Nothing Cannot Exist

[jtb]

Why can't a feeling just arise from nothing and induce a nerve impulse in that amazing part of the brain. Then, of course, that nerve impulse can trundle off to a muscle and produce action.

Mo, your the man!!!

Definition of Spirit, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary: “An immaterial intelligent substance. Spirit is a substance in which thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving (my emphasis) do subsist ... Eager desire; disposition of mind excited and directed to a particular object.”

Mo, you are describing the spirit of man. It is man’s spirit motivated by eager desire that stimulates nerve impulses to produce action. The key word here is motivated (motion). Desire without emotion (e-motion, eager desire) does not produce action.

Man’s spirit is an immaterial (non-physical) “substance in which thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving do subsist.” Spirit is the non-physical substance of man with the power to create something through motion. Nothing really is something. Nothing is spirit.
jtb

[jtb]

I thought it was a fun playful quip on the word nothing, but alas its meaning eluded you.

Sorry Arch, sometimes I'm a little thick and too serious. From Mo's post, however, I did determine that nothing is something. Nothing is the spirit of man.
jtb

[moses]

It is man’s spirit motivated by eager desire that stimulates nerve impulses to produce action.
jtb
Perhaps I should have started with the things that I agree with - like 'Nothing is the spirit of man'. If nothing is 'no thing' which is 'no physical thing' then nothing is non-physical and hence of the same nature as spirit, although then saying that 'nothing = spirit' is probably stretching it.

First nerve impulses don't need stimulation to produce action, the nerve impulses only need to be produced. I am saying that such nerve impulses are produced by the self which could be 'eager desire' or else the nerve impulses could be produced by spirit, if you like, which is more exactly stated as being produced by experiencing.

Thus eager desire is produced by past thoughts, feelings and experiences. Thus eager desire is not a quality of experiencing. The qualities of experiencing do not arise from the past. The past, memory, is physical or physically produced. The qualities of experiencing are non-physical. One cannot think wonderful thoughts to gain these qualities of experiencing. Thinking such things only builds the self and generates extra nerve impulses generated by the self.

Know thyself, and the self will naturally fall away leaving only action produced by the spirit - experiencing. So one develops an understanding that is not a bunch of memories, and such an understanding is a quality of experiencing. Tricky, that ! And one may ask, if understanding, why not eager desire being a quality of experiencing. Isn't being passionate such a quality. Well indeed it can be, but much more likely is feeling being generated by desire which arises from the ideas and emotions of the mind.
Mo

[Phorce]

"Nothing unreal exists."

Kiri-kin-tha's First Law of Metaphysics

[justcurious]

Haha, I'm going to use that bar joke about "nothing is better than <favourite drink>"

The bleeding edge big bang astronomers and the Dawkins poopoo on the biblical stories and heaven and earth, hell, God etc. and claim that those people are del;usional.

Yet they want me to believe that the entire universe was compressed into a point of space so small that it can't even be measured, perhaps even smaller than an atom.

In my mind they are equal stretches of the imagination. Ya sure, there was nothing then all of a sudden a Universe popped up, and to make matters worst, they add "dark matter and energy" to fill the gaps in their "highly scientific" theories.

[jtb]

Know thyself, and the self will naturally fall away leaving only action produced by the spirit - experiencing. So one develops an understanding that is not a bunch of memories, and such an understanding is a quality of experiencing. Tricky, that ! And one may ask, if understanding, why not eager desire being a quality of experiencing. Isn't being passionate such a quality. Well indeed it can be, but much more likely is feeling being generated by desire which arises from the ideas and emotions of the mind.

Thanks, Mo, you hit on something I have been trying to understand for a long time. Dan 2:21 “he giveth ... knowledge to those that know understanding:” In particular, “know understanding”.

If I understand what you are saying, experience generates nerve impulses that are stored as memory, which is physical. Understanding is a quality of experience, which is non-physical. The self is a product of understanding experience. A desire to know leads to understanding, and, results in an accumulation of knowledge. The end result is unconscious action.

It sometimes takes me a while to understand.
jtb

[moses]

If I understand what you are saying, experience generates nerve impulses that are stored as memory, which is physical. Understanding is a quality of experience, which is non-physical. The self is a product of understanding experience. A desire to know leads to understanding, and, results in an accumulation of knowledge. The end result is unconscious action.
jtb
Well I will always use the word 'experiencing' rather than 'experience' because experiencing is always now. And I use 'self' to represent the physical part of our being. Thus experiencing is not part of the self. If we are going to assign qualities to experiencing, like understanding or love, then we must be certain that we are not considering some aspect of the self, like knowledge or emotion.

But, again, brain nerve impulses induce experiencing, so now we are considering nerve impulses being produced by a reverse process, where whatever spirit is behind experiencing, can produce nerve impulses and hence physical action.

A desire to know could be a quality of experiencing, a natural curiosity, or else the self gets a kick out of knowing more, accumulating, and this produces the desire to know. And if it is the self wanting more then we need to see that and really understand all about this selfishness of the self, so that it may drop away and stop producing the desire, so that the real thing - experiencing, can produce the feeling of understanding.

We would love to consider ourselves to be full of spiritual feeling and action, but the reality is that the past, in us, generates untold brain nerve impulses which severely hinder any spiritual feeling or action. Thus we need to seek out that past, so that it loses it's energy or power to create those nerve impulses.
Mo