individuality and the external world ...
Obbe
Regular
... are only myths. Like the inside and the outside, the internal and external worlds are actually one. Here's an alan watts quote on it:
I believe that feeling of separation and alienation is going away, for more and more people. I believe that more and more of us are opening up to a better world.
... Well, let's ask the question, is a rainbow real? Well, it fulfills all the catagories of being there, because it fills all the catagories of public observation. It isn't the hallucination of just one observer, because you can stand beside me and see the rainbow, too. But you just try to get ahold of that rainbow, approach it. I remember as a little boy, I'd ride my bicycle around chasing rainbow ends, and believing there might be a pot of gold at the end of it. But the irritating thing was, you could never catch up with the rainbow. Well, was it there, or wasn't it? Well, everybody saw it. But you see, it depends on a kind of triangulation between you and the sun and the moisture in the air, and if that triangulation doesn't exist, and of those three functions don't exist, there isn't any rainbow. Just like if I hit a drum, and I pound the hell out of it with no skin on the drum, it won't make any noise. In other words, for the drum to beat, needs both skin and a fist. If there's no skin, the drum doesn't make any noise; if there's no fist, the drum doesn't make any noise.
So in the same way, exactly, the hard floor made of stone is like a rainbow. It is there only if certain conditions of relationship are fulfilled. Now, we like to think, you see, that houses and things go on existing in their natural state when we're not around looking at them or feeling them. But what about the rainbow? Supposing that there's nobody to see it; would it be there? Or let me put it in another way. We're supporting the myth that the external world exists without us, but let's ask the question in another way. Supposing I was there, capable of seeing a rainbow, but there wasn't any sun out. It wouldn't be there, would it? Let's put it another way. Suppose the sun was out, and I was there to see it, but there wasn't any moisture in the atmosphere. It wouldn't be there, would it? So equally, it wouldn't be there if there was no one there to see it. It just as much depends on somebody to see it as it depends on the sun and it depends on the moisture.
But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us. That's the whole myth of the independent observer, of man coming into a world into which he doesn't really belong, and that it's all going in there and he has nothing to do with it, but he just arrives in here and sees it as it always was. But that's a jokeº and people could only feel that way if they felt compeletely alienated and did not feel that the external world was continuous with their own organism. You bet you the external world is so continuous with your own organism: the whole world is human because it's humaning.
I believe that feeling of separation and alienation is going away, for more and more people. I believe that more and more of us are opening up to a better world.
Comments
and we are slowly waking up to that.
Yeah, think of it like this, we all develop an individual reality but each reality envelopes based on what it experiences on a shared "greater whole."
Without our brains operating between the two main levels of conscious. the self and subconscious, experience would have little and highly repetitive pattern of thought and interaction with internal and external realities.
But since the symbols that people see and experience each day serve the purpose of shaping a persons life experience based on what meaning they place upon objects they see outside themselves, This also works on a conscious/subconscious level.
So with this way of looking at the external/internal it becomes like metaphorical blender of the human psyche.
Since it occurs with any number of people I will use a church as a example. Ok, so the church is a is a place where all different kinds of people go to experience a religious symbolic externally created reality.
Now remember each person has there own associations based on what symbol is being represented, since this takes place no two people can have the exact same experience in reality, because what they consciously internalize is effected by the experience had at earlier points in life.
Most all see the same on the outside, but its what is downloaded unto the inside subconscious is what makes for the variations in people.