what i am understanding by clarity or awareness is thinking and acting clearly but how to relate pleasure to this?

Pleasure and pain come and go. If there is no identification with them, perhaps there would be no ego.

Pleasure is not a problem unless we make it so.

Denial of pleasure brings pleasure to the ego, but perversely so, an upside-down expression of the self-love.

What are you waiting for?

praven suri wrote:
thinking and acting clearly

That itself gives pleasure if we think about it latter.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

may i know what exactly is pleasure?

if we are watching,then will it be a pleasure!

praven suri wrote:
if we are watching,then will it be a pleasure!

With greatest respect, if you are watching yourself from the intellect while eating an ice-cream on a hot day, then your pleasure will be deadened. Why use the intellect to deaden pleasure? Why do you want to deaden your pleasure? This is repression of life.

If you do not know pleasure then you have not been alive in your life. This is very sad. Sir, live a little. Drown that intellect, not the pleasure.

Or, if the intellect is so determined to understand pleasure give it a good book to read like Zorba The Greek. Watch how indignant it gets. That should be fun.

Let the heart in on the puzzle. It deserves an outing.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Fri, 01 Oct 2010.

praven suri wrote:
what i am understanding by clarity or awareness is thinking and acting clearly but how to relate pleasure to this?

What happens when thinking is not going on under the light of awareness ? When one is not clearly seeing the thought process ? Please, experiment with this. Do not be in a hurry to give an intellectual reply.:)

FLOW WITH LIFE!

praven suri wrote:
may i know what exactly is pleasure?

Do you feel elated when after doing some mental work you find an appropriate, sharp kind of question or a reply to be posted here ? That feeling of elation is pleasure. :)

FLOW WITH LIFE!

praven suri wrote:
if we are watching,then will it be a pleasure!

Watching what ?

In any case, I feel that you already know the answers to all the questions you are asking. Why don't you share them with us ?

FLOW WITH LIFE!

Paul Davidson wrote:
If you do not know pleasure then you have not been alive in your life. This is very sad. Sir, live a little. Drown that intellect, not the pleasure.

Paul, there are live events happening 'now' in our lives and memory of such events. Similarly, there is live pleasure and memory of it. Thoughts are responsible for the later kind of pleasure. The former is joy of living. I feel questions that Praven is asking are related to thought generated pleasure.

FLOW WITH LIFE!

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote:
The former is joy of living. I feel questions that Praven is asking are related to thought generated pleasure.

Yes Sudhir, you may be right. It is up to the poor chap to expain. He has asked an overly open question and we need to get some bearings. Where does he want us to take it? Does he already have a fix of his own on the answer? Sometimes hearing an open question I doubt the sincerity. I don't want to doubt anyone, you understand.

Yes, there is pleasure that occurs in the now and there is the mulling over of pleasure, the repeating of it in the mind which recreates the sensation, or the electro-chemical response to the past event. We replay both our pleasures and our pains.

Out of that arises the 'me,' as the residue of experience, as the misunderstanding of the function and nature of sensation.

And also there is the arousal from this mental repetition, which becomes desire for repetition of the event in fact rather than just in mind. It is quite clear to me, what you say, Sudhir.

What are you waiting for?

Paul Davidson wrote:
there is the mulling over of pleasure, the repeating of it in the mind which recreates the sensation, or the electro-chemical response to the past event. We replay both our pleasures and our pains.

Paul, can you throw some light on why the mind replays pleasure again and again ? Why does it do so compulsively ? How did this trait become so deep rooted and powerful that it takes quite a lot of one's energy and time ?

FLOW WITH LIFE!

This post was last updated by Dr.sudhir sharma Sat, 02 Oct 2010.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote:
Paul, can you throw some light on why the mind replays pleasure again and again ? Why does it do so compulsively ? How did this trait become so deep rooted and powerful that it takes quite a lot of one's energy and time ?

I hope I can. It is an addiction. Our brains have become addicted to their own processes.

Apols. The following wasn't supposed to be a lecture. My poor old brain is habituated to unfold things in this way. Forgive me, god!!

OK.

