Really appreciated Matt pointing to the realm of the Unconscious in the discussion of the will. We largely utilize the penetrating, rational powers of the conscious ego in our philosophical discussions such that many of us are forgetful of the fact that the conscious ego is a key but relatively small part of our greater psyche and that Jung’s self and its derivative archetypal forces are largely driving the ship of state. The mind, as we commonly refer to it, is so extraordinarily more complex than we than we are willing to acknowledge in common philosophical discourse.
A wonderful discussion, and I need to pick up a copy of “The Blind Spot” myself: the more I hear about it, the more I want to read it. I like the idea that the problem isn’t so much abstraction but “misplaced concreteness,” which begs the question of how concreteness might be determined, which also suggests that indeed the phrase “most real” brings issues and problems. I’m also interested by the idea that there might be something fundamental like will, and I agree that it’s a mistake to over-emphasize seeing in our thinking (but such a hard emphasis to avoid…). Anyway, excellent work from you both!
Thankyou both. Matt,s take on the teleology, the move towards love and compassion, and Brendan,s feeling that Dante is on the money...would be great to hear u unpack just why these aren't likely to be projections, individual anthropomorphic fantasies... Meanwhile I 'feel' much as you do.
also, the quote from Oscar Wilde at the end reminded me of the words of Herman Hesse; roughly 'the mystic is a poet without words, a painter without a brush, a musician without an instrument'..
When he talks about the will and what we need to look for, for a queue, and then suggests we look inward. Its the opposite, we look outward to the world for our queue and allow those perceptions and concepts to dictate our actions.
Authors of The Blind Spot explicitly pointed that Plato championed pushing perceptual experience to the background and they quoted Lindberg: “Plato equated his forms with underlying reality, while assigning derivative or secondary existence to the corporeal world of sensible existence.” People like Matt and Varveake immensly confuse people about Plato and tell directly inverted interpretations. I know that we can look for new depths in old texts like in Bible - yeah, that's what poetry is for. But come on. The cultural role that Plato's philosophy played is quite clear. Quote from the book Empiricisms: "Plato dismissed the thesis of original becoming in the name of royal science. If a notion so monstrous as aboriginal becoming were allowed, identity would not be given, individuality would remain obscure, and pure theory would be unavailing. Therefore identity must be first and difference derivative." His philosophy is all about gaslighting people into his vision of worlds order, creating an ideology. There is pragmatic political reason why he was doing it. But I don't remember details. He needed operating system to get people on one page and reinterpret outdated fundational texts full of irrational behaviours (and volience) by using pretexts of finding deeper truths is them, to prevent literal interpretations. I think his philosophy was something supporting that goals. And it might be the same reason why Christianity adopted a lot from his philosophy while transforming from exlucive groups of "Jesus followers" to inclusive religion of the state (gaining as many people as it could under one identity and having hierarchical tree like social structure). It seems to me Brendan that you are asking very good questions but you don't know where (and from whom) to get answers from.
I wonder whether there's a chance that some kind of collective will ultimately determines the probabilistic outcome on the quantum level. That is, it's not up to a single electron to make the "decision," but that "decision" ultimately hinges on all of the universe.
What do you guys think about Lee Cronin and Sara Walker talking about novelty generation and selection possibly being fundamental and that life and consciousness simply exist on an assembly spectrum of complexification?
