Johannes Jörg
Hi Josh,
what I’m really interested in is liberation (particularly my own) and the theory and practice that support it. In my personal worldview, I see no distinction between the physical and mental worlds, except for perspective. So, many psi phenomena don’t surprise me at all, though I do find the understanding of such phenomena fascinating. And yes, I firmly believe that our understanding of causality is deeply impoverished!
I appreciate you sharing the links. Thank you!Greetings from Germany
JohannesI dont read his God as anthropomorphised. I rather read Whitehead using a language that is related to the experiencial realm of being a human being. A language that relates to the human experience rather than abstractions of these experiences. A sentient God makes the concept of God and the divine relatable and down to earth real, rather than theoretical and above the clouds.
And I dont read God as having a taste for value, but rather the other way around, our human experience as part and an experience of a greater telos, described as “God” in this case.
Hm, I have no trouble to see the soul (mind/psyche) as a constant change in experience. Because I cannot find anything else that is acctualy there. Anything beyond experience seems to be somewhat fictional to me.
My experience seems persistant to some extent due to many many many reoccuring habits, patterns, structure and phaenomena of experience. The experiences of the soul (mind/psyche) are not arbitrary and transitory in the sense that they are very much stuctured, organized and shaped in certain, evolutionarily occuring ways. These habits / reoccuring patterns of experience give the impression of persistence. While to me they seem to be created anew every time nevertheless.
To me mind and matter / mind and body are merely two sides of the same coin. The continously self-sustaining processes that make up the body of an organism correspond with the continuity of experience as mind. To me “matter” is a conceputal construction out of reoccuring patterns of sense experience, just as “mind” is a conceptual construction out of reoccuring patterns of felt inner experiences.
Once these organic processes / patterns of experience cease to self-stabilize
themselfs, the organism “dies”. The concept of a body and mind dissolves, respectively is radically transformed into simpler forms of outer and inner experience. But the organic processes / patterns of experience live on in other living beeings, that have been created and shaped by the older ones. Live is a continuum to me that started with the first cell and never died ever since. Only changed form continuosly.To me the rebirth idea in buddhism seems a little bit to litteral and naive.
“Do we experience ourselves as a series of discrete drops of experience or as a continuous flow that nevertheless changes through time?”
I surely experience myselfs as continous flow, even as a self that has the experience. To me the self appears to be clearly an unnecessary and unquestioned assumption, that results from a substance ontology point of view.
The experience of continuity is closely linked to having a memory. If I would have no memory at all, there could only be fresh experience every moment.
But at the end of the day we probably experience continuity, because our organism simply provides this experience. The human organism is a process that self-stabilizes and provides recurring patterns of experience that endures 100 hundred years in many cases… New in every moment, but in recurring patterns that get shaped gradualy, often so slowly that we cannot wittness the change and therefore the impression of continuity is even stronger.
also the changes in the point of view (self process) cannot be experienced as an experience in itself, but only as a change of in the contents of experience that may change over time…
Thank you for sharing these very intimate, inspiring and insightful experiences!