I just received a nice two DVD set of the Dalai Lama's teachings on Dependent Origination from the Gyuto Vajrayana Center in San Jose CA. Those interested in this area would probably enjoy this presentation. The topic is specifically focussed on the causes of reality, rather than how we deal with reality after death. Thus, it involves concepts a little deeper than life and death. Those who were involved in the "free will" discussion (which seems to still be ongoing in some respects, as I didn't sense closure) will notice that the approaches discussed, those of Je Tsong Khapa and Nagarjuna, are very much to the point of the discussion, as well as afterlife events and decisions etc.

This DVD et is not widely commercially available, if at all. I recommend it highly. You can buy it directly from the monks.

The web address of the Gyuto Vajrayana Center is www.gyutocenter.org

If you're in the area, they'd be happy to see you drop in.

dave

Sounds interesting - and the place looks it too. Unfortunately I'm not very near to St José to drop in.. Is it possible to summarize some of the points he makes?

Hi Orlando-

Anything can be summarized, however uselessly-

The essential teaching is that everything is nothing, and only because it is nothing it is everything. Thus, sensation (etc) s to be experienced, yet it is nothing, nor is there any experience nor an experiencer.

The presentation by the authors, and thus the Dalai Lama's review and analysis of their works, is much more to the point because it covers the entire concept of causes and conditions as a dependent series arising innately. If you're really interested, I suggest that poke up the Center's site and buy a copy of the DVDs - or pick up Nargarjuna's teachings and those of Je Tsong Kapa at your favorite book store - probably available through Snow Lion publishing, or maybe Shambala. I suggest that you avoid Western summaries because they often carry presumptions of individuality and the translations are not as good as the Tibetan translators' work.

dave

Thank you Dave, have ordered a set.  :) Looks like they have a free download now.

Must say I find it so very inspiring the way Buddhism and especially Tibetan Buddhism treats this stuff so clearly and  with such precision. And makes it available at minimum cost or for free.....

Yes indeed, I just have downloaded 4 sound files, the Dalai Lama talking with following translation/questions into English. Thanks for the reference! Got to burn it to cd and listen.

Spooky

Glad that this is useful to you. My own philosophical perspective attempts to look at "how it can be nothing", and arises from Vedanta rather than Buddhism, but that's just because I was unaware that the Buddhists had beaten me to it! :-)

I see three levels of interaction here. The most obvious is everyday stuff, like when I buy coffee and a croissant at the corner. In this world we live and die.  

Then the next world is that in which Bruce liberates stuck souls, which is what attracted me here. It's also the world in which I work to help people with past life issues, since that's the other side of ebing stuck - either going into spirit, where Bruce helps, or getting back to flesh, where I'm available.

Then the third level is going back prior to life and death, and also prior to the spirit world, and in this way we look at how the definitions of reality fray around the edges, and what they seem to arise from. (I claim that pure logic in a potential state space is sufficient.)

All of these are the same, yet they differ as we perceive them.

Hopefully, the DVDs will assist others to zero in on truth, as other recordings of the Dalai Lama's teachings have helped me.

d

It's funny, I was into Eastern teachings for years. Advaita Vedanta, Chan Buddhism, that sort of thing. Basically non-dual teachings that teach that the World is nothing but an illusion.

Eventually I made contact with my higher self in a disc/over soul sense. Found that this Universe and other Universes are far more than just an illusion. They were created with the creative aspect of source which is just as much a part of source, as pure consciousness and love are a part of source. The energy one feels in awakened kundalini, an atomic blast, or energy radiating from the sun, is far more than illusion. It is the dynamic energy which comes from the divine source of all.

No Eastern teaching I've delved into, has helped me to the extent that making contact with my higher self has done so. I've read lots of Eastern teachings, and never found any that speak of higher self in a disc/oversoul sense.

Here is an analogy that might sound silly but makes a point.  Say a man is asked to give his impression of what a Dagwood Bumstead sandwhich tastes like. If he took the Eastern approach, he'd taste one piece of bread that represents pure consciousness, and one piece of bread that represents the physical World, but wouldn't taste all that lies inbetween. How could he possibly comment on what the entire sandwhich tastes like, if he won't taste it?

Similarly, how could one possibly come to know all of one's self, if one isn't willing to consider who one is at all levels. For people who make contact with their higher self at a disc/oversoul level, it isn't just some hallucination.

Dogmatism isn't limited to religions of the West.

Actually, the point of the Buddhist sandwich is that not everything is made of bread, nor the ham and cheese between. We have the Eater, with awareness, and we have the World-Sandwich, and the Eating. But beyond that we have the unseen world of spirit to which we go after eating the andwich, a sort of PortaPotty for dumping gross materials prior to exiting for the next meal. That much, most spiritually inclined religions agree upon. The Buddhist's point is that the space in which all this occurs is essentially empty, and all of the stuff that we think of as ultimately real and personal, right down to the teeth that we eat with, is actually self-arising out of emptiness.

At this point we can take several equally valid approaches. One is that this is due to the "Uncaused Cause". Or we can side with science as say that it's all a matter of thermodynamics (which is another term for the Uncaused Cause), and then develop symbolic expressions that explain this process. (That's where I work.)  Or we can side with Hindus and say that this is all a projection from the mind of the Absolute Self (aka Brahman, God, etc), which is the Uncaused Cause projected into the world as the Mind that thinks the world, and in which we all share. (In the 1960 ers, hippies who used LSD plus intensive meditation used to enter sarvastarka samadhi, and they termed this "the Cosmic Consciousness". The same concept is available in the more esoteric Hindu teachings on yoga states. Swami Sivananda's book on the states of yogic progress is a good source. I can't find a title on line, but I have the book at home. It essentially would term your "night in heaven" as samadhi.)   Or Buddhists call it emptiness, the nature of which gives rise to structures that resemble reality and folks like us.

The dogmatism that is the target is the assumption that any aspect of reality is "real", permanent and absolute.

In specific, the "anatta doctrine" objects to the notion of a God who has physical embodiment, and sits on a cloud with a Cosic Flyswatter looking for sinners to whack, or a soul that is invariable, like a lump of coal, together with the idea that we are individually enduring ego states, as opposed to evolving awareness, or the concept of an eternal world with some kind of intrnsic validity.

Instead, the lesson from Siddhartha is that everything is contingent, an evolving aggregate, and rooted in nothing except the logic of its own nature. Thus, it can project itself, and by projecting it interacts, acquires knowledge, makes choices and grows. Were this untrue, it could do nothing (as in the dynamc ontology of Bishop Berkeley q.v.), and would be non-interactive, hence dead and invisible.

