From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Free will or Can Life After Death be Proven
Date: 30 Sep 92 23:30:46 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: sci.philosophy.meta
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.

In article <DIENER.92Sep30180952@namu14.gwdg.de>, diener@namu01.gwdg.de
(Immo Diener) writes:
|> In article <TORSTEIN.92Sep29123959@itekiris.pvv.unit.no> 
|> torstein@itekiris.pvv.unit.no (torstein hansen) writes:
|> >    ...
|> >   1) Human brain activity (human thinking) is a result of
|> >     (electro-)chemical reactions in the brain. As far as I know,
|> >      that is where science is today.
|> >    ...
|> 
|>   Nobody can proof that thinking "takes place" in the brain. Thinking
|> is accompanied by brain activity.

Nicely said.  More accurately, thinking is "believed" to be accompanied
by brain activity.  Few would disagree, but there are also indications
that thinking may not "take place" in the brain.


|> But THINKING
|> is a process you do not know. You just do it, but you do not observe
|> what you do when you think. As long as you know nothing about the
|> process of thinking, you apply a process (thinking) about which you
|> know nothing. So you know nothing about the relations between your
|> observations and the results you get by thinking about them.
|> 
|>   All human knowledge is obtained via obvservation and thinking.
|> So, if you want to know about thinking you must apply these to
|> processes to the process of thinking. This seems to be recursive
|> whitout end, but is is not.
|> 

Good point.  I thought we'd never get here.  Meditation is, among other
things, the observation --better, awareness -- of the thought process.
In meditation, awareness centers on thought and its motion which is 
consciousness.  It is not recursive because "awareness" is not "thought".
Thought arises within awareness -- thought thinks, awareness is aware.

|>   All science is illusion as long as the process of thinking has not
|> been clarified - simply because an unknown process is applied and thus
|> leads to results which have no known relation to the starting points.
|> 
|>   Whom do you call I, what is life, free will, intelligence, etc, etc.
|> None of these questions can seriously be attacked before clarified the
|> above point - because we apply an unknown process...
|> 

When "awareness" is differentiated from "thought", identity shifts
away from its attachment to discursive thought processes, and can just
as easily identify with the complement of thought, empty space, as with
thought.  With this shift, one becomes "the observer", and much can be seen
about the movement of mind and thought.  It also produces a good deal
of tranquility, since one is not compelled to apply energies to resist or
redirect thought processes -- one does not enter into conflict with the
content of one's consciousness.  In fact, its just as easy to "open" to the
space between thought as to the thought between space.

When thought is taken as the object of observation, it can be penetrated 
and seen for what it is -- the arbitrary motion of consciousness continually 
arising.  Thought itself can never be clarified, it is always motion, 
but awareness is freed more and more to stand in direct perception to any 
alleged "objects".  One no longer needs to see the stars colored by any
impurities which might be introduced by the telescope.

When the seeming relationship between "objects" of awareness and thoughts 
which arise coincidentally is severed, thought is then understood to be
irrelevant to phenomena.  Form loses meaning, and becomes "empty".  Why? 
because meaning is thought which arises in relationship to the particular 
form.  In Eastern systems this perception of emptiness is called "shunyata".

As a practice in observation, meditation elevates Science to mysticism.
Thus the alleged quip that whenever Science climbs to the top of another 
mountain it always finds a mystic already there, deep in comtemplation.  
You may understand this mystic as a  seeker of truth, who took the tools 
of Science, observation and thought, and introspectively turned them back 
onto themselves, and apparently never needed to return to the "external" 
world again.

Paul Collacchi



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