little-self

A non-carbon, carbon-copy, in logic.

Originally Posted by Drifter

A non-carbon, carbon-copy, in logic.

logic transcends to realization.
brother it took ls. seven year to 'understand'(realize) the difference between the "non-carbon and the carbon" i.e. "God (light) is me and i am in God (light); And fifty five years to understand the import of Lord Krishna's statement that He firstly imparted the knowledge of Gita to the Sun i.e. "all knowledge (intellect) is light"!
in the path of spiritual aspirants, there comes a stage---not state, when he/she has to de-hoard (unlearn) all that is learnt and be as blank as possible!love&regards.ls

Thanks ls,
[IMG]http://www.toequest.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=325&stc=1&d=1199460315[/IMG]

[QUOTE=r.p.bibra;bt1457]logic transcends to realization.
brother it took ls. seven year to 'understand'(realize) the difference between the "non-carbon and the carbon" i.e. "God (light) is me and i am in God (light); And fifty five years to understand the import of Lord Krishna's statement that He firstly imparted the knowledge of Gita to the Sun i.e. "all knowledge (intellect) is light"!
in the path of spiritual aspirants, there comes a stage---not state, when he/she has to de-hoard (unlearn) all that is learnt and be as blank as possible!love&regards.ls[/QUOTE]

On the 'stage' of awareness [Light], who is the untagible witness of the Play of Consciousness, which unfolds there-upon, Awareness itself?

[QUOTE=r.p.bibra;bt1457]logic transcends to realization.
brother it took ls. seven year to 'understand'(realize) the difference between the "non-carbon and the carbon" i.e. "God (light) is me and i am in God (light); And fifty five years to understand the import of Lord Krishna's statement that He firstly imparted the knowledge of Gita to the Sun i.e. "all knowledge (intellect) is light"!
in the path of spiritual aspirants, there comes a stage---not state, when he/she has to de-hoard (unlearn) all that is learnt and be as blank as possible!love&regards.ls[/QUOTE]

Many times man runs into his destiny along the path he choose's to avoid it.
The Play of Consciousness is but a dream?

[I]Om nama shivaya [I Am][/I]

[B][SIZE=+2][COLOR=#ff6666]47. [/COLOR][COLOR=#990000]Snake with Its Tail in Its Mouth[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B]
Medicine has its specific symbol which has come down to us from ancient times. Today military doctors of many countries wear badges on their shoulder straps in the form of a snake coiled around a staff or the stem of a cup.
Now there is a similar symbol in chemistry. It is a snake with its tail in its mouth.
[IMG]http://www.todayinsci.com/stories/047-Snake.gif[/IMG]
The ancients had a cult of all kinds of mystic signs, the meaning of which is often difficult to explain today.
So much for mystic signs, but the "chemical snake" has a quite definite meaning. It symbolizes a reversible chemical reaction.
Two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine to form a molecule of water. Simultaneously another molecule of water decomposes into its component parts. Two opposite reactions take place in the same instant: the formation of water (the forward reaction) and its decomposition (the back reaction). A chemist would represent these two contradictory processes as follows:
2H2 + O2 [IMG]http://www.todayinsci.com/stories/RevArrows.gif[/IMG] 2H2O The arrow pointing to the right indicates the forward reaction, and that pointing to the left, the back reaction.

[URL]http://www.todayinsci.com/stories/story047.htm[/URL]

[URL="http://www.dreamstime.com/register?jump_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dreamstime.com%2Fyin-yang-symbol-blue-flare-image3277201"][IMG]http://www.dreamstime.com/yin-yang-symbol-blue-flare-thumb3277201.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[B][I][SIZE=-1][COLOR=#ff6666]47. [/COLOR][COLOR=#990000]Snake with Its Tail in Its Mouth[/COLOR][/SIZE][/I][/B]
Fundamentally, all chemical reactions without exception are reversible. At first, the forward reaction predominates. The scales tilt towards the formation of water molecules. Then the opposite reaction begins to increase. Finally, there comes a moment when the number of molecules forming equals the number decomposing, and both reactions, from left to right and from right to left, proceed at an equal rate.
A chemist would say that equilibrium has been established. It is established sooner or later in any chemical reaction, instantaneously in some reactions, or after several hours, days, or weeks, in others. In its practical activities chemistry pursues two aims. First, it tries to make the chemical process go to completion, so that the initial products react entirely with each other. Secondly, it strives to obtain a maximum yield of the products needed. To accomplish these aims the establishment of chemical equilibrium must be postponed as far as possible. Forward reaction - yes, back reaction - no.
And here the chemist has to become something of a mathematician. He finds the ratio between two quantities, between the concentration of the substances formed and the concentration of the initial substances entering into the reaction.
This ratio is a fraction. The larger the numerator, and the smaller the demoninator of any fraction, the larger the fraction. If the forward reaction predominates, the amount of the products will in time exceed the amount of the initial substances. The numerator will then be greater than the denominator and the result will be an irregular fraction. In the reverse case the fraction will be a regular one. The chemist calls the value of this fraction the equilibrium constant of the reaction and denote it by [I]K[/I]. If he wants the reaction to result in the largest amount of the product needed he must first calculate [I]K[/I] for different temperatures.

