Resonance

Totally out of the blue, at least for me, comes

Tony Parsons “The Open Secret” - Interview with Iain McNay

I find him irresistibly infectious. You?

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I started it, but I don’t have 45 minutes ! So far, interesting, and a hint of the possibility of the pre/trans fallacy. Is that there?


Thanks for bringing in this conversation !


Blessings, OM Bastet

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Yep, irresistibly infections…that would be true!  How delightful!  The Open Secret is so funny…..right there like a delightful happy loving witnessing to all this pathos and gnashing of teeth.
I would love to go to a gathering of non-autonomous happenings.  I wonder if from the outside, it would look like a bunch of stoned people laughing their heads off…..
thanks for posting this Mascha. 
Jane

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OM, could you say a little more about the pre/trans fallacy you suspect there? I don’t want to assume I get what you mean, even though I think I do.

Jane, yeah, you’ve been celebrating the Open Secret for as long as we’ve been posting on these boards. There’s nothing new here, of course, while everything is happening for the first and last time, ever.

I remember reading Alan Watts while traveling in India in search of a true enlightened master. While I was in Aurobindo’s Pondicherry ashram, some little sentence in a book dear old Alan wrote struck me the right way for unknown reasons. Upside the head and down into the bones went the strike and in a flash, it restored me to my original wholeness. Such simplicity was too much for my mind…  For about a week I could barely stop laughing, deep, raucous belly laughs. Forgot about Aurobindo, the Mother, and all the saints dead or alive, I was complete already, at 21 years old, with no practice or education. Since then, I simply resonate with whoever transmits this unspeakable restoration in whatever way they can. It’s always unique and new, though repetitive as hell if you don’t get the juice that animates the words.

Now I’m in love with Tony Parsons, just enough to be in one of the circles of heaven on earth.

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I can only get the first 45 seconds of the clip.
 
Julie

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Julie, I tried to embed the video in this post but the instructions I’ve had on how to do that apparently no longer work.

Stumped.

m

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I tried, too, to embed, and failed. Perhaps we can no longer do that in Group Discussions posts? I vaguely recall it being discussed inthe Support pod. Wll check later.


What a wonderful story about the Watts triggering of your awakening, Mascha, if I might use those words. Totally makes me smile !! The subsequent prolonged laughter is one of the signs and symptoms of true awakening, as I understand it. 


I’m sure Aurobindo triggered some people, and Mother Meera triggered some. Fortunately, triggers abound, and we find one when we’re ready….


I was put on alert by the description of the infant state and the emergence of a “separate” body-bound self from that. Two possible errors: It is not necessarily a dualistic or “separation” self which emerges from the differentiation of self and other in infancy. IMO. and it’s so common to glorify the infancy consciousness as the same as nondual consciousness, I just wondered if he was doing that, or whether he clarifies later. 


That’s about all I heard so far.


Hugs, OM

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It’ll be interesting to see what you feel about it once you’ve watched the whole vid, OM - presuming that you can get past the glitch that Julie encountered after 45 seconds.

Do others here have the same problem? I hope not, cuz it really is a sight to behold the interviewer after the talk. His whole face is changed and subtly glowing with a preternaturally smiley light. Just thinking of his transformation makes my grin double-wide.

Ha! Transmission… come and get it. It’s freeee

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Mascha, I didn’t have the problem with getting stuck after 45 seconds, but my problem is that it’s gonna be at least a couple weeks before I can watch a 43-minute video.  But it’s gonna stay open on my desktop until I watch it.
 
 
 
That said, you’ve inspired me.  I’ve had Tony Parsons’ “As It Is” sitting on my bookshelf for about the last 3 years, and based on your recommendation, I’m moving it to the top of my reading queue!  The next time you hear from me, I’ll be fully enlightened.  :-)

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Replying to my own post: Sorry some of that sounded pedantic and ponderous, Mascha. That wasn’t aimed at you. I am just too preacherly for my own good, sometimes….


Hugs. Rev. OM

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I’m a firm “believer” in the power of “transmission.” It really would be sufficient, without any words…..


That would make life simpler, eh?


Like Tely, it’s open on my desktop, after I finish writing up those meeting minutes I promised, and responding in the pods I have responsibilities in, and ……


Blessings, OM

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Interesting. I finished up my computer stuff ready to go to bed, and the link to Tony’s video opened, and there I sat. Or “it was happening.” 


Yep, he knows, he is, whatever we wanna call it. 


The point about children never was pursued, so I don’t know for sure what he was saying on that matter.


But resonance, yes, like wow. Long ago it became clear that seeking prevents finding. There are some other voices saying that, but most teachers want to prescribe. What Tony and the ones I like say, is it happens. When it happens, it happens. Period. Oh, and it’s contagious (= resonance, = transmission, = vibration, etc.)


The interesting thing is that just in the last few days my own process – which is first and foremost bio-electro-magnetic-astral (with emotions and mind downstream) – has reached a point Adyashanti describes as the Ego trying desperately to find something to hold onto, and there is nothing it can grab anymore, nowhere to stand, no identity, no purpose, nada. Ongoingly. As in, never again. My Ego is panicked, the kinesthetic is like sliding down a snow-covered slope, unable to grab or stop. Life (as it was) is over, nothing matters the way it did. What will reappear is uncertain. So when Tony uses the words “FREE FALL” and “no control” of course I know exactly what he means. Whew !!


We can live in free fall. Imagine!!!


And there is laughing, at panic at returning to the natural state that always was there. 


So, this was perfectly divinely timed, for me, and I thank you profoundly, Mascha.  (I still relate to Adya’s words as more exact match to my experiences, but I recognize what Tony says.)


Blessingszzzzzzzzzzzz, OM

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Wow. OM, OM, OM. You just transmitted more than I can ever say if I were to write a few hundred books or blither on for hours.

I happen to relate (ha ha) to everything you said in so many meaningful ways, it takes my breath away to contemplate this fullness.

And Tely up above… may I be so bold as to suggest that I can’t imagine you needing more than just the title of the Tony Parson book on your shelf: As It Is. That should do it for ya, put you right into the middle of that space… boundless, utterly ordinary, not an altered state, not different from what is now…

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Mascha do you have a web address or some such thing so I can access the vid direct rather than via the link?
 
Julie

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the web address is:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1321306269?bctid=1913973849

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Thanks Jane, I already tried that one and it still only gives me 51 seconds. I meant a more primary source one, I’m going to try www.conscious.tv (although I suspect that’ll be subscription only) now that I managed to get that far into the video this time. I’ve been having serious problems here trying to access things and even to post.
 
 
 
Julie

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I tried this http://www.conscious.tv/consciousness.html and got 4 minutes and then it switched to Genpo Roshi and I got 25 seconds of him!! Maybe I’ll go back to Alan Watts :)
 
Julie

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Julie, try the Tony Parson website at

http://www.theopensecret.com/

You’ll find the same video and some others also. I think you gotta see this guy rather than just listen or read the words. He’s a relay station for the *vibe*, much more so than a lecturer.  I have yet to explore further myself. Didn’t want to overdose, you know? Like eating too much ice cream, which I did once when I was a teen, deliberately, together with my stepfather, after which we both came away with a lifelong ambivalence towards this great creamy pleasure.

Irmeli, Tom et al, thanks for chiming in with some important counterpoints and caveats. I want to address these later when the morning fog has cleared the ole brain pan.

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Hmmm…back to 45 seconds. I’ll try again tomorrow.
 
Julie

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 Mascha: Since then, I simply resonate with whoever transmits this unspeakable restoration in whatever way they can. It’s always unique and new, though repetitive as hell if you don’t get the juice that animates the words.

Mascha, I like the first sentence in this phrase of yours. I hope also the non dual teachers could resonate with others in this way.

I felt Tony Parson to be repetitive as hell. I listened to the video while simultaneously doing my ordinary work. It is the only way I can find time for listening. Maybe that partly explains my boredom. However this was also stuff that I’m already pretty familiar with.

It was very ordinary non-dual teaching, and basically fine, except there was nothing unique and new in his formulations. That is a sign to me that Tony Parson has conceptually adopted and is just repeating the ordinary philosophy or doctrine around non-duality.

I have had encounters with this sort of non-dual teachings pretty late, only a few years ago through the Internet. And these encounters have been disappointing.

I’ll try to explain you why. I’m one of those who have spontaneously dropped permanently to this ‘non-dual’ state or stage (?) already at age 16. This inner transformation profoundly changed my life, and ended my struggle with myself and life. Instead there has been prevailing a restful alertness, and inner stability.

However I grew up in an atheistic family with no contact to any spiritual tradition. That made my interpretation of what happened quite different from what you hear in typical ‘non dual’ teachings as this of Tony Parson. My perception was not that there was no ‘I’ anymore, only that part of the “I” wasn’t there anymore. What ceased to exist was identification with an image or idea of “I” my mind had created.

The transformation was followed by perceptions of infinity and love towards the whole humanity. However I never felt there was ‘no I’ anymore. It was much simpler than that: there was not anymore no need to be somebody. And that life accepts me as nothing.

A need to share this transformation with others never arose in me. And as I didn’t discuss it with anyone, I stopped myself also thinking about it. A new operating system had got installed, and it did not need attention in the form of ideas about what it was.

 After having become familiar with these ‘non dual’ teachings and teachers, I’m inclined to think that this operating system works better, when you don’t think about it, and form a doctrine and grandiose ideas about it.

A few years ago I found in the net a website where non duality was being taught. After reading some of the teachings, I realized this was the same thing that happened to me at age 16. The main difference was that these people were describing and interpreting that realization differently than I had. However there was enough similarity that I came to the conclusion that it must be basically the same kind of realization. I felt thrilled after having found others who had found this ground in infinity too. The only problem was that these people where teaching that there is ‘no I’. That had never been my perception. When I feel I’m hungry, I very clearly feel here is an I who is hungry.

Hence I started to ask questions like, what did that teacher of non duality feel and think when he was hungry. I also asked him what he means by an ‘I’, as I suspected my problem arose, because we understood by an “I” different things.

The teacher never answered my simple questions. He ignored them completely. He only went on with similar phrases as Tony Parson in the video.

However I was persistent too, and continued to bombard him with my questions. Finally he sent  to me  a PM, where he said he has no time to continue these discussions with such an stubborn and arrogant person as I was. He also said: “What is seen is seen, and cannot be undone.” Apparently he meant by it, that he as a non dual master could see the absolute truth. If I saw something else, it must come from a level of duality and ignorance. I was too stuck in duality for him to see any sense in continuing these discussions with me.

Then on another forum there was a man with whom I had participated in interesting discussions, who started to claim there is ‘no I’, and he had that kind of realization. He claimed also that he was enlightened. He seemed to be a person with his full senses. He was a PhD in psychology, and also a practicing therapist.

I started asking this man similar questions I had asked earlier at the non-dual site. The annoying thing was that I got pretty similar answers with almost exactly the same wordings. And also he did not answer my simple questions. I started to feel truly frustrated, and that man too with me.

Then he finally answered me that of course there is an ‘I’ in ordinary everyday life situations.

I fully agree with that. What I still don’t understand is why then are these people making those very general statements of ‘no I’. Why not trying to be more specific in what they mean by ‘no I’.

I also think that if you make a statement like there is ‘no I’, you should at least try to define what you mean by ‘I’.

I’m not questioning the profound permanent transformation these people have gone through.

I question their absolutizing of their interpretation of this transformation. I see them mixing up two things: the transformation that is beyond words, and making a doctrine of it in their effort to conceptualize it, starting rigidly defending that doctrine.

The doctrine tends also to create such ideas that people who have had this realization don’t need to meditate, or go to therapy or inquire about their deeper motives, and that they are enlightened.

My experience is that this realization does not free a person from her shadows. However it provides a very stable platform to work with one’s shadows, to face one’s difficult emotions and the different challenges that are part of our life.

Irmeli

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This is a great post Irmeli, thanks


I am reminded of an aphorism I often tell my patients, passed on by my father, and my grandfather before him:  ”God gave you pain to keep your hand of our the fire and your finger out of your eye.”  There is an ‘I” in this sense, their are fingers and hands and eyes and fires, and some of them are connected to my direct experience and some are not.  There are hungers that are only my responsibility to feed. There are other perceptions that only ‘I’ am capable of ‘knowing, and thus capable of being response-able for, capable of acting on…….it is indeed a complex web, the holographic web of perceptions, and the nodes of this perception which are the formed bodies of you and me and any of us, and likewise the sphere of intension and influence that any action my have.  Though the whole remains; ‘nothing is itself without anything else.’  It is sort of that impossible inside/outside dilemma, where the ‘brain is in the body but the body is in the mind’…..


