Strannik

There are only to ways to know available for us: to know by direct experience (including mystical) and to know by making concepts. Direct experience directly experiences itself (=experientially knows itself), that becomes obvious in the mystical experience. This is the same as saying that Consciousness (=direct conscious experience) directly knows itself (= experiences itself directly). Infact, any conscious experience is a direct experience of itself, because any qualia that are directly experienced are nothing other than the conscious experience itself (=inseparable from Consciousness). In other words, any phenomena or qualia are non-dual from the conscious experience itself. It is impossible to separate the qualia from the direct conscious experience of them, this becomes obvious and clear in mystical experience. So, what we experientially know in the mystical experience is an indivisible "blob" of the given wholeness of experience where nothing can be separated. It does not matter if it is formless mystical experience, or mystical experience with forms/qualia, that makes no difference.

If we don't know what kind of reality exists beyond experience, then we also don't know what can limit the experience. But the fact that we do not know it does not necessarily mean that it does not exist. I'm repeating again an analogy. Suppose that some creatures exist in 2D space, so all they can possibly experience is the 2D space. For them their experience within 2D is unlimited in 2-dimensions, they can move anywhere within 2D and find no boundaries. But they simply have no concept and no way to experience anything beyond that 2D. But in reality that 2D plain is contained within a 3D space and so it is indeed unlimited in its 2D, but still limited in 3D by its own surface. The takeaway is that if some reality is unlimited within its own domain, that does not necessarily mean that nothing can exist beyond its domain.

I had it, or actually having it right now, so what? Yes, the wholeness of conscious experience is by itself nondual, and that becomes obvious in a mystical experience. But how do you or I know it there is anything existing beyond that non-dual mystical experience? How do we prove that there is nothing beyond it? It is simply impossible, therefore we cannot in principle rule out a possibility that there may be some other kind of reality existing beyond experience.

All you actually know is only your direct conscious experience. What you call "consciousness" which has "direct experience" within itself is only your mind-created concept. There is no way to experientially know anything beyond direct conscious experience.

Nope, I'm repeating again: "What we actually know in our direct conscious experience is only a flow of qualia/phenomena present here and now inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them."? We label this bare fact with the word "Consciousness". So, here "Consciousness" is a linguistic label pointing to the experiential fact of the presence of a direct conscious experience here and now. Experience is not a "thing".

no, everything I'm stating is a contingent truth, except for the bare given experiential fact of: "What we actually know in our direct conscious experience is only a flow of qualia/phenomena present here and now inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them."? We label this bare fact with the word "Consciousness". Let's take an example with the truth of "Infinite Absolute Consciousness". We all know that Consciousness is present here and now, we simply all directly experience ourselves as Consciousness. It is possible that it is indeed the bottom of reality and the absolute truth. It is also possible that there is a reality beyond Consciousness. Now, how would Consciousness ever know if there is anything beyond it, or if there is nothing beyond it? There is no way for Consciousness to go "out of itself" to directly check and experientially know if there is anything beyond it. This means that for Consciousness the possibility of anything existing or non-existing beyond Consciousness will FOREVER remain unresolvable and unknown. There may exist a reality beyond Consciousness, or there may not, and there is no way for Consciousness to know it for certain. Therefore, any statement regarding the existence of reality beyond Consciousness can only be an unverifiable and unfalcifiable belief: "Consciousness is all there is" is a belief, "there is a reality beyond Consciousness" (such as matter, or some "Neutral Prime" as per neutral monism ontology or else) is also a belief. So now we have two options. One is to religiously stick with one of these beliefs. The other one is to remain agnostic and open to any possibility. The first option would be locking ourselves into a specific religion or philosophy by taking it as an absolute truth. The second one is freedom and liberation from clinging to any absolute beliefs. The funny thing is that it can actually be true in the absolute sense that "Consciousness is all there is". Or it can also be absolutely true that "there is a reality beyond Consciousness". So, I'm not denying that the absolute truth may exist. I'm only saying that there is no way for Consciousness to know what this "absolute Truth" is, because Consciousness is forever imprisoned within its own boundless limits and cannot ever know in principle if there is anything or nothing existing beyond itself.

