Ozfly, loved what you said about surf. What mind state - what type of receptivity - does the surf catalyze? When you are looking at the surf, and you forget you are looking, is there surf and you, or does surf/you only exist after you look and you then look back and think about it. When you are experiencing beauty most deeply, does the perciever/percieved dichotomy collapse in only percieving?
Question: detlof looks to cross-cultural connection and continuity (Oz, your tribal reference), but shouldn't, evolutionarilty speaking, the desire towards music go back further if so engrained? And, if so, what is the Darwinian incentive?
In other words, music is experienced in a passive, receptive mode of mind and body - hardly what evolution would select as a viable behavior for either a predator or prey. Remember, its not just rest that defines being drawn to music (animals sleep to rest), but its leisure in in what one is drawn to. So, what evolutionary mechanism would favor that dynamic? If only instinctual prey/predator (the "hard wired" part) then what selects such an unviable luxury of a being being drawn to music?
But then, remember, what we are drawn to is music, but by another name, more fundamental, it is being drawn to beauty. Is being drawn to beauty hard wired (doesn't seem so from above) or learned? Does this explain why humans listen to music and Bonobo Chimps do not? But...who "teaches" me to look at a sunset and see its beauty? Does anyone ever need to be taught?
If the inertia to be drawn to music/beauty is not instinctual per se, and it is not learned through listening to anothers thoughts on the experience (socialization), then where does it come from? Perhaps, consider this: there is a dynamic to evolution that parallels the Darwinian instincts of the deep mind, and parallels the evolution of thinking, and yet, just now, latent in all forms, is emerging more prominent in homo sapiens, so now we sit here and discuss it? Are we, below developing instincts to hunt and flee, below the developmemnt of advanced thinking, have also always been moving towards a fuller and fuller receptivity to beauty? Beside the arc of Darwinism has there also been an arc towards beauty?
When you look at surf, or sink deeply into the music - immersed in beauty - the mind is silent. In that moment, the mind is absent prey-predator impulse, or thinking, and is open to what is, in this case melody.
Have we been evolving towards the ability to silence the animal mind, the socialized mind, and, in so doing, "see" more beauty, hear more beauty?
The Chimp can't let his mind fade, but you can.
The answer is not in the instinctual past, or in the socialized present, it is in our collective future.
So, why do we all want to listen to our stereos and sink without thought into that beauty?
It is a Taste of who we could be.
Then, in that silent space, where your mind is silent, what are you connected to? Does it have something to do with what 6ch said of the opened heart?
Hmmm. |
Thanks for the laugh, Subaru! Very funny.
Does evolutionarily developed recognition of patterns in sound necessarily lead to (even though it may form the underlying matrix) to the receptivity to beauty that we presently experience. The former (pocreation,prey/predator reactions) all represent an active mind directed at the environment to manipulate some object there. Receptivity to beauty/music, however, is characterized by a "letting go" of the active, analytical, objectifying mind as one sinks deeper. What Darwinistic mechanism would account for such a shift, especially if physical viability is decreased by the latter?
Logically speaking, there are two possibilies:
1. Darwinistic evolution of sound perception is not determinant of music appreciation, and each is a separate dynamic of evolution, or
2. Darwinistic evolution on sound recognition (active) is integral with music appreciation (receptive), and, contrary to being a separate mechanism, is one that forms the devolpment for the latter; active mind is not determitive of receptivity, but forms the ground for its emergence.
My evidence? What I've been saying all along (listening Zaikesman?):
When you first sit down to listen, you listen predominantly with the thinking mind; seeing sound as source-objects, interested in detail and accuracy that bounds those projections from the space around it, your language to describe it dominated by visual terms (predators are visually orientated), seeing the sound as if it were "out there", a la Valin's "statue garden", external to you, in the environment outside, something to manipulate. Then, as you sink deeper you "let go" of this urge to think-the-sound, you move from active to receptive, your mind more sensitive to emotions towards the music in the relief of thoughts being absent (hence, the emotion-based language used to describe this level's experience), with thinking fading the dichtomy between inside/outside collapsing, the music is not out there, but integral with you.
The journey your mind takes every time you sit down for that late Friday night listening session is reflective of the evloutionary journey the collective human mind has taken to...get to the place where you can experience music/beauty as you do.
This is not a coincidence.... |
Greg, you made my brain think hard. Thank you. Some of what you say are things I don't know, but I will try to answer.