Equalibrium is serentity, at-rest 'stage' [alchemy], Equanimity [Peace of Mind]?

[QUOTE=r.p.bibra;bt1457]logic transcends to realization.
brother it took ls. seven year to 'understand'(realize) the difference between the "non-carbon and the carbon" i.e. "God (light) is me and i am in God (light); And fifty five years to understand the import of Lord Krishna's statement that He firstly imparted the knowledge of Gita to the Sun i.e. "all knowledge (intellect) is light"!
in the path of spiritual aspirants, there comes a stage---not state, when he/she has to de-hoard (unlearn) all that is learnt and be as blank as possible!love&regards.ls[/QUOTE]
self-diagnostic

Intuition works of its own accord
when I, consciousness,
get out of its way
and allow it to
Be.

drifter

[QUOTE=Drifter;bt1464]self-diagnostic

Intuition works of its own accord
when I, consciousness,
get out of its way
and allow it to
Be.

drifter[/QUOTE]

Mar 20, 2009 [B]...[/B] And as Thomas Metzinger argues in his stimulating new book [B]The Ego Tunnel[/B], that is exactly what is happening. [B]...[/B]

[FONT=trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica][URL="http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/"][IMG]http://www.andyross.net/metzinger.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL="http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/"]Thomas Metzinger[/URL], Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Theoretical Philosophy Group,
Department of Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
[B][B][B][B]Brain Science and the Self[/B][/B][/B][/B]

[URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127006.800-brain-science-and-the-search-for-the-self.html"]By A. C. Grayling
New Scientist, March 20, 2009[/URL]
[I]Edited by Andy Ross[/I]
In 1690, the philosopher John Locke argued that a person's identity over time resides in their consciousness (he coined this term) of being the same self at a later time as at an earlier, and that the mechanism that makes this possible is memory. A person is only the same through time if he or she is self-aware of being so. Memory loss interrupts identity, and complete loss of memory is therefore loss of the self.

In 1739, David Hume stated that there is no such thing as the self, for if one conducts the empirical inquiry of introspecting to see what there is apart from current sensations, feelings, desires and thoughts, one does not find an extra something, a self, over and above these things, which owns them and endures beyond them.

In 1781, Immanuel Kant argued that logic requires a concept-imposing self to make experience possible, and the Romantics made the self the centre of each individual's universe: "I am that which began," wrote Swinburne, "Out of me the years roll, out of me God and Man."

So fundamental is the idea of the self to modern human consciousness that one would expect developments in neuroscience to have a direct bearing on it. And as Thomas Metzinger argues in his stimulating new book The Ego Tunnel, that is exactly what is happening.

This is how the new book starts: "Consciousness is the appearance of a world."
[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Ego-Tunnel-Science-Mind-Myth/dp/0465045677"]The Ego Tunnel: The science of the mind and the myth of the self
By Thomas Metzinger
Basic Books, 288 pages[/URL]

We’re used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain — an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it? Do we still have souls, free will, personal autonomy, or moral accountability? In a time when the science of cognition is becoming as controversial as evolution, The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the mystery of the mind.

[IMG]http://www.andyross.net/ego_tunnel.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Review[/B] by Owen Flanagan:
[I]Edited by Andy Ross[/I]
What is the self? One answer is that it is the diamond in the rough that is you, the unique, immutable and indestructible jewel that makes each person who they are, the being amidst the becoming, the unfluxable within the flux. Kant called it the Transcendental Ego, which stands behind experience as the condition of its possibility. An alternative view endorsed by Buddha, Heraclitus, John Locke, David Hume, and William James is that the self does not exist.

The consensus among contemporary philosophers and mind scientists is that the self is a forensic concept, not a scientific one, and therefore not a member of the ontological table of elements. In The Ego Tunnel, Thomas Metzinger offers this explanation:
The phenomenal Ego is not some mysterious thing or little man inside the head but the content of an inner image. ... By placing the self-model within the world-model, a center is created. That center is what we experience as ourselves, the Ego. ... What we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a small fraction of what actually exists out there. ... The ongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image of reality as a tunnel through reality.
Metzinger argues that coming to terms with the non-existence of the self is required if we are to solve the philosophical problem of consciousness. But even if there are people who still believe in the existence of a self, I doubt they believe in the dopey idea that the self is an actual homunculus. More widespread than the self illusion is the view that humans have souls, but Metzinger does nothing to explain how belief in personal immortality may or may not be tied to views about the self.

