this blog is the continuation of a genuine mystical tradition, unless you get in daily contemplative time and abstain to a significant degree from "entertainment" then you are just wasting your time and mine !
The most annoying sound is the sound people make when they eat, or drink, the crunching, smacking... while listening to it today my brain suddenly popped this thought into existence: "Aren't you really just annoying yourself?" - Well I'll be damned!
(Here in Japan it's normal for people to make loud slurping noises when they eat noodles. But I am not so bothered by it here... if I hear the same noise in Europe though, I'm disgusted by it.)
sepehr, please make your own blog to paste this bullshit on !
you are cognitively slack, half arsed stuff you don't work out properly and then cut and paste together ending up with the usual web bullshit !
no wonder you prefer to post to the idiots on r/philosophy and the hardcore zen blog !
you have taken a short cut, assuming the bottom turtle is physical/biological reality and just paste onto that schema assuming it is the bottom turtle, which if it was the bottom turtle would be viable, but as the turtles are endless which is the true nature of infinity, all your cognitive shortcuts are doing is making for endless crap !
you also have some borderline personality traits like not giving a shit about the burden you impose on other people !
these things take time to work through, i really have no advice except if you think what you write is up to par then you should be doing it on your own blog . .
the big give away that people on these boards know unconciously what they write is crap is they make no attempt to set up their own voice, but just rely on throwing bullshit into the reddit or hardcore zen blog sewer and assume that is validation !
true philosophy is not to assume any bottom turtle . . .
But you say the importance of nutrition and stuff... I mean if nutrition is so important then doesn't that mean the physical/biological reality is one aspect of the bottom turtle? The bottom turtle however must interact with other turtles of course, but there is a bottom otherwise nutrition and health wouldn't be important.
Maybe the whole dichotomy between top and bottom turtle is wrong? Nutrition and celibacy are all important, but the point is to get how all these turtles interact in a looping kinda way to give rise to the experience of Now and ever-after or so?
I mean why emphasize on there being no bottom turtle while also embracing diet & nutrition and celibacy...? What is this physical/biology a reflection of that is supposedly deeper?
For example, Zakaj recently posted, "For example, consider the first few seconds when we are waking up. We are just like a computer when its booting. In those seconds we don't know what we are, who we are, or that there are any beings. We emerge. Then suddenly it all starts appearing, popping up: the self, things, future, past, our worries, our sadness, our joys, expectations, memories, etc. The Human Being Operating System fully loaded."
Thomas Metzinger technically describes this as such in this video called "Being No One" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k ) : When the organism wakes up in the morning, it has to achieve complex sensory motor integration. It meets this transient computational model, the conscious self model, and it just switches on. And this is the moment when you really wake up. As Roger Conant & Ross Ashby ( http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Books/Conant_Ashby.pdf ) argued, "Every complex system that has had a regulator, that regulates its own behavior, will automatically by necessity turn this regulator into a model of the system as a whole. If you want to regulate different parts, you have to map them somewhere."
My question is, before we emerge... where does explicit memory reside?
The turtles are endless horizontally, not vertically. There are no turtles above or below. All the turtles are clicking their shells and not on top or below each other. So the bottom turtle is bottom physical/biological, but there are infinite more turtles surrounding it, such as the realm of dreams and the unreal of poems.
Viewing there being turtles above or below leads to nihilism. Viewing turtures as being horizontally infinite leads to less burden and freedom.
So yeah I agree with you on the Infinite... but not on a vertical infinity. My body and health are absolute, hence why I read your nutrition advice and stuff.
there's a couple of different ways you can look at this !
one is that philosophical greats like heraclitus (and poetic greats like john of the cross and keats) had a very wrong minded view of the universe and biological reality compared to what we have now and really has only come into existance in the last hundred years . .
so this sort of wrongness and by implication rightness is irrelevant ! . . !
the very correctness and sophistication of current cosmology and brain biology is deceiving, it creates the illusion of a bottom turtle, but the reality is just process and endless approximation
for as long the human/ other intelligent life scientific knowledge base and process exists you will get an improving refinement and also catastrophic realignments of coherence . .
everything is insufficient, there is just this process of new insight and correction, same with nutrition and celibacy . . .
no bottom turtle, but endless turtles everywhere in a l l d i r e c t i on s
"What is this physical/biology a reflection of that is supposedly deeper?"
I once saw a turtle on my front yard. I went to call my wife because it was so sudden, especially with how s/he struck me with awe. When I came back, there was no turtle, but to know there is a turtle in my heart makes me happy.
Turtles are really majestic animals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Kiem_turtle
If turtles are the true nature of reality, that's not so bad.
"The immanence of Non-Being is basically constant penetration, exhaustive climaxes and crisp white Brooks Brothers shirts bought in crowded department stores'
that's immanence by the exclusion of Non-Being !
the world is full of hubric nutters like that claiming god or infinity is the inclusion of reality when in fact the world and thus them is exclusion
since they are exclusion and their very existance is dependent on their crazy nutty misperception, how can one expect any sort of cognitive coherence !
( i'm sounding a bit like dogen ! :o)
that celibacy/ natural scenery/solitude and contemplative space is alien to these people so they just rush blindly o n . .
the real question is how can you integrate that into your life instead of spilling your time fruitlessly into argument and half done explanations the way you are doing . . ?
the other thing is to bear in mind that it's avery long process, you don't have to rush in to have an opinion, wait for things come to you formed of their own accord s o m e w h a t ! : o ) (
be disengaged from the world and people or everything just ends up in endless reddit or hardcore zen blog fights ! :o)
Everything you say is right an3drew. While wasting time on the web wracking my brain over nonsense, my cat son came up to me and meowed in a concern manner. It seems he understands my patterns of behavior better than I understand myself... I give him good raw food and so forth.
Maybe I should just take my cat's advice and not waste time with bullshit.
One thing you're showing me is how talking to most people is a waste of time. I'm better off just reading poetry or watching a film or two than to waste time on reddit or forums.
"During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You ... are ... dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."
Dreaming of interpreting a dream, or dreaming of being a scientist that analyzes dreamstuff. Or being a brain that looks at another brain that is looking at the brain.
Someone posted Foyan on reddit the other day... I think it has very lucid moments, that book. He says the first mistake is to ride a donkey looking for a donkey. Isn't that what these scientists/philosophers of the brain/mind are attempting?
You and I are caught in a loop. Try to look at your comments here in 2013, or 2012. I did the other day, and you were saying the same things, it's uncanny. "OK, it's time to stop this BS and I will just read poetry and enjoy solitude" the same things you were saying 1, 2, 3 years ago. I'm not trying to criticize you, I am caught in an endless loop too. What I'm proposing to you & myself is that we spend some time reflecting on this fact, on this infinite loop, instead of going for another rollercoaster ride, finding another new take on the last turtle, another philosophy, religion, reality, explanation, another "Eureka!" moment etc.
We're finding it impossible to exist, but we're also unable to accept this impossibility once and for all, and so we're building and rebuilding conceptual castles in the sky to fill the gap of "reality" - the horror vacui the fact that reality is itself inconsistent or that it is infinite scares us we are still clinging to Mommy - and the ultimate Mommy is really the Last Turtle.
What I notice lately is that sometimes I am able to go out of the loop - and it is either pure anxiety when I do, like being in an alien terrifying territory where there's nothing I can rely on... or sometimes it can also be tremendously liberating (I hate the word liberating, but for the lack of a better term)... like breathing mountain fresh air after years of living in a smog hell like Beijing!
But mostly it is anxiety, it's like being lost in a large department store and there's a lot of strange old people and there's no Mommy. And she will never be back
Whenever we are exposed, we say "Your critique is right, Andrew. You are 100% right I am doing this, it's bullshit I will instead study Emily Dickinson and live in solitude" - but isn't it just covering our naked bodies with the enemy nation's flag? Anything to not be exposed
Like that story from Calvino, the Nonexistant Knight, have you read that one? It's very interesting, it's a knight that doesn't exist below his armor. He is just the armor.
Aren't we Nonexistent Knights? What are we below the armor, and what is the armor except the autistic loop?
Exposed for what? It's all turtles all the way down, giving this some of transparent reflection of the Infinite or so.
It requires tacit apprehension. It's easier in solitude because after I read Andrew's stuff, I went to Cashier, North Carolina a bit. I noticed powerful interesting stuff happened to my mind in the boundlessness of the mountains. Everything felt like a mirror but it felt like there was something there... in the infinite process or so.
