Some quotes I found on Facebook. I thought @inthedarkness might like them.
QUESTION: IS THIS REALLY IT? IS IT REALLY THIS?
ANSWER: NOPE. AND NOT-NOPE.
Two people recently asked me what “this” meant, as they heard speakers say that whatever appeared was “this.” They were trying to find some sort of meaning in the word “this” or see it as referring to some absolute ground of being.
But “this” is not a literal thing, as speakers of nonduality point out. So keep in mind that “this” is just a way to try and express what cannot ever be captured in words or thoughts. And if it ever sounds like you are hearing some sort of final answer, remember that this is not at all what speakers actually point out, which is that there is no language to express what seems to appear:
“This is wholeness or this is no thing as it already is. That’s the miracle. It just already is wholeness. Or the unknown. Or actually, there isn’t a real word for this.”
—Andreas Müller
“There isn’t a word for this but I use the word “this” because I can’t find a better one. But there isn’t a this. There’s a lot of other words people have used… so it’s a futile attempt to try and express what’s happening. There’s no knowing what’s happening.”
—Tim Cliss
“This, what is, can’t be described, can’t be known, can’t be owned, it has absolutely no fixed points to it.”
—Jim Newman
'“This is it” and “This isn’t,” “You are it,” and “There’s no one here” are all statements trying to express this inconceivable, unknowable wonder, a phenomena, a mystery, but that’s even saying too much."
—Emerson
Yeah that’s more like a bastardization of the very real concept that we make words for the sake of utility. What they’re on about is just mystical nonsense.
It’s trying to explain the notion of nonduality, which is some state of being that is allegedly prior to concepts. In other words empty of all the labels and distinctions we have about life. There isn’t really a way to check this though since it’s not like you can measure a personal experience to see how accurate it is.
“Linguistics - When you study words and language, you realize that all our beliefs are based on language and this language can never “touch reality” in that language is just an arbitrary description of reality, posing as real. I believe Miguel Ruiz must have taken a linguistics course as well–as his first agreement attests to the power of language. The four agreements pulls heavily from Saussure and Derrida. Both Saussure and Derrida (and many, many others) did work on how we form ideas in our heads based on language. The gist is this: we have something called a “symbol” in our brain which is composed of two parts: the word and the visual representation of the object (look up semiotics for further detail). These symbols are in our mind and work together to form meaning, then belief. The unfortunate thing is that they are entirely made up. It isn’t real. Our ideas of it aren’t real.”
Yeah, but he references fields of study and names in those fields. I’m not too sure about Derrida since I tried his stuff and couldn’t make much sense of it.
What “I me me” says is not that bad really. What he doesn’t say is that we can’t have some sense of what is real. He doesn’t say that everything is made up or that any expression of what a person thinks is pure nonsense. He is talking about language when he says, “The unfortunate thing is that they are entirely made up. It isn’t real. Our ideas of it aren’t real.”
A couple things he says are just not logical at all.
To simplify: scientists and academics in the millions have tried and tried and tried to find “the true belief” for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years and we have not yet arrived at any truth.
If we don’t know what’s true for certain, then we don’t know that we have not yet arrived at truth. We can look at how well our knowledge predicts future events.
He says a lot more about how we can’t know anything, really he’s just riffing on how we are always wrong about something, but that’s very different that than not knowing anything.
I like his list of things he learned, and this one is a good one,
The need to be right is so ingrained within us that we create a huge drama when someone contradicts our beliefs.
I can think of a few people who would benefit from meditating on that.
It’s more in the sense of not really being able to question them on anything since if no one knowns anything then they can’t really claim that they’re wrong since everyone is just telling stories.
I do know he’s wrong about science as science is more about doing the best we can with what we got, a fundamental misunderstanding of it.