Dontaskme wrote:Throng wrote:What do you refer to as 'I'?
I is a thought...it's a thing. That in which things arise is not a thing. Therefore the thing is not really a thing, it's just thinking it is. No thing is doing this.
Each thing is known in the instant it arises one with the knowing which is no thing. These two dynamics of thing and no thing are the same one pretending to be be two.
For more information on this subject, log on to the inner net of net i net i ...NETI NETI ....or go to the other virual information field @ noduality.com
Descartes got it wrong when he said I think. Because I is only a thought., and thoughts can't actually think, they only think they can...which is more thought. Descartes left out one very important aspect of the whole dynamic and that was ''nothingness'' ..and he probably did this for one very good reason, and that being..what can the mind do with nothing
I'm familiar with neti-neti and various non-duality speakers. Descartes process was precisely 'neti-neti': "I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all external things, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity; I will consider myself as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these" (
http://www.wright.edu/~charles.taylor/d ... tion1.html)
He says he will proceed as if all he senses isn't 'real'. That he has no senses at all, which in neti terms would be, I am not the senses.
It's difficult to know what Descartes meant by 'I am a thinking thing', but he said this in his second meditation: "... it must, in fine, be maintained, all things being maturely and carefully considered, that this proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind. (
http://www.wright.edu/~charles.taylor/d ... tion2.html
He arrives at the realisation that he must exist
each time he conceives of it or expresses himself.
The problem I see with your narrative is it implies we don't exist at all. That we do is more obvious than anything. I contend that when people say 'I', they generally are referring to that existent presence to which all their experiences momentarily occur.