I need that solitude. I stayed for only a day.
Also, in such a setting sexual energies rise up. I noticed it in myself. Celbacy is necessary to harness those energies to penetrate into the unfathomable, inexhaustible nature of reality.
I keep saying I need that solitude because I need that fucking money.
I understand what Andrew is saying very well, but it cannot be awakened to in the slums, suburban setting, or etc. easily. An act of creation in that moment of crisp mirror like taming of the mind is very different than a creation with monkey mind.
need the money, but i really loved it... it was so idyllic to the point my mind literally shut off with no worries. read some stonehouse's poetry on the mountain top which my dad bought... and it was understood even even better... but he's selling the land soon
my question is how does explicit memory relate to the brain. It's not ENTIRELY in the brain, man. I'm telling you. This is not a conspiracy. It's some high-level stuff to tell you and even Derrida mentioned something like deconstruction just being memory work.
You know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper, I'd become rich, right? It's a pretty profound question. I've found some severe technical issues with saying explicit memory is in the brain.
Our exchange last night was useful, Andrew. All of a sudden, Derrida is starting to "click" with me. Before I had a shallow understanding but now I feel as if I'm submerging a bit into it. I really need that setting of solitude to practice deeper into this...
'The very condition of a deconstruction may be at work in the work, within the system to be deconstructed. It may already be located there, already at work. Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. One might then be inclined to reach this conclusion: deconstruction is not an operation that supervenes afterwards, from the outside, one fine day. It is always already at work in the work. Since the destructive force of Deconstruction is always already contained within the very architecture of the work, all one would finally have to do to be able to deconstruct, given this always already, is to do memory work. Yet since I want neither to accept nor to reject a conclusion formulated in precisely these terms, let us leave this question suspended for the moment.' JACQUES DERRIDA MEMOIRES FOR PAUL DEMAN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1986
enlightened or unenlightened it doesn't matter . . the only difference is that "enlightened " you understand what is happening to you, that is if you don't have dementia or have become senile . . !
I still don't get what it means that "after death one is thrust back into the meaningless /meaning" and how doesn't point to a recursive rebirth. Rebirth can still happen if there is no I, just oscillation and stability. You said: " to
see
infinity
you
have
to
be
in
love
with
everything
how
beautiful
and
cruel
that
is !"
But why is Infinity deserving of Love if this "one life is all we have . . [and] some glimpses of infinity is al l w e g e t ! . ."
Do the glimpses end after death!!? Is it just nothingness! You're contradicting yourself into some kind of cyclical nihilism! I just don't get it! I got you up to this point but I don't know!!!
While you wait for Andrew's reply, a little intermezzo.
Nietzsche wrote about the love of everything ...
"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event – and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed." —Nietzsche,The Will to Power. (Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale translators) New York: Random House, 1967. (pages 532-533)
That sounds almost Buddhist, in fact, Nietzsche wrote in a letter that he imagines he will be "the Buddha of Europe", seen as such in the future... but as the opposite of Buddha, an Antibuddha:
"I do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day become more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been." - Friedrich Nietzsche
This entails loving everything that happens to you, including suffering:
"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it." — Nietzsche,‘Why I Am So Clever’, in Ecce Homo, section 10:[2]
"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer." — Nietzsche, section 276 of The Gay Science
---
It is interesting coming from him, he knew suffering in life.
Is it a case of Stockholm Syndrome?
One learns to love what holds one captive - to avoid being a helpless victim, one learns to identify and love the aggressor - meaningless pain in this case?
Nietzsche suffered from cluster headaches which can be called the worst possible pain known to man.
"Cluster headaches are also known, colloquially, as “suicide headaches.” Doctor Green confirms that “most headache doctors have had patients with cluster headaches who have committed suicide from the pain…That’s more likely in the chronic form, [when] they know that they’re going to get one or two or three of these headaches, every day, forever. It’s pretty awful to anticipate that.”
So how can one who suffers from such a condition learn to embody the ideal of amor fati, loving everything, one's own life - and has Nietzsche reached such a state.
A personal letter he wrote in 1882 answers that...
"Tautenburg, August 25, 1882: a slip of paper to Lou Salome'
IN BED. THE MOST TERRIBLE ATTACK. I DESPISE LIFE."
The next day, he wrote another note to Lou:
"Tautenburg, August 26, 1882: A slip of paper to Lou Salome'
My dear Lou,
Sorry about yesterday! A terrible attack of my stupid headaches - today all is gone.
And TODAY I see a few things with new eyes. ---
At 12 o clock I will take you to Dornburg: --- but before then I have to talk to you about something for half an hour (as soon as you get up)
OK?
OK!"
He is writing to the woman he was in love with, at the time.
---
One day he despises life, the next day he sees things with new eyes... how many times do you think this happened? What kind of loop was Nietzsche in? Did he ever escape it? Or was he an endtimer whose stratagem was to learn to love the loop itself, due to a Stockholm Syndrome reaction?
Apropos "interruption of the work", Nietzsche's work was interrupted by senility and psychosis, as is well known.
Your question "Why even love Infinity, if it all ends in death and all is cyclical?"
Aren't you really asking: What is my reward? There needs to be a reward! All that solitude and Emily Dickinson and watching boring black and white movies - in the end there must be a cake! What, the cake is a lie?!
What if Infinity only cares about herself?
So why even do it, if we won't be rewarded? What's the motivation?
One answer is, I think, because we are such people that can't help it. Because we are bent to its will. Because - for some unknown reason - it attracts us and everything else seems impossible. Or maybe, who knows, because it chose to crucify us?
But I think that is still a bit hypocritical... fake saintly... I think that every time we get what we want in life, we're a bit disappointed by it. So in time, we learn to enjoy our suffering. It's a Stockholm Syndrome situation - and when it gets to the extreme, it becomes this:
One just becomes tired of the logic of life, the logic of rewards, the logic of doing something "in order to..." of intentionality in general - that's what I imagine. Tired of "do X in order to Y" - so the question "why love Infinity?" doesn't even arise, the question "Why?" sounds like meaningless noise. It all becomes noise, a beautiful noise. Heidegger:
"The Geschick of being: a child that plays... Why does it play, the great child of the world-play Heraclitus brought into view in the aiôn? It plays, because it plays. The "because" withers away in the play. The play is without "why." It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound. But this "simply" is everything, the one, the only... The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play."
I was hoping something like the babble underlying my dreams, like a kinda coma before death, to seep into the next life. I don't need awareness of it as *this* "I", which is just oscillation and stability, but the idea of the meaning / meaningless in my lives' collective dreams serving as thrusting me into a new loop... is pleasant. I want that loop that binds the recursion to be more... happy and freeing... Like being a celibate farmer on an alien planet that writes poetry and plays board games.
I want to come back one more time in a kind of Harvest Moon land and then have a bitter sweet ending to my life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJl4bpkFKY
If the Infinite really crucifies me that much without mercy, then what is the point of continuing? I'm definitely not going to have children... I've vowed on this after watching True Detective and reading more about th horrible atrocities of mankind. Every time I open up a history textbook I feel I am saying the horror of mankind's capacity for Infinite destruction...
but seriously... illusion is real, as you say andrew... therefore when one dies and the indivisible, seamless motion of recursion continues, doesn't a last thought, a last attachment, towards some kind of meaning trigger a new but self-similar cycle? If life is but a dream, what is there to stop another dream from propagating?
I reference this famous Star Trek The Next Generation episode called "The Inner Light":
Maybe those who truly glimpse Infinity and abide in it don't come back, their lives are complete and have closure with one last glimpse of the Infinite before fading away... but this life is one of incompleteness and constant Crucifixion... I want at least one reprieve, one joyful dream, before being taken in by the impersonal, wholly deconstructive Infinity...
Is it really like Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal? When the knight confronts death and asks what else there is... and he just remains silent... humiliating them by making them dance to the tune of death before sending them to oblivion? If death really is oblivion, then what's the point of all of this? Why not just be a nihilist then? Not even Albert Camus went as far to say nothingness proceeds death, or even preceded life. Camus remained agnostic unlike the fraud Sartre and his concubine Simone de Beauvoir (they were polyamorous) ... I really liked The Plague & Myth of Sisyphus & The Stranger btw. I haven't read Sartre's Nauseau but his other texts are worse than Voynich...
