Are you the universe?

[pmwgreen]

It would be fun if someone said “I became one with the universe and that’s how I came to pick all those winning lottery numbers.” or “… and that’s how I could warn about the Hurricane.” or “… the bombing.” or anything really. No matter how connected people think they are, I suspect they aren’t.

[Machinaforce]

My guess is that they say you aren’t some separate entity cut off from reality but connected to everything around you. Similar to a wave connected to the ocean but not being separate from it. Though when it comes to atoms and bonds it’s more complicated than an ocean analogy. Yeah everything is connected but composition matters though.

You are right in that I can’t say iron is steel because the two are different. And yeah reality is weird, especially when I wonder how lifeless matter can create the vibrancy of a human experience. Though they might argue there is no human just matter creating the experience of being a human, not sure how to respond to that one.

But every time I try to nail their argument down it’s so vague. What is mean by “you”, or universe? How can there be the separateness of our experience but still with us being made of the same things as other life (mostly). Then I get to wondering about life, the self, and all these crazy things I don’t know or fully understand.

[mjmlabs]

It can be very difficult to assess what is true. There are many levels of reality, and what is true on one level need not be true – nor untrue – on some other level. Words are stuck on the level of verbal communication, which is why we must employ metaphor to convey truths beyond that level.

For instance, here are links to two sets of assertions. Ask yourself which are true, and which are not, and at which levels.

An Eschatological Laundry List

The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die

(It’s okay, you can trust me. I’m an ordained Taoist rabbi. Not so very different from Buddhism. Same universe.)

[Machinaforce]

@mjmlabs

It can be very difficult to assess what is true. There are many levels of reality, and what is true on one level need not be true – nor untrue – on some other level. Words are stuck on the level of verbal communication, which is why we must employ metaphor to convey truths beyond that level.

For instance, here are links to two sets of assertions. Ask yourself which are true, and which are not, and at which levels.

An Eschatological Laundry List

The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die

(It’s okay, you can trust me. I’m an ordained Taoist rabbi. Not so very different from Buddhism. Same universe.)

I don’t think there are levels of reality and metaphors are still words.

What I am getting at with this is that I think they mean we are not atomized and self contained beings but “expressions” of a greater whole. But the universe isn’t an ocean and not everything in it is made of the same things.

[mjmlabs]

@Machinaforce

I don’t think there are levels of reality and metaphors are still words.

Then I can be of no assistance to you.

I wish you well in your quest.

Sent from my SM-S727VL using Tapatalk

[Machinaforce]

@mjmlabs

Then I can be of no assistance to you.

I wish you well in your quest.

Sent from my SM-S727VL using Tapatalk

It’s not really a quest.

thinking about it, we do have separateness in a sense since we cannot feel what others feel or experience what they do.

PLus calling everything an expression of the universe…something about that just doesn’t really seem right but I can’t put my finger on it. I mean even in terms of atoms and chemistry things are different and yet similar, but different in very important ways. Just saying everything is made of the same atoms is a gross misunderstanding.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Machinaforce

It’s not really a quest.

If it wasn’t really a quest, you wouldn’t be bumping these deservedly dead threads every few days with some comment no different than what you have said a hundred times before.

[begbert2]

@Machinaforce

thinking about it, we do have separateness in a sense since we cannot feel what others feel or experience what they do.

PLus calling everything an expression of the universe…something about that just doesn’t really seem right but I can’t put my finger on it. I mean even in terms of atoms and chemistry things are different and yet similar, but different in very important ways. Just saying everything is made of the same atoms is a gross misunderstanding.

Hey Machinaforce, you should pay attention to what this guy who I quoted is saying. He seems to be on the right track.

[Machinaforce]

@begbert2

Hey Machinaforce, you should pay attention to what this guy who I quoted is saying. He seems to be on the right track.

But I’m still pulled back to “before you there was the universe” therefor you are the universe

[Darren_Garrison]

But I’m still pulled back to “before you there was the universe” therefor you are the universe

But that is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. Just because someone said it does not make it reasonable, rational, logical, or true. Before you there was your mother and father. Are you your mother and father?

