Free by Nature

Understanding Life

2011-09-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

"To understand life, I decided to study life's engineers... proteins!!
I broke them down to peptides, into individual amino acids, into individual atoms and even into electrons, and found them to be mere lifeless probabilities!!!

While I was busy closing my fist, the elusive phenomenon called life had slipped through my fingers!!!"

~ Pradipta Banerjee

Symbolism of the Oriental Triple Spiral

2011-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

The "triple spiral" represents a variety of symbolic notions:

The Buddhist "Triple Gem" - Buddha, Dharma, Sangha:
- Buddha - Sacred* Wisdom (Bodhi)
- Dharma - Sacred Responsibility (Human Duty/Divine Law),
- Sangha - Sacred Community
The Hindu "Trinity" - Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva.**
These three Hindu gods are the divine representations of the processes of:
- Creation - Brahma (Creator)
- Synthesis - Vishnu (Preserver)
- Analysis - Shiva (Destroyer of obstacles)
  Creation is driven by both the processes of synthesis and analysis! ***
The "Human Triple Unity" - Spirit, Mind, Body.
This unity is discernible in the harmoniously developed human. It is expressed by the three functional modalities of play (sacred lila), learning, and work:
- Spirit - Play (sacred lila) (pertaining to spirited enjoyment, bliss),
- Mind - Learning (pertaining to mental reality),
- Body - Work (pertaining to physical reality).
The first "Three Elements of Antiquity" - Stone, Wood, Water.
These earliest known elements are represented in by a stone edifice, a tree and a well or spring:
- Stone - house, temple,
- Wood - Pipal tree, Bael tree (bodhi tree, tree of knowledge),
- Water - well, spring, (fountain of life).
* Sacred or Human/Divine

** Unfortunately, the functionality of the divine powers of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva is rather misunderstood. E.g. according to traditional Hindu cosmology Brahma is considered to be the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. However ingrained this interpretation is in Hindu thought, it is a rather incomplete understanding, especially the role of Shiva as simply the destroyer!

*** "There are two major low-level cognitive mechanisms of creativity: divergent thinking that is the ability to generate original, distinct, and elaborate ideas, and convergent thinking that is the ability to logically evaluate and find the best solution among a variety of feasible alternatives. A parallel between these two mechanisms and the processes of synthesis and analysis of conceptual spaces can naturally be drawn: creativity per se is a balance of synthesis, which usually leads to expanding the conceptual space, and analysis, which is associated with exploring the space. The dynamics of the interaction of divergent and convergent thinking establishes the canonical dynamics of the creative process – the dynamics of creative exploitation and exploration." Source: http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0605/0605120.pdf (page ten)

The (His)Story of the Bowl

2011-09-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Avalokiteshvara, the Inventor of the Bowl

Introduction to Avalokiteshvara

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
(notice the bowl in his hand)

One of the oldest Eastern writings that mention the name Avalokiteshvara (1) is the Heart Sutra, an ancient Sanskrit text that goes right to the heart of the nature of existence, the nature of consciousness, the question of matter and non-matter, the elements, the faculties of perception and the functionality of those sense faculties.

Lord Avalokiteshvara who millennia later also came to be known as the Bodhisattva (2) Quan Yin, was not only a wise, very astute and courageous leader of his people, he was also a philosopher, discoverer and inventor. When he - it must have been some thirteen thousand years ago - moulded his first clay vessel from a lump of clay, he became the inventor of pottery, thus single-handedly setting the stage for many early technological advances, the products of which are still benefiting humankind.

We know about him through the Heart Sutra, a short ancient scripture from India (the English translation from either Sanskrit or Tibetan, Pali or Chinese versions contains no more than about 500 words) but this sutra is, in spite of its brevity, still a rich compilation of mantra like oral segments, commentary texts from sometimes misunderstanding followers, fragments of highbrow discussions, pieces of sometimes confused dialog and expressions of veneration.

Introduction to the story - a different approach

I wanted to tell his story, but instead of adding one more to the thousands of already available commentaries, myths and legends about him, I came up with a very different and rather unique approach, an approach that might lead to quite a different but novel understanding of Avalokiteshvara and the Heart Sutra, a less philosophical one to be sure and seemingly also a less (at first sight at least) spiritual one.

A new aspect - at first glance perhaps rather far fetched, maybe even absurd - will become clear in the story that I'll be telling here about the origin of Avalokiteshvara's account in the Heart Sutra. This aspect (about form and emptiness) is actually quite a soteriological one, although soteriologic in a very practical and utilitarian sense. (3)

I will tell the story of how Avalokiteshvara made a discovery that eventually delivered his people - and humankind - from the thirst and starvation that had been caused by the repeated periods of drought that were characteristic of the climate in the populated tropical zones of the planet throughout the end of the last ice age.

What follows is a reconstructive fantasy of a sequence of historical events that took place some thirteen thousand years ago when Avalokiteshvara, a tribal leader, had to find ways to help his people overcome a severe shortage of drinking water.

I have also attempted to reconstruct the moment, the environment and the mindset of those who were present when one of the first dualistic abstractions - form and emptiness - was being made and explained but… almost immediately integrated back into the non-dualist reality of the concrete sensorially observable world.

The story then that follows here is about how, why and when these two words: 'form' and 'emptiness', were first uttered and how far reaching the consequences were. Note in the reaction of the tribal audience to Avalokiteshvara’s words, how their understanding was very practical and utilitarian, while Avalokiteshvara’s understanding shows us the beginnings of a deep abstract understanding concerning concrete observations that lies at the birth of philosophy as well as technology.

The Story of the Bowl

One day, a very long time ago, close to the dawn of the emergence of 'modern' humankind, the tribal leader Avalokiteshvara had finally figured it out. For days he had been sitting by the dried-out riverbed, a former stream that was now only the littlest of a trickle compared to what it used to be so many years ago when the rains had been more abundant.

The frown on his forehead had become deeper and deeper, his mind more and more preoccupied with trying to find a way to deal with the drought. For a long time he had been trying to find a new source of drinking water, but although a new source he had not found, what he had found though was... a solution.

But it hadn’t come easy.

As he had been sitting there on his hunches, looking for ways of how and where to lead his people to water, he knew that in order to find a solution, that he first had to clear his mind from the worries he had about feeding his tribe. And as he succeeded - now with a mind less disturbed - all the while gazing at a peculiar rock in that now dried-up riverbed, he suddenly realized how in the past the force of the once wild stream must have hollowed out that rock. He then remembered how water tended to puddle in those kind of hollowed out rocks and boulders.

He suddenly cupped the palms of his hands to mimic the hollow shape that he saw in that rock and he wondered why he had never considered that a hollow shape could hold stuff, contain something... water for instance.

Suddenly he became aware of the sound that a few drops of water made that still slowly trickled down the rock wall behind him.

And all of a sudden he knew it.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, and although he could hardly find the right words to express what he had just discovered, he somehow blurted out, "Form is Emptiness!"

And while he rushed to his people, he kept shouting, "Form is Emptiness, Form is Emptiness!"

But just as he was doing that, he became acutely aware that what he was saying could easily be taken the wrong way, something like…: form had no substance, or that stuff could be thought of as no more than an illusion. So he quickly added, "and Emptiness is Form!"

"Huh?... What?" the tribal members wondered as they watched him running madly down the hill towards them, "He must be as delirious as all of us are!" (You see, by this time extreme dehydration had pretty well affected everybody and it resulted in rather erratic and unpredictable behavior.)

"… and Emptiness is Form!" Avalokiteshvara shouted once more and he muttered to himself, "Good thing I added that. If stuff were just empty-by-nature, people could easily conclude that they would not have to take responsibility for stuff." As it was, he had concluded, they had already become too apathetic.

He was surprised though that the reaction of his people to the discovery he had just made was quite lackluster. But he could understand why his own exhilaration did not make any sense to them. So he returned to the river bed and pondered deeply about how he could make this "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form" business clear to them.

Eventually, as though mesmerized by his memories of how the stream's water had once played so wildly with the rocks, sand, mud and clay, and had created so many hollows and water filled pockets in the rocks, he came up with a way to demonstrate his discovery. He would show them how his discovery of form and emptiness could also deliver them from thirst and starvation...

He looked for a still moist part of the riverbed to see if he could find some clay that was still soft enough so that he could shape it with his hands. After he found some, he gathered his people around him and he took the lump of clay and carefully kneaded it into a round shape.

"Form!" he shouted, proudly showing the round lump to the crowd.

"A boulder!" someone in the crowd shouted, mumbling that there was nothing special about such a round shape - there were after all plenty such round stones and pebbles to be found. But some of the others were amazed, they realized that their leader had been able to produce that shape by himself... with his own hands... he had just formed a ball from a handful of clay.

Then Avalokiteshvara surprised them even more. With his fist he punched a deep dimple into the ball of clay and he as he held it up, pointing at the hollowed out shape, he said elatedly, "Emptiness!"

"Hollow!" someone shouted back, but clearly not as elated as he was.

But then, in order to make his point really clear, Avalokiteshvara reached with this hollow lump of clay for that trickle of water that was dripping from the rock behind him, letting the hollow ball fill itself slowly with water.

"Drink!" he said, while he offered them the water that it now contained, "Drink from this eh... hollow ball... eh... bowl!"

"A bowl?" some in the crowd wondered, "What's a bowl? Drinking from a ball of clay?!"

But surprise and admiration followed soon after they saw how Avalokiteshvara himself proceeded to drink water from it himself; water from a ball of clay that now, astonishingly, was holding water.

But as no one came forward yet to drink, Avalokiteshvara was not sure if the gathering really fully appreciated the importance and the extent of his demonstration, so he urged them on, and slowly and reluctantly - something like this had never ever happened before - they came to drink.

When the bowl was empty, Avalokiteshvara demonstrated it again, again filling it from the trickle of water that dripped from the rock. And then, one by one, they came to drink from the bowl.

Eventually the bowl lost its shape so Avalokiteshvara moulded it back into a ball shape and again he punched a deep dimple into it and again he turned it into a bowl.

He then picked up another lump of clay and while he put the previously made bowl aside, he repeated the process, and eventually all of the tribal members came to have a drink.

Some time later he got the idea that if he would let the bowls sit to dry and let them bake in the sun, that the bowls would keep their shape longer, and so he proceeded to make more bowls, even some large ones.

Eventually some of the tribal members began to copy him and over time they realized that they had found a way to collect large quantities of water from small sources. In the past they would have run out of water altogether. They also discovered that they could keep large quantities of fresh water in clay pits in order to save it for later use.

Avalokiteshvara did not stop with his keen observations, over time he figured out how rock, clay, water, clouds and even fire formed. He discovered the principle of what he called skandhas. (4) (Something we nowadays call aggregates or phase states.)
He would explain his discoveries and insight this to his people. He discerned how there are five distinct gradations between the very hard and concrete such as the rocky earth, and the very subtle such as the skies and its clouds. He formulated how form can turn into emptiness through five stages: from earth to water, to fire, to air, to open space: from the gross to the subtle through a sequence of five in-between steps or (the way we say it nowadays) from solid to liquid, to plasma, to vapor and to vacuousness (6).

He also discovered the correlation between these five elemental or aggregate states and the five senses:
, human touch had mostly to do with solids,
, taste with liquids,
. sight had to do with light and fire,
. smell concerned vapors and gas, and
. hearing involved space and the vibrations through it - like drumbeats.

Although he must have been aware that much of what he said went over the heads of the ones he tried to explain it to, he knew that the practical applications of his insights would keep everyone healthier, happier and freer. They would drink fresher water, collected from cleaner sources rather than murky pools. They would be able to store food in lidded vessels and keep it from going bad. They could now save it for times when supplies would not be plenty. He figured that they would even be able to use their fires to turn the clay vessels into reusable pots. There was no end to this.

With his insight into the five elements and the five senses he would teach everyone how to use them to a better advantage.

He helped his people to use their faculties more sensibly and acutely so that they could distinguish between reality and imagination, especially the fearful imaginations and illusions that were instilled into them in the past, illusions that had kept them trapped into subservience through trickery by fear and misinformation... but that is another story.

Thus Avalokiteshvara, helped them to reclaim their original free nature and retain it rather than falling back into subservience.

Notes:

Heart Sutra text in Sanskrit
One of the oldest scriptures
in which Avalokiteshvara appears. (5, 8)

(1) It is interesting to note that the Sanskrit name Avalokiteshvara literally means 'The (tribal) lord (ishvara) who from above overlooks (avalo) the world (ki cf. the greek ge); definitely a lord who did 'dig' this world and observed it with a keen eye, consciously and compassionately looking with understanding.

It may be no coincidence that the title 'bishop', which comes from the Greek 'episkopos' (a watcher, overseer having an all-round overseeing view) has a similar meaning as 'avalokiteshvara'.

(2) 'Bodhisattva' (Sanskrit), a human being whose essence is enlightenment. From 'bodhi' (knowledge, wisdom, lucid insight) and 'sattva', essence, being ('sat' is existence).

(3) Soteriology - the doctrine of deliverance and salvation; from the Greek 'soterion', 'deliverance'; from soter, savior; from the Sanskrit/Aryan root SAR /SAL, to keep whole, to save, to keep safe.

(4) The five skandhas:

five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space,
five aggregates: solid, liquid, plasmic, vapor, sound,
five attributes: rupa, samskara, sanjna, vedana, vijnana - five from a range of twelve nidanas.
five senses: touching, tasting, seeing, smelling, hearing,
five organs of perception: hands, mouth, eyes, nose, ears.

Notice the vertical and horizontal order in the five series of skandhas listed above. These five series can be divided into two groups:

The top three series represent the observable (form) and are thus the material skandhas that we perceive.
The bottom two series are the psycho-physical skandhas that are initially without observations (hence their emptiness), but that fill themselves up, so to speak, with data. Thus the bottom two series of skandhas are used to perceive with.

(5) The Heart Sutra finishes with the Sanskrit :

गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā (7)

My interpretation and translation:

"Go, going, gone... gone all the way - we made it."

I like to interpret this mantra like the use of the song We shall overcome, the anthem of the US civil rights movement of the nineteen-sixties when this song was so enthusiastically sung, helping to successfully overcome the racial challenges of that age.

Dealing with challenges involves four stages:

Recognizing to overcome a challenge: 'gate' 'go' (imperative or infinitive),
Practicing (tapasya) overcoming that challenge: 'gāte' 'going' (present participle),
Success! Having overcome the challenge: 'paragate' 'gone' (past participle),
The challenge is fully behind us: 'pārasaṃgate': 'having gone all the way, we made it.'

(6) "Quintessence" - a newly formulated scalar field.

(7) "Bodhi" is enlightened insight, while "svāhā" is an expression of success, victory.

(8) For more in depth notes on the original "Heart Sutra" text go to part four of: http://www.freebynature.org/2007/05/form-is-emptiness-emptiness-is-form.html

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths

2011-07-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Traditional translation (1):

Note: When reading the following words by the Buddha, imagine that he, while speaking, was actually pointing to various parts of his body:

to his brow when he talked about the mind,
to his chest when he talked about his heart and sensuality,
to his navel when he talked about the fermentation of becoming,
to the top of his head (higher awareness) when he talked about ignorance.

'When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady &amp;attained imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the ending of the mental fermentations. I discerned, as it was actually present, that 'This is stress... (2) This is the origination of stress... This is the cessation of stress... This is the way leading to the cessation of stress... These are fermentations...(3) This is the origination of fermentations... This is the cessation of fermentations... This is the way leading to the cessation of fermentations.' My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there was the knowledge, 'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

~ The Buddha in a conversation with the Jain Sage Saccaka (4)

Notes:

(1) There are many commentators who wonder why the usual list...

Dukkha or Stress, Mental Suffering - its existence (2),
Samudaya - its origination,
Nirodha - its cessation,
Magga - the way leading to the cessation of dukkha (5),

...is so grandly named 'The Four Noble Truths'.
When I went deeply into the original text (as much Pali and Sanskrit as I could figure out) and the many variations of translations and interpretations, I eventually saw an additional series of four points emerge. It then dawned on me why this part of the Buddha's teachings was called 'The Four Noble Truths'. What I noticed was, when I while reading, pointed to the various parts of my body as suggested above, that the Buddha in his conversation with Saccaka, clearly put emphasis on his:

mind, '…ending of the mental fermentations…'
heart, '…release from the fermentation of sensuality…'
will, '…release from the fermentation of becoming…'
awareness, '…release from the fermentation of ignorance.'

(2) Dukkha - In this version translated as 'stress'
Etymologically 'dukkha' can be understood as being 'led astray or cut away from oneself'. Dukkha consists of two parts duk- and -kha, from the Aryan / Sanskrit roots DUK and GHA.
DUK means 'to go' or 'to lead', as in the English duct, seduction, conduct, production, duke.
GHA, KA or KAD mean 'cut away' or 'fall away', as in the English 'cathode', 'catastrophe', 'cut'.

(3) Fermentation: effluent or mental diarrhea - confusion

(4) An excerpt from 'The Longer Discourse to Saccaka' MN 36 PTS: M i 237
© 2008–2011 translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Another translation using the word 'effluent' insteadof 'fermentation':
http://www.buddhanet.net/w_s1.htm(the last two paragraphs)

