winterknight

Follow the path and you will find that truth that is beyond words. No, "beyond nature" is itself a categorical description.

Yes, there is truth, but it is not opposed to non-truth; non-truth is delusion, actually. No, it is not supernatural. Yes, it is a pointer to something beyond experience. Anyway, if you're at peace, I'm happy for you.

Sorry for not responding to this earlier. Great, sounds like huge progress. Is this understanding peaceful? If so, stay in that peace, and if you find yourself out of it, go back, as many times as needed. Well in the end it cannot be said to have sprung at all...

The texts are referring to reincarnation of the subtle and causal bodies -- that is, the mind and its accumulated memories and karmas -- into another biological form -- or perhaps, if we're talking about heavens and hells, just the "subtle body" without normal biological limitations. Or biology itself may vary from plane to plane of existence. I know of the Book of the Dead, but not familiar.

Understanding can only go so far. So far as Brahman can be understood, I understand it. But the seeker must realize that the Truth goes beyond intellectual understanding. If the Buddhist no-thingness can be fully understood and explained, then it is merely an object. Frankly I doubt that. Technically Brahman is beyond being experienced as well, experience being a category, and Brahman being beyond categories. And Brahman is also not a name, merely a pointer. These things can all be only comprehended when the veils have been cleared from the mind...

It is beyond the categories of change and changelessness, indeed beyond words and mind. Though it may sometimes be called changeless, that is again merely a pointer for seekers. Are you going to keep asking me asking these sorts of questions? Why not just apply what I've said here to all those kinds of questions?

No more than a finger pointing to the moon comes close to the moon.

Absolute is just a pointer for seekers, not an accurate description. As I've already said, it's technically beyond any such terms.

It is beyond presence and absence.

Is their mind getting more peaceful? Is their desire for liberation intensifying? That's the right direction, basically.

It cannot be said to be "always there" because that is a descriptor. It is beyond descriptors. It cannot be accurately described.

Brahman is beyond being and non-being. No, truth goes beyond the mind. 1. You have already quit the game. So simply, completely surrender. Give up all desires, expectations, and thoughts, and just be. Do not resist anything that happens, not in the world or in your mind. Just be. And you're instantly un-bound. 2. I don't know. From the standpoint of reincarnation theory, yes, you are certainly reborn. 3. Mental demons, perhaps. All thoughts are self-referential in some way. It is not self-referentiality that is the problem, but whether the Self is veiled or not. And for what purpose would you want to know whether someone is enlightened or not? You can't know, because enlightenment doesn't really exist. All you can do, if one was evaluating a teacher, is to look at things like whether the person seems to have coherent words and actions, understands and is able to respond to questions, makes sense in their ideas, projects peace and patience, etc.

I don't know. And why care about enlightenment? Because it is the answer to the deep-seated question about the meaning of things, and for the deep-seated desire for fulfillment that we just can't seem to get from chasing people and things in the world. But if that doesn't attract you, or if you don't believe that it can do those things -- no need to pursue it...

To "get" to enlightenment you will have already had to deal with many of them. As for the rest, enlightenment doesn't have any one specific effect. It plays out differently in different minds. It will lead to a gradual burning out of addiction & distraction... but about how precisely that works no easy generalization can be made.

Enlightenment is not a state. It does not come and go. I criticize and judge sometimes. As far as how to deal with the rest, it's about aligning your actions with your desires. That happens by discovering what your real feelings are, and that takes a combination of experimentation, metaphorization, and (if you can, I highly recommend) psychoanalytic therapy.

I have general recommendations here and here and in my book. Here are instructions on self-inquiry, suggestions for seekers to get psychoanalytic therapy, and instructions on what I call metaphorization here and here. More stuff on my website generally.

Well, they've examined the evidence of decades of behavioral experiments and there are many things that people do that don't give them pleasure, and can only be explained if there are other motivations at work -- motivations for power or for truth, for example, completely independent of whether obtaining those things gives pleasure.