[begbert2]

@Machinaforce

But I’m still pulled back to “before you there was the universe” therefor you are the universe

On the face of it that’s like a proof that I’m not the universe. I was born in 1976. If you see a picture of somebody taken before that, then that’s pretty good proof that the person in the picture is not me.

[Machinaforce]

I still go back to quotes like these though:

What it means?

Atoms are not discrete balls floating in space. They are more point-like excitations of a field. (Think of standing waves in a body of water.)

There are no discrete things or objects of solid substance; things as we perceive them are merely changing forms and patterns in nature (the universe) as a whole. You are not a small and lonely being lost in a foreign universe; you are a direct expression of the whole of the universe as it currently is; you (as everything else) is a brief movement in the dance of nature. You do not exist independent of the perceived outside; outside and inside are two sides of the same coin.

The seed is no different from the tree. They are the same thing viewed from different perspectives in time. Birth and death are really no different; waking life is really no different from dreamless sleep.

The nature of the human perspective is experience. This is why we say that we are the universe experiencing itself: A dark cloud is the universe clouding itself; the sun is the universe lighting itself; the rotating planet is the universe spinning itself.

The ocean waves; the planet rotates; the sun shines; the heart beats; the stomach digests; the brain thinks; the body acts. These events are no different in nature. The thinker of thoughts is the waver of oceans, not a little man behind the eyes of the body; the waver of the ocean is spontaneous, as is the thinker of thoughts. Nature is not being moved; nature flows without direction; nature is not concerened with tomorrow, for it is dancing today.

Look at a tree, see how it moves in the wind.

Notice your thoughts arising, even the thought “I am thinking.”

Notice that the movement of the tree and the movement of thought are two expressions of the same thing.

Stop labeling the tree and yourself; notice that all separation is a consequence of the labeling process; allow all boundaries to dissolve.

Feel the swaying of the tree as much as you feel the arising thoughts and the other bodily sensations.

Feel intuitively that what you refer to as I is a form in the universe experiencing itself.

The “inevitable” demise is the illusion itself. There limitation of having only those “options” is the illusion - the notion of “utility” is what is samsara/maya. When the man realizes that he is neither the doer of action, nor the enjoyer of the strawberry, has no volition nor efficacy and that he is the tiger himself as well as the strawberry as well as the man - then he has metaphorically climbed up and killed the tiger. You are right in the sense that it is not an “option” - killing the tiger is the reality, the true reality, beyond the “options.” It is scary because it is not meant for the faint hearted, However, on a tangible non spiritual level you are correct, however if after reading this you still believe that you exist as an individual conscious being in between birth and death and have to get “the most you can” out of “life” then I have not done a good job with this, and have failed you. Truth is you don’t need the strawberry, never did - and yes you can “win” against the tiger. But don’t take my word for it, try it yourself.

And it just seems to be intuitively true.

[Machinaforce]

Real talk: Everything is made of fields

[begbert2]

@Machinaforce

I still go back to quotes like these though:

And it just seems to be intuitively true.

I’m just going to ignore the second quoted section since it’s utter nonsense outside of context. (It may or may not be utter nonsense even with context.)

The first quote says some things that a blatantly false (seeds are not trees, birth is not death), but it does touch on something that is true, and uses it to argue something that is not true.

The truth is that everything is made of atoms and such, doing what atoms do. In that sense everything is the same*. The * there is because I don’t mean that two different atoms are the same atom, as some of the woo implies. However atoms all function in about the same way.

The part where your quote becomes a lie is because it’s pretending that the arrangement of the atoms is irrelevant. This is a lie. And it undermines the entire point they’re trying to make.

I can look at a tree’s leaves blowing in the wind, and recognize that I’m not a tree, because DUH**.

So there is a grain of truth behind the lie. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the grain of truth proves the lie to be true.

** Obviously one could talk at length about how patterns matter, and how different patterns and groupings of atoms coalesce in to naturally distinct things and the ways that these distinct things interact with their surroundings can play with the definition of “distinct” in this context. But I don’t feel like talking at length about something we all already know.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

Machinaforce, you start that first quote with “Atoms are not discrete balls floating in space. They are more point-like excitations of a field. (Think of standing waves in a body of water.)” And your next post there is a link to an article that’s flatly titled “Everything is made of fields”.