Incidentally, this is the Madhyamaika Pransangika interpretation to which I subscribe. It is better expressed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, or the present teachings from Nagarjuna et al. There are other similar interpretations by other Eastern sects, like the Svatrantikas etc, including pure idealism and naive nihilism. These generally seem to have technical issues that don't resolve very well, as they generally trail off into infinite regressions and unreslved contingencies. "Eastern philosophy" is not all of a single kind and opinion, but varies, much like the contents of a Dagwood.

Actually, for people on this Forum, there's nothing new here except perspective. For the common ego-dominated people of the world, some of these ideas are a bit shocking and unsettling, as they destroy the notion of a do-nothing fire-escape religion, what I tend to refer to as "the magic of Voodoo Christianity", substituting in its place the notion of personal responsibility. (The equivalant concept is Matt 7:12 - golden rule, but takenliterally.) This may be upsetting, but so are ghosts, afterlife experiences and the seemingly mysterious operation of karma unsettling to many.

dave

Sivananda Swami's book describing the stages of spiritual development from the standpoint of yoga can be obtained from the Divine Life Society, www.dlshq.org/books/books.htm and is titled "Spiritual Experiences" - their book number code E63, I think.

If you want to really understand yoga, and thus the actual essence of Hindu practice, this kind of thing is far better than trying to read erudite analyses by "experts" who have never praciced it.

d

Dave:

Responses below within double quotation marks.


dave_a_mbs wrote on Sep 21^st, 2007 at 3:26pm:

Actually, the point of the Buddhist sandwich is that not everything is made of bread, nor the ham and cheese between. We have the Eater, with awareness, and we have the World-Sandwich, and the Eating. But beyond that we have the unseen world of spirit to which we go after eating the andwich, a sort of PortaPotty for dumping gross materials prior to exiting for the next meal. That much, most spiritually inclined religions agree upon. The Buddhist's point is that the space in which all this occurs is essentially empty, and all of the stuff that we think of as ultimately real and personal, right down to the teetch that we eat with, is actually self-arising out of emptiness. ""But that emptiness from which everything arises is no mere emptiness. It is filled with potential. The potential to create.  Sure, there is no fixed manner in which things have to be created, but one experiences according to what one creates.  What one experiences is real for as long as one experiences it. Regarding "as long as,"  since all of time exists in the same eternal now, one can never get completely away from what one has created. One can only evolve to the point where one enjoys a perfected result. In his third book Ultimate Journey, Robert Monroe writes about returning to where he came from.  He found that the experience of manifestation is gone through, because the basic state we started with wasn't complete, and needed to be added to.  This goes along with my feeling that manifestation "isn't" just one big fat mistake. Dagwood made the sandwich because he wanted to eat it."" At this point we can take several equally valid approaches. One is that this is due to the "Uncaused Cause". Or we can side with science as say that it's all a matter of thermodynamics (which is another term for the Uncaused Cause), and then develop symbolic expressions that explain this process. (That's where I work.)  Or we can side with Hindus and say that this is all a projection from the mind of the Absolute Self (aka Brahman, God, etc), which is the Uncaused Cause projected into the world as the Mind that thinks the world, and in which we all share. Or Buddhists call it emptiness, the nature of which gives rise to structures that resemble reality and folks like us. ""My feeling is that reality is just simply reality, and it can't be categorized according to our concepts of physical and non physical. There is only one reality, and whether this reality appears as pure awareness (emptiness), love, or the ability to create, it is all the same thing.  Because of love and because we can create, awareness, the emptiness, has something to be aware of. What would be the point of having awareness, if there wasn't a Dagwood sandwich to eat?"" The dogmatism that is the target is the assumption that any aspect of reality is "real", permanent and absolute. ""Just because a Dagwood sandwich can be made in many different ways, this doesn't mean it wont fill your tummy. The key is to learn to make a sandwich that won't give you indigestion. Perhaps this is part of the reason we are all here. We're learning to make Dagwood sandwiches without getting indigestion."" In specific, the "anatta doctrine" objects to the notion of a God who has physical embodiment, and sits on a cloud with a Cosic Flyswatter looking for sinners to whack, or a soul that is invariable, like a lump of coal, together with the idea that we are individually enduring ego states, as opposed to evolving awareness, or the concept of an eternal world with some kind of intrnsic validity. ""I don't believe that God is an old man in the sky who sits on a throne. There are people who have experienced cosmic consciousness. During such an experience they find that the divine source of all is aware of everything that takes place within it.  I don't understand why this possibility is so hard to understand. If we can be aware of think about everything that happens within our energy field, then why can't the source being in which everything takes place be aware of and think about everything that takes place within its energy field. Buddhism doesn't tend to speak of this omnipresent being. Regarding Souls, if energy can accumulate to form chains of thought, bodies, planets, stars and such, why can't it accumulate to form Souls.  If an Eastern teacher had an experience of higher self in a disc/oversoul sense, he or she wouldn't be so quick to deny the existence of a Soul."" Instead, the lesson from Siddhartha is that everything is contingent, an evolving aggregate, and rooted in nothing except the logic of its own nature. Thus, it can project itself, and by projecting it interacts, acquires knowledge, makes choices and grows. Were this untrue, it could do nothing (as in the ontology of Bishop Berkeley q.v.), and would be non-interactive, hence dead and invisible. ""If the energy with which we create is a part of divine reality, then what we experience is real even if we can change the manner in which we create. Especially if our experience determines whether or not we are happy. If one came to the conclusion that all is empty, wouldn't one have to make use of manifested creative mind energy in order to realize this? After all, how could pure awareness/emptiness realize anything specific?"" Incidentally, this is the Madhyamaika Pransangika interpretation to which I subscribe. It is better expressed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, or the present teachings from Nagarjuna et al. There are other similar interpretations by other Eastern sects, like the Svatrantikas etc, including pure idealism and naive nihilism. These generally seem to have technical issues that don't resolve very well, as they generally trail off into infinite regressions and unreslved contingencies. "Eastern philosophy" is not all of a single kind and opinion, but varies, much like the contents of a Dagwood. Actually, for people on this Forum, there's nothing new here except perspective. For the common ego-dominated people of the world, some of these ideas are a bit shocking and unsettling, as they destroy the notion of a fire-escape religion, what I tend to refer to as "the magic of Voodoo Christianity", substituting in its place the notion of personal responsibility. But so are ghosts, afterlife experiences and the seemingly mysterious operation of karma unsettling to many. ""I used to be a big fan of the Buddhist teachings you speak of.  Eventually I learned it was dualistic to consider the manifested part of existence as something other than God, just a big delusion. I was a really big fan of Ramana Maharshi.  At the time I used to think, so what if I become enlightened when there is still a universe full of suffering beings? How could I possibly be happy if this is the case? One day I had this really deep insight which told me that we all wake up in the same eternal now. Therefore, when one wakes up, one finds that there is no more suffering, because all others have also awakened. This is part of the reason I liked Ramana and Certain Buddhist teachings so much.  They helped me relive my insight that when I wake up, I'll find there are no other suffering beings to worry about. However, eventually, I realized that if I have to experience inperfection despite what I realized above, then everybody else has to do the same. It is just that we all do so at the same time, even though in a linear sense, it seems as if people in different time periods do so at different times. When Ramana would tell his followers they don't have to worry about things such as Wars because it is all a dream he was wrong, because despite how illusory things might be, we suffer while we are in the dream. Sometimes, quite horribly. Therefore, I believe it is important to do what we can to improve the World, so our brothers and sisters of so called future generations don't have to go through unnecessary suffering."" dave