(5) The 'Eightfold Path' and the 'Triple Gem' were designed by the Buddha to accomplish the cessation of suffering and confusion.

~~~

A free translation treatment of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths:

'When my mind became focused, pure and clear, unstained by any defilement, when it became flexible and steady and when it could no longer be disturbed, I aimed it at finding out how to end all mental stress and confusion and I found that (1):
- when the mind is filled with the ferment of confusion that that is mental suffering,
- that from this ferment more stress and suffering arises.
- I concluded though that all this mental suffering and confusion can be overcome, so
- I looked for and found the way that leads to the release of suffering and mental confusion.
When I focused on my heart, I found how this knowledge also released me from the ferment of emotional confusion.
And when I focused on my will (2), this knowledge relieved me from the confusion that leads to willful strife.
As to my higher awareness, this knowledge released me from the confusion of not knowing who I am.

With this release, I now know what freedom (3) is.
I now know how birth comes to its fruition, how divine life fulfills itself.
Nothing further is needed in this world. That's it.'

~ After the Buddha

Notes:
(1) The Four Noble Truths:

The existence of dukkha,
The origination of dukkha,
The cessation of dukkha,
The method for the cessation of dukkha (4).

(2) The will - seated in the 'hara' according to Zen - when deviated a dysfunctional will drives one to 'become that, what one presumes one ought to be'

(3) Hence, the possibility of 'moksha', freeing oneself from dukkha, a return to one's authentic self.

(4) The 'Eightfold Path' and the 'Triple Gem' were designed by the Buddha to accomplish the cessation of suffering and confusion.

The usual road to freedom leads to quite a few pitfalls...

2011-06-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

Introducing "The Happiness Trap" *

“

Words inside our head, we call "thoughts"

Do any of the following thoughts sound familiar? "I'm not doing it right." "It's useless; I may as well give up now. This a waste of time!" "I'm an idiot!" "Why aren't I practicing what I read in that book?

~ Russ Harris MD - The Happiness Trap

”

In order not to lead the reader astray on the "usual road to freedom" - a road which actually leads to quite a number of pitfalls** - I have carefully stayed away in the articles on this site from offering any hints, directions, suggestions or methods on how to undo or overcome suffering, how to deal with, say, depression, how to reclaim our innate freedom, etc. Whatever we tend to do to alleviate our suffering, it actually increases it, and regarding freedom, in one of the articles here I mention:

"The actions we tend to take to gain, retain, regain or safeguard our freedom, are the very actions that prevent us from realizing that freedom."

and
"Suffering is always characterized by the fact that it includes failing attempts to alleviate itself."

So, rather than offering dubious ways out, and rather than having the reader step into just another trap (just read Harris' book) the intent of the articles on this site has always been to offer understanding and insight into the dynamics of the unfortunate acquisition of belief in our apparent loss or lack of freedom.

I feel that it helps that tracing and describing how and why the belief in that lack or loss of freedom has been acquired (instilled in those who were led to believe that they actually do lack that freedom or have indeed lost it) that its sting will slowly diminish. However, I have been quite aware that this approach does not help the recipient of those beliefs and thoughts, to let go of them. To discover that thoughts and beliefs are a not a "true" representation of reality, is not the same thing as being able to let go of those thoughts and beliefs... if that is needed of course.

To those who would like to effectively let go of unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, I highly and strongly recommend reading, practicing and applying the directions and suggestions by Russ Harris MD in his book The Happiness Trap.

click this line for a preview

Russ Harris gently and consistently helps his readers to adopt and apply effective ways to defuse the power of the very thoughts that causes the thinker of those thoughts to wrongly assume that they represent reality... which thoughts - any thoughts really - actually never do...

How so? Well, don't hesitate to get and peruse the book.

Whereas in my article How we were made to think who we are, I show

how and why

people are made to believe the illusion of who they appear to be, that that is who they are,

and how and why

people are made to believe that what they ought to be is what they should become...

Russ Harris shows his readers how to deal with those beliefs and thoughts and how to "defuse" them, so that one eventually ends up not only being aware of one's real being but also that

one recovers and lives the reality that one is who one actually already always was and will be...

- minus the deviating power of illusive thinking of course -

Whereas in my articles The Ownership of Your (?) Thoughts and Your (?) thoughts and emotions - whose are they really? I trace and show how and why thoughts came to be assumed to be one's own, the many exercise in "The Happiness Trap" guide the reader on how to successfully dis-empower and eventually disown those thoughts.

It is not that Russ Harris tells his readers that unhelpful thoughts will disappear - on the contrary! In a careful and persistent manner he steers his readers away from putting the expectation of the result of the exercises before the actual doing of those exercises... and he is quite right in doing that... lest the "Happiness Trap" closes on the reader.

But I myself can be a little less careful as I don't believe there is any danger in telling people that all-too-often thoughts are no more than commodities - products on a store shelf - and that when one buys (into) them, that the shelves displaying those thoughts will remain well stocked.

"Thoughts as merchandize" may well be a supply-and-demand thing. When the demand diminishes (by disbelieving and defusing unhelpful thoughts) that just like with goods*** for which there are no takers, those goods will eventually disappear off the shelves.

Chapter 23 in "The Happiness Trap" is an excellent and penultimate treatment of what awareness is and how to "become aware" of it.

Whereas in my article Awareness: True Being and Being True, I describe what awareness is (also awareness' etymological roots), Harris effectively guides his readers in how to kindle their awareness, how to "notice noticing" by simply "observing", without any danger for the observer to fall into the trap of becoming "self-conscious".

Whoever has been inspired - but possibly also 'in the end' stumped - by Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry "Who am I?" will find Dr. Harris' book a great help in eventually realizing - actually, factually and functionally - that...

One can and will be who one is without any thoughts about how to be.

Notes:
* The bold colored lines are clickable links.
** Except for the physical exercises that I offer in The Integrated Yawning and Stretching Technique on "The Kundalini Process" blog.
*** or bads :)

Is Suffering an Illusion?

2011-06-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

What pain and suffering have in common is that both have external causes. The nature of those external causes though differs very much:

Pain is brought about by external negative physical hurt - directly or indirectly- a hurt that is physically and tangibly real.
Although pain is subjectively felt, it is also objectively measurable*.
Suffering is caused by external negative mental hurt - directly- a hurt that is brought about by mala fide (of ill intent) perpetrators who use deceptive illusion to inflict a mental ill that is intended to make their victim(s) subservient (or redundant).
Suffering is subjectively experienced but is not objectively measurable the same way pain is**.

A characteristic of the suffering that is the result of this ill intended deceptive illusion is that the illusion in it is being presented and treated as being even more real than tangible physical reality. Whereas physical pain tends to happen accidentally and statistically, that what is deceptively threatened, has been made to be experienced in such a way that it can take place at any time - all the time; ergo, it is made to appear imminent and present. The result of this perceived imminence and seeming presence is that the fear for the threat to be executed any moment is felt as a constant. That mentally felt constancy and seeming imminent presence is what makes it appear to be more real than reality as the 'really' felt presence of fear (which is also present in the nervous and muscular system) never goes away. ***

This type of deceptive illusion uses the threat of physical pain as a tool to make the illusion seem as real as the actual infliction of physical pain. The use of this kind of illusion is invariably preceded or accompanied by actual "sample" inflictions of physical pain, if not the killing of "sample" victims.

Although suffering is entirely mental, it is always accompanied by threatened physical pain or the the expectation of painful death.

The fact that the feared infliction is a threat only is what characterizes it to be an illusion. The reason that such threats are threats only is because the perpetrator does not really want to execute the threats lest he loses his subservient victim(s). (E.g. in general, a sexual predator who threatens to kill his victims would not really want to kill them, lest he cannot sexually abuse them.)

Very often suffering is seen or treated as a "maneuver" that a suffering person is using in a manipulative manner; often the sufferer is blamed for this manipulative "scheming". It is unfair and unfortunate though that the kind of manipulative actions of suffering people are understood and treated that way. A case can be made that suffering people have the right, the prerogative or even the privilege to "use" their suffering in a legit manner to "affect or control" their situation - after all, they unfairly lost their right to a life free of pain and suffering in such an illegitimate way.

For more on this topic please read:
"Is life suffering or illusion?"

* Measurement of nerve conductance via electrodes.
** At least not yet, unless fMRI technology makes it "visible".
*** Compare the last sentence with a statement by Philip K. Dick in his book "Valis" (1981)

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

For a treatment of this statement please read:
Reality does not require belief.

Causality and Time

2011-05-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

The way bricks are laid... and the way thoughts arise...

Pete:

Concerning how our thoughts follow up on each-other and whether or not we are in control of their sequence...

Forget for a moment about the brain, and think of a brick house, each brick laid dictates the position of the next one, but it's the bricklayer who places the bricks. So, in the case of the brain, it's the thinker, his thinking skills and his practice that play the role of bricklayer.

E.J.:

Yeah but it seems to me that there has to have been a brick or two already laid before a particular pattern (practice) becomes evident. I mean I worked with bricklayers and there's always a layout guy that goes ahead and sets up the pattern. Not to mention bricks already made and abundant enough and in the same area. So, I'm saying that if practice makes patterns then there must be a pattern already made to start a practice.

Pete:

Look at it this other way, although, things arise co-dependently, they also happen sequentially.

Wim:

Ah, Pete, just what I was waiting for... :), I also see that simultaneity!

The issue of cause-and-effect... (the way we nowadays tend to see how an unfolding of action is brought about by something prior to that action; the way we tend to see action as a re-action or follow-through-action to a previous action) ... was not known to early non dualist thinkers like the Buddha or Nagarjuna... at least not the same way we currently explain 'causation' or 'causality'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratitya-samutpada

When they spoke of causality they spoke of co-dependent arisings or interdependent origination (that's how pratitya-samutpada usually gets translated). They did not speak about 'cause and subsequent effect' or 'action and subsequent reaction' in a time-wise unidirectional linear sort of sense. Their notion of co-dependent or interdependent arisings also always included more than two linked dependencies. Pratitya-samutpada was seen as a complex web of interferences... the way my mother said it once,

"Everything has got everything to do with everything else, but the way we see time, messes things up in such a way that we don't see anything anymore the way things actually happen."
(In Dutch, "Alles heeft met elkaar te maken, maar hoe we met tijd omspringen,
is hoe we er geen touw meer aan vast kunnen knopen.")

Our way of looking at 'happenings' linearly and one-directionally time-wise, is also steeped in a rather recent materialistic way of looking at what is, a paradigm that excludes 'anything considered to be opposite to the materialist definition as non-existent or not-extant and thus deniable, dubious or at least negligible.

The dualist paradigm made us divide the world into materialistic and non-materialistic 'notions'... a dualism that over time easily invited either one monism (materialism) or the other (spiritualism) to be deemed the only reality - either one judged by some kind of socio-moral acceptance, resistance, skepticism or denial.

This is not to say that before those divergent paradigms developed so contrastingly, that the world was seen more whole... obviously not... otherwise people like a Buddha or a Nagarjuna would not have arrived on the scene up expounding their insights.

One thing though, in their days - before the 'age of the clock' - time was experienced differently. That is... if time was experienced at all !!!

To us - who are so bonded to the clock from birth on (birth all too often scheduled by appointment, our feeding patterns, breast or bottle, so timely regulated) - when we look back into history (something that we clearly make up as we go) we all too much project our description of time onto whatever we may see as experienced in our stories of the past.

That means that if we want to understand "co-dependant arisings", etc., we have to clear our understanding of the insights of Buddha incarnations from our 'time' interpretations.

When we do that, when we take our understanding of time out of their causality/causation equation, then, as a consequence, we also subtract our assumed one-directional temporal linearity from it. Thus we will end up seeing and understanding their 'pratitya-samutpada' more clearly. When we also, in order to even better understand, include that in those days less materialistic 'drivers-and-drivens' were not denied, it might become evident that even non-material elements (so to speak) were part of the web of mutual reciprocal simultaneous interferences...

To illustrate the multi-directionality of time in structures operating in dimensions less tiny than the sub-nuclear, let me mention autopoiesis and teleodynamics, creative dynamics in which future patterns influence past arrangements or arrangements still to take place. (Geometrically Penrose (1989) identified such teleo-patterning in the way certain aperiodic crystals foresee their final non-periodic quasi-crystalline formation and set up beforehand to reach that shape.)

At any rate, I suggest it behooves us to wake up or re-awaken some intuitions, notions or ideas that we may very well harbor, conceptions perhaps that could be in line with a reality that differs radically from the assumptions that we held for real while they adulterated our observations of and in reality.

As well, we should hone our non-dual paradigm and ensure that, as we profess our nondualism, that we exclude dualist remnants that might still stick to us by force of habit, which only by way of habitual thinking seem to make sense - in spite of them being mental residue, being no more than non-sensorial nonsense.

Pete:

Well Wim, let's keep this simple and let us stick to the point I was trying to make. As far as sequentiality and cause and effect goes, watching a ballet, it seems that the beginning of a certain melodic theme causes the entrance of a certain dancer, and that a dimming of the lights causes the exit of another, etc.

Wim:

As we play life, that might indeed seem so... artistically, artificially in an artsy sense.

Pete:

Well, no, I don't think it just seems so. I mean, although this is still a metaphor, in the biological ballet that takes place in our head, neuronal connections always precede mental acts, and mental acts call for more neuron connections. No ticket, no laundry; no brain, no consciousness.

Wim:

It looks to me that in what you just said, that you include a certain 'webbedness' as well as some very welcome physical/mental integrative considerations.

Your view though seems to be in a one dimensional temporal way, albeit... bi-directional and that is great!

You may remember that I once suggested time to be two dimensional and that time - the square of time actually - is part of that 11 dimensions space-time String Theory, the extra dimension being an additional temporal dimension - orthogonal to our usual description of time. I said something like, "Heck, there might even be some kind of multi-dimensionality to time. The collapse of the wave function always involves a squaring of space/time vectors. We have to square with time... square off with time, really!

In Quantum Mechanics with certain complex representations of probability functions 'upon collapse', time also gets squared and... that's the crux of the matter... time's linearity and sequentiality disappear... and it is that what allows for that coincidental simultaneity of what is usually seen as dichotomous, dual, linear and sequential."

What we as humans tend to do in an attempt to gain a simple grasp of seemingly complex reality is to do something that is akin to taking the 'square root of it'...: something comparable to how we find it easier to visualize the size of a 225 square mile forest fire when we take the root of 225 and visualize the size of the forest fire to be 15 miles long by 15 miles wide.

The way we attempt to understand the dynamic 'a m b i e n c e' of life (the totality of surrounding conditions and circumstances affecting growth or development: atmosphere, climate, environment, medium, milieu, mise en scène, surroundings, world ~ Houghton Mifflin) is something similar: we take the square root of it: the nine dimensions of 11 D space-time (M theory) become three dimensions (the remaining six becoming hidden) and t (time) to the power of two become just t (time).

That 'root taking' produces a modicum of simplicity: we can follow it, there is sequence and linearity, order is simpler in lower orders of magnitude, we can 'geometrically' oversee it... forgetting though that this calculated simplicity only represents the square root of totality... and thus we, analyzing and simplifying, we live now in and according to a derivation of reality...

Cosmic Memory

2011-05-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

Diving deeper
(Are you coming with me?)

Diving deeper

You, I
into the
PRESENT PRESENCE
and we are loosening up,
dissolving our individual control gradually into it.
We can afford it,
nothing to lose anymore,
no fear no more.

We trust this momentous timelessness
so confidently now!

We are
at one point now
being aware of
being
and
being-even-not
simultaneously.

A primordial borderline-ness
shaping up
and dis-appearing
A PRIMAL NOW.

How to find more words
and which ones,
and why?

But there is an image,
we recall,
we want to recover it...

Imaginatively,
we remember ourselves being a coin...
a one-sided coin however...
Huh?

(are you still with me?)

One-sidedly
we drop onto nothing
tumbling
vibrating
"here now"

We are voicing it
...somehow...
vibrating IT within,
having nothing though to vibrate in.

A word perhaps?
Yes IT IS!
It is IS
IS... IS.

THE WORD

ahhh, primal sound... ohhh.
So Ham, yes, y-e-s,
YESSS!

The other side of the coin?
The (n)one not-even-not-there?
Not even imaginable,
not even wanting... nor wanted.

The freedom and impossibility of being,
the unneeded-ness.

And we are flipping ourselves into a void...

The void,
that wasn't even there
before we flipped ourselves
:-), :-), :-).

We get it,
we've got it !!!
The flipping forms the void
performs the void
as we flip our being.

And we chuckle,
we unavoidably realize the unflippable side:
Our SELF between,
between something and not even nothing
SELF is between

BETWEEN
IS
SELF

An inkling of relating,

a beginning of playing around limits,

Tumbling through NO and THING

And we chuckle even more,
we laugh,
fun,

f-u-n,
FUN !!!

WE COULD DO THIS FOREVER
and we DO

Laughter...

WE ARE ALREADY DOING THIS FOREVER
NOW
FOREVER NOW!

Laughingly we expand our expanse:
our universal echo

I, I
I, I, I

WE, WE, WE
THIS, THIS, THIS
HERE, HERE

!!!

Universal laughter
we tumblingly form our flipping universe.

Merriment,
divine fun:

the tumbli-ness of being and being not:
flippingly we discover a playful naughtiness.

This has forever only been the beginning,
The endy edge of being...

And...

there is no end to stopping...

Existence

2011-05-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

It may be hard to prove that something exists - even if it does.
But it is impossible to prove that something does not exist.
It is not needed to prove that "nothing" per se exists or does not exist - after all nothing is not called nothing for nothing.
Experience cannot be proven, one can only be aware of it.

Proof of something (not in the sense of mathematical proof) is usually wanted by those whose assumptions preclude the existence of that something, they then invariably urge (or trick) those who account of that something into proving the existence of that something to those who themselves already precluded its existence and who almost invariably keep persisting in precluding it no matter what.

They are quite likely feeling strengthened by the fact that it is hard to prove the existence of anything anyways (1). The ones who account of the existence of something on the other hand, feel strengthened by the fact that it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something (2) while they are also strengthened by the fact that their accounts are based on the awareness of experience. (4)

It may be hard to prove that something exists - even if it does!

This statement does not actually specifically deal with the reality of the existence of humans (e.g. our sons or daughters or ourselves): whether 'we seem to be' or 'materially are', whether our presence (and thus by extension any presence) is some illusive mentalized imagination by ??? or an existential and material unit made out of ???, created or not created by ???, by a ??? that exist or does not exist.

But, - as we cannot seem to prove anything conclusively, (see down below) statements like the above are all too often understood as to mean that therefore reality or even existence must be unsubstantial, thus only essential and not existential.

In this case the impossibility to prove anything conclusively is thus used to prove that that anything must therefore be immaterial, at best essential only, but definitely not existential... an absurd kind of proof - isn't it?!

That something cannot be proven conclusively in the above terms, can actually also mean that such a proof is redundant, that to insist on such a proof would be absurd - ridiculous actually.

To insist that a human should prove its own existence is like insisting that a hand should shake itself.

Discussions on statements like the above usually also end up in dealing with the question of whether the reality of self is physical or metaphysical, body or soul, mind or body, spirit or matter... the well known dualist distinctions...

Depending on one's own stance, one then requires proof from the other party to prove the opposite stance to be true. Such proof can never convince both sides, as the one party equally insists on proof from the other part and vice versa.

Obviously we are on the wrong track with this whole requisition of proof business. *

In the end proof only convinces the ones who provide and support the proof, proof can never convince someone else conclusively.

Note:

* This obviously means that neither the dualist nor the monist view (both use absolutisms of one sort or another) is tenable... That is actually what Advaitins or Non-dualists suggest...Non-dualists actually don't mean that non-dualism means 'not two and therefore must be one'. They only say 'not two' while they insist on focusing on the awareness of who one is and what anything actually is. Thus their deliberations are always about self-evidence, awareness and consciousness.

What's so wrong with Duality? Why the need to not treat it as real?

2011-04-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

A dualist view can serve a purpose... no doubt... but only as long as duality (or dualism) is seen as a conceptual description of reality - no matter what, it a limited and therefore limiting understanding of reality. I myself use it WHEN NEEDED (like in this instance) as a kitchen knife, a handy analytical cutting tool for discernment. But... I know WHEN to return that tool to its drawer in my kitchen cabinet.

Through ABSTRACTION (almost literally) this tool can turn wondrous-artistic-complexity-and-mystery into an artificial conceptual scarce simplicity; it can turn a multifaceted apperception of a multidimensional world into a strict linear one: a world of simplistic polarities - often opposing ones rather than complementary polarities. Very left brain really… analysis only, hardly any right brain synthesis!

Bosch's Heaven and Hell

The dualist view is very male… It is very God the Father knows best-like: good vs. evil, judgmentalism with all too often a lack of subtlety and nuancing.

Again, even that can serve some purpose but when duality or dualism becomes a definition of reality, then it creates trouble... on which it... thrives!

So, it is OK for dualism to be a temporary mode of interpreting reality especially when things get TOOO MUCH, but it is important to ALWAYS return to wonder, to not-knowing, not defining… to mystery…

All too often, dualism pretends to know it all… but really it only knows itself as it imagines itself mirror-imaged in everything, as it shines itself onto its own projected 2 dimensional mirror surface while attempting to prove its own absolutely-necessary-realistic-existence… narcissistic self reflection with - really - no one - not even one real human being - in sight.

~~~
Comment by Tim Cumper:

The abstract intellect - like a knife - yes a good analogy. Essentially reductionist.

In creating our abstract conceptual marvels, like the wood-carver, bringing in to being his creation - he can only do it by reducing the original integrity of the piece of wood he is working. His new creation, his idea, takes no account of the pile of shavings on the floor. The intellect always carves its own perspective - reducing a total glory to a mere facet.

So the intellect, or any perspective derived from the intellect is not really suitable, and often troublesome - when employed to intercept truth - not the best tool at all. Our own individual being is already a sharp blade of perception, silently dissecting the whole with its perspective - it is troublesome to dissect this even further by reducing our own wholeness. So we can only intercept and resonate with the truth using our whole being - which implies using our fully unrestricted & undistracted awareness.

We should understand that any particular "practice" or self-induced mode of perception - often originates from and is motivated by a perspective - and any conclusions will therefore be specious and narrow. What we bring to the table - we consume. If intellectual gymnastics are anyone's idea of heaven - then of course they are welcome to saturate themselves in that experience.

16 April, 2011

On Mind and Thoughts.

2011-04-09T17:39:00.000-07:00

Quite some years ago some friends figured out that I must be clairvoyant. One of them even asked me if I could read their minds, I said, "Yes of course I could." She then asked me if I could tell her what she was thinking, but I answered that I was not interested in "her" thoughts (gesturing quotes with my fingers) because, "Whatever you are thinking are not your thoughts anyway. Why waste our time on that...?!"

Luckily she did not say - as people usually would - that my answer was a cop-out, instead she wanted to know how come her thoughts could not be hers while, after all, she felt them to be in her own head.

I explained along the 'lines of thinking" in the following links: (please click the links when ready)

The Ownership of Your (?) Thoughts

"Your" thoughts and emotions - whose are they really?

She then said, "So really, my mind is like a shopping bag, whatever is in there I bought, but with shopping stuff I know that the source of that stuff is not me, while with my thoughts I assume that the source is me… ... ...
You know what, you are right, why should I buy into my thoughts...? I mean why should I buy into the assumption that my thoughts ARE actually mine? Huh… I most often don’t even like "my" thoughts (gesturing quotes with her fingers.) Ha, why am I behaving like a clairvoyant thinking I know my thoughts while I don’t even believe that anybody can be clairvoyant."

There's only one world, the other one is not real...

2011-04-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

Jan:

"…the world is both fundamentally dual and non-dual at the same time…"

From: http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/wheeloflife/

Wim:

It is important to define what one understands that world to be... especially when considering both its proposed non-dual and dual formation.

What if the one world is the extant world of sensorially contactable reality, and the other world an abstract, speculative, conceptual and thus “RAREFIED” world in the mind?!