Jane

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Hi Irmeli, I love reading about your adventures in Guru-land. You seem to have quite a propensity for biting the fingers that point to the moon, and so have I, god bless this corner in my little black heart, lol.

Very early on, one of the bearded sub-gurus in an ashram that shall remain unnamed, told me, “I don’t think,” when I asked him what he thought about something. “Then how did you answer my question? Without thought you can’t formulate a sentence,” was my reply. We parted ways after that as you can imagine, and I went on a bit of a crusade to debunk this notion that enlightenment means people don’t think anymore. Similar to what I’ve seen you do in your efforts to debunk the contention that there’s no “I” left after full realization.

In fact, when I heard Tony Parson trying to convey the absence of a sense of self in the video for the umpteenth time to his befuddled interviewer, I thought of you, me, and a few others who went to great lengths unraveling this paradox of Self versus no-self online. What epic battles were fought over what I consider nothing more than semantics, with egos pretending to be absent while in full frontal glorious display.

All I can say is, I have no difficulty understanding why Parsons and others keep insisting that “there is no one there.” That is one way of opening the door to freedom from conceptualization. Skillful means - if it works. If not, no credits in the skill department for whoever doesn’t juice your tubes. I prefer the more nuanced approach for myself where I can acknowledge that an ego is necessary to function and what happens in a shift to the deeper, unbounded operating system is simply this: the ego becomes the servant rather than the master of the house.

I also have found the following statement to be true even for the most accomplished realizers I’ve met on the way:

Irmeli: My experience is that this realization does not free a person from her shadows. However it provides a very stable platform to work with one’s shadows, to face one’s difficult emotions and the different challenges that are part of our life.

If you meet someone who readily acknowledges this while simultaneously showing all the signs and symptoms of continuing awakening with no hubris in sight, you’ve got gold in your hands, liquid gold that can cure the relentless thirst of the inner seeker.

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NIcely said, Irmeli.  One might IMO wonder at the depth of transformation in those who are so personally attached to their view, ie, are absolutistic.  What is is, and my view of what is doesn’t change that fact.

Wouldn’t my view of what is, if true to the movements seen everywhere in the universe, itself move?  Where, then, absolutism?  Sounds like everyday unconscious stuckness and fear to me.

There’s an interesting Persian fairy tale called The Secret of the Bath Called the Castle of Nothingness.  In it, the hero must kill the parrot to reveal the diamond, that thing of inestimable value which, according to the fairy tale, can be found only by exploring the bath (the drowning) called nothingness.  That parrot almost certainly symbolizes formulation AKA doctrine AKA tradition AKA ideas AKA the no-I theory AKA anything I’ve heard that doesn’t correspond precisely to my own experience and the particulars of its unfolding which, because I’m different, necessarily will be different, no?

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I don’t  have time right now to read all these fascinating replies, but I want to add that I didn’t see Tony Parsons attempt to do any teaching or preaching at all. He was just describing, as I recall. Which is a good sign. And he had the characteristic “Cosmic Giggle” as well.


The only negative I can recall at the moment was his dismissal of other dimensions. That appeared to me to be a closedness. And I actually didn’t feel any transmission, but if folks get triggered into awakening around him, as he implied is happening, then he must be radiating SOMEthing !


However, it appears to me that everyone’s awakening, and post-awakening life, are different from one another, so it’s kinda (though perhaps not impossible) hard to assess who’s “there” and who’s not, because of the differences.


When he says “no individual” I just saw him bumping up against the limits of language. There are indeed more “adequate interpretations” of this phenomenon, similar to what you described, Irmeli, but I didn’t discount him for his imprecise wording. What he said around that was recognizable by me.


Looking forward to reading thoroughly.


And thanks for your response to my post, Mascha. Why don’t you write ONE book, if you haven’t already, and then we’ll compare. ROTFL !!


Blessings, OM

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LOL ! Juliee, maybe The Flow is trying to nudge you ! Not that anything is ever outside the Flow, but ya know what I mean…..


:)
OM

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So Genpo Roshi or Alan Watts for me is it? :)
 
 
 
I saw a very short clip (maybe 5 minutes) of Genpo on IN guiding an audience to the non-seeking mind, all unsuspecting I was. One minute I was dabbling on my computer and the next…well as you said above, language is inadequate to the task.
 
I’ve had the same experience with some of Ken’s writing, particularly in One Taste and in The Simple Feeling of Being and Alan Watts The Book on the taboo…etc. And listening/watching Father Thomas Keating.
 
If you think about it there’s a wealth of people out there…
 
But I’d still like to watch Tony Parsons. I sent an email via his website asking if there’s a route.
 
Julie

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Julie, have you tried a different browser?  Sometimes when videos don’t work for me in Internet Explorer, I can get them working on Firefox.  And, of course, there are others, too, but those are just the ones I have.

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Dang it Tely, now I’m going to have admit my incompetence in public :)
 
My IT skills are self taught and limited to the very pedestrian and whatever my computer turns up with when bought! Firefox?
 
My strategy of staying very still and very quiet whenever any discussion involving anything more than IE or AOL (yes, cringe, red faced embarrassment) arises obviously worked!!
 
So, where do I go to step into the world of Firefox?
 
 
 
Julie

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Julie, go to http://www.firefox.com, and you can download it for free.

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Gulp, ok I’ll give it a try…if only to access this video!
 
 
 
Thanks
 
 
 
Julie

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OMG the speed…I can’t cope…I’ve got used to tortoise pace…off to try the video.

Julie

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Woo hoo! Got it, no time to watch now.

Thanks Tely.

Julie

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Mascha, thank you for opening this thread – a lovely, resonant read so far!  This was also the first full video of Tony Parsons that I’ve watched.
 
Jean Klein, for me, was a nondual teacher whose words really resonated with me at just the right time, as I was deep in inquiry at a Krishnamurti school in India and feeling stuck in familiar perspectives and formulations.  I remember the deep belly laughs I had when I first got what he was pointing at.
 
There are not many videos of him available, but one was recently posted to Youtube, which you can watch here.
 
And here is a very brief excerpt of one of his teachings:
 
Q. As everything a guru says can be meditated upon, can yougive us a few sayings which you regard as essential to live with?
 
JK. Certainly. I would say: What you are looking for is already there, before all physical appearance. It is. So all looking can only lead to an object.  Don’t try to find a cause for happiness or moments of fulfillment. There is no cause. As long as you look for, and give, a cause, you turn your back on the fullness, the message of the moment.  Come to understand clearly that there is no seen without seeing, no heard without hearing. Bring the seen back to the seeing, the heard back to the hearing. You are the openness and it is only in waiting without waiting that you become open to the openness. In the end openness is what it is open to, waiting is what it is waiting for. This is all.  Live with these sayings. Let them become living under-standing. This means, be aware how they act in you, how their perfume invades your body and your mind. Become one with this perfume. You can never remember this essence which is behind the words, you can only remember the sayings. But when you have once been attuned to the essence of the words they are no longer simply sayings but pregnant with their source. Then when you allow the words to be the Word, they have the power to transform. Live in identity with the silence in the sayings.

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Balder, I’m stoked that you got those deep belly laughs from Jean Klein’s pointers, so I had to jump in here and reflect.

This sentence from your quote carried the taste into my mouth – you know, the tasteless flavor that we can never get enough of even though it pervades all space.

J K: But when you have once been attuned to the essence of the words they are no longer simply sayings but pregnant with their source.

Pregnant in just that way, I went to OM’s photo gallery and got this image of reflecting, holographic nectarene drops poised on the precipice, which OM got from Kes, and Kes got from… on and on it goes, this resonance, reflecting back and forth, partial in complete wholeness.

m

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Did you notice Jean Klein’s face light up when he talked about playing the violin? There were others, but that one stays with me.
 
edit: I see that in my Grandma’s face now and again when she emerges from Alzheimers.
 
 
 
Julie

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This quote from Jean Klein is touching and feels truly authentic to me.
It also tells me one’s again how different our paths can be as individuals.

I’m not particularly attracted to words at all. I feel not attracted to meditate on words, but I know many people who are.
I’m more attracted to sensations. Replace words with sensations and feelings  in the quote and it creates strong resonance in me.

Irmeli

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Mascha: All I can say is, I have no difficulty understanding why Parsons and
others keep insisting that “there is no one there.” That is one way of
opening the door to freedom from conceptualization.

I can relate to that. For this reason I have earlier been very discreet and not spoken about the other side of the street I have perceived also.
Many spiritual teachers have had and still have as an ideal an amber relationship to their students, who are expected to behave in submissive ways. Only questions that support the teacher’s approach and are easy for him to answer,  and don’t reveal the limits of his approach, are accepted. Other sorts of questions get labeled as irreverence and rude, and be revealing the spoiled character of the inquirer. This is not a true mutual dialog.

Mascha:Skillful means - if it works. If not, no credits in the skill
department for whoever doesn’t juice your tubes. I prefer the more
nuanced approach for myself where I can acknowledge that an ego is
necessary to function and what happens in a shift to the deeper,
unbounded operating system is simply this: the ego becomes the servant
rather than the master of the house.

I can accept teaching non duality the way Tony Parson & others do as a teaching method. It could work for some people, but the teacher could also tell openly it to be a teaching method. However often it is the only song the teacher can sing, and he clearly is attached to it as an ultimate truth.

Nowadays I want to express these observations to others. This is what the vehicle I call me at present often enjoys doing. This is also part of the dance of creation and destruction in our manifested reality. I enjoy this game, and often even the fight if it gets there. It is truly fun for me to be on crusade. I often laugh, when I write my posts.

A lot of our communication is non verbal. I watched the video enough to make some observations on Tony Parson’s non verbal communication. There was a lot of subtle intentional sales pitch in it, even if he skillfully tried to create the impression that this was not his agenda. Selling one’s books and ideas is OK to me, when it is not hidden, but not like this.

For comparison here and here are interviews on non-duality that are not contaminated with hidden agendas.

Irmeli

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This one stuck in my mind as an illustration of how differently we may perceive the same things -

Irmeli: I watched the video enough to make some observations on Tony Parson’s non verbal communication. There was a lot of subtle intentional sales pitch in it, even if he skillfully tried to create the impression that this was not his agenda. Selling one’s books and ideas is OK to me, when it is not hidden, but not like this.

For comparison here and here are interviews on non-duality that are not contaminated with hidden agendas.


The two women interviewed in those videos above come across as far more retiring, passive and uncertain in comparison to Tony, that’s true. Lovely in their own way, absolutely. But for me far less effective in their transmissions. What you, Irmeli, see as pursuing a hidden agenda by selling himself and his message as a commercial product struck me as a willingness to project power, a kind of seductive pushiness. I recall the times when Tony was energetically leaning into the interviewer as if to grip his soul and compel him to experience the immediate shift. Nothing about that appeared to be underhanded to me. I just saw beautifully uninhibited yet relaxed male power in action. Another wonderful thing was that Tony is not some conventionally handsome hunk. Yet what animates him is irresistibly attractive, at least to me, and maybe only for the time being - until I wake up some more, lol.

Neverending gusto has been a guiding force in my life, though it is getting harder to find things of great interest as I get older. Maybe it’s possible to narrowly avoid the crusty old, totally jaded cynic mode that seems to be the lot of folks who feel they’ve seen everything. We’ll see.

:D

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Mascha, I agree fully with what you are saying.

What I’m critical about is totally other things. I don’t remember  the exact words he uses, but Tony says something like he has no agenda here, or he is not trying to convince anyone. However his pushing tone speaks to me something else. That pushing is completely fine to me except the denying or incapacity to recognize the motives that might lead him to push. When the interviewer asks him about this, he also denies that he is doing anything.
When you compare to those two women, they are different, even if they have had similar realizations. They don’t have this kind of agenda. And I repeat I don’t perceive this agenda as bad. The bad sign is that Tony cannot own his actions. Even if action happens spontaneously, he is responsible for it. He also gets actually the credit of having this capacity. This to me means there is a responsible “I” there. Saying no one is doing this, is just senseless word game to me.

When he feels hungry, does he really think no one is hungry? To me he has just replaced the word “I” with “no one”.

