jeeprs wrote:Well, the OP starts with
In the book Vivid Awareness, it is asserted that one cannot know the location of one's mind.
So we appear to have hit an impasse.
We cannot know the location of one's mind, because one's mind is not something that resides in any fixed location.
We use terminology that describes mind as a static thing,
rather than as a series of temporary events.
Thus, the mind cannot be said to reside "in" the brain,
although we can demonstrate scientifically that within the brain
there occurs neurological events combining various chemical elements and electricity,
and that these events are experienced
as thoughts/feelings and thus
as the arising of mind,
but only when occurring within the context of, or ground of, awareness.
With the experiences thus arises the sensation of
one who is having the experience,
which is the illusion of a permanent or intrinsically real self.
But again, the actual molecular structures in the brain do not experience this "self" because they have no means of doing so. Molecules do not have eyes or ears or any means of interpreting light and temperature, vibration, etc.
cognitively.
When molecular events occur where there is no ground of awareness, thoughts do not arise there.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it makes no sound.
It certainly
does produce all of the needed components for sound (it causes air molecules to vibrate)
and that is why, upon contact with awareness, those compnents are experienced
as sound.
Those components can even be recorded and recreated later (played back)
but no sound actually occurs until those components arise within the field of awareness.
Likewise, for all of the busy elecetro-chemical-neurological activity that takes place in the brain,
none of it manifests as cognition until it is subject to awareness,
and if there is no cognition, then logically,
the physical components of the brain alone do not produce that awareness.
.
.
.
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.