There is no need for a "stunningly original" theory of the self. Pitching the idea that "we are self-less ego machines" gets Kant off Metzinger's back, but the rest of us were already content with the notion that there is no transcendental ghost in our heads.

[B]Finally Some One[/B]

[URL="http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/symposia/metzinger/Hobson.pdf"]By Allan Hobson
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Psyche 11 (5), June 2005[/URL]
[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Being-No-One-Self-Model-Subjectivity/dp/0262134179"]Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
By Thomas Metzinger
MIT Press, 713 pages (2003)[/URL]
[I]Review edited by Andy Ross[/I]
I am pleased to see a first rate philosopher so carefully reading the neurobiological literature. Metzinger is comprehensive and comprehending. I have never read such a complete and penetrating analysis of my own scientific field: the cognitive neuroscience of sleep and dreaming. In this, as in other parts of the book that I understand well enough to comment, Metzinger cuts to the heart of the matter.

Metzinger insists that "data are things that are extracted from the physical world by technical measuring devices like telescopes, electrodes, or functional MRI scanners." In addition, "first person access to one’s own mental states" does not fulfill the intersubjectivity criterion of data since group mediation of independent verification does not exist.

While it is refreshing to read a scientifically critical book that is completely free of nitpicking and character assassination, it is alarming to see Metzinger so comfortable with ideas that are incomplete and probably wrong. I refer to the theory of Rodolfo Llinas that dreaming consciousness is simply off-line waking consciousness.

A great strength of Metzinger's book is the insistence upon an aggressive and thorough attack on phenomenology. One place where Metzinger shines out particularly brilliantly is in his discussion of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is phenomenologically valid because it occurs in and is reported by many sensible people.

Thomas Metzinger is at least as aware as I am of a need for a systematic empirical study of phenomenology. In failing to reveal his own conscious experiences he is not really "no one" but more exactly a third person half-some-one.


"Being No One is Kantian in its scope, intelligence and depth. Steeped in contemporary neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, the book gives the unsolved Kantian problems of inner self and outer world a new look, a new life, and a new route to solution. Metzinger's story is understandable, compelling, and, quite simply, very very smart."
— Patricia and Paul Churchland, University of California, San Diego

"Being No One is a superb and indispensable book. Thomas Metzinger's intelligence, open-minded honesty, and knowledge combine to produce the most complete and satisfying discussion of the problem of self currently available."
— Antonio and Hanna Damasio, Professors of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine

[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k"]Video: Thomas Metzinger "Being No One" (57 min)[/URL]

In six bite-sized parts:
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfdVyYSTuIs"]Part 1[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5efYaUBC5Y"]Part 2[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPDLClJMtMs"]Part 3[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOESAixFX8"]Part 4[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKF3nfeDOOY"]Part 5[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHw3uTmBSwA"]Part 6[/URL]

Metzinger's last words: "Strictly speaking, nobody is ever born and nobody ever dies."

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]AR[/COLOR][/B] I first met Thomas Metzinger at the Brain and Self Workshop in Elsinore, Denmark, in 1997.
I was immediately struck by the quality of his philosophical intellect and by his mastery of the relevant scientific work. I met him again several times over the years. I loved his big book Being No One but found it heavy going, so I suggested he should write a shorter, more popular book on the same subject. I am delighted to report that he has now done so.
[/FONT]

The 'little self', demystified.
[URL]http://www.andyross.net/metzinger.htm[/URL],
The 'lamp-shade', so to speak, that covers the Light and makes it what it isn't,
shaded, jaded

a.k.a. in some neurological circles as, "relative consciousness", as opposed to awareness.

The little-self demystified:

[B]Resolved Question[/B]

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[B]What is the difference between Awareness and Consciousness...?[/B]

in the context of spiritual inquiry and our ongoing dialogue? Do masters differentiate between these two? And are masters in disagreement over the definition and use of these terms? In other words, is there a commonly accepted or popular usage whereby there is a clear difference, or do they overlap and interchange, depending on the user?
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Awareness is the ground of our being, our permanent state of Being? Consciousness arises out of/within Awareness and is that which comes and goes?

