Self seeps into Mindfulness

We bringing the mind to the present moment, being aware not of fantasies or imaginations or thoughts or day dreams or not just drifting but being lucid about what is actually going on right now.

This can be quite mundane where we are aware of a particular thing that is going on, perhaps we are watching a game of rugby and we are engrossed in what is going on. Or as Buddha says in the Anapanasati sutra we can be aware of the nature of feelings of our breath: a long breath, a short breath etc.

But then there is the more transcendent where we are no longer interested in a particular going on but aware of the actual fact that there is a world, that things are going on, that there is a potential for things to go on. As Heideggar puts it we get alerted to the question of why are there things at all. We're not interested in solving that question, that is a pointless activity that drags us back down again. We are only interested again as Heideggar puts it in the "Lighting Up Process" by which the world becomes manifest. The brightness of Being. Some say that Heideggar was in love while writing Being & Time. Certainly there is a brilliance with which the world shines when we are in love. But this is a tainted version of the sublime because it is only temporary and it arises due to an imperfect conditional being namely the object of our love. But it does for a while focus and interest our mind on the reality of the world. When the suffering sets in again and we become disillusioned with the world again, we stop being quite so interested in it, the brightness goes and we dwell more again in fantasy and imaginations. But it need not be like this. That brightness of love is always there whether we love or not. In Christianity it is a God of Love. Jesus doesn't  fall in and out of love, that openness to the brightness of the world is a faith that cannot be tarnished.

But there is a potential pitfall here. The brightness of the world can be interpreted as an "I AM." It goes from a pure consciousness to a "self consciousness." This blog has looked in length at this Narcissistic move. The brightness of existence in general becomes hijacked by an intense awareness that I exist. The brightness of the world emanates from my eyes and it is my presence that makes the world exist.

What is the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it. The "I AM" realises that without it there is no sound. It sees itself in that sound. That sound is proof that it exists. "I AM" is what makes the world. This can get fully psychotic as we start to see our fundamental involvement in the very existence of the world. "I AM GOD" we can think in the extreme.

What was a brightness as light as a butterfly landing on our finger, is now a full metaphysical statement about our own primary status in the fabric of existence.

I made this mistake as a kid. The problem simply is that we are using the existence of myself to theorise about the existence of everything else. But if the existence of the world needs a foundation then don't we too?  

This is the Descartes error. The presence of thoughts, Descartes observed implied a thinker. Or originally the presence of doubts implied a doubter. And then eventually in his reasoning the presence of anything implied a self. That "presencing" implied an observer. That phenomena exist seemed to imply a necessary connection with a second entity the observer. Where one thing existed there seemed to be an attendant second thing. Surely a simply application of Occam's Razor might have been handy. It immediately doesn't seem right that for one thing to exist there must be two. Or is it?

But there is truth to all this. Quickly before I forget the conclusion, here is just in "owning" things. None of the reasoning is completely faulty it is just the grasping at things that becomes the pathology.

So it is true that a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it falls in a kind of "silence." That silence is in fact something we should call "null." Its not that a tree suddenly falls over in silence, that is crazy, its just that there is no one to hear and so it goes unheard. That is a "null", or in math an undefined. We are asking an impossible question. What is heard if no one can hear. Consequently the Buddhist encourages us to observe that a phenomenon arises as the interaction between an object and a consciousness. There are indeed two existences required for a single phenomenon to happen just as Descartes observed.

This can be generalised to the Buddhist doctrine of "Interdependence." Nothing exists by itself; all things are born from other things, and will decay back into other things. It's a simple thing to observe. If a cake existed in the ingredients then we could never eat a cake, it would exist forever. The point is that at some point the cake does not exist. It must be made. And then we eat it and it no longer exists again. The cake does not exist by itself. It is in fact the result of many things coming together, just as the phenomena of our sense are the result of things coming together. Coming together is what underpins existence.

Ah ha says our "I AM". See there "I AM". I am the consciousness that must be present when a phenomenon happens. I hear the tree, I have made that sound. But its only part true. The tree made the other half of the sound! And it gets worse for the "I AM." Because as we can see the tree start as a seed, grows and then falls and dies. And we can also see the exact same thing about our self. Indeed its even more fragile for a consciousness. Every time we fall asleep our consciousness disintegrates. Our consciousness gets made anew every time we wake up, completely new every day! And its even worse, because as we day dream and let our mind drift it can fall to such a low level of consciousness that it barely exists at all. Things can happen and we don't even notice. Best example of this was in the Beavis and Butt-head movie where the on going joke was that nothing happened for them, not because it didn't happen but because they simply didn't notice.

