The natural state?

Hello everybody. I know we've talked about this before, namely whether the stateless state of non-duality is natural, i.e. whether it is kinda like the “base” of who we really are, or whether it evolves, i.e. whether it requires mental discrimination to bring the stateless state about.

I've been thinking alot about this recently, and I would like to bring this up again and basically ask, did we come to any conclusions in the past about this? I know David and probably Lisa argues that the state is natural, but I don't know about the rest. What do you think?

I remember me and Bruce having a discussion some time ago where I myself argued strongly that the state was natural, and that consequently a new born baby was in a kind of non-dual state. I'm beginning to seriously doubt this now.

Now, obviously if we take a 3-p perspective, we can claim that non-duality is natural. Nothing comes and nothing goes. But when we take a 1-p perspective, some problems arise when we try to claim that a non-dual conscious state is natural. For example, it would absurdly follow that if we found a enlightened being and then erased all her memory, she would still be enlightened. Obviously this can't work - if we erase an enlightened person's memory, he won't be enlightened afterwards, because enlightenment requires discrimination. An enlightened being discriminates things as not inherently existent, and if his memory is lost, he will revert back to believing in inherent existence, because the mind was biologically programmed in evolution to reify.

So from this consequence, it follows that a non-dual state is not natural - that it requires mental functioning for it to “manifest”. On the other hand, we have to account for people who spontaneously enter into non-dual states, often induced by accidents or strokes, and the like.

Please help me out here. 

Re: The natural state?

An enlightened being discriminates things as not inherently existent, and if his memory is lost, he will revert back to believing in inherent existence, because the mind was biologically programmed in evolution to reify.


Yes, this is what I was getting at in earlier discussions, when I mentioned that enlightenment involves a type of understanding, a discriminating awareness that appears to depend on development and experience (memory).  I believe Tom argued similarly that the experience of nonduality or emptiness is a mental event, a mental function.

On the other hand, we have to account for people who spontaneously enter into non-dual states, often induced by accidents or strokes, and the like.

Wouldn't the fact that a non-dual type experience can be triggered by a structural change in the brain indicate that there is a structural, UR component of said experience, as Tom and I both suggested in the “States and the Absolute” thread?

Re: The natural state?

But it could also be, that there is an inhibitant structure in the brain, that kind of blocks the access to the supposed natural state. This “structure” (could be whatever, like a protein…they are fashionable these days). In that case, we couldn't say that there is a structural UR place for that experience. 
But then the question would be:”to which other structure the inhibitant structure, veils the experience.”

I think that there are different angles of approaching the subject:
- top-down models, like in Hinduism. This argues for the natural state. The ego-I is seen as a pale reflection of the Self in the mind. It's a dissolution model.


- Bottom-up models, like Occidental science, and particularly neuro-cognitive sciences. There, the ego-I is seen as an upper structure, resting on lower structures. Hence the sense of I. I think the Buddhist point of view is quite similar to that. This could lead to the idea that the non-dual state is built-up on lower structures and hence has an UR locus.

I would be interested if anyone has knowledge of a less “linear and cause/effect” model than these two. Something more circular or vibrating.

Patrick

Re: The natural state?

In Is Consciousness Primary?, while Michel Bitbol doesn't discuss the natural state, he does describe an approach to the question of the relationship between mind and body, consciousness and matter, that I believe goes beyond standard linear models.  It also is quite consonant with (it appears to be a relatively sophisticated statement of) integral methodological pluralism.

Re: The natural state?

Is: For example, it would absurdly follow that if we found a enlightened being and then erased all her memory, she would still be enlightened. Obviously this can't work - if we erase an enlightened person's memory, he won't be enlightened afterwards, because enlightenment requires discrimination.

I think it depends what sort of “enlightenment” a person has. Both Wilber and Ramana Maharshi speak of a level of adaptation where it's as though the toothpaste is simply out of the tube and it simply cannot get back in. I can't find the quotes at the moment, but Wilber mentioned this in one of the last three video/audios I have linked, so you should have heard it!

Maybe I will go back and find it at some point. I can't find the quote from Maharshi at the moment. If that is the case, and I believe it is (I recall another time when Wilber described it as the self being entirely “esconced” as the witness) then if someone had their memory erased it would not affect their realization but just their ability to act in the world.

This is why Wilber could have twelve seizures and nearly die and not lose his turiya or turiyatita. When he came to three or four days later (after being “aware,” as it were, the entire time) he at first couldn't even remember who Ken Wilber was, literally, nor anyone else.

Re: The natural state?

“I think it depends what sort of “enlightenment” a person has.”

I'm talking about any sort. I think it would be pre-rational to believe that without memory/discrimination, there would still be enlightenment in that person's mental continuum. You quote Wilber during his seizures. If he tells the truth, it is very interesting. However, Turiya is still a discrimination. It means that you make a judgement - ”I am not any form, I am pure conscious nothingness.” Right?

Kalu: “That's not it.”
 
I think here is where it gets a little bit tricky. First of all we need acknowledge that Kalu is correct - the stateless state of enlightenment strictly does not come and go. Nothing ever comes or goes in an ultimate sense. But still, the stateless state can clearly be lost, you can revert back to ignorance. If the stateless state was natural, why would this happen? I am currently chatting with a realized teacher called Scott Kiloby, and he still experience identification during dreams, even though he says the dreams have lost all their emotional intensity. Now David will say that his enlightenment is weak, but here's what I'm inquiring into - is his enlightenment weak, or is the conscious awareness/knowledge of the enlightened state (which is, I agree, not in space or time) conditioned by the biological structure of the brain?

It seems to me that it only hurts your position, David, to argue that in order to live the Turiya, you need to practice like hell in order to stay awake throughout the sleep cycle. If the stateless state of non-duality is natural, like you say, why then is it necessary to practice so hard for wakefulness to last? Wouldn't it simply be a matter of chillin' out and doing nothing, and we would be naturally awake and conscious?

To me, it seems more like when we're chillin' out and doing nothing, ignorance creeps back in and the mind becomes pulled into the appearances of the world as inherently existent. For example, when we go to sleep, you can feel how the mind becomes unclear and fuzzy and confused, and then consciousness is lost. (And we know consciousness is lost because we can remember it when we wake up - we don't “witness the unconscious state of mind”.) This suggest that the natural state of the mind (atleast in human beings) is the ignorant state, not the non-dual stateless state.

Re: The natural state?

Is: This suggest that the natural state of the mind (at least in human beings) is the ignorant state, not the non-dual stateless state.

If this was the case, I find that very interesting, in relation to the whole biological structure of the brain conundrum. So are you saying, that the 'natural' state - as conditioned by the biological functioning of the brain is 'ignorance' - which would imply the state we would physically experience as scrambled, monkey mindedness that comes with the territory of unconsciousness and inertia?

If so, knowing that we can fundamentally change and transform this by practices that increasing our awareness throughout all the states, surely it makes sense to do that. Knowing we are participating in the evolution and development of the process, including brain structuring etc.

I think ultimately the orientation and usefulness of how you put this in the frame of 'natural' is confusing & questionable. But more clarity is the purpose of this inquiry, no! :)

We could say paradoxically for example that the stateless state of non-duality is natural, and the relative state of ignorance in a human is also natural, or the norm. So therefore, practice, practice and do more practice if you want to slip out of the relative natural state of inertia, which is lazy, loves taking no responsibility for its evolution and transformation, and which will find all and any type of logical sequence to justify its desire to remain unchanged. It's an interesting thing to contemplate. I think interesting, and more profound levels of relaxation and chilling out come of there own accord once stabilized transformation in a person has transpired.

ps: I apologize for not exactly attempting to explore this in the context of your actual question!!! But cheers for facilitating the ponder anyhow! :)

Re: The natural state?

Bruce crossposted part of the original post to the Three Turns forum, interesting to see how differently the discussion is going there…

The Status of the Natural State 

Re: The natural state?

Is: I'm talking about any sort. I think it would be pre-rational to believe that without memory/discrimination, there would still be enlightenment in that person's mental continuum.


I think we have to differentiate between states and stages a little bit and also between plateau experiences and stage adaptations.

Vertical realizations, vertical nonduality, for example, Clear Light, requires discrimination. All action requires a brain, even nondual, Clear Light, One Taste. But if a person experiences nonduality in meditation, that is—theoretically, using Wilber's words and something the traditions maintain—not a perspective, beyond discrimination.

If a person had a lesser enlightenment, say, a nondual plateau experience with an Amber structure and then had their memory erased I believe that the nondual plateau experience would go as well because that sort of enlightenment is highly dependent on the stability of conditions around the four quadrants that created it.

But if it were really a stage adaptation and the toothpaste were really out of the tube and he person experienced some sort of brain damage, I believe they might well lose the structure and fall perhaps down into Archaic (perhaps even into a coma) but not fall back into the separate-self sense.

Also, recall the descriptions I gave earlier from Almaas and Nisargadatta in which there was no self-awareness. Nisargadatta described it as awareness that wasn't aware of anything, and that description doesn't entirely make sense of course but I think we get the idea from it. And there can't be any discrimination if there isn't even self-awareness. But that is a deep state experience, perhaps in deep sleep, rather than Clear Light action in the gross realm.


Is: You quote Wilber during his seizures. If he tells the truth, it is very interesting. However, Turiya is still a discrimination. It means that you make a judgement - ”I am not any form, I am pure conscious nothingness.” Right?


He writes that there is a point at which the person is entirely “esconced” as the Witness and that you can't get that “self” back in the separate-self sense at that point. Neti-neti is more about getting there. But that is not to say that Clear Light action doesn't require some effort and discrimination; I think it does. It may only be in deep sleep or deep meditation where there is no effort at all, generally.


Is: It seems to me that it only hurts your position, David, to argue that in order to live the Turiya, you need to practice like hell in order to stay awake throughout the sleep cycle. If the stateless state of non-duality is natural, like you say, why then is it necessary to practice so hard for wakefulness to last? Wouldn't it simply be a matter of chillin' out and doing nothing, and we would be naturally awake and conscious?


I think Lisa makes a very good point that “natural” is a misleading word or that we need at least two kinds of “natural” and to introduce the idea of conditioning. “Natural” can mean different things. It can mean naturally fearful and grasping and locked in gross comparative judgments and gross goal-driven behavior and such.

Clear Light (the structure, as opposed the the nondual state) definitely isn't there naturally. It takes loads of work, decades of work, to realize that. I think the basic point is that nonduality (accessed from any structure) is the light from within, what Andrew Cohen refers to sometimes as “the most intimate” part of ourselves. If we grew up in a Clear Light culture each person would probably be having deep state experiences all through childhood, but in our cultures everything and everyone screams at us that we are finite beings, animals, so we get very conditioned to think that way.


Is: To me, it seems more like when we're chillin' out and doing nothing, ignorance creeps back in and the mind becomes pulled into the appearances of the world as inherently existent.


Yes, this is why in Dzogchen, for example, which also uses the expression “natural state,” they also talk about dynamic meditation, meditation that is not exactly doing nothing. Ramana Maharshi once said that there is always some effort, but I think he may have been referring to action and maybe even the dream state but perhaps not in the deepest experiences or deep sleep.

Here is something good from Dzogchen I found after a very quick google. But that is of course different than the conditioned state that most people are in. So maybe we could differentiate between the “natural state” or “unconditioned state” and the “conditioned state.”

That book makes an interesting distinction between Madhyamaka and Dzogchen if you read on a little bit, on page 72.


Lisa: It's an interesting thing to contemplate. I think interesting, and more profound levels of relaxation and chilling out come of there own accord once stabilized transformation in a person has transpired.


Lisa, I think those are all great points, and I think this underscores the importance of vertical transformation. I think the higher we are on the spiral the more easy it will be to slip into the “natural state,” meaning nondual.



Another interesting part of this has to do with the traditional teachings of not making comparative judgments (like enlightenment and non enlightenment and such) an goalless behavior, but I will take that up later.

Is: But still, the stateless state can clearly be lost, you can revert back to ignorance. If the stateless state was natural, why would this happen?


I think this is a very interesting question (with regard to plateau experiences). Wilber cites shadow as being one possible reason, though I think there are others. I will try to find the quote about shadow later.

Re: The natural state?

Here is the quote about falling out of the “now moment”:

Re: The natural state?

Dawid: I've been thinking alot about this recently, and I would like to bring this up again and basically ask, did we come to any conclusions in the past about this?


Hey, back from the bush.  Parenthetically, all 8 of us who spent the week in a remote location with bears and cougars on northern Vancouver Island slept 11-12 hours a night.  Several (incl. me) said it was the best they've slept in many years.  I'm thinking EMI somehow disturbs the sleep cycle.  Either that and/or the reduced noise. 