🐟 02. A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF “LIFE”: Everything, both perceptible and imperceptible - that is, any gross or subtle OBJECT within the material universe that can possibly be perceived with the cognitive faculties, plus the SUBJECT (i.e. the observer of all phenomena) - is unknowingly to what most humans typically refer when they use the term “God”, since they usually conceive of Ultimate Reality as being the Perfect Person, and “God” is a personal epithet of the Impersonal Absolute. However, this anthropomorphized conception of The Monad is a fictional character of divers mythologies. According to most every fully-enlightened sage in the history of the human species, Ultimate Reality is, far more plausibly, consubstantially and simultaneously, Absolutely NOTHING and Absolutely EVERYTHING - otherwise called “The Tao”, “The Great Spirit”, “(Param) Brahman”, “Cosmic Consciousness”, “Eternal Awareness”, “Independent Existence”, “Unconditioned Truth”, “Uncaused Nature”, “The Universal Self”, “The Ground of All Being”, “The Undifferentiated Substratum of Reality”, “The Unified Field”, et cetera - yet, as alluded to above, inaccurately referred to as a personal deity by the masses (e.g. “God”, “Allah”, “Yahweh”, “Bhagavan”, etc.). Subsequent chapters expand on this axiom. In other words, rather than the Supreme Truth being a separate, Blissful, Supra-Conscious Being (i.e. The Godhead Himself, or The Goddess), Ultimate Reality is Eternal-Existence Limitless-Awareness Unconditional-Peace ITSELF (or, even more parsimoniously, Pure Being/Essence). That which can be perceived, can not be perceiving! This understanding can be factually realized by practicing one or more of the four systems of religion, especially the systematic method of introspection known as “gnosticism”, or “the yoga of knowledge” (“jñāna yogaḥ”, in Sanskrit). Because the Unmanifested Absolute (i.e. NO-THING, or Pure Subjectivity) is infinite creative potentiality, “It” perpetually actualizes as the manifest creation (i.e. EVERY-THING, or the sum total of all possible objects), in the form of ephemeral, cyclical universes/multiverses. In the case of our particular universe, we reside in a cosmos consisting of space-time, matter and energy, and because phenomenal existence is dualistic, there cannot be a single object without at least one subject. Recently, this Monistic haecceity has been termed the “Transjective”. Just as a knife cannot cut itself, nor the mind comprehend itself, nor the eyes see themselves, The Absolute cannot know Itself (or at least objectively EXPERIENCE Itself), and so, has manifested this phenomenal universe within Itself for the purpose of experiencing Itself, particularly through the lives of self-aware beings, such as we sophisticated humans. Therefore, this world of duality, is really just a play of consciousness within Consciousness, in the same way that a dream is a person’s sleeping narrative, set within the life-story of an “awakened” individual. PURPORTEDLY, this universe, composed of “mind and matter”, was created from the initial event (the so-called “Big Bang”), which started, supposedly, as a minute, slightly uneven ball of immeasurably-dense light, which in turn, was ultimately instigated by Extra-Temporal Supra-Conscious Bliss. From that primal event, every motion or action that has ever occurred, has been a direct or indirect result of that expansion. Just as all the extant energy in the universe was once contained within the inchoate singularity, Infinite Consciousness was NECESSARILY present at the beginning of the universe, and is, in no way, an epiphenomenon of a neural network. Discrete consciousness, on the other hand, is entirely dependent on the neurological faculty of individual animals (the more highly-evolved the species, the greater its cognitive abilities). “Sarvam khalvidam brahma” (a Sanskrit maxim from the “Chandogya Upanishad”, meaning, “all this is indeed Brahman”, or “everything is the Universal Self alone”). There is NAUGHT but Eternal Being, Conscious Awareness, Causeless Peace - and you are, quintessentially, that! This “Theory of Everything” can be more succinctly expressed by the mathematical equation: E=A͚ (Everything equates to Infinite Awareness). HUMANS are, essentially, this Eternally-Aware-Bliss, acting through an extraordinarily-complex biological organism, comprised of the eight rudimentary elements - pseudo-ego (the assumed sense of self), intellect, mind, solids, liquids, gases, heat (fire), and ether (three-dimensional space). When one peers into a mirror, one doesn’t normally mistake the reflected image to be one’s real self, yet that is how we humans conventionally view our ever-mutating forms. We are, rather, in a fundamental sense, that which witnesses all transitory phenomena. Everything that can presently be perceived, both tangible and immaterial, including we human beings, is a culmination of the singular, primary manifestation. That is the most accurate and