Dream terminology

[Korpo]

Yet the word 'dog' encompasses more than the word 'poodle', because a poodle is only one kind of dog, while all dogs are 'dogs'. Which is what I was getting at. Abstraction is the brain's (not mind's) way of trying to comprehend the infinite.
I'm still not sure what your objection is to this interpretation.

It is just a word. A word is a linear thought. You can think it is a powerful abstraction, but in reality it is an reduction. It is a loss of information, but to the thinking mind it seems like a win. That's why the thinking mind is never whole. It looks at less and less and thinks its on the right track to understand all. A contradiction in itself.

What does the mathematical symbol for infinity tell you about the Universe? It carries almost no informational content anymore besides being useful in a formula. I always found it so disappointing, and only now I can say why that is: It feels like betrayal. If that were all the mind could grasp about infinity, then it is depressing. But see, it really is the ultimate abstraction. It feels hollow.

But from what I "researched" in my own little studies for something else there is an infinite mind, too, and my guess this unifies with experience of non-duality because that mind experiences what it is "thinking" about. Old Gung Fu Master says: Be the rock, grasshoppa!

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

It is just a word. A word is a linear thought.

I disagree. A word is a linear representation of a thought that may or may not be linear. The linear thought is a side effect of having a frontal cortex. However, the idea behind the word, is as holographic as you want to think of it.

You can think it is a powerful abstraction, but in reality it is a reduction.

I don't think it's a powerful abstraction- I think it's a more inclusive abstraction, more general than the idea of 'poodle'. If I want to get more abstract than 'dog', I can go for 'canine', which includes wolves. It is a limited concept, that of the canine, but it is more complete than 'Poodle'. It doesn't eliminate information, it makes it part of the whole. So the exclusion goes to the more concrete, not to the more abstract. You have to remove more parts (kinds of dogs) to get Poodle than to get dogs. But you have to remove no canines at all if you go to the 'more abstract' abstraction. Ultimately, the only difference between the words 'Poodle' and 'Canine' is how they're defined. And the definition is more exclusive the less abstract it gets.
You seem to understand 'abstraction' as loss of information- I see abstraction as the loss of description. But the information is there, just not partitioned. A matter of perception, really.

It is a loss of information, but to the thinking mind it seems like a win.

This seems to me like a contradiction. The brain understands limitation, the mind does not. Loss of information is impossible to the mind, possible to the brain. I'm not sure why you say that it 'seems like a win' to the mind, unless your perception of the mind is one that sees value in information. Or lack of it. Or something like that.

That's why the thinking mind is never whole. It looks at less and less and thinks its on the right track to understand all. A contradiction in itself.

I agree with you there. That's the contradiction that pisses off certain religious groups. Remember the term 'Life is not a zero sum game'? The idea of infinity as zero is viscerally rejected by some.
Which is fine with me, it ultimately makes no difference to me.

[Korpo]

What is your message here?

Loss of information can never be more whole. What does the word dog tell you about my dog? You lack any specifical information about my dog, you are just having a set of rules and assumptions about "dog". You lost the more interesting part, the living part, the part that is vital.

Abstraction is dead and IMO the thinking mind (or brain, as opposed to the true Mind or whatever) is so engrossed in it as the ego itself has no real vitality or substance of its own. The ego is just a set of repeating patterns. Observing it long enough and clearly enough reveals it lacks substance of any kind, as the Buddhists do. As the Daoists do.

To abstract something you have to subtract something from it and make it a purely mental item. This something is to me the more important thing. It is that which cannot be understood by the thinking mind or dissected.

It's only fully present in the whole, and not its parts. Dissecting the whole removes the Tao from it. Every whole contains the Tao. The Tao is the whole before the parts. The thinking mind that makes parts moves away from the Tao as is creates more parts and dualities, and the Tao lives in whole and unity.

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

I guess we both will have to agree to disagree, then.

[sleeper]

well, this could be a really long discussion if we're going to nail down main points, so let me just clarify my position on a couple things, then slip back out of the thread.

When I have mindform thoughts, whole, big ideas during super deep trance, I tend to bring most of it back. While my brain tends to abstract things, it does not lose anything in the abstraction process; rather, it only loses what it's not capable of understanding. In other words, a big thought is made up of many parts, and only by understanding the parts can we understand the whole. furthermore, the parts have great value in themselves, and I am always grateful for having them as well.

I have spent too much time arguing over platos philosophy of the forms. It seems that everyone wants me to either take Plato's side, or Aristotle's side, but i don't even care about forms, for two main reasons. First, i find it absurd that the implications of this philosophy are totally ignored, such as the dog analogy. if there is a perfect form of a dog in heaven, or something, then all other earthly dogs are simply poor imitations of the form of the real dog in heaven, who doesn't even exist. etc. etc. Secondly, i am often frustrated at the simply trouble with concepts in general. In philosophy, and religion, and psychology, (and all others, but mostly in these fields), we lack 99% of the knowledge we need, and make up for it with concepts. For instance, we can dissect a brain and point out the language parts, the motor control parts, etc. But the greater levels of the mind are not understood, except to say broad things like: " the cosmic mind is made up of everything," "the unconscious mind of everyone is connected." This is why I don't talk about the ego, or holographic thinking, or consciousness, or concepts like that, so long as i avoid it. I'm interested in the details.

those are just concepts that point towards a greater meaning, but in themselves, don't describe anything. Even the great masters will admit, very willingly, that they don't know what they are talking about. They know where they are talking from, and are trying to help people arrive to the same place, yet, the words they use lack real power, and the masters often feel like failures because of that.

