Seraphis1 wrote on Apr 11^th, 2010 at 10:10pm:



Hi spooky: I found this passage:

Q. After such a major event as sudden realization, why would the mystic choose to remain silent?

A. It is not a matter of choice but of capacity. There is really nothing that can be said. To verbalize that state is difficult and requires favorable circumstances as well as some innate propensity or karmic momentum. To communicate about this state requires reenergizing form, which requires a considerable expenditure of energy. It is much easier and more natural to merely remain silent. Silence also serves in a different, peaceful way. In (my - my insertion for clarity) this (meaning himself...) there were many years of silence before there arose the ability to speak of these things.

S.

Seraphis:
Thanks for your effort.

Recoverer:
I think a good rule would be for everyone to be aware if one lives according to a concept, and nondualistic teachings are concepts just like any other, or if one lives according to profound own insight. The difference couldn't be more obvious. In the first case, one has to constantly invest effort to control oneself, if one is following the rules and is thinking in the "correct" way, in the second case you just know, without effort, and without depending on someone who tells you how far you have made it on the spiritual ladder.

Have a look at Melvyn Wartella's homepage. He had, so he wrote, an experience which sounds similar to what Parsons, Sylvester and Segal wrote about, but he seems quite engaged in environmental affairs and isn't one of that "doesn't matter" fraction. And he emphasizes not to follow teachings and through them think you're enlighted, while in reality you only follow someone else's thoughts, but don't live your own truth.

Spooky

"I can say this out of my own experience of enlightenment. Even to say that I had an enlightenment experience is misleading. There is no one to have such an experience, there is just reality seen clearly without the illusion of self in the way. Our language is dualistic and not very helpful in expressing that which is whole and complete. So please bear with me and keep in mind this problem of language."

Above is one thing Wardella says that I don't agree with. It is such a key point I don't know if it would serve much of a purpose for me to read more of what he has to say (I read some of his other words before I found the above). I've known of a number of gurus who say something similar, yet if you look at their lives they are quite self-centered and self serving. This shows that you don't have to be an egoless person to say such things.

Each of us is a unique soul, because source being can be utilized so many individual beings can be created.

This isn't my ego talking, it's my experience backed by a common sense that doesn't buy into the trap that I don't exist as an individual because some supposed enlightened people say there is no such thing as an individual.

Each of us has the ability to establish relationships, and when we do so, we are able to see that the creative aspect of being was utilized so many individual beings (souls) were created.

Such an understanding doesn't prevent us from sharing oneness with each other. Consider this experience, which I have shared in the past:

-One night I lay in bed and wondered what it means to be "one self." Suddenly I found myself walking down a city street (non-physically). I was very excited and happy because I understood that everything is one self. I walked up to strangers and hugged them and they hugged me back, because they too understood that everything is one self. It wasn't necessary for us to stop existing as unique individuals in order to understand that there is only one self. Multiplicity and oneness exist at the same time.

I hugged my mom and we didn't experience the oneness, because we had ideas about each other that prevented us from experiencing each other as the souls we are.

I hugged a lady I found physically attractive (she found me attractive) and we couldn't experience the oneness, because we viewed each other with sexual ideas.

So it isn't a matter of getting ourselves to believe that a multiplicity of souls don't exist. It is a matter of letting go of the ideas that prevent us from sharing love completely with others.

If souls didn't exist in a substantial way, there wouldn't be anyone who existed substantially enough so love could be shared.

It is not an illusion when two people share love with each other, regardless of what some supposed sophisticated philosopy has to say.

It is not egotistical to love the uniqueness of one's self and others. In fact, it is quite giving to acknowledge the preciousness of one's self and others.

People can get their minds to operate in all sorts of ways. They can even get them to create the impression that individuals don't exist. When this takes place it is done on an individual basis, not in mass. An individual has to exist substantially enough to have a mind that creates the impression that there is no one here. A person loses the ability to connect the dots and see the reality of his (or her) own existence.

We need to be careful about the kind of mental traps we create for ourselves.

I've done a bit of thinking about this because I started to begin thinking of the ego as our enemy. I considered all the problems with people, my problems, and how so much can be directed at the ego for why we don't progress. I thought about my depression and constant longing for personal happiness which plagued me for so long and now seemed to become very weak since expanding my consciousness to the Afterlife, the meaning of life, etc.

