Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:03 pm
Eugene I. wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:32 pm
The exclusion of all idea constructions (neti-neti) is only a certain phase towards realization of non-dual nature of reality including the world of forms and ideas. Rupert explains it quite well
here
In at least this version of Now we seem to be on the same page
As said in the other thread, the primary task today is to get an understanding of the microcosmic and Macrocosmic aspects of the funnel. We can very easily convince ourselves that in instructions like the above, these are quite
smeared out.
I've pointed attention to this many times. At what point in the above exercise, we understand that awareness is indeed One? I'm not speaking about an experience
reinforcing our belief in Oneness but some actual experience which somehow gives us the immediate knowledge of the Oneness of all? It's quite clear that the only way would be to expand into states where we begin to find the World within the same our conscious space. This is not what the exercises lead to.
Spira wrote:
Finally, having realized the unlimited nature of awareness, we make a return to the
world of objects and see all objects as made out of awareness.
This is very misleading. We can only speak with confidence about the appearance of our own thoughts. Only for them we know the (T) experience which explains them. To say that the objects are made out of awareness is general, intuitively felt truth but when presented in the above way it leads to very serious hinderance for further development, because it leaves us with the impression that we actually know what the objects are made of. In fact we know nothing. When we say that the table is made of 'awareness' it tells us no more than if we say it's made of 'matter'. If we are honest we must concede that we don't know how sensory perceptions manifest. To speak in the quoted way is like imagining that illuminating a dark room explains the existence of the furniture as coalescence of darkness. We mistake the entering of phenomena in the field of consciousness with their explanation.
Please get this right. I'm not bashing Spira or anyone else on some emotional grounds. I'm not even speaking about Spira in particular. This is a common symptom. The important thing is to understand what is being conflated in these flattened views. All we need is clear unprejudiced thinking. It's perfectly clear that the preoccupation with the so called pure awareness leads only to the threshold where the intellect is silenced. This is the reason why people like Sam Harris can have very different interpretations of these experiences. It is actually fortunate that there are counter-balances like Harris because they serve as a reminder that observing phenomena disappearing and appearing in awareness doesn't really tell us that much. Seriously, put any spiritual inclinations to the side for a moment and think about it. If the materialistic paradigm was to be true, then how would the mystical state differ? Once the intellect collapses, we enter a state without spatial dimensions, without even sense of time, but why couldn't this structureless/boundless brain state be falsely interpreted (once the intellect gets back online) as actual Spiritual Oneness?
These are serious questions that need serious answers. That's why I spoke about the subtle objectification. Even though in the mystical state itself there is no objectification, in the moment the "I" tries to understand its essence, it calls itself 'awareness' and all the world is only shapes in that awareness. And I repeat that this can be seen as right from the perspective of the Divine Word, where Spiritual Activity really speaks forth our spiritual stellar lattice but we need to understand in what relations we find ourselves with these levels of being. This is the primary task today. To find the relation of our own thinking voice which speaks words in the funnel and understands itself as 'awareness', to the hierarchical periphery of the funnel which speaks the world content of our consciousness.
Only when we begin to grow into the depth of the funnel we attain to the true structures within which world phenomena flow. This is very different from simply seeing phenomena coming and going, as we see the fly. Calling the fly 'object made of awareness' doesn't give us the (T) experience of its inner spiritual nature which extends in Time and guides its flight path. I understand perfectly well the appeal of exercises as the above, but what they really do is inflate the ego and lead one to imagine that just because they imagine objects as floating pieces of awareness, they are really standing at the level where they originate. This leads to the inner stance which imagines that it has already expanded to encompass the sphere of awareness and it is now only left to add more details to the picture. In other words, we imagine that when we see the fly, we're already at the correct vantage point if we imagine it as an object made of awareness entering consciousness. We imagine that it is only a matter of refining that object such that we understand the exact way this fly is created. But this is nothing other than the ego hyperinflating and imagining the world as coming and going of
microcosmic thoughts. If we don't gain consciousness of this desire to fit the world within our own sphere of awareness, we'll continue to behave as if we're at the apex of the awareness cone. We're blinding ourselves about the hidden forces which make us look only down, instead of realizing the depth hierarchy within which our thinking (including the one that imagines everything simply as objects of awareness) flows.