Yes, # 2 option above is correct. The evolutionary development of receptivity to beauty has been developing right along side the Darwinian side (active analytic cognition). When you are an amoeba you are completely focused on the exterior with a binary thought pattern that shifts only two ways (light/dark, pery/predator etc.). With modern humans, the influence of the environment on our evolution has lessened with the inverse increase in our power over matter (technology). This, in turn, leads towards a situation where humans are less prey of the environment and have space in their mind opened towards "beauty"; in the lessened instinctual thoughts towards the external a space is opened in which the dynamic arc towards receptivity towards beauty emerges.
My question would then be, when does sound become "harmony"? It only happens in the mind, ie I can't walk out my front door and point to "harmony", so what accounted for that shift in perception? What caused us to see sound as harmony (read: music). I believe my argument against a Darwinistic catalyst above still holds in the comtext of this question. What caused the primordial mind to structure sound into patterns that had meaning, apart from telling him that the leaf moving behind him was a predator? Why did he become suseptible/open/receptive to that "harmonic" meaning?
Yes, we hear music in the matrix of its structure of sound, but the "cosmic rules" that dictate that structure (a whole different discussion on what they are), do not determine meaning.
Structure does not fall from the sky; it is created by the mind. The will towards that creation is prior to the structure that is produced, regardless of a template for structure. What will manifected in us that caused us to structure sound from that focused on sound instinctually, and towards a structure that moved towrds receptivity towards "harmony"? The structure changed, yes, but that was only a symptom of a change in the orientation of the mind towards sound. The will changed. What caused that reorientation, one that had a contrary purpose from Darwinistic-engrained instincts. Didn't it have to be a "cosmic force" not accounted by Darwinism?
What is a force that moves the mind towards meaning, even as that move makes him/her less viable against the environment?
(Hint: Next answer could be that "harmony" lead towrds social cohesion in group, thus having a social Darwinistic cause. I don't agree but its a good argument...)
Detlof: what is the meaning of "harmony"? Or rather, the meaning of its experience? What was/is its purpose? Beauty and an Opening of the Heart? |
Thanks, 6ch. Was asking detlof, but, yes, I would be interested to your answer (can it be in words...?)
OK, I will bite...
Detlof!!
Ozfly, so good start, very smart, where are you? Nothing made you think? |
Oh, let me rub the bottle that is the recepticle of 6ch! I asked him and now he won't tell me, and I just, just...
Answer...
But wait for your response, Gregm. |
Good day 6ch :-)
Detlof!! you cruelly draw me into this thread, knowing I can't possibly stop, and I purposely only came when there was a four day lapse, and only because your question was so good, and only because Ozfly said so good, and....
Rub, rub, rub that bottle... |
Oh, 6ch, I didn't know that you could be a smart alleck too! :0)
You know, 6ch, you'd better be careful, or you might, just might become, become a curmudgeon like me; like waking and looking in the mirror and there, there's a pumpkin on your head.
"awe": Been holding onto that one, one? Where was it being held, being held? Remember what i said about holding onto those /'s and "'s?
HHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.......................
It is funny, though, the awe thing i mean.... :0) |
Ok, I'll go home now...
Smell of the mitt and mowed grass, dragonflies clicking overhead, the smell of the creek, the worn path around the house from playing tag at dusk, the call of my Mother down the block for supper, mitt over the bat over my shoulder as "i" walk home. |
6ch: you always crack me up; you go away for days, then come back with some big explanatory response - to what, I don't know. You imply that you are teaching me, but what statements of mine do you address? You tell me before there are no levels -trying to "teach" me that then - but then here you say that Bodhisattva has a level - you are playing Zen games (with yourself). Besides, where you got the idea that I thought a Bodhisattva was something other than a human (making him/her other-worldly in a "mountain hole", wherever you got that...) is beyond me.
Here's what I think. I think you go off for a couple of days, get a little Zen bliss high, then come back to me as your foil (to be your mirror) so you can see how "enlightened" you are. Do you need to teach me in order to prove to yourself you are "enlightened"?
I disagree with you: all is not mind, that is mind talking. Mind (thinking) arises from Ground (you've seen that haven't you, in minds that you "see"?) of Silence, yet ground is never separate from mind. Jesus could talk (mind) without karma because all instinctual remnants (Tibetan "defilements") had faded from him; he had transcended all prior minds' attachment throughout all evolution (which, yes, is only HERE/NOW). He had moved past amoeba mind by surrendering to it; not surrender as in it "wins" but by accepting it (its an illusion; its "energy" perpetuated by your resistance to it).
