Skepticism, interpretation and investigation

Pete (an avowed skeptic): To be a skeptic we must first renounce all reliance on authority. From early childhood we were conditioned to accept the authority of our parents. We knew nothing; they knew all we needed to know. It was a good thing that we accepted their guidance. It was a good thing we trusted our teachers, as well. But this created a feeling that others know best. An attitude of dependency and gullibility, most never outgrow, and so they trust their government officials, their preachers, the media, and their friends to tell them how to live.Ok, maybe, we here, are past that stage, but still authority is there ensconced in our minds as ideas we never question. It's the habit of questioning all your thoughts, of accepting nothing at first sight that creates that sixth sense which rings a bell, and alert us to look again. After all, when at the fruit market we don't grab just the fruit which lies on top of the pile and put it in our bag. No, we look it up and down, we turned it around, we give it a squeeze. If we took as much care with ideas, that sixth sense would be there to lead us where ideas are no longer fences, but just temporary wings.

Randy: Cynicism is distracting and skepticism should never be practiced towards one's own direct experience.

Pete: Correct! Only toward interpretations of such experiences. But.... whatever you, or anyone else, thinks, speaks or writes is an interpretation.

Wim: That may very well be, but whatever someone originally conveys of an experience is in the first instance a description of what the sensorial faculties report to the experiencer. Such a description is not necessarily an interpretation right off the bat.
It is more often the listener who interprets the speaker's experience when the listener attempts to make sense of the speaker's conveyed experience, especially when the description of that experience does not exactly translate into something the listener can relate to or has experienced him/herself.
However, what is conveyed originally can also quickly become an interpretation by the original speaker, especially when he/she feels not being understood or feels that what is conveyed is not being validated... This may now cause the speaker to augment his/her experience with interpretive descriptions to win over the misunderstanding, skeptical or disapproving listener.

It may be interesting to find out how the word 'interpretation' is to be interpreted. :)))

The word 'interpretation' derives from the Latin 'inter' (amongst, between) and 'prattein' (Greek for speaking, ME prate, DU praten, E prattle).

Interpretation originally had to do with language translation. Later it received the meaning of conveying a particular version or explanation of a notion, act or piece of work. The meaning of a teaching method also developed, e.g. an interpretive nature program.

Over time 'an interpretation' also came to mean 'someone's take or even slant on things'.

Initially inter-pretation was done by 'agents' who conveyed messages between between peoples of a different tongue. 'Inter-prete' originally meant to convey translated messages.
When such a translation is done well, there is of course nothing left to 'interpretation'... the 'slant' meaning :))

But back to Pete's remarks on skepticism.
I don't think that one has to be cynical or skeptical in one's attempts to truthfully understand any issue. Cynicism and skepticism often merely reflects how cynics or skeptics themselves were treated by their peers...
The cynic or skeptic may just be passing along a certain mode of mildly derisive behavior that has nothing much to do with inspection, investigation and inquiry to... reach clarity.

Reality does not require belief

If you want to know what is real, just let go of ALL beliefs.

 "Reality manifests when you let go of all beliefs."

~ Written on a wall in Omaha, 2003. 

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." *

~ Philip K. Dick in "Valis" (1981) 

Be familiar with Einstein

He doesn't mind...
http://www.einstein-online.info/en/elementary/index.html

One & All

Arvind: Like so many people I wonder many times about singularity and multiplicity of Self!

Wim: You mean "singularity" as in "One and all" - singularity being "One"?
And do you mean "multiplicity" as in "All is One" and "We are all one" - multiplicity being "all" or everything?

Arvind: Yes, something like that...

Wim: And as for your use of the word "Self" when you said, "singularity and multiplicity of Self", do you mean something like the higher or deeper Self is the singularity - say, the divine One - and the smaller selves are the multiple forms of multiplicity?

Arvind: Yeah, what I mean is that there is one God and that everything and everyone is a representation of God in individual smaller formats and... but... hmm... that all those individual representations might not really be real, that only "The One" is real, that only the divine higher SELF is real and that the small selves are just egos or something... that we have to reach beyond our small selves to really meet our "one and only" reality!

That's what I wonder about a lot, "What is real, what is what really?

I feel being thrown back and forth between those two distinctions... All or one.