Why is that relevant to you? Why are you even mentioning it, let alone leading off with it over and over again? Why the heck do you think it’s so important — or, for that matter, at all important? Why do you think it should matter to anyone whether atoms are discrete balls or point-like excitations of a field?

I genuinely don’t get it. A lot of stuff you post here — and I mean a lot of it — seems laughably wrong; but I can at least see what you’re shooting for. But this? Why this? Why do you keep bringing this up?

[Machinaforce]

@begbert2

I’m just going to ignore the second quoted section since it’s utter nonsense outside of context. (It may or may not be utter nonsense even with context.)

The first quote says some things that a blatantly false (seeds are not trees, birth is not death), but it does touch on something that is true, and uses it to argue something that is not true.

The truth is that everything is made of atoms and such, doing what atoms do. In that sense everything is the same*. The * there is because I don’t mean that two different atoms are the same atom, as some of the woo implies. However atoms all function in about the same way.

The part where your quote becomes a lie is because it’s pretending that the arrangement of the atoms is irrelevant. This is a lie. And it undermines the entire point they’re trying to make.

I can look at a tree’s leaves blowing in the wind, and recognize that I’m not a tree, because DUH**.

So there is a grain of truth behind the lie. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the grain of truth proves the lie to be true.

** Obviously one could talk at length about how patterns matter, and how different patterns and groupings of atoms coalesce in to naturally distinct things and the ways that these distinct things interact with their surroundings can play with the definition of “distinct” in this context. But I don’t feel like talking at length about something we all already know.

The Doors of Liberation | Lion’s Roar

This gets more into the being the universe more or less because there is no separate and unconnected self that you “are”. That birth and death are illusions.

As for the atoms bit it would mean there are no discrete essences to things and that they are just excitations of some underlying field.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Machinaforce

As for the atoms bit it would mean there are no discrete essences to things and that they are just excitations of some underlying field.

What difference would that make?

We’ve been over this before. I thought you’d dropped this point? It goes like this: if you hand me a gold cup full of mercury atoms, I don’t try to drink; but if the cup is full of water, what with the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atoms, yeah, that, I’m going to drink. (The cup, incidentally, is made of gold atoms, which is why it’s solid under conditions where the water and the mercury are liquid — and why it doesn’t react to magnets the way a cup made of iron atoms would).

That’s so if the atoms are balls floating in space, but it’s also true if they’re, uh, more point-like excitations of a field; regardless, I act like I can tell them apart, and treat them differently: pouring one down my throat and making sure not to pour the other one down my throat. I hope you do likewise, and I can’t imagine either of us varying that based on whether they’re floaty balls or pointlike excitations.

[begbert2]

@Machinaforce

The Doors of Liberation | Lion’s Roar

This gets more into the being the universe more or less because there is no separate and unconnected self that you “are”. That birth and death are illusions.

As for the atoms bit it would mean there are no discrete essences to things and that they are just excitations of some underlying field.

Noting thoughts on the link as I read it:

1: Based on the first paragraph, this article is probably steeped in jargon - terms which have customized meanings that differ from their plain meanings. Thus an out-of-context reader like me (and you) will have to be very careful about tracking the meaning of the jargon so it will be correctly interpreted.

continuing reading…

Standard silliness about how an empty glass isn’t empty because air. Correct, but silly and not meaningful…

Some paragraphs that make it explicitly clear that when they say that things are all connected/the same/inside one another, that’s just silly jargon for “things that are different and distinct have at some point interacted with each other”…

The paragraph immediately after that contradicts the paragraphs explaining the jargon by leaping to a conclusion that is incompatible with the jargon. These guys are idiots. But idiots with agendas - their blatantly fallacious thinking reaches the conclusion they like (emptiness, which is jargon for the connectedness/nonself stuff), so they are cool with the bullshit. Continuing…

A factually incorrect statement about how wind works, used as a basis for a factually incorrect statement about causality…

Some semantic nonsense about how unless something is currently in the act of verbing, they are not a verber. Correct (sort of), but meaningless…

