Toward Integral Consciousness.

[Drifter]

Oh no, looks like I'm spamming the thread ... ok just a quick one from that same link http://emergent-culture.com/alice-an...verse/#systems

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Two thumbs up


I think this is something also commonly overlooked in the physical sciences - yes, one could assume that things are hidden behind some unknowable "randomness veil" ... ah, but the view is much better with some additional content.


The fact that something might be considered physically unprovable does not necessarily mean it isn't or can't be true. In that case it can be worthwhile to see if there's a manner that it should be.


Yes, one could blindly put one foot in front of other throughout life, but that might not be ideal ...

This type of search inevitably leads, at least temporarily as it did for David Bohm and many others just as well I'm sure), into the realm of the "mystic-cal",

Where many have ventured beyond the norm searching for answers. Perhaps that is where you tread as well?

J.K. has an interesting talk with David on the subject of persception in the sidebar at this link. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...27387729432306
Itzack Bentov was another like-minded scientist who was of the mind of a mystic. Also an Inventor, Author, Speaker, Rocket Physicist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXMN2yMfZkU

http://www.google.com/search?q=itzac...ed=0CB0QqwQwAA

[Drifter]

I posted the link to this earlier.

The Teachings of Atmananda and the Direct Path


NOTES FROM SPIRITUAL DISCOURSES by Sri Atmananda (517 pp.) (Free download)
INQUIRY VIA THE DIRECT PATH (Audio Interview with Greg Goode)


Introduction
Like Berkeley but Global
Atma Darshan and Atma Nirvriti
Features of the Direct Path
Suffering and Freedom
Sources
From the Outside In
Stages of Realization
Taking your Stand as Awareness
Skillful Teaching
No Conflict in the Teachings
The Witness
Stabilization of the Witness
From the Witness to Pure Consciousness

Introduction

Sri Atmananda (Krishna Menon) was a teacher whose teachings flow from the fountain of nondual wisdom known as Advaita Vedanta. He lived in Kerala, South India from 1883 to 1959. This was in the same modern era shared by Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) and Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981). Like Ramana and Nisargadatta, Atmananda inspired Easterners and Westerners. And like Ramana and Nisargadatta, Atmananda even has a giant book of insightful dialogues rich enough to be contemplated for years, which has the ability to help establish one as nondual awareness.
Sri Atmananda is much less well known than Ramana or Nisargadatta. As I write this paragraph, there isn't a Wikipedia entry on Atmananda, and there are relatively few published books either by him or about him. Yet, speaking for myself, I resonated more quickly and solidly with Atmananda's teachings than with Ramana's or Nisargadatta's. Atmananda uses concepts very well suited to a modern Westerner accustomed to logical or scientific discourse - concepts that seem simple and intuitive, and yet when examined, totally dissolve under scrutiny. This feeling of having the rug pulled out from under one is part of the experiential teaching that has direct and tangible effects as one proceeds with it.
Atmananda has had well known students, some of whom became teachers in their own right. Examples include John Levy, Jean Klein, Wolter Keers, and Paul Brunton. My own association with the teaching comes through the Jean Klein branch via Francis Lucille. Francis gave me a copy of ATMA DARSHAN one day, and I read it with the attention and respect I felt went along with such a gift. This short book resolved in a wondrous flash a subtle question I had been contemplating for several years about the difference between subject and object. Here in ATMA DARSHAN were several sections devoted to the exact issue I had been pursuing, issues I had never seen touched upon in the hundreds of other books on Advaita or Western philosophy I had read.

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Like Berkeley but Global

There's something else too in my case. When one first encounters Atmananda's teachings, they can seem similar to the Western philosophy of Idealism, especially as taught by George Berkeley (1685-1753). It just so happened that I had been seriously studying Berkeley's teachings and before him, Brand Blanshard's (1892-1987) teachings as part of my own academic training in Philosophy. This had been going on for 25 years before I encountered Atmananda's teachings, during which time "physical" objects had lost their associated feelings of hardness, opacity, heaviness and brute physicality. I experienced physical objects as ideational.
And this is very very similar to the way that Atmananda first approaches his teaching. He starts by having you contemplate a physical object and acknowledge that it can be 100% accounted for by visual, tactile, auditory and intellectual "forms." And that apart from, say, a visual form that arises only as something in knowledge, it makes no sense to think that we "see" an object. We simply never experience anything "of" an independent object other than this form. So we have no way to establish that this form is "of" the object. We have no experience that there's an object independent of this form.
My Berkeley teacher gave me lots of hints that Berkeley was actually a nondualist; but to actually find this element in Berkeley's works, one must cultivate the skill of esoteric and hermeneutic reading. On the surface level at least, Berkeley wrote as a bishop in the Church of Ireland; he had to write as though human minds and the conventional figure of God are well and good, separate and intact. But writing in a different culture in the middle of the 20th century, Sri Atmananda didn't have to worry about persecution by religous orthodoxy. His investigation goes very directly and openly to the core of being. Atmananda applies the same sort of scrutiny to the sense modalities, to the body and to the mind. We simply never witness anything external to witnessing awareness. There is no evidence for a limitation to seeing, or a gap between subject and object. There is also no evidence that awareness is personal, separate, limited or compartmentalized. And so nothing is missing.

