Meditation exercise on "separate me"

[Stranger]

1) we can best detail\describe the nature of reality by saying what reality is not ( not hot, cold, not a particle(s), not waves, not male, not female, etc.) After we've listed all possible attribute\properties of what reality is not, what we are left with, is what it is.

1. Can you affirm that reality is not existence (in other words, that reality does not exist)? "Reality" is actually synonymous with "Being", because "to exist" is the same as "to be real"
2. Can you affirm that reality is not of the nature of conscious experience? To affirm that, you need to be able to demonstrate/prove the existence of anything that is not a conscious experience, which is obviously impossible, because in order to demonstrate it (even four yourself) you need to consciously experience it. According to our direct phenomenological experience, any knowledge or reality and any of its existence is always consciously experienced, so conscious experience is always inseparable from existence. We can only abstractly imagine "something" that exists but not consciously experienced.

Based on the above, the best knowledge we can have about the nature of reality is that it is existence and itis conscious experience - that is the "bottom" of the nature of reality accessible to us. We also know from experience that reality has ability to manifest all kinds of forms (thoughts, ideations, imaginations, feelings, percepts, willing gestures), the ability that we call thinking-willing-feeling.

[Stranger]

On Jupiter, where reality will be much more Imaginative

All manifested reality of forms, feelings and ideas is Imaginative, because it is all imagined by Consciousness. It may be imagined by higher-order beings, in which case it will present itself as percepts for lower-order ones and feel like "real world". Or, it can be imagined by lower-level beings. But still, everything is Imagined, except for Consciousness itself, because Consciousness is THAT which Imagines everything else.

This does not mean that imagined forms are "unreal", they are absolutely real as imaginations. Imagine an apple or an idea of an apple, or experience a percept of an apple by "looking at an apple on the table" - it is absolutely real as idea-imagination or percept. But there is no some kind of "real apple" existing "objectively" apart from the idea, imagination or percept of an apple. However, 99.9999% of humans perceive the reality in exactly this way - they believe/imagine that there is a "real objectively existing apple out there" which they experience, and they also imagine themselves being the "experiencer" of that apple existing apart from the "apple". This is a totally erroneous way of perceiving reality, but this is where the subject-object duality resides and splits the reality into multiplicity of "objectively and independently existing" subjects and objects. When we perceive reality in such erroneous way, we live in a completely abstract layer of imagined reality where we imagine "things", objects and subjects existing in an "objective world out there" that actually nowhere exist in reality. It is a "fairy tale" that is entirely incoherent with how/what the World actually is. Humans are currently stuck in this incoherent perception of reality, and we cannot significantly progress in spiritual evolution until we resolve and transcend it.

[AshvinP]

On Jupiter, where reality will be much more Imaginative

All manifested reality of forms, feelings and ideas is Imaginative, because it is all imagined by Consciousness. It may be imagined by higher-order beings, in which case it will present itself as percepts for lower-order ones and feel like "real world". Or, it can be imagined by lower-level beings. But still, everything is Imagined, except for Consciousness itself, because Consciousness is THAT which Imagines everything else.

This does not mean that imagined forms are "unreal", they are absolutely real as imaginations. Imagine an apple or an idea of an apple, or experience a percept of an apple by "looking at an apple on the table" - it is absolutely real as idea-imagination or percept. But there is no some kind of "real apple" existing "objectively" apart from the idea, imagination or percept of an apple. However, 99.9999% of humans perceive the reality in exactly this way - they believe/imagine that there is a "real objectively existing apple out there" which they experience, and they also imagine themselves being the "experiencer" of that apple existing apart from the "apple". This is a totally erroneous way of perceiving reality, but this is where the subject-object duality resides and splits the reality into multiplicity of "objectively and independently existing" subjects and objects. When we perceive reality in such erroneous way, we live in a completely abstract layer of imagined reality where we imagine "things", objects and subjects existing in an "objective world out there" that actually nowhere exist in reality. It is a "fairy tale" that is entirely incoherent with how/what the World actually is. Humans are currently stuck in this incoherent perception of reality, and we cannot significantly progress in spiritual evolution until we resolve and transcend it.

I don't get it, Eugene (I kind of do, but still). Every time progress is made towards a more concrete understanding of Oneness, to escaping the repetitive circles of discussion which are frequently complained about, and moving to the novel living details of our potential evolutionary stream of becoming, you snap back to the recapitulations.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(Byrne_book)

Byrne re-introduces a notion originally popularized by persons such as Madame Blavatsky and Norman Vincent Peale that thinking about certain things will make them appear in one's life. Byrne provides examples of historical persons who have allegedly achieved this. Byrne cites a three-step process: ask, believe, and receive.[9] This is based on a quotation from the Bible's Matthew 21:22: "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

Byrne highlights the importance of gratitude and visualization in achieving one's desires, along with alleged examples. Later chapters describe how to improve one's prosperity, relationships, and health, with more general thoughts about the universe.

