You have no image of yourself.

[Belinda]

Ihoardpoetry wrote:

Though I don't think the comparison between Sartrean conceptions of freedom and the fall necessarily fit. In fact, I'd say minimally so because Sartrean conceptions of freedom begin from an atheistic premise: that objects, which have a predetermined functionality - i.e. a knife has a predetermined essence, there is essential properties about it, as it has been designed. Meanwhile, humans lack this: "existence precedes essence" for persons, as there is no designer who created us.

I hold that objects that are very fit for purpose are designed by 1. humans e.g. good knives 2. natural selection and natural physical processes: for design to be the case there is no need to posit a Designer except for human artefacts which are designed by human designers. I suppose that most people think of God in the story of The Garden and the Fall as the big final cause. I prefer to think of God in the story not as final cause but as necessity or determinism. And the latter interpretation is why I can think of Adam and Eve as fallen into freedom and Angst.

I like your comment that Krishna was trying to tempt Arjuna to be inauthentic. I suppose that Sartrean authenticity is very Western. I bet Sartrean authenticity was first invented by Martin Luther

[Belinda]

dontaskme wrote:

As for being rich..in the story of I exist as a separate being...we somehow have to earn a living and pay our way using money...nothing wrong with how we choose to make our livings....and it is no business of any one else but our own.

.

Silly! Modern slavers , drug traffickers, burglars, earn their livings in ways that we all must condemn.
You need to think before you write. You understand new age idealism and it's a pity you are so undisciplined.Are you too lazy to study in a disciplined way, or what?

Supposing I became a master at being diciplined ...then what?

Would that mean I would be finally fulfilled or something....?

And what does it matter how people choose to earn a living....why condemn it....if there are no eternal moral values...surely we can just do what the heck we like...since we are free to make up our own minds about how we want to spend our temporal life experience ...

If you were to study in a disciplined way preferably supervised and led by a qualified tutor you would understand not only your version of idealism but also other theories of existence. Then you would have a wider choice, more freedom of choice.

[SpheresOfBalance]

And yet you are, but you do not need an image of yourself to BE...BEING is without doubt or error....and because there is here ''Pure Awareness Beingness'' already... is why you are able to create an imagined/illusory image out of yourself.

You have never seen your original face...All attempts to seek and find it is futile. It is like trying to see a mirror without your image. Every time you try to see the Pure Awareness you get trapped into mind the one reflecting back at you and you lose the purpose...

Q: What is the SELF?

A: Pure Awareness, the mirror that reflects everything except itself.

When there is identification with the face in the mirror to be who you are, this obstructs the real you which is the one looking at the face in the mirror.

What you are is going live right here now one without a second...as one unitary movement ..YOU are not a recording. The recording of you is memory past..it's not the pure aliveness of now. This moment is ever pure and fresh not-knowing not happening eternal NOW.

The other you,IS the illusory mirror image aka the known recording. You are watching the recording but you are not the recording... you are always the not-happening prior to the happening.

Trying to take a snap-shot of your original face cannot be done, you are already DONE.

YOU are the faceless mirror...identification with the image of you, will cause you to fail in seeing your original face, which is faceless...believing the image in the mirror to be your real face is like trying to take a picture of a face in the mirror ..you can't because the camera gets in the way...you are the camera, and the photograph is your image, the image of the imageless.

Seeing that you are the seer that cannot be seen is real seeing....that's who you are.

.

.

I have many images of myself, they're called photographs! They duplicate an exact copy of what the sense of sight reveals. It's all about light (electromagnetic energy) being reflected off any particular surface, where that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is reflected, know by humans as visible light, is due to the particulars of the particular surface in question.

[Dontaskme]

If you were to study in a disciplined way preferably supervised and led by a qualified tutor you would understand not only your version of idealism but also other theories of existence. Then you would have a wider choice, more freedom of choice.

What you mean like I would go to a teacher of discipline to listen to someone else talk to me about what I already know?

More freedom of choice for what exactly? ...what more could I possibly want other than the gift that is life itself...you really are not making any sense to me at all, in fact you are like most humans, totally hard to understand and full of intellectual garbage that has no significance or relevance to anything whatsoever in the grand scheme of things.

I'm already free, have been free all my life.

I'm here to express that freedom to be...in words.

You don't have to read my words or even like what they say.

Albeit dream words, dream ideas, dream everything....so be it.

The proof is in the pudding.