I do not understand how declarative memory can be stored in the brain, and I say this as someone that worked in a Neurobiology of Memory lab. I don't think memory totally vanishes when we die because it could be something holographic field that reciprocally interacts with the brain.
Why are you banning me, man? I'm not trying to pressure anyone, just have a sincere convo. There's no need to censor me.
But what's the point of that solitude if there's nothing more to life after dying? If it's just glimpses of Infinity and that's it, what's the point? It's too nihilistic.
I'll go away, but I always assumed you accepted something like rebirth after cessation of bodily functions because you said life is a reflection of something deeper...
Here's a thought... without the storehouse consciousness, life is not a reflection of something deeper. I am referencing your ultra short sutra
That's what Lankavatara Sutra was on about... Without accepting storehouse consciousness life is NOT a reflection of something deeper because that means we are nothing more than a fleeting memory that has no causal effect after dying...
I do read your poems, man. Just bear with me.
I just can't come to terms with how this illusion will all dissolve into nothingness or so...
ok, you are not banned but it is distressing to see you rave on in a fashion that has become quite schizophrenic !
you are busy telling me how things are so why are you here ?
basically your way of looking at things is all screwed up because one. you don't take on board what i saying and 2. you don't get any real life contemplative time !
you don't know what infinity is so you will always be wanking on the net, just go away and do some real contemplative/solitary work !
as per board policy you are not banned, but please waste some-one elses time, i am busy !
you are too needy, too fucking lazy and too fucking mad ! :o(
I agree with EVERYTHING you say but EXCEPT the nature of declarative memory.
Tell me is declarative memory stored in the brain or not. I don't think it is. There's evidence it is NOT.
People who do not have a glimpse of infinity before dying fall into a recursive, pocket-reality before they can finally blissfully unite with the Infinite.
I will get that solitude in natural scenery and celibacy, but I feel as if there is ONE other element necessary because no Buddhist, like Kusan Sunim, believed the brain to hold memory. I thin DHARANIS and HUA TOU show memory is not in the brain because it can put you in a state where you see how memory is more like "automatic writing", but it reciprocally interacts with the brain. It is not STORED in the brain. It is nihilistic and life-defeating to think declarative memory is entirely in the brain. It is not and is intimately tied to recursion through the he autoassociator theory of hippocampus and cortex interactions. There is an extra ingredient there.
I agree with EVERYTHING else you say BUT that one part. That's it. I really respect everything you've shown me and our discussions, but I really don't think the view the brain stores declarative memory is healthy. That's it. That's our only disagreement.
sepehr, the usual net opinionist takes a notion like "declarative memory" and says xyz going forward using it as a base which is what you are doing !
real philosophy and inquiry deconstructs the notion of what it is, pulls it apart to see if there is anything to it, and if it can be saved from the way it is used, reconstructed into something useful that sheds light and doesn't hide it !
my concern about the notion of "declarative memory" is the irresolvability of different visionary experiences, that the contemplative tableaux does not exist as one synchronous stream view but people can have different visionary takes, a lot quite untrue !
this is like this issue of parallelism, non identity with infinity that purports identity !
that singularities are a fiction, and condensing continuities are what it is about !
so i think your notion of "declarative memory" ties in with "singularity" which is the usual religious voynich like approaching god through the abatement of self, but in practice it doesn't work that way and really from many years of looking at this have advanced minimally further in getting any sort of coherent understanding about the issues !
I'm being downright scientific when I say declarative memory is not stored in the brain. The brain does not store declarative memory.
That's all I'm saying, man. I'm speaking as a scientist. Neuroscience doesn't show the brain stores memories. This is coming from an actual Neuroscientist.
I'm not talking philosophy right now. I'm talking empirical science.
Declarative memory is in its own field that reciprocally interacts with the brain. It is most likely in a holographic field or some kind of pocket proto reality. It's what binds recursions in the first place with over-lapping oscillators (i.e., cross-frequency coupling).
My school was rated #3 in Neuroscience.
i'm telling you I saw no evidence declarative memory is stored in the brain. It's not true.
It doesn't tie in with the singularity. It ties in with rebirth which is moment-to-moment. If you didn't have the ability to consolidate declarative memory like Clive Wearing, who has a 7 second memory, you'd be stuck in an extremely strong sense of the present, a crazy short loop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y
We are already in a loop, but the way to break it off I shall explain... later on the bottom of this post.
Hyperthymesia (extremely strong declarative memory) typically leads to schizophrenia and synaesthesia. Look what happened to Solomon Shereshevsky.
"One time I went to buy some ice cream ... I walked over to the vendor and asked her what kind of ice cream she had. 'Fruit ice cream,' she said. But she answered in such a tone that a whole pile of coals, of black cinders, came bursting out of her mouth, and I couldn't bring myself to buy any ice cream after she had answered in that way ...[3]"
I know what I'm talking about when it comes MEMORY. Even Derrida said deconstruction is just memory work.
That's because life is nothing but memory.
I hypothesize that after we die when the brain ceases its functions, memory is still there in a garbled and compressed form. The retrieval by the brain is what makes memory ungarbled and coherent. Without the constraints of the brain after death, the memory disperses faster than light in a dispersed centrifugal way. New pocket proto realities are created wherein a new life is lived...
To break free from that recursion you must not make contact with declarative memory prior to the last breath before you die... you must have one last glimpse of Infinity and unite with it... other wise the loops are perpetuated through the dispersal of field of declarative memory which is not stored in the brain, itself.
I speak from both experience and empirical science. There is no bottom turtle to the field of memory, considering it is always in motion in recursive way, but at the same it is not entirely in the structures of the brain. That's all I am saying.
" There is no bottom turtle to the field of memory, considering it is always in motion in recursive way, but at the same it is not entirely in the structures of the brain. " - not a conspiracy theory. I'm just saying there's no evidence to believe the brain stores declarative memories. I gave give articles that talk about it. They're not New Agey.
I think automatic writing can show this also. It doesn't point to any "subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source", but just the fact that there is most likely a field of declarative memory that reciprocally interacts with the body. The brain consolidates declarative memory into this field in a garbled, compressed way but it can recurrently be accessed in a non-garbled, coherent form.
From working memory it can be consolidated into either declarative memory (e.g., subdivisions include autobiographical and episodic memories) or procedural memory. Declarative memories are not stored in the fucking brain. I say this with absolute certainty and gave citations, including the reddit article you should read carefully. Now procedural memories are indeed stored in the brain.
Since declarative memories are not stored in the brain, it is not clear what happens after we die. Saying, "this one life is all we have . . " is nihilistic. No Zen teacher or mystic would say that.
"this is all we have awareness of" ... but the surfacing declarative memories can perpetuated more cycles after cessation of bodily functions.
This is really not that important, but it gives more incentive to people to have a glimpse of infinity before dying otherwise, it'll create some kinds of a pocket proto realities.
Also, Zakaj, check this out: http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2zijj0/how_can_explicit_memory_be_explained_by_an/
All I'm getting at simply is declarative memory is not stored in the brain. That's it.
I agree with EVERYTHING else Andrew says such as celibacy, solitude in natural scenery for contemplative time, reading + writing good poetry, and etc., but I do not agree with him that declarative memory is stored in the brain. That's it. I don't even believe in a universe of consciousness because I agree with Andrew when he says "there is a mysterious irradiance that permeates the entire universe", but I don't think the memory is entirely stored and consolidated in the brain.
Why fixate so much on this memory thing though? I'm fascinated by you... I thought we were similar and we are to a certain degree, but you have something crazier ... You are more intelligent than I, but also crazier. You are like on Adderall all the time, naturally. You seem to be postponing contemplation and neurotically finding every obstacle you can to make sure the contemplation period will never happen. Either you don't have enough money to build your perfect contemplation hermitage in nature, or you just need to solve one small philosophical problem about memory - and after you do, then finally you will be able to rest! But think - how could the question of where memory is stored change anything? An Islamic poet, I think Rumi, or someone else, maybe a Sufi, wrote that the Ocean doesn't care bout what philosphy do water drops contained in it hold... whether they think this or that of the memory, the Ocean stays what it is, the Ocean. You're too clever for your own good and to obsessed about knowing! You need to have more patience I think, and just learn to be OK with not knowing! Not knowing is OK!
