Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:36 pm Notice how already two concepts are implied at this point in addition to the experiential fact of the given that "self-reflective quality of thinking is already there" (which is obviously true). One of these concepts is that there is "we" who are thinking, so, in addition to thinking as a conscious activity, there is a sense-idea of "someone who thinks" behind that activity, and that "someone" is implied as if it is different from "someone who thinks" in other sentient beings. The other concept is that there is an "objective world" of which "we" are having a subjective experience.
Yes, this is one and the same meaning: when we say self-reflecting quality of thinking, this only means one thing to me: the sense of "I" is there. Similarly, once there is a sense of being a subject of experience, there is inevitably also a sense of object. They are indissociable.
Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:36 pm Try to test these concepts in meditation against your actual direct phenomenal experience and find out if they are true. Can you actually find the "me" who is thinking? No, there is only thinking and the phenomena produced and experienced by thinking. The only "me" you can find is a sense-idea of "me". But wait, isn't this sense-idea is a phenomenon itself? Of course it is a phenomenon, look at it and examine it carefully to see that it is in fact just a phenomenon. But how a phenomenon be the "me" who is thinking and experiencing other phenomena? One phenomenon cannot experience others, they are all equally experienced. So, you can only find self-reflecting thinking, but you cannot actually find the thinker. So here we are making a cognitive mistake confusing the "one who actually thinks" with the sense-idea-phenomenon of the "one who thinks".
There is a leap in this train of thoughts/the perception of experience you describe. The reconstruction of what's going on is this: when we hear the perspective initially, it calls us, it feels beneficial in many ways. In theory there’s been a millisecond when we could have realized that pull, but once we have let that sense of YES enter our soul, it’s so enormously difficult to bring it to light. And so before we know it, we are actively applying ourselves to build up a reasoning that supports it, and to find all the experiential confirmations of that sense in order to secure our new, unhoped-for, blissful sense. I am familiar with what you describe. As I said before, I did a few such meditations. Phenomenologically, it's true that you can dive, and completely immerse yourself, and dissolve yourself in the quality of thought. Through that sense, it's reasonable to conclude that the thought is real and we are the illusion that has to disappear completely in it, just as it has arisen from it. And if it doesn’t come naturally, it’s because the sense of self is so strongly culturally conditioned. Naturally, we can go on and on selecting the reasonable impressions that support this sense.
But how reliable this whole endeavor really is, when looked at uncompromisingly and holistically? In reality the sense of self is there, Eugene, only very well hidden inside the powerful thinking flow. The way to unmask it (if we dare to try) is at the exact moment when we say "I can't find it". We can find it indeed: our self is there, it's recognizable as our Will. There is an initiative that expresses itself (inevitably!) in thoughts, and that is only, exclusively, and unseparably ours. There is no way around it’s been there all the time. It can’t be made to disappear in the thought matter. It is willed thinking that actively decides to willingly subside and to feel how it feels to abandon oneself to the enormous relief of a no-thought possibility. Can you try for a moment to give this sense of enormous relief the right recognition it deserves? Because it is the main energy driving the whole process.
I found this same issue in the video you shared. I do understand its appeal. Not only do I understand it, but I also feel it. And I feel how it gives the heart a lift, a relief, a welcomed soft wrapping, so to say. But it is also evident in the structure of the speech how much leverage is obtained through the power of feelings, and how logic is kept outside in the train of arguments. It's natural to hope that beyond our most terrible fear there is the sweet liberation of abandoning ourselves to emptiness, letting the tension cease, and the worrying, and the restless doing. In the video it’s (also) a known psychological mechanism, which is demonstrated, probably in good faith, I would guess. But we need to be very very careful and separate all the soul influences that express themselves in feelings (as I wrote to Lorenzo) because we rarely are on top of them in full consciousness. We rarely master them. It's very tricky terrain. Playing hard with our unconscious. So it's necessary to make ourselves stronger than that powerful call.