There has never been a time nor will there ever be a time when my awareness does not exist. After I die I will not be in a state of no-awareness, as there is no such thing as "after I die". So I don't even understand what death is in the context of awareness.
To believe the world continues on after your death requires a leap of faith. After all, you have no evidence to suggest that the world is capable of existing without you sensing it; when you sleep, the world does not appear to exist as it does when you're awake. The state of the world is, sensibly, dependent on your state of awareness; its existence dependent on yours.
Interestingly, to believe that you continue on after your death requires no such leap of faith, but is heavily evidenced: for as long as you have been aware, you have been aware, and there is no time you are aware of during which you were not aware.
Contrary to the notion that your awareness will end, sensible evidence points to your awareness being eternal.
Jon
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
Contrary to the notion that your awareness will end, sensible evidence points to your awareness being eternal.
I agree that some suggestive evidence points to awareness being eternal; but I know of no sensible evidence that suggests a particular instance of it is eternal.
Our awareness turns off and on, the cycle clearly having had no effect on the world. Consider a patient on the operating table: awareness continued uninterrupted, but not the particular anesthetized awareness that stopped and then resumed.
Did you have some particular evidence in mind for an eternal individual instance of awareness?
Did you have some particular evidence in mind for an eternal individual instance of awareness?
Have you ever been aware of your awareness ceasing?
Our awareness turns off and on, the cycle clearly having had no effect on the world.
Or perhaps this is just true of the awareness we believe others to possess. All we can say for certain is that their awareness (or whatever it might be) has had no impact on our awareness, which is, as far as we can be aware, eternal and unending.
Jon
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
Over many years I've been lucky enough to have met and spent time with several American Indians from a variety of different tribes and traditions. One common theme that I've noticed is that almost all have mentioned external awareness, communion with other animals, even with non-animals or non-living things. On a few occasions I've even been fortunate enough to experience similar feelings. Is it real? No idea, but in every case I came away with some new understanding or experience. Is it simply imagination? Very possible, but those things I learned seemed to help me.
What is real is that those people I was lucky enough to spend time with all exuded wisdom, a mastery of self, of maintaining their connection with their surroundings.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
What evidence is more trustworthy than that which we collect for ourselves? Is there anything more powerful than seeing the proof with my own eyes? I will admit that I am unable to experience awarenesses that aren't my own, so perhaps I am limited in this regard, but then again, I'd argue that it is impossible to experience awarenesses that aren't mine to the point that the only awareness for which I have evidence - evidence even so basic as simply existing at all - is my own.
And as far as my awareness is aware there has never been a time that I am aware of that I was not aware - that I did not possess awareness. That is, I've never witnessed the non-existence of my awareness - my awareness being the only awareness for which I have evidence.
If I accept the claim of others - that they are aware and that my awareness did not always exist and will someday cease to exist while the awarenesses of others, indeed, all things considered, will go on existing without my awareness - I cannot verify the claim, but must accept the claim on trust... I must take a leap of faith. We can go even more basic than this, of course. If I accept the claim of another as having awareness, when this person ceases - and their awareness with them - then it would be evidence of the ceasing of an awareness. However, as I am unable to experience that person's awareness, I must simply trust their claim of having awareness - I must always accept their claim on faith - and so the 'evidence' for the cessation of an awareness stems ultimately from a leap of faith.
Actually, it's interesting: If we take this out to its implications, it means that to believe I will die requires a leap of faith, while believing in my eternalness is completely evidenced... as far as I'm aware.
Jon
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
Jar, I've also had the privilege of meeting and learning from some extraordinary people. I had no doubt then (and still don't) that they had indeed achieved a formidable mastery of awareness. Your description of their presence and impact is impeccable.
I spent much of my youth and a good bit of my early adult life seeking out alternative spiritual teachings and experiences. The same year I experienced my crisis of intellectual atheism described in my post above, I began to experience powerful, pantheistic visions (long before any experimentation with deliberately altered consciousness), and began writing poetry termed, mischievously, metaphysical by the Nobel laureate with whom I eventually had the good fortune to study.
So I found myself in the strange position of being an atheist with visions and metaphysical inspirations.
