Beware of Neo-advaita Trap- Read this long elaborate essay

[SOUL]

@Shanmugam I'm not making fun of you and I ridicule nobody, that's your projection, I'm just laughing because I find it funny.

I asked a simple question about your thoughts on the very content you posted, you refused to answer citing a conversation had quite awhile ago you still haven't gotten over.... that's funny to me. If you don't find any humor in it then that's on you, if we aren't laughing together that's your decision, I'm laughing either way.

If you would like to discuss Jeff's words in that quote I'm still opening to hearing your thoughts but that's up to you.

 

[Shanmugam]

@SOUL I posted another one and asked you if you can resonate with that.. Did you read that post?

[mohdanas]

3 hours ago, Shanmugam said:

People who only teach things like 'You don't exist', 'You don't have to do anything to get enlightened', 'you are already enlightened' 'Just be' etc...

These statements are useful pointers when said during the right time to the seeker. But it can't really help if this is the only teaching. If you read that article, it will make sense. 

I agree, I think, Once I read this line in a book,"I forget what it was but basically meant, the real you is inside"  though I knew it as I have read other books, something happened to me, like a concussion inside of my mind which started with subtle burst of intense energy and eventually subsided into more clarity and connection to myself. 

[mohdanas]

3 hours ago, Shanmugam said:

People who only teach things like 'You don't exist', 'You don't have to do anything to get enlightened', 'you are already enlightened' 'Just be' etc...

These statements are useful pointers when said during the right time to the seeker. But it can't really help if this is the only teaching. If you read that article, it will make sense. 

I agree, I think, Once I read this line in a book,"I forget what it was but basically meant, the real you is inside"  though I knew it as I have read other books, something happened to me, like a concussion inside of my mind which started with subtle burst of intense energy and eventually subsided into more clarity and connection to myself. 

[SOUL]

@Hsinav There are plenty of topics started already, I did one time but now let others do the starting.

[Shanmugam]

3 minutes ago, mohdanas said:

I agree, I think, Once I read this line in a book,"I forget what it was but basically meant, the real you is inside"  though I knew it as I have read other books, something happened to me, like a concussion inside of my mind which started with subtle burst of intense energy and eventually subsided into more clarity and connection to myself. 

It takes a lot of preparation to understand certain simple things.. Reality is so simple, but human beings have made their minds so complicated. They have built layer upon layer of conditioning above the root ignorance of separation...All those layers have to be broken.

[SOUL]

@Shanmugam It does resonate, I have often questioned some of the 'non-dual' teaching and wondered if it was just adding to the confusion and angst in others. In fact, I am aware of some people who were disturbed by me questioning the effects of it and have taken it personally while claiming they are 'impersonal'.

What are your thoughts on it? Does it resonate with you?

[Shanmugam]

@SOUL Yes.. that is the whole point of this thread and I have already shared my thoughts in a couple of posts in this thread.. This thread is about the trap of neo-Advaita. They don't meet the seeker at where they are at. When a person is too identified with his story , when he perceives the illusion of separation as 100% real, when he is deeply conditioned by everything that was fed by the society and when he is also suffering like he is in hell, these neo-Advaita teachings do not help them at all.. In fact, most of the teachers who are doing this are themselves deluded into thinking they are enlightened.. And that is what Jeff Foster admits...

[SOUL]

@Shanmugam Hmm well, Jeff is acknowledging that both the wave and the ocean exist. He is moving away from denying the wave, denying the individual story and instead embracing it while also embracing the unity, recognizing both individual expression and the whole expression.

He is suggesting it's more than just a trap of not teaching to the level of the seeker, as if it's just a mistaken teacher of an authentic teaching. He is saying it's a deceptive teaching itself because it's really just a story of claiming it's not a story while denying the seeker's story.

[mohdanas]

47 minutes ago, Shanmugam said:

It takes a lot of preparation to understand certain simple things.. Reality is so simple, but human beings have made their minds so complicated. They have built layer upon layer of conditioning above the root ignorance of separation...All those layers have to be broken.

Yes, I am beginning to understand that

[Shanmugam]

2 minutes ago, SOUL said:

@Shanmugam Hmm well, Jeff is acknowledging that both the wave and the ocean exist. He is moving away from denying the wave, denying the individual story and instead embracing it while also embracing the unity, recognizing both individual expression and the whole expression.

He is suggesting it's more than just a trap of not teaching to the level of the seeker, as if it's just a mistaken teacher of an authentic teaching. He is saying it's a deceptive teaching itself because it's really just a story of claiming it's not a story while denying the seeker's story.

Yes.. that is how the essay ends.. I am mainly sharing the thoughts of the portion that I quoted and asked you if it resonates with you.. And I replied since you asked me to share my thoughts on it..

There are two terms in Vedanta. Absolute truth and relative truth

The reality of the wave is the relative truth and the reality of the ocean is the absolute truth. And absolute is not the opposite of the relative..absolute also embraces the relative..

 

[Joseph Maynor]

I read the article.  I think I resonate more with the Radical Advaitans, as portrayed in the article. 

LET GO OF BEING HUMAN

The Soul is not a human being.  You can't have both!  The Truth is not two, it's one.  You hear some Enlightened people say -- oh I'm a human being.  No no no!  That's wrong!  You're not a human being.  You can't be a human being if you're Enlightened.  All your "human stuff" is Ego.  Reality does Ego stuff, but don't attach to it.   People appear to be very confused about this.  Emotions and thoughts are not yours.  That's a belief.  That's not reality.  There is no Ego in reality.  That's a made up metaphor that we've unfortunately taken to be the truth.  But that theory ain't the truth about reality.  It may be the truth about some fantasy, but not reality.  This can be confirmed, if you watch reality as it is.  There is no Egoic you in reality.  This is dead literal!  This language is not a story.  It points to language that attempts to have an analogue in reality -- "the Egoic self".  But it's this assumption that is false!  Reality is not an analogue of language.  Reality is not rational.  What is rational is theory.  Models are rational.  Mind is rational.  But it's a false assumption to think that reality is rational.  That is a mistake that almost everybody makes!  That goes way back in the history of Philosophy, both Eastern and Western.  