In the abstract, speculative, conceptual and thus “RAREFIED” world-of-the-mind, the tool (the mind itself aided by the sensorial system) that we humans use to figure out what the nature is of the world within which we exist (and which of course simultaneously exists within us), cannot help but “throwing in” dualist conclusions into the mix of the analytical data that it offers up for further consideration.
Extra care is needed to sort through those data in order to ascertain which data are characteristic of what is under investigation and which data are characteristic of the measuring or investigative tool used in the investigation.
For example, the knife we use to see what the inside of a loaf of bread looks like, will cut the loaf of bread and show its inside, however the cut itself is a characteristic of the cutting tool and not necessarily a direct characteristic of the bread itself.
Hence when one uses a dualist tool (a handy knife-like implement to distinguish, separate and grade qualities) to analyze a “thing” (e.g. the world), whatever one can conclude about the nature of that “thing” (e.g. the world) needs to be seriously investigated as to which aspects of that nature are actually a characteristic of the tool and which aspects are aspects of the “thing” (e.g. the world) one wants to get an understanding of.
The result of a measurement of something we measure, all too often also includes the characteristics of the measuring tool. Also one should always take great care that that what we are measuring that it does not take on the characteristics of the measuring tool itself.
What I see then as the world, is “one real sensorially distinguishable non-dual world”, in which we humans operate a 'distinctions-finding-tool' (a dualizing analyzing mind) that can indeed come to an understanding (grasping, grokking) of that world. And, while we humans use that tool (our mind) to appreciate more about the world, we also take great care to acknowledge that that what our mind offers (the conglomerate set of distinct data that represents that world) that within the mind itself, its representation can posture AS THOUGH it is that world (a posturing that elsewhere I called “megalomania of a dysfunctional mind”) while we (the users of the mind) however know that that mental representation is only “maya”, an illusive replica, a rarefied carbon copy, so to say, of the extant world within which we exist and which of course simultaneously exists within us.

~~~

Comment by Mitesh Farsodia:

I love the last line, "... the extant world within which we exist and which of course simultaneously exists within us".

16 April, 2011

Pain, Pleasure and Enlightenment

2011-04-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

An enlightened being does experience pain but does not suffer from it, nor is s/he fearful of it.

Pain

An enlightened being does experience pleasure but s/he is not desiring it.

Pleasure

Of course all this depends on one's definition of the words pleasure and pain, suffering and desire.

For my purposes here, I categorize pain and pleasure as purely physical sensations that can physically befall ANY human being.

Suffering and enjoyment as well as fear and desire I see as mentalized feelings (as distinct from physical sensations) brought about by the dys-functional mental processing of pain and pleasure. This occurs only in human beings who have been made to see life as conditional and/or to be manipulated.

The mind performs a different function in the enlightened being as compared to the workings of the mind in the "not-yet-enlightened".

By the way, I subscribe to the notion that every human being who has not yet done so, is in the process of re-covering or re-cognizing their innate enlightenment.

In the enlightened being the mind plays a serving role, in the not-yet-enlightened being, the mind is the controlling agent.

The controlling mental processing in the not-yet-enlightened human plays a heavy hand in the conditional maneuvering that takes place in a world that is seen by him/her as "to be manipulated".

The serving mind in the enlightened one, registers sense input as data or "givens", that are simply playful ingredients, allowing one to participate in human life as play... divine Lila.

An enlightened being simply experiences life (inclusive of pain or pleasure), s/he does not have any need to dramatize whatever comes with life for the effect of suffering or enjoyment.

Illusion is an illusion, that's why it is called illusion!

2011-04-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

Tanya:

You are the delusional state. The horrible existential truth is that there is no way for you to escape suffering because you are that suffering.

Wim:

How sad Tanya, do you really mean that?

Have you ever considered that the way you may have been made to believe that so irrevocably is exactly how suffering gets propagated?

Please do know

that in the end

one discovers

that the whole thing about illusion

IS illusion

and that:

"delusion" is a

personally appropriated

and staunchly believed

version of illusion

all too easily projected

onto anything not illusive.

Illusion is an illusion, that's why it is called illusion!

The trick of illusion lies in the 'a t t e m p t' to make the act of illuding appear successful.

With the entertainment type of illusion we know in the end that we are tricked by the illusionist and we are happily entertained by it.

Entertainer illusionists are playful at it, they want you to know that it is trickery, otherwise you wouldn't be entertained and... you wouldn't come back for more.

The trick of 'spiritual' illusionists however is that they want you to believe that everything not-spiritual IS illusion and that you 'f o r e v e r' 'entertain' that suggestion.

It is the spiritual illusionists themselves who are entertained by it though, not the ones who fall for it (them!).

Have you ever considered that it could be that the ones propagating the "all is illusion", "all is suffering" adages aim to rob their prey of the 'simple pleasure of unquestioned being' and that it might well be that they feed off it... rather like a schoolyard bully feeding off the fear he/she instills on unsuspecting subjects by scaring them with, say, rubber spiders and worse.

Ah, the rope tricks...!

Much of the 'guru', 'karma', 'maya', 'seva', etc. spiel is no more than a similar bullying but now on a mythologized field of Kurukshetra and rather than freeing their charges from suffering, ignorance, delusion and illusion they actually maintain the belief in the 'reality' of it promising that when their charges fully believe that all is 'maya' that 'nirvana' awaits them...

Reality manifests when you let go of all beliefs

Reality is what remains after one has let go of any belief, fear, expectation, regret, judgment, etc.... all of which are second-hand third-party instilled pseudo-notions that attempt to deform simple straightforward sensorial input and its simple responses to it by superimposing them with pseudo-notions about what the sensorial-input-and-the-way-one-deals-with-it should or should not be.

The Immediacy of Experience

2011-04-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

Greg:

Wilfred Sellars' “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”

One of the most important (Western) philosophy books in the 20th century. He talks about the "Myth of the Given," arguing basically that there is no such thing as a pure, non-relational, unmediated experience of any kind.

Jason:

On the contrary!

Pure, unmediated, non-relational experience is how it is always. Even when we live through another with books, movies, music, art, it's consistently right up front!

Wim:

Indeed... un-mediated is what any experience is, and thus a... direct immediate relating.

It is the ensuing thinking regurgitation process, often an undue over-mentalization that attempts (it can't really) to protract the immediacy and it will try to worm itself in between an experience's subject/object oneness to make THAT WHAT IS

seem that it isn't what it is, or
makes what is, seem that it actually wasn't, or
if it was, that it should not have been, or
should have been different
etc...

The mind originally did not 'come about' to do that, but the way we currently live and socially and morally condition each other seems to give this interfering-with-reality-mind a head start…

Of course the mental interference into immediate directness is also directly experienced but this mental interference has a stunting and jeopardizing influence on the possibilities of any non-mental experiences ‘a f t e r’.

Eventually such a mal-functioning mind attempts to hijack the experiencer away from physical experiences... hence the pathological consequences of a mind gone haywire in one subjected to such a controlling mind.

Duality only seemingly appears to be real.

2011-04-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Peter:

Subject/Object knowledge cannot remain an instant after the cessation of duality.

For to suppose that it could, would entail a new suppression of duality and so lead to infinite regress, which could mean that duality could never cease.

Tony:

It can never cease.

Wim:

Duality does not have to cease at all... it simply does NOT EXIST.

Duality is only a mental concept

If it seems to exist, it has only the appearance of existence and is only mentally represented as:

a flawed, limited and limiting VIEW of what is,
an abstracting, negating and oppositional INTERPRETATION,
a MISCONCEPTION appearing under the guise of conceptualization,
a MISUNDERSTANDING given the appearance of some kind of valid insight,
a MISAPPRECIATION and DENIAL of ‘Reality’ in all its integral and integrated wholeness.

Fighting duality is useless, it is fighting an illusive concept only. Such fighting is no more than a shadow fight, an unneeded skirmish, that - unfortunately - only gets the one who sets out to make it cease, be lost to the illusion that it does exist.

The Mind seen as a Field around the Brain

2011-04-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

Wim:

Some points I was pondering aloud on a discussion forum some years ago:

Did the human mind develop before language or did it develop simultaneously and reciprocally? (logos, logic???)
Do we think in 'thought forms' (a trendy word) or do we think verbally based on mental images (the mind's eye's conceptual in-form-ation of sensorial input?) that have been identified and "named".
What is the relationship between thinking and mind?
Did thinking develop prior to language or did language and thinking develop in tandem... again simultaneously and reciprocally??
When we "think", what 'percentage' of it is 'silently' verbal?

Tanya responded:

I have no answers for your historical, developmental questions.

Thought is perceived, experienced, known. It would seem that the components of thought are reflections of what is apparently sensory perception. So thought can seem to be visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, emotional but it is all, essentially, perception.

What knows thought knows all perception.

Wim:

A good answer for my purpose... I appreciate that you picked up on the historical developmental dynamic in my questions; also I'm noting especially that you used the word "reflections."

This somewhere ties in with my view that a 'field' is an essential part of ANY entity or thing. A field emanates from every entity or thing, be it fauna, flora, mineral, elemental, atomic or subatomic.

Every thing, every entity has a field.

I view a 'field' as an essential measurable part of ANY entity or thing.

Wave field characteristics are not a symbolic or abstract indirect representation of what they emanate from but FORM an intrinsic 'part' of and are a presentation of any entity/thing.

Notice the distinctive use of the words 're-presentation' and 'presentation'.

Example:

A sculpture that one may have of one's mother is not one's mother, it is a replica of one's mother put together in an entirely different medium than that what one's mother in all her complexity :-) 'consists of'. Such a sculpture is a re-presentation.

A sculpture or for that matter a painting of one's mother is not 'presently' one's mother.

On the other hand I hold the view though that a mental picture that one has formed of one's mother is a LIVE interconnecting concrete link with one's mother; she extends from afar (if that happens to be the case) through one's mental picture into oneself. (vice versa of course the mental picture she has of you is also a a live link to you).

This presentative relationship results from the complex dynamic of mutual reciprocal causation that is at work in Nagarjuna's view of reality as 'interdependent origination'.

Fields emanate wave-like from every entity or thing.

The characteristics of these fields - the data (Latin, literally the 'givens') are picked up by anything that is set up to register and to be 'in-formed' by these characteristics (or a selection of them) in whatever form they are emanated and registered.

There is a mutual reciprocity between the 'registrant' or 'in-formant' and the 'registree' or 'in-formee', a complex multi-dimensional simultaneity between the seer and the seen and vice versa. This dynamic was picked up by Nagarjuna as part of his very astute observations of and deliberations on causality and change that was eventually expressed as 'interdependent origination'.

This registration occurs:

by means of sensitivity to the basic forces of nature: gravity, strong, weak, electro-magnetic.
expanding and in addition to #1 in humans and other animals by means of a variety of senses - including 'extra sensory perception' in which I mean 'extra' to be understood as 'additional'.
expanding and in addition #1 and #2 in plants by specific sensitivities to humidity, temperature and other characteristics that flora appears to be sensitive and responsive to.

Noting here that sensitivity and responsiveness are wondrously and NOT JUST SYMBOLICALLY interconnected.

I'm working on a different approach to describe the workings of the brain/mind. I have already described elsewhere how I see the human mind as a field emanating from the brain. I compared this to the idea of how the two components of the electro-magnetic field represent a 'greater something', the electrons presenting or GIVING 'its' particulate nature, the magnetic field presenting or GIVING 'its' wave nature; the particle AND wave thus being a presentation both-or-together of a 'greater something', all this similar to how particles and waves both-or-together present a 'greater something' that goes by the name of 'light'.

I suggest that 'in origin' we see the physical brain as a complex conglomerate of lipids: fatty alcohols (cholesterol) and fatty acids that originally (way long ago in human evolution and very early in the development of the embryo) started out as a tiny pool of 'lipids in solution', a solution that was set up to be especially sensitive to wavelike 'disturbances'. These disturbances or interferences created multi-dimensional complex interference patterns within this expanding three dimensional lipid solution pool that eventually dynamically stabilized itself. Along the myriad of patterned interconnected stabilization lines a precipitate got 'laid down' that eventually developed into nervous tissue. Altogether this eventually resulted in the physical structure of the brain as we have it.

(Imperial Oil just recently - I believe via Digital Media Group Ltd. and Mammoth Pictures - produced a TV commercial showing an animation of the formation of the human brain, depicting a possible first phase of the above described dynamic. DMG used 3D 'puddling' in a plasma though, rather than 3D puddling that occurs similarly in a ‘near boiling point’ liquid. I will upload the commercial if they allow it.)

We have to realize that any wave that is picked up IS an 'essential' AND 'existential' part of that what it originates from, albeit a WAVE presentation rather than a PARTICULATE one.

The brain thus CONTAINS not 'just abstract' information but live emanations from sensed objects.

The brain is thus filled with non-particulate wave emanations from whatever these emanations originate from. These emanations are gathered through the senses (including the 'extra' senses and... why not) and delivered to the 'brain pool'. In the brain these wave emanations form intricate and complex multi-dimensional interference patterns which as I suggested above lead to the formation of nervous tissue which is part of the brain’s grey matter.

In addition and naturally so - as the brain is stuff - the brain also has a field. This field is 'composed of' - 'consists of' those non-particulate field emanations from whatever 'somethings' they initially originated from.

I hold the view that the brain's field, of which the combined complex formation originated from a myriad of interferential waves that emanated from 'something-elsewhere', that that IS THE HUMAN MIND in its fullest meaning and extent. The mind thus indeed consists of THAT by which it was in-formed.

I AM THAT!

One needs to be careful not to apply any qualitatively distinctive notions to mind or stuff - grading the two - be it mind or body, substance or field, wave or particle. They are simultaneous concurrent expressions of a 'greater something'. All stuff has a field, all fields or waves are emanations from a source. Stuff and fields are simultaneous presentations of a 'greater something'.

All ‘greater somethings’ make up what I like to call "The Whole Shebang."

The mind enables us thus to physically communicate - 'resonate' to say the least - with stuff, although... it 'a p p e a r s' to be 'at arm's length'. Luckily though the mind can help us happily to respond to what we sensed bodily by causing us to 'e x t e n d' our arms and embrace that what we thought we could only mentally embrace...

Michael:

Evidently we need to go beyond the apparent facts to a metaphysical view of how things must fundamentally be.

Wim:

Well, maybe not, maybe things are fundamentally as I described above.

Could you consider Michael, that the "metaphysical view" might be a non particulate presentation that is very intimate with the "physical" or particulate presentation, both and together being presentations of ONE 'greater something'?

Michael:

The strong reason for this gulf between subject and object is the identification of 'I' with one side of the equation.

:)))

Neat!

Don't Rastafarians say "I and I" instead of "we", "us" or "you and me"?

Conflicting Concepts and "Aha!"

2011-04-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

Self / Soul vs No-Self / No-Soul

Something / Nothing

Form / Emptiness

Julie:

Could someone explain how two conflicting concepts can be believable to someone who is "enlightened"?

Wim:

Different or even "opposing concepts" can lead different humans to the same and identical realization.
The 'conflict itself' between concepts can very well be that what leads to realization, e.g. Zen koans.

"Self", "Soul", "No-Self", "No-Soul", etc. are strictly conceptual notions; eventually one finds that they are in principle devoid of any meaning, and although they may lead to it, they do not contribute at all to the self-evidence of reality in what Julie calls "enlightenment".

If those terms at some point seem to have any meaning, that meaning dissolves in the full light of realization.

Why staring oneself blind on the meaning of those terms or even their conflict... unless of course... one stares oneself totally blind on them and thus becomes fully aware of the epiphany of unconditional, non-conceptual reality.

The usefulness and discardability of concepts

2011-04-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

As to the role or function of concepts...

If concepts have any usefulness at all it is only a temporary one... provisional and conditionally only.

A concept eventually only proves to be of value when it leads to a realization that transcends the original concept that one started with. Such a concept though, however helpful it was or seemed to be - it may even have looked quintessential - will after realization lose its direct usefulness and become... dispensable.

Evidenced truth and realization always transcends and replaces any initial conceptuality, however important the initial conceptuality may have seemed to be.

What all too often happens though is that a provisional and temporarily helpful concept stays around alongside the evidenced truth and realization and may even become idolized as more important than the realized truth... which is quite unfortunate... (A tad sad even?)

Consider the following. When one moves into a newly built home, one does not put the nailing gun that was used to built the structure on the a mantle piece or on the coffee table, let alone hang it above one’s bed.

Even if there is no doubt that that particular nail gun contributed tremendously to the building process, when that process is over that tool is not needed as such anymore. The trades people who built the house may be very fond of that particular tool, but they also know that the same house could just as well have been built with non-pneumatic hammers and different types of nails, even specialized glues could have been used with the same result or sheet-metal studs with drill driven metal screws.

The ‘r e a l i z a t i o n’ is paramount, just like the ‘h o m e’ is.

How one got there - with what concept or creative tool – that is in principle and eventually of little importance...

Questioning

2011-04-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

This is an installment of material that I wrote to various discussion forums on the reasons I've found behind the fact that humans at some point in their personal and evolutionary growth started to question. It is not necessarily in a logical order...

When I show [...], I've left out certain details or extensive reasoning for brevity sake. I'm sure that some of my statements sound kind of "ex cathedra" or axiomatic... but that used to be my style of writing in the past.

----

Asking questions and questioning is a conditioned and learned behavior. There are no entities in nature that are initially born with that faculty. Querying is a secondary [...] human trait, it is usually acquired soon after birth. Humans are not born with it nor are animals, nor do plants have a similar faculty.

Although I can see that and how other species can acquire the faculty to question/search, it is usually domesticated species that acquire it and that usually through human interference and/or training. [...]

When children are born, instead of inquiringly looking for things (as though asking their environment if it can provide what they need,) they instinctively fulfill their needs by bonding [...], reaching and/or grabbing, unquestioningly expecting that what they reach for is there ready for the taking.

(There is a wonderful documentary: "What Babies Want" by Debbie Takikawa showing how a baby right after birth, with its eyes still closed, crawls up its mothers belly and upper body to find her breast to start sucking immediately.

http://www.whatbabieswant.com

Questioning is an invention [...] that develops later in the life of an infant, it comes with the need to understand unexpected situations when their instinctive reaches to have their needs fulfilled are not met.

I see questioning, searching and asking questions as a faculty that arises only when an understanding is needed to sort out and make sense of unexpected situations.

As such I see questions, questioning, searching, etc. as an extension of the type of consciousness [...] that arises at the moment when direct unquestioned awareness gets artificially (even if accidentally) interfered with and thus compromised. It is an invention of and by the "I" at the very moment when also simultaneously a separate "I" gets invented... the very moment when artificial acts of separation and disconnect occur.

It is at that point [...] also, I suggest, that the notion of duality arises - starting with the "I VERSUS Thou" conundrum - while it overshadows (often overwhelmingly) the original, natural and instinctive "I AND Thou" reality that comes with built-in characteristics of commuting, mutual and reciprocal dynamics. It is at that moment, I suggest, that the 'natural subject/object seamlessness' seemingly appears to disappear.

Emptiness

2011-04-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

Pete:

There is no thing more foolish than a something pretending to be nothing.

Would a nothing parade as a nothing?

Only a something could claim to be nothing. Only a something can conceive of a nothing. Outside of something there isn't even the suspicion of nothingness.

Wim:

Right, that's why we can insist that 'sunyata' means 'emptiness' or 'without-ness' rather than 'nothingness'... and also... why we can insist that ‘sunyata‘ cannot exist by itself as ‘f u l f i l l m e n t ‘ belongs as much to sunyata as, say, Yin to Yang.

Emptiness inevitably attracts fulfillment.

When one looks at emptiness/fulfillment (mutual and reciprocal) in its functional sense, not in some logical sense, one finds that it forms the backbone of Nagarjuna’s ‘causality’ and ‘interdependent arisings’. Actually, looking a bit deeper into this, it is actually ‘kama’ or 'the desire to fulfillment' and 'sunyata' or 'emptiness' that belong together.

True, it is suggested that the Buddha points out that desire leads to suffering, but such is only stated in commentaries on talks he is alleged to have given. One gets a better understanding of what he may have talked about when one sees that suffering only follows desire when its fulfillment is made to be 'c o n d i t i o n a l' by third party interference and when the acceptance of whatever fulfillment, is made to be dependent on third party evaluations as to being appropriate or not.

The fulfillment of kama and sunyata is to be understood as the unconditional condition of ananda or bliss.

More about the word 'sunyata' or without-ness.

The Latin word 'sine', “without” (as in 'sinecure' or in the French 'sans souci') is related to the Sanskrit 'sunya'

From various Sanskrit dictionaries:

"Zunya" means empty, being void of or deserted, desolate, destitute of, hollow, lacking, possessing nothing, vacant, void, wanting.

Note that zunya (sunya) refers to something that is empty and therefore can contain something else (e.g. a vessel or bowl) - when something does not contain anything and is seen as empty, that 'empty' characteristic is called 'zunya'.

The attribution of the meaning of an absolute nothingness to sunyata is mostly found in Hindu/Buddhist commentaries by:

writers who have an agenda to promote the idea that life needs to be transcended,
writers who themselves have a problem surrendering unconditionally to life and ‘what is’,
writers who promote estrangement and alienation from what is (om tat sat) by that and who we are (tat tuam asi).

Consciousness

2011-03-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

A reflection of Adyashanti's original illustration

We don’t have to be 'c o n s c i o u s' to be alive…
To simply be 'a w a r e' that ONE AND EVERYTHING IS, is to be alive
Simple awareness is in principle what life entails.
(om tat sat & tat tuam asi)

(All the asterisked words below can be etymologically derived from sounds and expressions - not necessarily words yet! - that were vocalized at the earliest beginnings of our emergence as humans, when we were intent on distinguishing ourselves as a separate species on the evolutionary branch from which we and our 'sibling' species evolved.)

I. Consciousness as an Aid to make Sense of the sensorial World

As distinct from awareness* and secondary to it, I see consciousness* strictly as a functional mode in the dynamics of our human being, a tool designed for the maintenance of being and remaining human in a comfortable fashion, a faculty though that in principle is not of primary importance to human life or even... conditional to human life. In the view I'm promoting here, I see the importance of consciousness as being of a secondary nature, as a maintenance tool, a means intended only to enable us to return to our unquestioned and fully trusted immediacy of life (that of simple and direct awareness) in circumstances where external conditions made us realize that we might not be equal to enjoy, handle or fit human life's conditions in simple, direct and immediate (non-mediated) awareness.To be equal to life's conditions in this view is exemplified by a life that is simple and unquestioned - though not simplistic and short of wonder, not lacking inspired and inspiring vital dynamics. It is a life that has enough resilience (room to move) built in that naturally safeguards unconditional ease and comfort, a life in which external environmental challenges do not immediately create elevated feelings of unease and discomfort beyond the built-in resilience that can easily fit in or handle challenges.

Obviously such are not the overall and usual circumstances in which we humans live since the days - so very long ago now – when we decided to take advantage of our possible erectness and thus enhanced our mobility to enable us to migrate into environmental settings where the challenges were greater than what they were at the beginning of our emergence as a distinct species.

What enabled us to migrate to those more challenging settings was the discovery of the possibility to modify and/or relax our up to then automatic reflexes (fight or flight) that were controlled by our Sensorial System and the R-complex (R for reptilian) of the Sympathetic part of our Nervous System.

Instead of fleeing or fighting we learned to 'sit with' (con-) situations and analyse (-scio, as in science) the complexity of their often overwhelming qualities. Instead we learned to regroup and come forth with solutions so very different from fleeing, fighting, forcing to flee or being forced to flee. We started to use a new mode of behaving, a 'con-scious' mixture of previously habituated re-activity and newly acquired inter-activity, a mode of 'con-sciere', of being in-the-know-with the things we were surrounded with: we could become conscious when needed as needed! Eventually we became so adept in the use of consciousness that we could henceforth creatively extend our comfort individually and communally to zones and habitats where we previously could not survive.

(About the word 'consciousness':
The Aryan/Sanskrit root SKA and its later derivations like SKAD, SKAL, SKAR (meaning 'separating', 'cutting', 'splitting') can be found in

the Latin scio ('to know') and scientia, ('knowledge' as 'having separated one thing from another'),
the English science, consciousness, conscience, rescind, schism, scatology, shit and scat (two meanings), even words like skill, shape and shave, shell and skull,
the German scheiden ('to separate') and UnterSCHeidung ('analysis') and
a host of other Indo-German and Roman languages words.

And thus us early humans started SKA... eh... 'SCIENCE'... (the original beginnings of the scientific method!) with care* and caution*... instead of habitually resorting to flights in fear or fights to create fear.
When needed, now 'being conscious' became our newly acquired mode of sitting with (con-) a difficult situation that we could analyse and get to know (-sciously)!

Eventually though and over time we developed a propensity to be and stay conscious all the time... even in situations where not required, situations when we could simply enjoy the direct immediate awareness of quiet repose or dynamic play.
Unfortunately now, most of us are in a stymied state of being conscious all the time but now without actively using its possibly freeing faculty to return to our original and natural state of repose and play which consciousness was supposed to help us reclaim: our birthright to abidance in blissful repose (Buddha) and our birthright to being able to surrender without a care to blissful play (Krishna).

Unfortunately now, the means have become the goal, the tool the thing to have, humankind's birthright to pure and simple awareness seemingly lost and non-reclaimable, and consciousness now addictively talking most humans out of their own and others' birthright with the ceaseless verbosity of internal pseudo dialog and external non-dialog that for most humans came to characterize consciousness... unconscionably and neigh uncontrollably so.

Ah, to be able to use consciousness as intended again... as needed!

And indeed, after understanding this fully - with a renewed and fresh discovery as to what being conscious actually entails, it is indeed possible to return to our simple native and innate state of awareness which consciousness was originally designed to help us return to and restore.

The beginnings for so many thousands of years were so good, and fortunately - when not - for the many subsequent millennia that we found ourselves so distractedly off track, many a Buddha and many a Krishna re-minded us or helped us re-mind, so that we could reclaim our reality of awareness by helping us restructure our falsified 'consciousness-carried-away-with-itself'.

But back to the early days.

Early humans at the beginning of the invention and application of consciousness could sensibly relax to modify and eventually let go of their automatic reflexes consisting of 'running away' and/or 'shooing away', not having to separate themselves anymore from situations they would eventually embrace and enjoy with trust, in ease and comfort, being simply aware in them.

Consciousness was good, is good; it is not for nothing that being con-scious became a mode of being that showed 'being-with-it-ness' as a preferred, let's say - using a current word - a cool mode to be in even when conditions of extended durations of strain abated an did not warrant being conscious at the cost of being at ease and comfortable.
An unfortunate notion for the need of continuity of consciousness developed, consciousness was never supposed to be an ongoing mode of being, but some humans with a misguided need to manipulate in order to gain power and create inequality (this took place between 16 and 12 thousand years ago) saw that a side effect of consciousness could be used and exploited for their own use.
Consciousness then became a tool to jeopardize and even halt freedom and independence, it would even hide simple awareness, at best making it something to be wished for, at worst something that most became oblivious of. Consciousness instead was used to create dependency, slavery and fear, the very thing it was supposed to find solutions for to overcome. Manipulators of power found out that continuously conscious but non-clear-unaware people were not independent at all as they had gotten easily hooked into a habituated unceasing stance of alertness to discomfort, disease, fear and fear of fear, a stance that made them weak and dependent and exploitable, readily available for the acquisition of superficial products that simulate ease and mimic comfort.

II. Sensorial Reality as an Aid to keep Consciousness realistic

Our sensorial system is a system that feeds directly into the enjoyment of repose and play through our central nervous system. In fact the central nervous system employs a system of energies gross and simple, physical and metaphysical that make enjoyment physically/spiritually enjoyable... blissful (ananda). Our sensorial system is, so to speak, the tool that measures and records our internal comfort and ease based on and next to its measurement of external situations and influences that impact on our comfort and ease. In addition to that system and in intricate relationship with it we have our central nervous system with its categorizing and indexing infrastructures, with physical and metaphysical processes, all systems coming together in an overseeing, witnessing agency, a system of ultimately awareness in which mind, (simultaneously physically as well as and metaphysically characterized) is traditionally seen as all encompassing entity: Man.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=man

My intent was (is) to show that consciousness is a very important tool that when it functions as intended, is not suspect at all. My intent was (is) also to show that consciousness took over a leading role rather than keeping its supporting one, in the mutual plays of our interdependent lives and appears to have relegated or at least is attempting to relegate simple direct awareness to the background to such an extent even that now humans tend to be totally engulfed in consciousness and thus seem unable to live in simple awareness as it is so en-veiled in the webs of intricacies that a now dys-functioning, overworked and overworking consciousness has woven.

