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Hi Bruce and everyone:
The self becomes what it will be via comprehensive approximation to what it was AS IT IS (that is, in the present). The natural and integrated extensiveness of being and experience go hand in hand in and with time. Remember what I said about the Common Chimpanzees?
How can the self grow from a fertilized egg to a full human if it does not unify and, to some extent, harness/transcend/overcome the forces of physics to its ends -- think about gravity and electromagnetism/light?
We are always becoming other than we are in increments. Conscious and unconscious experience are necessarily interactive, so the understanding is limited.
We are outsmarted by (and in) the dream because the reconfiguration/replacement/alteration of sensory experience is not supposed to be overly intentional -- and this is the danger that modern physics poses.
The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sensory experience is dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience.
The dream makes thought more like sensory experience in general. Genius is relatively rare for the very reasons put forth in this paragraph. Television, for example, is neither dream experience nor waking experience for the very reason that it is both. Similarly, the dream combines opposites; and this is why dream experience is different from waking. That is why TV is a pure creation of thought, as the integrated and interactive extensiveness of being and experience (including thought) is generally reduced thereby. What of sensory deprivation alone? How can TV be good for us? Ultimately, the collective effort to "outsmart" experience in so many significant and various ways will lead to our ruin. Indeed, it already is.
Note that thoughts are relatively shifting and variable. The vision in the dream is more shifting and variable than waking. Consistent with what I have said, TV becomes even more shifting and variable (in conjunction with commanding and keeping attention).
Universal experiences (such as TV) were never supposed to occur, as everyone is different; in fact, we never experience the same things -- and this is the case in the dream as well. In a world of experience that is derived from everyone else, we cannot exist; for our individuality is taken; and is this not the modern trend?
Listen people, when the real and natural world of experience goes, you and your autonomy are gone. If you walk away from reality, reality will walk away from you.
I am spending so much time on this site in order to open your minds. Reality is the way it is, not the way we want it to be.
You only control someone or something by reducing it/them. I will again and again reiterate the importance of the integrated and natural extensiveness of being and experience.
WOW, what an eye opener this post is! Go spread the word. This is very serious stuff.