Dialogues 1: Language, Conditioning and Reality
Associated Pages:
Dialogues Continued (Page 2)
Dialogues Concluded (page 3)
Krishnamurti Dialogues
(Follow the link - or call up page 'dial2' for continuation)
Introduction:
These transcripts represent dialogues that took place in the final quarter of the year 2000, dialogues that centre on some of the deeper, underlying aspects of the teachings of J Krishnamurti - in particular the ontology, human conditioning and (especially) language and its effect upon human conditioning and the human perception of reality.
The reader is warned that some of these dialogues venture towards the edge of language and symbolism, and touch upon the relationship between language, image, perception, meaning, understanding and reality - indeed, much of some of the dialogues relates to the discussion of modes of experiencing and perception beyond words. Often, the words available in the English language at this level of discussion fold in upon themselves and become inadequate for expressing precise meaning. Since much of what is covered reaches beyond the word then the prudent reader is well advised to approach the dialoghues by starting at the beginning and proceeding in a linear, chrono0logical manner: it is strongly recommended that the readers do not 'jump in' to the dialogues at random points since the nature of discussions is likely to appear incomprehensible. Measured study - meditation even - on some of the issues here will bring its own reward: the ultimate understanding of some of what is represented here depends upon grasping and integrating the vagaries in a process which could be referred to as 'insight', a process which cannot be communicated in word.
The participants in the dialogues - at various times - were:
c=ce=cenglund (Female, American resident in Vancouver, Canada)
dave=daveofpool and variants (Englishman resident in Liverpool, England)
ram=bruce= (Male, American resident in Virginia, USA)
David=davidbindu (Male, American resident in Pennsylvania, USA)
Dan=danscorpio=morf and variants (Male, English resident in Cheshire, England)
[some of the strange names used reflect the stubborn refusal of the server to accept simple forms of the users' normal log in 'handles']
These participants originally met during the course of dialogues to discuss the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti in the Chat Room at http://www.kinfonet.org/Discussion_forums/ (the room stil operates to thios day). Dissatisfied with some of the disturbances in the Chat Room, and the failure of many of the dialogues to penetrate to any depth due to their fragmentary nature, one of the participants (danscorpio) - who had the necessary know how - set up a new discussion area on NBCI and this web page as a general record area.
Not all talks in this series got recorded - especially in the early days when the participants were unaware of how far and how deep they would travel: consequently the reader will have to fill in some of the gaps by inference from the available text.
Minimal editing of the extant transcripts (such as to remove trivia, correct some obvious typographical errors) has been carried out: accordingly, the English and spelling will be found wanting in places but the 'rough and ready' form represents the freshness and spontaneous nature of the discussions.
Dialogue 1 10th October 2000
Preliminary Exploration of Languaging and 'Thinking'
[morfinagin] To effectively function as human beings we need the facility to manipulate language for- practical ends - externally in terms of communication with others (and internally as 'logical' concrete- thought?)
[morfinagin] But once that's done, we need to shut it down
[davewhois] yes David, yes morf
[David] yes as a tool to be used not ruled by... there becomes then an art to using the tool and- thus an art to living a balanced and orderly life
[morfinagin] Perhaps that's impossible for us - the same 'brain circuits' get kicked into life & once- they have momentum will keep going into internal dialogue & fantasy land
[David] I don't think it's impossible judging from my very limited experience... but it isn't as- natural as eating a bowl of ice cream either
[David] it is perhaps 'maturity'[
davewhois] habits can be broken, some are more subtle and ingrained than others, trying to break- thought patterns doesn't work because trying is a thought pattern
[morfinagin] When I watch and listen to people around me, I notice how much of their conversation - conceptualisation and languaging - is ill formed and confused: then I look in myself, and see my thoughts and language has the same properties (not perhaps to the same extent) but the essence is the same. Seems we're all caught in the same cultural trap
[David] the breaking of the pattern can only happen as a byproduct of understanding... so- understanding and the love for it is what motivates... the love to grow and realize our full natures- don't you think?
[David] we call it a trap ... it's a label we put on it... but I wonder if it really is a trap or- more natural than we understand
[morfinagin] realization, yes, but I already realize that I do some of these things - but the- realization doesn't stop me: it annoys me rather in seeing what I'm doing and being unable to stop
[davewhois] u haven't intuited why u do them yet, but u will
[David] that's interesting because the annoyance comes from setting up the expectation... that's- when we stop the understanding and start with the conclusions right?
[davewhois] good point, David
[morfinagin] I think 'trap' is a fair description. We repeat behaviors we have been taught/pick up from- those around us - so the cultural sense is correct: trap in terms of us getting caught (and mostly not- noticing we are caught) into fixed behaviors
[David] trap is a value judgement... its just a propensity like an eddy in the side of the river- but the river does move on the current does pick up
[davewhois] I get into pointless conversations, dealing with the public and sometimes get sucked in,- but I never revert to actually believing or accepting the nonsense as true or right
[David] yes it becomes a cultural politeness I can't think of the word
[David] nicety but you are not fully in it
[morfinagin] II accept that it is a value judgement (so many words are) and that that's my way of- viewing it - I see myself (and others) habitually repeating certain speech forms: to me, that's a trap
[David] yes but you just made the jump again... what if you just stopped at the perception?
[David] mindlessness happens, you are aware that is mindfulness in the moment then you apply the- past comparison to make the judgement ... trap!
[morfinagin] I'm just using the words to describe the perception (which comes more in actuality as an- uncomfortable feeling in the head/gut) that's all
[David] OK ... lets not hang up here... but what's interesting is the implication to the collective
[morfinagin] when we were children, before we joined the language 'club', we existed with wordless- consciousness
[morfinagin] when we are asleep, we have (mainly) wordless consciousness
[David] well... it's true we did not have memory to bring to bear on the perceptions we had...
[David] and in deep sleep we are out of words
[davewhois] I can still remember, and still feel cheated by, realizing that the language adults teach- is mainly used to lie and patronize us as children
[morfinagin] we could walk (a form of body memory must exist for such a complex activity) before we- could talk. And we could see and make some kind of sense of what we saw
[David] yes as children we are adrift and dependant on adults for input
[morfinagin] Did I ever say when in Kinfonet that Aid is nothing but a form of perception?
[David] yes I actually remember it... thinking without words but in images
[davewhois] the world we are told exists and the real one are so different, I still feel like a child- who is being lied to, and encouraged to join in the lie, the illusion everything is ok, it's bloody- well not
[davewhois] Aid?, what that?
[morfinagin] I think what you've just expressed, dave, partially explains why I use the word 'trap'. I- see people saying things - by habit (or trap/delusion) which in the ultimate analysis are at best- illusions and at worst downright deceptions. In some cases, this is SUBCONSCIOUS - hence the trap- issue. (Aid=Audio internal dialogue)
[David] OK... somebody point where we're going...
[morfinagin] I'm about to point out that thinking exists as a habitual auditory hallucination
[David] you know, I think there's some relative truth there... yes habitual... seeing a non-reality- I suppose is a hallucination
[morfinagin] once interrupted with sufficient impulse and frequency, the illusions built up by the- habitual word patterns (as dave suggested) fall away and what one might call 'truth' - or what is- without the cloying obfuscating layer of words gets revealed
[David] yes-another way of saying the space between thought
[morfinagin] (And to get some background on this scientifically on the language side, look up 'Sapir- Whorf')
[David] BUT.... thought interrupted repeatedly through observation and understanding builds a- momentum of awareness without thought and brings an order to the thought 'process'
[morfinagin] Animals (which have vast spaces between thoughts) are significantly more attentive to- what's going on around them than human beings - they're not preoccupied all the time with the noise- that's going on between their ears
[David] yes... the past may not get in the way accept as reflex
[morfinagin] Notice that that which we normally refer to as thinking (which is more rightfully referred- to as thinking in words or 'internal dialogue') takes place as a hallucinated process occurring in the- sense of HEARING
[David] I enjoyed this today Morf! I got to think deep... it was really good... I enjoy our chats
Dialogue 2 30th October 2000
Metaphor and Dream
trying TCP connection to memberchat.xoom.com:8900 ...>>
The remote machine has accepted the network request ... please wait.
(c) 1999 NBC Internet [http://www.nbci.com] ParaChat server 3.00.01
>> Davidbindu has joined channel #XC.2218034
The topic is: Kdialogue
Davidbindu> Morf! Morf! Morf! Morf! Morf! Hi!!!
[morficus] CE and I had a heavy session yesterday about the Tonal, Nagual, no thing, thinging and karma
Davidbindu> I was just about to go off line when I decided to check this page... she got on me too- about my Jack Kornfield qutes... and issues
[morficus] I took away her final question as to how karma fits into the Tonal/thinging and said I'd- chew it over
Davidbindu> quotes... I see where she had just lost her job she said last night... so she was a little- down I suppose
[morficus] I'll save my conclusion (which may seem a bit obscure to anyone not involved in the discussion) until she turns up: if she doesn't, I may put a cryptic post on the Kinfonet page
Davidbindu> she and I were also discussing Karma with Allan
[morficus] Anyway, just to summarise: I put karma down to connectivity, the action/reaction of the- whole of the Tonal with itself
Davidbindu> and the Tonal is....?
[morficus] (and the total Tonal comprises an infinite number of interconnected realities)
[morficus] Sorry - this is Castaneda speak
Davidbindu> OK it's been over 20 yrs since I read all but his last book
[morficus] Read them in this order (since they all build on each other)....aha, you've read them all?