rational explanation for “karma” - everything was preordained from the initial spark, and every subsequent action has unfolded as it was predestined in ETERNITY, via an ever-forward-moving trajectory. The notion of retributive (“tit-for-tat”) karma, is just that - an unverified notion. Likewise, the idea of a distinct, reincarnating “soul”, or “spirit”, is largely a fallacious belief. As a consequence of residing within this dualistic universe, we experience a lifelong series of fluctuating, transient pleasures and pains, which can take the form of physical, emotional, and/or financial pleasure or pain. Surprisingly to most, suffering and pain are NOT synonymous. Suffering is due to a false sense of personal agency - the belief that one is a separate, independent author of one’s thoughts, emotions, and deeds, and that, likewise, other persons are autonomous agents, with complete volition to act, think, and feel as they desire. Another way of stating the same concept is as follows: suffering is due to the intellect being unwilling to accept life as it manifests moment by moment. Whatever state in which we currently find ourselves, is the result of but two factors - our genetic make-up at conception and our present-life conditioning (which may include mutating genetic sequence). Every choice ever made by every human and non-human animal, was determined by those two factors ALONE. Therefore, free-will is purely illusory, despite what most believe. Chapter 11 insightfully demonstrates this truism. There are five SYMPTOMS of suffering, all of which are psychological in nature: 1. Guilt 2. Blame 3. Pride 4. Anxiety 5. Regrets about the past and expectations for the future These types of mental suffering are the result of misunderstanding what was explained above - that life is merely happenstance, and is NOT precipitated by any particular entity. No living creature, including Homo sapiens, has individual free-will. There is only the universal, Divine Will at play, acting through every body, to which William Shakespeare famously alluded when he scribed, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. This illusion of liberty of volition, is excruciatingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, for most humans to surmount. The human organism is basically a biopsychological machine, comprised of the five gross material elemental groups (which one can perceive with the five bodily senses) and the three subtle material elements (which contain images, memories, feelings, and abstract thought objects). The ANTIDOTE to all mental anguish, first of all, is to discern pain from suffering, and then to achieve complete relief from that miserable state of existence, by abandoning the erroneous belief in personal authorship, and abiding in the primordial sense of being (the unqualified “I am” that is one’s core identity). This is akin to the peace that is experienced each night during the dreamless, slow-wave phase of the sleep cycle. This “resting imperturbably as Flawless Awareness” can be practiced on a regular basis, until it is fully assimilated and integrated into one’s life. Every adult human being, from time immemorial, has been either intentionally or unwittingly seeking such causeless peace, most commonly in psycho-physical pleasures, or in creating wealth and in the acquisition of material possessions, or else by practicing one of the four systems of YOGA (a Sanskrit term meaning “religion”, or “union”) delineated in the sixteenth chapter of this opus. This peace of mind is also referred to as “happiness”, “joy”, or “love”, and often presumed to be a temporal state, since many assume, incorrectly, that continuous peace is unavailable in this life. Fortunately, that is not the case - it is eminently possible to live one’s life acquainted with unbroken peace of mind, if it is destined. Cont...
So is abstraction some some sort "fractalization" where a simple/small idea contains the whole/large idea, where the "grand truth" is spoken to by the process itself?
if we all have to relate to the trinity then you are selling the trinity. there are millions of words on this planet each and every one is unique. there is reality and there is myth. there are fuzzy edges. but nothing says that trinity is more than any other word, words like spiritual, and sacred are words used to sell. those words include sin, heaven, right, wrong and kick the tires on this baby.
Sounds like "God of the gaps". Since there are gaps in our knowledge, we must assume that materialism (physicalism) is all wrong. This is just lazy thinking. A simplistic copout. It's much easier and takes much less mental discipline to just assume God, or that the universe has a "will". But this is a dead end. It requires no standards of proof, you just theorize whatever you like and know it can never be proven or disproven. It doesn't lead to knowledge, just opinions. There is a reason that religion and philosophy were displaced by science as methods of understanding the world.
