|
|
Post by amit on Mar 21, 2010 5:53:58 GMT -5
Thanks for your input. I get the basic concept of oneness but without experiencing it, it's difficult to embrace it unreservedly. Whatever will be will be. In the unconditional version of nonduality it is already Oneness as 'frank' no matter what 'frank' is experiencing including frank saying "It's difficult to embrace it unreservedly" Whatever conditions are imagined they do not have to be met to find what has not been lost. Good luck 'frank' -amit- |
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 21, 2010 13:15:48 GMT -5
Frank: Thanks for your input. I get the basic concept of oneness but without experiencing it, it's difficult to embrace it unreservedly. Whatever will be will be.
Embracing the concept of oneness is a bit like giving Harvey the rabbit a big ole bear hug, isn't it?
Experiencing oneness requires that you first pull out your Ginsu knife and split it into experiencer and experienced, right?
So if it's not a concept and can't be experienced, what the hell good is it? Hehe.
|
|
|
|
Post by frankshank on Mar 21, 2010 19:21:48 GMT -5
Frank: Thanks for your input. I get the basic concept of oneness but without experiencing it, it's difficult to embrace it unreservedly. Whatever will be will be. Embracing the concept of oneness is a bit like giving Harvey the rabbit a big ole bear hug, isn't it? Experiencing oneness requires that you first pull out your Ginsu knife and split it into experiencer and experienced, right? So if it's not a concept and can't be experienced, what the hell good is it? Hehe. I'm a fool searching for a diamond in a sea of mud! Frank Junior poetP.S. I've found some used cans though!  |
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 21, 2010 19:44:07 GMT -5
If it has worms in it, it might be a good omen!
|
|
|
|
Post by frankshank on Mar 22, 2010 7:28:59 GMT -5
If it has worms in it, it might be a good omen! 'Frank' needs clarity to go with the cans of worms. He isn't worried though. He has faith. He knows deep down that the answers will come, perhaps followed by the realisation that there is nothing to know. It should be fun! |
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Mar 22, 2010 9:00:52 GMT -5
Actually, oneness can be directly experienced through a human body/mind, but not by a separate entity or personal self. I think it was Angelus Selesius (1650 AD ?) who wrote,
God, whose love and joy
are present everwhere,
can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there.
That state of oneness is not known through the mind. When it occurs, it feels as if some other organ of perception has been activated, something that bypasses the intellect completely. There is no inside or outside in that state of oneness, and there is a joyful but awe-struck awareness of the infinite. One glimpse is all it takes, and, in Kabir's words, "one becomes a servant for life."
|
|
|
|
Post by lightmystic on Mar 22, 2010 10:39:10 GMT -5
That's a great quote! |
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 22, 2010 11:04:53 GMT -5
"God, whose love and joy
are present everwhere,
can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there."
Very nice.
Everything sought is present only in the absence of the one seeking, which is to imply that the belief in the seeker is the source of the perceived need; beliefs gorging themselves on their own conclusions, and eventually starving to death. This seems at once wondrous and tragic, the death being the wondrous part.
To be more better clearer, all virtue is present only in your absence, meaning that true humility has no interest in either humility or arrogance; selflessness is devoid of self. Love moves in the absence of the need to give or receive love. Peace is seen to be present in the absence of the peacemaker. Freedom has no interest in freeing itself.
I would say, come empty to every encounter. Therein lies the Peace of God.
|
|
|
|
Post by frankshank on Mar 22, 2010 11:27:40 GMT -5
I read Suzanne Segal's 'Collision with the infinite' a few weeks ago and I found it quite scary actually. She spent 10 years in therapy trying figure out why there was no 'me' anymore. It seemed strange given that she'd practiced Zen for 8 years that it didn't dawn on her that it wasn't a therapy matter. But then I thought, if there was no suzanne anymore who was bothered about the fear that arose? Who was looking for answers?
|
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 22, 2010 12:13:20 GMT -5
HA! That's a good question, Frank. Often, what seems to happen is that a 'me center' can no longer be found, but this isn't so much mind that's coming to some conclusion or the dissolving of a belief system, and so mind's conditioning turns it into a problem to be solved. We might say this is more of a matter of the movement of Grace and mind is always the last to get the memo about this stuff. Hehe. For this same reason, I've always had a suspicion that there are folks locked up in asylums who's mind can't process what has happened, and of course neither can the doctors. As for the Zen apparently not preparing her, it does seem a bit odd, but the popularized practice of Zen has also become a bit odd. For some, a rock garden and Buddha statue, together with some goal oriented meditation, constitutes a Zen practice, and this might not even hint at the potential dissolution of self. On the other hand, if you're walking down the street and suddenly can't find Frank, you know you'll be fine. |
|
|
|
Post by lightmystic on Mar 22, 2010 12:39:03 GMT -5
Hey Frank, That's a great point, that the whole "no me" thing seems to imply that an individual doesn't exist as separate, but somehow everything else does. The reason that "no self" is focused on is because a.) that's what it feels like, especially at first, but also b.) because that is all that is really needed to be recognized to end duality everywhere - inside and out. So it's not that there is no separate me, but there are separate "other things." With the end of self separation comes the end of all separation. It's experienced a little differently by everyone I think, but, for me and many others, there is a predominance of the experience that nothing has ever arisen.....and everything else seems very very secondary.... Do you see what I'm saying? I read Suzanne Segal's 'Collision with the infinite' a few weeks ago and I found it quite scary actually. She spent 10 years in therapy trying figure out why there was no 'me' anymore. It seemed strange given that she'd practiced Zen for 8 years that it didn't dawn on her that it wasn't a therapy matter. But then I thought, if there was no suzanne anymore who was bothered about the fear that arose? Who was looking for answers? |
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Mar 22, 2010 12:47:17 GMT -5
Frank: Yes, Segal's story is particularly fascinating. In another thread I was pointing to this underlying issue that her book raises. Most people who see through the illusion of selfhood, still have a sense of being an individual entity even though they aren't attached to it. They recognize that personal selfhood is an illusion. They realize that who they are and what the body/mind is is the whole truth manifesting “just like this.” They know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are not a "Bob," "Jack," Sally," or Ellen," and they know that those imaginary entities were nothing more than a kind of mirage. Very few people, however, ever seem to lose all sense of being an individual entity, and even Nisargadatta commented on the periodic appearance of "vestiges" of his past self--as if his past selfhood was only a dim memory occasionally flickering up in the vastness of pure impersonal awareness.