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How much further? All the way!

This awareness is our very self, since we don't stand apart from it and see it. It is our very seeing itself, as us. It is not separate or personal. It is clarity and openness. As Knowledge, it never feels that anything is missing. As Love, it is always accepting to everything that arises, never prohibiting or saying No to anything. As Happiness, it never suffers.

ATMA DARSHAN and ATMA NIRVRITI

ATMA DARSHAN is the more fundamental and poetic of the two works. It lays out the kernel of Shri Atmananda's unique method, which could be called the "outside-in" approach. Instead of expanding the individual so as to become universal, ATMA DARSHAN shows how the universal is always the sum and substance of the individual. Specifically, it shows quite clearly just how everything that seems to be outside oneself (i.e. world, body and mind) is actually inseparable from oneself as pure awareness.
ATMA NIRVRITI can be seen as answering questions that might have occurred to the reader of ATMA DARSHAN. Questions may arise such as how there can be seeing without a seer or indeed without an actual object that is seen, or how knowledge of your nature is different from everyday factual knowledge. ATMA NIRVRITI clarifies the issues in ATMA DARSHAN from different angles of vision, and in places from a higher level. In addition, ATMA NIRVRITI has three articles as appendices, "I," "Witness," and "World" which are extremely helpful in understanding how these concepts are regarded by this unique teaching.
If you wish to obtain these books, you can try the rare and out-of-print market. AbeBooks.com and Amazon.com carry copies occasionally. But I am sure that you will join me in wishing that Advaita Publishers reprints these two classic works sometime soon.

Seems the late 1800s were a hotbed for spiritual evolution, I wonder when the next round will take place? I'm sure it's in it's incubus form at this moment.

[SteveA]

This type of search inevitably leads, at least temporarily as it did for David Bohm and many others just as well I'm sure), into the realm of the "mystic-cal",

Where many have ventured beyond the norm searching for answers. Perhaps that is where you tread as well?

J.K. has an interesting talk with David on the subject of persception in the sidebar at this link. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...27387729432306
Itzack Bentov was another like-minded scientist who was of the mind of a mystic. Also an Inventor, Author, Speaker, Rocket Physicist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXMN2yMfZkU

http://www.google.com/search?q=itzac...ed=0CB0QqwQwAA

Bohm made a comment during that discussion on perception regarding correct and incorrect perception (I don't remember his statement exactly) and I was thinking that it might be rather accurate to say that "incorrect" perception is perception that is not understood. If we experience some events and these are sufficiently understood in their relationships that no inherently new or novel property is recognized, then that's close to the typical view of "correct" perception, but if instead those perceptions contain qualities that are unknown or inexplicable, that closely correlates with what is generally considered "incorrect" perception.

Wouldn't it be ironic if science was specifically inapplicable to "incorrect" perception, as that would seem the area it should be most applicable to.

I posted the link to this earlier.

The Teachings of Atmananda and the Direct Path

...

Thank you again for the links, Drifter. I read through this also and I like the way the material was presented.

[SteveA]

You guys have put up some good links and here's an attempt to return the favor. The material on this page is rather basic, though there are some different links on the left that have a variety of related subjects that could be enjoyable to explore.

http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00000d.htm

[Drifter]

You guys have put up some good links and here's an attempt to return the favor. The material on this page is rather basic, though there are some different links on the left that have a variety of related subjects that could be enjoyable to explore.

http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00000d.htm

Great link Steve, Thanks
d.

[Drifter]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFyJYNqQtIc

Toward Integral Consciousness.

Düsseldorf 2006 international scientists conference "Wisdom and Science''...


A report of a confererence of scientists ..
Facing up to how our consciousness causes the problems in our world: environmental, war, poverty.

Meeting in 2006 of scientists in Dusseldorf.
They all agreed that the worlds present condition had been foreseen by people thousands of years ago.

People treat each other very badly.
Can human behavior even be called rational? What is the true purpose of life?
Why don't we know how to be fulfilled? Why do we try to fill that hole with pleasure?
Labeling creates a fragmented self, which causes a fragmented world.
Classical consciousness is linear - but insight comes in flashes.
Consciousness is non-local. Conscious experience is possible without the body (NDE)

Subjective experiences need to be included in scientific research.

Humanity is together One Body - we operate as one big organism.

But we lack the awareness of this oneness.

Our consciousness needs to transform in order for humanity to survive.

Noosphere = universal love. By destabilizing it we destabilizing it, we destabilize the world.

The Four Noble Truths
by Traleg Kyabgon
Adapted from The Essence of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its Philosophy and Practice.

