Carl-Richard

The I that is God is not an avatar. That's the problem with projecting your own idea of the word. That's why I elaborate with what the "I" is. The entire linguistic enterprise is dualistic for God's sake. And I'm saying God is in everything. What is dualistic about that? "Sounds weird" means you're coming at this from a "feels" perspective not a logically consistent and conceptually informed perspective. And that's the problem. Something that is logically consistent sounds weird. We're barely logical creatures. The pointing game is ridiculously limited. The best way is sometimes to shut up. But people keep asking so we keep pointing. God and avatars are one, God and perceptions are one. God and feelings, sounds, colors are one. But you saying "only these sounds and colors exist, not these other sounds and colors", that's fantasy, that's illusion. Because show me "these sounds and colors". Point them out to me. If you can do that, you will see that is in fact dualistic. You see, solipsism in the way you seem to conceive it can ever only be dualistic. Ramana's solipsism, is radically non-dualistic. It's going inwards towards yourself, not outwards towards the world, things, feelings, perceptions, experiences, sensations — inwards towards the One, not outwards towards the many. The One and the many are united in the journey inwards, united in an infinite way, not in a "here is the border of my limited avatar-based experience, anything outside is not real" kind of way.

Why does an omniscient God care where your grandmother is specifically?

Why is @Inliytened1 asking where your grandmother is?

Me and other are illusions, God is real. "Where is other?" is illusion. "Only me" is illusion. God knows everything, God is everything, God is in me, God is in you, God is in avatars, God is outside avatars. The problem with being simple is that you project your own idea of "me" and "other" onto those words (and it tends to lead to equivocation). That's why I have to start talking about perceptions, sounds, colors, Freud, Jung. Grasping the difference between "personal" and "transpersonal" should not be that hard if you just try for more than 10 minutes.

I love how everything just loops back into "but can we describe anything at all 🤪"? when things become only slightly difficult. Yes, any description is a concoction, "dreamer" is a word. Same with solipsism, same with anything. This is philosophy 101. Welcome. Do we get this now and can we move on?

I linked this video earlier, and it resonates with what I have said, time and time again, in this thread and elsewhere. It resonates with what Rupert Spira has said about solipsism, what Bernardo Kastrup has said about it (I can also name-drop people). The distinction is about the dreamer and the dream characters. The dreamer is one, is omniscient, knows itself and everything because it is everything. The dream character, the videogame character, the avatar in the MMO role-playing game, is a projection, happening inside the dreamer's unbounded consciousness. The dreamer is one, because it is everything, it exists everywhere, in everything, at the same time, in "everyone". The avatars are irrelevant, they are illusory, projections. The dreamer is one. The dreamer is one. The dreamer is one. The moment you engage in "where is your grandmother?", you're engaging in illusion. You are not talking about an omniscient dreamer. You are engaging in a very select and limited section of the projections of the dreamer, dreamed by the dreamer, and the dreamer is not an avatar, it is not confined to an avatar, it is not confined to anything. Avatars are concerned with what you can see, smell, touch, hear, feel. The dreamer is concerned with what "is", what is everything, beyond what you can smell, see, feel, beyond anything you as an avatar can imagine with your limited imagination. And what "is" is pure knowing, pure being, pure "is". You were given the opportunity to read the above text with undue charity, strategically leaving this at the end so you might be more open. Now, let me re-iterate: there is something wildly juvenile about writing a thread where you open with "you know who agrees with me? The most respected guy in the business" and then you're completely wrong, and you even admit you're wrong. And now you also make it my burden to prove you wrong. That is also wrong. Nevermind, I should've placed it at the beginning. If you think knowing the difference between "minds" as in the common psychologist perception of it (the type Freud, Jung, etc., talk about) — the minds of perception, feeling, sensation — vs the mind of God, the pure consciousness permeating all of reality, is to be "engrossed in being complex", then ok, being complex is necessary.

You don't have to be a saint even though your parents expected you to be. It's OK.

But the light shines on everything does it not? Now this is just messing around.

Where does frustration rank on the pole of consciousness?

Wrong. It's that solipsism doesn't describe the world, only the dreamer. You're very sloppy in your scholarship of those you decide to name-drop for bolstering your personal beliefs. I suggest stopping that. Nevertheless, I'm just making it clear for anyone here who cares about what Ramana thinks about solipsism: this is not a thread about Ramana Maharshi. It's a thread about a guy's obsession about using a term to describe relationships in the world.

I read like a few post in this thread and two of them had circular definitions. Something to be conscious of.

Anybody care to explain what the interpreter of Ramana means by "not solipsism turned out on the world but solipsism turned in on yourself"?

Sort of. The Default Mode Network instinctively throws out long-term memories about oneself (self-referential processing). When you're more conscious, thinking about yourself drops.

Lesser activation of the Default Mode Network.

What's the point?

Yes. Is ain't ought.

Just distinguish between personal dissociative complexes ("minds") and boundless consciousness. It's so easy.

They seek deactivation of the Default Mode Network in their own limited ways.

They seek deactivation of the Default Mode Network in their own limited ways, the ways they were brought up to do, conditioned, what they believe is the best thing to do, but if they were given a taste of what spirituality does, they might capitulate to it completely or fear it for its intensity and for threatening their sense of limited identity and stability. It's a constant tug-of-war between what is desired the most (expansion) and what is feared of being lost (contraction). The common man is lost in the middle, being ruled by both, not capitulating to pure expansion. That's the truth of suffering, attachment, dukkha, samsara, being reborn as a fearing ego moment to moment. But it's not just the common man. It's every spiritual seeker up until the moment of letting go of everything they fear, and even everything they desire, but pure desire.

Now you're making the mistake of solipsism turned out on the world instead of turned in towards yourself, as Michael James put it (the person doing the Ramana Maharshi Q&A). Once you use solipsism to describe relationships out in the world, relationships between people, between you as a dream character and other dream characters, you are no longer talking about Ramana's solipsism. Ramana's solipsism is the one dreamer taking on the dream character(s) as an illusion in its own imagination. The relationship between the dreamer and the dream characters is not spatial, not local, not present in time, only present through omniscience, pure knowing, pure being of everything that exists. Once you start talking about hidden things, of things being present in space or being not present in space, of where things are on the screen of perception or where they are not — once you start to question the dreamer's complete omniscience — you are in conceptual thinking, belief, fantastical delusion. What Ramana wanted to tell you is that your grandma is an illusion, and so are you.

@Entrepreneur What if we could predict what everybody values the most based on an inverse activation of the Default Mode Network, and that the end goal of spiritual practice is the pinnacle of that?

And you?

Yup. MMO analogies are the way to teach zoomers. Tom Campbell was 20 years early.

Denying other, denying multiplicity, denying maya, is cool and all, but as Ramana Maharshi would have said, deny it all the way. Yourself as a person in the dream, that is also maya. If it's possible for you as a person in the dream to exist, it's possible for others in the dream to exist.

Death of the self means you're literally dying every single moment of your existence.