Dave:

"Erudite analyses by experts who have never practised it?" If you mean me, you way underestimate my experience with Eastern teachings. Eventually I found that such teachings have their limits and aren't completely accurate, and moved onto something that has helped me much more.

Do I have all the answers? No. But this is okay. This I believe is one of the problems with Eastern teachings. The word "enlightenment" is thrown out there so much, a person is liable to get into an all or nothing approach. It is much better to spiritually grow as much as one can,  without taking an all or nothing approach. Another problem with Eastern teachings is that people often believe that gurus and such have all the answers when they don't.  A person limits his or her growth if he or she won't go beyond what Eastern teachings teach.

I do not believe one can truly understand the value of Eastern teachings, if one hasn't allowed one's self to critically consider what Eastern teachings say, and if one hasn't taken the time to find out what higher self means in a disc/oversoul sense.


dave_a_mbs wrote on Sep 21^st, 2007 at 4:02pm:

Sivananda Swami's book describing the stages of spiritual development from the standpoint of yoga can be obtained from the Divine Life Society, [url=www.dlshq.org/books/books.htm[/url]]www.dlshq.org/books/books.htm[/url] and is titled "Spiritual Experiences" - their book number code E63, I think. If you want to really understand yoga, and thus the actual essence of Hindu practice, this kind of thing is far better than trying to read erudite analyses by "experts" who have never praciced it. d

P.S. I don't mean to suggest that Eastern teachings don't have anything to offer, but there are limits and inaccuracies. Just because people meditate and do things that seem exotic, this doesn't mean they have all the answers.

Why do I make such a point about speaking of Eastern teachings as I do? Because I believe way too many people have allowed themselves to be limited by them. Even teachings that seem profound can wrap a person in a limiting belief system.

Again, the target of Buddhism is to get rid of the absolutism of predestination and eternal permanence. The idea of "acting from the point of cause" means going to the place that this stuff emerges, and making decisions. I use this explicitly in therapy, such as a suggestion - "Go back before there was reality. Back to the instant of Creation. Back an instent prior, where you encounter the Infinite Creative Impulse, as love, as enthusiastic creativity, as omniscient awareness. Now, form the image of the world that you wish to live in, and see it replace the old ways of living. And finally, bring all this forward, watching the wonderful burst of fireworks as the universe is projected, all the way up to the present moment. - And now wake up"

I more materialistic and catechistic terms, Where is this universe? It is an island in emptiness.

How does it occur? It occurs because of the innate nature of emptiness.

What is the nature of reality? Reality is actually of the nature of the emptiness from which it arises. However, to us who live here, it is also real in the present moment, and is experienced as real, even though its utimate nature is empty.

And what of God? The innate nature of emptiness includes the totality of all potentialities to create, thus, when we speak of emptiness, it is like a dark verbal cloak covering the light of the Creator. This is dificult for those who seek a material God, but easy for those who can accept that the nature of God has no contingent properties by which to be limited. Thus, without properties to make God contingent, God is in emptiness, and beyond this we simply can't see. (Or at least not today.)

Samadhi is of two sorts, the common sort in which all seems real and it all works, and the sort that cannot be described in which we share the creative moment, yet nothing innate exists. Energy is one of thie things that vanishes, since it is actually a construct made up of matter, force and motion in space.

As you suggest, the most worthy goal is to serve others to reduce their pain - which turns out to be reduction of our own pain because, among other thngs, we are all one. So you've taken your own version of the Bodhisattvic obligation.

The purpose of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is to reduce suffering. The idea is that (1) By chance alone we have only a 50:50 chance of success, made smaller by human involvements and exploitations etc. This is a nuisance called "suffering". (2) We can see that suffering comes from attachments to things (and ations and relationships) that don't work. (3) Getting rid of dysfunctional attachments ends suffering. (4) The 8-fold path (and dozens of other approaches) ends suffering.

All the metaphysics in these concepts is our own addition. However, after you've died, you'll notice that what you've done in this life seems more like a dream while you're in spirit, and the spiritual reality seems predominate. (This you can test personally). Then it reverses at birth. So distant wars etc do not, in fact, directly involve us as perpetrators, we merely dream that we must get involved. (Usually without understanding all thedetails!) Better still is a life in which we stay involved with being our own selves 100%, doing what we actually can here and now locally. Then we can, as Jesus put it, "Let the dead bury the dead." Our job is with the living right next door.

And that, if I interpret you correctly, is what you've been saying all along.  Just different words, different perspective.

d

Dave:

I agree it is important to make contact with our source awareness, because it enables us to obtain freedom from mind stuff that is having a negative effect on us. This is one way in which years of meditation has benefited me. It has made it so I am better able to disentangle myself from negative mind stuff (still working at it though ;).

I believe the key is to someday find that even though what we create has value in varying ways, in the end we don't let it bind us by finding that knowledge, self worth, happiness, peace and love are found in an inward way.

Albert, I can relate to what Dave says here:

“The Buddhist's point is that the space in which all this occurs is essentially empty, and all of the stuff that we think of as ultimately real and personal, right down to the teeth that we eat with, is actually self-arising out of emptiness.”

As far as what I have learned in my experiences all forms that exist on the physical plane exists within a spiritual template where forms appear as transparent lines on a deep blue background in which the form is manifested by the background space having been completely filled in and the empty space that is left is what creates the form.

