Don’t know .. if there’s any point in writing anything in here .. yesterday four prayers .. today maybe nothing ..
The stance was .. I have done the Self Enquiry thing and found that there is still something there even when all else has fallen away .. how is that possible ? .. Oh that is non-dual awareness or pure consciousness .. that’s the I am .. if it’s there it must be God .. so everything’s God .. just as I thought .. He manifests as the non-dual as in the objects but also as in the ego self that can be seen objectively .. He does that so that I can know Him but really it’s Him knowing Himself through me .. End of .. my job is to worship Him .. that’s the dualistic manifested me’s way of recognising His greatness and as Creator .. that’s what He created me for .. so get on with the job.
Something like that ..
I fall down on the job after maghrib .. don’t do isha .. after supper it’s worse because I feel heavy .. the telly and its rubbish and the level of our virtually no censorship society that has lost its values along with its beliefs .. I go to the FB groups and find people reducing everything to smutty jokes even around elevated profound utterances like Rabia’s .. which had earlier in the day summed up the position mentioned above for me from a reliable and spiritually beautiful source ..
Total dissapointment and disgust with both the telly world and the FB world .. fed up with myself for typically tailing off in my faith and practice towards the end of the day ..
One other slightly interesting thing (to me) .. is that I played guitar a bit yesterday and I haven’t done that for ages .. there’s been zero interest .. and even when I tried, like no energy or inspiration ..
I wonder wether it is linked with the energy from prayers and dhikr .. ? Seems likely and possible .. wether that is because the ego wants to distract from the tiny progress made on the spiritual practices or not I don’t know .. or wether it is a sign of having linked back in to some kind of more healthy state .. Also increased sexual energy may come from the same source .. There always definitely seems to be an energy link made when praying and so on .. especially if fajr is done on time ..
The end .. nearly .. I mean I can go on and on .. but really I don’t know wether anything happened with the LU lot .. & I still doubt it ..
Either they are being unintelligent or I am .. maybe I haven’t really done the work .. if I haven’t it’s not clear what to do ..
I try to watch thoughts .. memories and emotions or feelings as they come up .. and see that they are not really me (though if they are not I’m not sure what they are or where they come from) ..
I see that there is a deeper self behind all that which may be termed the watcher .. probably Benthino’s Free Awareness that he is so pleased with .. I realise that if one was constantly in that place of consciousness there would be a disconnection with all the other stuff .. and though it carries on one would not be identified with it .. it would seem ‘hollowed out’ as Mooji described it ..
I see that one (perhaps) has no control over thoughts .. they just keep coming up .. I see that it can be said that there is raw sense data presented to consciousness and that mind and feelings jump in and label them as good or bad pleasant or unpleasant according to the individual situation ..
I see that the immediacy of events can be percieved almost as they are happening without interpretation and so it could be said that reality is that and the interpretation of them via labelling with thought is the veil of personal view which distorts objective reality ..
But when I’ve done all that .. nothing really happens .. except that if I was trusting all that mental consruct to tell me to disregard any of my normal accreted view of the world as unreal .. and that my whole idea of myself (which is admittedly very negative) is an unreal construct .. if I trust that and no further questions arise .. then I’d be like them (the other so-called liberated ..) and the liberators .. just happy with that ..
Perhaps the difference is though .. well .. first I must try one more possible obvious difference .. which is that I don’t do anything and don’t relate to hardly anybody so it could account for kind of slumping back into mind stuff and depressed feelings caused by inactivity and too much time alone ..
However I really think the main difference is that most of them are (it feels weird to say it) unbelievers by which I also mean in a way .. total materialists .. people who are happy to go along with a completely materialist view of life and especially human life and the world and the universe an everything .. happy with the big bang theory and that it somehow happened by itself (pretty ridiculous if you ask me) and conveniently forgetting that it is still just that .. a theory.. til maybe another one comes along .. Happy with Darwin and that sick fanatic - suffering from the extremism of his Plymouth Brethren upbringing and still reacting against that - Richard Dawkins .. happy not only with those two things to account for the existence of anything .. but also that the obvious implied result of that is complete meaninglessness to human life and the existence of the universe or anything in it ..
