UnbornTao

Did you make a breakthrough? Did you have a new experience - see something you hadn't seen before? Are you personally and undeniably conscious of the nature of experience? It might be that what you call direct is, in fact, indirect. No answer or conclusion will do it - hence the recurring mu koan joke. What do you expect an answer to give you?

Don't worry, on this thread it's about the questioning itself. Thanks for your answers!

Truth as what is. Like Archimedes and his "eureka" moment - not a conclusion but a personal consciousness of the truth. Thank you.

@Anton Rogachevski It’s been a fruitful interchange. Yes, the goal was simply to open up a bit and contemplate experience. Is there more to be found? Yes, the truth - maybe a breakthrough, or an insight into what experience is. But as we can see, that’s not readily available. It's a matter of personal effort. I skimmed your article. It looks like it took a lot of work, and it’s a smart analysis. It seems to point toward a more “bare” experience of the present moment, which is probably a move in a positive direction. But of course, reading and logical understanding are only the first step.

@theleelajoker Thanks for your input! Now, what would you say experience is? We can look into that.

Not me But it happens. I think the videos use "/articles."

https://www.actualized.org/insights/wrong-state

Of experience? It's an idea.

She created language as a context in her experience.

"Experience" is what we conventionally regard as coming after perception, though we typically make no distinction between the two - 'I perceive this pencil, therefore I’m experiencing it.' Direct experience, however, would be the apprehension of being prior to perception - getting to the being of the object, whatever that may be. The former is a process, a function of interpretation and meaning-making; the latter, a function of consciousness - an encounter with the thing-itself.

Are you a self? There you go.

Yep, thanks! You brought up the perception called “oneself,” and how it isn’t found anywhere. I made a distinction between the self as an activity and what one is, existentially. Do we experience ourselves? But that was a side point. It doesn't. That part relates to the self we take ourselves to be - a result of activity, such as identification, history, programming, education, and so on. It’s in this domain that we recognize ourselves in the conventional sense. The question is meant to be contemplated rather than answered. It’s not an enlightenment question. It's a good start to grasp the entity who is asking - because, again, regardless of belief or hearsay, nearly everyone experiences themselves as someone. Anyway - experience! Let's leave the self alone for the moment. Hey, you're trying to be more ambitious than I am here. The original question was “What is experience?” Out of that, we encounter, basically, thoughts about something and lived experience - dictated, perhaps, by our degree of participation in the encounter. The goal is to clarify that difference, and then more powerfully ask what experience is - especially what direct experience is. Perhaps a better way to approach this topic is to ask: What in one's experience isn't conceptual?

Not only the definition but the way it is experienced. I think this overlooks the invention itself. What has to happen in one's experience, for something to be created out of nothing? "Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!" - Helen Keller.

@Anton Rogachevski We should have stuck with the mu answer from the very beginning I suggested there's the self, and being. The former is what you take yourself to be; the latter is what you actually are, prior to activity. The "who" question isn't about enlightenment but about getting the person doing the asking. You likely experience yourself right now as someone, so who is that someone? If I were to ask you to hand me that pencil over there, you'd grab the object and give it to me. You wouldn't give me your idea of the pencil. This is another simplistic example but I think it gets the point across. So, you're saying that concept is the same as experience, not just that it can be experienced. Okay. Again, experientially - without stories or resorting to intellect - you can see that they're not exactly the same, can't you? That's the basic point.

@Anton Rogachevski That's what we're looking into. You can take your sensory feed example and recognize various activities within it such as perception, experience, and so on, which show up differently for you. You just mushed these together into a one simplistic distinction, painting it with broad strokes. Seeing an apple and experiencing an apple is different; your participation in the encounter may be the differentiating element here. Having a concept about an apple is the least "direct" process. Nice, thanks. Isn't that interesting? We seem to find ourselves in our identifications and experience, and yet don't seem to find the one that's supposed to be behind these activities - we might call this the self. And then there's who you are as a conscious entity. I suggest you can't be found within perception. Maybe there's isn't a perceiver in the first place - but you are conscious. Who's the one reading this now? We keep encountering this confusion- fusing (failing to differentiate) perception with experience.

