I got this wonderful book from my daughter and her man for my birthday. Most, enjoyable and landed right on the money for me now.
I would like to spend some time writing something about this book and its effect on me, but I don't have much time right now and I'll just jot down some stuff as a kind of aide memoire right now.
About getting towards non-self and emptiness through physics.
With Newton we have space between things. Gravity seems to act across this space, but Newton knows there's something unsatisfactory about bodies acting on each other without anything being between them.
Faraday with the magnet and iron filings shows us that there is something called a "field."
So there is at least one field between things, the electromagnetic field. James Clerk Maxwell (from this parish!) worked out the equations for that.
Einstein says space is an object. We have space time. Space curves and bends, Space is a gravitational field.
Most interested in reading that Einstein wasn't all that good at sums. (We're not comparing him to me!). It seems that Einstein was able to "visualise" or "imagine" what reality was like, and then had to hack about and find the mathematical description, the equations to describe this. But it seems to have started with "vision" or some kind of "seeing."
This has a lot of similarity to "enlightenment." Or, rather, realisations. I assume in some kind of realisation, you are mainly "seeing". I assume what you are seeing is the world in a different way. If you are talking about "non-self" and "emptiness", the whole must become self as your self goes out into everything visible so that you are the focus with the senses and somehow the reference point, but you are everything, your sense of self encompassing everything.
I has about ten seconds of this about twenty two years ago. So what I "saw" might be described as a "field" in that it was through everything and penetrating everything. But it was conscious and joining everything in a wholeness, a unity. Everything was essentially supported by consciousness which was integral to everything and not outside it.
So Faraday shows a "field" and Maxwell works out the equations.
If the field is consciousness, how would you do that? No idea. I cannot do sums. Can you have an equation with a big C in it to stand for consciousness?
The Big Bang is a very stupid idea.
Everything comes from nothing, a very wee nothing which goes bang. Stupid idea. I think no one is happy with the idea that your dog started as nothing since no one has ever seen nothing, and nothing is maybe like absolute zero ... no one has ever been there.
Maybe there's a problem with time. The Big Bang looks stupid since times seems to go forwards. Does it look any less stupid if you say time isn't going forward or backwards, but the history of this universe is there and we are somehow moving through it. Like the beginning is there and the end is there already. Is this a help?
I looked up ontological last week since I couldn't remember what it meant. Knew it then, but ....
Consciousness or mind? Start there. We don't know why (as with the other Big Bang theory), but lets start with consciousness, or mind, or something that might be described as bare awareness. An awareness without compounded thoughts. Then go Big Bang (still no reason for that!!) and then we can see that the history of this universe is about consciousness trying to know itself, or love itself, or be aware of itself.
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So we have consciousness (going bang) and then we get energy and matter.
The energy thing ... I'm not there yet!
With matter ... this seems to come from energy and is in different forms, maybe levels of complexity.
Imagine light being consciousness before the Big Bang. There develops energy and matter, but the matter is in various forms. So the light/consciousness is trying to 'project' itself through matter. Now, like it can do with through a glass or crystal. Put light through a crystal and you might get something interesting. Put the light on a stone and zippo.
So my consciousness is not that of a stone. My consiousness when I have just wakened up and haven't had any thoughts yet ... well, what difference is that from the consciousness of probably any other mammal? Surely, if I am not actually thinking about anything and look around, there might not be that much difference between me and a horse?
When you turn your mind inside out .... consciousness and self is in everything ... You cannot be separate or alienated or isolated. Is everything arising simultaneously in the eternal present?
The "field", the joining up stuff that I saw, was thick in the air ... there was no vacant space between things .. and it was filled with ribbons of red and blue moving into what we might call the physical objects. It seems to say non-self and emptiness, this is how it works.
It's so partial, and so incomplete and so lacking in so many things, but I did feel when I was reading this book that it was a real help. Mind, consciousness, field ... we need more words.
The Higgs Boson boy was on the telly (another joe from this parish!!) when they showed the proof at Cern. Particles, fields, what are we talking about .... the boy on the telly said the Higgs Boson maybe indicated a field that be there to show how weight or mass appeared. They think the wee tottie things are supposed to be massless. Is that true? So maybe there's a field that adds weight. Is there a field that incorporates consciousness? Adds consciousness where it can? Doesn't work too well with stones or flatheids, but is evolving surely to work a bit better ..... and then we will realise that we live in perfection and that nothing we little fuckpigs can do will ever change or effect that? Nothing is perfect is God's perfect world. I'm looking for a way to see this world as we perceive it as a play of higher consciousness, but it is not easy!
I love this stuff. Brian Wilson is one of the two other people who read this blog. He won't have read this far. He only likes the Beach Boys and has no interest in anything else. The other person, Albert, claims he invented the internety box, and he doesn't meditate. So this post is just for moi!!!
Anyway, the reason for being interesting in this is that if there is no objective reality, why fucking get bothered by stuff. It doesn't exist in the manner of its appearance.
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