Getting to know people?

[Dawid Dahl]

Hello, everyone! Thanks Bruce for inviting me.

 

I'm Dawid, from Sweden, with a passion for abstruse truth, pensive art, well-rounded morality, daring transhumanism, and integral cognition.

 

It would be awesome to get to know a few of you people here. (James, e, Bruce and Irmeli I am fortunate enough to know a little already, even back from the ol' Zaads days.) So I thought that perhaps the easiest way of making that happen would be to start with a premeditatedly terse - perhaps annoyingly so? - question! I'd really appreciate any answers, be they elaborate or concise, 0-tier or 4th-tier. So here goes:

 

Does God exist?

 

Kindly,

Dawid

 

:)

[Dawid Dahl]

"Dawid, you are positing an Absolute Casual Agent for the manifest realm."

 

I'm not aware of doing any such thing. I've only said it would be senseless to say that a phenomenon is causeless. That doesn't posit an Absolute Causal Agent. For what I know, the Buddhists might very well be right in that the Universe is without beginning, thereby eliminating the need for an Absolute Causal Agent. What it doesn't eliminate though, is that it would be absurd to assert causelessness while talking about phenomena.

[e]

Dawid, you believe in an Absolute and you believe in causality. What is the relationship between the 2? Are they separate? If they are not separate (you also posit non-duality) then you have an Absolute-Causality. Fess up, this is your belief whether you realize or not. :-)

Avoiding an orange based causality and the absurdity you caution, I don't intuit things but "things". "Things" are a process of conditioned dynamic change. Things are a reification of "things"...like snowflakes falling from a cloud. However, that reification cannot be maintained...like snowflakes melting on asphalt.

BTW Buddha never posited an absolute (that came later when eternalistic views of his culture infiltrated the Sangha and the Dharma after he died). He did speak about the ultimate fruit of practice. The folks who did not understand heard him positing an Absolute. So later forms of Buddhism are a hybrid...a Hindu-Buddhism. That is why Wilber likes them so much. They help support his Grandiose Integral Metaphysics Project (GIMP).

 

[Dawid Dahl]

e: " I don't intuit things but 'things' "

 

This is what I'm saying as well. Conventional phenomena are not causeless. I'm not saying things are caused or not caused in actual reality, because to have causality you need to have things that are caused, and since all things are empty, there's no sense in saying that actual reality is causal. That said, some of the phenomena we conceptually impute very much seem to be caused.

 

Like it or not, e, but you acknowledge this as well. Please consider this example: let's say the direct safety someone's family depended on whether or not you answer this question correctly:

 

"When I drop this rock, will it 1) jump away, grow a pair of arms, and go swinging in the jungle lianas like a monkey, or will it 2) fall to the ground?"

 

You would, without a doubt, answer the latter. (Thereby saving the family.) And why is it that you'd answer the latter and not the former? Because the world of imputed phenomena is positively not chaotic. There's positively not a 50/50% chance when it comes to the two options. One of the options, for some reason, has a vastly greater probability of being correct. That's all the metaphysics I'm asserting.

[e]

That said, some of the phenomena we conceptually impute very much seem to be caused.

It is a hard habit to see thru.

Please consider this example: let's say the direct safety someone's family depended on whether or not you answer this question correctly:
"When I drop this rock, will it 1) jump away, grow a pair of arms, and go swinging in the jungle lianas like a monkey, or will it 2) fall to the ground?"
You would, without a doubt, answer the latter. (Thereby saving the family.) And why is it that you'd answer the latter and not the former?

Because the good guys always win?

Because the world of imputed phenomena is positively not chaotic. There's positively not a 50/50% chance when it comes to the two options.

Since were making things up to prove our beliefs...the rock would not fall if we were all in space at 0 gravity. What if I was hallucinating or lucid dreaming, #1 may be my only option. I guess it is not so clear cut, I guess it depends on conditions huh?

One of the options, for some reason, has a vastly greater probability of being correct. That's all the metaphysics I'm asserting.

Good, are we finally thru talking about absolutes?

 

[Dawid Dahl]

"Because the good guys always win?"

 

Dodging the question.

