RE: The Meaninglessness of Meaning
July 27, 2015 at 8:55 am
(This post was last modified: July 27, 2015 at 8:56 am by bennyboy.)
Well, to be honest, what is known to you outside the context of your experience of self? Study science, and it is you sitting in a chair having the experience of listening to a professsor. Study philosophy, and it is you listening to a professor proving that he himself is an illusion. There are neither things, nor ideas, which can be real for us without experience.
However, I'm very concerned with the nature of the framework of self as opposed to its content. It seems to me that all content-- ideas, feelings, experiences, take place on something more unchanging, something like a movie playing out on a screen. If so, then the self isn't the content-- ideas about the things, world views, etc., but rather a simple philosophical quantity: the capacity for experience.
I'd say that the self of non-ego is the purest form of self, although somehow paradoxical-- something like the Buddhist nirvana, maybe, since it identifies only with the screen and not with any of the random content which flits over its surface. The next "level" is the self which identifies with shapes and forms. The next would be like the one who looks at a 2D screen and sees a 3D image that in reality isn't there at all.
However, I'm very concerned with the nature of the framework of self as opposed to its content. It seems to me that all content-- ideas, feelings, experiences, take place on something more unchanging, something like a movie playing out on a screen. If so, then the self isn't the content-- ideas about the things, world views, etc., but rather a simple philosophical quantity: the capacity for experience.
I'd say that the self of non-ego is the purest form of self, although somehow paradoxical-- something like the Buddhist nirvana, maybe, since it identifies only with the screen and not with any of the random content which flits over its surface. The next "level" is the self which identifies with shapes and forms. The next would be like the one who looks at a 2D screen and sees a 3D image that in reality isn't there at all.
