Spirit and Psychedelics

[joedirt]

"Division and unity are aspects of the same thing."

Well, you cant really have unity without diversity. Focusing on oneness alone has never made much sense to me personally. It is valid, but so is the diversity. If you dont have diversity than there is nothing to unify..and if you dont have unity than the seemingly endless expression of diversity sort of makes no sense becasue there is nothing like a sort of closure to bring it all back together into something that makes sense for us..as much as that even can make sense...

It is possible to take a unified object...say an apple and notice diverse feature of the apple. For instance the apple has a stem, dimples, seeds, a skin, and it has a meaty core. Those are true statements, but the apple is still the apple.

The thing is though, when you go to the base level everything is entangled and arises from fields. There is no diversity in the higgs field. There is no diversity in an electrostatic field. They are just fields of energy.

I am personally at odds with the idea of emptyness though..the idea of meditating on the void etc. It is not my thing.

It is not my thing either. However, I'd like to point out that the void and emptiness are the two most misunderstood aspects of Buddhism BY FAR. It arises from translation issues from Pali to every other language.

All things are empty of inherent existence. This means simply that things don't exist alone. There is no void that you meditate on. You meditate on the interconnectedness of all all things. You also meditate on the emptiness of things, but this is also a gross mistranslation. Emptiness means that things don't last. Look at your arm. Look at it again. Though it appears the same, every single atom is in a different location. Look back in 100 years and you won't see an arm, but only bones. Look back in 20 Million years and you won't find anything. It is empty. This is what is meant by emptiness. Emptiness does not mean that there is a black void that we all go sit in after death. That is absolutely not it at all. In fact Buddha directly countered this a few different time in the Pali cannon calling it an incorrect, extreme view. Along with nihilism.

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul). He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever.

I will take the living, thriving system of diverse abundance anyday, because that is where I see a future..and this is where I feel I thrive. I neither thrive nor see a future in a void. That is just me though. I still acknowledge the unity within that system..and I think it is important to do so.

There is obviously diversity in the world just like an apple has a stem, seeds, and skin. But we all breath the same air. If the atmosphere evaporate we'd all die together. Jamie I also agree I don't want to see a future void like you describe...but understand that emptiness from a Buddhist perspective does not mean that at all.

I also think ego death is not the be all end of the psychedelic experience..though it is one aspect of importance.

To me, out of the many voyages I've gone on...the ego death experiences are by far and away the most important experiences for me. They confirm for me what I glimpse in meditation. Namely that awareness is real and ego is fantasy. When death comes joedirt dies. But the awareness that permeates all of space does in fact continue on...and on....and on...and on... I will never die because I was never born. Though that statement is only a true statement when I am fully disconnected from my ego...which as of now I am not...

AKL is one of the kindest-knowledgeable and most mis understood friends that i have

That may very well be true, but he took a very confrontational approach in this thread which resulted in others taking a less patient approach with him. He doesn't have to agree with anything us crazies say. I wouldn't blame him there, but when he starts taking personal shots at Rising Spirit and then apparently arguing for what appears to be the sake of arguing, and now it would appear that he is declaring that he is in fact awake while the rest of us are asleep...well you can't really expect that people won't put up resistance to that.

 

[nen888]

..joedirt wrote: (& glad you're back online with your wisdom, & thanks Rising Spirit for still being here)

He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever.

..:thumb_up: like..

..only forever itself is forever..
.

 

[Amygdala]

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul). He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever.

Spot on.

Makes me think of the importance of novelty in the universe constantly recreating itself. How horrible it would be to live forever as the same exact thing. Eternal youth would really be eternal age. Its a terrible fantasy that is so popular, and yet seemingly so unconsidered. Imagine if you were this version of you forever. Ugh. Im quite happy to be something always different, always changing, like sand through fingers.

I've never really considered myself a Buddhist, but I like their ideas... especially this one.

I don't know why it isn't common sense that nothing exists in a vacuum. Every single little thing in existence is completely interdependent on every other little thing. "A butterfly flaps its wings and some geezer in Shanghai has a bilious attack". What a wonderful insane math equation this whole shebang really is. Psychedelics have made this wonderful fabric of interconnectedness so much more apparent to me.

I think about it all the time.

 

[Jin]

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul)

ya well i am not saying Buddha was wrong , i am just putting this view forward for others to ponder on ....... well my definition of Soul ( Atman ) is pure unadulterated awareness , and since awareness always exists , thus the notion of an everlasting Soul or everlasting awareness , whatever you want to call it is your thing

a physics law states that energy can never be created nor be destroyed its just converted from one form to another , another way to understand the soul is to understand energy , energy=soul=awareness , thus it does really last forever , it only changes forms ( how about that )

He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever

exactly yet that does'nt say anything about something that is connected to everything all the time and can last forever

truly physically talking without even a hint of spirituality , i can say all is energy , it is only present in various forms , and since its just converted to another form , it does as a fact last forever by continuous conversion from one form to another , this is what the Soul(Atman) is , the energy that animates a body , the same energy that comes as light from the sun , the same energy that is everything condensed into lower an higher levels of existence , its what moves the oceans , its what makes food grow , its what is everything-nothing and beyond both dualities

Atman is forever , its the source of everything , it is what makes the galaxies spin , its what makes the universe move , its is unlimited awareness , its unlimited potential

the goal of spirituality as i see it is to become Atman , become a soul

this is where i perhaps disagree with Buddha and offer my understanding of this subject

 

[jamie]

"The thing is though, when you go to the base level everything is entangled and arises from fields. There is no diversity in the higgs field. There is no diversity in an electrostatic field. They are just fields of energy."