[morficus] cast your mind back to the Tonal and the Nagual
[morficus] (the entirity of manifest being, and non being)
Davidbindu> I believe I did... I was in college and I was very taken with the books and their content,- the mysticism in our own back yard... but then I read a scholarly book calling him a fraud fiction- maqaurading as fact... Castaneda as the jackal or jokster
Davidbindu> and I was quite let down and I walked away from them
Davidbindu> now I see Ram says they were metaphors or somehing
[morficus] Yes, de Mille exposed his (Castaneda's) sources as fraud - and in doing so proclaimed him a genius for- the shamanistic world view he had put together (he was an expert on N American Indian Culture)
Davidbindu> yes that rings a bell
[morficus] The shamanistic picture he drew (not the way he drew it mind) contains great insight
Davidbindu> well good I'm open to it
Davidbindu> did you see my quote about karma on the chat page from yesterday or the day before?
[morficus] I think de Mille actually said: 'either this man is exceptionally brave and has undergone- the experoiences he recounts, or he is a genius of the highest order such as to have originated a- complex, coherent system' Words to that effect
[morficus] I read it
Davidbindu> OK
[morficus] Kornfield
Davidbindu> yes
[morficus] Sometimes insights come when we press for them
Davidbindu> sure
Davidbindu> so what was her point?
[morficus] One 'exercise' I work on is during waking up to normal consciousness
[morficus] Just as sleep leaves - and before the 'naming'/word process that makes up normal waking- conscious reality begins - a window of wordless awaereness exists
Davidbindu> yes
[morficus] In it, one can easily slip either way - back into sleep, or into full wakefullness
Davidbindu> been there a thousand times
[morficus] But one can balance there with a little bit of practice
Davidbindu> I tried to a long time ago when I was trying to catch myself levitating in bed..
Davidbindu> I would wake up suddenly as if falling back in bed
Davidbindu> they were very vivid dreams on the edge of awake
[morficus] In such states, it becomes easy for the 'subconcious' mind, or deeper levels of the mind- (choose your own terminology here), can come through and give insights
Davidbindu> OK
[morficus] I had one or two such insights this morning, insights which I believe have come about as a- result of searching and dialogue in here.
Davidbindu> wonderful ! can you describe
[morficus] Oh I think its quite natural - when one undertakes a deep serious search, your deep serious- bits will probably respond!
Davidbindu> I agree
Davidbindu> as you know I've been trying to catch myself in my conditioning
[morficus] I'll give you the second one first - as it's a bit easier to describe. And note that these- might seem a bit stupid in words, but in deep meaning (to me at least) they are signuificant in terms of- what I'm trying to do
[morficus] Right
Davidbindu> for many months... you helped by showing me the languaging aspect
Davidbindu> shoot
[morficus] When somebody draws a line (say) down the middle of a road, then all the people(drivers) who- drive down that bit of road will respond and drive according to how they interpret the meaning of the- line
Davidbindu> bringing their experience to bare on the situation
Davidbindu> I'll drive on the right and you on the left
[morficus] Yes, the thing is a metaphor. Similarly, one could say that the 'road' gets drawn on the- previously virgin land - same metaphor at a different level
[morficus] Going back to the lined road, our behaviour is conditioned by our experience of the man made- line on the (man made) road
Davidbindu> some intent was presupposed
Davidbindu> in whoever built the road... in the directio it took , etc
[morficus] Now, really - before the lne painter man came - there was and is if we ignore it) no line to- condition our behaviour. We only (normally) behave like we do on that road because of the man made- painted line. If we tried really hard we could ignore it (but we'd still be able to see it, so we- couldn't block it out altogether)
Davidbindu> yep
[morficus] So, filling in the gaps at the relevant level of the metaphor for this (on one level - ther- may be more when I think on it) ...[
morficus] Road= 'isness'
[morficus] Line= languaging
Davidbindu> yes... languages is created by thought that is well worn past, infused with expectation- acording to our specific conditioning
[morficus] In other words we interact with actuality through our language, using it as a GIVEN which we- cannot ignore
Davidbindu> yes ... how to think without language.... free
Davidbindu> or is the thinking process in the same conditioning so how to be aware without uding- thought...
Davidbindu> I cought myself doing it this morning too... thinking but not with words
Davidbindu> non liniar
Davidbindu> linear... how to spell?
Davidbindu> I did it right then didn't I?
[morficus] But the culture, our predecessors, have painted the lines so to speak, given us the rules- and now we can't ignore them. We're 'forced' to drive according to the lines (we may find some tricks- where we can partially ignore 'em & we may paint a few new lines of our own, but generally we['re- stuck). I now think I have the next level on this metaphor (which came about a week or so ago, and then- again during my discussion with CE last night)
Davidbindu> I am with you brother!
Davidbindu> we are in a unique moment of now... and what we do will be the conditioning of tomorrow
[morficus] We discussed archetypes (forms of differentiation from the whole - which are not necessarily- man made) ancient forms in symbol or material.
Davidbindu> yes
Davidbindu> primal man... reptillian man...
Davidbindu> the wolf
[morficus] So, consider the 'road' an ancient archetype - something ancient that's always (as far as- we're concerned) been around. Our recent paint lines are only superficial symbols on top of them. So- there, we have both superficial and deep conditioning in one metaphor.
Davidbindu> yes... the city buried under the city... the well worn path that leads to the next town....- a new road put on top... current utility
(Editorial Note: The entities 'morficus' and zenhead2' are one and the same - morficus experienced some technical difficulty and had to re-log in to the area)
zenhead2 has joined channel #XC.2218034
[zenhead2] hello!
Davidbindu> hi what happened?
[zenhead2] dunno
Davidbindu> how can I save this chat?
[zenhead2] seems i'm logged in twice here
[zenhead2] try cut and paste
Davidbindu> you have two windows probabbly.... maybe one at the bottom of your page
[zenhead2] only 1 visible
Davidbindu> I got it
[zenhead2] cut/paste?
Davidbindu> I got it all up to this point
Davidbindu> yes
[zenhead2] good
Davidbindu> now what?
[zenhead2] you want to hear the other metaphor/insight?
Davidbindu> yes but before you tell me... lets just take this one... so, karma is in the physical world- but as it relates to man...
Davidbindu> we are to this moment affected by w the choices the first humans made.... and they were- effected by the evolution that led to them>>
Davidbindu> the chain is there... the only way to change direction... is
Davidbindu> the direction of fractionalization and alienation..
Davidbindu> is to be now... the potential that is implicit in us
Davidbindu> how can that ever happen except by a few... who can act as a carrot in front of the face of- humanity
Davidbindu> you still there?
[zenhead2] y
Davidbindu> there's steam coming out of my ears I am thinking so hard...
[zenhead2] in every natural process that occurs, certain parts of the 'brew' change before the majority
[zenhead2] ...but in terms of 'transfiguration' of men, it can be a dangerous business
Davidbindu> yes... if the direction strays from the nature of man... and who can tell that to the- masses
daveofpool has joined channel #XC.2218034
Davidbindu> Hi dave
Davidbindu> Morfs got my wheels really turning
[daveofpool] hi David, hi dan
[zenhead2] hello dare
Davidbindu> dave can you see what we've been discussing?
Davidbindu> maybe we lost dave
Davidbindu> hang on....
[zenhead2] anybody still here?
Davidbindu> sorry wife wanted me to carry in groceries
Davidbindu> where were we
Davidbindu> talk about karma... no food no dinner
[daveofpool] sorry, got called away, no only got what's been said since i came in
Davidbindu> Morf tell the next insight that one was great for seeing the nature of the conditioning
[zenhead2] a flaw with this room I'm afraid
Davidbindu> well I could email you right now what was said
[zenhead2] OK. Now I've only partly worked out what this one means - and I\'ve forgotten some of the- detail - but here goes with the main chunks. I'll try to do it chronologically
Davidbindu> if you want me to email type out your email address dave
[zenhead2] This relates to camouflage
[zenhead2] I was in a room with various things and I had two self charging paint brushes - one white,- and one black
[daveofpool] d.haynes01@cableinet.co.uk
[zenhead2] With the brushes, I was painting large block (rectangular) black and white patterns on- things in order to provide them with camouflage. One thing I remember painting particularly was a- snake
[zenhead2] I then went off somewhere and returned to be told that whilst the black and white simple- patterns did indeed camouflage things, that this was not the best scheme to suit the real world
Davidbindu> so conform to the standards of camoflage
[zenhead2] At that point, a black and white dog (with a fluffy black and white coat - the coat being- flecked black/white/grey) came into the room and I was shown how to pattern better camouflage on it- with a fine pointed black brush. I practiced abit and found it easy to do.
[zenhead2] All the time this was going on, I was aware that the objects I was camouflaging were the- world 'out there' (or actuality), and that the act of me camouflaging was somehow related to me- applying language/language patterns and manipulating them on the objects/the actuality.
[zenhead2] Thats it
[zenhead2] Some of the secondary metaphorical meaning(s) has just come to me as I typed it out
Davidbindu> this insight led you to what...
Davidbindu> we learn to conform to standards and improve on them only in the approved way
[zenhead2] (And just to say, my dialogue with ce last night concerned making thing out of no thing by- both archetypal form and by languaging)
Davidbindu> but is making thing out of both nothing and some thing... right?
[zenhead2] Oh no: to me (and I know it 'cos I 'felt' it) the raw meaning is that the naming of things- camouflages their true nature - and one can do that simply or learn sophisticated pattyerns of doing- it.
Davidbindu> now I'm with you
Davidbindu> and the first insight?
[zenhead2] Thing is that once you've camouflaged 'em they fit in very well with the background...
[zenhead2] Oh that's the main one david, you already have it (this is the first insight - the one I- gave youi earlier is the second)
Davidbindu> did you get all that dave?