The problem for Descartes is that the "I AM" is very fragile. It will exist perhaps only during the phenomenon itself. It is a different "I AM" each thought. From the previous post when Descartes thinks "I am thinking" he is placing a token with that thought to give it some ownership and "hisness". A car is a car it is definitely not me, yet when I place my token in the car it somehow magically becomes a part of me. Scratch that car, even 1000 miles away and you scratch me. This is because we place a token, like a bet, on that car. If the thought that Descartes has placed his token in is good or bad, right or wrong, important or irrelevant now that token goes with it and that is the problem. Defending that token, leads to all kinds of strange behaviour regarding the thought. You may even write a whole book and philosophy, indeed begin Modern philosophy by following that token.

The giving of authority to first hand direct observation of phenomena instead of arguments derived from Theological texts or God was an important step in philosophy but it was immediately tainted by a spectre of "self" as individuals adding betting tokens. In the Neo-Classical West this is considered a good thing in the adversarial approach to justice, dialectics and politics. And indeed Plato is not wrong, that truth exists in the gaps between people, it is like the sound of the tree arising from the interaction of falling tree and ground; it doesn't stand around like a passive statue to be found, Truth is created in the interactions of people. But lurking around every corner is the desire for the "self" to place a token in this. This truth is mine. I did this. "I AM." 

And briefly picking up on a thread above. Phenomena are weird things. Beavis and Butt-Head may not notice all the things going on because they are incredibly unmindful and alert. But there is another quality of mind called Concentration. In modern secular meditation they don't talk about this much.  If mindfulness is keeping the mind gentle and watchful of what is going on around, concentration is closing the mind down on one thing. A person in mindfulness will notice all phenomena; they won't follow them (or place token) but will just note that they are there. A person in concentration will only notice what they are focused on, they will follow that one thing like a person on horseback follows the horse. Concentration is like a powerful laser beam that smashed through the layers of dirt and cloudiness that blocks the brightness of the present moment. After deep concentration the mind returns completely pure with all blockages removed. It is an extraordinary experience, unmatched by anything in mundane worldly life. This is jhana and there are either 4 or 8 layers depending upon your school. While jhana are connected in a tree you can enter any of them directly. So phenomena are in a precarious position. Someone may be in the forest when the tree falls, but if they are concentrating on something else in jhana the tree still won't have a sound.

So it is tempting then to say that "I AM" does exist, it is just the power to chose what I focus on and make exist. This is the transcendent version of something mundane like "I want to see Bodh Gaya". We go through all the processes, travel plans and eventually we arrive at Bodh Gaya and there are the temples and the people all manifest. We have made them manifest through our pilgrimage. "I AM" we conclude. And indeed this is true, you did make this happen. Wow people say you have done the pilgrimage. Unfortunately that means a token is placed! But it is done now, the journey is over, now you are there different things happen. And if we are tempted to start to leave a counter on the achievement of the pilgrimage it is worth reminding ourselves that we only exist because our parents gave birth to us. When the "I AM" does its awards speech on having achieved the great goal of having travelled to Bodh Gaya it needs to remember its parents, and the people who built and ran the transport, and the people who built Bodh Gaya and Buddha himself, and the worms that made the soil healthy that grew their food... the "I AM" is not so central after all.

I walked Lands-End to John o'Groats in UK once and in retrospect the big dissatisfaction was not knowing exactly when I arrived. For me it was following the straight line between coast to coast. But how do you pick the end? In the end I found a post on the cliffs by the lighthouse as the end. But went down on the beach all the same, and went into town. After so many weeks it ended with a fizz spread over a day, not a bang. This is life, there are no definite things or points, or landmarks or sign posts. You can do the whole walk but there is no clear line around it, like climbing mountains I mentioned before the exact top is unclear. We should set a precision limit when we aim to complete a task: within 20m of the top is enough. For some people they may say within 50miles of John o-Groats will do as the end. Likewise the boundaries of our pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya are a undefined. We get home and someone says they spent a week on retreat at the temple and we think oh no I didn't really arrive I only skimmed the surface like a tourist. So the phenomena are boundless and the events of the world really quite undefined. But we are not Beavis and Butt-Head, the point is that when we look closely and are fully aware they are no longer so black and white.

This reminds me of the SRH too. An entity cannot define its own boundary. The boundary of a thing necessarily invokes things that are not that thing. The idea of self contained entity, a pure substance that is itself is a contradiction. And even in abstract logic when someone tries to create a total system it fails as Godel showed. Or before him Russel with the Set of All Sets.

