"I see now that physics is of no importance, that the world is illusion." ~ Heisenberg
Ed's response:
Actually, the emptiness in and around atoms is only a concept in physics. Most of science is just concept. Have you seen an atom? Have you seen the space in atoms? Therefore, what is more real, the illusion of an apple being eaten, or the illusion of an atom? Ditto the "absolute truths" of mathematics. Have you ever touched the concept of a set, or a ring, or a number 17? All are concepts--mind.
At least the illusion of an apple or another person gives the appearance of the personal, unlike scientific concepts, and can feed the apparent body.
At least the illusion of an apple or another person gives the appearance of the personal, unlike scientific concepts, and can feed the apparent body.
Response to Ed:
You can see atoms nowadays, just not the particleshttp://www.insidescience.o
Ed's response:
Ed Muzika No, you are not seeing an atom. You are seeing the electronic representation of an alleged electron field around an alleged atomic nucleus, through the magic of an electron microscope. It is an interpreted image, shone on a CRT, not the atom itself. It is still all theory, mind stuff that seems to predict the way the illusional world acts under various conditions. It is still all concept.
Actually look at the two images that purport to be detailed views of an atom.
Both show round black field with blobs of blue in them. One has a larger blue blob, the other two smaller ones. This is supposed to be a representation of possible electron fields around the nucleus, which is unseen, and in that nucleus are supposed to be protons and neutrons, themselves made up of smaller, more fundamental particles, and those, in turn, composed of "strings."
100 years from now we will have a different set of concepts about the unseen world of atoms, which in that future, will be regarded as the correct theory compared to the "quaint" theories we had in the 21st Century.
Everything in existence is conceptual in nature, name and form, superimposed on emptiness, the void.
Form is none other than emptiness, emptiness none other than form. Feeling, thought and consciousness itself are like this. --Heart Sutra
Thank you Edji for even cutting through the conceptual labeling that is science. It is all mind and just a concept. Everything in consciousness changes. What is it that never changes?
ReplyDeleteLove,
William
You!!!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how we were able to utilize the atomic energy, in form of nuclear reactors or as a matter of fact nuclear bombs.
ReplyDeleteThese can't be just an illusion.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Millions of houses around the globe lit by nuclear energy.
Adding to it, I would like to say even a simple electric bulb is something that has invented by one among us, using the concepts only, which has changed our lives.
So all this is not just an illusion. We can't just humiliate the theories by calling them illusions. Our brothers/fathers have worked hard for the life we have now.
"Everything in existence is conceptual in nature, name and form, superimposed on emptiness, the void."
Everything in nature, "IS"
Concepts are formulated to understand their behavior/nature.
What is void is void.
"Form is none other than emptiness, emptiness none other than form. Feeling, thought and consciousness itself are like this. --Heart Sutra"
Here Buddha is telling us that emptiness is not different than form. Neither is form different than emptiness.
What is the point in discouraging form, if it is the representation of emptiness itself.
Mathematics and Physics are study of form. Not the 'Illusion'
'Illusion' is what we(may be only I) are discussing here. :)
It is neither leading us to the form nor to the emptiness.
JP, because you think the world is real, then science is also real for you. You think the world is real because you think you are real. When you see you are not real, that you don't exist, then automatically the world disappears too.
ReplyDeleteYou need to decide whether you want to accept the commonplace illusions of everyman, or to begin to look deeply into your own experience to find truth rather than outward into the appearances humans call the real.
This is what spirituality is all about: Looking inwards to find absolute truths rather than outwards to find patterns and external truths.
As Robert would say, it is just all a dream. That is what the awakening experience is all about, waking from the waking dream.
So, you decide what you want, life in the world of convention, or going beyond this "reality" altogether to experience that which is before the mind.
If you have read Advaita in the past you already know it. So why do you hesitate to jump out of the world and find out what you really are?
I think false problems arise when a teacher uses the world "real" without explaining clearly what they mean by this word. In the Indian philosophy of advaita, the word "real" means that which is permanent, which does not change. In this sense, the world is not real.
ReplyDeleteBut the common Western meaning of the word "real" is entirely different. It simply refers to objective experience, something perceivable and verifiable by the senses. In this sense the world is "real" -- we have an actual "real" experience of it, even if we haven't yet fully investigated the true nature of that experience.
Similarly with the notion of the dream. Upon awakening from an ordinary dream, we are aware that the objects that appeared in the dream have no existence independent of our own awareness of them. In this sense, the dream objects are not "real". But our experience of these objects, the experience of the dream itself, was real in the sense of being a "real experience", or a "real dream". We really did have an experience which we identify as a dream. In this sense, the dream is "real", while the dream objects clearly have no independent existence.
It is more useful to use clearer, less ambiguous terms, such as "independently existing" (which is not true of any apparent "object"), or "not having independent existence" which, upon deep investigation, is the case for all apparent objects of experience.
Thus the main problem with the whole "real"/"not real" dichotomy when it is discussed is that people mean different things by the world "real". If clearer terminology is used, the whole so-called problem disappears.
When the world "real" is used in the context of a discussion of advaita, the most essential thing, from the very outset, is to define clearly exactly what is meant by the world "real".
Peter R