To me it feels repulsive to say “no one” is hungry, “no one” is angry, “no one” is doing this, even if those feelings and actions happen spontaneously.
There is all the time a meaning making inside us going on that interprets sensations to hunger, anger, or to reactions in the form actions. To all of us almost all of this is spontaneous and automatic happening. And we have learned to call this meaning maker “I”. It makes no sense at all starting to call it instead “no one”.
Tony and those two women have had a similar realization. But when they start  saying no one is doing this, or no one is feeling this, they are simply conceptually making too wide generalizations of that realization.
I have asked many people, who make this “no I” claim, what they mean by “I”? No one of them has answered me.  Isn’t that weird? They behave as if they had not heard my question. They completely ignore it.  And here I use the phrase “no one” in the context I have learned to use it.

Irmeli

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No-I claims generally don’t make sense to me either.  In human development, peoples’ understandings in some respects track a Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis model.  The no-I mode seems to me to be a form of antithesis-language that negates a previous understanding—here, the “thesis” sense of a solid I or something, which no-I types typically call “illusion.”  But development doesn’t stop at antithesis.  Einstein didn’t go around claiming he spoke from no-Newton and that Newton was illusion, but found a new language to express a wider, more subtle reality in which Newton lives on happily as a limiting case.

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I like the Einstein/Newton example Tom.

Julie

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Hi Julie, the example could be expanded.  Newton thought “mass” was “solid” and basically an unquestionable given.  Let me grab the quote …

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Tom:One might IMO wonder at the depth of transformation in those who are so
personally attached to their view, ie, are absolutistic.  What is is,
and my view of what is doesn’t change that fact.

I think somewhere there is the ultimate limit in each of us where we are attached to our views or become absolutistic. However the non dualist teachers tend to claim themselves to be above that. They  can be completely blind to the fact that they in parts of their teachings fall prey to low level amber absolutism.

Tom:Wouldn’t my view of what is, if true to the movements seen everywhere
in the universe, itself move?  Where, then, absolutism?  Sounds like
everyday unconscious stuckness and fear to me.

This is aptly said. For years I wondered why many spiritual teachers, who were claimed to be highly evolved, often  behaved in so naive ways. I couldn’t fully believe it was just the ordinary unconscious stuckness I saw around me and in myself added with the weird phenomenon that addiction to power creates.

It seems to me that the gurus people tend to adore and glorify often have access to advanced states through which they can impress their followers, but are not more evolved in the stages than their followers are. Birds of the same feather keep together as the saying goes.
 These kind of gurus cannot help people evolve through the stages, rather they tend to keep them stuck in the stages or even regress in that respect. They don’t even recognize or appreciate the stages while they absolutize certain states.
 It is not easy to live in our society with a psychograph that is low in stages and needing a lot of time being spent in medit to keep oneself at an advanced state, except as amber guru with loyal amber followers as servants.

Tom:There’s an interesting Persian fairy tale called The Secret of the Bath Called the Castle of Nothingness. 
In it, the hero must kill the parrot to reveal the diamond, that thing
of inestimable value which, according to the fairy tale, can be found
only by exploring the bath (the drowning) called nothingness. That parrot almost certainly symbolizes formulation AKA doctrine AKA
tradition AKA ideas AKA the no-I theory AKA anything I’ve heard that
doesn’t correspond precisely to my own experience and the particulars
of its unfolding which, because I’m different, necessarily will be
different,

To understand that fairy tale the way you intepret it, requires probably second tier cognition and to live it you must be at third tier, I would guess.

Irmeli

Re: Resonance

Hello Everyone,

My friend, Mascha, recently invited me to join this discussion, having made the following two comments on my Q&R post, “How do you know when you’re on the right path?”

What if there was no path to being what you already are - whole and complete without a flaw?
 
What if it took millions of years to lead us astray from What Is Now but it takes only a split-second to be freed from all our fruitless searches?
 
Thus, with curiosity peaked, I watched the Tony Parsons interview and must say, I found his laughter and his joy wonderful – but in all honesty, I came away unconvinced that “liberation” is the panacea that frees us from the hard work of clearing our shadows and aligning ourselves with the Highest Good. Undoubtedly, it is a wonderful tool to add to the kit, but hardly the tool that ends all suffering! Thus far, Irmeli summed it up closest to my own views when she stated:
 
My experience is that this realization does not free a person from her shadows. However it provides a very stable platform to work with one’s shadows, to face one’s difficult emotions and the different challenges that are part of our life.
 
Now, on a lighter note, perhaps my inexperience in discussions of this nature will show here, however, I must say, I do find the whole “No one is here” language kind of ridiculous and cumbersome given that we are social beings with families and relationships. I mean, I get it (at least I think I do), and maybe for someone teaching it to someone who doesn’t get it, it is necessary to drive the point home, but really, to listen to that kind of talk day in and day out (I’m not here. No one is here!) would drive me nuts! But that’s just me!
 
Finally, I’m just curious if anyone had any difficulty with the passing reference that was made to the people of Zaire (or some African nation – I can’t remember) to the effect that this particular teaching method would be inappropriate there in light of the extreme suffering. Indeed – to say “No one is suffering here” would go over very well. That said, although I understand this, for a liberated person, the way the conversation quickly sidestepped that issue struck me as odd. Or rather, it left me feeling unsatisfied. I mean, if this approach is so powerful and transformative, how are you supposed to bring it to the regions of the world that need it most if you can’t talk about it? By the quick dismissal, it seemed that little thought had been given to date on how one could share the so-called Open Secret with a large portion of the world.
 
 

Re: Resonance

Mathew:Finally, I’m just curious if anyone had any difficulty with the passing
reference that was made to the people of Zaire (or some African nation
– I can’t remember) to the effect that this particular teaching method
would be inappropriate there in light of the extreme suffering.

I did not listen to the video so accurately that I would remember what there was said about the suffering of the people of Zaire.

From my own experience I can tell that stopping to identify with an idea of myself stopped a lot of suffering and struggle in me. but not perception of the suffering of others. When I did not anymore identify with an image of myself my mind had created, in place of this image infinity appeared. However it never occurred to me to interpret this as if there was no “I” anymore.

In me this happened spontaneously in a difficult life situation. And I would be very cautious of teaching this to people. If the teacher can transmit without words this shift, I think it is OK, because then the student probably is ready for it. This thing does not need too much conceptualization. All words seem to be somewhat misleading.

And it makes no sense at all to teach this to people, who have not yet properly individuated. And not even to people who are happy with their sense of separateness and individuality. If the feeling of separateness starts to become a big problem, this transformation can bring with it a powerful liberation from suffering.

I also think that if a person starts after this transformation feel that she does not anymore need to do self inquiry or shadow work, and starts to disown responsibility for her subjective stuff (upper left quadrant issues in AQAL terms)  harmful dissociation has also happened. However this dissociation can be due to all the ‘no I’ teachings through words.

Tom’s recent post where he makes comparisons between Newton and Einstein is right on the money here. Newton’s theories are still valid and useful in most situations, even if seen from a bigger perspective they are false or limited.

Irmeli

Re: Resonance

Welcome here, Mathew. So cool that you dove right into these unknown waters! Hey, what’s the worst that could happen? Some snarky shark comes along and bites your virtual head off, others smell blood, there’s a feeding frenzy, and ppphhht goes your online reputation. You’ll have to change your name and start a new Gaian incarnation… Okay, I got carried away there a bit, but not by much. I believe these fears are very common, and I resonate with worst case scenarios like anyone gifted with a rather vivid imagination.

Speaking of which… imagination moves energy… just think of someone in front of you biting into a lemon…

Or even better, watch this ~

So much beauty in the world

(Plastic Bag Scene from American Beauty)

Many jnanis (nondual experiencers) say that you can’t teach the shift that shatters the illusion of a separate “I” having any substance whatsoever. The best anyone can do is make themselves a very big target so you’ll be struck by lightning bolts. And you do that by living a very clean life and hanging out with knowers to whom it has happened to one degree of depth or another. But even then, there were people who hung around Krishnamurti for 40 years and followed him around the world, yet the shift never happened, they kept asking the same questions, and J.K. got very angry with them at times because he couldn’t transmit the pivotal switch to the unbounded operating system to them.

And how to convey THIS without implying you are somehow better, higher up on the evolutionary spiral, than whoever you’re talking to? Saying “there is nobody and absolutely nothing” to someone who hasn’t had at least some profound glimpses of this truth alienates already suffering people even more. What to do? I don’t know. I’m just free falling, and also prone to severe relapses into egoic contractions. And yet I can honestly say that I’m not a seeker anymore due to the grace of a series of unbelievably fortunate “accidents”, if you will.

Love, and again, welcome to das Pod, M.

m

Re: Resonance

Irmeli: And it makes no sense at all to teach this to people, who have not yet properly individuated.

Well, and doesn’t that observation carry interesting implications! 

Here’s one line of speculation: suffering is the feel of individuation, the feel of the process required to stretch one’s insides into a sufficiently strong, large, self-referred, subtle state as to feel and perceive non-separateness and love!  Suffering, in this understanding, or “separateness” (better: separating) becomes the doorway to subtle states of love and union and non-separateness.  And of course suffering reduces in correlation to the appearance of those subtle states because suffering has performed its necessary functions—it has transformed, as from seed and birth.

From this angle, those who perceive, from a no-I stance, that suffering is illusion are illuded about the role suffering played in creating that perception.  This latter illusion might be called a form of developmental amnesia or oversight that creates the ironic effect of splitting one from one’s suffering as if the past is not fully contained in the present, and as if love and separateness are somehow fundamentally in conflict.

This intimate relation between suffering and individuation is carried in the word “difference,” which derives from the same root as “suffer,” the Latin ferre meaning “to bear.”  To bear has two primary implications, to bear a child (childbirth) and to bear a load (to carry).  Respect your mother.

Re: Resonance

Oh beautiful, Tom. Resonating with your responses to Irmeli… and Julie as well. Visualize a quivering droplet of an Atman over here and you get a partial picture.

Love,

m

Re: Resonance

: )  And quiver on!  Continuing with the matter analogy for “I,” quivering is matter (is “I”).  Take again Einstein’s equation:

E = mc2

Flip it to show mass:

m = E/c2

Now hop over to quantum physics, which defines energy as wavelength or frequency (v) times a constant, a number called the Planck constant (h).  Here is the equation:

E = vh

Substitute the above definition of energy into the flipped Einstein equation and one gets:

m = hv/c2

Because “h” and “c2” are just constants (numerical multipliers), they can be dropped to show the fundamental relation of the qualities:

m = v

Mass …. is vibration.  Through vibration, two masses interact—cannot be separated: their vibration, like two waves on the surface of a pool, merge into a single pattern.  That single pattern is our universe.  Except for limited purposes of analysis, it cannot be reduced to parts.

Analogizing to “I,” I vibrates such that each one is as all the others are: separate but fundamentally not.  I am not “I” but am all and I, in I and all.  Resonance, by another term.

Re: Resonance

Wow!
You all are delightfully teasing apart the wonderfully paradoxical mystery of ‘I’/’Not I’.
I’m getting a bit of an image of Pelle doing the Tango.
Tom,
I love that “m + v” expression. Being an electrical engineer with an audio backround…I can visualize the rise & fall of the waves on the oscilloscope and recognise the value of the ‘flat line’ as the sound or signal goes to nil.
Yummm!
Thanks all for a really great conversation.
Doug

Re: Resonance

Silly me – joined a new group and forgot to activate the notification feature!
 
Mascha – you make me laugh! I loved your vivid imagination run-on, LOL. And that clip from American Beuaty – you know, I saw that movie when it opened back in ‘99, but I have absolutely no recollection of that scene. As it was, my heart chakra was unknowingly blocked until it spontaneously opened a few years after that movie, so clearly, I had no memory of that scene because I didn’t have the capacity to understand it or resonate with it at the time. What a beuatiful clip!
 
However, back to topic, I understand what you mean, Mascha, about not being able to teach non-duality – I guess by “teaching” I was referring more to methods that might lead the uninitiated and disadvantaged in the right direction. Ultimately, I realize that any sort of expansion can’t be manufactured. One might be able to arrange sympathetic conditions, however, as far as I understand, the when, why and how of expansion is still very much a mystery.
 
I related very much to these words of yours, Mascha:
 
I’m just free falling, and also prone to severe relapses into egoic contractions. And yet I can honestly say that I’m not a seeker anymore due to the grace of a series of unbelievably fortunate “accidents”, if you will.
 