When we sleep do we experience either state? When we dream?
2 months ago
Some responders say Awareness is the ground of our being, Source Itself. Others say it is Consciousness. i certainly don't "know," but do know that in the end they are only words...words that are infused with meaning from the individual's perspective, as, of course, are all words. This may be a futile exercise, to find common agreement. But it has been a good and friendly exercise that we've shared. Only in the recesses of the heart is anything known.
2 months ago
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[B][SIZE=4][COLOR=#43b607]Best Answer[/COLOR][/SIZE] - Chosen by Asker[/B]

Awareness is a wakeful state of cognizance. Consciousness cannot be understood in its entire meaning within thought, and as long as thought is an attribute of consciousness, awareness is an attribute of consciousness, The meaning of consciousness can be realized only when one drops the thoughts, drops the perceptions, drop the awareness. Consciousness is existence bliss. In material levels of thought, it can be seen in its biological meaning in opposition to unconscious state. Awareness is a quality of consciousness. Consciousness is the witness that tell you that you slept when you wake up in the morning. It is the witness that tells you it is you, it is I, and the kind. It is SELF, which is deathless and eternal, immortal. Consciousness is omnipresent within the body, outside the body. At a particular purified state, the consciousness have a separate identify from the impure consciousness prevailing everywhere on the earth and cosmos. There is knowledge in the air, in the vacuum, in what we call as nothingness, in the not-visible world around us, there are sound in the vacuum around us, there are pictures in the vacuum around us, there are colours in the vacuum around us, there are air in the vacuum around us, there are fire in the vacuum around us, there are water in the vacuum around us, there are consciousness in the vaccum around us. vacuum itself is consciousness, that we say as nothing, not visible, not hearable, not smellable, not tastable itself is consciousness. God is consciousness and therefore god is not hearbale, not smellable, not tastable and the kind. It is the Chetna. The life force which keep us alive, it is within each atom and each neurons of a being and is life giving. What is death giving is non-consciounsess or unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is what cease to be, but not dead. Death is always the death of the body in totality and not in part. a cell in the body is not dead even when the body is declared clinically dead. But the consciousness in the body is no more in those cells. If the cells are dead, it cannot be cause for life of another being by eating those flesh after death. Therefore the consciousness should be understood at varying levels of meaning according to its purity and metamorphic forms of Ethereal content.

PS: In Sleep and deep state it is unconscious meditation.
i.e. unconscious consciousness. There is a state beyond that which one can achieve in conscious meditation as well as in unconscious meditation i.e. the state beyond deep sleep which is Thuriya state. There it is only pure consciousness. Even thoughts go to sleep and are dropped that there is no hindrance between the consciousness in you and the consciousness outside to communicate with each other and get connected. The Cosmic consciousness flows in abundance when the channel is opened by dropping thoughts. Thoughts are obstacles to connect man with god. When thoughts are obstacles, obviously speech and actions are also obstacles. This is the reason why man is always in search of God because when he is in search he is thinking and when he is thinking he cannot find god. God cannot connect.

One of my all time favs brother:

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[FONT=Arial][SIZE=5][B][COLOR=#ff0000]Nisargadatta's Difference Between Consciousness & Awareness [/COLOR][/B][/SIZE]
This is a post I made to an Egroup devoted to the teachings of Indian sage Nisargadatta Maharaj.
see: [URL]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nisargadatta/[/URL]
[B]Nisargadatta[/B], who passed on in 1982, was a self-realized sage who taught a path of staying constantly with the inner question "Who am I?" This path of self-inquiry was also taught by the great sage [B]Ramana Maharshi[/B] of Arunachala, who died in 1950. They both said that by dwelling on the question of our actual identity eventually a series of realizations occurs which leads to self realization or knowledge of the Self, which is not different from God-realization. This post deals with a subtle distinction made my Nisargadatta between the words "consciousness" and "awareness."