I met Ram Dass (then Baba Ram Dass), Timothy Leary, the Dalai Lama, some Native American shamans (both North and South), a number of mendicant Buddhist monks--and once spent a few months at a monastery in Korea studying with a quietly charismatic monk who had been one of the most lethal people among the remarkably lethal ROK special forces. He tried to teach me to sit still and to fight without attachment: I used to tease him that he was teaching me the sound of one hand slapping.
Most of them knew what I had been experiencing without my even raising the subject, replying with a variant of "I can see it" when I asked how they knew. The few Christian ministers I spoke with apparently saw nothing, were discomfited by my reports, and were mostly concerned about the devil, madness, or both.
Minus the Christians, I think all of them would simply nod matter-of-factly at your description of encounters with external awarenesses. I have witnessed and experienced too much to dismiss the possibility of actual, direct, experiential knowledge of another awareness.
The Dalai Lama has encouraged scientific investigation of physical and mental states achieved by monks--findings have included brain structure changes that correlate with meditative intent, a fascinating parallel to the fakir's mastery of autonomic processes and pain. It is a pity, due to cultural bias and the various wars on drugs, that we may eliminate all authentic shamanic practices before we have an opportunity to learn from them.
On only a slight tangent, I have long been fascinated by the way animals react to different people. I can sit quietly, slow my breathing and heart rate, clear my mind, and enjoy the spectacle of "wild" animals casually comfortable with my presence--but it takes real effort on my part. My wife, on the other hand, can softly whistle and coo birds from the bushes and trees, and even startled animals often do not run from her.
She is a truly gentle soul with great respect for the sovereignty of all life, and I have to say that many animals seem to sense her benevolence. I also know people who cause immediate distress in every animal they encounter: I simply don't trust those people.
In all those remarkable people, I found no great interest or concern about whether their individual awareness would survive death. In fact, one common theme is that the I that so longs for survival is trivial, an illusion, maya, unimportant. It is the awareness unfettered by this local me-me-me that can enter the spirit realm, merge with the Void, find surcease from suffering, learn the greatest compassion.
The most spiritual people I've known do not fret about gods or immortal souls. I'm still learning to sit still, but at last I don't fret about them either.
To believe the world continues on after your death requires a leap of faith. After all, you have no evidence to suggest that the world is capable of existing without you sensing it; when you sleep, the world does not appear to exist as it does when you're awake. The state of the world is, sensibly, dependent on your state of awareness; its existence dependent on yours.
We have clear evidence of the world continuing to exist without us being aware of it, precisely because of what happens when we sleep, or are unconscious in some other way. If you sleep for 6 hours, when you return to consciousness your observations of existence are entirely consistent with the sort of observations you would have made had you been conscious of those six hours. Clocks have changed to indicate the passage of six hours. New posts and news stories, time-stamped to the missing six hours, will have appeared on the websites you frequent. The sun will have changed its position in the sky by the amount you would have expected it to in six hours. The programmes on TV would have changed to what was scheduled to have been on six hours after you went to sleep. The clothes you left to dry would have dried as much as they would have in six hours of constantly checking them. I could go on ad infinitum, but this all adds up to fairly good evidence that the world continues to exist in much the same way when we aren't conscious of it.
Interestingly, to believe that you continue on after your death requires no such leap of faith, but is heavily evidenced: for as long as you have been aware, you have been aware, and there is no time you are aware of during which you were not aware.
It's possible to be aware of times that you have not been aware, confusing as that sentence sounds. Aside from the evidence mentioned above that time passes without our noticing it, awareness is not a continual stream that flows without pause between periods of unconsciousness. I am often subjectively aware of an interruption and gap in this experience.
The passage of time is not a feature of the Universe, just of our own awareness. 13.5 billion years of time did not pass by until my awareness "awoke".
Does a tree falling in the woods make any sound if you are not there to hear it?
When I was 16 I was involved in a car crash. I went through an intersection and T-boned another car. Nearly 30 yrs later I can still remember distinctly the quite, gentle sound of glass breaking and I remember watching a shard of glass floating through the air in front of my face. It seemed to take forever to pass by. There was no other sound. Just a slight tinkling as this bit of glass floated by in slow motion. Then with a bang I landed in the passenger seat and the world slammed back to normal speed.
Since then I have wondered if our last moments dont stretch out into eternity.