Sensation developed in the first life species in order to interact with the environment. We could put it the other way and say that when the first sensation developed, inert matter became 'live.' The transition from inert matter to life was the developemnt of sensation, because life is relationship and requires the ability to respond, which implies sensation.

The senses are essentially binary and the basis of their binary code is attraction/repulsion. Every plant is attracted by sunlight and by water. As evolution produced life-forms that had increasing sophistication with regards to what they responded to and the variation of possible responses at their command, the senses were always, and still are, based upon a binary code of attraction/repulsion. The sensory world is just that, no matter how sophisticated it becomes.

The senses divide their environment into these two poles, whether it be up/down, left/right, light/dark, hot/cold, or sweet/sour. At any moment the organism is attracted or repulsed by any number of such dualities. This is true of all life forms, including man.

But man, the human species, has a remarkable nuance in that he has the ability to create images and hold them through linear time to compare them in time. Thus man can perceive the process of change. Some higher mammals such as the gorilla also have such capacities, although less developed. Man can create, hold and compare images and also manipulate them, thus having the capacity to think of a changed future and change his environment according to his vision. He can envision change and go on to make it happen. Thought is powerful.

The first, sensory brain of man is sometimes called the reptilian brain. The second is called the emotional brain (limbic system) and the third, the frontal cortex, is the conceptual brain.

If the senses understand the world along a pleasure/pain axis, the emotional brain understands the world along a good/bad axis. The conceptual brain works with a right/wrong axis (thought). The three brains are connected as one 'triurnal' brain. What is sensed as pleasure is felt as good and concluded as right.

Senses are still at the base of the pyramid. The emotion and the thought reinforce pleasure with good and with right.

Then there is a feedback loop which allows the thought of something right to replay the emotional feeling of good and recreate the sensation of pleasure, through the release of masses of pleasurable endorphins (directed by a gland in the brain, which again make the body feel pleasure, which reinforces emotional good and reconfirms thought/action as right.

It is a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. I imagine something pleasurable and I feel pleasure. It is not only a thought process but a physical and chemical one. When I think of a past pleasure or remember an old love affair, I get a hit, a fix of endorphins, which is pleasure, which is good, which is right . . . and so on.

We are addicted to the past. Our triurnal brain, which offers so much, has become a monkey on our back, which is why we need a revolution.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Sat, 02 Oct 2010.

Paul,

In your Post #13 you wrote, "The senses are essentially binary and the basis of their binary code is attraction/repulsion. Every plant is attracted by sunlight and by water. As evolution produced life-forms that had increasing sophistication with regards to what they responded to and the variation of possible responses at their command, the senses were always, and still are based upon the binary code of attraction/repulsion."

I'm sure this is in accordance with the latest science, but I still have to ask: are scientific facts being interpreted correctly to conclude that "senses are essentially binary . . . "

It would seem that "attraction" and "repulsion" are judgmental factors based on the physiology of the organism. Before there can be either attraction or repulsion, there must be an identification of that which is sensed. I would ask, is this identification a matter of sensing, or is it a mater of the organisms "remembering" a like situation in the past, a matter of comparing what is being sensed to a prior situation and its outcome?

It's rather difficult to visualize sensing as identification. The one seems to follow in sequence the other - - with a consequent lag.

The emphasis you place on sensation is good. It does seem to be the element that is essential to life and relationship.

max

Paul: Thanks to Max, I have taken a look at your post and I am so glad to see you here. I just gave a cursory look at this last post and I think it sounds quite "right on" as it applies to present brain research. If you have not read Zotan Torey yet I would suggest it (Crucible of Consciousness). It is expanding my understanding of the reason for consciousness based on the relationship between the left and right brain's different perceptions in the juxtaposition of language development as in what K refered to as Thought and simple observation in the moment by the right brain which seems to hold the essence of the "object" as in the Tree in K's terms and as we turn away from the object as humans, we are able to have an "oscillation" between the two brains that keeps the ordinary animals "out of sight out of mind" perspective as being our main difference. The word and the left brain appears to take our action but the word creates massive different illusions in the mind to think that one feeling like "fear" produced by the amygdala is a lot more than it really is: just one feeling which is relatively, biologically the same to the biochemical processes of the brain. K's statement "thought breeds fear" certainly is the curse of mankind and K extended this to pleasure too.

