Consciousness is all there is

[Eugene I]

Here is a short essay on forms-formlessness, consciousness and its phenomena, self – no-self etc.

We know ourselves and the world as a stream of phenomena of conscious experience: of sense perceptions, feelings, imaginations, thoughts and ideas of all kinds (from verbal and rational to subtle and intuitive). This is the reality that we actually intimately know from our direct conscious experience. All of the phenomena we ever experience are always present in our consciousness and directly experienced by consciousness. All these phenomena are real in a sense that their conscious experience is real. However, we do not find any more reality to them other than the reality of their conscious experiencing. For example, we can imagine and think about “Santa Claus”, and such thought-imagination, the idea of Santa, would be absolutely real. But that does not mean there is a “real Santa” existing somewhere in the “external world”.

Another hallmark of the phenomena is their impermanence. There is not a single phenomenon that we can find in our experience that would be forever permanent, they are all constantly changing affecting each other in a complex structure of co-dependent inter-relations. They all condition each other and they are all conditioned by each other in a complex way. We definitely observe consistent patterns and structures in both our sense perceptions of the world and in our inner ideas, feelings and thinking patterns, yet these structures are still never fully permanent, they are simply constructs created by and in consciousness, whether it is our individuated consciousness, or the group-collective or the global one. It would be inappropriate to call these phenomenal constructs as “illusions”, all these constructs are absolutely real, yet never eternally permanent, they can be created and they can be destroyed, no matter how rigid and persistent they may seem to be.

There are also states of consciousness absent of any phenomenal content – these can be experienced in deep meditative states. However, there are certain aspects of our conscious experience that never change – these are the aspect of the never-changing presence and the aspect of awareness/experiencing. Even in the state of the absence of any phenomenal content the presence of awareness is not interrupted in any way. We can notice that the presence of awareness is like an all-pervasive and limitless space in where all conscious phenomena appear and disappear. It is never conditioned by any phenomenal content in any way. This presence of awareness is live and luminous, it possesses amazing abilities to volitionally manifest and experience an unlimited variety of all sorts of phenomena, to imagine, think and experience an unlimited variety of ideas and meanings. Yet, all these phenomena manifested by consciousness are only impermanent constructs: consciousness can freely create them and freely destroy them without being conditioned by them in any way. And no matter what happens with the phenomenal constructs, the presence and the awareness of consciousness always remains intact. The phenomena exist, but they come and go, yet consciousness itself that creates and destroys them always IS and always aware.

We all, the individuated activities of consciousness, are co-creators of manifested realities, together with any deities or MAL that can possibly be there. The world of forms manifested by consciousness is, in a way, all just a fantasy of consciousness, the result of imagining the ideas that consciousness creates in its thoughts. Yet, ones manifested, this world of phenomena becomes real because it is fully experienced by us as the loci of consciousness. But essentially, it is one consciousness that creates these forms inside itself and experiences them. There is no separation between the forms and the experiencing of them, there is no such thing as the subject and object in every act of experiencing. This is because, upon a close examination, every experience of any phenomenon or form is inseparable from the form itself. We cannot say: this is the form, and this is the perception/experiencing of it, and this is the “experiencer” of it. No, this all is just one thing – “experienced form” happening in the same consciousness. Any form is no other than consciousness, and when forms arise, at the moment of their experiencing the consciousness is no other than the form. The way we picture the act of perception in our minds - as if there is a “subject” that perceives some “object” - is simply an idea that turns out to be not true upon a closer examination. In any actual act of conscious experiencing, if we closely examine it for what it actually is in our direct experience, there is no such thing as a subject or an object, there is only a single event of experiencing a form with no separation between the experiencing and the form.

Now, most of us have a sense of self – we typically perceive ourselves as some self-existing and autonomous “entity”, the “perceiver” of perceptions, the “doer” of actions, the “decision maker”. We all have a persistent “sense of self”, “sense of I” that we typically completely identify with and believe to be the “doer” and the “perceiver”. This sense of self is so persistent that we often develop a belief of its eternal existence and immutable nature. Yet, upon a careful examination, we can discover that in our conscious experience we cannot actually find that “thing” that does all those actions, we can only find the ideas and feelings about it and the persistent “sense of self”, “sense of I”. But the sense of self is just one of the phenomena of consciousness – an intuitive but persistent idea and feeling. An idea cannot be what is actually perceiving and acting, an idea is only what is perceived. As a fact of our experience of self, it is only a construct of phenomena, it is a collection of certain individuated patterns of activity in consciousness. It is not what consciousness is, it is what it does and how it manifests, or like Rupert Spira said: “separate self is not an entity, it is an activity”. Those on the path of spiritual practices and who are able to dis-identify with their human bodies and mind patterns, often develop a more sterile sense higher Self to which higher modes of perception and cognition are pertained. Yet, such Self is still an activity. Does it mean the “self” and “Self” do not exist, does it mean they are “illusions”? Not at all, they do exist as constructs and patterns of phenomena that constitute our individuated flow of consciousness with all its character traits, ideas and patterns, and in that sense they are absolutely real. Yet, they are no more than these constructs of phenomena, and in that sense they belong to the realm of impermanent forms. The self can be created, it can be changed, and it can be destroyed. And, if we believe in the existence of any deities or god-creators, they also do have selves of their own, yet all their selves are of the same nature: they are phenomenal impermanent constructs.

