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[Unedited extract from my journal.]
[Unedited extract from my journal.]
Just been reading an interchange between Mark and John on LU .. whew !
One feels as though one has answers for them as they struggle ..
Most of what I see is that there is not a common understanding of what non-duality is so it is not being seen that the end of dualistic consciousness is the end of subject object (or self story) .. and the end of suffering and the end of questions .. and answers ..
I think a big secret is in questioning who or what knows that there is no self .. within the no-self thing especially .. because no-self in reality would be enlightenment or non-dual consciousness .. but understanding the idea of no-self is a different thing ..
If you start out not being aware of what subject/object consciousness is (as in "there never was any subject object duality anyway") ..
Aah .. I give up .. already .. this is not the way ..
I was imagining that by answering some of their questions or explaining what I see as some of their ‘mistakes’ in seeking I would clarify for myself ..
All I can say is “Who or what knows that there is no self ?”
The one who is seeking is that which is sought ..
(Maybe Ingen’s totally subjective idea is almost it in one way .. but .. I think that is .. as she said .. ‘all world’ .. i.e. totally content with material reality .. however that is somehow another route or road .. but .. it does suggest that there is a difference between theistic non-duality and .. well, non-theistic .. which I can’t quite tie down to express in words right now ..except to say that it misses the miracle of existence .. i.e. that there is anything at all .. which can’t be denied .. except maybe as she says object is fiction .. which you could say equals Maya or the shadow show of existence .. so yeah ultimately it works .. )
I am That.
“Who am I ? “ self enquiry basically means who or what is the one that knows anything ?
The one posing the questions and the one finding the answers ..
When you find an answer you look at it and find that it just poses another question .. You really have to find out who or what is searching and what it is searching for ..
It is always ultimately searching for peace .. peace from the dualistic mind .. especially if you are of a philosophical bent and have seen that the truth cannot be found through thinking .. and then keep thinking .. The end of suffering .. generally .. which is release from dualistic existence or consciousness .. the ego’s perception that nothing is ever quite right ..
So the trick is somehow to shift out of ego self and or dualistic perception .. When you look at and deconstruct the ego self and realise that it is a fiction .. you are looking from somewhere in order to realise this ..
If you look again and (as Ingen would say) .. ‘objectivise’ this place where you are looking from .. you create another self (from which you are looking at the deconstructed self) .. and can repeat ad infinitum ...
However .. that sensation or moment in which you ‘jump outside yourself’ .. which may be fleeting at first .. can become a trusted state of ‘knowing’ .. which one may call the knower and the knowing becoming one.
The knower cannot ultimately be known .. because it would then be an object .. you can only ‘be’ the knower .. not know it ..
That is the spirit of self-enquiry and why it is so inextricably linked with this direct pointing to no-self .. and also the buddha’s Anatta it would seem.
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Now I want to approach it in another way for my own satisfaction .. and this is very hard to encapsulate ..
Can I say it by saying that .. That which knows is not other than God but God is much more than that which knows ?
Maya is not other than God but God is much more than Maya ..
Form or material reality is not other than God but God is much more than material reality.
God is therefore both subject and object (which is where Ingen’s non-duality is apprehended) .. but also He is not only the substance of them but also the creator of them .. therefore He is imminent (as material unity or non-duality .. being subject and object at the same time) .. and He is transcendant as much more than material reality even in non-dual understanding and consciousness even in non-dual consciousness as the uniquely unknowable Creator of material reality and consciousness and more ..
He is the indwelling reality of all that is .. and His unique unitary quality is to be found right inside oneself as that which knows ..
The knowing that knows that there is no self .. yet is still there to know that ..
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I haven’t re-read that to see if I expressed anything like it .. but want to push forward to ..
The understanding that He is one in everything .. that the one who is writing this .. and the typewriter and the fingers moving on the keys .. are all one .. and so is the one writing the replies on FB and their fingers and their laptop and keys .. all absolutely One ..
I know it .. the singularity sought by the scientists and time and space .. are all one in reality .. I know it ..
How do I know it with a dualistic mind ?
Mark would say that it is just a concept .. an idea .. my idea of unity .. “It’s all one.” 1+1=1 .. etc
Duality is itself unity .. because subject and object are one .. that which is known and that which knows is one .. and the one which created them both is one ..
