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Post by inavalan on Dec 20, 2022 21:03:02 GMT -5
Thanks, I've been considering this for a couple of weeks. inavalan's post (and my reply) gets more to the heart of my question, which is basically, if awareness supersedes everything, why aren't people, or at least certain people (the SR?), aware during sleep? If awareness never sleeps, why do ~*we*~ sleep (go unconscious)?I think I explained that in my previous post. Also, you can be aware of your awake-self when dreaming: it is called lucid-dreaming. You can also consciously sleep. I do it occasionally, and it is a powerful state. You can become aware of why some things happen in your awake life, what you have to learn from them. You can see how events in your awake life are set up for your learning benefit. You, as an identity, are aware when you sleep, and aware of your awake-self /ego. It is only that your awake-self isn't aware of what happened during sleep, because it believes that it was unconscious (is a trance state: you can't recall something you believe it didn't happen). The dreaming state is the continuation of the sleep state in your way to waking up, when you re-adapt to physical-like perceptions (through your five physical-senses). When you go to sleep you don't go unconscious, you just don't recall that part when you wake up. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2022 21:05:47 GMT -5
Excerpt From
Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana MaharshiQ: What is this awareness and how can one obtain and cultivate it? A: You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self. Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense.  |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2022 21:15:10 GMT -5
Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense. So you think something called awareness is performing the act of being aware? |
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Post by inavalan on Dec 20, 2022 21:27:06 GMT -5
This is completely absurd, and I never catch you in saying something absurd. How do most accidents happen? ... Yes, this is absolutely analogous to sleep, but if you have a car wreck in a dream, nobody ever dies. And this, most all my threads and questions come from my experience, I'm not really asking for answers. You (ego) don't die because you (ego) had an accident. You (ego) had an accident because you (whole-self) decided to put an end to your experience in that point of the physical-reality hyperspace, and made the necessary choices. Your death by accident is the perception of those who shared with you that same psychic gestalt. Not even all of those will perceive that event in the same way. |
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Post by inavalan on Dec 20, 2022 21:57:35 GMT -5
Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense. It might've been semantics, or lost in translations (?) You aren't awareness, but an identity that is aware. You are a gestalt of consciousness. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2022 0:26:20 GMT -5
Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense. It might've been semantics, or lost in translations (?) You aren't awareness, but an identity that is aware. You are a gestalt of consciousness. If I remember right, you've posted that people should not "believe" gurus, books, etc. I agree with that. And of course I include other people in that list of things that I'm not going to simply believe. So that would include you, and Ramana. The goal is to look directly for oneself. This is the core of the teaching from Ramana and others. It's not a concept structure given out to believe in. They're saying: look in this way, so you see for yourself, and go beyond all beliefs and ideas and teachers. When I look directly for myself, what do I see? (I don't mean visually.) Well, words fail and cannot contain immediate truth. Words are just a tiny part of our reality, used by a part of our mind. But they're pointers. The word awareness (or consciousness, which I sometimes view as a synonym) points to something utterly immediate and undeniable. The word gestalt I rarely use, and here it has no meaning to me. I might use it in its psychological sense, to mean something like a "complex". The word identity is interesting. To me it means: essential being, that which you are. Or it could point to an individual "identity", which upon close inspection, is revealed to be merely an appearance or object in consciousness, and not what you truly are. So words like "awareness" and "identity" and "being" – they point to the edge of where the mind can go. If I meditate and follow those pointers, all words fail. I would never debate someone about whether we are "awareness" or "being" or "identity that is aware". Because at that point words are failing. What interests me is then: what can you know for sure, directly? What can you directly experience about this most essential reality? Without believing in anything external? As Walt Whitman wrote: Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems [words],
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2022 0:40:53 GMT -5
Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense. So you think something called awareness is performing the act of being aware? No, I wouldn't say it like that. The word "awareness" is pointing beyond words. At this point, all words fail, and a debate about semantics like this becomes silly. But ideas like "things performing actions" don't seem to survive the encounter with where the word "Awareness" is pointing. Again from the same source: ~~~ Q: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
A: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.
~~~
Of course that last phrase is also in the Old Testament. |
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Post by inavalan on Dec 21, 2022 1:14:55 GMT -5
It might've been semantics, or lost in translations (?) You aren't awareness, but an identity that is aware. You are a gestalt of consciousness. If I remember right, you've posted that people should not "believe" gurus, books, etc. I agree with that. And of course I include other people in that list of things that I'm not going to simply believe. So that would include you, and Ramana. The goal is to look directly for oneself. This is the core of the teaching from Ramana and others. It's not a concept structure given out to believe in. They're saying: look in this way, so you see for yourself, and go beyond all beliefs and ideas and teachers. When I look directly for myself, what do I see? (I don't mean visually.) Well, words fail and cannot contain immediate truth. Words are just a tiny part of our reality, used by a part of our mind. But they're pointers. The word awareness (or consciousness, which I sometimes view as a synonym) points to something utterly immediate and undeniable. The word gestalt I rarely use, and here it has no meaning to me. I might use it in its psychological sense, to mean something like a "complex". The word identity is interesting. To me it means: essential being, that which you are. Or it could point to an individual "identity", which upon close inspection, is revealed to be merely an appearance or object in consciousness, and not what you truly are. So words like "awareness" and "identity" and "being" – they point to the edge of where the mind can go. If I meditate and follow those pointers, all words fail. I would never debate someone about whether we are "awareness" or "being" or "identity that is aware". Because at that point words are failing. What interests me is then: what can you know for sure, directly? What can you directly experience about this most essential reality? Without believing in anything external? As Walt Whitman wrote: Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems [words],
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.This is interesting. We are using some words differently, and obviously wording adds distortions. I expressed an opinion, with no intention to debate. I use the word gestalt a lot, because expresses clearly what I intend to say. I use this definition: - gestalt = a structure, arrangement, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2022 3:32:54 GMT -5
So you think something called awareness is performing the act of being aware? No, I wouldn't say it like that. The word "awareness" is pointing beyond words. At this point, all words fail, and a debate about semantics like this becomes silly. But ideas like "things performing actions" don't seem to survive the encounter with where the word "Awareness" is pointing. Again from the same source: ~~~ Q: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
A: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.
