Enlightenment - A direct, succinct account of what occurs...

[joeecho]

Posted by tim (here)

When I was young I liked to look in the mirror and laughingly tell the reflection "You don't exist"

It was only as I grew older I realised the reflection was telling me the same thing!

Then you're going to enjoy the meme down below:



It's not only from 'others' that one can receive understanding from. It's like if one wants to learn about the mind, one has a laboratory right inside their own head for firsthand experiments. To get outside ones head all one has to do is observe someone else and realize they are in 'character' without even being aware of it. It's harder, for me, to recognize I am deep into character unless I am in a quiet place and 'settled'. It is then that I realize I am not that which reflects nor the reflection observed. It is then that I come to grips with the implication referred in the expression netti netti. The thing is tim, once I leave this quiet settled place I revert back to a version of my character and temporarily lose sight of that awareness of who I truly am for lack of a better term. The only thing I can surmise is that 'reality over the eyes' is one hell of a blue pill (Falsehood, security and the blissful ignorance of illusion).

[joeecho]

Posted by tim (here)
As one's understanding and insight deepens, guidance can appear anywhere... In a song, the words of a stranger, nature or a poem...

Or from a single grain of sand.

[joeecho]

If the mind is capable of clarity through ignorance and the mind is illusory then how does one determine if the clarity itself is not, along with everything else, an illusion? If IT be nonexistent in an existent 'reality' IT is ultimately realized through a form of faith as the intellectual/ enlightenment way only goes so far.

[Shadowman]

Posted by joeecho (here)
It's harder, for me, to recognize I am deep into character unless I am in a quiet place and 'settled'. It is then that I realize I am not that which reflects nor the reflection observed. It is then that I come to grips with the implication referred in the expression netti netti. The thing is tim, once I leave this quiet settled place I revert back to a version of my character and temporarily lose sight of that awareness of who I truly am for lack of a better term. The only thing I can surmise is that 'reality over the eyes' is one hell of a blue pill (Falsehood, security and the blissful ignorance of illusion).

Earnest persistence in your chosen technique is key Joeecho.

Whatever comes and goes, or is sensed, perceived or cognized is not Reality, hence netti netti.

Include the "I" that reverts back in your netti netti approach.

As far as possible, both during and outside your quiet settled place (meditation?) keep your attention/focus on the unseen I am/presence/awareness, the knower of the field.

He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" - Luke 10:27

Posted by joeecho (here)
If the mind is capable of clarity through ignorance and the mind is illusory then how does one determine if the clarity itself is not, along with everything else, an illusion? If IT be nonexistent in an existent 'reality' IT is ultimately realized through a form of faith as the intellectual/ enlightenment way only goes so far.

It is not ignorance of the mind, but stillness/quiesence of the mind, wherein the Self is unobscured and self evident.

Be still, and know that I am God - Psalm 46:10

Find That and then see if questions arise as to it's authenticity. It has nothing to do with faith or the intellect.

I will be out of touch for a few weeks. There are more than enough hints/pointers/referrals in this thread, all of which ultimately lead to silence.

Practise your chosen technique in silence and ease up on the philosophizing, eh Jo. Questions lead to more questions.

The glimpses you have had will come more and more, and eventually, "all will be well"

With Love
tim

[joeecho]

Well received, tim.

The vibratory mind likes to share it's intrigues, pay no attention to mine.

[greybeard]

Appreciate your posts Tim and realise I might not get a response for a while.
Whats "your" take on free will?

Love Chris

[Rich]

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo

[Shadowman]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Appreciate your posts Tim and realise I might not get a response for a while.
Whats "your" take on free will?

Love Chris

Whose freewill?

Freewill is an ego phenomena. As long as their is identification with the ego, the ego appears to have freewill.

In actuality, in the absolute sense, no thing, act or person is really autonomous.Things happen and actions take place due to innumerable causes and actions within totality which are beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Everything appears as it appears, because of everything that has, is and will happen. This is where the cunning ego steps in and throwing up it's imaginary hands in confusion says to itself "well I might as well just do whatever the hell I want then" or " well I might just as well do nothing then" both of which reinforce the sense of doership, lol.

All doing and doership is in the realm of maya, in truth your Real Self does nothing. In the Nisargadatta quote below freewill is an aspect of Maya relating to the "he" who experiences existence.

In later Vedic texts and modern literature dedicated to Indian traditions, Māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem". Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal", and the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

All existence is in space and time, limited and temporary. He who experiences existence is also limited and temporary. I am not concerned either with ‘what exists’ or with ‘who exists’. I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither. - Nisargadatta


The following is extracted from 'The Wisdom of Balsekar, edited by Alan Jacobs, the chairman of the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK.

