Thought for July 7, 2016

From my Kindle copy of Meditation As Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love
- Highlight Loc. 46-48 | Added on Sunday, May 15, 2016, 03:01 PM Arthur Zajonc quotes:

Simone Weil put it well when she wrote,“To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death.Truth is on the side of death.”* Something dies in us every time we change.To make space for the true, familiar well-worn habits must give way.

* Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. E. Crawford and M. von der Ruhr (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 11.

Thoughts on the Nature of Consciousness Summer 1978

Some notes I found in the attic from the aged 27 me.  It was the summer of 1978.  I've wrestled with the nature of consciousness for a long time.  Also note the opening three lines I'm writing for myself three lines of a piece of music by Yes- Starship Trooper.

"Does consciousness begin?

Does it have an end?

What is feeling?  What is sensation? What is sight?

How can they exist where there is nothing to feel, see, or hear?

If there are no objects to touch, no sound waves for the ear, no light for the eyes, what would there be to be conscious of?

Is it possible to be conscious without these?  Is consciousness involved only in this existence?

Conscience exists now, does it have to end?  

Why does feeling, like sensation have to end?  Why death?

What is soul?

( knowledge

  sensation)       Whats the relation between them?

Is it possible to think without thinking in worldly terms?

Is that why we're here?  To experience, feel, touch?  Perhaps these don't exist on the other side?  Perhaps the structure of language will not permit talk of the other side.  The other side is untranslateable."