As long as one is in the buzz of consciousness (which one can know by noting its verbosity and tendency to keep an inward dialog going) one is not directly aware and thus not in the immediacy of being. While conscious one operates in life in an indirect way.

We actually need no tools to live, but we do need tools to procure and maintain that living when situations arise that challenge our ability to be equal to in ease and comfort.
We only need to use those tools, especially consciousness, when needed.

When alertness to fear, disease and discomfort has become our steady state, when we have been tricked into believing its continuity, we have the tool of consciousness buzzing ALL the time, making its efficacy null and void as no moment of simple ease and comfort are ever reached. We have then been led to believe that there is a continuous reason to keep one's guards up. A person with his guard up all the time is always a pawn, a guarded foot soldier in the service of someone who took advantage of the possibility of extended dependency of humans by keeping them in a state of dependency, having them constantly exposed to the illusion (lie, deceit) that the possibility of a to be feared situation is not just a probability but a continuous possibility that can easily take on (and it all too often does) the semblance of reality as the memory of an instance of real discomfort, disease, pain or suffering, which ONCE did occur in reality, is now constantly being kept alive artificially thus seeming actual and real and... being dealt with as even MORE real than a short moment of promised, but never really given authentic ease and comfort.

Consciousness is a tool to return us to the directness of just being, but there is no need to be in that mode continuously, especially not when one sees that the possibility of a challenging event is not equal to the probability of such an event.

When the possibility of an event is constantly in view and supported by an imagination based on a memory of that event, it is as though the event is acting itself out in reality (that is the state of illusion that the Buddha pointed out)

One only need to use the tool of consciousness when needed...

Awareness can gauge when the need to employ the functionality of consciousness arises, as the level of ease and comfort diminishes as reported to it by the sensorial system.

Awareness can gauge the veracity of what consciousness (through its derivative conscience) proposes.

October 2005

Reality and Illusion

2011-03-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

It may be worthwhile to first read the conversation in the following link about reality.

My definition of reality is definitely not according to current mainstream "thinking"...

To agree with the way I define reality in relation to thinking, you may have to make a paradigm shift.

Please check out: Is Reality what we think?

I - REALITY

The etymological root of the word "reality" is the Latin word "res" which means "thing".

Originally then, reality had to do with the "world of things", tangible things, or - to say it more completely - things that can be experienced through our five senses:

. Touch (tactile),

. Vision (eidetic),

. Smell (olfactory),

. Sound (auditory)

. Taste (gustatory).

In the classic and ancient Sanskrit literature (Heart Sutra, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita, etc.) the five senses are described as being related to the five "skandhas" (aggregates) and the five lower "chakras" or subtle energy centres of the chakra system. Please refer to:

The Chakras and their Petals - A Technical Overview

The five skandhas represent the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space, or, in more scientific terms, the skandhas can be identified as phase or aggregate states:

Solid state,
Liquid state,
Plasmic state,
Gaseous state,
Wave state (from inter-corpuscular, via inter-particular to sub-atomic wave space).

Anything that cannot be sensorially experienced by the 5 senses is NOT a thing and therefore... an illusion!

To be noted:

Of course, our sensorial faculties can be extended by any kind of measuring apparatus such as the microscope, telescope, particle collider, spectroscope, etc. For a comprehensive list of them see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_instrument
The complete human sensorial experience can range from sensing the very gross to sensing the very subtle, which (the very subtle) incidentally also includes the spiritual experience of reality.
Mind you, if that spiritual reality is not experienced through all the well-developed and evenly balanced subtle (but still physical!) chakras or subtle energy centres of our body - meaning, if spirituality is only based on a mentalized belief system - it is not spiritual reality at all but illusion under the guise of spirituality.
(What is traditionally considered to be the Kundalini experience of reality focuses on that subtle range, as it covers and includes the above described unadulterated spiritual experience of reality.)
The five sensorial experiences of a "thing" do not have to take place simultaneously, but each of the five senses will have to be satisfied sooner or later for "something" to be authentically a "thing".(It is interesting that the realism of the spiritual Kundalini experience is evidenced by the observation of subtle fragrances as well as a range of subtle visual, auditory and tangible vibrations and characteristics, and... ADDITIONALLY an enhanced and extended experiential awareness of space/time.)

II - ILLUSION

Whatever is not covered by the above, occurs only in the rarified realm of mental illusion (Sanskrit "maya") - a pseudo version, or better yet, a mimicked version of reality.

Illusion is artfully, or rather, artificially fed by allusions, illusions and delusions.

Altogether, illusion is a mental amalgam of confused and confusing beliefs, assumptions, suppositions, suspicions, fears, hopes, desires, expectations, skepticism, cynicism, fatalism, conspiratorial thinking and attitudes, paranoid notions, etc, etc. - anything supported by an imbalanced mind that leads to... vice rather than virtue!

Illusion is all that, which through:

forced belief (manipulation through fear),
purchased belief (through the commerce of religion) and
make belief (a through trickery acquired disability to handle reality,)

is artificially made to look more real than reality itself!

III - MORE REAL THAN REALITY

How can something appear to be more real than reality?

Please read the green lettered paragraph of:

Is Suffering an Illusion

The Ownership of Your (?) Thoughts

2011-03-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

Words inside our head, we call "thoughts."
~ Russ Harris MD - The Happiness Trap

I like that, but there is also more to it, let's find out...

The thoughts that you are thinking, whose are they actually, what is their source?

Thoughts based on reality can be your thoughts.
However 'thoughts' based on negativity can never be yours truly, as they are merely borrowed terms, words, labels. (I define negativity as the attempt at denial, negation or non-acceptance of substantive* reality.)

Actually, 'thoughts' (notice the quotes) based on negativity are NOT thoughts whatsoever, they only appear as thoughts by simulating or mimicking them.

The reasoning behind this - although simplified here for brevity - goes something along the lines of, "A picture of a cow is not a cow, although a physical cow and the image of that same cow are both labeled 'cow'!"

Negative or non-substantive 'thoughts' ALWAYS have verbal content through words that are externally acquired. **

Substantive thoughts in principle DO NOT! Rather than verbal content they have pictorial content, they contain images; although they may be (and often are) also accompanied by verbal content.

Negative (or 'faux') thoughts are actually not thoughts at all. It is only because their verbal contents is processed in the same part of the brain** where sensorially registered reality*** is processed (substantive thinking), that they take on certain characteristics that RESEMBLE substantive (or 'proper') thoughts.

Negative (non-substantive, surrogate or faux) 'thoughts' are based on illusion or conditional expectations ("What if..." or "If... ,then..." ), whereas substantive thoughts are based on sensorially processed reality.

Substantive thoughts come from an altogether different source (the unadulterated aware or observant self) than negative (faux, surrogate) 'thoughts'.

'Faux' thoughts come from external verbal sources only, as they are picked up and registered by our auditory (and partially our visual) sense.

Negative 'thoughts' are always REACTIVE in their verbal content. They are also incomplete and unsuccessful attempts at APPEARING as reasoning while they TRY (as they can never be successful) to deny, object to, invalidate or discount reality.

So although we use the same word "thought" for both substantive and - seemingly similar - negative phenomena, only the substantive versions are thoughts proper (as they are based on reality) while the negative or faux ones only mimic thoughts proper, while they are really only an illusion of thoughts.

Notes:

* I don't juxtapose the notion 'positive' over against the notion 'negative'. I see 'negativity' as a attempt at negation or denial of what is substantially real.

** The external auditory acquisition of words is processed in the brain's speech centres: Broca's and Wernicke’s areas. These speech centres are located in the brain's left hemisphere, hence the linear verbal processing.

The Bi-lateral Brain
Click picture to magnify

***The complete human sensorial experience can range from sensing the very gross to sensing the very subtle, which (the very subtle) incidentally also includes the spiritual experience of reality.

What is Pain? What is Suffering?

2011-02-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

"For me life is not at all a path of suffering. Although I do not say that I do not suffer, but I see it as an unavoidable possibility when carrying a physical body. But that is true only at a physical level, and cannot be admitted as true at every level. As well, I do not consider my personal sufferings as a solid reason to try to get rid of my physical body or - denying its possibilities - escape into a world of no-pain.
Had I myself made of my life an attempt to avoid suffering, I would consider it a very poor conclusion, as Joy, Love, Peace and Ananda are quite part of the true nature of this world as much, if not more, as suffering."

~ Winfrey (not Oprah)

Isn't it good what Winfrey is saying about pain and suffering?

I think though that it would good to carefully clarify the difference between pain* and suffering**.

What follows then is a summary of the way I define these two notions... which of course may well differ from how many people define them.

'Pain' I define as a sensorial feeling of discomfort that is strictly physical.

'Suffering' I define as the drama (emotional, mental or attitudinal illusion) that pain may get surrounded with in order to exploit a situation of physical pain in such a way as to avoid or to prevent a personal response to pain by having someone else respond to it:

either someone who one has made to feel responsible for one's "well being" or
someone who has made him or herself to be treated as someone who is responsible for one's well-being.

Regarding suffering:

Although I put emphasis on the manipulativeand dramatizing aspects of suffering, that is not to say that thisdramatization and manipulation is without valid reasons or mala fide. Peoplewho suffer have invariably been betrayed in their past by similar illusivetreatments; and because part of the process of mental healing often retraces happeningsand circumstances from the past, and therefore appears to go backwards in time,even in reverse order, for a period of time suffering people have no choice (asmanipulation and dramatization appear to be the only tools available) but touse them to get back on the road to mental health.

Regarding pain:

I see physical pain also as something that- inadvertently or not - may happen to someone in order to enable such a personto better navigate and negotiate the world s/he lives in.
E.g.: How can a toddler learn to walk if itdoes not stumble into a table or knocks its head against something?

Click here to access other articles on this site about pain and suffering.

Notes:

* The Sanskrit word for 'pain' (or pressure) is pida ইস.
** Suffering: Sanskrit दुःख duḥkha; Pāli दुक्ख dukkha.
Sargeant, et. al. (2009: p. 303) provides the etymology of the Sanskrit words sukha and duḥkha.
They compare the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient inhabitants of India spoke the Sanskrit language and were a semi- nomadic, horse, donkey and cattle breeding people who traveled in horse-, donkey- or ox-drawn vehicles. 'Su' and 'dus' are prefixes indicating good or bad; -'kha', originally meant 'hole' (in later Sanskrit also 'sky', 'ether', or 'space',) particularly 'wheel axle hole'. Thus sukha … meant, originally, 'having a good axle hole, while duhkha meant having a poor axle hole', leading to discomfort.

Life: Reality or Stage Show

2011-02-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

The Stage Show

Now Showing

“The Trappings of Life”*
a one-man show

The Actor:
You

The Roles:

The Father, the Mother, the Rich, the Poor, the Handicapped, the Angel and the Demon...

Directed by:
the Cosmic Law of Karma

The Stage:

Earth and Heaven

The Audience:

Buddha

~ after Rien Tien

* A translation of "The Six Re-encirclements" a Tibetan-Buddhist expression.

I hope that Rien Tien is metaphorically speaking, if not, I suggest that he should!

Originally, in early Buddhist or Hindu teachings, expressions like "life is not real" or "life is but a theater of illusions" (maya) or, in Rien Tien's words: "a stage-show", were only meant to be used as metaphors.Such metaphors were originally used by spiritual teachers such as the Buddha and other bodhisattvas as counseling tools, psychological aids to help "seekers on the path" - meaning: seekers who deviated from the right way - to get them back on their journey towards enlightenment, realization and liberation.

After all, why would the Buddha have come up with his “eightfold path” if life were just an illusion?!

Click this line to read about the Buddhas Eightfold Path

Statements such as "life is a stage-show" or "life is an illusion" do NOT represent REALITY...

In reality everything IS, there is no illusion in REALITY...

Incidentally, a popular saying such as, "Well, everybody has their own reality…" is in error. This saying would be better put as, "Well, everybody has their own distorted view of reality” - meaning that every one of those individual ‘d i s t o r t e d’ views is… an illusion.

(To read a conversation discussing this topic please click the following link:

Is reality what we think?)

Just like Truth, Love, the Divine, etc., there is only 'One Reality'...

Thus, anybody who does not 'a p p e a r' to be realized, is someone who at some point was MADE TO BELIEVE that they had lost touch with TRUTH, LOVE and REALITY, etc.

The problem with illusion is, that it so easily masquerades as reality, especially when fear, threats, curses, etc. are used in the masquerading. Such masked or faked reality is of course nothing else but a pseudo realistic illusion - an illusion though that is being treated as though it is more real than reality itself.

But back to Rien Tien's use of the metaphor that life is "a stage show" and that life's participants are but ‘actors’.

The kind of metaphor can of course be very effective and beneficial... providing... it is used in a clinical counseling setting... and... WHEN APPLIED TIMELY AND JUDICIALLY!

This particular metaphor may help a seeker during episodes of mental dissociation (while s/he is going through a phase of intense dramatization that is often accompanied with manipulative manoeuvrings) as it can very well jolt someone out of the mistaken belief that the dramatizations, manoeuvrings and manipulations are real.

Non-dual Reality and Dualist Illusion

2011-02-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

For more posts on this site on reality and illusion click this line.

"I am firmly convinced that the creation of an Heaven on this very ground, and not a salvation ahead in distant immaterial worlds, is the natural unfolding of the slow march of evolution. And that a new power will substitute the blind rewards of Karma, a power to appear inside the human being as the mind appeared once in the ape.."
"What's the use of material life, if it was only meant to discover its unworthiness, as - if that were the case - it would have been much more simple if it never existed.
No, if we are here, it is because something else can be done, with a deeper purpose yet to be unveiled, a purpose which will crown and justify the life and striving of men."
"To spiritualize material life, I believe, is the obscure aim of human life on Earth."

~ Winfrey (not Oprah)

Winfreys' ruminations hearten me, but as to his:

"To spiritualize material life, I believe, is the obscure aim of human life on Earth"

I always experienced that differently... I remember (I must have been four or five years old) that I convinced my mother that life was already divine and sacred, that life's spiritual aspect, so to speak, was only something to be recognized and acknowledged. I always knew that life did not have to be spiritualized as it always was already so:

"Why shining light on something that is already bright?"

is how I put it to her... and,

"Even if you don't see the sun, you only need to discover that the sun is always already shining. The only thing you need to do is to think with your mind's eye open, that's all..."*

I never experienced "the material as devoid of the spiritual"... I could never accept the 'mind/body' or 'material/spiritual' dichotomy as reality.

Only mentally could I conceptually come up with such dualistic notions. But I always treated those mental notions as secondary to non-dual experiencing.

If, for some reason, we need to use dualist language or employ dualist notions, we must never forget that 'the spiritual and the physical', are part and parcel of each other.

If we somehow can conceptualize distinctions between them, then we should nevertheless never disregard that they are mutually and reciprocally intertwined - that in actuality they are inseparable...

It is illusion (maya) only that makes people 'p e r c e i v e' them as separate...

Eventually it is that what causes deception, and such illusion only benefits the deceiver*... and that (as planned by the deceiver) to the detriment of the deceived...

* Of course all that was said in Dutch:

"Waarom zou je light schijnen op iets dat al helder is!"
"Zelfs al zie je de zon niet, je hoeft allen maar te ontdekken dat de zon altijd al schijnt.
Het enige wat je hoeft te doen is te denken met 'n open oog, dat is alles."

**diabolo is usually translated as devil, deceiver or satan. The word satan stands for 'opposer'.

The first human being who came up with the concept of opposite qualities (polarity) may very well have been identified (labeled or titled) as s-t-n or satan: the one who represents a dualist stance. Dualism is not possible without the conceptual notion of opposites or polarity.

An important feature of Tibetan Buddhist teaching tradition is a style of discourse that is in the form of orchestrated debate in which two students have agreed to enter into an argument. The role of one student is to be the 'opposer', against whom the other student has to prove his point. Current western academia still has remnants of this process, e.g. the defense of a thesis. The "devil's advocate" may very well stem from such orchestrated argumentations.

A Final Realization?

2011-02-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

What a strange final (even ironic) realization for a soul to learn and know that the soul-existence is the ultimate reality.
Is it then it really necessary for a soul to come on Earth only to find out what it already knows and is?”

~ Winfrey (not Oprah),

I love Winfrey's ruminations and deliberations, but what especially caught my eye was his question:

Is it then it really necessary for a soul to come on Earth only to find out what it already knows and is?”

When I read that, I immediately thought, but doesn’t he realize, that, just by posing that question in the way he did, that it indicates that he somehow must be aware that there might be something incomplete or amiss in that first statement?

What a strange final (even ironic) realization for a soul to learn and know that the soul-existence is the ultimate reality.

I wonder if Winfrey would be willing to seriously consider that what in his view 'a-p-p-e-a-r-s' to be a "final realization," that it may actually not be so final after all...

I understand well what he writes about. In fact your “final (ironic) realization” made me recall insights and realizations of my own, especially those I had many many years ago.In particular, the Winfrey's words made me remember a conversation I had with a psychologist when I was 19 years old (1963).

At that time, about two months after I had been accepted as a young and aspiring monk in a Trappist monastery in Holland, the abbot of that monastery had me see a psychologist. (I found out later that all ‘aspirant’ monks were sent to see this psychologist, and that it was this man's task to find out whether the ‘calling to be a monk’ was a ‘true calling’ and not just a ‘fleeting infatuation’, ‘an escape from the real world’, or some sort of obligatory fulfillment of someone’s catholic parents' expectations, etc.)

After he seated me in front of his desk and tried to make me comfortable with a cup of tea, he asked me what made me want to "live a radical life of love" (my words) in a “cenobitic monastery” (his words, and, yes, a contradiction in terms.)

After I had told him what initially motivated me to make this “drastic change in my life” he started to prod me on my ‘realization’ - the realization that was the cause of my motivation to make that drastic change in my living environment.

I started answering him by saying,

“I know that the soul’s existence is of ultimate importance and also that my existen…”

At that point though, he abruptly cut me off and inquired,

“Do you hate your body?”

I answered,

“No, why do you ask?”

Then he wanted to know,

“Do you find it difficult to accept the world the way it is?”

Again I responded,

“No, why do you ask? I love this world and I love myself!”

He was silent for a moment and then, after he asked,

“Do you find it difficult to accept your physical appearance?”

I went into a long monologue:

“Everything that exists is an unquestionable and necessary manifestation of one all-encompassing and ultimate divine reality, and (I stressed) my greatest discovery and realization is that the ultimate reality of what we tend to call ‘soul’ necessarily includes ‘physical appearance’.
In fact, talking about body and soul as though they are somehow mutually exclusive or each other’s opposites, or that we at some point might have to choose between the one or the other as though our life (temporal or eternal) depends upon it, is only due to a misconceiving mind… an unfortunate mental mis-comprehension really.
‘Soul’, so to speak, can not be without an existential physical presence of ‘some sort’.
It is only from a limited and limiting mental viewpoint that we erroneously interpret ‘ALL THAT IS’ as being separatable into seemingly dissociated ‘this and that’s’ ”.

While I was sitting in front of this psychologist’s desk, I gesticulated extensively, arching my arms widely so as to somehow represent ‘ALL THAT IS’ with the largest embrace possible.

A second later though I was be pointing at his fingers, attempting to empirically demonstrate to him that:

“All things, big or small - the ones that seem to be such separate entities - they are in fact like fingernails... mine or yours...! But although we feelingly know that those fingernails ARE part of us as a whole, we tend to talk about them as though they are separate from us… probably because we are so used to cutting them, or biting them off...
In reality though, your nails, like your heart or for that matter your hair - and of course your brain and lungs - they are intrinsic parts of what and who you are.”

I proceeded with showing him how my nails are an extension of my fingers and my fingers an extension of my arms and my arms an extension of my… etc… well, he got it… so I added,

“In fact what became so clear to me, is that ‘all the things’ that 's-e-e-m' to exist so separately, that each one of them is like one out of millions upon millions of connected fingernails… Each entity is in reality one out of a whole myriad of un-separated formations that emanate from, manifest and prove the full reality of one grand divine presence.”

I noticed that the psychologist, the way he looked at me, was having a hard time trying to figure out what I was talking about, and as I perceived that philosophy was not his field of expertise, I added,

“It is important to understand that the one-soul presence of the divine and the multi-fold presence of physical embodiment are NOT opposites.
Also it is NOT so that ‘the soul is ultimate and real’ and that ‘the constituents are ephemeral illusions'. NEITHER is it so that ‘physical substantiality is ultimate and real’ and that ‘soul or spirit is just an illusion’.
Sure, conceptualizing minds, the ones that operate only partially or even worse: minds that have become dysfunctional by habitually breaking things down into tidbits of abstracted information, such 'minds' may come to such conclusions, but those conclusions are false... And, by the way, isn't it so that there are way too many over-analytical people, men especially, whose minds have lost the ability to recognize the whole within which apparent parts are constituting the connective fabric of that whole?!

So, sir - if I may finish what I began to say when you so abruptly cut me off a few minutes ago - I know that the soul’s existence is of ultimate importance, but I also know that any physical existence in this universum is an intricately interwoven constituent of the fabric of one grand divine soul... and that is - I now realize - what I so acutely experience... That is the wonder of it all!
At no point in the course of any entity’s entire cosmic presence, can the physical and the spiritual ever be considered as separate... ... ... Except perhaps in the illuded mental eyes of a dissociated and thus dissociating beholder, one who unfortunately and artificially (but luckily only temporarily) had been made to lose sight of ‘who one is’ and ‘that one is’.”

I remained in that monastery for another three years…

Many years later I would say all of the above with fewer words:

“All is ONE and each in ALL uniquely so!”

And in the traditional ecclesiastical way one could add the doxological saying:

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum
As it is in principle, now and always and throughout all eons.*

Every individual element that exists, from the smallest infinitesimal to the largest infinitesimal and everything in between, is one unique formulation of all possible solutions to the divine function** that ALL THIS IS - PARAMATMAN.

Dear X, let me repeat the quote from your post again:

“What a strange final (even ironic) realization for a soul to learn and know that the soul-existence is the ultimate reality. Was it really necessary for a soul to come on Earth only to know what it already knows and is?”

If it appears to be necessary for a soul to “come to earth” so that it may eventually recognize its fully integrated sacred reality, then 'it' will sooner or later realize that there is neither coming or going, and that there is but one all-inclusive experience of multidimensional simultaneity… which is... love.

Have you ever been (you must have, of course!) in that wondrous state of unconditional love in which you blissfully recognize the oneness of love while you are also simultaneously celebrating the playful aspects of the multifold-ness of love?

* Traditionally in principio is translated as 'in the beginning', however in my view and experience 'in principle' as an alternate translation is more apt!

** I use function here also with all of its mathematical connotations. Mathematically seen the "whole shebang" (which includes what we tend to call the universe) can be represented by the most extensive and complex function or formula ever. There is no limit as to its number of functionals (operators or terms). As to the image or range of this ultimate function, anything that exists, ever did, ever will, ever can (and thus ever could) in any construct of dimensions (currently presumed to be 12), is a solution to that function and therefore present as an existential/essential entity in space/time.

Divine Essence / Human Existence

2010-10-19T01:43:00.001-07:00

Divine essence and human existence are seamlessly 'one'

- distinguishable but not separable -

in the innermost core and essential existence of every human being.

The Hindu notion of "paramatman" or the "supreme eternal soul" reminds me of Meister Eckhart's (c.1260-1327) understanding that “divine essence” and “human existence” are non-dualistically and seamlessly ONE (distinguishable but not separable) in the innermost core and essential existence of every human being.

When I was 19 (after what I described in http://free-by-nature.blogspot.com/2010/10/from-becoming-to-being.html), Meister Eckhart became my spiritual inspiration together with Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen and Teilhard de Chardin.

For more on Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German Dominican monk, teacher and mystic: http://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/eckhart-man

Quotes from Meister Eckhart

* Whoever possesses God in their being, has him in a divine manner, and he shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see.

* People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works.

* It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else. (Talks of Instruction)

* In 1985 the Pope, John Paul II, said: "Did not Eckhart teach his disciples: 'All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself - and let God be God in you'? One could think that, in separating himself from creatures, the mystic leaves his brothers, humanity, behind. The same Eckhart affirms that, on the contrary, the mystic is marvelously present to them on the only level where he can truly reach them, that is in God.

* Here in time we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and unceasingly bears in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. [German sermon 1, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* The soul in which this birth is to take place must keep absolutely pure and must live in noble fashion, quite collected, and turned entirely inward: not running out through the five senses into the multiplicity of creatures, but all inturned and collected and in the purest part: there is His place; He disdains anything else. [German sermon 1, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* Here God enters the soul with His all, not merely with a part: God enters here the ground of the soul. [German sermon 1, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* Though it may be called a nescience, and unknowing, [Neti, neti - Wim] yet there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it; for this unknowing lures and attracts you from all understood things, and from yourself as well. [German sermon 1, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* The soul is scattered abroad among her powers, and dissipated in the action of each. Thus her ability to work inwardly is enfeebled, for a scattered power is imperfect. [German sermon 2, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* Do not imagine that your reason can grow to the knowledge of God. [German sermon 4, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* No. Be sure of this: absolute stillness for as long as possible is best of all for you. [German sermon 4, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* You should know that God must act and pour Himself into the moment He finds you ready. [German sermon 4, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* To be receptive to the highest truth, and to live therein, a man must needs be without before and after, untrammelled by all his acts or by any images he ever perceived, empty and free, receiving the divine gift in the eternal Now, and bearing it back unhindered in the light of the same with praise and thanksgiving in our Lord Jesus Christ. . [German sermon 6, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* Since it is God's [Gotheits - Wim] nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. . [German sermon 7, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* So, when I am able to establish myself in nothing, and nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the Spirit. [German sermon 7, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* There is a power in the soul which touches neither time nor flesh, flowing from the spirit, remaining in the spirit, altogether spiritual. . [German sermon 7, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* One means, without which I cannot get to God, is work or activity in time, which does not interfere with eternal salvation. 'Works' are performed from without, but 'activity' is when one practises with care and understanding from within. [German sermon 9, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* It is a certain and necessary truth that he who resigns his will wholly to God will catch God and bind God, so that God can do nothing but what that man wills [German sermon 10, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* If you seek God and seek Him for your own profit and bliss, then in truth you are not seeking God. [German sermon 11, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* We find people who like the taste of God in one way and not in another, and they want to have God only in one way of contemplation, not in another.I raise no objection, but they are quite wrong. [German sermon 13a, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* I declare truly that as long as anything is reflected in your mind which is not the eternal Word [Om] , or which looks away from the eternal Word, then, good as it may be, it is not the right thing. [German sermon 14b, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* For he alone is a good man who, having set at nought all created things, stands facing straight, with no side-glances, towards the eternal Word [Om], and is imaged and reflected there in righteousness. [German sermon 14b, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* The human spirit must transcend number and break through multiplicity, and God will break through him; and just as He breaks through into me, so I break through into Him. [German sermon 14b, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

* Above thought is the intellect, which still seeks: it goes about looking, spies out here and there, picks up and drops. But above the intellect that seeks is another intellect which does not seek but stays in its pure, simple being, which is embraced in that light. . [German sermon 19b, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

From: http://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/some-eckharts-sayings

Note:
"The Life of Pi" by Yan Martel has a wonderful section on Hinduism which very much reflects the words (some exactly the same... e.g "the ground of being") and meaning of Meister Eckhart's wisdom.
On page 60, Pi refers to "Brahman nirguna" which is "God without qualities" in Meister Eckhart's words. When Pi talks about "Brahman saguna" he refers to what Meister Eckhart sees as a God with qualities, the one with human like features, e.g. the God of Abraham, the one so often depicted as having a beard, or the one passing judgment, or the one being revengeful, or the one Moses saw on the mountain, the one who gave him the Ten Commandments.

