When I found nothingness it didn't make sense anymore tbh...

[RMQualtrough]

Consciousness as fundamental is easy. But I found that there is literally nothing there.

Like I couldn't see consciousness with consciousness. Just know/be it via the existence of things.

And then it just didn't make sense anymore. Everything being mind is very easy. Everything being part of that nothing is very confusing in terms of what continues, separation, the nature of oneness, how nothing is literally something.

It wasn't a hallucination etc the thing I am, there's nothing back there. I can't perceive that thing only perceive through it. I could understand that there was definitely nothing actually there which is an object at all...

Edited September 1, 2021 by RMQualtrough

[Seraphim]

Ramana Maharshi explained it differently. It seems like, to him, the Self or consciousness felt very real and profound, and the objects felt like something that exists only on the surface.

[RMQualtrough]

10 minutes ago, Seraphim said:

Ramana Maharshi explained it differently. It seems like, to him, the Self or consciousness felt very real and profound, and the objects felt like something that exists only on the surface.

It's the most salient thing in existence, it's what we call consciousness, but it's not anything at all. There is just simply nothing there.

So when people use terms like awareness it is implying it could stand existent alone. I understood then that it was impossible because awareness isn't a thing, and only things can be perceived. It can't perceive itself because it isn't a thing. I was it and knew it through things. Without the things I would not know it.

And then I did not understand the process of death anymore.

[SriSriJustinBieber]

I'm not sure we are speaking of the same thing, however if we are, it can totally stand alone so to speak. What you actually want is not accurate perception but establishment and abiding as it. You can perceive it but perception is doomed to be distorted, it doesn't mean it's not relevant in the beginning. From where you are, it's in fact a process. The more and more you "know" it through things, the less and less the forms are referenced, until they become very "distant" and unreal.

As for death, you can't compute it because there is no death. The confusion you experience would be what happens when beliefs start melting away.

But then again, I'm not sure, you tell me if you feel we are speaking of the same thing or not.

[Leo Gura]

Yeah, the Nothingness cannot be known. You can only BE it. Because knowing is dualistic but Nothingness is nondual.

[RMQualtrough]

1 hour ago, SriSriJustinBieber said:

I'm not sure we are speaking of the same thing, however if we are, it can totally stand alone so to speak. What you actually want is not accurate perception but establishment and abiding as it. You can perceive it but perception is doomed to be distorted, it doesn't mean it's not relevant in the beginning. From where you are, it's in fact a process. The more and more you "know" it through things, the less and less the forms are referenced, until they become very "distant" and unreal.

As for death, you can't compute it because there is no death. The confusion you experience would be what happens when beliefs start melting away.

But then again, I'm not sure, you tell me if you feel we are speaking of the same thing or not.

Well, I don't think it would be conscious alone, because it was like I could only know it through the objects which weren't it. Alone it would be nothing at all.

So that is why it is confusing imagine how it works.

The self-mind evaporates, the nothing is still there. But I won't know it... Yet it is what I am. So I will. But I won't...

The only way I got it was when someone used an analogy where nothing is light and minds are prisms diffusing the light out. You can't go back in your fractured form. I get it that way. But I am not sure what it is experientially like.

I understand there is no "my" consciousness in the true sense, rather I belong to it. But experientially from a first person perspective what continues (or second person?). This is where it gets hard to think... It is easy to understand consciousness (the nothingness) is everything that exists, but you see relatively in this form we don't know each other's experience.

I get that the same nothing does know both of our experience. It's just weird because it's like, it's me but not me at the same time.

Edited September 1, 2021 by RMQualtrough

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura You said previously that ‘understanding’ is a function that goes beyond mind, and that it was a facet of the absolute. Do you still hold that view?

[Breakingthewall]

reality is nothingness, in the sense that there is not real content. So right now it's nothingness but it seems to the mind that there is content, many things, ideas, memories, images. they are false. It is not that they are a lie, it is that it seems that they are happening but they are empty images that do not mean anything. a steak is the same as a beggar, or humanity, or philosophy. nothing, empty. but we are addicted to that false content, so if in a moment they take it away, what remains, what we call emptiness, seems lacking in something, absence. It is not like that, emptiness is empty because it has no content, but it is full, it is being. it's pretty straightforward once you see it. The important thing imo is to recognize the adiction to the content, and see it's unreality. After the void is starting to be less threatening

Edited September 2, 2021 by Breakingthewall

[RMQualtrough]

37 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

@Leo Gura You said previously that ‘understanding’ is a function that goes beyond mind, and that it was a facet of the absolute. Do you still hold that view?

Leo will give you a better answer, but in my experience it was "being" that was not a function of the mind. Being was known VIA the things appearing in mind. In other words I couldn't know it without the appearances in it. But BEING it was just something you are like the analogy of trying to see your eyes with your eyes. You can't get behind it because you are it.

Understanding seems like knowing and then I would think it's dependent upon the mind because without the contents of mind, what you are would not be known.

Like how you wouldn't know you had sight if nothing was seen. So the knowing or understanding that sight is happening is dependent upon there being seen objects.

Edited September 3, 2021 by RMQualtrough