No, it is (perhaps the only) something you can DIRECTLY PROVE to yourself beyond any possible doubting- all science is still true in the relative relaity of our universe and experience, is based on valid inferences from experience & the best explanation & it would be totally invalid and unreasonable and clearly incorrect to deny the scientific laws and principles, but it is even more fundamemtally incorrect to claim that those of us who KNOW WHO WE ARE are simply being "lazy thinkers". In fact the reality is that we have actually been the opposite, we have genuinley QUESTIONED ourselves & the nature of ourself & the world to the point of arriving at the fundamemtal indubitble ground of Being that cannot be denied because it is KNOWN directly by BEING IT. Most of us have to suffer greatly before we are ready to turn inwards & truly look at ourself& our uncritical assumptions. You have to honestly engage in true self reflecrion, questioning everything you THINKyou know, questioning everything you BELIEVE, and once you are free from all uncritically accepted beleifs you will KNOW & start to laugh with the rest of us. Who are you, what is the nature of the self, that is the question you have to ask yourself honestly. If ypu start off with assumptions(the self is just cells and neurons and brains & dna & whatever) you will never arrive at the TRUTH, you can live your whole life in ignorance of this truth, but it is much more fun & curious & fascinating on the other side once you KNOW. A GREATER apprication for science & the universe is achieved from this REAL experience of REALITY. It os only fundamentlist religious people(who themselves have NOT questioned their beleifs and assumptions and SELF) that are antiscience & logic. In fact the truth IS logical and arrived at THROUGH ACTUAL LOGIC. Be like a scientist and examine YOURSELF. Take your values for "standards of proof" and PROVE YOURSELF to YOURSELF. Then you will be a real rational human being, a real wise person who doesnt accept things at face value, be a logician, a philosopher, a scientist and turn inwards looking for the DIRECT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE of SELF, and in that you will know the truth of the universe.
@@ar4203 When it comes to self-knowledge, It seems to me that anything beyond "I think therefore I am" is just speculation. You can't use philosophy to prove you are immaterial or to know your place in the universe or to arrive at some Absolute Truths. Our feelings, sensations, emotions, thoughts, experiences, etc., have been proven to be notoriously unreliable. That's why science tests them. Our brains have evolved to fool us. That should make us all skeptics of anything called "Metamodern Spirituality".
Man, I love this conversation! I learn so much whenever I hear y’all riff with each other. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Really appreciated Matt pointing to the realm of the Unconscious in the discussion of the will. We largely utilize the penetrating, rational powers of the conscious ego in our philosophical discussions such that many of us are forgetful of the fact that the conscious ego is a key but relatively small part of our greater psyche and that Jung’s self and its derivative archetypal forces are largely driving the ship of state. The mind, as we commonly refer to it, is so extraordinarily more complex than we than we are willing to acknowledge in common philosophical discourse.
A wonderful discussion, and I need to pick up a copy of “The Blind Spot” myself: the more I hear about it, the more I want to read it. I like the idea that the problem isn’t so much abstraction but “misplaced concreteness,” which begs the question of how concreteness might be determined, which also suggests that indeed the phrase “most real” brings issues and problems. I’m also interested by the idea that there might be something fundamental like will, and I agree that it’s a mistake to over-emphasize seeing in our thinking (but such a hard emphasis to avoid…). Anyway, excellent work from you both!
wow wow wow tysm you guys
Thankyou both.
Matt,s take on the teleology, the move towards love and compassion, and Brendan,s feeling that Dante is on the money...would be great to hear u unpack just why these aren't likely to be projections, individual anthropomorphic fantasies...
Meanwhile I 'feel' much as you do.
I’ve been looking forward to this conversation! So exciting!
also, the quote from Oscar Wilde at the end reminded me of the words of Herman Hesse; roughly 'the mystic is a poet without words, a painter without a brush, a musician without an instrument'..
When he talks about the will and what we need to look for, for a queue, and then suggests we look inward. Its the opposite, we look outward to the world for our queue and allow those perceptions and concepts to dictate our actions.
great discussion!
Authors of The Blind Spot explicitly pointed that Plato championed pushing perceptual experience to the background and they quoted Lindberg: “Plato equated his forms with underlying reality, while assigning derivative or secondary existence to the corporeal world of sensible existence.”
People like Matt and Varveake immensly confuse people about Plato and tell directly inverted interpretations.
