David expressed a legitimate question. Does emotions computer that plays chess Homo sapiens? And on the horizon is looming Artificial Intelligence with a "cold" reason. Domine quo vadis?

While it is true that chess-playing computers have no need for emotions (or a body), humans are very different from computers.

Even though the most advanced AI systems tackle weather prediction and patient diagnosis, they are still at their core logical-choice structures that simply encode details of expert knowledge. Humans, with perhaps some exceptions, don't have this core functionality. Instead, decision-making, mathematical operations, and other explicit reasoning seem to be added on top of a very different core, in which belief in the reality of objects and events, sensory perceptions and memory, and our emotional state all juggle for our inconsistent and unstable attention. Our core is actually abnormal, stressed by traumatic and difficult experiences in a very sick and stressed world.

Meanwhilke, a small number of humans have "awakened" to a different reality, based on a common and intelligent Awareness which does not change and which has no beginning or end. The state of these self-realized people is constant, filled with peace, love, and freedom. Thoughts and emotions may still come and go, but these people are lighthouses of friendship and guidance, always emitting these fundamental qualities of peace and happiness into their environment, benefitting those around them. They do not pay attention or give belief and energy to the thoughts and feelings that spring from stress (see www.nsrusa.org/about-stress.php).

Computers, no matter how cleverly programmed, do not have emotions and cannot contact their true Self, which is unbounded Awareness.

Meanwhile, the field of psycholoigy, which attempts to understand mind and emotions, is bogged down in trying to analyze these fleeting subjective experiences (and their reflections in the body) as though there were  something significant to learn from them, always ignoring our ability to be aware of being aware,just  as the rest of society ignores it. With notable exceptions, such as William James, Abraham Maslow, and a few others, happiness is not given its fundamental place, and shown to flow from our Awareness itself.

Currently, several effective techniques exist that can reveal our true self, through insight, through the fourth state of consciousness after waking, dreaming, and deep sleep (samadhi, or settled restful alertness). These techniques reveal reality to the Self, transcending problems and limitations and showing our Self to be one consciousness, with the self-confusing ability to have false beliefs and so to suffer as a isolated mind and body in a sometimes harsh world.

Why do we ignore Awakening and the reality it reveals to us? Why do we not instead seize on this ancient yet ever-new technology of living a whole and healthy life? Why do we focus on emotions, believing them (without evidence) as being central to our existence?

Along with these questions, we can also ask why we are all searching for something that will fulfill us and make us happy, whether it be a relationship, a career, or a drug? The answer is obvious to anyone who has actually explored the awareness that underlies all experience, rather than the experiences or objects themselves.

Emotions are either evidence of malfunctioning and hence suffering (anger, jealousy, suicidal ideation) or are the fundamental mood of the One Consciousness peeking through (peace, happiness, love, beauty). Analyzing them is a waste of time, while learning about our pure consciousness can always be a source of transformation and a shedding of the ignorance that our world loves so much, yet causes such harm.

Let's learn to ask the right questions of ourselves, and find the answers that free us from limitations and suffering. These answers have nothing to do with our "emotions" any more than they have to do with any other negative side effect of our addiction to suffering.

Thank you David for your thoughtful reasoning. We also know a lot of rationalism, which is often the engine of progress.

You are right, academic subjects and reasoning about them has led to many technological improvements, and even to improvements in the institutions of society.

However, the countries of the world are inconsistent in their application of advanced ideas to childhood education, prisons, health care, health research, mental health, the problem of unemployment, and so many other areas of society. So long as there is war, greed, racism, ignorance, injustice, and poverty, we have not done enough to help the world.

Thinking is not enough to solve the problems of the world. We need to support organizations that are teaching fulfillment in life, yet are limited by their lack of publicity. We need to value the knowledge that transforms, not just repeating the old ideas about the supposed value or lack of value of thoughts and emotions. There is more to reality that that which changes.

We need to bring the specific knowledge that produces peace and happiness to the world, not continue to believe in the power of thinking to transform our environment. That route is too slow, too random, too ineffective. We can do much better.

Dear Krasen Georgiev Ferdinandov,

There appears to be some theoretical differences between the theory of emotions in Belarus and Bulgaria, but of course that is fine, since most people are not in agreement about these concepts.

I appreciate your taking the time to rebut my arguments so deeply. While I do not agree with most of your points, disagreement is certainly valid in science, and I welcome it.

I will not take up too much space in this reply, but I do want to respond to one point you made, "There is no such thing as 'pure consciousness'."

Pure consciousness or awareness most certainly exists, and almost every one of the 7.2 billion people on earth are aware of their own consciousness. If you and I were sitting together, I would simply ask you whether you were aware of this table, this chair, these walls, the sunlight streaming in, and the sound of traffic outside in the street. You would naturally answer "yes".

I would then ask you whether you were aware of the awareness by which you were aware of (or knew) all these sensory objects and events. You might pause for a moment to relax your thinking a bit to see what lies under all thinking, but then you would answer "yes". Everyone who is awake knows that they are aware, and they can experience this pure awareness easily.

