Problems with the body being the external image of experiential states

[AshvinP]

Paul ... You may have already checked out this before, but once upon a story time BK offered this version of the function of the body, which may be of interest still ...

Thank you Soul_of_Shu, I hadn't seen this yet. I really like what Bernardo is saying in this video. It rings true to me.

This idea that the body limits consciousness, and that that allows for MAL to analyse itself sounds very reasonable to me. But that still does not explain why the body needs food. In the theory of Bernardo, it seems like MAL might as well create some kind mental body that feels separated from Mind At Large, but does not need to 'eat' the images of transpersonal mental states of Mind at Large to stay alive.

Especially if the purpose of the alters is to investigate MAL, then why would alters evolve that basically have to spend almost all of their time trying to collect food in order to survive? If you really wanted to investigate yourself, you'd create alters with a lot more free time on their hands.

But that being said, I do feel a bit less like there is a gaping hole after in Bernardo's theory after watching that video. I think there could be a reasonably satisfactory answer to why body's need food in the framework of Bernardo's theory. I just don't know what answer is yet.

I do however just get a bit the sense that consciousness is just playing this game with itself when it incarnates into the 'material' world. That all this happened due to the 'instincts' of mind at large seems just a bit farfetched. I get the sense more that consciousness just dreamt op a crazy material world, with some crazy 'material' rules, just to experience what it is like to experience its material self. But in this case consciousness is actively deciding to do all this. This would make Mind At Large basically an all powerful creator god. I'm comfortable with that idea, but I don't think many other people are.

This position is called naïve realism and is no different from the materialist who claims that the reach of our senses and cognition are determined by physical structures of the body. To the extent BK advocates this view, he must answer all the same questions about why physical structures are limiting in this way. That is impossible to do with idealist assumptions. It is actually increasingly more impossible to do with mainstream science, as illustrated from the excerpt of Everything Flows. BK really needs to address these issues without hand waving of "dissociation" as the explanation for everything related to localized consciousness. And we should as well, if we are genuinely interested in getting answers to our questions rather than interested in ignoring the answers so that we can forever keep asking the same questions so we feel like it's not our fault when absolutely no progress is being made. Rather we simply "can't find the answers"... yes we can, if we stop ignoring the answers given and seek their confirmation with genuine interest and effort.

[AshvinP]

Paul ... You may have already checked out this before, but once upon a story time BK offered this version of the function of the body, which may be of interest still ...

Thank you Soul_of_Shu, I hadn't seen this yet. I really like what Bernardo is saying in this video. It rings true to me.

This idea that the body limits consciousness, and that that allows for MAL to analyse itself sounds very reasonable to me. But that still does not explain why the body needs food. In the theory of Bernardo, it seems like MAL might as well create some kind mental body that feels separated from Mind At Large, but does not need to 'eat' the images of transpersonal mental states of Mind at Large to stay alive.

Especially if the purpose of the alters is to investigate MAL, then why would alters evolve that basically have to spend almost all of their time trying to collect food in order to survive? If you really wanted to investigate yourself, you'd create alters with a lot more free time on their hands.

But that being said, I do feel a bit less like there is a gaping hole after in Bernardo's theory after watching that video. I think there could be a reasonably satisfactory answer to why body's need food in the framework of Bernardo's theory. I just don't know what answer is yet.

I do however just get a bit the sense that consciousness is just playing this game with itself when it incarnates into the 'material' world. That all this happened due to the 'instincts' of mind at large seems just a bit farfetched. I get the sense more that consciousness just dreamt op a crazy material world, with some crazy 'material' rules, just to experience what it is like to experience its material self. But in this case consciousness is actively deciding to do all this. This would make Mind At Large basically an all powerful creator god. I'm comfortable with that idea, but I don't think many other people are.

This position is called naïve realism and is no different from the materialist who claims that the reach of our senses and cognition are determined by physical structures of the body. To the extent BK advocates this view, he must answer all the same questions about why physical structures are limiting in this way. That is impossible to do with idealist assumptions. It is actually increasingly more impossible to do with mainstream science, as illustrated from the excerpt of Everything Flows. BK really needs to address these issues without hand waving of "dissociation" as the explanation for everything related to localized consciousness. And we should as well, if we are genuinely interested in getting answers to our questions rather than interested in ignoring the answers so that we can forever keep asking the same questions so we feel like it's not our fault when absolutely no progress is being made. Rather we simply "can't find the answers"... yes we can, if we stop ignoring the answers given and seek their confirmation with genuine interest and effort.