Yes, free-falling! Funny, I used the exact same term on my blog last November to answer the question, “Where are you on your spiritual path?” I also don’t see myself as being a seeker, particularly  since I had that heart expansion that I earlier spoke of. That said, I do experience short-lived egoic contractions too – in recent years, mostly as a result of unyielding financial pressures. 
 
Irmeli – Thanks very much for your response. Like you, my expansion happened spontaneously, and also borne from a difficult life situation. In fact, all major growth that ever occurred in my life always came on the heels of trauma! Nevertheless, as my most significant growth of late has been heart-related, perhaps I can still look forward to the mind-expanding liberation that Tony Parsons and many of you speak of. I don’t know. All I know is I have felt an  indescribable inner peace ever since that heart event occurred – and yet, given the kind of disruptive personal changes that have concurrently plagued my life since that time, there are plenty of reasons to feel anything but peace! LOL!
 
Anyway, lots for me to learn in the field of non-duality. And in that regard, thanks to everyone here for allowing me the privilege of hanging out and exploring this very wise and interesting corner of cyberspace.

Re: Resonance

Mathew, could you describe the heart-opening experience that gave you a measure of peace in more detail? There’s a flavor of this in your posts - I can catch at least a whiff of it and would like to savor it more.

The way you spoke to a (possibly) mentally ill person on another forum was a small revelation for me; I recognized that I wanted to cultivate more of that calm, unassuming peacefulness in my outer personality as well at this point. My background is that of an extreme, often reckless thrill-seeker, experimenter, provocateur, and it’s only in the last year that I genuinely find myself getting tired of it. Some nights I lie awake in a semi-meditative state, and it dawns on me that I have the choice of being completely different in my outer expressions than I am now by habit and default. An immense freedom is available to just act and reinvent myself –  but then again, why bother?

I hope this makes some sense to anyone other than OM who I believe knows exactly what it’s like, lol.

Re: Resonance

Mathew: Nevertheless, as my most significant growth of late has been
heart-related, perhaps I can still look forward to the mind-expanding
liberation that Tony Parsons and many of you speak of. I don’t know.

Your description of the heart related indescribable peace held together with disruptive personal changes sounds amazing to me. Maybe you are already in non duality in your own wonderful way!

I was in the 90’s in psychotherapy. When I described to my therapist about the profound transformation that spontaneously happened to me at age 16, she interpreted it to regression. With open mind I explored with her that possibility.
However through that introspection I could even more clearly see that it was the point from where my ongoing effortless progress without seeking started.

After having had some problematic encounters with non dualists, who consider their realization to be a sort of ultimate enlightenment, I have learned better to understand where my therapist was coming from. This shift apparently can lead also to pathological detachment from one’s subjectivity, emotions etc.

Life is truly multifaceted, and I don’t know where to put this kind of awakening hierarchically. Some sort of ultimate realization I don’t consider it to be. For me it was a starting point, that created a stable platform for relatively effortlessly unfolding learning and inner work.

Irmeli

Re: Resonance

I am ridiculously far behind on this yummiest of threads, and am still behind, but have to say a few things. 


Yes, Mascha, I believe I have fully understood what I call “infinite freedom of Being” but it’s not fully integrated in all my awareness yet. It’s a close cousin of “free fall” hahahaha. 


I totally totally agree with those here saying that awakening and what we might call healing, the shadow work, are separate. In fact just this morning a paper on that started writing itself in my head. Just as I have concluded that spiritual practices are nice, but not steps into realizations, not CAUSES, just so, awakening and healing are separable processes, you can have one without the other. Healing contributes to quality of life, but not to awakening. And awakening generates a momentum toward healing, but that can be blocked or denied.


Adyashanti talks extensively about all the matters we are pondering in this thread, in his 6 CD set “The End of Your World.” I got it at my local library. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. I believe no teacher understands (from personal experience and from 11 years of teaching) the PROCESS of awakening better. In intimate, gory, excruciating detail, every nook and cranny possible. And he very much talks about the necessary clean-up “healing” work AFTER an initial or an abiding awakening. 


One small quibble with Tom: IMO individuation and the experience of separation are radically different, not the same as I think you were implying. Beings who abide in Unity Consciousness are individuated, they accept that they have bodies, such as those might be (usually energy forms that we would not consider as “matter” but of course, as was said above, all matter is but a certain vibrational speed of energy, 1/C squared, to be exact!) but these embodied Beings are never out of awareness of the Oneness underlying all distinct forms. Separateness-consciousness abides OUT of this awareness. Individuation is a perception. Separateness is a story. (Enactivism etc. being ignored for the moment.)


And I think the whole frou-fra around “Not-I” is discussed also by Adhyshanti in that CD set. He points out that a lot of folks get stuck in the emptiness and never rejoin, never become fully nondual. This was said in different words by someone above. Good ol’ KW and his “transcend AND INCLUDE.” To fully complete nondual realization, one rejoins the world of form and rejoices in it, in its multiplicity, none of which need be denied as “real” or “existent.” But it has shifted from one’s identity, to being an aspect of one’s (basically) infinite Self. That’s all. Not obliterated.


I agree that to deny any kind of “I” is to be OUT of Unity Consciousness. Or, perhaps more precisely, to be sloppy about specifying the perspective being taken. Within Unity consciousness, nondual awareness, many identities and perspectives are possible. That’s one aspect of that “infinite freedom of Being.” 


To the infinite One Self, every particular is “infinitely precious.” That’s been my experience when I have been in that perspective (inadequate word, but….)


Mascha, you will be amazed to know of a conversation I had this evening with a very advanced spiritual woman friend I have, who, when we started talking, said she had experienced a major shift just two week ago, and guess what: it was the shift into “free-fall.” We compared notes, and we were delighted and blown away by our similarities !!!!!!!


It appears that she is a bit ahead of me in the fullness and constancy of the free-falling condition, but I also know that I am being shown every little step and rock and place along the process, because I will be guiding others through this passage, soon. So I can’t rush through it, have to know it intimately, all possible experiences in it.


Not that any of this is conscious choice. God no. It is happening, and the best “I” can do is cooperate and be willing. If not, my head hurts too much !!!


And I agree with those who are saying you can’t really “teach” this, but you can radiate it, and it is contagious. And only those who are ready, will “pop.” TP’s use of that word was one clue to me that he was coming from more than just a conceptualizing of the awake state. I might be mistaken, but to me it’s a special word, an “insider” term, that some folks come up with spontaneously and independently.



Anyway, that’s my midnight two cents’ worth, and carry on. This is shaping up to be the yummiest thread I’ve encountered yet in Gaia !!


Blessings, OM Bastet

Re: Resonance

Forgot to clarify: The “end to seeking” is both a clue that awakening is happening and an indication it has happened. I was not offering the Adyashanti materials as being a resource for SEEKING nor a source of “should’s” or “to-do’s” that the Ego can latch onto. I was recommending it as a guidebook to the country one is already touring, that points out a lot of the features of the place one might miss, otherwise !!

Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

OM: It’s a close cousin of “free fall” hahahaha.

I can relate to all those cousins. And uncle Tom singing Free Fallin’ is still among my favorite background scores when doing everyday chores, especially driving in my car. Perks me right up and makes it possible to sail down the freeways like a swan on the river of eternity. That’s on a good day though. I won’t get into the details of describing instant contractions where the subtle bodies shrivel and writhe under horrible contortions. That’s where Sci-fi writers get their inspirations but others run for the doors.

Adyashanti has long been one of my favorite Jnanis too. Have taken it easy on the listening to him, though. It’s the overdosing that my system just can’t tolerate any more. I read or listen to a few of his pearls of wisdom and I’m already full, you know? It’s very wonderful that so many like Adya are popping up on the scene. But what I really want is a few hundred thousand of the cousins to pop by next Friday, preferably. There’s an urgent need to tip the scales on this planet and become a majority. Again, the paradox of knowing all is completely out of control yet perfectly well in the grand scheme, and feeling the call to do some heavy lifting - as in the lifting of the veils which is the literal meaning of the Greek word Apocalypse. (Tom, that was a tip of the hat to you).

Babbling before bedtime,

m

Re: Resonance

It just now occurred to me why possibly these ‘no I’ people never answer my question, when I ask them what they do mean by “I”.
They have all behaved in a similar way as if they had not heard my question. Is it possible that my impression is real: they truly cannot hear the question, because they have never become self aware of “I”? Something that does not exist in your reality you ignore completely. It passes by, because there is no “I” in their conscious reality.

Is it possible that they are not self conscious in a way that they can be aware of a real “I”?  By real “I” I mean the meaning maker, the interpreter, that mostly automatically and unconsciously creates understandable vision from the stimulus our eyes receive, from other kind of stimulus sensations like hunger, thirst, pain, pleasure, tiredness etc. On a higher level of meaning making appear thoughts. Even subtle intuitive complex seeing that seems to appear to our mind without thinking, is a result of this kind of dependent meaning making. It is also  the “I” who can become aware of the phenomenon of our interpretation and meaning making,  even if it often is not. Without the meaning making function of “I” only chaos would be there. With the impairment of the this meaning making, or “I” function, as in psychosis or dementia, this can be seen.

When people stop perceiving  “I” as a solid image or entity that their mind has created of themselves, what is left is a more real “I” from which no image can be made, because it is nothing static, it is a continuing process of interpreting stimulus and responding to it, and  making meaning from it. Maybe these people have never become self aware of this process, which they however naturally have learned to call “I” long ago. I’m hungry, I’m angry, I like you, I’ll go to study. These are very true descriptions of the interpreting process we call “I”.

Irmeli

Re: Resonance

OM: ... one’s (basically) infinite Self.

I like that “basically,” OM.  : )   Ah, the infinite.  Wasn’t that the (non-thing) that George Cantor troubled himself so completely over?  Not to go too deeply down this abstruse abstract alleyway, but just to peek around its corner, does not the saying “the infinite” imply there can be no “place” however where the infinite is not infinite?  The infinite would otherwise, in that place, be finite: infinite everywhere and everyhow else, except there.

Let’s call “there” this universe.  Any form in this universe—OM, Mascha, Irmeli—is by definition, and in some manner, finite: it’s a this-not-that: OM is not a car.

Thus form is a place, in its formness, where the infinite is not.  The infinite not being in that place, the infinite has been finited, and therefore is no longer infinite, never again can be.

So, yes, “basically” infinite.  There’s a wonderful feel of the human in that.

I personally think paradox is generative, so I tend not to want to collapse it.  But paradox is high voltage electricity …

Irmeli: Is it possible that my impression is real: they truly cannot hear the
question, because they have never become self aware of “I”?

Could be, Irmeli.  Could also be a fear of incarnation.  Or a fear of electricity.  A fear of the feminine and the blood of birth?  Ever notice there are always so many fears to choose from?

Mascha: … lifting of the veils ...

Hey, nice word, Mascha!  Gives a fresh ring to Apocalypse Now, an implication Eckhart Tolle would like, I’m sure.  I looked up the word veil.  It’s root means “sail.”  So, yes, lift the veils and catch a certain wind.  : )

Re: Resonance

Let me extend a little what I said above.  Facing the prospect of electricity, no-I looks to me as a pair of thick rubber gloves—actually, a thick full-body rubber suit: safe to a million volts.
 
How can I be true too?

Ever wonder why the real world—I as particular—doesn’t appear in theories or views?  Last summer I was on Ibiza island for a painting and creativity course.  Most days, we would walk from our little beachside hotel, up some cliffs (careful), along the cliffline and into a low-brush shaded forest where painting, or what some of us called painting, would resume.  In learning to look—one of the teachings given us—I was struck by how particular everything was: this jut of trees, that line of cliff with its rocks falling how, that massive granite island just offshore which, the night before, was home to a wisp of cloud and a full moon. 

What could we possibly mean by the word repeat?

Of course, closer inspection of anything at all brought but to increased resolution this impression of difference and particularity.  “Difference and particularity” don’t quite describe, as discontinuity or isolation didn’t appear in the perception.  I do remember thinking, looking at the island I mentioned, “extrapolate that from e=mc2.”  It can’t be done.  Uniqueness—and how everywhere* is uniqueness?—is not amenable to theory, not even a theory of everything, which therefore is a lie.  All those theory of everything books could be retitled:

“Theory of what I call a few things viewed from one limited angle.  (Don’t confuse with reality.)”

But then it wouldn’t sell.  And one would be faced with the feel of electricity in feeling the limitation.

