Is nonduality the absolute or a contingent knowledge?

[Strannik]

Let’s start from a quote from Leo’s talk with Curt: “time is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the now”. Similarly it can be said that “matter is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the given conscious experience”. However, these projections are also equally part of the given “this”, of the flow of qualia of the given conscious experience happening now. Why then these projections are considered any less “true” or in any way inferior compared to the presence of the given raw conscious experience at the instance of now which we consider to be the “Absolute”? Since there is no hierarchy in the Absolute, then any overlaid projections must be equally the Absolute and must be as true and real as any other experiences, qualia or ideas. Why then ideas and projections, be them true of false, are considered inferior to the given raw conscious experience if any ideas are always inseparable from the given conscious experience? Any ideas or projections are equally qualia of our conscious experience and are in fact as “raw” as any other kinds of the qualia of conscious experience. If we experience our hands as the “reality here and now”, then the overlaid idea that “these hands are material objects existing beyond my consciousness”, if it happens to appear in our stream of conscious phenomena, is also equally consciously experienced as qualia, as the reality here and now, and there is no way to distinguish and prioritize the raw sensual experience of the hands over any overlaid idea about the hands no matter how wild this idea can be. For example, Leo says that “the shape of a castle is a concept of a second order”, but that implies the existence of a preference and hierarchy in the reality: the Being is the fundamental preferred zero-order, the raw sensual qualia are the first-order phenomena, and the imaginations and concepts are the second-order phenomena that are somehow inferior in “truthfulness” or “reality” compared to the phenomena of the more fundamental orders. But such prioritization is already an idea that belongs to the second order, and there can equally be other alternative ways of prioritization where, for example, the concepts can be claimed to be more fundamental with respect to qualia of the raw experience and to the Being itself. If fact, there is a Plationic version of idealism claiming that the Absolute Idea is the ontic fundamental, and the being, awareness and qualia of conscious experience are only secondary forms and aspects of it. So, the view that the Being-Awareness is fundamental and is prior to any concepts is only a belief and an implicit idea which lies in the blind spot of the subjective idealism paradigms (such as Leo’s, Rupert Spira’s and like). I’m well aware that we all can directly realize and experience the “indivisible Beingness-Awareness”, as I did it myself, and that’s fine, but then we construct a belief that somehow this “Beingness-Awareness” must be more “true”, more “real” and more “fundamental” as compared to all other fleeting phenomena and qualia of our direct experience, including any concepts and ideas. But that is just another abstract idea, there is actually no sound reason to believe that it is true (there are logical arguments for that, but that’s all logic and reasoning which is just another set of ideas).

 

In order to distinguish truth from non-truth, there needs to be a criterion of truth belonging to a category of meta-truths. But there can be many criteria of truth, why prefer one over the other? In order to have a criterion of truth that is selected from all other alternative criteria, we need a meta-criterion of truth to assess the truthfulness of the criteria of truth, and by repeating the same argument we run into an endless process that never arrives to a definite criterion of truth at any meta-order. And even if we would somehow arrive at a criterion of truth at any meta-level, it would still be only an idea, a mental form among any other possible ideas or forms of consciousness with no possibility to choose and prioritize between them.

 

Leo: “Meanings are illusions, meanings are what we construct, Being is what actually is”. The belief that the Absolute-Being exists as something of its own and as a fundamental Reality is simply one of our abstract ideas. If we carefully examine the given facts of our direct experience, we find that what we actually directly experience is only a finite flow of phenomenal qualia in our field of direct conscious experience at the instance of now, where any phenomenon (be it a meaning, idea, sensation, emotion, imagination etc) is equally present and equally real by the very fact of their presence in our conscious experience. We usually construct many ideas about this flow and about the phenomena and their origins and causal relations, but all those ideas, once they arise, immediately become equally real and equally present as qualia and as inseparable part of our field of experience. In other words, the ideas, thoughts and meanings are also simply phenomena of our direct conscious experience. This is all we can know and directly experience as facts. The unsolvable epistemological puzzle is that there is no inherent “right” way to prioritize and sort these phenomenal qualia according to their degree of truthfulness or a degree or reality, or a degree of relativity or absoluteness, because any such way of sorting and prioritizing would be just another constructed idea, another phenomenon. That includes any ideas about the primacy of the Absolute, God, Being, Awareness or whatever you want to call it. The unchangeable presence of awareness-beingness is definitely a fact of our direct experience, no question about that, but to assume that the awareness-beingness is somehow more “fundamental” or more “absolute” with respect to other phenomena is only an abstract and constructed idea. The well-observed fact that the awareness-suchness is omnipresent in our experience and never changes is not a sufficient justification to declare them to be “ontologically more fundamental”, more “true” or “more inherent” to reality as compared to any other phenomena, ideas or aspects of reality. Similarly, there is no ground to declare any of our meanings, ideas, imaginations or thoughts as “false” or “unreal” or “secondary” since they are all equally real and equally present in our direct conscious experience together with all other qualia and with their suchness-awareness.