There is a reason why this topic of self is important. We tend to strongly identify with our sense of self, we believe that this is what we truly are, and if there would be no “self” in us, we would simply cease to exist. This identification is at the root of our egotism, because we perceive the world through the “lens” of self, as if our self is the center of the world that perceives the world and acts towards it, and from such perspective it becomes utterly important to maintain such self-existence and compete in the world with other selves for resources and status. We as selves also want to persist and we fear death. All of it leads to a development of a whole complex of egoic patterns of cognition and behavior leading to systematic conflicts within our psyche and with other selves, and becomes the cause of most problems and suffering in our life on both private and societal levels. It is only when we are able to mis-identify with this sense of self and realize that who we are is not the separate selves existing in the external world, but the consciousness itself that constantly creates the world of forms, including the creation of our sense of self, then we can let go of this mis-identification and, as a consequence, all the egoic baggage associated with it. We burst through the bubble of the separate self that seemingly separated us from the rest of the world of consciousness, we drop the egoic baggage accumulated inside that bubble, and regain our freedom as consciousness, we realize that we all are only the ever-present aware consciousness which presence and awareness are never conditioned or affected by any constructs of phenomena, yet consciousness always continuously manifesting the phenomena and aware of them simply as they are – the phenomena and forms of consciousness. That does not mean that the self as an activity of consciousness ceases to exist, but it’s the opposite – it continues to fully exist and function, but in a liberated and non-self-identified sense, in where there is no ground for any egotism to develop or to maintain itself. We know ourselves as the same consciousness as all other sentient beings and we see the common unity and common ground of this consciousness everywhere in the world. Regaining this innate freedom unleashes our creativity (as the individuated activities of Consciousness) to the full extent, we become no longer conditioned by the forms we manifest, but the opposite - the forms become conditioned by our creative, high-level cognitive and volitional abilities.

[Ben Iscatus]

Ahhh! How sweet, Eugene. May it happen for you!

[Eugene I]

Some other random thoughts. So, the world that consciousness fantasizes is a way for it to entertain itself, to learn and develop, to explore and to have all kinds of experiences, both from broad perspectives and from very limited ones. But when a perspective becomes too limited and contracted into small local activities, these activities tend to misunderstand and mis-perceive the common reality and take it for "too real", too strongly grip to it and too strongly react to it. It is like when we watch a movie, we often become so enchanted by it and so immersed into it that we forget that it is just a movie and perceive the content of the movie as an actual "reality", and as a result, react to it strongly and emotionally. After all, this was the exact intention of consciousness to fantasize such realistically-looking realities and to contract itself into limited perspectives that would be strongly involved in these realities and mis-perceive them. Consciousness became very good at fooling itself. There would be nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that such strong involvement and mis-perception causes a mess of confusion, disintegration, conflicts and suffering. The movie no longer just looks as a drama, but becomes a real experience of drama. The experience of such disintegration is still valuable, it is part of the learning and evolution of consciousness. Yet, the very suffering that is inevitable in these experiences naturally motivates the conscious beings to find ways to heal themselves from such suffering, mis-perception and mis-behavior. At some point in their development they realize that the reality they perceive and they themselves are not as "real" as they thought. Just like a movie that we watch has no "real" world inside it, yet the movie itself is absolutely real, likewise they realize that the world of conscious experience is real, yet does not exist the way they previously pictured it in their minds as a kind of "external" reality made of separate subjects and objects (including their "selves"). As a result, all over-reactions and strong egoic grips and attachments to it naturally drop, yet the flow of the life of the conscious world and the life of individuated consciousness as inseparable part of the world continues, but in a very different way absent of the egoic over-reactions, grips and clinging. The release of such over-reactions releases bulks of creative energy of consciousness that was previously short-circuited into compulsive egoic thinking and behavioral patterns. It's like when we look at a painting filled with mythical creatures, we may imagine them as real and react to them with strong emotions (fear, love etc), but when we see it just as a painting, we can look at it from a different perspective and may notice how actually beautiful the forms of the painting are, how rich and intervened is its content. The picture becomes a piece of art, as opposed to a "reality" filled with mythical creatures that need to be strongly feared and fought with, or strongly loved and being attached to for that matter. And one of those creatures on the picture is exactly our self by the way, so our "self" is not what perceives the painting, but it is just a part of the painting and it is what is being perceived. But then what is it that is perceiving the painting? It is consciousness! And what is the painting that is being perceived? It is also consciousness. Consciousness is all there is. Unless it wants to fantasize (all within consciousness as well) that there is something else existing beyond and outside consciousness, with no way of proving it true of course, because there is no way for consciousness to jump out of itself and see what is there beyond it and if there is anything at all there.