No wonder the disappearance of the particular (and often feeling) in theory.  And no wonder the particle nature of matter gives such trouble to quantum theorists.  And no wonder the I is so problematic.

For me, my path cannot be taught: my path is me.  What can be taught is that piddling thing called theory.


* paradox

Re: Resonance

Resonating!


 A quick thought before going off to my day:


I’d like to peek more around this corner:


does not the saying “the infinite” imply there can be no “place” however where the infinite is not infinite?  The infinite would otherwise, in that place, be finite: infinite everywhere and everyhow else, except there.

Let’s call “there” this universe.  Any form in this universe—OM, Mascha, Irmeli—is by definition, and in some manner, finite: it’s a this-not-that: OM is not a car.

Thus form is a place, in its formness, where the infinite is not.  The infinite not being in that place, the infinite has been finited, and therefore is no longer infinite, never again can be.



This is the age-old: Does the Absolute contain the Relative and if so is it still Absolute? And even the not-one, not-two paradox.


My answer is that the Infinite, whatever that might be, fortunately does not feel the need to conform and bound itself to human logic, and therefore, it can include finite parts if it damn well chooses to. 


And apparently, it does. At least, in appearance it does. But maybe it doesn’t REALLY. Maybe that’s what awakening is about. And before that, that’s what the concept of paradox is for. Or “the Mystery,” and leave it at that. The ineffable can be effed, but it can’t be logicalized. :)


And “holograms” might or might not be a real answer……


Actually I AM a car. At least, I am MY car. hahahaha.


And “infinite” is only a concept anyway. Like all, it is an attempt to capture something beyond capturing. It is the human mind’s word for “I’ve gone as fur as I kin go, and I don’t see the end, and I gotta stop and rest here. Maybe I’ll just give up here.” So we can’t really make any deductions, such as you were apparently doing.


But then again, you put in the weasel-words: “in its formness.” But that’s what awakening is about, no? In its formness, it is nothing but the infinite. AND VICE VERSA. That’s Realization, that’s paradox. 


My jaws ache from chewing on this now. No, actually, I am smiling.


Blessings, OM 

Re: Resonance

Now that we’ve solved that one, can I have your car?

Re: Resonance

Wow – interesting conversations here – lots of thoughts springing to mind.
 
First off,  before I caught up on this wonderful thread earlier today, I had myself a surprising little revelation in the shower (gotta love those magical shower-induced “aha” moments, LOL).
 
As it happened, I was standing under the water thinking about the conversations on this thread, and thinking about my own awareness, and trying to label it. I knew I wasn’t running a duality construct program, and I also knew I had never run the non-duality (at least, not the “I” am not here) construct either. So what was my “I” doing, I wondered. And then it hit me, and I immediately started to cry – I know, I know – hardly manly of me. But I confess, ever since my heart has opened, I have had to cope with a spontaneous outpouring of grateful tears – a minor side effect, I guess you could say. Anyway, so here was the aha – my operating construct, ever since my heart opened has been something that labeled itself as Plurality consciousness! In this awareness, I am fully conscious of my individuated self, and at the same time, I am also fully conscious of something beyond the “I” that my revelation identified as the “We”. This “We” is everything else that is not me. It is all of humanity – incarnate and discarnate – and all other life (ET) if you will –  incarnate and discarnate – and it is all dimensions and realms – angelic, celestial, group soul – it is the All of All. And I am acutely aware of it in some super-conscious fashion at all times, while at the same time, never losing awareness of my own individuated self. That said, I am also not concerned, afraid, or anxious in the least about the annhilation of the self. In fact, the thought of losing my self and merging (back) into a group consciousness or even back into Oneness, is something that sounds perfectly acceptable and exciting in this “Plurality” awareness of mine. Don’t know if this makes sense to anybody, but it really hit home for me!
 
OM – after I had my little revelation this morning, I read the following words of yours, and it sounded like you were saying the same thing. You said:
 
Beings who abide in Unity Consciousness are individuated, they accept that they have bodies, such as those might be (usually energy forms that we would not consider as “matter” …but these embodied Beings are never out of awareness of the Oneness underlying all distinct forms.
 
I read those words of yours, and I went – Yes! That’s precisely it! Unity Consciousness is the Plurality – me and everything else, interconnected, on the same universal path, One.
 
Mascha – thank you for the lovely compliment. You asked me to be specific about the experience that expanded my heart. Well, I think my Gaia Profile – which I updated a little yesterday – kind of paints the general picture. It has beens a gradual process of unfoldment, not precipitated by seeking outside myself, but by a curiosity to explore within myself. That said, I did initiate an exercise intuitively that was extremely intense, cleared a lot of shadow in a short amount of time, and brought me to a previously unknown place of forgiveness. I wrote about it here. It was quite a simple exercise, however, the results were truly transformational (for me, anyway).
 
About reinventing oneself – I totally understand what you are referring to, Mascha. Once my heart opened, I realized I had been mostly unconscious for the previous twenty- something years – and I wanted to change that. I wanted to stay conscious for the rest of my life! And that’s the journey that has unfolded ever since – a gradual reinvention of a more truer reflection of who I really am in my unbounded fullness! So I get it, and I can tell you first hand, it has been very much worth the bother! The way I have come to see it (and I’m sure there are many equally valid ways) – but for me, there are many versions of myself that I can be at any one time, however, there is only one version that is the most perfect reflection of that unbounded fullness – and that is the version I wish to be. The best me possible. Not that all the potential me’s aren’t right – there are no wrong choices leading to no wrong me’s – but I can carry the intent to be the best me possible, and within that intent, maintain an openness and a willingness, and a complete lack of any expectation as to where the road of the best me will take me! Just a willingness and desire to walk that road!
 
Irmeli – you wrote:
 
Life is truly multifaceted, and I don’t know where to put this kind of awakening hierarchically. Some sort of ultimate realization I don’t consider it to be. For me it was a starting point, that created a stable platform for relatively effortlessly unfolding learning and inner work.
 
Again – lots of resonance there for me. Thank you for that, Irmeli.
 
 

Re: Resonance

You just did it - threw me into wordless joy…

Mathew, Tom, OM, Irmeli, Doug… Y’all are just as effective as any of the more well-known gurus we’ve come to enjoy. Actually, your transmissions are even more immediate, more real, more poignant, more… transformational for me because of the tacit understanding that we’re all peers around here.

And as I look up from the keyboard, there is the first ladybug crawling on my window screen, a little red living thing. Must be springtime in NonGuruLand where everybody is a teacher and bloody beginner and everything in-between.

Such joy to recognize myself “out there” in you all and not having to explain.

Re: Resonance

Wooo effing hoooo !!!!!
(Apologies to any offended by swearing. I only swear for emphasis !!
I’ll start backwards.
Yeah, Mascha, what I love about this thread, or one of the things, is we are indeed all tacitly peers. We are not teaching, preaching or especially learning. No one is challenging. We are comparing and clarifying. And thus amplifying. I had been thinking about that even before you mentioned it. (Why am I not surprised about that !)
Mathew, wow wow. Yep, that’s what I meant to say, and it’s so precious to hear your own description in your own words. That IMO truly describes the state, whatever it is. Or stage. The Oneness is always there, sometimes foreground, sometimes background. Like the fact that I have two feet. Often in the background, but never out of my awareness fully.
And easy tears, well, “manly” needs to be redefined to include easy tears of appreciation and compassion.  
Well, Tom, so, what would you like to offer for my car??? LOL !!!!
Irmeli, I got an insight today about the “not-I.” Let’s see whether it makes sense to you and others. I’ve noticed that sometimes people are reluctant to let go of old definitions of concepts, and I think that’s happening here. (Although it really doesn’t explain why they don’t seem to HEAR your question, but I still think my following idea has some truth to it.)
People are used to identifying with their minds (and/or bodies.) That’s been “I.” Ego-identity = I. When they move into an expanded state, even into freefall, they are unwilling to label “I” anything other than the old Ego-self identity. They are simply unwilling to expand the concept of identity, to now include an individuated but non-separate self as a portion of the Self. They can’t shift the source of saying “I” to some new location in consciousness, or new function of consciousness, or new portion of consciousness. Since the old Ego-identity doesn’t exist as it did before, they see simply “not-I.” They aren’t even willing to regard as one of their “I’s” the new transmuted Ego-as-one-portion-of-identity, the one now in joyful service to the Self and the individuated self. 
So they insist on “not-I” because while they might recognize what we are calling the new sources of “I-ness” they are simply unwilling to apply that label to those new sources.
Is this making sense? It’s the only way I can make sense of what they say. (Unless of course they are simply parroting concepts from Eastern religion, about killing the Ego, etc.) I don’t think Tony Parsons is parrotting, I think he is just stuck in the old semantics and not being flexible in his conceptual definitions or labels.
How lovely, Mascha, the first ladybug of the year. And I have daffies who are budding !!
Oh, and I meant to mention something to you Mascha. When these unpleasant uncomfortable times of contraction come upon you, do you regard them as your attention being called to areas of yourself that need more of your awareness? Do you engage in some practice, like the kind of Inquiry Adyashanti says he had to do for six more years even after his abiding awakeness? Do you beat yourself up for “backsliding?” (Just curious about some of these possible responses.)
Re us all here compared to gurus: I experience many people who are having many of the same states or experiences as the famous gurus, and who can express themselves pretty darn well. With the wave of awakenings across the planet, there are many “secret gurus,” I call the ordinary folks who are chopping wood and carrying water and selling us groceries, and not needing to talk about their inner experiences to adoring crowds. (I am not knocking all spiritual teachers. Some are really fine people.)
Thank you all.
Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

Michael, that’s a lovely selfsense description.  Some day I plan to set down to articulate some of the complexity of the interweave we as I’s are—just even some of the scope of it, the details being too many.  Notice your atoms, for instance.  They, for their part, are a we, and a particularly cosmopolitan mix!  A molecule is a we, as is a human cell, which contains somewhere in the range of 10^13 atoms.  Awareness itself probably arises from cell interaction, so it is a we, a kind of chorus of cells.  And that’s quite a chorus, with 10^13 to 10^14 trillion cells in a human body.

This English language, like any language, is we-referred, we-created.  It moves and grows—differentiates like a tree—by the so many contributions of the so many in which it circulates: a we phenomenon.  The information language carries deposits in each person, creating a small structural change.  That be a we-originated change.

And god knows that to which awareness is not connected, which for me is more a being connection manifesting in, among other places, awareness.  Shot through we.

And on we go.  : )

Re: Resonance

Tom, you were talking to Mathew, right? So far, Michael has been conspicuously AWOL on this thread, and this is an official complaint about that.

OM, Iemme tell you that everything you say makes sense. Well, the extremely technical references are a bit over my head but I do get the essence of the gist of the core of what you mean without fail, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

A few thoughts about making generalized assumptions about where people are coming from when they deny the existence of a separate self/ego/individual “I”. We can only speculate what motivates anyone. And jumping to conclusions about Tony Parsons after viewing one talk is a bit rash for my tastes. I’ve been around guys (yes, it’s always guys, incidentally) who just had a big epiphany about there being “no one in particular”, who then go around correcting everyone who uses the word “I” or the other related words. This is billed as an effort to enlighten others about the non-existence of such a purely conceptual entity as an “I”. I found it pretty annoying after a while, but also kinda funny – all this strutting around like a newly rich millionaire, showing the paupers how far down they are on the food chain of spiritual attainment, ha!

Other reasons could also apply for using the no-self trump card. Poonjaji, my benefactor’s master, used to force certain people to have this insight during the Satsangs he gave. They got it - much like Andrew Cohen did. But later on in his life, Poonjaji admitted that it didn’t work too well and he shouldn’t have done it because most of these prematurely forced “realizers” promptly went on to create much mischief with their newfound “enlightenment certified by a genuine Satguru.”

Trial and error. There’s no formula for what’ll work.
Same goes for my contractions, the relapses you were asking about, OM. I don’t blame or berate myself when a contraction happens. I just experience it with as much awareness as can be mustered at the time. When the lights go dim, and fear or horror seems to devour my very essence, something will occur to me spontaneously, like humming Ommm, Ommm, Ommm, for a while until the disturbance subsides. Often it’s a very quick, almost immediate remembrance that thoughts and feelings self-liberate. They arise… and poof… they’re gone… like fireworks in the inner sky. A hundred more variations of this no-method-allowing can occur to me, and each time that I survive the worst of the worst contractions, it gets a little easier to die.

m

Re: Resonance

Hi Mascha, yes, I meant Mathew.  Pardon me, Mathew, I’m a little tired these days and it’s showing!