But on this level there is much diversity..so which one is really primary or fundamental? To claim that one is more rooted as the true aspect of reality, or the primary level of reality implies a sort of linear progression. Linear progression does not make sense to me outside of a certain closed loop sort of awareness. So even though the higgs field is in some ways a "new ether" as some call it, or a truely homogenous field does not mean to me that that lack of diversity means anything more than the presense of diversity at this level. They are just different aspects of the same, regulardless of what came "first" in relation to our perception of linear time frames.

All we can really say is that at some point there is the higgs field and at some other point there is planets and stars and life..

What this seems to be getting at..and what these threads always seem to be getting at is this attempt to basically explain away paradox with words. The whole thing is a paradox in and of itself..and I think what we understand as a "paradox" is really only a shadow of the real thing. It is why we have linearity, it is why we have 1 and why we have 2. It is why the world is the way it is for us and why all of this is so hard to explain. It is hard to explain because we cant really see what that thing really is. We dont see it. We see it's shadow, and we named it paradox.

 

[jamie]

"It is possible to take a unified object...say an apple and notice diverse feature of the apple. For instance the apple has a stem, dimples, seeds, a skin, and it has a meaty core. Those are true statements, but the apple is still the apple."

The apple will always be part of something bigger, which in turn will always be part of something bigger. If we reach a point where a thing does not make up part of something bigger than we have an even bigger problem to explain away. Although this is still speaking within a linear paradigm.

So if the apple is always going to fit in to something larger, than where do we draw the line in terms of what we define as fundamental?

Take the temperature scale for insance..it is now thought to be a loop, and not a straight line going simply from one end to the other. That might be a good paradigm for what we are talking about. There is no part within a loop that is more fundamental than any other part.

 

[Rising Spirit]

"In my view, it's more a no-thing, as in not a recognizable thing."

I could start a whole other thread just about that. I understand and agree with you, I seperate that idea from the common idea of a void though. I will stop there otherwise I will write too much and end up contradicting myself..becasue I think you have to conradict yourself to even begin talking about that whole subject..and then it comes out sounding like nonsense.

Agreed! And yeah, it could certainly become an in depth thread in it's own right. And sure, when we speak of the Void, the Great Emptiness, the Eternal Mystery... we use the opposite mechanism, our dualistic mentality, to conceive of the insubstanciality. This doesn't really work, as you wisely suggest, for it is a fundamental contradiction of sorts. :?

Great accomplishment seems imperfect, Yet it does not outlive its usefulness. Great fullness seems empty, Yet it cannot be exhausted.

Beautifully said. As an ideological concept, emptiness creates fullness, which is itself essentially still empty, because it never truly is apart from the undifferentiated totality. It only appear so from the vantage point of our defined ego. And it, The Eternal Tao, remains completely beyond words or quantification.

And despite such a profound truth, Lao Tzu did speak, as did Gautama Buddha and Mahavira. They did not go into the infinite silence and disappear from the eyes of the world at large. It is proposed that they did teach out of compassion for those caught in the net of illusion. Which strongly implies that some aspect of self are useful for human beings and some quite worthless.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Now, as far as integrating the idea of Void with the idea of Spirit, the primary subject of this discussion, I might suggest we look at emptiness not as an absence or a vacuum, rather, we might understand it as an undifferentiated state. One without commitment to this or that. But despite it's featureless-ness, it is often spoken of by humanity's deepest thinkers. This emptiness we discuss is wholly a non-formed state which contains all of the limitless potentiality of becoming and yet, of itself, remains unborn (as Bankei Yotaku described it, nearly 400 years ago).

There is a line of thought that revolves around the notion that the Void can be perceived in 2 alternate ways, which I personally believe is an illusion but serves as a method to draw us into mental quietude. White void and black void. And from my windowsill, this points towards the white void, versus of the black void. But I only say so because for myself, there really is no black void experienced. The black void is a stopping of the mind state and pertaining to the idea of nothingness. And the white void, from my own view, exists as a state of effulgent awareness without substance.

And yes, the notion that Void can be perceived in 2 alternate ways, is in itself a contradiction. The contradiction only exist in our mindset. But it does serve to draw our thoughts to a very subtle realm of understanding these abstract notions. Sot of, kind of, oh what the Hell... I give up! I surrender my subjectivity in profound angst. Lol

I know... one cannot realistically project duality upon that which is unmanifest, so while the concept of black and white are human in origin, we are left with arguably the most subtle of dualities, conceptually speaking. But there is much to consider from labeling one form of emptiness as black and one as white.