[SIZE=5][B]CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS[/B][/SIZE]
I have noticed in some posts a confusion, one which I also had when I first began reading Nisargadatta. It concerns the difference between the way he uses the two terms "consciousness" and "awareness."
Like most people I had always thought of these two words as meaning basically the same thing, but N. uses them to point to two very different meanings. When he uses the term "consciousness" he seems to equate that term with the "[B]I Am [/B]" and when he talks about "awareness" he is pointing to something altogether [B]beyond the consciousness[/B] ("I Am"), that is, to the absolute.
As far as I understand so far he is saying, of the consciousness, that it is all that we know, it is the fundamental sense of presence that we feel, and that it is a universal feeling of the sense of being. Consciousness = "sense of presence" = "the beingness" = the "I Am."
Those four terms are equated throughout his talks. And while he directs us, as we start out, to simply be aware of the "I Am" so that we come to the realization that [B]we are the consciousness itself[/B], and not the body or the mind or the mind's thoughts and identification, he does an amazing twist at the end of all that. When the realization has established itself that I am the consciousness itself (and he always points out that this means the universal consciousness only, the same in a human or a cow or a dog or an ant), when I realize that I am the "I am" he take us to the next realization which is when I subsequently realize that I am NOT the "I am," I am beyond that, [B]I am pure awareness only! [/B]
These are breathtaking leaps! In his use of the word "consciousness" there is always the touch of the duality. If I am conscious it is in relation to being unconscious. If "I am" it is always in relation to the "not-me." If I am conscious it is always conscious [B]OF[/B] something. Consciousness always has an object [B]of which[/B] I am conscious. So while the realization of my identity as the "I am" is very much closer to reality than the idea that "I am so-and-so, [I]a person[/I]" it is still a step away from the final realization of the absolute, that I am the non- dual awareness which is allowing the consciousness to be conscious. Awareness is that which is shining through the consciousness, but it is beyond the consciousness itself. So "[B] awareness[/B]" is different from "[B]consciousness[/B]" in Nisargadatta's talks. The pure awareness is the absolute, without which there can be no consciousness.
Another way he puts it is that the [B]awareness "is that by which I know that I am."[/B] Thus the awareness is there before the "I am" (or consciousness) appears, and is there after the consciousness disappears (unconsciousness or death). So the awareness is beyond even the universal consciousness. Another way that he put this astonishing distinction is by saying that [B]the absolute is "awareness unaware of itself."[/B] That statement of his is almost like a [U]Zen koan[/U], but I think the idea is of an awareness without a trace of distinction or duality. He speaks of it as "shining," and of it being an uncaused mystery. This is even beyond our idea of God, so he does not call it "God" but simply says "the absolute," or the ultimate reality, beyond time, which ever was and ever will be.
So while consciousness is always conscious [B]OF[/B] something (dual), awareness is not [B]OF[/B] something, it is not even aware [B]OF[/B] itself, and thus is absolutely singular, nondual.
This difference between his use of the words "consciousness" and "awareness" took me a long time to grasp, because we don't really make this distinction in ordinary common English. Being conscious or being aware are thought of as the same. But Nisargadatta uses the terms differently and difference is a great key, I think, to understanding what he is trying to convey to us.
I was amazed when I first realized that he had played a kind of "trick" in leading us from one realization to another. This is the trick: first he is telling us to realize that we are really the "sense of presence" or the "sense of beingness," and when we finally realize that he turns us around to the next higher realization and says what seems to be the opposite: "[B]NO[/B], you are not that "I Am"[B] either![/B] You are beyond the beingness, beyond the consciousness, beyond the sense of presence, you are the pure awareness only [B]by which[/B] the conscious has been able to come into being: you are the absolutely pure original awareness only." This latter realization can only proceed out of the former realization. [B]First I must realize[/B] that I am the "I am," the universal consciousness, [B]then out of that[/B] I can realize that I am NOT the "I am!" I am actually the absolute only, and nothing else REALLY exists at all! [B]Everything else[/B] is no more real than a dream. This is just breathtaking to me! No one else but Nisargadatta has ever made that line of realization clear to me. It is utterly simple, really, but difficult to stay with and crack open. Elegant but subtle.
[/FONT]

That is why he tells us that [B]we must become completely obsessed with it[/B]. We must develop an intense NEED TO KNOW. [B]You can't just play with it and expect to get anywhere[/B]. When he describes the time before his own realization he says that he was thinking and pondering about this nearly every single waking moment! He was OBSESSED to find out what he really was! The usual playing with words has no significance at that level of constant meditation. It simply becomes a life and death matter to really find out for oneself what one is. This is religion at it deepest level, the actual breakthrough into the absolute reality.