If you get bored some night, you might try to read some of my old forum that I gave up on if you can find it somewhere. Any questions you might have, you can send in email. I am somewhat busy right now and will be until winter when I may come back to Kinfonet if the responses to your posts are positive! Good Luck.

max greene wrote:
are scientific facts being interpreted correctly to conclude that "senses are essentially binary . . . "
It would seem that "attraction" and "repulsion" are judgmental factors based on the physiology of the organism. Before there can be either attraction or repulsion, there must be an identification of that which is sensed. I would ask, is this identification a matter of sensing, or is it a mater of the organisms "remembering" a like situation in the past

Good questions Max, if I may say so.

You see, please try to understand that I am understanding the senses as the whole apparatus, not just what happens at the coal-face, but the whole mining operation. I am seeing the senses and the 'physiology of the organism' as one movement, not breaking it up into departments. Am I making myself clear? The eye extends up through the nervous causways and synapses to the brain AS the brain extends itself downwards to the eye.

It is precisely modern science that has separated it all up into brain, senses and so on.

In terms of evolution, the brain developed from the nervous system in the same way that the nervous system develoiped from the senses. It is all sense based. The brain is a function of the sensory system. This is a seemingly perverse way to look at it, I know, but it represents the evolution of crystalised functions, concentrated differentiations and divisions of labour.

Think of the primative aquatic organisms that first developed a sense. A light sensitive patch on the skin was the beginning of an eye. It allowed discernment between light and dark conditions in the oceanic environment. Senses are based upon discernment, not judgement. For judgement you need a judge. If I used the word 'judgement' in my posting above it was probably a bad choice of word. (Can't remember if did.)

K stressed in his early works that judgement and discernment are entirely different. When something is not understood, the mind divides and creates a judge, an observer. That which is not immediately discerned is retained as memory and judged over, chewed over, endlessly.

But that does not detract from the fact that discernment is a binary process, a this and that reduction of uncertainty. There is no certainty in the sensory world but uncertainty can be reduced, according to criteria of pleasure and pain - attraction or repulsion.

It is the reduction of uncertainty in an unknown and unknowable world, that is the function of the senses, allowing us to put one foot in front of the other, figuratively speaking. However sophisticated the brain becomes, it is reliant on that binary input from the senses, however subtle.

And we still live in a world of surfaces.

But mind can also understand that which is beyond the senory data it receives. The mind itself is also an invisible world.

The only barrier that prevents the mind knowing itself is that presently it is divided by its functions, a chronic lack of proper maturation and integration. Animals become naturally integrated as they mature whereas we are subjected to a social disintegrative forces of education that sustains the division of our psychological functions. That is the overiding limitation.

We cannot rely on instincts and natural maturation to bring ourselves together. For man it must be a conscious, heart, mind and body process.

Some eulogise about the emotions, the passions, others have faith that the intellect will solve all our problems. One must not fall into a similar trap of romanticising the senses. Direct perception of 'what is,' is not and never will be a sensory matter. The sensory mind will never know the interiority of things, which is to go beyond the three dimensions and linear time.

What do they say? 'United we stand, divided we fall.'

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Sun, 03 Oct 2010.

phil K wrote:
If you have not read Zotan Torey yet I would suggest it (Crucible of Consciousness).

I'll look into that Phil. Always welcome reading suggestions.

phil K wrote:
the relationship between the left and right brain's different perceptions

Yes, I'm aware of that. But I feel the brain is the crystalisation of the mind. Neurologists start from the brain as a given. True, left brain linear functions give us time and shopping lists. The other half is for life.

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."
J Lennon.

One can have a musical brain, a mathematical brain etc, depending on the matrx of neuron connections supporting mind. Mind is the driver, always. The brain is the pliant executor. Sensory mind creates sensory brain.

If I could switch, voluntarily, from right side to left side and back, I could verify what the neurologists have said. Unfortunately I cannot so to me it is theory, which is not to dismiss it.

