Philosophy Now Forum

"Truth" is not found in mental chatter, but neither is it found is it found in passive receptivity.

Greta wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:Now the question is...is it real?

How do know it's real?

Are you sure it's real?

If you are sure, then prove it in your own words by explaining it to me. Otherwise how can you expect me to believe your claim?

I'm being serious now, don't make claims that reality is real without irrefutable proof ....prove it..?

Do you believe that the Sun, Moon and Earth are real?

The Sun, moon, and earth, are objects known. That which knows an object cannot be known by the object itself so an object cannot know it exists. So the knower cannot be the object known. So where is the knower ...and can that one be known?

The knowing seems to be coming from ''me'' I appear to be the reference point of knowing. But I too appear to be an object....as seen in my body parts...but does my arm, or my leg, or my head, know they exist? no,... the knower is not located in those objects....


Objects don't know anything....so where is the exact location of the knower? ...where is the knower if it's not my body?....there is obviously a knowing ...which is not my body...so I cannot be my body.....I cannot be an object..... I can see my body, but I cannot see the knower of my body.


I know my body and every other object appears and disappears as imaged.....so objects can't be real. They may look real, but who is the seer, who is the knower....? can that one be seen and known..?....no it can't...it's simply impossible because it is that which is seeing and knowing and this is ONE with itself...this one worships it's own image, perception of itself.. seen in the object of it's desire appearing real as it is known....by its own self...what this self is cannot be known by an other ...other than its self....there is only this one looking at itself as imaged...so everything is this one. The image is worshipped, but the projector is ignored...simply because there is no thing behind the projector to be seen or known ..the projector is seen and known in the image it projects, which is an illusion...and only that is worshipped...because only that is seen and known...by the illusion itself...how does this happen?....well it appears that a thought arises in conjunction with the image appearing that then says that image is me...and then a concept arises within the thought that names the image, ...in truth there is no thing there at all except the mirage/image of the imageless thought or concept. Objects or matter do exist, but they don't know that...the objects are given their life by that which is dead...ie: the concept/thought.

I know this sounds completely wacko...but bear with me...


Can one thing exist?....only as it appears and disappears in a conscious observer.....we know that there is no separation between what is seeing and that what is seen, there is no dividing line to separate the apparent seer and seen....so this is proof that oneness or consciousness is what it is...but that one cannot be seen by the object it sees...so the knower / seer is not an object.

Can oneness be seen and known? ....no, as that would require another one separate from the one to know that one....

So what is it that knows?.....the answer is simple....it is concepts and thoughts.


For a man, the real is what he experiences through the five senses in time and space. The experiences of the five senses, including time and space, is known only as thoughts. Without thoughts/concepts... experiences including time and space would not be known as real.

To clarify with the help from another point of view...is an excerpt taken from the author Dr. Vijai S. Shankar Phd.

A word is made up of letters. The letters that make up a word would require some duration of time, however small, to appear as a word in thought or speech. Only a single letter or part of it occupies a moment. A single or part of a letter within a moment would be just sound. A word cannot appear as a thought or speech within a moment for lack of time. So what man can think or speak in every moment of life is just subtle or gross sound. The known is made up of words, which is a collection of subtle or gross sounds made every moment. The collection of sound manifests an auditory illusion of word and the known in the mind. Hence, a word and the known have illusory existence and not real existence. Life is a play of sound.

The human mind has evolved to believe that a word and experience are real in time and space. Man will evolve to understand that a word and an experience in time and space are illusory and cannot be real. Therefore, the real cannot be experienced or known by man, religion or science. What man sees is an optical illusion of light. What man hears is an auditory illusion of sound. Life is a play of light and sound.

So back to my own thoughts.....what is it that we believe to be real? ...is it the objects seen that do not know they exist?...or is the seer of the objects that cannot be seen except as the object it projects which cannot know or see anything?...simply because an object is a dead thing..?

But then, how come this reality feels like it is alive? who knows that? who sees that?....nothing knows or sees ... except the thought or the concept.
how this happens.....THERE IS NO KNOWING OF.....therefore what we think we know and see is in fact an illusion appearing as if it is real.

Life is neither dead nor alive, real or unreal, known or unknown. It just is. And what ever man says or thinks about it is not what it is simply because man is a concept/thought...man is an object in it...what the it is can never be known by the object /man.

Therefore, we simply cannot just say reality is real...because we don't know that....and that which does appear to know cannot not be known, simply because it is the very knowing that cannot be known...

