Bruno Loff:
I consider this to be a very very deep question. I don't know how to solve it, but I have three tricks.
One is to have a scientific attitude. I try as much as possible to entertain only those opinions which can be satisfactorily tested. Try to hold my opinions to such a higher standard. For instance, the view that "all things are equal" has no meaning unless it comes accompanied with a procedure (a test, an experiment) which can successfully determine whether "all things are equal" or "not all things are equal." If there IS such an experiment, then the meaning of "all things are equal" is given by the experiment itself. If there is no such experiment, then the statement has no meaning (according to this scientific approach, it might have meaning in other contexts).
For instance, among certain mental masturbators such as myself, there sometimes arises the discussion of whether people have any "inherent good" or whether they always act out of "self interest", when appearing to sacrifice themselves for others. One might argue for both sides pretty strongly, but actually, if one applies the previous methodology, one finds that there seems to be no way of distinguishing between the two scenarios. Hence the question itself has no meaning, is uninteresting, and we should just move on. The same seems to apply to questions such as "essence vs appearance", "the existence of god" and so on.
Deconstructing the selective tendency. Nice one. So, when to stop? Can the deconstruction become an end in itself? I've run into this, so I'm wondering if that was just idiosyncratic of my experience or whether it's more widely experienced.
The second trick is to realize that often the content of my thoughts is frequently determined from the presence or absence of pain and pleasure. For instance, the closest I've come to thinking "we are all one," or something along those lines, I was in a specific ecstatic state of mind. At the time I might have thought that "we are all one" meant quite literally what it said (the dictionary meaning). However, nowadays, when I think "we are all one" I actually interpret the meaning of that thought as "I am feeling pleasurable/energetic/euphoric." On the other hand, when I think "people suck" actually I understand that it means that I am myself in pain at that moment. I.e., the meaning of the words I think is not always found by looking at their meaning in the dictionary, but by paying attention to the causal chain that led me to say it.
Yeah, that's an interesting phenomenon, too. Contraction around pain (or pleasure) is very selective.
In fact, a weird body-mind coupling of pain rose up within me a couple of months ago. On one level, it was obviously the result of personal upheavals of the past year. On another level, I can't help but wonder what course this would have taken in the absence of the clarity or refinemet which became accessible to me last year. Maybe I would have just ignored that pain in some way or another, pushed it away, resisted it. Maybe not. Hard to tell.
The third trick is to avoid isolation. Genuine interaction with others, particularly those with different perspectives, has a way of bringing light to my own perceptual tendencies and biases. It helps to have intimate and highly perceptive friends that don't agree with everything you say, and are willing to spend the time and energy to confront their views with yours --- which is really a rare and valuable thing.
Seconded. Human life is best played as a team sport.
These three tricks are generally helpful to me, and I have uncovered several instances of "fudging the evidence" through their use. However, for the specific question of whether "fudging the evidence" can be completely avoided, or how can we be certain we aren't doing it, I really have no idea.
Me neither. I have some hunches and suspicions though:
1. none of the evidence really is evidence (along the lines of your trick #1). That is, put another way, as long as we're trying to become something, we're always fudging the evidence, since the evidence that we're not it is abundantly there. This is very close to the "trying to become what you already are" red flag on the DhO, so maybe there's a better, more empowering way to phrase it, but I haven't found it yet.
Actually, thinking about this, the concluding joke of the last
Being Ordinary episode kind of points in this direction as well.
2. in what ways is fudging the evidence a problem? In the end, there will be evidence for or against the case that originally, there was a selective bias, and we're into the next round. So is it really a matter of what we do with all the evidence? Again, more in the deconstructing vein of your trick #1. Hmmm... maybe I'm relying on that too much?
As far as I can tell, bias could well be an integral part of how the mind works. In fact I consider the belief that there is some sort of Truth (or actuality) --- to which the clear-headed meditator/actualist supposedly has access to, but the rest of the world does not --- to be a somewhat dangerous terrain, full of self-supporting loops and tricky traps.
Yeah, that at least is done away with at a certain point. It's kind of funny in a sad way to see how the clear-headed meditator/actualist never ever gets to own or become or be Truth (or actuality). But what a relief. That, at least, is strong evidence, in my book

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Indeed I believe that there are two different, possibly coexisting scenarios: (1) perceptual changes caused by means of refined perception, and (2) perceptual changes caused by means of selective perception, i.e. ignoring what doesn't fit the picture.
What would we expect to see in scenario (1), versus scenario (2)? In yourself? Or in a friend: suppose that you have two friends, one of whose meditation practice has lead him towards the first path, and the second has had the misfortune (?) of heading mostly through the second path. How would you distinguish which is which?
Again, mostly hunches: What are they hiding? Whose welfare are they concerned about, and why? What is their motivation to keep going? Is their heart in it, or just their intellect?
I find this to be an extremely important question for the practice of meditation, and to me it has all sorts of personal reverberations.
Me too. Thanks for your comments.
Cheers,
Florian