Greg Goode

[Deleted]

I liked this:

Skillful Teaching

One of the surprising and hidden principles that traditional nondual teaching methods use is this - use the lowest-level or least abstract teaching that helps deconstructs the current object at hand. For example, if a person has a question about memory, it is more effective to examine memory's false claims directly than to tell one's self "Don't worry about memory, everything is consciousness anyway." Both methods tell the truth about things, but from their own level. If one immediately goes to the "everything is consciousness" answer, then the question is likely to pop up again and again. But if the claims of memory themselves are seen to be false and unwarranted, then that very seeing will dissolve the very roots of the question and it will not come up again.

In general, too subtle or abstract a teaching given too early will simply not have any lasting transformational effect. It can inspire and motivate and open the heart to some extent. But it will also be taken literally, which therefore gives the student another set of beliefs which will have to be examined later. But a more down-to-earth, less subtle teaching will be experienced as more relevant. It will have a more powerful effect on the inquirer since it accords with their background assumptions more fully. And then this lower level teaching will itself be deconstructed with a more subtle teaching later. This is why many nondual teachings seem gauged and staged.

Has anyone read his Standing as Awareness? I'm interested.

[Deleted]

here's another:

Is Spiritual Practice Necessary?

I don't give you what has to be done
because there is nothing to be done.
-- Papaji

Is spiritual practice necessary? This question never comes up in the orthodox traditions, because the "Yes" to practice is built into their very structure. But within nondual teaching contexts, this is a Top Ten Question. And most of the time, the answer is some version of

"No -- practice will only make matters worse! It will only reinforce the sense of a separate self that thinks it can gain something. What must happen is not practice, but the disappearance of this sense of self."

Does this mean that meditation, contemplation, Kundalini yoga, self-inquiry, devotional love and selfless service are counterproductive? Up comes the question,

"Should I stop doing these things? Sometimes they're performed or encouraged by the same teachers who warn against practice! Not to mention, most other paths are based on practice and progress. Does this make sense? I'm so confused! I don't know what to do!!"

If practice proves to be necessary or even helpful, then it's not counterproductive. So let's restate.

In nondualism, is spiritual practice necessary?

It depends on your goal, on what you really, really want. The question, as stated, is incomplete. Is practice necessary? For what? Spriritual practice is certainly not necessary to go shopping or wash the dishes.

So what do you really, really want?

Is your goal to be awareness, to be your true nature, to be that which cannot be thought, to be that which is before and beyond phenomena? Is your goal just to be?? No practice necessary for that! Anything that is truly your nature, anything that truly is, is both inescapable and unattainable. The noumenal WHAT IS is intangible. It stands untouched before all phenomena. Phenomena are inseparable from it, so close that they're "inside" it. It is already the case. It is ISness, and ISness simply is. It can't be acquired and can't be shed. If being is your nature, then you are unavoidably that, even now! And to call it awareness or emptiness or beingness is saying too much.

You are THAT. So are the teacup and the schoolbus. Awareness, or that which precedes, constitutes you and every "thing" else. There's no aspect of you that is not it. There is no aspect of you removed or shielded from it. You don't need to do anything to be it. Also, you cannot do anything to be it. And there is no way that you can not be it. It is not an experience. It is not an activity. It is not phenomenal. It can't be grasped or held. It can't be pointed to or talked about, even in this essay. Wherever you look, it was already there. It's behind you, it's unseeable. If that's the goal, no practice is necessary!

So there you are. You are. The non-dual traditions are unanimous about it. Question: Does hearing this help achieve the goal? Does it make everything fall into place? Does it seem like the end of the matter?

nonduality.com/goode5.htm

[bruppy]

I am me, how can I be aware of me, AWARENESS itself, hence no me to be aware of, that is non duality, is it not.

[Deleted]

greggoode.stillnessspeaks.com/ssblog/awareness_and_brain/

DOES AWARENESS ARISE FROM THE BRAIN?

....

• The "body" is not a physical object.
  
• The "body” is not a separate object endowed with a separate sentience.
  
• The "body" is not a container of awareness.
  
• Rather, the body, like the world, is awareness itself.
  
  

That is, in direct experience you can discover that the “body” is actually the body of love and the world of light: pure clarity and unconditional openness. The body is actually the world – there is no difference to be found. It is the global world of experience in which there is no inside/outside, no here/there, no separation and no suffering.

....

Colors aren’t objects hanging around outside awareness, waiting to be seen. Rather, the arising of color is what we mean by “seeing.” The way we ordinarily speak of seeing in the everyday sense, we allow that an object is present whether currently seen or not. In the everyday sense, if your cat runs out of the bedroom, you think of the cat as existing, but momentarily unseen. The cat can be seen, and it can be unseen. When it is unseen, it is simply “somewhere else.”

