Do fictional characters have eternal life?

[Dontaskme]

I think that what the TaoteChing is saying is that there is the relative yin and the relative yang and that both spring from the Way, which is beyond human experience and cannot be told. This is what I believe, that the Way (or timeless eternity) is far 'beyond' all possible imagining.Perhaps by analogies we can sort of imagine the Way, or eternity. The trouble with analogies is that they can become idols.

Yes, this is beyond human comprehension. Drop the idea that there is something to understand, and all will be revealed.


''When you look for who is watching, you either do not know, or you come up with an idea, a thought-construct, a product of the imagination. Essentially “you” have no idea who or what you are, as all ideas of who or what you are, are imaginary.''

[Belinda]

Dontaskme wrote:

Yes, this is beyond human comprehension. Drop the idea that there is something to understand, and all will be revealed.

Although the Way, or eternity, is beyond human comprehension don't you think that we are forced constantly to choose between yin or yang and between their derivatives? If we don't learn from experience we die.

[Dontaskme]

Dontaskme wrote:

Yes, this is beyond human comprehension. Drop the idea that there is something to understand, and all will be revealed.

Although the Way, or eternity, is beyond human comprehension don't you think that we are forced constantly to choose between yin or yang and between their derivatives? If we don't learn from experience we die.

In the dream of the character yes...it appears there is a choice...albeit a choiceless choice, since there's just what's happening to no one or thing.That there appears to be a 'me' to which life happens is the dream. Dream characters are fictional, they are seeingly born and die...But, the dreamer is eternity which is neither alive nor dead. Eternity is looking through every eye.. smelling, hearing, tasting and feeling through every fictional characters body /mind mechanism ...which is the instrument eternity uses to function as a character in realtime ...without which nothing could happen or be. The experiencer is not the character, it is everything and no thing appearing as and through the character. Therefore the relative and absolute are one and the same(the dream and the dreamer)....aka ETERNITY expressing itself infinitely, living and dying simultaneously in every moment.

The character dontaskme aka ''me'' doesn't know this...the present moment aka eternity knows this as it expresses itself through fictional language appearing as and through the body mind mechanism of the dontaskme character. Eternity takes the form of a finite character in time and space ..but this phenomena is an appearance that comes and goes in eternity which is a constant active or inactive presence always here. Appearances are a movement within that constant stillness.

[Belinda]

I endorse all that Dontaskme says about eternity, or the Way, is the bottom line. However is this ontic insight a guide to how those prisoners of time, Dontaskme and Belinda, should make their live's decisions?

[Dontaskme]

I endorse all that Dontaskme says about eternity, or the Way, is the bottom line. However is this ontic insight a guide to how those prisoners of time, Dontaskme and Belinda, should make their live's decisions?

Not really sure what you mean or what you are asking...but my answer would be from what I think you mean is...

No it's not a guide to how characters should make a decision, because a fictional character can't make decisions. What apparently effects the character due to a decision has zero effect on the dreamer from where the decision comes from. Although the dream of an ontic insight is what's apparently happening to the dream character..it is (the dream) nothing more than an appearance in the dreamer of the dream feeling like there is an imprisoned entity living in time and space...but no such event /time or space exists or ever happened as with any dream. The dreamer is not bound or imprisoned by it's dreams, it's boundlessly free and timeless...watching on and experiencing every dream as it appears and disappears without a trace.

[Belinda]

What I really meant, dontaskme, is that we are each a prisoner of time that's to say none of us lives our lives from the eternity perspective. Except for instance maybe some hermit who is fed and otherwise kept alive by acolytes who engage with the necessities of staying alive.

I cannot see how the prospect of eternity or the Way, is possible except as an occasional escape from the other and more accustomed reality of relative being in time.

[Dontaskme]

What I really meant, dontaskme, is that we are each a prisoner of time that's to say none of us lives our lives from the eternity perspective. Except for instance maybe some hermit who is fed and otherwise kept alive by acolytes who engage with the necessities of staying alive.

No one lives from an eternity perspective. There is only eternity or everything living itself from every fictional perspective arising in it. You already are eternity experiencing itself. Eternity is not an experience, it is the experience-in here right now forever as every appearance. It's this boundless aliveness presence that cannot die because dying is not an experience...dying is just an idea arising in this aliveness that never dies, death is an idea born of the apparent assumption that there is an entity here living life and that that entity will one day die..that's not what's happening. There is no death for a thing, because life is not a thing, it is everything and no thing. Things are thoughts which are empty.

I cannot see how the prospect of eternity or the Way, is possible except as an occasional escape from the other and more accustomed reality of relative being in time.

No you will not see it because you already are it. The absolute and relative are one and the same. One cannot escape from what is happening no more than one can enter what is happening..there is only what is happening here nowhere for no one. One cannot escape what one was never in. In & out are fictional relative concepts in THIS that is neither in nor out.. but always just here now nowhere.

[Belinda]

Dontaskme your replies to my questions are faultlessly reasonable. If I can count on your patience once again I'd like to ask what is the 'cash value' of a person's understanding that eternity pervades all.

By "cash value" I mean if I remain ignorant of eternity or the Way, will I be less or more dutiful and conscientious, less or more healthy, less or more selfish or greedy, less or more appreciative of beauty? Will I become a fatalist or more docile towards established authority?

[Belinda]

I do think that fictional characters are eternal. Eternity expresses itself as time and change through time. Fictional characters exist only in and through human mind-bodies and are ideas or thoughts which act only through the agency of human mind-bodies, and fictional characters have no conatus or will.