So, to clarify what just happened in this imaginary scene, you have (or might have) admitted, based on your own experience, that you can be aware of your own awareness, that which knows any sensory activity or perception.

So, there most definitely is such a thing as "pure consciousness", and we know it from our own subjective (object-free) experience.

Normally, we ignore our own awareness. We do this because we have been conditioned by our parents, our schools, and all the rest of society to ignore it. Never are we asked about the nature of our consciousness. Never are we asked whether we are aware of being aware. But we are, and it is a fruitful field of study, even though not an objective (outer) field of study.

There is so much more that can be said about the nature of spirituality, nonduality, subjective research, or the study of the Self, but I'll limit myself to just this one point I have just made in rebuttal to your false statement about consciousness. Any human who is awake and aware is experiencing pure awareness, perhaps hidden under masses of thoughts, emotions, or other stresses stored in the nervous system by a very stressed environment all around the world.

My organization works to eliminate war, greed, racism, ignorance, injustice, and poverty in the world by eliminating the stress stored in the nervous system of each individual. Our clients have no trouble learning or practicing the mental technique that leads to the fourth state of consciousness, sometimes known as turiya, satori, nirvana, or samadhi. There are no obstacles when transcending thought, and the results in daily life include happiness, peace, harmony, freedom from stress-related psychological disorders, and many more. We have research showing the dramatic reduction in both state and trait anxiety, and many case studies showing the range of improvements that can result from the reduction of internal stress, should you be interested in either.

David Spector, President (an unpaid volunteer)

Natural Stress Relief/USA

Dear Krasen,

Thank you for spending so much time on composing your reply. Unfortunately, we seem to be discussing two different subjects, resulting in complete non-communication.

To put it simply, everything you discuss relates to thoughts. Everything I mentioned in my previous posting concerned pure consciousness, which has no qualities of thought whatsoever. I still disagree with almost everything you write.

I will try to give some examples from your posting, but your posting is far too long to analyze here. It would have helped if you could have posted simpler and shorter claims. Then I would be able to address them without wasting this public space which we do not own.

1. "You’ve just talking about old concept, that geshtaltians called Bewusstseinslagen & Einstellungen."

According to your further discussion, this is not true. For example, I never said anything about thought with no images. You seem to have two bad habits: (a) you ignore the points made by the other person, substituting points that you are very familiar with, (b) you have opinions that are so strong as to prevent you from having an open mind. For example, I discussed experiencing the awareness of being aware in depth, yet you never once mentioned it.

2. "Since their subjects could not describe these processes beyond saying that they had them, Mayer and Orth were in turn helpless to say anything about them."

This has nothing to do with pure consciousness, which is free of thoughts. Pure consciousness can be experienced at any time, and so can be researched through internal observation.

3. "‘‘Imageless thought’’ is based on the discovery that not all mental processes had their reflection or counterpoint in consciousness."

What you call a "discovery" I would call pseudoscience, since it is apparently based on a researcher's opinion about subjects' experiences that he did not understand instead of a theory based on demonstrated facts. Furthermore, even this quotation mentions "consciousness" without definition, showing that everyone knows that we have consciousness, but no one bothers to investigate it. This is poor science.

Besides, I disagree with this "discovery". All mental processes occur in consciousness but are not the same as consciousness. For example, a thought or other mental process has a lifetime; it does not continue forever. But pure consciousness continues forever, as we can verify through our experience as I discussed in my previous posting. Another way to show this is to consider your experiences since childhood: your experiences are always new and different as you got older, yet your awareness, your identification with self, remained completely constant. Everyone has the same experience of being aware, even though everyone is aware of different objects and events.

4. "Marbe’s monograph on judgment"

What does judgement have to do with anything I discussed? Perhaps it is of interest to you, but judgement is simply a mental process, an extended thought with particular meaning for a person. It has nothing to do with pure consciousness, which if you will recall is the only topic on which I was attempting to correct your erroneous statement (that p.c. did not exist). Whether judgements are based on knowledge or something else is irrelevant. You are simply posing the intellectual equivalent of a tongue-twister, in this case a mind-twister. This is a total waste of time and of space on this website. It also seems intellectually lazy to me, in spite of your love of length, since you have not considered what I discussed at all.

5. "The subject is given a task (Aufgabe) and then a series of stimulus words."

This example is simply and exercise in thinking and observation. It has nothing to do with pure consciousness, our subject. You seem to have much difficulty in sticking to the point. Remember, I was correcting your erroneous statement about pure consciousness.

6. "they served the purpose of bringing the elementary experience of knowing, or knowing the meaning of something, into consciousness; they are what the familiar ‘‘Uh-huh’’ of daily recognition is about."