Edited February 19, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Mercurio3]

The Ultimate Truth is not that everything but Itself (God, Absolute Infinity, etc) is an illusion, is that the truth and the illusion are the same thing. They are indivisible. There is no sea without waves, and there is no waves without the sea.

[SOUL]

@ShanmugamThe quote you used was him explaining how he himself was teaching the deceptive ideas under the guise of being authentic. He is saying without embracing the story of the wave it isn't authentic, the wave's story is just as real as the ocean's story, even more real.

He suggests that the 'impersonal' story is just a personal belief, not an absence of belief as so many have been teaching and this is something that I have been saying for decades. That people don't live in the absolute, or the ultimate as he called it, we live here in life, in the relative as you and many others call it.

There really is no absolute truth since 'truth' is comparative term because truth depends on relating to a standard and we cannot perceive that standard, all we have is a relative perception. Even that supposed absolute "truth" standard is a story that humans have conceptualized and projected onto the universe.

What it really matters is the point of exploring any of this, it's to cease the source of suffering, it's not chasing after some unknowable ultimate absolute with no standard of comparison, that is the "trap" he is talking about.

Healing and ceasing the self caused suffering is attainable in the so called "relative truth", it's attainable in real life, there is no other point to any of this without attaining that, the rest is mental masturbation of chasing abstractions.

This is why I speak to the simplicity in just being and that isn't a story about a happy ending, it's a story of joyful being.

Edited February 19, 2018 by SOUL

[Shanmugam]

13 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I read the article.  I think I resonate more with the Radical Advaitans, as portrayed in the article.  The Soul is not a human being.  You can't have both!  The Truth is not two, it's one.  You hear some Enlightened people say -- oh I'm a human being.  No no no!  That's wrong!  You're not a human being.  You can't be a human being if you're Enlightened.  

Truth is one.. that is correct.. But even though I experience myself as this one truth, I still have to play the role in the dream in which I interact with others.. Since you have been reading Shankara, You will come across this as a part of Vedanta. In fact, Shankara talks about three levels of reality...It is actually a paradox

[Shanmugam]

2 minutes ago, SOUL said:

@Shanmugam

What it really matters is the point of exploring any of this, it's to cease the source of suffering

 

Yes... thats right... That is the whole point of any teaching. All the teachings are only finger pointing to the moon. We use all these concepts only as devices.. So where is the disagreement other than any misunderstanding that may be happening because of the usage of words?

[Shanmugam]

@Joseph Maynor

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta

Quote

 

Shankara proposes three levels of reality, using sublation as the ontological criterion:[158][155][159]

Pāramārthika (paramartha, absolute), the Reality that is metaphysically true and ontologically accurate. It is the state of experiencing that "which is absolutely real and into which both other reality levels can be resolved". This reality is the highest, it can't be sublated (assimilated) by any other.[158][160]

Vyāvahārika (vyavahara), or samvriti-saya,[161] consisting of the empirical or pragmatical reality. It is ever changing over time, thus empirically true at a given time and context but not metaphysically true. It is "our world of experience, the phenomenal world that we handle every day when we are awake". It is the level in which both jiva (living creatures or individual souls) and Iswara are true; here, the material world is also true but this is incomplete reality and is sublatable.[160][162]

Prāthibhāsika (pratibhasika, apparent reality, unreality), "reality based on imagination alone". It is the level of experience in which the mind constructs its own reality. Well-known examples of pratibhasika is the imaginary reality such as the "roaring of a lion" fabricated in dreams during one's sleep, and the perception of a rope in the dark as being a snake.[160][163][164]

 

 

[Faceless]

1 minute ago, Shanmugam said:

So where is the disagreement other than any misunderstanding that may be happening because of the usage of words?

Also, the clinging to memory, knowledge, experience, ‘what is known’ which is thought/the self. 

I don’t know much about advanta vindanta, but I know the self. Freedom isn’t at the end it’s in the beginning. Freedom to attend is essential. If there is no freedom there is no communion. 

Not to accept or condem..when there is freedom to attend without the burden of the past there can be an understanding, and to understand is to transform what is. 

 

 

 

 

[SOUL]

@Shanmugam I don't recognize any disagreement, so I won't perpetuate that perception.

What I observe is that the complication of the teaching often brings even more self caused suffering which is why I prefer to focus on the simplicity of being present. It also comes from teaching that the only "truth", the only reality and the only thing that exists is an unknowable absolute that really is just a story humans have conceptualized and projected onto the universe.

Life is what it is, we can just be in it and accept it for what it is. It doesn't have to be viewed as a 'false absolute' we need to deny and reject to instead believe a conceptual 'truth absolute'. Although some people shame others for just being human, for having a story and ridicule them for not calling it all a dream and getting on the conceptual belief wheel to chase after an unknowable 'absolute' of their creating.

That is just another believed story as Jeff so clearly points out.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Shanmugam I don't like the Levels of Reality idea.  There are no levels of reality.  That's a story.  I don't want to have any stories like that about reality.  Reality doesn't need a story!  That's the whole point of Enlightenment is to dislodge all your stories about reality.  Reality needs a story like a dog needs fleas!

 

Edited February 20, 2018 by Joseph Maynor