What Do You Think Of This Description Of Inseparable Distinction In Non-duality?

[Ananta]

@Joseph Maynor ya know what just came to me ... once you've negated everything and apprehend your true nature. Eventually, you come full circle and realize everything you've negated is also you (awareness). That's when "concepts" really come in handy. So, that this "apparent" existence can somewhat be explained..to the mind. As its the mind that seeks answers. Sorry, if I'm beating a dead horse..lol.

[Joseph Maynor]

6 minutes ago, Anna1 said:

@Joseph Maynor ya know what just came to me ... once you've negated everything and apprehend your true nature. Eventually, you come full circle and realize everything you've negated is also you (awareness). That's when "concepts" really come in handy. So, that this "apparent" existence can somewhat be explained..to the mind. As its the mind that seeks answers. Sorry, if I'm beating a dead horse..lol.

@Anna1 I take a very stark view.  Existentially, reality is non-conceptual.  It is just what is.  It is to be noticed.  Anytime the mind gets involved, that's where we lose this very genuine sight of reality.  The mind screws up our understanding of reality.  That's the basic problem.  

[Ananta]

1 minute ago, Joseph Maynor said:

@Anna1 I take a very stark view.  Existentially, reality is non-conceptual.  It is just what is.  It is to be noticed.  Anytime the mind gets involved, that's where we lose this very genuine sight of reality.  The mind screws up our understanding of reality.  That's the basic problem.  

Perhaps, your just not to the point I'm referring to yet..no problem.

Understanding seems to come in phases and you can't jump to a phase your not yet at.

[Ananta]

Also, in case it wasn't clear, I was referring to using concepts in understanding "apparent" phenomena in my past post. The cosmology of the manifest universe.

When you've done your time in negating the world long enough you start to eventually question the other side of the coin, manifestation.. that's what I'm referring to. That's what I mean by coming full circle.

The realization that Mithya is also awareness, therefore also "The Self". Ultimately though all theories are discarded when the mind becomes calm and still, when questions/doubts are gone, then you just rest in your true nature and play your role in life.

The only other time to bring it up is in discussion. Like on this forum for example.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Anna1

[Joseph Maynor]

@Anna1 Does this video kind of get at what you are saying?  Understood practically and less theoretically.

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Ananta]

@Joseph Maynor She seems to only be speaking about ego, which I don't concentrate on too much anymore. The ego is simply an I-thought that thinks it's real. On inspection (Self inquiry) it dissappears, so was never real to begin with. She is right, imo, you cant destory it, but you can transcend it (see its unreality).

When I talk about cosmology I'm speaking Vedanta concepts such as- Brahman, Maya, Isvara, 3 gunas, vasanas, jiva, non-doership, ect. 

I know you are somewhat familiar or at least you've read about it a bit. Having a sound foundation in these terms, what they mean and how they fit together, when wielded by a skilled Vedanta teacher will answer every question that can be answered by a tradition regarding the nature of reality and what's happening phenomenally. 

Yes, this is my opinion and no, it isn't for everyone. So, it's a loose suggestion for those who may want to go that route, either now or in the future.

I have an analytical mind that questions/doubts and demanded answers, even after knowing the ultimate truth. It happens. Vedanta says, the teacher is to answer the students questions until all doubts are removed. Period. End of story.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Anna1 Here's what is confusing me.  And it is on point with this question too.  How can I be both part of reality and all of reality at the same time?  How can I be the caterpillar's perspective of reality or the jellyfish's perspective of reality?  If I am all of reality, I should have access to the perspectives of all creatures, to all distinctions.  It seems as though I am a form in reality that mentally can (at least) partially transcend it's own default programming, at least to the extent that our Inquiry can accomplish.  But that mental transcendence does not change the monkey that I am on the ground, what my body-mind actually is and will be while such a distributed system exists in reality.  And it will not change the fact that a monkey is trying to self-inquire too.  There are a lot of red flags with this too, if you think about this.  We like to overlook this fact.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Ananta]

9 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

How can I be both part of reality and all of reality at the same time?

I'm going to repost what I said in another thread then comment after it.

 

"I'll assume you mean by limited perspective, the body/mind? If that's the case (?), think of all apparent objects as being a hologram.  

An analogy- A room is filled with light (pure awareness/Brahman), then a hologram appears, "made of" light (awareness). Its superimposed upon/within the "light" in the room. Therefore, the light in the room is also "permeating" (Atman) the hologram.

The hologram thinks it's an individual volitional entity, because it doesn't recognize it is made from/out of light. It doesn't apprehend the light in the room. 

All analogies break down at some point, but my point was to say the "real you" is the light in the room, not the hologram. The hologram exists (as its also awareness), but its temporary, therefore, ultimately its an illusion and dependent on the light itself for its apparent existence.