I can’t get through to them because even if I have discovered the same thing as them about ‘no-self’ .. it still leaves me amazed that anything exists at all .. because I do not believe and can almost not concieve of the universe coming into existence by itself .. ( a mad and ridiculous notion) .. a fact still unaccounted for by any theory .. even if modern physics can say that things can come into existence by themselves .. (which I think I read somewhere) .. they certainly don’t know how .. so even if you accept that there was ‘nothing’ .. and then a tiny mass of incredibly dense material which rapidly expanded out to become the known universe with all that we know about it .. somehow floating in nothingness .. which we can’t find the edge of in order to measure this known universe etc etc .. Even accepting that .. which I can .. and (as I realised the other day) .. do .. still, no-one knows how that happened .. let alone why ..
I still find it interesting and quite amusing .. but more than anything, highly significant, that the idea of using computers to extrapolate backwards from a present knowledge model of the universe back to its beginning .. just a few milliseconds before the beginning .. all the maths breaks up .. The significance of this to me put in common language is that you can’t use maths and computers to ‘spy on God’ .. i.e. they still don’t know even the how .. let alone the why. ..
So it seems that I am talking to a bunch of people happy with the no-self .. floating in an existence with no explanation and no significance .. Therefore it is no wonder that it doesn’t seem even mildly interesting to Ingen or anyone else how on earth they still seem to be there and functioning after realising that they ‘don’t exist’ .. I mean .. crazy stuff .. really the land of the blind .. and for many of them another triumph in tearing up the rule book .. or destroying old myths etc ..
This stuff was originally done in a completely different atmosphere of intelligent and awestruck wonder at life .. with a recognition that something is going on .. and then investigating carefully and respectfully .. It has happened for thousands of years in Vedanta and also in Buddhism .. where the conclusions and the results were different ..
I am still not saying that it hasn’t been useful and interesting and pleasurable for Ilona, Ingen, Elizabeth and many other for sure .. but to just keep mining that same seam as if it was the answer to everything and a universal cure for everything seems so silly to me ..
Part of the problem of incomprehension that I receive is because of age maybe .. people near the end of their lives may have more motivation and occasion to question more deeply the significance of life on earth and particularly their own ..
I am sad to see that so many youngsters are content with the idea that they are nothing more than advanced apes .. and that human life and the world and the universe have no significance or meaning ..
They are also even eager to say that any belief is due to some poor sad idiot’s attributing meaning but in reality there is none ..
I say look deeper then and tell me how anything exists at all ..
Simply put .. how is the universe here at all ?
What is life and how does it occur ?.. Particularly human life ..
.. jeez .. I realise that they will come up with the whole Darwinian scientific view .. it has been swallowed lock stock and barrel so that there is no understanding of the miracle that there is anything at all .. or that the human has this particular symphony of amazingly intricate structure at every level even biologically, let alone the nature of consciousness and it’s extraordinary subtlety ..
Everything to do with consciousness is believed to be accounted for by the brain and its activity by some people (like Ilona) .. and that is vaguely assumed by most ..
I have to ask myself if it is worth carrying on spending any time in those groups ..
Maybe I can ask if everyone there considers themselves to be atheists with an unshakeable belief in the big bang theory and Darwin
Maybe I can make one last desperate attempt to get them to remember that both are theories and should not be the basis of a world view without deep questioning.
I have come up against this through the no-self thing and wondered wether Rabia’s words might have helped sum up where I am with it ..
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
~ Rabia al Basri
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out ?
And in whose being you still exist ?
O.K. .. the line “In whose presence you are blotted out.” I took to be the sufi equivalent of no-self .. the sufi annihilated in God recognises that he or she has no real self .. but is not as crazy as the so-called Liberated no-selfers as to be blind to the fact that they still exist .. so I take the line “And in whose being you still exist.” To be the recognition of that ..
i.e. Where I am and where they should be ...
(if they are honest and not lying to themselves & others like Tony Parsons )..
.. that no-self is the recognition that the ego self or ahamkara ..
(the ‘I maker’ if that is the right and correctly interpreted word from advaita vedanta which I came across yesterday but found some seemingly conflicting accounts of) ..
Is an illusory and not solid construct which when taken to be the real self causes ‘sorrow’ and is a veil over reality and the real self ..
