electricshephard wrote: ↑Sun May 16, 2021 1:11 pm
I've noticed that even some of the most enlightened thinkers and idealists still sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking about time as a super-structure that envelops consciousness, rather than consciousness enveloping time.
It has been said that as the eternal Self, you can either be on top of the mountain, where you can see everything but there's not that much to do (i.e non-duality), or you can go down and get lost in the forest, where you can see very little but there's plenty of things to do (i.e the Maya).
In one of his talks, Alan Watts talks about God periodically getting bored of non-dualistic infinite bliss and voluntarily coming down into a localised and ignorant finite-form for the purposes of temporal excitement and adventure. Now and again, it would seem that the Mind at Large goes on vacation from being God and gets well and truly
lost in the woods.
It's a very seductive idea that to me certainly
feels very close to the truth, and yet also seems to be fundamentally problematic: In order for "God to become bored" it would have to be subordinate to a higher super-structure of time, that allowed sufficient animation and process for boredom to manifest.
But surely this cannot be possible, as the structure of time is contained
within consciousness, not the other way around. Time is a subordinate structure, not a super-structure. The non-dualistic experience is an experience
without time - quite
literally eternal.
But nonetheless it would seem, self-evidently and paradoxically, that consciousness appears to "cycle" through various states. It seems that there is an addictive temptation to try to make sense of it
within the context of a higher transcendental timeline. For example mystics often speak about God's big descent into the Maya as "The Great Fall" - a time-based metaphor with "the falling" implying
a process.
Are we addicted to time as a super-structure? And if so, how do we account for the apparent cycles and oscillations between Universal Mind and disassociated mind?
We are addicted to time - big time. This is another of the bad mental habits that we'll need to overcome and it's quite serious. It's the one called
anthropomorphism. And it will become more serious as time goes by if people refuse to learn something about the higher worlds and the needed stages of consciousness. Otherwise, we project - out of a mixture of ignorance and arrogance - our Earthly nature into the higher worlds.
Things like 'God became bored and split into parts' are simply false. As a matter of fact there's no such perspective of MAL which decides to 'split into parts'. Ashvin's latest essays already lay the foundation for this. The metamorphic view not only changes but
integrates. I've mentioned this several times - conscious experience as we know it, is the result of continuous integration which in the most general sense we call memory. Of course this shouldn't be confused with the memory we understand from information technology, as a structure for data storage. Neither it is the simple ability to remember things. It's something much more deeper and that's why it is yet another thing that so easily falls into a blind spot of consciousness. It's actually very simple - we would never have the experience of a stream of consciousness if we couldn't feel our current state as building upon the previous states. In certain sense every next state should embed, resonate with all previous states. This build up doesn't need to be strictly monotonical - it's rhythmical, as it can be seen from our waking/sleeping cycle, but still, there's overall integration. We are not conscious about our falling asleep but on the next morning we know that this is what happened and now we've reemerged again at a higher level of integration.
I've already hinted about these things in this
metaphor. This simple realization moves external reasons for the direction of time to ourselves. This is another consequence of the Kantian divide. As long as we imagine that there's a world-in-itself outside consciousness we can fantasize as much as we want about it and search for laws (like the second law of thermodynamics) which explain the direction of time. The reason is much more intimate. We could never speak about time without the integrative process of memory. We can imagine that this is not some 'law' of the universe but a simple
necessity. It might as well be the case that our next state of being could be
anything, but
only those states which form a gradient in relation to our current state can lead to experience of a stream of consciousness.
Practically all be-ings experience integration towards
eternity which
encompasses all potential as a whole. No be-ing can
consciously split into parts. This would mean that every 'next' state of that being should be less conscious than the previous, this would be like reversed time. Every next state should lose memory since the limited state can't remember the higher state, and thus it can't be experienced as a stream of consciousness. This 'splitting' action is experienced somewhat differently. I've mentioned that in the Deep M@L essay. It can be said that there are constantly infinitely many streams of being that integrate from the periphery towards the center of eternity. Each stream is a metamorphic view experiencing its own awakening from the deep cosmic sleep, acquiring self-consciousness and continuing to work consciously on its integration. Those beings which are well ahead in this process in certain sense form 'resistance', an
opposite flow from the center towards the periphery. This is the principle of world creation. Without this resistance all peripheral flow towards the center would immediately implode into eternity. Through the resistance, the peripheral flow must find creative solutions for its integration, which is the basis for exploration of be-ing in time.
Another aspect of the above is that this integration is not an 'improvement in time', like some skill getting better and better while time flows as it ever has. The more integrated the metamorphic view, the more we encompass idea-beings whose activity spans time. I tried to give an analogy of this in the Deep M@L essay through the symphony. For example, the states of being of our whole incarnation can be encompassed as something holistic from higher perspective. This is the origin of all 'life flashing before one's eyes' experiences. Ultimately this is the direction of all evolution - approaching a perspective before whose eyes the whole infinite Cosmic potential 'flashes' as something holistic. The great difficulty (effect of anthropomorphism) is that we don't gain proper understanding of this if we simply imagine ourselves becoming well integrated while forgetting to account for the way the experience of time changes. It's only when things like these are neglected that the nonsense about 'becoming bored' can emerge. If we say that, we simply don't really try to overcome our linear time habits. This is also related to the possible objection: 'But I don't want to integrate into eternity and all existence to end. I want to keep experiencing things as much as I want'. This again can only be a product of complete misunderstanding of the nature of the higher worlds. Only the Earthly ego can make such demands. In reality, the more we move towards the eternal, the more we integrate all potential - past and future - and it is like we've lived through all that. If the center of eternity could be experienced it would be like feeling every conceivable state of being as a kind of memory - as something that we know from direct experience. If this is understood it will also explain why all existence flows through the periphery towards the center. The center of eternity can't get bored and decide to fragment into sequential time fragments for a change. This is precisely the fallacy electricshephard points out - through the act of the blind spot we project our anthropomorphic time experience into eternity. Yet the metamorphic view can be experienced as gradually evolving from complete unconsciousness, through sleep consciousness, through dream consciousness, reaching awakening - this is our stage. From here on the conscious integration continues. And this has very direct practical aspects. One of the many that can be mentioned is the overcoming of
envy. Within the higher states of consciousness we can relate to the perspectives of other human beings and experience livingly something of their states. This makes it clear that it's not at all necessary that one being should experience everything for itself. At some point all experiences are accessible as a shared pool in Akasha. When this is understood, even if we don't have such experiences at the moment, the understanding itself becomes a
living soul force which gives us the strength to transform envy. (this has relation to Paul's words
"But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.". In other words, the only thing that deserves to be envied is the integration of our being, which is up to us to work on through Love).
So in summary, there are always waves after waves of be-ing, travelling from infinity at the periphery towards eternity at the center (in Deep M@L this should be clear but I'll mention it just in case - there's only one center - the same center of our metamorphic view). Against these waves flows the activity of higher beings, which create the means for complicated experiences. For example, if there were no resisting force to our metamorphic process, there would never be a reason for our mineral bodies to take form. Our evolutionary scenario is an example of finding the wholeness of our metamorphic view even amidst of severe decoherence. The human bodies are the result of collective effort of beings, which allow for the human "I" to experience the integrative memory process even in these difficult conditions.