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Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude!1 “Have courage to use your own understanding!” — that is the motto of enlightenment.
Immanuel Kant
After reading a number of posts from a few people I have come to the realization that there are some very serious leaders and a lot of sheeple around. I came across this while reading and felt that it is a pretty clear statement concerning not the eastern concept of enlightenment but rather a western view of it. What do ya think.
JSin
Immanuel Kant
After reading a number of posts from a few people I have come to the realization that there are some very serious leaders and a lot of sheeple around. I came across this while reading and felt that it is a pretty clear statement concerning not the eastern concept of enlightenment but rather a western view of it. What do ya think.
JSin
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Las Vegas
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Re: Enlightenment
Thu, May 28, 2009 - 6:24 AMI think that is the best definition of immaturity I have seen. Thanks! -
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Re: Enlightenment
Thu, May 28, 2009 - 10:53 AMI'll have to call Dick and see what he says and get back to ya.
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Re: Enlightenment
Thu, May 28, 2009 - 11:27 PMPeople (whether sheeple or not) mechanically make decisions and mechanically act upon them. Their actions aren't so much a matter of courage, but a simple matter of responding as they must based on a unique set of circumstances - each person's actions *are* a direct reflection of their understanding at a given moment, and there isn't any way they can modify them other than perhaps second-guessing after-the-fact as to how they might have acted, a secondary action which may, of course, affect future actions. Characterizing an action as being enlightened or unenlightened, or courageous or cowardly is simply a judgment coming from a different frame of reference. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Sat, May 30, 2009 - 6:17 AMSo, perhaps, enlightenment is simply the fact of having a different frame of reference. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Sat, May 30, 2009 - 6:25 PMwe were jawing about that here unearthly-souls.tribe.net/threa...f6454d
seems to be what people are talking about today!
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Re: Enlightenment
Sun, May 31, 2009 - 12:17 AMYes, but categorizing a person or an action as being enlightened implies the existence of an unenlightened person or action, or at the very least references a distinction of something being higher or lower. A different frame of reference is but a different frame of reference, though we ceaselessly classify most everything that enters our sphere of awareness from our personal subjective frame - such is human nature. Though, in a sense, every action, every exchange, is unto itself enlightened - at least if you happen to be coming at it from a positive perspective. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Sun, May 31, 2009 - 12:19 AMOne man's enlightenment is another man's Hippy woo woo -
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Re: Enlightenment
Sun, May 31, 2009 - 12:34 AMeveryone you know is either enlightened, possibly in ways you'll never understand,
or they are one crazy, s#itsucking, painful, long-dark-night-of the-soul away from their enlightenment.
10 points if you can guess who's who! -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 2:04 AM<One man's enlightenment is another man's Hippy woo woo >
Indeed :)
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Re: Enlightenment
Sun, May 31, 2009 - 12:36 AMUncontrollably convulsing as bolts rivet up my spine and bluish-white light pierces my brain...
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 6:15 AMI think it is human nature to classify and divide things into groups. It allows us to make order out of what otherwise would appear as extraordinarily chaotic.
Not to say it is not chaotic.
JSin -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 8:49 AMthis discussion reminds me of a bunch of blind people dissing the idea of a one-eyed man who can see. not that i'm not blind myself...
I like Kant's idea. Here's a good overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapere_aude -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 12:01 PMenlightenment, the other white meat.
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 6:19 PMTo go back to JSin's original quote...
"Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude!1 “Have courage to use your own understanding!” — that is the motto of enlightenment."
Kant's statement (at least to me) seems to be ridden with errors. The first and most obvious one is the concept of "self-imposed immaturity". Such a concept assumes that man (or woman) has control over whether his current state is mature or immature, an idea I don't necessarily subscribe to. The second idea that makes no sense is described as "the inability to use one's understanding without guidance". One's understanding is displayed by one's action at a given moment and this is derived from an aggregate of influences, of which probably none are under our direct control. It's like saying that you have control over how you were going to respond to this sentence, because by the time you've read it you've already reacted and it's already too late.
