Living Reality

[Montane]

Are you trying to get into distinction of matter?

Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.

[Obbe]

Are you trying to get into distinction of matter?

Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.

Something like that.  Say some dust is blowing in the wind.  It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is.  It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life?  A man might walk around and talk and make decisions.  But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?

The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source?  The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms,  but it's still all the same stuff.  Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust.   We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.

[Lanny]

Something like that.  Say some dust is blowing in the wind.  It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is.  It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life?  A man might walk around and talk and make decisions.  But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?

The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source?  The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms,  but it's still all the same stuff.  Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust.   We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.

Very pretty and all but useless beyond being amusing or maybe motivational. You're not telling us anything interesting, everyone who's been through elementary school understands enough to know the standard origins model is based on a common source of matter and energy and needs not extend beyond materialism.

[Obbe]

Very pretty and all but useless beyond being amusing or maybe motivational. You're not telling us anything interesting, everyone who's been through elementary school understands enough to know the standard origins model is based on a common source of matter and energy and needs not extend beyond materialism.

I have nothing to sell. I'm an entertainer. That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music. He doesn’t want to convert you to anything. He doesn’t want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's. And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or a violinist with his violin. I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy.

The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe.

Just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own. Furthermore, every organism is a process: thus the organism is not other than its actions. To put it clumsily: it is what it does. More precisely, the organism, including its behavior, is a process which is to be understood only in relation to the larger and longer process of its environment. For what we mean by "understanding" or "comprehension" is seeing how parts fit into a whole, and then realizing that they don't compose the whole, as one assembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness, which has no separate parts. Parts are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at the world through a net which seems to chop it up into bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.

We define (and so come to feel) the individual in the light of our narrowed "spotlight" consciousness which largely ignores the field or environment in which he is found. "Individual" is the Latin form of the Greek "atom"—that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person's head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment. This implies that the only true atom is the universe—that total system of interdependent "thing-events" which can be separated from each other only in name. For the human individual is not built as a car is built. He does not come into being by assembling parts, by screwing a head on to a neck, by wiring a brain to a set of lungs, or by welding veins to a heart. Head, neck, heart, lungs, brain, veins, muscles, and glands are separate names but not separate events, and these events grow into being simultaneously and interdependently. In precisely the same way, the individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is—rather literally—to be spellbound.

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected—and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo—the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use—which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing—for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury.

[RisiR]

I'll just post this here. I guess it's relevant and on topic. Probably....

Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died--in his thirties--of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy.

[Obbe]

I'll just post this here. I guess it's relevant and on topic. Probably....

Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died--in his thirties--of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy.

... for dust you are and to dust you shall return.

[Montane]

Are you trying to get into distinction of matter?

Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.

Something like that.  Say some dust is blowing in the wind.  It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is.  It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life?  A man might walk around and talk and make decisions.  But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?

The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source?  The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms,  but it's still all the same stuff.  Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust.   We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.

Well, yes originally, and that can be the basis for love, but in order to communicate, we use words, which have definitions that pertain to occurrences. Life is defined by 7 characteristics: growth, stimulus response, cellular composition, levels of organization, reproduction, energy utilization, and adaptation. Inherently completing these tasks with the use of organic matter classifies things that are alive.

Perhaps you could call the Earth alive, but reality...

[Obbe]

I never said reality is alive.  But I do think that, from a particular perspective,  life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing.   Or that you are an activity which reality is performing.  Just as the wind blows the dust around,  the forces of the universe,  of reality itself,  shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are.  "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing,  and when the performance ends reality doesn't end.  It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.

How do you define yourself?   Are you the performance or the performer?

[RisiR]

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

[Infinityshock]

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

Brilliant post. I wholly agree

[Montane]

I never said reality is alive.  But I do think that, from a particular perspective,  life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing.   Or that you are an activity which reality is performing.  Just as the wind blows the dust around,  the forces of the universe,  of reality itself,  shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are.  "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing,  and when the performance ends reality doesn't end.  It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.

How do you define yourself?   Are you the performance or the performer?

Forces and energies are within reality. Reality is simply everything right here as it is now. My conscious body controls reality as much as the forces within reality control me. The performer creates the performance. What if there were no performer?

[Obbe]

I don't know.  If we're saying that reality is the performer, then if there was no performer there would be no reality.   Reality is right now though,  so obviously something is putting on the show.  If you say your behavior is like a tug of war between you and the forces of nature,  that would mean that there is something within you that has a will of its own, and I don't know if there is anything to actually suggest that.  If everything is determined by the forces of nature there really is no individual will.  You are simply an expression of the whole, an act being performed by reality itself.   The feeling of being an individual with a consciousness may very well be a sort of illusion.

[FON]

I never said reality is alive.  But I do think that, from a particular perspective,  life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing.   Or that you are an activity which reality is performing.  Just as the wind blows the dust around,  the forces of the universe,  of reality itself,  shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are.  "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing,  and when the performance ends reality doesn't end.  It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.

How do you define yourself?   Are you the performance or the performer?

lol ok bro. your life is just that reality dude putting on a performance maaan. fuck this mystical shit is retarded and pointless.

[Obbe]

What's mystical about this?

[FON]

you trying to sound deep.