I disagree with you that everyone is "Jesus", or rather knows what he knew in his bones, becoming his bones. I know you want to be the Laughing Buddha gadfly, but samsara exists in most people, and so the Buddha told us. Denial of that is samsara itself. Why did Jesus/Buddha talk at all? The Bodhisattva vow says that one will not stay in Nirvana until all sentient beings (not just humans BTW) are saved from suffering, which, of course, means that some/most beings are suffering. Buddhas don't suffer; they have transcended its attachment - that's what makes them "Buddha". You can be there - yes, RIGHT NOW/HERE - but, for all my affection for you, my friend, you are not there, and that needs to be clearly said. Glad you are enjoying the bliss of your peak exprerience, though. As I said, try to cut back on the Zen books a bit...
Ozfly: thank you for your lucid response. And for more surf.
Yes, primordial patterns of sound exist in us, its not just from culture (although that's where Jung saw it). Like Kant's space/time matrix, or Chomsky's language template, a template for pattern recognition exists (bewteen those two BTW). My point, however, was that the evolutionary forces that "created" this patterning lens in the mind's perception was one that strongly selected an active patterning of sound, yet when we listen to music we are not just actively listening to sound (a twig moving) but the opposite: letting that active orientation go. The forces of survival that lead to active patterning would not seem to be the forces that would lead to the "letting go" of an attachment to that patterning.
Loved what you said though. |
I'm not sure, detlof, who you were talking about when you said there was too much talking :0). Yes, there was, but I get tired of every time something gets a little more complicated, digging for a shiny thing with fingernails bare, someone jumps out from the bushes with some Zen garble or "Jesus in their pocket" (...love that one!). I apologize if I offended you (assuming that I did because you have yet to respond to my above inquiries, which I think have "some" merit). Basically, hadn't heard from you, thread went dead for 4 days, only Oz replying, so didn't think you'd mind a "stir of words". Did you want "prettier" words, words like water, words that feel like the music you long for? Ones where you could more easily intuit the Search, or that it is still there?
Back to thinking:
So, if music is found in silence, then how could we talk about it in words at all? Are words always a "harsh clamor" upon an experience of the Truth/Music/Beauty? Are we left with poetry, or poetics, or poetic-sounding words?
Music does not just happen in silence, although deeper meanings can be found there. Music is found both in the silence and the notes which arise from that ground; Truth is found both in the Silence and the thought-notes which arise from that ground; "beauty" is found in them both and in all things and thoughts because all things and thoughts, and notes, arise from that Silence. Yet, by saying "silent" I create not-silence. In doing so, is the world split asunder, me from It?
Do not make the Silence "grave" as if it is holy and only holy, somehow apart from the notes and words. It is not the holy Other. That is what St. Augustine told you so he could sell more seats (bless his soul...).
Words carry "propulsion" and move minds; notes carry "propulsion" and move minds.
The notes are not separate from the Music; the Music is not "grave" and the notes not. That is its own subtle split. Neanderthal saw the sky and made it the Other sky, a "grave" force to be appeased with fire and hearts (and which BTW lead to some engrained archetrypal lens...do you see that lens?)
Truth is found in the notes and the Silence.
Truth is found where you look for it.
The world is oscillating (can you feel it, the notes chaotic as post modern predator mind finds his mirror in medieval predator mind, the meekest minds of animals withering...?) and human minds that are so moved - see the black vault of descending sky - want to hear the poetics of the silence, as their last sauve, so tired from the nihilism, from the words, from what yawns, so I leave them to that, heads down.
A break from audiogon "thinking" is on order.
Did you hear that? A leaf fell, damp ground, the wind.
Adieu, my friends |
Oz, maybe I misunderstood detlof myself, because I agree with everything you just said, which, I thought, was what I just said!! Oh well...
I read detlof's comment, "silence, where music happens" to mean that music, impliedly, does not occur where silence is absent, namely, when notes are going on (or words). In conjuction with his negative take on "talking", this seemed to be a reasonable interpretation. Maybe I didn't get it, though (wouldn't be the first time...)
Maybe what he was saying was that the "way" we were using words was "enslaving" the Truth (the analogy: discordant notes getting in the way of falling into the beauty of Music).
OK, I can get that, but here's something interesting...