i don't see any reason why my brain, or anyone else's brain can't comprehend big thoughts, if they are developed properly. I'm not talking about ken wilber's big mind concept, or sitting in samadhi all day, I'm talking about developing the brain parts so they're not ... um... let me 'splain.

what i've experienced, speaking broadly, is this: early on, it seemed that my brain was focused only on my body, and reacted only to nervous signals of pain, etc. As I developed real life skills, My awareness expanded to my emotions, and as i transcended many of them, it turned towards the energy body, etc., all of this on it's own. it doesn't sound interesting in any way, except to say that by not skipping any steps in my development, by incrementally developing all the small parts in a comprehensive way, I have not skipped anything, and my development has managed itself. Conversely, the traditional methods of detachment, or kriya yoga, or things like that would have me bypass my incremental personal development and go straight for the big stuff.

but incrementally, I have arrived at big stuff. And I have found that i experience that stuff in small but significantly different ways. And that variation in experience has caused me to disagree with everyone about everything, because I am the minority in my experiences. My brain isn't entirely linear, chronological, and the like, even though everyone assumes it is. and that is why i rarely write anything...because I always disagree, and can't get past those simple things in a discussion, in order to get to the cool stuff.

anyway, speaking of cool stuff, i have found nothing but limitless potential, never boundaries, except that boundaries are always self-imposed. In this case, my boundary, my failure, is to accurately describe what I know. And i'm going to transcend that, because, now that I know what the problem is, it is inevitable that i will eventually overcome it.

[sleeper]

i do agree with CFTraveler pretty often, though. It's kind of unsettling to me, I'm not used to it.

[CFTraveler]

i do agree with CFTraveler pretty often, though. It's kind of unsettling to me, I'm not used to it.

Ha ha that's a baaad sign. It's even worse if you understand me.

[sleeper]

i do agree with CFTraveler pretty often, though. It's kind of unsettling to me, I'm not used to it.

Ha ha that's a baaad sign. It's even worse if you understand me.

i understand you, but in a liminal, abstract way, incomplete way.

What is the Zen of CFTraveler?

[CFTraveler]

That makes sense, 'cause I just is.

[Korpo]

While my brain tends to abstract things, it does not lose anything in the abstraction process; rather, it only loses what it's not capable of understanding.

It loses nothing but what it loses.

What you're saying is: "I'm losing nothing except what my thinking brain does not understand. I find what I retain still interesting and helpful."

I have no doubt of that, but that process IMO inherently loses things. The thinking brain is working in "dual mode", partitioning everything and moving away from wholes, losing information. All I am suggesting is that I believe it is ultimately better to move towards wholes and away from loss and partitioning.

i don't see any reason why my brain, or anyone else's brain can't comprehend big thoughts, if they are developed properly.

I'm not talking philosophy here. I do not like philosophy if it is derived from nothing but the thinking brain. If I want to know something that is of real value, I don't go to a "thinker". I go to someone like Lao Tse, whose philosophy is not derived from what he thought about it, but instead a try to put into words what he found beyond words. He did not "think it through". He does not value the words he speaks, but what he found. He describes by wrapping it into thoughts and words, by writing down what he found when going into stillness. For our benefit not his, since the words are not important to him.

True words aren't eloquent;
eloquent words aren't true.
Wise men don't need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren't wise.

(from: http://www.edepot.com/tao4.html)

I lack inherent wisdom because I am even letting myself be drawn into this philosophical discussion, knowing that deeper down it is not a philosophy to me. Part of me wants to be right, but another part of me wants to help you out in a way:

I've been down that road. The road of dissection and analysis leads away from the whole. It can solve many "problems", but not this one. Linear thought is but a tool with a limited use. "Big thoughts" are never big enough to get a hang of the infinite.

Remember your message: Your brain betrays you. I'd say: It applies the same tool over and over, and would use a hammer to unscrew a screw, because all it has is a hammer.

The masters do not lack understanding. We do lack a means of understanding them. We use words and do not understand. We evaluate what we learn in terms of the past and miss the present moment. The cure for the condition of unwhole thought is not "more thought" or "bigger thought". Bigger, more, farther, higher - that's a change in quantity. That's the paradigm of our unwhole time. Quality matters, it is a paradigm change, back to a whole.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

(from: http://www.edepot.com/tao4.html)

IMO the path of "big thoughts" is walked until the thinking mind hits its inherent limit. It induces lots of unhappiness and unnecessary suffering as you struggle with what "must be true" and "how it should be". Concepts come and go and are never good enough, so a deep unfulfilled feeling is lurking in the background. The feeling of unwholeness becomes more and more apparent.

Unfortunately for a clever, smart and intelligent person like you this process can take a very long time, and can lead to great frustration. The bigger capacity of your thinking process prolongs the process and prolongs actually the suffering inherent in it. Healing is always around the corner, but never comes.

Fortunately this way naturally hits the wall. The more determined you are, the bigger the impact. At the end it is so exhausting it points the "other way" almost by itself, IMO. The mental strain of trying to comprehend all in thought and in building this ultimate "thought cathedral of mental order" is at some point overwhelming. It induces more and more strain. This strain leads to a point where you can no longer keep it up.

So, even if you don't believe me now nothing is lost. IMO this realisation is inevitable, but few people go the short way. I didn't.

Take good care,
Oliver