"it should be understood that neuroscience is far from understanding how experience is “stored” in the brain. It is currently confounded by the fact that everywhere one looks, “processing” site and “storage” site seem to be equivalent. In fact, this “storage” has never been more than an hypothesis, though one with the force of a dogma."
my question is how does explicit memory relate to the brain. It's not ENTIRELY in the brain, man. I'm telling you. This is not a conspiracy. It's some high-level stuff to tell you and even Derrida mentioned something like deconstruction just being memory work.
You know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper, I'd become rich, right? It's a pretty profound question. I've found some severe technical issues with saying explicit memory is in the brain.
the problem with "declarative memory" is it is also "declarative memory" as is "the brain", you are not parsing anything in a usefully meaningful way !
"You know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper"
the fact is you won't make your own blog to post this 1/4 arsed stuff but just cover the 7th patriarch blog with this rubbish, if you really think you are doing some real work then isn't it worthwhile enough to post on your oww blog or page ?
anyway this board is not designed for the sort of volume you are posting in so please restrict your posts to several a day !
If there is no bottom turtle, doesn't that mean there is a holographic aspect to reality, considering one property of holograms is they are infinitely divisible?
If so, the idea memory is in a flux within a holographic field is not stupid.
Declarative memory is a holographic field that the brain interacts with in some causal way, but it is still turtles all the way down.
yeah that's what i'm trying to argue, man, "World is the encodable field for declarative memory !"
The subfield of the world called declarative memory isn't just in the brain.
For when I die, the universe will die with me, and and all will be lost forever gone... BUT not if one clings onto a declarative memory of the mountains, hills, rivers, streams, fall foilage, or so forth... and thereby endlessly circling with them in endless motion.
Those are the two options. It's topsy turvy, like you've said. One can go the Daoist route of immortality, endlessly circling with the recursive dance of nature or go beyond the beyond that all to the unknowable Infinite...
"when we die the world also dies which is why being faced with death is such a topsy turvey disturbing process, yet paradoxically so opening !"
It was a good film. It just shows declarative memory is involved in our perception of time, but it doesn't show the brain is the encodable field for declarative memory.
I argue here how the world is the encodable field for declarative memory here:
either I was lucky or the light and the temple themselves emanate beauty ... that's my wife and my mother-in-law
the paths are beautiful, https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-3COQcTF8q48/VQ6-bet6XkI/AAAAAAAABr4/oMcCmkpDyuU/w463-h617-no/DSC04912.JPG ... this is the place where Eisai the founder of J. Rinzai Zen used to meditate, the very spot: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-cU2aFRJKWNw/VQ6-fEvNPYI/AAAAAAAABsA/ytMrZZOCTKE/w823-h617-no/DSC04915.JPG
love the paths and the gardens, https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YzFs2CL88UI/VQ67fDL2wzI/AAAAAAAABoQ/nt0hrbamzS4/w463-h617-no/DSC04869.JPG wish I could be here as something other than a tourist...
the first two pics are of Kaidan-in which is perhaps one of the most important Buddhist structures in all Japan. It was in this building that Mahayana Buddhists declared their independence from the Hinayana Buddhists of Nara. The structure itself was built to commemorate the death of Saicho (767-822), the founder of the Tendai sect... this is where Dogen, Nichiren, Shinran, Eisai, Ippen, all of the big names of Japanese Buddhism , practiced and were ordained
that's your best content so far and you apologise ! ?
both you and sepehr delete your best posts as well !
i presume you used a digital camera and i think one reasons the photos came out so well is the light was bright, but diffused which is what it takes to make digital cameras shine, they especially don't like the light being too dull !
"The reason one must face his darkness, and enter into that darkness is not that he may return purified to face God. One must go into the darkness because that is where God is. The darkness is not sin, not evil. Those are by-ways, side paths by which one can escape. The darkness is pure terror, and the last terror of all is to know as one turns downward that there is no God. Then the darkness is upon you, and there is God Himself, for God is the greatest destroyer of gods."
sepehr you are way too needy and too much work maybe the hardcore zen blog is your level !
you have talent, but if it's being used to murder me, then i can do without it ! please limit yourself to one post a day maximum for six months until the 23rd of september 2015 !
Monk asks: "What is the depth of the deep?" Zhaozhou: "What depth of the deep should I talk about, the seven of seven or the eight of eight?"
ReplyDeleteboth replies fit, so i have included your quote as well !
DeleteHaha Patriarch you look funny lol
ReplyDeleteI'm with you brother... in uglification...
The most annoying sound is the sound people make when they eat, or drink, the crunching, smacking... while listening to it today my brain suddenly popped this thought into existence: "Aren't you really just annoying yourself?" - Well I'll be damned!
ReplyDeleteYeah my brother is like that and I try my best to be as quiet as I can be but he still picks it up
DeleteHow in the hell are you not affected by your own chewing? Like one cannot perfectly make it a soundless chew.. or can you?
We are not disgusted by the smell of our own shit... So it's all interpretation.
Delete(Here in Japan it's normal for people to make loud slurping noises when they eat noodles. But I am not so bothered by it here... if I hear the same noise in Europe though, I'm disgusted by it.)
DeleteLol awesome answer thx m8
DeleteThe most annoying thing is to be around most people. I just want solitude, really.
Deletewrote a paper on it in high school.
ReplyDeletefixed link
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2zijj0/how_can_explicit_memory_be_explained_by_an/
Is there a holographic field or some special area where explicit / declarative memory is "stored"?
sepehr, please make your own blog to paste this bullshit on !
Deleteyou are cognitively slack, half arsed stuff you don't work out properly and then cut and paste together ending up with the usual web bullshit !
no wonder you prefer to post to the idiots on r/philosophy and the hardcore zen blog !
you have taken a short cut, assuming the bottom turtle is physical/biological reality and just paste onto that schema assuming it is the bottom turtle, which if it was the bottom turtle would be viable, but as the turtles are endless which is the true nature of infinity, all your cognitive shortcuts are doing is making for endless crap !
a good article on cognitive short cuts
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/intellectual-character-of-conspiracy-theorists/
you also have some borderline personality traits like not giving a shit about the burden you impose on other people !
these things take time to work through, i really have no advice except if you think what you write is up to par then you should be doing it on your own blog . .
the big give away that people on these boards know unconciously what they write is crap is they make no attempt to set up their own voice, but just rely on throwing bullshit into the reddit or hardcore zen blog sewer and assume that is validation !
true philosophy is not to assume any bottom turtle . . .
But you say the importance of nutrition and stuff... I mean if nutrition is so important then doesn't that mean the physical/biological reality is one aspect of the bottom turtle? The bottom turtle however must interact with other turtles of course, but there is a bottom otherwise nutrition and health wouldn't be important.
DeleteMaybe the whole dichotomy between top and bottom turtle is wrong? Nutrition and celibacy are all important, but the point is to get how all these turtles interact in a looping kinda way to give rise to the experience of Now and ever-after or so?
DeleteI mean why emphasize on there being no bottom turtle while also embracing diet & nutrition and celibacy...? What is this physical/biology a reflection of that is supposedly deeper?
For example, Zakaj recently posted, "For example, consider the first few seconds when we are waking up. We are just like a computer when its booting. In those seconds we don't know what we are, who we are, or that there are any beings. We emerge. Then suddenly it all starts appearing, popping up: the self, things, future, past, our worries, our sadness, our joys, expectations, memories, etc. The Human Being Operating System fully loaded."
DeleteThomas Metzinger technically describes this as such in this video called "Being No One" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k ) : When the organism wakes up in the morning, it has to achieve complex sensory motor integration. It meets this transient computational model, the conscious self model, and it just switches on. And this is the moment when you really wake up. As Roger Conant & Ross Ashby ( http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Books/Conant_Ashby.pdf ) argued, "Every complex system that has had a regulator, that regulates its own behavior, will automatically by necessity turn this regulator into a model of the system as a whole. If you want to regulate different parts, you have to map them somewhere."
My question is, before we emerge... where does explicit memory reside?
That's it. That's my question.
The turtles are endless horizontally, not vertically. There are no turtles above or below. All the turtles are clicking their shells and not on top or below each other. So the bottom turtle is bottom physical/biological, but there are infinite more turtles surrounding it, such as the realm of dreams and the unreal of poems.