Re your question whether the enlightened state is natural, I think your answer will depend, in the first instance, how you define natural (Lisa's point).  For me, uber-naturalist as I am, anything that is is natural: depression, enlightenment, jealousy, confusion, suicidal urges—these, to me, represent what I tend to consider inner resonances that, but for the inner structure so resonating—the 100 trillion cells arranged and relating-god-knows-how and just-so—no depression, enlightenment, etc.


Notice how I've defined a person as essentially a society.  This is a good, Whiteheadian, Bohmian, Hartshornian, Buddhist, Wilberian view of an organism as a holon, a structured relation of parts, the parts being themselves holons as down things holonically go.  Hear me using the word “part,” even “society,” as an abstraction that doesn't exist-in-itself.  Not one of my cells exists-in-itself, but it can be identified in some abstracted manner (ie, as a cell and not a crystal).


If you arrange cells in a certain manner, you get a human.  Arrange them otherwise and you get an aardvark (or any other lifeform).


Arrange them just so in a human and you get a depressed human.  Arrange them otherwise and you get an enlightened master.  “Depressed” and “enlightened” states are, to me, different resonances, though both exist, above a certain threshold of structural complexity, as possibilities (trees can't get depressed).  The two states are both equally natural, therefore.


Regarding your more specific question re memory, I don't think we understand how memory works, so I'm not sure your question can be answered convincingly.  On the speculative side, and in my view, the kind of learning required to produce enlightened awareness is a form of memory-training, but the memory so trained is not equivalent to what we normally consider memory (like, remembering I spent the last week without civilization).  Both forms of memory IMO involve structural changes, but the former looks to me to involve a much deeper structural change than that involved in remembering where I was last week.  Absent the kind of structural change required to produce the enlightened state, no such state.  And also in my view, any such state includes a mental component, which is to answer David's characterization of mental.  These states are fundamentally not not mental, to put the matter neti-like.


I do think enlightenment memory can be erased, but with much greater trauma than that involved in erasing memories (it could be that memory loss is but memory access loss, but j'digress).  Viewing memories as structure would explain why Wilber didn't lose his ability to experience however he experiences.  It also explains why Jill Bolte Taylor lost her personal memories (or memory access) but didn't forget how to walk.  Her walking memory (the cell structure relevant to walking) was not affected by her stroke.


David: I think all traditions basically work from the “always already present” understanding, though some with different depths.


Enlightenment experiences with some universality, yes, involve an experience of timelessness, an always already presentness.  But to refer to that experience or view or perception (call it what you will) apart from structure, well …. I mean, if a person isn't experiencing it, a person isn't experiencing it, so “where” is enlightenment then?  It exists, at best, as a possibility, but needs a structural change to presence IMO.


Dawid: If the stateless state of non-duality is natural, like you say, why then is it necessary to practice so hard for wakefulness to last?


Relevant question, Dawid.  My answer is that practice, or work, or experience, or whateverelse, creates a structural change.  Ask why people typically (always?) deepen into enlightened awareness—Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Poonja, Cohen, Wilber, Tolle, Katie: these all talk about deepening.  How could deepening be possible?  Try specifying what's changing in deepening without mentioning some word that equates to structure.

Re: The natural state?

Tom, glad you survived. Parenthetically: Did you see any wildlife there?

Also parenthetically: Yes, it wouldn't surprise me if EMF and the like affected circadian rhythms and such. Have you ever looked into Q-links? I wear one, originally on Wilber's suggestion. I think it is helpful.



Tom: I mean, if a person isn't experiencing it, a person isn't experiencing it, so “where” is enlightenment then?  It exists, at best, as a possibility, but needs a structural change to presence IMO.


It can seem to be quite far away or even non accessible at times, but then one can find oneself in a deeper state the next moment, very quickly. Sometimes you can just spend a little time with a person who has realized it very deeply and fall into a deeper state. This suggests something other than a structural change.

Re: The natural state?

To “hold it,” though, tends to require structural change. Apparently there are some “peak-plateau” experiences, but I think in these cases the structural change occurred before the peak experience (which then stuck as a plateau experience or stage adaptation, perhaps). This is what Ramana Maharshi said, that the people who came to him and got sudden Jnani had been those who had worked on it for years without a really clear idea of what they were doing or without “transmission.” But people with no previous work can have experiences, even deep experiences. Apropos of nothing Andrew Cohen had a very deep experience when he was fifteen years old, while just talking with someone.

Re: The natural state?

David: To “hold it,” though, tends to require structural change. 


Hi David, I agree with this statement.  I speculate that those who peak experience higher states are actually generating or producing, in their neuronal firing or some such, a temporary pattern that, if we had the proper tools, could be seen as a permanent trait of someone like a Maharshi, whether that trait was seen just in the brain or, more likely, in a brain-body structuring of sorts.


The brain, for its part, is exceedingly complex, with more neuronal connections than atoms in the universe.  A finite neuronal firing sequence or loop, or growing sequence or loop, should be able to produce a kind of movement-to-infinity that characterizes non-dual awareness.  I would expect to find an interplay, as such, between pattern and movement such that the movements of the universe are reproduced.  This seems IMO what a good physics equation does.  But this posited movement would need an underlying structure to support it.  That structure could be purely a form of chemical grease between patterned sets of neurons, all undoubtedly too complex to ever really see in a demonstrable way.  Or at least now and into the foreseeable future.


In relating states of awareness to structure, one answers the question why the Buddha appeared when he did.  The answer, IMO again, is that prior to his appearance, the structure that underlies his experience was not fully developed.  It is in this sense, I think, that non-dual awareness is natural: via the appropriate underlying structure, it resonates a potential existing in matter.  Also natural are states-to-be higher than non-dual, which teenagers will soon be peak experiencing, “soon” measured in evolutionary longer-than-a-life time.


Btw, I'll check out the Q-Links.  The phenomenon of all these adults sleeping so soundly was quite striking to me.  There can be only a handful of reasons for this, probably one of them dominant.

Re: The natural state?

Hi Tom,

Yes, it would be interesting to explore the UR correlates of these deeper states and higher structures further. However, I don't think there is evidence to suggest that these deeper state experiences/realizations are merely products of the UR. What is the injunction/data/verification that you are using for this theory?

Wilber's experience of constant consciousness, even when the body is severely traumatized (12 gran mal convulsions, three flatline episodes on the electrocardiogram) indicates that he has most likely cultivated a consciousness that is not dependent on the brain. If such a realization were dependent on very evolved operations within the brain, they would most likely shut down when the brain was under such extreme duress as no electrical activity in the heart, and the person would slip back into the separate-self sense.

 I understand the point about not all illnesses having the capability of affecting such a realization, but saying that someone could endure such an experience as Wilber's and not lose the realization because the experience just didn't affect the area of the brain responsible for the realization seems like a stretch. At any rate, it is a claim without evidence.

Since people can experience that constant consciousness without state training as a temporary experience, that ability or state appears to be always there, a given. We don't need to spiritualize that and call it Spirit; we can call it a different aspect of ourselves or being.

I agree that the Buddha's experience required a structure to access it consciously, but that does not mean that the experience itself was a product of that structure.

I think you object to Wilber's states as “givens” (reading between the lines, guessing, and so forth), right?  :) I think that's fine. However, sooner or later you have to do a few things: 1) Give us your definition of metaphysical and post-metaphysics (something I have asked for several times);  2) offer an alternative model; and 3) explain childhood state experiences and other peak experiences not brought about by a state-training injunction.

The question at the end of the day is not whether Wilber V is perfect but whether it is an improvement on what came before or on whatever else there is.

Finally, I would like a list of flora, fish, mammals (both land and marine), avian species, crustaceans, and the like that you observed on your vacation.  :)


David

Re: The natural state?

David, can you define 'produce' as you used it above?  I didn't use that word and want to know what I'm responding to.

Re: The natural state?

David, on Wilber:

“he has most likely cultivated a consciousness that is not dependent on the brain.”

[Cough, splutter] I beg your pardon? Do you have a model which shows how consciousness can be maintained by a human without a brain?

Re: The natural state?

Thanks to the “find on this page” function, I have discovered that we have both used the word “produce.” I used it first, twice, and you used it three times after that. I don't know about previous threads. It's no big deal, just a fact I thought I would mention.  :)

Here are the two times I used it:

Re: The natural state?

Hi, David, I have a quick question to interject here:  Are you suggesting that some state experiences/realizations are not AQAL occasions?  Or, if you believe they are, would you say that the right-hand correlates, for instance, are just of a different order, perhaps not currently detectable or measurable by science?

Re: The natural state?

David, oops, I meant to ask what you meant by saying experiences are but a “product” of the UR or of structure.  On a similar note, can you expand on what you mean by “effects created by the brain”?

Re: The natural state?

Hi Bruce, well, I think everything is an AQAL occasion. It includes everything, right, including our Original Face, nondual Spirit.  :)

As for the correlates of deep-state experiences, some are detectable, right? We can detect brain-wave patterns, for example. I'm sure there are many others that haven't been identified yet.

Okay, I've answered your question. Now you give me your definition of metaphysics and post-metaphysics.  :)

Re: The natural state?

Okay, thanks.  I asked because you said that you thought some state experiences were of a different order than biochemical events, so I thought you were saying that they did not have right-hand, biological/neural correlates.

About the definitions of metaphysical and postmetaphysical, I thought you were asking Tom, not me.  I've defined those terms in a number of posts, and I also happen to have a pod, if you haven't noticed :-) , dedicated to exactly those questions, where we've explored the meanings of both terms over many different threads!

As you probably know, the term, “metaphysical,” can mean a number of different things, depending on whether it is used by Heidegger, Habermas, Wilber, or others.  When I've used it in our discussions here, I've been referring, generally, to Wilber's definition: that models or approaches which appear to make perspective-free claims about reality or particular features of reality – claims which involve the myth of the given, or the notion that the subject has direct, unmediated access to (aspects of) reality-in-iteself – are metaphysical.  And postmetaphysical approaches are ones that are critical of this “philosophy of consciousness,” as Habermas puts it, and which advocate, instead, non-representationist, enactive, injunctive approaches.

If you're interested, I discuss metaphysics and postmetaphysics (and problematic and non-problematic traces of metaphysics in Wilber's model), in this recent post, which was in respose to Jim's thread.  It includes lots of quotes from Wilber and Cohen, some of which appear (to me) to be metaphysical and examples of the philosophy of the subject.

Re: The natural state?

Tom, I was mostly referring to the sort of thing you were saying in sentences like this:

Re: The natural state?

Bruce: I asked because you said that you thought some state experiences were of a different order than biochemical events, so I thought you were saying that they did not have right-hand, biological/neural correlates.


I was saying that they appeared to be of a different order than simple biochemical events like drunkenness, that they couldn't be reduced to biochemical events, as the materialists claim.



Bruce: About the definitions of metaphysical and postmetaphysical, I thought you were asking Tom, not me.  I've defined those terms in a number of posts.


I was hoping to catch you on it, too, because I've asked you for definitions before a few times, and I don't remember you answering.  :)

So, you mentioned two things that are metaphysical: 1) perspective-free claims and 2) the myth of the given or philosophy of the subject.

Re: The natural state?

Hi again David

You said that some state experiences “appeared to be of a different order than simple biochemical events like drunkenness, that they couldn't be reduced to biochemical events, as the materialists claim.”

Could you please say a little more about such states and why you think they cannot be reduced to biochemical events? What exactly can we point to about such states that suggest they are of a different order?

Re: The natural state?

David:  So, you mentioned two things that are metaphysical: 1) perspective-free claims and 2) the myth of the given or philosophy of the subject.

The myth of the given and the philosophy of the subject are related but not identical.  To the list, I should also add the “metaphysics of presence,” since the example I gave in my IPS forum post was actually more of an example of the “metaphysics of presence” than the “philosophy of the subject.”

The “metaphysics of presence” is a notion critiqued, in different ways, by Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty, and others.  It is the notion that we can have direct access to a pure meaning, a pure moment, a pure subject – that there is a fixed, transcendental presence outside of time, history, context, to which the subject has direct access.  At different times, this transcendental presence has shown up in our systems of thought (as Rorty writes) as “God, [or] the intrinsic nature of physical reality, [or] the moral law, [or] the [fixed] underlying structure of all possible human thought.”  Or, in Wilber's language, as Spirit.

David:  We know that Wilber is not guilty of the first one, perspective-free claims, because everything he says or that anyone says in his system has a kosmic address.

Yes, Wilber argues that any claim that is made without specifying the kosmic address is metaphysical.  And in his model, all of his claims are ideally subject to this addressing, even if he doesn't often do so himself.  I guess one of the issue here is in the actual application, not the ideal scenario.

