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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2018 10:07:01 GMT -5
And yet you believe that an infinite wholeness means infinite expression. Hmmmm... How could it not? 'Infinite' doesn't mean 'large', it means immeasurable, unlimited, countless. If 'oneness' is the case (unlimited, without boundary), then what is expressed AS 'oneness' must also be unlimited, without boundary.As spiritual-solipsists would have it, what is expressed as oneness might be limited, boundaried and measurable to what is appearing in just one POP. That's not oneness! That's finiteness and limitedness! Even 10 POP's is finiteness/limitedness. Don't get me wrong, folks are entitled to believe that finiteness/limitedness is the actuality of 'This' or MIGHT be the actuality of 'This'. I can't prove them wrong. But I would say that spirituality points to oneness, not finiteness/limitedness, and oneness is accepted as true. The opposite is true. The expression of boundlessness is necessarily bounded; limited. You're making an irrational connection between boundlessness and the number of bounded expressions. Boundless Intelligence doesn't have to express at all. The number of expressions can be zero. You also don't understand the meaning of oneness.
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Post by Reefs on Oct 17, 2018 10:07:43 GMT -5
That depends on whether 'conscious' and 'mind' are known to be individual and finite, or known to be fundamental and therefore infinite. Or the other possibility is that you don't know if 'conscious' and 'mind' are finite or infinite. For me, I know they are both fundamental, and therefore infinite. All those abstract concepts are fundamental, and therefore infinite. The nightly dream fails as a metaphor unless you consider it possible that consciousness/mind etc might be finite. Ok, so let’s look into what that means. Let’s suppose you see a body. Here, you’ve already abstracted out from the visual image you have this thing you call a body. And to that body you attribute the idea “you.” But why not some other abstraction instead? Suppose for example that the body you see has its hand resting on a bush. Maybe the “hand + bush” is the you and has a mind of its own and experiences of its own and the other hand in the air has a mind of ITS own. Perhaps every pixel in the visual image of the hands has its own mind too. In fact they have to because “consciousness and mind are infinite,” right? Or a paperclip, as someone mentioned earlier on this thread. Or perhaps every color in the world is a different you. Is that your position? Where does the hand end and the brush begin? That's the kind of questions you should be asking. Ramana said that both the jnani and the ajnani say "I am the body".
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2018 10:11:33 GMT -5
Exactly. & Even seeing what mind does with this stuff, and that it isn't going to stay out it, doesn't preclude mind from trying to sneak in the back door.
And that's really what happened with those who had a CC/Kensho experience involving 'the nature of Self' who then come away from that, certain they now know that appearing people and things are in fact, experiencing/perceiving.
The realizational component of 'nature of Self' cannot be captured with words or concepts, but mind crept in and assigned material knowledge/conceptual understanding to that which is actually beyond concept.
I think this is where you are projecting. Honestly, I have no idea why you guys still keep talking like this. You see, the way you categorically rule out a realization like kensho even being possible rather points to a rigid mental position. And the fact that you had to copy and paste from ZD kinda destroyed all your credibility on the subject. I suggest you take an honest look at what you are doing here. Like Enigma, you have no actual reference for what we are talking about. At least Enigma had the decency to admit that. But then you both go on and on about what kesho actually is and actually isn't. Seriously, if I don't have a clue what's been talked about, I'll take the STFU route or at least keep a low profile. But not you guys. I don't get that. I've had numerous 'mystical/CC experiences' ....many that fit the bill for the definition of "Kensho" (interesting though, that term is pretty open to interpretation...definitions all over the place when you do a google search). Some of those mystical experiences have been extremely impactful, however, that said, the experiential content itself, is understood to be devoid of Truth.
And really, one does not need to have the exact experience another has to be clear on the fact that experiences in general, regardless of how compelling they may be, are devoid of Truth.
It's understandable, of course, that those experiences that are particularly compelling and seem particularly 'vivid and real' , those that convincingly 'speak to' the inner workings and structure of creation, the Universe, are going to be the ones that have the power to suck us in to believing they are something more than just 'regular' experience. That's why it's important to stay vigilant....to be aware of the ways in which mind will try to have it's way, to intrude where it has no business going.
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Post by Reefs on Oct 17, 2018 10:13:12 GMT -5
Bump . Perhaps E you could answer these sort of posts rather than spending time dancing around with trivial posts that are of no real substance excuse the pun). . I understand that you're going through a period of grief and mourning right now, but this has me wondering if we're back to the old standards of disrespect and ridicule from before Reefs took up the badge. Huh? What do you think of 'tenkatology' and similar stuff?