So the consciousness and the pure awareness are quite different really, although the consciousness can only exist because of the [U]prior shining [/U]of pure awareness. [B]The awareness, on the other hand, does not depend on any way whatsoever on the consciousness, and is not even touched by it.[/B] The consciousness comes and goes, waking and sleeping, birth and death, but the awareness is always there. The consciousness suddenly appears in the morning on top of the birthless and deathless ever existing pure nondual awareness. Other than that absolute, there is really nothing.
Another interesting thing that is confusing at first is how Nisargadatta keeps hammering away at the question about [B]"When did you first appear? What was that exact moment when you first knew that you ARE?"[/B] That is a very difficult question, but he says it is of extreme importance to contemplate. [U]I can't remember when I first knew that I was![/U] I have no idea! Isn't that rather mysterious in itself? I still puzzle over this a lot but I am beginning to suspect that perhaps his stressing of this question might be to prepare us for the final realization: that I am NOT that "I Am." In other words, this "I am" had a beginning, seemed to appear out of nowhere, and it will have an end. [B]So I must be beyond that "I am," because I am the knower of that "I am." [/B]I am not actually the "I am" but rather THAT which is aware of the "I am."
It took me years to figure this much out. Each realization builds on and becomes possible because of the previous realizations, and the final realization can even seem to contradict a previous realization.
1. First I realize I am not all this other stuff that people usually think they are. [B]I am not a person[/B]. The person is memories, knowledge, habits, and other false identies: "Mr. So- and-so." So I dispense with that. I can see that it is all a false identity made up by thoughts.
2. Then I realize I am not even the more intimate stuff that people usually think they are. I am not the body (that is the toughest one, as Nisargadatta points out again and again). I am not the mind or its thoughts either. I am not the chemistry of all this either. One could spend an entire lifetime and not ever get through [B]this[/B] realization.
3. Then I realize that if I subtract all the above, [B]what is left?[/B] Only my sense of existing itself, my sense of presence, my sense of being here, the consciousness. I realize that I am that consciousness only, the feeling of existing. I must be THAT. What IS that? It is very subtle. But now I am coming closer. This is the realization of the mystical phrase [B]"I am that I am."[/B] And along with this stage of realization comes the realization of my universality. This realization of the "I am" brings with it the explosive understanding that [B]there is no such thing as an individual[/B], the "I am" is universal, everyone and every living thing [U]is feeling it the same way[/U]. We don't ourselves create our sense of "I am." [B][COLOR=#ff0000]Rather we inherit the prior existing sense of presence of the original beingness which spontaneously first appeared on the background of the void, or the object-less pure awareness. [/COLOR][/B]
4. When I am thus established in sense of identity with this universal sense of presence, or the "I am," I am at last poised for the final realization. Remember, the realization of the "I am" is already a very high state, and many will simply stop here to enjoy living in the universal personless beingness. This is the knowledge of God and the knowledge that I am God. But some rare ones keep going and keep questioning deeper and come to the breakthrough realization that ALL beingness, even the beingness of "God" is still a form of illusion and duality, and they will realize and move into and "become" the pure awareness only, giving up even that last and very high identity as the universal "I am." The consciousness will continue on no doubt, and the all the activities of life, but the identity of myself will now be fixed back at its original home, the pure awareness which was prior to consciousness.
This last step is still incomprehensible to me but I love to think about it again and again. Many can give up the lesser false identifications, casting them off like tattered old clothes and stripping naked down to the singular universal consciousness. But who can give up that very sense of beingness itself?[B] We LOVE to be[/B], and fear terribly not being anymore. It is frightening! Looked at from a lower level the final realization seems like absolute and utter [B]anihilation[/B] itself, and who on earth wants to be completely anihilated? Thus, very few rare souls ever realize the final realization![B] Above all, I WANT TO BE! [/B]
But the true sage makes the final realization and the final step and is in fact completely anihilated. "He" ceases to exist, and [B]all that is left of him is what was there at the beginning of the world[/B], as Buddha became the Void itself and entered into the great nirvana. A friend of mine called it "[B]The Great Suicide[/B]." Then one realizes the final incredible and terrifying reality: [B]there is nothing[/B]. And though really and truly there is absolutely nothing, at the same time that nothingness is inexplicably filled to fullness with an indescribable "[I]something which is not a thing[/I]," the pure awareness, the absolute, unaware of itself. That is the one and only "thing-which-is-not- a-thing" which is truly real. All else is false, a fraud made of spacetime, of things which begin and end and come and go, the Great Maha Maya, the dreams of the universal mind.
That a human creature can realize THAT is a miracle to me, a miracle in this incredible dream-Creation. The whole thing boggles the mind. [B]The mind cannot grasp it, because the mind is too limited.[/B]

As all the sages have sung, [B]it is not a matter of gaining anything, it is just a matter of removing stuff[/B], and removing more stuff, until that which was always there begins to shine through. Certainly I can't CREATE the ultimate reality. [B]All I can do is clean the mirror[/B] so that light of the incomprehensible pure awareness can reflect through the mirror and shine. That is why Nisargadatta says that self realization is very simple and easy, and yet it is very subtle and difficult. Removing all the dirt from the mirror is not so easy as it might seem, although that is really all that needs to be done.
Above all, in contemplating all this, one feels sometimes like bowing down and thanking heaven that sages like Nisargadatta, and so many others, especially in ancient times (like the "satya yuga" or age of truth), have taken birth and shown the way. As N. points out, our lives, if we sum it all up, are primarily an experience of suffering overall. One thing or another, from birth to death, there are endless problems, unfullfilled desires, stuggle and effort, and suffering. Now and then a few happy moments to keep us going. In fact, if there were no such possibility as realization and liberation one might well say that suicide were a preferable way out and an answer to the sufferings of life.
But that awareness has broken through in the cases of so many sages and saints and proven throughout all of human history that a glorious freedom is indeed possible. [B]From the ancient Vedas and Upanishads to the teachings of the Christ, again and again, certain rare ones have demonstrated to mankind that evolution into [I]the likes of angels is possible[/I].[/B] For this we must be ever grateful throughout our journeys, and follow the teachings and instructions of those like Nisargadatta, with great earnestness, love and joy.

