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@winterknight Is sinking the mind in the Now (not the phenomena in the Now, but the essence of the Now), and sinking the mind in the Self, one and the same?

What is it that gives Now its Reality? Why is the clock ticking Now real while the same clock ticking a second ago is not real?

@winterknight Recently my meditation/contemplation takes me into the following direction. Please let me know if it is worth pursuing I ask myself what is it that is always here, changeless and is yet goes unnoticed by the mind. And the answer I get is, this intangible, undefinable "thing" that gives Now its reality. There is a timelessness to it. It does unnoticed by the mind because mind can only understand things by comparison so cannot see what is changeless and always there. Then i try to notice this "thing" and a sinking of the mind starts occurring. Mind calms down because it doesnt feel required to notice what is already here, prior to knowing. After such a 'meditation', there is a general peace and stillness that i feel for a while. It has an effect on me that i cant quite put my finger on. Is it something legit or am i deluding myself ?

does someone know how to delete comments here

Yes, looks that way. It is still in its early stages but looks promising.

What is your field of study?

Haha thank you! I love you too fellow seeker!

Hi, nice to see you here. Indeed, relieved to see I am not the only black sheep of physics i do many body quantum systems, condensed matter, but mostly mathematics.

No, I understand that I will have to give up the mind to get there completely. But it is not the spiritual-me who is asking it is the physicist-me who is asking the question about the physical world. You see all of physics actually runs on analogies. For example, we cannot 'experience' the black hole, but we can still talk about it reliably using analogies (mathematical equations). No one has experienced the 10 dimensions but that doesnt stop us from calculating properties of a 10 dimensional universe using analogies. That's why I want to know that when you say the physical world is not real to you anymore, in what sense it is not. Is it like upon waking up a dream is not real? Or going close to a mirage and finding it was never there? or the screen analogy? There has to be an analogy!

@winterknight Please tell me if the following analogy about what happens to the body-mind-world after enlightenment is correct.. We can see a picture on a laptop of a landscape with a man standing in it. But if we go closer and look ever more closely, at some point we will only see the screen, the pixels.. so in a sense the landscape and the man was appearing only because we had a poor view of the situation. Looking closely, there is just the screen, no landscape, no man. We learn that it was all a mind construct made out of a distracted view of the reality (screen). Self is the screen in this analogy of course.

No I suspected as much that's why I stopped going in that direction.

I used to do a lot of open eye meditation in which i would merge field of attention with total awareness and try to attend to the whole mind-body-world at the same time. It started having an effect. Every once in a while when i am out in the world doing my thing, the visual world would suddenly start looking quite unreal ..flimsy.. like a 3D hologram. There would be a collapse of the separation between me and the world but only visually. It would look that i am where the world is and vice versa. It was like nondual awareness but only visually. (i only noticed later that psychological me remained very much). It would last from minutes to sometimes an hour or two. And then it would be back to normal view. I stopped doing that because i realized that the psychological self wasnt being affected by it and it remained very much during those episodes. I can still switch on those modes if i try for a few minutes. The world starts looking like a 3D hologram and appearing where my head is. What is this perception of the illusory nature of the visual world? DOes it have any significance? I ask because it seems to be a mini case of mind recognizing its own illusory nature.. only the visual mind recognizes it.

Ok good. I got it. But if the true I is not an object how can the mind ever recognize its experience which is presumably always present?

So I cannot "know" the true "I", I can only "be" the true "I"? But how would I know whether i am being the true I or i am being some version of the ego (like in the case of weed-meditation) ?

One kind of experience is much more common to me. Sometimes, when there is stillness, the present moment looks totally absurd.. especially the time aspect of it. Somehow we all FIND ourselves here and things are changing, and somehow everyone goes with it as "thats how it is". It is all quite strange! No one knows what this is but everyone is playing along! Why are things changing at a certain speed?! What is all this?! It doesnt make any sense whatsoever! Why is time here? Can you please comment on what this kind of moment mean? :-o

Yes, I can relate to the morning one. But it is very short and not even clear what happened in retrospect. But if 'not remembering who i am' is what you are looking for, then i have stable one of those: I sometimes meditate on weed. There is no remembrance of who i am, where i am. I cant even remember how my face looks like. As i close my eyes there is a space with bodily sensations and sounds appearing in it. No body contours. The memory of the past seems so distant and totally alien. Then I turn around (not literally, just in that internal space) to see who/what is experiencing all this and it is a TOTAL mystery. There is a sense of an "I" but it has no idea what it is. The "I" is not totally one with the space but it is hard to find boundaries either. What is this I?

Sorry I don't think I ever noticed that I blanked out for a moment looking at a beautiful thing.

@winterknight would you buy into the description that your mind/brain was creating your world, including the I, and years of yoga, meditation changed its working so now it's all changed?

Cmon, just try. With analogies if you need them. I'm sure I won't get it but perhaps it would guard against any false awakenings

@winterknight you did not answer a question I asked previously. What is I-ness to you now? What is the I?

Why can't I call them appearances? A dream is illusory with respect to waking state, but it is still an appearance, no? Can you please expand on that. I'd apologize for taking too much of your time, but since there is no time for you..

I see. Understood. Does the room get the same status too? That the whole idea of 'you being in a room' is gibberish and nonsensical.?

The wakinh up from a dream analogy for enlightenment is quite common in nonduality so let me ask something about that. When I wake up from a dream, that world is gone and I cannot even interact with that illusory world and people in it anymore. However enlightened ones seem like are still interacting with their dream people, like me.

Ok great, this analogy explains what you meant. So let me push further. In my case, upon waking up, id see that the idea was stupid and only seemed real because I was asleep. But the rough idea would still be here with me even now. Is it the same with you and mind? Is the mind still there with you and just is not as meaningful or real as it once looked when you were 'asleep'?

Or taking the mirage analogy.. if I saw a mirage but now standing there I just see sand.. isn't that simple to describe ? Like you were deluded into believing the construction of time by the thought, but now may be the construction still happens but you can see it for what it is, a mind construct ?