballpark"

Pila Mulligan: my words cannot transport them, of course

Eos Amaterasu: I wonder, though, if subjective experience is really exclusively subjective

Pema Pera: Imagine that somebody claims to have lived in Holland. He has learned perfect Dutch, but I am not sure whether he has actually lived there. It wouldn't take long for me to find out, in talking with him, whether he was bluffing, or whether he had actually lived there. No amount of learning Dutch from tapes or from books would make it possible for him to really fool a native. He might be able to answer a few questions here and there, but if I would let him talk for a few minutes, I'd quickly spot oddities.

Pema Pera: similar example as Pila's Iowa

Threedee Shepherd: Pema, have you just restated the turing Test?

Pema Pera: that's certainly related

Strannik Zipper: I may not have been to Iowa, but I have seen a cornfield - you could tell me that Iowa is a place with a lot of them, and I can extrapolate a small bit of experience to imagine the latter

Threedee Shepherd: Yes, but have you seen LOVE?

Pila Mulligan: Threedee, it was the touring test :)

Pema Pera: Strannik, that's about getting the experience --- Threedee, I think, is talking about verification

Strannik Zipper: hahaha - very punny

Threedee Shepherd: <.>

Threedee Shepherd: in the sense that verification implies that we "mean the same thing" yes

Strannik Zipper: then I think that Pema's idea of the shared hypothesis makes sense - you test that your experience is really matching up

Threedee Shepherd: by telling each other that it is???

Pema Pera: so we formulate explorations, do them, talk about them, and try to check to what extent we talk about the same thing

Strannik Zipper: by sharing impressions

Pema Pera: that talking in turn helps to refine the explorations

Pema Pera: which in turn helps us to report more clearly

Pema Pera: it's a circle

Pema Pera: Hi Geralyn!

Pila Mulligan: Eos wondered if experience is exclusively subjective -- I'd say some felt experience can be more than subjective, depending on the degree of lucidity

Pema Pera: You're welcome to join us

Geralyn Landar: hello..and thank you

Threedee Shepherd: So if I say to you that in my last 9 sec experience, I found that being tastes like strawberries and has a runny gel-like texture, is that at all useful

Strannik Zipper: once in a while you can have a sublime intersubjective experience, like when you and someone you know, look at a thing, and you both laugh, and you both know why you are both laughing without any words at all - or you really know what the other is thinking

Eos Amaterasu: the laughter is the confirmation

Pema Pera: yes, Threedee, it tells me a lot about your understanding of Being :-)

Strannik Zipper: right, which is underscorred with a deep sense of knowing - no words may be exchanged, but if they were, you already know what they would be

Threedee Shepherd: Stannik, I'm laughing at the funny noses, you at how then interfere with kissing. We SEEM to agree, but don't

Pila Mulligan: please define strawberry, Threedee :)

Threedee Shepherd: strawberry is the taste of strawberry jello

Pila Mulligan: thank you

Pila Mulligan: god is the taste of love

Threedee Shepherd: Pila, I cannot, of course, that is the problem with primary qualities (qualia)

Pila Mulligan: sounded good to me

Eos Amaterasu: but even the misunderstanding about what we're laughing about may disclose Being

Threedee Shepherd: no Pila, love is the taste og God

Threedee Shepherd: *of

Pila Mulligan: ah, so easy to get them backwards :)

Threedee Shepherd: Or perhaps love is the taste of Dog

Strannik Zipper: It may be right both ways :)

Threedee Shepherd: Or perhaps vole is the taste of dog.....