Exactly, it is just a survival mechanism

If a feeling of rejection naturally arises, why not accept it since awareness equally accepts everything, including rejection? And if a state of ignorance or delusion exists or arises, why not accept it since awareness equally accepts everything, including any deluded and ignorant states. So then, why knowledge is any better than ignorance from the absolute perspective? And if it’s not better in any way, then who cares about actualization and what is all this fuss about actualization and realization?

OK, keep dreaming in your religion of "Infinite Absolute Consciousness", there is nothing wrong with that. At least it's better than the mainstream materialism. But those who are ready will break beyond that. I feel pity for spiritual teachers, they usually become stuck in their teachings because they invested so much in them that it becomes almost impossible to publicly admit that they were wrong and to continue growing further beyond their limited beliefs and teachings. And such stagnation becomes even worse when it is fueled by narcissism and arrogance hiding in their blind spot, this makes them totally unable to be honest to themselves and to admit at least to themselves that they might be wrong.

what if nothing we can know is absolutely true other than a simple and bare given experiential fact of: "What we actually know in our direct conscious experience is only a flow of qualia/phenomena present here and now inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them."? Anything we can know can still be true in a relative, contingent or practical sense. Some ideas can still be more useful or practical than others. In that sense the idea of "Absolute Infinite Consciousness" may be practically useful for many people in helping them to dismantle their previous belief system of naive realism. Again, I understand that what I'm saying here may be hard to swallow for many people, but there is no obligation. There is actually nothing wrong with having beliefs in some absolute truths, that's what the vast majority of people do anyway, and there is nothing we can do about that. But if anyone wonders what the "Enlightenment" actually is (at least in the Buddhist sense), then having beliefs in some absolute truths unconsciously hidden in one's blind spot is just not that.

I know, I've done this before. Sure, you can apply this line of reasoning and arrive at a logical conclusion that there are no actual personal boundaries and therefore there is only one "Cosmic Consciousness" in which all our conscious experiences arise. Yet, those would only be concepts based on logic and reason. But what makes you think that reason and logic can lead you to the Absolute Truth? We humans developed our logic and reason as practical cognitive tools based on the observations of correlations in the flow of our conscious phenomena. What makes us think that the same logic and reason applies to the reality as a whole on its very fundamental level (if there even is such level)? Also, mathematicians found that there is a countless variety of logics in addition to the classical Aristotelian one, some of them being quite bizarre. How do we know which one actually applies to the "Ultimate Reality" (if there even is one)? Logic and reason are only sets of abstract ideas, they turn out to be practically useful in describing what reality/nature does and how it behaves, but there is no reason to believe that it can be applicable to what reality actually is.

sure, of course time is a concept, as well as any "being" or "infinity". The thing is, people are unconsciously trying to find and hold on to something firm, something existing in the absolute sense. If it is not "human me", then find it in the "I", or "being", or "God", or "Absolute Truth", or "Formless suchness", or "Formless Awareness", or "Infinity", you name it. Of course, they try to ground it in their spiritual experience in order to have experiential certainty in addition to just having a belief. It is really scary to let go of such "absoluteness" which we could hold on to and to experience reality as a bare Zen of "THIS", as it actually is present here and now in our direct experience: an ultimately uncertain bare flow of qualia/phenomena where there is nothing to hold on to, where nothing absolute, fundamental or ultimately true can be found.