OK I may have lost thread here. Returning to the conclusion. There is a stage in the lucid mind where we have an amazing experience of the Now where we deeply understand that we exist. Life is no longer a dream. I really do exist! Its a profound life changing realisation. "I AM HERE." When I see the sun rise it is rising on and even for me. It is religious and gives grounding and solidity to the world. But beware. We can grasp at this inauthentically and hold that self as a permanent being. I need to explore this more myself because in Hinduism the Tat Tvam Asi (TTA) is very close to this. The Atman (or "I AM") is seen as identical to the Brahman (or "That is"). Which is very near Descartes. In the manifesting of the world we see ourselves. They are not different but the same.

Perhaps easier to put the TTA in terms of its opposite. In mundane existence we see ourselves as separate from the world. The world is there to be grasped, owned, conquered, and in turn it fights back and crushes us, disappoints us, lets us down, makes us hurt. The opposite of this is TTA. We realise that there is no soul that exists in "opposition" to the world. My deepest soul IS the most hostile and alien part of the world. Not similar they are the exact same thing. Look one way it looks like Self look the other and it looks like World. Yet people do not regard Descartes meaning this. For Descartes the thinker and the thought were bound together, they were not the same thing!

And Buddha differs from TTA too. For Buddha the Thinker and the Thought are separate things, what is important is that neither is permanent. The phenomenon or consciousness of thinking arises from the interaction. For Buddhism there is only one goal and that is to up anchor and drift away from the idea of a solid statue like permanent self. The problem with TTA is that it places a solid statue like self at the heart of the universe. In reality this means people with this teaching are more likely to grasp the TTA and attribute some solid reality to it. The proper use of TTA is to use it to get rid of the opposition between self and world which is the mundane state of belief and awareness. Absolutely not to then posit the existence of something solid and permanent behind this that we can hold onto instead. What kind of Moksha involves holding on to things?

And so to wind up. A lucid consciousness in the present moment may start to grasp a self and use this as proof of a self that is separate from the world; the "I AM." This should be resisted. The proper mind state is just awareness that this is now and that we are inhabiting a very present now at this moment. But we take nothing from it! Once this lucidity goes it is gone! Carrying things around after meditation or pure states of mind arise is like putting another rock in our rucksack. We aren't supposed to be carrying anything, we're supposed to be lightening the load.

This is the fallacy in declaring your enlightenment. Indeed you may be enlightened, but you don't carry it with you as a weight. Enlightenment is the giving up on such weights, labels and binding. How can Siddhartha Shakyamuni have been enlightened, he wouldn't even have accepted that name (except for pragmatic reasons of discourse). Likewise how can there be a "I AM" beyond a fleeting moment. We certainly can't be bothered to carry it the freeloader with us.

Cue Zen story. So a novice monk and his master come to a swollen river and find a woman unable to cross. The master offers to carry her. She climbs on his back and he wades over. Some days later the novice says that he is troubled by what the master did. You are not supposed to have contact with  women how could you have carried her on your back. The master said I only carried her across the river, you have been carrying her ever since.

And this is the point, not of rules and petty worldly concerns but the essence of life that it only ever happens in small chunks and when the chunk has happened it is gone. All of it. Even our precious memories are temporary. Things happen, we remember them, we re-remember them and change them, the original memory is gone we hold on to some new version, it changes gradually, and then we forget them or we die. There is nothing to carry with us. Not even a "thinker" or "rememberer" being carried along. Even mind states no matter how wise and enlightened only lasts so long. As Venerable Kondanna realised at Sarnath what is born must die, and what exists must have been born.

Its a common feature of mankind that as kids we look to the future and as elderly we look to the past and at some point in the middle we are concerned with what is actually going on. There is no reason it has to be this way. In a long difficult journey at the start its good to look back and appreciate what you have achieved, rather than be overwhelmed with what is to come. And at the end we focus on what is left to do. When all is done we can relax. The elderly don't need to look back, they can look only at what is left to do, and rejoice in that freedom of everything being done. Compare themselves with a child who has all the struggle of education, finding love, settling down, becoming someone still to do. There is no fixed approach here. We don't have to carry anything unless we want to, but then like the monk carrying then woman, we put them down once the river is crossed. Easier said than done, but that is the challenge of enlightenment... which we also put down eventually.

So in conclusion, at end of another very rambling and lengthy post while I think onto paper to sort out my own ideas out: in lucid states of mind the temptation to grasp at a self is the wrong take home. The take home is the opposite that we can let this go.

