From our old friend.
The idea of chakras as understood in Eastern philosophy does not exist in medical science. In Eastern thought, the chakras are thought to be levels of consciousness, and states of the soul, and 'proving' the existence of chakras is asking to 'prove' the existence of a soul. A mystic deals with these occult concepts on the occult plane, as a model for their own internal experience, and when talking about 'energy centres', they are generally talking about subtle, spiritual forces, which work on the psyche and spirit, not about physical, electrical, or magnetic fields.
The primary importance and level of existence of chakras is therefore posited to be in the psyche. However, there are those who believe that chakras have a physical manifestation as well. Although there is no evidence that Indian mystics made this association themselves, it is noted by many that there is a marked similarity between the positions and roles described for chakras, and the positions and roles of the glands in the endocrine system, and also by the positions of the nerve ganglia (also known as "plexuses") along the spinal column, opening the possibility that two vastly different systems of conceptualization have been brought to bear to systemize insights about the same phenomenon. By some, chakras are thought of as having their physical manifestation in the body as these glands, and their subjective manifestation as the associated psychological and spiritual experiences.
Indeed, the various hormones secreted by these glands do have a dramatic effect on human psychology, and an imbalance in one can cause a psychological or physical imbalance in a person. Whether these changes in body state have a bearing on spiritual matters is a subject of dissent even among the Indian theorists, and the different systems of conceptualization, Indian and Western, make only a partial convergence in this case.
Perhaps the most psychologically dramatic and potent secretion of these glands is the psychedelic drug DMT (which is thought to be synthesized by the pineal gland, corresponding to the brow chakra).
(btw, I couldn't work out the answer to your life and death Go question.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
You are sentient because of a process - a self-organizing process. When that process dies, because you die, so does sentience. It is unique and individual, confined to one continguous mass of neural connections, and is not transferable - to heaven, to hell, or to any other creature. You can't be me, I'm taken
I see it more like a computer, there is hard- and the software and a programmer - but who is the programmer?
This is a topic refered to in Jyana Yoga, the intellectual yoga which has one of the main questions - WHO AM I? WHO or WHAT IS THINKING THIS? etc.
I certainly agree with sven that the self (the conscious "I" that controls and makes constant decisions) ceases to be at death--and this makes it very unhappy. I think aspects of our current civilisation promote and seek to expand the "I" (the selfish ego?), and I don't think this is a healthy road as this "I", of all things, is the one that is doomed to die.
It thinks of itself as a homunculus, but it isn't that, it is a rapidly connecting something something bicyle cycle home home... Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
How can something that has ceased to be, be unhappy? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
It's PNing of the highest order... You can't be me, I'm taken
Through complexity it comes to see connections in a past-present-future tense system (Fran's left brain model), and so it realises that it will, necessarily cease to exist: die. After death, it won't be there to worry, of course. The dead are calm. Those left behind are the bereaved. But as it lives, this selfish-ego is at times overwhelmed with the idea of not existing anymore at some time in the future. The more society promotes this selfish-ego, the more this unhappiness is spread about.
(Connections here to the potential extinction of humans--the horror!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
However, conscious life may actually have no end as we are not there to be aware of the end of awareness in the first place...
Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
However, conscious life may actually have no end as we are not there to be aware of the end of awareness in the first place... Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up?
Like going to sleep but without the dream--or the waking up?
I don't think consciousness ends at death, but I think "self" consciousness ends at death...
The question then is: what is this consciousness that isn't the self, and who cares about it? Which I would take as a comment by the self about its own extinction. Yet there is a long historical cataloge of humans experiencing states which are, it seems, real but impossible to vocalise in prose.
And From vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.
The brain has always been interpreted by the prevailing technology of the day, whether a telephone exchange earlier or a computer today. (or indeed the 'magic' that was the 'technology', before technology)
Look at anything that grows (including the brain) - it certainly unfolds in a predictable manner, but is there a little man guiding it? Look at a flock of birds whirling round and ask who is the leader? There is none, just as there is no little man.
I'm not against the use of the word soul to describe a particular conjoining of neurons, or any of the other words like chakras. But they are only inadequate words to describe complexity.
And of course one can change this complexity in the brain by manipulating your neural networks - by meditating, studying, experience, exercises etc etc.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the Skene monks of the Russian Orthodox church. They choose this incredible discipline in order to completely cleanse their minds of everything before. They live alone, far away from the monastery. for many years. They have a shelter and a well. That is all. They 'chain themsleves' to the forest to survive. It is the simplest life of all and filled with constant prayer - and I am mean constant.