Davidbindu> I emailed him the first part.... do you want me to email you the whole thing? [daveofpool] we can be so good at this that when the actuality is pointed out we can't, or won't, see- it, the camouflage has become our reality, yes David i did
[daveofpool] thanks David,
Davidbindu> the two stories do place the process of our condtioning in contrast.... that's good Morf! - but the first one implied we can't get free of it
[zenhead2] I don't know that it's implying anything - it just shows it
Davidbindu> yes... what did C say... her point,
[zenhead2] what both scenarios show relates to an active a) participation or b) participation reaction
[zenhead2] CE had problems in getting what I meant by archetypal patterning (at first - then she- twigged)
Davidbindu> so K was trying to alter the perceptions of humanity to try an realign intent
[zenhead2] You'll have to relate that to this david
Davidbindu> trying to teach us to look at the conditioning
Davidbindu> let karma work toward wholeness instead of destruction by fractionalism
[zenhead2] If those insights of mine said one thing, they said that my conditioning isn't something- 'out there' that I can look at, but a dynamic. Likewise, thinking about the 'out there' that did exist,- with form, (ie as a given) in both scenarios: the Tonal of the times?
[daveofpool] as a 'dynamic' what u see 'out there' is what the dynamic tells u is out there, very- complex
Davidbindu> I love it... I need to consider it more... but my wife wants me to hang a picture and other- stuff so I must go.... thanks for sharing the insight
[daveofpool] bye David
Davidbindu> morf shall I email this to you???
[zenhead2] see you, david
[zenhead2] If you would be so kind - I am writing some of this stuff up (but the complexity makes it- hard work to wrap words around it)
Davidbindu> ok
Dialogue 3 2nd November 2000
Language and the Process of Understanding
The Chat topic is: K dialogue 11/2/00
David - Good morning Morf.... !
Morficus - Why hello dare!
David - It isn't man 'and ' his conditioning is it? It's 'the conditioned man"! What we have no words for, we cannot understand; it does not fit into our view of what is real. Yet, there is a part of each of us that knows eternity - it may be forgotten or covered over, but it is there.
Morficus - I'm not sure about the 'words/understand' bit. We can 'think' in other ways than words (and what do we mean by understanding anyhow? Does the process limit itself to words?)
David - Understanding ... who understands? The limited identity of self? Understanding is comparison of the past as experienced?
Morficus - Perhaps we need to 'understand' what understanding means first, understand it as an actuality.
David - Yes... it's slippery 1 a : to grasp the meaning of , b : to grasp the reasonableness, c : to have thorough or technical acquaintance with or expertness in the practice of, d : to be thoroughly familiar with the character and propensities of, 2 : to accept as a fact or truth or regard as plausible without utter certainty, 3 : to interpret in one of a number of possible ways
David - So, comparison!!! to judge!!!! to apply memory to determine meaning How's that?
Morficus - Just quickly running through the process inside myself then, I found that 'understanding' for the couple of examples I chose, relies heavily on internal visualisation (Vi) - but I can find examples which invoke the (internal Ai) sense of analogue sound and internal dialogue. Thanks for the dictionary stuff - that certainly describes the 'end result' but not the 'process' that occurs in understanding. Observe what happens inside you when you address the question: 'Do you understand?'
David - OK
David - I'm drawing a blank at the moment... I thought I observed those things I mentioned... judgement, comparison, stored history there's a suspension of thought in the process... a waiting for something to come in a sense an opening.
Morficus - Try it with something simpler: how does a graphite pencil work?
David - Visualization of mechanical process sifting through thought to draw up a representation of the process.
Morficus - Right: I'm strongly visual for this example (and would guess that for some of my examples that one must invoke the visual sense in order to 'see (note the word) how they work
Morficus - I chose an electrical plug, an automobile engine and an electric guitar (and then a pencil)
Morficus - To understand how they work, I visually model them and then watch the model perform dynamically. As an alternative to the dynamic thing, I can 'talk through' of give a commentary on the visual model using internal dialogue. With the guitar example, I actually modeled it dynamically and then imaged the sound coming out of it (hence the Ai bit)
David - Yes, I did it with the mechanical pencil so to understand is to 'see' the essential process of the thing to be understood?
Morficus - So to me, the process of 'understanding' seems to lie in the creation of a coherent model. I can do that internally using the processes described above. (And I suppose I can do it externally as well with drawings/symbolic representations).
David - Yes a mental model or a loose representation if it's an idea or concept that is if the understanding act is applied to concepts.
Morficus - If my model 'works' - at least in my perception in a particular case - then I feel I 'understand': if not, then not.
David - Yes gaps keep us focused until we fill them in.
Morficus - So far, we've focussed on what I would call 'concrete' understandings, those referring to tangible goings on in the real world.
David - OK. I'm not sure where we're headed here
Morficus - (and apparently related to 'process' activities not objects/nouns - the statement 'I understand the wall' and such has no meaning. Let's go slowly here - I sense a discovery
David - Process, meaning how things work in addition to what the things are and how they interrelate.
Morficus - The use of the word 'understand' in loose, general terms, seems to invite associated deletions (yes, how things interrelate seems at the bottom of it - internally modelling a coherent relationship) By loose, I mean 'non-concrete' as in more general parlance - but the two do have some interrelationship at the process level. For example: 'Clinton understands politics' represents what I would call loose use. The deletion here lies in the missing words (as a minimum) of 'the workings of'
David - And in the statement there is little specific info, or point to the statement.
Morficus - Correct.
David - The statement invites relative understanding, the hang-up would be what is meant by politics in the statement and what understanding means. We assume we have an approximation of what Clinton means so the question is what aspect of politics and what depth of understanding it invites clarification and specifics.
Morficus - The images one can conjure up to associate with that statement are necessarily vague and diffuse (as 'direct' visual or Ai aural images) and the temptation is to draw on more verbiage (Aid = internal dialogue) and thus create a web of words without 'grounding' them in the 'real' world of relative sensory image. By relative sensory image, I mean images of sense - the 'real' ways in which we experience the world. With words, we only experience abstract, semi circular images of our
David - More ways to assert a reality.... another way to maintain it in our thoughts like the 'is' and 'are' words more ways for the radar of the brain to throw out its web of safety.
Morficus - In other words, when we think we 'understand' abstract statements of that kind, we don't, as we don't ground them in experience. We just build a word map and assume it's accurate (but a word map probably based on other like misunderstandings). The whole web self-supports. In one case we have good, concrete, grounded image, in the other poorly defined, abstract, non-grounded image. (Remember the Meta model and the Milton model?) I think we have that here AND something valuable too.
David - Yes
Morficus - One very obvious thing we have here as an insight,
David (to me at least)
Morficus - We can see what understanding is not...
David - bingo! yes... negation of the web leads us to... an understanding if not the one intended by the statement
Morficus - ...it's not the state that exists when the brain responds by creating long strings of (abstract - because they're symbols) words.
David - Right it's the state of "I don't know"! Suspension of judgement, comparison and history
Morficus - I'm not saying that - but I am saying as a matter of fact (because we just worked it out for ourselves) that the antithesis of it is bunches and bunches of continuous words.
David - The web of assumptions we make...
Morficus - Or get provided with ready made by the culture
Morficus - Note also that in the case of 'concrete' knowledge, few words in Aid mode get used to assist the process
Morficus - Whereas in the 'non-concrete' words - in large quantities - seem needed (but maybe not all the time)
Morficus - (E.g. 'I understand that Clinton is a womanizer' can work without a lot of words - just one or - two images. Thing is that when people making that statement can have, and probably will have, many different visual images of Clinton as a womanizer /draw on their experience of what that means to them. Result, as before, of confused non-grounded images)
David - Yep.... leads right to where we ended last time doesn't it.
Dialogue 4 6th November 2000
Language, Conditioning, Metaphor and Reality
The Chat topic is: K Dialogue 11/6/00
David - MORF!
Morficus - Hello dare!
David - Hi!
Morficus - I had some really powerful stuff come to me last week - but didn't write most of it down. I've just let stuff flow into/through/around me of late, only capturing a little of it formally. There's just so much. I had a very powerful revelation on metaphor (if you've ever been to my site, you'll see that the topic has some importance to me)
David - Great! I had a really significant experience that went way deeper than I realized ... it still affects me and I still gain insight from that one experience.
David - Tell me about yours.
Morficus - I've said enough previously: you first!
David - Well... I posted mine on the K page it was just an opening that happened on the drive home from work that inspired a few lines of poem about the sky opening and gold poring in... did you read it?
Morficus - I think I half read it: to be honest, I saw some large blocks of text & thought they were quotations - so I skipped through. Please it copy here?
David - Hold on
David - What we have no words for, we cannot understand; it does not fit into our view of what is real. Yet, there is a part of each of us that knows eternity it may be forgotten or covered over, but it is there. By stripping away of all we hold ourselves to be until only the eternal remains we come to know another reality.A ribbon of road led the way Above deep, dark clouds with veins of ultramarine Holding back the setting sun,But parallel to that nearly black horizon, As far as eye could see,The sky was cracked and gold was pouring in
David - Reading it, it's just a description, but when it happened, I opened very deeply and things are still coming to me today about how I looked at that moment ... the act of looking.
Morficus - I remember reading that, and it does relate to the thing that I observed. I understand that.
David - A parallel world... an opening to something another reality.
Morficus - This relates to our dialogue last week: another reality amongst an infinite possible number.
David - Exactly! In that instant, I found it interesting I looked without focusing at first without the focus everything came in instantly.
Morficus - That exists concurrently in unity - in a uniform coherent movement - as aspects of a singular actuality.
David - Then afterwards I looked at details... but initially it was all at once.
Morficus - All at one.
David - Yes.
David - Now is that anything like what happened to you?
Morficus - The content displays difference, but the underlying 'process' or structure bears remarkable similarity.
Morficus - Have you read the story of the blacksmith - the metaphor - on my site?
David - I don't think so
Morficus - Not the one on the front page (which only exists as a clever way of presenting contents), but the one on the fable and metaphor page?
David - No but I will
Morficus - OK. The metaphor of the Blacksmith is a metaphor about metaphor (and has received praise from some strange places, believe me).
David - Metaphor about metaphor is interesting.... a parallel world in a sense.
Morficus - OK. Now, as we know courtesy of K and by our own observations, our behavior is conditioned.