I wrote:  It seems to me that the argument in both of these passages – that there is a non-contextual, non-historical Ground of Being that can be directly and immediately contacted, as it is, in its unchanging and ever-present Suchness, at all levels of development – is essentially a metaphysical claim, and exactly the sort of claim that postmodernism critiqued as 'the philosophy of the subject.'

As I mentioned above, the example I cited is really more of an example of the metaphysics of presence; that is what I should have said.

1) “Non contextual”—the argument is that nonduality is the one perception that is not a perspective at all, that it is free of all contexts, and that is something only the meditative adepts could tell us, not the postmodern philosophers, most of whom didn't have any experience of such things, let alone any sort of mastery.

Yes, from a postmetaphysical perspective, this is where Wilber preserves his metaphysical constant – the pure presence outside of time, history, interpretation, etc. 

Until relatively recently (the last several years or so), I accepted this claim that satori is the “one perception that is not a perspective,” but the more I've reflected on it, the harder I've found it to maintain.

2) “Non historical”—the claim you're making is that there couldn't possibly be anything non historical (or non contextual), that such a claim would be metaphysical, but there is a performative contradiction here: the claim that there couldn't be anything nonhistorical or noncontextual is itself being held to be a universal, timeless (yes, metaphysical!) law.

I'm not talking about universal laws; I'm talking about what I believe we can justifiably say, particularly within an integral, (post-)postmodern, postmetaphysical approach.

3) You seem to be saying that the interior science employed by the wisdom traditions is an invalid methodology, that it all falls under the banner of “the philosophy of the subject.” Is that what you are saying?

No, I'm not.  I'm just questioning some of the interpretations of the experiences these practices enact.  I believe – I know from my own personal experience – that contemplative practice can lead to some rather extraordinary and potentially transformative insights and experiences.  But if we understand contemplation within an enactive frame, rather than the older representationalist one, what are the best interpretations of such experiences?  That's what I'm looking for; that's what I'm talking about.

4) The philosophy of consciousness criticism involves the scientist not taking into consideration his or her own cultural and personal interpretative biases and conditionings (the influence of the other three quadrants), but Wilber's model has indeed considered these biases and colorings and stripped them away. What remains is what is universal about the claims of the wisdom traditions, that which has been found cross culturally by those interior sciences —- the net result is something quite different than the philosophy of the subject.

Yes, I see value in looking cross-culturally to discern universal – or universalizable – patterns.  And I agree that there are meaningful patterns that do show up cross-culturally among contemplative traditions.  How we interpret those patterns is what is at issue here, I suppose.  For instance, within both representationist and enactive frames, you can conduct this cross-cultural research, but the representationist and the enactivist will draw different conclusions about what the “data” actually indicates.  Would you agree?

Re: The natural state?

James: [Cough, splutter]

James, please cover your mouth when you do that!  :)

David: He has most likely cultivated a consciousness that is not dependent on the brain.

James: Do you have a model which shows how consciousness can be maintained by a human without a brain?


Well, I was being slightly provocative there, but I think his experience of twelve gran mal convulsions, flatlining three times on the electrocardiogram and yet not losing his turiya or turiyatita indicates that he might well have developed something that doesn't depend on the brain. I think the idea of deep-sleep awareness suggests this as well, but of course it's not proven, just suggestive of it.

Now, if he came back and said, “Well, gee, I used to believe in reincarnation because I had this turiya and it had stayed with me through thick and thin, but after those gran mals I lost it; I was unconscious for three and half days, came to and didn't know who I was and was totally lost in samsara, totally identifying with the gross body/mind, took me eight months to get the turiya back”—if he said that it would be suggestive that turiya is simply a higher stage of some sort that's highly dependent on stable brain function rather than a higher stage that includes deeper state realization as well.

Of course all action depends on the brain no matter what as far as we know.


James: Could you please say a little more about such states and why you think they cannot be reduced to biochemical events? What exactly can we point to about such states that suggest they are of a different order?


Thank you for asking that; that's an interesting question. I can think of two things, at the moment, and one has to do with logic and the other has to do with interior science.

It's very well agreed upon by people have taken the injunction and experienced the illumination, particularly the real realizers, that these deeper states represent deeper truths about who we are and what everything is.

When we get drunk or angry or attached or other states like that, which can have profound biochemical correlates, we don't usually think that we have found some deeper truth about anything, or if we do, we are likely going to be the only one who thinks so.  :)

But the adepts of the wisdom traditions agree that these deeper states represent deeper truths about who we are, what we are, our origins. It only matters so much that the modernists and postmodernists disagree–they haven't taken the zone-#1 injunctions, haven't experienced the illumination, and thus don't know what the realizers are referring to. The modernists and postmodernists think they are referring to something that is also in their own experience or something that they can easily imagine and are misinterpreting it, but they are not; they are referring to something that those people haven't brought forth yet for themselves and aren't in a position to make judgments on: their methodology simply isn't up to the task; it's for something else.

I mentioned logic—Ramana Maharshi, agreeing that deeper states represented deeper truths, said that that which is not present in deep, dreamless sleep is “not real.” Here is Wilber talking about it:

Re: The natural state?

Bruce, very interesting points and questions! Nicely done.

Bruce: The myth of the given and the philosophy of the subject are related but not identical.

Well, that's interesting. What is the difference between the two? As far as I have seen they seem to be saying essentially the same thing but that the different terms refer to different parts of the issue or hitting the issue from slightly different angles.


Bruce: The “metaphysics of presence” is a notion critiqued, in different ways, by Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty, and others.  It is the notion that we can have direct access to a pure meaning, a pure moment, a pure subject.


But those postmodern scientists weren't employing a methodology that ever could disclose such a thing. There are many in the wisdom traditions who refer to nonduality as “absolute subjectivity,” but they have taken an entirely different injunction. Here is Wilber discussing the different methodologies:

Re: The natural state?

Hi, David,

I said: The myth of the given and the philosophy of the subject are related but not identical.

You replied:  Well, that's interesting. What is the difference between the two? As far as I have seen they seem to be saying essentially the same thing but that the different terms refer to different parts of the issue or hitting the issue from slightly different angles.

Yeah, the philosophy of the subject focuses on the subject-as-given, and the myth of the given focuses mostly on objects-as-given.

I said: The “metaphysics of presence” is a notion critiqued, in different ways, by Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty, and others.  It is the notion that we can have direct access to a pure meaning, a pure moment, a pure subject.

You replied:  But those postmodern scientists weren't employing a methodology that ever could disclose such a thing. There are many in the wisdom traditions who refer to nonduality as “absolute subjectivity,” but they have taken an entirely different injunction.

Yes, different injunctions are involved.  But there are a couple of additional points to consider:  Buddhism also essentially critiques the “metaphysics of presence,” through its notions of emptiness and non-self.  So, this critique doesn't only flow from the postmodern praxis.  Now, there are different interpretations of emptiness within Buddhism, as you know, with one big difference being between the Yogacara and Madhyamaka interpretations (or, in Tibet, the Shentong and Rangtong views).  The Shentong hold that, for the mindstream, emptiness means emptiness-of-other rather than emptiness-of-self-nature; where as the Rangtong, following Prasangika Madhyamaka, hold that the mind (like everything else) is empty of self-nature (e.g., interdependently arisen, not self-constituting).  The debate around this is subtle and difficult to follow, because there is a lot of back and forth around whether different teachers and schools (Yogacara, Dzogchen, etc) express a Shentong view or not.  The main critique of the Shentong view is that it is eternalistic, that it hypostasizes emptiness or mind into absolutes. 

Wilber's view appears to be close to the Shentong or Yogacara perspective, in some ways, but it perhaps shows up in an even more exaggerated form than it might in Yogacara teachings, since he often capitalizes Emptiness and equates it with terms from other teachings which have no problem with eternalism or hypostasized absolutes (God, Brahman, the Absolute Self, etc)…

But to return to the question: while postmodernists are not taking up contemplative injunctions, there are still vigorous debates among those who have (in Buddhism) about views which posit an absolute ground or self-existing subjectivity (the “metaphysics of presence”).  So, it's not simply a question of “taking the injunction” and then having “reality” or “the truth” disclose itself to you.  There is a deep interpretive layer to this that meditation alone will not resolve.

You said:  So, the methodologies disclose different things. The postmodernists' work with language isn't the proper injunction if we want to know whether there is absolute subjectivity or a universal causal or nondual “state” that transcends language.

As I mentioned above, it's not so simple as a “method” simply “disclosing” reality.  That's still the myth of the given.

You wrote:  As far as language goes that is true—the word “nonduality” is dualistic because it implies duality; it implies that there is something other than nonduality. But that's all within the world of language, while the illumination of the wisdom traditions is beyond language altogether —- there is no language in deep, dreamless sleep, for example.

When is it that deep dreamless sleep becomes illuminating?  People have deep dreamless sleep every night, but they aren't enlightened.  So, what about it makes it illuminating?  Is interpretation involved in that illumination?

I said: Yes, Wilber argues that any claim that is made without specifying the kosmic address is metaphysical.  And in his model, all of his claims are ideally subject to this addressing, even if he doesn't often do so himself.  I guess one of the issue here is in the actual application, not the ideal scenario.

You asked:  You mean every time he says something rather than there are claims that he isn't giving a kosmic address or injunction (!) language, right?

Both, actually.  He does say that there is a perspective-free experience, so that is outside of the AQAL matrix, by definition.  To the extent that he uses it as an eternal, given, perspective-free constant to anchor his whole system, it is metaphysical, in my opinion.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The natural state?

Bruce: So, it's not simply a question of “taking the injunction” and then having “reality” or “the truth” disclose itself to you.  There is a deep interpretive layer to this that meditation alone will not resolve.


Exactly, unless of course one cares to take the position that absolute truth, or consciousness, call it what you care, be so revealed.  That kind of positioning isn't where I'm at.


For me, uncertainties arise in interpreting the names people give to experiences they say they have, not to mention in attempting to probe those experiences themselves.  To find a certain nominative correlation between a subset of those names, cherry-picked by the correlator, doesn't to my mind constitute science, as much as Wilber might care to call it so.  Likewise to exclude elements of a person's report to maintain that nominative correlation is to me unjustified.  I'm thinking here of such elements like Ramana's belief in two brains.  Where does the two-brain theory show up in critical assessments of Ramana's “experience”?  Are we to believe that such elements are entirely unrelated to what Ramana said in other realms?  Is anything so unintegrated as to leave entirely untouched anything else a person might think or say or experience?

Very typically, the rush to claim validation (here scientific validation) sweeps inconsistencies and differences under one's chosen rug.


Bruce: He does say that there is a perspective-free experience, so that is outside of the AQAL matrix, by definition.  To the extent that he uses it as an eternal, given, perspective-free constant to anchor his whole system, it is metaphysical, in my opinion.


Yes.  I've said the same about 25 times.  The main element of Wilber's system is his capital E emptiness, which is off the AQAL chart.  100% perspective-free.  Pure unbounded thisness that always was and has been such.

Re: The natural state?

David: And I think the basic question we are asking is, where are these state experiences coming from? Are there simply UR correlates to them or, as some suggest, are they products of the UR, like drunkenness.


My answer would probably be 'both,' per what follows.

My thought in the quote you selected was this speculation: language° is composed of a numerically finite set of words, but the relations between those words, considered as static relations, are practically infinite and, considered as moving relations, can set up motions in the brain etc. that simulate motions in that which is experienced or cognized, that is, the movement of what is.  The movement of what is is thereby brought into awareness, at least in some outline fashion.


Of course, the brain, and whatever else is involved in experience and cognition, is made of that stuff-in-motion, thus experience and cognition would seem to me to set up a resonance, either consonant or dissonant depending on the movement-match or -mismatch, with itself.  A certain feeling would attend that resonance.


Spiritual experience to me could be that sort of thing: what is taking itself into its own self-created awareness, and resonating with itself, subject-what-is to object-what-is, these two being one thing.


Notice that one need not go outside the universe (as if we could, and if we can, I'd say the notion of 'universe' needs expanding) to experience timelessness.  Light is timeless: always absolutely still and outside time, according to our best theories.  I'm therefore not surprised there exists an inner experience of this aspect of reality.


As to KW's notions expressed pretty much anywhere, including his most recent writings, the primary anchor of his theory is off the AQAL chart, ie, is out of this universe.  That's where he and I part ways.


° My somewhat complicated theory of language includes the notion that words grew from action, and action was honed over billions of years to a profound precision.  Action is fundamentally, for me, movement in a relation.  Language, growing from action, is a lingual form of the relations actions have incarnated (our bodies are incarnated actions).  Words are thus not 'just words' or 'just language,' but something much more profound, as any emergent thing, like consciousness, is.

Re: The natural state?

