No knowledge from experience, but I guess that moving on requires dropping the attachement to the issue that's binding us - much as in life. Except that  afterlife time (ALT  ) and how we perceive it may seem rather different.

It seems that the afterlife (at least much of that accessible by us from this reality) is basically part of the same cause and consequence driven learning system  as the physical.

What I'm not so sure of is our propensity to interpret what's going on in the afterlife. (or the Bardos as Tibetan Buddhism would call it). I'm not sure that it isn't a little overreaching ourselves, and am not sure that we in our unrealised state have what it takes to comprehend it.

It also seems that for all our theorising on the subject we don't really seem to have a grasp of what determines our path from birth to death to rebirth and so on. Buddhism is quite clear that it's driven by karma, and that short of realisation we really don't have that much conscious control over what happens other than that as far as obtaining a good rebirth is concerned it's reckoned to be a good idea to head for the brightest available light at all times.

The implication being that karma is driven fom the very deepest/highest levels of mind.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes for interesting reading, there's some very nice translations and commentaries available nowadays...

Hi David-
As Vajra put it, "Life is driven by karma." And karma operates because it leads to growth, and growth occurs because it leads to more stable states that those preceding it. (The second law of thermodynamics, expressed in terms of logical cause and effect.)

All too often we talk about God in the sense that we'd talk about neighbors that we never got to know, but we knew where they lived. This gives the sense of God as the Infinite Other. However, channelled teachings and regression work seem to agree that God is Us.  It's not some Big Bad Guy who dumps on us, but rather, we are now and always elements of the nature of God. So my problem might be said to be caused when God screwed up, but that part of God that does the up-screwing is Me.

To make sense of this in an abstract manner, consider the ultimate Beginning - a single point of creativity projecting everything. The wavefront of creativity, interacting with itself as it creates space and time and people like you and me, doesn't change its character. It just adds on new ways of doing what it does. It's still one thing, the single Creative Impulse that we refer to as God.

The precise manner in which we share that transcendental existence is not at all obvious, but neither does it mean that we are separated from, or different from, the ultimate nature of God. That's the kind of separation that might appeal to ego, since it suggests that we, of our own selves, are responsible for creating reality. But our ability to do anything derives from that initial singular creative impulse, which means that whatever we are doing, it is, in effect, our own way of manifesting God's nature in our world. This is the reason that getting rid of the ego-self leads to transcendence, as in meditation, and not to oblivion. In this sense, Bet's remark, to love God totally (and to the exclusion of ego-centric differentiation), tends to lead us into awareness of our unity with God. In fact, this is the essence of bhakta yoga, which has been around for several thousand years as one of the three major paths to enlightenment and oneness.

dave

I guess it's not that I in some way fear that some God might get upset about our poking around. The opposite in fact, gaining some higher awareness seems to greatly speed our opening, insight and consequent awakening.

The issue is possibly just that if we are interpreting using our conventional intellect and are restricted to the language and concepts of space time (our usual reality) that much as in the way that we (as mostly unrealised persons) interpret what we experience here very selectively according to our pre-conceptions (and are basically unable to see what lies outside of that framework) that likewise we will selectively perceive what we encounter in higher realities.

Buddhism holds the view that the absolute or dharmakaya reality or emptiness or primordial source of all is simply inexpressible. Even what seems if I understand it correctly to be the transcendential realm or the sambhogakaya (the territory of the bardos or of Robert Monroe's travels) tends to be talked of in terms which are very culture or spiritual tradition specific. There's by all accounts for example a Buddhist belief system territory or territories for example, but the point is that it goes far beyond this. The entire sambhogakaya is the joint belief system creation of all sentinent beings.

Which makes sense since underlying it all is the view that whatever manifestations are encountered in the sambhogakaya (whether pleasant or nasty, or appearing as Gods or other realities) are emanations or creations of your own mind and have no absolute reality.

But which also means that these 'realities' have no absolute existence - it's not like exploring the Amazon and making a map of the independently existing reality you find so that the next guy along can follow the same route. In Buddhism there is no such thing as independently existing reality - nothing in the realities we perceive is real.

It only appears to exist as a consequence of the coming together of a whole network of interdependent cause and consequence. Remove the causes (which include mind) and there's nothing left, no fundamental 'beingness'. This in very short form is the teaching on emptiness.

Your transmission of the belief that the Amazon exists and what it looks like to another may make it possible for that person to have similar experience, provided it becomes their belief that this is what they will find. But that may (or may not - I don't know) be as far as it goes.

Robert Monroe at least in part talks of this sort of thing  - of the deceased creating their own afterlife realities, the belief system territories and the like.

So I guess what I'm saying is that anything recognisable we posit as existing in the afterlife may only appear to do so (as is probably the case in this reality) precisely because we have created it - brought it into existence by our minds (collective and individual, conscious and unconscious imaginings). But the point is that it's still probably a part of samsara or the realm of suffering that Buddhism says we live in.

Samasara can be whatever we decide it is, negative or positive. Even an infinitely extending maze of realities comprised of whatever we an imagine.

Buddhism is as above absolutely clear that only the dharmakaya has any reality of existence, is the only consciousness  worth striving for. But this reality is untiy, all. So the existence of self is only a concept too, it has no absolute of real existence.  So it's very definite that siddhis and the other strange manifestations of non-ordinary transcendential individual experience while potentially nice and also very interesting are only a side show, a diversion.

