Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

What is a human being? What is life? Can science give us reliable answers to such questions? The electricity of life. The meaning of human consciousness. Are we alone? Are the traditional contests between science and religion still relevant? Does the word "spirit" still hold meaning today?

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Grey Cloud
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by Grey Cloud » Wed May 28, 2008 5:32 pm

I'm with the eunuch, if you see what I mean. In the myths Ouranus and Cronos are not killed or destroyed but emasculated or diminished. They can still participate in events but cannot create
If I have the least bit of knowledge
I will follow the great Way alone
and fear nothing but being sidetracked.
The great Way is simple
but people delight in complexity.
Tao Te Ching, 53.

soulsurvivor
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by soulsurvivor » Thu May 29, 2008 8:08 am

There's no longer a need for opposition; rather a state of perfect balance is the "heaven". Male becomes "castrated", giving up or becoming informed that the perfect balance doesn't depend upon opposition or greater power, allowing the male/female to become "one" within the same body, the same universe, the same cell. In my way of thinking, it's a "truth" that proves out from the simplest to the most complex.

So, is there a state of "perfect balance" that's found within the electrical universe, the electrical universal theory?

Sorry, I'm still not stating this correctly, but the perfect balance, rather than a "merging" of opposites, is a state whereby the positive aligns with the neutral to create the perfect boundary from the negative. All of humanity is both male/female within. In original state, neither sex has to be dominant.

Would this theory translate into an ancient sky?

soulsurvivor
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by soulsurvivor » Thu May 29, 2008 10:04 am

Maybe just one other note to consider - Could the Electric Star hypothesis also apply to a human? Except, hopefully, not ending with an explosion? :)

soulsurvivor
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by soulsurvivor » Sun Jun 08, 2008 9:44 am

One additional thought and then I'm back to read only for the remainder of my stay:

Please, do not be quick to assume that the external, visual experience was the primary source to inform the myth.
Allow equal plausibility for the internal and sensory experience.
What happens in the heavens also happens within.

I was banned from a quantum physics forum for suggesting that humans have the ability to achieve and maintain zero point within.
It is descriptive of a state of existence where "heaven" is found within a physical body.

Grey Cloud
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by Grey Cloud » Sun Jun 08, 2008 10:45 am

soulsurvivor wrote:One additional thought and then I'm back to read only for the remainder of my stay:
Please, do not be quick to assume that the external, visual experience was the primary source to inform the myth.
Allow equal plausibility for the internal and sensory experience.
What happens in the heavens also happens within.
I was banned from a quantum physics forum for suggesting that humans have the ability to achieve and maintain zero point within.
It is descriptive of a state of existence where "heaven" is found within a physical body.
Well said. As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.
My own studies lead me to believe that myths are far more complex than modern interpreters credit. They are certainly not all reducible to stories about Saturn, Mars and Venus.
“Truth is within us; it takes no rise
from outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect clear perception – which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error – and to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.”
From “Paracelsus” by Robert Browning.
The universe and I exist together, and all things and I are one. As all things are one, there is no need for further speech. But since I just said that all things are one, how can speech be not important?...Behind the divisible there is always something indivisible. Behind the disputable there is always something indisputable. You ask: What? The wise man carries it in his heart.
CHUANG-TZU
If I have the least bit of knowledge
I will follow the great Way alone
and fear nothing but being sidetracked.
The great Way is simple
but people delight in complexity.
Tao Te Ching, 53.

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bboyer
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by bboyer » Tue Jan 20, 2009 9:30 pm

Haven't visited this thread in a while. Thought I'd just toss this in.
Alan Watts in The Nature of Consciousness extract wrote:
....
And so in this way--it's called the technique of reductio ad absurdum. If you think you have a problem, and you're an ego and you're in difficulty, the answer the Zen master makes to you is 'Show me your ego. I want to see this thing that has a problem.' When Bodidharma, the legendary founder of Zen, came to China, a disciple came to him and said 'I have no peace of mind. Please pacify my mind.' And Bodhidharma said 'Bring out your mind here before me and I'll pacify it.' 'Well,' he said, 'when I look for it, I can't find it.' So Bodhidharma said 'There, it's pacified.' See? Becuase when you look for your own mind, that is to say, your own particularized center of being which is separate from everything else, you won't be able to find it. But the only way you'll know it isn't there is if you look for it hard enough, to find out that it isn't there. And so everybody says 'All right, know yourself, look within, find out who you are.' Because the harder you look, you won't be able to find it, and then you'll realize it isn't there at all. There isn't a separate you. You're mind is what there is. Everything. But the only way to find that out is to persist in the state of delusion as hard as possible. That's one way. I haven't said the only way, but it is one way.