Morficus - Furthermore, (in like manner since it is merely an extension of our conditioned viewpoint), our view of any events that we observe is conditioned by our conditioned memories.
Morficus - So when we see something (take for example a raindrop falling in a puddle) we see that through conditioned eyes.
Morficus - When we name the event (raindrop/falling/puddle), we condition it with those words AND with the attached words that relate to those particular words in the languaging system: ultimately, this means the entire languaging system acting as a conditioned whole (see previous dialogue)
Morficus - 'Naming' (raindrop/falling/puddle) means extracting those elements from the ongoing unitary, universal process and in the act of naming, we give them attention. (for naming here, one could substitute 'Sapir Whorfing')
David - Yes
Morficus - You with me so far (I can potentially move in about 4 different directions from this point, so advise me of any lack of clarity)
David - I think so... the naming though is the part of the process "after" the initial perception.
Morficus - In terms of internal dialogue (or response by word) we observe the process which we call raindrop/falling/puddle and somehow 'know' what is going on. I put this down to visual memory (comparison of events with previous image of events [feeding back on the 'naming' or languaging brain circuits, but we 'know' what goes on without languaging as well]).
Morficus - And that happens: a) so quickly, and b) as a parallel process.
David - OK.
Morficus - That to all intents and purposes it occurs concurrently/apparently implicitly with events and we take it as 'sensation'.
David - For most of us it happens like that... not noticing it as a process, unless something happens as I described earlier as what happened to me.
Morficus - In fact it isn't sensation, because memory is in there somewhere interpreting at a silent, non-verbal level (probably looking after safety - if one sees a car hurtling towards one, one jumps out of the way & tho whole process can occur non-verbally).
David - I'm with you here.
Morficus - Point I'm making here is that our 'recognition' and knowledge processes exist at a level deeper than language. I don't know if they are hard wired or not, I just know - by observation and deduction - that they exist. So, moving back a little, we have raindrop/falling/puddle which I can recognize at a verbal level and also at a non-verbal level.
David - Yes... it has to happen before thought if thought is to pick it up afterwards, as with the description of the gold pouring in from the crack in the sky.
Morficus - I can't say much about the non-verbal level (almost by definition), but we have a bit of a joke coming up with that which I've just spotted - we know it exists and can refer to it by metaphor!
David - Yes, indeed.
Morficus - Now, suppose you had recently arrived from planet Tharg. And your space transportation vehicle took the form of a globular collection of water molecules, 3 Yudocs in diameter.
David - Ha! I see where you're going!
Morficus - You decided to land your craft in the normal style in a convenient lake of ambient temperature
Davis -Yes.
Morficus -So we have raindrop/falling/puddle cross mapped spacecraft/ landing/ lake.
David - And you are reunited with your amoebae brethren!
Morficus - That's what I call a metaphor!
David - Aliens are among us! Parallel reality? I guess we have to define reality, don't we to answer that?
Morficus - (Just to attempt to simplify this a bit, perhaps we should conjoin the deep level semi 'hard wired' realities and the verbal realities since they exist in such an intimate state of connectivity. They do interact - I have evidence that verbal can affect so called 'hard wired', and hard wired can certainly effect verbal - this is a huge subject in itself which perhaps we should discuss at a future date)
David - OK Great! Lets do it...
Morficus - Right, going back to our puddle Now imagine a microbe that lives in the puddle observing events. Now let a frog at the bottom of the puddle observe events. Now observe events from the point of view of a typical electron orbiting a typical hydrogen molecule in the puddle I can extend the list indefinitely.
David - Yes.
Morficus - And writing all this down in metaphor form (and I started to write a fairly complex essay on metaphor last year sometime - unbeknown that I'd come across this lot) We have... A1/B1/C1:A2/B2/C2:A3/B3/C3:.... ....An/Bn/Cn… Where An, Bn and Cn are cross mapped sets which are also related within themselves according to A/B/C. So, in the ACTUAL case, something unknown is going on (it has to be unknown, since if it's known it becomes a part of the An etc., sets)
David - Yes... something unknown is going on!
Morficus - And that reflects in 'REALITY' as an infinite number of perfectly cross mapped metaphors - each of which exists as a separate (but dependent by mapping) reality. And each of those realities depends upon the conditioning (which infers pre-existent/extant/ ongoing) that exists in the 'entities' that inhabit (in the broadest sense) the particular reality. (which by the way, must cross map)
David - I'm stumbling here... an infinite possibility of relative realities... but all are ideas pointing to "unknown".
Morficus - The no thing - the 'conditionless'. All things move in and around it but it remains unchanged. "Oh, beautiful!" - karma, equilibrium, justice, just is! (the total of all realities and being)
David - And our existence is creating specifics out of the infinite, by the nature of our looking.
Morficus - Yes - and not just ours.... We make (I'm not saying choose, because we have conditioning/karma) our own metaphors. And the word 'metaphor' is SO close with respect to verbal conditioning.
David - Everything exists, and we and other creatures create our specifics by looking.... But is there not an independent physical world?
Morficus - Therein lies a mystery, David.
David - Thanks Morf this was a good one! I will email it to you.Morficus - OK. Take care.
Dialogue 5 7th November 2000
Preliminary on Independend Existence
K Dialogue 11/7/00
Morficus - I had a session exploring your question: 'Is there any independent existence?' with respect to our dialogue last night.
David - Yes, tell me about it!
Morficus - Independent of 'us' human beings.. We' are a relative late comer in historical evolutionary terms and going back to our metaphors/relationship model…
David - Yes, if the history of the planet were the equivalent of an hour , I think man is in the 59th minute!
Morficus - All forms relate to each other according to their 'sensory' reaction to each other by their particular 'form' metaphor. So 'tree reality' as a group metaphor has been around one hell of a long time…
David - What does form metaphor mean?
Morficus - The viewing of actuality that gives that particular metaphor
Morficus - OK got to go. try 7.00GMT tomorrow
David - Ok bye…
Dialogue 6 8th November 2000
Language Loops, Conditioning and Nature
David - Sorry I'm late... how is everyone?
Dave A - Hi David
Morficus - Hello dare!
David - That's what I said before!
Morficus - Dave, shall I email the (6th Nov) dialogue to you - before we continue with your insight? All this seems to have developed a life of its own & is beginning to meld together into a coherent 'system'.
Dave A - Summarize if that's ok? can we just summarize (for purposes of continuity) where we got to last night
David - All forms relate to each other according to their 'sensory' reaction to each other by their particular 'form' metaphor. So 'tree reality' as a group metaphor has been around one hell of a long time
David - That quote of yours was yesterdays chat essentially
Morficus - Yeah, that's where we finished off - and you asked me what I meant by 'form metaphor' (which I do admit is a bit of an oddball expression: all this is new area and we perhaps need some new terms)
David - So all there is, is nothing and something is just condensed nothing...
Morficus - Differentiated...
David - OK.
Dave A - With you I think…
David - We are the differentiators!
Morficus - OK,
Dave A., you had an insight? Perhaps we can discuss that & maybe how it relates to what we were going on about?
Morficus - (not just us)
David - Yes, all sentient beings are the differentiators… perceivers perhaps.
Dave A - What you said about the way we use language, it's mostly just opinion etc, I saw that my mental processes are the same whether I am internalizing or receiving data from outside.
Morficus - In terms of 'processing' the word stream?
Dave A - It's the same in the same way that language is the same for truth and falsehood, at the same time I'm often aware that I'm internalizing, that it's just memory playing with itself.
Morficus - I just got booted off. Could somebody please repost the last few lines of dialogue?
David - Ok... we relate to the interpretations we make about things and react to more interpretations, etc
Dave A - The thoughts seem as real whether i'm "talking" to myself or hearing others or birds singing, wherever… on one level there is no difference, on another I see this as it's happening.
David - What do you mean by your mental process are the same,
Dave A.?
Dave A - Watching myself and others I see that we really are relating to… what we think they and oneself are, not the reality of what's happening… what's happening in my head is the same, David
Morficus - They are not as real, rather they are pale imagined reflections the difference between external excitation of the neurones or (weaker) internal excitation by memory.
David - Let's try to restate this cause I'm getting confused.... we react to our perceptions about things and those reactions in tern bring about others reactions to them... creating a reality out of illusion?
Morficus - Can you put what you're trying to say in a nutshell, Dave A. - or perhaps give a few separate descriptions. So far, you seem to say that we are caught in the same conditioning which is not just 'outside' us, but is (commonly) inside us as well? That 'language' lives like an almost independent entity.
Dave A - When I'm caught by this conditioning it is as "real" in effect, as reality, but I can also see that it isn't real at all.
Morficus - What conditioning do you mean here?
Dave A - The way my thoughts work…
Morficus - Do you mean the symbol system which we denote as 'language', or do you go beyond that?
Dave A - My superficial mind is caught, but my consciousness isn't. I go beyond the symbol, I feel the symbol is the expression, not the ground of conditioning.
Morficus - (and just to correct something, if we can perceive something with ours sensory apparatus, it is 'real')
Dave A - Yes
Morficus - So thinking - in words or in whatever way - is a real process.
Dave A - Oh yes, but what we are thinking is so often pointless, we already know the information, and if it relates to a problem, what to do?
David - So languaging creates a reality of sorts... one part of an all-encompassing reality… so the world created by a metaphor is a real world?
Dave A - But it occupies a space which is, at much of the time is meant to be a space, nothing
Morficus - I intended to say something about form…
Dave A - All this internal stuff, though real in a way occupies space, perhaps unnecessarily.
David - We create a lessor reality by thinking and languaging but we live in a greater reality encompassing all things and nothing?
Morficus - Form may be the essence of conditioning: but without form, no differentiated being exists.
Dave A - And our endless chatter prevents us from realizing the 'other'… he physical differentiated psychological being is real, truly real, but the psychological being is the cause of so much crap
David - We are echoes of creation.... we are created and we do the creating.