Taste and smell your own BS.

.

[Dontaskme]

I have many images of myself, they're called photographs! They duplicate an exact copy of what the sense of sight reveals. It's all about light (electromagnetic energy) being reflected off any particular surface, where that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is reflected, know by humans as visible light, is due to the particulars of the particular surface in question.

There is only invisible light reflecting itself as shadow through colour seen, a phantom light and sound show...a mirror image copy of the original that can never be seen for one very good reason...There is no Self...only the imagined belief in one.

All words are pure fictional concepts that have no substance or reality whatsoever.

How do I know this? ..I don't, it's all made up out of no thing...in the same way the information in your response has all been made-up.

It's a self sustaining feedback loop...the idea comes, from nowhere to be seen...and then it is recorded by the brain and projected as symbols and images...then what happens is an entity appears as if by magic out of the image identifying itself as being the image, which is actually empty to the core. The entity was just a dream image believed to be real.


There is absolutely no one here - no entity at all. It's all a dream dreamt by no one. And while the dream is believed to be real, the story will continue, and it's a wonderful story as long as we are believing in it...we are literally creating ourselves out of nothing.

And out of the nothing we can pretend to be anything we want and make up all sorts of ideas about this and that, just like any author does when writing a novel or making a movie...the possibilities are endless for this movie/story.

But the thing to remember is ...no thing is doing any of it.

Where would an entity have come from?

When do I end and you begin? ..that's what we need to focus on very carefully and deeply...where does reality begin and end?

It doesn't and never did, and never will.


.

[ihoardpoetry]

Ihoardpoetry wrote:

Though I don't think the comparison between Sartrean conceptions of freedom and the fall necessarily fit. In fact, I'd say minimally so because Sartrean conceptions of freedom begin from an atheistic premise: that objects, which have a predetermined functionality - i.e. a knife has a predetermined essence, there is essential properties about it, as it has been designed. Meanwhile, humans lack this: "existence precedes essence" for persons, as there is no designer who created us.

I hold that objects that are very fit for purpose are designed by 1. humans e.g. good knives 2. natural selection and natural physical processes: for design to be the case there is no need to posit a Designer except for human artefacts which are designed by human designers. I suppose that most people think of God in the story of The Garden and the Fall as the big final cause. I prefer to think of God in the story not as final cause but as necessity or determinism. And the latter interpretation is why I can think of Adam and Eve as fallen into freedom and Angst.

I like your comment that Krishna was trying to tempt Arjuna to be inauthentic. I suppose that Sartrean authenticity is very Western. I bet Sartrean authenticity was first invented by Martin Luther

I'm unsure what Sartre would have to say on the theory of natural selection/evolution since that would seem to posit an overarching 'human nature', something he vehemently opposed. He was entirely against the idea of design in humanity, so I would estimate a Sartrean response would centre around consciousness and how this is what means we are without essence/design (though, if there is some scientific theory which can explain how consciousness was an adaptive behaviour through natural selection, this would fall short as an explanation).

In the case of natural physical processes, however, there is a fair few quotes from Being & Nothingness where Sartre discusses the way that we can 'step outside of the causal order'. In that, again, I think he is referring to the conscious ability to always reject what we are presented with. Though we might exist within this orderly, physical world (although modern physics suggests it is not orderly at all, but chaotic) we are not at all confined or restricted by it.

That's interesting. I've not seen the Fall interpreted in that way before, I'd definitely love to hear more. Though, again, if we're referencing the Fall and natural selection, it seems a bit contradictory. Unless, of course, we're seeing the Fall as a purely symbolic narrative.

Yeah, definitely very Western. Though, it falls into the Continental branch of philosophy (the labelling of the traditional West like England and the U.S.A towards European philosophy, like Sartre, who is French), which contrasts against the most Western philosophy - Analytic. Though, both are definitely very Western-centric - amongst analytic and contintental universities or academic spheres alike, discussion of philosophies from places like Asia or Africa are limited, if there at all.

I would be interested whether Martin Luther discussed some form of Sartrean authenticity. I'm tempted to look it up.

[Dontaskme]

I tried to read Sartre's ''Being and Nothingness'' book...it was a present to me from my Brother.

Had to put it down, since I found it to be too deep, in fact I couldn't make head nor tail of what he was talking about, no matter how many times I tried to.

.

[ihoardpoetry]

I tried to read Sartre's ''Being and Nothingness'' book...it was a present to me from my Brother.