For people lacking in understanding their own nature as pure awareness, naturally insight and meaning will seem to spring into mind spontaneously, like magic. However, this is not fact but conjecture. For those of us who have spent some time subjectively researching our essential nature, it is obvious that having an appropriate thought, such as to solve a real-life problem, is not magic at all, but the play of pure consciousness, which ensures its relevance and correctness. If we do not have that understanding of our true nature, all other understandings will seem like magic and be impossible to analyze, as you have demonstrated nicely by all your examples.

7. You spent much time describing research experiments in which subjects were asked to do complex mental tasks. These are all irrelevant to the topic we were discussing. Mental processes, whether complex or not, prove absolutely nothing about our essential nature as pure consciousness.

8. At the end, you ask me whether I can imagine two situations: (a) a Buddhist monk in fMRI tube just before he get into nirvana state; (b) Artificial Intelligence with fully Buddhist algorithms of processing simulating nirvana state.

Yes, I can imagine almost anything you propose; that is the nature of imagination. In situation (a) you assume that the monk must "get" into a certain mental state. Can you imagine that the monk is always in that state? We are only unaware of being aware when we have the habit of ignorance, which we adopt from everyone around us. We live in a profoundly ignorant society which results in all forms of suffering, including war, greed, racism, ignorance, injustice, and poverty.

In situation (b) you reference AI. Since I have been a professional software engineer and have studied computer science at the Master's level, you can't fool me: I actually know about the various types of AI that have been developed.

AI is simply the behavior of very complex algorithms, including algorithms that can learn new tasks. All the fundamental steps of AI are very simple logical operations, such as looking up or storing a piece of data.

There are no algorithms, Buddhist or otherwise, for simulating a nirvana state, since that state does not occur on the level of thinking or knowledge at all, but rather of experience. A computer has no experience. For that matter, it has no pure consciousness either. Since AI only consists of logical operations, it has no way to transcend its own processing, even as a simulation (I could reference Gödel's Theorem here: "any sufficiently complex logical system cannot prove certain true statements that can be expressed within it"). Yes, you could have the computer say, "wow, I feel wonderful peace and happiness," but do you really believe that a computer could have such an experience? No, transcendental experiences are only possible for humans, because only humans can contact their true nature as pure consciousness. Your "AI" examples are red herrings and you should know better.

Finally, I would like to suggest, respectfully, that we stop our interaction. We seem to be writing at cross-purposes, rather than communicating effectively. Judging from your last posting, true and effective communication between us is impossible, so let's leave it at that. We must agree to disagree, whatever that means.

If you have any final thoughts, I will consider them. But I will not reply further to you unless I see evidence that you are interested in what I have said in my previous postings, or unless you really want an answer to a question. Frankly, you seem more interested in showing off your esoteric knowledge than in communicating or learning something new.

Krasen,

"So you can't imagine anything I would propose"

No. I said I could imagine anything you could propose. That is the nature of imagination.

"But you are determined"

I never said that. I don't even know what it means in this context.

Best of luck with putting words into other people's mouths.

As to fighting and mind games, communication is not a fight; it is a process of exchange with a view to learning and helping.

I'm done with this now.

What test? Whch project? Your confusion is confusing me.

Krasen, You haven't been listening to me at all, or you would know that I'm not interested in artificial emotional management through measuring emotional properties or emotional contemplation.

First, you have not asked me if I have any emotional difficulties that need fixing. The answer is no. I have been practicing transcending (samadhi) twice a day for 47 years, so all problems that result from attachment are pretty much gone by now.

Second, you have not noticed that my interest, both for myself and others, is in exploration of pure Being, pure consciousness, not exploration of the field of thinking and feeling, which is what people normally spend their time doing.

I think our conversation really and truly is at an end. You simply are too attached to your beliefs to listen to another person. And, in all fairness, I am too amazed at my own experiences with pure awareness to be at all interested in exploring emotions, most of which spring either from our ignorance (in which case, they are life-negative) or spring from our pure awareness (in which case, they are life-positive). No further verbal analysis of emotions is of any use, in my opinion, based on my own experiences and those of my 2000 or so NSR clients.

Best of luck.

"I'm sure that you have overcame your personal strivings by clearing your mind."

Many people believe that you can "clear your mind" but have not tried it. Thoughts come from stresses stored in the nervous system and cannot be "cleared" without eliminating the stresses that cause them.

Your focus on emotions is understandable, but it will never help people lead more peaceful or happier lives than will eliminating the stored stresses.

You have mentioned Buddhism several times, and I don't see the connection between this religion or its practices and what we have been discussing. Like most of us, Buddhists take thoughts and emotions too seriously, regarding them as basic instead of as a result of internal stress.

As to my helping your research, I cannot invade the privacy of my clients by asking them to participate in a study which has so little rationale and so little consideration of the nature of life.

If your study were compatible with a philosophy of life that is compatible with eliminating stress, then we would be happy to cooperate. I will not cooperate with ignorance, and with ignorance which clearly wants to stay ignorant, sorry. When you learn that there is more to life, that investigating our inner nature as pure consciousness is worth doing, then please contact me again.