Leo Gura

Important! - Nobody On This Forum Is AWAKE

1,427 posts in this topic

@Water by the River Keep the epic train rolling xD

Mystics describe it differently, but for whatever reason, I see the absolute as light. The idea that the absolute is blind doesn't resonate for me.

I agree with the problem of describing the absolute as anything OF. It is not aware OF anything, as this would imply the subject-object duality of the dream. Every OF dissolves in the absolute ocean.

It reaches the point where words simply fail, and only direct realization suffices. Below are a few pointers:

[I experienced] the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact…I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been.
- Aldous Huxley

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi swaha!
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond all going [please don't slay me, gladiator], offering the heart-mind to the fire of awareness!
- Buddhist Heart Sutra (final mantra)

The Self, pure awareness, shines as the light within the heart, surrounded by the senses. Only seeming to think, seeming to move, the Self neither sleeps nor wakes nor dreams.
- Katha 4.1.7

Keep the "I am" in the focus of awareness, remember that you -are-, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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.

There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi


Just because God loves you doesn't mean it is going to shape the cosmos to suit you. God loves you so much that it will shape you to suit the cosmos.

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Lovely Pointers. Thanks for the post.

8 hours ago, Moksha said:

The idea that the absolute is blind doesn't resonate for me.

Yes, words fail. I don't mean to describe the Absolute as blind in any way. That is not its nature. If any, its nature IS Awareness, at its core. But too much "its" in this sentence of mine, and Awareness is not any "thing" being pointed to, despite the word awareness is a noun.

One can go via the via negativa path: Nothingness. Or with positive description of properties or potential or "doing": Awareness. Potential for sentience. Or Awareness of perceptions perceiving themselves.

At the end, "it" is empty, aware, nondual, infinite, all there is. And the Infinite Reality beyond all appearance. And IT is ones True Self. Nondual, Infinite. One without a second. Pure Impersonal Infinite Consciousness, Infinite Reality itself. Unchanging, Silent, eternal, unchanging, unmoving, without "anything" being possibly outside of it (infinite).

So all "via negative", not this not that. And its potential or essence of Awareness. But Awareness is a "loaded" concept, see below. The negative concept are more uncritical.

Nothing is as close to the divine as silence.

And Nothingness as pointer for example covers Deep Sleep quite well. While describing the Absolute only as Awareness would cause probably some hard time understanding it for a non-enlightened being, since the experience/"memory" of it is different.

As long as one can intuit right now what is still present in Deep Sleep, which can not not be there, it aligns again.

 

 

Nothingness, as defined by Andrew Hawal, God is Nothingness. A pointer I personally like a lot. No danger of "solidfying" it as some kind of thing, or not empty consciousness. And "the" Awareness, or potential for it, clearly stil there

Appendix I of "God is Nothingness"
Some readers may be wondering why I say that awareness is not the Absolute, despite the fact that so many ancient scriptures and eminent teachers say that they are identical. For instance, Nisargadatta taught that consciousness is rooted in (and therefore limited to) the physical human form, while awareness transcended the individual body and was actually the Absolute—that everything is Universal Consciousness.

This is more of an instructive approach than a philosophical commitment. If pressed as to whether the Absolute is awareness or not, I would say, like Huang Po did, that, “Mind is not mind, yet neither is it no-mind.”


In Nothingness, there is some degree of awareness present—it is not how most people imagine brain death—albeit unconditioned, object- and subjectless. The Consciousness (for lack of a better word) of Non-being is so subtle that the moment we try to reflect upon it to check if we are conscious, we are jarred back into ‘being’ and into our ordinary dualistic consciousness. I hesitate even to call this experience “pure subjectivity,” for that invites a metaphysical position that I am not willing to support.


In the end, to paraphrase Socrates, all that I know is Nothing.

This Consciousness has shed all of the characteristics that people normally identify with awareness, such as perspective, spatial and temporal contexts, objects, ownership, etc. Yet, if there were no awareness, then it would be impossible to differentiate the numinous Nothingness from how people conventionally conceive of blankness or being comatose.