How can I say ? .. (and I am trying to get to the root of the difference between theistic and non-theistic non-duality here)
Because non-theistic non-duality certainly exists .. as in Zen Buddhism .. but also non-duality is common to Zen & Sufism .. yet I have always seen Sufism as superior .. & now .. (in a way).. I see clearly how the obvious proof of that is that Zen does not account for the existence of anything .. neither self nor world .. subject nor object .. maybe it just accepts that and doesn’t question (which is where I see it as falling ridiculously short) .. it is humanitarian based .. full
of compassion for humanity and wanting to resolve it’s suffering through (ultimately) non-dual consciousness .. disssolving the duality and the separate I in oneness .. of all including subject and object .. an unnamed but nevertheless very real unitarian consciousness known as the enlightened state .. which happens after a sartori or enlightenment experience .. It is liberation in the sense of liberation from self .. because self must disappear in true non-dual consciousness .. in the resolving of the subject /object equation .. Rather than a dichotomy of self and other it is an equation of self and other .. all dualistic thinking is resolved in a unity and so on ..
However it never accounts for the very existence of the subject .. or the object or the consciousness of both as two or as one ..
Only the knowledge of the existence of God does that .. and it is seen that Unity is essential to God and to existence .. an undeniable fact .. yet stillonly an aspect of God .. while being the truth of creation & the created ..
He is uncreated .. the causeless cause .. the first cause and when unity is truly seen .. the only cause ever .. no secondary causes .. as in Ghazzali’s example of the match put to the cotton .. and the subsequent burning of the cotton as all being the result of an ever present unitary cause .. as like a continuum of one cause in each apparent event .. dualistic consciousness thinks that the match sets light to the cotton and causes it to burn .. true unitary vision sees that the match and it’s flame and the subsequent burning of the cotton are all from one direct cause in the immediate present rather than a series of causes and effects in time .. like the difference between Newtons
In the same way when it is recognised that the ever present oneness is also an active living ever present oneness so it can be more easily accepted and understood that something can be in many places at one time .. as has been seen to be a property of those spiritually advanced people like the sufi Sheikhs who have been reported to lead the jumaa prayers in many places at once on the same day ..
Due to their very real unity with Allah ..
The unity of dualistic consciousness can then be seen to be on more levels than one .. a very first ‘taster’ of which is being found in the direct pointing of no-self .. sometimes experienced directly and sometimes understood intellectually (and kind of ‘missed’ by thinking about it) ..
Interestingly there are also reports of the Buddha showing signs of having been beyond time and space in the sense of knowing the questions of his students before they arrived to ask them and also of “swimming through the earth” as it was described .. somehow travelling through material reality rather than in it ..
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In ‘Bells experiment’ it was found that two particles separated in space both reacted immediately in time when only one of them was affected .. according to the laws of realtivity this should not have happened .. but when it is accepted that there is only one immediate ever present cause for any event .. and that that cause is the same one that caused the very existence of the particles in the first place it is easy to accept ..
Perhaps not for scientists because they can’t account for that cause .. it being beyond space and time and therefore invisible and unknowable except in its effects ..
The very properties of a transcendent and unknowable God .. Who is actually the very existence of the knowable world ..
Hence Samsara and Nirvana are not two ..
Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Will anybody ever understand what I am saying here ? I doubt it ? Will they even read it .. maybe one or two .. will anyone ever get right through it all without getting confused about what I am saying ?
Maybe not .. Does it matter ?
a) yes .. to me as a human being wanting to be understood .. and
b) yes .. if it is true it should be very beneficial to others .. in several ways ..
1) everyday level .. increasing trust and confidence through understanding .. therefore reducing suffering
2) possibly leading to non-daul consciousness / awareness / liberation / enlightenment (vitually interchangeable terms at this level)
3) .. most importantly, (from the view of a true believer of ‘knower of God’) introducing God back into the whole non-dual movement from which He has been dropped and lost because of the rejection of a) all the suffering caused by religion and b) because He is seen as the ultimate duality with humans or subjective consciousness rather than the cause of existence and consciousness and the substance of both in true unity.
Therefore allowing the reality of eternal spiritual existence before the universe and after it in a realm beyond, (outside of and comprehending space/time) which can also be found within the human experience and within a human lifetime on earth and is directly connected to through the real self in humans .. through self-knowledge .. as in “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” .. or the awakened self-realised enlightened human being who knows “I am That.” ..
The unity of all things in and as God .. which .. (in religious language ‘saves’ a person in this life and the next.) .. the after life is understood not as a fairy tale to keep suffering humans happy with the promise of something untrue and non-existent but actually the eternal reality in which and from which this temporary reality comes.
In the light of that eternal reality beyond space and time .. all is temporary .. universe .. human life .. consciousness .. all coming from and returning to eternity ..
A little silly tiff with P ..jeez ! Have I got to analyse and evaluate why that happened ?
At least it is a living proof that even directly after writing all that stuff out (i.e. the idea of the mind tying it all down and then everything will be O.K. etc) I can immediately have a silly argument with her which upset her and upset me ..