And ironically the take home from this text hopefully is no doctrine, but rather a step closer to upping anchor and considering nothing in this world worth carrying for longer than necessary. And the "than necessary" is critical. It tempting when first beginning to throw everything away and carry nothing at all. What did Buddha do other than abandon all worldly interests and even almost starve himself to death. We shouldn't be concerned about such an extreme approach, we all need to learn. I sometimes think "middle path" is interpreted as caution and mediocrity especially in strict societies where rigid social conformity is expected. We should not be worried about making mistakes, the whole point is to abandon such concerns as reputation and achievement. If we seek earnestly we will find, that's all. But if harm arises, like Buddha almost dying of starvation, or at the other extreme our motivation weakens and we become fat, formulaic, dogmatic and lethargic, the message is pretty obvious we have placed too many betting tokens, our debts have risen and we are carrying too many things.

This Way and , Ego and Betting

 Things can either go this way or that. Usually we prefer one or the other, or don't care. When we do care it can be trivial or it can be important to us. When we take sides we end up being bound to this way or that and then it matters existentially to us. If things go against us, like in gambling, then we feel we have lost, and have literally lost something of us. Enough losses and we really start to feel that we are being eroded and are less than we were. Death we presume is the ultimate loss when we lose everything, so a long run of bad luck can feel like death.

But all a long run of bad luck is, is not anything special about the world, it is just us takin the "wrong" sides.

If we watch people betting we can see people get happy and sad in equal measure and see that it all doesn't matter. Its just how individuals have taken sides.

So what is this "taking sides", this caring about "this" or "that"? It is linked to a belief in a substantial self. Because we belief firmly in a "solid self" that like a roulette counter we place on a number we experience the outcome as a "real" thing. Having placed our counter in the world we are bound to the outcome and so bound to what happens.

But there is nothing really there, there is no counter to place in the world. Well there is, but its just a temporary counter that we make decisions with. It doesn't last and it has nothing to do with us. We don't take it with us.

So an enlightened being can lose 10 or 100 or 1000 times in a row and apart from having lost a lot of money, they themselves are completely unaffected. There never was a solid self being staked on this side or that side, so after each spin of the roulette wheel they reset as though nothing had happened. They actually would make a good gambler. People who get permanently attached to stream of betting start to feel unlucky after things go against them for a while, and magically start to think that "their" "luck" will change: the classic Gambler's Fallacy. Well they never had any "luck" in the first place, it wasn't theirs either. It was just a series of events that they took sides on. The taking sides was the thing they added, and it didn't really exist anyway.

So we create all kinds of nonsense in life my trying to take sides and stick on one side or the other. When actually this kind of betting is all in the mind, and there is nothing taking sides either. Its all just imagination.

So everyone laughs at us as we lose 1000 roulette spins in a row. Wow that guy is unlucky all the people around the table say. They joke and make fun of you. Well wouldn't you? Reckon that's a pretty ordinary response to such an unlikely event. They will talk for ages about the time this loser lost 1000 roulette spins in a row. Fair enough. But this is great in a way, its a real test of whether we "really" took sides or whether we just took it all as it came. Given that the self REALLY is insubstantial then literally no one has lost. Suppose you never turned up and never placed those bets. The ball would still fall the exact same way. This is the reality. The bets you placed or didn't place didn't really happen. Well they did but no one was REALLY taking sides, so no one could REALLY lose. Its a bit like a play. Yes all those things happen, but the characters don't really exist they are invented by the actors. We do the same thing in life. We invent a person to take roles like the gambler, but they don't really exist, not in a permanent way that follows us around. 

I was watching something on TV today where a guy commits suicide cos he can't handle what we had done. But what was apparent was the question: what does a suicider think they are getting rid of? Once they are dead the body is still there. And what they have done is still there. Nothing actually changes. What the suicider is trying to get rid of is the "bet" that they made, when they became someone. They took sides, and now can't undo that. So they kill themselves to try and get away from this bet in them self. But they don't realise that the token they placed on red or black is just a token. Tomorrow it will be someone else placing the same token in a different bet. It isn't permanent. This body, our self, our decisions, everything is just a token that we place a bet with today and tomorrow it is gone. If we think to kill our self, we are just killing something that is already gone. Likewise if we think to kill someone else we are getting rid of something, that thing we try to kill is already gone too. None of these "selves" or "tokens" exist in a solid permanent way. We are always free.

We could take this freedom wrong to think it means we can just behave anarchistically. If nothing survives then tomorrow we wake up with a clean slate and whatever we bet on yesterday is gone. This is actually true. Its the cheat people think of in Christianity. Jesus says the person who truly repents is forgiven. So people think, well I will just sin all I want and then repent. The problem is, with this attitude you won't be able to repent cos you did it all in the full knowledge you were doing it. What makes you think you will suddenly change to realise it was all wrong? Likewise once you are free from taking this side or that then you won't be interested in types of behaviour that seek this way or that. All evil stems from seeking my way over giving up to some else's way. That is this way rather than that. What is giving other than accepting that way (your way) more than my way (this way). An enlightened being isn't interested in winning or losing, or having things one way rather than the other. Things just are, and even if we do bet, the token is only on the bet for a short while after which it is forgotten.

