Tuesday 8 June 2021

Agent and Patient

 There’s a spectrum from agent to patient.  In the ordinary way of thinking about it the agent confronted by a possible  action can do it, not do it, do it differently.  The patient is the one we have been discussing, the powerless one, the end stage junkie, the alcoholic, the gamblers enormous guy.  An insidious HAL is in charge of his ship and unless he is reborn he is doomed.  He has to pause the course that he has set.  That path to homeostasis that is his fix  must be laid aside before he can begin to remove the programs and Daisy can give him his answer.

The agent has his own set of rules, habits and behavioural loops.  They smooth the path to immediate response.  The centipede wondering which leg to move first fell over.  Freedom is a project even if its unattainable as an end state of a-causality.  The Vedantic sage dismisses the merely causal as an illusory end, just karma, nevertheless spiritual practice engenders peace or the tranquillity of order.  Now the big question - Who Am I - is possible.

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