DeleteViewing there being turtles above or below leads to nihilism. Viewing turtures as being horizontally infinite leads to less burden and freedom.
So yeah I agree with you on the Infinite... but not on a vertical infinity. My body and health are absolute, hence why I read your nutrition advice and stuff.
there's a couple of different ways you can look at this !
Deleteone is that philosophical greats like heraclitus (and poetic greats like john of the cross and keats) had a very wrong minded view of the universe and biological reality compared to what we have now and really has only come into existance in the last hundred years . .
so this sort of wrongness and by implication rightness is irrelevant ! . . !
the very correctness and sophistication of current cosmology and brain biology is deceiving, it creates the illusion of a bottom turtle, but the reality is just process and endless approximation
for as long the human/ other intelligent life scientific knowledge base and process exists you will get an improving refinement and also catastrophic realignments of coherence . .
everything is insufficient, there is just this process of new insight and correction, same with nutrition and celibacy . . .
no bottom turtle, but endless turtles everywhere in a l l d i r e c t i on s
"What is this physical/biology a reflection of that is supposedly deeper?"
the hunting of the snark ! :o ) (
"My question is, before we emerge... where does explicit memory reside?
DeleteThat's it. That's my question."
what is "explicit memory" that it it resides separate from being explicit memory ?
I once saw a turtle on my front yard. I went to call my wife because it was so sudden, especially with how s/he struck me with awe. When I came back, there was no turtle, but to know there is a turtle in my heart makes me happy.
DeleteTurtles are really majestic animals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Kiem_turtle
If turtles are the true nature of reality, that's not so bad.
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ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"The immanence of Non-Being is basically constant penetration, exhaustive climaxes and crisp white Brooks Brothers shirts bought in crowded department stores'
that's immanence by the exclusion of Non-Being !
the world is full of hubric nutters like that claiming god or infinity is the inclusion of reality when in fact the world and thus them is exclusion
since they are exclusion and their very existance is dependent on their crazy nutty misperception, how can one expect any sort of cognitive coherence !
( i'm sounding a bit like dogen ! :o)
that celibacy/ natural scenery/solitude and contemplative space is alien to these people so they just rush blindly o n . .
the real question is how can you integrate that into your life instead of spilling your time fruitlessly into argument and half done explanations the way you are doing . . ?
the other thing is to bear in mind that it's avery long process, you don't have to rush in to have an opinion, wait for things come to you formed of their own accord s o m e w h a t ! : o ) (
be disengaged from the world and people or everything just ends up in endless reddit or hardcore zen blog fights ! :o)
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Deletethe problem is, that unless you are brought up in it, the belief system is too crazy
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DeleteEverything you say is right an3drew. While wasting time on the web wracking my brain over nonsense, my cat son came up to me and meowed in a concern manner. It seems he understands my patterns of behavior better than I understand myself... I give him good raw food and so forth.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should just take my cat's advice and not waste time with bullshit.
One thing you're showing me is how talking to most people is a waste of time. I'm better off just reading poetry or watching a film or two than to waste time on reddit or forums.
"During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You ... are ... dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."
DeleteDreaming of interpreting a dream, or dreaming of being a scientist that analyzes dreamstuff. Or being a brain that looks at another brain that is looking at the brain.
Someone posted Foyan on reddit the other day... I think it has very lucid moments, that book. He says the first mistake is to ride a donkey looking for a donkey. Isn't that what these scientists/philosophers of the brain/mind are attempting?
You and I are caught in a loop. Try to look at your comments here in 2013, or 2012. I did the other day, and you were saying the same things, it's uncanny. "OK, it's time to stop this BS and I will just read poetry and enjoy solitude" the same things you were saying 1, 2, 3 years ago. I'm not trying to criticize you, I am caught in an endless loop too. What I'm proposing to you & myself is that we spend some time reflecting on this fact, on this infinite loop, instead of going for another rollercoaster ride, finding another new take on the last turtle, another philosophy, religion, reality, explanation, another "Eureka!" moment etc.
We're finding it impossible to exist, but we're also unable to accept this impossibility once and for all, and so we're building and rebuilding conceptual castles in the sky to fill the gap of "reality" - the horror vacui the fact that reality is itself inconsistent or that it is infinite scares us we are still clinging to Mommy - and the ultimate Mommy is really the Last Turtle.
What I notice lately is that sometimes I am able to go out of the loop - and it is either pure anxiety when I do, like being in an alien terrifying territory where there's nothing I can rely on... or sometimes it can also be tremendously liberating (I hate the word liberating, but for the lack of a better term)... like breathing mountain fresh air after years of living in a smog hell like Beijing!
But mostly it is anxiety, it's like being lost in a large department store and there's a lot of strange old people and there's no Mommy. And she will never be back
Whenever we are exposed, we say "Your critique is right, Andrew. You are 100% right I am doing this, it's bullshit I will instead study Emily Dickinson and live in solitude" - but isn't it just covering our naked bodies with the enemy nation's flag? Anything to not be exposed
Like that story from Calvino, the Nonexistant Knight, have you read that one? It's very interesting, it's a knight that doesn't exist below his armor. He is just the armor.
Aren't we Nonexistent Knights? What are we below the armor, and what is the armor except the autistic loop?
Exposed for what? It's all turtles all the way down, giving this some of transparent reflection of the Infinite or so.
DeleteIt requires tacit apprehension. It's easier in solitude because after I read Andrew's stuff, I went to Cashier, North Carolina a bit. I noticed powerful interesting stuff happened to my mind in the boundlessness of the mountains. Everything felt like a mirror but it felt like there was something there... in the infinite process or so.
I need that solitude. I stayed for only a day.
Also, in such a setting sexual energies rise up. I noticed it in myself. Celbacy is necessary to harness those energies to penetrate into the unfathomable, inexhaustible nature of reality.
I keep saying I need that solitude because I need that fucking money.
I understand what Andrew is saying very well, but it cannot be awakened to in the slums, suburban setting, or etc. easily. An act of creation in that moment of crisp mirror like taming of the mind is very different than a creation with monkey mind.
"I went to Cashier, North Carolina a bit. I noticed powerful interesting stuff happened to my mind in the boundlessness of the mountains.
DeleteI need that solitude. I stayed for only a day'
well you know where to go and to stay longer !
need the money, but i really loved it... it was so idyllic to the point my mind literally shut off with no worries. read some stonehouse's poetry on the mountain top which my dad bought... and it was understood even even better... but he's selling the land soon
Deletemy question is how does explicit memory relate to the brain. It's not ENTIRELY in the brain, man. I'm telling you. This is not a conspiracy. It's some high-level stuff to tell you and even Derrida mentioned something like deconstruction just being memory work.
DeleteYou know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper, I'd become rich, right? It's a pretty profound question. I've found some severe technical issues with saying explicit memory is in the brain.
Our exchange last night was useful, Andrew. All of a sudden, Derrida is starting to "click" with me. Before I had a shallow understanding but now I feel as if I'm submerging a bit into it. I really need that setting of solitude to practice deeper into this...
ReplyDelete'The very condition of a deconstruction may be at work in the work, within the system to be deconstructed. It may already be located there, already at work. Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. One might then be inclined to reach this conclusion: deconstruction is not an operation that supervenes afterwards, from the outside, one fine day. It is always already at work in the work. Since the destructive force of Deconstruction is always already contained within the very architecture of the work, all one would finally have to do to be able to deconstruct, given this always already, is to do memory work. Yet since I want neither to accept nor to reject a conclusion formulated in precisely these terms, let us leave this question suspended for the moment.'
ReplyDeleteJACQUES DERRIDA
MEMOIRES FOR PAUL DEMAN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1986
Some more good quotes:
Deletehttp://www.derridathemovie.com/readings.html
I need to read Derrida more...
It's awesome. I want to be able to get a handle with Derridean deconstructive dialectics.
Deletebasically you are embarking on a slow process of work that will be cut off by your death or senility !
what happens after the death and senility? will i be reborn without awareness or is that it? ... :(
Deleteim doing my best, but maybe you're right... it'll be cut off by my death and senility.. but then what?
Delete
Deleteeverything including this world will have ceased and you are thrust back into the meaningless /meaning ! :o)
not necessarily a positive thing btw ! :o)
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Deletei don't understand...