Another classic example is when we place our token on one side of an argument. All we can think of then is this side of the argument. It becomes "our" side. And we fight, even when the "other" side starts to make sense and we can see that we could have put our token on the other side. Perhaps we will change sides and move our token from red to black. Then all we can think of is black, that is now "our" side. Its often difficult to change sides, we believe we really exist on one side and moving will make us not exist. That feels like humiliation or embarrassment, but it also feels like fresh air to let go and be able to move our token to another colour. We realise after looking at both sides that it isn't so clear which side to chose, and we realise that people stick to the black side and people stuck to the red side are both experiencing the same thing. In an argument it is the same. Both sides can get stuck to their side, and it feels like death to let go. That fear that we become nothing if we let go. We are nothing! That is the essence of the freedom that allowed us to chose. If we really were one side or the other then how could we chose?

Joni Mitchell says this well in Both Sides, Now

Perhaps the roulette bet is a bit unrealistic. In real life the sides of a choice or argument or life are rarely completely symmetrical and identical. You literally have no way of knowing whether it will be black or red. In the real world if you look one way one side looks appealing, if you look another the other side looks appealing. Being able to inhabit both sides of an argument is freedom. Only then can we make a proper choice. And to make that choice purely we are nothing yet. To do this means that we invest only a temporary self in a side, just a reusable token. We experience the cool fresh water feeling that Buddhists call emptiness that accompanies the ability to let go, to be this, to be that. It is the opposite of the gambler who feels they have to take sides again in order to feel complete.

A cheap model for Pandemics and the place of Viruses in general

Mortality from the 1918 pandemic and 2019 pandemic aligned so peaks match.

1918 had no medical intervention while 2019 had vaccines before the 3rd wave.

Mutation rate for SARS2 = 3.7E-6 and FluA 1.5E−5 that is FluA evolves 4 x faster than SARS2. The peak Wave Length for SARS2 = 9 months and FluA = 4 so 2.25. I needed to stretch the 1918 graph by 2.25 to make it fit. Not sure exactly how to relate rates and wave lengths but they are comparable.

So what have we learned:

(1) Viral mortality is caused by poorly coevolved parasite and host. As pandemics progress mortality falls.

(2) Peaks are caused by new variants, rising as variants take over from previous less well adapted variants and falling as host immune systems adapt

(3) Pandemics are short lived taking around 3 significant variants and peaks until the parasite has evolved to coexist with the host. Coronavirus evolves much slower than influenza so the 2019 pandemic took longer than 1918.

(4) Hosts exist in an interdependent "viral ecology" and depend upon viruses for their health. It is wrong to think that viruses are the enemy and cause illness, they also cure it. If we remove viruses we create a blank slate for poorly evolved lethal viruses to take over. Omicron is now protecting us from a whole range of transspecies cross over "bat-flus".

Hypothesis: The above presents the mechanism and pattern of a typical pandemic.

Its a shame that no "experts" have put anything as comprehensive as this forward, or shown any real understanding of the pandemic.

Can you really gain enlightenment in the world?

This was a favourite topic of the early blog. Can you gain enlightenment through work, relationships and life in general.

Definitively I can answer no.

The reason is that the motivation for "worldly" existence is literally the opposite of the "spiritual" path.

The worldly path seeks to divide things into preferred outcome and unfavourable outcome. And we work for the preferred outcome. Often this seems easy and harmless, but the devil is working already. Once we reject one outcome in favour of another we are training ourselves to bind to the world and struggle for only certain eventualities.

Not outcome will ever be perfect or final and it will lead to more decisions and preferred outcomes and soon we will be stuck in the world in an endless struggle for this but not that.

We will have been teased away from the spiritual path and the goal of being centred and unmoved by worldly phenomena and events.

This sounds cold, unemotional and deathlike. Surely a living being embraces the struggle of life and suffers and rejoices at its fortunes in equal measure.

But this is not the correct view. The struggle comes from being *bound* to certain outcomes.

If we look closely in fact any outcome will do. We only prefer a certain outcome because we chose to see it in a particular way.

We might think that death is the absolutely bad outcome and obviously all creatures struggle to avoid death. But death will come to us all. One day no matter how we struggle or not, death will come.

