I Was Never Born

[PureExp]

Masters will tell you that the consciousness was never born, will never die, is immortal, is eternal, is beyond time. It never started and it can never end. A religious person might simply believe it all blindly, which really does nothing for him, but a seeker will not settle for anything less than a direct experience of it. So how to get that direct experience?

There are 4 ways to know the answer to this question - self-enquiry, realization that time is non-existent, realizing that you do not change, witnessing death and birth directly. Self-enquiry is the easiest and takes only a few minutes. Experiencing non-existence of time needs a very calm mind which can watch how time gets created out of eternal now, but once you see this, you have the answer because birth and death happen in time and are therefore non-existent. Death/birth are nothing but change, and if you see that you never change, it follows that you will remain the same, never die and will be never born. Forth way is beyond my pay-grade, I won't even attempt to write about it.

A direct experience is always self-evident, clear, logical, brutally honest and lacks any beliefs or assumptions. If your experience is polluted by concepts, ideas, beliefs, assumptions, fluffy unicorn stories, bookish stuff or testimony of others etc. it is not the direct experience, it is a fantasy. Please know this clearly - no assumptions are allowed.

So we will attempt the easiest way. Ask yourself - When were you born?

You will instantly get a date of birth, its ok, its not entirely false. Now try to go to the experience of birth which you think happened on that date. Well, most of us cannot get there, at most you will get memories of childhood, no memories of being born. You can ask others, but remember you are trying to know by your own direct experience, this is the rule of the game. Anyhow, others will tell you that you were indeed born, and they saw it with their own eyes. But, there is a catch, they saw only your body, a tiny one, and since you already know you cannot be a body (and definitely not that tiny one), you can't trust them. No one obviously saw your consciousness taking birth, if you are unsure, just ask them and see a puzzled look in their eyes, its funny.

Now, you can say that you were born, but you do not remember it. Note that this is an assumption. Do you remember that you ate potato chips 10 years ago on a particular date? If you don't, its silly to say that you did eat them on that day, you just don't remember now. Its only your imagination, there is no way for you to know that. Past can be known only via memory, and you have no memory of birth.

But perhaps you are right, you just forgot that you were born, happens, we forget useless things fast . Now your mind is really challenged, and you will perhaps say - I was simply unconscious when I was born, I became conscious later, and then memories started forming. A very bad argument, you see. We are trying to get to the birth of consciousness, not of unconsciousness. Just ask yourself - how did the experience of unconscious birth looked like to you? What a silly question, if I was unconscious, there would be no experience. Yes, exactly, you don't have any experience of being born in unconscious state, so why would you just assume that? We need solid evidence, don't settle for made-up stuff.

Ask yourself - how would any unconscious experience look like? You will find that there are no such experiences in your entire life. "Unconscious state" is only an assumption, you do not know any such state, its merely social conditioning. All of our experiences involve consciousness, it is by necessity. Doesn't matter if you remember them or not.

Ok, so now your mind can say - perhaps I was born, do not remember it because the memories were not formed, brain was still developing, and any impressions got erased, but I was conscious at birth. Good thinking there. But think again, you will look like a fool If consciousness was already there while you were born, then it means consciousness was not born, it was there witnessing the birth of a body.

Note that memory is a function of mind, not of consciousness. Consciousness remembers nothing, its only a witness. If you remember your birth, it clearly implies a prior presence of both mind and consciousness, if you do not, then it implies absence of mind and no evidence of birth, doesn't imply absence of consciousness.

The post is getting long, so I will not take up more questions and doubts your mind will throw at you, but you get the point. You will never find a clear evidence of your own birth, and by you I mean the consciousness that your are essentially. No birth means no death. Only that which can take birth can die, this is by definition of death. Its done, you have seen that death and birth are just concepts, assumptions, ideas. Birth/death is ignorance, and now you are free from it .

If you have any questions please ask, and if you like a longer version, read it here.

Edited February 24, 2017 by PureExp
Link updated.

[jse]

3 hours ago, PureExp said:

I Was Never Born

 

[Principium Nexus]

Conciousness is just being transformed, your mom and dad are actually you. But in turn those also inherited their being from their parents. It would be cool to follow the tree of life completely back to its origin if there is any at all. Thats when we were born

[pluto]

Good stuff, Love it.

[PureExp]

Bonus stuff from long version. Puts final nails on the coffin of death

---

All there is, is only Experiencing. Experiencing of birth implies an experiencer, and if that experiencer is already present experiencing its own birth, then it is not experiencing its own birth, its experiencing something else being born while wrongly assuming it itself is being born. Its a temporary forgetting and attachment to the scenery. In other words - ignorance. Experiencing its own birth is an impossibility for an experiencer, because it demands its own presence at its own birth. It is a clear absurdity, you see. It is stupidity to assume that the experiencer can be born. You are that experiencer. You never had that experience, and since experience is all there that exists, birth does not exist, as its experience does not exist and cannot exist. This is certain, this is by necessity. This is a must.

Another way to think about it is by using your direct experience of your consciousness, which appears as no-thing, nothing... Its not even an experience strictly speaking, because it is the experiencer. Then it is not even the experiencer, there is just Experiencing. For convenience, we will simply say that you are nothingness at the core - just Emptiness. If you have that direct experience (easy to have it), then you will realize that it is not possible for nothingness to appear, there is nothing to appear ! And it is not possible for it to disappear, it is already nothing ! Well, that was a mind bender, but you will see that the mind stops here, it can't think now, and the concepts of birth and death simply fall apart like a house of cards, they are meaningless. You've been applying meaningless concepts to yourself, you see it now clearly.

[Morzart]

@PureExp Pretty sure that consciousness was already there when we were born, our brains just weren't as developed enough to fully experience or remember it.

But what if consciousness developed with our brain when we were still embryos? I mean, that could also be true as none of us has a direct experience from consciousness making some kind of connection “out of nowhere“ with our bodies.

[PureExp]

@Morzart I agree that consciousness must be there while bodies are being formed, but the rest is all assumptions. Bodies, brains and embryos appear in consciousness, not the other way. This is the direct experience of myself, you and others. There cannot be any doubt about it.

There are a few assumptions in your questions. If everything is consciousness, there is no need to "connect" stuff, it is all already one. So its only a belief that consciousness and bodies are different and need to connect. Consciousness expresses itself as a body with various organs.

Second assumption is that consciousness develops in embryonic brains. Even if we consider that as hypothesis, no one can prove it by any means whatsoever. Obviously, you won't find that via direct experience (which is the rule and criterion here). Third assumption is that brains experience stuff -  they do not, only consciousness experiences. Just ask your brain what did it experience today.

Try considering the primacy of consciousness over everything, see what answers you get when you take consciousness as ground of everything. Are those answers more satisfactory and as per your own direct experiences? If yes, you have a winner. If no, tell us something that is much more convincing, self-evident and free from made-up stories.