Your writing seems very coherent and enquiring, Phil. Thanks for your comments - only my opinion of course!

What are you waiting for?

Dear Paul, your post no. 13 is very clear and informative. I will respond to it after some experimenting. Thank you very much.

FLOW WITH LIFE!

Thank you Sudhir. Very generous comments.

Some time later, after I wrote all that, and after the pangs of guilt subsided!! I saw that I had missed something very essential - which I have now alluded to in other postings, which is this:

I said that pleasure is entrapped by itself in a feedback loop. That is true. But something much more is involved. I am reading K's early writings and he stressed things a little differently, stressed other elements at that time. He says:

Memory is the residue of incomplete comprehension of experience. All the unfinished business is there in linear memory. It is the accumulation.

And it seems to me that we paw over this residue in order to finish with it. We think that by going over and over the same event in our minds we will understand it. "Why did he have to die . . . ?" It is because we did not fully understand death. It is because we banked on the perminance of life. No amount of replay of the dreadful event will bring us to an understanding of death. We are trying to understand the event rather than our own lack of understanding of something that encompasses tha much greater movement of live and death itslef. We are trying to reach an understanding of this particular bereavement, that which is the immediaste pain whereas the cause of the immediate pain is the lack of coming to terms with the whole issue of life and death, which we treat with fear.

And is is the same with pleasure.

Pleasure brings with it its own sense of disquiet. Excitement of the senses, as pleasure, is a break in the equilibrium of life. It causes a tension.

It is not simply that we want to replay and repeat the pleasure, the particular. It is also that we want mastery over the pleasure, we want the upside without the downside. We replay pleasure to get to the end of it, the same as we do with pain. We are seeking completion. We are seeking understanding. We are simply approaching it wrongly, looking for a solution rather than the cause.

Repetition can never bring completion. It simply reinforces the thought pattern that we are already locked into. The deepening of the patterns of incompleted experience becomes the self. That is our story.

Please forgive this early serving of a second course before I gave you time to digest the first. A large glass of good red wine will help. I suggest Pinot Noir.

What are you waiting for?

Paul,

In your posts #16 and 17 you refer repeatedly to the "mind," with words on what the mind can do and what it does. What is the mind? Please excuse the impertinence, but unless one knows very well what the mind is - - unless one knows for certain that a "mind" even exists - - it is useless to discuss its activities.

You wrote, post #16, It is the reduction of uncertainty in an unknown and unknowable world, that is the function of the senses . . .

We had discussed this in another topic, and we pretty much see it the same way as above except for the term "unknowable." The senses reduce uncertainty, all right, by allowing access to the previously unknown - - which then becomes the known. The unknown always recedes before the known, and in this sense there is an "unknowable." I'll go along with this meaning and description.

I'm not a neuroscientist nor do I have a science background. I can't comment on the mechanics of the organism's brain and nervous systems.

max

max greene wrote:
What is the mind? Please excuse the impertinence, but unless one knows very well what the mind is - - unless one knows for certain that a "mind" even exists - - it is useless to discuss its activities.

No impertinance Max.

I use the word 'mind' as a pointer to the totality of the processes of consciousness. There is the intelligence of the body, the reflexes, the instincts, the movements, the urges etc. There are the emotions, the ability to feel, that particular movement which is not thought. Then there is the intellect, thought and memory. This is a sketch of the territory, not the whole thing.

The various parts of mind come into play sequentially during the course of infantile maturation. The reflexes, then the senses, then the feelings, then mentation, then the sex-drive. It is more complex than I am putting. It is only a sketch. Don't get hung on the details.

It should be that everything meshes into place and that maturation maintains harmonious development. It should be that a whole being, a holistic life form, is produced. Unfortunately . . .

The mind that we possess is a totality of disparate parts, performing independent functions, working out and continually revamping rules of engagement between the various centres and trampling on each others' rights. It is a world of warring nations. That is the base of mind, as is.

A totality, in the semnse that I am using the word, is quite different than a whole. The whole is more than the total of its parts. We are parts looking to be a whole. A collection of watch parts not quite put together. It has no meaning. Only whole things have meaning.