Someone once told me they had a near death experience canoeing where they got a shoelace caught on the canoe and couldn't right it, or swim clear of it. They were stuck underwater. At first they struggled, but eventually they realised the game was up and they stopped. In that moment they were overwhelmed by a feeling of complete peace and tranquillity. Time seemed to stop. But then all of a suddenly the instructor righted the boat and they could breath again. When you realise now is the time not to struggle, then you have peace even when facing what you consider the absolutely worst outcome. Even in the absolutely worst outcome, if you look at it correctly is profound peace. The phenomena are always just illusions that our minds stick together in a certain way, but which is never the only way or the complete way.

So it is not that those on the spiritual path just give up and don't struggle. But the point is the vector of their life is the opposite of the worldly. The worldly is bound to certain outcomes. Only the chosen outcome will do, and they transition forever from one chosen outcome to the next.

Capitalism exploits this to the maximum. Currently there is a growing number of housing adverts that use all manner of techniques to make the viewer feel that they are in the wrong house, or they haven't found the right house, or that they are missing out on a new life of happiness because they have not moved. All complete nonsense that doesn't even need thinking about. It is simply estate agents trying to get people to give them their money. Whatever house you move into, you will see another advert and realise you need to move again, The only way to stop is just to stay where you are and make that work. And that is the general truth of the spiritual person. Find the peace in the place you already are. There is no need to do anything, change anything, it is simply a matter or rearranging your thoughts until what you already have works. In this sense Capitalism is nothing but the work of the devil.

But this can give the image of the hermit sitting under a tree and just wasting away. How will find food, and how will they live.

There are things even the spiritual person needs to do. If they are canoeing and it capsizes they obviously need to right the canoe. It is true that they could find peace in the overturned canoe and just drown. But it is also true that they could right the canoe and find peace in the alive too. Perhaps they could flick a coin to find out which to chose. Anyone thinking like this is already so unbound to the world that there is little risk of being bound if they grasp for life. Such an act to save oneself from drowning is not then an act of suffering, but just an act of kindness to allow a body to live. But if indeed their shoelace is caught and it turns out they cannot save their body from drowning this apparent disaster is not really a disaster. It is just the end of the road that was coming some day.

So we must make this choice: are we going to struggle to make the world go this way or that way to satisfy our desires and so bind ourselves into a endless struggle--and literally endless as every second there is something wrong or not quite right. We can put a brave face on and just ignore the sufferings, becoming so tough and insensitive that apparently nothing touches us. This is a useful skill, but it doesn't actually solve the sufferings. We still would prefer things to go this way rather than that. If we day dream for a second about how we wish things could be, we will find what our actual desires are and the imperfects and disappointments that keep us from those wishes. But its not just us: this type of happiness is impossible. There is always something there to break it, we just overlook it as we grasp for happiness. Obviously the opposite is true: there is always something good out there even when we grasp for unhappiness. But it is all suffering this grasping.

The spiritual path is the opposite. We look to undo the thoughts and mindsets that make suffering in the world. We are still seeking that peace and happiness but no longer by diverting the world into this way or that way. Each way has its strong and weak points. The purpose for us is to have mastery over our mind so that we can see those strong points. Nothing is ever just one sided, there are always so many ways to see it. And with our deluded minds literally making up fantasies about the world, it can be very hard most of the time to get away from what we want to see, and instead see things in a different way. This is what they call karma: the force that drives us to see things in a certain way and so act in a certain way. With spiritual commitment the change does not come from acting out our views and desires, but rather changing ourselves to fit the situation. Finding happiness is what is there, rather than pushing for it to be different in some future.

In reality we are embedded in an extremely rich and fruitful world. There is deep beauty and satisfying wholesomeness everywhere. But under the force of our mental preconceptions and desires to see things this way or that we don't see that and see what we want to see instead. This is great when our mind is forcing the world into a positive fantasy like when we fall in love, but it is equally horrible when that same mind forces us to see things with hate. In both cases it is us who decides these outcomes and makes them happen, but with worldly attitude we go our fighting and get bound to a world that can never really satisfy us. With spiritual mind we give up trying to change the world and instead seek to see it correctly with peace and happiness and appreciation for what it is before we try and change it.

Again this does not turn us into passive meditating hippies. It turns us into beings deeply sensitive to what is going on and what is there. Satisfied with what is going on and what is there. Not bound within superficial mental formations about what we think is there, but seeing through the cracks and open to the newness of our existence and the world. It should feel like a cool shower for our soul. When we act with this clarity it cannot be wrong. We already have what we spiritually need, everything else is just a bonus.

So no you can't be worldly and spiritual. You either seek material satisfaction and hoard up a particular way of life, or you turn the complete opposite way and reject the whole worldly thing to seek peace and acceptance of the world as it is. Preferring to change oneself in place of the world.