For example, the black void isn't at all my thing, either. I meditate of the white void. And before we get into splitting metaphysical hairs ad infinitum... it might be more reasonable to see the pair of voids as allegorical, as symbolic, like the idea of Yin-Yang, the holistic unity of apparent opposites.

Conceptually, the black void is the absence of all conceivable thing-ness. it is formless and has no describable feature, save darkness of non-being. Sure, I realize that this is a gross oversimplification, but for the allegory, it applies logically (for what it's worth). Conversely, the white void is likewise featureless and also wholly formless, save for our conscious-awareness of the presence of an intense expanse of Light. One so blinding it absorbs all that it touches into it's radiant formlessness. So, the differentiation, experientially, is in terms of our initial perception of inky black emptiness or the insubstantial fullness of The Supreme Light.

Now I am flavoring it with my own cosmology... but that's what we do, each time we raise voice on any subject matter, even about the idea of subject-less states (ah, the grand paradox arises).

When all is seen through the lens of limitless light, what can be differentiated from said light? Meaning, when naught is perceived but the blinding white light, there becomes the awareness of that light alone and so, no differences exist between seer and seen. Self disappears, the internal witness dissolves, the watcher from within us vanishes (albeit temporarily). And I am speaking of perception of oneself as real. So, in terms of ego-death, we embrace our non-reality and become silent enough to awaken to this perfect moment, right here and now. :thumb_up:

This expansive shift in perception makes for a unified perceptual framework, to the seemingly sequential dissolution of the witness of the light, and in the sameness in being, of the shift into this immense luminosity, one loses oneself in the effulgence. No thoughts arise to a unreal witness, no duality breaks the illumination's shimmering perfection from being itself, wholly infinite. But in such an indivisible frequency, the Light of the Godhead disappears, as well. It is also Void. This is why the term Clear Light of the Void arose in human semantics.

The mind needs to be wholly still and deep into silence to make immersion into such a brilliant abyss. So, light and dark fall away as dualistic reference points in cognition. The same can be said of god. god is Void. If all is Divine, then what is not Divine? So, what we are heading towards, as an idea, is that without the separation of the individualized witness, that the Sacred and the illusion, enlightenment and ignorance, only exist in our mind.

The peak of this paradigm is called a "whiteout experience" by those who use psychedelics. It is called many names, in many places: Nirvikalpa Samadhi to the yogis, Satori to the Zenists, Nirvana to the Buddhists, Divine Rapture to the Judeo/Christian/Islamic. Nothing can be said about it. No words come close to what it is. You can simultaneously experience it in union, and remain separate enough to conceive of it in terms of a subject-object duality. We are hog-tied when we try to speak of it. so, we can only describe some subtle aspects of it, when we return to normal selves.

And from this point in the ideological flow, we see ourselves as also, quite void. In ESSENCE we are a flash in the time-space-continuum. Iso-self is born from Omniself, and despite the seeming split... we are the still that state of undifferentiated Brahman, even though we do appear to be separate and become existent in a world of endless polarities and a seamless balance of dichotomies.

So, if it were possible to put the whole thought into a proverbial nutshell (which it ain't), it would appear as if the mirage of separation is temporary and the reality of our unity within the Void is eternal. and this doesn't mean we don't see the eternal in the temporal, it means we don't believe the our dream of an isolated self, a separate part alone, for the reality of our conscious-awareness within the Unified Field of Being. I feel that we are in our core of being, that which cannot be split into duality, despite inhabiting bodies and brains briefly existent in the time-space-continuum. We are One, interrelated aspect of the unity, for we are the very dynamics of the interconnectedness. 8)

Yet, we come back from the immersion, the peak experience, the deep trance-state, and still fully retain our mortal bodies, our mental processes and our human ego. The are the vessel of our awareness. so, even though we know they are illusory in the sense that they will pass, we use them to exist on this plane of consciousness. We incrementally train our mind, body and heart to center on the balance.


"Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water."

 

[Rising Spirit]

It is not my thing either. However, I'd like to point out that the void and emptiness are the two most misunderstood aspects of Buddhism BY FAR. It arises from translation issues from Pail to every other language.

All things are empty of inherent existence. This means simply that things don't exist alone. There is no void that you meditate on. You meditate on the interconnectedness of all all things. You also meditate on the emptiness of things, but this is also a gross mistranslation. Emptiness means that things don't last.

Yes, this! You speak of Sunyata, that insubstantial aspect of Bodhi as a state of permanence or enlightenment, perennially residing inside of all of the seeming impermanence, and therefore, it remains intact in it's emptiness. This is a definite oxymoron and perhaps it is intended as one? I have always believed that Lord Buddha was putting these ideas out to snare the habitual human propensity to continuously conceptualize about everything. Admittedly, I might be wrong, wrong, wrong.