“It only matters so much that the modernists and postmodernists disagree–they haven't taken the zone-#1 injunctions, haven't experienced the illumination, and thus don't know what the realizers are referring to.”
 
Modernists and postmodernists didn't need to take the zone#1 injunction in order to trash the ideas of Red and Amber. Why couldn't they - using valid evidence and logic - trash the idea of a constant conscious Witness existing as a cosmic soup behind all apperent manifestation?

I think you need to read some about modern consciousness research. Here's some from a great book I just read called The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger:

“The shadow metaphor suggests Book VII of Plato's republic. [explains the metaphor] Might we be like the captives, in that objects from some outside world cast shadows on the wall before us? Might we be shadows ourselves? Indeed, the philosophical version of our [modern zone#2+#6 consciousness researchers] position on reality developed from Plato's myth - except that our version neither denies the reality of the material world nor assumes the existence of eternal forms constituting the true objects of those shadows on that wall of Plato's cave. It does, however, assume that the images appearing in the Ego Tunnel [“the cave of consciousness”] are dynamic projections of something far greater and richer.
 
But what is the cave, and what are the shadows? Phenomenal shadows are low-dimensional projections within the central nervous system of a biological organism. Let us assume that the book you are holding as consciously experienced by you at this very moment, is a dynamic low-dimensional shadow of the actual physical object in your actual physical hands, a dancing shadow in your central nervous system. Then we can ask: What is the fire that causes the projection of flickering shadows of consciousness, dancing as activation patterns on the walls of your neural cave? The fire is neural dynamics. The fire is the incessant, self-regulating flow of neural information-processing, constantly perturbed and modulated by sensory imput and cognition. The wall is not a two dimensional surface but the high-dimensional phenomenal state-space of human Technicolor phenomenology. Conscious experiences are full-blown mental models in the representational space opened up by the gigantic neural network in our heads - and because this space is generated by a person possessing a memory and moving forward in time, it is a tunnel. [Metzinger said later in the book that for certain individuals with no self, like mental patients and enlightened people, the Ego tunnel is not a tunnel, but more like an “Ego Bubble”, in that if there's no self, there's no time.]”

Ok, so here we have a modern (zone#2, L/5) version of consciousness. The brain and nervous system open up a “state-space” in a biological organism, in which representations of the physical world appears. These representations will be interpreted according to the persons AQAL position. So consciousness or awareness in this model is not an underlying, all-permeating, vast blob of sentience which souls have some kind of mysterious umbilical cord attached to, as in David's model, but simply the appearance of a world.

I would like to argue that the causal states you're talking about David, in which there is only the Turiya or the Void, occurs when a person stops identifying with the shadows on the cave wall, and instead come identify with the cave wall itself. That is, when a person stops identifying with the representations of the outside world provided by the senses and instead starts to identify with what Metzinger described as “the high-dimensional phenomenal state-space of human Technicolor phenomenology”. That is, the state-space in which a world appears.

This view is supported by Nisargadatta. When he was asked, ”What is samadhi?” he said: ”Not making use of one's consciousness.”

The only thing is that people who do that later assumes the belief that they can have the state-space without something in it, which is I think uncalled for. If all representations in the state-space vanish, so does the state-space. They depend on eachother.

Re: The natural state?

Hi, Is.

Is: Modernists and postmodernists didn't need to take the zone#1 injunction in order to trash the ideas of Red and Amber.


They did need to take an injunction. For example, with Amber they had to read the Good Book, attend a service maybe, see what the illumination was all about, examine the claims made in the book, etc.

The difference here is that the injunction is very demanding, and so people want to sit back and find some excuse for not doing it. They also intuit that it means the end of their lives as they know it, that it will involve a kind of death, a renunciation or two, and they don't want to do that. Very few people do. As Adyashanti has said, most people fight it with everything they have.



Is: Why couldn't they - using valid evidence and logic - trash the idea of a constant conscious Witness existing as a cosmic soup behind all apperent manifestation?


For the same reason you can't find a whale with a microscope.

Once again, I am not claiming that constant consciousness is the numero uno profound realization. I think vertical stages are more profound. My points about constant consciousness include 1) if you want the deepest sort of emptiness, that's where to go; 2) if anyone claims they are a nondual realizer or jnani and they don't have constant consciousness they're not among the most knowledgeable or realized people; 3) if we want to know whether it is truly possible to transcend the waking state, transcend the ego, transcend the body/mind, we would take the sort of injunction that would lead to constant consciousness and turiyatita. We won't find out messing with words because these deeper states, whether or not they are truly out of this world, are transverbal.

If we are interested in jnana yoga we will be interested in constant consciousness because that's what jnana yoga involves, but there are other sorts of yoga: there is bkhakti yoga, karma yoga, hatha yoga, etc., and people will choose what interests them.

I will read the except from the Ego Tunnel tomorrow. I am looking forward to it because I really like the cave part of the Republic.

Re: The natural state?

Hey!

“1) if you want the deepest sort of emptiness, that's where to go”

The difference between the nothingness of deep sleep and emptiness is as vast as the sea.

“2) if anyone claims they are a nondual realizer or jnani and they don't have constant consciousness they're not among the most knowledgeable or realized people”

While pearl diver's ability to hold his breath under water is superior to any of us, this still doesn't mean he can breathe under water.

This is my understanding of states - a human being can put himself through ardous training in order to, incredibly, maintain awareness during dreaming and deep sleep, yet, that does not 1) imply that that being can somehow transcend the death of the brain, or 2) that this being is enlightened. All it means is exactly that - they can maintain awareness of dreaming and deep sleep. Enlightened awareness is not about state-training.

“O daughter, how is a Bodhisattva victorious in battle?”
“Manjushri, when analyzed, all phenomena are unobservable.”
- Superior Sutra of the Sport of Manjushri.

“Having past into Nirvana, the Victorious Conqueror
Is neither said to be existent
Nor said to be nonexistent.
Neither both nor neither are said.”
- Nagarjuna, MMK XXV: 17

 
If the selflessness of phenomena is analyzed
And if this analysis is cultivated,
It causes the effect of attaining Nirvana.
Through no other cause does one come to peace.
- Samadhiraja Sutra.
 
The Buddha asked, “Manjushri, would you not say you have attained saint-hood?”
    Manjushri asked in turn, “World-Honored One, suppose one asks a magically produced person: 'Would you not say you have attained sainthood?' What will be his reply?”
    The Buddha answered Manjushri, “One cannot speak of the attainment or non-attainment of a magically produced person.”
- Demonstration of the Inconcievable State of Buddhahood Sutra.

Re: The natural state?

Is: I would like to argue that the causal states you're talking about David, in which there is only the Turiya or the Void, occurs when a person stops identifying with the shadows on the cave wall, and instead come identify with the cave wall itself. That is, when a person stops identifying with the representations of the outside world provided by the senses and instead starts to identify with what Metzinger described as “the high-dimensional phenomenal state-space of human Technicolor phenomenology”. That is, the state-space in which a world appears.


Yes, that's it! Ramana Maharshi was very fond of a metaphor like this. He used a movie screen:

Re: The natural state?

“What do you think enlightenment is about?”
 
The four quotes I posted represents it very well, but since you ask I can try to formulate my own answer.

Enlightenment is a state of being that is without ignorance. Ignorance = the false innate view misconcieving persons (the cave wall) and phenomena (shadows on the cave wall) to exist inherently, independently, intrinsically.

As you can see, unlike in your and Maharshi's conceptual system, not even the cave wall is reified here. The Middle Way Consequentialists (Prasangikas) are sometimes called the ”Thoroughly Non-Abiding Madhyamikas”. Why?

“It gives us an idea of how it would happen if it does.”

For how long are you prepared to live in a state of dukkha-generating doubtful anticipation? Don't waste your precious human birth. Cut through all, and find the eternal life that is beyond being and non-being. Why did the Buddha not answer the questions about whether a person continues to exist after death, or does not continue to exist after death? Was it because he deemed them of no importance? Was it because he simply did not know? Was it because he knew but couldn't or didn't want to tell?

…

”But all the representations vanish in deep sleep, and the screen is still there.”

Definitely not. Discrimination/thought/memory is still there. Otherwise, how would one know that one is in deep sleep? You might now claim that not even discrimination is present in deep sleep, but if one does not know that one is conscious of deep sleep, how does it differ from any persons experience of deep sleep? If one does not know that one is conscious of deep sleep, how could one remember it upon waking up?

The only way for you to escape these consequences is to positively assert that the Blob of Consciousness (ālayavijñāna, turiya) not only has the attribute of awareness as part of its intrinsic nature (as Dzogchen says: ”A space that is aware”), but also that it contains the attribute of discrimination. By executing this bronze-age move, you'll further your firm stuckness in the dark marshlands of Amber. Would you like that?

“Yes, that is it. All these states come and go. The Self is not bothered; it has only one state.”

Again, this metaphysical view will never pass through the borderstations of Modern and Post-modern critique. And the only way to the glorious lands of Integral and the green hills of Third Tier is through those borderstations. You can't sneak past them, the staff there take their work very seriously. 

;)

“example, with Amber they had to read the Good Book, attend a service maybe, see what the illumination was all about, examine the claims made in the book, etc.”

Error, these are all exterior injunctions. You claimed Orange and Green could not dismiss the Vast Trans-Personal Blob of Consciousness without taking the zone#1 injunction. So my question still stands.

By your standards, we can't accept Thor as non-existing in the UR, because the people who reasoned their way to the conclusion that Thor does utterly not exist (L/5) or that he is a mere cultural construction (L/6) did not actually experience Thor in their zone#1 awareness the way my Red nordic ancestors did. It's ridiculous.

Re: The natural state?

Is: As you can see, unlike in your and Maharshi's conceptual system, not even the cave wall is reified here.


You did use the expression “state of being.” Also, Ramana Maharshi was in complete agreement that the Self/emptiness is beyond conceptualization:

Re: The natural state?

“I don't think it's something we can understand conceptually at the end of the day or that will make perfect rational sense, like nonduality, which also can't be accurately conceptualized.”

There's nothing wrong with claiming that something is beyond conceptuality. But all who do that need to be able to conceptualize why it is not possible to conceptualize about it. For example, non-duality is beyond conceptuality because verbal conventions and discriminatory awareness must by necessity operate in duality. Just saying “screw you, dude, it can't be understood” won't impress anybody. You need to state why it can't be understood.

“Apparently the interpretation is done retroactively; there is no self in deep sleep to think or discriminate.”

My listed consequences still stand. You have two options: 1) ignore them (game over, you're doomed to wander the desolate plains of Amber forever, have fun), or 2) try to adjust your position to avoid these consequences.

“The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. Similarly my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as the doer…

Since turiya alone exists and since the seeming three states do not exist, know for certain that turiya is itself turiyatita (that which transcends the fourth).”

So you are OK with the fact that you don't exist as a separate entity? What about all this talk about subtle energies and reincarnation then? All those systems would collapse if there is no self to reincarnate or no subtle energies to manipulate.

“Thor and the Virgin Birth and the Buddha being born out of his mother's side are all myth, imaginations, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and flying rabbits.”

And I consider the independently existing Vast Blob of Consciousness to be a myth as well. That is, the idea that there actually exists A Vast Blob of Consciousness that is the base-storehouse Consciousness of all sentient beings, so that when a being dies, he will not die, but continue his existing in the storehouse. This is a myth, think nothing else. <gloriously wields the Orange shotgun>

“Didn't you like the cinema-screen metaphor?”

Looked through a metaphysical lens I hate it. Looked through a post-metaphysical lens I find it very interesting!

Re: The natural state?

Bruce: The philosophy of the subject focuses on the subject-as-given, and the myth of the given focuses mostly on objects-as-given.


Thank you for this. Nice distinction. In both cases, though, it comes back to the subject and its interpretation, right? Is there is a difference in the argument?



Bruce: The main critique of the Shentong view is that it is eternalistic, that it hypostasizes emptiness or mind into absolutes.


And what dogs the Rangton crowd is continuity and memory (ever since Abhidharma according to Hokai). It couldn't be true that there really is absolutely no self because there is continuity and the no-self Master always comes back to report on what it's like.

So while it's not true that there is a self there it's also not true that there is not a self there—it's simply beyond those conceptualizations.

If we agree on that, which Wilber certainly does, it becomes a matter of what's the most useful metaphor for students and what's the most pleasing metaphor for academics. I would suggest that the former is most important, but the latter is important as well and might lead to better metaphors and pointing-out instructions for students. The latter also might to bring the wisdom traditions into mainstream academia and culture, so I suppose they are both important.

But when this semantic debate leads to a denial of the “experience” or a devaluation of it in such a way that discourages people from taking the injunction, it begins to be a quadrant transgression, particularly when those denying and devaluing haven't taken the injunction fully and can't give an interpretation that is based on experience.