At the end of this process - which is slowly disconnecting old neural connections (literally), and reconnecting simplicity - the monk is incredibly pure. These are often the monks (so I've been told) that go out into the world to minister to prostitutes, criminals and murderers. They are so pure that they are untouched by anything they see. You can't be me, I'm taken
Part of my work is translating complex ideas into visuals, and I find that rewarding because you cannot create the visual without understanding the concept. It motivates you to do the work of understanding, instead of being lazy. You can't be me, I'm taken
Now, now, you don't take Intelligent Design seriously, do you? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
homunculus |h??m? ng ky?l?s; h?-| noun ( pl. -li |-?l?|or -les |-?l?z|) a very small human or humanoid creature. * historical a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being from which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin, diminutive of homo, homin- `man.'
your opinion brooks no rational argument...
yet....it seems dismissive.
are you so sure of your self-organising sentience, that you can afford to sound so absolutist?
reading your confident assumption, i am tempted to assert that 'donna know nosseeng' might be the prime requisite for enlightenment.
your brain denies your soul, but perhaps it just hasn't found the password.
for such a pooh-pooher, you sure have touched my soul with many of your brilliant comments these last few months!
oddly perhaps, but 'homunculus' seems to describe a little imaginary mannikin, purported to be a homeopathically tiny version of the final product, into which it supposedly swelled.
enchantingly medieval!
but what has it to do with humans being ensouled? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Now if you said the soul was 'aspiration' or 'hope', I might agree on the definition, because those characteristics could be logically seen as related to the survival of life - which I argue is what underpins all our actions in some way.
If you said that 'soul' was 'self', as in self-aware, I would accept that too. What I don't accept is that anything called 'soul' is transferrable beyond the physical limits of a brain (human or otherwise).
And I can't see why a 'soul' is needed for enlightenment or anything else. The brain is a fantastic thing that functions on a myriad levels.
Your use of the 'password' analogy is revealing - it shows you still believe that there is someone controlling everything - the homonculus. YOU control everything. ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
You're thinking of the soul as a thing, then, as opposed to consciousness...which is not a thing, but a process?
I don't think I've quite got your meaning.
(I don't see how you can categorically state that processes of 'understanding'--sentience?--are held within the body...Jung's collective unconscious...
A friend of mine, a pure scientific rationalist, came to the conclusion that we do have a "race memory": he said we had two basic fears: of volcanos and of ice, coz those have always been the two that have wiped us out. I'm digressing wildly.
But Ikernov Nussink.
So, you state categorically that 'consciousness' is the "I", a process created by complexity of a system, and disappears at the death of the complex system...?
(I'm thinking of, was it das monde?, who wrote about the consciousness of the planet.)
(My personal experience is that part of my "I" used to be a chinese town planner back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century...big towns, no cars, elegant structures but nothing showy. Bloody drugs mate, rot yer brain...) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
as for being damned if you don't believe...superstitious poppycock.
you're right about the password analogy, it does sound like i'm trying to get behind a firewall, and need big daddy's permission.
i meant it in a slightly different way.
watching a child teach itself to drag its body to the vertical position and learn to hold their balance is amazing.
the patience and willpower are awesome, and eventually, gradually, balance becomes second nature -until you get old and wobbly again.
forgetting yer password!
damn i used the analogy again...
i hope i didn't sound polemic, i intuit our pov's are neither exclusive, nor do they cancel each other out.
seemingly antagonistic perhaps, they are in reality complementary.
i heard when humans die, they suddenly become a few grams lighter.
not that i need physical proof, mind...
i love subjects like this.
mind over natter....
i suspect the soul will ever resist definition, will never cease to change, and will delight eternally in hiding in plain sight.
attempting to describe the ineffable is the source of all poetry.
if i was in control, i would not have to wait for anything, ever! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Then how are we supposed to carry out a conversation on it? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
what would you like it to mean?
my guess is that every human would have a slightly or greatly differing opinion about that definition.
personally i'm working on the difference between 'spirit' and 'soul', and it's been years....aeons maybe...
i find 'spirit' to be more about the aspirational and devotional, e stretching for expression and refinement, 'soul' more about the unconscious, fertile, magmatic substructures of personality, and the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience.
if having a discussion about these things were only permitted to those who agree on definitions, we risk postulating prejudice instead of encouraging expression.
trying to define things is more fun than not, but these ideas are written in water, not stone.
