This post is sort of a continuation of a conversation some of us had.  It is about whether each of us is a self/soul that continues for all of eternity. Below are words of the Buddha:

From the Diamond Sutra (Edward Conze's translation):

2a. The Vow of a Bodhisattva
3. The Lord (Buddha) said: Here, Subhuti, someone who has set out in the vehicle of a Bodhisattva should produce a thought in this manner: "As many beings as there are in the universe of beings, comprehended under the term 'beings'--egg-born, born from a womb, moisture born, or miraculously born; with or without form; with perception, without perception, and with neither perception nor non-perception--as far as any conceivable form of beings is conceived: all these I must lead to Nirvana, into that Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind.  And yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to Nirvana. And why? If in a Bodhisattva the notion of a 'being' should take place, he could not be called a 'Bodhi-being.' And why? He is not to be called a Bodhi-being, in whom the notion of a self or of a being should take place, or the notion of a living soul or of a person.""

From "The Heart of Perfect Wisdom" (sometimes known as the Heart sutra):
"There are the five skandhas, and those he sees in their own being as empty. Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness; whatever is form that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness that is form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. Thus, O Sariputra, all dharmas are empty of own-being, are without marks; they are neither deficient nor complete. Therefore then, O Sariputra, where there is emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no impulse, no consciousness, no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind; no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touchable, no object of mind; no sight-organ element, etc., until we come to : no mind-consciousness element; there is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, etc. until we come to: there is no old age and death, no extinction of old age and death; there is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path; there is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.

Therefore then, O Sariputra, owing to a Bodhisattva's indifference to any kind of personal attainment he dwells as one who has relied solely on the perfecton of wisdom. In the absence of an objective support to his thought he has not been made to tremble, he overcome what can upset, in the end sustained Nirvana......

Therefore one should know the Prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth--for what could go wrong?"

Without getting into what precisely it is that has the above understanding since there is supposedly nothing to have such an understanding, it is important to understand that the Buddha viewed life as suffering. He considered it important to bring our illusion of life to an end, so we would no longer suffer.

I used to love the above sort of teaching. Eventually, things developed to the point where I found that life isn't about thinking ourselves out of existence, it is about embracing the challenge of becoming beings who can live eternally as beings of happiness, peace, spiritual freedom, wisdom and love.

Jesus Christ said something that goes along with my way of thinking.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  (John 14:1-3)"

According to the no individual self viewpoint there is no need for many mansions, because there won't be any souls to occupy these mansions.

My spirit guidance enabled me to have the following experience this morning.

I was walking on a city street (not physically).  I felt very happy and excited, because I understood that there is only one self. I hugged complete strangers and they hugged me back, because they also understood that there is only one self. There was no need for our existence nor the city we walked in to dissolve into pure awareness, because our uniqueness and the manifested part of existence didn't prevent us from being one self.

Then something funny happened. I leaned forward to hug my mom, and didn't experience oneness.  I didn't experience it because I approached her according to my ideas of relating to mom, rather than seeing her as another part of the one self. Next, a lady and I approached each other with sexual attraction in play. This prevented us from perceiving each other as parts of the one self.

The above experiences goes along with other experiences/messages I have received. We don't need to wish ourselves out of existence in order to be one with each other.  We simply need to see each other as unique spirit beings who are a part of a larger self.

Hi R-
In interpretation of the Prajnaparamita Sutra etc it is necessary to be aware of the context. Siddhartha was a Brahmin, a high caste Hindu, and very much embedded in the philosophy of his day. The basic thrust of his teaching is readily paraphrased from the four noble truths -  (1) life is imperfect, hence everything involves some degree of disappointment, discomfort, or in general, suffering. Ex: You have food. It's good. You eat it. Now you have no more. That ends the good feeling and replaces it with lack and the need to find more. That's a darn nuisance = suffering.

(2) Suffering comes from attachments - and those are always attachments to mundane things, aggregates, assemblages of mundane parts. All aggregates decay and their parts get recycled. Thus attachments to things that are transitory and impermanent does no good.

(3) Ending attachment ends suffering. To end attachments means to no longer try to live in a world of imposed contingencies. That frees us. When free, we no longer worry about attachments etc as they no longer control our lives or emotions.

(4) The eightfold path ends attachments. So does meditation on the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the ashtanga yoga of Patanjali etc. This works by taking us out of the mundane contingencies and brings our focus back to the global unity. Just as you mentioned with regard to the way you met people.

There is no metaphysics in these statements. Even the denial of the permanence of everyday reality is intended to simply point out the futility of trying to find a transcendental solution by non-transcendental means.

The other statements that are controversial are denial of God and denial of a soul. The denial of a material god is intended to get away from the notion of a fat man with a beard who sits on a cloud in heaven, as well as all the thousands of local deities who appear as statues.  The denial of a material soul is intended to remove the notion of a material thing to which we are attached, and to replace it with the dynamic of the moment. That is, we are not "things" nor "bodies", but we exist in the dynamic of changes, and not as lumps of matter. Our nature is of fire, not earth. In fact, there is no earth. Everything reduces to its initial ingredients in the end, which is nothing. We are simply patterns of awareness, mindfulness if you prefer, that can occur when emptiness gets twisted around itself in such a way as to form the appearance of a mundane world. But it is only an appearance.

This is not a traditionally Christian way to see things. However, it winds up with the same ultimate state, oneness with everything and everyone through oneness with a non-material God. The location of the soul is thus not a place, nor is it an object, but it is part of the Divine Dynamic that exists in voidness. That a person is saved is thus an indication that the dynamic has returned to its core nature, but no "thing" has been saved. Because there are no "things" there is no need for there to be a "place" (meaning an aggregate construct) for them. Instead, there are many modalities of the dynamic by which we exist.

I personally don't see any conflict here. The approach is different, but could be expressed in Christian or Judaic terms - and the Sufis and Dervi have already favored Islam with the same kind of insights. However, I think that your remarks about hugging people is very much to the point, and the rest is more historical and academic in nature.

dave

Dave:

Comments below within double quotation marks.


dave_a_mbs wrote on Dec 28^th, 2007 at 4:20pm:

Hi R- In interpretation of the Prajnaparamita Sutra etc it is necessary to be aware of the context. Siddhartha was a Brahmin, a high caste Hindu, and very much embedded in the philosophy of his day. The basic thrust of his teaching is readily paraphrased from the four noble truths -  (1) life is imperfect, hence everything involves some degree of disappointment, discomfort, or in general, suffering. Ex: You have food. It's good. You eat it. Now you have no more. That ends the good feeling and replaces it with lack and the need to find more. That's a darn nuisance = suffering. ""I agree that life as we know it is imperfect and has a lot of unnecessary suffering. For example, I wonder how many incarnations it will take before I'm confident about how to spell "unnecessary."  :)"" (2) Suffering comes from attachments - and those are always attachments to mundane things, aggregates, assemblages of mundane parts. All aggregates decay and their parts get recycled. Thus attachments to things that are transitory and impermanent does no good. (3) Ending attachment ends suffering. To end attachments means to no longer try to live in a world of imposed contingencies. That frees us. When free, we no longer worry about attachments etc as they no longer control our lives or emotions. ""I agree that we need to let go of the attachments that bind us until we can really live. However, I don't believe we need to let go of the idea of our being a particular individual being who is one of many parts of a much larger being. If such a thing can be attempted, isn't there something that attempts this?   One might say that random collections of thought attempt to do so, and eventually these random collections of thought somehow negate themselves. Going by my experience, a limited pattern of thought can't negate itself. The only way a limited thought pattern can be negated, is if thought energy at a higher level that can see through the falseness of a limited thought pattern, decides to let go of it. I've said this before, but I'll go ahead and say it again. I figure we are awareness energy beings who can use the energetic part of our being in a creative way. We can also learn. Once we learn how to use the creative aspect of our being in a loving an intelligent way, we can use it to create a life that is not only preferable, but glorious.  If one thinks in terms of moments of succession, we might not start out as awareness/energy beings who know how to use our creative aspect of being in a wise and loving way, but as long as we use what we have to start with, and as long as we experience according to what we create, I don't see that the creative aspect of our being needs to be equated as being less real than our uncreated state, even if we could've created in any number of ways. Especially since if you look at things from a non-linear time perspective, our uncreated way of being and created way of being aren't separate from each other. A lady I work with just walked past my cubicle. She is such a sweet good hearted person. Shall I tell her that her life has no reality because there is suffering in the World, or should I tell her that a process had to be gone through so her wonderful uniqueness can be created? Eventually things will reach the point where all of us can live together in eternal perfection."" (4) The eightfold path ends attachments. So does meditation on the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the ashtanga yoga of Patanjali etc. This works by taking us out of the mundane contingencies and brings our focus back to the global unity. Just as you mentioned with regard to the way you met people. There is no metaphysics in these statements. Even the denial of the permanence of everyday reality is intended to simply point out the futility of trying to find a transcendental solution by non-transcendental means. ""I know of many people and teachings that interpret transcendental to mean getting to the point where only pure awareness exists, because as long as creative thought energy is active in some way, there will be imperfection. I now believe that this interpretation is false. Manifestation doesn't cause us to have problems. It is our inability to work with manifestation is a wise and loving way that causes us problems. Should an unqualified doctor kill his patient, when a doctor exists who knows how to treat the patient's ailment?"" The other statements that are controversial are denial of God and denial of a soul. The denial of a material god is intended to get away from the notion of a fat man with a beard who sits on a cloud in heaven, as well as all the thousands of local deities who appear as statues.  The denial of a material soul is intended to remove the notion of a material thing to which we are attached, and to replace it with the dynamic of the moment. That is, we are not "things" nor "bodies", but we exist in the dynamic of changes, and not as lumps of matter. Our nature is of fire, not earth. In fact, there is no earth. Everything reduces to its initial ingredients in the end, which is nothing. We are simply patterns of awareness, mindfulness if you prefer, that can occur when emptiness gets twisted around itself in such a way as to form the appearance of a mundane world. But it is only an appearance. ""What I wrote above shows that I don't agree with the above. If the Buddha believed in a God that doesn't fall within the old man in the sky perspective, why didn't he just say something such as, "Yes, there is one divine source for everything, but this source is much more than an old man in the sky? If one is going to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a particular self, one is going to need to make use of thought energy to come to such a conclusion.  Doesn't the fact of how an entity/self can use thought energy in such a purposeful way, show that a particular self can be created? Why does a self have to be negated once it learns to live in a wise and loving way? What is the purpose of such a demonstration of spiritual suicide? How does love fit into the picture? I've had meditations where I experienced bliss to an extent where it sempt as if I didn't need anything else. Yet, when I came out of such meditations, my spirit guidance would immediately share something with me that shows the importance of sharing love with each other, and how love is much sweeter than bliss ever could be. How can one self fully experience love and oneness if there is nobody to share it with? Perhaps the first being that existed, call it God if you like, created the rest of us so it would have somebody to share love with. The Eastern idea that all of us get squashed like a bunch of illusory and meaningless pimples and warts, doesn't go along with idea of a loving creator who created all of us intentionally. I say that we go through the travails we go through for a while, because besides being given the gift of being unique souls, we're given the gift of self determination. Isn't it possible that the first being that existed, came up with a way to make use of its own being, to create a multiplicity of souls? Should one deny this because of gurus and such who were more interested in putting themselves on a pedestal than God, denied the existence of a being who has such a capability?"" This is not a traditionally Christian way to see things. However, it winds up with the same ultimate state, oneness with everything and everyone through oneness with a non-material God. The location of the soul is thus not a place, nor is it an object, but it is part of the Divine Dynamic that exists in voidness. That a person is saved is thus an indication that the dynamic has returned to its core nature, but no "thing" has been saved. Because there are no "things" there is no need for there to be a "place" (meaning an aggregate construct) for them. Instead, there are many modalities of the dynamic by which we exist. ""There is an implication above of a person who isn't able to understand the Eastern viewpoint. I slept with the Eastern viewpoint for years.  After making contact with spirit beings who represent the light, the only master for whom I've come to know by name, is Christ. Therefore, when he says there are many mansions in my father's kingdom, I feel inclined to believe him. I've received numerous messages and experiences which show that there are many mansions in God's kingdom, and these mansions aren't just mere illusions, despite what some gurus have said."" I personally don't see any conflict here. The approach is different, but could be expressed in Christian or Judaic terms - and the Sufis and Dervi have already favored Islam with the same kind of insights. However, I think that your remarks about hugging people is very much to the point, and the rest is more historical and academic in nature. ""The fact that you're okay with hugging shows that you see the value of love. Perhaps in the end our love is so strong, that we all get to exist with each other very happily for all of eternity.  Thought  patterns stay alive because we choose to give them life. What if we come to the point where we only have thought patterns that are worth having? Shall we dispense with them because of a theory of no self? If we come to such a conclusion, what precisely is it that stops providing the interest/energy that enables them to stay alive?"" dave

I should say as well R that while this teaching is often de facto interpreted as negative by the behaviour of some of those attached to Buddhist groups that the moving away from grasping/attachment (opening and creation of space in our lives) that's pointed to in the heart Sutra results in a weakening of selfish urges and the emergence of of all that's good  - spontaneous joy in our life and our surroundings, loving behaviours and so on. There's great joy that follows from love of self, and service to and love of others as well.

