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> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was comple

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me. This was really nice for about two weeks and then my ego (I expect) just kicked my arse and brought me back down to earth with a crash (maybe its a safety system) Just for the conversation: the «from nowhere» really just might be the unconscious brain, as the relationship between conscious and unconscious is ambiguous at best. The conscious insist in being in control, most of the time fooling itself, while the unconscious does most of the work in a really autonomous way. Maybe the «safety system» was just the unconscious rebelling to prove it does indeed exist and that the conscious should take note, and resume its part in the general guidance of the being :)

haswell 4y ago
> * the «from nowhere» really just might be the unconscious brain* The trouble is that once you start to consider the nature of the unconscious brain, such consideration leads to the same conclusion. If the unconscious brain somehow has “control”, from where does it derive this control? Unless you then accept some kind of metaphysical explanation, it’s centerlessness all the way down.
- tuyiown 4y ago
  > it’s centerlessness all the way down Well I didn't meant anything else actually. I realize that the «unconscious» term is tainted, as it can represent something like a hidden part of personality, especially on Freudian literature and likes. I didn't meant that, I was thinking of the sum of the autonomous processing and coordination of the numerous intricate and distributed functions of the brain, senses, motor, emotional, etc…
  - haswell 4y ago
    That's a good clarification clarification. I misread the quoted part as trying to shift the "well" of consciousness to the unconscious brain, which really just moves the problem down one level.
- kfajdsl 4y ago
  Is being centerless really such a bad thing? Then again, I really haven't experienced the concept at a fundamental, spiritual level, only intellectually; I don't really meditate. Maybe there's something deep in our wiring (probably in our unconscious mind, which really pulls most of the strings) that has difficulty grappling with the loss of the idea of "self".
  - haswell 4y ago
    I don’t believe it’s a bad thing at all, it just is. And glimpsing centerlessness for yourself sounds disconcerting, but instead seems paradoxically comforting when it happens. For me personally, it brought with it a deep sense of peace and wonder about my existence and coexistence with a world full of similarly centerless beings. To your point about wiring, I think absolutely yes. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, many aspects of conscious experience ensure we stay alive and procreate, but are not necessarily pleasant and seem to be increasingly incompatible with modern life. Robert Wright’s book “Why Buddhism is True” explores this at length and is a really interesting read. It’s not a book about religious truth, but one that maps a modern understanding of evolutionary psychology onto the insights of Buddhist philosophy and how such philosophy can be incredibly helpful when dealing with the implications of living in a body that did not evolve to survive the conditions to which it is currently subject.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Well I would say it like this. The ancient part and the modern part of the brain are in a sort of dialogue. The ancient part can place a thought into the modern part of the brain, like a sort of notification. The modern part can then decide to pay attention to this or decide not to. It can reason about it. And finally it can say something back to the ancient part of the brain. It can communicate some plan that the ancient part executes. I say ancient/modern rather than unconsious/conscious, because to a certain extent even the reasoning "just happens", so you might be tempted to say that even the reasoning is unconscious and it's actually all unconscious except some supernatural me that is just passively watching everything without actually taking any action. But we can bypass that (quite interesting) subject, by talking about ancient / modern, because the reasoning part is separate and more modern. Tldr: The neocortex is the homunculus (in the sense of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument).
  - haswell 4y ago
    That is an interesting way to categorize those functions of the brain, but philosophically, doesn't this leave us in the same place? Whether you classify it as ancient/modern, or subconscious/conscious, we're still talking about two modes. In one of these modes we actively perceive/experience our concept of reality, and the other acts as a black box - not available for direct interrogation, but still possible to reason about via observations in conscious experience. The issue I'm having with this take is that our definition of reasoning still depends on the black box. The experience of feeling like a being capable of reasoning and then using that ability to consider a problem is all built on a foundation of thoughts, sensations and feelings that just "appear" in conscious experience with very little evidence that the conscious mind had anything to do with putting them there.

haswell 4y ago

> * the «from nowhere» really just might be the unconscious brain* The trouble is that once you start to consider the nature of the unconscious brain, such consideration leads to the same conclusion. If the unconscious brain somehow has “control”, from where does it derive this control? Unless you then accept some kind of metaphysical explanation, it’s centerlessness all the way down.

tuyiown 4y ago
> it’s centerlessness all the way down Well I didn't meant anything else actually. I realize that the «unconscious» term is tainted, as it can represent something like a hidden part of personality, especially on Freudian literature and likes. I didn't meant that, I was thinking of the sum of the autonomous processing and coordination of the numerous intricate and distributed functions of the brain, senses, motor, emotional, etc…
- haswell 4y ago
  That's a good clarification clarification. I misread the quoted part as trying to shift the "well" of consciousness to the unconscious brain, which really just moves the problem down one level.
kfajdsl 4y ago
Is being centerless really such a bad thing? Then again, I really haven't experienced the concept at a fundamental, spiritual level, only intellectually; I don't really meditate. Maybe there's something deep in our wiring (probably in our unconscious mind, which really pulls most of the strings) that has difficulty grappling with the loss of the idea of "self".
- haswell 4y ago
  I don’t believe it’s a bad thing at all, it just is. And glimpsing centerlessness for yourself sounds disconcerting, but instead seems paradoxically comforting when it happens. For me personally, it brought with it a deep sense of peace and wonder about my existence and coexistence with a world full of similarly centerless beings. To your point about wiring, I think absolutely yes. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, many aspects of conscious experience ensure we stay alive and procreate, but are not necessarily pleasant and seem to be increasingly incompatible with modern life. Robert Wright’s book “Why Buddhism is True” explores this at length and is a really interesting read. It’s not a book about religious truth, but one that maps a modern understanding of evolutionary psychology onto the insights of Buddhist philosophy and how such philosophy can be incredibly helpful when dealing with the implications of living in a body that did not evolve to survive the conditions to which it is currently subject.
im3w1l 4y ago
Well I would say it like this. The ancient part and the modern part of the brain are in a sort of dialogue. The ancient part can place a thought into the modern part of the brain, like a sort of notification. The modern part can then decide to pay attention to this or decide not to. It can reason about it. And finally it can say something back to the ancient part of the brain. It can communicate some plan that the ancient part executes. I say ancient/modern rather than unconsious/conscious, because to a certain extent even the reasoning "just happens", so you might be tempted to say that even the reasoning is unconscious and it's actually all unconscious except some supernatural me that is just passively watching everything without actually taking any action. But we can bypass that (quite interesting) subject, by talking about ancient / modern, because the reasoning part is separate and more modern. Tldr: The neocortex is the homunculus (in the sense of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument).
- haswell 4y ago
  That is an interesting way to categorize those functions of the brain, but philosophically, doesn't this leave us in the same place? Whether you classify it as ancient/modern, or subconscious/conscious, we're still talking about two modes. In one of these modes we actively perceive/experience our concept of reality, and the other acts as a black box - not available for direct interrogation, but still possible to reason about via observations in conscious experience. The issue I'm having with this take is that our definition of reasoning still depends on the black box. The experience of feeling like a being capable of reasoning and then using that ability to consider a problem is all built on a foundation of thoughts, sensations and feelings that just "appear" in conscious experience with very little evidence that the conscious mind had anything to do with putting them there.