 

"...the rock would not fall if we were all in space at 0 gravity."

 

And I rest my case. If chaos were the case, you wouldn't be able to make that statement.

 

In fact, you wouldn't be able to say anything, because as soon as you'd say it, the opposite would be equally true (or equally false), which renders the statement meaningless, meaning no one would have to listen to what you're saying. (I.e. you'd have no conventional authority on any matter, including Buddhism.)

 

"Good, are we finally thru talking about absolutes?"

 

e, I would love to just buy into the, for example, new age notion that we are an immaterial and indestructible energy which will survive after bodily death. That would be great. But, I just can't accept that belief. Why? Because I wouldn't be true to my experience. As they say, I'd rather live an inconvenient truth than an convenient lie.

 

It is the same thing with your notion that there is - absolutely - no difference between option 1) and 2) as it comes to the rock example. It would be great to just release the line of reasoning which sees that one option is more probable than the other; I'm certain it would be freeing and peaceful. Yet, something wouldn't be quite right about it. Because when I drop a rock (here on Earth under present conditions), it has, for some reason, hitherto fallen to the ground every time. My direct experience. To me, denying this would be absurd and unethical.

[36hot9t8hcdap]

hey Dawid .....

 

ya either "believe it when you 'see' it"

 

or ya  "see it only when you believe it"...( quote stolen from a christian church billboard I drove past today ... lol )

 

sorry to say there seems to be no "middle way" to this one

[Irmeli Mattsson]

Bruce:"[Panikkar] regards atheism, at least as it has found expression among some thinkers, as an evolutionary step beyond monotheism, and has said he'd like to put a moratorium on the word, 'God.' For Panikkar, the divine is not some entity or being 'out there,' or even a reified entity 'within,' but rather the depth dimension or openness of things, the inexhaustibility and infinity of being that can be intuited in and through and 'as' all particular things.”

 

So far I have not needed to explain anything in my inner or outer reality with the concept God. Of course God exists in that way in my world that I have some idea what people mean, when they use that concept. My observation is that people, who most often use that word, seem to have also at least some rigid amber religious beliefs, and fears underlying them. When comparing myself to these people, it has never seemed that I am missing an essential aspect in life that those religious people are more open to.

I have recently read the book Deeper than Words by Brother David Steindl-Rast. In that book he  uses often expressions that resonate to my own experiential reality beyond words and concepts.

He says  in that book:

: “Faith is far more than the sum total of beliefs. Beliefs are merely pointers; faith is profound trust in the actuality to which  beliefs point.”

“But many people have become allergic, as it were, to the word GOD. This is understandable. Too often the G_word has been misunderstood and misused. In an attempt to point at the experiental reality without pushing the wrong linguistic button, I often use synonyms – “Ultimate Reality”, “Ground of Being”, “Source of Life”, and the like.”

 

As a teenager a profound shift appeared to me almost as it were out of the blue sky  in a situation where I was very anguished about how my life was turning out. The shift was profound and happened on a non conceptual level, and it changed my life radically. There was no turning back to my old life.  It was like huge iron doors had closed permanently behind me.My anguish was gone. I felt very stable and grounded. The struggle to become something was gone. Life had become more like a flow. And there was a deep trust in life as process, and I was as a conscious being tuning in with that.

In retrospect I tried to explain myself intellectually what had happened. I felt like I had surrendered myself to the deep intelligence beyond life. I came also upon many other conceptual descriptions and nuances to my new way of being. However these descriptions have never become principles that I follow. The new structure operated automatically. It did not require the adoption of any belief system, or trying to follow consciously  the principles I had intellectually created. It was a new  structure or stage of being that operated on its own.

For longs times thereafter I could not relate this experience at all to God or religion. Gradually writings like these quotes above, have made me see that religious beliefs can in some cases lead to a similar shift in consciousness than mine.

Through my own life experience I don’t  think that belief in the concept God is necessary. In that sense God does not exist. I tend to think that it is a concept that belongs to certain stages of spiritual development.  This crucially important actuality of life that God in best cases points towards, can be conceptualized in many different and more nuanced ways that are better capable of expressing the personal perspective and path. This means people  can get to the actuality the concept of God points to without adopting the belief in this concept or the  other concepts mentioned in the quotes above.