Had to put it down, since I found it to be too deep, in fact I couldn't make head nor tail of what he was talking about, no matter how many times I tried to.

.

Admittedly, I haven't read it all - time doesn't permit me such a luxury, and I imagine I'd find it much harder to write a concise essay consisting of only 1,500 words if I'd read the whole thing, but I intend to read it over the summer.

It is definitely a tough read - I deconstruct each and every sentence as I'm going along. I've found myself enjoying his style the more I read, and definitely, the more I read the easier I find it. A lot of Sartre, I think, is interpretative, however. My partner and I are both studying the same module for our degree, and though we have both been in the same lectures, seminars, and read the same extracts, our interpretations and essays are so wildly differently - it's definitely very interesting!

If you are interested in Being & Nothingness and understanding it a little more, I would recommend McCulloch, Levy & Cox, all three wrote books providing secondary literature and guides to B&N. McCulloch's Using Sartre is especially helpful if you're finding it a little bit difficult.

It's funny, actually. I'm attempting to write an essay on B&N for my module at the minute, though I find myself procrastinating by coming on here to discuss it instead. Academic procrastinating is almost productive, right...?

[Dontaskme]

I tried to read Sartre's ''Being and Nothingness'' book...it was a present to me from my Brother.

Had to put it down, since I found it to be too deep, in fact I couldn't make head nor tail of what he was talking about, no matter how many times I tried to.

.

Admittedly, I haven't read it all - time doesn't permit me such a luxury, and I imagine I'd find it much harder to write a concise essay consisting of only 1,500 words if I'd read the whole thing, but I intend to read it over the summer.

It is definitely a tough read - I deconstruct each and every sentence as I'm going along. I've found myself enjoying his style the more I read, and definitely, the more I read the easier I find it. A lot of Sartre, I think, is interpretative, however. My partner and I are both studying the same module for our degree, and though we have both been in the same lectures, seminars, and read the same extracts, our interpretations and essays are so wildly differently - it's definitely very interesting!

If you are interested in Being & Nothingness and understanding it a little more, I would recommend McCulloch, Levy & Cox, all three wrote books providing secondary literature and guides to B&N. McCulloch's Using Sartre is especially helpful if you're finding it a little bit difficult.

It's funny, actually. I'm attempting to write an essay on B&N for my module at the minute, though I find myself procrastinating by coming on here to discuss it instead. Academic procrastinating is almost productive, right...?

Yeah, I hear you, and I agree...

It's funny actually, I can't get my head around how he puts his ideas into words, but I know I do know the gist of what he writes ..and that's why I can't let go of the book, normally, I'd give a book away after I've read it...but this one I seem to want to keep...I do pick it up now and again to give it another try...but it's so long winded really, there is a lot to take in.

.

Academic procrastinating is almost productive, right...? ..you bet...pondering what we already know deep within us is just as productive.

[SpheresOfBalance]

I have many images of myself, they're called photographs! They duplicate an exact copy of what the sense of sight reveals. It's all about light (electromagnetic energy) being reflected off any particular surface, where that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is reflected, know by humans as visible light, is due to the particulars of the particular surface in question.

There is only invisible light reflecting itself as shadow through colour seen, a phantom light and sound show...a mirror image copy of the original that can never be seen for one very good reason...There is no Self...only the imagined belief in one.

All words are pure fictional concepts that have no substance or reality whatsoever.

How do I know this? ..I don't, it's all made up out of no thing...in the same way the information in your response has all been made-up.

It's a self sustaining feedback loop...the idea comes, from nowhere to be seen...and then it is recorded by the brain and projected as symbols and images...then what happens is an entity appears as if by magic out of the image identifying itself as being the image, which is actually empty to the core. The entity was just a dream image believed to be real.


There is absolutely no one here - no entity at all. It's all a dream dreamt by no one. And while the dream is believed to be real, the story will continue, and it's a wonderful story as long as we are believing in it...we are literally creating ourselves out of nothing.

And out of the nothing we can pretend to be anything we want and make up all sorts of ideas about this and that, just like any author does when writing a novel or making a movie...the possibilities are endless for this movie/story.

But the thing to remember is ...no thing is doing any of it.

Where would an entity have come from?

When do I end and you begin? ..that's what we need to focus on very carefully and deeply...where does reality begin and end?

It doesn't and never did, and never will.


.

Or so you say!