What do you mean by the “raw data” of direct experience?

[blankisomeone]

I kinda know what you mean, but I don’t.

[seeking_brilliance]

Well then meet us halfway... What do you take it to mean? 

[blankisomeone]

I have a very chattery monkey mind. I spend literally the entire day with my mind narrating what’s happening around me. I rarely just look at the color blue, for example, and see it for what it is. There’s always a sentence that goes through my mind that says “oh, that’s blue”. My mind is actively filtering the world through literal grammar like that. Maybe because I read a lot? I’ve heard some people don’t have an internal dialogue like that.

Through meditation, I’m starting to be able to quiet my mind down. Most of the times it won’t shut up completely, but I can rest for a while in the quietness of the awareness under the thoughts. => That’s what I take to be experiencing the raw data of reality. Looking at the color blue without my mind labeling it blue.

BUT, I feel like it goes deeper than this. Just the fact that my mind feels quieter, there’s still a sense that “I” am looking at the color blue. It’s still not the raw data of experience. You guys keep saying there isn’t a perceveing of the experience, there’s just the experience itsef. But THAT I don’t understand…

Edited September 1, 2020 by blankisomeone

[seeking_brilliance]

This is exactly what we are talking about in my book study in journal section. Short answer, yes sounds like that's it. Although I'm curious what is blue without any of the chatty labels? At that point, is blue known? As a separate entity from the red sock beside it?  Let's find out... 

I still don't understand that whole no internal dialogue thing... I can only imagine it from someone deaf who does not think in verbal language... 

Edited September 1, 2020 by seeking_brilliance

[Leo Gura]

All colors, sounds, sensations, feelings, tastes, smells = raw data

It's the most fundamental stuff of which reality is made of. These are the true "atoms". You can't boil down the color red any further than itself. You can't boil down the taste of salt any further than itself.

[blankisomeone]

16 minutes ago, seeking_brilliance said:

I still don't understand that whole no internal dialogue thing... I can only imagine it from someone deaf who does not think in verbal language... 

@seeking_brilliance

There’s many people like this girl. An endless mind chattering with sentences isn’t a reality for everyone.

Edited September 1, 2020 by blankisomeone

[Fran11]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can't boil down the color red any further than itself. You can't boil down the taste of salt any further than itself.

I find qualia to be the most simple clue against reductionist materialist. 

It takes extremely complicated mental gimnastics ir order to try to equal a color to neurons/fotons/wave-frecuencies/whatever. Still people manage.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Fran11

[seeking_brilliance]

@blankisomeone well if visualising is the sacrifice, I'll take the affliction. 

 

 

40 minutes ago, blankisomeone said:

 

[Spaceofawareness]

It is the senses without any additional interpretations.

Pain is a warm sensation, or a sharp sensation, pleasure is a tingly sensation, etc. You are stripping away all of the additional interpretations to sensory data and focusing on the raw feel of it.