Originally posted by HoserHellspawn
You've done a lot of thinking, haven't you? It strikes me that an opinion such as this one which states that "true self", a term which I can't bring myself to say without putting quotations around it, is found by not thinking and looking outwards can only be realized by much thinking. Without that mental "exercise" I can't see how anybody's brain would be capable to put together on it's own what you have stated above. If they hadn't, they'd essentially be following that doctrine but be completely oblivious to it. Is this all inherently paradoxical or is it just me?
No, it's not you, this, like everything else, is inherently paradoxial, and in high-level reasoning such as this it's almost impossible to not use paradoxes. Existence itself is a paradox. In quantum physics: is a photon a particle or a wave? It's both at the same time, it is at once a distinct entity and a bump in the vacuum of space-time, 2 conflicting points of view but they are both 100% accurate. Reality is built on this duplicity and inherent duality. Bear with me for a second and I'll clarify, it seems weird at first but it makes total logical sense and can be proven to be true in modern science.
Existence (as we interpret it with our limited perception) is built on the idea of relativity, or more accurately, relativity defines how we view things (in this "dimension" or "reality" or whatever). This means that we see everything only in relation to something else. We see physical matter because it is painted on the canvas of the vacuum of space. If there was no space, only matter, we wouldn't be aware of matter cuz we'd have nothing to compare it to. If there was no matter (for the sake of argument) then we wouldn't see space cuz we'd have no way to define space relative to something else. If there was no light then there would be no such thing as darkness. There's no hot without cold, no up without down, no good without evil.. etc. What I'm saying is that the seemingly dualistic and mutually exclusive aspects of reality aren't really mutually exclusive, they are co-depedent on each other for their existence. Reality is built on duality. For each particle there is an anti-particle with opposite mass and spin going in the opposite direction in time. The univere is constructed in such a way that if if you were to take into account all the matter and anti-matter in the universe then you would find that
the total mass of the universe is exactly ZERO.
As weird as this sounds, it's true, so purely technically speaking, the universe doesn't exist at all! And yet it does. Oh gee, doesn't that sound like another paradox? That's cuz it is, even the whole of the universe itself is one giant paradox, so it no wonder why the it contains many paradoxes within it, the universe itself is one big impossible dualistic paradox. It's like a sheet of rubber, you stick your hand into the sheet and it forms to your hand and sticks out from the sheet. You remove your hand and what you see is the shape of your hand on one side of the sheet (a bump), and on the other side there is a hole (the anti-hand). In our world all we see is the hand, not the hole of the anti-hand, so we assume that that's all there is. The "hand" in the rubber isn't real, it's just the inverse of the hole on the other side. The "anti-hand" isn't real, it's just the inverse of the hand. So does the hand or the anti-hand actually exist. The answer, as you might have guessed, is yes and no. Both answers, though paradoxial, are correct. Things are never how they appear and we preceive such a small part of reailty. Some people then say that since we can't understand the origins of the universe "oh, god must have created it" but that's not a solution to the puzzle, where did this god come from? It doesn't answer the question, it just postpones it and creates a new question that is even more whacky and harder to grasp. The fact is we'll most likely never know how the universe began, I'd explain why but it's very involved, suffice to say that when we exist in a reality that is built on relativisitic duality then we are blinded by the division. We can never understand the physics within a singularity (like a black hole) cuz the 'laws' of physics which we use to calculate stuff themself break down as soon as the 4 basic forces of nature become one. Relativistic perception is all we have, in a singularity like in the beginning of the universe there is no duality, no subject-object division, no place to stand from which to take measurements, no measurments, nothing. There are no words to desribe the beginning cuz language is also built on relativity. The best way I've heard it described is "the spilt between something and nothing". It's also interesting to note that modern think now feels that the universe didn't have a distinct beginning as we understand it, and it didn't happen at some point in the past, time was created with the universe so there was no "before" the beginning. That's how limited our reasoning is. The universe has no outside. It's just weird.
But anyway, to answer your question, everything is a paradox. I feel that the "true self" of the universe cannot be felt by thinking cuz thinking is relative and seeks to divide everything into mutual exclusions. When we "think" we see the hand in the rubber sheet and we know about the existence of the anti-hand and although we know and understand they are dualistic expressions of the same phenomenon we can't see both at the same time and we can't grasp the underlying phenomenon which birthed them. The parent of duality is singularity and we can't even measure what's going on in a singuality cuz it's impossible to look inside one and even if it were possible to look inside and extract information from it it would be meaningless to us cuz we "think" in relativity and it's inescapable. As soon as we think, relative duality is born and ultimate reality is hidden. For this reason I feel the closest we can come some "understanding" reality is by not thinking. When there is no observer (self melts into environment) there is nothing to be observed and nothing to understand, the universe just "IS" and "ISN'T" and there's really nothing more we can accurately say about it without getting lost of the infinite duplicity of subject-object reasoning.
Consciousness at once create the idea of understanding and prevents understanding by it's very roots of being relativistic.
btw, all this crap I've written here and everywhere isn't something I just made up, it's zen buddhism and quantum physics (2 ways of looking at the same thing), and I take no credit for these ideas whatsoever. I'm just a messenger. A sacreligious messenger, muwahahah.
Satori, newfie from hell (who says newfies are stupid? hahaahhaha)