So almost all spiritual disciplines, meditations, prayers, etc, etc, are ways of persisting in folly. Doing resolutely and consistently what you're doing already. So if a person believes that the Earth is flat, you can't talk him out of that. He knows it's flat. Look out the window and see; it's obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him it isn't is to say 'Well let's go and find the edge.' And in order to find the edge, you've got to be very careful not to walk in circles, you'll never find it that way. So we've got to go consistently in a straight line due west along the same line of latitude, and eventually when we get back to where we started from, you've convinced the guy that the world is round. That's the only way that will teach him. Because people can't be talked out of illusions.

There is another possibility, however. But this is more difficult to describe. Let's say we take as the basic supposition- -which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening, or whatever you want to call it--that this now moment in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity. That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary, and that we may not feel very well, we're sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on, and that it ought to be changed. This is it. So you don't need to do anything at all. But the difficulty about explaining that is that you mustn't try and not do anything, because that's doing something. It's just the way it is. In other words, what's required is a sort of act of super relaxation; it's not ordinary relaxation. It's not just letting go, as when you lie down on the floor and imagine that you're heavy so you get into a state of muscular relaxation. It's not like that. It's being with yourself as you are without altering anything. And how to explain that? Because there's nothing to explain. It is the way it is now. See? And if you understand that, it will automatically wake you up.

So that's why Zen teachers use shock treatment, to sometimes hit them or shout at them or create a sudden surprise. Because is is that jolt that suddenly brings you here. See, there's no road to here, because you're already there. If you ask me 'How am I going to get here?' It will be like the famous story of the American tourist in England. The tourist asked some yokel the way to Upper Tuttenham, a little village. And the yokel scratched his head and he said 'Well, sir, I don't know where it is, but if I were you, I wouldn't start from here.'

So you see, when you ask 'How to I obtain the knowledge of God, how do I obtain the knowledge of liberation?' all I can say is it's the wrong question. Why do you want to obtain it? Because the very fact that you're wanting to obtain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there. You already have it. But of course, it's up to you. It's your privilege to pretend that you don't. That's your game; that's your life game; that's what makes you think your an ego. And when you want to wake up, you will, just like that. If you're not awake, it shows you don't want to. You're still playing the hide part of the game. You're still, as it were, the self pretending it's not the self. And that's what you want to do. So you see, in that way, too, you're already there.

So when you understand this, a funny thing happens, and some people misinterpret it. You'll discover as this happens that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior disappears. You will realize that what you describe as things under your own will feel exactly the same as things going on outside you. You watch other people moving, and you know you're doing that, just like you're breathing or circulating your blood. And if you don't understand what's going on, you're liable to get crazy at this point, and to feel that you are god in the Jehovah sense. To say that you actually have power over other people, so that you can alter what you're doing. And that you're omnipotent in a very crude, literal kind of bible sense. You see? A lot of people feel that and they go crazy. They put them away. They think they're Jesus Christ and that everybody ought to fall down and worship them. That's only they got their wires crossed. This experience happened to them, but they don't know how to interpret it. So be careful of that. Jung calls it inflation. People who get the Holy Man syndrome, that I suddenly discover that I am the lord and that I am above good and evil and so on, and therefore I start giving myself airs and graces. But the point is, everybody else is, too. If you discover that you are that, then you ought to know that everybody else is.

For example, let's see in other ways how you might realize this. Most people think when they open their eyes and look around, that what they're seeing is outside. It seems, doesn't it, that you are behind your eyes, and that behind the eyes there is a blank you can't see at all. You turn around and there's something else in front of you. But behind the eyes there seems to be something that has no color. It isn't dark, is isn't light. It is there from a tactile standpoint; you can feel it with your fingers, but you can't get inside it. But what is that behind your eyes? Well actually, when you look out there and see all these people and things sitting around, that's how it feels inside your head. The color of this room is back here in the nervous system, where the optical nerves are at the back of the head. It's in there. It's what you're experiencing. What you see out here is a neurological experience. Now if that hits you, and you feel sensuously that that's so, you may feel therefore that the external world is all inside my skull. You've got to correct that, with the thought that your skull is also in the external world. So you suddenly begin to feel 'Wow, what kind of situation is this? It's inside me, and I'm inside it, and it's inside me, and I'm inside it.' But that's the way it is.

This is the what you could call transaction, rather than interaction between the individual and the world. Just like, for example, in buying and selling. There cannot be an act of buying unless there is simultaneously an act of selling, and vice versa. So the relationship between the environment and the organism is transactional. The environment grows the organism, and in turn the organism creates the environment. The organism turns the sun into light, but it requires there be an environment containing a sun for there to be an organism at all. And the answer to it simply is they're all one process. It isn't that organisms by chance came into the world. This world is the sort of environment which grows organisms. It was that way from the beginning. The organisms may in time have arrived in the scene or out of the scene later than the beginning of the scene, but from the moment it went BANG! in the beginning, if that's the way it started, organisms like us are sitting here. We're involved in it.