I am theorizing here, based upon various comments by people like Ramana and Nisargadatta, but it appears that some people apparently shift so radically from body/mind awareness to identification with pure awareness that they no longer have any identification with transient phenomena. They eventually look at the body as impersonally as if they were looking at a rock or tree.
Ramana was only sixteen when he awakened, and he then spent many years in deep samadhi, so it appears that his identity as a particular body/mind was utterly eradicated. Apparently this same sort of thing suddenly happened to Segal, who was living an ordinary life at that time, and the total disappearance of all self-identity was extraordinarily frightening. You found her story scary, and you were only reading the story! Imagine how it must have felt to her! One minute “she” was there, and the next minute “she” was not, yet the body/mind mechanism was intact and fully functional. She says that it took many years for her to realize that fear can be simply recognized as fear appearing in emptiness, and this allowed her to finally relax and accept her impersonal “condition.”
I suspect that the sense of being involved with self-directed activity is a very complex body/mind phenomena, and the total disappearance of the "felt" sense of selfhood by someone not seeking that state, would be just as frightening as Segal describes it.
The body/mind through which I/IT manifest seems to be pursuing the same state that Nisargadatta and Segal describe. We might call it curiosity, but for whatever reason, reality, in this form, has been pursuing deeper and deeper states of silence and pure awareness. I have no idea what will happen in this context, or if anything at all will happen, but I have theorized that at some point, there may be a sudden shift to identification with awareness rather than a particular body/mind. If that ever happens IT will let you know. LOL.
I suspect that what might happen might be similar to what happened to the Russian psychologist who, at the turn of the century, wore the periscopes that turned his vision of the world upside down. After several weeks, his vision flipped 180 degrees and he saw the world "normally" again. When he took off the periscope glasses, the world appeared upside down even though he was looking at it sans glasses. Two weeks later he was walking along and the world flipped right-side up again. Apparently the body/mind is capable of shifting perception in this manner, and the same thing might happen to people who remain in a state of pure awareness long enough. Identification may suddenly shift to awareness and the background may become the foreground.
In the case of Nisargadatta and Ramana, regardless of how the shift occurred, it was accompanied by joy rather than fear, and Nisargadatta referred to it as "our natural state."
If anyone else has any insight into this issue, I would certainly be interested in hearing about it. Cheers.
|
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 22, 2010 14:48:47 GMT -5
"If anyone else has any insight into this issue, I would certainly be interested in hearing about it. Cheers. "
Me too! I don't think I have anything to add, but that rarely seems to stop me.
As you imply, it gets progressively more obvious that it all plays out as it will, and it has become more clear that what is happening is a Wholistic matter, having no special interest in the depth of realization through this mind/body as opposed to any other mind/body, at least for now, and in the cases where that has occurred, these are signposts along the road, and signposts are of limited value, resulting in more confusion rather than less as their numbers increase. I don't see most going to the depth that you predict, but rather to the depth at which you currently are. This is enough, and the means by which radical transformation would take place. The starry night sky is beautiful and wondrous, but nobody will move until the ground is lit and folks can see their way.
It's also apparent that mind cannot separate itself from the totality of Mind, and the most bizarre thoughts arise, and are likely to continue to arise, in spite of the fact that they are not of the least bit of interest. As a reflection of the consciousness of humanity, mind is incorrigible (hehe) and nothing can be done but to let it be.
|
|
|
|
Post by Portto on Mar 22, 2010 15:02:01 GMT -5
Yes, Suzanne's story is indeed amazing. It's just another proof that the body can function without the idea of a separate individual.
But in fact there are plenty of other proofs: being a baby, sleep, intense focus, meditation, etc.
Actually, the sense of being a separate individual is very discontinuous for everybody - it only pops in from time to time. When we see it, we imagine that it has always been there, but that's not the case.
This sense of self is imagined into existence during early childhood. It seems that Suzanne suddenly lost that piece of imagination, but some information about it was still present in her memory - and the mind created worries about it (ooops, I lost my wedding ring).
On a side note, it appears that Suzanne died of a brain tumor - which can be very disturbing for an individual identity, but completely irrelevant for an empty mind.
|
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Mar 22, 2010 16:10:51 GMT -5
"This sense of self is imagined into existence during early childhood. It seems that Suzanne suddenly lost that piece of imagination"
The 'sense of self' is your sense of existence, and is not, itself, imagined. It is generally projected onto an object of perception (the mind/body), and it seems that in this case it was noticed that it's not really the case. Mind isn't what notices this, and so mind was still looking for it to be there, but the Self was informing mind that this wasn't true. This 'informing' does not take place conceptually, and so mind didn't have an alternative concept to grasp. The end result is that a localized center is looked for, because it is still imagined, but can't be found. It also cannot be found 'here'.
Does that make sense?
|
|