For example, what if there exists a beyond-consciousness Meta-Reality? It would be something like a Kantian “thing in itself” for us that we can never possibly know, imagine or experience, so we have all practical grounds to deny its existence based on the principle of parsimony (as Bernardo Kastrup usually argues). But such Meta-Reality would not care about our ability to experience it and about our principles, it would still exist by itself regardless of what we believe, think or perceive. We may still choose to ignore it and believe that “Consciousness is all there is”, and we indeed have all practical reasons to do that, because conscious experience is the only thing we can actually ever know and experience, and because the existence of such Meta-Reality would be absolutely irrelevant to our practical life and existence anyway. But still, this would only be a belief if we take it in a religious way, or an assumption if we take it in a philosophical way. In other words, “Consciousness is all there is” is still a limited paradigm, a belief, a choice among other possible beliefs or assumptions, and possible versions of Reality. But any belief system, no matter how practically useful it may be at a certain stage of our development, becomes a limitation at some further stage. By adopting a belief that “Consciousness is all there is” we still corner ourselves into a very specific and limited worldview, no matter how practical, comfortable or nirvanic it may be. Would not the ultimate liberation be letting go of any beliefs, including the belief that “Consciousness is all there is”?

 

So, what if this “oneness” or “the truth of non-duality” is as much a constructed trickery of the mind as the “world of duality”? What if the “nondual Self” is as much an abstraction and projection as the “individual self”? What if we simply fool ourselves by flipping from one kind of mind-constructed view of reality into another equally mind-constructed one: from naïve realism of believing in the reality of separate subjects and separate material objects outside our individual minds and in the absolute truth of our mind constructed meanings to a naïve nondualism of interpreting the reality as a fundamental nondual “Absolute-God-Consciousness-Self-Awareness-Beingness is all there is”? The latter might arguably be more practically meaningful, functional and productive, at least for some people, but that does not necessarily mean that it is ultimately true. And what if there are other levels of realization beyond both of these mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality, and beyond any other possible mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality for that matter? Just like Leo said that any meaning is mind-constructed, but he still believes that the “Being” is prior to meaning, it would be a simple realization that there is nothing prior to anything else, and all our beliefs in the primacy of something with respect to something else is also nothing else then a constructed meaning. And then what’s left would be a real freedom from deceiving ourselves into any beliefs in the absoluteness or absolute truthfulness of anything and simply abiding in the given reality of the direct conscious experience just as it is present here and now. This is not agnosticism, not a denial of any possibility of knowledge, but a simple realization that any knowledge can only be mind-constructed, pragmatic and relative, including any realization of “Being” or “one's ABSOLUTE nature” or any other kind of “spaghetti monster” that we would want to believe to be “prior to” any knowledge.

 

But from that perspective, we can still acquire and exercise knowledge, including non-dual realization. However, any knowledge we have will always be contingent. The difference is in the fitness of the knowledge. The fitness can be assessed from practical and consistency perspectives: any knowledge has higher fitness if it is more useful for our functioning and more consistent in correspondence with the body of facts. In that respect the nondual knowledge arguably has the highest fitness as compared to any other currently available to us.

[Carl-Richard]

Can I have a tl;dr? ?‍?

[thisintegrated]

No way am I reading this.

Can I just run this through AI and give you the output?

[Leo Gura]

@Strannik It's real simple: You are Absolute Truth.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Devin]

i think it's a quality post

@Strannik consider infinity, if any concept is true, that would be/mean finite. 'Being' is infinite. Knowledge as in knowing something, would mean something(the anti of what you 'know') isn't possible, would mean finite, it's 'No-ing'. Knowing sort of implies you gain something, but in reality it's just sectioning off a piece of infinity, knowing is 'no-ing', to know something is to 'no' the anti of what you 'know'.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Devin

[Strannik]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Strannik It's real simple: You are Absolute Truth.

Leo, you fail to see that it's still a belief, which is currently in your blind spot. I've been through all this awakening stuff: "I am That", "Consciousness is all there is", experiential realization etc. It's a good stuff, it helps to disintegrate the dualistic perception. But it's not the final destination, only a stage, a belief system. You can move beyond it, but only if you are open to it. It's like a needle to remove a splinter, but once you remove it, you don't need the needle anymore.  

 

The only actual fact of experience is this: what we actually directly experience is only a finite flow of phenomenal qualia in our field of direct conscious experience at the instance of now that always happens with awareness of the qualia. We do not know anything beyond this simple and direct fact of experience. This is it! Any other understanding, labeling or interpretation of this fact, such as "I am Absolute Truth", "This is Infinity of All There is" or alike, is just another idea, another mental quale appearing in this flow of phenomena. 

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Strannik]

8 hours ago, Devin said:

i think it's a quality post

@Strannik consider infinity, if any concept is true, that would be/mean finite. 'Being' is infinite. Knowledge as in knowing something, would mean something(the anti of what you 'know') isn't possible, would mean finite, it's 'No-ing'. Knowing sort of implies you gain something, but in reality it's just sectioning off a piece of infinity, knowing is 'no-ing', to know something is to 'no' the anti of what you 'know'.