Nobody likes being told that he has no free will. And yet look at the state of the world at the present time. The world is on the brink of disaster, where it has been for many years now with one crisis after another. The question - the big question - therefore remains: The human being certainly has tremendous intelligence (to send a man to the moon); he is also supposed to have free will - then why has the human being been unable to combine his intelligence and his free will to make the world a better place?!

There is also another aspect. There are so many intelligent people, leaders in their respective fields, who are very much interested in knowing their future. If they really believed in their own free will, why would they be so interested in astrology and similar phenomena?!

If you think along these lines, the only reasonable conclusion you will arrive at is that the human being has been acting in this fashion because he has no control over his thoughts and emotions. What he considers as his actions are in fact only reactions of the individual organism to an outside impulse: a thought which occurs, an event that he sees or perhaps what he happens to hear. Each organism reacts according to the natural characteristics with which it has been programmed: physical, mental, intellectual, temperamental.

Another difficulty about truly accepting this teaching is the argument that it leads to a 'fatalistic' attitude. The fatalistic argument translates itself into the question: 'If I am not to be motivated by the fruits of my action, and, indeed, if I have no free will over my actions, why should I work at all?' The answer is astonishingly simple: you will not be able to be inactive for any length of time because the energy within the organism will compel you to act: to act according to the natural characteristics of the organism. In other words, whether to act or not is itself not in your control.

The essence of the ultimate understanding is the ineluctable fact that the individual human being, as such, does not - cannot - have any volition. He is without any independence of choice of decision and action, for the simple reason that the human being is not an autonomous entity. The human being is merely an infinitesimal part the totality of manifestation. That the human being can see, hear, etc, through his senses is merely because he has, like any other sentient being (insect or animal), been endowed with sentience. That he can think is merely because he has, in addition, been endowed with intellect In the absence of consciousness, there is no sentience, no intellect, and as far as the human being is concerned, no manifest world.

The Final Truth p. 215

Knowing that he cannot live according to his will or volition, that he is in fact 'being lived' (as an instrument of the Totality), he also knows the futility of 'intentions'. By abstaining from volition the man of wisdom is free of anxiety and misery, because then he transcends conceptualization which is the basis of volition and intention. Knowing that he is being lived, the man of wisdom transcends both volitional action and its counterpart, volitional non-action: volitional non-doing is also doing. It is for this reason that the man of wisdom goes about his business in the ordinary way without any intentions, without any lime of doership.

It is only the 'me'-concept that can have intentions because 'will' and 'ego' are synonymous terms. Thus the absence of volition in the case of the man of wisdom does not mean phenomenal inaction but the absence of volitional action (positive or negative)**. The absence of volitional phenomenal action can only mean the presence of noumenal action. In other words, the non-volitional action of the man of wisdom (whether perceptive, conceptive, or somatic) is noumenal action, the non-action of the sage (because the 'me' and his intention are totally absent).

A Duet of One p. 83

**Perhaps this is what Buddha referred to when saying we can be bound by both Golden and Iron chains (identification with relatively good or bad volitional actions, either of which are identification with a "doer")

With Love
tim

[greybeard]

Not having walked through the door so to speak---I need reinforcing of this from "those" that have.
The world of duality seems very real--but then it supposed to.
I realise there is no door and no one to walk through it---Maya the ultimate mirage.

Ramesh Balsakar said " God gave you an ego, let Him remove it" as though we have any choice in the matter.

Thanks for your post Tim
love Chris

[Rich]

Posted by tim (here)
Whose freewill?

Great question, I looked up the meaning of free will, it does not necessarily make it clear to whom
this free will pertains to.
It says free will for “human beings” but what is meant by 'human being'? the body or the persona or the observer of the persona? Why are humans singled out? I don't see a difference between a human choice and (another) animal choice.
The mind can create the "experience" of free will whether it is there or not does not change the effect of that experience.


dictionary.com

free will

1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision:
You took on the responsibility of your own free will.
2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.