Little investigation into primes

There is a problem with all this! It has nothing to do with primes! The final expression is true for any infinite list of numbers! It's a tautology.

The original idea was to use the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra to partition the natural numbers into those with particular lowest prime factor. But because numbers usually have more than 1 prime factor this is not so simple. Since 3 x 5 = 5 x 3 there is a fundamental symmetry to all this.

Anyway we can construct a list of primes like this:

Ignoring 1 if we take the first non coloured square it is 2. This is prime. We know that every 2nd number is now not a prime because it is divisible or has prime factor of 2. We can colour these red.

The next non coloured square is 3. We know that every 3rd number from 3 is now not prime as it has a prime factor of 3. Let us colour green. The next prime is 5, let us colour that purple etc 

Now of the green squares i.e. the 3 timestable obviously half will have a Lowest Prime Factor (LPF) of 2. That is 2x3,4x3,6x3 etc will all have a LPF of 2 and only half will have a LPF of 3. For 3 timestable beyond 3 then the LPF must be 3 e.g. 3x7 has a LPF of 3. Let us denote the ratio of numbers in timestable T with LPF P as R(T,P). This has values = 0 except for P <= T. For T = 3 the values are R(3,2) = 0.5, R(3,3) = 0.5. The sum of R(T,*) = 1. R is undefined for T = 1 and P = 1.

Let us look at T=5. That is the 5 times table: 1x5,2x5,3x5,4x5,5x5,6x5,7x5,.... the highest LPF is 5 since any multiple of 5 above 5 has a LPF of 5.

R(5,2) = 1/2 as with 3.
R(5,3) = 1/6. That is because half of the 3 times tables has a LPF = 2 as above.
R(5,4) is undefined since LPF of any multiple of 4 is already 2.
R(5,5) = 1/3. We can calculate this as 1-1/2-1/6 but also with the following algorithm.

If the prime at position i in list of primes is Pi then

αi = 1/(P(i-1) -1)+1

And R(Pi,Pi) = R(Pi-1,Pi-1) / αi, Where α1= 1

Once R(Pi,Pi) is known then

R(Pi+1,Pi) = R(Pi,Pi)/Pi

and then

R(Pi+2..∞,Pi) = R(Pi+1,Pi)

As above R(Pi,Pi) = 1 - Sum[ R(Pi,1..Pi-1) ]

So for Pi = 5, i=3

α3 = 1/(3-1)+1=1.5

 R(5, 5) = R(3, 3) / α3 = 0.5/1.5 = 1/3

And for Pi = 7, i=4

α4 = 1/(5-1)+1 = 5/4

R(7, 7) = R(5, 5) / α4 = 1/3 / 5/4 = 4/15

We can work out the rest of the matrix from the diagonal.

R(Pi+1,Pi) = R(Pi,Pi) / Pi

So

R(7..P∞,5) = R(5,5) / 5 = 1/3 / 5 = 1/15

R(11..P∞,7) = R(7,7) / 7 = 4/15 / 7 = 4/105

The rows sum to 1 in the matrix:
Sum(R(Pi,j) , j=P1..P∞) = 1

This is the grid so created:

Each Row represents a timestable and the Columns represent the proportion of numbers with LPF equal to Step. The green squares are derived from the ochre above by dividing by the Step.

The green square is also in the ratio to the ochre square of
1:step-1
where step is the step of the green square.

The green squares sum to 1. That is the ochre squares / step sum to 1.

So R(Pi,Pi) = R(Pi-1,Pi-1) /  [ 1/(P(i-1) -1)+1 ]
And Sum[ R(Pi,Pi) / Pi, {1,∞} ] = 1

Sum[ R(Pi-1,Pi-1)  /  [ Pi/(P(i-1) -1)+Pi ] , {i,1,∞} ] = 1

This simplifies to the series:

Where P1 =2, P2 = 3, P3 = 5, ... are the prime numbers.

Which can also be written:

OR

as by defining the next term:

t(n+1) = t(n) (Pn -1)/P(n+1) where t(1) = 1/P1 and Pn is the nth Prime where P1 = 2

Well that ties all the primes into a single expression. But its not a very nice series as the terms tend to an infinite expression themselves.

What does Religion Look Like?