I know that we can look for new depths in old texts like in Bible - yeah, that's what poetry is for. But come on. The cultural role that Plato's philosophy played is quite clear. Quote from the book Empiricisms: "Plato dismissed the thesis of original becoming in the name of royal science. If a notion so monstrous as aboriginal becoming were allowed, identity would not be given, individuality would remain obscure, and pure theory would be unavailing. Therefore identity must be first and difference derivative." His philosophy is all about gaslighting people into his vision of worlds order, creating an ideology. There is pragmatic political reason why he was doing it. But I don't remember details. He needed operating system to get people on one page and reinterpret outdated fundational texts full of irrational behaviours (and volience) by using pretexts of finding deeper truths is them, to prevent literal interpretations. I think his philosophy was something supporting that goals. And it might be the same reason why Christianity adopted a lot from his philosophy while transforming from exlucive groups of "Jesus followers" to inclusive religion of the state (gaining as many people as it could under one identity and having hierarchical tree like social structure).
It seems to me Brendan that you are asking very good questions but you don't know where (and from whom) to get answers from.
I wonder whether there's a chance that some kind of collective will ultimately determines the probabilistic outcome on the quantum level. That is, it's not up to a single electron to make the "decision," but that "decision" ultimately hinges on all of the universe.
What do you guys think about Lee Cronin and Sara Walker talking about novelty generation and selection possibly being fundamental and that life and consciousness simply exist on an assembly spectrum of complexification?
🐟 02. A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF “LIFE”:
Everything, both perceptible and imperceptible - that is, any gross or subtle OBJECT within the material universe that can possibly be perceived with the cognitive faculties, plus the SUBJECT (i.e. the observer of all phenomena) - is unknowingly to what most humans typically refer when they use the term “God”, since they usually conceive of Ultimate Reality as being the Perfect Person, and “God” is a personal epithet of the Impersonal Absolute. However, this anthropomorphized conception of The Monad is a fictional character of divers mythologies.
According to most every fully-enlightened sage in the history of the human species, Ultimate Reality is, far more plausibly, consubstantially and simultaneously, Absolutely NOTHING and Absolutely EVERYTHING - otherwise called “The Tao”, “The Great Spirit”, “(Param) Brahman”, “Cosmic Consciousness”, “Eternal Awareness”, “Independent Existence”, “Unconditioned Truth”, “Uncaused Nature”, “The Universal Self”, “The Ground of All Being”, “The Undifferentiated Substratum of Reality”, “The Unified Field”, et cetera - yet, as alluded to above, inaccurately referred to as a personal deity by the masses (e.g. “God”, “Allah”, “Yahweh”, “Bhagavan”, etc.). Subsequent chapters expand on this axiom.
In other words, rather than the Supreme Truth being a separate, Blissful, Supra-Conscious Being (i.e. The Godhead Himself, or The Goddess), Ultimate Reality is Eternal-Existence Limitless-Awareness Unconditional-Peace ITSELF (or, even more parsimoniously, Pure Being/Essence). That which can be perceived, can not be perceiving! This understanding can be factually realized by practicing one or more of the four systems of religion, especially the systematic method of introspection known as “gnosticism”, or “the yoga of knowledge” (“jñāna yogaḥ”, in Sanskrit).
Because the Unmanifested Absolute (i.e. NO-THING, or Pure Subjectivity) is infinite creative potentiality, “It” perpetually actualizes as the manifest creation (i.e. EVERY-THING, or the sum total of all possible objects), in the form of ephemeral, cyclical universes/multiverses. In the case of our particular universe, we reside in a cosmos consisting of space-time, matter and energy, and because phenomenal existence is dualistic, there cannot be a single object without at least one subject. Recently, this Monistic haecceity has been termed the “Transjective”.
Just as a knife cannot cut itself, nor the mind comprehend itself, nor the eyes see themselves, The Absolute cannot know Itself (or at least objectively EXPERIENCE Itself), and so, has manifested this phenomenal universe within Itself for the purpose of experiencing Itself, particularly through the lives of self-aware beings, such as we sophisticated humans. Therefore, this world of duality, is really just a play of consciousness within Consciousness, in the same way that a dream is a person’s sleeping narrative, set within the life-story of an “awakened” individual.
PURPORTEDLY, this universe, composed of “mind and matter”, was created from the initial event (the so-called “Big Bang”), which started, supposedly, as a minute, slightly uneven ball of immeasurably-dense light, which in turn, was ultimately instigated by Extra-Temporal Supra-Conscious Bliss. From that primal event, every motion or action that has ever occurred, has been a direct or indirect result of that expansion.