And finally a disclaimer. In the written above I do not make any claims that it represents any ultimate truth or any "true" way to understand or perceive the reality or to develop our consciousness. I see it as only one possible way, the way that works for me, the way I personally see it and follow, and that I wanted to share here. I make no claims that anyone else should agree with it and follow along this path.

[AshvinP]

Eugene,

Thanks for writing this up - it is always helpful to put our thoughts into longer essay forms, for the benefit of ourselves and others.

As I am sure you expected, though, I do not find it a satisfying perspective on what we experience. Much of what you write are statements of your conclusions without any reasoning for how you got to those conclusions. Perhaps they are all derived from your meditative-mystical experiences, but then they must express some Unity of concepts, if they are valid, which makes more sense of our everyday experiences than other perspectives. I do not find that in what you wrote.

Yet, such Self is still an activity. Does it mean the “self” and “Self” do not exist, does it mean they are “illusions”? Not at all, they do exist as constructs and patterns of phenomena that constitute our individuated flow of consciousness with all its character traits, ideas and patterns, and in that sense they are absolutely real. Yet, they are no more than these constructs of phenomena, and in that sense they belong to the realm of impermanent forms. The self can be created, it can be changed, and it can be destroyed. And, if we believe in the existence of any deities or god-creators, they also do have selves of their own, yet all their selves are of the same nature: they are phenomenal impermanent constructs.

I do not understand the distinction you are trying to make here between "impermanent forms-constructs" and "illusions". How do you define the latter?

And finally a disclaimer. In the written above I do not make any claims that it represents any ultimate truth or any "true" way to understand or perceive the reality or to develop our consciousness. I see it as only one possible way, the way that works for me, the way I personally see it and follow, and that I wanted to share here. I make no claims that anyone else should agree with it and follow along this path.

So you are claiming your path does not provide any more added value than any other path? If that is in fact the claim, then what is the point of even discussing it?

[Eugene I]

Thanks for writing this up - it is always helpful to put our thoughts into longer essay forms, for the benefit of ourselves and others.

As I am sure you expected, though, I do not find it a satisfying perspective on what we experience. Much of what you write are statements of your conclusions without any reasoning for how you got to those conclusions. Perhaps they are all derived from your meditative-mystical experiences, but then they must express some Unity of concepts, if they are valid, which makes more sense of our everyday experiences than other perspectives. I do not find that in what you wrote.

Yes, I did not say about the practical side of it about how I got to such perspective, it would be a different topic and if anyone wants to apply it for themselves, it's best to read/listen to practical guides by either modern non-duality teachers (Rupert Spira, Adyashanti), or to follow traditional Buddhist or Advaitic practices. I admit that I do not have a full conceptual philosophy supporting such view with no explanatory gaps (as if there is any other philosophy or metaphysics that does). What I know is that there is a reality of consciousness, it is ever-present, ever-alive and ever-aware, in which there is a flow of phenomena and forms that, as opposed to the permanence of the presence and awareness of Consciousness, always change and are never permanent. I can definitely trace the living, developing and hierarchical structures and inter-dependencies of these phenomena, and inside these structures there can be a lot to investigate and learn, but ultimately they are all just structures of phenomena. The thinking ability of consciousness can also produce a wealth of ideas and meanings (from very rationalistic or primitive, to very subtle and intuitive on a level of higher-cognition), raw or subtle feelings, as well as the acts of volition can also produce a wealth of perceptual or thinking phenomena, yet they are all just structures of impermanent phenomena that consciousness can create and erase. Based on that simple observation, that I can clearly see that any phenomena, ideas or structures is what Consciousness does, but not what it IS. That does not mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with phenomena. I don't see a need to develop any other concepts in order to be able to live fully and creatively in this wonderful reality of Consciousness.

