coincidence

[Caduceus Mercurius]

the more eminent question regarding coincidences and synchronicty would be: is everything connected with everything else at any place and at any time ???

Everything is indirectly connected, but that is not necessarily why synchronicity occurs. We sometimes get an eery feeling of "No, this can't be real, this is too much like a movie script!" And we call such freak incidents synchronicities. But they may just be that: our recognition of the world having a script, an order within the chaos. It's a feeling that often creeps up on you when you take a psychedelic and then interact with the normal world.

and does everything influence everything else and vice versa by more subtle connections, than we might be able to observe???

Again whether things influence eachother may not be of that much importance. But what things and events are all influenced by is a much more interesting question.

 

[Forkbender]

so there it is coincidence doesn't exist. It's all a part of the process

What process are you talking about if I may ask? The process of exploring yourself?

The process in which you come to understand that speculation is just as much determined as being unable to know if determination and chance coincide or not.

In other words: blahblahblah. I'm not saying speculation doesn't have a specific function, but it is not going to help you. Ever. It puts you into this little room that you created, in which you pretend to be free. Speculation is perceiving maybe's as temporary truths and building upon them, ultimately forgetting that it is all based on unproven assumptions. It's a bad habit. Drop it like it's hot. Truth doesn't need speculation/so-called uncovering.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

A skateboard kid with dreads drove past my shop just now, on his t-shirt "Bulls 23". What does it mean?

 

[Brugmansia]

Is the human mind simple or complex?

The more my consciousness grows, the more I tend to see everything as 'it just is, point.'

 

[restin]

'it just is, point.'

Never take anything as granted. Never stop asking. Because you never know anything, you just assume. As soon as you stop motion, you stop thinking.

Human mind is one of the most complex things in the universe.

 

[BrainEater]

human minds only exist in the brains of the people.

 

[restin]

If you mean human minds = consciousness, then yes, of course. But it exists.

 

[BrainEater]

human minds = consciousness + unconsciousness

 

[Nomada]

human minds = consciousness = unconsciousness?

 

[IJesusChrist]

I really liek talking about this stuff, but I have about three minutes!!

I believe in determinism.... so far, there are points out there that conflict with it, personally in my view. Especially with conciousness.

I used to have very bad trips where I would "Realize" I wasn't actually concious and I was just a driven mechanism... there was no "me" I wasn't controlling myself.... I was just I.

Thats my bad trips in a nutshell haha!!!!!!!!!!! Determinism sucks but I really can't seem to make myself believe in anything more hopeful and happier you know? It just doesn't seem like it.

If you don't know what determinism is, it's the theory that, since we have physics and calculus, everything... EVERYTHING has to follow those rules, so there is no random processes. Meaning everything that happened after the big bang had to happen that way, it's thje only way it coulda happened!

Hopefully I'm wrong though.

GOTTA GO!

 

[Brugmansia]

'it just is, point.'

Never take anything as granted. Never stop asking. Because you never know anything, you just assume. As soon as you stop motion, you stop thinking.

Human mind is one of the most complex things in the universe.

Neither anything can be taken as granted if you speculate for evermore

It's a choice, I have abandoned speculation and complication, I'll just proceed as an eye-witness.

Philosophy combined with psychonautism is no longer the way to go for me. It has such a negative loading which is not desirable at all in the long-term. And it'll swell.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Define speculation...

I used to be part of a religious movement in which "speculation" was strictly forbidden or frowned upon. Very often fellow devotees will tell you "don't speculate!" if you get a little too independent in your philosophical musings.

So when I left the movement, I really enjoyed speculation again (as I always did actually). In fact it helped sever the philosophical ties to the movement by being openminded enough to discover all kinds of contradictions and falsehoods in their teachings.

Hard data, proven facts, conclusive evidence etc. are all very nice, but they are not always available. They might become available when you know what you're looking for though. Speculation might be the impetus to start looking for such data.

Take "The Cosmic Serpent" by Jeremy Narby for example. If you haven't, get it and read it. In the book he goes to the Amazon and then back to Europe again. While in Europe he speculates non-stop. And his speculations urge him to pay attention while talking with the scholars and literature he encounters in the following years. Narby described his own process of speculation as "defocalizing". Narby discovered many interesting things about anthropology, shamanism and DNA through that process. Sometimes you can only discover things by defocalizing, for example when watching one of those stereograms (3-dimensional images), which look like a blur of dots when you focus on the computer screen, but becomes a 3-dimensional image when you let go of your focus.