Look here, we take the propogation of an electric current. I can have an electric current running through a wire that goes all the way around the Earth. And here we have a power source, and here we have a switch. A positive pole, a negative pole. Now, before that switch closes, the current doesn't exactly behave like water in a pipe. There isn't current here, waiting, to jump the gap as soon as the switch is closed. The current doesn't even start until the switch is closed. It never starts unless the point of arrival is there. Now, it'll take an interval for that current to get going in its circuit if it's going all the way around the Earth. It's a long run. But the finishing point has to be closed before it will even start from the beginning. In a similar way, even though in the development of any physical system there may by billions of years between the creation of the most primitive form of energy and then the arrival of intelligent life, that billions of years is just the same things as the trip of that current around the wire. Takes a bit of time. But it's already implied. It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn. And so in any lump of rock floating about in space, there is implicit human intelligence. Sometime, somehow, somewhere. They all go together.

So don't differentiate yourself and stand off and say 'I am a living organism in a world made of a lot of dead junk, rocks and stuff.' It all goes together. Those rocks are just as much you as your fingernails. You need rocks. What are you going to stand on?

What I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense. We've got all sorts of ideas built into us which seem unquestioned, obvious. And our speech reflects them; its commonest phrases. 'Face the facts.' As if they were outside you. As if life were something they simply encountered as a foreigner. 'Face the facts.' Our common sense has been rigged, you see? So that we feel strangers and aliens in this world, and this is terribly plausible, simply because this is what we are used to. That's the only reason. But when you really start questioning this, say 'Is that the way I have to assume life is? I know everybody does, but does that make it true?' It doesn't necessarily. It ain't necessarily so. So then as you question this basic assumption that underlies our culture, you find you get a new kind of common sense. It becomes absolutely obvious to you that you are continuous with the universe.

For example, people used to believe that planets were supported in the sky by being imbedded in crystal spheres, and everybody knew that. Why, you could see the crystal spheres there because you could look right through them. It was obviously made of crystal, and something had to keep them up there. And then when the astronomers suggested that there weren't any crystal spheres, people got terrified, because then they thought the stars would fall down. Nowadays, it doesn't bother anybody. They thought, too, when they found out the Earth was spherical, people who lived in the antiguities would fall off, and that was scary. But then somebody sailed around the world, and we all got used to it, we travel around in jet planes and everything. We have no problem feeling that the Earth is globular. None whatever. We got used to it.

So in the same way Einstein's relativity theories--the curvature of the propogation of light, the idea that time gets older as light moves away from a source, in other words, people looking at the world now on Mars, they would be seeing the state of the world a little earlier than we are now experiencing it. That began to bother people when Einstein started talking about that. But now we're all used to it, and relativity and things like that are a matter of common sense today. Well, in a few years, it will be a matter of commons sense to many people that they're one with the universe. It'll be so simple. And then maybe if that happens, we shall be in a position to handle our technology with more sense. With love instead of with hate for our environment.

Alan Wilson Watts (January 6, 1915 – November 16, 1973)

The Nature of Consciousness

http://deoxy.org/watts.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one's mind and one's subtle body rest upon that and not rest on anything else. [---][/---] Maitri Upanishad

Grey Cloud
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by Grey Cloud » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:32 am