~~~

Comment by Astrid:

Wonderful Wim, bookmarked your site last week and was delighted to see that you were influenced by Teilhard de Chardin! I just finished "The Future of Man", very weighty but moving.

Wim:

Thank you, Astrid, and yes what a great visionary sage Teilhard de Chardin was. And as you might know, just like master Eckhart, he also had to defend his views with the Roman Catholic curia and censors, but he was a bit more successful than master Eckhart, although papal cautions are still in place about his writings You may also like that I added a note to this piece about the book "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel - a delightful read and there is really a great message interwoven into the fabric of his tales...

11 November, 2010

"Being" instead of "Becoming"

2010-10-01T00:25:00.000-07:00

(Holland, winter 1963, I had just turned 19)

It was a frosty and foggy morning and as I was riding my bicycle to school through the misty Dutch polders and the fogged-in streets of the city, I could hardly see more that ten feet around me.

Except for my bike’s handlebars all my usual reference points seemed to have disappeared.

I had made this 30 minute trip to school (a teacher training college in The Hague) every school day for the last 3 years or so, but this time, when I arrived at the school building, rather than parking my bike in the school-basement’s bicycle storage, I leaned the bike against a lantern post and I locked it.

I proceeded to take my leather book-bag off the bicycle rack, but while undoing the bungee cords I caught myself wondering aloud,

"What are you doing...?

W h a t a r e y o u d o i n g ...?"

While lugging my heavy book-bag as I went up the granite steps that led to the school's entrance, I tried to answer that question, but somehow I could not find any words.

After a minute of trying to have my lips form some verbal sentences, I could muster - but just barely,

"I am becoming...

I am becoming a t...,

becoming a teach...

I'm becoming a... ..."

But that was all my mind could offer my mouth to utter.

Then suddenly, something from deep inside me was welling up, and I caught myself wondering loudly,

"Becoming...? Becoming...?

But.. I am!

...

I am!!!"

I immediately returned to my bicycle, unlocked it, strung my book-bag back up and started on my way home.

While cycling back through the outskirts of the city and then through the fields, the sun started to melt the fog away and I drove through a landscape that was all white with snowy frost. The tree branches, the shrubbery, the grass land... all silvery white.

But even as the hazy sun began to shine clearer and as the white haze became more an more golden and as I was gazing into the distance above and before of me, it struck me that I saw no horizon whatsoever. As far as I could see, it was as though the silvery earth seamlessly merged with the almost golden sky.

I eventually arrived at a special tree, a tree under whose shadows during the summer I'd usually do my homework. But this time, after putting down my bike, I leaned against the tree wanting to hug it, but instead I slid down and I lost my bearings totally, becoming slowly aware that my normal consciousness was slipping away.

It was about an hour later that I "came to", so to speak, and after mounting my bike I drove home, tears of happiness and exhilaration streaming down my cheeks.

I started to sing... songs like poems, the words of which were a mix of Latin, Greek and Dutch,*

“Terra - Caelum,

Helios- Gaia,

Γαῖα - Ἥλιος.

The Earth is the foundation of the Heavens.

Ge - Hypo Anthropoon Ge,

Helios - Hyper Anthropoon Helios…

The Earth is the fundament of the Heavens,

And the Heavens are the glory of the Earth.”

I did not return to school.

A week later though, just a month before the school-year’s exams would begin, I informed the principal that I was not going to finish my studies,

"I am not going to become a teacher!

I'm not going to become anything…

I'm not gonna…

I am!"

Only my mother understood!

It took some time to put my youthful affairs in order, but by year’s end I stepped on my bike again and after a six hour trip into the country (Van Gogh country) I found the monastery (a Trappist monastery) where I would carry on with my inquiry into my authentic being - my self rediscovery.

I rang the bell and after a short interview at the gate, a monk opened the cloister door and I entered monastic life…

Much more happened after that of course as my reclamation of innate freedom only continued there.

Eventually I was able to reclaim the original freedom into and with which I was born.

* The Dutch words here translated into English.

To find out more about who you are with the guidance of the Indian guru "Ramana Maharshi" whose method of "self-inquiry" into who one is (by gaining insight into one's True Self) culminates in the recovery of "I Am", please click this paragraph for an excellent video on him and his method.

The two Sides of Spiritual Mercantilism

2010-09-25T13:37:00.001-07:00

In his review of Brad Warner's book "Sex Sin and Zen" John L Murphy (Fionnchú) says, "[Brad Warner] reminds us how “mystical serenity” has nothing to do with true wisdom..."

So true, but it seems to me - from reading the review - that Warner's (shall we say?) “banal bashing” also has very little to do with true wisdom!

I suggest that Warner's “demystifying banality” is just the other side of the same coin that is expected to be dropped into the donation boxes at the market stalls in that illusive and deluded world of spiritual mercantilism.

Come to think of it:

What if Warner, Osho, Allan Watts* and the like all have something in common: that they are (were) somehow unable (disabled** perhaps?) to have their genuine (yes!) enlightened insights help them to actually and factually realize & apply them - that is making them tangibly real!
What if they were somehow prevented** from seeing that their compulsive reactive activities (caused by a third party's ill intended conditional and thus illusive maneuvering) were meant to prevent the reclamation of their original freedom (everyone's birthright!)
What if they wished but could not** (yet) use their genuine insights as a tool to regain their authentic and genuine existential/essential state of freedom (liberation, moksha)?

It may well be that their letting it all hang lead them into no more than pseudo-realization, fake liberation, or, if not that, than at least an incomplete form of it.

It seems to me that what they have in common is that they are (were) not able (yet?) to detach themselves from the compulsiveness of their impulses while they unfortunately assumed that their giving up and giving in, their letting go and letting it all hang is the real thing... not suspecting it to be as deluded as (indeed) the “mystical serenity” of their more hallowed new age competitors, the spiritual mystical strivers, the ones they so seem to detest...

* This is not meant to say that the value of the copious contributions by Alan Watts and Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) to the cause of liberation (the Zen way or the Hindi way) are to be dismissed. The dissemination of their insights (quite pioneering in the West) into liberation, enlightenment and realization introduced the Oriental approaches to a wide and ready public.