Morficus - In the 'endless chatter' (which does have natural punctuation marks) we repeatedly create idea form: to state that more concretely (i.e. idea form), we continually throw our neurons through the same sequences of patterns and fixations (and I want to talk further about the latter word)
Dave A - That's what I mean by internal stuff, go on.
Morficus - We fixate (or 'Sapir Whorf' as a verb) our thought patterns on one particular (previously conditioned and ongoing) metaphor or worldview.
David - It reminds me of Wilber's theory that everything, ideas, and even a table and such are real and they are governed by two forces... the force to be a part of the larger whole and the force to transcend its limitation as a part.
Morficus - We selectively choose elements of the 'out there' according to our conditioning and in doing so make them into our magnified world view. And a lot of this, not all, we do by means of language
David - That is clear to me
Morf... yes... our worldview determines how we act and others react.
Morficus - Does anybody want to go on and talk about the nature of? 'archetype', independent awareness, form and consciousness other than human (and it reciprocates in the pool David)
David - That fabric of act and react is overlaid on a physical world that is changing... we change it further.
Morficus - Or would you like a chance to read up, Dave A.?
David - I can continue if you can.
Morficus - I'm a bit bothered about leaving Dave A. on a limb here. We got into the multiple consciousness/reality stuff quite deeply you know.
Dave A - Excuse I've got to do something, please carry on.
Morficus - OK - read the 06/11/00 chat Dave A. before next time. It got rather heady and what we do now essentially is move on from there. Going back to no thing and thing, David, no thing - by definition - is formless, whereas thing(s) have plurality and form.
David - Yes
Morficus - One is conditionless (the ground), the other, by having form or being, is conditioned. One could say that conditioning is a condition of being!
David - OK
Morficus - So going back to out multiple metaphors or realities, the forms in those realities are conditioned according to those realities (or condition them - a reciprocal process?). And since the realities all exist concurrently side by side and collectively make (the harmonious) non metaphorical no thing... Every reality exists in perfect balance (is!) with every other. Since 'thingness' exists as a conditioning process (dependent upon consciousness - and I did not say human consciousness) The interdependence of 'things' depends upon their relationship 'sensing' with each other.
David - Trying to get my head around this...
Morficus - So, to go back a few billion years on planet Earth, the grass, the earth, the trees, the waters, etc, existed as the 'things' of the time and had their metaphor (in this plane) or thingness established/conditioned by their ongoing relationship and interaction. Cue evolution. To put that briefly, they have ancient (and taking it back further) semi archetypal existence as rudimentary forms of consciousness. Now take the same paintbrush, and color the picture for matter itself - down to the rudimentary form of hydrogen, and perhaps beyond.
Morficus - Any questions so far?
David - Where am I?
Morficus - Bottom line, David, to answer your question about: "does any independent reality exist?" is yes and no.David - Well it seems we just described the yes... what's the no?
Morficus - The ancient ways of the trees, the Earth, matter, the grass - the fundamental (but interactive & therefore relative realities to them) exist as a hard concrete reality to you and I since we are mere newcomeres.
Morficus - In short:
Morficus - Nature is 'real'
Morficus - Our view of things is relative. (Rather, Nature is 'real' to us)
David - Wait a minute... we are real to nature even if we are latecomers...
Morficus - But the basic elements in Nature are relative to itself - that's the conditioning of those elements)
Dave A - We are nature, we just think we're not, that damn consciousness again!
Morficus - Oh yes! And something even more fundamental exists in us with respect to the material that makes up our physical bodies.David - Its form... i.e. conditioning.
Morficus - But have FORM (sounds criminal!) as human beings. The matter in us doesn't give a shit about man's the human physical form - and all the bells and whistles on top.
David - Awareness... we are nodes of awareness.
Morficus - In the scale of human evolution, the period that man has had/created problems due to his languaging, and ideation goes back a mere 6,000 years or so (so I'm told, but I don't believe it)
David - We are nature aware of itself.
Morficus - One can prove that man had ideation abilities - and used them selfishly - 3,500,000 years ago, even so, that's only a blip in the vastness of evolutionary time. Perhaps our present problems just represent a few teething troubles of an infant 'real' humanity.
Morficus - Yes, David: nature aware of itself. The observer is the observed.
David - I feel like I've been underwater for the past hours and I'm just now surfacing!
Dave A - John Stuart Mill is interesting on this… there's been an ongoing debate on man and nature for over a century. As you said, best description is nature aware of itself.
Dave A - K cuts to the chase so well, the observer is the observed, and only by observation, as we demonstrate so well, can we come to understanding
Dialogue 7 9th November 2000
Humanity and Reality: Reinforcement of Conditioning/Metaphor
11/9/00 K Dialogue
Morficus - OK, we'll take it easy if you like. I want to correct something I said yesterday (yes, saw the email)
David - shoot
Morficus - But having said 'correct', that's a bit premature... All this stuff is new to me as well (I said in an earlier dialogue that a lot of things had been 'coming through') - the better word might be 're appraise'.
David - OK.
Morficus - What I really need to do is get the last two or three dialogues edited up & then print them off such that I can peruse them at leisure and then work out corrolories/ reappraise/rethink/expand etc.
David - OK, do you want to pause in the discussions until you have had a chance to do that?
Morficus - What I want to correct relates to our (humanity's) relationship with the ancient established nature of physical reality (or the ancient established reality of physical nature - strange how poetic and intertwined this gets)
Morficus - No, david, I'd like to press on while it's still fresh - and I'd like you to poke and prod what I offer such that we can jointly get coherence
David - To go back through the world of history accumulated over the centuries to a pristine consciousness?
David - Although pristine it may not have been... perhaps more animalistic.
Morficus - Can I recap briefly before chucking something new in (the latter bit as an integrating, coherence adding element)
David - By all means...
Morficus - OK, billions of years ago, before the advent of man or animal (that keeps it simple), vegetable and mineral nature existed.
Morficus - The elements of that nature (assuming we could watch from the particular perspective of our reality as 'fly on the wall' non-interfering observers) would have particular form relationships with each other that gave rise to a common 'out there' (to us) independent reality.
David - Yes.
Morficus - That independent reality would exist as one of multiples (seen from the different points of view of the participants in the 'whole'), but us fly on the wall watchers would see one coherent 'member' reality of the coherent set.
David - You know it sounds like we're splitting up reality by the number of billions of functions that exist in a relationship of rock to fire to water to air...
Morficus - (I got to that yesterday evening later on - but let's leave that for the time being - this thing has tentacles within tentacles)
David - OK
Morficus - Don't split them up, let them move in synchronicity, in one huge interrelated dance.
David - I'm on board sir!
Morficus - So now, (and this is where - on reflection - I didn't get it right last night), wind forward the clock by several billion years and introduce humanity (and animals/insects etc.) into the picture
David - The reality soup thickens… unfolds perhaps a better word.
Morficus - We - man, animals, insects and so on - all become PARTICIPANTS in this once placid vegetable world (Garden of Eden?), and as such we all modify it with our species view/relations with it/metaphor and interact with it - thus modifying things
Morficus - We will modify consciously and subconsciously (a vast area for future dialogue), but modify we will
Morficus - So the 'old' or 'God Created' reality (the great mystery stuff with regard to where did it all come from in the first place)
David - And the solar systems and galaxies are also unfolding... flowering.... but if it's unfolding it is unfolding according to it's own nature... the nature of reality....
Morficus - So that 'old', once independent reality becomes part of the modifiable reality of all the life forms - and we are very active in this department.
David - Yes, we are of the nature of reality… change appears to be an unfolding of potential.
Morficus - That, in respect of yesterday's dialogue, is what I wanted to say. I needed to say it so as to make coherent the findings of the quantum physicists (on the observer modifying raw matter). And also with regard to K's statement on the observer and the observed, and in respect to something I read years ago about scientists (in general) modeling reality by hypothesis (not measurement or observation) in the first instance [cf J Chilton Pearce 'Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg']. Now, with what I've said above, it all fits.
David - It does seem to doesn't it?
David - What K said regarding the observer as the observed... didn't he mean direct observation of the direct experience of relationship without thought as a center?
Morficus - On the one hand, yes - but in my experience he meant more than that. You said it yesterday.
David - Please remind me of what I said?
Morficus - (something like) 'We are nature observing (sensing?) itself'
David - Yes... a deeper awareness... First the ego awareness opens to a deeper awareness
Morficus - Here's something from this morning... (but it needs the foundation of the last few dialogues to see the sense in it)
Morficus - Every time we speak, think or 'language', we reiterate the metaphor that we behave in accordance with (i.e. we reinforce our) conditioning.
Morficus - Realities outside that metaphor get rendered inaccessible by energisation of the prime metaphor
Morficus - So, sensation wise, access to the alternatives - and 'what is' - lies in non-verbal sensation.
Dialogue 8 10th November 2000
Deep Conditioning: Cognition in Non-Languaging Ways
Chat 11/10/00 K Dialogue
David - Hi Morf! Where'd we leave off?
Morficus - I left off last night remarking about 'non-verbal' sensation/consciousness and its part in containing a number of our alternate realities. But we also have alternate realities within language systems and within individuals
David - Realities according to form and relationship, right?
Morficus - We could start from there - or if you like start somewhere else (but trying to hold generally to the 'language' theme). Yes, according to form and relationship.
David - Ok.
Morficus - Reading through all this lot again, as I have done during the course of tidying up the text, we have swept rapidly over some vast areas, areas which in themselves will provide huge fields for potential dialogue.
David - Do you want to further develop a certain area?
Morficus - Before we can get into them, I feel we should all have full access to the available transcripts so far in order that we can consider at leisure and absorb. I'd like to carry on from where I left off last night.
David - Let's do it!
Morficus - I am 'living' this to some unknown extent, and as I bring it out verbally, it affects me day to day. Examples are some of the ongoing insights I got last week (in parallel with us probing) and I got something else, something peculiar, today and I'd like to explore where it MIGHT lead. Anything been happening to you?