Bruce: Wilber's view appears to be close to the Shentong or Yogacara perspective.


Wilber often chooses metaphors that resemble Shentong and Yogacara because he evidently feels that those metaphors will be most helpful for students (he has his guru hat on when he says that sort of thing). His official academic view is that it is beyond conceptualization altogether, like Nagarjuna. So let's be clear that this is not a debate over core beliefs because the core beliefs between Wilber and Nagarjuna are the same. It's a debate over what is the best metaphor for the Indescribable.

Also, once again, Wilber believes that Yogacara explicitly accepted Sunyata and just favors a different metaphor (he is probably speaking of later Yogacarans rather than those who were contemporaries of Nagarjuna—likely Nagarjuna’s contemporaries in the Yogacara school hadn’t quite digested what he had to say and erred on the reifying side of the Middle Way).

 Wilber also mentions a Zen master, Shibayama, who found “absolute subjectivity” to be the best metaphor for nonduality, so it is likely simply a type a difference. [Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 719-29]



Bruce: It perhaps shows up in an even more exaggerated form than it might in Yogacara teachings, since he often capitalizes Emptiness and equates it with terms from other teachings which have no problem with eternalism or hypostasized absolutes (God, Brahman, the Absolute Self, etc).


I don't see why it's so bothersome to capitalize emptiness; it makes it clear that what he is referring to is beyond conceptualization. Capitalizing makes it less nihilistic sounding and therefore more accurate because it's neither self nor not self, neither emptiness nor fullness—capitalizing emptiness is an expression of paradox, and:

Re: The natural state?

David: “Wilber's position is a blend or integration: that there is something universal and something interpretative, that it can't be boiled down to simply being interpretative to the point that there is no universal aspect because there is abundant evidence for a universal aspect—people in all cultures, for centuries, at essentially all ages have experienced this.”

Just to be clear, when you say “there is something universal” in this context you mean “universal” as in “the experience can be shared by all human beings”, as opposed to “existing throughout the entire universe” right?

If you mean the former then I would agree with your other statement: “I think that should be accepted (that it is a given for human beings)”

However, to then presume that because the experience feels like - has been interpreted as - “timeless” that this somehow counts as evidence in any discussion of “whether it is “eternal”, back to and before the Big Bang” sounds to me like a “quadrant transgression”, to use an earlier phrase of yours.

It reminds me of a question Bruce asked elsewhere on Gaia : “Does contemplative experience prove that Empty Spirit caused the Big Bang and created the physical universe?)”. To which my own answer is: “Contemplative experience indicates that human beings have very similar neural hardwiring capable of sustaining a state which feels like  Empty Spirit to those inclined to interpret it in such a way.”

Also, I agree with you to a large extent here: “If we reject the idea of a perspective-free “constant” without taking the injunction fully it is nothing but metaphysical dogma because it is skipping the three strands of science. Such a rejection also wouldn’t be living up to the ideals of Integral Methodological Pluralism….I think this requires a degree of humility: either we say, “I don’t know, but I would like to know, so I will take the injunction” or “I don’t know, but I don’t want to take the injunction, so I will just have to say that I don’t know.”

However, Ken should also be saying “I don't know because I can't find any evidence outside of the UL”. He is not living up to the ideals of IMP either in asking us to accept the existence of a perspective-free constant when he has no evidence outside of interpreted reports arising out of inner contemplation. As Tom says below, “Wilber wants us to believe (accept without evidence) there exists an experience without an interpretation (ex-AQAL), that Emptiness is therefore permanent.”

Or to put it another way, you said: “As for the perspective-free constant (which he believes is not really a “constant”—“constant” is simply a metaphor) that is something we would indeed have to take the injunction for if we wanted to cast a vote.”

Mm'K, but shouldn't we also equally say: ”As for the perspective-free constant (which he believes is not really a “constant”—“constant” is simply a metaphor) that is something we would indeed have to provide evidence for outside of the UL if we wanted to cast a vote.”

And lastly (phew) what in your opinion is Ken's use of the word “constant” a metaphor of exactly?

Cheers

James

Re: The natural state?

James: However, Ken should also be saying “I don't know because I can't find any evidence outside of the UL”. He is not living up to the ideals of IMP either in asking us to accept the existence of a perspective-free constant when he has no evidence outside of interpreted reports arising out of inner contemplation.


Well put, James.  Just to be clear, I hold experience in high esteem, in fact, of the highest, because to me living is fundamentally experiential.  I therefore have no problems with injunctions per se.


I do have a problem with “take the injunction to find that which is off AQAL.”  I don't see how that differs from Billy Graham's injunction to “just believe.”

I also have a problem with the notion of the injunction.  “The” injunction?  What single injunction would one have to follow to approximate, say, Adi Da's realizations?  Live his life is probably the answer, but that's not a single injunction, unless you voice that injunction as “be him.”

Re: The natural state?

David:  *prays Bruce doesn’t link or paste a Desilet article*

I will skip Desilet and go straight to the source which, in this case, Wilber has misunderstood.  Please read this passage and tell me if you think the “it” (in “no translation would be possible without it”) refers to “transcendental signified” or to “this opposition or difference [between signifier and signified].”  I agree with Desilet that, in the passage in question, Derrida was not saying, “No translation is possible without a transcendental signified,” but rather, “No translation is possible without a (non-absolute but also non-negligible) opposition or difference between signifier and signified (e.g., they should be confused with each other).” 

I invite anyone else reading this to weigh in as well – what does the “it” refer back to?  “Transcendental signified” or “opposition or difference”? 

I think it's clear here that Wilber just gave this passage too hasty a reading and saw something in it that he hoped for, but which wasn't there.

Re: The natural state?

Bruce,  your reading is correct.  The relevant passage is (emphasizing 'it'):

That this opposition or difference cannot be radical or absolute does not prevent IT from functioning, and even from being indispensable within certain limits—very wide limits.  For example, no translation would be possible without IT.

Re: The natural state?

Btw, Ken's leaning on The Signified is coherent with his leaning on The Permanent, with his absolutist ex-AQAL anchor, his anti-evolutionary ahistorical Emptiness, and the various Givens that litter his theory (the subtle Spot Given-Inside, the causal Spot Given-Inside …).  All IMO arise from a representationalist, thinging, pre-evolutionary Newtonian-experiencing source.  That area of Ken's brain needs a good massage.  Seems a little contracted to me.  A little tight.  Fixed.  Pre-Green [crowd gasps].

Re: The natural state?

I haven't read the Derrida text in its entirety, but it seems Derrida's statement that opposition has limits is an admission that opposition is relative, which implies an absolute aspect.  Perhaps Wilber was intuiting that.

Re: The natural state?

“Pre-Green”

:-O

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Is: Just saying “screw you, dude, it can't be understood” won't impress anybody. You need to state why it can't be understood.


I did explain why earlier in the thread and other threads:

Re: The natural state?

David, just a few questions.  How does your repeated call to do the injunction differ from, say, Billy Graham's call to take his injunctions?  How do you separate an experience from its interpretation?  And do you really think that capital E emptiness will be absolutely the same in a billion years (assuming humans develop for that long)?  

Re: The natural state?

Hi, Tom.

Billy Graham is not asking anyone to take a scientific injunction because he is pre-rational. He is just asking you to believe, and not offering any evidence to back it up or asking you to examine anything or think it through. He just wants you to give up your life for Jesus because Jesus is the Lord (3-p, L/4).

And, of course, that's good if the person is Red, because they will then move from Red lawlessness and egocentricism to “do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

The second question is a doozy, and I am going to have to get something to eat and probably get some sleep before I attempt an answer. I would say, however, that it's probably impossible to do it perfectly but that we could do some cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-type, cross-level, cross-line (all of them might not be necessary for every case) studies and come up with some universal aspects within the interpretative structure that we are enacting.

Do I really think that Emptiness will be absolutely the same in a billion years—when did I say it would be?

I would say, as Wilber does and as I have often said, that there might well be states deeper than nonduality and stages higher than Clear Light. But within our interpretive structure now it might be the “absolute ground,” the “purest emptiness,” as deep and as high as we can go at this time and thus at least a kind of absolute, for us.  :)

Re: The natural state?

David: … a kind of absolute …

Sounds like a definition of relative to me, David.  ; )   So does this:

I would say, however, that it's probably impossible to do it perfectly …

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“Isn't a desire for permanence egoic clinging?”

Dude, right on.

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Hey Dawid, just to expand where I'm currently at, I think there's something to what David called “a kind of absolute,” which is to say our notions of absolute look to me now to boil down to absolute-now with a new absolute-now to follow.  “Absolute” therefore moves, ie, it's an “absoluting,” a real-time reading of the current relative state of affairs, a kind of abstracting from the currently experienced, known and posited.  The only absolute I see in this experiential abstracting, and to put words to it, is relativity itself.  But even our notions of relativity will change, with a new absolute from the new relative to follow.

The Ramana experience of abstracting from this and my now, yes, feels permanent, but every time I look closely at it—the experience of suchness and the seeming absolute factness of something-is—I never can find permanence, because that sense of permanence is bundled with a view, and the view will change.  

Re: The natural state?

Wilber: “Emptiness does not evolve.”

= permanence, err, Permanence.

Of course, an important teacher to Wilber, the guy who kicked his butt into bed, is Ramana.  Let's see if we can find a possible source for Wilber's Permanence in Ramana.  I wonder what we'll find?


That which is not natural, but acquired, cannot be permanent, and is not worth striving for.

But men want absolute and permanent happiness. This does not reside in objects, but in the Absolute.

Is there any moment when Self is not? It is not new. Be as you are. What is new cannot be permanent.

[A]s soon as [a seeker] is instructed by a competent master, permanent experience results.

Only when the ever-present consciousness is realised will it be permanent. Consciousness is indeed always with us.

If the Self were to be gained anew, it would not be permanent.

Was there mind in your sleep? It was not. It is now here. It is therefore impermanent.

What is got afresh, will also be lost. So it will be impermanent. What is not permanent is not worth striving for.

Since it is not in sleep it is impermanent. Being impermanent it has no stamina. Having no stamina it is easily subdued by the Self.  The Self alone is permanent.
That which has neither origin nor end is the permanent ‘I-I’ consciousness.

Relative knowledge pertains to the mind and not to the Self. It is therefore illusory and not permanent. …  So you see the futility of all such relative knowledge.

For what is real must be continuous and permanent. Did you feel ‘in’ or ‘out’ in sleep? Of course not.

Unless something permanent is held, the transitory nature of the world cannot be understood.

Realisation is ever present, here and now. Were it to be acquired anew, Realisation must be understood to be absent at one time and present at another time. In that case, it is not permanent,and therefore not worth the attempt. But Realisation is permanent and eternal and is here and now.

The Self can never be illusory. It is the only Reality. That which appears will also disappear and is therefore impermanent. The Self never appears and disappears and is therefore permanent.

The ego-self appears and disappears and is transitory, whereas the real Self always abides permanent.

Moreover, if Realisation is not present here and now, how can It, newly got, be of any use? What is permanent must be eternally present. Can it be newly got and be permanent also?

The consciousness of ‘I’ is permanent and continuous.

Moreover, what is acquired will also be lost in due course. They can never be permanent.  The only permanent thing is Reality; and that is the Self.

The jnani’s experience of the Self is therefore distinct and permanent.


So one’s efforts are meant only for the removal of obstructions which hide the true vision. The real nature remains the same. When once it is realised it is permanent.

The effortless samadhi is the true one and the perfect state. It is permanent.
That which is continuous is also enduring, i.e. permanent.

Therefore the state of Being is permanent and the body and the world are not.

But one should not therefore desire to be always in sleep. In the first place it is impossible, for it will necessarily alternate with the other states. Secondly it cannot be the state of bliss in which theJnani is, for his state is permanent and not alternating. Moreover, the sleep state is not recognised to be one of awareness by people, but the sage is always aware. Thus the sleep state differs from the state in which the sage is established.

It is wrong to consider Realisation to be impermanent. It is the True Eternal State which cannot change.

Being is continuous. The thoughts are discontinuous. So which is permanent?

[Y]ou cannot find Bliss in places and in periods of time. It must be permanent in order that it may be useful. Such permanent being is yourself. Be the Self and that is Bliss. You are always That.

Re: The natural state?

Ok, further to Ramana and Wilber Permanence, notice the close association, in their respective theories of Permanence, between awareness, what David calls 'constant consciousness,' and the Self, ie, Permanence.  The Self is Awareness Itself, the conscious blob, the Capitalized Thing, 'that which is continuous and enduring,' 'that which is eternally present,' The Given.  This eternally present always given continuous conscious awareness thing, in both Ramana's and Wilber's theories of Permanence, is that which abides always, and therefore also in DDS.