I do not understand the distinction you are trying to make here between "impermanent forms" and "illusions". How do you define the latter?

As I said above, when you look at a movie with Santa Claus, you perceive the movie. The movie and your experiencing of it are absolutely real, they are not "illusions" in any way. But then you may develop a thought-belief that the Santa that you perceive in a movie is not just a form of the movie, but it is a reflection/perception of some "real" Santa who actually exist as a person in some kind of a "world out there". And the content of that belief can be called an "illusion" because in fact there is no evidence that such real "Santa"-person exist anywhere, apart from being a form on the screen. The funny thing is that the idea itself that " there is a Santa who actually exist as a person in some kind of a "world out there"" is real - it is an idea that we create and experience in our consciousness. Yet this fact of the reality of such idea does not make the mythical "Santa-person" any more real. Now we can apply this analogy to our everyday life and our perception of the world.

So you are claiming your path does not provide any added value more than any other path? If that is in fact the claim, then what is the point of even discussing it?

I do not want to compare it with any other paths. The way it works is that people should try to adopt and apply different paths practically in their lives (if they want to do it of course) and see what practical benefits they bring to them. One thing that I can testify that it does work for me, and, from what I have seen, it does work for many other people travelling along the non-dual path. But I cannot claim that it should work as well for everyone. Obviously, it does not work for you for example, so your case is a clear evidence that this path is not universal The point of presenting it here is that it may resonate to some people and they may find it appealing, try it practically and find it working for them, or find it not appealing and not working for them, and that's fine too. The fact that it may not work as well for all people does not make it not worth sharing here, because it is good enough if it may work just for some of us.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for writing this up - it is always helpful to put our thoughts into longer essay forms, for the benefit of ourselves and others.

As I am sure you expected, though, I do not find it a satisfying perspective on what we experience. Much of what you write are statements of your conclusions without any reasoning for how you got to those conclusions. Perhaps they are all derived from your meditative-mystical experiences, but then they must express some Unity of concepts, if they are valid, which makes more sense of our everyday experiences than other perspectives. I do not find that in what you wrote.

Yes, I did not say about the practical side of it about how I got to such perspective, it would be a different topic and if anyone wants to apply it for themselves, it's best to read/listen to practical guides by either modern non-duality teachers (Rupert Spira, Adyashanti), or to follow traditional Buddhist or Advaitic practices. I admit that I do not have a full conceptual philosophy supporting such view with no explanatory gaps (as if there is any other philosophy or metaphysics that does). What I know is that there is a reality of consciousness, it is ever-present, ever-alive and ever-aware, in which there is a flow of phenomena and forms that, as opposed to the permanence of the presence and awareness of Consciousness, always change and are never permanent. I can definitely trace the living, developing and hierarchical structures and inter-dependencies of these phenomena, and inside these structures there can be a lot to investigate and learn, but ultimately they are all just structures of phenomena. My thinking can also produce a wealth of ideas and meanings, and my acts of volition can also produce a wealth of perceptual or thinking phenomena, yet they are all just structures of impermanent phenomena, I can create them and I can erase them. Based on that simple observation, I can clearly see that any phenomena, ideas or structures is what Consciousness does, but not what it IS. That does not mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with phenomena. I don't see a need to develop any other concepts in order to be able to live fully and creatively in this wonderful reality of Consciousness.

Right, but I find this separation of what we do and what we are untenable. We are beings-in-process of becoming. Our evolving and unfolding spiritual activity is precisely what we are.

I do not understand the distinction you are trying to make here between "impermanent forms" and "illusions". How do you define the latter?

As I said above, when you look at a movie with Santa Claus, you perceive the movie. The movie and your experiencing of it are absolutely real, they are not "illusions" in any way. But then you may develop a thought-belief that the Santa that you perceive in a movie is not just a form of the movie, but it is a reflection/perception of some "real" Santa who actually exist as a person in some kind of a "world out there". And the content of that belief can be called an "illusion" because in fact there is no evidence that such real "Santa"-person exist anywhere, apart from being a form on the screen. Now we can apply this analogy to our everyday life and our perception of the world.

OK then according to this analogy, the Self, the Christ-being, the Trinity, are all "illusory" forms on the same order of Santa Clause character in a movie? I find that also untenable, not simply because I believe in Christ, but because the concept of "Christ as Santa Clause illusory form" makes absolutely no sense of the evidence I am presented through myth, history, culture and experience.