Focusing on the power and causal efficacy of thought can be a helpful first step, but it turns into something like the above if the intuition isn't further fleshed out with living details of the rhythmic gradient of our thought-life. It is as Cleric mentioned previously about all new-age people suddenly feeling they are qualified for something like Buddhahood. A similar thing is happening here with your comments.

You frequently say that nondual realization that All is willing-feeling-thinking with no 'separate me' is only a first step, but then when posts such as Cleric's advance to higher steps which flesh out the intuition and begin charting a course for a much more practical and deeper understanding and development, you take the opportunity provided by that post to regress back to the first step, i.e. the broad-based experiential/conceptual understanding of Oneness which transcends the 'incoherent perception of reality'. You use that first step then to diminish the importance of the living details or even cast them as dualistic delusions because they speak of a polarity between pralaya and manvantara, Idea and Manifestation. You don't seem to realize that you are preserving the incoherent perception by refusing to investigate the living gradient along which Oneness can potentially manifest. You feel that smearing out this gradient into a generalized experience of nonduality, which is similar to Lorenzo's negative approach to 'what is reality', relieves us of the responsibility for working through the subject-object layers of manifestation, spiraling them into closer and closer unity within all facets and layers of of living experience.

Why does this continually happen?

[Stranger]

You use that first step then to diminish the importance of the living details or even cast them as dualistic delusions because they speak of a polarity between pralaya and manvantara, Idea and Manifestation. You don't seem to realize that you are preserving the incoherent perception by refusing to investigate the living gradient along which Oneness can potentially manifest.

This is not to diminish the importance of the living details or even cast them as dualistic delusions. The living details are crucially important. The reason I do not talk much about them is because Cleric is doing much better job in describing how to approach the living knowledge of these details, so there is not much I can add to that, but that does not mean that I diminish them. But what I am emphasizing is a way to decipher the living details pertaining to the "abstract" dualistic layer of perception that is incoherent with Reality from the living details that are organic to Reality. We cannot really progress in acquiring the knowledge of the living details until we learn how to identify and discard the details that pertain to the dualistic perception of reality as incoherent. We can acquire the knowledge of the organic living details of Reality as it actually is only if we have an ability to differentiate it from the details that are incoherent with reality.

There needs to be a right balance between the knowledge of the details of the structures of the forms and the knowledge of the nature of reality which manifests the forms. If we diminish the details, we get into the extreme of "reductionist nondualism", if we diminish the nature of reality, we get to the extreme of reification of the structures as the only reality that exists, of being lost in the details forgetting that they are the products of the more fundamental Reality that created them. As the Buddhist say, we need to go by a "middle way" between any extremes.

[AshvinP]

You use that first step then to diminish the importance of the living details or even cast them as dualistic delusions because they speak of a polarity between pralaya and manvantara, Idea and Manifestation. You don't seem to realize that you are preserving the incoherent perception by refusing to investigate the living gradient along which Oneness can potentially manifest.

This is not to diminish the importance of the living details or even cast them as dualistic delusions. The living details are crucially important. The reason I do not talk much about them is because Cleric is doing much better job in describing how to approach the living knowledge of these details, so there is not much I can add to that, but that does not mean that I diminish them. But what I am emphasizing is a way to decipher the living details pertaining to the "abstract" dualistic layer of perception that is incoherent with Reality from the living details that are organic to Reality. We cannot really progress in acquiring the knowledge of the living details until we learn how to identify and discard the details that pertain to the dualistic perception of reality as incoherent. We can acquire the knowledge of the organic living details of Reality as it actually is only if we have an ability to differentiate it from the details that are incoherent with reality.

There needs to be a right balance between the knowledge of the details of the structures of the forms and the knowledge of the nature of reality which manifests the forms. If we diminish the details, we get into the extreme of "reductionist nondualism", if we diminish the nature of reality, we get to the extreme of reification of the structures as the only reality that exists, of being lost in the details forgetting that they are the products of the more fundamental Reality that created them. As the Buddhist say, we need to go by a "middle way" between any extremes.

So what are concrete examples of the living details 'pertaining to the abstract dualistic layer of perception that is incoherent with Reality'? In your previous post, you mentioned the living detail of an apple on a table. You were responding to Cleric about the living details of the imaginative perceptual reality which would manifest on the Jupiter reincarnation of Earth. Everyone here knows that the perceptual spectrum is not some free-floating reality independent of Ideas - in fact the entire purpose of entering the living details is to flesh out the inutition of how they are intimately related within our evolving individual-collective experience. So what is the purpose of your post and the comparison between the two?