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Post by siftingtothetruth on Oct 17, 2018 10:15:42 GMT -5
Ok, so let’s look into what that means. Let’s suppose you see a body. Here, you’ve already abstracted out from the visual image you have this thing you call a body. And to that body you attribute the idea “you.” But why not some other abstraction instead? Suppose for example that the body you see has its hand resting on a bush. Maybe the “hand + bush” is the you and has a mind of its own and experiences of its own and the other hand in the air has a mind of ITS own. Perhaps every pixel in the visual image of the hands has its own mind too. In fact they have to because “consciousness and mind are infinite,” right? Or a paperclip, as someone mentioned earlier on this thread. Or perhaps every color in the world is a different you. Is that your position? Where does the hand end and the brush begin? That's the kind of questions you should be asking. Ramana said that both the jnani and the ajnani say "I am the body". If one asks where the hand begins and ends it will turn out there is no hand, and thus no question of its being alive or aware. Only if we accept the hand do we get the question of whether “it” is aware. Ramana said the jnani says “I am the body” as a provisional teaching... in fact there cannot be said to be any body, or any I.
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2018 10:15:51 GMT -5
Everything that appears IS Consciousness. The divide is between appearances which are conscious and appearances which are not. What is silly is to declare that a paper clip is conscious by virtue of it's appearance. Why do you think a paper clip is conscious? What do you think it's conscious of? A paperclip has be mechanically moulded into form, they aren't 'naturally' occurring. Nevertheless, whatever the basic elements of a paperclip are, have an essential and formless aliveness and consciousness. As you said, Consciousness 'knows', and it IS everything. I understand I think why you put this in parenthesis...it's a very subtle knowing, not readily understandable (more 'intuitive' than conceptual) i.e not the same kind of 'knowing' as the conventional use of the word 'knowing'. So we can't really say that the paperclip 'is conscious of stuff', the use of the word 'know' is far more subtle than that.In order to 'grok' this essential and formless aliveness and consciousness, we actually have to see beyond 'the paperclip'. We even have to see beyond 'the human'. I'm also not opposed to even going beyond this essential and formless aliveness/consciousness into a state of pure 'nothingness' or 'awareness' which I guess would relate to what some folks call samadhi. Yes, but you just did say that. Or is being conscious different than being conscious of stuff? If so, then appearances are not necessarily conscious perceivers.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2018 10:22:15 GMT -5
Most of us on this forum have a reference for some of the terms that are commonly used here, but I suspect that all of us lack some references. I know exactly what is meant by OBE, NS, SR, CC, kensho, being in the zone, the natural state--SS, non-locality events, etc, but I have no reference at all for lucid dreaming or full awareness while in deep sleep. I have very little experience with kundalini other than kryia (spasmodic muscular contractions caused by meditation) and other relatively minor energy circulation experiences. I accept that there are psychic phenomena (such as lucid dreaming, awareness in deep sleep, major kundalini effects, etc)) that other people have experienced, but it would seem a bit strange to categorically deny things that I have no direct experience or knowledge of. Nobody's denying there is a kensho experience. Nobody ever has, and God willing, nobody ever will. A very simple statement is being made, and it's not being made casually or carelessly. It's not being made to anger anyone or hurt anyone. That statement is - Experience is illusion at a fundamental level and cannot say anything about anything beyond the experience of it. Anything that has a beginning and an end is an experience. I don't care what it's called and I don't have to experience it myself. All, really well said. Indeed, no one is denying the kensho "experience." It's whether or not the Kensho experience, or any experience for that matter, can somehow illuminate that which comes and goes, that which is transitory and without the inherent substance and permanence of Being, as not actually being transitory, impermanent, absent substance at all.
And to the bolded--Exactly.
The extremely compelling nature of the content (that it seems more vivid/more real than real/that it creates deep feelings of bliss/joy/awe) is what's being used to augment the argument that it is something 'more' than just an experience. But really, all of those qualities themselves, are arisings within experience, no more 'truthy' than any other experiential quality.
One does not need to have the exact experience another has, to know that all experience, straight across the board, irrespective of how cosmically compelling it is, or how wonderful it makes us feel, is devoid of Truth.
It is said of these experiences that they happen via an impersonal perspective, absent any sense of 'me' and yet, surely if there's an experiential story to relay in the wake of "Kensho" there had to have been a 'me' present during.
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2018 10:24:05 GMT -5
True nuff. And I needed to stop and 'look' before I noticed the truth of it. Ironically, the question really has no importance and doesn't deserve consideration, but still, I should have taken a look before I answered. What I objected to was your comment: " he continue to say other individual is real because..." I'm guessing you looked from within Gopal's model of the world, which doesn't place any significance on whether Self is finite or infinite. In the moment you looked, you could see it was logically true from within his model. However, that should never have made it possible or true from within your model. No. it's true we can't know, but the issue is just philosophical and has no real importance. What is of interest is how others apparently can know.