Personally, I think that differentiating between Nothingness and consciousness is helpful, and that is my ultimate goal—to help people realize Non-being or Absolute Consciousness. At that point, I can care less whether people call it Nothingness, God, Brahman, Buddha Nature, One Mind, Universal Consciousness, or a kangaroo.

Names at that point, after the Absolute has been realized, are insignificant."

 

 

8 hours ago, Moksha said:

It reaches the point where words simply fail, and only direct realization suffices. 

Yes, and that needs to be added.

8 hours ago, Moksha said:

I see the absolute as light.

I can understand why you write that.

 

All Pointers at the end are not it, but arise in it.

Probably some resonate more with certain pointers than with others.

We are all just starting communicating that. There are no studies showing which pointers work better for which practitioner. And that should be the goal: To get the maximum number of people to get "it". Of course not in a grasping way.

So, I can just state the Pointers that worked for me. And for other practitioners wired similiar as me, probably could work too. And try to intuit which pointers probably work for the largest number of beings. 

Anyway, as we both know, the bliss & love these awakened nondual states of Pure Infinite Consciousness bring, leading to a drowning of the activities and self-contraction of the separate self, conversing about pointers arising within IT is just some minor nuisance that one just does to be able to communicate it at least a bit.

I do have a faible for trying to align the pointers of different systems/traditions/teachings. Being able to explain which mystic used which pointer (and some are quite contradicting, for example the topic of Its Awareness vs. Awareness is not it), and what he/she means with the concepts. If for example using the term/pointer/concept "Awareness", there is a huge spectrum ranging from Awareness OF, to Pure witnessing Awareness to Nondual Unity Awareness to Infinite boundless timeless Awareness....

And that faible for aligning the pointers of different systems comes from having needed to do that on the path. My path. And there many many paths up the mountain, and many many pointers.... 

Ah, UnbornTao, please hit me. Seems I can't write short posts.

Water by the River

Edited by Water by the River

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There is only one thing: MIND. It can be actively dreaming, or it can be at rest, but it is still MIND.

If you say there is something other than Mind, then you created duality, since now you've got Mind and not-mind. So just expand your notion of Mind to include EVERYTHING, including Nothing.

A TV is still a TV even if it's set to off. Think about it.

Anything you say isn't MIND, I will say is MIND. Until you get that it's all ONE MIND, YOUR MIND.

Edited by Leo Gura

You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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@Water by the River ⚡Infinite boundless timeless Awareness. I like that (with the small request to change the A to a) xD 

Every name is a sword that people can cut themselves with, if not careful. It's one reason I try not to even capitalize (@Yimpa) any pointer that I use to describe the absolute. You're right that awareness can be misleading for many people, because the natural inclination is to apply it conceptually, on the relative level.

The polarities of negative (Eastern) and positive (Western) spirituality are collectively a powerful pointer to the absolute, which is beyond both. Eastern mystics see god as emptiness, Western mystics see god as abundance. Both are right, but the absolute is beyond emptiness and abundance.

It is a conceptually impenetrable mystery. How does the mind grasp spirit? It is only directly seen by letting go of all knowledge, and becoming small enough to pass through the silent gate of absolute realization.

Edited by Moksha

Just because God loves you doesn't mean it is going to shape the cosmos to suit you. God loves you so much that it will shape you to suit the cosmos.

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The absolute is indescribable and unthinkable for the simple reason that it is absolute. any description is contrast, that is, limit.

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there in Mind and mind, mind is an object in Mind, Mind is all this, mind is what an ego uses to create and dream all day and at night to practice itself being Mind so that (baby) mind grows up to be (daddy) Mind ... my dreams give me a taste of being what i am destined to become; they motivate the apparent small me to wake up and be the actual real me

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Silly humans…

Nobody here is AWAKE because this is an INFINITE DREAM

:x


"Wisdom is not in knowing all the answers, but in seeking the right questions." -Gemini AI

 

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