How do we know anything?

[Jkris]

@Truth Addict a thought cannot know another thought like wise a sensation cannot know another sensation feeling etc. So something which is unchanging is  knowing other objects. 

The perceiver cannot be the percieved. 

[Truth Addict]

1 minute ago, Jkris said:

@Truth Addict a thought cannot know another thought like wise a sensation cannot know another sensation feeling etc. So something which is unchanging is  knowing other objects. 

The perceiver cannot be the percieved. 

There's no perceiver.

There's nothing perceived.

The perceiver and the perceived are the same thing.

Of course, to you that's just another story.

If you want to verify it, do self-inquiry.

[Jkris]

@Truth Addict by knowing what we are not we know we are - Nisargadatta Maharaj. 

In the absence of sense of me there seems to be no seperate perciever or in complete absorption there seems to be no seperate perciever. But that cannot be the case. 

Any how i am not awakened self realized. Will do the practice as suggested. 

Thank you. ?

[Truth Addict]

39 minutes ago, Jkris said:

@Truth Addict by knowing what we are not we know we are - Nisargadatta Maharaj. 

In the absence of sense of me there seems to be no seperate perciever or in complete absorption there seems to be no seperate perciever. But that cannot be the case. 

Any how i am not awakened self realized. Will do the practice as suggested. 

Thank you. ?

I myself am not fully awakened. I just understand awakening in theory.

Or, you can say I'm awakened at the level of the mind. So, I still have a lot of work to do.

You're welcome! ☺

Edited March 22, 2019 by Truth Addict

[tsuki]

12 hours ago, andyjohnsonman said:

Leo talks about understanding that he is everything and that he gave birth to himself - he is his mother as everything is consciousness.

If direct experience is just awareness free of thought how can he know those things for sure when they are stories created by the mind? Seems paradoxical.

I'm not having a go at Leo, it's more of an epistemological question as to how we can know anything. I'm sure many people will answer, "because you are looking for the answers from the mind not from awareness, if you look directly just from awareness then you will see."

Well how do we know that is the way to see things and not from thinking. All I've come to realise is that the mind creates stories and that being present in awareness is free from stories and therefore there is no knowing. 

 

Thoughts?

@andyjohnsonman There are two kinds of knowledge. Conventional and non-conventional. I'm making these names up, so don't make a fuss about it.

Conventional knowledge is just belief. Probably most if not all knowledge you have is belief. I call it belief because what holds it in place is ignorance. Ignorance is blindness - unwillingness, or lack of ability to question/challenge. This is what holds your world together.

Unconventional knowledge emerges when you free yourself of beliefs. When you question them to death, to the point when it will seem as if you genuinely don't know anything. That you're not even sure if you are a human, or if you live on earth, or if yesterday happened. When you're unsure whether you were even born, or whether you will die. This is the place from which you can get insights like Leo presents to you in videos. This is the point of deconstruction and a place from which true contemplation can begin.

You can listen to unconventional knowledge, but it will be incorporated into your conventional reality as something that upholds its structure. Truth does not work like that. If you heard the truth for what it is, you would be swept clean off your feet. If it doesn't sound like that, then it means that you are probably not hearing it, or it became mundane to you. I'm betting on the first option.

[Truth Addict]

5 hours ago, andyjohnsonman said:

I have questioned this duality as i have also questioned non duality. I haven't had any mystical states or non dual experiences although i had some intense mushroom meditation trips that gave me a feeling that there's more.  I'm basically saying that the stories the mind creates can be very deceptive and maybe even the subject-object duality being an illusion is also a story. I would love to be wrong tho. As of now i sit as an agnostic like a scientist but the difference being I am aware of the dogmas of the materialist paradigm. 

Please, next time don't forget to mention the member you're talking to, by using the @ symbol, or at least quote them so they get notified.

As for the questioning of duality, I didn't have any mystical experience after I realised non-duality either.

I don't think mystical experiences are required to realise Truth, I think they're rather a bonus.

My guess is that you are overthinking, and I suggest that you look for something more tangible instead, which is direct experience.

Watch this video for help:

 

Edited March 22, 2019 by Truth Addict

[Jack River]

57 minutes ago, tsuki said:

@andyjohnsonman There are two kinds of knowledge. Conventional and non-conventional. I'm making these names up, so don't make a fuss about it.

Conventional knowledge is just belief. Probably most if not all knowledge you have is belief. I call it belief because what holds it in place is ignorance. Ignorance is blindness - unwillingness, or lack of ability to question/challenge. This is what holds your world together.

