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Nothingness

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My wife and I sat and watched that while sipping some wine and we both enjoyed it a great deal. She even said that this is what she believes. I love to delve into this Esoteric stuff. Good post. Can you tell us more about the narrator? thanks and cheers.
 
Soooo......everything we do, have done, will do......all of our accomplishments, everything we hold dear..........is really nothing.
So life is just a pointless accident?
We're here and then we're not.
I cannot, personally, think of anything more depressing than the day to day struggles and massive freaking stress I go through doesn't matter for shit.
 
exo_doc said:
Soooo......everything we do, have done, will do......all of our accomplishments, everything we hold dear..........is really nothing.
So life is just a pointless accident?
We're here and then we're not.
I cannot, personally, think of anything more depressing than the day to day struggles and massive freaking stress I go through doesn't matter for shit.
Click to expand...

I really think you missed the point...there's a lot of something in that great nothingness for which all things emerge.
In addition, the only being that can add meaning to the world is your own mind asking the question. Without our minds, there's no querying for ultimate meaning in the universe--we are simultaneously the question AND the answer to our own mystery.

A bit more on the narrator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts



 
The question regarding the predicate "accidental" can only have its existence in the mind. We are the observers who inquire being while simultaneously living out as a subset of the overall universe. In essence, we are the eyes of the universe looking at itself--so we bring "accident" into being by our own questioning.
 
I like the way Sagan put it concerning our place and reason for being "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." That seems like such a liberating thought.
 
With this philosophy I fully agree. We are literaly nothing. And conciousness/life springs from nothing. From my viewpoint, conciousness/life is a resonance, an echo, which springs from nothing and inhabits the dead matter that are our bodies. I guess this makes me a Buddhist.
 
softbeard said:
With this philosophy I fully agree. We are literaly nothing. And conciousness/life springs from nothing. From my viewpoint, conciousness/life is a resonance, an echo, which springs from nothing and inhabits the dead matter that are our bodies. I guess this makes me a Buddhist.
Click to expand...

As Lao Tzu says: "naming is the origin[lit: "mother"] of all particular things"

So we like to add names and tags to the numerous phenomenally bounded apparitions of being. In fact, the universe is a unified field of emptiness (atoms are 99% empty space with electron clouds as "force fields" that give us the illusion of "solidarity")--that is one thing.


We verbally divide the world into nouns and verbs, when in actuality the existence of a thing is brought about by dynamic processes. The world is neither pure action or pure being--these are verbal fictions of the mind.
 
 
Alan Watts was a wonderful communicator and philosopher. I love reading and listening to him. I temper Watts with doses of U.G. Krishnamurti.

Accepting that nothing is the spring from which everything arises and then returns is a bit too much for some folks I think. Annihilation can be a harsh concept that perhaps can only be softened by an identification with the whole.
 
Watts often said the fundamental basis of all existence was the trickster "hide and seek" game -- or the universe acting in multiplicity within itself as its own trickster.
 
Michael Allen said:
Watts often said the fundamental basis of all existence was the trickster "hide and seek" game -- or the universe acting in multiplicity within itself as its own trickster.
Click to expand...

Individuation as god's inner dialogue? One of my favorite quotes by Robert Heinlein:

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology. [Lazarus Long, _Time Enough for Love_ by Robert Heinlein]
 
Boomerrang wrote:
Individuation as god's inner dialogue? One of my favorite quotes by Robert Heinlein:

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology. [Lazarus Long, _Time Enough for Love_ by Robert Heinlein]

It's funny you should quote this. I started this book in paperback literally "years" ago. It's still right there on my bookshelf having survived trips from Alabama to Texas to Hawaii to Colorado and back to Alabama. Maybe I oughta finish it. The bookmark is still saving my place. :-) Anyway, I love this quote. I came to kind of my own variation of this quote for myself. Way back in the early 80's when I started to pay a little more attention to my inner thoughts I became fascinated and kind of symphthetic to the idea of reincarnation. I only had two types of folks around me back then. There was the fundi Christian type and I of course read all their material about why reincarnation just couldn't be true. Then there were the secular more agnostic types. I read their material about why reincarnation couldn't be true. Then I thought about it and came up with the following thought, "I don't know if it's true or not" and I still don't after all these years:
But, it makes as much and as little sense as sky gods and ressurections and primordial soup and blind chance. 8) Plus, for me it's easy to dance to and I find the tune to be very moving.

Peace. :)<!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: ad_showthread_firstpost_sig --><!-- END TEMPLATE: ad_showthread_firstpost_sig -->
 
tyder001 said:
But, it makes as much and as little sense as sky gods and ressurections and primordial soup and blind chance.
Click to expand...

I understand the sky god, resurrection, and primordial soup references but who says anything about blind chance other than people who have a gross misunderstanding of the theory of evolution? Anyone who talks about evolution, pro or con, that thinks that blind chance has any place in it has a terrible misconception of the theory.
 
I understand the sky god, resurrection, and primordial soup references but who says anything about blind chance other than people who have a gross misunderstanding of the theory of evolution? Anyone who talks about evolution, pro or con, that thinks that blind chance has any place in it has a terrible misconception of the theory.


I agree some folks have a terrible misconseption of theory. :p But, my post really and truly was not about evolution or religion as much as it was and is about "my" thoughts on nothingness and it's relation to inner/spiritual reality. :cool: Also, in all fairness people who dismiss all of faith as "sky god silliness" are like the folks who dismiss all of evolution as "monkeys into men" I'm not trying to dismiss faith or science here. Just giving my own thoughts on or some of them on "life, the universe and everything." <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: ad_showthread_firstpost_sig --><!-- END TEMPLATE: ad_showthread_firstpost_sig -->
 
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