It is experienced as concept - mental activity. The having of the concept isn't. Think of doing something, and then do it - these are the domains I'm talking about. I'm not conscious of what experience is yet, so won't speculate on its substance. Three activities seem to be involved here: experience concept experiencing a concept (experience) The latter isn't commonly done. It is the possibility of not only having a thought but experiencing the activity that is the thought as it occurs. Hence the conflation. Would you say you perceive a concept the same way you experience what the concept is referring to? I'm just suggesting we conflate - fuse with - these different domains, not necessarily separate. I'm not claim realness for one or the other - but experience does seem to be more grounded and less "burdened" with mental activity. We fucked up - it's probably sensory, not sensual. Yeah, we should get clear on what these things are. In your example, they are taken to be the same thing, even though we can see that they are not. Sounds like your claim is that you are a perception.

We had to invent language at some point - both as a species and as individuals - so why couldn't we also experience what it's like to be without it? It'd be a temporary exercise, after all. We probably couldn't talk or think about it, though. Again, it's just a question to contemplate - eliminate the context of language and see what that's like. Perhaps. We now live within language and so take its existence for granted. And yet, this very act requires a significant leap in our cognition. It seems quite basic or primordial, but I'm not sure whether it is the first idea a creature has. "Language" as a context would need to have been invented first before such an idea could be conceived. Without language, a movement is just a movement. Sound is just sound. You move your hand that way, yet language isn't found in that act. So "where" is it? 什麼是語言？ jiuhg rr- x,es`+`´gv214z<. efdt vt7h I think what you're exploring here is the nature of difference, rather than language. Anyway, language aims to represent something with something else - sound, gesture, scribble - that is not that thing. I'd say that the nature of that thing may actually be secondary to this process. As long as it represents a distinct experience, then language has done its job in this regard. So I'm repeating myself here. Not sure what other creatures do with our use of language. Yes, we often conflate labeling something - and being familiar with the label - with a personal understanding of that thing. Take emotions, for example: once we learn to name them, we start treating them as if they're fixed, objective phenomena. And yet, each individual doesn't make the exact same distinctions. It might be the case that what people experienced as emotions centuries ago was not quite the same as what we experience and call emotions today.

Ahh okay.

You've got a lot of crap in the way: expectations, "knowledge," and opinions about what enlightenment is or looks like. The solution is to be open and really ask what you are; stay there.

How's the book going for you?

You keep conflating concept and experience! Yes, as you say, a concept can also be experienced, yet it isn't an experience. You'd experience the mental activity giving rise to it. Like experiencing a pineapple versus the recollection that your uncle Bob bought it for you. Sounds good! The body might not need a self but that's another topic. That one is different from the other. It sounds like you are calling experience the sensual feed (sensory field?) - I'd call that perception. And I'd say that perception comes prior to concept. Perception > experience > conceptualization. Don't take this model too seriously, btw. I'm not even saying it's true but it might help us ponder what each process is about.

What would an experience of having no language be like? That's quite the contemplation. It's a fascinating question - and not a simplistic one at all. Without the context of language, there couldn't even be symbol, or the possibility that noise represents something other than the sound itself. It points - that's the point. Whether it references a fact or a truth is secondary. If we're aware of something, then we've already made a distinction in our experience. Terms like "paradox," "gravity," or "unicorn" all point to something we're aware of, even if abstract or unreal - something comes to mind in relation to the word. It might be something objective, abstract, invented, false - whatever - but it is a distinction, even if the term is "nothing." Language is supposed to represent something through something that isn't the medium itself. You read sandía and, if you don't speak Spanish, you have no idea what it represents, but you know that something is being communicated. Even though the term is unknown, the context of language is still operative. Not sure what specific point I'm trying to get across here. I'll need to keep investigating this - these are just provisional thoughts. So, what must be created for a sound, a bodily movement, or a squiggle to represent something it's not?