Mascha, your observations regarding no-I men, with their strutting, is so characteristically male!  Have an experience—pretty much a binary experience at that—then interact with others regarding it from a presumed hierarchy etc and sell sell sell.  How curious.

I suspect the male version of experiencing interconnectedness can be so extreme due to the overall more tenuous connection between right and left hemispheres of the male brain.  In this regard, I’d like to mention one woman who had a very real no-I experience, Jill Bolte Taylor.  She was a Harvard neuroanatomist—a real left brain type—who suffered a brain hemorrhage in her left hemisphere.  The stroke bled into her language centre and entirely erased, for weeks:

all words
all numbers
memory access
personal identity
sense of I
linearity
time
sense of separateness and boundary
finiteness

Astonishing!  She had to relearn all of that.  In its place in the meantime was left just a peaceful sense of living interconnectedly as space, with no boundaries and zero fear of death. 

Here’s an interesting inference: the right hemisphere of the brain looks to be the material correlate of enlightenment experience.  It perhaps goes without saying that most enlightenment language follows the outline of what Jill described—basically, a loss of everything Jill lost—thus enlightenment looks to be a form of right-brain integration that, in some (think Adi Da), manifests as right brain dominance.  No-I, one could say, is right brain.

From the above, it makes sense that more men than women experience a “break” when the perception of connectedness arises, for the reason I mentioned.  Women are in so many ways less extreme than men, less binary, less polarized.  I suspect hemisphere communication has much to do with that.

Oh, and by the way, Jill Taylor’s experience implies that everything in the list above is fully one half of reality.

Re: Resonance

Mascha: Other reasons could also apply for using the no-self trump card.
Poonjaji, my benefactor’s master, used to force certain people to have
this insight during the Satsangs he gave. They got it - much like
Andrew Cohen did. But later on in his life, Poonjaji admitted that it
didn’t work too well and he shouldn’t have done it because most of
these prematurely forced “realizers” promptly went on to create much
mischief with their newfound “enlightenment certified by a genuine
Satguru.”

Trial and error. There’s no formula for what’ll work.

Mascha, I really like what you say here.  People are very particular beings whose histories and unfolding, while conforming in some ways to certain other peoples’ experiences, retain an irreducible uniqueness in sequence, content, overall flavour and depth.  Force respects none of that, and can push people to an overall less integrated and peaceful development by directing that oh-so-precious thing called attention in less optimal directions.

Re: Resonance

Hi Tom, Thanks so much for the compliment, and as well, the molecular and atomic wee “We” lesson, (did I just write we-we?) and BTW, no worries about the name confusion. Besides, you were only just one little disciple off (alphabetically that is – with or without a double “t” Matthew).

Mascha – “wordless joy” – wonderful!

OM and Irmeli – Thanks for including me in the fun! ;-)

Re: Resonance

I’m asleep on my feet but must mutter a few things before toddling off.
Mathew, your parenting immersion is getting to you, haha.
Mascha, glad to hear your episodes are less frequent and less unpleasant. Sometimes I feel as if someone called the Consciousness RotoRooter person, and I’m watching all kinds of unpleasant or horrifying old stuff going by my awareness on its way OUT for good. And sometimes I just watch and let the wave go through, and sometimes I must make some efforts, similar to what you mention…..
This thread is an interweaving of several different conversations. Interesting. 
The Bolte Taylor stuff has gotten a lot of press. I have read excerpts from her book, quite a few. I wrote a critique, if anyone here is interested. Best of all were her descriptions of  ”the ineffable.”
The connection of the hemispheres is relevant, I think, in several ways. One is that the greater the flow between them, the less difference between thought and emotion or the effable and the ineffable. I do think m-f differences are interesting to speculate about.
Gee, Mascha, I hope MY ponderings about the no-I people didn’t come across as “assumptions.” I hold them, and thought I presented them, as plausibilities, as speculations. 
Here’s another official complaint at the lack of Michaelness on this thread. Someone needs to tell him some fun and hugs are available here, and he’ll be right over !!
Namazzzzzzte, OM

Re: Resonance

OM: Irmeli, I got an insight today about the “not-I.” Let’s see whether it makes sense to you and others. I’ve noticed that sometimes people are reluctant to let go of old definitions of concepts, and I think that’s happening here. (Although it really doesn’t explain why they don’t seem to HEAR your question, but I still think my following idea has some truth to it.)
People are used to identifying with their minds (and/or bodies.) That’s been “I.” Ego-identity = I. When they move into an expanded state, even into freefall, they are unwilling to label “I” anything other than the old Ego-self identity. They are simply unwilling to expand the concept of identity, to now include an individuated but non-separate self as a portion of the Self. They can’t shift the source of saying “I” to some new location in consciousness, or new function of consciousness, or new portion of consciousness. Since the old Ego-identity doesn’t exist as it did before, they see simply “not-I.” They aren’t even willing to regard as one of their “I’s” the new transmuted Ego-as-one-portion-of-identity, the one now in joyful service to the Self and the individuated self. 




This is how I understand that phenomenon also. In the book “The Evolving Self” Robert Kegan says something like this also. When a stage shift appears in the self, that which earlier was the subject, the lens through which one interprets and sees one’s reality, becomes now an object in one’s mind, one can look at. According to Robert Kegan for a while after a stage shift in the self for some people it feels like there was no “I”. The new subject or “I” cannot be sensed at all.
The thing I am worried about here is that this kind of naturally transient phenomenon is made to a doctrine and gets interpreted as an ideal state. In hidden subconscious ways a lot of self importance gets attached to this “no I” state, even ideas of enlightenment. If you get attached to the idea of ‘no I’  state meaning nondual supreme enlightenment, a developmental arrest has appeared.
Therefore I think these kind of notions need to be criticized and deconstructed on a wide front. 
Irmeli

Re: Resonance

Sorry Om – I meant to thank you for your lovely words. And for your support for compassionate and grateful tears.

Also, Tom and Om – “My Stroke of Insight” has been sitting near the top of a pile of books on my desk for several months. I started it, and found it very interesting, only to stall on the science that comes with Chapter 2. The fact that both of you are talking about it – I will endeavor to pick it up again! Thank you.

Re: Resonance

Reply to Irmeli’s post:
Yes, great analysis about “not-I.” Another thought I had was that any rejection of any “I” as outside of acceptable experience or as external or outside of the new “Whole” (to use Tony Parson’s term,) is judgment, is nondual thinking. “Doctrine” in your words. Transcend and INCLUDE. The All is the ALL. Or, in other terms, “There is nothing which is not-God.”
Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

OM, where you said, “… any rejection of any “I” as outside of acceptable experience or as external or outside of the new “Whole” (to use Tony Parson’s term,) is judgment, is nondual thinking,” did you mean ”dualistic thinking”?

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No, I meant “not nondual.” 
Tee hee.
Thanks for catching that. I do proofread, but that one got by me.
Namaste, OM

Re: Resonance

Mathew, if you’re interested, I posted references to materials about Jill Taylor in a different pod here.  There you’ll find links to some audio-video materials and a NYT article on her experience.  I found the Oprah interview mp3 particularly good.

Re: Resonance

Yes. Yes. Oh yeah. (Did I make my agreement clear enough yet?)

Ahem.

Just to recap, Irmeli said:
In hidden subconscious ways a lot of self importance gets attached to this “no I” state, even ideas of enlightenment. If you get attached to the idea of ‘no I’  state meaning nondual supreme enlightenment, a developmental arrest has appeared.

That’s my take also, generally speaking. Ironically, this insistence on there being “no I” becomes fuel for the most pernicious kind of self-aggrandizement, where enlightened no-selfers can legitimately lord it over those poor, deluded believers in some self, either with a small s or a capital S.

Luckily, it’s pretty obvious when that’s the case, so I’m not worried about having to debunk it too much. However, and this is really funny, Poonjaji used to say that misleading people in their sincere quest for liberation is the worst of all crimes anyone can commit and it lands you and your followers in Eighth friggin’ Hell - worse than the seventh circle, ha ha ha! He used to chop the heads off that some people sprouted after their initial enlightenment experience, often with ridicule combined with military precision. Apparently, that’s what happened to Andrew Cohen, but I wasn’t around at that time, and anyway, I really couldn’t care less about the stories that Cohen followers spread after Andrew started his own gig.

m

Re: Resonance

Regrettably all the nondualists I have met, have had rigid attachments to the “no I” concept. I have tried to communicate with them by explaining that I don’t deny their experience, but I would conceptualize it differently. None of them haven’t even wanted to hear, what I have been suggesting. However all these encounters have happened online. Face to face I never have met rigid ‘no I’ people.
I probably have met people who have nondual perception, but this thing goes almost unnoticed, if the person doesn’t have an attachment to the “no I” concept.

Irmeli

Re: Resonance

Here’s what I wrote elsewhere and am copying to here:

Quick Comments on Jill Bolte-Taylor’s Book  A Stroke of Insight

I had of course heard a lot about her experience, but had never actually seen a video or read her book A Stroke of Insight. Yesterday a friend of mine spent a bunch of minutes reading excerpts from throughout her book to a small group of folks, and I’d like to share my impressions from that. This is just how things appear to me based on that information, so I don’t claim accuracy, and welcome other viewpoints in comments.

I have BTW (by the way) heard that many others have disagreed with some of her philosophical or metaphysical viewpoints or assumptions, but I have not actually read or heard any of those disagreements. Just sharing my own here.

First, I am really glad she is out there sharing her experiences. I found her descriptions very moving, very powerful, and I believe she has done a great deal to expand the consciousness of many people, thus being of great benefit to their lives, and thus moving the world toward being My Spirit’s Ideal World. I appreciate the dedication and effort she put into both her recovery and her public sharing of her experiences.

I resonated strongly with many of her descriptions of expanded consciousness and of her internal experiences. I believe her descriptions are significant contributions to the literature of first-person descriptions of what we might call Kosmic Consciousness.

I found hearing her various descriptions of her experiences quite exciting, as I was able to easily relate them to what I have experienced, and to other thoughts and descriptions I have run across. What she said was easily “mappable” onto things many others have said. Yet what she said had her own unique flavor and energy which was interesting and valuable.

And I appreciated that most of the time she was talking in the first person, and not pretending her viewpoints were universally true or applicable. She was owning her experiences and viewpoints, but not pushing or claiming that they ought to be (or actually ARE) mine as well !!!!!!

Here are my differences from what I think I heard or detected.

She seems to assume and perpetuate the viewpoints that consciousness is an epi-phenomenon of the brain, a mere consequence of neural complexity and circuitry, and that consciousness is located within the brain. I might on second reading conclude that she perhaps assumes this only later, and not in her description of her expanded awareness.

Her experience seems to have been not what I call Nondual, or not Unity consciousness, because she seems to regard left-brain functioning as something other than, inimical to, separate from, opposed to, what she calls right-brain functioning or the right-brain’s subjective experience or worldview. True nondual awareness is another step, which comes back to the world we know, as it were, and understands EVERYTHING to be an expression of, as not separate and not “other” and not opposed to, the expanded Kosmic consciousness.

And I just plain can’t go along with her attribution of her experience to right-hemisphere brain functioning. I believe she had a true experience or apprehension of something Real, but her belief that the CAUSE of it was that only her right hemisphere was functioning, is an unwarranted assumption. It is an example of the viewpoints I mentioned above: that consciousness is located within and springs from, the brain itself.

My view is that the brain is a radio receiver, filtering out various portions of the infinite field of Consciousness which makes up both matter and energy and what we regard as thought and consciousness, and enabling us to experience – in our ordinary state of awareness – a small select portion of these. Thus consciousness is an infinite field of vibrating energy, and the brain is one portion of this, one section of this. It localizes what is inherently nonlocal.

My one other main quibble is that she seems to neither embrace all of left-brain functioning, even that which seems to result in “suffering,” or uncomfortableness, as part of the vast One, nor understand what might be the life-enhancing purposes of every single aspect of left-brain functioning. Like so many who are at war with Ego, she seems to be permanently in resistance to (read: thus creating the persistence of) some aspects of her left-brain functioning. In my view, that means she doesn’t understand their Larger Purpose in the Grand Scheme of Things, and is unable to view them with Divine Compassion – let alone view them as purposeful CREATIONS of her own Largest Self, the vast One Conscious Beingness.