I'm always rattling on about solid state, saying it has distortive aspects that keep you from falling into the music. Now, if detlof was saying the same thing about how we were talking - our distortive "Jesus in pocket" talk was getting in the way of talking about the Silence - then that means that while I've been decrying SS distorions in components I've actually been creating more here on threads!!
Seemingly ironic, until you consider....
This thread was DEAD. Yes, Oz had said some beautiful things about the surf and patterns, but notwithstanding detlof's many questions, the responses went dead for four days - usually terminal on a subject like this. So, unless detlof meant his questions to be answered in the silence he talks of - highly doubtful given the number of probing questions posed - that means that the recent allegedly discordant words have actually been catalyzing dialogue. Because, if I'm not mistaken...
detlof is back, Oz is here, 6ch is happy and behaving himself, Gregm has just said some penetrating words, and
we are together, again, talking about the music that we love (and love to share the thought-words on)and the thread is going on, like the notes of Music...
So, effectively, were the words "discordant"? As we are apt to say, isn't the proof in the pudding (or, listening?)
Hmmmm. |
I really must get back to the silence for awhile, but let me seek return back to detlof (now that we are all here...)
What is the purpose of music?
We've had some interesting discussions above about where it might have originated as far as patterning in our cultural/primordial past, but, here, in our present, why are we drawn to music and not just sound?
What is "in" music that causes us to feel that it is a meaningful activity? Is it just because it makes me calm - its own sort of pleasure (absense of thinking pain) - or is there something else that is happening? Just an emotional tonic?
If our listening is more than just listening to sound patterns - that we derive meaning from the experience - then what is that meaning?
Why does it happen at all?
What is the purpose of Music?
Detlof asked many questions, but before we can answer some of the others, maybe we need to answer his question: "What is music and what does it do to us?"
Be well. |
|
Music, to soothe the savage beast.
What is the beast?
When the beast is gone, the white dove flies skyward in silence, a halo of Light all around.
What is the purpose of Music?
What did you feel when you just read what detlof wrote, what bach wrote - both in words/notes - now into your mind...
Maybe the question is not what music brings "in", but once there, in our minds, what leaves?
If so, when that leaves, what remains? |
Policemen with anonymity, without badges... |
The ear is a physical interface between the external and the internal; the internal mind "interprets", not the ear. So, what does it "interpret" and what is the nature of that process? Just because what is interpreted is physical/material (sound wave) doesn't mean that that nature determines the interpretation. Those attached to materialism believe this and default to that, er, interpretation; namely, that the material is first in time in the process and therefore determitive of the result of that process in the mind.
So, what is the process/nature of interpretation? I'm not sure Ohn if you meant to say this ("take music to the level of thought only"), but the mind does not percieve only through thinking; that is another Cartesian/materialist bias that keeps us from looking at what might be the nature of our trans-thinking ways of percieving.
The place in the mind where we percieve trans-thinking is absent thinking. And, since language is based on thinking, its very hard to talk about it - but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The nature of that space is open-ness and receptivity to that which is external; the process is a movement from thinking about sound to experiencing music; the way we describe it is to talk about its effects in ourselves and to share that experience.
You like the initial effects of single malt (a dram or two) because it makes the thinking mind "let go" of its thinking (the calm feeling). Its not a coincidence that we sometimes combine it with music listening. We turn of the lights for the same reason during listening; because it detaches the visual and the thinking mind is very visually orientated (having to do with our evolutionary predator past)
The "soul" is open to interpretation, but not by mechanical means because those means (technology) are a product of thinking and the experience of one's sole is beyond thinking's ability to encompass it (since thinking arises from it, this would even make logical sense; like the man who goes out his front door to see if he's at home...).
Love to hear you talk about it though, Oz. You too, ohn.
If music is "soul satisfying" then what is it satisfying?
|
Accident? Why so afraid? Its Christmas, snow on the trees, collective memories of why we are here arising, if you let them, into our minds, why such fear? From words? Isn't music we listen to related to Music we are talking about?
6ch/6chac/six channel comes out to say "I!", in a lull, when it robs no one of their voice, and you still have your finger on the channel changer; the accident is only his, to choose. Citing it and you crawl into the car with him. Altruism?
Let them. Let what? 6ch? No, the memories...
Unsound, if you want to return to the music, a question for you.