The Truth of Suffering
The first of the Four Noble Truths is suf­fering, which is the usual translation of the Sanskrit word duhkha (Pali, dukkha). We should qualify that translation by saying that this does not mean that the Buddha didn’t acknowledge the existence of happiness or contentment in life. The point that he was making is that there is happiness and also sorrow in the world; but the reason why everything we experience in our everyday life is said to be duh­kha is that even when we have some kind of happiness, it is not permanent; it is subject to change. So unless we can gain insight into that truth and understand what is really able to give us happiness, and what is unable to provide happiness, the experience of dissatisfac­tion will persist.
Normally we think our happiness is contingent upon external circumstances and situations, rather than upon our own inner atti­tude toward things, or toward life in general. The Buddha was saying that dissatisfaction is part of life, even if we are seeking happiness and even if we manage to find temporary happiness. The very fact that it is temporary means that sooner or later the happiness is going to pass. So the Buddha said that unless we understand this and see how pervasive dissatisfaction or duhkha is, it is impossible for us to start looking for real happiness.
According to the Buddha, even when we think we are trying to find real happiness, we are not doing it effectively, because we don’t have the right attitude and we don’t know where to look for it. The Buddha was not against happiness; rather, he gave us a method of finding out how to overcome that sense of dissatisfaction, and this method is part of the last Noble Truth. (We shall come to that soon.)
The key to understanding the truth of suffering is what the Bud­dha called the “three marks” of everything that exists. All condi­tioned phenomena,1 he said, are pervaded by these three marks: impermanence (anitya), dissatisfaction or suffering (duhkha), and in­substantiality (anatman, “without self”). According to the Buddha, if we do not understand how conditioned phenomena are marked by these three aspects, then we will not be able to understand the first Noble Truth. We may do all we can in order to avoid facing the fact that everything is contingent and transient—we may try to hide ourselves from it, and we may even spin out all kinds of metaphysical theories of an unchanging, permanent, substantial reality to avoid this all-pervasive nature of ephemerality. Also, if we do not under­stand that conditioned phenomena are unsatisfactory, we will not think about restraining ourselves from overindulgence in sensory gratifications, which makes us lose our center and become immersed in worldly concerns, so that our life is governed by greed, craving, and attachment. All of these things disturb the mind. If we do not understand that everything is insubstantial—anatman—then we may believe that there is some kind of enduring essence or substance in things, or in the personality, and because of this belief we generate delusion and confusion in the mind.
The Origin of Suffering
The second Noble Truth is the origin of suffering, which means that once we have realized that suffering or dissatisfaction exists, we next have to find out where that suffering comes from: does it originate within, or does it come from some kind of external situation or con­dition? The Buddha said that when we start to examine ourselves and see how we respond to situations, how we act in the world, how we feel about things, then we will realize that the cause of suffering is within. This is not to say that external social or economic conditions don’t create suffering; but the main suffering that afflicts us is created by our own mind and attitude.
The Buddha said that if we want to overcome dissatisfaction, which is intimately linked with our experience of suffering, then we have to deal with craving, grasping, clinging, and attachment—all these exaggerated forms of desire. Now, some people think that Bud­dhists encourage the idea of eradicating desire altogether, but that is not what the Buddha said. He said that we should try to overcome excessive and exaggerated forms of desire, which manifest as craving, grasping, and so on, because they make our condition worse by increasing our sense of dissatisfaction and discontentment. It is the more obsessive types of desire that the Buddha said we should try to overcome. As long as we have these strong forms of desire, they will always be accompanied by aversion, hatred, resentment, and so forth, because when we can’t get what we want, we become frustrated, angry, and resentful. Or, if we find some obstacles in the way of satisfying our desire, we want to eliminate them, eradicate them, or attack them. We may even resort to violence and deception in order to satisfy our greed and craving. So the Buddha said that we need to deal with these extreme forms of desires; but we should not aim to eradicate desire altogether, because we can use desire in all kinds of positive ways as well.
The Goal: The Cessation of Suffering
The third Noble Truth is the goal. First we find out about the human condition, how it is pervaded by a sense of dissatisfaction, then we look at the cause of that dissatisfaction, and after that we look at the goal, which is the attainment of nirvana. Some people think nirvana is some kind of absolute reality that is transcendent and otherworldly. But the Buddha said that one can attain nirvana while still living in this world; this is called “nirvana with remainder.” One can also at­tain nirvana at the time of death, which is called “nirvana without remainder.” So it is possible to achieve nirvana in this very lifetime. Achieving nirvana means that one’s mind is no longer afflicted by delusion and emotional afflictions. The mind becomes tranquil, and one’s experience of happiness is no longer dependent upon external situations and circumstances. Therefore, one’s reaction to things is less extreme, and one is able to maintain a sense of tranquillity and peace, even when faced by adverse circumstances.
This is so because the one who has attained nirvana has overcome the three root delusions of attraction, aversion, and ignorance. When the mind is no longer governed by strong emotional reactions of ei­ther attraction and aversion, we can be at peace and tranquil even when things are not going right. We maintain a sense of fortitude and face things courageously.
http://www.shambhala.com/html/learn/features/buddhism/basics/four-truths.cfm