** To find out more about the hows and whys of "ill intended maneuvering" that "third parties" peruse to bring about unilateral dependency and conditional freedom (which is no freedom at all) there are many articles on this website that deal with that. Please check out the Main Menu (top of the left column) for topics on this.

~~~

Comment by Fionnchú:

I like your term "spiritual mercantilism", Wim, it complements Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's "spiritual materialism." There's a lively sub-genre as Noah Levine's "Dharma Punx" popularizing this generational iconoclasm, perhaps as Warner & Levine both come out of a post-hippie reaction to its vibes? For comparison and contrast, peek along the way that Juniper: Buddhist training for modern life may be pioneering as a secular-scientific rapprochement, along the lines of Stephen Batchelor, as well as Skillful Meditation Project with its consideration of "unlearning meditation," suggest other, less snarky or pop culture alternatives for the West (and recalling Dzogchen Ponlop's call for a dharma that globalizing Easterners can also accept!). Juniper takes Tibetan and SMP Vipassana rooted traditions while applying them to Western mindsets and what we know now about the mind and body. Directions such as these may show a more mature reaction to what Buddhism can evolve into, one that may be more integrated than the interim stages that Warner may be reacting to.

25 September, 2010

"Work diligently to successfully regain the perfection of your original being"

2010-09-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

~ the Buddha's last words (paraphrased)

A conversation on the liberation from suffering, illusion and karma and release of the belief in past-life karma and reincarnation

This conversation took place over the internet, some parts by means of voice chatting, other parts by means of keyboard chatting.

Natalie:

"Those beneficiares will give you thanks."

Wim:

Sorry, Natalie, I don’t get what you mean by that...

Natalie:

Oh, gosh, I must have just copy/pasted that in by accident, sorry. I’m feeling a bit weak today... But, hmm... why should I be feeling weak today? After all I spent quite a bit of time with my yoga teacher who was helping me meditate positively on issues to do with my health and well-being (kalyas*). He is a Theravada Buddhist teacher...

Hmm... I think I know... Maybe I'm feeling weak because afterward I did some intense burning off of personal karma...**

Wim:

Right, maybe your timing of "karma burning" was a bit off... That happens.

But about "Those beneficiares will give you thanks"...

Maybe it was not so accidental that you pasted that in, because it is true, isn't it?

Sooner or later all those who truly "benefit" will give thanks.

(No universal good will ever go unnoticed.)

But back to your "burning off some personal karma", I have heard that phrased differently, something like "killing the demons from one's past".

Incidentally, my wife just yesterday did quite a bit of that, but afterward she realized something very important, namely the illusiveness of those "inner demons" - those inner turmoils that we sometimes like to call "demons" or "evil spirits".

She became quite convinced that what is usually seen as personal karmic suffering, that it is really based on illusion - artificially forced make belief.

She discovered that, although suffering is somehow experienced internally and personally, that it really is not her own suffering.

Karmic sufferings, brought on, so to speak, by 'outer demons' in one's past, sooner or later tend to POSE as 'inner' demons***.
At some point they even tend to be identified that way - even experienced as such.
But are they really my inner demons?

Who's suffering is it really?!
And... aren't those karmic sufferings really characterized by the very transience and impermanence**** that the Buddha called "illusion?!

Natalie:

So true Wim, tell her that I often feel that too. I also know, albeit mentally, that 'my' suffering is not really mine.

So she realized that too eh? As for myself though, I realize it only sometimes, but... unfortunately not now! Right now it feels as though this suffering is located as pain in my stomach.

I do feel pain. I do feel weak. I feel this aching emptiness, like a hole, a wound in the pit of my stomach.

Wim:

I know it well, Natalie, it is a terrible feeling! But, like you say, although that suffering is not really yours, the body though does feel it as physical pain...

Natalie:

What about that pain then, Wim?

Where does the pain come from if the suffering is not really mine?

If my suffering or based on illusion, delusion even, then why the physical pain?

Wim:

Well, the pain is not an illusion, it is not even psycho-somatic! The pain is your pain, you feel it physically. Maybe you can trace its origin.

Do you remember, from your past, when you felt that pain for the first time in your life? Can you remember the situation in which you actually first became aware of that aching, when it was first incurred?

Natalie:

Well I would have to dig deep, but I'm sure that I can find instances. I may not find the first time that it happened, but...

...

I remember for instance that when I was still very young, how lonely I often felt, abandoned...

and that is... ... That's when the pain started, that aching in my stomach... Oh, and that intense nervous feeling in my belly...

And now... I am still feeling it!

Wim:

Could that be the body's memory of when exactly your suffering - your abandonment - was first instigated? The moment that you first became acutely aware of being abandoned?

You see, pain and suffering, although they take place at the same time, they are a different kind of experience, the one is in the body, the other in the mind.

Pain is 'bodily' yours. It is actually a physical memory in your nerves and muscles of what took place physically when other people's anguish and/or anger was unduly instilled in you, transferred to you; when it was reflected onto you in the hope - false though - that by projecting their anguish, anger and suffering onto you, that they would be rid of it themselves.
Suffering is actually never ever 'bodily' yours. Suffering is only 'mentally' contained, in the form of disturbing messages or memories.
The problem is that those memories or messages, although called memories, they are often 'forgotten', hidden actually, suppressed... even if they are registered by means of neural linkages and come up as mental associations!

Whereas the associated pain is still physically felt, even years later, the originating circumstances are often suppressed and seem to be forgotten.

But when you remember what actually and exactly took place, say, that moment when you were abandoned, when other people's anguish, frustration and suffering got transferred to you, then, what you now remember in your mind as seemingly your anger, anguish, frustration and suffering, you are matching the physical pain that you now have with the physical pain that you incurred then, the previously repressed and seemingly forgotten memory.

Although the memory is yours, the transferred suffering though, the anguish, etc. is actually not!

It was only directed to you, reflected onto you, although... in a rather serious and convincing manner!

Suffering then - in its 'original origin' - is really only a projection onto you, a reflection that was initially only aimed at or directed to you.

The problem is though that that projection was repeated so many times that at some point in your early life it stuck itself to you like a thistle... like Velcro... meaning, that over time you have been made to feel as though that projection was not a projection from the outside at all, but that it was you, that it represented you, that it identified you, and... unfortunately... it is still trying to do that.

So, now it feels that that suffering IS YOUR suffering, and… worse even: you have been made to believe that you were also the... cause of that suffering, in addition to the... result.

Natalie:

So, now it appears as though that suffering defines me... and that I myself caused my suffering?

Wim:

Yes, you have been defined and identified by that suffering so much and so often, that eventually you came to fully identify yourself with it... causing you to also assume that that suffering is part of your identity and reality…

But, of course it never ever was that, but… by now you have forgotten that.

Natalie:

So, at some point early in my life, I, my unadulterated being really, has been substituted by that passed-down pseudo-identity...? And I was made to adopt that pseudo-identity and treat it as ME?

...

How did that happen, and when, and who made that projection?

Who projected that anguish, anger, or as you say 'their own assumed suffering' onto me, while, as you say, they expected that by projecting their own suffering, that they would be rid of it themselves?

Wim:

Look for someone in your life's past... a malevolent person of course, BUT very likely appearing as benevolent... one who even thought, or even may have told you, that he or she had the best intentions in mind for you.

See if you can recognize that you have been artificially identified to be that 'pseudo-person' which 'that person with the best intentions' wanted you to be...

People with secondary (often malevolent) motives do that so often that eventually one adopts that forced or made-up fake identity as one's own.

Eventually one even assumes that it has all been 'your own fault' or if not that, that you had it coming or deserved it… all the while forgetting - or having been made to forget - that you were actually tricked into the acquisition of that fake identity, that identity with that unwarranted and 'uncalled for' suffering.

Isn't it interesting that suffering people have been tricked (through the instillation of fear by others with likely secondary, even malevolent motives) into treating illusion as more real than reality itself... thus having been tricked into replacing REALITY with pseudo-reality and their real SELF with a fake or pseudo-self?!

Natalie:

That must be the reason why so many suffering and anguished people often say that they don't feel themselves!

Wim:

Absolutely! Right on Natalie!

But back to "burning karma" or "killing demons"...

This is how demonic**** people (malevolent people / power mongers who use others for their own benefit, but to the detriment of the ones they are abusing) make you believe that it is "all your own fault", that it is YOUR karma… while… it is/was actually their abusive work, their karma** on you.

And it enabled them to hold you under their control, in their power… and... which is even worse… if you did not succumb or surrender to them, they made you believe that you were absolutely discardable and not even worth to be alive!

Natalie:

U ARE SO RIGHT...

And so, they abandoned me...

And they probably even expected that I might end up wanting to put an end to my life

...

About my meditation just now with that yoga teacher.... See, oddly enough, this person still smokes, and after my meditation I was so sad that I felt like smoking too, like I needed it as some form of compensation, hmm... consolation actually.

It was so strange, the sadness and the temptation or need for that artificial consolation.

I mean, why after such a meditation, when I only wanted to burn off karma, that I felt like burning tobacco and inhaling smoke?

And.. that temptation made me even more sad.

Wim:

Too bad about that temptation, but it was very good that you felt that enhanced sadness. It gave you a chance to look at it.

So now, looking at that sadness...Do you now see that that sadness is really a repeat of the very first sadness you ever felt when you were for the first time duped in your life, and when you were for the first time conscious of the unfairness of it.

Natalie:

Yes, that is so true, that sadness and me wanting to cry came from the abandonment, the feeling of not being accepted, recognized - not being wanted!

So that’s also why the loneliness!

Somebody told me once that it was just bad luck...

Bad luck…?!

That cannot be of course not, I so remember that I was a defenseless little child... a mistreated child... and now of course I always have that sense of being the victim…

Wim:

You have a right to cry, so please do weep, you WERE so terribly duped...

It all happened when your will was weakened AGAINST YOUR WILL, when your free will was hijacked so to speak, when you were either taken advantage of, or when you were just abandoned and discarded.

You have a right to be angry... you have a right to stand up for yourself...

Then - in the past - when this first happened, you could not stand up for yourself, you were probably too small or too weakened, short-changed and underfed emotionally, and perhaps... physically as well...

Hence the pain or empty feeling in your stomach or around your solar plexus - the seat of your willpower.

And, yes, this happens most often when a child is helpless, defenseless...

Natalie:

Well, I feel hurt, intense hurt, like the wound is again open and I wonder why?

Wim:

Yes, the old hurt revived..., that intense aching!

...

By the way, Natalie, nothing of what we are talking about here is to assign blame or to judge anyone... but IT IS IMPORTANT to make contact with that moment... AND... to identify the players and the circumstances in the drama that took place.

The players of course had no choice but to do to you what they were somehow also forced to do. If they still would've had their 'free will', they would never have done it.

But compassion will take care of that... but later.

NOW you have to identify that moment and identify the actors without fear... Good thing they are not here at the moment..., it is safe now.

Feel strengthened, Natalie, by this knowledge...

Be strong in this moment...

Let the weakness and sadness turn into strength...

Do some intensive deep breathing after your weeping, and… look for a feeling of triumph... however strange that might sound, however uncalled for triumph or even victory may seem…

Natalie:

Why does the attempt to liberate yourself cause so much pain and suffering?

That feeling of suffering appears to be so ancient, as though from an other life… I have so many memories of that…

Wim:

More about that "other life" later, Natalie. For now, anger is good, providing it is at some point followed by compassion, and it will be!

It is a good thing that real rightful anger (not resentment, not hatred) will always be followed by compassion... you can take my word for it... and... love will follow as well, but it will be REAL love not fearful or pseudo-love that is being fed by guilt.

Natalie:

Yes, I feel that, but I would like to break this connection with suffering forever. Of course!

And you are right, before compassion one must understand that suffering, gain deep insight into it.

I feel that I need to understand how that... how did you put it?... how and why suffering was instilled in me.

Right now though, on the whole, there is still so much darkness in my suffering…

Wim:

Have you read my blog pieces on "reincarnation", "past lives" and "bad karma"?

What I write about that, you may at first not agree with, but please do read the pieces on it carefully and trust me fully: you can confidently give up the belief in past life karma.

http://free-by-nature.blogspot.com/2010/05/reincarnation.html

http://free-by-nature.blogspot.com/2010/02/reincarnation-past-lives-and-karma.html (also read the comments)

http://free-by-nature.blogspot.com/2007/09/karma-power-of-entrapment.html (also read the comments)

In fact, liberation (moksha) does not take place when you don't realize that past life karma is also part of that chain of suffering and ILLUSION!

The illusion being that you have been made to accept (or tricked into accepting) that you personally are the cause of your suffering - eternal suffering even, in the case of belief in past-life or past-lives karma and the reincarnations that presumably follow.

You can safely undo that belief in that so called 'reality' of past-life suffering.

Sure, that is a daring thing to do, I know, but when one does, one IS very brave...

One MUST be very brave, as it (giving up the belief in past life karma) goes against the sentiments that unfortunately are such a strong part of certain unhealthy elements in many religions and most New Age spiritual approaches. Unhealthy, as those sentiments actually keep the 'believer' enslaved to those unhealthy elements of religion and spirituality - the elements that keep the 'believers' captive, bounded.

Attachment to that belief actually prevents, or, if not that, it can seriously stymie one's genuine liberation.

It may be best to start with: http://free-by-nature.blogspot.com/2010/05/reincarnation.html and then to take it from there.

Natalie:

Well now that we are talking about all this, it seems that my inner self addressed me to you to find your good advice.

Wim:

Thank you Natalie, but don't be surprised if you find yourself doubting what I am writing about karma and reincarnation in the articles I am suggesting you to read.

But that is to be expected as it is quite radical... but so was the Buddha's message, so was Jesus', so was Akhenaton's...

To be genuinely free and liberated, all beliefs eventually will have to be detached from.

In spite of what most people think in the world of spirituality,

most attachments are to… beliefs - not things.

But you can unconditionally trust the process of liberation. All conditional attachments will eventually disappear while the process of liberation is taking place.

Natalie:

I know, I’m radical as well, eclectic even, but I would like to liberate with Palden Dorje. I dream being one of his disciples and experience Truth with no fear or attachments so that I can leave everything behind.

Palden Dorje is so pure, so 'virgin'. He does not want to be manipulated by any hierarchies, not even the Buddhist ones.

Four years ago I felt he is the one, and I’m so lucky to live in the same era.

Wim:

It is so wonderful to find such a person, someone who enables you in becoming unconditional in one's love, who helps you in your genuine search for truth and who enables you to reclaim and realize genuine unconditional happiness…

Natalie:

The need for renunciation - that has been my life and of part of my ancestors.

I have already renounced so many things, but I have still so many things left that I still need to detach from.

Wim:

Any genuine liberator will help you to also become free of... the liberator himself (or herself), and any real liberator will remind you of that many times... even while you, who are following him (or her), feel so drawn and indebted to that person.

Any one-sided dependency - even on the guru - will disappear, although, the gratitude will of course always remain.

Natalie:

I know that! For sure!

No attachment at all, not even to the guru… But still, the Buddha had many many disciples, and still Buddhism seems to be a wide religious movement of followers…

Wim:

Let us always remember the very last words of the Buddha:

"Vayadhamma sankhara appamadena sampadetha."

"Work hard to successfully regain the perfection of you own original being."

I have to leave now, Natalie, it was privilege to be with you!!!!

We will talk again...

Love forever…

Natalie:

Thank you Wim and I know that Palden Dorje will always invoke in us:

"Om Mani Padme Hum"

"You are a treasure, the light always shines in you!"

Wim:

Remember how we started our conversation with "Those beneficiares will give you thanks"?

Indeed,

And all negativity, illusion and suffering will be seen as transient and will disappear...

Universal good will never cease and will never go unnoticed.

* Kalya (Sanskrit), Adverb - able, healthy, ready, well, capable, timely, pleasant, agreeable, auspicious.

Kalya, (proper name) masc. - with a short final vowel: ' a healthy boy'.

Kalya, (proper name) fem. - with a long final vowel: 'she who is the object of admiring meditation'.

The name of the Goddess Lalita.

** Karma (Sanskrit) - originally karma means work, action or act.

*** The 'demons' actually being ill intending victimizers (power-mongers and manipulators) with devious or deviating motives in the treatment of their charges by means of abusive strategies which increase their own advantage to the detriment of and at an emotional cost to their victims.

**** Transience or anicca (Pāli: अनिच्चा anicca; Sanskrit: अनित्य anitya).

The Pali word 'anicca' is usually translated as 'impermanence'. In my view however 'transience' does a slightly better job in reflecting what the Buddha intended to point out when he discussed that conditional phenomena***** are fleeting and cannot be depended upon or trusted with full confidence:

Conditions are as they are, they are givens (as in 'data'), they might or might not be transient, at least they can be scientifically and objectively measured, exactly calculated and even predicted.
Conditional phenomena however, are reflections that appear in the mind only. They cannot be depended upon with full confidence as they are mental interpretations that depend on the correctness of observations, interpretations and descriptions.

***** Phenomenon (noun) from phainomenon (Greek, noun) - that which appears,

from phainesthaiphainein - to show (active verb) but also - to appear (passive verb).

Free by Nature - The Book

2010-09-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Notice:
The printed book version of this publication is not available anymore, but everything that was in it (and much more!) you can still find freely on this website.

Each article on this web magazine can of course be printed out individually. Just click on the main title of any article and select "File / Print Preview" from your browser's "Menu Bar" to see what it will look like in print. Then, if desired, make the appropriate changes (e.g. headers, footers, page numbering or margins) in "File / Page Setup" , and then select "File/ Print..." .

FREE BY NATURE

ALTHOUGH CONDITIONAL CONDITIONING MAKES IT SEEM THAT WE ARE NOT

A 180 page publication, containing a collection of essays, correspondence, conversations and ruminations on:

Awareness, reality and illusion.
Impermanence and suffering.
Suffering and illusion.
Identity, ego and pseudo-self.
Entrapment, subservience and apparent loss of freedom.
The reclamation of innate freedom.

From the back cover:

"A surprise awaits the reader who accompanies the writer on his investigation into the dynamics and language of entrapment, dependency and suffering while he endeavors to uncover the causes of apparent loss of human freedom.
Witness how he digs up clue after clue on how this innate and inherent freedom came to be treated as only conditionally available.
You are invited to look over his shoulders and find out with him how humankind was made to believe that dependence and suffering define life more than freedom and happiness do, and to discover that the claim on unconditional freedom and happiness is not only warranted but realizable for everyone."
The booklet comes with: "Personal Power Pack(TM)," a mini booklet containing "points to ponder," a collection of phrases drawn from the main text that can be used for meditational consideration."

Reality does not require belief

2010-09-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

If you want to know what is real, just let go of ALL beliefs.

"Reality manifests when you let go of all beliefs."

~ Written on a wall in Omaha, 2003.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." *

~ Philip K. Dick in "Valis" (1981)

Variations:

Reality is what refuses to go away once you stop believing in it.

Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.

Illusion is that what goes away when you stop believing in it.

Reality doesn't go away when you stop believing in it, illusion does.

Truth doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.

Illusion goes away when you stop believing it.

Illusion isn't even 'there', even IF you believe in it.

Truth doesn't go away when you stop believing in it, illusion does.

Truth doesn't go away when you stop believing in it, untruth does.

Reality manifests when you let go of all beliefs.

One realizes reality when one lets go of all beliefs.

As any belief's obfuscating notions evaporate, reality becomes clearer and clearer again.

As beliefs dissolve, reality clarifies.

Reality is what remains after one has let go of any belief, fear, expectation, regret, judgment, etc.

A short conversation:

Wim:

First try to realize that you don't exist, that nothing does, and keep trying until you suddenly realize that things are just what they are.

Then you might discover:

. that it is best to put all ideas to rest,

. that you can give up any belief,

. and that you can let go of all assumptions...

Then... just live as though there is no end to it!

Randy:

But Wim, shouldn't we also give up the belief that there is more at the end of life than just a biological end.

Wim:

For sure, providing though that we also give up the belief that there is nothing at that so-called "end of life"!

And now that we are into giving up, we may as well drop any belief about what life entails,

especially any belief about:

. how/where/when/why and if it ever began,

. how/where/when/why and if it would ever end,

. and whatever appears to happen in between.

Note:

* Copyright RPG Inc. Pre-printed Post-It(R) note.

~~~

Comment by Scarlet Adams: But sometimes, belief is the only thing that leads you to reality. Then what?

Belief isn't always illusion.

Belief is what diminishes fear.

Belief is what erases any regrets.

Belief is what help you get rid of your ego, greed, anger, lust, illusion.

Belief is essential, so embrace what you believe, and dig deeper to understand what it means.

Belief is the core trust that lies in our souls, which is a path way for us to see the Supreme Truth.

Belief is what leads us to see what the Truth of Reality."

Wim:I very much appreciate your response, Scarlet.

What you write about belief is true insofar that it describes the intermediary steps or attempts by those who are on their way to retrieve genuine reality - ergo: people who are getting ready, beginning to, or in the process of looking genuine reality squarely, honestly, fearlessly and unconditionally trustingly in the face...

Reality is fully realized when all beliefs have dissipated or dissolved themselves after they have, so to say, served their worthwhile (but only temporarily so) bridging-the-gap purpose.

Full reality does not require belief, genuine reality is self-evident, it speaks clearly for itself, it is truth, it is dharma.

What is usually or commonly called 'reality' is not 'direct' or 'immediate' 'self-evident' reality. Such pseudo-reality is still in need of the crutches of mental reasoning, suppositions, assumptions, beliefs, hope, faith, etc.

Such pseudo-reality only SEEMS to be reality, but it is in appearance only, hence the Buddha identified that whole complexity as "illusion". Hence also, in Buddhism and Hinduism it goes under the label of "maya".

You say very correctly that "Belief is what leads us to see what the Truth of Reality [is]."

But - and I don't doubt that you know - unfortunately and all too commonly "believers" tend to be so attached to their beliefs that they treat their beliefs as more fundamental and real than the "Truth of Reality" they are aiming to reach with their beliefs.

As long as one is so attached to one's beliefs as to not be able to let go of them eventually, reality (dharma, truth) can not be realized...

04 September, 2010

Akhenaten's Hymn

2010-07-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

Akhenaten

The young enlightened Egyptian pharaoh.
A divinely inspired spiritual revolutionary, possibly the first monotheist.
18th Dynasty's (1353- 1336 BCE)

Akhenaten and Nefertiti

Akhenaten and Nefertiti
Illustration source

Akhenaten's Hymn to Aten

(See footnotes 1 and 2)

Hieroglyphs of Aten, the Solar Disk

"When you set in the Western horizon, the earth is in darkness and everything seems as lifeless as someone asleep in his sleeping quarters, eyes closed, seeing nothing, hardly even breathing.

It is dark now... the world is in silence.
You, who made everything alive, are now resting behind the horizon.

Then, from the East at dawn you brighten the earth as you rise up over the horizon, chasing darkness away by sending forth your rays.

It is light now... and you revitalize everything with your golden disk. You touch everything with your life giving energy.

Now, from the North to the South, our land's inhabitants are enjoying their daily tasks as though they are at a feast.

You woke them up with your rays and they are all fresh and on their feet.

Everyone is bathing and dressing themselves beautifully.

They all raise their arms in adoration of your dawning, and they proceed happily to busy themselves with their daily doings.

The beasts feed themselves in their pastures and the trees and the plants flourish.
Birds flutter in the marshes, their wings lifted up in adoration of your presence.
Sheep and their lambs, goats and their kids jostle and dance in the fields.
Insects fly about lively while you shed your light on them.
The fishes in the river and the sea leap up from the waves while they glisten in your rays.
Ships and barges glide smoothly in the rivers, their sails in the wind, up and downstream alike.
All roads and pathways are freely used everyone, their ways lit by your rays.

You grow the ovum in a women and produce the sperm in a man, and you provide for the life of the child in its mother's womb.
You sooth and console the children so that they will not be sad or weep, and you nourish them just as you nursed them while in the womb.
You give breath to all living beings, and when they come forth from the womb on the day of their birth, you open their mouth so that they can find their voice.

When the fledgling is still in its shell, you give it breath to secure its life, and your warmth hatches the egg till it burst open. The chicklet chirps with all his might, and then goes about on his two feet from the moment it emerges from its shell.

How manifold and varied are your works, even while so many of them remain hidden from our knowledge and sight.

Oh Divine One, with your infinite creative powers you formed everything that exists from the deepest core of your being.
You, who brought forth all beings, humans and animals large and small, all that go about on their feet and fly high on their wings

Considering all countries - amongst them Syria and Kush, and our land Egypt - you enable everyone to be settled peacefully in their place.

You supply all necessities of life and safeguard what everyone possesses.

You protect everybody's livelihood, no matter which language they speak, no matter the color of their skin and - indifferent to the distinctions in their culture - you shine on them all, sanctioning and sanctifying all their varied diversity."

Note 1. It was probably the Hebrew king David, the biblical musician/poet, who, around 1000 BCE, wrote a similar hymn: psalm 104. Click here (I am looking fro a new one) for a side by side reading of Akhenaten's hymn and psalm 104.

Note 2. Saint Francis of Assisi wrote a comparable hymn or canticle in 1224: the Canticum Fratris Solis or Laudes Creaturarum

(Abd'El Hakim Awyan - Egyptian archeologist)

"Your?" thoughts and emotions - whose are they really?

2010-06-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

It is quite possible that you'll have a hard time agreeing with the contents of this post. Its conclusions may seem to go against anything you have been made to believe about the ownership and source of 'your own' thoughts...

Give it a try though... It may help to get the point that I'm making if you also read:

Sentencing
The Ownership of Your (?) Thoughts
Reality and Illusion

Only
positive thoughts and emotions
are your own

and reflect reality!

However,
any negative thoughts and emotions

only look and feel
as though they are your own

and only look and feel
as though they reflect reality.

They are NOT your own though,

and they are NOT based on reality.

How come though,

that YOU seem to have those negative thoughts
in your own mind,

and that YOU seem to feel those negative emotions as being
in your own body?

All negative thoughts and all related negative emotions - in whatever form or through whatever process they may have been implanted into your mental and sensorial system* - are based on you having been 'captivatingly illusioned' (tricked) and 'sentenced for life' by people with self-serving, one-sided and manipulative motives after they put you under their spell of illusions and lies - illusions and lies which were not only unduly and unfairly projected** onto you, but which you were also tricked into believing that they were your own, of your own doing and... of your own choosing.

As long as you still feel compelled to believe and nurse any negative thought and emotion, and as long as you consider any negative thought and emotion as being your own, you are still being held under that captive mental spell, your a still living under that life-sentence that was so unwarranted and so undeservedly passed over you.

Are you ready to give those negative thoughts, emotions, spells and illusions a chance to wear off and clear away?

Are you ready to dis-own and dis-avow them?

Are you ready to look-fearlessly-in-the-faces of those who got you stuck with that negativity?

Will you free yourself from them?

Are you ready to let go of that negativity - those negative thoughts and feelings which were never yours to begin with and which by your very nature were never really a part of you?

Can you redefine and reclaim your original self by not feeling compelled to characterize yourself anymore the way you were at some point in the past unfairly tricked into identifying and characterizing yourself?