Deletewhat am i thrust into if i do "get it" instead?
does it make any difference whether i am enlightened of infinity or not? does it change what i thrusted into after the world has ceased?
enlightened or unenlightened it doesn't matter . . the only difference is that "enlightened " you understand what is happening to you, that is if you don't have dementia or have become senile . . !
Deletereincarnation is no n s e n s e . .
this one life is all we have . .
some glimpses of infinity is al l w e g e t ! . .
if this one life is all we get, then what's the point of solitude and celibacy?
DeleteThe idea of eternal dreamless sleep frightens me, but idea of being thrusted into the endless cycle of meaningless /meaning is kinda frightening too.
Infinity seems like a bitch, in truth...
You said after death one is thrust back into the meaningless /meaning.
One does that even mean, and if this is the ultimate outcome regardless of enlightened or not, then why does it matter ?
is this life really all that's had? do i just fade into nothingness?
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DeleteI still don't get what it means that "after death one is thrust back into the meaningless /meaning" and how doesn't point to a recursive rebirth. Rebirth can still happen if there is no I, just oscillation and stability. You said: " to
Deletesee
infinity
you
have
to
be
in
love
with
everything
how
beautiful
and
cruel
that
is !"
But why is Infinity deserving of Love if this "one life is all we have . . [and] some glimpses of infinity is al l w e g e t ! . ."
Do the glimpses end after death!!? Is it just nothingness! You're contradicting yourself into some kind of cyclical nihilism! I just don't get it! I got you up to this point but I don't know!!!
as usual you delete your best post !
Delete----------------
sepehr posted
I bare fangs towards Infinity ! This constant deconstruction is not one worthy of love. I will not be crucified by this endless charade...
I will be the crucifier to the totality of all existent, to Infinite!
I shall become the star child that screams and makes all of reality shatter.
---------------------
see what it is when reality is deconstructed i n f i n i t y a p p e a r s . . . !
it's this knowledge of infinity and identity with infinity is all that matters
it is
love
beauty
h u r t . .
we will all take the first two, but it's the last that opens the g a t e ! : . . ! : o ) (
While you wait for Andrew's reply, a little intermezzo.
DeleteNietzsche wrote about the love of everything ...
"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event – and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."
—Nietzsche,The Will to Power. (Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale translators) New York: Random House, 1967. (pages 532-533)
That sounds almost Buddhist, in fact, Nietzsche wrote in a letter that he imagines he will be "the Buddha of Europe", seen as such in the future... but as the opposite of Buddha, an Antibuddha:
"I do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day become more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been." - Friedrich Nietzsche
This entails loving everything that happens to you, including suffering:
"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it."
— Nietzsche,‘Why I Am So Clever’, in Ecce Homo, section 10:[2]
"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer."
— Nietzsche, section 276 of The Gay Science
---
It is interesting coming from him, he knew suffering in life.
Is it a case of Stockholm Syndrome?
One learns to love what holds one captive - to avoid being a helpless victim, one learns to identify and love the aggressor - meaningless pain in this case?
Nietzsche suffered from cluster headaches which can be called the worst possible pain known to man.
"Cluster headaches are also known, colloquially, as “suicide headaches.” Doctor Green confirms that “most headache doctors have had patients with cluster headaches who have committed suicide from the pain…That’s more likely in the chronic form, [when] they know that they’re going to get one or two or three of these headaches, every day, forever. It’s pretty awful to anticipate that.”
So how can one who suffers from such a condition learn to embody the ideal of amor fati, loving everything, one's own life - and has Nietzsche reached such a state.
A personal letter he wrote in 1882 answers that...
"Tautenburg, August 25, 1882: a slip of paper to Lou Salome'
IN BED. THE MOST TERRIBLE ATTACK. I DESPISE LIFE."
The next day, he wrote another note to Lou:
"Tautenburg, August 26, 1882: A slip of paper to Lou Salome'
My dear Lou,
Sorry about yesterday! A terrible attack of my stupid headaches - today all is gone.
And TODAY I see a few things with new eyes. ---
At 12 o clock I will take you to Dornburg: --- but before then I have to talk to you about something for half an hour (as soon as you get up)
OK?
OK!"
He is writing to the woman he was in love with, at the time.
---
One day he despises life, the next day he sees things with new eyes... how many times do you think this happened? What kind of loop was Nietzsche in? Did he ever escape it? Or was he an endtimer whose stratagem was to learn to love the loop itself, due to a Stockholm Syndrome reaction?
Apropos "interruption of the work", Nietzsche's work was interrupted by senility and psychosis, as is well known.
Your question "Why even love Infinity, if it all ends in death and all is cyclical?"
DeleteAren't you really asking: What is my reward? There needs to be a reward! All that solitude and Emily Dickinson and watching boring black and white movies - in the end there must be a cake! What, the cake is a lie?!
What if Infinity only cares about herself?
So why even do it, if we won't be rewarded? What's the motivation?
One answer is, I think, because we are such people that can't help it. Because we are bent to its will. Because - for some unknown reason - it attracts us and everything else seems impossible. Or maybe, who knows, because it chose to crucify us?
But I think that is still a bit hypocritical... fake saintly... I think that every time we get what we want in life, we're a bit disappointed by it. So in time, we learn to enjoy our suffering. It's a Stockholm Syndrome situation - and when it gets to the extreme, it becomes this:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/vietnam1963.jpg
One just becomes tired of the logic of life, the logic of rewards, the logic of doing something "in order to..." of intentionality in general - that's what I imagine. Tired of "do X in order to Y" - so the question "why love Infinity?" doesn't even arise, the question "Why?" sounds like meaningless noise. It all becomes noise, a beautiful noise. Heidegger:
"The Geschick of being: a child that plays... Why does it play, the great child of the world-play Heraclitus brought into view in the aiôn? It plays, because it plays. The "because" withers away in the play. The play is without "why." It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound. But this "simply" is everything, the one, the only... The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play."
(Note: "Geschick" means in German fate, destiny, if I am not wrong.)
DeleteZakaj... An3drew...
DeleteI was hoping something like the babble underlying my dreams, like a kinda coma before death, to seep into the next life. I don't need awareness of it as *this* "I", which is just oscillation and stability, but the idea of the meaning / meaningless in my lives' collective dreams serving as thrusting me into a new loop... is pleasant. I want that loop that binds the recursion to be more... happy and freeing... Like being a celibate farmer on an alien planet that writes poetry and plays board games.
Perhaps, I am naive, considering I still read children's books like The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry... Katherine Woods translation is the best... It deals with the infinite in the imaginative, even though in that particular story it's not in identity with the real world... Idk
What i'm trying to get at is the idea of being a non-returner appeals to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_%28Buddhism%29#Ideas_of_rebirth
I want to come back one more time in a kind of Harvest Moon land and then have a bitter sweet ending to my life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJl4bpkFKY
If the Infinite really crucifies me that much without mercy, then what is the point of continuing? I'm definitely not going to have children... I've vowed on this after watching True Detective and reading more about th horrible atrocities of mankind. Every time I open up a history textbook I feel I am saying the horror of mankind's capacity for Infinite destruction...
but seriously... illusion is real, as you say andrew... therefore when one dies and the indivisible, seamless motion of recursion continues, doesn't a last thought, a last attachment, towards some kind of meaning trigger a new but self-similar cycle? If life is but a dream, what is there to stop another dream from propagating?
I reference this famous Star Trek The Next Generation episode called "The Inner Light":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29#Plot
Do you get me?
Maybe those who truly glimpse Infinity and abide in it don't come back, their lives are complete and have closure with one last glimpse of the Infinite before fading away... but this life is one of incompleteness and constant Crucifixion... I want at least one reprieve, one joyful dream, before being taken in by the impersonal, wholly deconstructive Infinity...
Is it really like Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal? When the knight confronts death and asks what else there is... and he just remains silent... humiliating them by making them dance to the tune of death before sending them to oblivion? If death really is oblivion, then what's the point of all of this? Why not just be a nihilist then? Not even Albert Camus went as far to say nothingness proceeds death, or even preceded life. Camus remained agnostic unlike the fraud Sartre and his concubine Simone de Beauvoir (they were polyamorous) ... I really liked The Plague & Myth of Sisyphus & The Stranger btw. I haven't read Sartre's Nauseau but his other texts are worse than Voynich...
I do not understand how declarative memory can be stored in the brain, and I say this as someone that worked in a Neurobiology of Memory lab. I don't think memory totally vanishes when we die because it could be something holographic field that reciprocally interacts with the brain.