So you are claiming your path does not provide any added value more than any other path? If that is in fact the claim, then what is the point of even discussing it?

I do not want to compare it with any other paths. The way it works is that people should try to adopt and apply different paths practically in their lives (if they want to do it of course) and see what practical benefits they bring. One thing that I can testify that it does work for me, and, from what I have seen, it does work for many other people travelling along the non-dual path. But I cannot claim that it should work as well for everyone. Obviously, it does not work for you for example, so your case is a clear evidence that this path is not universal The point of presenting it here is that it may resonate to some people and they may find it appealing, try it practically and find it working for them, or find it not appealing and not working for them, and that's fine too. The fact that it may not work as well for all people does not make it not worth sharing here, because it is good enough if it may work just for some of us.

Fair enough. I sense you include such disclaimers to distinguish your path from other paths which you feel are too exclusive. From my perspective, your path is just as exclusive as others. It excludes the exclusivity of the spiritual scientific path, for example. That is not a trivial claim, but rather a pretty strong one.

[Eugene I]

Right, but I find this separation of what we do and what we are untenable. We are beings-in-process of becoming. Our evolving and unfolding spiritual activity is precisely what we are.

Yes, that's what we are as individuated activities of consciousness, no question about that. But there is one Consciousness in which all these activities take place, and as soon as any of such activity experientially realizes that it is only an activity of and in Consciousness, which means that fundamentally it is only one and the same Consciousness taking forms and acting, then the identification with particular activity naturally drops. Which does not stop the activity in any way, but only lets it unfold in a different non-identified mode so to speak.

OK then according to this analogy, the Self, the Christ-being, the Trinity, are all "illusory" forms on the same order of Santa Clause character in a movie? I find that also untenable, not simply because I believe in Christ, but because the concept of "Christ as Santa Clause illusory form" makes absolutely no sense of the evidence I am presented through myth, history, culture and experience.

I'm ok with that. All I'm saying that we all, our self and Self, and all the world we perceive are only activities and forms in and of Consciousness. But that's my opinion only and you don't have to agree. Now, we can label some aspects of Consciousness not associated with forms per se in terms of Trinity, for example, say that the Being of Consciousness represents the Father, the potential of activity and manifestation of forms represents the Son, and the Awareness of forms represents the Spirit. In that sense they are not forms but the universal and unchanging aspects of Consciousness. So it is not a matter what words we use, but what we actually mean by them and which actual realities they point to. But I have to make a disclaimer here. The traditional Christian theology claims that the Trinity represents not just come universal aspects of reality, but actual personalities (hypostases in Christian terms). However, these universal aspects of the reality (Being, Awareness and potential to take forms) that I know from my direct conscious experience have no personal aspects whatsoever. That does not mean that these personalities associated with such aspects do not exist, it is just that I have no experience of them, and therefore, no reason to believe that such personal aspects exist. And again, I did not say anywhere that any forms are illusory, I don't know why you misinterpret of misunderstand what I wrote above.

Fair enough. I sense you include such disclaimers to distinguish your path from other paths which you feel are too exclusive. From my perspective, your path is just as exclusive as others. It excludes the exclusivity of the spiritual scientific path, for example. That is not a trivial claim, but rather a pretty strong one.

Of course, if one path A (such as spiritual scientific path that, as you said, is exclusive) excludes other paths, then the very fact of the existence of other paths excludes the exclusivity of the path A. So for any other path there are only two choices: either to agree with the exclusivity claim of the path A and disappear, or continue to exist and by the very fact of its existence exclude the exclusivity of the path A. But the problem here is obviously with the exclusivity claim of the path A, not with he existence of other paths. Any path has right to exist notwithstanding any exclusivity claims of any other paths.

[AshvinP]

Right, but I find this separation of what we do and what we are untenable. We are beings-in-process of becoming. Our evolving and unfolding spiritual activity is precisely what we are.

Yes, that's what we are as individuated activities of consciousness, no question about that. But there is one Consciousness in which all these activities take place, and as soon as any of such activity experientially realizes that it is only an activity of and in Consciousness, which means that fundamentally it is only one and the same Consciousness taking forms and acting, then the identification with particular activity naturally drops. Which does not stop the activity in any way, but only lets it unfold in a different non-identified mode so to speak.

We are back to the nature of Consciousness, then. Is there a Consciousness separate from willing-feeling-thinking activity? If so, then we are at dualism. If not, then we must claim Thinking is not involved or Thinking cannot experience its own activity, which makes very little sense to me. That is also what Cleric's Deep M@L post was challenging (non-Thinking M@L).