Strannik Zipper: haha that is also true :)

Pila Mulligan: never et dawg

   

Eos Amaterasu: Pema's hypothesis is that we can experience Being thru the path of non-dichotomy

Eos Amaterasu: We use non-dichotomy as a test, tuning fork, though there may be many questions about dichotomy

Pema Pera: Eos, concerning "Pema's hypothesis is that we can experience Being thru the path of non-dichotomy"

Pema Pera: I would phrase that a bit differently

Pema Pera: Being itself cannot be captured in a language that is based on dichotomies

Pema Pera: and we as what we think we are cannot experience it

Pema Pera: so there is no path

Pema Pera: and no us, no self

Eos Amaterasu: But there is the tax :-)

Pema Pera: yet we can live our live with Being as a resource

Pema Pera: yes, there is tax, but no death :-)

Threedee Shepherd: Pema, I would say that Being always is, and that the hypothesis is that there be ways to notice it by stripping away or seeing beyond/through the confusions we constract about it.

Pema Pera: and the tax is voluntary :)

Pema Pera: yes, Three

Pema Pera: and "notice it" is not like noticing an object

Threedee Shepherd: yes, it is experiencing

Pema Pera: more like expressing, celebrating

Pema Pera: within everything, including experience

Pila Mulligan: people have signifcant experiences and assemble them into a view of life, an effort that intermixes with the mind's pleasure in describing things -- but sometimes the view gets tangled up in the words

Eos Amaterasu: transcends subjective, can we say?

Pema Pera: yes, Pila

Pila Mulligan: I would agree Eos

Pema Pera: transcends all dichotomies, including subjective

Threedee Shepherd: And when (or if) I have done so, there are no "words" that can let me tell you about it so that just the words evoke the experience for you.

Pema Pera: oh, there are, Three

Pila Mulligan: may be Threedee, it depends

Pema Pera: if we both have had the experience

Pema Pera: but "experience" is not quite the right word

Pila Mulligan: ever been to Iowa?

Pema Pera: not "experience" as what is experienced by an experiencer --- we have to go beyond those dichotomies too.

Pema Pera: nobody can "experience" Being in that sense

Eos Amaterasu: nobody is paying that tax :-)

Pema Pera: but Being can present itself (so to speak)

Pema Pera: without there being a presenter or presented

Pema Pera: hence: appreciate the presence of appearance

   

Threedee Shepherd: Pema, I need to check. Is there "only one Being" such that everyone who 'experiences' it is "tasting" the same source.

Pema Pera: that's enough

Pema Pera: Being is beyond the dichotomoy of one-many

Pema Pera: there are no people who can experience it

Pila Mulligan: (that sounds like a yes)

Pema Pera: only Being deals with Being as Being in Being

Pema Pera: I'm not trying to be complicated, I'm trying to describe as accurately as I can what I've found in my own explorations -- and I'm earger to compare notes with what you all have found

Pema Pera: to the extend that we find differences, I'd be happy to talk about those

Pema Pera: and learn

Pila Mulligan: its tricky when Lao Tse says the way that can be described is not the eternal way

Pema Pera: Hi Hadiran!

Strannik Zipper: to know being, it is necessary to go beyond all description in the form "its like this or its like that"

Hadrian Rives: good evening :)

Pema Pera: Welcome back!

Threedee Shepherd: Pema, is the functioning of your brain a necessary (I do not say sufficient) condition of your"own explorations"?

Hadrian Rives: thank u

Pema Pera: asking that question already limits you to a view in which the notion of Being does not make sense, Three

Pema Pera: For Being, there are no separate beings

Pema Pera: no you and me as separated selfs

Strannik Zipper: another dichotomy - brain/mind or no-mind

Pila Mulligan: ... but (answering Threedee's earlie question) my guess is that everyone experiencing Lao Tse's eternal way it is tasting the same source

Threedee Shepherd: If Threedee (Mark) ceases to exist, can Mark still experience Being?

Pila Mulligan: yep

Pema Pera: in a movie, switching on a light switch seems to make a room light up -- but the real light is coming from the projector

Strannik Zipper: but not necessarily as Mark

Pema Pera: my brain seems to do my thinking, but that is buying into a limited picture, buying into the story we have woving about our conventional picture of reality

Pema Pera: but Being is also not a projector that is elsewhere, that's where my metaphor would go wrong

Threedee Shepherd: Pema, I chose my words very carefully. ALL I asked was is the functioning of your brain a necessary condition (not the only one) for your eexplorations?

