Hi Claudiu - along with giving much thought to what you have written recently in posts 67, 69, & 73, I have been thinking of how to proceed with this topic to a satisfactory conclusion. The crux of the issue is that which was raised in my response to Srinath (above):
Your response that the cause of suffering is neither metaphysically inherent nor physically inherent (not merely physically inherited); that ‘I’ am neither a metaphysical entity nor a physical entity; that emotions can be factual but cannot be either metaphysically or physically existent, leaves very little room for proceeding forward.
That is not Rick who is saying that. Please look again carefully at what Richard is explicitly saying there. That not only is malice and sorrow physical, but that the instinctual passions which give rise to malice and sorrow are physical as well.
As ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, then guess ‘who’ is physical after all.
Diverging from the crux of the issue for a moment, one thing that is becoming clear is that a strict reliance on what a PCE informs will produce divergent positions on key issues. For example, the clearest PCE that I can recall did not inform me that the emotions and self that preceded it were ever illusory or lacked substantial existence, only that they were not existent at the time of the PCE. In another example, Richard’s PCE and actual freedom informed him that all forms of mental visualization signified the presence of ‘self’; of course it transpired that that particular bit of PCE-derived information would be entirely incorrect. As far as an identity being accurately informed by its own PCE’s it is instructive to bear in mind that all religions presumably began at some point with some chap having one or more outstanding PCE’s where ‘self’ was completely absent, and who ex post facto interpreted the experience in either an idiosyncratic manner, appropriate to his culture and epoch, or piggy-backed on a pre-existing framework in such a way that it either led to or helped shape the formulation of yet another theology with all the attendant problems. How much can the identity be entrusted with conveying information faithfully from its PCE? Also bear in mind how the PCE informs different ‘self’-less bodies of different things. One actually free person’s PCE is currently informing them of the existence of God and angels, another actually free person’s PCE is informing them that their thoughts and mental images are not actual but virtual phenomena existing in a distinct idealistic realm of virtuality as elucidated by Gilles Deleuze, and yet another actually free person’s PCE is informing them that colors and sounds are not physical, while still another maintains that sensations are purely physical. There is thus a distinct possibility that both the suspension and immolation of ‘self’ does not, in of itself, resolve all the matters that the self-less condition professes to resolve. As Srinath recently remarked (post no. 50), “these ontological matters (…) may never be resolved to everyones satisfaction – even amongst actually free persons.”
At the end, it may well be that the only thing any human being can ever attest as being factual is the infinitude of the universe:
(2004)
RESPONDENT: … your mind would no longer be the universe experiencing itself as a mind. Instead, apart from being free from the human condition you are completely clueless about the universe.
RICHARD: If I may point out? Other than being apperceptively aware of infinitude I am already ‘clueless’ about the universe. Vis.:
• [Richard]: ‘… it did not occur to me it was a concept, and not a fact, that the sun was a giant ball of nuclear fusion until about five years ago.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Do you, perchance, know what the sun actually is?
• [Richard]: ‘No, virtually the only thing regarding the properties of the universe that is readily apparent here in this actual world is its infinitude … matters such as what a star/planet/moon/comet is require observation and illation.
What happened was that, whilst browsing the internet in 1998-99 I came across a web-page proposing that the sun was plasma-only (as contrasted to the mainstream science proposition it had a nuclear-fusion interior which generated the surface plasma), and it dawned upon me that I had accepted – as a fact – what I had been taught in high-school last century … just as earlier generations had accepted as fact the then prevailing wisdom that it was a giant ball of fire (spectral analysis has shown the sun to have no oxygen so it is not that).
Nor is it a god/goddess, of course, but had I been born millennia ago I would (presumably) have accepted that to be fact.
‘Tis quite remarkable just how much is fed-in from an early age.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 49
In other words, its absoluteness:
(2005)
RICK: Richard, could you list as many characteristics as possible that you would ascribe to the universe, please. Such as benign, infinite, wonderful, marvellous, eternal, a veritable perpetuus mobilis etc. As many as possible would be neat to look see. I’m just curious to read what the universe is and therefore what it isn’t from a pure consciousness experiencer.
RICHARD: The fundamental characteristic, or nature, of the universe is its infinitude – specifically having the properties of being spatially infinite and temporally eternal and materially perdurable – or, to put that another way, its absoluteness
Mailing List 'AF' Rick