Kant then goes on to speak about "courage" - as if we have any direct control over objectively evoking a degree of courage. And then he correlates this fallacious concept with "enlightenment", which makes even less sense than what he'd previously written. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 23, 2009 - 12:52 PM"I think it is human nature to classify and divide things into groups."
It's human ego that forces us to classify and divide things into groups. It's the ego that seeks acknowledgment and acceptance into an entity known as a group. The ego causes the desire to be part of something smaller and less general. This is completely counter productive towards achieving enlightenment. Being enlightened means being part of EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. Not part of just one classification, but sharing the cosmic energy you give as an piece of the whole cosmic universe. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 23, 2009 - 6:00 PMActually to me the need to classify is rooted in exactly what we are doing now... Communication. Words have meanings and descriptors. They have meaning because we have made divisions and classifications based on common traits. If I say apple. You should picture a fruit having certain properties. This is classification.
I would venture that the desire to classify is one of the biggest advantages we as humans have over other animals. We damn well do not have nasty claws or big teeth. The ability to communicate ideas clearly allowed for a more organized tribal society. This allowed us collectively to succeed when otherwise individually we would most assuredly fail.
We can generalize all to hell such as stating "It is" But really does that tell you anything?
So enlightenment in your view is to create a world that has no differentiation or division. No changes, No light , no day. The ideal in said world would likely be all white with nothing but white noise. Seems plain and boring to me not a step forward in consciousness.
JSin
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Enlightenment
Wed, June 24, 2009 - 12:42 PMI think you're misunderstanding. It's the definitions of Light and Dark, night and day, black and white that are often ego infused. I had a discussion recently about dark vs. light music. A friend says, "Wow, that's really dark music." But yet the people were dancing and quite happy. The perception of the ego defines what is dark and what is light. The people dancing were not feeling sad, or broody as the word dark implies. Yet an individual found the music to be such. Again... ego and perception of the ego is what creates an individual definition.
Words are nothing more than specialized sonic vibrations. Like how cats communicate with purrs and growls, birds with chirps and tweets. The noise that comes from our vocal boxes is nothing more than the same. As a species though, we've allowed ourselves to transcribe those phonetic tones into symbols which we use to communicate not only verbally but visually as well (much as we do on this internet forum). But much is lost in this form of communication. "can u tell that i'm screeming" - Not without the ALL CAPS or punctuation.
To be truly enlightened, you go beyond the form of visual or even specialized vibrations. You "feel" the energy of all around you. You become part of it. There's no need to say, "Hello, I'm here." Because it's apparent in your energy. All the identifiers of the ego produced individuality becomes unrecognizable. *Silly reference alert* - Think of the movie, The Matrix. In their physical form, the freedom fighters were once connected to machines. Tubes and connectors in their backs, spines, and arms that left scars and ugly implants. But in the matrix itself, they were shown as their mental image wanted to be presented - sleek, agile, tough, pretty. "The mind (read ego) makes it real."
It's not a matter of losing individuality, because within a state of true enlightenment, individuality doesn't matter. In the cosmos, it's not even recognized. All the identifiers that you carry with you in the ego-state are meaningless when you are in the bliss of the cosmos. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Fri, June 26, 2009 - 10:54 PM"...because within a state of true enlightenment..."
Is there a state other than true enlightenment?
It seems to me that enlightenment is always enlightenment for an individual at any given moment. Whatever that state, be it classified as higher or lower, is the perfect and irrefutable conceptualization for a specific individual at a particular instant. Now, this is not to say that as time passes one might experience things differently, and that a particular person may get the sense that their then current state is higher or more ecstatically endowed with a more potent degree of life force than those in times passed. I can’t deny the apparent perceptions of such sensations and the intellect’s consequent interpretation. Yet, I tend to see such experiences more as the mind naturally transforming and transparently shifting its coordinates of awareness - nothing more.