I started to see that the ego had to be controlled. Then I thought that the better word was tamed. It appears that only by expanding the consciousness can we leash the ego and begin to control our fears, desires, and everything involving the self in negative ways.

I have changed my thoughts on allowing the ego to be weak and instead found an understanding that it must only be improved and brought to balance with the consciousness. The consciousness and the self consciousness should achieve harmony. Upon doing this we can find balance in the life for the individual and balance for the life outside of it.

The truth is that the self conscious is required. The ego is required. If you can't find peace within yourself, how else can you really know and practice it? The problem is when the self conscious works alone without the consciousness outside of it. Every individual making up the 5+ billion population lives a completely different reality and experience separated from the other. No individual is completely unique or "one."

This is not a new revelation, but it should be made aware. We are one in our influence of each other. We change the world and the events every single day from this influence. Every decision, every experience, and every move from each individual is the entire source for everything which takes place. There is a domino effect going on at all times. A single influence that you have on another individual completely changes their day and their events from if you had never encountered them, and that process is repeated from person to person to person.

This is how we are connected. This is how we create fate and this is how everything works in the physical world. This is why a mass expanse in consciousness is so incredibly important. Imagine if everyone understood this. Think of how impacting it would be on the world. It is part of our system, particularly as social beings.

We aren't meant to exist as a single being. It is through the collection of our individual consciousness; each working separately but with and for each other, that we enlighten the planet and enhance our lives.

I don't see the point in ever needing to exist separate from myself. If that is the will of the universe, then so be it. But it seems to me that only through the perfection of each individual soul can mass perfection occur. Once the self conscious and the conscious are in harmony, there will no longer be restrictions from the ego. Improvement will be sought in all aspects.

That's good to hear. When people make contact with their soul, they find that they are more than the person they took themselves to be.


spooky2 wrote on Apr 13^th, 2010 at 10:59pm:

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I'm really willing to understand existence without the self consciousness. Or would you separate that word from the ego? You know how the ego is when you're younger. It likes to ride around. But many, many a blow has been dealt to my ego through my life. It was never very big, but it became the center of attention last year and had to be dealt with.

I don't really know how close psychedelics/hallucinogens get you to a transcended state but my experience on shrooms was definitely one of those life changing moments. I know exactly what it is like to retain consciousness and be absolutely certain that I am dead. Maybe that doesn't make sense since I was alive...but I'm referring to the affect on the mind/ego/all of it. That's the most important thing I remember, was that I felt the shock and dread of an absolute belief that I had left my life and was where ever you go when you die. I felt heaven, I felt hell, I felt shear terror and I felt shear peace. Then once all the shock of it faded I came into this understanding that in this new world I was free from the restrictions of the physical world. Things became willed from my imagination. I never felt any sense of self awareness or any sense of time at all. I just was what I was and it was pretty nice to feel no restriction to anything. Then I tried to make sense of the power I felt by realizing myself to actually be the one and original being of God, that I had lived a human life and was now free of it, and upon realizing this figured I needed to continue my experience as a human. Not long after I woke up and was pretty blown away.

That and a second similar experience was the closest thing I got to having any fundamental understanding that I was much more than I had perceived throughout my life and there was more after death.

I was sent this yesterday as a message:

"Under the influences of hallucinogens, individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change."

Couldn't really disagree with that, personally.

I would just like a better understanding of it without the drug use.

Yes Stone Cold True, I remember your other posts about these experiences. The term "ego" is used differently. The really interesting thing is, at least for me, when people tell about their ego fell off, and they mean with "ego" all those self-attributations which is the process to become a person. In my view there is a basic locality sense which is the root of the person. It's just the "here-I" in an absolute sense, as babies have, and animals. Then there is the self-attributation process, and that's when we become a person, and not only that, we as well identify objects as not-me, and we have the distinction of inner world and outer world, and all those rules between them. And the interesting thing for me, as I've said, is, to see if it is possible to go behind this built self, which in this meaning Wartella calls "ego". I have some brief experiences which are similar to what he told of, and they were great. So I follow this trace.

Spooky