OK then according to this analogy, the Self, the Christ-being, the Trinity, are all "illusory" forms on the same order of Santa Clause character in a movie? I find that also untenable, not simply because I believe in Christ, but because the concept of "Christ as Santa Clause illusory form" makes absolutely no sense of the evidence I am presented through myth, history, culture and experience.

I'm ok with that. All I'm saying that we all, our self and Self, and all the world we perceive are only activities and forms in and of Consciousness. But that's my opinion only and you don't have to agree. Now, we can label some aspects of Consciousness not associated with forms per se in terms of Trinity, for example, say that the Being of Consciousness represents the Father, the potential of activity and manifestation of forms represents the Son, and the Awareness of forms represents the Spirit. In that sense they are not forms but the universal and unchanging aspects of Consciousness. So it is not a matter what words we use, but what we actually mean by them and which actual realities they point to. But I have to make a disclaimer here. The traditional Christian theology claims that the Trinity represents not just come universal aspects of reality, but actual personalities (hypostases in Christian terms). However, these universal aspects of the reality (Being, Awareness and potential to take forms) that I know from my direct conscious experience have no personal aspects whatsoever. That does not mean that these personalities associated with such aspects do not exist, it is just that I have no experience of them, and therefore, no reason to believe that such personal aspects exist. And again, I did not say anywhere that any forms are illusory, I don't know why you misinterpret of misunderstand what I wrote above.

That's what I was asking in my first response - what is the difference between an "impermanent form" in your essay and an illusion. You claimed the Self is the former in your essay but not the latter. In your response to my comment, you clarified that a movie experience of Santa Clause is real, but the ideal content of Santa Clause in the movie is an illusion. Maybe that wasn't the best analogy for you to use. So, what can we compare the non-illusory yet also impermanent form of Self-Christ to?

As for personal vs. non-personal, I do not get how you "have no experience" of personalities. You always experience a personal agency behind will, feeling and thought, except maybe when you are in a deep meditative state. So the only reason you can say the OP is non-personal is because you equate deep meditative experience for the Reality-in-itself, even though experience of personal agency is much more frequent and pervasive.

Fair enough. I sense you include such disclaimers to distinguish your path from other paths which you feel are too exclusive. From my perspective, your path is just as exclusive as others. It excludes the exclusivity of the spiritual scientific path, for example. That is not a trivial claim, but rather a pretty strong one.

Of course, if one path A (such as spiritual scientific path that, as you said, is exclusive) excludes other paths, then the very fact of the existence of other paths excludes the exclusivity of the path A. So for any other path there are only two choices: either to agree with the exclusivity claim of the path A and disappear, or continue to exist and by the very fact of its existence exclude the exclusivity of the path A. But the problem here is obviously with the exclusivity claim of the path A, not with he existence of other paths. Any path has right to exist notwithstanding any exclusivity claims of any other paths.

I probably should have clarified more. The spiritual science path is inclusive of many spiritual traditions because they are viewed as streams of a unified whole which only appear to remain separate from each other. On the other hand, it is clearly exclusive to a materialist path, for ex. Your path excludes the possibility of most paths being hierarchically nested within an esoteric Christian path, and rather treats the spiritual streams as parallel without every unifying into a higher whole (but that's fine for you because they all end up in an Ocean of non-personal, non-diversified Consciousness?). The overall point is, every world-conception excludes the [pragmatic] Truth value of other ones, including yours.

[Cleric K]

Thank you for the essay, Eugene!

You know that I practically agree with everything you describe when it's seen as a general truth about the One Cosmic Consciousness.

We reached as far as we can in the other thread so I don't intend in anyway to retrigger the discussion. I just would like to point - for other readers' sake - where the main difference lies.

The first things is with the "Consciousness creates everything". In the highest sense this is clear. But what about our human perspectives? The only thing that we really experience as being created is our own thoughts - this is the only things where the cause is known. Every other perception, or the phenomena entering and leaving consciousness as you say, confronts us as a mystery. Not only that but these mysteries act like actual constraints for our activity. I know that you make the distinction between what our human perspective creates and what the Cosmic does, but still, from your essay one is left with the impression that as soon as one realizes that it's all One Consciousness, somehow every phenomena becomes 'mere floating thoughts'. It's not just that we have forgotten ourselves and took the dream for reality. It's a fact that even if I'm fully convinced that a wall is just a dream picture within Consciousness, I still can't overrule it and pass through it.