~~~
Of course that last phrase is also in the Old Testament. You are clearly understanding what I am saying here, then where is the problem? I am asking a simple question here, are you believing Self is Performing the act of perceiving, in such a case Self has the power to stop it's act but what if Self itself is the act of perceiving? In such a case, it can't stop perceiving because it is act itself. I am saying second one is true. While the second one is true, it can't perceive nothing, it always has something in it's focus, It may not remember correctly when it comes out of the deep sleep but that doesn't mean that it was not perceiving anything. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 21, 2022 8:26:48 GMT -5
Excerpt From
Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana MaharshiQ: What is this awareness and how can one obtain and cultivate it? A: You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self. Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. One must directly experience NS in order to have a reference for it. Without a reference, one can only engage in idle speculation. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 21, 2022 8:28:27 GMT -5
No, I wouldn't say it like that. The word "awareness" is pointing beyond words. At this point, all words fail, and a debate about semantics like this becomes silly. But ideas like "things performing actions" don't seem to survive the encounter with where the word "Awareness" is pointing. Again from the same source: ~~~ Q: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
A: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.
~~~
Of course that last phrase is also in the Old Testament. You are clearly understanding what I am saying here, then where is the problem? I am asking a simple question here, are you believing Self is Performing the act of perceiving, in such a case Self has the power to stop it's act but what if Self itself is the act of perceiving? In such a case, it can't stop perceiving because it is act itself. I am saying second one is true. While the second one is true, it can't perceive nothing, it always has something in it's focus, It may not remember correctly when it comes out of the deep sleep but that doesn't mean that it was not perceiving anything. No reference for NS. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 21, 2022 8:30:17 GMT -5
So you think something called awareness is performing the act of being aware? No, I wouldn't say it like that. The word "awareness" is pointing beyond words. At this point, all words fail, and a debate about semantics like this becomes silly. But ideas like "things performing actions" don't seem to survive the encounter with where the word "Awareness" is pointing. Again from the same source: ~~~ Q: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
A: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.
~~~
Of course that last phrase is also in the Old Testament. Exactly. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 21, 2022 8:35:03 GMT -5
Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. Ramana and many others report that it's possible. My intuition tells me it's possible. I've experienced a couple interesting hints myself. I'm going to tentatively trust all that over you, no offense. That's wise. Thousands of sages have talked and written about NS. They're a bit more trustworthy than people who have no reference for NS. |
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Post by zendancer on Dec 21, 2022 8:44:32 GMT -5
I think that awareness is present even in sleep or when the body is unconscious. Niz distinguished between awareness and consciousness and noted that there can be awareness without consciousness (as in NS) but there cannot be consciousness without awareness. I think he defined consciousness as consciousness OF SOMETHING whereas during NS there is nothing to be conscious of. An analogy might be how people get lost in thought while driving a car on the interstate. For twenty minutes they don't consciously notice the road or anything other than their thoughts, but THIS is intelligent and aware, and it drives the car while the intellect is totally focused on thoughts. For all practical purposes the driver is unconscious of the world during that period of time, and this may be analogous to what happens during sleep. In one case the intellect is focused on thoughts to the exclusion of all else, and during sleep the intellect is either focused on dreams or is unfocused on anything. The problem is that the truth is undivided, and the intellect is trying to understand and make sense of things that it has distinguished as separate but are not really separate. As many of us have noted, the movie projector, the screen on which the movie is being projected, the images on the screen, and the one who is looking at the images are all part of a unified field of being, so trying to intellectually understand all of the imagined aspects of what's going on is a somewhat fraught endeavor. is completely absurd, and I never catch you in saying something absurd. How do most accidents happen? The driver's attention is captured by something other than what's right in front of him or her, and s*** happens. Getting lost in thought means we are literally driving on autopilot. If what you were saying was true then THIS as intelligent and aware would alert the driver to trouble, and *awaken* the driver, like your bladder awakens you (me) in the middle of sleep, so as not to *have an accident*. When I was teaching each of my kids to drive I told them this is probably the most dangerous thing you will ever do in your life. (At the time I didn't know one would go into the Army, one the Air Force, and one into the Coast Guard). The body can drive on autopilot, when everything is as usual, but if a car drifts into your lane or a deer jumps out in front of you, or any one of 1,000 that could happen, happen, and your attention is not present, bad stuff can happen, people can die, or end up in a wheelchair, or a vegetable. Yes, this is absolutely analogous to sleep, but if you have a car wreck in a dream, nobody ever dies. And this, most all my threads and questions come from my experience, I'm not really asking for answers. The OP asked about NS. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2022 8:52:11 GMT -5
Awareness is always aware of something, awareness is nothing but the act of being of aware of something, its not an entity. So it can't give up being aware of something. One must directly experience NS in order to have a reference for it. Without a reference, one can only engage in idle speculation. Can you know when you are in NS? Or you can only know after you came out from that state? |
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