Is Rovelli 'Dragooning the Human Spirit'?

[Eugene I]

The sense in which it is the Source from which all springs and to which all returns. Keep in mind, though, that this process is eternal - it transcends temporality so there is no "final destination" (at least none that any human knows of yet). This image from Cleric's essay should help clarify some (again keeping in mind this image is just a low-resolution helpful symbol):

Well, this is an intellectual model of it, and you can envision it this way if it works for you. But to me, even though it is indeed the Source from which everything springs, that "everything" never actually leaves/separates from the Source, and there in no form and no place/moment where the Source is not present, so there is as much of the Source in the "center" (wherever you want to define it) as there is on every periphery and in any form. So, in my view on it, the Universe of forms springs from the Source that is present equally everywhere in the Universe. So, every point and every place is the center, which is the same as to say that there is no center, but only the omni-present Source everywhere.

[AshvinP]

The sense in which it is the Source from which all springs and to which all returns. Keep in mind, though, that this process is eternal - it transcends temporality so there is no "final destination" (at least none that any human knows of yet). This image from Cleric's essay should help clarify some (again keeping in mind this image is just a low-resolution helpful symbol):

Well, this is an intellectual model of it, and you can envision it this way if it works for you. But to me, even though it is indeed the Source from which everything springs, that "everything" never actually leaves/separates from the Source, and there in no form and no place/moment where the Source is not present, so there is as much of the Source in the "center" (wherever you want to define it) as there is on every periphery and in any form. So, in my view on it, the Universe of forms springs from the Source that is present equally everywhere in the Universe. So, every point and every place is the center, which is the same as to say that there is no center, but only the omni-present Source everywhere.

That is true, but it is the same kind of truth that arrives to us when the 'Platonist' says, "there is no 'physical' realm, only the spiritual, and everything you see around you is that spiritual realm". Yes, true... but it is such low resolution truth that it makes no sense of our immanent experience. That is the experience of fragmented perspectives of the spiritual, fragments of the One Ever-Expanding Form, which are clearly not omni-present, omni-potent, omni-anything else, in the way that the Source must be. The mystic will make some progress from that abstract truth by way of experience, but my view is that there is still much more resolution to be gained on how exactly our current limited perspective is translated from, embedded within, and, eventually, translated back to its Source. It is truly like learning a new language, or maybe more like learning all past, present, and future languages. That is more than enough impetus to keep us meaningfully occupied for many lifetimes.

So, although I do not mind the direction of this discussion so far, as it is at least slightly different from previous ones, I am still wondering about your answer to my previous question - what is the next topic you want to keep you occupied until you can answer it?

[Eugene I]

So, although I do not mind the direction of this discussion so far, as it is at least slightly different from previous ones, I am still wondering about your answer to my previous question - what is the next topic you want to keep you occupied until you can answer it?

I have one question that always puzzles and mystifies me - why and how Consciousness exists? Why Consciousness and not unconscious "matter" or any other kind of "shmatter", or why not nothing at all?

[AshvinP]

So, although I do not mind the direction of this discussion so far, as it is at least slightly different from previous ones, I am still wondering about your answer to my previous question - what is the next topic you want to keep you occupied until you can answer it?

I have one question that always puzzles and mystifies me - why and how Consciousness exists? Why Consciousness and not unconscious "matter" or any other kind of "shmatter", or why not nothing at all?

It's interesting you bring that up as it was also addressed earlier in the thread, probably before you started following it. Let's take a moment to recognize that these sorts of questions were only born of the modern age. No pre-modern person I am aware of ever asked that question (although if you can find an example I would love to also see it). I think Bergson provides a pretty satisfying answer to that question:

But let us go further and try to engender (we can do so obviously only in thought). To the extent that we distend our will, tend to reabsorb our thought in it and get into greater sympathy with the effort which engenders things, these formidable problems recede, diminish, disappear. For we feel that a divinely creative will or thought is too full of itself, in the immensity of its reality, to have the slightest idea of a lack of order or lack of being. To imagine the possibility of absolute disorder, all the more the possibility of nothingness, would be for it to say to itself that it might have not existed at all, and that would be a weakness incompatible with its nature which is force. The more we turn toward this creative will, the more the doubts which trouble the sane and normal [modern] man seem to us abnormal and morbid.
...
Such is exactly the effect certain “great problems” produce in us when we set ourselves again in the direction of generating thought. They recede toward zero as fast as we approach this generating thought, as they fill only that space between it and us. Thus we discover the illusion of him who thinks he is doing more by raising these problems than by not raising them. One might just as well think that there is more in a half-consumed bottle than in a full one, because the latter contains only wine, while in the former there is wine and emptiness in addition.