Most of what I am or she is talking about is “the ineffable,” the Tao which cannot be captured in words, or fully expressed in words, thus my choice of words above reflects my own ways of pointing into the Inexpressible, and my words can be and should be freely translated into your own experiences that you think resonate or match.

Comments, corrections, invited !!

Sorry about the bolding. Lazy.

OM Bastet

Re: Resonance

Hi Om

I think this is interesting….

OM: ”My view is that the brain is a radio receiver, filtering out various
portions of the infinite field of Consciousness which makes up both
matter and energy and what we regard as thought and consciousness, and
enabling us to experience – in our ordinary state of awareness – a
small select portion of these. Thus consciousness is an infinite field of vibrating energy, and the brain is one portion of this, one section of this. It localizes what is inherently nonlocal.”

Sounds similar to the work of Hameroff & Penrose where they postulate what mechanisms and features the brain might be able to utilise in order to “localise the nonlocal”.

I think it’s fascinating work, although it has received some harsh critiques too.

James

Re: Resonance

Wow,that’s an interesting site, James. At first glance, no, there are quite significant differences from the view I stated, but I certainly didn’t originate the view I stated. It’s been around for decades, and I don’t recall where I got it from.
OTOH you have read more than my cursory glance, so if you think that’s what they are talking about, I will read further. Also, can you link to any critic you think has a respectable viewpoint? 
Yeah, Irmeli, it’s kinda interesting that people who abide in the nondual state can go unnoticed in real life. They are chopping wood and carrying water…..
That’s one reason I take heart about the world. If teachers like Adyashanti, who see lots of folks and who are better able than most to assess where a person’s consciousness is, says there are a lot of awake people around, then even if these folks are not obvious at first glance, they are there, and they are having their influence on the world.
But, of course, this is not news to you and some others here…..
Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

Here’s an interesting blog about No-I statements, from Centria/Kathy, whose level or stage is IMHO pretty darn “up there.” I was looking for another of her blog entries, which I didn’t find, but saw this one and thought you all might enjoy it.
Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

Hi Om

I can’t see the significant differences between what you stated and the work of Penrose and Hameroff. Sorry!

I think your description of consciousness as an “infinite field of vibrating energy” is very close to what they are saying. And the idea of “the brain localising the non-local” is almost exactly what they are saying. But I’m happy to be proved wrong by closer examination! :-)

BTW please don’t be put off by the fact that Hameroff was interviewed for and included in the movie The Secret. It doesn’t mean that he believes he can manifest a yellow Ferrari from the quantum level simply by thinking about it via his microtubules! :-)

Maybe your analogy about the radio receiver is closer to what Keith Richards describes about the process of song writing:
“Writing songs is a peculiar practice anyway. I never feel I write them, I’m just an antenna and the songs are already zooming through the room, and I hope to pick up something. I sit with a guitar or at the piano and play my favorite Buddy Holly or Otis Redding songs and, with a bit of luck, something suddenly happens and you’re off on your own track. Maybe it’s because I never deliberately sit down to write songs that it still happens. I’ve written more lately than ever before. I recieve and transmit-it’s that simple. If I actually believe I created something, I’d be in big fucking trouble. There’s no godhead ego, I don’t believe in the grand bold type “WRITTEN BY KEITH RICHARDS.” I just pick up the songs and pass them on. They aren’t mine, they’re everybody’s. To me, the best songs are the ones that come to you in dreams. I wake up, put it down on a cassette next to the bed, turn over and go back to sleep. I wrote “Satisfaction” that way.”

Sorry, was that off topic? ;-)

James

“I can’t get no…dah na na….!”

Re: Resonance

Topic? 
Oh, yeah, Topic.
No, I see relevance because we are exploring aspects of “I-ness” and possible kinds of experiences related to not-I-ness. At least, that is my impression of the topic, hahahaha. I guess Mascha just wanted our responses to Tony Parsons, but you know us Gaians: conversations here always get deeper the longer they go on, I’ve noticed. 
Many composers have said almost exactly what Keith Richards says. His statements are really clear, I really love this quote. Thanks a lot for it. I am sure I will find an opportunity to pass it along sometime. 
As I glanced at the Hameroff thing I saw something that implied a view that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain. But the tab is still open, and I will read more. Thanks for persisting in clarifying. 
Blessings, OM 

Re: Resonance

With a thread title like Resonance you can’t miss as long as you’re resonating with something somebody said. Isn’t that great?  ;)

Hi James (waves). You have no idea how close to home your references to Keith Richards hit for me on several different levels. Same goes for OM’s views about the brain being a relay station - it’s positively uncanny, actually. But I haven’t had time to read the links you guys posted these last few days, and I’d like to stick to my rule of withholding judgment on ideas I haven’t spent a reasonable amount of time considering from various angles yet.

Spaciously a-quiver,

m

Re: Resonance

Ooh, how great, Mascha !!
And I was gonna say that about resonating with anything is on-topic, but I desisted. But I’m glad you didn’t, as it again shows how great minds run in the same track….. LOL !!
OM

Re: Resonance

OM, I love you too. All of you - right this minute, that’s a felt and palpable reality.

Kosmic hugs are in order.

Re: Resonance

Oh! Mmmmmm!!

Re: Resonance

OM: “As I glanced at the Hameroff thing I saw something that implied a view that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain.”

Ah yes now I see what you mean.

In response I would say that a useful way to look at this is that there is probably agreement with your previous definition of Consciousness with a capital C , and that in addition what they are looking at is how consciousness with a small c , i.e. that part that manifests inside human brains, might manifest qualities of the infinite Consciousness (not that any such split between these 2 named types of consciousness necessarily actually exists!)

At least that’s my interpretation.  :-)

James

Re: Resonance

Hi Mascha

(waves)

James

Re: Resonance

Well if that’s all they want to know, why don’t they just come and ask me !!!!?

Wow. Gotta look at those waves closeup. My colors !!

LOL !!

OM

Re: Resonance

The last 20 seconds where the host just smiles and goes, “Ok… Tony” is priceless… just says it all (to no one clearly).

:)

Re: Resonance

What? What do you see there, Chris? I know you’re specializing in resonance themes from reading your profile. But now that you’ve dropped this intriguing hint, I want to know more about your take on what happened there.

Waves some more,

:D

Re: Resonance

Hey Mascha,

Oh, nothing deep… just I was humored by the host, deciding that it was ok to simply let the discussion go, since the show was out of time. :)

What Tony P is propounding is a rather, um, inexpensive form of enlightenment.  Shift the language, enjoy the perspective, have some fun because the language paradigms clash at a level where it’s not quite frustrating, just a bit silly – sort of like how Irishmen have a total blast when talking to foreigners.

Now, there is a mental effect in this language shift, in going person-less in one’s grammatical constructions (and yes, thoughts created in the mind are very much grammatical).  It feels a bit like swimming, to detach from your base language mechanisms.  But it’s neither fair nor accurate to say this is the true enlightenment of a non-being who realizes he is such, because there certainly is a Tony P brain present doing the processing, causing the projections of a Tony P persona, which the Tony P brain has meticulously honed over the years.  He hasn’t discovered salvation, he’s discovered a language game.  But good for him, he seems happy – maybe that is salvation.

I did like the formulation though of “resonance = resonance with something before”.  I very much believe that.  But it’s not resonance with some universal no-clouds of no-existence.  I believe that resonance is with patterns that have had great personal appeal at some point in the person’s past.  In Tony P’s case, it’s resonance with a warm and comforting time, his childhood (which not everyone will share).  Again, nothing wrong in embracing and reliving that resonance.  People that had the same comforting time as a child will feel something similar.  

I find a better use for resonance in its ability to guide us forward into more resonant experiences.  To the degree a particular resonance helps us do this allows us to determine the value of that resonance.  1 step back, 2 steps forward is my motto.  Step back into resonance, step forward into better resonance.

Anyway, back to work :)

Best,
Chris

Re: Resonance

Thanks for unraveling your take a bit more, Chris. I can appreciate it… notably the reference to Tony’s P(ea)brain, lol. More confirmation that we’re already living in sometimes markedly different parallel realities that is.

Blessed be your work as a programming wiz on Gaia! (You must have noticed how flipped out the spacing gets when people cut & paste text they have written elsewhere into their posts… hint, hint… :)

m

Re: Resonance

“Language game.” Well, yes, I can see that there. But I can also see a lot ELSE as well, more genuine than a game. 

But you put me in mind of Adyashanti’s describing that he no longer believes any of his thoughts. And this appears happening to many of us, moving into that pretty automatic “disbelief.” Not disagreement, just disidentification. 

Tony P kept insisting that all he said and all he did was just (in KW’s terms) “arisings,” from the Whole, but I get the sense he WAS “believing” much of what he said. It’s possible anyway. What do you think about that point, Mascha? 

Strictly speaking I have to agree Chris, resonance is resonance with something in the past, but my experience is that something new can set up resonance in me with what I am in this moment (which is the cumulative result of my past), and that resonance is completely in the now, and the NEW does not have to be notably similar to the past (except within the limits of being conceivable or possible, hence perceivable.)

Perhaps I am not clearly understanding what you were getting at.

I do believe the line/paragaph spacing has been fixed today, I think :franc was working on that. Am testing it to the max !

My favorite of all the new changes is being able to see all the posts surrounding the new one I am creating. That is soooo much easier on the brain, and makes being relevant and complete in replies, soooo much easier!

Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

Well said, OM, as usual.

OM: Tony P kept insisting that all he said and all he did was just (in KW’s terms) “arisings,” from the Whole…

That’s the view from a certain altitude. Everything is just happening and there are no separate entities who make things happen as ‘doers’ independent from the Whole. I can access this altitude in a split-second and describe what I see from there, and behold: my language will be pretty close to what Tony and all the other nondualists have used for millenia.

OM: …but I get the sense he WAS “believing” much of what he said. It’s possible anyway.

Of course. He believes it to the extent that it’s an accurate description of the View from that vantage point. As far as words can go to convey the direct experience of the View, Tony is doing an admirable job if you ask me. Don’t get hung up on the words, they’re inadequate, is what he’s saying. Let yourself be catapulted (or pulled, or relaxed) into the state from where the View becomes obvious to yourself.

I definitely can understand why realizers used to just run off to the jungle and kept quiet for years. What to say so that people get it for themselves and no longer need pointers? How to make yourself useless as a teacher so that you can be among peers and just have a great time confirming to each other: yes, you are IT. I am That, and so are you, ha ha ha! Beautiful, ecstatic, amazing and totally ordinary, and NOT an altered state – get it?

Oh dear, we’ll be discussing this unspeakable whatshallmercallit for the next few thousand years unless everyone gets it now and puts the Bodhisattvas out of work, for crying out loud, have mercy on their bodhisattvic souls.

Hee!

This

Re: Resonance

Misunderstanding, Mascha. I do know that “view” from that altitude. It is indeed “obvious” “there,” and the words are indeed just pointers. I can’t shift into it as easily as you can, but it’s “present” more and more.

Keywords in my sentence were “insisting” and “believing.” It just is, and IMO doesn’t generate those flavors of energy he was putting into it.

But, I am willing to be mistaken about that aspect of him. It’s entirely possible he is there a lot, and his un-assimilated Ego has ALSO co-opted it and toots about it. Pushes about it.

And yes, it’s not an altered state but the only natural state. Amen. 

For me the fun comes not in confirming You are IT, I am IT, We are IT, but in the joys of daily living that have an extra sweetness and extra intensity. “Amazing and totally ordinary.” Exactly.

Talking does seem less and less fun, especially to the extent I have a goal for talking, like saving the world, so I talk only when talking arises, haha. This is an issue I am still evolving around.

But I’m glad I said what I said because it evoked you to say what you said, which was so cool !!

Don’t get me started on bodhisattvas. I have a very heretical view about that…… haha.

Blessings, OM   

Re: Resonance

OM: it’s not an altered state but the only natural state.

Hi OM, I’d say it’s an actively generated state, constructed and created and time and place dependent and all that.

Re: Resonance

OM, you might very well be right about that “un-assimilated Ego”, as you put it, hooting and tooting its co-opted realization in Tony’s case. It doesn’t matter to me; I don’t expect jnanis to be pure, perfect, egoless. In fact, it’s just like Tony says in the video: You may become more vivid, outrageous, brazenly fearless once you’ve dropped into the natural state… if that’s what your personalities’ tendency was before. There’s no guarantee for how you will be. This is freedom itself expressing itself through the vehicle of the human personality. Some say after awakening, you take nothing personally anymore. I can say with equal conviction that it’s also the opposite: everything becomes personal - it is All You, in a sense, nothing outside what You Are which is what is - heh heh.