Wim: Hmm... I think that the neat thing is that we don't have to make a choice between say, the big SELF or the little self, the ONE or the many, singularity and multiplicity.
Don't you think that it could simply be simultaneous and coincidental... that there is no qualitative distinction between the two, and also that the ONE is not before the All, a cause/effect kind of thing?!
I seem to sense that you feel there is some qualitative distinction and that if you choose wrongly that you will feel caught or that you will loose out.

Arvind: Yes, it feels that way...

Wim: Those dichotomies and dualities eh?!
Ah, the distinctions that we feel we somehow have to choose between!
Hmm...
But we actually don't have to choose, it is just that we... unfortunately and actually needlessly... that we have grown accustomed to 'having to make a choice' between:

• this or that,
• not this but that,
• this, but only after that,
• etc.

But that is really only due to a flawed understanding and description of how time operates and how common understanding of causality is influenced by that limited description of time.
In quantum mechanics there is something known as the "collapse of the probability wave function" which results when the probability wave function gets squared'... Hmm. It is related to this.

Don't we sometimes say, "We have to square with time"? - square off with time really?!
In Quantum Mechanics with certain complex representations of these probability functions "upon collapse", time also gets squared and... that's the crux of the matter... time's linearity and sequentiality disappears... and it is that what allows for that coincidental simultaneity of what is usually seen as dichotomous, dual, linear and sequential.

"One is all" or "singularity AND multiplicity" can both be experienced at once. In fact, we already always experience singularity and multiplicity at once.
We already always do, except that:

• we tend to "live" according to a linear description of the world...
• we describe our experience of life as though we are living in a world that seems limited to only three dimensional space and one dimensional time, the "space time continuum"... while we NOW scientifically "know" that the world is at least eleven-dimensional. (In my experiential view even 12).

That is what is talked about in String Theory or the latest version of it: M theory.
Anyway, one could say that we "live" according to a simplified description of the world... as though we have taken the root (root as in "square root") of "complex circumstantiality" so that we can wrap our customary causal and linear mind around it - so that we can simplistically talk about it in some linear fashion... follow me? (Pun intended.)
Come to think of it, similar to when we had to update our worldview when we found that the earth was not the center of the universe nor flat (the days of Copernicus, Columbus and Amerigo Vespuci) it is now again time to update our paradigms.
Timeline Copernicus Columbus

One of the first well known educators who attempted to do that with the 20th century's newest scientific findings (although most people who know her don't think about her that way) was Maria Montessori. From the year 1905 (when Einstein came with his relativity theory!!!) she created an educational system that took Einstein's' relativity and other scientific discoveries (e.g. De Vries - biology, Lorentz - mathematics) of her times into account. Too bad that many a Catholic nun who applied her system had no inkling of the reach of Montessori's vision and ideal. It is now (2005) 100 years since... 

Arvind: OK, sure, hmm... let me think...
In any case, to get back to what I was saying, in my incarnated form I can't deny multiplicity.

Wim: Of course not! Good for you!
And why not celebrate that, enjoy it and rejoice in it?!
Why would even the thought to "deny multiplicity" have to come up?
Why would one feel one may have to deny this endless and wondrous variety that multiplicity has to offer?!

Arvind: But you know Wim, when I die... when I let 'I' die... I find no other and others.

Wim: But Arvind, "I" never dies... let me expl...

Arvind: There is no secondary reality but "I", "ME"...

Wim: Ah Arvind, let me just say it very clumsily, it's a good thing that "God" does not feel like having to make a choice between his "I" and "you", that he doesn't feel like making a choice and having to come up with: Just ME GOD, not you!
Good thing that God lets you and I be, that he lets multiplicity and singularity be.
Maybe that's why you and I can talk about this...

Arvind: But Wim, when I focus on the temporary forms, I perceive many, but when I dive within... I find no other, no others.

Wim: You may not "find" other or others, but have they really disappeared?!
But all right... if they seem to have disappeared, I'd suggest they only disappeared out of sight, not out of existence!

Arvind: But isn't it self-evident that I am not "you" or "the other"?!

Wim: That is "o n l y" seemingly self-evident, it appears so to the "lower case self" - atman, the one so used to feeling excluded from the "upper case SELF" - paratman.
So, such seeming evidence is by convention rather limiting and limited to "self" and "i" (lower cases) and is therefore seemingly not inclusive of say for example "me - the other" and "ME - the "ONE".

Time