The religious path is like an onion. We begin thinking as a young child that everything is me. Then we see inanimate as different from animate of which I am animate. Then we divide animate into Humans and other creatures of which I am Human. Then Me and My Family and friend are different from other Humans. Then My Body is seen as different from other bodies. Then my Thoughts and Feelings are seen to exist within the body: the Descartes stage "I think therefore I am". I can lose my arms and legs and still be Me on the inside. Then My Consciousness becomes the deeper stage on which thoughts, experiences and feelings happen so I become different even from what happens in my head. Then I consider death and realise my consciousness does not go with me, so I separate my soul from even my consciousness. At each stage we shrink the Self and let bits go, and this process continues until there is no "my" or "me" on the inside at all. That is what in India is called Moksha or freedom, and when that "me" shrinks to a vanishing point the Buddhists call it Nirvana or "blowing out." You can see it is nothing at any stage, but if you are stubborn then just shrink it till it becomes so small that it is absurd you still hold it as relevant: just put it down and pick up the overwhelming wealth of stuff you have discarded as "not me" on the journey.

Set of All Sets and SRH

Sure must have been here before but aren't these deeply connected?

The "Set of All Sets" leads to contradiction via Russel's Paradox. As a result this entity cannot exist in most forms of logic.

Now SRH is saying that Russel's Paradox is the same problem that crops up in Godel's Theorem, Turing Halting Problem, Chaitin's Constant or just the simple Liar Paradox. That is the existence of "self reference" causes contradictions and breaks the system. Now its not that simple, as many forms of self reference are not problematic. The most recent speculation is that if self-reference is problematic then any theorem using self-reference is problematic. And SRH is therefore problematic as it is making a statement about the validity of self-reference itself. It is quite possible that SRH is undecidable. It is impossible to say for sure whether self-reference is going to cause a problem or not. All said intuitively, but not proven.

But let switch that and say "the Set of All Sets" is the problem, that then breaks all other problematic expressions of self-reference. Whenever we are trying to say "All" that encompasses itself we have this problem. In other words "I" cannot construct the "Universal" or vice versa. Or there cannot exist a particular member of the Universal that represents the Universal.

∀x¬∃y | x = y OR x ∈ y

I think that says "for All x there Does Not Exist a y such that x is y OR x is in the set of y"

If we say that two entities are the same if they are the same or have the same elements, then there is no entity that is either the same as everything or contains everything.

#TODO now show that all other problems like Liar Paradox are like this...

In all the below 'x' is within the set of countable numbers.

"I am false"

We could create a function g(x) taking a single number which represents the expression numbered by x. The set of all possible expressions is countably infinite, and so g(x) will map each number to an expression.

Now obviously in use expressions get bound so there are an infinite number of bound expressions for just g alone e.g. "g(9906753)". So we need make the Use/Mention distinction of Quine. Which is itself a form of SRH. The Use/Mention distinction occurs from SRH itself. If you mix them you get contradictions. Meta statements are exactly this distinction. Talking about something, must be different from that thing else you have contradiction. #TODO so in fact SRH is used even to express a self-reference!

Anyway, using g we can make this sentence:

∃x | ¬g(x)

There exists an x such that the sentence coded by x is false. No problem.

Now let g'(x) be the inverse of g(x) so that g'(g(x)) = x

Now suppose it were possible to make a meta statement like this: 

σ = g'(∃x | x=σ AND ¬g(x))

It says σ is the code for the sentence which says that there exists a number x which is the code for a sentence which is false and which is also σ

This is the liar paradox. But it is also extremely badly formed.

Try another approach. Suppose there was another expression I which is interchangeable with the number of the sentence that mentions it. So for example:

∃x | x = I

Assuming this sentence is valid then it must have a code number. That number is 'I'. So we are saying that there is a sentence which has the code number of this sentence. Like the Ontological Proof of God this must be true. And so we have a problem:

¬∃x | x = I

There must also be this sentence created by adding just a ¬ symbol which says there is not a sentence which has the code number of this sentence. Well there is, it is there. So we must reject such an expression as I.

No cannot be a component of a well formed sentence that refers to "this" sentence. No time here, but this is essentially the reason for Use/Mention. You can't go doing meta work outside a sentence like determining its code number, and then go using that within the sentence. It's odd to think that Von Neumann computer architecture has circuits for the 2 types of numbers Data/Instructions because of this. I suppose its a well known fact that if computers start writing into memory that contains code it's only a short matter of time before the computer blue screens or hangs! Now this is exactly what Turin machines do, but even they do not write into the machine state - that is still hermetic and sacred. 

Not all meta work is problematic. Consider this working sentence: "This sentence is made from 0b101110 characters". The difference here is that many sentences have 46 (0b101110) characters and many do not so negation does not force things "into a corner." But the g(x) meta function uniquely mapped to the sentence so ¬g(x) unique does not and so there is "no room to move." 

So anyway the formal Liar Paradox is off to a bad start.

#TODO you were originally looking to show that Liar Paradox can be reduced to problem of making claim of ALL