Hello, Ed.
The show is over.
What a weird game spirituality is. In the first moments, no spirituality, no liberation. In due time , if spirituality remains, no liberation is possible. At the end of the game, it is discovered that one has never been bound...A sad and necessary game to play...
I woke up one of this days and started a progressive contemplation:
I started with "things", apparently separate from me. I looked at a chair and thought, "Is it possible for the chair to exist independently from the consciousness that perceives it? No. Is the chair telling me "I am you"? No. Is the chair asking me for its eternal existence? No. It is just a perception. It depends on me".
Then I climbed the ladder and looked at the first possible identification, the body. I just watched it, pure comtemplation. And, to my surprise, I realized that the same questions that I applied to an apparent "external thing", are also pertinent for the body: Is it possible for the body to exist independently from the consciousness that perceives it? Impossible. It is just a group of perceptions. No consciousness, no perception, no body. Is the body telling me "I am you"? No. The body cannot say anything, since it is just a perception. It does not perceive, it is perceived. Is the body asking me for eternal existence? No. The body is more than happy with its being just a perception.
Finally, the last step: the pure, wordless, thoughtless feeling of being of the waking state. The "I am"-consciousness . The window that allows the universe to appear every morning. And that´s where the whole castle of cards , "spirituality" , collapsed.
To my amazement (and amusement!), I found out that the "I am", without which there is no universe and no spirituality at all , is subject to the same questions that the body or even a chair are!
When I watch it without allowing thought to stand in the way, does it tell me "I am you"? No!! What does it tell me about me? Nothing. Is it possible for the waking state consciousness to exist independently of "something" that perceives it? NO!! The "I am-consciousness" is not independent from me. It is just a mirage, a perception. Amazing.
The door to the universe is just a perception! . Is it asking me for eternal existence? No. It can tell me NOTHING about me, because it does not see me. It is the other way round. I am the one who sees it! It needs something prior to it that allows its existence. What is birth? The PERCEPTION of the appearence of space and time. What is death? The PERCEPTION of the dissapearence of space and time. How could birth, which is a perception, create the one who perceives it? How could death, which is a perception, kill the one who perceives it?
So, even the seed of space and time, of the entire universe, depends on me. And if the seed of space and time is itself in space and time, I cannot be within the universe, I cannot have space/time coordinates. That´s why the question "What am I two hundred years before the appearence of my body?" is a wrong question, since my true nature, whatever name one can give to it, is not something that "lasts" eternally. It is not a continuum in time. It is completely OUT of time. I am just deluded by the wrong messages that the mind sends. The mind is born with the birth of the body and will die with the body. It feeds on "form", so it conceives its absence as "nothing", as death, because it cannot create memories of that which has no physical form. That´s why it tells us "you were nothing before the body, and you will be nothing when the body dies". And all that game is just a mirage, a movie.
Really amazing. Really marvellous.
Thank you very much for your help. Very, very much.
REPLY:
But you need to stay convinced!
wow, excellent analysis!!
ReplyDelete"The mind is born with the birth of the body and will die with the body"
ReplyDeleteSo is the body born or not?
Jigsaw Fits
ReplyDeletePieces in Place
Big Picture Show
Gone!
S.A.M.
Self Aware Mind
In following this argument I fall at the first hurdle.
ReplyDeleteI can see that the perception of the chair may depend on me, but I don't see why the chair itself should.
As I open and close my eyes, my perception of the chair goes in and out of existence, but why should that apply to the chair itself?
Any help on this would be appreciated.
yours in doubt, Simon
The idealist position is that there is no thing in itself. They believe it an unsustainable assumption that there an independent object that supports a perception, which is what is called "naive realism" in Western philosophy and still the predominant Western worldview, although that has been changing since the discovery of quantum mechanics and more modern string anhd plane theories.
ReplyDeleteYou really can't prove an independent chair exists except by round about logic. For example, touching a chair does not prove the existence of a "Thing in itself" chair independent of subjective touch or subjective sight.
