Post by DSometimes I have fun with theories of identities. You know
the one that says that we are all one? I try to imagine
how that could be explained in terms of material/scientific
concepts.
I think my favourite is to imagine ourselves as consisting
of the same raw materials. We all come from the same
source (big bang), and we all exist in the same field of
atoms. Every living and dead thing on the planet exists,
connected in the same field of atoms, ultimately separate
by the vacuum of space. So from that point of view, we
could be seen as "materially one".
Then we have consciousness. All consciousness is fueled
by some kind of electric activity in nerves. It could
theoretically be argued that this electric activity which
fuels every living thing, is part of the same chain of
causation going back to the first spark.
So materially we are in fact "one" (from the point of
view of a field of atoms encompassing everything from the
vacuum of space down to the earths core) and in terms
of the nervous system and consciousness, we share the
same causation, the same spark, from the beginning. The
spark has just settled in a multiplicity of hosts, but
through the chain of cause and effect, it is ultimately
the same spark.
I was reading something similar to such the
other night, but it was what to me are more traditional
examples, like this from the Lankavatara Sutra, which I
believe is, in part, trying to say that distinctions are
purely in mind:
============================================================
| Mahamati, it is like a lump of clay and the particles of |
| dust making up its substance, they are neither different |
| nor not-different; again, it is like gold and various |
| ornaments made of it. If, Mahamati, the lump of clay |
| is different from its particles of dust, no lump will |
| ever come out of them. But as it comes out of them it |
| is not different from the particles of dust. Again, if |
| there is no difference between the two, the lump will be |
| indistinguishable from its particles. |
============================================================
I tend to want to reinterpret that as: Mental discriminations
do not affect the bona fide nature of the referents, and thus
are indistinguishable from the stuff dreams are made of, which
is to say the entire field of mind is hallucination which
wisdom often says is best transcended - which is kind of
a misleading word for somewhat implying "going above /
beyond", when it's more a "going beneath" said field
of re-presentation.
Post by DWell, enough mumbo-jumbo for now. ;)
Heh, last night I watched/heard Nicolas Cage enunciates
"much-jumbo" in a hilariously derisive way in "The Family
Man". So, thanks for being an agent of Synchronicity!
--
oldernow
xyz001 at nym.hush.com