As seen in all religion there are those misery guts that instead of working towards this sort of becoming via meditation and so on instead seek to produce a facsimilie of it by denying through an act of will all sorts of stuff they would actually like to do. The trouble is ultimately this facsimilie is ego or grasping/attachment driven, and so delivers suffering instead of the above joy.

The essential problem from the Buddhist perspective is that if we seek joy/pleasure by direct means or as an end in itself it's never maintained.

I guess as I've said before it's hard with meditative experience that seems to very convincingly separate the parts that appear to make up the self (higher mind/awareness from thinking mind and body) to posit an unbreakable linkage between them.

We each in the end have to make our own call on these things though. Buddhist teaching certainly makes a tight case on the nature of self, but without experience this isn't proof and its possible to suggest alternatives. My personal tendency though is to find it hard to ditch Buddhist teaching - it's always so incredibly comprehensive and practically applicable.

The risk as I see it of having something invested in continuity of a total self is that at the practical level it may make the achievement of the selflessness implicit in loving behaviours a lot more difficult to realise. If the bardo teachings are correct it may ultimately lead to pretty scarifying experience with the dissolution of self too.

I can't on the other hand see any great downside to remaining easy on the issue, in that it'll presumably sort itself out in due course.....

Vajra:

Comments below within quotation marks:



wrote on Dec 28^th, 2007 at 5:57pm:

I should say as well R that while this teaching is often de facto interpreted as negative by the behaviour of some of those attached to Buddhist groups that the moving away from grasping/attachment (opening and creation of space in our lives) that's pointed to in the heart Sutra results in a weakening of selfish urges and the emergence of of all that's good  - spontaneous joy in our life and our surroundings, loving behaviours and so on. There's great joy that follows from love of self, and service to and love of others as well. As seen in all religion there are those misery guts that instead of working towards this sort of becoming via meditation and so on instead seek to produce a facsimilie of it by denying through an act of will all sorts of stuff they would actually like to do. The trouble is ultimately this facsimilie is ego or grasping/attachment driven, and so delivers suffering instead of the above joy. The essential problem from the Buddhist perspective is that if we seek joy/pleasure by direct means or as an end in itself it's never maintained. ""What if the goal is to reach a state where many beings abide in a state of love and oneness with each other? Is there anything wrong with such a goal? Such a goal is beyond seeking joy/pleasure by direct means. It is a matter of finding that true fulfillment is obtained, only after we learn to love unconditionally to an extent, where we are able to share state of oneness with each other. Once we allow ourselves to experience such a state of being, where will the need be for finding fulfillment through superficial means? When it comes to experiences other than the experience of love, surely, it is possible to enjoy something without being dependent upon it. To suggest that one can't learn to make use of the creative aspect of being in a meaningful way, is to suggest that one can't learn. Perhaps some teachers don't speak of how it is possible to become a master of one's creative ability, because they haven't learned to be a master of their creative energy. Instead, they tried to find a way to seperate themselves from the creative aspect of their being. This isn't anymore possible than it is to separate the sun from its radiance.  Not even if a person found a way to focus his or her attention so the creative aspect of his being wasn't apparent. My kundalini first awakened years ago. Then I got involved with non dual teachings and willed my kundalini not to rise, because I figured it got in the way of experiencing pure awareness. After meditating on pure awareness for a number of years, I started to develop various physical problems. Mainly, lower back, upper back, and neck pain. When I allowed my kundalini to come alive again, and worked on clearing the psychological issues that caused this energy to be blocked,  my physical problems improved significantly. Once my kundalini got to the point where it reached my crown chakra, it became hard for me to not acknowledge the energetic/creative aspect of being. For a while a lack of love during my meditations troubled me. Then one night the following sequence of images were shown to me (I've shared them before). First I was shown a lifesize heavy metal dude. I could see kundalini flowing through him. He said he uses his kundalini for evil. Next I was shown a lifesize demonic image of myself. Next I was shown the face of Jesus Christ. The message was clear. If I'm going to go through the kundalini unfoldment process and learn to make use of the creative aspect of my being, I need to make certain that I do so with Christ consciousness/love in mind. This is where Eastern teachings often fall short. They so much deny the creative aspect of being, that they don't completely deal with it. If one wants to evolve to being a light being, one needs to deal with the challenge of becoming a master of one's creative aspect of being.  If one does like I used to do and only acknowledges the awareness aspect of being, how will one reach the point where one deals with the creative aspect of being in a serious manner? There might be some Buddhist practices that help one deal with the challenges that mind includes, but to the degree that false premises exist within Buddhist teachings, one will be limited.  The complexity of what divinity has created won't be revealed to one who dismisses the capabilities of this divinity. For example, the ability to make use of the creative aspect of being in a manner that is so perfect, it would be ridiculous to think in terms of negating it as mere illusion."" I guess as I've said before it's hard with meditative experience that seems to very convincingly separate the parts that appear to make up the self (higher mind/awareness from thinking mind and body) to posit an unbreakable linkage between them. ""I sort of covered this above, I'll add something else. I've had meditations where I experienced myself as an awareness/energy being while watching and hearing all kinds of imagery play out in front me.  Numerous things including people involved in various activities. It felt as if I was a being who was independent from what I experienced, yet what I experienced partly came from me.  Even though I experienced what I experienced as being separate from me, I was still there as a distinctive spirit being. There are three things that enabled me to be a distinct being. One, I had a parcel (chunk ;)) of awareness/creative energy that belonged to me; 2) I had the ability to think independently; and 3) I had the knowledge I had acquired up to that time.  By knowledge I don't mean concepts that limited me. I mean knowledge that enabled me to exist as a spirit being who isn't limited by the creative thought energy I make use of. The spirit beings I communicate with seem to be masters of making use of creative energy. There existence is no longer a case of their following the whims of their minds.  I don't believe it would be reasonable to tell them that they won't be able to keep it up for all of eternity. It seems to me that when people hold the viewpoint that the creative aspect of mind can't be used in a manner that represents perfection, they are speaking from the perspective of unperfected mind, rather than perfected mind."" We each in the end have to make our own call on these things though. Buddhist teaching certainly makes a tight case on the nature of self, but without experience this isn't proof and its possible to suggest alternatives. My personal tendency though is to find it hard to ditch Buddhist teaching - it's always so incredibly comprehensive and practically applicable. ""Just make certain that Buddhist teachings will take you as far as you want to go. I've found that they won't do the trick for me."" The risk as I see it of having something invested in continuity of a total self is that at the practical level it may make the achievement of the selflessness implicit in loving behaviours a lot more difficult to realise. ""I doubt that a self could ever wish itself out of existence. Suicide cases come closest, and they aren't the model to follow. A being who truly loves itself won't give up on itself, but instead will find a way where it can be truly happy. Eventually it will come to the point where it will find that the only way to do so, is to be a being who lives according to love. If this is its aim, selflessness won't be a problem."" If the bardo teachings are correct it may ultimately lead to pretty scarifying experience with the dissolution of self too. ""I had my night in heaven experience before I got involved with a spiritual practice. Many near death experiencers have experienced a higher realm without going through an extensive spiritual practice that emphasized the idea of "no self."  This shows that people don't end up in lower bardo like realms just like that. They probably end up in such a realm because they lived an unloving life. Isn't it interesting that NDE people don't tend to speak in terms of you have to negate your sense of self in order to evolve? Rather, they emphasize than one needs to grow in love.""   I can't on the other hand see any great downside to remaining easy on the issue, in that it'll presumably sort itself out in due course..... ""Perhaps a part of this sorting out process includes some people trying to see if there are perspectives that go beyond the perspective people such as the Buddha spoke about. What if despite his reputation, his teachings don't represent the ultimate? Should mankind be bound by them for as long as mankind exists?""

I feel that we have a philosophical impasse here that arises from widely different terms and usages.  For example, Eastern philosophy uses karma as the global teaching engine, and until the 'Gita, where Krishna specificaly states that he returns, views spiritual growth as a natural part of life. Christianity in particular favors the idea of the Christ, the bringer of new ways of life, as an emanation of God, and adds the Holy Spirit as having the essential nature of awareness. God, however, is viewed as essentially alien, while the East views God as essentially self. And without being very accurate nor specific, I could go on and on in the same light.

There is a philosophical perspective called a "multi-aspect theory", which is a statement that recognizes more than one way to look at and interpret things. In specific, one way to look at each of us is as individual, isolated, material beings, operating solely through stimulus-response conditioning. Another way is to view people as manifestations of God's creativity, and if we were Puritans, I'd have to add that this also implies total determinism. Or, in another perspective, we can view people as little bits of God-stuff that are out in the world, but which return to God. All these ideas, and a heck of a lot more, are true in at least one way. I'm not sure of any perspective that is true everywhere and in everyone's eyes, maybe there is none.

And, to asnswer why Siddhartha never simply said, "Hey guys, the image of God being a little old man who rides around on a cloud is invalid."  - The rishis to whom the words were addressed ultimately were unlikely to use those terms. Just as Jesus favored Aramaic the language for Siddhartha was Pali. That is not the language of philosophy, and all the words had to be translated into Sanskrit to make them "official" - rather like the Latin Vulgate being the scholar's bible.

As we sweat and strain to get these topis properly digested, I can't help but recall Mark Twain's remark about people struggling and shaking like a dog passing peach pits. In fact, we all are in basic agreement - except that our language hides this, and because we think in words, we feel that language is the nec plus ultra of criteria. To escape that is one reason the guru tells the student, "Don't try to verbalize what you experience - just be aware of it."

I do notice that we tend to take an adversarial posture in defense of our beliefs. This means that if we agree with everything except the placement of a punctuation mark, we're gonna tear into whatever is being said because of the offending comma. A better approach might be to acknowledge that for at least one other person, the other way is quite probably true. This means that as we get into these discussions, there is more space for "both and" thinking than there is for "neither nor" approaches.

Personally, I think that everyone is right. But I'm not quite sure how. ;-) But to try to respond in specific - "My kingdom is not of this world." or "Let the dead bury the dead." - We can't create a spiritual world out of a material universe. However, we can do the reverse and from spirit obtain a material manifestation, and one that fits everyone. "In my Father's house are many mansions." or "I go to prepare a place for you," and so on.