But of course in our direct experience of color, an unseen color is never experienced. The absence of a color is never experienced. If a color is not something experienced as absent, then it can’t be the kind of thing that is experienced to be present. A color, like any other “arising,” is not the kind of thing that can alternate between being present and absent. You can’t have a one-sided coin. If you can’t have one side of a pair of opposites, then you can’t have the other side either. So neither “present” nor “absent” applies to an arising.

This is our direct experience “of the world.” Neither present nor absent, but experienced as awareness itself.

....


MINI EXPERIMENT
Does awareness arise from the brain?

(Needed for the experiment: A comfortable chair, a table, and if possible, a photo or diagram of a brain printed from the Internet.)

Follow these steps:

1. Sit comfortably in the chair. Starting with yourself, wish yourself and all other beings in the universe good will and happiness. Then follow your breath for a few moments. If a thought comes, let it come and go. Don’t follow it, analyze it or chase it away. It will go in a moment of its own accord.

2. Look at the table. Feel the texture of the table. It arises visually as color. It arises tactually as texture, warmth/coolness, hardness/softness. These are all directly experienced and arise freely in open, clear awareness.

3. Do you see the color giving rise to impersonal witnessing awareness? Do you actually witness a causal process going on where the color is seen to cause witnessing awareness to appear? What would that even look like? How can the process create awareness, when awareness is already present, apprehending the process itself?

4. Do you feel a texture causing witnessing awareness to arise? Aside from the texture associated with the table, what is there additionally in direct experience that could create the existence of witnessing awareness? What would that even feel like? And isn’t witnessing awareness already present in order for this creative process to appear? So how can the process create awareness?

5. This is analogous to steps (3) and (4). Look very carefully at the image you printed of the brain –it may serve as an aid to imagination. Imagine that you are looking directly at a “real” brain. You may be assisting in a neurosurgical procedure. We know that in direct experience there is nothing more to a physical object than colors, tactile sensations, sounds, etc. And even these don’t really “arise” since they are not separate object in the first place. But if we are allowed to speak in terms of these visual and tactile sensations for a moment, we will check our direct experience. These sensations are arising in and appearing to sweet, open, loving witnessing awareness.

6. Do you have direct experience that these particular “brain-colors” are causing witnessing awareness? Just what would this causal process look like? Let’s say for a moment that you do seem to have direct experience of these colors causing awareness. What is this direct experience appearing in? Witnessing awareness is already present before the causal process even arises. So the process cannot possibly cause the witnessing awareness that preceded it.

Conclusion
It is never our experience that witnessing awareness is not present. Therefore it is never our direct experience that witnessing awareness comes into existence based on a causal process. The process itself must appear in witnessing awareness, which was there “first.” Awareness is always and already.

There is no contradiction between nonduality and neuroscience. Neuroscience measures a subtle object. This subtle object is a kind of sentience, a local reactivity associated with a biological organism. This sentience is an arising in the witnessing awareness that is your true nature, your direct experience, infinite sweetness and unconditional love.

Nonduality and neuroscience – you can think of them as different songs.

[question]

The relevant passage is this:

The Brain
The brain is normally thought of as a mass of a certain kind of biological tissue. That is, it is normally thought of as a physical object. As a physical object, it is part of the “world.” How does the brain arise? What happens? No one sees their own brain in the act of seeing. We may “see” and “feel” the brains of other organisms, the way I did in school. We see many images of brains in anatomy classes, images of CAT-scans and X-rays on light tables, in textbooks, on computer screens, represented by scopes and meters of different kinds, and on TV shows about doctors and cops.

What arises in all cases is a visual or tactile image. But biologists and physiologists say that the brain is an essential component for sentience. Many people attracted to nondual teachings agree (see first quote above.)

The “awareness” that is measured by brain science includes


certain kinds of reactivity to stimuli,
the ability to see, hear, smell, move, etc.
the ability to speak or give verbal reports
the ability to recall objects and actions
the ability to report one’s name or location
the measurements of chemicals
the activity of and within neurons, as measured and depicted by various kind of scientific apparatus

There are two things to say about these elements in the description of awareness. One is that they are all based on the very same kind of physical object as a table or a chair. You can investigate at any time how one of these objects or events arises: as a set of colors, sounds, textures, etc. So how can the brain, which is experienced as an arising in awareness, actually give rise to awareness? That is like saying that the color "blue" can give rise to awareness!

Awareness vs Sentience
The other thing that can be said is that the “awareness” measured in these ways is not the Awareness of the nondualist (the capital letter proves it! :-)). What the scientist is measuring in these ways is something infinitely less subtle: it is sentience, the waking state, which in Advaita-Vedanta is called “jagrat avastha.” This waking state is a subtle object that comes and goes, alternating with the dream state (sushupti avastha) and deep sleep.