BK's "explanation" in that video is even more materialistic than I imagined it to be. He is basically speaking of scientific inquiry as a very reductionist enterprise - "Mind uses the body to isolate aspects of itself for study". He rightly criticizes materialism for trying to reduce Mind to matter, but is apparently fine with reducing everything else about the cognizable Mind to the rigid 'things' of the modern age, which are all simply static abstractions of the intellect. Calling those 'things' "thoughts" does not make it any less reductionist. We must remember that the scientific method and experimental results do not need to be conflated with materialist scientific interpretations and conclusions. The latter are anti-scientific as they add on flawed assumptions and confuse intellectual abstractions for Reality itself.

[Soul_of_Shu]

This position is called naïve realism and is no different from the materialist who claims that the reach of our senses and cognition are determined by physical structures of the body.

I'm not getting how it is naive realism to say that within the corporeal construct, except in rare cases of synethesia, our experience of phenomenal representations selects out visual, auditory, tactile, and taste representations, as uniquely distinct from each other, since under naive realism they would not be representational of ideational activity, but taken to be actual phenomena that exist 'out there'.

[AshvinP]

This position is called naïve realism and is no different from the materialist who claims that the reach of our senses and cognition are determined by physical structures of the body.

I'm not getting how it is naive realism to say that within the corporeal construct, except in rare cases of synethesia, our experience of phenomenal representations selects out visual, auditory, tactile, and taste representations, as uniquely distinct from each other, since under naive realism they would not be representational of ideational activity, but taken to be actual phenomena that exist 'out there'.

What is a "corporeal construct"? That itself is an abstract concept we derive from materialist scientific conclusions. There is no such "thing" in Reality. In fact, there are no "things" in Reality, as suggested by the foreword from "Everything Flows" quoted before. Naive realism does not only apply to dualism or materialism, but to any worldview which mistakes abstract concepts, pictures, etc. for the Real process itself. Do you disagree?

It's interesting you mention synesthesia now bc I was just writing about it. I point out how those are extreme cases of what we are all always experiencing, albeit unconsciously for the most part. Sensory processes are always interpenetrating each other. It is our abstract intellect which fixes them into rigidly distinct categories, just as our intellect sees "things" in the world instead of constantly flowing and interpenetrating processes.

[AshvinP]

This position is called naïve realism and is no different from the materialist who claims that the reach of our senses and cognition are determined by physical structures of the body.

I'm not getting how it is naive realism to say that within the corporeal construct, except in rare cases of synethesia, our experience of phenomenal representations selects out visual, auditory, tactile, and taste representations, as uniquely distinct from each other, since under naive realism they would not be representational of ideational activity, but taken to be actual phenomena that exist 'out there'.

What is a "corporeal construct"? That itself is an abstract concept we derive from materialist scientific conclusions. There is no such "thing" in Reality. In fact, there are no "things" in Reality, as suggested by the foreword from "Everything Flows" quoted before. Naive realism does not only apply to dualism or materialism, but to any worldview which mistakes abstract concepts, pictures, etc. for the Real process itself. Do you disagree?

It's interesting you mention synesthesia now bc I was just writing about it. I point out how those are extreme cases of what we are all always experiencing, albeit unconsciously for the most part. Sensory processes are always interpenetrating each other. It is our abstract intellect which fixes them into rigidly distinct categories, just as our intellect sees "things" in the world instead of constantly flowing and interpenetrating processes.

Here is what is happening in a nutshell - BK rightly points out mindless isolated 'particles' cannot possibly explain phenomenal conscious experience. Then he says, if we get rid of isolated 'particles' of materialism, we only have One unified Consciousness consisting of psychic processes. Again that is correct. But then, when it comes to explaining how those constantly flowing, evolving psychic processes manifest the phenomenal world in our experience, he has no answer, because he assumes abstract intellect is so far the maximum capacity of self-reflective be-ings. Anyone who has moved beyond that to noumenal experience in the past of currently is, by definition, not reflecting and the illusory Self has dissolved away. That is what generally all idealists in the direct tradition of Kant-Schopenhauer have assumed. But he cannot just be left with no detailed explanation whatsoever for the phenomenal world, so he falls back on the naïve realism of modern science and assumes all of its conclusions can be mapped on to an idealist understanding with 1:1 correspondence. I am not saying he does this consciously. We all do it to some extent, and I just happen to be at a point where my perspective has shifted so much within a short period of time that I can notice exactly why this occurs for the abstract intellect in the modern age.