DeleteWhy are you banning me, man? I'm not trying to pressure anyone, just have a sincere convo. There's no need to censor me.
ReplyDeleteBut what's the point of that solitude if there's nothing more to life after dying? If it's just glimpses of Infinity and that's it, what's the point? It's too nihilistic.
I'll go away, but I always assumed you accepted something like rebirth after cessation of bodily functions because you said life is a reflection of something deeper...
Here's a thought... without the storehouse consciousness, life is not a reflection of something deeper. I am referencing your ultra short sutra
http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/andrew/pending_poems120.html#ultrashort_sutra
That's what Lankavatara Sutra was on about... Without accepting storehouse consciousness life is NOT a reflection of something deeper because that means we are nothing more than a fleeting memory that has no causal effect after dying...
I do read your poems, man. Just bear with me.
I just can't come to terms with how this illusion will all dissolve into nothingness or so...
ok, you are not banned but it is distressing to see you rave on in a fashion that has become quite schizophrenic !
Deleteyou are busy telling me how things are so why are you here ?
basically your way of looking at things is all screwed up because one. you don't take on board what i saying and 2. you don't get any real life contemplative time !
you don't know what infinity is so you will always be wanking on the net, just go away and do some real contemplative/solitary work !
as per board policy you are not banned, but please waste some-one elses time, i am busy !
you are too needy, too fucking lazy and too fucking mad ! :o(
I agree with EVERYTHING you say but EXCEPT the nature of declarative memory.
DeleteTell me is declarative memory stored in the brain or not. I don't think it is. There's evidence it is NOT.
People who do not have a glimpse of infinity before dying fall into a recursive, pocket-reality before they can finally blissfully unite with the Infinite.
I will get that solitude in natural scenery and celibacy, but I feel as if there is ONE other element necessary because no Buddhist, like Kusan Sunim, believed the brain to hold memory. I thin DHARANIS and HUA TOU show memory is not in the brain because it can put you in a state where you see how memory is more like "automatic writing", but it reciprocally interacts with the brain. It is not STORED in the brain. It is nihilistic and life-defeating to think declarative memory is entirely in the brain. It is not and is intimately tied to recursion through the he autoassociator theory of hippocampus and cortex interactions. There is an extra ingredient there.
I agree with EVERYTHING else you say BUT that one part. That's it. I really respect everything you've shown me and our discussions, but I really don't think the view the brain stores declarative memory is healthy. That's it. That's our only disagreement.
Deletesepehr, the usual net opinionist takes a notion like "declarative memory" and says xyz going forward using it as a base which is what you are doing !
Deletereal philosophy and inquiry deconstructs the notion of what it is, pulls it apart to see if there is anything to it, and if it can be saved from the way it is used, reconstructed into something useful that sheds light and doesn't hide it !
my concern about the notion of "declarative memory" is the irresolvability of different visionary experiences, that the contemplative tableaux does not exist as one synchronous stream view but people can have different visionary takes, a lot quite untrue !
this is like this issue of parallelism, non identity with infinity that purports identity !
that singularities are a fiction, and condensing continuities are what it is about !
so i think your notion of "declarative memory" ties in with "singularity" which is the usual religious voynich like approaching god through the abatement of self, but in practice it doesn't work that way and really from many years of looking at this have advanced minimally further in getting any sort of coherent understanding about the issues !
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DeleteMy question is more of a scientific one, An3drew.
DeleteI'm not even talking about mysticism here.
I'm being downright scientific when I say declarative memory is not stored in the brain. The brain does not store declarative memory.
That's all I'm saying, man. I'm speaking as a scientist. Neuroscience doesn't show the brain stores memories. This is coming from an actual Neuroscientist.
I'm not talking philosophy right now. I'm talking empirical science.
Declarative memory is in its own field that reciprocally interacts with the brain. It is most likely in a holographic field or some kind of pocket proto reality. It's what binds recursions in the first place with over-lapping oscillators (i.e., cross-frequency coupling).
My school was rated #3 in Neuroscience.
i'm telling you I saw no evidence declarative memory is stored in the brain. It's not true.
It doesn't tie in with the singularity. It ties in with rebirth which is moment-to-moment. If you didn't have the ability to consolidate declarative memory like Clive Wearing, who has a 7 second memory, you'd be stuck in an extremely strong sense of the present, a crazy short loop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y
We are already in a loop, but the way to break it off I shall explain... later on the bottom of this post.
Hyperthymesia (extremely strong declarative memory) typically leads to schizophrenia and synaesthesia. Look what happened to Solomon Shereshevsky.
"One time I went to buy some ice cream ... I walked over to the vendor and asked her what kind of ice cream she had. 'Fruit ice cream,' she said. But she answered in such a tone that a whole pile of coals, of black cinders, came bursting out of her mouth, and I couldn't bring myself to buy any ice cream after she had answered in that way ...[3]"
I know what I'm talking about when it comes MEMORY. Even Derrida said deconstruction is just memory work.
That's because life is nothing but memory.
I hypothesize that after we die when the brain ceases its functions, memory is still there in a garbled and compressed form. The retrieval by the brain is what makes memory ungarbled and coherent. Without the constraints of the brain after death, the memory disperses faster than light in a dispersed centrifugal way. New pocket proto realities are created wherein a new life is lived...
To break free from that recursion you must not make contact with declarative memory prior to the last breath before you die... you must have one last glimpse of Infinity and unite with it... other wise the loops are perpetuated through the dispersal of field of declarative memory which is not stored in the brain, itself.
I speak from both experience and empirical science. There is no bottom turtle to the field of memory, considering it is always in motion in recursive way, but at the same it is not entirely in the structures of the brain. That's all I am saying.
" There is no bottom turtle to the field of memory, considering it is always in motion in recursive way, but at the same it is not entirely in the structures of the brain. " - not a conspiracy theory. I'm just saying there's no evidence to believe the brain stores declarative memories. I gave give articles that talk about it. They're not New Agey.
DeleteI think automatic writing can show this also. It doesn't point to any "subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source", but just the fact that there is most likely a field of declarative memory that reciprocally interacts with the body. The brain consolidates declarative memory into this field in a garbled, compressed way but it can recurrently be accessed in a non-garbled, coherent form.
Deletehttp://www.theassc.org/files/assc/Bergson-Phenomenology-2.pdf
^ this gives some pretty good arguments from quantum physics and other interdisciplinary sources
you are in your manic phase, no doubt to be followed by the depressive ! : o)(
DeleteThis is just a scientific question, man...
DeleteIs declarative memory stored in the brain or neural structures?
If no, then where?
http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/Bergson-Phenomenology-2.pdf
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DeleteAll of life is in working memory. That's a fact.
DeleteFrom working memory it can be consolidated into either declarative memory (e.g., subdivisions include autobiographical and episodic memories) or procedural memory. Declarative memories are not stored in the fucking brain. I say this with absolute certainty and gave citations, including the reddit article you should read carefully. Now procedural memories are indeed stored in the brain.
Since declarative memories are not stored in the brain, it is not clear what happens after we die. Saying, "this one life is all we have . . " is nihilistic. No Zen teacher or mystic would say that.
"this is all we have awareness of" ... but the surfacing declarative memories can perpetuated more cycles after cessation of bodily functions.
This is really not that important, but it gives more incentive to people to have a glimpse of infinity before dying otherwise, it'll create some kinds of a pocket proto realities.
"This is really not that important, but it gives more incentive to people to have a glimpse of infinity before dying '
Deletebut you had that glimpse
"I went to Cashier, North Carolina a bit. I noticed powerful interesting stuff happened to my mind in the boundlessness of the mountains.
I need that solitude. I stayed for only a day"
it must have frightened you because you are now proxing any real work until your next lifetime !
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Deletewell the glimpse showed me it's not all in the head... declarative memory is not store in the brain. That was just one thing it showed tho
Delete"it is
ReplyDeletelove
beauty
h u r t . .
we will all take the first two, but it's the last that opens the g a t e ! : . . ! : o ) ("
I agree, but I think... memory is not stored in the brain, so those who don't glimpse prior to dying come back.
That's the only thing we disagree on. I won't bring up this topic anymore.
That's all. I see no evidence memory is stored in the brain, and I know the neural mechanisms better than anyone here...