David - Not like that one opening to the gold pouring in from the sky... a couple of lesser openings that were similar but probably I compared them to the original and the memory was closer and more familiar... so the impact was felt as less. I probably blocked the experience of the moment by that very comparison.
Morficus - Shall we start there, how that experience of yours potentially opened you to parallel realities?
David - Sure.
Morficus - Did your internal dialogue come to a temporary halt?
David - Of course any discussion now of that event is based on the memory of it.
Morficus - Yes.
David - So yes ... all thought ceased... there was feeling... an outward movement but not physical movement. There was awe… there was a willingness to remain in thoughtlessness for a period without having thought rush in… no fear of that emptiness and therefore no need for security and the thought to provide it.
Morficus - There's the key. The internal dialogue - the map we have drawn for us as our reality, our metaphor of 'what is' (and then continually re-draw/focus on/Sapir Whorf by internally conditioning our perception to it by languaging), the map gets rubbed out for a while. The overriding metaphor - our world model - comes to a halt.
David - That's a trust I think... in 'what is'... what is perceived… yes, the veil of conditioning parts.
Morficus - If it didn't come to a halt, it would (by default) exist in consciousness and preclude the 'other'.
David - Yes... I remember reading K and what he said about this and then I watched for it in myself.
Morficus - The self generated veil (the metaphor, the form we make according to our conditioning)
David - And I observed that at that moment... the observer is the observed.
Morficus - Remember a couple of days ago when I mentioned that our 'silent' awareness also seems (to some extent) be conditioned and that in some way is wired up to our languaging system? I find it extremely difficult to see how all this works - it operates almost transparently and is on the verge of being subconscious.
David - Yes...
Morficus - Maybe it is the upper level of the subconscious programmed by word (and as an aside, I have found a way to experiment with this on the edge of sleep).
David - I would like to hear about that... but the edge of sleep or the cessation of thought all seems to bring us to an emptiness or fullness beyond words and images.
Morficus - But, recognizing that silent, visual (or aural) recognition of non-verbal form takes place, then we have as a logical conclusion that these deeper, silent layers of consciousness possess a conditioning (read 'languaging' or symboling, or metaphoring, or reality forming) mechanism of their own. For RECOGNITION of any kind to exist, so must CONDITIONING.
David - Yes I can see that we "see" with our conditioning... it is our whole body input and stored mental history… the body-mind I think we called it. Are you saying that even seeing without thought... but directly as I described is also to some degree conditioned by my awareness? Awareness is not recognition... recognition is comparison so thought must be present.
Morficus - Yes. Recognition. Seeing again - the process demands comparison. On the other, we needn't keep on looking at things the same way (as in comparative recognition), perhaps we can directly cognize if we set ourselves to do it (and this neatly leads to where we came in). Even the scientists are quite happy to tell us that our central nervous systems are massively parallel.
David - Ok.. tell me how you directly cognize in your sleep/wake experiment? If you remember I once told you I found upon waking that I named things and in doing it I established my waking reality… and felt secure in it.
Morficus - So, if we can jump our world model/metaphor/form/language system, we become genuinely 'choicelessly aware' as K urged. Yes naming makes the metaphor of 'what is' - creates the reality at one level. Consider the body/human system as a huge interconnected parallel system - which indeed it is. Now stop (habitually) exciting certain pathways in that system and let it 'be' in a state of alertness. Billions of nerves and nerve pathways, quiescent and observing: and what do you get?
David - Choiceless awareness? Collective consciousness?
Morficus - Sensitivity. Free observation (without prejudice). Alertness. On line massive parallel processing. 'Feeling' of the surroundings. Intuition - and you beat me to the last one, because that's what exists without the continual interference of the separate metaphor making. On the bit of a web page we have related to this site, I posted an exercise related to 'feeling' of the body & just observing it come and go. This morning, arising from what we discussed yesterday, I discovered something else. And this afternoon I built upon it.
David - What?
Morficus - As for this evening, well let's wait and see. Right, the earlier exercises in the series I posted related to actively feeling body parts (from within), and passively feeling them anywhere as feelings come and go. I'll try and explain this very directly (I don't actually recall how I 'learned' this, it sort of happened) Walking along, eyes wide open and arms swinging, I suddenly became aware of my feet and lower legs... A second later, I became SIMULTANEOUSLY aware of my hands and arms. Then my upper legs, upper arms and finally torso. I was aware of my entire body 'from within' as an entity moving along in parallel - at the same time seeing and hearing quite normally.
David - I know this feeling... I have it often.
Morficus - As I walked along, (I think the internal dialogue had more or less stopped), I felt most peculiar - as if I was weightless/floating along quite effortlessly. It bothered me a little and the feeling went away… then it came again… Awareness in alternative mode of being.
David - I am with you on this... I have done this... I know that awareness.
Morficus - That's it! But in the morning, I had discovered how to 'set' myself for the experience by being 'passively' aware (but as an act of will - I know that sounds stupid) of my entire body at once as a no dialogue behavior.
Morficus - David, I'm going to have to go. Could you mail me this please? Next time we dialogue, I'll tell you about the way I experimented with consciousness and form. Like turning on the light by using the switch - then you walk away from the switch.
David - Bye...
Morficus - OK catch you over weekend. Take care.
Dialogue 9: 13th November 2000
Insights, Questions, Which Way Now, Holy Men and Cleansing
The topic is: K Dialogue 11/13/00
David - How are you?
Morficus - Fine. I've been busy launching that website. I've put it on a few search engines including the 'open Directory', so we may get some new people joining us in due course.
David - Yes, web site looks good... once you get the other chats on there anyone can follow along.
Morficus - I'll update it periodically. When we significantly change subjects, I'll create new pages.
David - I copied something K said which you have spoken about, "So it is almost impossible to communicate with each other unless both of us have the intention of understanding and going beyond mere words."
Morficus - Going back to the content of the dialogues, it seems we have a multitude of ways to go now. At some point (possibly with more than just two of us about - but I won't get overly swayed in this by mere casual participants) we need to stop and perhaps review where we intend to go with this lot. Several lines of major enquiry seem apparent to me. I feel we have uncovered some fairly significant features in human behavior - more or less as 'observation', i.e. 'this happens'...
Morficus - Do you know we had a major 'scientific' insight yesterday in extending, nay - making meaningful the 'strong' interpretation of - Sapir Whorf?
David - What was the discovery?
Morficus - That it's not just at the word or 'language' level where consciousness is conditioned by symbol. (corollary 1: animals are conditioned the same way)
David - Yes there must be a base level of consciousness.
Morficus - (corollary 2: Stone Age man 2. The process has existed millions of years in mankind)
David - Yes ... from there a capacity to step oudside of perception... or to split it so one could imagine alternate scenarios
Morficus - (corollary 3: language 'quickens' this process - gives it 'easier' access through an Interrelated cross-indexed system: on the down side, language won't let go either (will keep internally self referencing)
David - Yes well said... then culture and individual reflect back on each other to add additional thought and behavior paths as each generation follows.
Morficus - What I'd like to do, David, as a trial on that (and I think we have to be careful not to lose anything here - when we work at the edge of words, it sometimes takes half a dozen snapshots to give us a larger picture of the whole)...
David - OK.
Morficus - There exist other ways of 'experiencing' things than through language - ways such as we used before we began to language. We are caught in language: when we see this, it does not stop but can annoy us: only when it stops will we actually 'see'.
Morficus - But I've missed some important bits out (e.g. 'hallucination', Aid, looping. That's something like for dialogue 1 ...but for the others - especially dialogue 4 and onward there's just so much richness, diversity and (even in the dialogue) open ended twists and turns. The dialogues themselves - being descriptions of something much larger than themselves - exist as synopses of that greater thing! Just Have a quick look at dialogue 5 or 6 for example. It seems to me that if we attempt synopsis here, we can over simplify and get stuck in some meaningless corners speaking cliché. Ultimately here, I feel, we have something that lies beyond words. All our words point to it from different directions - yet even as they stand at the moment (even without synopsis) they provide but faint flickering torches that glow in the dark and illuminate what we seek but ephemerally. To grasp this, I think we somehow have to find the way to comprehend it as a gestalt, as a unitary whole, and the only way we have of doing that lies in 'insight' - a parallel process. In other words, what we talk about in dialogue 1 and 6 (or 3 and 8, or 2 and 5, etc.) is one and the same. If you want to write a synopsis David, then fine - but I'm not happy that we can describe how to design a 747 in three short lines of text. What we have here seems a lot bigger than a jumbo. As for others (who you may have in mind), well let them pick up the gestalt in the same way we have: I don't believe I can write the story of everything down for them in a paragraph.
David - Hi Dave!
Morficus - OK, now Dave's here, and we are three, perhaps we can discuss which way to go. As I said earlier, I see several ways. Well, we have (had) a basic theme of language, which has now broadened to 'symbolism' we could keep on down our 'observational' path of behavior we could consider how far down there we intend to go (and why).
David - Sounds good to me.
Morficus - We could consider why are we doing this anyway (and perhaps how to use/exploit what we have learned so far to that end) we could review what we've done so far and pick up some of the tempting questions out that we ignored at the time (and there exist dozens of them) or we could further develop what we have so far by working on corollaries of what we've found (irrespective of exploiting) We could assume K had something when he mentioned 'the wrong turn' and try to get at that (but he could have been wrong with his presupposition of course - in which case we waste our time)
David - That's interesting... not sure it was a wrong turn but a further unfolding
DaveA. - I was reading a bit about the wrong turn stuff today.
David - Ok then what is the wrong turn mankind made?
DaveA. - Jaynes and Koestler have put forward similar theories. Jaynes suggests that 5 or 6 thousand years ago man developed self-awareness, and this led to a wrong turn
David - Well... there's an obvious value judgement there...