So, maybe Mahavira, Buddha and Lao Tzu never used words like God, Brahman or Ishvara, because it was just another trap for our conceptual minds? You know, we worship a God so devoutly that we remain separate observers from it's totality and unity, and still exist consciously, as apart from it's unilateral reality. Seeing ourselves as parts of the whole, instead of the interconnectedness of the whole, the Oneness. We perpetuate the subject-object duality in our cosmology and so, project a division of observer-observed, upon that Field of Unified Being, which has no duality at all. This becomes a mess, as history records.

This is not so different that the Hindu belief in an undifferentiated realm of Brahman, which despite remaining wholly unbound and infinite, exists freely within all of the transient forms of all existences. The common ground is the core being, itself insubstantial and transcendent of all passing phases of impermanence.

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul). He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever.

Atman or self or I, is the most difficult aspect of our being to clearly pinpoint with any modicum of success. Hindu thought describes a seeming dichotomy betwixt Jivatman and Paramatman. I myself echo this idea with my terms, Iso-self and Omniself. Neither exist apart from one another but we use them to refine our intelligence. I find nothing more fascinating or challenging than the idea of duality... and it's ensuing polarities. Lord Buddha, in an effort to point out the mirage of separate existence, chose to emphasize that Atman is also quite an illusion. What individual self? We are never separate parts from the whole.

We do not truly split into two frequencies of self, one temporary and one eternally free of division. He taught that the Iso-self is unreal and that the Omnislef is the only reality. If so, the Omnislef doesn't exist as a separate part, either. It is also a mirage. Anatman is the only permanence, as it never divides itself from the Void. I think he wanted to point out that Self is not ever divided, as it doesn't really exist until the paradox of duality is created. Only in the mind of the unreal, is Self divisional, ego is separate and divided from the non-self. So, it makes perfect sense to propose the notion of Anatman, since self as a dichotomous paradox, is impermanent. Real self, unreal self, non-self. Words... human words.

But when 20th century sages like Sri Ramana Maharshi used Atman as a synonym for God, the Atman is the undifferentiated totality, it adds confusion to the whole mix. I can't say why he chose to ignore the use of the word Anatman, other than he not being a Buddhist and himself, being an Advaitan. "You say, potato, I say potahto. You say tomato, I say tomahto." He stressed that the "I" perceiving from deep within the center of our and everyone else's quintessential being, is that Supreme Self, the Indivisible Oneness. And who can say with any certainty? Most of the highest truths are completely nonverbal and defy description, so we are playing a game with words and ideas.

Great masters of realization do speak, though. And while we cannot speak of the Absolute in relative terms, conceive of Infinity in finite ways or approach an understanding of the Eternal, using our transient values or sequential conceptualizations... it is a fantastic exercise for our mental focus. Our concentration is sharpened each time we go around and around on this merry-go-round. It's what we do, we humans. It's good fun too compare and contrast human ideas, though. This thread has engendered a lot of intriguing stuff, and it is most fascinating to explore. As long as we don't take it too seriously, it's play and a grand time!

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Greetings and salutations all.

Normally I wouldn't jump into a thread so deep into it already... First of all because it entails a LOT of reading to get up to speed. But, also because, by now, the conversation has devolved into the handfull of diehards who are going back and forth, with precious few newcomers willing to join in (see 1st reason).

Hehehehe.

But then I saw who those handfull of diehards were... a who's who of my favorite chums here on the Nexus. RS, jd, jamie, Tattvamasi, AKL... come on.

Of COURSE I have to chime in here... if only to say hello to some core brothers who I haven't had the pleasure of hanging with in too long a time. I am a great lover of all y'all.

So. To get to the matter at hand:

I can't see how this thread has gotten so vitriolic over such a simple OP. Here we are discussing a topic where everyone here agrees on the fundamental point, and only diverge in what ammounts to a typical semantics debate.

Before I say my piece, let me say that I am a little shocked at how far Albert has come. Those of you who remember our epic debates of years past might recall that this is already a huge step towards the "spiritual" camp for my brother. He starts the thing off by taking the fundamental unity of all things as something so obvious and glaringly true that it isn't even worth discussing! Rewind to AKL from 2 years ago and he would have debated that point to the bitter end. (as I remember anyway)

AKL and I have a similarity in our personalities in that we both not only don't shy away from a debate, we invite it with eager anticipation. Going head to head with a worthy mind is a thrill that never gets old for me. As long as there is some basic respect involved, I like the no-holds barred style of verbal street fighting.

That said, I am firmly in the BoyPony, joedirt, Tattvamasi, Rising Spirit camp when it comes to what we are calling "G*d Realisation." I often refrain from using the G word because of the heavy baggage that this tiny word packs. Obviously, in this company, no one is really invoking the judgemental schizophrenic of the Bible, or some other comical anthropomorphised divine caricature. Still, I find that The Universe, The Tao, The Infinite etc. are basically interchangable with G*d and each other in practice, and thus I often opt for words that won't immediately scare off the anti-religionists.

