Why think that Ultimate Reality is a Personal Creator

[Laird]

Yeah it gets tricky because how [can] there exist a "before" preceding Time itself?

Exactly. The only way I've been able to (sort of) make sense of this "timelessness" is that it is a transcendence over all time, such that (for the timeless being) there is no privileged present moment - no before, now, or after - only a transcendent relationship to (over) the entirety of time as a whole. This means, though, that the beginning of time isn't privileged either, which maybe weakens the cosmological argument, or maybe not. It also maybe implies a block universe, in which the future is in some sense (already) fixed.

I would agree that a decision in itself suggests the passage of Time, but it seems to me so would the nature of the First Causer simply compelling it to enact the First Cause. After all for the nature of the First Causer to compel also suggests a state before the compulsion to begin Causality occurred?

Not necessarily, I think: a compulsion could itself be timeless (unchanging) in the transcendent sense.

I think that this opens the door to another possibility which brings back in a willing personal being: rather than "deciding" to create time, it could "will" time into being. "Willing" doesn't necessarily have the "before and after" connotation of "deciding": one's will can be constant and unchanging in the same sense of a basic (what you call "compelling") nature to bring time into being being constant and unchanging.

I suspect that this is the limit of my current ability to think about this so I'll have to hope the book proves enlightening.

Well, you've pushed my thinking on this to its limit too, so we're both relying on your reading of this book now. Pressure's on. 😁

I don't really understand what "personal" means.

Individuality exists. Consciousness exists. But you can't see how thoughts, emotions, impulses, or sense of self arise into consciousness. They seem just to pop into awareness from unconscious processes - seemingly from cause and effect via memories, associations, or logic. Even when you feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, that feeling is just like any other feeling, and where did the impulse to use your mind come from? And it isn't one unified unconscious process it is several that produce thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experience. And they can work at cross purposes, we crave rood while wanting to lose weight. We have conflicting emotions, conflicting thoughts, conflicting impulses. We "know" we are right but later find out we are wrong. Knowing isn't really knowing, it's actually a feeling.

So do all these disconnected unconscious processes add up to a "person"? Or is the feeling/belief of being a person an illusion like an image made up of pixels?

And wouldn't there be an infinite regression if you were aware of how thoughts arose into consciousness? You would see how a thought arose and how that understanding arose, and how that understanding of understanding arose.

I don't really understand what "personal" means.

Individuality exists. Consciousness exists. But you can't see how thoughts, emotions, impulses, or sense of self arise into consciousness. They seem just to pop into awareness from unconscious processes - seemingly from cause and effect via memories, associations, or logic. Even when you feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, that feeling is just like any other feeling, and where did the impulse to use your mind come from? And it isn't one unified unconscious process it is several that produce thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experience. And they can work at cross purposes, we crave rood while wanting to lose weight. We have conflicting emotions, conflicting thoughts, conflicting impulses. We "know" we are right but later find out we are wrong. Knowing isn't really knowing, it's actually a feeling.

So do all these disconnected unconscious processes add up to a "person"? Or is the feeling/belief of being a person an illusion like an image made up of pixels?

And wouldn't there be an infinite regression if you were aware of how thoughts arose into consciousness? You would see how a thought arose and how that understanding arose, and how that understanding of understanding arose.

I think it's a leap to go from mental aspects like thoughts/feelings/etc coming into our awareness/being to the idea that the person is illusory.

After all, there is the "I-self" observing the very thoughts/feelings/etc as per the "Further Fact Theory of Mind" ->

[Wittgenstein] suggests that if you wrote a book called The World as I Found it, there is one thing that would not be mentioned in it: you. It would include all of the facts you found, including all the facts about your body. And it would include psychological facts about yourself as well: your character, personality, dispositions, and so on. But you – the subject, the one to whom all this appears, the one who finds all these facts – would not be found

 -Norman Melchert, A Historical Introduction to Philosophy

Now is God's nature like that of a mortal human person? And if that is the case, could such a being [be] a First Cause or does Its very nature also place it in Time?

No idea, hopefully the free book Loke wrote enlightens me!

No idea, hopefully the free book Loke wrote enlightens me!

I trust you will enlighten us about its contents after you have read it!

David

I think it's a leap to go from mental aspects like thoughts/feelings/etc coming into our awareness/being to the idea that the person is illusory.

I didn't say the person is illusory, I wrote, "  is the feeling/belief of being a person an illusion".

What we think of as self is not what we think it is. 

I assume Norman Melchert never tried vipassana meditation. There are over 500 million Buddhists who would disagree with him.

I didn't say the person is illusory, I wrote, "  is the feeling/belief of being a person an illusion".

What we think of as self is not what we think it is. 

I assume Norman Melchert never tried vipassana meditation. There are over 500 million Buddhists who would disagree with him.

I don’t know if altered states should supersede our everyday awareness, though even there we’d have to compare all sorts of altered states from varied individuals. I’d estimate that even people who feel their personhood is an illusion in meditation still engage in being an individual I-Self for most of their lives.

Beyond that my own experiences in Asia make me suspect that most Buddhists are polytheists or at the least are concerned about Survival at the personal level.

Very few, in my experience, think of a person as an illusion.

There are over 500 million Buddhists who would disagree with him.

You may have just been throwing a number out to make a point, but I've often wondered how many people actually experience super rich, deep experiences via meditative practice.  I have a great friend who's been immersed in Buddhist practice for 30 years including long retreats, being a senior member of his order, etc.  While he's shared some stories of his deep personal insights its taken a tremendous amount of time, commitment and discipline to do so.

I've always found it hard to believe that this is the common experience of someone identifying as Buddhist.  (i.e., the 500 million)

I didn't say the person is illusory, I wrote, "  is the feeling/belief of being a person an illusion".

What we think of as self is not what we think it is. 

I assume Norman Melchert never tried vipassana meditation. There are over 500 million Buddhists who would disagree with him.

  I think the way theravada buddhist use the term self - not self - creates a cognative dissonance where no self becomes a thing as far as the way it is often spoken of.
There is also a smaller faction of buddhists who refer to the concepts as false self and true self or small (s) self and big "S" self which i think is a better way of seeing it for westerners where the cultivation and development of a "self" (heinz kohut self psych) is a prerequisite to having a functional life as well as having the facility to enter the stream or walk the eightfold path or another way of putting it - "you have to be somebody before you can be nobody"