Is It something you can continually experience?

I use to participate in another forum, the Adviatin. I believe there were a lot of scholarly type people from in India. It was suppose to be a forum about Shankar’s teachings but it sure didn’t seem that way to me, but this is beside the point. There was once a very heated discussion as to whether some highly regarded spiritual text was written by some famous philosopher or by the hand of God. Jiminy crickets! What difference does it make? It’s all God anyway –how could it be otherwise? And besides, just try a take in what the scripture was saying instead of worrying yourself to death where it may have come from. Now I’m not quite sure how I was going to relate this to our discussion. Maybe, it is that different ways of looking at things are merely opinions.

Now to backtrack a bit. I kind of felt my last post on this thread may pushed the envelope a bit. But, the way I see it, we are all talking about the same thing, just slightly different shades, so I appreciated Tony’s follow up post and it is nice to hear from bee!
I also really like Angel6’s say-it- like it is honesty. And if anything, it inspires us to articulate our own shade of understanding.

Ok, so here is my go; I’m just going to see where this takes me:

How can we know anything? Just look at what we take for reality. We have what appears as sensory input channels- the eyes ears, etc. Now it’s clear they are only tuned to pick up a very limited range of frequencies. Whatever it is that they apparently sense gets converted to some electro-chemical signal that is sent to a part of the brain where it is pitch blackness. They then apparently get converted to these images we take for reality. Now isn’t is clear that the whole world of phenomena are nothing more that images or objects that are apparently generated in the mind? If there is not a certain type of apparent brain activity there is no world. We are often asked to consider deep sleep. Another way of looking at this is that everything is consciousness. And the world of consciousness is always changing. Nothing is stable or everlasting. Here today, gone tomorrow. Now take this a step farther. This consciousness constitutes the objective reality. That’s all the mind does- it objectifies whatever It is into the phenomenal world. But what is this It ? We cannot really know because we only can see the objects not their source. Could we call this source God? But we can’t really know or articulate what God is because that would turn god into phenomenal object. Now I’m not sure where to go next. I am done writing for now.

Great discussions shaped by our desire to express as clearly as possible our current understanding of this world. Some relevant thoughts.

Angelsix- I also appreciate and enjoy your 'say-it-like-it-is' honesty. Keep it coming. What you are getting in return may sound like a lot of words going round in circles...don't believe a word! But I suggest trust where they are coming from, also another type of honesty. It may appear long winded, sophisticated, off with the fairies, etc. but have you had a straight and uncomplicated answer from anyone yet on issues that concern you? I would say it'impossible to get a rational answer that satisfies everyone, because no set of words and concepts can describe What Is or What We Really Are. The teachers we often quote are quite aware that words are not it, that they are potentially contradictory and paradoxical, but persist with them because they act as pointers to a Truth which is beyond words' capacity to describe.

That Truth cannot be other than What We Are Right Now. That is obvious and beyond doubt if we don't get caught in thinking about it.

bee- a comment on your "We are untapped and vastly under-expressed pure potentiality and we all limit this potential with judgements. But then that's the human condition, isn't it?". Yes! However, for clarity's sake, I would put it as: the nature of the human condition is Pure Potentiality stepped down, reflected/actualized into our day to day life where those human limitations play themselves out, i.e. mistakes and judgments are made, etc. But also part of the human condition is the impulse to transcend those limitations, which is triggered when the time is ripe. May be a subtle refinement, but it's meant to remove any hints of blame on account of being sentient beings. Rocks don't suffer from our limitations, but also are not capable to transcend themselves. Rocks are rocks and humans are humans.

Kolomo- on your "Could we call this source God?". As you say, we can't know or articulate what God is. The fundamental reason, though, is that it's not 'i/we' who wake up, not the person, the unit, or the separate sense of self. The realization that "It’s all God anyway –how could it be otherwise?" does not come from the person. It arises as self evident, beyond concepts. Therefore, metaphorically, it's God/What Is/Mind/Consciousness that goes through the process of waking up from the notion/dream that it is only a singularity, a separate entity. Another take on 'God loves us' is that that entity is none other than a manifestation of God.

Hi Clouddust, hadn't heard from you for a while! I enjoy sharing our points of view on the topic of what 'God' is, how we come at the question of God and us, and what that means in our lives.



What I actually said (using my language convention) is that God has Free Will and Universal Power (better still to say that God is Free Will and Universal Power). That was in contrast to free will and personal power which applies to decisions we make. As Kolomo points out, when we exercise free will, e.g. the act of choosing between one course of action and another, that choice is the result of many factors, some of which we are conscious of and others that we are not. However, I would say that the factors affecting any choice I (the personal self) make are actually infinite. That’s because of the ‘butterfly effect’ (every thing or event is linked to every other thing or event) and that at the instant of the decision making a unique set of circumstances exists that affects that decision. To close the loop: the butterfly effect, the circumstances and ‘my’ decision are only the visible manifestation of God’s Free Will and Universal Power: “the Father’s Will [be/is] done on Earth (the Manifest) as it is in Heaven (the Absolute)”.



My choice and exercise of volition (the thought/belief that I want something to happen) seem to be ‘free’ to me, because of the belief that I act independently and am separate from those circumstances. As everyone would have experienced many times in one's life, things happen as they do irrespective of personal choice and volition.

As long as the self is there as a working identity, with a personal agenda of what’s good and bad, we appear to be making choices and having volition. As we progressively die to self, as we become empty of self, the idea of personal will is replaced by the Reality of God’s Will. God’s Will is none other than the absoluteness of every event that happens moment by moment, i.e. Now. Understanding that is surrendering to God’s Will. That’s the Truth that makes one Free. Only then the Peace that surpasses all understanding can be known.



Tony



A question: if we are not already God, or made of Divine 'material', how can we possibly follow the instruction “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”?

bee, good questions that already have an implied answer!
In my experience of Meditation (the activity of simply being myself, not a meditator) it is clear that thoughts come and go, not created by 'me'. It can be seen that we fall for the temptation to grasp them, to hold on to them, as if they were substantial. Same for sensations, perceptions and mental formations. The 'me' is itself a thought or stream of thoughts that is mistaken for a fixed entity. Thoughts like "I think" and "I am" are a reflection of our Subjectivity, What We Are. Where do thoughts come from? Like all other forms, from Emptiness, No-thing. They exist but do not have their own substance or self-existence, like the characters appearing on the screen.

The screen analogy is useful to show that what appears 1) must have an empty background to 'exist', 2) cannot have any effect on the screen and 3) it is inseparable from the screen. By analogy that's the relationship between Emptiness/God Transcendent and 'us', Form/God Immanent: absolutely different and absolutely the same. Being-ness is Space and It is Always Right Here (no place, no time) because there is nothing else but Space [see also our discussion inspired by the movie Gravity].