Does anyone out there see any problem whatever with this?

Re: The natural state?

Yes.

My problem is that in these models, if I understand them correctly, the only evidence for this “eternally present always given continuous conscious awareness thing” comes from the UL. But the assumption seems to be that this “eternally present always given continuous conscious awareness thing” exists “out there” everywhere in the universe. It is an unjustified extrapolation from the subjective interpreted inner to the outer.

The nearest non-UL based model for an “eternally present always given continuous conscious awareness thing” seems to be coming from quantum physics and the ideas about all particles/waves being fundamentally bits of non-local information. (Did I get that right?). But recent quantum theory is not included in the Wilber and Ramana models.

Re: The natural state?

I agree, James.  I don't see the evidence for it.  Should evidence be presented, I'm willing to see and evaluate the evidence.  Billy Graham, to me, isn't evidence.

I think I've stated a few times that, in physics, light actually exists in a timeless state.  Or it does so, under relativity, assuming light has no mass. (Time is an ordering concept appropriate only to particles having mass.) The “timeless” therefore looks to be part of the universe, and an important part given the ubiquity of light.  And isn't the experience of timelessness associated with enlightenment?  Why the push to find an extra-universe or extra-AQAL explanation for experience?

Re: The natural state?

Let me say one more thing about the transcendentalist urge to go outside the universe to explain something (an experience, or a feeling) happening inside the universe.  Our current theories probably (almost certainly?) are a paltry speck of description on the possibly infinitely describable panoply of what is.  I personally am unsurprised to find current unexplainables among our observations.  Unexplainables possibly will exist forever and always.

Against that background, and having already given one reason why an experience of timelessness might be explained as an in-universe phenomenon, let me give another.  In the last decade thereabouts, the science of quantum chromodynamics has emerged as a strong supplement to quantum electrodynamics and quantum mechanics.  Quantum chromodynamics is the theory of quarks.  The theory of QCD is perhaps more rigourously founded than even quantum mechanics, as the equations describing QCD allow for minimum error and fudge and are absolutely symmetrical.  QCD has thus been described as one of the most beautiful scientific theories to emerge on the scientific stage.

Here's one interesting thing QCD scientists discovered: the mass of most of normal matter, being the mass of protons and neutrons, = ~ 99% of all mass we call matter, arises from quark interactions.  Quarks are almost entirely massless.

Mass, therefore, arises from something massless.

Mass is of course one of the fundamentals of our macro level of reality.  Other fundamentals are time and space.  Now, to say that mass arises from massless interactions is very close, IMO, to what Buddhists say about there being no thereness there.  Mass is one of the essential defining characteristics of matter—it is matter's thing-in-itself eternal aspect, according to Newton.  But here's my point: if mass arises from something it's not, why, too, cannot time?  Seems to me time will eventually tell it does, ahem.  I would hold the same probability for space.  What we now “know” is so paltry.

Let's generalize: an emerging speculative theory could defensively state that all manner of appearance at our level of reality can be seen as arising from that which it is not.  If some think I'm playing a reductionistic game, let me remind that in this evolutionary universe, matter, and mass, are (late) emergents.  Something went before mass, such that “arising” is an appropriate time-sequenced term to describe mass.

Compare the above speculations with Ramana's theory of timelessness: the imPermanent arises from the play of brains whose source, mind, which is extra-universal, is the source of that play itself:

The mind is only a force operating on the brain. You are now here and awake. The thoughts of the world and the surroundings are in the brain within the body. When you dream you create another self who sees the world of dream creation and the surroundings just as you do now. The dream visions are in the dream brain which is again in the dream body. That is different from your present body. You remember the dream now. The brains are however different. Yet the visions appear in the mind. The mind therefore is not identical with the brain. Waking, dream and sleep are for the mind only.

Re: The natural state?

Actually, the word “arise” as I used it above doesn't properly express what I was wanting to say, which is this: as regards mass, there is a place in this universe, a level so to speak, where mass is not, and that place or level is right inside, and constitutive of, mass itself, a kind of being and nothingness of mass in mass.

Likewise for the timeless, there is a place in this universe where time is not: in photons, and presumably in quarks, as they are massless (time is mass-only relevant).

I would think other such places will be found.

Personally, I would not be surprised to find that consciousness can reach any such place in conscious experience.  We are those places, after all.

Re: The natural state?

Fascinating posts Tom

I agree that what we know is almost certainly but a paltry speck of what is. I can also see the similarities in Ramana's model.

Tom: “there is a place in this universe where time is not: in photons, and presumably in quarks, as they are massless (time is mass-only relevant)….I would think other such places will be found….Personally, I would not be surprised to find that consciousness can reach any such place in conscious experience. We are those places, after all. ”

Do you have any inkling by what mechanisms “consciousness can reach any such place in conscious experience” ? I presume it's not via normal neuronal interactions?

Re: The natural state?

James, I think I have to answer I don't know to your question, as I'd be but adding speculation to speculation.  I will say this though.  Light is a form of energy, and according to Einstein's equation e=mc2, energy-as-light (timeless) and mass (time) are convertible into each other.  The brain, for its part, is composed of mass and regularly converts some of that mass into photonic energy in the form of biophoton emission.  To the extent consciousness relates to brain and other material and light-emissive activity would I expect to see a link between those physical realities and states of awareness.

To ramble a bit further with this theme, it seems to me the traditions were perhaps fooled by their eyes into thinking this-universe = movement (samsara) and not-this-universe = stillness (nirvana).  You can hear echoes of this basic, Newtonian thinglike division in many modern spiritual teachings, including Wilber's, where earthly life is considered “form,” or “the manifest realm,” or “the relative,” or “the limited,” and some extra-earthly zone is the negatively termed source of those (the formless, unmanifest, absolute, unlimited).

My posts intend to point out that this division, and presumed escape, is, even for reasons of a careful consideration of physics, counterintuitive.  An experience of timelessness is evidently part of what-is-here, of living physics, because people have that experience, and I personally think a little imaginative questioning can elicit grounds for suggesting that the dualism of normal teachings should be sundered.

Re: The natural state?

Hi Tom

Yes, I can see your thinking here: “To the extent consciousness relates to brain and other material and light-emissive activity would I expect to see a link between those physical realities and states of awareness.”

Until very recently I have seen Wilber's theories in the same light as you here: “the traditions were perhaps fooled by their eyes into thinking this-universe = movement (samsara) and not-this-universe = stillness (nirvana).  You can hear echoes of this basic, Newtonian thinglike division in many modern spiritual teachings, including Wilber's, where earthly life is considered “form,” or “the manifest realm,” or “the relative,” or “the limited,” and some extra-earthly zone is the negatively termed source of those (the formless, unmanifest, absolute, unlimited).“ 

However, as I've said before, I am left scratching my head when I then see quotes like this from Ken: “(some) people try to take something like the quantum vacuum potential or some quantum level of reality that seems to be unmanifest and they want to say, okay, that's Spirit, that's Brahman, that's Tao, and then it gives rise to this manifest world over here. And they want to say that as a concrete actual reality, in other words, there really is this thing over here that gives rise to this material electron over here. Now, already you've got a dualistic Spirit. You just fundamentally messed it up right there. Actual nondual Spirit is the suchness of everything that's arising. It doesn't cause anything to do anything.“ 

OK I like that, but then in Chapter 1 of BHOE he says the complete opposite:
 “Spirit or Emptiness gives rise to form”.

When he says things like: “Emptiness leaves everything exactly the way it finds it. It doesn't push or pull anything, because it's not separate from anything.” then I feel he is leaning towards what you indicate you often try to do with your posts: i.e. move towards a sundering of the dualsim of normal teachings.

But then he'll come up with this: “Spirit manifests as all four quadrants…those quadrants - they are the radiant glory of Spirit's manifestation”. Frustrating as hell, but you gorra love the guy's ability to hold multiple perspectives, right!

Re: The natural state?

Yes, the perspectives he holds sure are multiple, ha ha.  I love how he asserts he knows what such things like the unmanifest realm are.  “Actual” nondual Spirit, he says, implying absolutely correct knowledge, is blah blah blah.  Actual nondual Spirit.

Let's play with the notion of unmanifest.  If one were to throw me into a fire of sufficient heat with sufficient pressure, I would become a blob of uranium (molecular number 92).  Increase the temperature and pressure and perhaps “I” would become some who-knows-what with a molecular number of 200.

Now, throw 200-me back into the heat and pressure, and with a chemist's control, render me some fancy form of super-teflon, some combination that's never existed in the universe.

Find the source of information activity, then turn me into a crow.  I love crows.  It would be a great life, all that squawking and hopping around.

I watched some crows washing in a small stream yesterday.  One crow was standing on a rock awaiting his turn while another flapped about in the water.  Each time the bathing crow flapped, the crow on the rock jumped as if to avoid a predator.  This went on for several minutes.  Eventually the crow on the rock flew away, possibly because he could no longer tolerate being activated into “yike” mode.

All those potentialities exist as part of the proper definition of what I am, and are currently unmanifest.  They exist as real properties, you might say, of the matter of which I consist.  The uranium 92, the who knows what 200, the super-teflon, the crow.  Add a probable infinity of other “things” to properly round out this list.

Where is the “realm,” the unmanifest realm, in which those real potentialities exist?  In the very place in which the “actualities” exist, presumably.  Is that unmanifest realm different from that of which Wilber speaks?  I have no idea.

Re: The natural state?

“And isn't the experience of timelessness associated with enlightenment?”

It is called enlightenment because it dispels the darkness of ignorance, not because the quantum fluctuations of photoelectrolytedinitrophenylbisoxolates in extra-dimensional hyper-invisible-entagled states of protoplasmic vacuum energyfields turns out to be mostly empty space. Science = ignorance.

I hate videos like this. We simply can't use theories born from ignorance to explain spiritual enlightenment. Theories can only serve as more or less accurate signs or pointers. But in the end, it's like you have a person blind from birth trying to describe the appearance of a rainbow - it just doesn't work.

Re: The natural state?

Dawid, I'm not playing a reducing game.  I'm merely building a basis for suggesting the universe's physical structures and motions are coherent with human experience.  I see an analogous fit between those two, that the universe, no matter where you slice it and how, resonates coherently.  This perspective actually works in favour of the view that the universe is spiritual also.

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Yeah, I agree with you. Just wanted to argue a little. <throws random stuff at Tom>

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Ha ha.  

Actually, to extend the resonance, no matter how you slice it thing, my speculations suggest enlightenment is a natural state.

Re: The natural state?

“Paradox is simply the way nonduality looks to the mental level. Spirit itself is not paradoxical; strictly speaking, it is not characterizable at all.”

Beautiful!
 
“I did explain why earlier in the thread and other threads.”

Error. I did not ask you to explain why non-duality is beyond conceptuality. That's easy. So I asked you to explain why and on what basis you believe it is true that for someone being aware in deep dreamless sleep there is no discrimination/memory/thought. Question is: If there is no discrimination - how are they different from any other person “in” deep dreamless sleep, and how do they know it (either during the dds or upon waking)?

”3) Take the injunction so your position will be based on experience.”

Error. I've already explained why this argument is invalid. The reason is that you grant the premise that I don't need to actually experience the wrath of Thor the Great God of Battle within my 1-p awareness in order to dismiss his (UR) existence altogether. Just out of reason, evidence and logic we can dismiss Thor's existence, without experiencing what the nordic people of the pre-modern centuries did. If you say that Thor is a myth, and the Vast Blob of Consciousness is not, how will you justify this claim? Don't you think that the nordic people, if you went back and asked them, wouldn't say: “He really, really exists. I've experienced him myself. You can't say that Thor doesn't exist unless you've seen him yourself.” Now, it may be true that they have actually seen Thor. But they have done so in the UL, which does nothing to support his UR existence.

It is true that they believe a certain thing, not that the thing believed in has any existence outside the Upper and Lower Left.

“The absolute truth is that none of it exists; the relative truth is that they do or might exist in a relative way.”

Indeed! And it is one thing to just casually say that because it has been learned, and quite another to intensely experience this, in blood and guts. One who experience directly and non-conceptually what you just say is an enlightened one. Also, when you say ”might exist in a relative way”, what do you mean exactly? I suspect you've sneaked the myth of the given in through the back door here, like some Svatantrikas. We must keep in mind that what is relative does not inherently exist in any way (that is, it does not inherently exist relatively) but exists only relatively, as a conceptual imputation. In the parable of the snake, a snake is imputed onto a rope, but the snake has no inherent existence, even relatively.

“Yes, I agree: it exists and doesn't exist, both exists and doesn't exist, neither exists nor not exists.”