You may sense and feel differently, and the perceptions of your experiences change, but I wouldn't bet the farm on our having any real control over our level of engagement or over the ultimate outcome of the process - other than making up what we want it to be. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Mon, June 29, 2009 - 2:34 PMThere's many stages towards true enlightenment that are often confused with the actual state. There's bliss, which is a result of being in a state of enlightenment. There's intellectual enlightenment, which can come from a life changing epiphany. In actuality, we do have control of the level of enlightenment we can achieve. This is actually what the science of Yoga is. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Thu, July 2, 2009 - 7:24 PMFrom my point of view you're substituting the term 'enlightenment' for what is experienced as the process of change, which as you've pointed out is not linear at least in how we perceive it. Though I'm somewhat hesitant to use the term because it's a term so subjectively charged, as I previously stated, one is always in a state of enlightenment. The problem is that they're stuck in the mode of figuring out how they're going to get there, which apparently the gods have defined as being their state of enlightenment at that particular moment.
Again, from my point of view, 'bliss', as you define it, is no more than a temporal state of imagination due to the overloading of circuitry in the brain, just the brain filling in the blanks without control or direction, a mechanical process that's customized for a particular individual at their then unique stage of development. Bliss is indicative of rapid change over time, and when you think about it, those are the particular times when we lose touch with time altogether, when time flies by without a hint of our being aware of it. And then people go about propping up this state of random imagination, calling it bliss - sort of like putting lipstick on a pig - or something like that.
Again, development is a mechanical process defined by the unfolding of genetic characteristics in a particular person's time-line. There's no control over this process other than wishful thinking as to it's existence, and it's the erroneous perception that one does have some degree of control over the process that muddles clarity for a person at a given instant. The greater degree of control one thinks one has - the more one is blinded as to what's immediately before them. Anyway, being concerned about control isn't even a factor unless there's some deeply lurking sense that you're out of control in the first place.
No doubt that one who practices yoga will end up having a different experience had they not had any exposure to yoga - yet if it is in the cards for one to have been exposed, to practice, and how much - these are all factors that are not under a person's direct control - unless one is predisposed to believe in such fairy tales, just more factors that are not under a person's control. So, I guess, what it comes down to is that we don't have any control at all as to what we believe. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Fri, July 3, 2009 - 7:17 AMNot sure what all this talk about control is about. Seems to me we certainly do have a choice in our believing and reality construction. If Bliss is "no more than a temporal state of imagination," then I'll take my pig with lipstick on, with maybe some sandalwood oil behind the ears.
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Re: Enlightenment
Fri, July 3, 2009 - 8:59 PMI think you may have made my point. When you say we have a choice in our believing, which in a sense at a given moment *is* our reality construction, you're taking a stand, you're providing a snapshot of your static state at a particular moment - at least with respect to your opinion related to 'choice in believing'. You're unveiling your particular belief about belief. Now, I'd say you didn't have any choice on the matter, and that you more or less instantly evoked a response. Where is this 'choice' you are talking about? Now, I'm not necessarily saying you are wrong, because you might be right, and certainly you are from your 'then' point of view. But the way I see it, your response was mechanical - at least at that past moment - though this is not to say that at some future time your opinion about choice might morph into something other than what it was then or now is, but my guess would be that when you're done reading this, you're still going to believe that you have choice in what you believe in.
Tell me more about sandalwood oil behind the ears. You got me on that one. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Fri, July 3, 2009 - 9:13 PMIndeed. my "particular belief about belief" seems (to me) to be a bit more useful than your particular belief about belief. Yours seems to be a mechanical and "stuck" sort of belief, whereas mine seems more open-ended and creative. In fact, I believe we can create whatever we'd like, including a stuck belief or an open-ended one or anything in between.
However, I'd grant you that that may only "seem" to be the case for me, since it IS my belief.
My guess is that when you're done reading this, you're still going to believe that you (and everyone else) have (has) no choice in what you (they) believe in. That seems rather limiting from my believing POV.