And that to which it arises is the witnessing awareness that is our true nature. The following table spells out the difference between them:

WAKING-STATE SENTIENCE WITNESSING AWARENESS
Is apprehended by witnessing awareness Apprehends waking-state sentience
Comes and goes Never comes or goes
Measured by science Measuring and science appear to it
Appears as an object along with other objects Never appears or disappears; can’t be an object
There is at least one per person Never more than one, and even that is too much to say!
You are there even if it is not there It IS you; you as awareness are never not….

The Brain and Sentience
Neuroscience can create experimental correlations between parts of the brain and aspects of waking-state or dream-state sentience. As many inquirers have told me, “Hey, remove my brain, and that’s the end of consciousness!” That may be the end of a certain span of waking-state sentience, but it cannot be the end of the kind of awareness that the nondualist talks about.

Why not? Because the very removal of the speaker’s brain to as an event requires witnessing awareness to “take note” of it as an event. Of course the speaker needn’t be present for this, but impersonal witnessing awareness is never absent. Even if entire universes cease, awareness is not a kind of entity or object that can disappear along with them. It isn’t an object in the first place. Awareness is THAT to which the coming and going of universes appears. Regardless of what comes and goes, awareness IS.

In his experiment he has proven that qualia don't cause awareness, but he hasn't even attempted to prove anything about brains.

He is basically differentiating between consciousness and awareness (a distinction based on esoteric woo woo stuff). He actually does admit that the brain does affect consicousness, but he is also saying that awareness is prior to awareness. He doesn't explain why awareness is independent of the brain.

[nobody]

I don't think the differentiation is woo woo. I think he's saying that consciousness is "personal" in the sense that it appears that there is a witnessing entity.

And he does not admit that the brain does affect consciousness. He says, "it MAY BE the end of a certain span of ..." In other words, it's a story.

I don't know if anyone knows why awareness is independent of the brain. But I think he is saying that everything is dependent upon awareness. In other words, nothing exists independently of awareness.

If you aren't aware of your brain right now, like if it was sitting on the table, then you actually have no proof that it exists. The idea that we might have brains in our heads is just a story.

That being said. I think Goode is awesome. I loved his book.

[question]

I agree, brain is just a story, but awareness is equally just a story. Depending on how you set up the thought experiment you can support a conclusion in favour of either story.

However, Goode writes as though he is presenting some sort of a formal or experiential proof, which simply isn't the case. What is he talking about colours and feelings for? He is supposed to be talking about how it can be possible that everytime I mechanically stimulate a certain part of his brain he bursts out in laughter.

[Deleted]

i don't know, call it what you will, but awareness is hard to deny. the concept "awareness" is just that -- an idea overlayed on an experience -- but the continuing experience of awareness or whateveryouwanttocallit is just straight up, no doubt, right?

using my teeny brain, I'm not yet at the point pondering this stuff where I can comfortably say that just because awareness seems prior to all appearances (including the brain) that that also means it's actually prior to all appearances. some folks seem comfortable saying that but, as we know, if there's a BS artist before enlightenment, there's also a BS artist after enlightenment.

the thing I like about Goode is that he feigns building a solid foundation for this stuff in actual direct experience and philosophy. It provides some comfort but then I end up just scratching my head because I don't actually know what he's talking about. Still, i give him props for trying, and feel it's worth trying to understand how he draws his conclusions.

[nobody]

I don't think that Greg offers any proof. No-body can prove anything, and despite what history claims, no-one has ever proved anything.

He has an experiment in his book where he has you look at an object, a cup I think. Then he has you close your eyes and see that you still see that colors are there in mind (or in awareness), even thought your eyes aren't open. He's saying that it's not necessarily true that the color is "out there". That doesn't prove that the color isn't out there, but it does make you question what you think you know.

Yeah. I agree that awareness is a concept, but I'd leave it at that. We can't really talk about it, otherwise we'd be making into some thing.

And yeah, I liked Greg's experiments quite a bit. Between his and Harding's I had some really wild insights.

[enigma]

Dec 21, 2011 18:19:56 GMT -5 ivory said:

I don't know if anyone knows why awareness is independent of the brain. But I think he is saying that everything is dependent upon awareness. In other words, nothing exists independently of awareness.

All he's trying to say is that the object doesn't precede the awareness of the object. The presence of the object isn't the cause of the awareness of the object, as we would normally assume.

This doesn't imply that it's the other way around; that awareness precedes the appearance of the object. This awareness that he talks about always being here, or being here "first", is just an idea. Why does he put "first" in quotes if it really IS here first? He's not really trying to talk about it.