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Post by enigma on Oct 17, 2018 10:27:09 GMT -5
All things are possible All things are possible All things are possible All things are possible A dream can never impose limitations on how the dream can unfold. When you jump, it would pull you down, it is imposing! Do you see that? Wait, lemme try it........Yup, that's what happens.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2018 10:29:55 GMT -5
Nobody's denying there is a kensho experience. Nobody ever has, and God willing, nobody ever will. A very simple statement is being made, and it's not being made casually or carelessly. It's not being made to anger anyone or hurt anyone. That statement is - Experience is illusion at a fundamental level and cannot say anything about anything beyond the experience of it. Anything that has a beginning and an end is an experience. I don't care what it's called and I don't have to experience it myself. Focus on the word 'experience' misses the point, and should be a different topic of conversation. Like a realization, its not the event which matters, it is the resulting "seeing". But in the case of these "kensho" experiences where one comes away having gained knowledge about the material world, the seeing is the very same as the content of the experience had.
True realization involves a seeing through of material knowledge not the acquisition of knowledge about the material world.
I do think it's possible to have a mystical experience that serves as an apparent 'catalyst' to a seeing through, in the sense that it's just the mind component of the actual seeing through, and thus, they are arising pretty much in tandem.
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Post by zendancer on Oct 17, 2018 10:31:56 GMT -5
Agreed. It's not the mind that knows the Infinite; it is the Infinite that knows the Infinite, and it can know Itself directly and non-conceptually. The intellect is somehow bypassed in kensho, and what we call "the intellect" can only conceptualize what was seen after the seeing. This is why Reefs calls it a realization rather than an experience--because the usual experiencer, the person, isn't there when it happens, so it's not an experience in any usual sense. Oneness is the only thingless thing that can apprehend oneness. As with all realizations, mind becomes informed by what is seen, and only then attempts to understand it conceptually. The Infinite, through a body/mind organism, clearly sees _____________, which is Itself, but it cannot know Itself conceptually without imaginatively dividing Itself into abstract artificial states, and that kind of knowing is not the same as direct knowing. Many Buddhists call the Infinite "the One Mind" or "Big Mind," and that concept seems to point to the same thing. In that sense, Big Mind is like the ocean, and human minds are like waves on the ocean. They have individual perspectives, but they're still one-with the ocean. There's no actual twoness. This concept would correspond to what I've often referred to as "the download phenomenon" associated with kensho that many mystics report (what Bucke called "an intellectual illumination impossible to describe"); it's as if a big computer on earth downlinked stuff or re-programmed stuff for a small computer on a distant spaceship via some sort of telecommunication. The connection is actually felt in some weird sense and it's like a flow of power. Many times people understand stuff after a kensho that they never previously understood or perhaps never even thought about. It's as if the neural circuits of the brain get reorganized in some new way. Needless to say, probably none of this type talk will appeal to anyone who only thinks in terms of appearances. I'm pretty sure you've spoken in the past about the importance of seeing the delineation between that which is an impermanent arising in contrast to that which abides as the unchanging back-drop to that. Isn't that essentially the same as delineating 'appearances' in contrast to that which they arise within?
I don't remember using the term "impermanent arising," but perhaps I've used the Buddhist words "dependent arising" or dependent origination" to distinguish between products of imagination and ________________. _____________________is the unchanging backdrop, and it's what we are all one-with. Niz saying, "I am THAT" is equivalent to, "There is only __________________." Feeling and knowing what this is pointing to "in one's bones" is where sages are coming from. When someone asks a ZM, "Who are you?" and she responds, "I am what asked the question," she is challenging the questioner to realize that the entire field of reality is unified, and there are not two. The ZM and the questioner are both ______________. The ZM knows that without any doubt, and is challenging the questioner to realize it. I suspect that the reason Zen folks would have no interest in discussing appearances is because their whole approach is grounded in a rather "in your face" matter-of-fact non-ideational interaction with, and manifestation of, ________________. Thus, if someone asked a ZM, "Is reality real or unreal?" he would probably get hit with a Zen stick because ______________supercedes all ideas about ____________. ITSW, if someone asked a ZM, "Are you an appearance?" the response would be the same. The hit would be a physical admonition to leave the intellect behind and discover ______________. IOW, Zen people are only interested in __________________, and they are always pointing other people to ________________. When people talk about "appearances" and whether it can be known that other people or POP's exist, that talk sounds very ethereal, ungrounded, and disconnected from ________________. One of my earliest existential questions was, "How could life have appeared in an inanimate universe?" All of the usual scientific ideas struck me as increasingly absurd. After a first kensho, however, it became obvious to me that the entire universe is alive--even the supposedly "dead" spaces between subatomic particles or stars. Tolle writes a lot about the aliveness of reality, and I suspect that this is the reason that Jesus often talked about "the living truth." They are both pointing to something dynamic rather than static.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2018 10:36:31 GMT -5
But, Do you have reference for actual, present moment, visceral 'Being'? Sure, though I know 'Being' viscerally AND infinitely. So for me, the question of whether 'Beingness' is present for 'others' cannot arise. If there is a known 'quality' to being, mind has gotten in the way. I am talking about just pure, unfettered Being. Do you have a reference for that?