Self negating ideas are simply logical errors. One example is that "by waging war we can create peace". In fact, war creates hatred and lingering rage, both of which are antithetical to peace. It was this realization that led to the League of Nations, and its sucessors.


As energetic "awarenbess beings" we are not "things". The "thingly" aspect is a material superposition and assumed by us in order to localize what we see. In fact, we are a dynamic, a process, and the fact that we can attach to matter is merely a happenstance. Of course it's useful, as it gives us a place with logical limits, and through them we learn.

"Suffering" is a technical term that means "life is imperfect". We have to do unpleasant thngs, like catching cold, or going to work, or wiping up the mess after spilling the milk. Your beautiful lady would doubtless agree that it is a bother (that means suffering) that she has to wear panty-hose and paint her face or be a social outcast.

Not being able to work out the kinks in manifestation is indeed the problem with going on to bigger and better things. There are abundant sources of suggestions from all the moral and religious leaders over all time that attempt to help us with this. Buddhism offers another way. So does Vedanta, Tantra and Theosophy - if properly interpreted. (Sorry - Proper interpretation is not my department.)

The reason to deny an ultimately isolated self is to send the mind backwards to its origins. We all came from God, and ultimately we have nowhere else to which to return. Buddhists of the day, disliked the notion of God in the sense of what Burton's Kasiddha called a "bigger, stronger, crueller man, the phantom of our baby fears ... ere time began" and were equally down on the idea of God as a material being. God, in the sense of a dynamic, the same as our own nature, is not a thing" but a sort of condition of everything-at-once. We can make sense out of God and the rest in terms of many levels of understanding, many of which would be differwent, but in the end, denial of a material God simply focusses us on that which lies beyond - literally transcendent of "thingness". To deny "thingness" gives us hope of realization of ourselves as the dynamic spaks of God-stuff that we are. Or, if you prefer, we are parts of our True Self, Mind, the Ultimate Awareness behind the experience of the Cosmic Consciousness. Attachment to matter makes this an elusive idea.

Love amounts to oneness, all are as myself, and all are as God. Multiplicity is thus illusory. This is more easily understood in the sense that it is the opposite of nanda, or harmfulness, separation etc. If you want the traditional meanings of love, joy and awareness it is necessary to look at sat-chit-ananda in terms of the meanings of the terms themselves and how they arose from the three gunas.

There is no attempt to squash the individual. Nirvana is the "blowing out" or "snuffing" of attachments because one has found something better. You remain you. But you also are everyone else. The individualizing traits of jealousy, hatred, rage and the other terms that make soap operas so endearing to us are antithetical to life by their nature. The history of life, discoveries, experiences etc all remain. There is no need to remove them, as they are part of the collective awareness of reality. These are the childhood experiences of the "First Being". Learning how to grow does not negate the personality of the child. There is no spriitual value to pooping one's pants forever, so kids grow out of it. The same with attachments and negative emotions.


Christain doctrine is not wrong. Jesus was not a liar. The words simply point to other places to look besides Buddhism etc. The false aspect here is to presume that because our favorite avatar has spoken, nothing but those words are true. This is obviouslty foolish. Abraham had a good deal to say that Moses had failed to utter, but that doesn't negate Moses. Jesus' words do not negate Abraham. Mohammed's words do not negate Jesus. Each simply said a little about a vast topic, and none expressed the totality of all that could be said. This is simply self evident.

We live in our thoughts. Even the body to which we are so fondly attached has no property by which it is able to express itself except as an opinion as to the source of sensation, hence of thought. My suggestion is that matter neither needs to occur, nor do we need to believe in it. Instead, we can do equally well to deal exclusively with sets of properties. And because we are dynamic, and not static lumps, these are dynamic properties. The reason that we cling to the idea of physical objects is because it makes sense relative to our other explanations of the world.  Matter is a convenient delusion, but not a necessary one.

dave

hey there deep thinkers. hi.

I like to tell what I call my NDE. the physical death of the body is not necessary to have a mystical journey.
if I tell my story, it's from my inner being, so even though this thread brings up many thoughts to respond to I'll just put this story down. I think it may even answer some questions that maybe someone else would say, that happened to me also.

I awoke as if in another dimension of reality, where there was no gravity and I sensed I could move differently here, I didn't have to walk, I could float or glide, but I preferred the walking motion I was used to, although I moved much faster here. at this time I was not thinking I had died..it was just a strange place to be in, unfamiliar. I was still me. This is for R. I was myself. I knew my basic self to be, as some guidance dream told me, "the seeker, the finder, and the observer of the other two."

I was very close to a physical plane of existence and attempted interaction with what I assume were physical beings. a few were aware of my attempts to communicate, but mostly they were apprehensive of my being there, as these two dimensions do not that often reveal to the physical eye.
feeling despondent, knowing I needed interaction I wandered away and momentarily blinked out. here I note the blinking out action. I developed a theory to test out. I'll jot that down later.
when I blinked back on, with this awareness of who I was, I found myself in the presence of one who loved me and whom I loved. right away I was formulating the power of love to "save."
I asked my darling what was wrong that it seemed I was not seen and heard, what could I do? I needed to find my place. my baby was crying and told me I was dead. that was what was wrong. I was between two worlds.

most people would probably not become jubilant at this point, but I did. I knew she spoke the truth and that was why the others could not welcome me to their table.
at first, I chided myself for not realizing I had died. Then I saw the fallacy of this self blame and stopped it. I only knew I now had to go find my place, but before she told me I was dead, I would have remained with her, not knowing where to go.
and so I began to work with retrievals, and love had retrieved me to the truth.

I was one with my kid, because love makes us one. love saves. love is god. we call it PUL here. I like to call it undistorted love, because it is undistorted by the seeking aspects of human nature, so it is a higher love.
this experience was one of the greatest of my entire life, although there have been a few more, this one helped me deal with retrievals.

so the best part is coming. I left my daughter there after promising her and knowing I could keep my promise, that I would be back.
I didn't consider seeking JC or god as I don't see these entities as possessing a permanent form, but spread out, and everywhere.
for symbols, I gave to my sleeping brain these symbols of what my being reach for.
It was with incredible yearning I reached my arms up to fly up. a swift current took me, liquid and warm I rose faster than light travels. I was pure energy.

but before rising was a thought of the unknown. there is fear attached to the unknown. it is intrinsic to be human, to also have fears, but we can overcome fears by taking a risk.
it felt like I could stay there. at least I had beingness right where I was.
however, I also knew there was nothing here for me, as it were, between two dimensions but more of the same inability to communicate with those here, as I was ghostly.

so I rose up thinking this may be the ultimate dying experience but here goes, as nothing else to do. Just before ascending I thought about faith. that even if I died for real, I had this faith which essentially meant there was something orderly about the universe which knew where to put me. so I shut my eyes and kissed the face of god is the only way I can put it.
dying was ecstasy and when I rushed through the tunnel like thing I could hear a 1,000 welcoming whispers which took away all apprehension in my choice to go up.

I had lost nothing of myself. I was escorted by a knowing to a room similar to this board in all respects. people were reaching across miles to others from the station of this room and they all knew me and said hi as I passed.
we were in the shift in consciousness, at the front of it with many others.

Love is all there is, all the rest doesn't matter much, all roads will end up back home, where the atmosphere is always welcoming..
my teacher said to give up judgment of all the different paths as someday we won't need all the different religions, but now they are like tools.

love, alysia

Greetings,

Self is a big mystery to me, and the more I read here the bigger the mystery gets! This is about the only topic in the afterlife where I am getting more evidence and yet getting more confused.

We know we have multiple selves because we know of self-retrievals, and of bi-location, such as Bruce's at the workshop in Japan. Now we have Aysia's NDE and "Kara' believing she is dead and requesting a retrieval; did they in fact bilocate and lose so many 'layers' that the remaining person-part was robbed of feeling life?  People in comas or with other illnesses seem to have lost vital parts of themselves too. When some split off and change their mode of operating from the mainstream 'person'ality, we get fearful. Something unknown and to some, very threatening is happening.

We don't have a model or concept for this type of layering, do we?
Does each self have a total soul, or do they report in to the major soul, as perhaps Alan's vision suggests? Do we have any evidence that a halographic model is appropriate?

Wonderring,
Bets

Hi Recoverer and all,

I have thought on a closely related topic this way:
 The relationship of the "I" and it's memories: For a person in the usual sense there are special memories needed. But for the more basic "I" / "here" / "me" it doesn't seem so, it is more that this "I" is providing the possibility of memory in the first place, so that it is that the "I" "has" or "owns" memories, but would be still there without them, though not easy to imagine. Imagine someone would give his/her memories to you, directly, so that you really had that memories, like first-hand memories. You, or more precise, your "I" would still be there, only with more memories. Imagine all memories of all people would melt into one. Surprisingly, only one "I" would be sufficient for all these memories, without a loss. How is this possible? It is because the pure "I", without memories, is always the same, as it is something like a state, a function, and all "I"s are the same. So, it is possible to merge with everything and everyone without losing the "I", as the "I" is the same in everyone. (Of course, it doesn't fit with the "many mansions", unless it is meant the personal origin of memories endures, like "these memories once are gathered under the person of Charles Smith" or so)

 Your guidance-experienced is quite interesting Recoverer. Those persons we are close to, we might think it is easier to be "one" with them; but it can appear as quite opposite, this closeness can make us aware of the differences in the personalities, while with strangers we don't know so well there is not this hindering threshold. In the terms of my thoughts above, when you look at the person, the personal memories and, following, attitudes, the difference between persons might be emphasized, while looking at the unity of the "I" function and the, at least in theory possible direct-sharing of memories, the oneness of all is emphasized.

 Thanks Dave, your brief comments are so clear. The difficulty, as it appears to me, is simply that it can seem that you have nothing "to lean on" without all these (or at least one) things which we're used to deal with in the physical life. So, we have to get used to "emptiness" without looking for "something" to hold on.

Recoverer wrote: "How can one self fully experience love and oneness if there is nobody to share it with?"
 Ultimately, if there is only one, one can share love with oneself, and it would be allright. It is like "love your neighbour as you love yourself" in the state of oneness.


Spooky

I recall listening to the Dalai Lama speaking on one of the sutras, and emphasizing that there is nothing permanent in the world. Since "beginningless time" it seems that there has been what Alan Watts called a "peopleing tendency" - the world tending to make people come out of emptiness. In fact, the world itself came out of emptiness. Since al created things are aggregates, and since the nature of aggregates is to fall apart, nothing is permanent.

Looking further, everything carries the essence of ts nature as a potential offering to other things - thus, when two of them meet, the natures of each manifest in formation of a new aggregate. The qualities of the new aggregate emerge when this new object interacts, and so on. Thus, the nature of today's interactions s found only in tomorrow's interactions, expressed as properties of whatever today has brought forth. Without that dynamic expression, after the fact, there is no expression by which today's activities can be known.  In other words, there is no time or place at which anything comes fully to rest. At absolute zero the world stops existing, and at any other temperature, it is a dynamic interaction of properties, for which we merely project the notion of fixed reality. In this ultimate sense, nobody is alone, because the very activity we manifest ourselves has come from our own creation, our own emergence, from another dynamic system. As close to rest as we can come is the practice of yoga, whether formally, or in informal settings, such as soul retrievals and meditation.