…and here we are, the crystalization of the above silliness and errors: the assertion that when you take out all the stuff that’s (really not) in you, that there’s nothing left. Putting aside the idiocy about causal influences (like the sun!) literally existing within you, there’s some cleverly evil legerdemain going on here. It’s true that if you remove all the atoms from a person, the person will vanish and all you’ll be left with is a pile of assorted atoms. But that doesn’t mean that you just showed the person was nothing but a pile of atoms; that means that the removal process destroyed the person, because patterns do in fact matter. But buddhists don’t want patterns to matter, so they say stupid shit like “If you remove the non-me elements from me—the sun, the dirt, the garbage, the minerals, the water, my parents, and my society—there’s no me left”, as though that implies that we’re nothing but a random arrangement of our component parts. Which is blatantly false.

Shall I go on? I don’t think I got to the birth being death thing yet, but honestly there’s so much idiocy and outright falsehood in what I’ve already read that I’m highly confident that the rest is garbage too.

[Machinaforce]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

What difference would that make?

We’ve been over this before. I thought you’d dropped this point? It goes like this: if you hand me a gold cup full of mercury atoms, I don’t try to drink; but if the cup is full of water, what with the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atoms, yeah, that, I’m going to drink. (The cup, incidentally, is made of gold atoms, which is why it’s solid under conditions where the water and the mercury are liquid — and why it doesn’t react to magnets the way a cup made of iron atoms would).

That’s so if the atoms are balls floating in space, but it’s also true if they’re, uh, more point-like excitations of a field; regardless, I act like I can tell them apart, and treat them differently: pouring one down my throat and making sure not to pour the other one down my throat. I hope you do likewise, and I can’t imagine either of us varying that based on whether they’re floaty balls or pointlike excitations.

I’m mostly referring now to the lion’s roar link that I posted now. Since I asked a physicist about it being true and he told me the short answer was NO.

[Machinaforce]

@begbert2

Noting thoughts on the link as I read it:

1: Based on the first paragraph, this article is probably steeped in jargon - terms which have customized meanings that differ from their plain meanings. Thus an out-of-context reader like me (and you) will have to be very careful about tracking the meaning of the jargon so it will be correctly interpreted.

continuing reading…

Standard silliness about how an empty glass isn’t empty because air. Correct, but silly and not meaningful…

Some paragraphs that make it explicitly clear that when they say that things are all connected/the same/inside one another, that’s just silly jargon for “things that are different and distinct have at some point interacted with each other”…

The paragraph immediately after that contradicts the paragraphs explaining the jargon by leaping to a conclusion that is incompatible with the jargon. These guys are idiots. But idiots with agendas - their blatantly fallacious thinking reaches the conclusion they like (emptiness, which is jargon for the connectedness/nonself stuff), so they are cool with the bullshit. Continuing…

A factually incorrect statement about how wind works, used as a basis for a factually incorrect statement about causality…

Some semantic nonsense about how unless something is currently in the act of verbing, they are not a verber. Correct (sort of), but meaningless…

…and here we are, the crystalization of the above silliness and errors: the assertion that when you take out all the stuff that’s (really not) in you, that there’s nothing left. Putting aside the idiocy about causal influences (like the sun!) literally existing within you, there’s some cleverly evil legerdemain going on here. It’s true that if you remove all the atoms from a person, the person will vanish and all you’ll be left with is a pile of assorted atoms. But that doesn’t mean that you just showed the person was nothing but a pile of atoms; that means that the removal process destroyed the person, because patterns do in fact matter. But buddhists don’t want patterns to matter, so they say stupid shit like “If you remove the non-me elements from me—the sun, the dirt, the garbage, the minerals, the water, my parents, and my society—there’s no me left”, as though that implies that we’re nothing but a random arrangement of our component parts. Which is blatantly false.

Shall I go on? I don’t think I got to the birth being death thing yet, but honestly there’s so much idiocy and outright falsehood in what I’ve already read that I’m highly confident that the rest is garbage too.

But their argument is that there isn’t a separate and independently existing self to call “you”, who you are comes from everything around you and life experience from those things so how can they be “you”? But then again infants are born with personalities and humans aren’t born blank slates and some traits are enduring so maybe there is more to it than that.

Also how are those statements factually incorrect?

And the bit about death is the one that got me.