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Post by andrew on Oct 17, 2018 10:42:52 GMT -5
Experiencing is either a fundamental quality of God/Self, or it is a questionable appearance, or it would have to be absolute Truth. You consider experiencing to be absolute Truth? T here is no 'literal' meaning of 'consciousness', because it's an abstract concept...even scientists don't understand it well. There is a consensus understanding of consciousness i.e that consciousness is present in certain beings as a result of particular physical characteristics. The spiritual understanding is that this is not the case, instead...consciousness is fundamental to all life forms. It's the same 'consciousness', just a different understanding associated with it. Yes, that's a point I have been making early on as well, and that point has been turned on its head and then been used as a strawman to discredit the realization that everything is alive/conscious. The realization is not that everything is consciousness. The realization is that everything is alive and conscious, that's what is seen directly. Mind will then turn that into 'consciousness is all there is' in order to make sense of it, which is fine with me as long as it is clear that that is just an abstraction of the actual realization and not the actual realization itself. Now, since to Figgles it is inconceivable that one could actually see directly that everything is alive instead of the lifelessness of the objectified world (aka appearances) everyone is used to (aka from the perspective of self), what she heard was that the realization was that 'everything is consciousness' and then mind turned that into 'and therefore everything must be conscious' when in reality it is exactly the other way around. I never said those words. Enigma later picked up on that and that's what got him into trouble (giraffing). And it seems that giraffe is still alive and well, even though it has gone into hiding. Yes. The basic position you are offering is simple, and is beyond mind in the sense that you are speaking about an essential/formless 'aliveness' (or pick a different word), and so the invitation is to look beyond thingness. However, it is inevitable that during a long period of conversation, there are subtle mis-quotings, misunderstandings, misrepresentations and twisting of words. I'm not saying it's deliberate as much as an unfortunate aspect of long conversation. Like chinese whispers I guess. For example, talking about an essential/formless 'aliveness', and then being asked to talk about paperclips, has missed the initial point. But then explaining how the point has been missed, usually creates another sidetrack and a whole new load of concepts to be addressed.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2018 10:48:08 GMT -5
There's a couple of points I want to make here, but I don't really understand the bolded sentence. What kensho, or CC, or this 'intuitive realization' tells us is that existence has essential quality ('aliveness', 'intelligence', 'awareness'...pick a word, it doesn't matter). Once this kensho/CC/intuitive realization has happened, you cannot IGNORE it. You can't undo what you know. You can't NOT accept it to be true. And it is known beyond the conceptual objectifying rational mind. The fact that what you come away from that experience 'knowing' (quality/property) tells you that the knowing is not actually 'beyond the conceptual,objectifying rational mind' at all. Knowings that are beyond the conceptual/rational mind, can pointed to, only. All delusional knowings are accepted to be true....and thus, cannot be ignored. That's why it's so important to have an actual realization so the seeing through of delusional beliefs/ideas can happen. The seeing of 'infinite possibility' is really at it's root, just the 'seeing through' of bounded-ness/limitation/capture through conceptualization itself, Oneness is the case, is just the seeing through of separation. The 'positive' statements of those, does not mean that one has had an experience that revealed a new knowing to replace the seeing through, rather, the seeing through is simply being phrased in a way that sounds as though a new knowing has been added. It hasn't. And if those statements are being taken as the acquisition of new knowledge, a conceptualization of the seeing through/ realization has taken place.
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Post by Reefs on Oct 17, 2018 10:51:32 GMT -5
Everything I talk about is within the scope of what can actually be seen, what has been realized, vs. what can be reasoned out, theorized about, or concluded based upon what I've seen/realized. That's why I say, what can actually be known for certain, is pretty miniscule in scope. well I think one of the problems with the looking that you have done, is that you do take the looking 'at face value'. There are subtleties to looking that I'm not sure you have considered. First, is that what we look for, we find. The second (and related), is that the looker and looked are not actually separate. So I don't question what you have seen, I just don't consider it to be as... 'Truthy' as you do. Yes, not subject-object split. I'm not sure she understands what that means. I'm not even sure if she understands what objectification means. If that were understood, the questions about 'other people perceiving' would subside naturally.
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