ls, you are a blessing to us all imo.

namaste'
drifter

[QUOTE=r.p.bibra;bt1457]logic transcends to realization.
brother it took ls. seven year to 'understand'(realize) the difference between the "non-carbon and the carbon" i.e. "God (light) is me and i am in God (light); And fifty five years to understand the import of Lord Krishna's statement that He firstly imparted the knowledge of Gita to the Sun i.e. "all knowledge (intellect) is light"!
in the path of spiritual aspirants, there comes a stage---not state, when he/she has to de-hoard (unlearn) all that is learnt and be as blank as possible!love&regards.ls[/QUOTE]

And of the Mahabhrata and Vavishtha's Yoga,
Has your [seven and fifty-five] brought to an understanding of those, in its unfolding/blossoming?

Culled from an old post.

“Consciousness vs. Awareness

We must understand the difference between consciousness and awareness; then it would be easy to understand the reality of ‘existence’. Soul is said to be embodied with three attributes, truth-awareness-bliss, corresponding to existence-being-beauty (bliss). Awareness as such is an attribute of Soul/Reality/God, and is not directly related to Cosmic-Consciousness, unless both are equated as the same---which is not true.
Each unit in nature---sentient/insentient--is embodied with conscious (as consciousness pervades in all) ---which is local i.e., individual. As rocks grow rock, trees grow as tree. Every variety of life has its ‘history’ embodied in its seed: a mango seed grows as mango tree and so on. The composite conscious of each unit in ‘existence’ is known as cosmic-consciousness. But it is bereft of the quality of ‘awareness’. Consciousness as such could be the ‘life-force’ of the insentient nature. It is the ‘conscious’ memory of the nature/creation. But there could be many, many other creations in the infinite vastness in which all universes along with their creations---gross, subtle-casual, subsume. In ‘existence’ the seeds of each creation project/manifest according to their latent ‘history’(memory).as the conscious in a mango seed grows only a mango tree, similarly the seed of creation (COSMIC-EGG) manifest in correspondence to their conscious-memory---latent in it. There is nothing innovative in these projections, as these are merely the duplications of there ‘original-self’.
A realized soul is Aware’ that he/she is divine are embodied with the same attributes as that of the divinity.
Consciousness is the ‘conscious-memory’ of the material manifestation. It is not embodied with divine-awareness. All creations are conscious, but not aware. All human beings are conscious of the fact that they are human beings, embodies with the qualities of senses-mind-intellect-conscience-wisdom, but not all are aware of their being divine.
Existence is the entirety of ephemeral ‘existence’---the consciousness in all its three phases’ i.e. gross, subtle and casual.
Truth is existence of ‘One-Reality’, ‘That’ is AWARENESS; Its attribute is bliss. Realised-Self is ‘that’, who is aware of his/her divinity and who is always in the state of bliss. In nut-shell;
External Consciousness vs. Internal Awareness
Consciousness is related to only the material objective Jagath, whereas for the Divine-realisation/‘knowledge,’ it is always the Awareness.
Consciousness is of ‘Jagath (ephemeral-world)
Awareness is of Divine”

Post post script;

The current topic of enlightement for this little self is;
Tripura Rahasya: The Secret of the Supreme Goddess (Spiritual Classics)

Beyond the concepts of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field, I'll meet you there. ~Rumi

Out beyond ideas.

[SIZE=5][B]ARE THE TENET OF CHRIST AND THE BUDDHA ACTUALLY NEW ADVANCED LIFE PHYSICS?[/B][/SIZE]

Well, here I am going to stick my foot in religious mouths - fair warning. I wrote an article a couple of years ago titled, A PHYSICS OF LIFE: ARE THE TENET OF CHRIST AND THE BUDDHA ACTUALLY NEW ADVANCED PHYSICS?, somewhat tongue in cheek, and with the goal of initiating dialogue wherever readers read it. Here, I preface everything by making the same statement Frank Tipler has made in one of his better known books - The [I][B]Physics of Immortality[/B][/I]. The statement is simply this: [U][I][B]physics reigns supreme and religion is a subset (included in and a part of) physics[/B][/I][/U]. Now, having said that, let me make my case here. Note that I am making my case on the forum concerning applications of idiomaterial physics in everyday life - this is no accident, nor a piece of fortuitous coincidence. It is very much purposeful, and the purpose is simple: to bring about discussion by challenging common understanding of the phenomena described herein with my saying that much, if not all, that passes for "spiritual" is nothing but sheer life physics.