OK, let's go back. Here is how I tried to describe "THIS" in one of the posts (again, this description is only a pointer): "What we actually know in our direct conscious experience is only a flow of qualia inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them." So, "THIS" is not a state necessarily absent of any forms, labels or ideas. The forms (sensations, feelings, imaginations, thoughts that include labels, beliefs, ideas etc) may or may not be present, and it does not really matter whether they are present or not. So, any our state, including your state right now looking at the computer, is actually already "THIS". The difference of the "enlightened" way of experiencing THIS vs. non-enlightened way is that in the non-enlightened way we unconsciously interpret THIS "through a lens" of a certain layer of beliefs. For example, a common human interprets it through the belief that he is a "perceiver-self in the center of the world looking at the external material world of separate objects and subjects" etc. This interpretation is so persistent that people actually "see" and "feel" themselves and those objects in the "world out there" as absolutely real. A more spiritually advanced person may interpret it through a different belief that all that is happening appears in the "Absolute Formless Consciousness" (aka "God"), in the "Absolute I" that is aware of all fleeting phenomena. But that is just another interpretational layer. But the funny thing is: all these interpretational layers and beliefs are simply part of THIS, of the experiential "flow of qualia inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them". All these interpretation layers, beliefs, labels, ideas, no matter how good or bad, true of false they are, are all automatically included in "THIS", but none of these beliefs are true or false in any absolute sense. So, there is in fact the "I" or "Truth" or "a computer" as an idea, as a phenomenon of experience included in the flow of THIS. And as phenomena they are all "real" in a sense that we actually experience them as thought-forms. But when we say that there is no "I" or "Truth", it really means that there is no independent reality of "I" or "Truth" other than simply them being just the content of those thought-forms. As the Buddhists would say, they are "empty" of independent existence (empty of existence as some actual entities like "I", "God" or "a computer" other than just our thought-forms about them). Now, you can go rather far in your spiritual practice and experience a state absent of any forms. It is actually quite useful and helps to realize that all our beliefs and ideas are only thought-forms that may be removed from THIS, as well as added to THIS. When I practiced dream yoga, I once had an experience of lucid deep sleep where there was actually nothing at all, not even any sense of any "I", but there was still conscious experiencing of this nothingness (absent of any conceptual understanding of it). It was quite revealing, but that is not what the Enlightenment is, it's just a useful experience that may (or may not) help on the way. If you never had such experience, don't worry, it's not a prerequisite.

"God" typically implies "Absolute Truth", which is already an overload, a pointer to a layer of belief. In spiritual practice what is practically important is using precise pointers to where a person should continue enquiring. If a pointer is confusing or ambiguous, that can easily be an impediment for people. That's how most people in common religions get stuck in their beliefs. If you can figure out that "God" is actually pointing to just "THIS", then good for you, but most people are not so lucky. As I said, part of the realization of "THIS" is that nothing can be "absolutely true" other than a bare experiential fact of a simple aware presence of "THIS" here and now, not even a belief that there is nothing else other than "THIS". That is quite far from a common meaning of the word "God" as far as I now. Again, looking at the example of Buddhism, there is a practical reason why the Buddhists avoid using the word "God", not exactly because they are atheists, but because they know that the label "God" is too imprecise, confusing and overloaded with a baggage of wild beliefs to be used as a good pointer in spiritual practice.

There is nothing wrong with making and using labels, I'm not saying that we need to be stripped of any labels. In the Enlightened state any ideas or labels can be present (or absent), including the ideas of "I", "self", "Self", "Absolute", "Infinity" etc. There is just a clear realization that these are simply labels, contingent ideas, and none of them are true or false in any absolute sense. So, what needs to be "stripped" is the belief that any idea or state or realization can be "ultimately true". Or, more precisely speaking, realizing that the "belief that an idea or state or realization is "ultimately true"" is itself just another belief, just another idea that can never be proven to be "ultimately and absolutely true" (including the state of realizing just "THIS"). Well, yeah, you can label "THIS" with anything you want, it's just a word game after all, but it seems to me that when it is overloaded with labels like "l", "God", "fundamental", "Infinite", "Absolute Truth" and stuff like that which Leo loves to do, it really confuses people and confuses the matter by making associations with meanings that have nothing to do with "THIS". Why not then call it a "flying spaghetti monster"?