For example, in Euclidian geometry, defining a point creates a sphere.  A radius drawn out from that point in all three dimensions will create the surface of the sphere.  However, in etheric space which one could say is negative space, to form a sphere the opposite occurs where an infinite number of planes comes from all directions to fill in all space except for a spherical area of space left empty.  It is the area not filled in by all the planes meeting each other that then defines an empty spherical space.  Therefore, all that arises does so out of emptiness.  It appears to be this empty space or template from which all forms are created.

Dave thanks for the link.  I’ve dl the files as well.  I’m also wondering if you could explain a little more about what is meant by phenomena?

Love, Kathy

Kathy:

I agree that all comes out of emptiness, and in a way, what is created, and hence what we experience, is somewhat arbitrary.  For example, the life that any of us experience could've been a completely different life if we were placed in different circumstances.

However, certainly the emptiness being spoken of isn't empty in the way people usually speak of empty. Beingness couldn't give life to so much if it were actually empty. Even "empty" is a concept, because it suggests something other than the beingness that causes everything to be.

On an earlier post I mentioned Ramana Maharshi. He teaches the Advaita Vedanta viewpoint, which basically means that the only thing that exists is the one Self, which has the nature of consciousness, existence and bliss. Everything else is an illusion and requires no explanation as to how it came to be.

One time my guidance showed me an image of Ramana in a business suit sitting at a table with a lady. This image came with a mental message.  The translation is that Ramana, like many Eastern teachers, deny the reality of the creative aspect of being. The woman he sat with represented the creative aspect of being.  The table represented that his sort of approach needs to be balanced so that it includes the creative aspect of being that comes from no other place but God.

When we allow the creative aspect of being to be a part of who we are, it enables us to consider who we are at various levels including disc/oversoul/higher self level.  Going by what I've seen in numerous instances, Eastern teachings only place an emphasis on the pure consciousness/emptiness aspect of being.

Must say I don't have Dave's command of detail but tend to come from a pretty similar place on the question of what Buddhism says or does not say.

It's important to realise that as he says it's not a monolith. Not only do differing traditions have differing emphases there's also the fact that for example Tibetan Buddhism contains three different levels of teachings or views (or turnings of the wheel of Dharma) - the Hinayana which is mostly about worldly rules for behaviour, the Mahayana which introduces compassion and the emptiness or ultimate lack of fixedness of self and of this reality, and ultimately the Vajrayana which works with emptiness using faster but higher risk methods. These are essentially progressively more sophisticated teachings for persons of progressively higher awareness.

What we take from it is I think very conditioned by the culture and teaching of those we learn from, and how we relate to it.

The apparent tendency to focus on enlightenment and absolute reality is perhaps not accidental.

There's no denial in Buddhism of the existence of the 'afterlife' or the bardo type realities - it's known as the sambhogakya. (technically that's the form of body we assume in it) It's just that there's a view that excessive focus on the 'interesting' and sometimes very pleasant experiences which can arise from it (as discussed here)  can lead to our taking our eye off the ball to wallow in these. Or worse still can result in  use of some of the abilities which arise for negative purposes.

The ball being escape from samsara - the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

I'm sure that the teachings on Buddha nature while using different language incorporate ideas of collective selves and the like - references to multiple location and the like frequently arise. Higher levels of consciousness assume collective awareness and awareness of past lives. But it's very clear that these are highly mutable realities depending on state of mind - our sense of somehow exploring a fixed afterlife reality would be regarded as mistaken.

Emptiness does not mean that for example this life or the afterlife is not real - just that it's not an absolute or a fixed reality that holds true regardless of mind state. Life (and the afterlife states) are all brought into being by mind, and as such are subject to continuous change - we cycle from relative (but somewhat unsatisfactory) happiness into unhappiness and back again under the influence of karma.

Some traditions teach that this life does not matter, but Tibetan Buddhism would say that this is in error. It teaches in fact that this is a trap - that the conditions of this life are an important driver of spiritual progress (harder conditions as experienced in potentially more negative rebirths make practice almot impossible, while too much comfort can remove the perceived need for escape), and that depending on how we live it we can do ourselves a lot of good, or a lot of karmic harm.

Buddhism would hold to a few basics which I think we risk losing touch with when chatting here:

1. Afterlife type experience does not of itself confer any ability whatsoever to escape the cycle of rebirth, or to ensure a fortuitous rebirth - the potentially very nasty implications of karma ensure  this. We can never assume that our next rebirth for example will even be in a human life that will support spiritual progress. Highly negative karma from past lives may ripen immediately after a spiritually successful life.

2. Realisation (ideally in this life given the risk of karmic reversals in the next) is the only way to transcend this. Hence the recognition that this is the state towrds which our effort must be oriented.

3. Meditation and ongoing spiritual practice are the only way to progress faster than would naturally be the case.

4. Grasping or striving after paranormal experience or even enlightenment will block progress on this path. Dabbling in the black arts (selfish use of higher consciousness and resulting abilities) will rapidly reverse it. Hence the very strong reluctance to discuss this sort of experience in detail in Buddhism and the tendency to acknowledge but downplay it - to do otherwise risks sending out the wrong message, causing a fixation on experience, and slowing our own progress.

5. Ditto for wrongly motivated intellectual discussion, or an excessive emphasis on intellectual learning for egotistical reasons. Cognitive understanding is important in as much as it prevents us from becoming frightened when faced with experience we don't understand, and helps us to maintain a correct  spiritual direction while accumulating as little additional negative karma as possible. But too much or indulged in for for pleasure simply becomes babble and a distraction from the practice that underpins all true progress.

That's not to say that higher awareness enabling the accessing of alternative realities is not a good thing, or presumably even that it cannot be used for the good. (although I worry a little about our dabbling in rescues) Higher awareness creates opening, the resulting extra wisdom and compassion helps us to live from love and hence helps our progress along the way  - it's just that we need to be careful the experience does not become an end in itself.

I hope I'm not misquoting here. A pair of books which together set out the three views associated with  these teachings pretty clearly are Indestructible Truth and Secret of the Vajra World by Reginald A. Ray. Published by Shambhala books.

I used to believe the below but no longer do.  The below is mainly an Eastern viewpoint. There is lots of evidence which shows that realisation in the physical World isn't required in order for a spirit to move on to higher levels in the spirit World. Especially since realisation goes beyond discovering pure awareness/emptiness, and requires one to find out about one's self at various levels.