Again, it is one thing to say that, and another altogether to understand it. I smell an air of pseudo-wisdom on display here, as well as a wind of severe confusion of the two truths. Explain to me how the positive tetralemma you just offered is not just mere, empty word-masturbation. 1 Why does it exist? 2 Why does it not exist? 3 Why does it both exist and not exist? 4 Why does it neither exist nor not exist? You must prove that you can explain all four, otherwise you are not authorized to use the tetralemma. Go!

Re: The natural state?

Is: I asked you to explain why and on what basis you believe it is true that for someone being aware in deep dreamless sleep there is no discrimination/memory/thought.


Wilber, for example, says there is no “you” there and describes it as just a very, very subtle awareness. Maharshi refers to it as the “thought-free brain” and such and also as witnessing awareness. We know there is no dreaming going on.

I did a quick search and found some people who are studying this sort of thing:

Re: The natural state?

David: … a kind of absolute …

Tom: Sounds like a definition of relative to me, David.


I meant to convey that it had a kosmic address, which is another way of relativizing it a little.

Do you agree with the scheme from Wilber that I posted earlier?

[David:]: I would say, however, that it's probably impossible to do it perfectly …

I would say, however, that it's probably impossible to do it perfectly [separate experience from interpretation] but that we could do some cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-type, cross-level, cross-line (all of them might not be necessary for every case) studies and come up with some universal aspects within the interpretative structure that we are enacting.

Re: The natural state?

Hi, James.

James: Just to be clear, when you say “there is something universal” in this context you mean “universal” as in “the experience can be shared by all human beings”, as opposed to “existing throughout the entire universe” right?


At the deepest levels nondual realizers report that space is seen to be an illusion. So it might seem really far out to say it exists for the whole universe, but if space is an illusion, it's not like claiming some universal like “a creature cannot survive anywhere in the entire universe without plentiful oxygen and water.”

There are a lot of poems in Zen that suggest the illusion of space (including the Zen sayings from One Taste in my post to Tom):

Re: The natural state?

David, thanks for the replies.

“Wilber says it's a mistake to think that quantum physics proves anything about nonduality. He discusses it on this free podcast with Corey DeVos. ”

Yes I remember listening to this and being unconvinced. I also remember Wilber saying that it' a mistake to think that a half-wing has no evolutionary adaptive value whastoever… He's not an evolutionary biologist and he's not a quantum physicist either. I wonder if he's speaking metaphorically again? ;-)

Re: The natural state?

“we have the confirmation from the meditators that, yes, they were aware through the sleep cycle, and then we see what the machines say. What the practitioner says is also important because the machines are not always right or complete.”

David, all that this proves is that they are conscious in deep dreamless sleep, and that's it. It does not prove that which you're after - that the consciousness can be maintained after the death of the brain.

“It didn't have anything to do with Prasangika vs. Svatantrika; it just referred to their relative existence.”

It does. Because Svatantrikas, like you, while they do not affirm the inherent existence of phenomena ultimately, they do affirm the inherent existence of relative phenomena. In contrast, Prasangikas do not affirm inherent existence even of relative phenomena. Here is an excerpt from the text The Harmony of Emptiness and Dependent-Arising in the Middle Way Consequence School, by the 17th century master Jang-gya:

“In our system, when a chariot is analyzed in these seven ways, it is not found, and it is not found either as an ultimate truth or as a conventional truth. But this does not make the chariot utterly non-existent. For, (1) the assertion of a chariot is not made due to [the chariot's] being extablished by reasoning analyzing whether it inherently exists or not, but it is established by only a non-defective, ordinary, worldly - that is, conventional - consciousness without any analysis that searches for the object designated. And (2) moreover, the way in which [a chariot] is posited is that it is established as only existing imputedly in the sense of being designated in dependence upon its parts, wheels and so forth.”
 
David: “Ramana Maharshi, for example, often called it the “thought-free state”—thoughts arise in emptiness like everything else, but emptiness is not a thought, even a very clever thought. Clever thoughts and not-so-clever thoughts, good discriminations and not-so-good discriminations all arise in emptiness.”
“…it as just a very, very subtle awareness.”
 
Don't you see that you need a discriminatory consciousness in order to make this very claim? (And take this accusation lightly, because I couldn't see it either just a couple of months ago.) In Buddhism they call it: (from Meditation on Emptiness) ”apramanasamjna - discriminations observing limitless space or limitless consciousness, and akinchinsamjna - discriminations observing nothingness (a state beyond course feeling and discrimination).” The belief that discrimination/memory/thought is not needed is exactly the metaphysics that Wilber set out to destroy in Integral Spirituality.

When people are born they are ignorant, they have no clue about what you or Ramana are talking about. This is how God chose to create the world, and we have to deal with it. Because of this ignorance - the natural state of the sentient beings - men and women do not know the natural state of reality that is Suchness or the Dharmakaya, so they need discrimination to dispel their innate ignorance in order to realize the supreme, unsurpassed enlightenment (Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi). Meditation on Emptiness, page 243:

“Discrimination is the heart of identifying the object of negation in the view of selflessness and then reflecting on a reasoning proving non-inherent existence. Thus, far from being a hindrance to the path, correct discrimination is to be enhanced.”

Re: The natural state?

Is: All that this proves is that they are conscious in deep dreamless sleep, and that's it. It does not prove that which you're after - that the consciousness can be maintained after the death of the brain.


You are projecting the beyond-death thing with me. In that moment I was just trying to establish that it is beyond thought, beyond language, not totally beyond the body. Whether it's beyond the body is an interesting question as well, but more controversial—I am just trying to see if we can establish some middle ground first, which would kind of move things forward. I think it would clear up a lot, for one thing, if we could just establish that turiya is beyond language, that it is the “witness” of language. That's well established among realizers.


Is: It does. Because Svatantrikas, like you, while they do not affirm the inherent existence of phenomena ultimately, they do affirm the inherent existence of relative phenomena.


Are you affirming the inherent existence of Svatantrikas?  :)

I believe in the two-truths doctrine, like Nagarjuna.

I can't find it online now. Maybe they've taken it off. Can you link me to the Fundamental Verses?

You know the passage I like to quote, something like:

Re: The natural state?

Bruce, this is interesting. Thank you for going straight to the source!  :) (I was mostly kidding, but I didn't want to be distracted by his criticisms of Wilber or AQAL, which I don't really want to spend more time on at the moment, though I don't want to be absolute about that.)


First of all I think there is either a misprint in Integral Spirituality or Wilber was a little hasty in writing that, though my reading of it, misprint or not, is like Wilber's.

Wilber talks about Derrida admitting to a “transcendental signifier” when Derrida is talking about a “transcendental signified.” I don't think the mistake, if it is a mistake rather than a misprint, harms Wilber's argument, though. If it was his mistake I think it was just on the surface, a miswrite.

If we want to translate pomme into apple we have to have some notion of the fruit, which is more or less the same fruit whether it is growing in France or anywhere else, that transcends pomme or apple. “Some notion” meaning some “transcendental signified.” I think that is what Derrida is referring to.

Later when he says “this opposition or difference cannot be radical or absolute” I think he is saying that that notion or “transcendental signified” we need to translate pomme to apple cannot be perfectly pure and absolute in itself but we nevertheless have to admit its presence when we translate a language. (That sounds a little like Wilber's saying that yes, there is an absolute, but that that view has a kosmic address, by the way.)

I was a little thrown off by the misprint/mistake in copying it into this thread (it doesn't really fit without the misprint/mistake), but Wilber is saying that there is an “experience” or perception that is free of perspectives (nonduality—no subject nor object). That's not like the “transcendental signified” that Derrida is referring to. I think the “transcendental signified” is a separate issue than Spirit/Emptiness/nonduality and that what Wilber is saying in IS in that footnote (p. 155) is simply that the idea that we need some “transcendental signified” to translate languages—even if it “cannot be radical or absolute”— changed that particular debate and made the extreme poststructuralists back off.

But that again is involving language and isn't really what Wilber is saying with regard to nonduality—the experience Wilber is referring to doesn't involve language; it's in a different zone. Wilber, when he talks about Emptiness, is talking about an “experience” or “perception” than can be experienced during meditation, and we can, metaphorically, give that “experience” (in quotes because nonduality technically isn't an experience) a signifier (Emptiness, Spirit), quickly adding that it's not really a thing like Prasangikas quickly add that emptiness is also empty.

But if we say—Derrida's “transcendental signified aside”— “there can be no transcendental signifier” (no “Emptiness” or “Spirit”) we have the performative contradiction again—an absolute stance in a world that is allegedly 100% relative. I think Wilber's proposal to have absolutes with kosmic addresses is better than these performative contradictions. We can do a lot more with the former; the latter leads to misunderstandings about all sorts of important discussions and pursuits, all the while contradicting itself.

Re: The natural state?

David, I need to ask for clarification:  do you mean to say, “transcendental signifier” or do you mean something like, “transcendental referent”?  The signifier is the actual word or symbol used, and the signified is the idea or concept associated with that word.  For example, the word “apple” is the signifier; our concept of apple is the signified; and the actual 'thing' we're pointing to or eating is the referent.  So, I'm not sure what you mean when you speak about a transcendental signifier.
In Derrida's case, what he is addressing is the Platonic / Rationalist metaphysical idea that there is a pure Idea to which words/signifiers (and, actually, physical objects, also) point or which they reflect.  He is questioning whether there is any pure Idea which exists wholly distinct from systems of signification.

Re: The natural state?

Hi Bruce, when I was talking about a “transcendental signifer” I was just referring to words, signifiers, like “Emptiness” and “Spirit” that refer to the  “transcendental referent” we are discussing (the perspective-free “experience”).

Come to think of it, people have been objecting to both what I called the transcendental signifier (something different than the transcendental signified, which I understand refers to an idea, but not an absolutely pure one in Derrida's view, beyond systems of signification) and also that there could be such a “thing” as a transcendental referent (the perspective-free “experience”).

They are two separate debates that I should have made a distinction between—sometimes Buddhists object to what I called the “transcendental signifier,” like Spirit or Consciousness, and we have had a little of that in this thread (perhaps because of misunderstandings), but recently it has been mostly about whether there is a transcendental referent, so basically that's what I meant, yes, transcendental referent; I had both those debates in mind at the same time.  :)

(And using Wilber's misprint! There's no use for the phrase “transcendental signifier,” is there? Unless we're using it like I was, to refer to signifiers that refer to a transcendental referent.)

With regard to the pure idea that exists wholly from systems of signification, as I said I think Derrida is saying that there really isn't a totally pure idea that transcends systems of signifiers but that we need to admit to the idea of a “trancsendental signified” that isn't absolutely pure because there is some kind of meta-signified when we translate pomme to apple, right? Even though that meta-signified would have a kosmic address, wouldn't be absolute or pure.

So in the beginning of the page he is talking about the transcendental signified “which, in and of itself, in its essence, would refer to no signifier”—just the basic abstract idea of the phenomenon that arises when we translate pomme to apple. I think it's clear that he's not simply critiquing the rationalist idea of a pure idea to which words point but that he is proposing something new, or rather, a new interpretation of “transcendental signified” that wouldn't really be pure but that we nevertheless have to admit to. It seems like an integral idea—a transcendental signified that isn't absolutely or purely transcendental.

Re: The natural state?

Hi, James.

James: Yes I remember listening to this and being unconvinced. I also remember Wilber saying that it' a mistake to think that a half-wing has no evolutionary adaptive value whastoever… He's not an evolutionary biologist and he's not a quantum physicist either. I wonder if he's speaking metaphorically again? ;-)


Okay, what is the evolutionary adaptive value of a half wing?  :)

Have you read Wilber's response to those critics, by the way? I think I might even have linked it to you before, but even if I did here it is again.

I'm not a quantum physicist, but have you read Quantum Questions? Wilber, in that audio, said all thirteen of the physicists he quoted from in that book were mystics but that none of them believed that quantum physics had anything to do with mysticism.

I'd like to have a look at that book. That's one I've entirely passed by for some reason; I haven't even browsed in it. But it would be interesting to hear about mysticism from such consummate physicists as that group. Wilber says that one of them, Schrodinger maybe, wrote beautifully about Vedanta.

Re: The natural state?

Hi

David: “Okay, what is the evolutionary adaptive value of a half wing?” :)

Well here's what I said in an earlier post to Kelamuni on a related thread last month
——————————————————————————————

 Kelamuni: ““Metaphorically?” Is he back-pedalling here?”

James: Yep! I think he's back-pedalling about a very poor example, poorly expressed, in Part 1 Chapter 1 of BHOE, about “a half-wing having no adaptive value whatsoever”.

Sorry Ken! There's even video evidence! And more and more

However, I think the general point he is trying (in this case very badly) to make in this passage is still valid. Ken points out in the same paragraph: “these same mutations must occur simultaneously in another animal of the opposite sex, and then they have to somehow find each other, have dinner, a few drinks, mate, and have offspring with real functional wings”.