On top of that the output of all this psychological movement creates a matrix which projects itself, as a film on a screen at the movie theatre. Which is to say, it has the capacity to be aware of its own movement in some form. There is no coherence and no consistancy and no continuity in this totality which we call mind. As was said in the bible, man is legion. We are not one but many.

Given this mess we create an image of consistancy and a centre from which this image is kept up to date. An authority and an image.

All of this multi-levelled movement in confusion is what I am calling mind. One would think someone would have done something about it after all this time, wouldn't one?

Yes, I do not consider mind to be a unitary factor. It could become so, but this would be the revolution. We are incomplete beings in charge of our own perfection. To be whole is to be perfect, in whatever shape or form that turns out to be. When we are whole we will deserve to be given the name, species.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Sun, 03 Oct 2010.

praven suri wrote:
may i know what exactly is pleasure?

Pleasure is whatever gives you a thrill or a sense of gratification. It's entirely subjective. What may bring pleasure to you might bring pain to others, so your notion of who are and what-should-be is the measure of pleasure.

Paul,

"I use the word 'mind' as a pointer to the totality of the processes of consciousness."

Consciousness is the past. It is the record of our past experiences, the known and the remembered. That's all consciousness is and all that it can be because it is impossible to think of something unknown. At the center of this consciousness is the "I" that we use as a filter to identify and evaluate, accept and reject.

Since consciousness is limited to knowledge and the known, its "processes" will lead only to the known. For example, learning is an act in the immediate present. The act of learning itself is not known (because it requires observation, not thinking), but that which is learned (requires thinking, recall) is in consciousness - - it has become the known.

All action is in the immediate present, now, simply because action cannot take place in the past. It is not possible to be conscious of action. One can think about a past action or anticipate a future action, but action, acting, can only be sensed.

So it seems to me that to limit the mind to consciousness and its processes is very limiting indeed. Learning, sensing, intelligence, love appear to be "items" that cannot be included in a definition of the mind as consciousness. Doesn't the mind become something else if individual identity, with its consciousness, is discarded?

max

max greene wrote:
So it seems to me that to limit the mind to consciousness and its processes is very limiting indeed. Learning, sensing, intelligence, love appear to be "items" that cannot be included in a definition of the mind as consciousness. Doesn't the mind become something else if individual identity, with its consciousness, is discarded?

K's contention was that the mind, consciousness as we know it, is in dire need of a radical transformation. As you say,"Learning, sensing, intelligence, love appear to be "items" that cannot be included in a definition of the mind as consciousness", to which I would add, as we know it.

So what is one to do? The brain as it is can not know the NOW of which you constantly speak. The brain must change. You first.

Max, you asked me what is 'mind.' I explained the actual capacities we have and how they act in a fragmented way to produce the matrix we call mind. I say that mind is both the projector and the projection. It is what it is. Of course it can change. But to change, the projector must know itself and to do so it must be whole, not fragmented.

But you have answered about 'consciousness' and have defined it as the past. You are concentrating your attention only on the projection and not on the actual apparatus that lies behind it. So, it is half an answer. It divides things up. The projection is time (the past) but the projector is now.

Problem commenses with the fact that the equipment has not been put together rightly. We do not approach life wholly but in parts. We approach one thing with the intellect, another with the heart, another with the instincts and yet another with the sex-drive. We collectivise the various images produced from these fragmented responses and call that mind, but it is only the collectivised projection of past events not understood.

Consciousness, you state, is the past. I can start with that definition. It is fine. But I now want to know, if consciousness is the past, what is present? There must be that in me which is present to deal with the past. There must be that in me which is present to become enmeshed in the past. Consciousness exists in the present, irrespective of whether or not its projections are of the past. Everything exists ONLY in the now, never in the past. The past is gone. It is past RIP. Consciousness offers its representations of the past in the present. It is doing it right now, in the present.

Consciousnes is the past in the present. That is a clearer definition, surely. It is that which projects the past into the present. This must be the case. It is just that mind is locked in the illusion that the past, the projection, is the present, the real, that the idea is the thing.