Are you ready to claim you inborn, unadulterated and unconditional freedom?

If yes, now enable yourself to be ready, and you will never unduly and unfairly be held accountable anymore for anything negative that you were once and many times over made to feel was your own, your own doing and... of your own choosing...

You can be unconditionally free again!

See what happens when you
disable
your (?) pseudo self.

See what happens when you
enable
your (!) real self.

* Mirror Neurons ("echo neurons") are involved in this process.
** Remember the wizard / illusionist / projectionist in "The Wizard of Oz"!

~~~

Comment by Mitesh: Can same be true for positive thoughts? What is the role of our subconscious mind, as it always accepts everything without any resistance?

Wim: Answering your questions can only be done after we evaluate WHAT thoughts actually are...

Thoughts based on reality can be YOUR thoughts, "thoughts" based on negativity though (the denial of reality) can never be YOURS truly, as they are merely borrowed labels)...

Actually, they are NOT thoughts whatsoever, they only appear... as thoughts by simulating or mimicking them. (The reasoning behind this - although simplified here for brevity - is something along the lines of: A picture of a cow is not a cow, although a physical cow and the image of that same cow are both labeled "cow"!)

Negative "thoughts" (notice the quotes) ALWAYS have verbal content, through words that are externally acquired. Positive thoughts in principle DO NOT! Although they may (and often do) acquire verbal content.

Negative (or "faux") thoughts are actually NOT thoughts at all, it is only because their verbal contents is processed in the same part of the brain were reality (positive thinking) is processed, that they take on certain characteristics that RESEMBLE positive (or "proper") thoughts - RESEMBLE!!!

Negative (surrogate or faux) "thoughts" are based on illusion, whereas positive thoughts are based on reality.

Positive thoughts come from an altogether different source (the inner unadulterated self!) than negative (faux, surrogate) "thoughts"... which come from external sources only as they are picked up and registered by our auditory (and partially our visual) sense.

Negative "thoughts" are always REACTIVE in their verbal content. They are also incomplete and unsuccessful attempts at APPEARING as reasoning while they TRY (as they can never be successful) to deny, invalidate or discount reality.

So although we use the same word "thought" for both positive and - seemingly similar - negative "phenomena", only the positive versions are thoughts proper (as they are based on reality) while the negative or faux ones only mimic thoughts proper, but... they are really only an illusion of thoughts.

As to your question about the "subconscious mind", the answer depends on the definition of what "consciousness" is and what "mind" is.

You may remember that I see "mind" merely as a handy (though sometimes clumsy) tool that Pure Awareness can make use of.

Awareness (ala Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry "Who am I?") is of primary importance, whereas mental consciousness is only of secondary importance..

Only "un-Aware" people have under-performing and thus "sub-conscious" minds. I very much appreciate your question Mitesh!!! I hope that my answer will help you in YOU getting to YOUR authentic answers to all your questions... :)

25 June, 2010

Comment by Mitesh: Wim, could you please elaborate more about "reality"and what is "illusion" exactly?

Wim:

I - REALITY

The etymological root of the word "reality" is the Latin word "res" which means "thing".

Originally then, reality had to do with the "world of things", tangible things, or - to say it more completely - things that can be experienced through our five senses:

Touch (tactile),
Vision (eidetic),
Smell (olfactory),
Sound (auditory)
Taste (gustatory).

Please refer to: http://thekundaliniprocess.blogspot.com/2009/11/updated-view-of-chakras.html

The five skandhas represent the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space, or, in more scientific terms, the skandhas can be identified as phase or aggregate states:

Solid state,
Liquid state,
Plasmic state,
Gaseous state,
Wave state (from inter-corpuscular, via inter-particular to sub-atomic wave space).

Anything that cannot be sensorially experienced by the 5 senses is NOT a thing and therefore... an illusion!

Note 1:

Of course, our sensorial faculties can be extended by any kind of measuring apparatus such as the microscope, telescope, particle collider, spectroscope, etc.

For a comprehensive list of them see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_instrument

Note 2a:

The complete human sensorial experience can range from sensing the very gross to sensing the very subtle, which (the very subtle) incidentally also includes the spiritual experience of reality.

Note 2b:

Mind you, if that spiritual reality is not experienced through all the well-developed and evenly balanced subtle (but still physical!) chakras or subtle energy centres of our body - meaning, if spirituality is only based on a mentalized belief system - it is not spiritual reality at all but illusion under the guise of spirituality. (What is traditionally considered to be the Kundalini experience of reality focuses on that subtle range, as it covers and includes the above described unadulterated spiritual experience of reality.)

Note 3:

The five sensorial experiences of a "thing" do not have to take place simultaneously, but each of the five senses will have to be satisfied sooner or later for "something" to be authentically a "thing". (It is interesting that the realism of the spiritual Kundalini experience is evidenced by the observation of subtle fragrances as well as a range of subtle visual, auditory and tangible vibrations and characteristics, and... ADDITIONALLY an enhanced and extended experiential awareness of space/time.)

II - ILLUSION

Whatever is not covered by the above, occurs only in the rarified realm of mental illusion (Sanskrit "maya") - a pseudo version, or better yet, a mimicked version of reality. Illusion is artfully, or rather, artificially fed by allusions, illusions and delusions.

Illusion is all that, which through:

forced belief (manipulation through fear),
purchased belief (through the commerce of religion) and
make belief (a through trickery acquired disability to handle reality,)

is artificially made to look more real than reality itself!

05 July, 2010

Andrew Cohen interviews Eckhart Tolle

2010-06-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Eckhart Tolle (Bio & Resources) - Andrew Cohen (Bio & Resources)

ANDREW COHEN: Eckhart, what is your life like? I've heard that you're a bit of a recluse and that you spend a lot of time in solitude. Is that true?

ECKHART TOLLE: That was true in the past, before my book The Power of Now came out. For many years I was a recluse. But since the publication of the book, my life has changed dramatically. I'm now very much involved in teaching and traveling. And people who knew me before say, "This is amazing. You used to be a hermit and now you are out in the world." Yet I still feel that inside nothing has changed. I still feel exactly the same as before. There is still a continuous sense of peace, and I am surrendered to the fact that on an external level there's been a total change. So it's actually not true anymore that I am a hermit. Now I'm the opposite of a hermit. This may well be a cycle. It may well be that at some point this will come to an end and I will become a hermit again. But at the moment, I am surrendered to the fact that I'm almost continuously interacting. I do occasionally take time to be alone. That is necessary in between teaching engagements.

AC: Why is it that you need to take time to be alone, and what is it that happens when you take the time to be alone?
ET: When I'm with people, I'm a spiritual teacher. That's the function, but it's not my identity. The moment I'm alone, my deepest joy is to be nobody, to relinquish the function of a teacher. It's a temporary function. Let's say I'm seeing a group of people. The moment they leave me, I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. There's no longer any sense of external identity. I simply go into the stillness more deeply. The place that I love most is the stillness. It's not that the stillness is lost when I talk or when I teach because the words arise out of the stillness. But when people leave me, there is only the stillness left. And I love that so much.

AC: Would you say that you prefer it?

ET: Not prefer. There is a balance now in my life, which perhaps wasn't there before. When the inner transformation happened many years ago, one could almost say a balance was lost. It was so fulfilling and so blissful simply to be that I lost all interest in doing or interacting. For quite a few years, I got lost in Being. I had almost relinquished doing completely—just enough to keep myself alive and even that was miraculous. I had totally lost interest in the future. And then gradually a balance re-established itself. It didn't re-establish itself fully until I started writing the book. The way I feel now is that there is a balance in my life between being alone and interacting with people, between Being and doing, whereas before, the doing was relinquished and there was only Being. Blissful, profound, beautiful—but from an external viewpoint, many people thought that I had become unbalanced or had gone mad. Some people thought I was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore.

So the balance now is between aloneness and meeting with people. And that's good. I'm quite attentive to that so that the balance doesn't get lost. There is now a pull toward increasing doing. People want me to talk here and talk there—there are constant demands. I know that I need to be attentive now, so that the balance is not lost, and I don't get lost in doing. I don't think it would ever happen, but it requires a certain amount of vigilance.

AC: What would it mean to get lost in doing

ET: Theoretically, it would mean that I would continuously travel, teach, and interact with people. Perhaps if that happened, at some point the flow, the stillness, might not be there. I don't know; it may always be there. Or physical exhaustion may set in. But I feel now that I need to return to the pure stillness periodically. And then, when the teaching happens, just allow it to arise out of the stillness. So the teaching and stillness are very closely connected. The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

AC: When you're alone, do you spend a lot of time physically being still?

ET: Yes, I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there's also complete stillness; there's no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There's simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that's beautiful.

AC: In your book The Power of Now you state that "The ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world." Could you please explain what you mean?

ET: Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking. In other words, it means to act without seeking to enhance one's sense of self through one's actions or one's interactions with people. Ultimately, it means not needing the future anymore for one's fulfillment or for one's sense of self or being. There is no seeking through doing, seeking an enhanced, more fulfilled, or greater sense of self in the world. When that seeking isn't there anymore, then you can be in the world but not be of the world. You are no longer seeking for anything to identify with out there.

AC: Do you mean that one has given up an egotistical, materialistic relationship to the world?

ET: Yes, it means no longer seeking to gain a sense of self, a deeper or enhanced sense of self. Because in the normal state of consciousness, what people are looking for through their activity is to be more completely themselves. The bank robber is looking for that in some way. The person who is striving for enlightenment is also looking for it because he or she is seeking to attain a state of perfection, a state of completion, a state of fullness at some point in the future. There is a seeking to gain something through one's activities. They are seeking happiness, but ultimately they are seeking themselves or you could say God; it comes down to the same thing. They are seeking themselves, and they are seeking where it can never be found, in the normal, unenlightened state of consciousness, because the unenlightened state of consciousness is always in the seeking mode. That means they are of the world—in the world and of the world.

AC: You mean that they are looking forward in time?

ET: Yes, the world and time are intrinsically connected. When all self-seeking in time ceases, then you can be in the world without being of the world.

AC: What exactly do you mean when you say that the purpose of the world lies in the transcendence of it?

ET: The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people feel, "Yes, now I have arrived," and then they realize that, no, they haven't arrived, and then the striving continues. It is expressed beautifully in A Course in Miracles, where it says that the dictum of the ego is "Seek but do not find." People look to the future for salvation, but the future never arrives.

So ultimately, suffering arises through not finding. And that is the beginning of an awakening—when the realization dawns that "Perhaps this is not the way. Perhaps I will never get to where I am striving to reach; perhaps it's not in the future at all." After having been lost in the world, suddenly, through the pressure of suffering, the realization comes that the answers may not be found out there in worldly attainment and in the future.

That's an important point for many people to reach. That sense of deep crisis—when the world as they have known it, and the sense of self that they have known that is identified with the world, become meaningless. That happened to me. I was just that close to suicide and then something else happened—a death of the sense of self that lived through identifications, identifications with my story, things around me, the world. Something arose at that moment that was a sense of deep and intense stillness and aliveness, beingness. I later called it "presence." I realized that beyond words, that is who I am. But this realization wasn't a mental process. I realized that that vibrantly alive, deep stillness is who I am.

Years later, I called that stillness "pure consciousness," whereas everything else is the conditioned consciousness. The human mind is the conditioned consciousness that has taken form as thought. The conditioned consciousness is the whole world that is created by the conditioned mind. Everything is our conditioned consciousness; even objects are. Conditioned consciousness has taken birth as form and then that becomes the world. So to be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness.

Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost, one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost.

The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering.

This seems to be everybody's path. Perhaps it is not everybody's path in this lifetime, but it seems to be a universal path. Even without a spiritual teaching or a spiritual teacher, I believe that everybody would get there eventually. But that could take time.

AC: A long time.

ET: Much longer. A spiritual teaching is there to save time. The basic message of the teaching is that you don't need any more time, you don't need any more suffering. I tell this to people who come to me: "You are ready to hear this because you are listening to it. There are still millions of people out there who are not listening to it. They still need time. But I am not talking to them. You are hearing that you don't need time anymore and you don't need to suffer anymore. You've been seeking in time and you've been seeking further suffering." And to suddenly hear that "You don't need that anymore—for some, that can be the moment of transformation.

So the beauty of the spiritual teaching is that it saves lifetimes of —

AC: Unnecessary suffering.

ET: Yes, so it's good that people are lost in the world. I enjoy traveling to New York and Los Angeles, where it seems that people are totally involved. I was looking out of the window in New York. We were next to the Empire State Building, doing a group. And everybody was rushing around, almost running. Everybody seemed to be in a state of intense nervous tension, anxiety. It's suffering, really, but it's not recognized as suffering. And I thought, where are they all running to? And of course, they are all running to the future. They are needing to get somewhere, which is not here. It is a point in time: not now—then. They are running to a then. They are suffering, but they don't even know it. But to me, even watching that was joyful. I didn't feel, "Oh, they should know better." They are on their spiritual path. At the moment, that is their spiritual path, and it works beautifully.

AC: Often the word enlightenment is interpreted to mean the end of division within the self and the simultaneous discovery of a perspective or way of seeing that is whole, complete, or free from duality. Some who have experienced this perspective claim that the ultimate realization is that there is no difference between the world and God or the Absolute, between samsara and nirvana, between the manifest and the unmanifest. But there are others who claim that, in fact, the ultimate realization is that the world doesn't actually exist at all—that the world is only an illusion, completely empty of meaning, significance, or reality. So in your own experience, is the world real? Is the world unreal? Both?

ET: Even when I'm interacting with people or walking in a city, doing ordinary things, the way I perceive the world is like ripples on the surface of being. Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean.

So there is no separation in the way I perceive it. There is no separation between being and the manifested world, between the manifested and the unmanifested. But the unmanifested is so much vaster, deeper, and greater than what happens in the manifested. Every phenomenon in the manifested is so short-lived and so fleeting that, yes, one could almost say that from the perspective of the unmanifested, which is the timeless beingness or presence, all that happens in the manifested realm really seems like a play of shadows. It seems like vapor or mist with continuously new forms arising and disappearing, arising and disappearing. So to the one who is deeply rooted in the unmanifested, the manifested could very easily be called unreal. I don't call it unreal because I see it as not separate from anything.

AC: So it is real?

ET: All that is real is beingness itself. Consciousness is all there is, pure consciousness.

AC: You're saying that the definition of "real" would be that which is free from birth and death?

ET: That's right.

AC: So only that which was never born and cannot die would be real. And since the manifest world is ultimately not separate from the unmanifest, according to what you are saying, in the end, one would have to say it's real.

ET: Yes, and even within every form that is subject to birth and death, there is the deathless. The essence of every form is the deathless. Even the essence of a blade of grass is the deathless. And that's why the world of form is sacred. It's not that the realm of the sacred is exclusively being or the unmanifested. Even the world of form I see as sacred.

AC: If someone simply asks you, "Is the world real or unreal?" would you say it was real or would you have to qualify the statement?

ET: I would probably qualify the statement.

AC: Saying what?

ET: It's a temporary manifestation of the real.

AC: So if the world is a temporary manifestation of the real, what is the enlightened relationship to the world?

ET: To the unenlightened, the world is all there is. There is nothing else. This time-bound mode of consciousness clings to the past for its identity and desperately needs the world for its happiness and fulfillment. Therefore, the world holds enormous promise but poses a great threat at the same time. That is the dilemma of the unenlightened consciousness: it is torn between seeking fulfillment in and through the world and being threatened by it continuously. A person hopes that they will find themselves in it, and at the same time they fear that the world is going to kill them, as it will. That is the state of continuous conflict that the unenlightened consciousness is condemned to—being torn continuously between desire and fear. It's a dreadful fate.

The enlightened consciousness is rooted in the unmanifested, and ultimately is one with it. It knows itself to be that. One could almost say it is the unmanifested looking out. Even with a simple thing like visually perceiving a form—a flower or a tree—if you are perceiving it in a state of great alertness and deep stillness, free of past and future, then at that moment already it is the unmanifested. You are not a person anymore at that moment. The unmanifested is perceiving itself in form. And there is always a sense of goodness in that perception.

So then all action arises out of that, and has a completely different quality from action that arises out of the unenlightened consciousness, which needs something and seeks to protect itself. That is really where those intangible and precious qualities come in that we call love, joy, and peace. They are all one with the unmanifested. They arise out of that. A human being who lives in connectedness with that and then acts and interacts becomes a blessing on the planet, whereas the unenlightened human is very heavy on the planet. There is a heaviness to the unenlightened. And the planet is suffering from millions of unenlightened humans. The burden on the planet is almost too much to bear. I can sometimes feel it as the planet saying, "Oh, no more, please."

AC: You encourage people to meditate, to as you describe it, "rest in the Presence of the Now" as much as possible. Do you think that spiritual practice can ever become truly deep and have the power to liberate if one has not already given up the world and what the world represents, at least to some degree?

ET: I wouldn't say that the practice itself has the power to liberate. It's only when there is complete surrender to the now, to what is, that liberation is possible. I do not believe that a practice will take you into complete surrender. Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice. But whether the spiritual practice is taken up after a certain degree of insight or the spiritual practice is just done in and of itself, the practice alone won't do it.

AC: Something that I've found in my own teaching work is that unless the world has been seen through to a certain degree, and unless there is a willingness based on that seeing to let go of it, then spiritual experience, no matter how powerful it is, is not going to lead to any kind of liberation.

ET: That's right, and the willingness to let go is surrender. That remains the key. Without that, no amount of practice or even spiritual experiences will do it.

AC: Yes, many people say they want to meditate or do spiritual practice, but their spiritual aspirations are not based on a willingness to let go of anything substantial.

ET: No, in fact it may be the opposite. Spiritual practice may be a way to try to find something new to identify with.

AC: Ultimately, would you say that real spiritual practice or real spiritual experience is meant to lead one to the letting go of the world, the transcendence of the world, the relinquishment of attachment to the world?

ET: Yes. Sometimes people ask, "How do you get to that? It sounds wonderful, but how do you get there?" In concrete terms, at its most basic, it simply means to say "yes" to this moment. That is the state of surrender—a total "yes" to what is. Not the inner "no" to what is. And the complete "yes" to what is, is the transcendence of the world. It's as simple as that—a total openness to whatever arises at this moment. The usual state of consciousness is to resist, to run away from it, to deny it, to not look at it.

AC: So when you say a "yes" to what is, do you mean not avoiding anything and facing everything?

ET: Right. It's welcoming this moment, embracing this moment, and that is the state of surrender. That is really all that's needed. The only difference between a Master and a non-Master is that the Master embraces what is, totally. When there is nonresistance to what is, there comes a peace. The portal is open; the unmanifested is there. That is the most powerful way. We can't call it practice because there's no time in it.

AC: For most people who are participating in the East-meets-West spiritual explosion that is occurring with ever-greater speed these days, both Gautama the Buddha and Ramana Maharshi—one of the most respected Vedantins of the modern era—stand out as peerless examples of full-blown enlightenment, and yet, interestingly enough, in regard to this question of the right relationship to the world for the spiritual aspirant, their teachings diverge dramatically.

The Buddha, the world-renouncer, encouraged those who were the most sincere to leave the world and follow him in order to live the holy life, free from the cares and concerns of the householder life. Yet Ramana Maharshi discouraged his disciples from leaving the household life in pursuit of greater spiritual focus and intensity. In fact, he discouraged any outward acts of renunciation and instead encouraged the aspirant to look within and find the cause of ignorance and suffering within the self. Indeed, many of his growing number of devotees today say that the desire to renounce is actually an expression of ego, the very part of the self that we want to liberate ourselves from if we want to be free. But of course the Buddha laid great stress on the need for renunciation, detachment, diligence, and restraint as the very foundation on which liberating insight can occur.

So why do you think the approaches of these two spiritual luminaries differ so widely? Why do you think that the Buddha encouraged his disciples to leave the world while Ramana encouraged them to stay where they were?

ET: There's not one way that that works. Different ages have certain approaches, which may be more effective for one age and no longer effective in another age. The world that we live in now has much greater density to it; it is much more all-pervasive. And when I say "world," I include the human mind in it. The human mind has grown even since the time of the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. The human mind is more noisy and more all-pervasive, and the egos are bigger. There's been an ego growth over thousands of years; it's growing to a point of madness, with the ultimate madness having been reached in the twentieth century. One only needs to read twentieth-century history to see that it has been the climax of human madness, if it's measured in terms of human violence inflicted on other humans.

So in the present time, we can't escape from the world anymore; we can't escape from the mind. We need to enter surrender while we are in the world. That seems to be the path that is effective in the world that we live in now. It may be that at the time of the Buddha, withdrawing was much, much easier than it would be now. The human mind was not yet so overwhelming at that time.

AC: But the reason that the Buddha preached leading the homeless life was because he felt that the household life was full of worries, cares, and concerns, and in that context he felt it would be difficult to do what was needed to live the holy life. So in terms of what you're saying about the noise and distraction of the world, that is actually precisely what he was addressing and why in fact he led the homeless life and encouraged other people to do the same.

ET: Well, he gave his reasons, but ultimately we don't know why the Buddha put the emphasis on leaving the world rather than saying as Ramana Maharshi did, "Do it in the world." But it seems to me, from what I have observed, that the more effective way now is for people to surrender in the world rather than attempt to remove themselves from the world and create a structure that makes it easier to surrender. There's a contradiction there already because you're creating a structure to make it easier to surrender. Why not surrender now? You don't need to create anything to make surrender easier because then it's not true surrender anymore. I've stayed in Buddhist monasteries and I can see how easily it can happen—they have given up their name and adopted a new name, they've shaved their heads, they wear their robes—

AC: You're saying that one world has been abandoned for another. One identification has been given up for another; one role has been dropped and another has been assumed. Nothing has actually been given up.

ET: That's right. Therefore do it where you are, right here, right now. There's no need to seek out some other place or some other condition or situation and then do it there. Do it right here and now. Wherever you are is the place for surrender. Whatever the situation is that you're in, you can say "yes" to what is, and that is then the basis for all further action.

AC: There are many teachers and teachings today that say that the very desire to renounce the world is an expression of ego. How do you see that?

ET: The desire to renounce the world is again the desire to reach a certain state that you don't have now. There's a mental projection of a desirable state to reach—the state of renunciation. It's self-seeking through future. In that sense, it is ego. True renunciation isn't the desire to renounce; it arises as surrender. You cannot have a desire to surrender because that's non-surrender. Surrender arises spontaneously sometimes in people who don't even have a word for it. And I know that openness is there in many people now. Many people who come to me have a great openness. Sometimes it only requires a few words and immediately they have a glimpse, a taste of surrender, which may not yet be lasting, but the opening is there.

AC: What about the spontaneous call from the heart to abandon all that's false and illusory, all that's based on the ego's materialistic relationship to life? For example, when the Buddha decided, "I have to leave my home behind—it would probably be hard to say that was an egotistical desire, looking at the results. And Jesus saying, "Come follow me. Let the dead bury their dead."

ET: That is recognizing the false as false, which is mainly an inner thing—to recognize false identifications, to recognize the mental noise, and what had been identification with mental images as a "me" entity, to be false. That is beautiful, that recognition. And then action may arise out of the recognition of the false, and perhaps you can see the false reflected in your life circumstances and you may then leave those behind—or not. But the recognition and relinquishment of all that is false and illusory is primarily an inner one.

AC: Those two cases, the Buddha and Jesus, would be examples of powerful outer manifestations of that inner recognition.

ET: That's right. There's no predicting what is going to happen as a result of that inner recognition. For the Buddha, of course, it came because he was already an adult when he suddenly realized that humans die and become ill and grow old. And that was so powerful that he looked within and said that everything is meaningless if that's all there is.

AC: But then he was compelled to go off, to abandon his kingdom. From a certain point of view he could have said, "Well, it's all here right now, and all I need to do is just surrender unconditionally here and now." Then I guess the result could have been very different, he could have been an enlightened king!

ET: But at that point he didn't know that all that was necessary was surrender.

AC: Yet, when Jesus was calling the fishermen to leave their families and their lives to follow him and, similarly, when the Buddha would walk through towns and call the men to leave everything behind, their surrender was demonstrated in the actual leaving, in saying "yes" to Jesus or the Buddha and letting go of their worldly attachments. And obviously there would also be their inner attachment to let go of as well. In these cases, letting go wasn't only a metaphor for inner transcendence; it also meant literally letting go of everything.

ET: For some people that is part of it. They may leave their habitual surroundings or activities, but the only question is whether or not they have already seen the false within. If they haven't, the external letting go will be a disguised form of self-seeking.

AC: For my last question I'd like to ask you about the relationship between your understanding of enlightenment, or the experience of nondual consciousness, and engagement with the world.

In Judaism, fully engaging with the world and human life is seen as the fulfillment of the religious calling. In fact, they say it is only through wholeheartedly living the commandments that the spiritual potential of the human race can become manifest on earth. Jewish scholar David Ariel writes, "We finish the work of creation . . . God stands in need of us because only we can perfect the world."

Many enlightenment or nondual teachings like your own emphasize the enlightenment of the individual. Indeed, transcendence of the world seems to be the whole point. But our Jewish brothers appear to be calling us to something very different—the spiritualization of the world through devoted men's and women's wholehearted participation in the world. So is it true that nondual enlightenment teachings deprive the world of our wholehearted participation in it? Does the very notion of transcendence rob the world of the fulfillment of our potential to spiritualize it as God's children?

ET: No, because right action can only flow out of that state of transcendence of the world. Any other activity is ego-induced, and even doing good, if it's ego-induced, will have karmic consequences. "Ego-induced" means there is an ulterior motive. For example, it enhances your self-image if you become a more spiritual person in your own eyes and that feels good; or another example would be looking to a future reward in another lifetime or in heaven. So if there are ulterior motives, it's not pure. There cannot be true love flowing into your actions if the world has not been transcended because you're not connected with the realm out of which love arises.

AC: Do you mean pure action, untainted by ego?

ET: Yes, first things first. What comes first is realization and liberation, and then let action flow out of that—and that will be pure, untainted, and there's no karma attached to it whatsoever. Otherwise, no matter how high our ideals are, we will still strengthen the ego through our good actions. Unfortunately, you cannot fulfill the commandments unless you are egoless—and there are very few who are—as all the people who have tried to practice the teachings of Christ have found out. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is one of the main teachings of Jesus, and you cannot fulfill that commandment, no matter how hard you try, if you don't know who you are at the deepest level. Love your neighbor as yourself means your neighbor is yourself, and that recognition of oneness is love.