Hi Arc-us,
On Fri Jan 16, 2009 9:25 pm you wrote:
I've often wondered just how many people bother to read long, page after page of quoted material. Not many I imagine. I suspect "tl:dr" (too long: didn't read) is more often the case.
Well count me in, especially when it is something as interesting as anything by Alan Watts.
I've not read much by him, I know him more from audio and video lectures and such. I find that when it comes to food for thought he always serves up a generous helping.
The first half or so of the passage is similar in content to U.G. Krishnamurti, though nowhere near as blunt as U.G. For example:
So you see, when you ask 'How to I obtain the knowledge of God, how do I obtain the knowledge of liberation?' all I can say is it's the wrong question. Why do you want to obtain it? Because the very fact that you're wanting to obtain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there. You already have it.
This part is superb:
So the relationship between the environment and the organism is transactional. The environment grows the organism, and in turn the organism creates the environment. The organism turns the sun into light, but it requires there be an environment containing a sun for there to be an organism at all. And the answer to it simply is they're all one process. It isn't that organisms by chance came into the world. This world is the sort of environment which grows organisms. It was that way from the beginning. The organisms may in time have arrived in the scene or out of the scene later than the beginning of the scene, but from the moment it went BANG! in the beginning, if that's the way it started, organisms like us are sitting here. We're involved in it.
This is similar to a point I have been trying to get over, and failing miserably, in the Materialism thread and elsewhere. There is not a Universe with space and objects, there is only the Universe. A planet for example is no more a separate 'object' than my liver is separate from me. My liver's awareness, or consciousness, of itself and its environment differs from my awareness of my myself and my environment only in so far as my liver and I differ. Its all just variations on a theme - one theme; infinite variations.
This sentence:
What I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense.
is similar to a thought which floats around in my head. My thought involves the word 'reason', as in when we say to someone 'be reasonable'. When we say this we are not saying 'be logical', we are saying take a less extreme position, i.e. move aware from the extreme of emotion or logic (the two brain hemispheres) and take up a position somewhere in the middle. Aristotle described common sense as the sense which is common to all, i.e. inherent. At the Oracle at Delphi it said 'know thyself and nothing to excess'. That Delphic phrase is the kernel of e.g. Plato's philosophy in the West and the I Ching (look within and don't strain) in the East. Incidentally, one Greek wag criticised Aristotle for being excessive in his moderation.
Alan Watts can have the last word:
Well, in a few years, it will be a matter of commons sense to many people that they're one with the universe. It'll be so simple.
If I have the least bit of knowledge
I will follow the great Way alone
and fear nothing but being sidetracked.
The great Way is simple
but people delight in complexity.
Tao Te Ching, 53.

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bboyer
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by bboyer » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:19 pm

If you get a chance, Phil, read the entire article if you haven't already; I only posted a relatively small extract from the transcript. There are also a few others posted at that link if you're interested. I have learned so much from Watts, I couldn't begin to to summarize my admiration/gratitude. I, too, haven't read that much of him compared to the audio - I have managed over the years to collect all or nearly all of his material, several hundred hours I'd say.
There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one's mind and one's subtle body rest upon that and not rest on anything else. [---][/---] Maitri Upanishad

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junglelord
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by junglelord » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:33 pm

Grey Cloud wrote:Hi Arc-us,
On Fri Jan 16, 2009 9:25 pm you wrote:
This part is superb:
So the relationship between the environment and the organism is transactional. The environment grows the organism, and in turn the organism creates the environment. The organism turns the sun into light, but it requires there be an environment containing a sun for there to be an organism at all. And the answer to it simply is they're all one process. It isn't that organisms by chance came into the world. This world is the sort of environment which grows organisms. It was that way from the beginning. The organisms may in time have arrived in the scene or out of the scene later than the beginning of the scene, but from the moment it went BANG! in the beginning, if that's the way it started, organisms like us are sitting here. We're involved in it.

Everything in the universe vibrates and oscillates. Therefore the connecting link between all forms of energy is vibration, sympathetic harmony, and resonance. Dr. Dan Burisch, David Wilcock, and others have discovered that a simply quartz crystal, electricity, and water are all the ingredients needed to create a medium for spontaneous DNA to appear in the vacuum..
If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.
— Nikola Tesla
Casting Out the Nines from PHI into Indigs reveals the Cosmic Harmonic Code.
— Junglelord.
Knowledge is Structured in Consciouness. Structure and Function Cannot Be Seperated.
— Junglelord

tannaberton
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by tannaberton » Tue Mar 17, 2009 6:05 am

I have a nine year old whose mental magic allows us to discuss topics most adults seem wary to acknowledge but for a piteous smile.

When I introduced the concept of an electric universe, I meant to show him ideas beyond rigid presentation and legislated acceptance as shown in schools for gifted children convinced they cannot meet his educational requirements.

Especially offensive is the Big Bang.

However, when I pointed out the nature of Birkeland currents he asked if I noticed DNA has the same structure.

He's off and running.

Tanny
Dancers appear insane to those who do not hear the music.

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bboyer
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by bboyer » Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:17 pm

tannaberton wrote:I have a nine year old whose mental magic allows us to discuss topics most adults seem wary to acknowledge but for a piteous smile.

When I introduced the concept of an electric universe, I meant to show him ideas beyond rigid presentation and legislated acceptance as shown in schools for gifted children convinced they cannot meet his educational requirements.

Especially offensive is the Big Bang.

However, when I pointed out the nature of Birkeland currents he asked if I noticed DNA has the same structure.

He's off and running.

Tanny
Dancers appear insane to those who do not hear the music.
Nicely put, and understood. Fondest memories of similar magical moments when mine were of that age. Fortunately, they have continued through the years with us as we all mature.
There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one's mind and one's subtle body rest upon that and not rest on anything else. [---][/---] Maitri Upanishad

dejavouz
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Re: Recovered: The Electricity of Life - a personal view

Unread post by dejavouz » Tue Mar 31, 2009 3:33 am

That was inspirational thinking and I certainly loved the rant...

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