So, all phenomena is a temporary  "appearance" (created out of Brahman/awareness) due to the power of Maya and Isvara. Objects are superimposed onto/within Brahman, therefore Brahman "permeates" every-thing. When Brahman permeates a jiva/object, it's then "associated" with it, then its called Atman."

Ok, so currently the "portion" of awareness/Brahman "associated" with the body/mind Joseph, has a limited perspective. This limited perspective is do to Maya and will continue until the death of the body/mind, then who knows.

This limited body/mind is created out of awareness, permeated by awareness AND awareness reflects within the subtle body, therefore the mind (not brain). This reflection causes the sense of "I AM" in the mind imbued with awareness. 

From my analogy, the hologram can apprehend that it is actually "light", therefore not different from the light permeating the room or other holograms, but it can not see from the perspective of other holograms, because Self-realization and enlightenment happen with the intellect, an aspect of mind, of the individual "apparent" body/mind/sense complex. 

There are 3 perspectives that can be understood-

First, is the perspective of Brahman/pure awareness- it is a witness only in a figurative sense and that's why they say from its perspective nothing is happening, which isn't really a perspective, since it does have a mind to know objects in the traditional sense. 

Then, Isvara (God) perspective- It's perspective is that it is the creator, sustainer and destroyer of all of manifestation. It is the puppet master and we (apparent persons) are the puppets. From Its perspective there is no free will for jivas, as it is the cause/effect of everything (3 gunas, vasanas, ect). That's why the jiva is not truly the doer.

Jiva/persons perspective- we have thoughts, feelings, emotions, a transactional world, ect. For us this all seems very real. We feel that we have free will and choice, to some extent we do. In the sense that we need to listen to our internal promptings and make the best choices possible, but one could say that even that is coming from Isvara. 

The best we can do is realize/recognize/apprehend our true nature, which is awareness. Drop the identification with the body/mind and identify with our true nature, whilst simultaneously being "associated" with the "individual" body/mind.

You will still have an I-sense after Self-realization. This is how you can transact business in the world, do your duties, take care of the body, ect, ect. 

It's a both/and understanding, not either/or.

[Arkandeus]

10 hours ago, Anna1 said:

@Joseph Maynor She seems to only be speaking about ego, which I don't concentrate on too much anymore. The ego is simply an I-thought that thinks it's real. On inspection (Self inquiry) it dissappears, so was never real to begin with. She is right, imo, you cant destory it, but you can transcend it (see its unreality).

When I talk about cosmology I'm speaking Vedanta concepts such as- Brahman, Maya, Isvara, 3 gunas, vasanas, jiva, non-doership, ect. 

I know you are somewhat familiar or at least you've read about it a bit. Having a sound foundation in these terms, what they mean and how they fit together, when wielded by a skilled Vedanta teacher will answer every question that can be answered by a tradition regarding the nature of reality and what's happening phenomenally. 

Yes, this is my opinion and no, it isn't for everyone. So, it's a loose suggestion for those who may want to go that route, either now or in the future.

I have an analytical mind that questions/doubts and demanded answers, even after knowing the ultimate truth. It happens. Vedanta says, the teacher is to answer the students questions until all doubts are removed. Period. End of story.

the answer is infinity, try to give that answer to your mind

give that answer to every question in your mind
you will see it will shut down, because it is the final answer that shuts down your mind
it is the answer that takes you beyond concepts and into the truth

Edited July 29, 2017 by Arkandeus

[Ananta]

55 minutes ago, Arkandeus said:

the answer is infinity, try to give that answer to your mind

give that answer to every question in your mind
you will see it will shut down, because it is the final answer that shuts down your mind
it is the answer that takes you beyond concepts and into the truth

This is a very simplistic view, imo.

It seems like neo-advaita. If that's your thing and works for you, great. Others may need/want a bit more and there's nothing wrong with that either, imo.

What does shut's the mind down mean to you? Is your mind shut down? 

 

[Shanmugam]

11 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

@Anna1 Here's what is confusing me.  And it is on point with this question too.  How can I be both part of reality and all of reality at the same time?  How can I be the caterpillar's perspective of reality or the jellyfish's perspective of reality?  If I am all of reality, I should have access to the perspectives of all creatures, to all distinctions.  It seems as though I am a form in reality that mentally can (at least) partially transcend it's own default programming, at least to the extent that our Inquiry can accomplish.  But that mental transcendence does not change the monkey that I am on the ground, what my body-mind actually is and will be while such a distributed system exists in reality.  And it will not change the fact that a monkey is trying to self-inquire too.  There are a lot of red flags with this too, if you think about this.  We like to overlook this fact.

That is a good question...