Pema Pera: Alas, it is lunch time here for me . . . .

Eos Amaterasu: both mind and brain are secondary to first person "experience"

Strannik Zipper: I think it is fair to say that one's words and thoughts about being are one thing, but experiencing being without or beyond thoughts is something else entirely

Pema Pera: and Threedee, I can answer that in many ways . . . .

Pema Pera: . . . if you ask me whether a comic book figure can experience something

Pema Pera: what do you mean?

Pema Pera: do you want an answer within the story?

Pema Pera: Sure, withing the story the figure experiences all kinds of things, as part of the story -- but outside the story, no.

Threedee Shepherd: "in a manner of speaking"

Pila Mulligan: have a nice lunch, Pema-san :)

Pema Pera: so as long as I view myself as a person with a body and a mind, as we usually do, the self or ego I am talking about has only the status of a character in a story

Pema Pera: what I really am, what really can be fully involved in the world, is Being

Pema Pera: and we can "play as Being"

Pila Mulligan: maybe they will have vanilla alligator

Pema Pera: even while not quite having seen what that means

Hadrian Rives: this is well worn positional thesis in the duality arguments imho

Strannik Zipper: lol

Pema Pera: we'll see, Pila :0

Threedee Shepherd: say more please, Hadrian

Hadrian Rives: 2 millenia and no resolutions in sight :)

Eos Amaterasu: Caio! Chow!

Threedee Shepherd: good lunch, Pema

Pema Pera: not if you keep circling around in words, Hadrian :)

Strannik Zipper: "in sight" being the operational words?

Pema Pera: I'l leave the words behind now, and eat :-)

Pila Mulligan: bye bye

Hadrian Rives: me? :) i am circling around only in my head since i tried to make sense of it

Pema Pera: thanks, everybody!

Hadrian Rives: so long

Strannik Zipper: zaru soba!

Threedee Shepherd: So, I will tell you a personal "secret" it is the fact that I am convinced that not only is there no resolution in sight, but that no resolution is possible, that I "believe" in Being.

Pila Mulligan: aghast

Strannik Zipper: no resolution for your mind, you mean?

Hadrian Rives: u are right Three :)....when i see such conviction as evidenced in Mr. Pera's notions

Hadrian Rives: it harks back to the great debates between the monists and dualists in eastern philosophies

Threedee Shepherd: .

Hadrian Rives: the Being is separate and knowable and sentient from the Super being who is all knowing and all sentient

Hadrian Rives: oh noi no,....wait..they are but one and the same if only you looked at things THIS way

Threedee Shepherd: .

Hadrian Rives: :)

Threedee Shepherd: Pila, why aghast?

Eos Amaterasu: But re no resolution in sight, I think there is resolution, has been, among numerous people following this...

Pila Mulligan: playing Threedee -- you keep confimring my opnion that you are really a metaphysicist

Threedee Shepherd: Eos, what is that

Hadrian Rives: resolution among ppl who choose one side or the other for comfort

Threedee Shepherd: If it is not an oxymoron a "Pragmatic Metaphysicist"

Strannik Zipper: what if one doesn't choose for comfort?

Hadrian Rives: convenience then? ;)

Pila Mulligan: a dichotomy perhpas?

Eos Amaterasu: Person to person connection & recognition, and not just within a single practice strand, but even between them

Threedee Shepherd: Well, you can choose wave or particle if that make YOU happy, but it does not make it so.

Strannik Zipper: what if you don't choose wave or particle, but simply let the dichotomy exist as it is?

