Philosophical Speculations

I agree, David. In certain sense all this is correct to say. The question (the post at the other thread has few things on this) is that as man progresses on his spiritual journey through the ages, the landscape changes. If few thousand years ago man experienced the Brahman as mighty presence, a pro...

Cleric, thanks for your elaborated post The facts of experience is that both self and no-self states are possible. I entirely agree, since both states are possible, the experience of both states makes the idea of the existence of self inconclusive as well as the idea of its non-existence. Round and...

My question right now is whether either of you have come up with other ways to convey such different habits of mind to others. Are there any go-to relatively simple thought experiments you find most engaging and useful? I imagine the best ones are those which relate to our inner experience of perce...

A person who is not first motivated to provide for their own needs and orient their own habits of thinking is useless to everyone else. Your [preceding the above clip] answer is unrelated to what I said. If my recollection is correct, I talked about peeps who regarded their "'self' as being 'm...

Yes, well, I did start the thread with direct excerpts from Barfield's essay. You stated his view was "included" in yours and I pointed out why that's not accurate. Simple. I see that you do not see what I see. your[/u] view, there is no choice as to regarding one's 'self' as 'more import...

I get (at least I think I do) what Barfield talked about. What I talked about included that (I think). Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that...

Barfield explores the phenomenon of modern mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, and how it reveals a fundamental alienation of the 'self' from the surrounding world and from the true Self in all of human society, with the Schizophrenics being the ones who are most aware of the alienation. Moderns...

advaita vedanta talks about pure awareness, without any thought. That's the real you. My 'view'. which admittedly is a function of my e-motional engagement with Life (defintion: Life/Creativity is causal purpose in action), is that classic (i.e. tradition ensconced) advaita vedanta is an 'abortive'...

Barfield explores the phenomenon of modern mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, and how it reveals a fundamental alienation of the 'self' from the surrounding world and from the true Self in all of human society, with the Schizophrenics being the ones who are most aware of the alienation. Moderns...

I sometimes think or rather hope that there is a reason or better saying meaning and purpose for our existence. But I often doubt it. Can you help me in this regard? Is there a meaning; what do you personally think? I am very interested. Or can you perhaps not deal with the absurdity of life and ex...