This is where it gets tricky. Hehe. What awareness refers to is non-linear. It's not occurring in time. It's not involved with first or last, so it's not ultimately true that awareness is here 'first', and then the appearance appears second. All of that is, itself, an appearance of temporality. The arising, and the awareness of the arising, are simultaneous, and always now.

And yet this is just a way of talking. There aren't really two things happening, there's just the awareness of the arising. That statement; 'the awareness of the arising' does not imply the awareness..... and the arising. Awareness of the arising, and the arising, are one and the same.

We could call this awareness-of-arising, the sense of I Am. The sense of existing appears along with the arising. However, this sense of existing is not always present, and somehow we know this. How do we know this if there's no sense of I Am present that could know of the absence of I Am?

Something watches the sense of existing come and go. It's extremely subtle, but it is known that 'I am not always here', and so clearly there is something here that knows that. We would not call it 'I Am', and we would not call it anything.

[nonny]

Wilder Penfield spent a lifetime bumping into awareness in the surgical theater....(

The patient lies on the operating table, with the right side of his body raised slightly. The anesthetist sterilizes his scalp and injects it with Nupercaine to produce analgesia - the patient will remain fully conscious throughout the procedure. Behind the surgical drapes, three large incisions are made in his scalp. A large flap of bone is then cut from his skull, and turned downward to expose the surface of his brain. The ultraviolet lights which illuminate the operating theatre and keep the air sterile are positioned in such a way that they do not shine directly upon the cortex.

Using an atomizer, the surgeon sprays a small amount of Ringer's solution onto the brain substance, to keep it moist. He then manoeuvres an electrode attached to a special holder which is clamped to the margin of the opening in the skull, so that it comes into direct contact with the brain. He adjusts a dial on the stimulator to 0.5 volts, and a current with a frequency of 60 cycles per second is applied to the patient's cortex. After asking the patient if he feels anything, and getting a negative response, the surgeon reaches for the stimulator again. He turns the voltage dial up a notch so that it reads 1 volt, and applies another current. This time, the patient reports a tingling sensation in his face and, when asked to indicate exactly where, raises an arm and points to his left cheek and temple.

The surgeon dictates these results, via a microphone, to a secretary in the viewing stand. He then places a small numbered ticket on the part of the brain he has just stimulated, and manipulates the electrode again, bringing it to bear on another point several millimeters away from the last. Upon application of current, the patient reports a sensation on the inner surface of his left forearm, and there is a slight movement of his left thumb. He knows that his face, arm and thumb have not been touched; although aware that his thumb moved, he knows fully that he did not will the action, and realizes that he can reach across with his right hand to prevent the movements.

scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/....artographer.php

It's pretty apparent to me that some aspect of the mind is not imprisoned in duality. It maintains a steady state of conscious intelligence, or, to take a quantum leap- it just is. This core of undisturbed clarity ("he knows fully that he did not will the action") is awareness itself, in its purest, simplest "form."

[question]

Enigma,

We could call this awareness-of-arising, the sense of I Am. The sense of existing appears along with the arising. However, this sense of existing is not always present, and somehow we know this.

I'm still not sure why you're calling it awareness, imo it's just presence (what is). And no, we don't know that presence is not 'always' present (well, at least I don't know). That presence is ever not present is nothing more than a contradictory thought.

Something watches the sense of existing come and go. It's extremely subtle, but it is known that 'I am not always here', and so clearly there is something here that knows that. We would not call it 'I Am', and we would not call it anything.

Your point escapes me. I have never watched the sense of existence come and go. Why do you even put the sense of 'I am' and sense of existence into the same category? Actually, I don't even know anything about no 'sense of existence', there's just presence (what is) which may look like a 'sense of xyz' or not.

In any case, that presence is sometimes not present is just a thought. In light of your deconstruction of subjective/objective I don't understand why you're again talking about things that come and go.

[Deleted]

Dec 22, 2011 1:54:21 GMT -5 enigma said:

All he's trying to say is that the object doesn't precede the awareness of the object.

It seems like that's a jump, that's all. Awareness of an object is dependent on awareness of an object. In other words, for Awareness of an object to happen there needs to be two ingredients: awareness and object. It's a jump to conclude that because those two need to be in place for awareness of an object to happen, that an object doesn't exist prior to awareness (or vice versa). Who the heck knows? NOT ME, that's for sure.

[nonny]

Dec 22, 2011 9:26:25 GMT -5 question said:

In any case, that presence is sometimes not present is just a thought.

Is forgetting a thought?

dunno, jes asking.

[question]

Dec 22, 2011 11:04:54 GMT -5 @nonny said:

Dec 22, 2011 9:26:25 GMT -5 question said:

In any case, that presence is sometimes not present is just a thought.

Is forgetting a thought?

yes