We have said that the brain changes with the perceptions it experiences. Since not all experience is derived by thinking - notwithstanding what those Cartesian minds attached to the power of cognition would like to tell themselves - and since I listen to music, or watch the waves, I am experiencing reality also, then what brain/mind is formed by the experience of music?
If we can say what next "you" is being formed by the music - or rather, not BY it, but through your participatory, integral relationship to that external experience - then aren't we closer to saying what the purpose of it is in our lives? When we look at beauty, what next "me" am I chossing to form?
Last, how is that "me", or rather, my orientation to reality that allows the event of my beauty apprhension to occur (ie some deny it exists...) related to the beauty of the collective memory I talked about above? Simply put, are the abilities to percieve music-beauty and compassion-beauty related?
Aren't they both percieved through open-ness; through receptivity to what is; through a forgetting of the "I" in the moment of rceognition?
Perhaps, Unsound, what you have been hearing are not as unrelated as you think. But, were you listening, open, receptive? |
Ohn: thank you for your wondeful response. Next I would say, what is the nature of those patterns constructed in the mind? A materialist will default to purely a quantitative orienation to this question and will say that you put the patterns together like counting sticks, or placing blocks on top of one another; the interpretation of patterns is didactic, linear and, accordingly, is seen as a SUMMING of patterns. This mind sees music in the mind as equal to a sum of patterns (hence, no coincidence that materialists are also invariably mathematically orientated).
But a question: are patterns in the mind summed? Is the recognition and receptivity to the beauty of music synonomous with a summing of patterns? Just because the ears sums sound patterns, does this mean, necessarily, that the way those patterns are conjoined in the mind must also be linear? (this is my point above about the mode of the mechanism dictating the process of interpretation).
Two points.
If we look at Chaos/Turbulence theory, we see that order - or rather, what our mind interprets as "order" - arises out of chaos. Or another way, the creative formation that we recognize arises from a formation that we characterize as un-formed (evolutionarliy speaking, we use objectification to order things with our minds, so we instinctively label what is not-order as Chaos). Importantly, this arisement is characterized as one that, in a fractal mathematical sense, arises from non-linear to linear.
Applied to listening of our stereos, can we perhaps say that the recognition of creativity in patterns is not simply a linear summing, but is perhaps characterized by both linear and non-linear recognition. In other words, perhaps could we say that at deep listening levels where thought is relatively absent we experience the patterns in a non-linear way, and when we first sit down to listen, and when our cognition is more pronounced, we listen in a linear way consonant with that faculty.
If we are experiencing the music as a summing of patterns when we first sit down, does this mean that that mode of perception must continue? If thought is absent at deeop levels, and summing is a linear process wholly characteristic of thinking, then what type of percieving happens when we are not thinking, yet still perceiving the music?
Could, perhaps, the deep listening mind be percieving music from that level in a way that is different from the thinking mind's way of listening, particularly if the non-linear aspect of creative arisement is recognized?
At surface levels, the mind is linear, looking out at reality and objectifying what it sees. In this mode it sees linear relationships between these objects and its main mode of assimilation is summing experience. At trans-thinking levels, the mind merges patterns into currents and these currents, the meaning they impart/that we percieve, is greater that the sum of their parts. |
Ohn: thank you for the article.
Active/receptive perception - the moment of interpretation - is not the same as memory engrainment, or the storing of the interpretive impression of that moment. I have no doubt that memory data is stored in nueral pathways/centers etc in a material sense, but again, this material condition subsequent is not necessarily determinitive of the process of original discernment. In other words, because memory is found in matter does not mean necessarily that matter causes the original creative thought.
Most new evidence shows, and the pattern of dicovery is quite revealing, that thought produces movement of nueronal cells. Its being called neuroplasticity. Prior to 1989 or thereabouts, scientists maintained the old idea that the brain never changed, which of course fit nicely with their assumption that brain matter determines thought (ie only the material exists as assumption). This, of course, becomes interesting because the causal sequence of matter-to-thought maintained by science is being eroded in favor of a modified model where consciousness is primary to brain matter. This model would also be consistent with the memory being subsequent and easily located in matter.
Of course, if you only want to watch billiard balls bounce off each other to discern truth - even denying the mind's existence, the same mind that came up with your scientific method, because, underneath it all, you are so attached to the power of that same mind over matter - then you are not too crazy about hearing that interpretive consciousness is casually primary to matter. Because, it means that the mind that science has tried so hard for two hundred years to discount is, even by their emerging measures, existant and primary.