Let me answer it according to my own experience first and according to what I have read... And I will try to put everything in words to my best ability. (The problem is, every word in every language, including the words in this sentence, even though has almost same meaning in the dictionary, has some what different meanings in each person's mind. )

If I look back at my past 4 years ago, the way I perceived the world was like this: I had a distinct feeling that I was an individual. What I called as 'me'  ended exactly at the place where my skin met the air. I perceived the whole world as  something different from me and full of different people who seem to have a solid reality in my mind.. By this, I mean that, all of the bodies who I perceived with my eyes also had separate distinct realities in my mind as well. 

Sometime during 2014 (In the month of July when my practices reached a peak point), I started to feel the reality in a different way. The agent, the doer, which I thought I was, who had a feeling of incompleteness and was looking for fulfillment, completely disappeared. With the disappearance of the agent, the distinct feeling which creates an idea of 'me' and the idea of an 'other' also disappeared. There is no sense in calling anything separately as 'me'. In that sense, the whole experience of reality became non-dual. Since there is no particular incomplete entity striving for fulfillment, it also made me to rest in peace. And at one point, I didn't even know what to do next in life. All my actions from then on were only to fulfill the needs of this body and to meet the demands of people who are dependent on me. Slowly, in the next three years, I started to have a direction in my life to proceed with, even though there is no goal to attain anymore and nothing matters. This non-dual reality continues with no feeling of distinctions... So, in that sense, yes, everything is one.

Depending on how the same thing that I said above has been described by different people in the past  in different ways, I can certainly infer that they talked about the same thing as well. But what everyone in the past did was create some theories based on this and also proceeded to teach others on how they can start perceiving the reality  non-dually.

And the way they created such theories and teaching methods are always based on their own past experiences and probably by observing/discussing with other people who had the same perception of reality. Some of these people attracted huge followings and a varieties of distinct philosophies must have got created based on this. As time went on, people who had no taste of such a non-dual reality in its purity also started adding things to such theories. And there was no way in the past to verify such theories with empirical research. It would have been even difficult to communicate to another person who was living miles away, but now people from different parts of the world can communicate easily with each other in this forum. If such a convenience existed during the time of people like Buddha, Shankara etc, things would have been different.

One such theory was that consciousness is non-local and it is the same for everyone. I think this is where your difficulty is. First of all, this way of perceiving the reality is not an evidence for non-local consciousness. It doesn't tell me anything about the origin of universe and things like that either. However, the way all these theories were created was only based on pure reasoning and experience, and some of them did help people, regardless of these theories being true or not. For example, in Yogic school of thoughts, there are multiple purushas (atman) and one prakriti (maya). Even though they have explained the reality this way, the end result of yoga called samadhi also ends in perceiving the reality in non-dual way, according to their own scriptures. Here, it is important to understand what the word samadhi means, because most of the people only think of it as some kind of experience reached by eyes closed meditation. Samadhi literally means putting everything together. Nirvikalpa samadhi means putting everything together without any distinctions. But I know that these words have various other meanings which can cause disagreements. Even the same vedantic scriptures (Upanishads, Gita, Brahmasutras) have been interpreted differently by different people like Madhva, Ramanuja etc and their view of reality was different.

But all these theories are only about the objective world, to explain things like, the other people having their own conscious field and perceiving the reality in a different way . The need of such theories in the first place arises only when they try to teach others. They don't have to be taken so seriously and  they are only used as teaching devices. The core of the spiritual practice lies only in discriminating the witness and the things that are witnessed. This doesn't require any belief in such theories. But these theories are helpful for people in having some basis to work with.

However, if there is a curiosity to find out what is real in the objective world, most importantly, if consciousness is non-local or not, it can be efficiently carried out only by following scientific method. There are people who have prejudice against science, but however, science is nothing but a method that is used in acquiring knowledge. We use scientific method all the time..

For example, a guy may think about a girl this way : 'She called me the other day and told me she felt like she wanted to talk to me', 'today she said she missed me when I was not present for a week', 'she gifted me  a gold ring'.. Now all these above statements are observations. Based on the observation he creates a theory, such as 'I think she is in love with me'.. He also comes up with a hypothesis 'She will soon propose me one day'... What did the guy actually do? He somehow used a scientific method, even though he may not call it the same way. Scientists just use a more refined scientific method, thats it..

 

[Shin]

I think it's time to burn the books and actually do the shit they talk about.

Thinking about it won't do anything

[Ananta]

5 minutes ago, Shin said:

I think it's time to burn the books and actually do the shit they talk about.

Thinking about it won't do anything

Yes, let's burn the books, shut our mouths, never speak of any of this ever again, even if you're trying to help someone else. Ramana and Nisargadatta talked the rest of their lives about it, what we're they thinking?