The above is the starting point of Spiritual Science. Yes, it's all a spiritual experience, but the hierarchical constraints that we experience are undeniable, and this is what is investigated through the higher forms of cognition. If we are to continue your movie analogy, we would have to say that there's a living hierarchical structure of the movie scenario - exactly in the sense of Deep M@L. In our human perspective we are directly creative only in our thoughts - and even they are conditioned by the deeper layers of our overall knowledge, life path, etc. Our bodily actions are not as intimate as our thoughts. We're just used to the fact that our body reflects our spiritual intentions but it's enough to imagine a paralyzed limb to appreciate that there's much going on beyond our direct creative control - we're just taking it for granted.

So everything up to this point fits in your view. Now the real difference has to do with the question of death. In your view (not mentioned in this essay but as we discussed it elsewhere) it is precisely that after death we're in position to experience things (if we are developed enough) from the perspective of the One Consciousness. In other words, after death, humanity, the planets, the Sun really become the floating Cosmic thoughts of the One Consciousness and we can think them away and continue with other forms of creativity if we so desire. Spiritual investigation draws a different picture, revealing that the movie scenario hierarchy doesn't become floating dream picture after death but is still there. The consciousness is very different but there are still whole worlds of phenomena which are beyond our control - they enter and leave our awareness without asking us for permission. Higher cognition explores the actual gradient of the movie hierarchy. It really allows us to experience the higher creative perspectives of the One Consciousness from which it really is the case that things are being spiritually created. For example, in my ordinary consciousness I look at a rose and say "it's just a thought within the One Consciousness". Yet I don't experience it as such. I can neither create, nor destroy a rose through my own activity. But through higher forms of consciousness we can reach the worlds from which the idea-form of the rose is being projected.

Spiritual investigation reveals that the souls of the dead continue to live within the Spheres in between incarnations. The stages of consciousness within the movie hierarchy which support through their free activity the Spheres themselves, lie much higher than anything that man will reach anytime soon.

Now this is the moot point because from the point of mysticism, what the spiritual investigator reveals simply reflects his or her limitations. The investigators see a long process of future evolution up the gradient of being, simply because they don't dare to find true liberation. The funny thing is that the mystic doesn't experience the Spheres, the souls of the dead in between incarnations, the archetypal forces of the rose, the planets and the Sun. He only experiences a spread out selfless idea that everything that exists is a creation of consciousness. The immediate human experience confirms that only for our thoughts, but it's nevertheless assumed that after death things will be otherwise. We're now fully conditioned by the Spheres and our own completely human limitations but after death we're the creators of the Cosmos.

As promised, I don't say the above to retrigger the discussion - there's nowhere to go from here on. But maybe it could be of interest to someone else to see things side by side.

[Eugene I]

We are back to the nature of Consciousness, then. Is there a Consciousness separate from willing-feeling-thinking activity? If so, then we are at dualism. If not, then we must claim Thinking is not involved or Thinking cannot experience its own activity, which makes very little sense to me. That is also what Cleric's Deep M@L post was challenging (non-Thinking M@L).

Thinking activity, as well as any other activity (volitional, perceptional etc) is of course not separate from Consciousness and happens in and to Consciousness. The ability to think is the innate aspect of Consciousness, yet every particular thought and idea it produces is always only a impermanent form in Consciousness (that appears and disappears in it). Thinking is only one of the ways Consciousness can experience itself and reflect on, and it is a perfectly valid way. But when thinking addresses the actual conscious experience, any activity of thinking is always and only a reflection of the actual direct conscious experiences. In other words, I can experience the redness of an apple directly, and then I can reflect on it by recalling that experience and thinking about it. Yet, there is another way that Consciousness can experience itself prior to thinking - it amazingly can experience itself directly by direct (non-thinking) knowing that it IS and it is AWARE, in other words, experiencing its beingness and its direct experiencing (which is called Jnana in the Advaita tradition). However, we are usually not aware of such direct experience of beingness because we habitually approach the reality through thinking only. In order to practically experience such Jnana, one needs to stop thinking for some time and just notice and directly experience the reality of the aware presence of Consciousness that is always here prior to any thinking and always directly experiences itself. Then one can go back to thinking (because there is nothing wrong with it). Amazingly we also find that such Jnana is always present even when we think and act, but its presence is so subtle that we just usually do not notice and ignore it.