Looking to find a stable place to stand is thus impossible. Material reality is a myth, and when we look closer, the most stable of all that we know remans temporary and variable. This also applies to God, the dynamic from which we arose. It appears that the only reason we believe in a material reality is that we observe both potential states, mostly inside our heads, and we also observe extended reality, always external to us. Extended reality seems to be stuff that was projected from God prior to our own arising, hence is logically prior to us, and as a result, we can't do much with it, but it can affect us readily. The yogi can come into balance with the dynamic of satchitananda, but it still is dynamic

From this perspective, there is no place to rest. Everything is motion. At death we lose attachment to our local anchor, the physical body, but remain part of God. Sensing God is to sense the Light, an overwhelming brilliance of energy. That gives three major divisions to our spiritual experience: birth, liberation, and return to Godhead.

For us who are still alive and kicking, liberation (meaning satchitananda) is an adequate choice. And as far as I can tell, that's as good as it gets.

dave

8-)

Hi,

“Dave wrote and he is so wise and correct”

“As energetic "awareness beings" we are not "things". The
"thingly" aspect is a material superposition and assumed by us in order to localize what we see. In fact, we are a dynamic, a process, and the fact that we can attach to matter is merely a happenstance. Of course it's useful, as it gives us a place with logical limits, and through them we learn”.


Yes, Dave is right we are not “THINGS” we are eternal unique self-awareness’s that continue just like God our creator to exist forever. (Not in linear time, the ever-changing moment of now)

Our material bodies have within them what I call the "everlasting essence". It cannot be destroyed or annihilated into some mindless cosmic soup.

I have been on the other side of life during my nde. I know I don’t hypothesize that we continue as persons retain our unique awarenesses and progress up towards the light of the Infinite One. We merge with each other and God over there in mind-to-mind contact and have access to the Divine mind of God. We are not absorbed into some mindless cosmic soup. As this would be extinction of self the ultimate horror of man.

I don’t care about the convoluted twisted philosophizing OF MANY on this side of life have been and have died and seen, unlike them the real reality of the afterlife. I have never been to New York and can read about it until the cows come home, but never ever know it like someone who lives  there. Only when I finally make the journey myself. only then will I know the real feel, ambiance, vibrancy and truth about this great city.

Alan

Hi Recoverer, pardon the delay in my replying to your long answer come distance above - I've been away quite a lot and can't keep up with all the threads running at the moment.

I'm not sure as Dave suggests that we necessarily disagree that much.

First off I'm as before not formally a Buddhist  - precisely because I don't want to be bound by what for me can often be institutional or cultural dogma or patterns of behaviour. When I draw on Buddhist views it's not out of some unconditional acceptance of them - it's more out of a sense that they align with my own instincts and are at this stage of the game more than credible to me.

I can in this regard agree that the culture and behaviour that one often encounters in Buddhist groups can seem a bit conformist and lacking in creative spark and interpretation. It's quite tough to explain, but i think the following are maybe factors.

The principle of accurate transmission of the output of realised teachers often whether intentionally or otherwise suppresses debate - although with good reason: most of us would much rather shoot our mouths off than listen or learn, and the result when control is not applied is inevitably a confusing babble of nonsense. (debate is nevertheless a central aspect of monastic life)

The downside of this compromise is maybe that lots of what's more a reflection of either the idiosyncracies of individual teachers, the personality profile of those Buddhism attracts and elements of the fairly hierarchical traditions it springs from de-facto and inadvertently gets built into the culture than is remotely reflected in the teachings. Especially in local dharma centres where those teaching and setting the tone are not themselves very realised, students are not necessarily very discriminating and where access to realised teachers is both rare and restricted to formal circumstances.

Related to the above is the fact that the public teachings that one encounters in dharma centres tend to be pretty basic. The higher teachings which involve working with non ordinary realities are taught in 1:1 teacher/student relationships, and only after considerable preliminary meditation and other work has been completed. Even if you are ready it can for purely practical reasons (geography, numbers etc) be quite difficult to access teachers at this sort of level.

Another factor is spiritual materialism (I mentioned Chogyam Trungpa's book on the topic before)  - people start acting out facsimilies of what they take to be devout behaviours for institutional and ultimately egotistical reasons, and these act to block spontaneity and groundedness.

A final factor is perhaps the very genuine problem that most of the pro-active forceful action to right wrongs that seems quite reasonable to our Western mindset when viewed holistically does more harm  than good. We tend easily to conclude that Buddhism delivers excessive passivity, when true wisdom perhaps lies much closer to this end of the continuum than we like to admit.

These issues most certainly do not reflect the teaching of the more realised voices in Tibetan Buddhism for example - which teaches and hugely values the sort of spontaneity and creativity you talk of.

The thread on the reality of love in a sense tackles the issue of just how difficult it is to truly be able to live from love, and perhaps explains why the purity of the message received from any institution must by definition be in some way blurred by the consciousness of the total membership.

I posted at length on this before, but I can only suggest that in approaching Buddhism it's important to as taught by the Buddha from the start to retain discrimination and to avoid blind faith - to fish for the core teachings and what they truly mean, to verify them through experience, and to not indiscriminately take on board everything that one is exposed to.

At the end of all of this I have to again confirm that Buddhism has for me proven incredibly powerful in solving life issues and providing an intelligible overview. I'm only scratching the surface, it shows no signs of running out of steam.

On some of your other points. As before Buddhism teaches that how we live our lives is very important indeed. It's basic goal is through compassion to end the suffering of all sentient beings - by teaching a path to transcend ego. Learning and abiding in love are central.

Action in the world is therefore central too.

On kundalini. I too have benefited enormously from the use of kundalini meditation to ease all sorts of health and wellbeing issues. Especially this year using a book recommended by you guys. I jumped the gun as I could not locally access this sort of teaching. But kundalini meditation is taught in Buddhism too - but at higher (vajrayana) levels as its regarded as potentially dangerous until we have established a basic stability of mind through more basic meditative practice.

Point being. To be a light worker some sort of basic spiritual competence is necessary or we risk doing harm to ourselves or others. The tools for creative work most certainly are taught, but its true that few students progress this far and that it's as above hard to access teachers at the right level.

Finally on the transient nature of self. Alan more or less caught the Buddhist view again, as did Dave. Which may or may not seem to make sense, or to appeal.

But as ever we each have to reach our own conclusions.....

Who says what seems less interesting to me than their basis for saying it, since the degree of "wisdom and correctness" in people's posts appears to have something to do with not talking about that which they haven't experienced in some manner. We have some people on the forum who are qute advanced spiritually.

Here's an example. You reported sensing yourself amidst many of your selves - an experience that I have also had under different circumstances. This seems to be a fairly common experience. Each of those "other selves" must have been equally well qualified to represent the inner personality residing within it, so that you were, in a sense, in a group of parallel selves, each essentially equal to the other, except that "you" were in the one in the middle. Perhaps if you had identified with one of the others you would have moved into that worldline and experienced that parallel reality. That you experienced these alternatives suggests that you have extended your reach in some new direction,

That kinda suggests that there must be an awful lot of otherwise equivalent beings in parallel universes. Since parallel universes split off parent universes at every decision point, many of these "other selves" are essentially clones up to some point, and diverge thereafter.

I personally feel that if you were to look all the way down that line of alternative selves, at the very end it would terminate in God, since that's where the initial individuation occurred. And, by the same token, all the multiple selves can be properly viewed as fragments of God. At the same time, they can be viewed as alternative personal selves.

dave

Absolutely correct Dave,

Regards

Alan 8-)

hi all, a continuing great thread, thanks to R for starting it. it appears due to my meditations I was to develop my mental into balance with my emotional state this life, so since especially Ian's arrival here on the board, I have taken up to study these two, in comparison, these 2 if I may call them religions, Buddhism versus my traditional focus on JC the man who ascended.

I find absolutely no problem between the two so far, I compare, I don't incorporate truth until it hits the 2nd chakra with a thud, a physical reaction to some bit of info I had needed. some will understand this reaction to be a gut feeling.

I'm studying Leadbeater's book "Inner Life" and came across this reference to Buddha and wanted to share so I'll quote it:
"If any reference at all is to be placed upon exoteric tradition, even the Buddha himself, who descended from higher planes with the definite intention of taking birth to help the world knew nothing clearly of his mission after he had entered his new body, and regained full knowledge only after years of searching for it. Undoubtedly, he could have known from the first had he chosen, but he did not choose; he submitted himself to what seems to be the common lot." end quote

This struck me as the martyr or archetype, where god comes to town, with a comparison of JC the ordinary carpenter, who studied with various teachers before coming into his own enlightenment and before he struck out on his own to find fishers of men.

Also, I recall in my studies of A Course in Miracles, the statement that as we evolve, we start to "remember" who and what we are with each additional experience where mental and emotional meet with import.
Also when I found TMI teachings, the same objective as above; Indeed, in Bruce's books he starts off with "I needed to find out who and what I was."

If we proceed towards enlightenment with the objective of remembering, versus learning, but remembering, who and what we are, this objective, this sort of focusing supposes that knowledge is already there and will be dropped into the consciousness that is ready for that, either thru experiencing, relating, paranormal experiences, meditation, self discovery thru risk taking, there must be so many ways to discover who and what you are.

this is why I like this board, as there is no dogma or indoctrination here, although our words are twice removed from reality, it's ok, the purpose we come here together is being fulfilled nonetheless. the accent is always upon your own experiential realm so that others may do their own explorations, and the guidelines only point to that, the work is always on your own head.
so it's fun. I am comparing this to that, to find the collective area where we are as one, to be affecting of each other. I have found another source of the godhead, that we also enact to be creating of each other.
through the mind, we can "see" another person and build an image of that person with astral particles and mental particles, thought is a thing.

so we can be in this sense, putting a person on a pedestal. that is what I meant about "creating" another person.  then, if they do that to you too, what happens is two false images are created that need to be introduced to the truth, that they are not whom we thought they were.
we also create a false image of god. there is talk of this in the bible, of making graven images. You will observe romantic relationships are like this, where we create an image of the beloved as well.
The higher type vibrations of our loving essence's do not "make up stories" about another person, but rather, we are one on the other levels, and continually play off of each other to reveal who and what we really are, and not who and what somebody else says we are or are not.
essentially the non duality state of consciousness we are all moving into, or sliding into against our will at times, as it's like a roller coaster ride, but it can be like a pleasant walk through nature also.

I have a happy feeling about 2008. I'm glad you are all here to talk to or I would be one lonely person!

you are love.

Alan wrote:  "I have been on the other side of life during my nde. I know I don’t hypothesize that we continue as persons retain our unique awarenesses and progress up towards the light of the Infinite One. We merge with each other and God over there in mind-to-mind contact and have access to the Divine mind of God. We are not absorbed into some mindless cosmic soup. As this would be extinction of self the ultimate horror of man."

---------------------

I agree.  What Alan wrote matches my experiences and what I've been told by the beings of light I'm in contact with. Just because everything started as one being all by itself, this doesn't mean that everything needs to return to such an unmodified state, in order for ultimate reality and oneness to exist.

Sometimes people like to say that Eastern teachers and Jesus taught the same thing. I don't believe this is true. When people suggest such a thing, they tend to refer to a few of Jesus' statements that can be interpreted in such a way. It seems to me that Jesus came here to tell people to live their life in a good and loving way, so when it it is their time to move on to the World of spirit, they can move on to a nice place. As you sow so you reap. He didn't tell people that they need to find out that their perception of being a distinct individual is nothing but an illusion that needs to be negated, so they'll stop reincarnating over and over and over again.

NDE reports tend to match what Jesus has to say, rather than what Eastern gurus have to say. I have yet to find an NDE which states that we have to find out that our existence as an individual soul is nothing but an illusion. Rather, NDEs tend to confirm our existence as unique souls, and the need to grow in love.

I use to believe what the gurus have to say, until I had the audacity to question them.

Spooky:

Responses within double quotation marks below.