Many near death experiences show that people have no problem choosing the light over bondage to the physical World after seeing/remembering what the spirit World is all about. Where is the difficulty? You end up in a realm that has all the happiness, peace, beauty, knowledge and love you looked for throughout your life, and your gonna say: "No, I'd rather have the harshness of the physical World"? Regarding knowing one's identity, many near death experiences clearly show that people find out that they aren't bodies but wonderful divine spirits when they have their experiences. They do so without going through a preceeding spiritual practice.

Or consider how Bruce Moen wrote about how spirits who are stuck in lower realms for a while can choose to continue their growth in the spirit World rather reincarnate on earth. My experiences have shown me that spirits are assisted with moving from lower realms to higher realms without having to first reincarnate.

The main difference between sources of information that explore spirit realms and Eastern sources of information, is that the former places an emphasis on finding out what the World of spirit is about, while Eastern teachings tend to think of spirit realms as an extension of illusion. Certainly people who take the time to explore spirit realms are going to know more about what happens after death than people who don't. Some people might say that people who take the Eastern approach don't need to do such exploration, because this knowledge automatically becomes available to them. If this is the case, how come such sources never speak of things such as higher selfs in a disc sense, or don't know that reincarnation isn't the rigid necessity they make it out to be? I've read such teachings, and one would have to go to great lengths to conclude that they do speak of such things.

After one finds out that the numerous teachers who claim to be enlightened aren't the all knowing masters they claim to be, and sees that their disciples aren't becoming enlightened, it is hard to see how things will mathematically work out so that everybody in the World will become liberated. At this pace we're all going to be reincarnating for a very looooooooooooooong time.





[quote author=vajra link=1190156685/15#16 date=1190417189]
Buddhism would hold to a few basics which I think we risk losing touch with when chatting here:

1. Afterlife type experience does not of itself confer the ability to escape the cycle of rebirth, and the potentially very nasty implications of karma for this. We can never assume that our next rebirth for example will even be in a human life that will support spiritual progress. Highly negative karma from past lives may ripen immediately after a spiritually successful life.

2. Realisation is the only way to transcend this. Hence the recognition that this is the state towrds which our effort must be oriented.

It's in truth R hard have the experience or knowledge to argue the point from anything except a mostly theoretical view point - that's my situation anyway.

I came to Robert Monroe's books after having had a  (basic) Buddhist training and found them instructive and refreshing. Given what I said above I kept an eye out for indications in them that it's possible to control rebirth and so on.

Monroe actually seemed however to find that while he could easily experience alternate realities and meet those within them that there were (he didn't use these words) controlling forces at work.

He'd find souls, help them by suggestion to lift out of whatever mind made scenario they were stuck in, but invariably find that regardless of his intention they would disappear when they were drawn to whatever reality resonated with their consciousness. Individuals inhabiting self created realities at some of the higher focus levels also seemed after time to move on. He likewise spoke at length of the compulsive nature of the urge to rebirth - of its addictive compulsive quality.

It's not about propping up dogma for its own sake, but my immediate thought (given my training) was 'what else would you expect to happen - that's karma at work'. Put another way - regardless of what we might superficially think or hope  - when we find ourselves in the afterlife (where mind creates almost immediately) it'd presumably require the transcending our ego/our conditioning for it not to generate our experience.

There may of course be other ways of interpreting what he said, but Monroe to my mind seemed to say little that was at variance with the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan book of the dead which describes the death and rebirth experience in the bardos, and is especially graphic in its explanation of the overwhelming way karma kicks in after some time for most to propel us into what is normally an uncontrolled rebirth)

That's only one view however, and a very old one that tends in one way to take quite a harsh view of these things. But above all else the reality of existence seems to be that events proceed according to it's own rules - regardless of our normally selfish interest or wish that it was otherwise. No more, no less. There's nothing personal in this, but it can seem hard.

If it's untrue (and it's difficult to see how we can avoid the consequences of our state of consciousness) I guess the million dollar question is what actually does happen? What is the mechanism that determines rebirth and/or the possibility of moving on elsewhere??

I'm really sorry if this rains on anybodies parade, but I guess it's about the most fundamental question there is......

Here's a more basic question, Vajra----

:-[ :-[  :'(  ::) Duh, with apologies----

Where's the button on the link to get His Holiness the Dalai Lama to speak English?
All I get is Tibetan.
Sorry for the interruption.

:D  Thank youall for a very fine discussion!

Love, Bets

Hi Bets- The "Translation Button" is to wait a while (up to five minutes) and after the Tibetan, the translator comes in and gives you the English version.

Vajra - Buddhism and the Buddhist explanation is not the only possible perspective that can validly describe the situation we're in. But it is a good way to get the basic picture. If I have understood rightly, the point is to be compassionate because we are going through a process in which we get feedback. Good feedback is from helping others, and for hassling others we get hassles ourselves. This is educational, but, as Recoverer put it, if we depend only on the reincarnation cycle alone, we'll be doing this for a very long time. However, that's the core of Theraveda. Nothing gets wasted - but it might get very old.

That we have an everyday world, plus a spirit world, and when we go beyond that to look for where it came from, we find that the reality of everything sort of fades away into the stuff from which it arose by its innate self-creativity. That stuff has no definition, is not contingent, has no prior nature because, ultimately,  it has no present nature. All we find is potentiality, the notion that were there to be a manifestation, meaning some kind of extended existence that would be sensible, it could be infinite in extent, and would be non-contingent. (Bad description - take it liberally, please.)

Working to free a person stuck in a burning car after a freeway wreck is meritorious. In the same way, working to free a person stuck in memories of past events of their life, such as a car wreck, is a meritorious action.  In exactly the same way, working to free people stuck in the spirit world by glueing themselves into some situation through pride, fear, ignorance or whatever, is also a meritorious act. Or, in my practice, I work to free people from the memories and karmic entanglements of past lives that leak through into the present life.

Based on that, I look up to Bruce as a guiding light of compassion. If we cut through the rhetoric to the core of the bodhisattvic attitude, we find precisely what Bruce has been doing - saving people from their own ignorance. Freeing them from their own internal fires. Or, for that matter, we also have the "Church of Don" and innumerable other acts by which people are assisting their fellow beings. Providing that we keep that attitude, rather than trying to make personal ego gratification from it, we are doing that which will assist us. In analogy, if you look backwards up the line of causality to the "beam of light" from which people have been split off by the prism of experience, we can see that as we help others, we directly improve our own natures and setting as well.