But you asked me, what is the mind. And I included the senses. And the contention is whether or not the senses are part of mind. Because, some are saying that the senses operate as pure perception, in the present, while mind is the past. And I am defining things otherwise and I am using words otherwise. I do not want to divide mind into past and present, into senses and thought. It is not a natural division. It is man made and artificial.

So start again from this question, are the senses and the body intelligence part of the mind? Or, is there a natural division between the senses and thought, senses being of the present and thought being of the past. Are we endemically divided in that way?

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Mon, 04 Oct 2010.

Paul Davidson wrote:
So start again from this question, are the senses and the body intelligence part of the mind? Or, is there a natural division between the senses and thought, senses being of the present and thought being of the past. Are we endemically divided in that way?

The difference between sensation and response is that sensation can exceed what the organism or "the mind" can reasonably respond to. A blow to the head, for instance, can render the brain unconscious. Likewise, an extraordinary experience can "blow the mind" that is content with its content.

The brain, being no more than animated meat, is limited. But K would have us consider the possibility that it is capable of communing with what it can't understand, can't grasp, can't articulate, yet must be in contact with, or be doomed. So, can the brain inquire into this supposed possibility without succombing to the siren song of belief, faith, NOW, or whatever word/concept turns you on?

This post was last updated by nick carter Tue, 05 Oct 2010.

nick carter wrote:
The brain, being no more than animated meat, is limited. But K would have us consider the possibility that it is capable of communing with what it can't understand, can't grasp, can't articulate, yet must be in contact with, or be doomed.

the brain or part of the brain reverberates when it encounters some thing at the same level, at the same intensity at the same time, when there is communication and spontaneously turns out to be a communion.stupendous synchronicity!
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Paul,

" . . . if consciousness is the past, what is present? There must be that in me which is present to deal with the past. There must be that in me which is present to become enmeshed in the past. Consciousness exists in the present, irrespective of whether or not its projections are of the past. Everything exists ONLY in the now, never in the past. The past is gone."

What is the present? Since consciousness (as we know it, Nick points out) is memory - - the past- - it's obvious that consciousness isn't the present. So again, what is the present if it is not consciousness?

I would say that the "present" is unknowable, that the indefinable present constantly recedes before our senses. Nevertheless, our senses act in the present (can they act in the past?) and with this action the new and the unknown is brought into our consciousness. We sense, we probe constantly into that which is unknown to our consciousness, and in this manner we learn the new and previously unknown. The senses are the key to the unknown.

"Everything exists ONLY in the now, never in the past"

The indefinable now is before existence. All that is in existence - - all, the physical the psychological and whatever - - is already created (past tense). But living is in and of the present, as is all action, since neither living nor action can take place in the past. There is a distinction between that which is living and that which exists. We are living beings, and we are in and of the present, the NOW.

max

Nick,

"So what is one to do? . . .The brain must change. You first"

It isn't - - huh, let's say 'productive' - - to ask "what is one to do." K's wraith would wax wroth to wread such. He always claimed the world's mess was caused by "what shall we do about it."

But it seems to me that a lot of our difficulty is that we confuse knowing with sensing. It's obvious that the two are totally different. To use learning as an illustration, the act itself of learning is sensing (observation) but what has been learned is knowing (as in 'a knowing glance,' implying knowledge) or the known.

So recognizing this confusion, we can see that it is never possible to know when one is in the act of sensing because sensing comes first, and then comes remembrance - - knowing. Strangely enough, we always act first and think later. The sensing itself is the action, and then comes the thinking about it.

So there is a world of sensing out there that we don't recognize and can't recognize because sensing - - the act of sensing - - is before consciousness and the known.

"So what is one to do?" We can realize that sensing is totally outside of and unknown to consciousness, and yet sensing is as much (probably more) a part of us than is our consciousness. This realization may open into other things.

max

i am sorry, i was busy with my son but its good to see how much has been discussed,it will take time to go through all the discussion.

while i was with my family and my proffesion and all the things in between it was too difficult to be crystal clear,so is this a reality that you need lonliness to understand pleaure or awareness etc?