PS - attaining the Middle Way or balance is not by reinforcing the perceived duality between details/structures of reality and 'nature of reality', but by progressively realizing how they are One and the same. The process of unveiling the former should become united with the process of understanding the latter. If we imagine them as two separate processes, two separate avenues of investigation, then we are reinforcing the duality and oscillating between the polar extremes instead of harmonizing them via the Middle Way.

[lorenzop]

1) we can best detail\describe the nature of reality by saying what reality is not ( not hot, cold, not a particle(s), not waves, not male, not female, etc.) After we've listed all possible attribute\properties of what reality is not, what we are left with, is what it is.

1. Can you affirm that reality is not existence (in other words, that reality does not exist)? "Reality" is actually synonymous with "Being", because "to exist" is the same as "to be real"
2. Can you affirm that reality is not of the nature of conscious experience? To affirm that, you need to be able to demonstrate/prove the existence of anything that is not a conscious experience, which is obviously impossible, because in order to demonstrate it (even four yourself) you need to consciously experience it. According to our direct phenomenological experience, any knowledge or reality and any of its existence is always consciously experienced, so conscious experience is always inseparable from existence. We can only abstractly imagine "something" that exists but not consciously experienced.

Based on the above, the best knowledge we can have about the nature of reality is that it is existence and itis conscious experience - that is the "bottom" of the nature of reality accessible to us. We also know from experience that reality has ability to manifest all kinds of forms (thoughts, ideations, imaginations, feelings, percepts, willing gestures), the ability that we call thinking-willing-feeling.

I assumed Federica meant the Nature of Reality, not reality from a specific sentient creature.
I think we can all agree that the nature of reality for a being is structured in the consciousness (mind\body) of that being, for example, we may experience the world differently from day to day, and certainly different when awake, then when dreaming, and sleeping.
If we then ask what is the nature of reality independent of any finite body\mind - that is a question for philosophy. The philosophy I tend to agree with is: Neti Neti . . . . not this, not that.

[Federica]

So what are concrete examples of the living details 'pertaining to the abstract dualistic layer of perception that is incoherent with Reality'? In your previous post, you mentioned the living detail of an apple on a table.

I think Eugene would answer that a concrete example of the "fairy tale" approach to reality is this:

For example, sorry Federica for using you as an example , in this message she said:
"Yes, this is one and the same meaning: when we say self-reflecting quality of thinking, this only means one thing to me: the sense of "I" is there. Similarly, once there is a sense of being a subject of experience, there is inevitably also a sense of object. They are indissociable." This is a very accurate description of exactly how we humans perceive the world as a duality of subjects and objects (= dualistic mode). But this is not how nondual beings perceive the reality. So, in order to be in the "constructive interference" mode with them, we ourselves need first of all to transcend this subject-object duality.

Correct, Eugene? But that was page 18! This is page 23, and so much has been reprocessed since then, through the great unfolding that's happened here. You have to loosen the mental grip on your pre-Stranger certainties, become stranger to them, and let you be touched by the truths that have been rolled out like a multi-layered red carpet for you. Would you please try?

[Stranger]

In your previous post, you mentioned the living detail of an apple on a table. You were responding to Cleric about the living details of the imaginative perceptual reality which would manifest on the Jupiter reincarnation of Earth. Everyone here knows that the perceptual spectrum is not some free-floating reality independent of Ideas - in fact the entire purpose of entering the living details is to flesh out the inutition of how they are intimately related within our evolving individual-collective experience. So what is the purpose of your post and the comparison between the two?

My comment was just about the Imaginative nature of any manifested reality and it was not particularly a comment on the Jupiter reincarnation on Earth.

PS - attaining the Middle Way or balance is not by reinforcing the perceived duality between details/structures of reality and 'nature of reality', but by progressively realizing how they are One and the same. The process of unveiling the former should become united with the process of understanding the latter. If we imagine them as two separate processes, two separate avenues of investigation, then we are reinforcing the duality and oscillating between the polar extremes instead of harmonizing them via the Middle Way.

That is exactly right, we need to follow a harmonized approach as part of the same process.

[Stranger]

The philosophy I tend to agree with is: Neti Neti . . . . not this, not that.

Neti-neti comes from the Advaita and the purpose of Neti-neti in the Advaitic practice is not to come to a point of a complete nihilism, but to discover the "invariant' aspect of reality what is left after going through all possible neti-neti with respect to whatever you can identify as "variable" part.

So, applying this neti-neti method, can you neti-neti the very existence? Can you prove that such thing as nonexistence exists? Can you actually ever experience nonexistence? Likewise, can you neti-neti your awareness - your very the ability to consciously experience? Can you prove that such thing as non-experiencing exists? Can you actually ever consciously experience the absence of conscious experience to prove that it exists?

[Federica]

re what is the nature of reality, ask me again next year I may have a slightly different answer

Why next year, Lorenzo?