Good point. But in his use of it in the early part of the passage there was nothing metaphorical about it. It was simply a poor choice. Why he couldn't simply say “yep, that was a bad example to get my point across - sorry folks!” I'm not sure.

Bearing in mind how many words and articles he has produced I think I can find it in my heart to forgive him ;-)

————————————————————————————————————-

Wilber was wrong in his statement about half-wings. Is he wrong in his statement about quantum physics being nothing to do with non-duality? Perhaps. So, saying “Wilber says that…” may carry no weight at all. Ooer!

My deeper point is this: if quantum physics is currently providing humanity with the most accurate right-hand information regarding the basic building blocks of the universe, how can we then say that non-duality is nothing to do with it, unless we're suggesting non-duality is somehow (woo woo) outside of the universe, or as Tom said “off AQAL”?

If as Ken says, Spirit “permeates all of manifestation” then why would he draw a line between this Spirit and our deepest examination of manifestation, as if ne'er the twain shall meet? Methinks Ken is being overly protective of his special (and confused and confusing) definition of Spirit. He wouldn't want all his readers going off to read up on Quantum Mechanics instead now would he!?  ;-)

Re: The natural state?

James: If as Ken says, Spirit “permeates all of manifestation” then why would he draw a line between Spirit and our deepest examination of manifestation, as if ne'er the twain shall meet?


I think you're right to ask that, James.  Wilber's nondual doesn't feel so nondual to me.  It's that extra-AQAL leap he makes at the foundation of his theory.  Emptiness the UFO, which then requires a UFO landing-spot inside (= pregiven, preformed states).  From IS, underlining added:

In a special sense … the 3 great natural states … contain an entire spectrum of spiritual enlightenment.

Re: The natural state?

Allow me to expand on the above.  The problem, as I see it, is that Wilber equates Spirit with suchness.  Let me grab that quote you reproduced, James …

Actual nondual Spirit is the suchness of everything that's arising. It doesn't cause anything to do anything.

Viewed without relation to or comparison …

{Aside: David, I'm not equating absolute view with mental but am saying mental development is a necessary condition.  Rocks don't suchness experience.}

Re: The natural state?

James, I think Ken is trying to please so many people that it often ends up hurting his credibility, and causing tons of confusion. That, as well as carrying with him alot of new age ideas. What did you think about my proposition regarding a possible non-new age integral philosophy? (The new age/intelligent design-idea you mentioned represented as nr 2) in my post.) 

These days if I'm saying to someone that I like Ken Wilber's work, I sometimes get the “Ah, that new age guy?” types of responses. It's kind of annoying when integral philosophy obviously has the power to bring harmony the entire feckin' multiverse, to have it mixed up and mistaken for witchcraft, pre-modern sentiments and spooky mysterianism.

(But ahh, then it wouldn't sell so many books, quenching the thirst of the desperate ones.)

-

Tom, interesting post. I'll offer my own ideas regarding the matter soon, in which I will try my best to honour the perspective you're offering.

Re: The natural state?

A clarification of a clarification. When I used “trancendental signfier” in the following:

Re: The natural state?

James: My deeper point is this: if quantum physics is currently providing humanity with the most accurate right-hand information regarding the basic building blocks of the universe, how can we then say that non-duality is nothing to do with it, unless we're suggesting non-duality is somehow (woo woo) outside of the universe, or as Tom said “off AQAL”?


He did say, in the beginning of the interview, that quantum physics is a part of Spirit like everything else. Is he overstating the case by saying quantum physics has nothing to say about UL interiors?

I don't know enough about quantum physics to say, but it's kind of interesting to look at the situation in reverse: Does introspective science, meditation, tell us anything about physics? Does ethnomethodology or systems theory have anything to tell us about physics?

Perhaps one zone can learn some interesting things from another zone, but I think we might consider the cultural context in which we were raised: the modern world, where science is God, where the MD and physicist are the Zen masters, the people who really know what's going on.

I think that probably affects us quite a bit, including how we look at spirituality, probably in many positive ways but perhaps not in all positive ways.

If nonduality could be proven empirically—then most of the people around us would believe it, too, because the scientists would be telling them it is true. But when it hasn't been proven empirically (and perhaps never could be proven by right-hand empirical methods) we are going against the grain of our culture and cultural conditioning, and that's not easy.

Re: The natural state?

David: Is he overstating the case by saying quantum physics has nothing to say about UL interiors?


He must be overstating, David.  Nothing to say about UL?  He's essentially saying a foundational theory of the UR has nothing to say about the UL.  That assertion is methodologically wrong given his insistence that all phenomena tetra-arise, or however he puts it.  It is also theoretically hasty, if not considerably counterintuitive, to say a link and some or several analogies between quantum physics and consciousness will not be found.  

Re: The natural state?

Dudes, you don't have to bother with quantum physics. All you need in order to prove the validity of non-duality scientifically is E=mc2 + the neuroscientifical findings that there is no inherently existing self inside the brain, calling the shots.

“The philosophy of action points to the middle path between the over-confident optimism of the idealist, and the deterministic pessimism of the materialist. In action we are both bound and free.”
-Gudo Nishijima

“Panta Rei.”
-Herakleitos

Re: The natural state?

Dawid: Dudes, you don't have to bother with quantum physics.


You're right, Dawid.  E=mc2 is sufficient.  Convertibility is the key to anything that can be called anything at all.  E=mc2 = dependent origination.

Notice that convertibility implies I am everything in real potential: just change my conditions.  So you get a deep feeling of unity to boot.  Contingency's utter dissolubility is the doorway to peace.

Physics has nothing to say about UL?

Re: The natural state?

From a ways up:

David: But maybe people aren't going to go any deeper than nonduality. Maybe that really is the absolute ground. We don't know that it isn't. We would still likely get higher and higher stages, but perhaps it is the deepest state.

But if it's least absolute for our lives, that's kind of pretty absolute, isn't it?

I agree we don't know we'll get further stages.  We also don't know the universe will continue in its motions, or whether further investigation will modify current scientific theories.  But the entire known history of each of these suggests things will continue as they have until now.  In my view, it is therefore valid to tentatively expect that things will continue, and counterintuitive, if not self-ishly motivated, to suggest otherwise.  Here's one self-reason for the latter: the person spouting no-more-change can often be read to say: no more change beyond my theory.  Interpretation: I'm the truth.


This is the Adi Da-zzler eschatological fantasy: I'm the end, the last and most real, the insurpassable blah blah blah—oops name change—a very nice envy manifestation that lacks the humility the partialness of our partial existence-slice suggests.  You want a universal?  Try partialness.


That's a tough message to swallow for absolute truth seekers.  You want an absolute?  Try relativity.


Thus I agree with your latter statement: our versions of absolute are kind of and pretty and for-our-lives absolute.  These all say: relatively absolute.  Notice, here, that one can say relatively absolute, and cannot say the reverse, absolutely relative.  Absolute is the negative of relative and is the included term; it cannot include its polar.


My attempt above to minimally correlate the experience of absolute (suchness, thisness, the now, emptiness) with the development of the mental ability to abstract, generalize and universalize highlights the developmental historicity of our capacity to experience.  I personally find a very close analogy between experience and knowledge: both are partial, both build on what went before, both move into unknown futures, both abstract (ie, present partially), and both are fundamentally informed by historical developments (ie, no UFO landing strips).  Absolutizing one's absolute, as Ken does with his ahistorical ex-AQAL capital E emptiness, is to run counter-evolutionary, a little surprising given Ken's contribution is to bring evolution to spirituality, but no so surprising when you consider that those most opposed to evolution, Ken included, are religionists.

Re: The natural state?

David: Does introspective science, meditation, tell us anything about physics?


In my world, I would think the answer is yes, but in my world there's no separation between physics and interiority: both are limiting abstractions from something that strikes me as one whole thing.  Thus I personally expect to find analogies, if not direct correlations, between operations on the physical and interior so-called planes.  I think the meditative sense of unity analogously figures in quantum physics' primary characteristic, which is undivided wholeness (phrase goes back to Bohr).  Ervin Laszlo has commented considerably on parallels he finds in theoretical physics and spiritual experience.  But Laszlo is interested in unifying knowledge.  He doesn't perhaps have the interior reach that people like Wilber have, but he has no theoretical UFO landing strips, which puts him a step ahead in a nonduality prognosis.  Truly integral integrates everything IMO.

And if Wilber is being polarized to counter an unbalanced polarization (only science is true), he's being polarized, isn't he?  How scientific is that?

Re: The natural state?

Ok students, here is a little dualist meditation for your morning.  I want you to follow by listening and relaxing into the words, just feel into them, sense that whole-body registration deep inside of utter splitness and fragmentation …. mmmm mmmm mmmm.

Now here are some words [from Quantum Questions]:

They [Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Pauli] uniformly rejected … the notion that physics proves or even supports mysticism …

How can that be?  Very simply, they all realized that, at the very least, physics deals with the world of form, and mysticism deals with the formless …

Physics and mysticism, physics and mysticism, physics and mysticism … they have nothing in common …

What is the relation between modern physics and transcendental mysticism?

Does physics bear at all on the issues of free-will, creation, Spirit, the soul?

Does physics even deal with Reality (capital R), or is it necessarily confined to studying the shadows in the cave?

The central mystical experience may be fairly (if somewhat poetically) described as follows: in the mystical consciousness, Reality is apprehended directly and immediately, meaning without mediation, any symbolic elaboration, any conceptualization, or any abstractions; subject and object become one in a timeless and spaceless act that is beyond any and all forms and all forms of mediation.  Mystics universally speak of contacting reality in its “suchness,” its “isness,” its “thatness,” without any intermediaries; beyond words, symbols, names, thoughts, images.

Now, when the physicist “looks at” quantum reality or at relativistic reality, he is not looking at the “things in themselves,” at noumenon, at direct and nonmediated reality … not at reality itself.

What an absolute, radical, irredeemable difference from mysticism!

Re: The natural state?

Oh, Master, sublime!  Many pranaams.  Please now teach me about the difference between mysticism and postmodern word games.

Re: The natural state?

*applause*

Very nicely done, Tom.  :)

I also enjoyed the crow story and the suchness riff.


Tom: He must be overstating, David.  Nothing to say about UL?


I was paraphrasing. He didn't really say that. He just said that quantum physics didn't have anything to tell us about mysticism. He didn't say “UL interiors.”




Ken: Very simply, they all realized that, at the very least, physics deals with the world of form, and mysticism deals with the formless …

Tom: Ah students!  Feel the music!  It's sublime, like an E and an E-sharp chord strummed together hard!  Relax, relax, and feel the self-againstness, the absolutely utterly Two …


I think it has to be paradoxical. We can get into nondual language sometimes and say “not two,” “everything is Spirit,” and the like, but they are all dualistic, too, right?

I think we have to honor the two-truths doctrine: there is the absolute truth (all is one or not two) and then the relative truth (there are many).

Likewise, a person who has experienced the formless realms can speak of an unmanifest and a manifest—there's nothing unenlightened about that; it's just an enactment of the two-truths doctrine, which I think is necessary.

Without making relative distinctions people would be running into each other all the time. Think of the traffic mess! It makes it controversial saying “manifest” and “unmanifest”—I think it's the controversy inherent in the idea of “unmanifest” that is really the issue for you rather than the honoring of relative truths, right?




Is: “The philosophy of action points to the middle path between the over-confident optimism of the idealist, and the deterministic pessimism of the materialist. In action we are both bound and free.”
-Gudo Nishijima


Here's another: The philosophy of evolutionary behavior kosmocentric behavior points to the middle path between cynical already knowing and irresponsible not owning up to what you do know.

Re: The natural state?

Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of peace) reflects perfect poise like the eye of a hurricane.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of action) ruts in the sensate fields of impermanence.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of compassion) sees beings arise and beings pass away.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of understanding) is not confused by words.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of wisdom) is absolute absence.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of wisdom) is relative presence.
Neither existing nor non-existing
the natural state (of e) functions via a bit sleep deprived auto-pilot back stroking in a slightly caffeinated infinite sea of love.
Cutting thru all falsehoods, may all beings re-cognize their non-separability with the natural state (of affairs)…

love

e

Re: The natural state?

[Deep sigh - deep smile] Haah,…thank you e.

Re: The natural state?

That's pretty cool, e! I thought I was reading a sutra at first. Really, that's pretty cool.

Also, beautiful new picture. Do you know this one?

Re: The natural state?

Thanks guys, glad you liked it! David, I am familiar with Gil’s work but I don’t remember that tune. The first song I played for her was Angel by Anita Baker. Tonight when I’m home from work I will play and sing along to Gil’s. Thanks!