 

Irmeli

 

[e]

Because the good guys always win? 
 
Dodging the question.

Pale attempt at humor.

--

Dawid what causes rocks to fall?

 

[Dawid Dahl]

 e: "Dawid what causes rocks to fall?"

 

I don't know.

 

What I do know though is that if you have two choices like this (within the conventional realm of publicly agreed upon conceptual imputations):

 

When a rock is dropped, here on Earth under present conditions, will it:

 

Option 1: fall to the ground?

Option 2: float off into the sky?

 

...then, for some reason, Option nr 1 is way more probable to be correct than the other.

 

As I said, I don't know why this is. I am merely observing that it actually seems to be the case that Option nr 2 isn't an accurate answer to the question. And, consequently, that this observation regarding the particular two options can't be changed by changing one's personal thoughts.

 

---

 

(This is in no way an inherent limitation however, somehow preventing "spiritual freedom". This is because rocks are empty, and only exist when we conceptually impute their existence. And when rocks (and "I" and "Earth") are empty, causation stops making sense. Yet, well within that sphere of conceptual imputation, interpersonal exchange, and public general agreement, the leaning towards option nr 1 still curiously appears.)

[e]

e: "Dawid what causes rocks to fall?"

 

 

Dawid: I don't know.

 

Dawid, you emphatically claim every observable phenomena in your experience has a cause. Using your example, when I ask what causes the effect of rocks to fall you say you don't know, How is this not a metapysical belief in an unseen and unknowable causal agent or agency?

[Dawid Dahl]

"Dawid, you emphatically claim every observable phenomena in your experience has a cause. Using your example, when I ask what causes the effect of rocks to fall you say you don't know, How is this not a metapysical belief in an unseen and unknowable causal agent or agency?"

 

It is not a metaphysical belief because I don't claim that phenomena are caused or not caused in reality. It is only in the conventional/illusory world of conceptual imputations that it is possible to say that, in a choice between two options, we can actually say that one is more probable to occur than the other. I don't know why this is, but is an observation that it in fact is possible to predict which of the two options is more feasible.

 

e, Don't you agree that it is possible to predict, in the conventional realm of conceptual imputations, which of the two options is more likely to occur? In this case, whether the rock will 1) fall to the ground if I drop it (here under present earth-conditions), or 2) fly away into the sky if I drop it (here under present earth-conditions).

 

If you agree, then we can actually affirm that to describe our conventional experience as chaotic is not accurate. If you disagree, why would you choose option nr 1) in order to save that family we talked about earlier? (I know you would!)

[e]

It is not a metaphysical belief because I don't claim that phenomena are caused or not caused in reality.

 

If you don't claim an ultimate casual agent, how can you claim a relative one when you don't observe it? That is you believe in a non-metaphysical relative causal agency that you have no experiential proof for? Really?

 

It is only in the conventional/illusory world of conceptual imputations that it is possible to say that, in a choice between two options, we can actually say that one is more probable to occur than the other. I don't know why this is, but is an observation that it in fact is possible to predict which of the two options is more feasible.

 

How can there be a choice if option #2 is nonexistent?

 

e, Don't you agree that it is possible to predict, in the conventional realm of conceptual imputations, which of the two options is more likely to occur? In this case, whether the rock will 1) fall to the ground if I drop it (here under present earth-conditions), or 2) fly away into the sky if I drop it (here under present earth-conditions).

 

#2 is not an option given the earthly constraints. So it is a bogus argument.

 

If you agree, then we can actually affirm that to describe our conventional experience as chaotic is not accurate. If you disagree, why would you choose option nr 1) in order to save that family we talked about earlier? (I know you would!)

 

I don't have to posit an improvable unobservable causality (which you admit) to not want to see anyone suffer. BTW I am not positing (absolute) chaos either. We can steer a middle course between causality and chaos with a very simple conditionality that is 100% in accord with experience sans belief and sans argumentative hoops to navigate and without the need to posit 2 distinct ultimate and relative realms. Isn't this the import of 'samsara is nirvana'?