The second characteristic of maya is more subtle. Anything that appears is not real. This seems like a contradiction. Anything that appears must be real by virtue of its appearance. It has a presence and therefor must have a reality. But we can also say that anything that appears must also disappear. This implies that anything that has a beginning must also have an end. Including your birth. If you are born you must die. If you believe in your birth and death, and your existence consists of the span of these points, the you will suffer, because it implies you were born to die. This sounds harsh but there is no denying birth and death are linked to each other. Finally our perception of life is bound by space and time, or perception of it is a product of maya. This points to human consciousness being finite and limited, appreciating reality in specific forms and their evolutions. It cannot conceive beyond those boundaries. The implications are enormous. For instance, there seems to be a space or sense of division between us and everything else. This implies who we are is separate from everyone else. This sense of duality causes suffering because it separates us from the source of our existence. Examining what reality is not we can see what it is. Reality is unchangeable. It does not have a beginning or end, but always been and always will be. It is not bound by space and time and therefor doesn’t have different parts or facets, nor qualities or characteristics, it is absolute and infinite and therefor beyond the dimension of form. If we believe we are the body and our senses we are disconnected from our essence. At some point, when realize there is no substantial reality to this formed existence, we can then take the steps require to lift our awareness beyond the changing field, and let it merge with, or dissolve into, the Absolute Pure Consciousness.
Getting back to the original point about being the universe is based on the idea that there is no duality. That there is no you or me. That you begin and end at the body and that time and space are an illusion. That reality has no beginning or end, that nothing changes, and that such things are just living in the illusion. That what you see is an illusion (or rather what appears is an illusion) or Maya.
And he jumps the shark once again, heeeyy. There's no question here. Nor is there a clear point. It's been an interesting ride but I sense it is coming to end, or is it a beginning?
I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have a point. You just have large block quotes that you say are a point, but aren’t, and when you can’t explain them, you say they weren’t exactly the point, or that you aren’t sure what they mean, but you can’t argue against them. You ignore questions, challenges, thought experiments, clarifications or anything else that is handed to you.
Xain, Go ahead and let your awareness “…dissolve into, the Absolute Pure Consciousness” then let us know how it works out.
(hint: maybe u should have a 3rd party document the dissolution of your awareness and your transition to “Absolute Pure Consciousness” as you may then be beyond communicating with us mere temporal humans. Likely you will appear to us as someone in a profound unreachable catatonia.)
Seriously? “Absolute Pure Consciousness”? How gullible are you?
I mean if I could argue against this stuff (and believe myself) then I would. But the constant questions that leave me with nothing to stand on. Like the origin of the universe, or how people sometimes say the whole “something from nothing” doesn’t make sense. In it he says that reality has always been and will be. I don’t know how to argue against it because it’s somewhat based on the Big Bang (saying that the origin was highly compressed mass, I think). I just don’t know how to wrap my head around any of this.
You learn what you can and stand on that, while realizing that there is stuff that you don’t know, and may not ever know. You accept that and take your best guess until you learn a little more of the unknown, if u ever do.
Many religious ppl cannot accept that there is stuff we don’t know and may never know, so they adopt a ready made belief system that has all the answers.
But most religious (supernatural) belief systems are ridiculous in the light of what we do know about life, the universe, and everything. And “Absolute Pure Consciousness”? Come on. That is just another concocted supernatural easy answer.
The article was based on his personal experience and his teacher, who he said seemed to embody the peace of this truth.
It’s just that I see stuff like “nothing that appears is real” and fear seizes over me and overrides all else. I don’t know why I give Buddhism, and this “nonceptual stuff” such a free pass. Maybe there “transcendant” talk just grabs me.
Cool, man. Some ppl like rap music. Not my cup o’ tea. But then, I might qualify as an old fuddy duddy. I do, however, draw a line when it comes to believing supernatural crap is real.
I wouldn’t call it supernatural. More like “how do you know what’s real”? He opened with that in the article, like how you know dreams aren’t real, but how do you know this is? I mean that question is turtles all the way down though.
But just hearing the words: illusion, reality, false, truth, in some kind of order just triggers me and fear compels me to read and listen to them.
And the thing is the more I think about it the more it seems like it’s right. Like things may appear to have a sense of separateness but it’s all the same (I’m guessing in the sense of all atoms from the Big Bang). I’m guessing based on the law of conservation of matter nothing truly “dies” since matter isn’t destroyed it just breaks down and forms into other things. I’m guessing the reality has always existed is likely based on the idea that you can’t get something from nothing, and that nothing isn’t a sound concept philosophically.