I know this all sounds very confusing because it's not what we have been taught in mainstream.....however, it is known to the one who makes the effort to inquire into the true nature of reality, it is a knowledge you stumble upon yourself that is within you. No other teaching or teacher can give you this knowledge...it's not found outside of you in the external world.....this teacher is you yourself, it is an inside job, it's the silent teacher that cannot be seen or known, but it is there....but only as it appears to be...as the illusion it is.

The word illusion is misinterpreted believed to be a phenomena existing that is not real....but illusion does not mean reality does not exist, it means reality does not exist in the way we think or believe it exists...

For example: ....death cannot be known, simply because no one has ever experienced it....well how can the concept death be known at all if it's never been experienced?

It's known only in comparison / relation to aliveness.....aliveness is an experience, but who experiences aliveness? if death cannot be an experience, how can aliveness be an experience?

From this perspective....no one is dead or alive...except the concept/thought.

No one has ever been born..no one can die...only the mind is born..ie: concepts and thoughts...which are dead things...appearing real/alive.



But a concept is just a dead object....so I can't be that....and a thought has never been seen.....so I can't be that....so what the heck is this?


The truth is....death and life are the same one differing in their appearance only.

A flower will appear to be alive one minute and will appear to die the next...but the flower does not know it is living and dying ....it's the same with every object in reality....that which gives reality it's realness is light, light is invisible, it only shows up in the colour it reflects...colour is an illusion, and so is it's source.

Life is an illusion irrefutably so.....the masters have known this for centuries....this knowledge is what's known as enlightenment...no one is enlightened....enlightenment simply means no thing is enlightenment.

Sorry for taking so long to explain this Greta...but I cannot put it into one simple sentence ...well I could but the conditioned mind that believes reality to be real would not be able to grasp it in one sentence... in it's entirety.

NOW

As for who is aware...who is self aware....you mentioned we became self aware in a previous post....

Please explain who you think is self aware? if that's what you believe...it's no good just saying things like that making sure claims if you cannot explain what you are saying...of course you do not have to explain it, that is your prerogative...but don't expect me to believe anything within your statements of knowledge without providing proof.

Reflex wrote:"Truth" is not found in mental chatter, but neither is it found is it found in passive receptivity.

Reflex. ..If you would like to join in this conversation please explain what you mean by the above statement?

I would like nothing more than to engage in conversation with you in this thread.

Dontaskme wrote:

Reflex wrote:"Truth" is not found in mental chatter, but neither is it found is it found in passive receptivity.

Reflex. ..If you would like to join in this conversation please explain what you mean by the above statement?

I would like nothing more than to engage in conversation with you in this thread.

It is very difficult for me to describe what in in front of my face, but I'll try. The division between "mental chatter" and "passive receptivity," which seems to be where you're saying "truth" is found, is to divide where there is no division to be made.

Reflex wrote:"Truth" is not found in mental chatter, but neither is it found is it found in passive receptivity.

What, like being punched on the nose, for example. Whenever that's happened to me, I've always found it brings home a certain kind of truth.

Reflex wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:

Reflex wrote:"Truth" is not found in mental chatter, but neither is it found is it found in passive receptivity.

Reflex. ..If you would like to join in this conversation please explain what you mean by the above statement?

I would like nothing more than to engage in conversation with you in this thread.

It is very difficult for me to describe what in in front of my face, but I'll try. The division between "mental chatter" and "passive receptivity," which seems to be where you're saying "truth" is found, is to divide where there is no division to be made.

The mind divides what cannot in reality be divided...any divide is illusion.

Although the mind can divide reality in two, it cannot reverse that illusory divide. The truth is found in that understanding. No one finds this, it is never not here, or lost, it's a realisation by no one that reality is nothing being everything. The former being the truth...the latter being untruth.

"Truth" is not a concept; it is not something that can be contained or expressed in a body of ideas. Yet, ideas are one of only two ways of exteriorizing it; the other is by act.

True, the mind divides what ultimately cannot be divided, but I do not call the division an illusion no do I relate to it as such. For without the division, we would not and could not exist.

Reflex wrote:"Truth" is not a concept; it is not something that can be contained or expressed in a body of ideas. Yet, ideas are one of only two ways of exteriorizing it; the other is by act.

True, the mind divides what ultimately cannot be divided, but I do not call the division an illusion no do I relate to it as such. For without the division, we would not and could not exist.