The question then becomes, what is forming in brain matter when you are percieving but not thinking. What mind do you form in deeply listening to music?
Hmmmm. Karmic overtones from the dicoveries of science. Geez, that science ended up proving the mind, implying that you reap the brain matter that your perceptions sow, do you think that's a coincidence?
BIG Hmmmm....
Yes, I can hear the minds of materialsts everywhere scampering as we speak, saying that if a monkey writes to infinity he's bound to write a poem, stretching their probablistic assumptions to a tight thread, nearly breaking in their effort TO STAY WHERE THEY ARE.
But here's a BIG question: if thought arisement engrains brain matter, and matter is responsive to thought in that regard, then what is engrained in the mind that denies the mind and says only matter exists? Isn't the attachment to staying where you are an implicit denial of what you might become; a denial of future possibilities?
A man said, "Argue for your limitations and sure enough they are yours..."
You create your world, and the limits of it, and what you will see; you choose how deeply you want to listen to the Music. Of course, you may have to "take a step into the dark (the chaos you precieve)" [Saint John of the Cross]
But, perhaps, the dark-ness is only the limits of possibilities that you have already chosen... |
Ohn: when I said "you" or "your" I didn't mean you personally; just a foil, of which i thank you in advance for your indulgence. |
6ch: is the flag moving, or the mind watching it?
If neither, what is move-ing?
If both, what is move-ing?
How many paths are there up the mountain?
If infinite, what is one's point of reference to say "path"? Where is the center?
The Zen you have on the top of the moutain is the Zen you brought up. If you are attached to the "top", or "thought" or "matter", however, sometimes you don't see this...
If don't see this, what are "you" seeing?
If see this, what are you *seeing*?
The wild geese do not intend to cast
their reflection
The water has no mind to receive their images. |
Hi detlof.
I've never read Jaynes. What does he say?
Agree is fine, hello, but order arises from chaos. Stir pot, then, is good too. I didn't make the "rules"...
Hope you are well.
Mark |
"6ch" says:
"Don't call me!"
"I really don't want...!"
"Don't you see my point!"
"Do the math!"
"You are off-center!"
"Stop calling me blind!"
"If you don't call me 6chac - this sound that "I" like, that is "me" - then I'll start calling you As_!" My "you" will call "you"!!!!!
I, I, I, YOU, YOU, YOU!!!!!!!
6ch/6chac (the "I" who wants the "ac"), didn't the deep-you see, I wasn't talking to "you"?
But look who answered...
Oh yes, 6, nearly forgot.
I call you "six channel home theatre"!!!
(the CRACK of bamboo across the back)
You can call me As_ if "you" like....
(Hmmm....)
Prescription? Take two "I" pills and call me in the morning. |
Thank you ozfly, your thoughts too.
On "formed", I was actually talking about the actual matter of our brains conforming to the stimulus of our thoughts, not psychological forming (which are, of course, related, see below).
We had talked about the newer discoveries in neuro-physiology and how we are now finding that neuronal cells move in response to signal. The trend seems clearly to be towards a model that posits consciousness as primary to matter. I took this, and asked, if so, and matter "forming" follows creative thought, then what is being created - what brain matter is forming - when I listen to music.
Granted, its easy to get confused, especially when I say "brain/mind" at the same time. When one discusses the brain/mind interface, which I have only alluded to so far, things become much more complex. Because, while we might say that listening to music moves networks of cells in response (I argued for the proposition above that at deep listening levels apprehension occurs in a non-linear mode; or, a perception that can interpret non-linear perceptive data), that doesn't necessarily mean that the brain's control is wholly divorced from the function and forming.
This is a very difficult issue. I know the answer, I'm writing about it right now, and it has to do with levels of consciousness. In higher aware individuals (transpersonal stages of development) the matter of the brain has less influence on thought construction (ie. instincts engrained and originating from more ancient parts of the brain have less power over thought). But in lower levels of awareness -where, not coincidentally, the mind is attached to matter/form to a determitive degree - the matter of the brain, its habitually furrowed pathways, are more influential on the formation of the next mind. Its a sliding, progressive dynamic relationship between attachment to matter that enslaves you to the matter dominance of brain matter and the transcending of the mind's attachmnet to form and a consequent reflection of that movement in worldview in the shift in formation emphasis from matter to consciousness as primary. In Neanderthal, the inner brain matter predominates in formation of thought and, hence, in continued formation of nueronal movement (signal tends to stay in the same ruts, so to speak); in Jesus, who has transcended attachment to matter (and, consequently, to objectify other minds/souls into the "other"), the brain matter has no control on thought formation.