I mean, there is nothing wrong with getting stuck in this "I am the Absolute Truth" state. It is definitely much more advanced compared to an ordinary state of a confused and suffering human who identifies themselves with human mind and body and believes in the reality of the external material world. It may be good enough for you, you already broke free from human psychological suffering, and that can be enough from the pragmatic perspective. But if you are really on the quest of the inquiry into the reality, then there is no reason to stop here. And it is understandable that the realization that "there is actually no "I", no "Truth", no "fundamental", no "Absolute" and no "Ultimate" (apart from just fleeting ideas about them), there is only "this" - your direct conscious experience present and awared here and now" - can be very disorienting, scary and uncomfortable, just like it was disorienting and scary when we let go of the idea of our little human separate self. So, that quest is not for lighthearted, and there is no obligation to go that way anyway, you can perfectly keep blissing out in the "I am the Absolute Truth" state. It's just that if there is anyone who wants to go beyond, I'm just showing the way. Just like the Heart Sutra says: Gate Gate Pāragate Pārasamgate Bodhi Svāhā - Gone gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail! (that is what actually the Enlightenment was meant to be in Buddhism)

When I "experience" formlessness in a mystical experience, I go beyond what you described: there is no "myself as I have always been and always will be". Any such interpretation of mystical experience is a result of mental fabrication about "my-self" (or "my-Self" with capital "S") that always "be". As Buddha would say, it is "eternalism", it is believing that you exists as some eternal "Self" (it does not matter whether you associate it with your human body or identity or not). These are all just ideas. Granted, this interpretation is fueled by our sense of self, sense of "I", but we need to inquire into this sense until we discover that it is only an idea. A way to do that is to go further and experience a state where the is no any sense of "I" left. In such core formless mystical experience there is actually only aware-presence now, there is no "be", no "will be", no "I", no "self" or "Self". When forms appear, there is the same aware-presence just present with forms, but still no object, no subject, no "I", those are just ideas that are simply part of the same flow of phenomena. Adding anything to that simple direct experience of aware-presence with no forms or aware-presence with forms, such as that the aware-presence is "I", that it is "fundamental", "ultimate and absolute" is only throwing a bunch of mind-fabricated ideas and interpretations on top of what is actually directly experienced. When we do the exploration, we realize at some point that our association of our sense of self with human body or mind is only a conceptual idea that we have subconsciously subscribed to, and so we go beyond that and now associate our sense of "I" with the formless presence. That is definitely a progress, but many get stuck at this stage and believe that they arrived at the "Ultimate Truth" and there is nothing else to discover. However, there is still a way beyond this stage where it is possible to realize that even the sense of "I" and the "Ultimate Truth" are only mind-fabricated ideas that we simply subconsciously overlay on our direct conscious experience which is only a flow of qualia inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them, just like before we overlayed on it the mental image of the "external world", "subjects and objects", "me as a human" etc. So, we are kind of peeling away layers after layers, and the point is not to stop peeling until we get to the bare core of our direct experience and direct experiential knowing of reality as it is given here and now. At that point we discover that there is actually no "I", no "Truth", no "fundamental", no "Absolute" and no "Ultimate" (apart from just fleeting ideas about them), there is only "this" - your direct conscious experience present and awared here and now. We can call it a "bare Zen", even though that would be just another mental label. Keep sleeping in your religious fairy tale, kid

Well, isness is accessible, we all experience isness/presence directly. Isness is not different from awareness because for us to know isness is the same as to be aware of it (sounds like a tautology). But what makes you think that isness is the "Ultimate Truth" and not simply an aspect of some more fundamental reality that may "be" in a totally different way inconceivable to us and different from the "issness" that we know from our experience? Or what makes you think that isness is the most "fundamental"? "Fundamental" is only a concept, an idea. I guess, we can continue talking over each other heads and blame each other that the other party is "lost in concepts". But the only thing I'm saying is that whatever we can know conceptually or experientially (and there is no other way for us to know anything), we have no way of being sure that what we know or directly experience has anything to do with the "Ultimate Truth" (it may or may not, but there is no way for us to prove or disprove it). Basically, this discussion is about a topic that Buddha debunked 2300 years ago when he critcized both the extremes of "eternalism" and "nihilism" (claiming that something "exists" or "does not exist"). In Leo's case the claim is that the "Ultimate Truth" exists and "you are That". Buddha was pointing that the very existence (of the "Ultimate Truth" in our case) is a mental fabrication, an idea. What we actually know in our direct conscious experience is only a flow of qualia inseparable from the "isness/presence" and conscious awareness of them. Everything else beyond this simple experiential fact (such as any assumptions about what is "fundamental" or "True" or "Absolute" and what is not, what is a "subject" and what is an "object" etc) is only a result of conceptual fabrications. This simple realization is Zen.

