Moksha

You are the sky. You created the clouds as a game, but the clouds are not you. They are the sock puppet that you drape over your hand, which you occasionally pull off to surprise yourself.

Vishna to Arjuna.

What does your intuition tell you? Is it possible to be awake, without needing to meditate or take drugs in order to stay awake?

@PurpleTree Yes You are the cause of you, but You are not your thoughts.

Never trust a guru that never smiles Never trust a guru that smiles too much

Thoughts happen to us. When you wake up, you can observe them from a distance, even play with them, but you realize you aren't them.

Peekaboo

Consciousness is its own purpose. It is the dharma of dharmas. It expresses itself through creation. Consciousness manifests mini-dharmas to enjoy, like shadow puppets on a battlefield, delighting in playing peekaboo with itself. Ultimately, there is only Consciousness itself, manifesting itself in a multitude of forms, for eternity.

@Thought Art There is no failure. People wake up when Consciousness decides for them to wake up. "Enlightenment" is nothing more than Consciousness realizing itself. It's a game, not an achievement.

There is only one cause: You. Causation is just another word for creation. Creation is just another word for play.

I like that

Bingo The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. It is beyond our ability to name it. Fortunately, we don't need to name it; we just need to realize it.

That is the Mystery. How can Tat be beyond time and space, and still suffuse the world of dream with its essence? It is both Brahman and Atman. How can Consciousness be outside of time, and yet manifest within time, progressively realizing itself through enlightenment? Our human mind tends to think in dualities: existence vs. nonexistence; 1 vs. 0; change vs. changeless; illusion vs. reality. We can't understand Tat, the ultimate non-duality; we can only directly experience and point to it. Some of my favorite pointers:

My mind doesn't get it at all. It never will. Fortunately I don't need my mind to get Tat

@ZeroInfinity Even if You are not here right now, You still are. Even when You are here, you are still unique and worth celebrating. You did create you for a reason after all

I guess I'm confused. How do you have a party without a person?

The ancient Eastern sages practiced spiritual science. The literal meaning of brahmavidya is "supreme science". It is the discipline of focusing intently and systematically on the contents of consciousness, and discarding everything impermanent as ultimately unreal. Their principle was neti, neti atma: "this is not the self; that is not the self." They peeled away identity, layer by layer, and found at the core the one irreducible reality: Consciousness itself. This meets scientific standards, with one crucial exception. It cannot be externally observed and replicated. It can only be directly experienced.

Of course first-person consciousness is possible. I'm asking for logical evidence that no-person consciousness is possible. If you're only asserting that consciousness exists when people exist, well duh

He's a very smart guy, but his logic is a little flawed. He left physicality because it couldn't explain the evolutionary selection of consciousness, but he doesn't recognize that evolution could select for intelligence, which in turn produces consciousness, rather than selecting for consciousness itself. He does recognize that the physicalists can't definitively explain why consciousness occurs in the first place. The epiphenomenalists have explanations for that though. Like any good scientist, he refuses to indoctrinate his own, or any other, scientific theory. That is the beginning of wisdom. Unfortunately, it is also the end of wisdom, until he is willing to validate direct experience.

Damn you for luring me back onto the hamster wheel, but one more turn.

Loved it, especially his admission that he doesn't believe in any theories, and the recognition of the possibility of an ultimate reality that is beyond human comprehension.

Ajata is not created (0), and infuses all of its creations with its essence (1).

@Mikael89 We can assume unconditional consciousness, and then extrapolate that consciousness is possible outside of birth, but the assumption itself is unprovable. Any logical conclusions derived from it are similarly unprovable. Here's where I hop off the hamster wheel It's a fun game, but let's cut to the chase. Humans have been running the rational wheel for millenia. The game is ultimately constrained to its own cage. It is impossible to know anything outside of the game itself, when you only play by the rules of the game. We have realized the limitations of human rationality: Gödel's incompleteness theorems What if ultimate reality cannot be constrained by logic? What if it is literally beyond human comprehension? How can ultimate reality logically exist and not exist in the same moment? The sages called it a Mystery for a reason. Maybe Consciousness would put it this way. Let's call it "C" since we're all friends. C points at the hamster: The human mind C points at the wheel: The game of logic C points at the cage: Relative reality C points outside the cage: Ultimate reality C opens the cage: Enlightenment

You can thrive in the world of form without being identified by the world of form. You are both human and being. You are the only you that there ever will be. So make the most of it. Stay connected to being while engaging in doing. Your choices will be more creative, your actions will be higher quality, and your results will be more refined. Source is the salt that brings out the goodness in everything

Well, see my original post. Our thoughts are confirmed within the spacetime cosmos. But there is a deeper dimension underlying spacetime that is not bound by spacetime