Unconventional knowledge emerges when you free yourself of beliefs. When you question them to death, to the point when it will seem as if you genuinely don't know anything. That you're not even sure if you are a human, or if you live on earth, or if yesterday happened. When you're unsure whether you were even born, or whether you will die. This is the place from which you can get insights like Leo presents to you in videos. This is the point of deconstruction and a place from which true contemplation can begin.

You can listen to unconventional knowledge, but it will be incorporated into your conventional reality as something that upholds its structure. Truth does not work like that. If you heard the truth for what it is, you would be swept clean off your feet. If it doesn't sound like that, then it means that you are probably not hearing it, or it became mundane to you. I'm betting on the first option.

Awsome breakdown of KNOWLEDGE/knowledge. 

 

[Leo Gura]

@andyjohnsonman The question of how we know anything and what can and cannot be known is a very deep one. I have been studying this question for over 15 years. I have literally poured thousands of hours contemplating this one question because it is so important. On it hinges everything else. If you get this question wrong, you're basically fucked in life.

From your current POV the truth is you don't know what can or cannot be known. You do not even know what knowing is!

This is a great place to start. From this place you can do some serious inquiry. This question is not to be guessed or answered by looking up an answer in a book. You must really go on a journey and explore what knowledge is and how it works.

Also keep in mind that there are different kinds of knowing. Verbal or rational knowing is only one kind. The most advanced things I speak of are knowable, but not from your current state of consciousness.

For example, it is possible to know what God is or why existence exists or what consciousness is. But not through coventional logical verbal knowledge. There is knowing and understanding beyond the human mind.

The deepest insights I share are not just stories or beliefs -- they are transrational understandings.

Consider that there is a very profound connection between knowing and being. Some things can only be known by being them. This is the domain of mysticism and samadhi.

[andyjohnsonman]

@Leo Gura Yea it seems like the most important question in all of this work. So from my POV i should continue to question beliefs, stories, the ego and direct experience while at the same time continuing Kriya until my consciousness rises enough that being and knowing merge. At this point being and knowing will no longer be taken on as a dogma? 

Glad you're back and that your retreat went well. You're a massive inspiration.

Edited March 25, 2019 by andyjohnsonman

[Leo Gura]

@andyjohnsonman That is one way out of dozens.

You could eat some magic mushrooms and know things which would otherwise be impossible for a human to know. That would be another way.

You don't even know if Kriya yoga will work. Maybe it's a scam as far as you know. See how tricky knowledge is? What do you trust? What is true?

Truth is a highly non-trivial matter. How do you even know what criterion you'll use to determine if a thing is true? What if your criterion is false?

And yet at the same time you also cannot say that all knowledge is false or impossible since that itself would be true knowledge, and you don't actually know that for sure. Such a claim would require that you test every piece of knowledge in the universe to make sure they are all false. You are nowhere close to doing that.

So the bottom line is: keep a very open mind, don't dismiss anything, and run some experiments. Kriya yoga is one such experiment out of hundreds that you will have to run in order to come to know what knowledge is and is not.

[andyjohnsonman]

@Leo GuraYea it seems quite the complicated affair. Maybe there is no way of measuring truth and the truth being that there is no truth.

 

It must be hard for someone who has found the truth (if you have) to not try to persuade others about this truth as you know the traps of the mind. If i found the truth I would be dying to get others on board I am aware that this is all ego but a problem i discover from time to time is even if i am aware of the ego i let it run for a while. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by andyjohnsonman

[Leo Gura]

@andyjohnsonman There is an Absolute Truth. In fact, Absolute Truth is all there ever is. That's what truth is: that which is the case. It's actually very simple: whatever is must be true. And that which is untrue does not exist at all.

The being of this very moment is none other than Absolute Truth, but you are not yet conscious enough to see it as such. Concepts are getting in the way of direct consciousness of being.

Once you find the Absolute Truth you will discover that it is so grand, astounding, epic, and good that it will kill you. "Death by Truth" I call this  And you will realize that no one can know it but you. It cannot be shared with anyone else, since in truth, there is only YOU! It's ALL you!  It will break your heart that something this good cannot be shared with anyone but yourself, so learn to enjoy your own magnificence in solitude.

Ta-da!

But this will take you some years of hard work to fully realize. So get to work. It's worth it.

Or maybe everything I said above is false? You don't know. This requires exploration.

[Forestluv]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It will break your heart that something this good cannot be shared with anyone but yourself, so learn to enjoy your own magnificence in solitude.

Beautiful sadness.

Welcome back