I should mention that as someone who has had the "I Am The Creative Source Of Everything" experience more times than I perhaps deserve... AND as someone who has practiced Taoist & Buddhist Internal Kung Fu systems for well over 30 years, see both sides of this coin and find them to be too similar to bother pitting them against each other. From this persective, I think the whole sidetrack into scriptural Taoism was fairly pointless. I was never the scholar type when it came to this stuff. My lineage of Kung Fu masters were far more about the internal work... they were Neo Neo-Taoists, and as such, the texts were not so revered as in other schools. (The more Confucian influenced Taoists come to mind.) We were all about achievement. A single ounce of full blown mystic experience is easily worth a billion tons of talk... even from the great sage himself.

I should also point out that the "Emperor's New Clothes" argument here is not an argument at all. Nearly anything one says can fall into this, and AKL employs this technique at least as much as the people he is chastising for it. After all, he is basically saying that "if you understood Taoism like I do, you would agree with me." This is a briliiant move on your part bro, a page right out of old William S. Burroughs' rules on lying and propaganda... accuse the other of what you yourself are doing.

Another classic ploy used here is the ever so useful "defuse any counter argument by preemptively agreeing with it." This is some great spin doctoring. You can even sway the perceived ground of debate by under or over appreciation of what might otherwise be troubling points if made by your adversary.

I tip my hat to you sir. But you do not fool me.

Let's get back to the topic at hand.

Are psychedelics innately spiritual? & Is the "Oneness" experience useful?

Hehehehehe.

It seems almost too silly to bother... but obviously these are oxymoronic premises to begin with. Depending on your usage of the words in question, the answers run the gamut.

Let's start with the crux of the matter... what does spiritual mean?

The spirituality debate is as much of a non-starter as saying something is or is not natural. In fact, the two words are nearly interchangable. To me, saying something is spiritual or natural is both obviously true of all things... and also inherently false. This is because, to designate anything as such is to say that there are things which are not this. Spirit is the essence and substance of all things in my understanding... just as everything that arises in manifestation does so naturally. These are meaningless terms for me.

I think what AKL and others mean here comes closer to what I mean when I use the term mystical. Mysticism is a practice that embraces and synthesizes these paradoxes. It understands the fundamental unity, but it also seeks (by definition) to seperate itself from some normative reality and to cultivate the esoteric directly.

I am an avowed Mystic. This is no surprise to all you here, who know my feeling on this.

So are psychedelics inherently mystical? No. I think not. They are simply tools. In the hands of a mystic, they can be used for the pursuit of mysticism. Much like a pair of scissors. Are scissors creative? In the hands of a creative artisan. But a 4 year old is still liable to hurt themselves or others if left alone with a pair.

This is somewhat less the case with entheogens than with plain old psychs. To me, an entheogen must invoke (or at least be capable of invoking) the godhead experience... it is in the name, after all. En THEO Gen. Creating G*d Within. But even still, entheogens are still simply tools. Potent and awe-inspiring ones, no doubt... but still subject to the intent and understanding of the user.

People here have wondered how AKL could give such substances to hundreds of people and have none of them report anything spiritual about their experiences. This doesn't surprise me. If your friends and colleagues tend to be averse to spiritualism and shrink from associating themselves with such an "airy fairy" notion... they are extremely unlikely to use such terms in their description of their experience. The same goes in reverse. When you give DMT to a bunch of yogis and mystics... the terminologies they are familiar with will be used and the majority of them will claim to have had some kind of spiritual experience.

A lot of things get bad reps because of the commercialism or dogmatic institutionalisation of their elements. Money and dogma can corrupt just about anything. Just because most people learn Tai Chi at their local gym from someone who may have never even met a Sifu... doesn't diminish the supernal art of the grand ultimate fist in the least. People could say that waving your hands around in slow motion in some limp wristed, space cadet style is worthless. And, for most of the people you see in your local park, or some sad spin off Tai-Chi-Ish Aerobics DVD this might well be near to true. And yet, anyone who knows a real Tai Chi master will be able to attest that these cats are beyond badass, and what they do is EXTREMELY useful for them. The benefits of even a basic Chi Kung practice are too innumerable to mention.

So, IS the experience of "Oneness" useful? No... and Yes. Nothing is useful TO Oneness. What use does everything have for anything? But it is useful to the ego. Often immensely so. If you get enough of this experience, it can transform the ego from a petty force poised against any realisation... into a driving force in the pursuit of more of this experience. To use one of my favorite Taoist analogies... the monkey and the sage can join forces and can climb the mountain as buddies rather than being adversaries in the deep jungle.

Realization is euphoric.

Is this euphoria addicting? Ummm... duh. Bliss is to heroin what heroin is to aspirin.

AKL talked a lot on this thread about not chasing this bliss... about how spiritual evolution is impossible etc. Naturally, though, he had flip this dichotomy and on the other side he spoke of "making the world better" and of things "holding you back, and getting in the way."

Of what?

For something to hold you back or get in the way of something, you have to have some concept of spiritual, or at least practical, evolution or mastery. At the very least, you are acknowledging that there is somewhere to go and that certain activities are superior to others... in this case, AKL intimates that actions are valuable if they help other people or whatever.