I threw the sandalwood oil behind the ears in because I had a feeling it would get you. It tends to pry open stuck belief systems. (No, I have to confess I just made that up.) In any case, I love sandalwood oil, even though it's mighty expensive these days. It, like rose oil, supposedly has the ability to cool the body down. I'm in Austin, where we're having a ridiculously hot June (5 to 10 degrees hotter than in living history) and my car has no AC. So I carry both rosewater and sandalwood oil with me when driving in the heat of the day, 105 degrees or so at its hottest.
A spritz of rosewater or a dab of sandalwood oil on my forehead seems to cool me down noticeably. Of course, that could only be just my believing. But it seems to work. And my pig is happier... -
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Re: Enlightenment
Sun, July 5, 2009 - 1:15 AMI see beliefs as being stuck at any given moment. To me there's no such thing as an open-ended or creative belief at a unique time slice. Of couse, a belief evolves over time, possibly in as little as few seconds - maybe less, yet if you freeze the frame at any particular instant (like right now) and perceptually ping it, you're going to access the corresponding solidified belief. If I asked you if you believed in Santa Claus, I don't think there would be any wiggle room in your response. Now, at some future time, if you saw some fat dude with a sack of goodies popping out of your fireplace on Chrismas Eve then your belief might change, and pretty rapidly. Likewise, your current belief about Santa Claus is probably not the same one you had when you were three of four. So, beliefs evolve, but only over time - at least in the way I see it.
Characterizing a belief as creative is the grafting upon it an intellectual response, and generally such a characterization makes sense to us personally because it is mechanically generated from that which we are composed. Our sense of creativity is our personalized and most subjective interpretation of transpired events. Possibly the concept of creativity is no more than natural (and I might add - inevitable) evolution over time.
We generally don't get that type of heat along the coast out here near San Francisco, but I'll make it a point to try a dab. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, July 7, 2009 - 9:41 AMFreezing a belief in a particular time slice is an interesting idea. I'm going to have to mull over that one...
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 23, 2009 - 4:05 PMAgreed.
In addition, their are more states of being than enlightened or not enlightened. I might know how speak to animals, or make a pizza...but have no idea how to let go of a thought or fix a car engine. Everyone has something that they bring to the table...if they didn't, they wouldn't be here. If their was someone that brought everything to the table, their would be no reason for the rest of us.
As far as immaturity being self imposed...I agree.............I believe everything in existence chooses to pass through the veal from nothingness in to something, in doing so we agree to leave some (if not most) of the knowledge of everything and nothing behind. Giving us a reason to grow into a new combination of the same thing.
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Re: Enlightenment
Tue, June 2, 2009 - 5:44 PM"I think it is human nature to classify and divide things into groups."
I cannot not disagree with this, though I see each individual's classification system as being unique. We each classify and divide depending upon our respective genetic and experiential footprint, which is just another way of describing our mind at its then-current unique location in time and space, adjusting and resynchronizing each moment as it must. We may deem the experience of our trip along the rail as being chaotic or not chaotic, but this is just our momentary and very personal take. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Thu, June 4, 2009 - 11:21 PMI'll see your Kant and raise you one Socrates.
"There is no shame in being ignorant, shame lies in not doing anything about it.
There are no disabled, only differently able.
I wonder if an inability can be considered a disability, or just a lack of ability,
where in this case, enlightenment is not for everybody, at least not all at the same time.
And as Einstein has noted, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
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Re: Enlightenment
Mon, July 6, 2009 - 7:14 PMor perhaps enlightment is the ability to understand from any frame of reference. -
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Re: Enlightenment
Wed, July 8, 2009 - 1:42 AM<or perhaps enlightment is the ability to understand from any frame of reference. >
Maybe.. or maybe that is just Wisdom..
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Re: Enlightenment
Fri, June 26, 2009 - 11:48 PMA little bit left field.. but this gave me some grins and giggles... (okay.. it has been a slow day)
www.youtube.com/watch