British Dictionary definitions for free will
noun
1.
a. the apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined
b. the doctrine that such human freedom of choice is not illusory
c. a free-will decision
2. the ability to make a choice without coercion: he left of his own free will: I did not influence him


Google

free will
noun: freewill
1. the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

synonyms:
self-determination, freedom of choice, autonomy, liberty, independence

[greybeard]

Doors opened and most times this one walked through.
Sometimes there is a thought to do something but these days there is rarely a doing out of the ordinary chopping wood and fetching water.
The wants--things to be different --has for the most part, fallen away.
However I am left with a kind of boredom and a wish for the game to be over, literally.
Seems I am between two stools ---the knowing of the Truth--yet living short of this.
All suggestions have been tried earnestly---the desire to know has come and has just about gone---so the entity is in limbo.
Washing dishes gives as much contentment as meditation or any spiritual practice.
Playing bass probably the high of a very ordinary existence and even that is nothing like the buzz it once was.

Seem so close to Truth but the elusive butterfly is not to be "captured"

Its a bit like "Divine Romance" by the author of "Autobiography of a Yogi" who's name escapes me.--ah Yogananda.

That's where c is at the moment.

[Foxie Loxie]

Chris...I think our age & the experiences we have lived through contribute to our attitudes in this later stage of life. What say ye?!

[greybeard]

Foxie you may well be right

My late Father lost it with his Dr
Dad was looking for a diagnosis--something to treat.
The Dr said --"The trouble is you don't like the colour of your hair"
Dad was far from amused, but the truth is seldom amusing.

There is no fix for being in ignorance as in --not being aware of being enlightened--the natural state has not dawned on this one.

Ch

[Shadowman]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Foxie you may well be right

My late Father lost it with his Dr
Dad was looking for a diagnosis--something to treat.
The Dr said --"The trouble is you don't like the colour of your hair"
Dad was far from amused, but the truth is seldom amusing.

There is no fix for being in ignorance as in --not being aware of being enlightened--the natural state has not dawned on this one.

Ch

Chris your dilemma is prevalent in the West. When you use the word "aware" of being enlightened, the context suggests you mean your mind is not conscious of enlightenment.

So the mind seeks to "fix" it's "ignorance" (or avidya) via it's usual methods ie attempting to know through either perception of the other senses, conceptualization and "knowing" in an intellectual sense. This is not possible and is the great mistake Sosan refers to in the Hsin Hsin Ming. The mind "knows" by being separate from that which it perceives. It is only through the "disappearance" or "quiesience" of the mind that the power of Maya loses it's hold.

While there may be steps and procedures in your practice, the actual Realisation, when it occurs, is direct, immediate, Self Evident and entirely different to mental cognition or discovery. The shift is from the temporal to the timeless, from form to the essence of form, from separation to w(holiness) or totality or unity.

That which seeks a "fix" or a "dawning" or a "door" to walk through, that which is alternately bored, amused, terrified or otherwise, IS the very mind which allows the illusion of a separate observer.

Remember Nisargadatta's great fortune was that he trusted innately the words of his Guru, and practised accordingly -

Q: How does one come to know the knower?

M: I can only tell you what I know from my own experience.
When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘You are not what you take
yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’,
find your real self’. I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as
he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in
silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon! It took
me only three years to realize my true nature. My Guru died
soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered
what he told me and persevered. The fruit of it is here, with me.
WHATEVER PLEASES YOU, KEEPS YOU BACK

Q: What is it?

M: I know myself as I am in reality. I am neither the body, nor
the mind, nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all these.

As you pointed out earlier, the world of duality or Maya, projected by the mind, is very powerful. Earnest and persistent focus on the Real is required to break the spell.... (see first link in google search link below for pdf of The Diamond Sutra book from which the following passage is quoted)


The opening lecture of the Vajra Prajnà Pàramità Sutra
marks the beginning of another prajnà assembly in America.
The events which led to this assembly began in 1968 when
a group of eager students from Seattle came to the Buddhist
Lecture Hall in San Francisco to participate in the first official
seven-day meditation session ever held in America, lasting
daily from six in the morning to nine in the evening — although
the participants found it rigorous, it was actually very
expedient. Authentic dhyàna sessions start at 3 A.M. and run
straight through to midnight.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=t...k1.WHeiiftuSXo

It is being suggested to you, and all who have ears to listen, the godspell (gospel/good news), of the Truth of who you are, as outlined in the OP.

You are, right now, and eternally, already that which the mind is seeking. Pay no attention to the mind and it's games - remain focused on your Being, empty of all forms and concepts, as far as possible. Where possible, set aside time for quiet practice, then carry your practice throughout your day...

Q: Are you just nothing?

M: Come on, be reasonable. Of course I am, most tangibly.
Only I am not what you may think me to be. This tells you all.

Q: It tells me nothing.