I find this to be a run around. We can do another thread on the whole "compassion" topic. I will merely say that like the other paradoxes in all this... The world can not be better, as it is already perfect... and yet, it can very definitely be made better FOR US. Anything that exists or could exist is equally perfect. Just not to our subjective viewpoints. Obviously, the world can be made better... for some specific group or another. We could make it better for humans. We could make it better for Cajun Americans. We could make it better for viruses. We could totally destroy humanity, and it would be a boon to the fungi and plant life of the world.

You get the point. Relativity and all that jazz.

Sheesh. This is rather long. I hate to engage in the proverbial verbiage dump, but I am as guilty as the next Nexian... drunk on the profundity and overall sound of their hyperspace touched voices.

You will have to forgive me. I am commenting on over 100 previous posts, so it is what it is.

I will end this now, and save some things for later posts. I'll just say that I am exuberantly happy to see all of you guys again. I stayed away for too long, and seeing all you lovely people here just reinforces that for me. A deep and reverent bow to you all. RS, jamie, Albert, Tatt, joedirt et. al., you guys have been missed.

TTFN
HF

 

[Jin]

well whats really amazing about this thread is through many perspectives , through various questions , the forward and backward process and all that

atleast whoever reads this thread will get a good understanding of what spirit is and what our view on the subject is

even through differences of opinions and all that a lot of novel information and views have come forward :thumb_up:

 

[joedirt]

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul)

ya well i am not saying Buddha was wrong , i am just putting this view forward for others to ponder on ....... well my definition of Soul ( Atman ) is pure unadulterated awareness , and since awareness always exists , thus the notion of an everlasting Soul or everlasting awareness , whatever you want to call it is your thing

Right! But the everlasting soul you are referring to is not a personal everlasting self. That's the difference. I completely agree with your take as does Buddhism. And ultimately so does Vedanta, but for me at least I simply can't think in terms of reaching a higher self because every time I do it turns into an ego chase. Why does the ego joedirt want to be enlightened? So he can be different than others? So he can teach others? Perhaps so he could do magic tricks? etc, etc, etc.

For me learning to really focus on the fact that my ego is the illusion has been pivotal in my spiritual growth.
Speaking in terms of consciousness you can't be both a separate self and unified with everything at the same time. Buddha realized that most religious people of the day, and even the ascetics, were ensnared with their ego chasing the higher self and thus unable to actual achieve it because their aim was wrong.

He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever

exactly yet that does'nt say anything about something that is connected to everything all the time and can last forever

That's right.

Atman is forever , its the source of everything , it is what makes the galaxies spin , its what makes the universe move , its is unlimited awareness , its unlimited potential

and in those terms Buddha would not disagree with you as long as you didn't try to assign any part of your personality to it.

the goal of spirituality as i see it is to become Atman , become a soul

I highly recommend looking deep into Vedanta. I think it's a natural fit for the path you seem to be on.. IMHO of course.

Peace

 

[joedirt]

BTW Good to see you as well HF!

It has been a long time since this motley crew hammered out a spiritual thread.

 

[joedirt]

So, maybe Buddha and Lao Tzu never used words like God, Brahman or Ishvara, because it was just another trap for our conceptual minds? You know, we worship a God so devoutly that we remain separate observers from it's totality and unity, and still exist consciously, as apart from it's unilateral reality. Seeing ourselves as parts of the whole, instead of the interconnectedness of the whole, the Oneness. We perpetuate the subject-object duality in our cosmology and so, project a division of observer-observed, upon that Field of Unified Being, which has no duality at all. This becomes a mess, as history records.

This is not so different that the Hindu belief in an undifferentiated realm of Brahman, which despite remaining wholly unbound and infinite, exists freely within all of the transient forms of all existences. The common ground is the core being, itself insubstantial and transcendent of all passing phases of impermanence.

I think this is quite right. I think Buddha realized that people were easily ensnared in all of these conceptual traps because they were focused on 'their' enlightenment and not nearly focused enough on what they actually were and were not. Neti, Neti, Neti.

It is from this basis that Buddha argued for anatman (no soul) vs atman (everlasting soul). He simply saw nothing that lasted forever and was not connected to all other things. I agree with him thus far as I have also not observed anything not connected to other things and I have not observed any object that will last forever.

Atman or self or I, is the most difficult aspect of our being to clearly pinpoint with any modicum of success. Hindu thought describes a seeming dichotomy betwixt Jivatman and Paramatman. I myself echo this idea with my terms, Iso-self and Omniself. Neither exist apart from one another but we use them to refine our intelligence. I find nothing more fascinating or challenging than the idea of duality... and it's ensuing polarities. Lord Buddha, in an effort to point out the mirage of separate existence, chose to emphasize that Atman is also quite an illusion. What individual self? We are never separate parts from the whole.