Each time you open yourself to beauty you form the next "brain" that then can move closer to the point where mind forms matter and matter is less dominant. There are better ways to do it faster (music listening opens the "I" self to beauty through a forgetting of it in the receptive experience, but, unlike so-called mindfulness meditation, it does not observe the forming of the "I" as one thinks and, therefore, does not as actively dissolve it), and in the way you live with the world (the world is the teacher), but any form of opening to beauty moves you closer. Those who deny the possibility that "beauty" exists as a mind state, are, again not coincidentally, the same minds that say only brain matter determines thought.
Anyway... |
Unsound: Are you sure that the premise is unknowable? I guess I don't know what you mean by "too many personal variables" Please help me.
Personality, the source of "personal variables," is constructed by the thinking part of the mind from an idea of the self. What I am asking is, if science shows that thoughts create neural pathway engrainment within the brain, then what engrainment occurs when we are in a not-thinking mode of perception, as characterized, but not limited to, music listening at deep levels?
On "serotonin": the substance is still matter. Matter effects matter, that's what we've been staring at for three hundred years. My point, that mind is a causal agent TOWARDS matter, is a much more radical departure, that I don't believe your serotonin anology is relevant to.
On "surreality":All perception of the surreal is already in reality; no experience escapes reality, so you will have to help me understand how you mean this, analogously, metaphorically, illustratively, etc.
On "choosing": as ommission is action, so you choose to let go of your attachment to thought, which is, below that, an attachment to the thinking mind's power over form/matter.
The compassion-beauty I was talking about is never ugly.
If you proceed from the premise that all mind's ability to interpret "beauty" is equal, or truth, and so resort to a radically relativist stance to say that there are too many variables, or that each interpretation is equally valid, then we will have to agree to disagree. (Although I would point out the relativist position is self-contradictory because it is itself an opinion that claims the truth, even while it denies it for others through its argument of relativism).
The more I look at what you've written, and with no disrespect meant, I think I might not know exactly what you are saying...
Maybe help me a little. |
Ozfly: thank you for your beautiful response. Yes, that, in words, is as close as we can get. But, we did get there didn't we (Unsound, do you think that was an "accident"; that my purpose was to satiate my inquiry? It was never about "touches"...). Interestingly, Ozfly, we got there, in the essence of your response, its meaning, only when you responded that we were being circular. I wonder how that happened? Hmm. (Although detlof said something beautiful back there somewhere...)
Unsound, the reason we keep talking around each other - even though, beneath that and tying us together is the journey we agree on - is because we define consciousness and its capacities differently. You say, you can not think about a place absent thinking - which is true - but then go on to assume that because your thinking can't see itself that you can't know anything about its absense. The underlying assumption of this is that only thinking derives truth about non-thinking spaces of the mind. This, essentially, reduces all trans-thinking perceptions into a category of unknowable (hence, my original question asking you if you were sure it was unknowable).
You ask, how can we derive truth about non-thinking spaces, and my answer is, by watching them. The thinking mind says this is not possible because it tells you that there is nothing left to see or to be the seer, but, again, this is a bias of the thinking mind (cognition is objectifying; any space absent objects is categorized as a nothingness, then, as non-existent).
In fact, you can watch your own thoughts, and even discern eventually their arisement in the mind. Yes, you can not "see" this silent watcher with thoughts, but it does exist. Of course, like any searcher for the truth, one must engage the injunctive to prove or disprove its existence. With thought discernment, we can share that knowledge with each other through thought-based language, but the knowledge that is derived by the silent witness to your own thought processing can only be done, that experiment upon your own mind, by yourself. The "what is" has it rigged that way. You experience the truth of the silent space by be-ing it...The beauty of compassion that I talked of is found there.
Which is why I always come back to trans-cognitive levels of perceiving music as a valid perception; because it allows a discussion of these levels in general; music is my foil.
Interestingly, the thinking mind of many can experience the "letting go" of cognitive impulse and the consequent experience of trans-cogitive perception listening to music, but then, when we come to dicussing it, that same thinking mind denies a place beyond itself where truth (especially of itself) can be discerned.
This is, of course, a logical incongruency. |
See you next time, Unsound. Thank you for taking the time to listen and respond. |