Things that are alive will die. We are alive, therefore we will die. The chair I am sitting on is not alive, therefore it will not die.
This is where it gets more thinky, because the molecules that are part of us will eventually be replaced, and yet we remain individuals who are alive. Thus, there are no molecules that are alive, only transient collections of them that are considered to be part of a living thing.
Don’t get too comfortable, your quest for whatever you think is the real you is likely to become a lot more complicated and uncomfortable.
The second characteristic of maya is more subtle. Anything that appears is not real. This seems like a contradiction. Anything that appears must be real by virtue of its appearance. It has a presence and therefor must have a reality. But we can also say that anything that appears must also disappear. This implies that anything that has a beginning must also have an end. Including your birth. If you are born you must die. If you believe in your birth and death, and your existence consists of the span of these points, the you will suffer, because it implies you were born to die. This sounds harsh but there is no denying birth and death are linked to each other. Finally our perception of life is bound by space and time, or perception of it is a product of maya. This points to human consciousness being finite and limited, appreciating reality in specific forms and their evolutions. It cannot conceive beyond those boundaries.
But then does anything really come into existence though? Is anything really born? Does anything truly die? Like it said anything that appears must also disappear. That anything with a beginning must have an end.
Examining what reality is not we can see what it is. Reality is unchangeable. It does not have a beginning or end, but always been and always will be. It is not bound by space and time and therefor doesn’t have different parts or facets, nor qualities or characteristics, it is absolute and infinite and therefor beyond the dimension of form.
Again reading through what he writes it just seems based on his say so. Reality is changeable and there isn't anything to prove that we are more than our bodies. The indefiniteness he speaks off is just a trick of the brain, a common sight in meditation and in NDEs. Of course they could make the argument that the brain is masking that true nature of reality by doing that, though there wouldn't be much to support that since it is the same brain that led to their experience to begin with.
"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate."
Xian: "Again reading through what he writes it just seems based on his say so."
It's hard responding to you- I type what I want to say, then delete it and type something much much less insulting. [Keep that in mind when you think I'm being unkind.]
My mind is continually blown by your inability to put together even one single independent thought. You state in plain English that the person writing whatever pseudo-scientific/intellectual article you’re referring to is pulling ideas out of their arse, yet you still think they are some sort of genius with insights into life no one else is capable of seeing.
Think! Think, think, think! Read what we write and THINK! Stop ignoring everything we say and continually go back to the useless word-salad articles you’ve arbitrarily decided are full of wisdom.
You might be a decent person in real life, but on here you’re a whiney, spineless twit. [Remember, that was written after I wrote what I really want to say.]
Again rat, you offer nothing useful to say. If it is nonsense then you’ll have to do better than a simple say so. I wish it was that easy but I can’t just call something nonsense without saying why it is so. Judging by your replies it doesn’t seem like you practice what you preach.
Unless you find holes in what he is saying (which I wish I could but I haven’t seen it), then I’ll just have to conclude that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you might be out of your depth.
Even the bit about the self you weren’t very helpful, just…loud. I used to think there was something that you would get to if you cleared it all away like the Broward people said, but it seems like that’s more like the end-result of a series of actions (pursuing a hypothetical) that result in such a state but don’t prove it. I have to accept Susan’s remark about it, though it doesn’t prove much other help really.
As for what this other guy said, I can’t really verbalize or write much of it out since I mostly “think” in feelings, sensations, and movement (it’s weird and takes a long time to explain, I’m doing my best on here). But the more I think about it the more sense it makes (not that I relish that fact). I mean I think it is based on the idea of where does X come from, and how far back you can take that untill you get to the beginning of the universe. Since there is no “ness” (or inherent essence to things) then it’s all just the universe, which I “guess” is what he means by not real (but even that is a stretch). Kind of like how what seems to be separate pieces its all just connections of one big whole.
As you can see from your Wikipedia article, you are certainly not the first person to get mired in these thoughts. How do you know that you’re not a brain in a vat? How do you know that we’re not all residents of the Matrix? Every generation comes up with a new version of the same idea. It’s like walking a labyrinth. It’s a puzzle that you’re not necessarily meant to solve, but the walk itself IS the solution, if that makes any sense. There are times in meditation that I feel “as one” with the universe and it all makes sense. It’s a wonderful feeling while it lasts. But then… whoosh… it’s gone again.