^ Yes. This is it. I think the only thing I say different is that the 'self' is truely an illusion. I honestly don't think any aspect of my current 'self' crosses death. joedirt (may he rest in peace) does not survive death. The awareness that is capable of observing joedirt however does. But this awareness is almost alway's cluttered with ego and very seldom shines through. The few God head moments when the ego was truly gone and I was able to fully see from a pure unbridled awareness was transformative for my faith in the path. I mean once you experience your ego drop and your awareness expand like that. My God! lol

=RisingSpirit]We do not truly split into two frequencies of self, one temporary and one eternally free of division. He taught that the Iso-self is unreal and that the Omnislef is the only reality. If so, the Omnislef doesn't exist as a separate part, either. It is also a mirage. Anatman is the only permanence, as it never divides itself from the Void. I think he wanted to point out that Self is not ever divided, as it doesn't really exist until the paradox of duality is created. Only in the mind of the unreal, is Self divisional, ego is separate and divided from the non-self. So, it makes perfect sense to propose the notion of Anatman, since self as a dichotomous paradox, is impermanent. Real self, unreal self, non-self. Words... human words.

The only thing that matters is that the student arrive at a correct understanding. Paramahansa would say there are as many paths up the mountain as there are beings.

 

[○]

Glad to see you back Hyperspace Fool

 

[BoyPony]

I like where this thread has ended up......tempers are lower and egos have relaxed. This is where real work happens.

We live in interesting times! Life is wild sometimes even w/o the aid of entheogens.

These time are about completion.
These times are about resolution.
These times are about REMEMBERING....about recognition of the light energy that you recognize as your source.
For at the deepest level, there is something wonderfully familiar about this energy that so many are sensing. And something profoundly peaceful and reassuring in the sense of connecting with a long past memory so distant it defies imagination...and yet it is here.

That is the nature of the experience some have tasted fleetingly and some are drawn....even compelled ....to follow to the ends of the Earth. For in so doing, they know, at a level of knowingness they cannot even begin to identify, that they have somehow returned from WHENCE THEY CAME.

That is the Journey upon which we have embarked. The Journey without end that will lead you back HOME......to the beginning.

If You choose to Go.

Namaste-

-Boypony

 

[Rising Spirit]

This ^^^
Remembrance is the dawning of awaking. We are resplendently becoming ourselves, in full bloom. Like Jin wisely said, we are all spiritually and organically encoded to recall our own natural propensity towards blossoming, effulgently and exponentially.

I sincerely feel that we are each symmetrical microcosms within the greater macrocosm. All parts of the whole are also the totality, channeled effervescently into individualized self bubbles. We are the Spirit breathing itself into it's ever-changing being. Touching and touched, as a singular of surge of Divine expression.

Yeah, we aware of the diversity, the multiplicity, yet we are equally if not more, aware of the unity. How is this then useful? It helps us to dream a good dream, to live a balanced life and to love each other, everywhere, as one intergalactic family of beings becoming aware of their own consciousness, as it expands beyond the membranes of division, thus transcending the boundary of self and other.

It's so great to have you guys back, BoyPony and Hyperspace Fool!!! Ain't we got fun? Om Shanti

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Thanks RS, jd, Tatt...

I did miss you guys. Naturally, when travelling a lot and having limited online time... some things get neglected. This was a crazy winter for me. I could barely get the absolute essential things taken care of.

Anyway.

I am a bit surprised no one responded to any of my provocative statements in the post above. I know that posts as long as that often get skipped or skimmed, but it was my thoughts on the entire thread so far...

Funny enough, between the time I decided to chime in here and actually posting my thoughts, the tone and theme of the thread had changed. And, even more interestingly, I find I have more to disagree with now, than I even did then. This is primarily because the topics being wrangled earlier were non-issues.

Now we are getting to some core stuff, but I find that I am having trouble truly agreeing with anything that is being said now.

I have to jet in a minute, but I will just say that while everyone seems to pay lip service to the whole "ego is an illusion" concept... and a few even seem to grasp that the world the ego plays in is equally illusory... the points being raised tend to not actually reflect this.

This is not a finger pointing exercise, and I know full well that one can intellectually grasp this illusion/maya stuff in the abstract LONG before it actually breaks through into practical thought. What can you expect from paradoxical mysteries? This one is so core, that the illusion itself goes out of its way to keep you from fully recognizing it or appreciating the ramifications of that recognition.

I really do have to run... so i will just say be careful when philosophizing to not lose sight of the Truth that nothing in the purview of your ego is even remotely real.

OK. Ciao.
HF

 

[jamie]

It makes little sense to me that ego would be any more illusion than non ego. I dont really have anything else to say on that subject I guess. The idea that one is illusion and one is not, seems to me to be an illusion itself.

Based on what I ask? Pretty much every model people have put forth for why ego is more illusion than non ego seems to be a linear model based on people rationalizing what is fundemental..what came first or what is more homogenous etc. Personally I am respectfully calling bs on the whole thing.

It is all part of the same thing. Ego is a part of that thing. So to say ego is the illusion means to say that part of what makes up that thing is an illusion and I would disagree. I am a wholist(speaking within a paradigm where I will choose to categorize myself for the hell of it, basically contradicting the rest of my whole point here). Every aspect of a whole is just as important as every other aspect. Calling a part of that whole an illusion does not make sense to me. It can only seem to be an illusion from one perspective at best.