Hi Lights-
Crudely, Phenomena are the stuff of the world as we know them by name and form (nama rupa), while noumna are their nature-in-themselves which are emptiness.
I really like your "sphere" of inverted space. Ha! Take a world surrounded by emptiness, turn it inside out and there we are. That's neat!  :P

I usually think of space as being defined by the implicit relationships of extended matter - your model captures that quite nicely as well. :-)

Recoverer- We seem to be so invested in the details and words that we often miss the point that all of us somehow carry the fundamental understanding of what is actually going on. I think that it's perhaps a good time to point out that your explanation is at least as good as mine, and that every other explanation that captures the same sense is also equally good. Unfortunately, we don;t always recognize that - and words are blunt tools - so we argue over trivia as opposed to agreeing on basics. At any rate, there are many other explanatory systems that are valid, but that focus on other experiences - - For example Voodoo, in wich the spirits are viewed quite differently, but the goal is the same, to rest eternally with Papa Legba in Ife. (And with Chango et al. it sounds almost Christian ) - I like Buddhism because it's clear in many sticky places. But that doesn't detract from Jesus or any of the other manifestations of the Ultimate.

My thanks to everyone for a spirited encounter! ;-)
d

Ta Dave! I don't in truth have any very serious concern about recovery, just a certain caution. But it does cross my mind from time to time that there may be good reason for what's going down that we don't perceive.

On enlightenment taking eons and 1000s of lifetimes. That's as you say exactly what Buddhism teaches - but it of course is only one of many traditions holding widely differing views on these matters. Given my respect for Buddhist teaching my personal hope  ;) on this is that in fact there are maybe a lot more people around that achieve realisation or at least sufficient realisation to move on than we realise.

The hard issue remains though - there's no sign of a view that says that what happens in the afterlife is influenced by anything much other than karmic consequence....

Hmmm - proof that in spirit we remain causally effective? - Back to the "free will" argument again?

The terms of the Bardo Thodol philosophy tell us to view spiritual phenomena as nothing but mental projections. That suggests that we have freedom to make that decision. In the same way, for somebody to get stuck in a situation due to their feelings, drives etc, implies that they have chosen the state in which we find them, since they evidently can make a subsequent choice to abandon it. This is an underlying assumption of soul retrieval.

My claim is that, as a minimum, when we operate from the point of Creation, then we are free, because that is a non-contingent state. I also feel that to the degree that we simply react to immediate worldly phenomena, we are determined, as our nature is contingent upon a combination of nature plus nurture. In between we might also make the claim that to the degree that we perceive and move toward a non-contingent state we have freed ourselves.

Then as we move from the extremes of isolation to the extreme of ultimate unity, it would seem that we also develop freedom. The spirit world is closer to the point of creation that is a position in the everyday world.  That implies that it is more free - providing that the prior assumptions are valid.

Cheating and feeding back information from nirvastarka samadhi we might observe that in that  samadhi we no longer have any connections of note to the everyday world, and we are totally involved with the creative activities by which everything, worldly or transcendent, gets defined. As such, we are "co-creative" with Godhead. But that simply says that if we escape the world we escape its contingencies, so it's circular.

Maybe we'll just have to wait and see?

d

It's interesting the way threads here often converge to become workings of differing facets of the same issues. For example this and the one on atonement have come to focus on the karmic consequences of wrongdoing.

What you've just said Dave (as you know, and so far as I know :)) fits pretty precisely what Buddhism teaches.  That the ability to be at the point of creation as you term it (to transcend samsara or this time/space/causal reality) frees one from the effects of karma. That since there is no vestige of self/no causality in that state there's nothing for it to gain traction on.

While on the other hand whether in this life or in the afterlife we remain in the causal reality and as such subject to it.

As you've more or less said in the thread on atonement the (Tibetan) Bardo Thodol  suggests that  following death we initially create a reality that reflects our intention/expectation and view at the time of death.

Which as a result (much as Monroe perhaps suggested with his stories of finding people in huts on the beach and the like) tends initially to reflect expected pretty conventional realities. (giving rise to the belief system territories, bombers being met by houris and so on)

The problem is that the subsequent (implies time/causality still in play) dawning of higher insight/awareness (as a result of the life review talked about in the Thodol and elsewhere, or maybe put another way of the greatly increased wisdom, compassion and seeing that dawns with the stripping away of the ego and its obscuration of true perception - which in life prevented us from seeing the implications of our behaviour and meant we felt no pressing need to change) causes a change from  the initially experienced relatively pleasant realities to 'living' (dreaming?) the consequences of our actions. Which for many entails the instant creation by mind of scarifying scenarios. (it's generally held that all that's experienced is the creation of our own mind)

The Thodol suggests that most of us become so frightened by this experience (described as the winds of karma starting to blow) that we are driven into less than ideal rebirths. In which lives we are most likely to be forced by difficult circumstances to commit more acts damaging to others and so again increase our karmic load.

The Thodol suggests ways out of this - either the achievement of realisation/return to the point of creation in life (or during death which is regarded as a very good opportunity), or by utilising meditative focus in the afterlife to avoid being overcome by fear so that we can consciously achieve realisation, or at least avoid the undesirable paths and choose a more auspicious birth which will greatly increase the chances of realisation during the next life.

There's some great translations of the Bardo Thodol with commentaries available in the bookshops now. (the Dalai Lama has recently published one)

This picture is at least a rational scenario for me (and it fits very well with Robert Monroe's writings), and is the reason that as above I tend to be influenced by the (pretty tough and uncompromising) Buddhist view that the game that matters is the achievement of realisation.

And that there are practices on the spiritual path that help in this regard, and others (like for example striving, excessive intellectualisation of the topic, especially if not combined with meditation and other practices that deliver insight, mindfulness and hence increased wisdom and compassion) that don't.

It's why I (genuinely) keep on asking what (presuming the above is not accepted, or is held to be harsher than the reality) determines rebirth and/or our ability to move on to higher levels. If there's a more effective way out it'd be nice to know about it. Perhaps its as simple as stopping thinking about it......

Vajra-
That precise idea had occurred to me, so thanks for the reinforcement. Evidently, what we think about is what we perceive - at least on the mental level - and then as we start getting more interested and more involved - Whoops - here we are again!

As you say, the "final nirvana" seems to be a state in which we simply abandon thoughts to which we are attached or with which we identify, so that we remain forever in the state of oneness with the Creative Essence - Mind experiencing Itself, Being without the necessity for intervening "thought".