Eos Amaterasu: wave/particleness seems paradigmatically Being, non-dichotomous - maybe that's an analogy

Threedee Shepherd: I agree Strannik, it just is, and even wave vs. particle is an oversimplification that raises a false dichotomy

Hadrian Rives: what kind of a world would that be...all these dichotomies contradictions ..hard to live that way

Strannik Zipper: if I choose, particle, perhaps I am identifying with particle, and then, yes, projecting my own needs for particles

Pila Mulligan: I like polytheism -- a god for every opinion

Strannik Zipper: I think we do it all the time

Threedee Shepherd: backwards, again Pile, it's an opinion for every god

Pila Mulligan: ahh, where are my glasses

Strannik Zipper: we have some experience that strips away previous opinions and identifications, and we are free falling without reference points

Strannik Zipper: when our models and thoughts have cracks in them, then the light can shine thru

Pila Mulligan: falling until the reference points are reintegrated maybe

Threedee Shepherd: yes and locally we define a floor to fall to or we would go crazy. The important thing is not to confuse that local illusion for reality.

Strannik Zipper: we don't go very long without reference points, but if we pay attention when they are obliterated, it can be quite valuable

Hadrian Rives: local reality global reality personal reality impersonal reality

Strannik Zipper: sometimes "unknowing" is a nice partner to "knowing"

Threedee Shepherd: what about non-knowing

Strannik Zipper: we always have some of that

Hadrian Rives: i find it illuminating and ultimately meaningful only to view things in the context of an individual's own personal reality

Hadrian Rives: rather in globalisms

Threedee Shepherd: Hadrian, of course, that is all anyone CAN do

Strannik Zipper: what would happen if you did both simultaneously or neither?

Pila Mulligan: I can agree with that, Hadrian

Hadrian Rives: so..i am very interested in Pila...and three...and stran..and peer and eos

Eos Amaterasu: in a way that is the topic

Peer Infinity: :)

Pila Mulligan: well speaking for Threedee, life is like strawberry jello

Hadrian Rives: lol

Eos Amaterasu: which is what Being tastes like

Pila Mulligan: Threedee you may answer for the person of your choice

Strannik Zipper: as someone who just finished eating a bowl of strawberries that were picked today, I would have to say that the jello is a heavily mediated experience :)

Pila Mulligan: ahh, REal Strawberris

Hadrian Rives: NOW u guys are talking

Hadrian Rives: :)

Threedee Shepherd: Ahh, I think I get it....

Threedee Shepherd: the use of symbols (language) is like consciousness, I don't know what either is, but I do know they work!

Pila Mulligan: Hadrian, would you like to describe your personal view of reality?

Strannik Zipper: language, symbols, grunts, fingers pointing, gestures

Peer Infinity: goodnight

Pila Mulligan: bye Peer

Threedee Shepherd: night, Peer

Strannik Zipper: night

   

Hadrian Rives: Pila...at a very basic level i have come to believe we are all at very different and individual points in our journeyas to different destinations

Hadrian Rives: almost like a busy railway station...souls passing by...many just swirling around

Hadrian Rives: not knowing which train to get on

Pila Mulligan: 'like tall ships passing in the night'

Hadrian Rives: all the debate about good and bad and universal rights and wrongs...almost hold no meaning to me now...

Hadrian Rives: all i do is search for souls who might be further along in a similar journey towards ends i personally want to reach

Strannik Zipper: sounds like a good strategy

Hadrian Rives: we'll see :)

Hadrian Rives: sorry..rather simplistic i guess

Strannik Zipper: and what do those souls do to you?

Strannik Zipper: what do they communicate?

Hadrian Rives: they sort of give me the same info a traveller who has been to the place u want to visit does..

Hadrian Rives: what do they think and feel when they are there...what did it take to get there...what have they become..

Strannik Zipper: that sounds like the crux of the topic - how it gets done!

Strannik Zipper: for me the experience of having experience communicated is all about presence

Strannik Zipper: it may or may not involve words

Hadrian Rives: please help me understand presence

Hadrian Rives: ah yes

Eos Amaterasu: presence of myself to myself qua presence of you to me?