[quote author=spooky2 link=1198867968/0#8 date=1198975544]Hi Recoverer and all,

I have thought on a closely related topic this way:
 The relationship of the "I" and it's memories: For a person in the usual sense there are special memories needed. But for the more basic "I" / "here" / "me" it doesn't seem so, it is more that this "I" is providing the possibility of memory in the first place, so that it is that the "I" "has" or "owns" memories, but would be still there without them, though not easy to imagine. Imagine someone would give his/her memories to you, directly, so that you really had that memories, like first-hand memories. You, or more precise, your "I" would still be there, only with more memories. Imagine all memories of all people would melt into one. Surprisingly, only one "I" would be sufficient for all these memories, without a loss. How is this possible? It is because the pure "I", without memories, is always the same, as it is something like a state, a function, and all "I"s are the same. So, it is possible to merge with everything and everyone without losing the "I", as the "I" is the same in everyone. (Of course, it doesn't fit with the "many mansions", unless it is meant the personal origin of memories endures, like "these memories once are gathered under the person of Charles Smith" or so)

""Think of the one self as a large room with many computer terminals. Each computer has the capability to make use of thoughts, even if they have none to deal with. Replace digital computers with bio computers in the form of human minds. Each mind has the ability to make use of thoughts, even if they have no thoughts to be aware of.

If it is possible that energy can be used to create physical computers and bio computers, isn't it possible that energy can be used to create spirit computers/souls/individual "Is?" How precisely a source being would do such a thing, I don't know. However, I figure that disks, planning intelligences and even higher levels of intelligence are quite crafty, and can use energy in just about any way they want, even if a guru who doesn't know about their existence claims that they don't exist.

When in human form, "Is" tend to be quite limited. When they progress further, usually sometime after death, they find out that there is much more to an "I' than meets the eye.  They'll find that they are connected to disks/I-theres/Soul groups/whatever name you like to use, and they'll have access to all kinds of memories/information that they'll be able to make use of according to need. They'll find that it is possible to make use of knowledge in a manner that is so wise and loving, that no need to negate the existence of an "I" comes into being.

Through all of this each I will find out that it is is connected to many "Is" including source I, at a divine center of consciousness and creative energy that had an instant where it wasn't modified.  Since time didn't exist at such an instant, it doesn't make sense to say for how long source being existed in such an unmodified state""



 Your guidance-experienced is quite interesting Recoverer. Those persons we are close to, we might think it is easier to be "one" with them; but it can appear as quite opposite, this closeness can make us aware of the differences in the personalities, while with strangers we don't know so well there is not this hindering threshold. In the terms of my thoughts above, when you look at the person, the personal memories and, following, attitudes, the difference between persons might be emphasized, while looking at the unity of the "I" function and the, at least in theory possible direct-sharing of memories, the oneness of all is emphasized.

""I get what you're saying. I also figure it is a matter of seeing that a person I define in a limited way, is actually an unformed being who makes use of its experiences in various ways.

Think of it this way. Quite often we view people as the body based people they appear to be.  The soul that occupies a person's body could've just as well occupied another body, and seem to be a completely different person.  If one wants to see a self/soul as it actually is, one needs to be able to see beyond the appearances of a particular person, and see that there is a divine soul that exists in a manner that is far beyond what body based personas are about.""

 Thanks Dave, your brief comments are so clear. The difficulty, as it appears to me, is simply that it can seem that you have nothing "to lean on" without all these (or at least one) things which we're used to deal with in the physical life. So, we have to get used to "emptiness" without looking for "something" to hold on.

""The question is, is there just one self that has nothing to lean on, or one self and the many souls it created that have nothing to lean on? I've had meditations where I saw that I wasn't a particular persona, yet I knew that I was still somehow distinct from Spooky, Alan, Vajra, Alysia, Dave, Betson and others.  For example, I don't know what you had for breakfast this morning.

On the other hand, what if beings develop to the point where they know how to live according to love and wisdom.  Wouldn't such an ability be something to lean on?""



Recoverer wrote: "How can one self fully experience love and oneness if there is nobody to share it with?"
 Ultimately, if there is only one, one can share love with oneself, and it would be allright. It is like "love your neighbour as you love yourself" in the state of oneness.

""Perhaps one being could spend all of eternity loving itself and no one else. Perhaps this one being figured it would be much more fun if many other beings, perhaps infinite in number, got to join in on the fun. Perhaps this is where the reproductive instinct really comes from. Some might say that the urge to reproduce is simply a survival of the speices thing. Perhaps some of us want to share the gift of life with others, and have others to share love with. If in the end existence can be a wonderfully joyous thing rather than just a bunch of suffering, why not?""  

Albert

I think what an illusion is, needs defining by the individual, not what a "trainee" says, as they can be only partially correct in what they offer so the need for discrimination.

the illusions and misinterpretations of who and what we are is at the crux of the matter or we have the blind leading the blind. we may have to go back to this reference when studying humanity and self determination: We were created in the image of god, not that we created god in our image.

yet our essence, I can see is unchanging as god is, in reference to god being love.

I myself and all of us have labored under illusions and to explain this, an allusionary belief system would be something which is not a substantial, eternal truth, yet while under it's influence, the soul advances through trial and error of testing it's premises and eventually breaks through the illusion, in this trek through time.

what I think the Buddhists are doing is pointing to man's propensity to self agrandizement, a thing Ian is calling the ego. We all know what the ego can do to another ego, when it is being inconsiderate of the others whom it may be leading, such as a boss who is not considering what his employees actually need in the work environment. or, like the Hitler thread. there is a man who had huge power issues and somehow got the population thinking the same thoughts, that Jews were hindering the process of human evolvement.  this is what can happen if an ego makes the wrong choice, for the greatest inconsideration, the greatest illusion, in terms of the statement god is love, and you and I came from that love, the greatest illusion we can go wrong on is to assume one person is loved greater by god, than another, and is therefore more fit to occupy the planet.

Hitler is the type of person where he suffered under this illusion of self granduer. yet he is an extreme example, still, we all have our illusions, and the only absolute truth would be love, a type of energy we are composed of which unites us, while we still retain the fruits of our labor, our individualism.
perhaps then in conclusion we are looking at two thought systems which can lead to enlightenment;
1) Buddhism says what you are not
2) Christianity says what you are

this is extremely generalized. and I do not believe in evil demons as anything more than a fabrication, or illusion. I see that what is called evil has been cast from heaven but returns as the prodigal son. yet what is brutality, it can become like a thought form, but not be eternal and so is not able to return to heaven, where eternal things abide.
I disagree a bit with Dave, there are resting areas on the other side as anything we need or want is also there, to be creating of that.
we can be stagnant if we wish, but I do not call it a state of non-movement.

I may conjecture Buddhism is aware of the way humans are constantly changing, moving out of this role into another role, changing careers, changing mates, changing housing, and so I can conjecture we do this and we discover in this way, what is good for the goose is not in every case good for the gander.

the amazing thing about life at all, is having a life in the first place, we need to get to the thank you part. we used to say grace at the table. thank you for the food. we don't hardly say thank you to anyone anymore, let alone god. gratitude also is a creative endeavor.

concluding for real now, lol, if I have an idea, and another person has an idea, if he shares his idea with me, I now have 2 ideas, and the same for him.

therefore we are more when we join with others, for we may create a 3rd idea from that joining. Buddism, all religions are just ideas, it's the intentions that are important within the sharing, not the ideas themselves. and the way I see it, life is sometimes two steps backwards and one step forwards..then other times a great leap forward, but surely we will discover we are on a journey from our home, and we get there by assisting others to get where they want to go.

Alysia:

Here is where I hooked up with you. You love life, and I love life. You love to love others, and I love to love others. Therefore, there is no need to get rid of each of us for the sake of sophistry.

I don't know about what Leadbetter had to say about Buddha; however, I must not state that even if all gurus are false (??), they aren't all the same.  There are many gurus who have had spiritual experiences. The thing is, having spiritual experiences and being a master of one's self, aren't the same. It could be that some gurus incarnated into the World in order to help out, but somewhere along the line they became more interested in having a life style where they are put on a pedestal and treated as an all knowing master, rather than keeping their attention focussed on their divine purpose.

Consider the main false guru I knew. I could tell that he had some bonified spiritual experiences. Unfortunately, he decided to play the role of guide for others, before he completed the business of taking care of himself. Eventually the parts of self he never took care of, started to get the best of him.

Many false gurus don't fall within these parameters. They are simply people who get off on controlling and manipulating others, being put on a pedestal, and making lots of money in a dishonest way.

Betson:

What you're asking reminds me of when my higher self enabled me to experience about 12 different perspectives at the same time. I felt like I was this large spacious spirit being who wasn't defined in a particular way, yet I was still "me." I figure that what we experience as we spiritually evolve, is more about accumulating the information that helps us figure out what everything is about, rather than defining ourselves in a limited way that becomes a self imposed prison. As long as we learn about existence in a manner that eventually isn't limiting, where is the problem?



betson wrote on Dec 29^th, 2007 at 5:36pm:

Greetings, Self is a big mystery to me, and the more I read here the bigger the mystery gets! This is about the only topic in the afterlife where I am getting more evidence and yet getting more confused. We know we have multiple selves because we know of self-retrievals, and of bi-location, such as Bruce's at the workshop in Japan. Now we have Aysia's NDE and "Kara' believing she is dead and requesting a retrieval; did they in fact bilocate and lose so many 'layers' that the remaining person-part was robbed of feeling life?  People in comas or with other illnesses seem to have lost vital parts of themselves too. When some split off and change their mode of operating from the mainstream 'person'ality, we get fearful. Something unknown and to some, very threatening is happening. We don't have a model or concept for this type of layering, do we? Does each self have a total soul, or do they report in to the major soul, as perhaps Alan's vision suggests? Do we have any evidence that a halographic model is appropriate? Wonderring, Bets

Recoverer wrote: "How can one self fully experience love and oneness if there is nobody to share it with?"  
 Ultimately, if there is only one, one can share love with oneself, and it would be allright. It is like "love your neighbour as you love yourself" in the state of oneness.  

""Perhaps one being could spend all of eternity loving itself and no one else. Perhaps this one being figured it would be much more fun if many other beings, perhaps infinite in number, got to join in on the fun. Perhaps this is where the reproductive instinct really comes from. Some might say that the urge to reproduce is simply a survival of the speices thing. Perhaps some of us want to share the gift of life with others, and have others to share love with. If in the end existence can be a wonderfully joyous thing rather than just a bunch of suffering, why not?"
____
:)  this is where the idea of free will or choice in which direction to look is taken. we can choose to suffer, or we can choose to share with others our love.
I think what I love about this life, is saying out loud I love you. theres something about speaking the word..that way. there are many cannot say I love you. so I can say that, then they might remember they can choose to see love.

great summation R, on a great thread and maybe we aren't finished fattening it up yet!

I continue to have the most joyous communion with all of you whom I see as one with me.

Perhaps a key to determining if a being (parcel/chunk of consciousness-creative energy)  is a being in its own right, is if it is a being who makes decisions for itself and experiences accordingly.

Can the fact of many beings who decide for themselves and experience accordingly be denied, because somebody had an experience of pure consciousness? The fact of how many people have stated that they have experienced pure consciousness shows, that there are many people who were able to self determine their lives, so they could have such an experience. When a person has such an experience, source being and other people are effected only to the effect that the overall chain of causation is effected. This shows how multiplicity exists within oneness.

If we can look around a room and see many things, yet remain one being, couldn't God look around and see many beings, and still remain as the source being he is?

Is there anything to prevent us from seeing our uniqueness from each other and oneness with each other at the same time? Perhaps these two viewpoints are in conflict with each other only to the extent that we lable their relationship in such a way.

To suggest that everything needs to revert back to formlessness in order for God to be apparent, is to suggest that something other than God exists.