In DMT, The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman starts the book with his speculations and then continues with the different experiments he has conductecd on the basis of those speculations.

Terence McKenna is famous for his many speculations, always admitting and stressing that none of his ideas should be accepted as absolute truth. And I love him for it, because I've encountered enough arrogant fundamentalists in both the religious and nonreligious fields. To speculate, and admit that you're speculating, tells me you're a humble and honest human being trying to make sense of what's going on in the world, being aware that this world is indeed a very mysterious place and that not much can be said about it with absolute certainty.

When talking about the nature of the self, you will have to speculate to some extent, for we do not really know what the self is. I have various ideas about what the self could be. When I think about the world I have to take these different ideas about the self into account. I have many world views. Some I have abandoned in recent years, some are still waiting to be disproven or confirmed. It's an ongoing process.

I think speculation is an activity that continually takes place in an open mind. It's the closed minds (the fundamentalist religionists and materialists) that abhor speculation. Sure speculation never proves anything, but it's an essential element into devicing experiments; the experiments may then prove or disprove some of these theories.

 

[Forkbender]

Terence McKenna is famous for his many speculations, always admitting and stressing that none of his ideas should be accepted as absolute truth.

This is the key point. Often people start to see their own speculations or those of others as truth along the way. That's why speculation was frowned upon in the religious movement you were in. I understand both the positive and the negative consequences of speculation.

Hard data, proven facts, conclusive evidence etc. are all very nice, but they are not always available. They might become available when you know what you're looking for though. Speculation might be the impetus to start looking for such data.

Yes, but there's a danger here: you might start interpreting the world in such a way that it fits your own speculation. Selecting data instead of accepting all and everything. This produces a garbled vision of reality.

Therefore I see speculation and openmindedness as two distinct features. Openmindedness is basically willing to consider everything you ever thought to be wrong. Speculation is always trying to chase the truth, thereby fabricating and projecting it on what you perceive and blurring your vision. True openmindedness is testing what you think is true against reality. Speculation is testing reality against what you think is true.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Openmindedness is basically willing to consider everything you ever thought to be wrong. Speculation is always trying to chase the truth, thereby fabricating and projecting it on what you perceive and blurring your vision. True openmindedness is testing what you think is true against reality. Speculation is testing reality against what you think is true.

Hence "define speculation..." Using those definitions I would agree with you.

 

[Nomada]

Unification of confounded confronted bots in the mindscape for expedience as psychonautic fuel. What has been called speculation versus good old hard data.

This has been fabricated by some mad men as follows:
Negative thinking, unlike positive, has a particular mechanic aesthetic for generating itself: you don't ask yourself what is something [positive] but how many things can something be; or as called, speculation. Notice please that I'm not using positive/negative as culturally normed.
Speculation is simultainety, complexity, possibility quatum-like, it is projection and hence geometry as medium of itself.
The joining of these two principals: positive and negative in this epistemological way of saying brings forth a new scape: How does pure imagination as gnosis of the trancendental other, of unknown and horizon cristal enter dynamic comunion with the empiric, skecptic, pragmatic if you will, nature of immediateness and its siblings brigade?
[In a way, by itself, this is teached through psychedelics and this can be noted, at least initially, as the fact that psychedelic is the bringing forth of psyche to the bodily and thus cognitively apprehended delos realm of idmediateness]
This juxtaposition that takes into account both the independent existence of each center in this bipolar system, this example; and the bound existence of unity in this also seemingly plural structure is, besides creating a complex set of differently colored fluxes, a robust and salvage way of doing epistemology. I would like to extend more but my time has ended.

 

[Forkbender]

Openmindedness is basically willing to consider everything you ever thought to be wrong. Speculation is always trying to chase the truth, thereby fabricating and projecting it on what you perceive and blurring your vision. True openmindedness is testing what you think is true against reality. Speculation is testing reality against what you think is true.

Hence "define speculation..." Using those definitions I would agree with you.

I already thought so, just wanted to clarify my own thoughts.

 

[GOD]

Speculation = theory . No speculation = no advance .

 

[Forkbender]

^in another sense of the word speculation, yes.

 

[GOD]

The diference ?

 

[Forkbender]

It's a difference in attitude of the one speculating. If you sit on the couch speculating how everything fits together and is working towards a giant 2012 apocalyps/mass-enlightenment, it might be fun, but hardly adds to knowledge. If you have an unexplained phenomenon and some data concerning this phenomenon, speculate on the possible future developments of this phenomenon and testing this against what is happening, it can be valuable in gaining understanding. This means not making steps that aren't needed for the explanation.