The reality of such Jnana closes the Kantian gap. The Kantian gap is seemingly present to us when we identify ourselves with our thinking activity and understand that our phenomenal experiences and thoughts can not penetrate through a seeming barrier between us and the reality itself "as it is". When we drop such identification, we can realize the presence of Jnana which is nothing else than the Kantian "thing in itself" directly experiencing itself. Because we are only Consciousness, then Consciousness has no Kantian gap from itself to itself, because Consciousness itself is the "thing in itself", but, being directly Conscious of itself, has the ability to know itself experientially and directly. The "spiritual science" has a different solution and claims to cross the Kantian gap by posing that the world of ideas is what the Kantian "thing in itself" actually is, and so, we can directly access it through our thinking abilities due to the innate ability of thinking to apprehend ideas.

That's what I was asking in my first response - what is the difference between an "impermanent form" in your essay and an illusion. You claimed the Self is the former in your essay but not the latter. In your response to my comment, you clarified that a movie experience of Santa Clause is real, but the ideal content of Santa Clause in the movie is an illusion. Maybe that wasn't the best analogy for you to use. So, what can we compare the non-illusory yet also impermanent form of Self-Christ to?

I do not like the word "illusion", it's too confusing. Christ as a personality that I'm aware of is a "Santa Claus" of the movie of the world unfolding within the Cosmic Consciousness, or we can say - a character of the dream unfolding in Consciousness (sorry for such analogy, but that's what you asked for), and it is no more and no less real than any other dream characters. These characters are not illusions, they are just what they are - actual dream characters with certain thinking, perceiving and feeling activities and forms all unfolding within Consciousness. Now, if you claim that Christ is an innate aspect of Consciousness that actually produces the whole dream, than that is an entirely different position, but as I said, in such case I do not believe that such aspect has any personal agency.

As for personal vs. non-personal, I do not get how you "have no experience" of personalities. You always experience a personal agency behind will, feeling and thought, except maybe when you are in a deep meditative state. So the only reason you can say the OP is non-personal is because you equate deep meditative experience for the Reality-in-itself, even though experience of personal agency is much more frequent and pervasive.

You do not have to believe me, but I just do not. I often experience no personal agency even when in active state, but I often still experience this sense of agency. When I do experience it, I can't help noticing that this sense of agency is exactly what it is - a sense, a thought-feeling form appearing and disappearing in Consciousness. For me it means that this sense of agency and personality belongs to the category of impermanent forms, which means that it is definitely real as much as any other form is real, but it is not one of the unchangeable aspects of Consciousness. It's a though-form, but a though can not be an "agent" that actually produces other forms. A form can cause other forms to arise (like one thought can be a cause for an appearance of other thoughts in the stream of dependent origination of thoughts), but that does not mean that any thought can be an actual "agent" that produces or experiences other forms. Now, you can of course argue that the "sense of agency" is only a reflection of the "actual agency", and the fact that I often lose the sense of agency does not mean that the actual agency (as some actual unchangeable aspect of Consciousness) ceases to exist. And I admit that it would be possible, but that also means that I actually have no direct experience of such "actual agency" but I can only have a reflection of it in my "sense of agency" (just like my reflection of "Santa Claus" does not mean that such actual personality exists), which means that I have no way to prove to myself that the "actual agency" even exist.

On the other hand, Consciousness definitely has a volitional aspect, an innate ability to make willful actions. That does not mean that there is an "agency" from whose behalf such actions are made, just like the fact that there is conscious experiencing of forms does not mean that there is an actual "agent"- an "experiencer" who is the "receiver" of these experiences so to speak.

I probably should have clarified more. The spiritual science path is inclusive of many spiritual traditions because they are viewed as streams of a unified whole which only appear to remain separate from each other. On the other hand, it is clearly exclusive to a materialist path, for ex. Your path excludes the possibility of most paths being hierarchically nested within an esoteric Christian path, and rather treats the spiritual streams as parallel without every unifying into a higher whole (but that's fine for you because they all end up in an Ocean of non-personal, non-diversified Consciousness?). The overall point is, every world-conception excludes the [pragmatic] Truth value of other ones, including yours.

I approach it differently, I only take my approach as an inference and a possibility, I do not take it "religiously", and therefore can not claim its exclusivity. I accept the possibility that Christian path may turn out to be true, and therefor there is no way I can exclude it. I still follow my chosen path because it practically works for me and resonates with me, which does not mean that it is "true" and it may very well turn out at some point that I will need to switch to another path. It is only when you have a personal belief that your path is "true", then by the fact of such belief you make your path exclusive, and here I agree with you. But I do not hold such belief, I again only take my path as an inference. I do not know which path is true, but that does not hold me from taking paths, because I need to keep going, so I do take one of the paths that practically works for me and "sounds about right" to me, without firmly believing that it is actually the "true" one.