DaveA. - "Willful cruelty and murderous violence became intrinsic characteristics of human behavior".
David - Do they imply that killing of one's own species didn't happen before the point?
DaveA. - Koestler thinks the old brain, the hypothalamus and the new, neocortex, are out of synchrony. Koestler thought chemical adjustment was the answer, K said realizing the root causes will cause the necessary mutation.
Morficus - 1) we use languaging for useful, practical purposes. Why can we not operate without languaging (thought, speaking and listening) when it does not have a practical use. (and from our investigations, we have awareness that though significantly affects our reality)
DaveA. - The interconnection of practical and 'unnecessary' thought seems seamless until we observe closely, even then we can't stop it easily.
Morficus - 2) I see that the thought and language patterns of those surrounding me are ill formed, delusional and partial. I notice that my own patterns - to a limited extent - -have the same properties. How does one cure this malaise?
DaveA. - Although we learn a lot of our behavior from others, can we say that we learn to think aimlessly from others or do we teach ourselves?
David - Observation of the movement... understanding that results cures it.
Morficus - 3) A lot of my languaging (almost all?) has a subconscious origin. I am conditioned subconsciously - how do I alter this?
DaveA. - Have you cured it personally David?
David - This is interesting but in the past year I have focused on watching my thoughts... where they lead... where they come from... what are the triggers of emotion... where do 'they' come from... does my history from childhood have influences... watching all that does bring a certain clarity of thought.
Morficus - 4) How does language/consciousness reboot itself every day (assuming that total absence of languaging/word occurs in deep sleep)?
David - Cured is a whole other implication.
DaveA. - Yes, I agree David, it doesn't stop it immediately though does it? I'm not suggesting it should, by the way.
Morficus - That's it for dialogue 1. The plot will thicken significantly on subsequent dialogues.
DaveA. - That's plenty Morf, for now
David - It can reboot from moment to moment... from one day to the next... in a sense I think dying implies the cessation for rebooting to occur.
Morficus - And can I say at this juncture that I think Question 1 has probably got done to death previously on Kinfonet.
Morficus - Right, let's get organized. Which question shall we address first - or would somebody care to do a synthesis?
DaveA. - I can't go beyond observation as a way to address each and all of these questions.
Morficus - All I'm saying is that Question 1 (and 4)) have had so much hammer in Kinfonet - I must have participated in a dozen dialogues on them - that we now know (intellectually( the answer - and it does not help us!
David - Well it would help if we have personally observed the moment.
Morficus - So, seeing as I asked the questions, maybe I asked wrong questions.
David - "Rebooting" is reestablishing the continuity of reality, the past... but can we see in away that does not drag the past into the picture?
DaveA. - This connects with the problem of necessary data from our memory and the crap and keeping the one and dropping the rest. The crap will still be there, will letting it be, be enough to dissolve it?
Morficus - Here's the answer - flogged out time after time in Kinfonet - to Q1,Q4. Good news, in light of our latest explorations, is that we might have a little more insight into the problem now. The answer: consciousness - the repeating patterns of words (and images) in the brain - has physically conditioned the brain matter down to a molecular level and quite possibly beyond. The material of the brain/nervous system/body has become physically conditioned. So long as this persists…
David - It brings us back to understanding thought and how it works "in us" that dissolves the impediments to seeing in the moment.
Morficus - The alternative solution might lie in ECT - 20,000 or so volts across the frontal lobes but seeing as that might disrupt the 'logical' or 'practical' brain circuits as well as the 'rogue' ones, the results could turn out problematic!
DaveA. - Koestler suggests chemical rebalancing, bad idea I reckon.
Morficus - Did he volunteer to be first?
DaveA. - Doubt it. You know K reckoned we don't have to do all this ourselves since he did it, his life placed the ability into human consciousness, we have to let it do it in us, we are stopping it by our behavior.
David - I think we can do it... have done it... that everyone does it... but it passes by unnoticed.
DaveA. - So we have to focus on our behavior
DaveA. - So do I, David
Morficus - There is some sense to various suggestions of 'repatterning'. After all, our language system the structure and the words - exists as patterning (which patterns consciousness). Add to this the deep visual and auditory patterning (some of which also has connections to language), and one sees how important that is. 'Chemically coshing' somebody repatterns them as well, as does LSD, opium, cocaine, speed, hash, aspirin, tobacco, tea, coffee. Even the things we habitually eat, drink. Maybe we need 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness to clean us out - physically and psychologically.
DaveA. - I was in l, Liverpool town center recently when I suddenly 'came to', I was in a different state for some time.
David - K was right... we must start with ourselves... we must look inward... yes Morf those aids may have a momentary effect but it's the repeated looking inward and understanding of our minds and hearts that changes us. That repeated base experience of being... that is the only place we can start from... unless we just start from thought... fragment to fragment and we know where that leads. So learning where that base experience of being is.. returning to over and over ... leads to clarity
Morficus - K's assertion that he has done it and therefore blazed the trail for the rest I am willing to accept on the basis of: a) he appeared a man of earnestness and some integrity
David - Yes but it's verifiable... you've been experimenting with it for years.
Morficus - b) I 'felt'/experienced some significant changes in consciousness in his presence
Morficus - c) his statement is supported by Sheldrake's scientific work on Morphic Resonance (A religious precedent also exists - if we can believe scripture)
DaveA. - So is physical and psychological cleanliness all we need to prep the ground?
Morficus - Seems like all the 'holy' type men go through some kind of a thing
David - I believe to start with, living in a simple way helps keep the mind relatively clear, so that when difficulties of life happen we are clear enough to deal with them instead ofrunning away or ..
Morficus - Perhaps its time to reiterate my question 2 and 3. Can you repaste them David please?. (Questions 1 and 4 feel like they've taken me back into the Iron Age after last weeks discussions)
David - 2) I see that the thought and language patterns of those surrounding me are ill formed, delusional and partial. I notice that my own patterns - to a limited extent - -have the same properties. How does one cure this malaise?
David - 3) A lot of my languaging (almost all?) has a subconscious origin. I am conditioned subconsciously - how do I alter this?
Morficus - Yes. Now we get into the meat of this. When we have practiced self-awareness for any period of time, we begin to realize this.
DaveA. - If we are conditioned subconsciously by our conscious behavior we can be unconditioned the same way.
Morficus - I'll synthesize the questions into one: Realizing that my language and thinking is subconsciously conditioned, how can I change it - and by extension change the like subconscious conditioning of those around me? I think that in the beginning, Dave, we didn't get subconsciously conditioned by our conscious behavior, but by the subconscious behavior of others...
DaveA. - Doubt you can change others except by changing yourself. I asked earlier, do others teach us to think aimlessly, or do we slip into it ourselves?
Morficus - The culture - including language - exists largely at a subconscious level and we, in common with every other member of the culture, got indoctrinated - made a member - at a very early age. We had no choice.
David - Yes we are spoon-fed it from our parents who learned some and were spoon-fed the rest from their parents and so on… we right it down... pass it on ... teach it to our young and on and on… we fold it back on our selves and unfold it anew… we inherit and develop and perpetuate our habits
DaveA. - Perhaps we pick it up because others don't give us the attention we need, then we have to learn that we don't need this attention in maturity.
Morficus - I learned all the necessary things to think in order to become an engineer (highly structured, sophisticated modes of thought). So we can set ourselves to learn ways of thinking. It's more the emulated, subconscious, habitual, acculturated modes of thinking and behavior which tend to be the sloppy ones. For instance, I learned (stupidly - peer pressure) how to smoke at a very early age: it took me years to give up.
David - What we didn't learn and what K wanted to teach us was how to look inside ourselves to find our own enlightenment.
Morficus - Children (relatively blank slates mentally) emulate and are extremely vulnerable to peer pressure.
David - If we knew how we worked we could modify our actionsDaveA. - I've got to go guys, catch you later, bye
David - Bye Dave
Morficus - Robert Cialdini has written a brilliant book about the ways that people get conditioned: title of the book (strangely enough) is 'Influence'. It's all in here - natural psychology plus dirty tricks
David - Is it technical or can my simple mind understand it?
David - OK I will.... well shall we end here?
Morficus - If you like. I've not finished with this yet though - I feel a lot more worth going into with this latest question (I genuinely feel that Q1 and Q2 took us backwards - and I shall avoid putting questions like that in future)
Dialogue 10: 14/15 November 2000
Language World View and Hypnotism
Morficus - Yes, I think 'Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H Erickson MD Volume 1' (and 2, I suppose) has great import on the questions (2 and 3) I raised last night. We can talk about it briefly here - fuller discussion when we have more time/greater complement of people
David - Do you mean the questions, as you summarized as follows: "Realizing that my language and thinking is subconsciously conditioned, how can I change it - and by extension change the like subconscious conditioning of those around me? "
Morficus - Bang on!
Morficus - I'll put another (closely related) question
David - Don't you have to start from the outer edge? With thought... the ordering of it... as K suggested... and as order is preserved space is gained and it then becomes possible for a larger more encompassing point of view? Using imagination to work for us... visualizing a wider point of view sometimes aids in the gaining of a wider point of view.
Morficus - How is it that a certain man could, without any physical contact and without the knowledge of a second man, by mere word influence the second man so much that within a matter of minutes the latter knew not what he was doing and was subject to the will (unused)) of the first? And, we have a series of descriptions, from the horses mouth, of how he did it.
David - Doesn't it require a relinquishing of control on one man's part?
Morficus - No, but yes. Erickson had several ways of running this: here's a description of one of his more formal ways of working... 1) Pacing and leading of the dominant (language) hemisphere. 2) Utilization of the dominant hemisphere language processing which occurs below the level of awareness. 3) Accessing the non-dominant hemisphere.David - So it's an inducement of this relinquishing?
(continuation: 11/15/00)
Morficus - Can we pick up where we left off yesterday?
David - Please... Erickson you mean?
