Originally posted by Polly
Hello, would you tell us a bit more about this "water" as you have experienced?
Although you've not suggested anything about my motives, nonetheless first let me make it clear I am not trying to be an all-knowing expert on the subject, and I have nothing "mystical" to say. What I am talking about is something exceedingly simple. I will try to answer your question, and then at the end of this little essay I will also try to explain why I at least might appear frustrated at times in these discussions.
In one of my posts to Zero I said something like the following, "I am saying that there are a set of internal conditions present inside you that exist independent of what's external. . . . [if you] turn your attention away from external input, and then focus on the neutral sensitivity inside you that waits at the ready to respond to stuff . . . that is a "you" most people know very little about because they are so busy thinking and being stimulated by externals to feel it."
What is that "neutral sensitivity" I am referring to? To use an analogy, say you sing into a powered microphone so much that you only see a mic as the amplified sounds it makes. Then someone points out that even if you don't sing into it, the mic sustains a field of sensitivity which waits in readiness. They show you that the field has its own internal dynamics, and how if the field is noisy with its own noise, it colors every note of your music.
Similarly, I am suggesting that the foundation of consciousness is sensitivity; in its neutral or pure condtion I've come to refer to it as
base sensitivity. On the perception end, much of what stimulates our base sensitivity is information the senses send to it, but we also think and imagine with it. The incessant stimulation of that sensitivity now, combined with all the stimulation from birth that has left it "colored" or condtioned with patterns of the past, means we never get to experience our base sensitivity "clean" of that stimulation or conditioning.
Also significant is the effect of our base sensitivity always being being in some shape or another. If you can imagine that all our non-stop current thought, stimulation, and past conditioning require the use of our base sensitivity's power, then you can see we may never find out what it feels like to experience existence with our base sensitivity functioning at full senstivity.
Can one ever achieve a neutral, still base sensitivity? Well, this is where I've argued here (and at the old PF) that there is a three thousand year old history of individuals who've seen the value of this consciousness potential, and have seriously undertaken a certain type of inner practice to achieve it. Of the many people who achieved skill with it, two are most famous.
In India, the Buddha seems to have been the first to have realized perfect stillness (
nirvana) through the practice of
samadhi. In the West, devotees of Jesus took up the practice calling it
union (the term "samadhi" means union). If you can accept my explanation of base sensivity, then the term union makes a lot of sense. That is, all the thoughts, conditioning and pursuit of external stimulation keeps our base sensivity fragmented; when one achieves the stillness of base sensivity, consciousness integrates (i.e., unifies) into a single experience.
To cite an example, here’s a quote from a Western practitioner of union, Teresa of Avila, a 16th century nun (most practitioners in the West were monastic residents) describing how she worked toward union through three stages of inner prayer: recollection, quiet, and then finally union. In the recollection phase of union Teresa says, “the soul [what I am calling 'base sensitivity'] collects its faculties together and enters within itself . . .” In other words, an individual withdraws his or her attention from the senses and mind and allows it to return to, or be “recollected.” The next stage of union is the “quiet” which Teresa says is, “In it the soul enters into peace . . . The soul understands in another way, very foreign to the way it understands through the exterior senses . . . that not much more would be required for it to become one . . . in union.” Now Teresa says the inner practitioner is ready for the final stage of prayer she calls union where awareness, “neither sees, nor hears, nor understands . . . for the union is always short and seems . . . even much shorter than it probably is. . . . And I say that if this prayer is the union of all the faculties . . . we already know [how union comes about] since it means that two separate things become one. . . .”
Now, are the advantages of union worth the effort? If one does acquire skill with it, might it allow one to become aware of subtleties a "noisy" awareness never detcts? Does the integrated experience (as many pratitioners claim) give us a blissful joy and lasting satisfaction independent of external conditions? Is the deep realization of this experience the source of reports of something some individuals called God? All those questions can only be answered one way, and that is to learn the experience for oneself.
Bringing all this a little closer to discussions which take place here, that experiential standard for unon is exactly the same standard for verifying the truth of an empirical statement. In other words, once I claim some external situation works or is a certain way, the truth of that empirical statement is verified by experience (i.e., observational, or sense experience). The difference between union and sense experience should be obvious because in the former there is no external input needed (or wanted) or externalization possible for "observation." All of it takes place within. Union is not an attempt to experience something "other," it is an attempt to experience one's self more fully.
At this site, if you see me frustrated it is usually because of debating with people who think they know all there is to know about conscious experience. In this thread you can see Zero and Deeviant, for instance, insisting there is no genuine conscious experience besides that derived from the senses and brain. They demand a "proof" of the inner thing that requires sense data and intellectual operations to establish.
When I try to explain to them what a ludicrous proposition that is for union, they simply again demand more external proof. When I site the long history of the practice of union, they refuse to look at it, often characterizing it as some sort of cult or weirdo mystical deluded practice. Do they know the first thing about it? Hell no. Does that stop them from spouting ethnocentrically educated opinions to the whole world. Hell no. Even when I tell them I personally have gone to the trouble to practice and learn the experience, that too is ignored. What am I to conclude from such discussions except that they have already decided reality is a certain way, and they are therefore pre-committed to rejecting out of hand any evidence which doesn't conform to their model of existence. To me, that is not how one participates in a philosophical discussion. Of course, you have not participated this way here, so none of that applies to you.
My interest here at PF is not to get people to try union. I don't think that is appropriate for a forum format. If you were interested in investigating the history of this practice, I might privately suggest reading or some other avenue. But here in the forum, my sole purpose is to confront the narrow empirical claims about what consciousness is and is capable of, and to open minds a bit.
Of course to put it the other way can only suggest I've chosen sides, perhaps because the Theists (Creatoinists) would consider me nothing more than an Ahteist? (or traiter). However, it's Atheists I seem to be most at odds with ... at least when it comes to debating anyway.