Also, Zakaj, check this out:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2zijj0/how_can_explicit_memory_be_explained_by_an/
All I'm getting at simply is declarative memory is not stored in the brain. That's it.
I agree with EVERYTHING else Andrew says such as celibacy, solitude in natural scenery for contemplative time, reading + writing good poetry, and etc., but I do not agree with him that declarative memory is stored in the brain. That's it. I don't even believe in a universe of consciousness because I agree with Andrew when he says "there is a mysterious irradiance that permeates the entire universe", but I don't think the memory is entirely stored and consolidated in the brain.
Why fixate so much on this memory thing though?
DeleteI'm fascinated by you...
I thought we were similar and we are to a certain degree, but you have something crazier ... You are more intelligent than I, but also crazier. You are like on Adderall all the time, naturally.
You seem to be postponing contemplation and neurotically finding every obstacle you can to make sure the contemplation period will never happen. Either you don't have enough money to build your perfect contemplation hermitage in nature, or you just need to solve one small philosophical problem about memory - and after you do, then finally you will be able to rest!
But think - how could the question of where memory is stored change anything?
An Islamic poet, I think Rumi, or someone else, maybe a Sufi, wrote that the Ocean doesn't care bout what philosphy do water drops contained in it hold... whether they think this or that of the memory, the Ocean stays what it is, the Ocean.
You're too clever for your own good and to obsessed about knowing! You need to have more patience I think, and just learn to be OK with not knowing! Not knowing is OK!
:)
A monk asked Zen master XYZ: "Where is declarative memory stored?"
DeleteZen master XZY replied: "I don't remember."
My main reason is I don't have enough money.
DeleteI'm just saying declarative memory is not stored in the brain.
I talk about why reductionism is stupid here also:
http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=112489&postcount=28
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Deleteread this when you have time zakaj.
ReplyDeleteExplicit memory is stored in a holographic field:
http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/Bergson-Phenomenology-2.pdf
"it should be understood that neuroscience is far from understanding how experience is “stored” in the brain. It is currently confounded by the fact that everywhere one looks, “processing” site and “storage” site seem to be equivalent. In fact, this “storage” has never been more than an hypothesis, though one with the force of a dogma."
The paper gives good arguments for this.
my question is how does explicit memory relate to the brain. It's not ENTIRELY in the brain, man. I'm telling you. This is not a conspiracy. It's some high-level stuff to tell you and even Derrida mentioned something like deconstruction just being memory work.
ReplyDeleteYou know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper, I'd become rich, right? It's a pretty profound question. I've found some severe technical issues with saying explicit memory is in the brain.
the problem with "declarative memory" is it is also "declarative memory" as is "the brain", you are not parsing anything in a usefully meaningful way !
Delete"You know if I take this theory and write an in-depth paper"
the fact is you won't make your own blog to post this 1/4 arsed stuff but just cover the 7th patriarch blog with this rubbish, if you really think you are doing some real work then isn't it worthwhile enough to post on your oww blog or page ?
anyway this board is not designed for the sort of volume you are posting in so please restrict your posts to several a day !
If there is no bottom turtle, doesn't that mean there is a holographic aspect to reality, considering one property of holograms is they are infinitely divisible?
DeleteIf so, the idea memory is in a flux within a holographic field is not stupid.
Declarative memory is a holographic field that the brain interacts with in some causal way, but it is still turtles all the way down.
is a hologram infinitely divisible at the planck scale ?
DeleteYeah, but then it's no longer a hologram. It's something else unknowable in human language.
Deletewhat is outside language about a hologram being encodable beyond physical limits ?
Deleteit's simply a conceptual possibility that can't exist in the physical world !
you can argue that the world is the encodable field for declarative memory !
what do the mountains, hills, rivers, streams, fall foilage of cashiers, north carolina, encode ?
is that unknowable ?
it is knowable !
yeah that's what i'm trying to argue, man, "World is the encodable field for declarative memory !"
DeleteThe subfield of the world called declarative memory isn't just in the brain.
For when I die, the universe will die with me, and and all will be lost forever gone... BUT not if one clings onto a declarative memory of the mountains, hills, rivers, streams, fall foilage, or so forth... and thereby endlessly circling with them in endless motion.
Those are the two options. It's topsy turvy, like you've said. One can go the Daoist route of immortality, endlessly circling with the recursive dance of nature or go beyond the beyond that all to the unknowable Infinite...
"when we die the world also dies which is why being faced with death is such a topsy turvey disturbing process, yet paradoxically so opening !"
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Deletesepehr, you write
Deletehere's a play i wrote about Emil Cioran 4.25 years ago.
Is it good?
They actually acted the play and it made people feel uncomfortable:
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=4841
my reply
yeah it is a good play, actually so good that its a pity you can't make a career in it !
it would go quite well on you tube !
it really helps to have something published or produced like that so others (including family) can see it !
Yeah my friend helped me write it awhile back. We worked together a lot.
DeleteSepehr I'm sure you've seen the 2000 movie, Memento. What does the movie tell us about declarative memory?
DeleteIt was a good film. It just shows declarative memory is involved in our perception of time, but it doesn't show the brain is the encodable field for declarative memory.
DeleteI argue here how the world is the encodable field for declarative memory here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2zijj0/how_can_explicit_memory_be_explained_by_an/
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ReplyDeleteI thought these two pics were especially good, considering how much I suck at taking photos!
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gogmQy2LGZI/VQ6-I6YnCvI/AAAAAAAABrM/dee8q6fTME4/w823-h617-no/DSC04908.JPG
I'm fascinated by its colours, and the light
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-SxDcFjIhDwU/VQ6-N-yigEI/AAAAAAAABrU/Pd__I786dPA/w823-h617-no/DSC04909.JPG
either I was lucky or the light and the temple themselves emanate beauty ... that's my wife and my mother-in-law
the paths are beautiful, https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-3COQcTF8q48/VQ6-bet6XkI/AAAAAAAABr4/oMcCmkpDyuU/w463-h617-no/DSC04912.JPG ... this is the place where Eisai the founder of J. Rinzai Zen used to meditate, the very spot: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-cU2aFRJKWNw/VQ6-fEvNPYI/AAAAAAAABsA/ytMrZZOCTKE/w823-h617-no/DSC04915.JPG
love the paths and the gardens, https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YzFs2CL88UI/VQ67fDL2wzI/AAAAAAAABoQ/nt0hrbamzS4/w463-h617-no/DSC04869.JPG wish I could be here as something other than a tourist...
the first two pics are of Kaidan-in which is perhaps one of the most important Buddhist structures in all Japan. It was in this building that Mahayana Buddhists declared their independence from the Hinayana Buddhists of Nara. The structure itself was built to commemorate the death of Saicho (767-822), the founder of the Tendai sect... this is where Dogen, Nichiren, Shinran, Eisai, Ippen, all of the big names of Japanese Buddhism , practiced and were ordained
Delete(Sorry for this "travel log" I won't abuse 7th patriarchs blog to blog my travels it was just one exception!)
Delete' Sorry for this "travel log" '
Deletethat's your best content so far and you apologise ! ?
both you and sepehr delete your best posts as well !
i presume you used a digital camera and i think one reasons the photos came out so well is the light was bright, but diffused which is what it takes to make digital cameras shine, they especially don't like the light being too dull !
"The reason one must face his darkness, and enter into that darkness is not that he may return purified to face God. One must go into the darkness because that is where God is. The darkness is not sin, not evil. Those are by-ways, side paths by which one can escape. The darkness is pure terror, and the last terror of all is to know as one turns downward that there is no God. Then the darkness is upon you, and there is God Himself, for God is the greatest destroyer of gods."
ReplyDelete- Alfred Romer
sepehr you are way too needy and too much work maybe the hardcore zen blog is your level !
Deleteyou have talent, but if it's being used to murder me, then i can do without it !
please limit yourself to one post a day maximum for six months until the 23rd of september 2015 !
What's your email address andrew?
DeleteI'm writing one horror play and one children's novel with my wife.
I would like to to proofread and give m your thoughts on them when I finish. I will not waste bandwidth on your site anymore, sorry.
it's not bandwidth that's the problem, it's cluttering the board with copy and pasted junk !
Deletewhat you post here should have a degree of finish, collection, condensation and originality !
my email addy is on my web site front page !
there's a whole author culture on the web, https://www.goodreads.com/