Stranger wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 1:51 am
Perfect agency and responsibility can only be accomplished when the world of duality is transcended by the direct knowledge of the One which is inseparable from the World it creates. In this case the World is not rejected, but fully embraced as the expression of the One and can be brought to the harmony with the One. The World can come to peace and order only when its structures and its knowledge are coherent with the One that creates it. When the world and its beings do not know the One, their perception of the world is inevitably dualistic and fragmented, and all their attempts to build the structures of perfect order are futile, because it will always be subject to the pendulum of dualities, of good and bad, of me and other,no matter how they organize their hierarchies.
lorenzop wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 3:19 am
Ashwin, exactly the point. As long as one identifies with the separate self there will always be a lacking, a sense of something missing. It doesn’t matter the depth of one’s achievements or how many angels one has hugged, or how many celestial curvatures one has trodden . . .
I propose to bookmark
Ashvin's post with
because it really points to the
root cause of all these discussions. All talks about I, not-I, and so on, only circumambulate around this center. We can use this symbol to quickly return to the core when we wander too far.
Let's remind that we all agree on the following:
Intuitive fact #1: In our deepest essence we feel to be One with the fundamental Being of existence
Intuitive fact #2: The metamorphoses of our being are constrained by many factors which we can label as physical, organic, temperament, habits, desires, passions, sympathies, antipathies, mental patterns, etc. In a sense, the pure potential of Being is sieved through these constraints and experienced as limited existence through spatiotemporal metamorphosis.
These are intuitive facts (IFs) we all agree on. The divergences come only when we raise the question:
what should the thus constrained in a human form Being do while going through this spatiotemporal metamorphosis? Or simply: what is our (human form) role in all this, is there anything we should be striving towards in our Earthly existence?
Here things quickly reduce from intuitive facts into speculations/beliefs. And they can be countless. To name a few:
Speculation #1: Nothing really matters as long as we dream through the Earthly state while holding fast to the IFs. Everything else is provisional, quite external to Being. In this view, we don't even know if Being preserves continuity of consciousness after death. We choose to simply have a peaceful journey in the embrace of Being, without any concern about the true nature of the constraints.
Speculation #2: Real life in freedom begins after death. All layers of constraints are left behind at the moment of death so it's quite useless to focus on them while still in a body - they have absolutely no relevance after death. We need to hold fast to the IFs in order to fully emerge from the constraints at the moment of death (that is, we shouldn't allow for residual connections which may drag us back). The constraints themselves are inessential. Studying them while on Earth is entirely optional (only if we are curious) and serves no purpose in higher life. All that counts is our ability to hold on to the IFs, without being distracted by the Demirugal constraints.
Speculation #3: The constraints matter. Immediately after death, we loosen only the physical constraints but still live within the others. Yet on Earth we still need to focus on the IFs. We're too limited in our physical state to work creatively and redemptively on the invisible constraints. On Earth our job is simply to know our true limitless nature. The conditions to transform the constraints will be much more favorable after death. Then we'll work on them with freer and clearer consciousness.
These speculations can go on and on. They are not simply different versions of the same truth but may be quite mutually exclusive.
Yet there's
one thing in common (besides the IFs). None of these speculations
follow in some clear way from the IFs. There's simply no intuitive connection that can be explicated. For example, there's no logical sense in saying: "I'm One with the Essential Being, thus nothing needs to be done on Earth, except holding on to this fact." There's simply no logical connection here. We can say such a thing only by unknowingly holding on to a whole secret spiritual cosmology. There are tons of assumptions that need to be made if such a connection is to make sense, and none of them follow directly from the pure intuitive fact. Based only on the IFs we can't even rule out materialism (in some panpsychic form)!
Ultimately, the Essential Being constrained in the form of a human ego speculates about the possible ways it can liberate itself and return to its true essence. Death is the final arbiter. Each speculation is like a bet and we only see whether we have placed our chips on the winning horse at the moment of death.
My questions to both Eugene and Lorenzo are:
Question #1: Do you understand in
full lucid clarity all the above? Do you understand the
distinction between the IFs (on which we all agree) and what human beings decide to do with their life based on these facts? Do you understand that
none of the speculations above
logically follow from the general IFs?
Question #2: Do you understand that death is being held as the final arbiter, that it is assumed that truth can never be known until then, and thus one justifies saying "Well, no one knows and no one can know, so the most we can do is place our bets on the speculation that feels most sympathetic to our constrained heart."
Yet there's one special speculation that says: "What if death doesn't solve anything? What if the transformation of the invisible constraints needs to be done here and now?" Please notice that this is the only speculation that has the possibility to be verified while still on Earth. Every other speculation requires that we
wait for something external to happen, only then we can verify the outcome of our bet.
Here's a hint on how to make the gravity of the situation more evident. Imagine that there's no death, we're bound to continue this embodied life with no foreseeable end. Or alternatively, imagine that we're
already dead. This physical existence is simply how our unborn state feels like. We've got stuck in some spiritual dimension that feels physical to the touch. In either case, there's no inevitable death event that we can hope will rescue us from the constraints of our enchained existence.
Please try to feel the hopelessness of this situation. Our IFs are still completely valid. We intuitively know that deep within we are the unlimited Spirit, which now metamorphoses through heavy constraints that are completely beyond our conscious control. We can't imagine away our body, we can't imagine our temperament differently. Not only that but we don't even understand what the nature of these constraints is. Our conscious experiences only confirm the fact that we're constrained but we don't see what the constraints are, we can't see them as some object and tweak them with a screwdriver.
Nothing external is coming to our rescue. Death is not coming. It's obvious that if we don't
act, nothing will ever change. Our limitless Being will need to witness its constrained state eternally.
What do we do? Do we sit and wait for a miracle? Or we understand that Being already works within our perspective and can begin wiggling its way out
from within outwards? In that case, how can this wiggling out begin? What is it that we presently
ignore because we believe is irrelevant, which can become our
only way out if death is not coming to our rescue?
PS: I'll mark this thought experiment with
for future reference. The circle signifies the non-dual experience, which we can't circumvent by the duality of life and death. The goal of the thought experiment is to prevent us from using the 'other side' as a wildcard that we can tweak to fit our tastes and preferences. The solution to this fully non-dual situation has to be found here and now. If we can't conceive how we can spiritualize (uncreate) the physical body/world, not in theory but in the most real practical sense (without secretly expecting that death will save us from this duty), we haven't yet found the solution.