Whether there is a thing in itself, in dependent of our subjectivity is still the key problem of spirituality in my view.
I can't prove that the external world exists, but that isn't reason enough to believe it doesn't exist, only reason to doubt its existence.
ReplyDeleteBut then I couldn't prove that 1+1=2 either, and it's never troubled me much.
The doubts concerning the internal world, or at least its perceiver, are the ones that trouble.
Salutations, Simon
and mine. Doesn't enlightenment give all the answers, then, Ed? I was kind of hoping it did.
ReplyDeleteNisargadatta seems to suggest, in I Am That, that the entire universe is projected by the individual's consciousness, and, therefore, winks out of existence when the 'I' goes to sleep, and winks back into existence when the 'I' wakes up.
ReplyDeleteIn one dialogue, Nisargadatta states that because the questioner (he's talking to) is unable to find the answers he seeks, within himself, he has projected Nisargadatta as a way of creating a separate entity in the external world, to provide the answers. This line of reasoning means that I have projected Edji from within mySelf to answer the questions that I don't have the confidence or the ability to find. I have also projected Nisargadatta and Ramana, and Robert Adams - and in fact, every single human being I've ever seen in my life.
I like this concept because it means everyone I see around me is nothing more than a figment of my imagination. If I can't prove that a chair exists without my perception, then I can't prove that anything else exists independently.
Gurus always say life is a dream/life is an illusion, and I always thought that the world-as-a-projection of the self concept was what they meant by this.
I wish someone could give a concrete answer about this. And if Ed doesn't know, it means Enlightenment doesn't provide the answers, either.
. . . unless, of course, Ed is a part of my dream, and therefore . . . as unreliable as everything else in my dream.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
This is important: Nisargadatta never ever spoke a truth and neither did Robert. There is no freedom in following the mind. As U.G. Krishnamurti said, "The mind is not the way." When you know the world, first with no mind, and from places even deeper than no mind, you see the utter joke of all concepts, all seeking, and even existence itself, and you give up. The conviction comes that you are full, complete, and you may even express that completeness in concepts, but you are no longer taken in by them.
ReplyDeleteJust feel yourself, love yourself, and love other people and animals too in every way you can. I wish more of my teachers would have emphasized the latter.
Thanks, Ed.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for the day when I eventually get the 'joke'. I hope I don't soil myself.
I'm trying hard to love myself. Loving animals is easy. Loving people . . . not so easy.
You keep telling us not to follow the mind, and I believe you, Ed . . . and yet, I keep doing it.
Reading in the latest newsletter form SriRamanasramam:
ReplyDeleteReality in Forty Verses
3 'The world is true'; 'No, it is a fals appearance'; 'The world is Mind'; 'No, it is not'; The world is pleasant': 'No, it is not', What avails such talk? To leave the world alone and know the Self, to go beyond all thought of 'One' and 'Two', this egoless condition is the common goal of all.
UlladuNarpadu by Sri Bhagavan (Verse 1)
Edji,
ReplyDeleteThis blog post, this analysis took my mind for a wild ride. I saw myself trying to grasp, to understand, to compare, to join in the comprehension. But that left me feeling inadequate, lacking. The predominant feeling was of a failure. Not because there wasn't the intellectual understanding but because it didn't take me to the 'Aha' moment and beyond the mind.
I wonder if some had a similar response.
I contemplated for some time, went into myself and realized how important our own personal way is, how essential is to stay close to our own personal experience. In my case it is about going into the heart. Through loving I sink right into my heart which has been a very effective way to bypass the mind, to get closer to a door leading to stillness, sweet joy and happiness, indescribable sense of peace and completeness. This is still coming and going for me. I have not stabilized and am a work in progress.
I love you Edji. I am ever so grateful for your accepting and supporting of my own way.
Janet
Dear GGji, (since you asked)
ReplyDeleteNot only is everyone else a figment of my imagination, I am a figment of my imagination.
And in this there IS freedom.
Love
Brinna