~~~

Comment by Anonymous:

Nice to read more of Tolle's thoughts. As an interviewer you really shouldn't talk more than your interviewee, and definitely shouldn't cut him off multiple times. Is there some ego there? Perhaps you'd like to grapple with a master and feel some mastery of him, yourself? It's worth considering. Still, thanks for the interview. I got linked here by accident, looking for something entirely different. But I'm glad I came by.

Comment by Peter:

This interview is more in the format of a conversation between Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle in which AC is asking the questions while also adding some remarks to steer the interview to the next topic of discussion. The result is a series of very succinct and to the point responses from ET. By the way, AC is not someone to be discounted...

01 September, 2010

The Mother of all Concepts: to feel at odds with oneself and separated from others

2010-05-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

Clay: Can realization be experienced?
If 'yes', by who/what?
If 'no', is realization only a concept?

Wim: Realization remains an idea or concept only until one recognizes / realizes and thus experiences one's original being*. From that moment of recognition on, one's existence is* authentically, unquestionedly and directly experienced by oneself.

Actually, the notion that one feels estranged or separated from one's original authentic self (and concomitantly others) is 'the mother of all concepts', a concept that - for most people from the moment of their birth - has been artificially, unduly and unfairly forced upon them.

*To have it totally right, the word 'again' should be inserted here, as the realization and re-cognition of one's original self (yourself) is in actuality a reclamation of that reality-of-self before one was made to lose sight of it - before that reality went into 'abeyance'. Within everyone such reclamation is eagerly waiting for the moment to be discovered.

The Enlightened View

2010-05-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

Pete: I don't like the word enlightenment. It's vague, it evokes fantastic expectations, but I think there is such a thing as an enlightened point of view, a point of view that can clearly be reflected in words. It's a point of view which points to less rather than more: less beliefs, less reliance in conceptuality, less mental agitation. Its sole aim is to set the mind at easy, at peace. Peace with itself and the "world." A peaceful mind inevitably will see unity, would perceive wholly.

When you read material which aims to multiply concepts, to acquire more beliefs, to make you feel more emotions, even those positive ones such as love and rapture, know that doesn't come from an enlightened view, or a mind at peace. It comes from the urge to acquire, to aspire at more, and more, and more. There is no peace in more, there is no end to more.

Wim: What needs understanding is that "...such thing as an enlightened point of view" is still is a POINT of view. I'd suggest that the enlightened view understandingly accepts the presence of any points of view.

Josie: Well then, this is another point of view I accept... understandingly.

Pete: Ah yes, I understood that, and - also understandingly - let it slide.

Enlightenment is not bound by rules. It could accept a particular point of view as expressed by one, and reject it in another. It could say, amend today, and nay, no, never tomorrow about the same point of view.

Wim: Yes, like one can play with restrictions and limitations the way a child plays at the beach building a sand castle under a hot summer sun, kept cool by a the summer breeze.
At the end of the day - next flooding tide of course - the castle with all its fortifications and scrap beach-wood amenities will be gone. But happily enough, next day the child will play the same game with the elements again... earth/sand, water/sea, fire/sun, air/breeze...

(A conversation from 11/9/05)

Reincarnation, do we need it?

2010-05-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

"I used to believe in reincarnation but that was in a past life"
~ Paul Krassner

Brian: I have been wondering about beliefs and theories about how we survive death to live on again in another body. This is pretty much taken for granted in many mainstream eastern philosophies. The puzzling part is making non-dualism and its moksha (enlightened liberation) somehow fit into this game plan.

Wim: It can be done when we re-view the conventional concept of reincarnation and find out that it is based on something more original, something that is prior to the idea of reincarnation.

In my own case I found that I don't have to adhere to 'reincarnation' at all to make sense of my experiences of memories of events that happened prior to my date of conception.

If I do use the term 'Past Lives', I don't use it in the context that it means that I or anyone lives through a string of personal past (and future!) lives. There are way too many people who have claimed to be Cleopatra!!!

Brian: But Wim, there are far too many people out there who have semi-briefly experienced this 'continuity process' to toss it out as merely some sort of 'must go on until we get perfected' mind-set or manner of thinking.

Wim: True!

Brian: So, I think it - reincarnation - must be happening.

Wim: No doubt, 'something' IS happening. But that something that is 'happening' became at some point and over time misinterpreted until it eventually developed into the 'belief in reincarnation' and the 'concept of past lives'.
The way I see it is that the idea of, say, 'personally owned past lives' and 'reincarnation linked to past life karma' is a simplification of something that is in origin fundamental and radical...
Compare it to how an 'urban myth' can evolve from something that was originally very primal, fundamental and real, into something that subsequently became 'just' a belief, concept or theory or a powerful - but still dubiously fanciful - myth.

Brian: Yes, I can see that. What I am also beginning to see is that while still believing in or accepting the 'good old reincarnation process' that it is difficult to adhere to an 'advanced' non-dualistic philosophy of life or being.

Wim: I don't think it is difficult, I think it is impossible!
But... we might be able to understand how from some underlying and original genuine dynamics, concepts like reincarnation, past lives and past life karma could develop. We could investigate why and how they, from our perspective, became such confused and confusing derivations.

Brian: Does one have to reject one in order to believe the other?
Could it be that there is indeed a survival of the death process alongside a subsequent reincarnation? Or... maybe not, reincarnation also seems to be something to get beyond as it is essentially contains quite a bit of fatalistic judgmentalism.

Wim: I think Brian, that you are on the right track taking restrictions away that enable you to gain greater and deeper insights into this.

Brian: Well, I am still willing to try and accept the 'tried and true theory of reincarnation'... I am willing to deal with it if it proves to be true.

Wim: Nothing wrong with being flexible. Having restrictions or limiting preconceptions about any such ideas will not help you in finding out what might in fact be behind the theory of reincarnation.

But before diving deeper into this though, we have to be aware of the difference between:

Reincarnation, the Tibetan Buddhist way in which say a Dalai Lama gets reincarnated, a version of reincarnation in which only certain beings get that chance or privilege, and
The Hindu belief in reincarnation in which everyone reincarnates until one gets to jump off the karmic wagon and gains liberation or moksha.

Be that as it may, as for me, I myself don't hold to the concept of reincarnation, although... I personally have quite a few memories of events that happened a long time ago, and I remember episodes from the lives of beings who apparently lived way before I was born... Somehow I retrieved long stretches of memory - some of which were also dealing with the evolution of life on earth and episodes in the development of the cosmos - but I never felt the urge to view them as my own personal memories.
Instead I felt an urge to look for a different understanding, and eventually I found an explanation in which the concept of "Akashic records" played a decisive role as I discovered and experienced that it is possible to gain access to the history of any previous living being or any previously existing structure or dynamic when... needed.
Why that can be so and how that could be handy is quite an interesting topic for discussion.

Brian: It seems to me that the tricky part in what you are saying is what or who one considers oneself to be in that process of 'history retrieval' that you are describing.

Wim: But Brian, one is always 'I'!
By the way, it is remarkable that, to my knowledge, English is the only language in which just one letter is used to represent one's identity: 'I', and moreover, it is a capitalized 'I'!
Everyone IS always I, and it is a wondrous surprise when one discovers the significance of that.
One finds that in fully integrated awareness everything/everybody/everyone shares in that one - I feel it as divine - "I"dentity.

Brian: Wow!

But Wim, let's be realistic, let's come down again.
You see, honestly, I still tend to think that we should consider ourselves to be a physically bundled assembly of desires, wants, reflexes, body memories, etc., etc., all packaged in individual temporal physical forms. And something in me still wants to believe that we kind-of linearly go from one life to the next and that our karmic actions somehow control the nature and quality of those lives that we go through...
Yes, in spite of what you just said... although I must say 'I' impressed me!
In any case, and again realistically, we should really consider that because each one of us experiences himself or herself separately, that the eventual process of reincarnation indeed seems to continue and revolve around each one of us individually.

Wim: I don't think we need that consideration at all.

Brian: If, however, before the death process,...

Wim: I'll cut you off here for a second, Brian... There is this thing about death...
Hmm...

Death is a concept that has to be seen as something radically different from how it is usually talked about by non-participating bystanders or onlookers. They only observe from the outside and mistakenly assume that the one who is 'dying' so to speak, experiences the same thing - death - as what the onlooker sees as happening. As you know, I have many times talked about my brushes with 'death', when I accounted of my various NDEs, and I must say, one - who to the outsider appears to be 'dying' - does not experience any such thing at all. One seamlessly experi...

Brian: OK, OK, Wim, I get it! I really think I do, so let me continue. I am starting to see something that I'm sure you will agree with. If before or even during our "death process" we are able to sufficiently self examine what-and-who-we-actually-are and consider or even recognize our real self to be the sentience behind all the bodily images, memories, etc, then the actual moksha-break will come to completion, will it not?

Wim: Makes quite a bit of sense, does it not?!

Brian: Yeah, the difference being that the memories/desires go on but they would not be attached to us. I have no clue yet as to how these 'go on' without us though, but... alright...

Wim: It has to do with:

the seamless continuum of integral awareness,
segmentation of what-one-is-aware-of as a function of or operation in the process of consciousness with enables each individual to make sense of that continuum in terms of time, place and space,
and... unfortunately pseudo-consciousness which is the result when that seamless continuum of awareness is lost out of sight and when the conscious segments as distinguished within the whole are treated as broken-up and separate, as though unrelated to each other.

Brian: Could you elaborate on this pseudo-consciousness?

Wim: It is of course off-topic but OK...
What is conventionally called 'consciousness' is in my view merely 'pseudo-consciousness', a clumsy and broken tool that is used differently from how consciousness was originally designed to be applied.
As every functional process has side-effects, so does consciousness. When those side-effects are exploited by people with abusive ulterior motives, they become adverse side-effects.
Pseudo-consciousness and pseudo-self go shackled-hand-to-hand with unilateral dependence, slavery, etc. as brought about by that exploitation.

Brian: Wim, you are saying, "I see 'pseudo-consciousness' as a tool that is used differently than how it was designed to be used."
How was this 'pseudo-consciousness' designed to be used?
What is the relationship between 'pseudo-consciousness' and I?

Wim: Consciousness by itself is a faculty designed by humans for humans to use to help their 'core awareness' live practically, efficiently and effectively in equal, reciprocal and mutual relationship with 'all that is' (Sanskrit 'om tat sat'.)

I consider direct 'I Awareness' or 'Soham' the core of our being. (See Ramana Maharshi and his "Who am I" nondual inquiry.)
I consider consciousness to be an extension of our core awareness, I don't place it at the top of what it means to be human, I view consciousness as a faculty - rather like a tool.

Now, just like any other tool can be used for purposes it was not originally designed for (a hammer can be used to help build houses but can also be used to clobber someone to death) and just like, for example, medication can have adverse side effects, the same counts for consciousness.
Typical abuse or misuse of consciousness results when people with negative ulterior motives trick other humans into situations of stress and duress and then manipulate their victims to become dependent, they 'give them' so to say 'a piece of their mind'.
This type of abuse is always accompanied by sentence-like verbalizations (judgments, curses, spells, sentencings, incriminations,) that get lodged in the mind (engrammatically engraved) of the one being manipulated.
Internal dialog, could be seen as evidence of how inner conflict is really a conflict between oneself and one's usurper, one's conscience and the acquired or 'forced-upon-you' surrogate or pseudo-consciousness.
When mental abuse of power occurs (remember... under duress and stress) core awareness of the recipient goes into hiding, moving out of harm's way. (Luckily to emerge again later after therapy or yoga or say, Vipassana meditation.)
The original consciousness of the victim gets usurped by the manipulator and becomes pseudo-consciousness, the core of the victim's being goes on hold or in hiding and gets temporarily replaced by a pseudo-center (often called ego) and thus... the victim 'feels not him or herself anymore'.

The aim of the manipulator is of course to create dependent underlings who will do the bidding of the manipulator.
Words like manipulators, victimizers, power mongers are strong words, and the number of people operating that way may not be considered great. However underlying our common society structures are softer forms (more socially accepted versions) of manipulation they may be somewhat acceptable, although they can easily and eventually lead to excesses like consumerism, capitalism, communism, religious fanaticism, materialism, spiritualism, religionism, etc.... ergo all the various ways of cajoling innately free human beings into dependency to have them live under 'conditional conditions' set by hierarchic structures - behind which incidentally, those with 'agendas to take advantage of others' are hiding.

Manipulators always include maneuvers and strategies in their creation and handling of dependents that make the manipulators go scot-free and have their victims incriminate themselves when they run into modes of suffering that are actually the result of external manipulative strategies... rather then the inadequacies that the victims tend to accuse themselves of.

That is not to say that it is not possible to have relatively well operating societies with hierarchical structures that safeguard a free society enabling people to retain their innate freedom while still functioning for mutual and common good.

Examples from history are some Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms where enlightened kings/princes returned freedom back to those who used to be their underlings. A case in point is the ancient Khmer kingdom. (Angkor Wat - http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/history/A0827550.html) in the region that now encompasses Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, etc.)

Khmer experienced many centuries of an enlightened society, although the history books don't necessarily account of it. Looking at its art though, its architecture, the agricultural infrastructure, they show clear evidence that a leader doesn't have to be the leader of a pack... but can help fellow human beings to regain their freedom... freedom that was only seemingly lost... (Suffering is the illusive appearance of seeming loss of freedom that is made to feel as though more real than reality.)

To see a fine Cambodia slideshow click the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5mRvfpysz8

(For another treatment on 'dropping the belief in reincarnation', please read Karma and the power of Entrapment.)

21 May, 2010

The Language of Compassion

2010-05-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

An Etymological Treatment of the Word Compassion

How are sympathy, empathy, passion and compassion related? Language-wise that is!

Notice how these four words all share the same letters 'pa'?

Passion

Many Greek words that start with the etymological root 'PA', have to do with 'feeding', 'caring for': παω in Greek (pronounce "paoh").

Words like pater (papa, father), pais (child/boy - as in paedophilia), pathos, pastor (shepherd - from the Latin pasco, to lead a herd or flock), passio (suffering), passion, the Latin panis (bread), the French pain (bread) and even pasta all derive from the same root PA. And... so do the English words food, fodder and feeding. (Via Old English, Old Scottish and Old Frisian words like fodian, fedan, fuoten, fodjan.)

The name of the planet Jupiter originally comes from the Greek name of the main God in the Greek pantheon: Ju-piter; it was originally Dios-Pater or God the provider.

The feeder - the father - Latin 'pater'

and

the fed - the child - Greek 'ped'

In Greek pathos (Latin passio) originally had the meaning of being fed, being cared for, being taken care off, undergoing.

Over time 'pathos' (as in pathology) also acquired the meaning of suffering, experiencing hunger, pain and anguish. In Latin the word passio (suffering) and passivus (passively undergoing) express the same meaning, hence the "Saint Matthew Passion" which has to do with the suffering of Christ before he died on the cross.

Interestingly, as to the word suffering, initially in English suffering did not necessarily have a pain connotation, it simply meant 'experiencing' or 'letting it be' as in the sentence Jesus used when he said, "Suffer the little children." *

The interpretation of pathos connoting feeling and sensation is apt, but when the interpretation includes experiencing an extra dose of passionate energy, it is even more apt.

The original self (the higher or inner self) uses pathos as feeling, experience, sensation, undergoing the experience of being energized, being fed or supplied with energy - the stuff that is the origin of the original self.

Compassion

Compassion or sympathy (roughly equated with empathy in English) is what Bodhisattvas apply when they deal with beings who are energetically malnourished. A Bodhisattva helps the 'sufferer' to become re-energized.

'Pathos' proper is the sensation mechanism of the higher or original self through the five senses or "the five skandhas" as Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara calls it.

Compassion or loving kindness is the mechanism or gesture of healing... feeding...caring for...

Bodhisattvas feel pathos as unconditioned energy flowing through themselves (shakti, soma, amrita) feeding them, nurturing them, conditioning them to share it universally with anything and anybody around them... unconditionally!

* "And they brought young children to Him, that He should touch them: and His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God."~ Mark 10:13-14, see also Matthew 19:14.

To eat or not to eat

2010-05-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

or
To kill or not to kill

This cartoon is about animal sacrifice...
The following few paragraphs are about vegetarianism and liberation.

Tony:

I am convinced that one can be spiritual and a meat-eater for example, but I don't really feel one can be a meat-eater and achieve Moksha or Liberation, no matter the level of intellectual understanding. For Compassion and Ahimsa are the nature of the Self and cannot be learned, they can only become.

Wim:

Why putting a condition on moksha or liberation?

When moksha or liberation is limited by or dependent on conditions it is not truly free, is it?!

I came to a point where I ate only bread, honey, butter and drank fresh spring water, then I came to a point where I did not need to eat or drink anything at all... and I did not. Then I came to a point where I loved everything so much that I wanted to fully integrate, and eating or drinking anything was not a problem anymore.

(Incidentally, there is quite a bit more to what Jesus said when he made himself fully available: flesh and blood, bread and wine and all.)

Bodh Gaya

2010-04-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple

Where the Buddha gained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.

The Mahabodhi Mahavihara and other Buddhist Sites in Bodh Gaya.