HAHA Nice try. The Truth you are talking about is Consciousness-Awareness-Suchness, Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is formless and boundless. We are all conscious and we are all aware, we all consciously experience qualia that appear in a boundless space of Awareness, so correct: Consciousness is not a concept but a fact of our direct experience. This is elementary stuff, don't assume that you are the only one "awakened" here. What you fail to realize that it is only your belief (idea) that there is nothing that exists beyond Consciousness. The fact that all you can ever know or experience is only the content of conscious experience does not mean that there is nothing beyond what can be consciously experienced (in other words, beyond Consciousness).

The formlessness you are talking is accessible to direct experience, it's just formless presence-awareness. "Being it" is an idea that you add up to this simple direct experience. There is no "being" in presence, it's just presence. If it is boundless, that does not mean that there cannot be some other boundless and formless reality beyond the formlessness given to our direct experience. Example: the mathematical 2-D space is boundless and formless in 2 dimensions, yet it is contained as a sub-space in a 3-D formless boundless space. Any creatures living in the 2-D space directly experience the space as 2-D boundless formlessness, but have no access to experience of the 3-rd boundless and formless dimension. Yet, it can perfectly exist. No, Kant made no assumptions about "thing in itself", and we should not either. It has nothing to do with whether "an embodied creature that looks out on the world and perceives a thing " exists or not. A "thing in itself" may just exist on its own.

I know that you are talking about formless presence-awareness, and it is true that it is the most fundamental level of reality accessible to us in our direct conscious experience. Regarding Kant, in addition to those organizational principles he was also talking about the "thing in itself" regardless whether it takes any forms or not. The "thing in itself" may be formless, or it maybe not, there is no way for us to know.

No, I can't. But that does not mean that something more fundamental does not exist. It still may exist, or it may not exist. But if it does exist, we just have no experiential access to it, so for us it would remain a "thing in itself" in a Kantian sense. So, the bottom line is: a "reality" more fundamental to what we can experience may or may not exist, but we have no way to know whether it exists or not. The possibility of its existence is beyond our abilities to experience, know, prove or disprove it.

To make some parallels with spiritual traditions, what Leo teaches is fairly close to Advaita, just presented in a modernized language and conceptual framework. The idea ais that our "Atman" - pure consciousness-awareness that we directly experience, is ontologically identical with "Brahman" - the "Ultimate Reality of the Infinite Universal Consciousness". But Advaitists and neo-Advaitists fail to realize that is it just a belief, an assumption. It is a reasonable assumption, no question about that, at least more reasonable than materialism or naive realism. But the fact that it is reasonable does not necessarily make it ultimately true. In other words, Advaita is still a religion. However, Zen goes beyond that, beyond any religion. Zen is living in a direct experience of the given at the moment of now without any views or suppositions about the "Ultimate Reality", without any interpretations of the given. It is just "THIS", be it a pure presence of awareness without any phenomena, or presence-awareness with a flow of qualia-phenomena. There is essentially no difference between the presence or absence of phenomena. Any ideas or concepts are also included in the flow of phenomena, but with clear realization that they are simply contingent ideas, they are just thoughts, not true and not false in the "ultimate" sense, but some of them may be more practically useful than others. This "given", as it is given, is neither dual, nor nondual. It is just what it is. "Duality" and "nonduality" are just concepts automatically included in the given. It is true that this "given' is only our direct conscious experience, yet we do not know whether "all there is" is also only conscious experience, or whether there is anything beyond that. But we do not need to assume whether "all there is" is only conscious experience or not. Either way, these assumptions would still be just concepts and beliefs.

I have every day, I'm a lifelong meditator. Yes, it is pure presence-awareness, not an idea, but a fact of direct and concrete experience. So what? What makes you think that this pure experience it is indeed the same as the Ultimate Reality? And by the way, "existence" is a concept, "presence" is a fact of direct experience. The idea of "existence" was debunked by Buddha 2300 years ago.

Good answer, it indeed happens on autopilot, it's a natural process of ego destroying itself and of consciousness naturally evolving beyond the ego. Doing it willingly just makes it happen more smoothly.