Eugene,Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 12:20 pmI do not agree with that. We can never experience the actual event of awareness "dissolving" into nothingness, because if we would experience such event, the awareness would still be there to experience it. Awareness can not experience the actual event of its own "dissolution". So there is no way to experientially prove that such state of "awareness dissolved into nothingness" actually exist. It is only your unprovable assumption/hypothesis/belief (religious or philosophical).Adur Alkain wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 9:10 am So, my point is not that we can experience nothingness, but that we can know it is there. We can know that nothingness or absolute emptiness is the ground and source of all experience, not by directly experiencing the nothingness, but by experiencing how our awareness dissolves into nothingness, and how it arises out of it.
I'm going to post a video below, where A. H. Almaas discusses this very point with Rupert Spira.
Philosophically your position can be classified as neutral monism, because you are claiming that the ontological ground of reality is "nothingness" where, in its "pure" form, there is yet no awareness, consciousness or existence, and the awareness and all forms and aspects of reality "emerge" from this nothingness. This is exactly neutral monism, which if fine, such ontology does exist and there are philosophers subscribed to it. One of the main problems of this ontology is the same "hard problem of consciousness" that materialism has to struggle with: how something fundamentally non-conscious (such as "nothingness" or "matter") can make conscious experience possible?
are you saying that you are always aware, even when you are in deep sleep? Have you never experienced the dissolution of your awareness (for example, under the influence of anaesthesia)? Like a gradual dimming of your consciousness, until everything "goes black"? I would think that everybody has had this experience. And sure, it is awareness that experiences its own dissolution. But then it's gone. I don't see this as any kind of assumption. It's just everyday common experience.
And by no means can you argue that my position is neutral monism. In my view, consciousness is more fundamental than matter. Matter is created by our perceptions. And I'm not even sure we can say that nothingness is more fundamental than awareness or consciousness. Only that, in our experience, these different dimensions appear in this order: discriminating consciousness is the most accessible, then comes pure undiscriminated awareness (only reachable in deep meditation or deep psychedelic states), and finally absolute nothingness (even harder to reach). But this doesn't necessarily mean that one dimension is more fundamental than the other. I don't see why there has to be a hierarchy among them.
A. H. Almaas describes five fundamental dimensions of reality or true nature: consciousness, awareness, nothingness, love and dynamism. All are equally fundamental, and experienced as such: as the ground of everything. (As you see, matter is not one of them.)
In any case, I see myself as an idealist.