Morficus - We began to address questions 2 and 3 from Monday. Realizing that my language and thinking is subconsciously conditioned, how can I change it and by extension that of those around me (that also means that they are likewise conditioned of course) by likewise I mean same process, not (exactly) the same content, but generally a cultural content
David - Well we were discussing hypnosis as one way yesterday, we discussed direct perception in the moment without thought intervening also, beginning with the individual.... the particular first before the general.
Morficus - So, we have this peculiar chap Milton Erickson (and a few others like him) who by pacing/leading and distracting, then accessing language patterns below the level of conscious awareness could, without us knowing, completely re-arrange our realities
David - Was he that good at it? I mean suggestion does influence but does it compel? Before hypnosis that is?
DaveA. - Patterns set deep in the cerebral cortex? Doubt it. You might manipulate, u wouldn't shift them.
David - Maybe that's the point of demarcation, once you relinquish control you can be compelled, you can compel with the point of a gun too.
DaveA. - Can ' I ' relinquish control, and not be compelled by others either? Vacancy that is not manipulated by others or any outside influence.
Morficus - Any chance of a three line summary? OK, I can probably fill in the gaps. A 'vacancy' has been postulated. I doubt if we can ever find that (or one wonders how to come across it) since we are conditioned not only at the verbal level but, as we discussed in one of the early dialogues, at the subconscious non-verbal level (although the two interact) This is precisely what I brought Erickson - and his apparent miraculous cures, treatments and phenomena (and we aren't talking guys in claw hammer coats here you know: this guy was and eminent psychiatrist and the foremost medical hypnotist in the world) Back to Erickson: the man could radically change consciousness-using language (he could do it in other ways as well, but he could do it with language more or less alone) The significance of this is enormous
David - That we can manipulated through sound
Morficus - No, words David - not just sound.
David - Then whoever discovers how to do it well will rule the world
Morficus - Anybody here ever read 'The Crowd' by Gustav le Bon?
DaveA. - No
David - I read summary of it.
Morficus - The book again (or indeed pre Erickson) indicates how certain language patterns can be used to influence the behavior of crowds. Talking about 'ruling the world', one Adolf Hitler studied the volume in depth.
DaveA. - On a more personal scale, we participate in mutual reinforcement of this kind continually, yes?
Morficus - Thinking for a moment of our friends Sapir and Whorf, our languaging determines our consciousness, our reality.
Morficus - Yes Dave. Perhaps Erickson only sits down and deliberately uses a process in which we continually participate - both by thinking (or thinging) and speech/interaction with others anyway. We call it 'reality' and because it seems quite normal (and because we share it with all the other members who share the common languaging) we never notice. Our reality = our conditioning. In other words, we all work as (subconscious) Ericksons and condition ourselves as well as others!
David - When we focus we aim our attention... but we still receive input peripherally and we are effected by that input and we don't notice because that's not where we're focusing.
Morficus - And I've read enough of Erickson to know that one of the major tools he uses to get his effects comprises in knocking his subject's language out of kilter (i.e. breaking the patterns)
DaveA. - A major problem seems to be that looking for ways to change this will more that likely lead into replacement conditioning rather than ending it altogether
Morficus - Correct. The stuff is so subtle, do you want to see (say) the first ten lines of an induction with explanation? (It won't work on you remotely, besides it goes on for 40 lines) Yes Dave, but comparing one thing with another, we can see the likeness. That seeing gives us something...
DaveA. - Yes, I suspect most K readers who apply what he says to themselves will have greater insight to the trickery of the mind.
David - And it's trickery of thought, isn't it? It's not what changes when thought is not present
Morficus - Can you rephrase that David?
David - Well... thought tricks thought... the original question was ...
Morficus - But what we're talking about here lies beyond verbal thought - we have moved into that silent area which we recognized the other day exists below language and yet (visually, aurally, kinesthetically) is conditioned
David - We are changing out conditioning by trickery but not removing it so Erickson was operating at a lower level below thought, languaging? At a more direct input level... sorry am I off the train?
DaveA. - It would have to go as deep as consciousness goes to end conditioning, wouldn't it
Morficus - With regard to all this talk of 'trickery' be aware of you (probably biased) image of hypnotism
David - Actually I was thinking of a quote from K I read this morning about thought tricking thought... that true understanding comes when thought stops
DaveA. - Whatever it is it would have to go as deep as consciousness goes to have an effect
Morficus - Don't for a moment compare Erickson (a medical man of immense standing and eminence), with some charlatan getting a woman to pretend to be a headless chicken. Erickson actually used his patient's subconscious mind to cure them.
DaveA. - This is probably why continual vigilance is necessary, so that changing states are observed with continuing and deepening awareness
David - Yes I'm aware of his stature... I don't have a dim view of hypnotism though my knowledge may be slim...
DaveA. - Morficus - yes we're saying that: are we defining thinking in this context as internal dialogue, or something else?
Morficus - We need to be clear on this (Kinfonet is so confused on this)
Morficus - What do you reckon with regard to thinking in this context (again, we need some new words)
David - Ha!
Morficus - Rather than use the word 'thinking' for the verbal bits, I prefer the words 'internal dialogue' which more accurately describe what's going on - but that's not the end of it
Morficus - Erickson developed something called the 'handshake' interruption (2 variants). He very rarely used it professionally - but one of his students did (one time to hypnotize 6 lawyers apparently). Just shake hands with the guy and zap!
David - So there are people walking this planet that have remarkable powers over us and we aren't even aware.
DaveA. - Luckily many of them are responsible, some probably are not though.
Morficus - Such techniques work by interrupting sequential body routines (TOTE's = Trial Operate, Trial Exit) which we learn over periods of time. The kinesthetic interrupt is very powerful since the K mode is our fundamental seat of awareness.
DaveA. - K mode?
Morficus - Carry on: all this has great relevance. It's a pity the word hypnotism has got such a bad name down the years - it causes many people to dismiss it, but I feel the processes, behaviors that have been observed in hypnotism have great relevance (how can they not) to any study in consciousness (kinesthetic). Some authorities would say that a person absorbed in a book is hypnotized...
Morficus - May I interject with a new, but relevant, observation on this topic?
DaveA. - Yes
Morficus - Well, if somebody gets hypnotized and they can't wake 'em up, the solution is to leave them alone and let them sleep it off. When done, they come back to 'normal' consciousness. Similarly, when we go to be at night - no matter how worried, down, happy, etc. we wake up in the morning with a virtually 'fresh sheet'
David - Yes sleep is a regenerator.
Morficus - So, when we wake up, we wake up to our 'default' consciousness so to speak.
David - Like 'rebooting' a computer the basic settings are set.... so how to change those settings is the question we are dealing with right?
Morficus - Unless we happen to be talking about it to ourselves just before we wake (and we don't because I've gone through the silence that exists there and been aware of it - internal dialogue kicks in after waking)
David - I agree... the logic sense kicks in.
Morficus - Yes. Our 'waking up' consciousness represents the default state (not immediately conditioned by words - but conditioning at the deeper, wordless level that has previously been conditioned by words does exist there)
David - So the question of how do we regenerate.... overnight sleep... and from moment to moment cleaning the slate as we go if thought is absent
Morficus - 1) Will you uncross your legs? 3) and sit with your hands just like this? 4)And look at any one spot there thought as internal dialogue? or something else.
David - Internal dialogue with roots to the unconscious or body/mind and perhaps to an emptiness that is endless.
DaveA. - We are programmed much like a computer, but we know we are too, and when the memory chip is running we can't differentiate between the necessary and the junk, the internal dialogue is a memory chip that's stuck in record and repeat randomly.
David - We're driving forward but looking in the rearview mirror.
DaveA. - If we can sort the necessary from the not the internal structure must be such that this is possible.
Morficus - Right. Now, and this is still bang on topic, can we possible determine which of our 'language patterns' (which we seem to think influence our consciousness) represent the 'junk' element, and which don't? I ask this (as an engineer) with practical intent: the way our language degenerates equates to the way our consciousness degenerates. Can we do any healing?
DaveA. - The necessary a framework, like a wooden bridge, the not a growth, weedy creepers all over it, it is growing from a source.
David - Memory and the act of creating continuity by naming and repetition... but at the same time it's necessary
Morficus - And I'll tell you this for free: there are people out there actively engaged in deliberately using degenerate language patterns for their own immediate, selfish ends (just do a search on NLP)
David - So observing how thought works provides understanding and that understanding works to change us what is degenerate language and it's effect?
DaveA. - If degenerate language = a cancer- like growth it is feeding on something, more of itself, from inside and out, and it's eating us.
David - The term degenerate language is throwing me off.
Morficus - Non-specific, deliberately confusing, Milton Model (but in advertising, sales, politics, seduction, persuasion of all times). Slick Willy got off the Lewinsky rap with the aid of Anthony Robbins - a big NLP guru and pal of his who 'reframed' his alleged behavior. There's a whole industry at it out there folks. NLP = Neuro Linguistic Programming.
DaveA. - So we reframe the content of our consciousness, excuse, condone, twist, tickle, and anything but face the reality of our pettiness and get better at it all the time.
Morficus - That's how they do it Dave - but it's more pernicious than that. Watching TV, I think even the police senior ranks are at it over here.
DaveA. - Oh, everyone is, undoubtedly, but we help the process ourselves!
David - Well, there seems to be a social/ cultural movement motivated by big business to manipulate us to spend money where they want us to, and it is plastered on the TV and most of us are glued to the tube.
Morficus - What 'reframe' means is redescribe in terms more favorable to you, the describer - and don't worry about leaving bits out or using euphemisms, it's up to those who oppose you to challenge (if they can or get the opportunity).
DaveA. - Yeah, but we do it to ourselves, it's part of the internal dialogue, a big part, external triggers set off thought patterns I should know better than to indulge and internal ones do too, it's like I set minefields for myself and then forget where they are.
David - It all feeds the ego doesn't it... feeds into the manipulation of ego.