[quote author=dave_a_mbs link=1198867968/0#9 date=1198992630]I recall listening to the Dalai Lama speaking on one of the sutras, and emphasizing that there is nothing permanent in the world. Since "beginningless time" it seems that there has been what Alan Watts called a "peopleing tendency" - the world tending to make people come out of emptiness. In fact, the world itself came out of emptiness. Since al created things are aggregates, and since the nature of aggregates is to fall apart, nothing is permanent.

Dave: The above shows that we aren't saying the same thing. In fact, it clearly points to one of the main points about Eastern "philosophies" I don't agree with.  According to the above, there is no such thing as an eternal self/soul. All of us go through what we go through, until we commit spiritual suicide and think our way out of existence. In the end there will be just one large self that won't have room for the illusion of the rest of us. Therefore, the above approach is "nihilistic."

Where is the basis for saying that it isn't possible for intelligent light beings to learn to work with energy in a way so they can create an eternal experiencer?  Because personalities change? Because things like molecules have half lives and degrade? Personalities may change, but this doesn't mean that the parcels of consciousness that experience personalites stop being the parcels of awareness and creative energy they are. As long as the energy to do so remains, what is to prevent a parcel of consciousness from using its knowledge to prolong its existence to its heart's content?

Dalai Lama: "Excuse me sir (while speaking to a soul), it is time for you to think your way out of existence."

Soul: "But why dear Lama, I love my existence, and I have learned to use the creative power given to me by God, to live a wonderful life of love and light?"

Dalai Lama: "Because the Buddha said life is suffering."

Soul: "Dear Lama, many years ago I used to experience sufffering, but life is so wonderfully glorious now, I couldn't imagine giving it up. I ran into the Buddha the other day, and he has found the same.  It is true that energy can be used to create impermanent things such as personalities.  But this doesn't mean that a soul can't gain the knowledge that will enable it to experience a life of eternal perfection. It goes through the personality experiences it goes through, so it can gain the knowledge that will help it find a way to eternal perfection, that wouldn't be possible if self extinction was the final goal."    

Albert

dave_a_mbs wrote on Dec 30^th, 2007 at 8:17pm:

That kinda suggests that there must be an awful lot of otherwise equivalent beings in parallel universes. Since parallel universes split off parent universes at every decision point, many of these "other selves" are essentially clones up to some point, and diverge thereafter. I personally feel that if you were to look all the way down that line of alternative selves, at the very end it would terminate in God, since that's where the initial individuation occurred. And, by the same token, all the multiple selves can be properly viewed as fragments of God. At the same time, they can be viewed as alternative personal selves. dave

Regarding what Dave wrote above, if things worked out so parallel universes branched out indefinitely, just think of how much suffering there would be. For every version of us that finds a happy way of existing, there would be an infinite number of versions that live an infinite life of tremendous suffering an horror. Versions that manifest in the most disgusting manner imaginable.

When thinking in this way one might say: "The Buddha is right, life is suffering, and needs to be extinquished." The problem is, if the parallel universe viewpoint is true, wouldn't there be an infinite number of beings who live in a universe who never seek self extinction and therefore suffer horribly for all of eternity?

On the other hand, perhaps we evolve to the point where we have control over our creative thought energy, and we create only the realities we want to create.  We become wonderful unified beings, rather than beings who split off in an infinite number of ways without any say in the matter.

There might be some physicists such as Erwin Schrodinger (Meow!  ;)) who believe in the parallel universe viewpoint, but last I heard, the majority of the quantum mechanics'  community doesn't agree with this viewpoint.

referring to R's last comment in regards to Dave's more scientific view  :) this is why I found retrievals of self so helpful to my own growth.

Retrievals both of others and of the self, makes a person integrate their self into a whole person operating with full consciousness of who they were, who they are, and who they will become, as linear time becomes meaningless, as these 3 time inferences become one thing, when you remember an experience, instead of denying it did happen, and now you can deal with it, integrate it, and accept it did happen, so you rise above it that way, ending the suffering of denial, and it's easier to be loving others when you are whole, complete and accounted for, with no complaints.
In every person's life will come a time when suffering is not. even a belief system crash can be experienced as a type of suffering.
go thru enough crashes, it's like falling off a log after awhile, if one does not cling on to the old thoughts, the old ideas.
Buddhism does not advocate suffering any more than Christianity with it's pick up your cross idea.
R is right, when he says we do evolve into better quarters, thats precisely why we are here, that and it's a chance to make something out of yourself, or something out of nothing.
we all know you think Buddhism sucks R. go ahead and have the last word. I'll quit now.
take care of yourself.
love rules...

Alysia said: "we all know you think Buddhism sucks R. go ahead and have the last word. I'll quit now.
take care of yourself.
love rules...[/quote]"


;D ;D ;D
I wouldn't go that far.

However, as already stated, I don't like the idea that we get squashed like a bunch of unwanted pimples at the end.  Alysia, I know you say Buddhists don't think in such terms, but if you look at some of the things Vajra and Dave wrote, whether they realize it or not, they're thinking in such terms. For example, here are some of Dave's words again.

"I recall listening to the Dalai Lama speaking on one of the sutras, and emphasizing that there is nothing permanent in the world. Since "beginningless time" it seems that there has been what Alan Watts called a "peopleing tendency" - the world tending to make people come out of emptiness. In fact, the world itself came out of emptiness. Since al created things are aggregates, and since the nature of aggregates is to fall apart, NOTHING (emphasis added) is permanent."

Through out the years I've run accross many Eastern or Eastern oriented teachings that hold this view. What's to like?

Albert to his true self: "Sorry soul, but it is time for you disolve away, something about a lack of permanent aggregates."

Albert's Soul: "But wait a minute, there is something here where I am that is aware of these aggregates, and I have the ability to choose which aggregates I make use of."

Albert to his true self: "Sorry soul, but if people as reputable as the Buddha and Dalai Lama say I have no soul, then I have no soul, despite what my experience and common sense tell me."

Soul: "Well Albert, where do you think your experience and common sense come from? Haven't there been times where you've experienced things that are much deeper than a bunch of confused aggregates?"

Albert to his true self: "But soul, if I'm going to be the coolest kid on the block, I have to say that I agree with what people like the Buddha and Dalai Lama have to say, even if I don't."

Soul: "It's up to you Albert. Either you can seem pleasant to people for a short while, or you can exist as a magnificient divine soul for all of eternity. Which ever way you choose, I already have what I need to continue for all of eternity."

funny guy R  ;D

while you put forth your interpretation, you tend to place our friend Dave beneath your own utterances.
you are insensitive and disrespectful of other's beliefs. Dave has admitted he has never journeyed to heaven. Still, look at his contributions..he gives what he has, nothing more. I do not interpret his aggregates as less of a contribution to the whole of this board than your contribution story of your night in heaven. both are equally interesting, and both of you have good intentions that I can see through the words.

what I think u r missing, is you offer only your interpretation of Buddhism while someone offers their own interpretation.


Every one here has an opinion worth reading, or a question, or a poem, or a bit of something or other. I come from some mystical journeys, all quite personal, very difficult to put in words. everyone offers just their beliefs or their interpretations of those beliefs under discussion.

I sometimes am privileged to get emails from people whom cannot feel free to post their thoughts in public. Ian has undergone a transformation for the better he tells me in private. he was very ill before his Buddhistic study. he needed a place to write his story and his love of the transformational value of his studies.
whats it to you if Buddhism actually helped him? This forum is supposed to be about TMI, to my way of thinking, instead, we are drawing all sorts of people with all sorts of beliefs, we should let them have their say despite we may object to their philosophy.

Religion, Buddhism, physics discussions, whatever it is, it won't go away just because we object or condemn it. theres room for everyone here or there.

but at the least, I do believe we are all in agreement about the continuing of the soul despite any rumors you may have come across to the opposite, most of us don't pay attention to the idea of annhiliation as a possibility.

I think we should give Dave some credit, as he said he's about as psychic as his left shoe, yet he comes here and never once put me or Juditha down for some of things we profess as experiences...he's willing to learn from us. that, my friend, is what I call PUL in expression. he doesn't have to be psychic. I'll see him in heaven.

and as for our Buddhist who claims not to be a Buddhist fully, he's doing just fine in the PUL dept too. for some reason he trusted me, to tell me his story, and to remind me even, that the pen is a sword, and can cut deep, then I would have to pay the cost, I realized, of a careless word.
He trusted me, he guided me. He is something else, and doesn't even know of his great light, as it effects me. he's too humble.

you, R, will not know of humbleness for you can only speak against something, you do not speak for others. nor see their love, that they would give to you in a new york minute if you only would let them.

Alysia:

I don't write what I write because I want to insult people.  I figure if there are things about Eastern teachings that are false, somebody needs to speak out, even if some people end up thinking poorly of that somebody.  Shall Eastern teachings be allowed to share some of their false premises as much as they want, without anybody being allowed to present an alternate view? Why should people who believe in Eastern teachings be defensive?  Eastern teachings say things that clearly contradict what I've found to be true, yet I feel no need to feel personally defensive. I write what I write out of the goodness of my heart, even if it doesn't appear that way.

In the end, whether or not souls are eternal isn't a matter of personal opinion. If they are eternal, then they are eternal.

In my back yard there are several paths leading back into the bush. I can take ony of them I desire. The fact that there are multiple worldlines connecting me to my yard, hence parallel universes, does not mean that we need to experience all of them at once. We choose the one we want, and the other potentialities are either not experienced at all, or they are only experienced as dreams, fantasies and speculations.

Non-attachment does not mean that we are apathetic. Instead, it means that we are carefree. The key to be successfully carefree is that one must have good taste, the innate knowledge of how to avoid unpleasant or inappropriate things.  I drink a glass of water without becming attached to it. So in place of being ultra serious ands mooning forever over the possibility of suffering, we just don't have to go there. It's more fun just to do that whih is appropriate, without concern, and in full faith that we are doing the best that can be done at that moment.

The reason that this is so difficult is that we tend to be greedy, which means attachment, and that runs off into self-delusion about values and goals, choices that are contingent and thus not free, and then we devlop a competitive posture which interferes with love etc. To not care, but to retain good taste, seems to be all we really need. Then we can do that which appears most useful, have fun doing it, and not get all hung up in stuff. That's the idea of sat-chit-ananda - it's an actual state of being in the world, based on non-attachment.

dave

I'll go along with what you just wrote Dave, even though I've heard sat chit ananda used differently. Usually I've heard it applied when people speak of Nirvikalpa samadhi or pure consciousness.

Hi R-
We're getting into the esoteric stuff here. It took me several months to get the idea of satchitananda straight in my mind. In essence, satyan refers to karma yoga, chittan to jnana yoga and anadam to bhakta yoga. And the three yogas arise directly from the three gunas, basic aspects of reality, rajas, tamas and sattva. Let's see if my understanding agrees with yours -

Incidentally, I'm a jnani by personal preferences, which makes for an occasionally awakward fit to this forum where mostly people are bhaktis. Hence I tend to use logic as compared to love as my primary mediating concept.

The essential idea is that as we perfect ourselves, we attain a relatively complete yogic posture in each of these three areas. In fact, it turns out that all we need is to get rid of major issues. A few minor ones don't seem very important - they just cause little karmic bubbles every so often when we do some trivial thing, like speeding a bit, or neglecting an opportunity to help others etc.

The other thing about satchitananda is that it is usually associated with inner silence, although that is not actually part of the definition. Success in yogic meditation tends to occur at about the same time, and everything sort of shuts down because we don't need it, which is pleasant. It's always easier to turn it back on than to get it to shut up - I recall how wonderful it was when I finally got my own mind to shut up for a half hour!