So now that we've resolved all the ultimate issues of the cosmos, what to do?  Personally, I'm moving today, so I'm surrounded by boxes and bales of packing stuff. As they say, chop wood, carry water. ;-)

dave

Vajra and Dave:

First of all, even if we communicated about this verbally there would be some difficulty, because discussion that takes place in linear time has its limitations. When we write on a forum things become even more difficult, because it is difficult to express everything we have to say without making our posts overly long.  The number of angles in which this subject can be approached are numerous. That said, I'll try to keep my next post sort of short ;) .

Vajra, have you read Robert Monroe's third book Ultimate Journey? It was published about 9 years after Far Journeys. During this time period Robert discovered many new things. For example, he met his I-there (what some people refer to as Disk, oversoul, higher self, monad).  If you read what Robert and Bruce Moen have to say, each of us has the goal of finding our disk/I-there. This is what retrievels are partly about. Sometimes spirits are stubborn, and want to cling to things such as the sex piles Robert wrote about. It isn't necessary to become completely enlightened in order to rejoin one's disk/I-there.  In Robert Monroe's terms, one simply needs to decrease one's attachment from the earth life system enough, so they can gain enough escape velocity.

There are various ways this can be done. For example in his fourth book Voyage to Curiosity's Father, Bruce wrote about Sylvia. Sylvia was an abusive person while in the physical. The energetic she accumulated while here could've got her stuck in a lower realm. Fortunately, after she died, because of her Christian beliefs, she remembered to think of Jesus. This enabled the light workers who helped her to get her attention. They exposed her to doses of PUL (pure unconditional love). This enabled her to become honest about the kind of person she was. She went through a cleansing process to change her energetic.  Bruce was surprised to find out how quickly she became a light being/graduate.

If you factor in cases like the above, plus how various sources show that we're all connected to a disk/I-there/soul group with which we share our experiences and hence growth with, there are numerous ways for spiritual growth to take place other than physical incarnation.

I figure things are taken care of on a case by case basis. Different people/spirits have different needs. There might be some cases where a spirit meets with its counsel and isn't mature enough to decide what it needs to do next. In such a case a spirit might actually be required to take on another physical birth. Perhaps into a loving family that will help it overcome its negative ways. Such an occurence will also provide its family with growth opportunities.

One of the reasons I'm so involved with this subject, is because I understand what it is like to live according to the belief that souls have to incarnate over and over again until they become enlightened. I used to belong to a group that taught this. Members were afraid to leave the group because they wanted to become liberated and break the cycle of birth and death. Eventually almost all members did leave the group, after they found out that the guru, despite his excellent ability to expouse Vedanta and Buddhist teachings (Mahayana teachings), wasn't the enlightened master he claimed to be. Elizabeth Claire Prophet's group displayed an extreme example of how the numerous rebirth belief can be used in a negative way. Her group contended that if a person left the group, he or she would have 10,000 incarnations added to his or her spirit development! Ouch! Certainly the truth of the light is vibrant enough for us to wake up quicker than that.

As opposed to approching spiritual growth with an all or nothing become enlightened perspective, I believe it is better for a person to simply grow in love as much as he or she can. It is hard to take such an approach if one is afraid of reincarnating over and over again. One is liable to not listen to one's heart, what one really wants, and will try to grow according to how they are "supposed to" grow. My guess is that both you (Dave and Vajra) have seen how a fear based approach to spirituality effects one's discrimination in a negative way, no matter what tradition one is following.

Albert

  I agree with a lot of your points on this thread Recoverer, yet i also agree with some of Vajra and Dave's..  Fortunately for you guys, i don't remember what i agree and disagree with from earlier reading, so no super long posts today. ;) ::)   If i didn't know better, i'd might have to tell myself to lay off the pot. :D

 But anyways, just want to quickly address something.  


Quote:

There are various ways this can be done. For example in his fourth book Voyage to Curiosity's Father, Bruce wrote about Sylvia. Sylvia was an abusive person while in the physical. The energetic she accumulated while here could've got her stuck in a lower realm. Fortunately, after she died, because of her Christian beliefs, she remembered to think of Jesus. This enabled the light workers who helped her to get her attention. They exposed her to doses of PUL (pure unconditional love). This enabled her to become honest about the kind of person she was. She went through a cleansing process to change her energetic.  Bruce was surprised to find out how quickly she became a light being/graduate. If you factor in cases like the above, plus how various sources show that we're all connected to a disk/I-there/soul group with which we share our experiences and hence growth with, there are numerous ways for spiritual growth to take place other than physical incarnation.

 I do agree with this, yet i would also point out that Sylvia or rather her Total self, still has to meet self here in the physical.  Karma doesn't get magically erased by graduation or what not, one still needs to meet what self put out in another physical experience.  

  A quick example, Cayce's source said that Joshua of the O.T., and 'Jesus' of the N.T. are part of the same Total self/Disk/I-There, and this source said look to Joshua's life to get a better understanding of Yeshua's.    Joshua was bit of a warrior leader/Priest type, and was involved in some warring.   Apparently in one incident, Joshua had some leaders from the other tribes, strung up on trees to die.     While Yeshua in his life, completed the ultimate graduation, he still had to meet self in his earthly experiences, and hence part of the reason of why he was crucified.   In a sense, he did overcome or transcend Karma, because he had enough self detachment, wisdom, and love to meet those experiences with grace, centeredness, and inner joy.  

 What we put out here in this dimension, we primarily meet here and to some extent in the nonphysical, what we put out in the nonphysical, we primarily meet in the nonphysical.  Sylvia's Total self, will most likely choose to experience a life where she experiences similar dynamics to what she put out to others.  And how much she chooses to take on, depends somewhat on how developed her Total self as a whole is, and what kind of personality gets developed from the overall matrix of self (Total self that is).

Ahso:

I agree it is a total self/higher self/disk/I-there/oversoul team effort. Each member/part/self/probe takes part in the process.  My feeling is that there are some things I need to accomplish for my overall disc.  

The teamwork factor makes it so that each part of total self doesn't have to incarnate numerous times. How many times a member of total self incarnates probably varies quite a bit. When Bruce speaks of parts of his total self/disk such as Ed Carter hanging out by his disk, I don't get the impression that Ed Carter needs to incarnate a bunch of times until his particular self becomes enlightened in the manner defined by eastern thought.  A manner which is viewed in various ways.

The impression I get when I'm in contact with my higher self/total self/disk/whatever you want to call it, is that all parts are intimately connected as one.