He really should be taking more cues from Hoffman, because the latter frequently mentions my point about synesthesia above - it would not still exist in the world if it was some sort of genetic anomaly. In fact, Hoffman frequently says we may all be evolving towards the interpenetrating experience of synesthetes - that is basically correct, if we drop the materialist evolutionary paradigm and confusion surrounding the nature of Time, thereby realizing that this flowing, interpenetrating experience has always been there embedded within the structure of Reality, and it is only our own obscured perception-cognition, that has been mineralized into dead abstract concepts, which fails to grasp that Reality 'behind' the physical world of outer appearances. The dynamics of that Reality have been submerged into the collective subconscious, and it is our duty to shine a Light on those contents to bring them into conscious awareness. This is such a simple yet key point to understand - it is why all spiritual traditions, in one way or another (and in varying levels of completeness), tell us not to blame Reality or other people for our sufferings and our "sins", or even the sins of other people, but only ourselves.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Well, I'm not going to to play Devil's advocate on BK's behalf. As far as I'm concerned the only countering of the various critiques that keep cropping up here lately, which is going to count for much, would have to come from BK. And since, as you know, he rarely checks in here, it seems that whatever critiques are posted here are all-too-safe from his perusal of them. So I suggest venturing out from this cave and presenting the critiques where he will actually come across them and be likely to respond. Too bad no-one here seems to have a well established youtube channel, where if bold enough one could coax him into doing a one-on-one interview where these issues could be specifically addressed. I'd even pay to see that.

[AshvinP]

Well, I'm not going to to play Devil's advocate on BK's behalf. As far as I'm concerned the only countering of the various critiques that keep cropping up here lately, which is going to count for much, would have to come from BK. And since, as you know, he rarely checks in here, it seems that whatever critiques are posted here are all-too-safe from his perusal of them. So I suggest venturing out from this cave and presenting the critiques where he will actually come across them and be likely to respond. Too bad no-one here seems to have a well established youtube channel, where if bold enough one could coax him into doing a one-on-one interview where these issues could be specifically addressed. I'd even pay to see that.

It seems to me maybe BK is really in the "cave" and we are out here by the sources of Light

I have tried to get his attention via Twitter - he liked a few of my essays but I have no idea whether he read them. Maybe he did, because I remember he liked ISM Part I on the Gita, but did not like Part II which started very critical of Schopenhauer. I also joined a Q&A once to ask him about Steiner, which led to that massive record-breaking thread of comments, although admittedly most of those were completely useless. But yeah, it would be nice to see him on the forum - maybe you guys can convince him to do another round of Q&A submissions with the readers?

[Soul_of_Shu]

What is a "corporeal construct"?

That would be the idea construction that is represented by the phenomenal forms we call bodies. However abstract it may be to you, I'm still disinclined to throw it in front of a bus.

[Ben Iscatus]

I'd even pay to see that.

Blimey! This statement smells like leather wallets and mothballs to me

[AshvinP]

What is a "corporeal construct"?

That would be the idea construction that is represented by the phenomenal forms we call bodies. However abstract it may be to you, I'm still disinclined to throw it in front of a bus.

Those "constructions" belong to 2-D pixels of Flat MAL, and we need to go beyond that to 3-D Deep MAL, and eventually to 4-D Deeper MAL which accounts for Time-Consciousness spectrum. Even BK criticizes this approach of materialists very often - they developed quantitative abstractions for a very specific purpose and then started confusing their own abstractions for the Reality itself. That is exactly what is going on here with Flat MAL, corporeal construction, "dissociation", "alter", etc. They are only useful for the specific purpose of transitioning away from materialism. I am not sure if they are even useful for that anymore, given how confused people seem to be once they get here after that transition.