suppose....lovely word
suppose |s??p?z| verb 1 [with clause ] assume that something is the case on the basis of evidence or probability but without proof or certain knowledge : I suppose I got there about half past eleven. * used to make a reluctant or hesitant admission : I'm quite a good actress, I suppose. * used to introduce a hypothesis and trace or ask about what follows from it : suppose he had been murdered--what then? * [in imperative ] used to introduce a suggestion : suppose we leave this to the police. * (of a theory or argument) assume or require that something is the case as a precondition : the procedure supposes that a will has already been proved | [ trans. ] the theory supposes a predisposition to interpret utterances. * [ trans. ] believe to exist or to possess a specified characteristic : he supposed the girl to be about twelve [as adj. ] ( supposed) often |s??p?zid| | people admire their supposed industriousness. 2 ( be supposed to do something) be required to do something because of the position one is in or an agreement one has made : I'm supposed to be meeting someone at the airport. * [with negative ] be forbidden to do something : I shouldn't have been in the kitchen--I'm not supposed to go in there. PHRASES I suppose so used to express hesitant or reluctant agreement. DERIVATIVES supposable adjective ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French supposer, from Latin supponere (from sub- `from below' + ponere `to place' ), but influenced by Latin suppositus `set under' and Old French poser `to place.'
being able to control-click on a word and look it up in a dictionary in the blink of a dialup eye is like a new toy, sorry! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
What am I supposed to suppose is real? You just give me a word with no meanings attached. What do you mean by "suppose the soul is real"? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
perhaps it's like trying to describe the taste of a banana...yellow?
as you seem interested enough to reply, try skipping the first sentence and going to the second one.
If the soul existed and could be a value-addition to an onsouled life, couòd you care?
*or maybe your life is complete without 'going there', and you possibly think anyone who enjoys soul communion is merely deluded...
maybe there is a surrender needed to understand.
how about this?
critical thinking is crucial in life, all would agree hopefully.
are there times when excessive critical thinking might be an impediment to experience? has this ever been true for you?
perhaps you fell in love with someone your reasonable side urged you to avoid, for example.
or you made an apparently prudent decision, that later you regretted, realising it was fear, not wisdom that drove your choice.
perhaps 'soul' is like phlogiston or ether, handy terminologies till better ones, with more enquiry, arrive and take their place. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
When you say "soul" do you mean this?
The soul ... is a self-aware ethereal substance particular to a unique living being. ... the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sentience. In distinction to spirit which may or may not be eternal, souls are usually ... considered to be immortal and to pre-exist their incarnation in flesh.
[I find] 'soul' more about the unconscious, fertile, magmatic substructures of personality, and the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience
it wouldn't seem like you do. So does 'soul' already have a meaning? I have to admit I have no idea what you mean by "the emotional gestalt we discover sharing numinous experience", among other things because I don't think I have had numinous experiences as in
that which is wholly other. The numinous is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that leads in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent.
because he evinces signs of humour, playfulness and compassion, i suspect he does.
but what do i know, i only play guru on the internet... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
you do manage to extract elliptical ones!
bell that cat ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Damn! I've been outed! Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
It is a black furry animal.
Define black, define furry, define animal.
Does this process regress ad infinitum and take us to that diary you're about to write which I am looking forward to reading?
(Like Nomad, I will take my socks off first ;) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
If the word "soul" refers to something, what does it refer to? If it doesn't, what are we talking about?
If I ask you what a black furry animal is, you can produce one. You can, in fact, produce many different ones, which helps narrow down the essential features of "black furry animal". You can produce white furry animals, black naked animals, and black furry coats.
What is a soul? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I don't know. I don't use the word. My guess is that it doesn't refer to a "thing", nor does it refer to "no thing". It exists in a language game called "spirituality", of which "religion" is a subset.
I don't think producing physical examples acts as a definition. You produce something, I say, "Well, I can see it, but what does the word mean? You point at the object and say, it means that. "But what are you pointing at?" I say. "This!" you say. But what is that thing you are pointing at? What are "black", "furry", "animal" etc? Words to be used in a language game. As is "soul".
The fun is to flip 'em around in the game and see what comes out. I suppose refusing to accept that a word has a meaning is to refuse to play that language game.
Elf. Pixie. Hey, my daughter used to be a pixie and is now an elf. (This happens to be true, but in which language game?)
So, the first thing to say might be "The soul is or is not a physical part of the human body." Then the discussion can be about those missing grams.
If it is not a part of the body, the conversation could be, "So, does the soul survive the death of the body?" etc.
(P.S. I felt the hexagrams 23 and 20 referenced ET. Indeed, without imagination what is a human? Snarfle grap urgh Wittgenstien moments...language used to point to events uncontainable by language...the quote about language being a finger and the object of language being....referent and reference and referee...enjoy yer lunch!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