Good stuff guys. For sure we're unlikely to tie this territory down in words. I can see you are a cat fan Ah So -  :) always a good sign in a person....

Some responses. Yes, I've read Ultimate Journey R and RM's account of his 'I there'. Funnily enough it had never crossed my mind that an individual entity from the oversoul might re-incarnate more than once.

For no very good reason I'd simply presumed that each fresh incarnation was a new addition to it, and that the oversoul simply grew until realisation was achieved and it was time to head for the emitter and lift out to the next level. Although that begs the 'from where do they come' question, and would amount to a fairly free mapping of Buddhist ideas to Robert Monroe's.

I guess that when we access past lives we access members of the oversoul from suitable states of consciousness. Although I read somewhere recently (here?) that there's a view that what are interpreted as past lives are often snatches from the lives of others, or possibly from even in the future.

If we take it that the ego and its obscuration is stripped off/dies in the afterlife then it's not surprising that we quickly become beings of light after we get there. The problem seems to be as you say that the karma till exists, and pretty quickly kicks in to speed us back into another life where we get confronted by the consequences of our past actions.

For sure too it's probably true that getting all hung up on beliefs about multiple incarnations (or any other dogma) risks creating a self fulfilling future. My instincts are consequently to avoid heavily belief  driven scenarios like the more pious/dogma driven tendency in certain Buddhist groups and traditions.

In that vein one I'm cautious about is the Bodhisattva vow. Much like my little doubts about recovery activities i can't help thinking that maybe a vow to be reborn until such time as all sentinent beings achieve enlightenment may screw up the functioning of the oversoul.  

It kind of begs the question too of who or what takes such a vow, and how binding can it be? On the positive side you can see why if a Rinpoche is an enlightened person who keeps returning to help dig us out of the hole (one able to routinely draw in life on the wisdom and compassion of a completed oversoul) why they might have some fairly special abilities.

It still seems to me though that there are some fundamentals about reincarnation that it's maybe not possible to sidestep.

One factor that (in my optimistic moments I hope) possibly reduces the number of reincarnations required may be that some don't have too many glitches left to iron out to reach realisation. ( ::) says he failing to notice the huge weight of karma poised ready to drop in as a result of genocide committed in a past life - bad joke)

I've for example heard Tibetan Rinpoches quoted as saying that while the Western mind is to Eastern perspectives incredibly turbulent that this very energy often contains the seeds of rapid progress too. That a lot of progress can be made in a single life in this very fast moving intellectual environment.

Here's hoping.....

Vajra:

I tend to believe in the oversoul/disk viewpoint because that's what my experiences and messages received have told me. Regarding a disk member reincarnating over and over again, if I interpreted the messages I received correctly, this isn't the norm. It is something that happens occasionally. There could also be cases where a member does so before returning to its disk/I-there.

One message I received just simply stated: "Every part counts." This message came with a feeling. The feeling that a disc/oversoul doesn't tend to create new aspects of self, so they can be lost after reincarnating.  I've also been shown symbolic visual messages which suggested that it just wouldn't be possible to incarnate all that results from numerous incarnations, into one small body.  Doing so would be sort of like taking a huge database from a macro computer, and trying to make it work within a micro computer.  If the viewpoint I suggest is correct, many selves result. If it isn't, much difficulty within the physical World is gone through, with few selves as a reward.  

Regarding the Bodhisattva vow or any other vow, how can any person make a long lasting vow while in the physical without knowing the entire picture? Consider the spirit who now plays the role of Dali Lama. It seems that this spirit has manifested as a good, humble man. I don't believe it would be fair for this spirit to play the same role over and over again.  Certainly there are other ways this spirit can serve the light, and certainly there are other spirits who can incarnate as the Dali Lama.

Thank you R. I can't draw on experience to formulate views as to how the oversoul works. Don't think that an incarnation following completion of the oversoul (but that's only me speculating) would be some sort of super human with 100% conscious recall of the collective wisdom and experience though.

Tibetan Rinpoches (who have vowed to be reborn until all beings in this reality achieve realisation) will if pushed however sometimes admit to the ability to access information from past lives, and on just about all shades of existence. (they may embody differing levels of realisation)

Some of the more realised (bearing in mind that it's not regarded as good practice to talk too much about this stuff or to flout it as it creates the wrong perspective)  demonstrate pretty amazing abilities to know and to influence events and their own physical reality - beginning from childhood. Some pretty amazing stories of very odd events are told by those that accompanied the 16th Kagyu Karmapa (hope I have the number right - he died in Boston back in the 80s) on his US visits.

On the other hand they have to be brought up and educated the same as anybody else - if something comes through it seems to be in the form of insight, intuition, wisdom, compassion and the like plus special abilities. Whatever else these traditions have an amazing track record in picking kids at a very early age, declaring them a reincarnation of whoever. The deceased has usually left information so that he can be found when he is reborn. (which implies control over this too)

They almost without fail blossom into the most amazing individuals as above....

Whatever about the above, I have to agree to wondering too how the bodhisattva vow when (as is usually the case) taken by a single not very realised individual can be a good idea. Unless of course there's something slightly magical going on....

Vajra:

I figure the spirit World knows that Tibetan Buddhism tries to identify Lamas by seeing whether a child can identify objects. That being the case, if what I suggest is true, all the spirit World would have to do is implant memories of such objects into whatever spirit incarnates into a potential Lama's body.

Good thinking R. Not only that but the highly focused creative intention created by a highly disciplined meditative tradition would make it especially likely that it would play out to script.

Gets really interesting then though, in the that it really does blur the boundaries as regards the personal perspective on reincarnation and on what it is that actually has continuity between lives.

It's definitely not total the personality or the body, maybe something more like a set of attributes and tendencies that interact with the biology and the circumstances it finds itself in....

Perhaps not the best term, but I call it "attitude" - the process that is supported by the extended stuff. Process can exist in manifestation, in everyday spacetime, or in pure potentiality. In fact the Ultimate Attitude would be Godhead (or Buddha-Mind, or whatever you call it) existing in absolute nothingness, since that's a state of total potentiality.

In principle, were we able to devise a machine that would both have the ability for a spook to couple onto it, plus a means to make noises or other expessions interactively, we should be able to create an "artificial embodiment".  This is a pet project of mine, and it seems to be potentially practical. Then the "thing" that would get embodied would necessarily have no content except information flow. Hence, "attitude", the tendency toward responding in this or that manner to random stimulii.

dave