& now of course there’s no discussion of that .. no attempt to understand .. only mud slinging and accusations ..
God believing in God and His unity ..
Believe def:1) accept that (something) is true, especially without proof:
Belief in God and that He is the cause & being of all with no proof except the miracle of anything existing at all.
Whatever .. I believe in God .. existence is the proof for me (no garden without a gardener perhaps .. but this is so much more than a simple garden .. A garden has order .. which is not naturally found in untended nature therefore the hand of a gardener is inferred ..
Earth and man have an order of such a refined and integrated and incredibly complex yet harmonious order that one infers the hand of something much more than man ..
A tape recorder is a complex machine but cannot understand its maker ..
A human being has consciousness and rational thought ( as well as emotion and awe) .. so can at least infer its own maker ..
I can never be content with existence just existing .. or “excistence is its own meaning” .. unless in the sense of its miraculous nature ..
The question, “Why am I here ?” always recieves its satisfaction in the answer .. because God created me and created me in order to know Him .. first through His works .. and second through myself ..
(“Allah shows His signs on the horizons and in themselves.”) ..
It seems the only way to know Him truly is through oneself because that is the most intimate place of knowing .. what we know best is ourselves because we never leave ourselves .. and certainly never leave our real selves as evidenced in out of the body experiences ..
The more we leave our everyday self the more we find our real self .. as evidenced by the process of direct pointing dissolving the illusion of the everyday ego self ..
The question is how to make this (any of it or all of it) a lived real experience which affects the human being by effecting the transmutation of his base (lead) nature into spiritual (gold) or enlightened .. self-realized .. or God-realized nature ..
Work .. work on oneself .. through ...
Finding or knowing (being) the real Self ..
Finding or knowing God .. Who turns out to be the real Self ..
At least recognising the false self and something of its nature ..
Learning to avoid identification with the false egoic nature ..
Trying to control the ego through discipline such as asceticism .. meditation .. prayer .. fasting .. repeating of dhikr or mantra ..
Shattering all false beliefs .. leaving only Truth or reality ..
Which to do ? How to do them ? Which is most efficacious and true ?
Efficacious means either causing non-dual consciousness or Unity with God .. which may be different .. I now tend to think they are & have had that emphasised while trying to identify with and use the methods of no-self etc ..
There seems no doubt that in intention .. and in result the two are different ..
Believing in God .. wanting to know Him and finding that the knowing is the being .. or the knowing of God is the being of God .. or the being of the human is the being of God ..
Is different from wanting relief from suffering and finding that it resides in achieving relief from dualistic consciousness and seeing that unity is found in present conscious awareness from the knowing self .. rather than subject object consciousness .. becoming all subject so that the object disappears .. or is seen as an illusion ..
I do see them as two different methods with two different goals although there is and must be overlap in the found unity .. the discovery and lived consciousness of and in unity ..or abding non-dual awareness .
That consciousness lived in and for its own sake is different from that consciousness lived in and as awareness that there is nothing other than God including consciousness so that .. although the human (servant) knows that he is none other than God .. yet God is always Lord and servanty always servant bewcause it was God’s very own being which brought the servant into being in the first place and his own consciousness which is discovered to be none other than God .. but not in His totality .. other wise an enlightened Sheikh would be able to create .. The understanding is that he may be able to say “Be & it is.” But only if Allah wills .. in that moment he is none other than He as in the expression “It was not he when he threw.” .. in the Koran when speaking of the prophet throwing a handful of dust at the enemy which blinded them and caused victory over them.
The prophet was apparently throwing but actually it was all Allah’s doing .. beyond the normal effect of a handful of dust.
It is said that the prophet didn’t have a shadow .. fittinmg together with Sheikh Adnan’s “He didn’t have a human being body.” ..
i.e. .. totally surrendered or annihilated in God .. more than any other human being .. ever .. to that point that light passed through him because he was light .. (or words/ideas to that effect) ..
Does this mean that it is time to re-define or renew or refresh my faith in him (pbuh) .. and .. consequently return to being Muslim .. praying and practicing etc .. as both the meaning and purpose of my life ?
Interestingly it answers a statement by Mark that the meaning and purpose of life are two different things because if the purpose of life is to know God then also the meaning of life is to know God.
They are interchangeable and really “a path with heart” .. and following one’s passion.
If knowing God is to be achieved by worship & prayer and self control/asceticism because it is the best and quickest path for the individual and also for the society ..
If the prophet was the best man ever in all senses but especially in the sense of and because of having greatest knowledge of God .. and being the most beloved of God ..
Then it makes sense to follow him his message and his example which should be the last complete and best message from Allah to all mankind .. and also because ultimately (as Ibn Arabi says) The Prophet .. and The Koran .. are none other than Allah ..
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