M: Because it cannot be told. You must gain your own experience.
You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and
mental. I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor
energy, neither body nor mind. Once you have a glimpse of
your own being, you will not find me difficult to understand.
We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in distant
lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and goddesses,
because we were told. Similarly, we were told about
ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We
never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction
of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your
most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body
is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world —
God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it
starts — fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems
— all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his
wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are
cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends.

When you practice, as when you work, give no thought to the results. A man once told that he had 3 more lifetimes before awakening complained bitterly. Another when told he had as many lifetimes as the leaves on a nearby tree (counting in the hundreds) exclaimed "Is that All" and rejoiced. To be free of expectation, to be free of judgement, to be free of all concepts (even the concept of freedom or the concept of enlightenment) is to be free of the mind - This is the natural state and regardless of appearances - You are already THAT

with love my wobbly friend
tim

[greybeard]

Your assistance is appreciated Tim
Its true "Reward for effort" is the normal--an expectation--however I gave up on expectation quite some time ago--it became obvious the sincere effort was to no avail.
The words I have used in the last two posts are just an attempt to describe and are not that accurate.
Dish washing happens--I see no decision prior to action and that applies to the rare times I now meditate or any spiritual action happens--there is nothing that is not equally spiritual or not spiritual--all just is.
It could be said I have given up but there was no decision--even listening to spiritual teachers has more or less come to an end.
A daily dose of hours spent absorbing Nasargadatta I am That --a full time occupation -- all come to a close.

I stopped posting but somehow got drawn back.
I can see clearly that things are happening but there is no one deciding to.

The I is used as in normal conversation there is little identification with the typing, it more or less happening.

So it is as it is--and most times accepted

Much Love Chris

[Shadowman]

Excellent Chris, it seems your last post (#313) was misunderstood.

What you have just described sounds very much like the "sun" has already dawned.

Words in a forum don't always lend themselves to clear understanding, especially in relation to the subtleties of Awakening.

Thankyou for your wonderful posts, my beautiful friend, they are a fine example of the genuine compassion, humility and

kindness which are the true marks of an Awakened One,

Much Love
tim

[Chester]

What if the illusion of the individuated being continues past the dropping of the physical body? What then?

[greybeard]

Posted by tim (here)
Excellent Chris, it seems your last post (#313) was misunderstood.

What you have just described sounds very much like the "sun" has already dawned.

Words in a forum don't always lend themselves to clear understanding, especially in relation to the subtleties of Awakening.

Thankyou for your wonderful posts, my beautiful friend, they are a fine example of the genuine compassion, humility and

kindness which are the true marks of an Awakened One,

Much Love
tim

The bullet grazed "me"-- not the full shilling--a few pence short of a £ or whatever expression could be used.
If there is such a thing as a process --undeniably progress has been made---Neity Neity.

Anyway things have a way of unfolding.
The caterpillar not yet the butterfly

Many thanks for your kind comments Tim

Much love
Chris (whoever he may be)

[Flash]

Posted by Sammy (here)
What if the illusion of the individuated being continues past the dropping of the physical body? What then?

Yes, good question, because it seems that it does, following many eastern and many esoteric teachings. therefore the trap impised by ou own illusions. A movie about the afterlife in which Robin Williams was the main caracter describes it pretty well -gosh i searched it, got it, came to post and realised i had the French version for an English forum - this is true bilingualism !
In English: what dreams may come

Gosh google does not let me search in English anymore - i hate those preferences tracking it has

[Chester]

Posted by Flash (here)

Posted by Sammy (here)
What if the illusion of the individuated being continues past the dropping of the physical body? What then?

Yes, good question, because it seems that it does, following many eastern and many esoteric teachings. therefore the trap impised by ou own illusions. A movie about the afterlife in which Robin Williams was the main caracter describes it pretty well -gosh i searched it, got it, came to post and realised i had the French version for an English forum - this is true bilingualism !
In English: what dreams may come

Gosh google does not let me search in English anymore - i hate those preferences tracking it has

What Dreams May Come...

for me that movie has a huge personal significance. Why? Because my first wife, named Mandy who I often refer to as "The Lovely Lucifera" had recommended to me back in the late 90s that I watch that movie.

So in mid October of 1999 while in my home in Curacao and with Lucifera off on a trip with two of her friends across the western United States, I decided to watch that movie.

At just about the midpoint of the movie, the phone rang and it was one of Lucifera's friends who was with her on the trip. She said (and yes, this is a quote) - "Chester... I don't know any other way to tell you this. Mandy just tried to kill herself."

All I know is the something 'beyond' is going on. The nature of that may be an eternal journey. Up to this point, I sure hope so.