That becoming fixated on these as an end in themselves is an error and potentially a serious one - an indulging of the ego which actually reinforces it, or potentially a path to abuse of those powers. Because the ego is ultimately the entire edifice of mind creation.

It's probably for this reason that Buddhism generally seems to frown on discussion of transcendential experience - the only bit that matters is as above the absolute which is indescribable using our intellect or discursive mind. I suppose that at a basic level that this sort of discussion may serve only to encourage people into egotistical sharing of experience which may mislead others too.

Hope I'm not being too convoluted in my explanation.

I posted the reference just a while ago, but a good but very readable treatment of this territory from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective is in two books. 'Indestructible Truth' and 'Secret of the Vajra World' published by Shambhala and written by reginals A Ray....



Buddhism for what

Quote:


smiling here at Varja's ALT. good one! I called it non-linear time before I read this.

another person calls linear time RTZ. real time zone.
then we have focus 15 given to by another explorer here, labeled as a "no-time zone."
in the focus 15, is where future probabilities can be seen.

I also like the reference to the ALT or afterlife area being a reflection of part of the cause and consequence ELS. (earth life system)  (DP says as it is in heaven so it is on Earth)

as far as karma, I visualize on the other side a table of counselors assigned to each incoming Earth aspirant who would come for mastery. they hand out a lot of suggestions about a plan. if u start to remember what u came here for, you're in trouble. if you don't remember who u r you're still in trouble.
lol. love, alysia

Alysia - sorry, i overlapped with yours last time. David - sorry for making it all very complicated and not dealing dorectly with your question.

Must say the why and wherefore of it all is territory I can't seem to bottom a view on. It's pretty clear that there's a drive towards ego and all it entails (usually painful), and it's pretty clear too that there's an opposing drive (you can call it Grace, true nature of the mind, buddha nature, inherent wisdom and compassion or lots of things) that takes us back towards unity, God, the absolute   - whatever.

Heaven (maybe literally) knows the purpose of the total system or how it came into existence  (we probably don't have the capability to do so at this level) but it seems fairly clearly that whether you call it samsara or something else that there is a realm of cause and consequence (which includes multiple realms/dimensions) within which the cycle of rebirth and spiritual evolution as we know it takes place.

Which seems to be mind (in the collective as well as individual sense) created.

Somebody like Gary Renard in Disappearance of the Universe sets out a rather lovely description of how it might have come about. Why it is we don't see the big picture. By likening it to how we forget when we move between dreaming and waking  - how we lose consciousness of the other. As of course does ACIM. As also but in rather more conventional/personal terms does the Urantia Book.

It's not clear to me either is why it exists at all, but that I guess is the forgetting. It'd be very easy if we knew none of our current reality mattered.  Was it some sort of accident of God consciousness, or is it God experiencing itself (a learning school), or is it a reality bubble run by nasties like in the matrix or David Icke's books who milk us for something they need. I don't know.

I guess the one thing that's fairly clear is that the spiritual path (the climb away from ego or selfish instinct towards God/collective wisdom/compassion/love/unity while not easy leads (as best we can tell) to greater happiness.

Although as in the other thread and above the game seems to be set up in such a way that we forget - that while in the dream we can't seem to consciously answer this question we are still drawn steadily against our lower instinct in that direction.  (better hope it's not all a matrix like scam though)

Buddhism takes a fairly harsh view (that relatively speaking it's pain until you achieve enlightenment - not that you need go anywhere else, but rather that happiness arrives when you learn truly to see what's happening and to live with wisdom and compassion), other traditions are more positive in talking of joyful opportunities for service and the like.

The good news that all seem to agree on in the end is that we all achieve realisation/unity/God eventually.

As posted before:

Life unfolds 
As time rolls out
While certain we decide the script
We circle endlessly in ego’s grip

The dream 
Leads ever deeper into pain
Self reinforced but made from fear
Sees only what it deigns to see

And yet
Though blind resisting every step
Bathed in light all but ignored
Our path somehow revealed unfolds

Until 
At last in retrospect
We dimly can discern the sign
That through life’s detritus spirit’s called


Maybe retrieval simply represents as I think has been said already a reaching out by somebody lightly better positioned on the ladder just now to help another in need/temporary difficulty on his/her way...

Quote:


Hi Friend,

  My practical view is this isn't so....  my experience of the practice of Buddhism is one of a 'lightening up', nothing harsh or heavy; it's a relaxation and ease into what is already so. The key aspect of such a relaxation is a release of conceptual layers, as if clouds dissolve to uncover a clear blue sky... and one just goes "ahhhhh" with a simple joy, opening into spaciousness and freedom.

My own experience with myself and others within buddhism is one of laughter and light. Certainly I've encountered heavy people from all walks of life though, buddhists included.

It depends on the lineage and one's own temperament I guess.

I think it's not the belief system that's important. It's one's own attitude and view. Belief systems are always temporary. Just a boat ( a vehicle) to cross the river with, nothing to hold on to otherwise.... like Shakyamuni Buddha himself says.

I feel my breathing relax, you and I breathe within the same atmosphere of this one sky, a simple thing like that connects us and i am grateful..

Love to us all,
                     Tim F.

Mr. Nobody wrote on Jun 17^th, 2007 at 1:43am: