Philosophy Now Forum

Dam wrote:

We know the idea of separation is imagined simply because it's only a word that separates you from me. What appears to have happened is that the word has created a false division and at the same time is mistakenly believed to be the true state of how things are.

Are you suggesting that the great living machine we call organic life on earth that functions by the integration of separate parts doesn't exist? It only appears to exist because someone invented the word elephant and there it was.

Nick_A wrote:Dam wrote:

We know the idea of separation is imagined simply because it's only a word that separates you from me. What appears to have happened is that the word has created a false division and at the same time is mistakenly believed to be the true state of how things are.

Are you suggesting that the great living machine we call organic life on earth that functions by the integration of separate parts doesn't exist? It only appears to exist because someone invented the word elephant and there it was.

It's not a someone that invented the word elephant, the concept is an idea appearing in existence known in the instant it arises one with the knowing. What that knowing is... is not known by the label known....the knower is a mystery....but then not really a mystery because existence already is the mystery known...and that's what makes it so beautiful.

Sounds daft I know but there is no other way of pointing to this without using words...and language is dual by it's very nature, so explaining this is always going to sound contradictory.

Even if the Elephant is here, there is no thing that can know it is an Elephant until a label is attached to it, it doesn't exist without a name even though it's here. When an object is given a label, it becomes known, it becomes knowledge. The knower of knowledge is the mind /imagination. It's not known what the source of all knowledge about existence comes from so we call it the imagination ..the source of any thing will remain one of the most unsolved mysteries, it cannot be understood objectively using concepts, because it is not a concept, it is that in which all concepts arise. So that empty space in which all things appear is only known in relation to the known appearances showing in it...by association.

So what I'm trying to say is the separate parts don't exist independently apart from the whole of existence, they only appear to exist separately...separation exists because concepts exist, concepts divide. But the division is illusory..and not existence itself. Existence just IS...without a knower or a name...arising as every known name.

The space in which appearances come and go is only known in contrast to the appearances...and vice versa.. Without the contrast nothing is known about existence whatsoever.

Words seem to imply that there is a 'thing' which in itself is 'something', which when seen by one observer (separate from 'the thing') is seen to be 'one thing', and by another observer, 'something else'.

No 'thing', separate from the observer is here observed. No observer is observed here... only observing.

Yes: "Ultimately no sight to see" (Seeing cannot see itself) and "no-thing to be seen"... yet here is seeing: 'seen to be' through the 'colours seen'.

Just to illustrate another way of saying this I will use an 8th Century Buddhist quote...


You may say "existence," but you can't grasp it!
You may say "non-existence" but many things appear!
It is beyond the sky of "existence" and "non-existence"
I know it but cannot point to it!

Dam wrote:

So what I'm trying to say is the separate parts don't exist independently apart from the whole of existence, they only appear to exist separately...separation exists because concepts exist, concepts divide. But the division is illusory..and not existence itself. Existence just IS...without a knower or a name...arising as every known name.

Let me see if I understand you. Would you agree that the relationship between the number one and fractions of one exists. It is true that without "one" fractions wouldn't exist. But that is not to say that fractions don't exist since one exists. You seem to be saying that fractions are an unnecessary illusion.

Plato's tripartite theory of soul describes the human essence as three parts: appetites (lower) spirited (middle) and mind (higher) This is the scale of being of the human essence. The quality of being in which these three are reconciled as ONE is awakened. You seem to be saying that this is all nonsense. Human being itself is an illusion because we are God. So fractions aren't a neceessity for I AM and human being itself isn't real. Is this what you mean?

Nick_A wrote:
Let me see if I understand you. Would you agree that the relationship between the number one and fractions of one exists. It is true that without "one" fractions wouldn't exist. But that is not to say that fractions don't exist since one exists. You seem to be saying that fractions are an unnecessary illusion.

Actually Nick, although separation is an illusion it is necessary for oneness to reveal itself, else how could oneness be known? How could one ever know itself to exist if there was nothing to equate itself to.

Say if you never had a name or any thought or sense about yourself..and you were just existing.. what on earth would you be? and how would you even know you are alive without any knowledge about yourself?

For instance, trees are alive, they exist, we know that they exist because we have knowledge that they do, but the trees themselves don't know they are alive or that they exist as a tree. So the question is who knows the tree - who senses- who thinks about things? .. answer is no one does but the knowledge, and knowledge comes from the mind...but the mind is non local, it's not inside a human body as we believe it to be....we just assume it is....and no one ever questions the whereabouts of the mind inside our body, we just take it for granted that it's there....it's all rather silly in that respect.

So what is this knowing, sensing, thinking reality ...it is a verb world, it is one with itself. It only seems to exist from the realisation that it is purely conceptual, it is imagined to be via thought, senses, or beliefs about it etc... It seems to be, it appears to be here...but no one is making this happen, it's just happening all by itself so it seems.

It appears to be when a thought about it appears in the exact same moment, when thought is present, existence is present.. and the reason it seems to be here all the time is because there are thoughts about it all the time. When there are no thoughts about it..it doesn't exist within the thinker. The times it doesn't exist is when you are dead, or when you are in deep dreamless sleep or under anesthesia. Existence therefore can only be like a dream image of the one who is dreaming / thinking it into existence. And because it's mentally thought about then the existence must be ethereal in nature like a dream. Just because it is a dream doesn't mean it doesn't exist, our nightly dreams exist but as we know they come and go and are of an ethereal nature. Well it's the same with the waking life, that too is an ethereal dream appearing real as senses are sensed, and imaged as seen. The fact that no one is doing this is what makes it all so ultimately free and boundlessly liberating. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride of our temporal dream lives. Waking up from a nightly dream is the realisation the dream wasn't real, while the dreamer is. It's the same with daily life, here in daily life, we awaken to our real formless nature that is dreaming a material dream body in which to live and experience adventures...we become lucid in our own dream.

Nick_A wrote:Plato's tripartite theory of soul describes the human essence as three parts: appetites (lower) spirited (middle) and mind (higher) This is the scale of being of the human essence. The quality of being in which these three are reconciled as ONE is awakened. You seem to be saying that this is all nonsense. Human being itself is an illusion because we are God. So fractions aren't a neceessity for I AM and human being itself isn't real. Is this what you mean?

Humans can know it's humaness but only as a concept. Human cannot know the I Am ness of presence simply because we are already that having the human experience. That always present presence is behind every concept including the concept of being a human.. but we are not human. This is not human, it's an idea about being human. Humans come and go in that I am ness that is always present. The present is all that ever lives. Humans appear and disappear in that aliveness.

I'll finish with a quote from the ''The Gnostic Apostle Thomas''

"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter [the kingdom]."

Nick_A wrote: So fractions aren't a neceessity for I AM and human being itself isn't real. Is this what you mean?

Not really saying that, but pointing to the idea that the human is just an experience of pure beingness being human. Pure beingness is this ever present alive presence.

The human is an experience in this and is therefore not this. This is ever, whereas experiences come and go. When the human is attached to identification of being human instead of being beingness being human then it is lost in mind story, it is bound by it's limitation of being something that is born and dies without realising it's true boundless freedom of it's unborn undying existence...which is nothing being everything.

Beingness doesn't need to be anything to be what it is, what is ..is ..without knowing. To know what it is..it has to be something. But the something is not what it is, it is an appearance in it.

One of the Upanishads, sacred texts in the Hindu system, puts it this way: "As a man when in the embrace of a well-loved woman knows nothing, either within or without, so does that man, when in the embrace of the intelligent self, know nothing within or without."

"The inside I have made outside, and the outside [inside], and thy whole fullness has been fulfilled in me."

The above quote is pointing to the stateless state, it is the state of Pure Beingness aka Aware Awakeness. THE AWAKENED ONE.


"Words don't convey it except feebly; we are aware of having been in communication with infinitude and we know that no finite form we can give can convey it. . . . "

Dam wrote: So what is this knowing, sensing, thinking reality ...it is a verb world, it is one with itself. It only seems to exist from the realisation that it is purely conceptual, it is imagined to be via thought, senses, or beliefs about it etc... It seems to be, it appears to be here...but no one is making this happen, it's just happening all by itself so it seems.

This is where we differ. You seem to be suggesting that the universe would not exist without my imagining it. I believe the Great Chain of Being connecting relative qualities of being is the essential structure of our universe

"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter [the kingdom]."

But how is this done? It isn’t done through imagination but rather the conscious perception of a lower level of reality by a higher in which for example male and female are one. That is the great danger of imagination. It takes the place of conscious perception taking away the conscious potential for Man. Be careful.

Dam wrote: So what is this knowing, sensing, thinking reality ...it is a verb world, it is one with itself. It only seems to exist from the realisation that it is purely conceptual, it is imagined to be via thought, senses, or beliefs about it etc... It seems to be, it appears to be here...but no one is making this happen, it's just happening all by itself so it seems.

Nick_A wrote:This is where we differ. You seem to be suggesting that the universe would not exist without my imagining it. I believe the Great Chain of Being connecting relative qualities of being is the essential structure of our universe

Existence is without doubt or error.

It's Self knowing, but that knowing is not human...a human is the known. The human is a thought known arising in Self which is all knowing. Self is One ....and that one is being what ever it happens to express itself as. I don't believe humans have a special place in the universe over and above any other creature of phenomena- I don't believe man has a conscious potential because I don't believe man is conscious, human is a thing thought, and no thing is conscious. Consciousness is no thing arising as all things known. I believe only consciousness is conscious. No thought of me, or you, or I am a human and that is a cat is conscious, rather, consciousness are those thoughts and beliefs are this unknowing known mind of God.

I intuit the human thought in the mind of God are more highly evolved aspects of the mind of God than of other creatures in that they have a much bigger brain and have evolved self awareness. But that has been the problem with the human dynamic. Because they have falsely taken on a sense of separate self apart from the mind of God. But this is part of the dynamic of freedom to be. In that thoughts appear to take on a life of their own. Thoughts are free to be what ever they appear as.

When the human becomes identified with the thought as who it is - it seemingly appears as if it is a separate being apart from the rest of life and believes it lives inside a body and that the rest of life is outside of it's body. All these thoughts and beliefs are not anything except ideas, they have no actual existence apart from the mind of God. It is only ever God having the thought I am a human separate from myself. Human who is identified with separate self don't seem to see that they are not a human but are the human thought in the one mind of God.

A cat is not a cat, it is the thought of a cat in the mind of God. Same goes for every thing else in existence. No one has seen the mind of God, no one has seen the thoughts in the mind of God, no one has seen a human or a cat, these are conceptual ideas in the mind of God. No one has seen God because only God sees. Only God is.

What is God...? can that question ever be answered by a thought? ...thoughts come and go. God does not....That which is eternally present is here now as awareness. Thoughts about what awareness is - is just more thought. No one is thinking - there is only thinking appearing and disappearing in God awareness.

Awareness of thinking is a movement within itself and are one and the same appearing as two. Awareness without thought is still Awareness...(pure stillness)

Awareness can't see or know itself.. it can only know and see itself in what's appearing and disappearing in it.

I know you don't agree with this, but God is dreaming existence. Things are characters in the dream of God which is not the character but the awareness in which the characters arise and fall... appearing to be the characters. God is just another word for Awareness. When Awareness is aware it is dreaming, existence is known. There is no other explanation...imo

All the above are opinions and ideas conjured by the one I believe, imagine myself to be .. and I have no idea if they are right or wrong, and neither do I care, for it is just how this one here is visioning this reality...and that's all I can do is imagine it because I have no idea what it really is - if in fact it is anything at all.

Dam wrote: "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter [the kingdom]."

Nick_A wrote:But how is this done? It isn’t done through imagination but rather the conscious perception of a lower level of reality by a higher in which for example male and female are one. That is the great danger of imagination. It takes the place of conscious perception taking away the conscious potential for Man. Be careful.

But the point is...who is the perceiver...can that one be known and by whom?

God awareness is consciously dreaming it is a wo/man ..it is lucid within the dream where s/he awakens from the dream of twoness to it's original formless nature unconscious oneness. The sleeping God is the conscious character in the dream..when the conscious character awakens it knows itself as the unconscious dreamer God. Lucidity is the realisation that there is only one self and love is the only miracle there is. God's love is your love. Your love is Gods love. Lucidity is dawning in the knowledge that when you can see yourself in someone else and someone else in yourself are both one in God.

Dam wrote:

I know you don't agree with this, but God is dreaming existence. Things are characters in the dream of God which is not the character but the awareness in which the characters arise and fall... appearing to be the characters. God is just another word for Awareness. When Awareness is aware it is dreaming, existence is known. There is no other explanation...imo

All our differences circle around what you wrote. Explain to me why pure consciousness within which everything resides in its essence as forms, has the need to dream? Is it boredom, loneliness or anything else. As I see it there is no reason for God to dream other than escapism which makes God a creature within creation. Creation is one thing while dreaming is another. What am I missing?

Nick_A wrote:Dam wrote:

I know you don't agree with this, but God is dreaming existence. Things are characters in the dream of God which is not the character but the awareness in which the characters arise and fall... appearing to be the characters. God is just another word for Awareness. When Awareness is aware it is dreaming, existence is known. There is no other explanation...imo

All our differences circle around what you wrote. Explain to me why pure consciousness within which everything resides in its essence as forms, has the need to dream? Is it boredom, loneliness or anything else. As I see it there is no reason for God to dream other than escapism which makes God a creature within creation. Creation is one thing while dreaming is another. What am I missing?

Who is going to know why things appear and from where or why only that they do, it's a happening, and no thing ever started it or can stop it. It's a total mystery why it's happening.

But it's not because it's bored because that's just an idea arising in this ever present silent still awareness...this has no concept of boredom, that's only in the appearance, it's not lonely either, for same reason it would have no concept of loneliness, all these are known conceptual ideas that arises within it. Anything that arises in it is not real, only that in which they arise is real and that is the unmoving unborn eternal silent witness aka awareness. And even that is not real, it only appears to be real from the perspective of the character in it.

God is awareness, God is the perceiver... seeing and perceiving every experience as they appear in awareness. Everything is appearing and disappearing in God's awareness. Behind every appearance and disappearance is God's awareness silently present at all times watching and knowing every thought feeling, sensation and every experience as it arises. The awareness that is aware of every experience as it appears never changes while what arises in it does. The individual person is an appearance, an experience of the one awareness ..that then thinks it is the one who is aware, it is not, rather it is that which is aware of the appearance ... experiencing itself as a person.

We don't know what awareness is so we call it God. We know we are awareness, simply because we don't know what it is, so we identify with the character as who we are instead, but the character is only a temporal appearance... our true self is the non changing, eternal ever present awareness in which the temporal experiences arise.

Life is not exactly a dream per-se because daily life is not like the dream state of a nightly dream. But, daily life is compared to a dream in that live events and experiences are appearing and disappearing in nothing, and although things are changing all the time, nothing ever changes. It only appears that time is passing and stuff is being born and dying. This is the dream aspect of reality, aka the duality of space and time in which things appear from nothing, so without the nothing, there could not be something, and so all this happening is happening in that which does not age, is not born, does not die, is not an experience and is not in time or space, it is beyond all that and is actually behind every experience and appearance as the silent witness called awareness, which is also called God. And everything is embraced by God at all times. This is real love. God is closer than your own skin and the feeling of separation is why we suffer lack. When we awaken to God Self we are home in the arms of the beloved, and we realise we had never left that state of pure love...living here and now forever...but only as a dream, a live living dream. Only the dream is known to exist via the experience. That in which the dream appears cannot be an experience for it is oneness.

That's why life is compared to a dream, because nothing is happening, it only appears to happen. Who sees the images in a nightly dream, who feels the sensations, emotions or the terror in a nightly dream, when eyes are closed and all is apparently darkness?

Well we can pose that same question to daily life, who is seeing, perceiving, being, experiencing, feeling, sensing, talking, ~?

There is without doubt seeing, perceiving, experiencing, being, but people are not doing this, they are those experiences arising in this awareness..right now.. there is no way the experience of a person can look at the looker aka awareness,the Self, we are that Self... Self is not a thing, and yet every thing arises in it. . .everything is Self.



I'll close with a quote from Sri Ramana Maharshi:

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.''

Dam wrote: Who is going to know why things appear and from where or why only that they do, it's a happening, and no thing ever started it or can stop it. It's a total mystery why it's happening.

But it's not because it's bored because that's just an idea arising in this ever present silent still awareness...this has no concept of boredom, that's only in the appearance, it's not lonely either, for same reason it would have no concept of loneliness, all these are known conceptual ideas that arises within it. Anything that arises in it is not real, only that in which they arise is real and that is the unmoving unborn eternal silent witness aka awareness. And even that is not real, it only appears to be real from the perspective of the character in it.

If this were true, existence including Man would have no objective meaning or purpose but is the dreaming of a quality of consciousness which has the ungodly need to abandon consciousness in order to dream. As I’ve said, I believe this to be a dangerous dream that promotes escapism and getting lost in la la land rather than awakening to the reality of the human condition in relation to universal meaning and purpose. Are you familiar with Plato’s Chariot allegory? If you are, we are the dark horse which needs conscious healing rather than imagining itself a god.

Walker wrote:You might want to think on that. Avoidance is an aspect of suffering (samsara).

Fair enough, he provided a philosophy so one ends suffering if one follows it. Or is the Eightfold path and Four noble truths not such a thing?

A

rising wrote: Walker wrote: You might want to think on that. Avoidance is an aspect of suffering (samsara).
Fair enough, he provided a philosophy so one ends suffering if one follows it. Or is the Eightfold path and Four noble truths not such a thing?

Buddhism initiating with its source, not Western Buddhism, is not avoidance but rather intentional experience. Big difference.

Nick_A wrote:
If this were true, existence including Man would have no objective meaning or purpose but is the dreaming of a quality of consciousness which has the ungodly need to abandon consciousness in order to dream. As I’ve said, I believe this to be a dangerous dream that promotes escapism and getting lost in la la land rather than awakening to the reality of the human condition in relation to universal meaning and purpose. Are you familiar with Plato’s Chariot allegory? If you are, we are the dark horse which needs conscious healing rather than imagining itself a god.

No thing is imagining. Imagination is all things.

The conscious healing comes when there is an awakening from the dark to the light ..or from the dream of separate self to the one whole self. God is already this timeless perfect and abundant oneness aka life..and knows it... God is the unconscious one also living as two in order to know and experience itself as conscious life. Life and death are the same state...with the exception of their appearance, they differ in appearance but are essentially the same one being the other...and vice versa, it cut's both ways, one size fits all so to speak.

The separate self which is God's extension of itself is in darkness and has to awaken to the light to become fully whole and healed. God never worried or tried to rescue and fix the dark side of itself because it already knows it's real side which is love beauty and light...it already knows it's extended self is the only place it can experience itself, and that place is in the dream world of space time duality... and because God is dreaming itself into existence it already knows every dream character very intimately and knows they would all eventually awaken from the dream of separation and return to the light of itself... because no character has ever left the light side or have ever been separated from the arms of the beloved one God. Everything is God. Everything is the manifestation of the one light. No harm can ever come to God, except in a dream. But on awakening from the dream God knows nothing ever happened to God and that God always is the only one ever left standing while every thing else comes and goes, including evil, fear, lack, pain, suffering, every appearance of darkness will eventually dissolve back into the arms of the one loving God. God is love, and that love is the only real love, that love takes the weight of every dark thing and carries that sin in an unto itself alone because God is pure love who unconditionally allows every aspect of it's one same self to manifest knowing the mighty position it and only it holds can never be taken by another. So God always lives to see another day. God lives to dream another dream and on and on it goes expressing itself as black or white infinitely for all eternity.

God is light and there is only light. And so God does not despair or intervene at the condition it's unconditional worldly life is in. God knows all characters can return to the truth at any time..because lies cannot live in truth, just as darkness can not live in light. A human being will always turn to the light, all living things turn to the light because light is the only sustenance that every living thing is dependant on and necessary for life to be possible. Humans will either awaken before they physically die or awaken on their death bed. The return to light source is inevitable for every life form. Nothing can survive it's own death. Humans are shadows of the light, and shadows have to die in order for light to shine as one...if the shadow refuses to die it will ever eclipse itself and never come to the light of it's real self shining one. Awakening is dying to live.

There is no one living life, it lives itself. That's the perfection and beauty of it. It's all Love, which is another word for God.


God already knows beauty and love, and that everything is it...so doesn't intercept when an experience of ugliness, evil and corruption arises. God knows choice will always be drawn to light, to beauty and love and will always turn away from darkness. God knows this and is why free will is given to life to experience itself as it chooses...because it's all oneness experiencing itself as it so chooses which is in fact a choiceless choice.

Nick_A wrote: Buddhism initiating with its source, not Western Buddhism, is not avoidance but rather intentional experience. Big difference.

Intentional action is my thought. But I agree that 'Western' Buddhism isn't, as it's far to much hard work for them.