I am happy to discuss that further. But I also should have specified my question a bit more - I am really interested in philosophical or spiritual topics which relate to the physical world and its 'translation' into spiritual world. That, IMO, is the core essence of philosophy (phenomenology) and spirituality (at least before the modern age of abstraction) - how to get from what is experienced with our senses to what is essentially true. I don't want to get stuck on the word "essentially" - I think we both reject naïve realism, i.e. that what is immediately experienced in the sense-world is the sum total of Reality itself. So do you think there is any means of taking those experiences and begin penetrating into the Reality itself, and, if so, what specific question could we start exploring in that regard?

[SanteriSatama]

So do you think there is any means of taking those experiences and begin penetrating into the Reality itself, and, if so, what specific question could we start exploring in that regard?

Expressing the Gnostic dualistic view that this not real, only that out-there Reality it-self is real... do you think/hope/expect/believe by speaking of "penetrating", that the Reality-Out-There is A) more like something homogenous and objective, B) more like something diverse and social?

[Soul_of_Shu]

I have one question that always puzzles and mystifies me - why and how Consciousness exists?

Insofar as it is causeless, and thus can't not exist, it seems rather a moot point. What I'm more mystified by is WTF (pun intended) integral, participating role does the apparency of this subjectified, ideating, locus of it play in manifesting meaning—which I feel is what Ashvin is getting at here ...

So do you think there is any means of taking those experiences and begin penetrating into the Reality itself, and, if so, what specific question could we start exploring in that regard?

[Jim Cross]

I have one question that always puzzles and mystifies me - why and how Consciousness exists?

Insofar as it is causeless, and thus can't not exist, it seems rather a moot point. What I'm more mystified by is WTF (pun intended) integral, participating role does the apparency of this subjectified, ideating, locus of it play in manifesting meaning—which I feel is what Ashvin is getting at here ...

So do you think there is any means of taking those experiences and begin penetrating into the Reality itself, and, if so, what specific question could we start exploring in that regard?

Something that is not dependently arisen
Such a thing does not exist.
Therefore a non-empty thing
Does not exist.

Or

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

[Soul_of_Shu]

Something that is not dependently arisen
Such a thing does not exist.
Therefore a non-empty thing
Does not exist.

Or

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

Who was referring to a thing? For this "__" which everyOne is in essence ain't no thing

[AshvinP]

So do you think there is any means of taking those experiences and begin penetrating into the Reality itself, and, if so, what specific question could we start exploring in that regard?

Expressing the Gnostic dualistic view that this not real, only that out-there Reality it-self is real... do you think/hope/expect/believe by speaking of "penetrating", that the Reality-Out-There is A) more like something homogenous and objective, B) more like something diverse and social?

Gnostics were not dualist, as they lived far before dualism became a philosophical possibility. My previous post says that the spiritual is the only realm and physical is the spiritual. But that is low resolution and does not prompt us to any questions about Reality. It just leaves us with egoistic and dogmatic feeling that we have discovered it all and there is nothing left to investigate. That is also the major nihilistic threat of naïve realism, of materialist, dualist, and idealist metaphysics alike.

The world I experience right now is filled with living beings, human ones who are social, and also is objectively shared by all those beings, with objectively shared meanings, and can be objectively investigated (including our participatory role in it). I see no reason to assume that the spiritual is fundamentally different in that regard, and that of course is the core of dualism - mental and material are essentially two realms with two different essential features and two different means of investigation, or lack of investigation for the mental-spiritual.

[Jim Cross]

Something that is not dependently arisen
Such a thing does not exist.
Therefore a non-empty thing
Does not exist.

Or

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

Who was referring to a thing? For this "__" which everyOne is in essence ain't no thing

So it is no-thing.

That, of course, means no self or soul exists.

Things in fact lack essence, according to Nagarjuna, they have no fixed nature, and indeed it is only because of this lack of essential, immutable being that change is possible, that one thing can transform into another. Each thing can only have its existence through its lack (sunyata) of inherent, eternal essence.

https://iep.utm.edu/nagarjun/