No formula here to hold onto. No position to maintain, yet easy access to any position/perspective, so that you could argue on either side of a debate with equal verve and conviction, yet never land on one side or the other for too long to settle down dogmatically.

I know you get this, OM - and probably more deeply than I do in certain respects. We’re just riffing, bouncing off each other in an online duet. For what purpose? Certainly not to teach. Much more like alpine dairy maidens yodeling while milking the cows within shouting distance, methinks.

That’s what I mean by confirming You are IT, and so AM I.
95%  of the joy comes through the non-verbal transmission, but we have to open our mouths to let the other 5% out for the sake of communion.

And now you have to divulge what heretical views you harbor about bodhisattvas, my dear!

m

Re: Resonance

Hi Tom, I don’t think I agree if you are referring to nonduality. I go with KW who doesn’t even regard nonduality as a “state.” It is the “paper on which we write” anything, including all activities and etc. So my even calling it a “state” was imprecise. 

Your description doesn’t seem to match the ones I’ve “experienced” and also seen described (well, pointed to) elsewhere, especially as nonduality, the Inherent Nature of Being and the Void, to get fancy, is prior to time and space, not at all confined to it. Prior to, and yet including, or expressing itself as, time and space. And Prior to and expressing itself as, all activity, all generation, all states, all constructing and creating. 

And especially, not “dependent” on anything, not a “conditional existent.” 

But perhaps you were referring to something entirely different from what I meant, perhaps I wasn’t clear…..?

Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

I was referring to what you take me to have referred to, OM.  See this thread and this thread for relevant discussion about what you say.

Re: Resonance

Yep, Mascha, you are so eloquent about all that. Love listening. Yodel -ay-eee-hooo!! (I adore yodelling, have CD’s of it.) 

Tom, Despite the sloppy terminology the rest of us use, including me, nonduality is not a state of human (or any other kind of Being’s) consciousness. It is the GROUND of Being, the Suchness of consciousness. And on and on. Have you read where KW talks about it as the paper on which our models and descriptions are written, not an item within our models or descriptions. It is not “complex,” it is the ineffable.

I guess my view is closest to what Is. was saying in one of those threads, though I didn’t read all the posts. It’s a long and complex subject and I have written extensively on it, but right now I can’t track anything down. 

So I’ll just say here that my “position” is different from yours, and from Bruce’s and from anyone’s who regards nondual as a “state.” There is something that kinda looks as if it is a state, and that’s often called nonduality, as the pinnacle of the evolution through other states, but Wilber used to say, at least, and I have to agree, that it is the ground of all states, present within all other states, and not a construct of our awareness, although not a “given” either. In fact I would go so far as to say that nonduality expresses itself as all other states.

But then again, perhaps nonduality is our label for a perspective, and the Grand PooBah Ineffable is something else.

Mascha, funny you should ask about Bodhisattvas. haha.

Well whoever is not interested can stop reading here.

B’s are pretty universally admired as shining examples of selfless service. To me, they are pretty misguided. 

But, first I must say who I am talking about, because there are several ways of defining a B. I am talking about individuals who:

–Are on the verge of full enlightenment (however defined)
–Keep themselves from going into it
–Because they want to help others into enlightenment by “staying” this side of it.
–They say I can’t go while you are suffering, I must help you out of your suffering and into enlightenment and we’ll all go together. 

Hmmm. How to be brief. Can’t be brief without being blunt. I could say all this more tactfully….. And of course my language is shot through with imprecision…..

These folks are into rescuing, not compassion. They don’t understand the Big Picture (Divine (= beyond comprehension) Will and Purpose) of why some folks pop before others, and they believe they MUST rescue the slow ones, and they are egotistical enough to think they have a big effect, when in fact, it’s Divine Grace (= random, as far as we can see) that determines who pops when. They don’t trust God’s processes, they need to intervene and control !!

They also don’t understand the value of examples, of finishing their process as an inspiration to others. They think their staying in suffering helps others out of suffering, when in fact it’s the opposite. They also don’t understand transmission as a way of helping people along.

Of course, the whole Bodhisattva trip is just an arising, and in the Big Picture they’re just as fine as any other perspective. But also an arising is my perspective of the smallness of their misguided thinking, and the msiplacedness of the adulation they receive for their small misguided thinking ! They just don’t see things clearly. 

How’s that for a heresy? Definitely makes me unpopular in some New Age circles !

And it’s just my opinion. I don’t believe it, but I also think it has merit !

Any comments or feedback, welcome !

Blessings, OM  

Re: Resonance

Amen x 2, OM!  Both about nonduality and about bodhisattvas.  Beautifully said.
 
I wouldn’t have dared speak those thoughts out loud about bodhisattvas, but I’m glad you have the courage to express it, because I am feeling such a great … resonance!  :-)

Re: Resonance

Ja! Listen up, budding bodhisattvas, pundits, gurus & Co.

Here comes HeidiOM!!!



Thar she blows.

Re: Resonance

Hi OM, I don’t view nonduality as a state, and KW’s descriptions leave me in a Cartesian-proportion split.

Re: Resonance

Whew! How delightful ! Thank you, Tely.

Perhaps now I’ll do the Integral trip by giving another definition of Bodhisattva that I DO resonate harmoniously with !!

Individuals (notice that is a weasel-word, because it can refer to embodiment, soul, human, nonhuman, ET, whatever)

– ahem, Individuals who “move into” (however defined) “enlightenment” (however defined) and don’t go “up and out” but stay here embodied in the world, because they simply realize it flows for them to do that, because they feel “called” to stay, because it is their profound joy to stay, because they feel motivated by their compassion, and they live life fully as who they Are, knowing that’s the best way to benefit others, but not regarding themselves as needed by others, or superior to others in any way, or even significantly different from others, knowing it’s all just arising !! (Pls forgive the run-on sentence!) These are the “chop wood carry water” folks.

No sense of “sacrifice.” The idea of selfless service, of self-sacrifice, is crucial to the view I don’t resonate with.

But those who stay to teach, to heal, to co-create an Ideal World – these Bodhisattvas are many — many who are here in Gaia, in fact — and I do admire and resonate with them !!

Bet you do, too !

Blessings, OM

 

Re: Resonance

As much as I love the lip-zip graphic, OM, I don’t think you got too pontifical – I think you’re spot on.
 
This idea of “sacrifice” smacks heavily of codependency and martyrdom.  And when it’s preached as the correct or desirable path for a bodhisattva, it seems to lose authenticity and become not so much about true compassion, but more about feeding one’s egoic ideals – the image/persona of compassion, rather than the spontaneous, authentic arising of it.

Re: Resonance

Oops, I got too pontifical.

Re: Resonance

more about feeding one’s egoic ideals – the image/persona of compassion, rather than the spontaneous, authentic arising of it.



Oh YES!!!!


I have to say about about 99% of the “spiritual” behavior I see around me in the world is actually ego’s attempt to mimic behavior that authentically, spontaneously arises from the whateveritis, call it “True Realization” for now.


In fact, it is generally accepted in New Age circles that we get to full awakening by forcing ourselves to think, feel, and act like awakened people – the “image/persona” you mentioned. That – when I let it – makes me soooo sad. It causes MOST of the suffering I see among these people. Because it can’t be achieved, first of all, so everyone feels like a spiritual failure. And because second of all, it feeds ego co-opting of whatever true awakening happens. 


Not that all of isn’t simply an arising, and there’s nothing wrong or bad about it. But that’s the response that arises in me !! Probably by a year from now, I’ll be free of even these judgments, but I’ll still be naming and describing what I see !!!!!! Thinking perhaps it might prompt some folks who are ready to let go of some of their suffering, if it’s their time to do that !!


We’re all just pretending, down here, anyway…..


Thanks, Tely, for your wisdom.


Blessings, OM

Re: Resonance

Oh. Well, then I’m confused but glad, and as per your comments on the Language thread with Irmeli, I can dig that you detect that split !!

:)
OM

Re: Resonance

Hello, all!  I’ve just finished reading Tony Parsons’ “As It Is,” so now I feel OK about commenting.  The person who recommended that book to me also recommended Adyashanti’s “Emptiness Dancing” and another book called ”Do You See What I See?” by Jae Jah Noh.  I have to say that of the three, all of which are about nondual realization, my favorite is “Do You See What I See?”  Somehow it seems more honest and practical – more accessible – than the other two (although the other two are excellent, too).  And the people to whom I’ve recommended it and who have actually read it have raved about it, too.

The author wrote the book in 1977 under the pen name “Jae Jah Noh,” but his real name is Edwin Carl Smith.  His website is www.relentlesslove.com.  Unfortunately, the book is out of print, but it is available used.  Here’s a little blurb about it, in case you’re interested:

Jae Jah Noh, in the marvelous Do You See What I See?, describes how one comes to what he variously calls the life of faith, the cessation of the search, the unravelling of the “form of ones fear”, and the willingness to allow oneself to “be done by reality”: 

  ”Among truly sincere students, any “method” will serve to promote spiritual realization. Among the insincere no method will serve…Methods are illusory, serving only to pacify and gratify the mind. That which accounts for the realization of some and not of others is readiness..It is best that each person try every conceivable method of redress, avenue of change, discipline of self-improvement, before he attempts faith…For whatever reasons, the fact remains that true conviction comes only after the lack of meaningful alternatives have been vividly, and intensely experienced. The entire structure of one’s existence must necessarily be dramatically questioned and undermined. It is not that the mind is being convinced in this affair, it is being destroyed. This insight is not a mindful one, but an intuitive one, and incredibly deep grasp of the idea of non-alternative, hopelessness, death. One must vividly see the absoluteness of his fear, his avoidance..This crisis is the heart informing the mind..It is not an insight of wisdom, but of profound ignorance, an insight of darkness, of death. There is no place to go. It is the ‘bottom of the pit’; end.”

Re: Resonance

Hi Tely!

This quote from Jae Jah Noh comes closest so far to my interpretation of the ‘no I’ experience.

Here  I have described that kind of awakening this way:
“The irony is that when I at age 16 had my first conscious awakening
shift, I hadn’t consciously felt any desire to merge with God. After
this awakening I saw and felt that there is subtle deep intelligence
permeating and beyond everything. It is responsible for evolution and
also for the inner growth and evolution of us humans. My trying to
become something or being something disturbs the workings of this
intelligence in me. If I try to become something my conscious awareness
cannot stay in tune with this deep intelligence beyond all manifest
nature.
I also saw that life or this deep intelligence
accepts me just as I am with all my defects. Trying to be or become
something means denial and non-acceptance of what is. I think this
applies also to trying to get enlightened.
The basis for
growth and real transformation is in accepting and then gradually
penetrating what is, not by putting your attention elsewhere.
Just
be present and observe your deep motives, emotions, and energetic
states as sincerely and as truthfully as you can, even if it might feel
painful. Don’t avoid feeling painful and heavy emotions. This avoidance
is most potent in creating suffering and stagnation. ”

This awakening appeared without words. It was of permanent quality. There was no returning back to the old “I”.  It radically changed my life. It felt like huge iron doors had been closed behind me to the old way of functioning. In retrospect I can see that all seeking to be or become something ended there. Life is my path that unfolds on every step I take. And those steps are pretty much intuitively guided. It is open ended where the path leads to. However my discriminating intelligence observe my feelings, emotions, thoughts etc.and through that process clearly strongly influences often in subconscious ways the steps I take.

However all the interpretations through words came later, when I tried conceptually understand what had happened. Therefore I find it pretty telltale, if there is a rigid conceptual attachment to ‘no I’ words. ‘No I’ was never my perception, and if I tell this to ‘no I’ people they dismiss this shift of mine to something lesser.

There was “no I” anymore in the sense that I did not anymore identify with an image of myself. I have felt this concretely each time I have happened to participate in a guided meditation, where I have been instructed to form a picture of myself. That is IMPOSSIBLE for me.

This kind of awakening clearly does not correlate too well with higher stages of development. It maybe an advanced one in the self line, but does nothing to the other lines, that can be at amber.

Irmeli 

Re: Resonance

Yep. Sounds good. The description toward the end appears to me basically, more or less, what Tony captured by the term “freefall.” It’s marvelous to compare descriptions !!

Thanks for the resource, Tely !

Blessings, OM