The value of satchitananda is that since it is a state of yogic absorption, it gives us three ways in which to handle incoming events from a positive basis. Normally, a random incoming event will have potentialy positive or negative impact on our lives because we can't control the unknown factors of the future. With at least two of the three yogas mastered, we have at least two ways to usefully respond in order to handle the event, and also to handle its impact, even if negative. That's because even if it wipes out some positive goal according to one of the three systems, we still have another way to work with it to reconcile everything. So satchitananda is a state in which we are liberated from negative karma - hence "Liberation" is one of the names for the state.

This is not samadhi nor nirvana. It's just a posture in life. Samadhi is a specifically meditative trance - with seed it condenses to sarvastarka (no opposites) and that goes to nirvastarka (no differentiations). Nirvana simply refers to losing the tendency to attach ourselves to things because we no longer find them worth the hassle. Instead, we maintain a carefree state without contingencies.

An interesting thing that I noticed is that sarvastarka samadhi brings awareness of the "Cosmic Consciousness" - as if we are participating in a universal Mind. All questions are answered - but I couldn't think of anything to ask. My interpretation was that this was like being touched by God - and like the first crystalline seed that leads a window to frost over in the next instant, everything seems to become "God-saturated". It's almost as if we can go on autopilot after the first taste. God seems to be like honey - a tiny drop, scarcely enough to notice, spreads out to cover everything.

dave

Thanks for the response Albert. Yes, it could be as you say, although it can be true together with the possibility/theory of the "one-I-function" I have outlined. You wrote:

>>>When in human form, "Is" tend to be quite limited. When they progress further, usually sometime after death, they find out that there is much more to an "I' than meets the eye.  They'll find that they are connected to disks/I-theres/Soul groups/whatever name you like to use, and they'll have access to all kinds of memories/information that they'll be able to make use of according to need. They'll find that it is possible to make use of knowledge in a manner that is so wise and loving, that no need to negate the existence of an "I" comes into being.<<<

And exactly these enhanced abilities of having access to knowledge is what makes me wonder about the meaning of "I". Sometimes in meditation, when I communicate with helpers or my higher self, I feel I'm an open book, already read by my communication partner. It seems indeed, there is the ability to have access to all memories of another being. This leaves me questioning about how true the viewpoint is at all, that "I" am "here", the "other" is "there", while we could totally share all our experiences we have ever had. Because it turns out then, there is no difference in experiences anymore, and what is left is the difference of the viewpoint- me "here", the other "there", only this, and this is a strange thing, as it is nothing with a content, nothing substantial, but only a sort of meta-function.
 Another example to illustrate this is the old problem of the continuity of a person. We're used to say that we're the same person now than we were yesterday, when we're saying "Yesterday I did this and that, and today I do this and that". In another meaning, we're not the same, because since yesterday we have gathered new memories, and our bodies changed a bit. From this, what remains the same, the "I", is independent from our experiences, memories, personal history and is a mysterious kind of empty viewpoint. (This fits with the old philosophic statement that everything which is composed and has extension, is subject to change and nonpermanent, and only what is non-composed and not extended is eternally the same)

So, apparently we can think in two ways of an evolution of individual spirits. Greater awareness and enhanced means of access to all sorts of knowledge and experiences can lead to
1. An (only seemingly) merging of "I"s through total sharing of memories, or
2. An ever refining development of individuality.

Or maybe it's both, somehow. I have heard of experiences of altered states, and some of my own experiences went in the same direction, where one is embedded in the whole like a sort of relais-station, sharing all data of the whole network and processing them. Maybe the whole network is like a resonator, depending of all it's parts, and the sum is fed back to all the parts of it, so that finally one can't really speak of "parts" and "the whole" as it is so closely interdependent.

These thoughts are not mere sophistication or theorization for me, it's as real as thinking about what to have for breakfast. :-)

To Dave: To be entirely without attachments is incompatible with being physically alive, isn't it? As one needs to care about many things to stay alive.

Spooky

hi there, this really is a good thread all in all.  :) I'm learning lots of stuff. I can only self examine when I read this stuff, perhaps thats a bit like self determination maybe R is talking about.
theres a lot of gray areas in discussing these sorts of subjects. I don't see that there is black or white areas in life, or a thing called absolute law, as rather I look to find the exception to the rule to see why it works to be an exception.

as I was reading the posts I started doing my self examination by seeing where everyone elses focus point was. so I do this, thats how I find myself.
I discovered I was attached to this board like a barnacle on a boat..I might need scraping off in that case!  :)
I see we are doing all right, because I'm doing all right so that is my empathic focus. I'm glad to hear R is not trying to run anybody off. I rather like everybody to stay.
R was talking about false gurus:
R, its people themselves who ask for a guru and proceed to make that false guru in their own mind. A false guru cannot manifest into society unless the people themselves create that in there own minds. woe unto the false guru who is just trying to have a life and not have to constantly explain exactly why he is not what they would make of him. theres even a book called the reluctant messiah which makes me think of this guru topic. as u can see, my sympathy is with the false guru, who has some kind of calling which attracts the others unto him and causes a chain of remorse upon his soul.

I can imagine this on an emotional level. I know someone like this. on an emotional level, say this false guru meets people from time to time and these people try to extract a secret from him which is not there. after awhile, these who failed to extract the golden egg, whatever, would vacate the premises shaking their heads in disappointment. this in turn would make the false guru feel bad because he didn't really have the golden egg so he tried to please them, and just couldn't. because he was just a man. he might even start to not like himself. it would be hard to find a true friend because all these others would be creating of him a false image.

this scenario reminds me of the bible, to not have false idols. but we do it anyway. don't wanna get on a rant, but I think celebrity rags are harmful. so and so marriage has broken up, point of example. then the public gloats..well, if the rich and famous have failed relationships, then they are no better than me, people get off on this kind of thinking; I believe its called sensationalism. we experience awe, jealousy, possessiveness but if we see these items in our own self, we tend to call it a different name and self justify. so yea, we are a mess here. it appears to me as kindergarten Earth school. but though we blow up the world, follow false gurus, whatever, we must always focus on whats left of the world, the things that remain to rebuild.

and everyone soon enough becomes the phoenix bird arising from the ashes of what was as you just can't keep a good man or woman down. I think theres a vast difference in having an idol and just honoring the creative divine part of each person on Earth. we must all be in degree of our own potential. some times people are clone like though. we should get over that. in due time.

just rambling.
would people please stop calling me a nice person here? I don't want to get that reputation that I'm too nice. :D

Alysia:

I know of a lot of well meaning people who went to see false gurus not because they wanted a false guru, but because they were sincere about spiritual growth.  Because of their trusting nature, they would for years diligently apply themselves to teachings that won't completely accomplish what they are looking for. Often these teachings point them in the wrong direction.

False gurus aren't like a bartender who tries to talk a drunk patron out of one last drink. They are like drug pushers who try to get people to have a snort.



LaffingRain wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2008 at 1:58am:

hi there, this really is a good thread all in all.  :) R, its people themselves who ask for a guru and proceed to make that false guru in their own mind. A false guru cannot manifest into society unless the people themselves create that in there own minds. woe unto the false guru who is just trying to have a life and not have to constantly explain exactly why he is not what they would make of him. theres even a book called the reluctant messiah which makes me think of this guru topic. as u can see, my sympathy is with the false guru, who has some kind of calling which attracts the others unto him and causes a chain of remorse upon his soul. I can imagine this on an emotional level. I know someone like this. on an emotional level, say this false guru meets people from time to time and these people try to extract a secret from him which is not there. after awhile, these who failed to extract the golden egg, whatever, would vacate the premises shaking their heads in disappointment. this in turn would make the false guru feel bad because he didn't really have the golden egg so he tried to please them, and just couldn't. because he was just a man. he might even start to not like himself. it would be hard to find a true friend because all these others would be creating of him a false image. this scenario reminds me of the bible, to not have false idols. but we do it anyway. don't wanna get on a rant, but I think celebrity rags are harmful. so and so marriage has broken up, point of example. then the public gloats..well, if the rich and famous have failed relationships, then they are no better than me, people get off on this kind of thinking; I believe its called sensationalism. we experience awe, jealousy, possessiveness but if we see these items in our own self, we tend to call it a different name and self justify. so yea, we are a mess here. it appears to me as kindergarten Earth school. but though we blow up the world, follow false gurus, whatever, we must always focus on whats left of the world, the things that remain to rebuild. and everyone soon enough becomes the phoenix bird arising from the ashes of what was as you just can't keep a good man or woman down. I think theres a vast difference in having an idol and just honoring the creative divine part of each person on Earth. we must all be in degree of our own potential. some times people are clone like though. we should get over that. in due time. just rambling. would people please stop calling me a nice person here? I don't want to get that reputation that I'm too nice. :D

Dave:

If we're going to use Hindu terminology, I would say that most people on this forum are jnanis, rather than bhaktis. As you know, a bhakti is a person who tries to love God more and more, until he or she is no more.  Except for a few exceptions, I don't find that people speak very much about how much they love God. For some, the existence of God as an actual being is a question. Perhaps people are bhaktis if one considers loving each other the same as loving God. Otherwise, people seem more like Jnanis, in that they seek knowledge, albeit with different parameters than jnana yoga.

I used to follow the Jnani approach. As I'm sure you know, I found that the path didn't have everything I need.

I always thought of satchitananda in terms of sat=existence, chit=consciousness, and ananda=bliss. Not that it really matters. Just terminology.

It's pretty cool that when you experienced savikalpa samadhi you didn't have any questions. When I had what I refer to as my night in heaven experience, things were simply known without having to think about them. I figure a natural state of knowledge wouldn't require us to keep asking questions, as we try to figure things out intellectually. Our connection to what universal mind has learned will make knowledge a natural thing.

Spooky:

I figure knowledge is one thing, and taking on self definition by limiting thought patterns is another. I figure a higher self/disk consciousness isn't limited by the various personalities its various selves have manifested. By the time a consciousness gets to the point where it can create additional selves for learning purposes, it has reached the point where it knows how to make use of thought energy without being limited by it.

I figure that when a self returns to its disk, it develops the ability to learn with the same freedom that a disk consciousness learns with.  

I've found that there are two ways of understanding. Either we can understand something intellectually, or we can open ourselves to universal mind and understand in a way that is certain. When we do the latter, we don't get bogged down in psychological conditioning.

Like you, I've found that my higher self sees me as an open book. It doesn't miss a thing. There is no way it could understand me so completely,  if wasn't able to see me in a comprehensive way that didn't include the limitations of psychological conditioning, nor a way of thinking that is limited to thought by thought thinking.

R says: False gurus aren't like a bartender who tries to talk a drunk patron out of one last drink. They are like drug pushers who try to get people to have a snort.
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ahhh sounds like my first husband whom I couldn't be one with unless I smoked his pot.

I suppose the jist of all this talk is what was said a long time ago; trust yourself, that all the answers are within, to go into your closet..that truth is not "out there."

being a solitary reclusive contemplator as I see myself, I have never sought a guru and only learned my stuff through various relationships of personal bearing. yet it was and is a perfect pathway for me to learn through relationships. they are the relationships that are important.
where did I hear this phrase "if you meet a guru on the path, slay him?"

or let us not kill the messenger? I agree going into one's closet is to take care of business at home and develop this ability to hear all the answers one might seek.

for me, getting to the point I might listen to music and hear some truth. like the song, Satisfied mind. I had that as a favorite once. I wanted to die with a satisfied mind, so I said, ok, piece of cake. well it wasn't a piece of cake, but to get to the point where death has no fear surrounding it when u think on it, to get to that satisfied mind I saw I had a lot of living to do first and satisfaction came later, but no one could tell me a thing, I would not trust anyone to tell me nothing, and when I was young, I was still smart in my way, I did not grow fond of pot and got no high from it although my husband smoked it constantly and the rest of the time wanted to control me it seemed.

these experiences we go thru in relationship show us the ability to walk away from overbearing people, that we are stronger than we know.
women more than men are abused by their husbands, either emotionally or physically. my experience with Ron set me on my path and so I can't complain. but I had no one to talk to about the way another person can try to dominate their partner. So, survival here without bloodshed means to me to be strong and not let anyone walk on you, even in the name of love. I think true freedom must come from inside and that guides do assist us on that journey if we would do this kind of prayer and then listen for the answer and follow thru. so it's about living and owning yourself to my way of thinking, if we are talking about basic character growth.
love, alysia

Snoopy - Excellent point. How to live without being involved in the living process? I have a possibly limited perspective here, but it seems to work.  For some reason I think of a chicken leaving its egg behind. Or the worm that suffers through the ending of the world, only to wake next day as a butterfly with no thought of its cocoon.