How does a whole exist if one part of it is not real?

You can acknowledge the importance of havving awareness of the interconnected nature of all things that make up the whole..and you can realize that from our limited experience that whole can seem to be larger than the sum of it's parts..but is it really? If you think about that for a moment it also seems iffy becasue it implies such a linear, ratonial model to be assumed in the first place. We always place things in terms of importance..this vs that..

We categorize things, and then we collect them and put them away on some shelf. This is no different. It is useful, but it is not trancendental.

The real mystery is, for me larger than any of this. It really IS still a mystery..and one I dont think we have an explaination for within a linear or rational paradigm.

 

[joedirt]

It makes little sense to me that ego would be any more illusion than non ego. I dont really have anything else to say on that subject I guess. The idea that one is illusion and one is not, seems to me to be an illusion itself.

Jamie have you ever sat down and held your attention on were your thoughts come from? Really tried hard to determine where this sense of ego ( 'I' ) comes from.

We can measure rocks, wind, light, etc but you can't find a trace of your thoughts. You may see the after effect of thoughts on a EEG but you can't see the thought itself and you certainly can't measure a thought. At least it hasn't really been done as of yet in a way that has convinced me, but Im alway's game to hear about new research.

When I observe my thoughts with close scrutiny what I see is thought - space - thought. The thing is the thoughts themselves seem to appear out of a void, stay a spell, and the return directly back to the void to which they arose. WITHOUT ANY CONTROL BY ME.

I'm not saying this is the only one correct view, but I am saying that I have spent a considerable amount of time investigating head on where 'I' arises from. I personally can not find it. I can't find any trace of it in neuroanatomy of neurophysiology either. If the ego ('I') is so real then were is it's location? Everything else in the real universe can be measured in some way. But thoughts are like ghosts. We can see there after effect in EEG (maybe...this certainly is not hard proof as of yet) but we don't see the thoughts themselves in anyway but a subjective way. Thoughts appear to defy objectivity.

It seems to me that by pretty much every measure we use to define something as real, thoughts turn out to effectively be ghosts. If thoughts are ghosts and ego is just thoughts of 'I' then couldn't ego be ghost/illusion to?

 

[jamie]

thats not really what I am talking about though. I know what you mean but I dont think it really speaks to the points I made about how we categorize things, or how we always try to define these things in linear terms even when the experiences themselves seem to have no linear or rational aspects to them.

I never said the ego was real in the way we define it as real ..but then how does one even really define what is real?

My point was that to claim that individual existance is any less true than some kind of larger unity existance makes no sense at all. How can you define the parameters that say at what point an "egoless" state is not simply another aspect of a much larger ego?..or when what we percieve as a whole is not just part of a larger whole?

It is like taking out part of an apple and then saying you still have an apple. Reguardless of what ego is, even if it is an illusion it is still an illusion that makes up part of that larger thing..so how do we define "real"? Can we really say that what we perceive as the whole is more real? I tend to see that logic as reductionist even though it seems at first to be the antithesis of reductionism. My view of wholism is all parts being equal to the whole on all levels. What we perceive as individuality plays just as large a role as what we perceive as unity, and linear progression is just as valid as non linear progression. Neither one cancels out the other. There will be paradoxes though that we cant get around..which is why it is a huge mystery for us.

Personally I see paradox as a shadow of some far harder to grasp beast. It is the next phase of the face of the mystery for us to grasp and this is why we have this dicotmey between everything..and also why when we have an experience of unity or "ego death", we resort back to this sort of dicotemy between ego and non ego after the fact in an attempt to explain it and I think this does an injustice to the experience. I think that most of you understand this, but still we all seem to enter into some kind of contract of dicotemy when we try to capture the essence of the experience afterwords.

You see what I mean? it seems like people judge what is real based on their own perception of scale..which is a linear and rational model..a left brained model. It is phenomenon that would seem right brained that is constantly trying to be categorized and defined by left hemisphere consciousness. It can not be done without resulting in this kind of paradox where the experiencer cannot proplery define the experience..even by me making that statement I make it sound like I devalue left brain consciousness, because I am using left hemisphere logic to try to explain it. It is a paradox I cannot escape.

I have no idea where my thoughts come from..but nonetheless many of the thoughts we have do seem to exhibit the qualities of a compartmentalized consciousness system.. you dont have to call it an ego if you dont want to, and personally I am not convinced my thoughts only come from me..but that would require a whole other thread again I think to even discuss.

I just think that what we are talking about is an experience that fubars the left brain, rational and linear consciousness system with this phenomenon of paradox, and that left brain categorizations will never quite fit. That does not mean left brain models are some kind of illusion though for me..it just means they have their place where they are useful and there is a boundry to that usefulness.

The cosmos just seems to be. I dont know what else to say about it. I certainly feel weird about trying to compartmentalize any aspects of it and then compare them against each other with my limted concepts of what is real or what is illusion or what is fundamental outside of a human paradigm that understands that their concepts are limited in such a way.