[Belinda]

I do think that fictional characters are eternal. Eternity expresses itself as time and change through time. Fictional characters exist only in and through human mind-bodies and are ideas or thoughts which act only through the agency of human mind-bodies, and fictional characters have no conatus or will apart from the ambience of the settings in which they exist.

[Belinda]

Earlier in this discussion dontaskme wrote:

There is no thinker of thought. Thoughts have no location or reality, they are phantom appearances...so no thinker. They arise here now in the I Am. The I Am has to be first, if a thought is to appear at all. The I Am is nowhere and everywhere all at once and doesn't need a thought to be here. But thoughts need the I Am to be here.

Why do you presume that the I Am is thought alone and is not also capable of material substance as presented to us as stuff that occupies space such as brain cells? Sure, the I Am has to be first and who can deny that! Thoughts and brains and bodies proper too " need the I Am to be here". Unthinking stones, and rivers etc "need the I Am to be here" . I challenge dontaskme to argue that the I Am is incapable of expressing itself in material bodies as well as in thoughts.

[osgart]

no . They are imaginary. And they are not non fiction.
Sherlock Holmes and his world will not come into reality. Their is no law of destiny that he will. Proof of this is he missed his time period of entry; the 1800s in england. There are no found records of his identity. Nor Watson.

[Harbal]

Sherlock Holmes and his world will not come into reality.

There are no found records of his identity.

That means nothing. You forget he was a master of disguise.

[Dontaskme]

Dontaskme your replies to my questions are faultlessly reasonable. If I can count on your patience once again I'd like to ask what is the 'cash value' of a person's understanding that eternity pervades all.

By "cash value" I mean if I remain ignorant of eternity or the Way, will I be less or more dutiful and conscientious, less or more healthy, less or more selfish or greedy, less or more appreciative of beauty? Will I become a fatalist or more docile towards established authority?

You'll be what ever life dictates as and through your body mind mechanism. If being more healthy appears as and through you as a character, then that will be, if it not then that's also what will be.

Normally, and most commonly, the body mind mechanism which is just a mechanical instrument eternity uses to experience life, is believed to be the doer of life, the body is also used by eternity as the vessel in which thoughts are processed into all kinds of things which are only ever the thoughts themselves sent by eternity, and in that function, an energy is created that becomes attached to those thoughts, resulting in a character avatar identity that appears to be born in time, which is then believed into thinking it is the one thinking and calling all the shots in life, but this identity is a mistaken identity, because it is only ever eternity which has no physical identity..it's that one that cannot be named who is calling all the shots as and through the mechanical instrument aka the character of 'me'. This mistaken identity appears to be unaware that it's real existence is eternal. It's not even a mistake as even that idea is just an energy at play with itself, it's all the play of the one pretending to be the many. So that pretending energy of separate 'me' will always live in a fictional world of lack and fear and of losing it's life, always wanting and striving for more, never quite realising the vastness and eternal nature of it's real nature. Then there is another energetic dynamic where the belief in an individual identity drops away completely, in other words the identity of ''me'' dies ...and at that moment that energy shifts into eternal life, which is the gateless gate entrance into Nonduality...aka one without a second. And with that realisation may come a better way of living or there may be no change whatsoever. But life will dictate this, not the assumed identified character, because life is always and ever one unitary movement with itself. Life is always and ever is because it's an experience. Death is the illusion. Paradoxically, life is death because no one is living life, therefore life and death are one and the same, they're only difference is in their appearance.

[Dontaskme]

Why do you presume that the I Am is thought alone and is not also capable of material substance as presented to us as stuff that occupies space such as brain cells? Sure, the I Am has to be first and who can deny that! Thoughts and brains and bodies proper too " need the I Am to be here". Unthinking stones, and rivers etc "need the I Am to be here" . I challenge dontaskme to argue that the I Am is incapable of expressing itself in material bodies as well as in thoughts.

I'm not presuming or knowing anything about what I am, I do not know what I am, only that I am by pure being it. One cannot know this I am and also be it, for that would require this immediate beingness/aliveness to split itself in two into a knower and the known...which is impossible...for there is nothing outside of this immediate being/aliveness independent of it. So for example: a mountain is, but the mountain does not know it is a mountain, the mountain only comes into existence as and through the word, or the story about it, via idea/concept etc..etc..


The silent still presence of aliveness is this immediate I am, and is not a thought. It does not need thought to be here, it's here with or without any thought about it. Material substance however is a thought, a thought then becomes a word. Without the world no material substance can exist, therefore pointing to the illusory fictional nature of all things. The only real here is the emptiness that contains all things, which are essentially the same emptiness appearing solid and substantial.

The I am cannot do anything without an instrument of contact. As one of many examples: The physical ear never heard a sound, it does not hear a thing, but sound cannot be heard without the instrument of hearing which is the ear. So who actually hears the sound if not the ear?...the answer is eternity does...it is one with the knowing in the experiencing as and through the instrument of hearing. Therefore, the physical world is fiction, and yet at the same time paradoxically speaking, it is an inseparable aspect of the real world which is the nonphysical/nonconceptual...world.

Jesus talked about this when he said My father is greater than I.... and then he also said...I am in the world but not of it ..translated as meaning, what we truly are is far beyond what we as an assumed identity only think and believe to be real...we are much more that what we think or believe we are.