Once you've realized, just let others be confused. Just tell them to meditate for 50 years and if their real lucky maybe they'll have an epiphany or Self realize.

Good plan.

[Arkandeus]

1 hour ago, Anna1 said:

This is a very simplistic view, imo.

It seems like neo-advaita. If that's your thing and works for you, great. Others may need/want a bit more and there's nothing wrong with that either, imo.

What does shut's the mind down mean to you? Is your mind shut down? 

 

my mind is not completely shutdown but it is nothing like before, it has weakened and weakened and weakened,I never use my mind to make a decision,even though it still tries its hardest to provide input,I follow my instinct

nowadays I merely listen to my mind when it pleas, I don't feed it,I listen, I take it in, I let it get silent  
if my mind manages to provide a strong case I use answer with infinity and all its power dissipates,that's the shut down I'm referring to

when your mind has a pull on a decision or a belief in your life but you can manage to break free from it. 

take this subject: 
- the mind inspects the way I'm evolving spiritually : ''am I using the right spiritual practice? is this the best spiritual practice I can use?if its not the best I'm in trouble, how do I know if it's the best?''.....mind starts running

answer it with infinity ---> ''any way can be the best way,I'm the creator, so whichever way I chose is fine''
the mind automatically shut downs because it cannot deal with infinity, if every way is the best way then there is nothing to criticize, nothing to worry about, if every way is the best way how will you make a choice now? 
you'll simply chose what you like, completely bypassing your mind, you don't need your mind to know what you like, if your mind knows every way is fine it won't have anything to say because all that keeps the mind is running is worry and stress

 

you are the creator, reality forms itself around and for you, reality is always following you, so there is never any ''best way'', you are free to do whatever you want and it will turn out absolutely magnificent for you, that is infinity, you are here to create whatever the hell you want, not to follow a map, you can create your own unique way of enlightenment if you want to...let reality and enlightenment chase you wherever you go. 
just do whatever you feel like doing, everything will fall into place
so there's no need for your mind ever, to figure anything out, there's no danger, just let your feelings flow

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Arkandeus

[Ananta]

@Arkandeus This seems like discrimination between you, awareness and the mind illusions (thought). I agree with using discrimination! You meet every experience with discrimination to break the hold of Self-ignorance, which is hard wired! 

Self knowledge though is not the arch enemy. It compliments by resolving doubts/questions, thereby calming and stilling the mind, so one can more effectively discriminate, imo.

 

[Shanmugam]

@Joseph Maynor  You may be surprised to know how these theories about reality evolved... I will pick Vedanta as example and will give you a history of certain theories.. I am not going to cover things that are well known but certain interesting theories which existed then.

First, it is important to understand how people around 1000 BC led their life.  Vedic rituals were  a part of everyone's life... This was their belief: There are Devas, invisible entities who help people in bringing rain, cattle etc. These devas can be invoked by chanting mantras and sacrificing animals, grains and ghees etc in fire. They also believed that doing such rituals make them to live in heaven.

1) In the time of Upanishads (800-600 BC) , many ideas developed. There were also people who were enjoying the freedom of non-duality. The  advice you will find in major upanishads is this: The person, after studying Vedas, should renounce the world, practice austerities, pull his mind from the senses and receive the teaching about the Atman from a teacher.

2) Shankara's interpretation of Upanishads reconciles many contradictions in the Upanishads and he seems to suggest some paths for people (this is during 800 AD, which is about  1600 years after the time of Upanishads) ...

a) Studying vedas and practicing vedic rituals are a part of life... The only people who are banned from studying vedas are shudras (lower caste people).. All others should do as prescribed.. Failing to do so, they will reach hell after death, suffer for a while and will attain a birth of animal, plant or shudra.

b) Practicing vedic rituals properly will help them to reach the Moon after death, where they enjoy the company of Devas and be happy for certain duration, until they enjoy the fruits of their good actions. Then their soul comes through the rain and reaches the earth. They become a part of the plants; when humans eat it, these souls reach the human body and mixes with semen, to be born again in this world.

c) Practicing rituals along with upasana meditations until death help them to reach the Sun first and from Sun they reach a world called Brahmaloka. There they live until the end of the world and become a part of Brahman.

d) People who attain liberation by following the teachings that lead to liberation, may attain liberation in this life and they are merged with Brahman right away. After death they neither reach any other worlds nor born again in this earth.

      Only the 4th one from above survives as Vedanta today, though some religiously oriented teachers speak about others.. But you will find detailed descriptions and insistence on all the above four in Shankara's commentaries.. It is good that the other three are dropped, because they won't make much sense in this century.

Once science is bridged with spirituality, we may start seeing  purer version of spiritual teachings.