The real Self when really found can only be lived in and not known because it is what you are, not a construct in consciousness but the very stuff of consciousness itself .. it is what the Advaitins said is a true thought “I am” .. we know this .. it is obvious .. but the no-selfers want to say that they do not exist .. they want to say “I am not” .. it is so foolish and so unsubtle .. and causes the reaction .. “Well if you don’t exist what is sitting there writing and who is saying they don’t exist ?” etc
If this is not recognised and there is no discussion and no seen or felt need to account for the obvious fact of existence after liberation .. what’s the point in trying to engage .. ?
It both saddens and frustrates me .. because something that is so full of potential and with such great possibilities of application to much of modern psychological suffering and even a realistic first step to non-dual awareness or enlightenment just gets relegated to being see as a bunch of loonies making big claims about something that has not really happened or is not happening .. where as for some people it has happened deeply and for others it has made a great difference to their lived experience of life and a useful tool for dealing with many of the actually illusory experiences caused by identification with the ego self ..
Oh dear no-selfers .. please recognise that while some may have stopped living in the ego-self for good and others may have learned how to disidentify with it temporarily .. still life goes on as the Real Self .. and social interaction goes on through the ego self but as a mask or necessary mechanism ..
Please stop saying “I don’t exist .. you don’t exist.” .. it’s such bollocks ..
Sufis know that their real self is none other than God .. Advaita Vedantins know that their real self is Brahman or That .. no-selfers or liberated say they don’t exist .. how silly is that ?
They may be permanently or temporarily liberated from the tyranny of the ego .. but for God’s sake how is there a group or even an internet presence without existence ? It may even be just use of language (english is not the first language of Ilona Elena Ingen Mihai Damon or many others ) .. but please don’t bandy about ridiculous and meeaningless statements .. except perhaps in the context of one-on-ones where it may be a necessary tactic for emphasis or shocking people out of their comfort zone.
This is about how to break the identification with the ego or false self .. and it is a slightly new twist on resolving an old problem and the root cause of suffering and seperation from reality or whatever you want to call it ..
“I don’t exist !” is a first stage realisation .. “Oops! I still do exist but with a completely different present consciousness of existence.”.. is second stage realisation.
------------------------------------------------------
If I could agree on the above with the group .. then .. one is left with the question still ... “And how does existence occur ?” Who or what accounts for the existence of even the new liberated consciousness ?
What is that consciousness that blots out the ego consciousness .. the apparent separate self ? What is that that maintains the appearance and existence of oneself and all else ?
Don’t ballshit here .. !
The commonality that is felt is God’s Unity in all things because nothing exists other than He .. the nearest we can get to feeling that existence is in ourselves (obviously not in objects) so when we find our real totally subjective self .. the real I am .. and we are it .. we find it to be none other than God .. as the scientists find really that material existence is none other than God ..
The sufis achieve and even more intimate God consciousness when they become so annihilated in Him that they can go beyond time and space and appear in many places at once as well as go back in time etc etc because of being immersed in the sea oc becoming or the ocean of creation .. it is a grant from God Himself to them and happened also at some level to Ramana Maharshi (who was not scared to talk of God )..
These things are not the goal of sufism nor of advaita vedanta .. but a corelated result of the depth of union with that which is .. They reuslt from earnestness .. love .. sincerity .. trust .. faith .. whatever deep personal characteristics were brought to the search by the great saints ..
Modern apparent exponents of advaita like Ramesh Balsekar lacked any taste of deep spirituality and of course disappoint people like Ed Muzika .. because they were not truly saintly or spiritual people in the first place .. Good intellect .. deep thinking and application can produce something that looks like a realised advaitin .. but .. to be honest I never found the guy worth bothering with much in the first place .. Even through books and videos a taste can be found or not .. As Rabia said ..
“Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.”
Ay Dios ! and even after all that I am aware that I am explaining !
e.g. that the singularity that science so dearly wishes to find turns out to be none other tha God in His unitary aspect .. and that the very experience that they engender of not existing is due to the discovery of Him at work within themselves .. but as they refuse to recognise that, even with any other name that they wish to apply (That Which Is .. consciousness etc) .. so they must end up in the untenable and ridiculous position of saying that they do not exist ..
What is it in the presence of which they cease to exist and in the being of which they continue to do so ?
Might be a better way to rephrase Rabia’s question for a non-believing materialist (‘audience’) ... group of people.
What is it in the presence of which you cease to exist and in the being of which you continue to do so ?
(Answer God .. The Self .. Consciousness .. abiding non-dual awareness .. The Tao .. Brahman .. Allah .. etc etc ..)
No comments:
Post a Comment