One additional caveat: I am not a religious person (as you will be able to tell from this posting here), but I am eminently a very spiritual person - that is to say, a very life physics sort of fellow. Allow to continue to to tell you how, and why.

Recently, a committee of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government selected Karen Tse, a Chinese-American born in 1964 as one of America’s Best Leaders. What makes Ms. Tse such a unique individual from our viewpoint? She is a practitioner of what is coming to be known as New Advanced Physics. And what is singularly interesting to us is that Ms. Tse practices one of the centerpieces of what is now known in certain circles as the Working Model of the New Advanced Physics: an interconnectivity between and among human beings that is her signature leadership style; she calls it “spiritual persuasion via human connection.” Tse’s success – director of the International Bridges To Justice (IBJ), a Geneva-based organization that trains public defenders and raises awareness of criminal rights in countries that have only just acknowledged them – surprised actually no one. Bachelor of Arts in Education from Scripps College, lawyer and graduate from UCLA Law School with a Juris Doctorate, and a Master of Divinity from the Harvard Divinity School, married, two sons, and reads the Harvard Business Review for fun.

Actually, it is not anything external that makes her unique. What sets her as unique in this world, says Mia Yamamoto, a criminal defense lawyer who serves on IBJ, is that “there are some people that the purity of their intention is inescapable.” Ms Yamamoto is blunt in her assessment of Karen’s leadership style: “you’re looking for the bullshit factor with just about everybody. This couldn’t be as altruistic as it sounds. But I’ve known her for a long time, and she’s really like that.”
How, then, is Karen a practitioner of what is now known as the New Advanced Physics? To tell that, we must first tell you about the Working Model, or the way in which Nature as the whole of creation is painting herself out to be. And as we enter this rather interesting, mostly weird new realm, we will call forth Dorothy’s admonition to Toto, along the Yellow Brick Road, to you now. Someone has to say it, “Toto, we’re no longer in Kansas” with the New Advanced Physics’ [I][B]Working Model[/B][/I]. The way things are in 4-spacetime to us is but a mere impression of proprioception (signals going to and from the cerebral cortex and the body) of a construction of reality by our senses. And these construct what we call “real” on the basis of information received by our senses. Or so the theory goes. But is it this way? Well, things are not as they seem.

I am not going to include here what I wrote about the basis of life physics in answer to the statement above that things are not as they seem. Let me refer you to Kurt Strzyzewski's headliner article First Forum's Life Physics of the ultimate thought and the Working Model, posted a few days back. It will provide an ample set of rationale to the statement that things are not as they seem. Here, I am going to move on to make a short argument for the basis upon which what is presented here is not only possible but inevitable. The UNUM as described by Kurt (which is not altogether different from how I described it in earlier essays) makes creation one humungous thought, in which causation and causality are bidirectional – from T-boundary to 4-spacetime, and vice versa.

How is this Unum organized?

The Working Model tells us there are 12,960,000 infinities as degrees of interconnectivity between the T-boundary and any surface of any object in 4-spacetime. Each degree consists of 360 nonlinear probability ranges from a “floating” tangent. Such a tangent is any region within any one of the 360 nonlinear probability ranges in which holomoveme
nt (any resonant or transient transform moving along an upward or downward causal chain) occurs in an infinity at nonlinear right angles from any tangent. So there are literally infinities enfolded in infinities, and each of the 12,960,000 infinities from 4-spacetime to the T-boundary are at right angle from infinities along any tangent on any nonlinear degree/infinity between any 4-spacetime surface and the T-boundary. The information capacity of the Unum far surpasses that of the 4-spacetime universe, and the enfoldment capacity of any one nonlinear degree or region of a nonlinear degree is beyond anything possible in 4-spacetime.
[URL]http://www.lifephysicsgroup.org/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5[/URL]

Dear Drifter, ls. has high regards for your knowledge of ancient Indian scriptures, and there is not an iota of doubt about your commitment towards spiritual sadhna.
So for as your contributions in ls. blog is concerned, he has some reservation, as to about your intent and purpose! Are you trying to help extend his ‘knowledge’ about spirituality or the contents are for the benefit of other members? If your intention is to help ls., then your ‘help’ is absolutely of no use, as the books you refer to, were mostly read by the members of their family in their early teenage, because ours was a traditional family and perforce we were required to read everyday religious books! By age twenty four and half, he had read, quite elaborately, ancient ‘thought’. If on the other hand if your contributions are for the eyes of the toe members, then you are requested to please move your precious material to your own blog! However if you have to make some expert comments on ls. articles/thoughts, you are welcome! No hard feelings pl. love&regards.ls
Ps. since you had asked for his (ls) views on the subject, therefore the reply is as above!