Just as all the extant energy in the universe was once contained within the inchoate singularity, Infinite Consciousness was NECESSARILY present at the beginning of the universe, and is, in no way, an epiphenomenon of a neural network. Discrete consciousness, on the other hand, is entirely dependent on the neurological faculty of individual animals (the more highly-evolved the species, the greater its cognitive abilities).
“Sarvam khalvidam brahma” (a Sanskrit maxim from the “Chandogya Upanishad”, meaning, “all this is indeed Brahman”, or “everything is the Universal Self alone”). There is NAUGHT but Eternal Being, Conscious Awareness, Causeless Peace - and you are, quintessentially, that!
This “Theory of Everything” can be more succinctly expressed by the mathematical equation: E=A͚ (Everything equates to Infinite Awareness).
HUMANS are, essentially, this Eternally-Aware-Bliss, acting through an extraordinarily-complex biological organism, comprised of the eight rudimentary elements - pseudo-ego (the assumed sense of self), intellect, mind, solids, liquids, gases, heat (fire), and ether (three-dimensional space). When one peers into a mirror, one doesn’t normally mistake the reflected image to be one’s real self, yet that is how we humans conventionally view our ever-mutating forms. We are, rather, in a fundamental sense, that which witnesses all transitory phenomena.
Everything that can presently be perceived, both tangible and immaterial, including we human beings, is a culmination of the singular, primary manifestation. That is the most accurate and rational explanation for “karma” - everything was preordained from the initial spark, and every subsequent action has unfolded as it was predestined in ETERNITY, via an ever-forward-moving trajectory. The notion of retributive (“tit-for-tat”) karma, is just that - an unverified notion. Likewise, the idea of a distinct, reincarnating “soul”, or “spirit”, is largely a fallacious belief.
As a consequence of residing within this dualistic universe, we experience a lifelong series of fluctuating, transient pleasures and pains, which can take the form of physical, emotional, and/or financial pleasure or pain. Surprisingly to most, suffering and pain are NOT synonymous.
Suffering is due to a false sense of personal agency - the belief that one is a separate, independent author of one’s thoughts, emotions, and deeds, and that, likewise, other persons are autonomous agents, with complete volition to act, think, and feel as they desire. Another way of stating the same concept is as follows: suffering is due to the intellect being unwilling to accept life as it manifests moment by moment.
Whatever state in which we currently find ourselves, is the result of but two factors - our genetic make-up at conception and our present-life conditioning (which may include mutating genetic sequence). Every choice ever made by every human and non-human animal, was determined by those two factors ALONE. Therefore, free-will is purely illusory, despite what most believe. Chapter 11 insightfully demonstrates this truism.
There are five SYMPTOMS of suffering, all of which are psychological in nature:
1. Guilt
2. Blame
3. Pride
4. Anxiety
5. Regrets about the past and expectations for the future
These types of mental suffering are the result of misunderstanding what was explained above - that life is merely happenstance, and is NOT precipitated by any particular entity. No living creature, including Homo sapiens, has individual free-will. There is only the universal, Divine Will at play, acting through every body, to which William Shakespeare famously alluded when he scribed, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. This illusion of liberty of volition, is excruciatingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, for most humans to surmount.
The human organism is basically a biopsychological machine, comprised of the five gross material elemental groups (which one can perceive with the five bodily senses) and the three subtle material elements (which contain images, memories, feelings, and abstract thought objects).
The ANTIDOTE to all mental anguish, first of all, is to discern pain from suffering, and then to achieve complete relief from that miserable state of existence, by abandoning the erroneous belief in personal authorship, and abiding in the primordial sense of being (the unqualified “I am” that is one’s core identity). This is akin to the peace that is experienced each night during the dreamless, slow-wave phase of the sleep cycle. This “resting imperturbably as Flawless Awareness” can be practiced on a regular basis, until it is fully assimilated and integrated into one’s life.