After watching this video I thought maybe I should just smoke more pot. I may not live longer but it will seem like it. Time, on a quantum level, is not the same as time in the waking world.
or just get in to a black hole from our prespective it will look like you are immortal since time is slower there from our prespective from yours it will take a few seconds for you to disintegrate and get crushed by the gravity
When I was 16 I was involved in a car crash. I went through an intersection and T-boned another car. Nearly 30 yrs later I can still remember distinctly the quite, gentle sound of glass breaking and I remember watching a shard of glass floating through the air in front of my face. It seemed to take forever to pass by. There was no other sound. Just a slight tinkling as this bit of glass floated by in slow motion. Then with a bang I landed in the passenger seat and the world slammed back to normal speed.
Since then I have wondered if our last moments dont stretch out into eternity.
The same thing happened when I dropped my favorite bong in college.
I still get a tear in my eye when I revisit those sights of it very slowly shattering on the floor.
I can still hear my voice deepen as its it slows while yelling: "NOOOoooooo"
If you sleep for 6 hours, when you return to consciousness your observations of existence are entirely consistent with the sort of observations you would have made had you been conscious of those six hours. Clocks have changed to indicate the passage of six hours. New posts and news stories, time-stamped to the missing six hours, will have appeared on the websites you frequent. The sun will have changed its position in the sky by the amount you would have expected it to in six hours. The programmes on TV would have changed to what was scheduled to have been on six hours after you went to sleep. The clothes you left to dry would have dried as much as they would have in six hours of constantly checking them. I could go on ad infinitum, but this all adds up to fairly good evidence that the world continues to exist in much the same way when we aren't conscious of it.
It is taken on faith that these things happened as we did not experience them, and on faith that we suffered a period of "unawareness". Do you know for certain that your awareness ceased?
My point is that we can experience our awareness, but we cannot experience our unawareness; therefore, any episode of awareness will be more evidenced than an episode of unawareness, making awareness the more evidenced state. What is more, we are never aware of experiencing unawareness, but are always aware of experiencing awareness.
Thus, as far as I am aware my awareness is eternal, for whenever I could be aware of my awareness, my awareness was present, but there were no times when I could be aware of my unawareness that I was aware of not being aware.
The only thing of which one can be certain is that which one experiences for one's self.
Jon
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
If you half a clue as to what I am blathering about, please let me know your thoughts, as I'm in the dark. We're talking zombies, teleportation, and quantum immortality.
For what it's worth I recall a number of years ago being thousands of miles from home on Oxford st. in London just before Christmas. I looked down that incredibly crowded street knowing no one and with no one knowing me. I was suddenly infused with the sense of my awareness, (to use your term), or the sense of self and the realization that everyone on the street viewed the world from that same perspective. Everyone was I. At that particular moment my universe was overlapping that of the universe being experienced by everyone else around me.
I have pondered that experience ever since, and it has certainly helped form my world view and my understanding of the world. It is to a large degree the reason that I am fascinated by the study of consciousness and the idea of looking for an understanding of our universe from that perspective.
I found the discussion on this thread concerning time extremely interesting. I had an experience of having a peddle snap off a bicycle causing me to tumble over backwards with the bike going over top of me. It all happened in slow motion to the point that I was concerned about the white jacket I was wearing, and I had time to think, without acting from instinct, that I should lift my head as I rolled over backward so that I wouldn't crack my skull on the concrete. I am also convinced that I experience time, or change, differently now from when I was young. I don't believe that it is just my imagination that time passes more quickly as we get older.
At any rate, you asked for some thoughts, and those are mine.
The old field stone house sat on the side of the hill, surrounded by woods. The trout stream was down a path, where there was a little pool fed by two small waterfalls. The trout often hid up under the overhang, barely seen as they sat nearly motionless just hold their place against the flow. My sister would lie on the rock between the two streams until the trout came out to eat the bread balls from her hand.
My baby brother would go out to the edge of the woods and sit. Soon animals started coming to him, the chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, deer. He'd sit there much of the afternoon will the wild animals played about his feet and ran across his lap. Once a fox even came out and joined the crowd around him, and amazingly, none of the other animals seemed to fear the fox.
In the living room there was a hole in the far corner of the ceiling. Often the black snake that lived in the rafters between the floors would stick its head down and watch all the kids at play.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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