The closest to the truth would be a mental silence in which there is no question of whether there is seeing or what is seen -- of whether it is or it isn't, or if the things are, or if they are, what they are, or whether the brain sees them or not, or whether they are interconnected or not... Those questions, even if they arose, would not seem to have arisen. They themselves would not even be recognized as questions. The closest to the truth is that what ordinary beings consider day the enlightened one considers night, and vice-versa, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita (2.69). By analogy, let me mention a story from the Yoga Vasistha that Ramana Maharshi narrates as follows: The devotee asked once again, “What about those who are in complete awareness (sahaja samadhi)?” Bhagavan replied saying, “It is just because of such questions that Vasishta narrated the story of the ‘Sage and the Hunter’ to Rama to illustrate the fourth or turiya state. In a forest, once a great Muni sat in the lotus posture (padmasana) with his eyes open, but in deep trance. A hunter hit a deer with an arrow, but the deer escaped and ran in front of the Muni into the bush nearby and hid itself. The hunter came in hot pursuit of the deer and not seeing it asked the Muni where it had gone. ‘I do not know, my friend,’ said the Muni. The hunter said, ‘Sir, it ran right in front of you and you had your eyes wide open. How could you have not seen it?’ Finding that he would not leave him in peace unless a proper reply was given, the Muni said, ‘My dear man, we are submerged in the Self; we are always in the Fourth State. We do not have the waking or dream or deep sleep states. Everything is alike to us. These three states are the signs of the ego and we have no ego. Egoism is itself the mind and it is that which is responsible for all the deeds done in this world. That ego (ahankara) left us long ago. Hence it does not matter whether we keep our eyes closed or open; we are not conscious of what is happening around us. That being so, how can I tell you about your deer?” The hunter thought that it was all sheer nonsense and went his way.

Pretty much. One implies a "thing." Most people can't just help thinking along those lines -- some big blob of stuff. It's not unhelpful early in the Search to think that way, but it's a hindrance later. I personally don't love "Everything" because it suggests that there are things -- and there is the whole collection of them, when in fact the truth is more like the negation of all of those things. Brahman is really closer to No-thing than Everything. But you're right, it probably helps some people. What matters is tailoring the prescription to the person. Different temperaments respond well to different language. Every person is a puzzle that they must solve themselves.

Yup. Indeed Ramana's ultimate instruction for mature, ripe minds has always been: just be.

Well as I indicated earlier, #1 is the closest in words to the truth. For #2 and #3: all the concepts of the "One" are useful for a certain level of understanding but ultimately dangerous. There's a reason it's called "advaita" -- "not two." #3 and #4 are reasonably fine levels of understanding for most seekers -- they can relate to it, and it motivates them. #5 might help a few people, but is really neither here nor there.

By the strictest nonduality standards, nothing can be said at all, really, not even this sentence (so this is already one step down from that strictest standard). And thus nothing can be said of anything, either -- neither existence nor non-existence can be attributed, and no objects can be named. Not even the idea of "object" can be admitted.

@stevegan928 Actually top motivational psychologists have examined the issue and concluded that there is in fact strong evidence for a truth drive distinct from drives for power and pleasure.

Well it's not quite either. Certainly the idea of a radio wave is just a model, but that doesn't mean that only what you experienced exists. Actually a) technically even what you experienced cannot be said to exist if you go by strict nonduality. So if that doesn't exist then neither is there any question of what underlies it. But b) if you do want to say that the experience of the TV turning on does exist, then certainly there is something underlying that experience and which causes it -- that is, the set of universal laws, or else you can call it God's will (my preference). At best we can only make models of this. Thanks. Yeah, I know some people like this model, but not me. There is a single liberation (and not even that!). The mind may "change" after that, but those are not "deeper stages of enlightenment." Those are just the various bindings and tendencies of the mind altering over time. And really, enlightenment is the recognition that the mind itself simply cannot be said to exist.

Yup, sounds about right... The end of all bliss/kundalini/chakra work is liberation. That's the whole point of liberation: it's the whole pot of honey at the end of the rainbow. God consciousness, unity consciousness -- nothing but pointers to liberation (which of course is already so much what is already the case that it cannot even be said to exist...).