Strannik Zipper: when you come into the presence of a soul who can impart something to you, and you are fully present to them, something happens

Eos Amaterasu: presence of Being might be more accureate than "experience" of Being

Pila Mulligan: "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

Strannik Zipper: yes, perhaps

Pila Mulligan: Longfellow

Threedee Shepherd: Strannik, I agree

Eos Amaterasu: hi gina

Pila Mulligan: hi gina

Strannik Zipper: There was a desert monk, who had visitors come into his cell. He didn't speak a word. His attendent asked 'Father why did you not speak to the guests" he said "If they are not edified by my silence, neither will they be edified by my words"

Hadrian Rives: hi gina

Strannik Zipper: hi gina

gina Broono: hi Hadrina and all

gina Broono: I'm happy you found a nice home to come to here

Hadrian Rives: i have known that....in person...from a soul who was my teacher...i sat in her presence..thats it

Hadrian Rives: thank u gina

Pila Mulligan: a community aruond an animated fountain :)

Eos Amaterasu: Hadrian, would you say that was/is Being?

Hadrian Rives: hmmm

Hadrian Rives: a Being

Eos Amaterasu: her BEing?

Hadrian Rives: eos..i have no resolution within me about THE Being vs a being etc....after decades of study...i dont care anymore frankly

Eos Amaterasu: your Being?

Strannik Zipper: there are some encounters of this type, where it becomes difficult to tell where one person ends and the other begins

Hadrian Rives: yes....her being

Strannik Zipper: the totality of being can never become a concept

Threedee Shepherd: "In seeking the mystery, we are like moths incessantly circling around a flame that is not there."

Strannik Zipper: or a percept either, for that matter

Strannik Zipper: but we see the light, and can feel the heat

Pila Mulligan: but oh so many doctrines :)

Strannik Zipper: why?

Threedee Shepherd: .

Hadrian Rives: i saw the light...that is beyond any doubt...

Strannik Zipper: might not a doctrine just be a finger that is pointing to reality?

Threedee Shepherd: "In seeking to understand the mystery, we are like moths incessantly circling a flame that is not there."

Pila Mulligan: yep

Eos Amaterasu: forms of play forget the play

Pila Mulligan: or a lesser doctrine may be pointing to a donation tray :)

Eos Amaterasu: nevertheless the play's the thing

Strannik Zipper: yeah, that would be where discriminating wisdom is needed :)

Pila Mulligan: :)

Eos Amaterasu: where with we catch the Being of the thing :-)

   

Hadrian Rives: Pila..would u mind sharing your views on where you are on on your journey and where are u headed

Pila Mulligan: I am old, looking forward to the final day (without morbidity) and thinking pretty everything is pretty much as it seems to be

Pila Mulligan: strike the first pretty :)

Threedee Shepherd: Actually Pila, that is an exceptionally good heuristic

Pila Mulligan: oh crap, i'm a heurist

Strannik Zipper: hahaha

Hadrian Rives: lol

Strannik Zipper: I must depart - thank you all

Threedee Shepherd: g'nite

Strannik Zipper: night

Pila Mulligan: bye Stranick

Pila Mulligan: I'm trying to find the name of one of Heinlein's novels where the story line was based on the premise that everything anyone ever thought is true

Eos Amaterasu: Can't recall that one

Threedee Shepherd: Well, friends, thanks for the chat. Lacking a witty quip, I will just responsd to the quit-y whip and leave :D

Eos Amaterasu: I have to turn in, tune out

Pila Mulligan: bye threedee

Eos Amaterasu: Thank you, good night!

Pila Mulligan: bye Eos

Pila Mulligan: it was "The Number of the Beast" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Num..._Beast_(novel)

Pila Mulligan: it was a fun nvel, and an interesting idea

Pila Mulligan: hmm -- everyone is gone :)

Pila Mulligan: ... so, good night dear readers :)