Thinking Mind and Working Mind
This concept notionally divides the mind into two: thinking mind and working mind. The thinking mind is the ego. The working mind deals only with the job at hand at that moment, being planning or physical work. The working mind does not worry about the consequences of the job. The working mind, however, does draw on memory to fine tune its present task. It is presently concentrating only on doing a good job, but it does not make any judgement of what is good or bad. The working mind also continues after enlightenment when he has to respond to people calling him by name. In this instance he does not bring up an image of himself, when called. The bringing up of the self-image amounts to pride or deprecation, which is the function of the thinking mind. The thinking mind, the ego, is mainly concerned with the consequences of the job at hand. The thinking mind is not interested in the quality of the job, but only on the results, which could be good or bad. This ego dips into memory to project his wants and desires into the future and also its fears. The working mind dips into memory in order to bring its experience to give higher quality to his work. The sage being without the sense of doership does not care about his reputation in the job. The sage still has to live out his life span and therefore he has to answer to his name and to do menial tasks of going home and performing small domestic chores.
The jnani, the sage or the enlightened one, also has no will of his own. Everything that he does is spontaneous. His working mind is silent. However, the thinking mind used to come in and interrupt the working mind by asking these questions: ‘Is there a better way of doing it? What happens when you fail? These interruptions would reduce the efficiency of the working mind. With the understanding that there is no doer and one is not in control of the results, the thinking mind gradually gets ousted leaving the working mind to take charge. At the end of the day the individual finishes the work much faster without any tension in the body as the thinking mind has taken leave of the individual, and the working mind has not been disturbed or obstructed in its function. While the working mind is functioning there is no “me” present, and therefore there is no relationship between the two. As there is no “me”, in a dialogue the working mind does both the talking and the listening. On top of that there is no awareness behind the working mind. The working mind therefore is the same as the animal mind. The animal reacts to danger right away, but after the danger is over, the animal does not plan for the future in case another predator arrives.

For me, reading I AM THAT: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was like reading about the life of a potato. It captured my attention at first, but quickly became repetitive and boring -- the SOS over and over again.

Reflex wrote:For me, reading I AM THAT: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was like reading about the life of a potato. It captured my attention

I so agree. Learning about one's ancestors can be fascinating.

Reflex wrote:For me, reading I AM THAT: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was like reading about the life of a potato. It captured my attention at first, but quickly became repetitive and boring --

Advaita literature does tend to say the same thing over and over again...but for me, it's the pure simplicity within the message that I love.

It has the opposite effect on me. I can't get enough of it. To me, nonduality is the most beautiful subject ever. I love reading about it, it's pleasure factor is like coming home to a nice cup of hot chocolate and snuggling down in a comfy chair in front of an open log fire on a freezing cold winters night.

Dontaskme wrote:

Reflex wrote:For me, reading I AM THAT: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was like reading about the life of a potato. It captured my attention at first, but quickly became repetitive and boring --

Advaita literature does tend to say the same thing over and over again...but for me, it's the pure simplicity within the message that I love.

It has the opposite effect on me. I can't get enough of it. To me, nonduality is the most beautiful subject ever. I love reading about it, it's pleasure factor is like coming home to a nice cup of hot chocolate and snuggling down in a comfy chair in front of an open log fire on a freezing cold winters night.

A Course in Consciousness (not to be confused with ACIM) should be of interest, then. (PDF file)

Dontaskme wrote: coming home to a nice cup of hot chocolate and snuggling down in a comfy chair in front of an open log fire on a freezing cold winters night.

So you don't mind stepping into the world of false perceptions when you fancy a cup of cocoa do you? Idiot.

Has anyone actually written the biography of a potato? (And strangely, Harbal and I were just speaking of the intellectual prowess of trees.... Hmmmm......) I think a tree's biography would be vastly more interesting than 'today, I spudded'.

Harbal wrote: So you don't mind stepping into the world of false perceptions when you fancy a cup of cocoa do you? Idiot.

There's just what's happening, but no separate thing is making it happen. If there was a ''me'' making it happen, I'd be able to stop the happening before it happens you dummy......( I don't know how many times I have to tell you that)

Does this assumed ''me'' make the sensation of thirst and hunger or needing a pee and a shit happen??

Think on these things!! .......your more than your limited assumption of yourself.

Your entire perception of yourself as a separate person is an assumption...not real.

ASS U ME

Why make a donkey out of a king?

The one eyed man is king...but if who prefer to be a ass...then what can I do about that??