“Infinite Absolute that encompasses all there is and all that can possibly be” is only an abstract idea. It is in principle impossible to have a factual raw experience of the actual infinity of “all there is”, no matter how much DMT you take. The content of any conscious experience is always finite, it's an undeniable fact of our direct conscious experience, even though there are no limits to it that can be experientially found. But the absence of limits is not the same as the actual infinity; the former is the fact of experience, the latter is an abstract idea.

[Carl-Richard]

6 minutes ago, Strannik said:

“Infinite Absolute that encompasses all there is and all that can possibly be” is only an abstract idea. It is in principle impossible to have a factual raw experience of the actual infinity of “all there is”, no matter how much DMT you take. The content of any conscious experience is always finite, it's an undeniable fact of our direct conscious experience, even though there are no limits to it that can be experientially found. But the absence of limits is not the same as the actual infinity; the former is the fact of experience, the latter is an abstract idea.

The content is limited and finite, the context is unlimited and infinite.

[Strannik]

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The content is limited and finite, the context is unlimited and infinite.

OK, another nice abstract idea.  Don't get me wrong, guys, your ideas are beautiful and arguably practically useful, at least compared to the mainstream materialism. But that alone does not make them to be the "Truth".

 

What makes you guys think that the "Truth" or "Ultimate Reality" can be knowable or available for direct experience? What if Kant was right and the Reality is "a thing in itself" beyond the reach of our conscious experience or our intellect?

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Carl-Richard]

47 minutes ago, Strannik said:

OK, another nice abstract idea.  Don't get me wrong, guys, your ideas are beautiful and arguably practically useful, at least compared to the mainstream materialism. But that alone does not make them to be the "Truth".

 

What makes you guys think that the "Truth" or "Ultimate Reality" can be knowable or available for direct experience? What if Kant was right and the Reality is "a thing in itself" beyond the reach of our conscious experience or our intellect?

I guess you haven't had a non-dual mystical experience? I've experienced my body, my thoughts and sense of space and time literally disappear, and the only thing that was left was pure existence. Pure existence is not an abstract idea. It's the most concrete thing there is.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Strannik]

32 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I guess you haven't had a non-dual mystical experience? I've experienced my body, my thoughts and sense of space and time literally disappear, and the only thing that was left was pure existence. Pure existence is not an abstract idea. It's the most concrete thing there is.

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.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Strannik]

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. 

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Strannik said:

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? 

I wouldn't call it "the ultimate reality" but the most fundamental reality. Can you get more fundamental than boundless formlessness?

Edited December 10, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Strannik said:

What makes you guys think that the "Truth" or "Ultimate Reality" can be knowable or available for direct experience? What if Kant was right and the Reality is "a thing in itself" beyond the reach of our conscious experience or our intellect?

Kant was talking about principles that organize our perceptions, i.e. the reality of form. I'm talking about the reality of formlessness.

[Strannik]

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I wouldn't call it "the ultimate reality" but the most fundamental reality. Can you get more fundamental than boundless formlessness?

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.

[Strannik]

9 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Kant was talking about principles that organize our perceptions, i.e. the reality of form. I'm talking about the reality of formlessness.

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.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Carl-Richard]

22 hours ago, Strannik said:

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.

Well ok. I don't see the point of a "thing in itself" if it's not even a thing  

Again, I think the "thing in itself" concept is very humancentric and is bound to the reality of form (perceptions, qualities), in that it thinks of knowing something as being an embodied creature that looks out at the world and perceives a thing (subject-object), and then it postulates "what if we can't know the thing in itself?". Knowing formlessness is just being it. The question of whether you can know it or not doesn't even arise.

 

22 hours ago, Strannik said:

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.

So you're saying that something could be inaccessible to boundless formlessness? If you say something is inaccessible to something else, you're in the world of form (differences, qualities), so it doesn't really add up.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Strannik said:

Leo, you fail to see that it's still a belief, which is currently in your blind spot. I've been through all this awakening stuff: "I am That", "Consciousness is all there is", experiential realization etc.

Haha

Nice try.

You have no idea what Consciousness, or Absolute Truth is.

It is not a belief nor a concept.

You are the one lost in concepts. All your understanding about what I am saying is concepts. That's not what I am pointing to.

There is Absolute Truth and you are not aware of what it is.

[Strannik]

43 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Knowing formlessness is just being it. ... So you're saying that something could be inaccessible to boundless formlessness? If you say something is inaccessible to something else, you're in the world of form (differences, qualities), so it doesn't really add up.

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.   

 

Quote

Again, I think the "thing in itself" concept is very humancentric and is bound to the reality of form (perceptions, qualities), in that it thinks of knowing something as being an embodied creature that looks out on the world and perceives a thing (subject-object), and then it postulates "what if we can't know the thing in itself?".

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.   

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik

[Strannik]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Haha

Nice try.

You have no idea what Consciousness, or Absolute Truth is.

It is not a belief nor a concept.

You are the one lost in concepts. All your understanding about what I am saying is concepts. That's not what I am pointing to.

There is Absolute Truth and you are not aware of what it is.

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).    

Edited December 10, 2022 by Strannik