Every adult human being, from time immemorial, has been either intentionally or unwittingly seeking such causeless peace, most commonly in psycho-physical pleasures, or in creating wealth and in the acquisition of material possessions, or else by practicing one of the four systems of YOGA (a Sanskrit term meaning “religion”, or “union”) delineated in the sixteenth chapter of this opus. This peace of mind is also referred to as “happiness”, “joy”, or “love”, and often presumed to be a temporal state, since many assume, incorrectly, that continuous peace is unavailable in this life. Fortunately, that is not the case - it is eminently possible to live one’s life acquainted with unbroken peace of mind, if it is destined.
Cont...
David Bentley Hart’s new book, All Things are Full of Gods is a 500 page exploration of this very thing in the form of a Platonic dialogue.
So is abstraction some some sort "fractalization" where a simple/small idea contains the whole/large idea, where the "grand truth" is spoken to by the process itself?
You mean, like a hologram? Interesting.
Like Mandelbrot set ?
@@bernardofitzpatrick5403 yes
28:13 Thresholdism
How is his mic from those AirPods so good
It is so good because I'm not using the AirPods for my mic! I have a separate condenser mic that is out of frame.
If you are concerned or curious about esotericism I recommend checking out and even connecting with Lon Milo DuQuette.
if we all have to relate to the trinity then you are selling the trinity. there are millions of words on this planet each and every one is unique. there is reality and there is myth. there are fuzzy edges. but nothing says that trinity is more than any other word, words like spiritual, and sacred are words used to sell. those words include sin, heaven, right, wrong and kick the tires on this baby.
Sounds like "God of the gaps". Since there are gaps in our knowledge, we must assume that materialism (physicalism) is all wrong. This is just lazy thinking. A simplistic copout. It's much easier and takes much less mental discipline to just assume God, or that the universe has a "will". But this is a dead end. It requires no standards of proof, you just theorize whatever you like and know it can never be proven or disproven. It doesn't lead to knowledge, just opinions. There is a reason that religion and philosophy were displaced by science as methods of understanding the world.
That's why I prefer naturaling sense-making than theological like this.
No, it is (perhaps the only) something you can DIRECTLY PROVE to yourself beyond any possible doubting- all science is still true in the relative relaity of our universe and experience, is based on valid inferences from experience & the best explanation & it would be totally invalid and unreasonable and clearly incorrect to deny the scientific laws and principles, but it is even more fundamemtally incorrect to claim that those of us who KNOW WHO WE ARE are simply being "lazy thinkers". In fact the reality is that we have actually been the opposite, we have genuinley QUESTIONED ourselves & the nature of ourself & the world to the point of arriving at the fundamemtal indubitble ground of Being that cannot be denied because it is KNOWN directly by BEING IT. Most of us have to suffer greatly before we are ready to turn inwards & truly look at ourself& our uncritical assumptions. You have to honestly engage in true self reflecrion, questioning everything you THINKyou know, questioning everything you BELIEVE, and once you are free from all uncritically accepted beleifs you will KNOW & start to laugh with the rest of us. Who are you, what is the nature of the self, that is the question you have to ask yourself honestly. If ypu start off with assumptions(the self is just cells and neurons and brains & dna & whatever) you will never arrive at the TRUTH, you can live your whole life in ignorance of this truth, but it is much more fun & curious & fascinating on the other side once you KNOW. A GREATER apprication for science & the universe is achieved from this REAL experience of REALITY. It os only fundamentlist religious people(who themselves have NOT questioned their beleifs and assumptions and SELF) that are antiscience & logic. In fact the truth IS logical and arrived at THROUGH ACTUAL LOGIC. Be like a scientist and examine YOURSELF. Take your values for "standards of proof" and PROVE YOURSELF to YOURSELF. Then you will be a real rational human being, a real wise person who doesnt accept things at face value, be a logician, a philosopher, a scientist and turn inwards looking for the DIRECT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE of SELF, and in that you will know the truth of the universe.
@@ar4203 When it comes to self-knowledge, It seems to me that anything beyond "I think therefore I am" is just speculation. You can't use philosophy to prove you are immaterial or to know your place in the universe or to arrive at some Absolute Truths. Our feelings, sensations, emotions, thoughts, experiences, etc., have been proven to be notoriously unreliable. That's why science tests them. Our brains have evolved to fool us. That should make us all skeptics of anything called "Metamodern Spirituality".