This seems to be a sequence. The animal aspect of our being is conditioned, so it really is not only attached, but it is of the nature of attachments, a wholly contingent assemblage. And we start out believing in the animal nature of our own being, and we set up all manner of contingent interactions by which to enhance and glorify it.

But in time we abandon ideas about being a body and go on to being a mind, and to being a spiritual essence. Bodhicitta, love for our fellows, arises, and we sense that the universality of sentient existence ties us all together, and we  act in a manner that expresses our inner joy and enthusiasm, as if we were at the center of creation. Eventually, we just accept what comes, That doesn't negate our values and preferences, since those take their value from acting as extensions of our situation. That is, we don't suddenly stick our fingers in a flame, or look for some tasty bathroom cleanser to sprinkle on our corn flakes. Nor do we obsess about it. We just go on and do whatever seems appropriate. "Chop wood, carry water," so to say.

My feeling is that attachment to life is better expressed by the long line of Poor Me types lined up at the pharmacy counter for the latest curatives, hoping to extend their lives by another ten minutes. It's not that they're wrong - they aren't. But they seem to be so involved with quantity that the notion of quality is lost, and everything devolves into struggling for one more day of mechanical support for a spark that would have naturally died out years ago.

By contrast - I'm aware that I'm slowly dying of a combination of cardiac insufficiency and bad lungs and I get a bit pissy when I can't breathe, or when I bend an arthritic joint the wrong direction, But I have far too much to do do spend time over it. It isn't worth worrying about. So I go off to have fun - at present I'm having a blast setting up a restaurant, which involves a huge real estate reshuffling to pay for it. Our chef just had a new baby, Angelo, my wife has a new house, I have some fun toys. I might drop off the planet to morrow, but today is fun.

I recall some Tibetan who mentioned that when they get the impression that a new building was needed, they simply went out and built it. And it was done "without thinking".

So the question that I sense here is whether the fire that burns the wood is attached to the wood, or is the wood merely an incidental bit of furniture through which the fire expresses its nature?

Alysia - To paraphrase you inaccurately, I like the analogy of the phoenix a bit more than being a barnacle on something's bottom, but that is pretty close to the way it looks to me as well.  Baenacles start life as freely floating little guys. Then they get attached to what they hope is solid and they cling to it relentlessly, because they see nothing else. (Talk about a BST!) I don't think that a "nice person" like you has abandoned hope to the extent of barnacleization. (Hm, makes me want to scratch my backside.)

IMHO this forum is hardly a rock of solidity. I view it more as a location over which a rather fierce fire is burning. As we abandon old perspectives and adopt new ones, we effectively release the old world and take on the new. This seems to be a natural path. We start in freedom and ignorance, attach to something, including false teachers (there's only One ultimate teacher anyhow), then drop off again and float away in a world of renewed freedom in which attachments are unnecessary.

R- my thought was based on the common observation of people saying things like, "Love is everything." That's a bhakta perspective. It isn't incorrect, but neither is it complete.

Agreed, satchitananda is classically defined as "the perfection of existence, awareness and blissfulness" - known as a realized state of being. These are just the three gunas in revised form, rajas = satyam = karma yoga, tamas = anandam = bhakta yoga, and sattva = chittam = jnana yoga. The inference is that we can get by without paying undue attention to any of these worldly factors, which is the goal of the three generic yogas. It's a three way un-attachment, so to say. What strikes me as most valuable about this is that perfection is not at all required. It seems that all we need is to be adequate, to cut down on the major issues, and things improve immediately, and to the degree that we have limited our demands and attachments.

Evidently, in sarvastarka samadhi we all have essentially the same experience. There are no contradictions, everything is explained, everything is obvious etc. - When everything is known, how can anything be asked? - Actually, I sort of felt stupid that I couldn't think of a suitable question, and of course when the perspective changes, so does access to the answers.

Hi Alysia, after reading some of your responses to Recoverer on this thread, i think you'd might benefit from reading something i just wrote recently on this site.

Here is a link and my reply is towards the end of the thread so far

http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1199049963/0#6


 I really think you have some mistaken perceptions and beliefs about Albert.  While i don't believe he is fully Source attuned, he is attaining to that awareness and far along the path, and he mostly wants to help people.   In short, while he hasn't set himself up as one, i believe he is a real teacher as talked about in the above link.   I'm sure he still has his misconceptions, misinterpretations, and even emotional hang ups, but to ascribe such generalized unloving intentions and motivations to him...well i just cannot agree at all.  

 Belief systems are strange things, they are double edged swords, which can help to cage people, or to help set them free.    While the choice is always up to us, beliefs and belief systems are not neutral energies.   All relative energies, affect all other relative energies.  There are degrees of fast vibratory patterns and frequencies and slow vibrating energies in relation to both different teachings and different teachers.

 Albert has been caught up in such limiting belief systems, and has largely freed himself from them, he would like to see others freed from same.    This at times, may mean speaking out against such beliefs.   What i would agree with you about, is that Albert could do less speaking out against, and more speaking on what's true, right, and freeing in nature.   He does do the latter, but does seem to spend a bit of energy on the former as well.   Maybe the proportion is not fully optimal, but again that doesn't mean that he has negative intentions and wishes to see people hurt.  

 Thankfully, unlike many other Guru's or teachings out there, he doesn't claim to be fully Source attuned and perfectly knowledgeable on stuff.  

 What i find interesting, in comparing say the N.T. to many Eastern teachings is this.   Many Eastern teachings spend a lot of time and energy on concepts, ideas, etc.    The N.T. on the other hand, is an account of how one Source realized person freed himself by living totally for others and then set about freeing others.   It's all based on pure example and the partial account of a life lived.   There is not a lot of esoteric teaching, thinking, and concepts in there, it's there in a sense but not directly as distractions and glittering side thoughts.    

 The call of Christ is so simple in its message, lose self in service to others and you will find your true self again.  Think more of others and their needs and not so much of the little self's needs and wants.  Learn of love, remember love and to love.   The best way to teach that, is by and through example, and that's why the N.T. is so account based.

 It cuts through all the misleading, extraneous, and/or distracting stuff that so many Eastern teachings are filled with.  And i'm not saying that all Eastern teachings are worthless, not by any means, i've gained from my studies into these, but like Albert i've found that as belief systems, they can be limiting.    When is say these things, i don't mean to offend those attached to same, or to try to hurt anyone.      You may believe that all you like, you certainly seem to oft ascribe those perceptions to Albert.  

 Anyways, yeah if you read that link and really think about some of the real spiritual teachers and their lives of yester year, you will understand that they are not always very socially accepted, liked, and what not.   They do not tell others what their false self aspects want to hear.   They are sometimes even controversial and upsetting to others, like Jesus with the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducee's....

Well i would say there is a little bit of Jesus AND Pharisee in all of us.   Best be sure what one is primarily emotionally reacting from.   The clue is in the term emotionally reacting and in reactive.

Dave said: Alysia - To paraphrase you inaccurately, I like the analogy of the phoenix a bit more than being a barnacle on something's bottom
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hi Dave, I like to use funny sounding phrases but I realize nobody is going to enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy reading the funny things (to me) that pops up to mind. sometimes I'll get a word in my head even and I don't know where I got it from; I'll look in the dictionary to see what it means. actually, in the back of my mind I realize I need this place to talk to you guys. I just got a thud sound in my gut when I wrote that so it must be true. so I should clarify, I am here, I choose to be here and I'm not a barnacle really, I'm more than sea life. funny, I just realized I'm not really attached as I thought I was. so I suppose we all grow in our way here, to be writing to each other this way, seems to sprout up new thoughts and is energizing.
and besides, having spent most of my life being pretty much the introvert of the universe, I now feel the need to be gabby with like minded. I'm working on the sense of humor if you will cut me some slack on that.
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Dave said
IMHO this forum is hardly a rock of solidity. I view it more as a location over which a rather fierce fire is burning.
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well I agree it's pretty hot in here sometimes.
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Dave said;

R- my thought was based on the common observation of people saying things like, "Love is everything." That's a bhakta perspective. It isn't incorrect, but neither is it complete.
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well hmmm. maybe it's like a superficial comment to say love is everything and such comments are so easy to toss out as they lose their meaning. take the song title for instance "Love is just a Four Letter Word."
this bothered me, it might be true! haha! well come to find out its true, yet move along into another perspective on what love is, and it becomes false, or incomplete statement.

if we are beings who are perpetually in the act of becoming, which seems to be the case what with a fire burning now...lol...then one could miss the inference altogether that Love is Everything. what a tacky statement. I think I'm the one who said it! lol!

It's because love is my focus point of my mind. one time I had an affirmation. it said "I wish to see only love." then I fell asleep and dreamed. in the dream I heard a voice. It spoke as if it knew what it was talking about. It said "when you wish to see only love, you will see only god."

so then what is god? I wonder if he's in the dictionary? lol!!! oh oh there goes my bad sense of humor again. anyhoo, when the mind seeks to see and find something within it's experience which can anchor the heart and give meaning to our struggles here, the mind will follow the attention. pretty soon, love began popping up everywhere because I wished to see it.

then that brings up a whole new kettle of fish, about what exactly is "attention?"

it might be construed as being in a state of receptive expectation, yet without attachments to the outcome. because I always believed that it was true, in the bible, that whatever you ask for believing, you will receive. I used to call it faith, until someone said, we're not talking about faith anymore; gee whiz, alysia, what century did you come from?

love you guys, and I feel perfectly free to delare Im an emotional gal.

yes, I was off the beam Justin. R and I have resolved the misunderstanding basically when he told me he was not wishing to drive people away, I saw immediately, maybe it was spirit, that he spoke the truth.
so I had it wrong, and I thank you for recognizing I was off beam.

Yes Albert, the relationship of the disk-members to their disk is a keypoint of this whole issue. It is a difficult step, at least for me, to get a first-hand impression of what the disk-perspective feels like. Sometimes I suspect I have tapped into it without realizing it while having the experience, and this could be because the "I" perspective was still there during it, and simply because I connect the I-perspective with my earthly person I become not aware that I'm already experiencing from a way greater "I" than just my projected little earthly "I".
 And when you tell about the two ways of understanding, the intellectual one and the certain one, the latter seems to indicate to me (as I'm a bit spoiled by western philosophy) the vanishing of the subject-object difference; when someone thinks that there are things around, this one can always doubt them, how far these things are distorted by the individual perception/beliefs, while when there are no "things around", but here, within me, where I am, than those doubts cannot arise.

Dave, you make me remember what I was always fascinated of, when I watched eastern martial arts movies or read Lao-Tse: This "let it happen" way; the less force, the more effect. The art then is to really LET it flow. From this perspective, the average person or the pupil is an energy-flow-hinderer, while the master is the energy-flow-allower. I really like the idea of letting unfold amazing powers while being relaxed.

Spooky

 Thanks for the update Alysia, its good to hear that things are worked out between you.