Bindi

Much appreciated stirling It’s probably too hypothetical for me to answer, I could make up an answer but that would very likely miss the mark. On that Yin Yang dual level I know this much, they come to work together and don’t need me to direct or interfere, together they make a complete team, but before working together they were misfit, unable to work together. It’s likely that their workings filter down into the mental/emotional level so both these levels, Yin/Yang and emotional/mental operate perfectly, without ‘me’ being engaged at that level. I suspect the Self that interfaces between heaven and earth, left right duality is taken care of, but heaven earth duality requires my attention. 🙏

I can see how you can simplify the procedure, but at the same time doing a thorough job I have noticed the subtle energy level that is also mistakenly identified with, that more impersonal level described as true Yin and true Yang, I believe there’s no way I would have noticed that if I had raced through the process, I also don’t know how the invisible trunk/post conjoining can be pulled apart quickly, if rushing through how would anyone even know there is something to pull apart (because it is invisible). Subtle clinging and invisible clinging, hypothetically this could keep one returning for many lifetimes. I had my own mini experience of sudden freedom from emotional and mental distress, it lasted two days and was very pleasant indeed, especially in contrast to the distress I had been feeling, and I have thought on a number of occasions if that had continued then, my life would have been very peaceful for sure, but I don’t believe my subtle energy body would have been developed as it has, and my subtle body’s development has brought its own rewards and will continue to do so IMHO. I’m good thanks Someone once had a dream for me, in it she described a 4 stage process where first one had to face one’s fears, then one had to climb a mountain, then one had to disengage, and then one had to resolve the dual battle within oneself. Again step by step, in a certain order, it seems I am very into defined steps and stages

I have to disentangle my mind from the structure, and my entanglement is many hundreds of points between tendrils, sticks, and the apparently conjoined trunk and post. Even falling the whole thing is reinstated twice before finally turning my back on it all, getting the two apart doesn’t seem like a simple job to me, and in my dream I do the whole process very deliberately and methodically. I’d say I need to see what I’m doing, and be very clear about how to get it done, there is a lot of effort involved, and an order that I have to follow for it to come down fully, for instance starting at the trunk wouldn’t work because there would still be sticks and tendrils attached, and there would be no space above the conjoined trunk/post to find a handhold to start pulling them apart. I think the difference for me is that I see all vasanas and samskaras and karmas as needing to be divested before the grand happening, and I very much get the idea that the nondually realised on this board don’t see that as necessary.

Actually I pretty much agree with what you’re saying, I’m not quite sure how we’re seeing it differently?

I will refer to my dream which I posted earlier: I had a dream of a grape vine growing entwined on a pergola structure, it was so entwined that at its trunk it was almost impossible to tell what was vine trunk and what was pergola post. On top of the structure the branches had grown around the beams, and the tendrils had also wound themselves around the beams. In my dream I began separating the vine from the structure, starting at the tendrils, unwinding them, then unwinding the branches, and after some time coming to the trunk which had grown around the post to the point that it was was indistinguishable from it. I couldn’t unwind it as it was hard wood, not pliable like the tendrils and branches, so instead I held the trunk and the post above where they were enjoined and worked at pulling them apart. They did come apart but the whole structure started to topple over so I pushed it up again, and then this happened again, I pulled the trunk and the post apart from above where they were joined, the structure started to topple and I pushed it up again, and then pulling the post and trunk apart a third time it started to topple again, and this time I just walked away. When I looked back the overgrown heavy old vine had disappeared along with the structure, but in its place a new young vine had been planted with no structure around it, and I marvelled as I realised that the vine had never needed the structure in the first place, and was now free to grow. The structure, maybe best described as lifetimes of human conditioning and false identification, is what the ‘self’ has attached to and believes is necessary, so much so that the structure and the ‘self’ are at the deepest level indistinguishable from each other, whilst the ‘Self’ is the new young vine that has no structure, no conditioning, no false identifications, and never actually needed it. I claimed previously that the momentary experience of nonduality was not the ‘Self’, because the ‘Self’ being the new vine can only be established once all of the previous ‘self’ which is conditioned and has false identifications has completely disappeared. There can be a moments view of emptiness, but either the ‘self’ and conditioning and false identifications resume as they did in my dream when the toppled vine and structure were pushed upright by myself, or emptiness perhaps can be extended with no new ‘Self’ established. Going one step further in my view this new ‘Self’ develops and grows unhindered by conditioning and false identifications which is contrary to Advaita Vedanta, which holds that the Self is already perfect, so I can’t be an Advaita Vedantist after all, let alone a fundamentalist one. The proof for me is the absolute lack of any conditioning or false identification left, anything partial is necessarily in the land of ‘duality’ for me.

I will always stick by my guns The 'self' is all the mistaken identities, it doesn't exist when the 'Self' is realised, if it does exist then the Self has not been realised, there is no room for self and Self, only room for one. What then are you comprehending?

The self that I am not has to be comprehended, not recognising those multiple selves leaves me being those multiple selves. When they all fall away completely and permanently the Self is established for the first time. Before that, the “moment of complete understanding”, that is a momentary collapse of self identifications, but that is not the establishment of the Self, this can only happen when non-identification is absolute and final.

As a fundamentalist nondualist, it boggles my brain that any clinging is seen as acceptable, root it out I say! A nondual approach doesn’t seem that expedient if it leads you to accept and defend clinging. Indeed

Perhaps, but reading that article made me start googling traditional Advaita Vedanta to see if what the author said was correct, and I think it might be, as self-knowledge is key in Advaita Vedanta, and “It’s impossible to have only partial knowledge of the Self.” I can agree with these statements. I have to fully comprehend the limited self in order to be the Self, and moments of nondual view, even if it were up to 99% of the time, do not mean I have full knowledge of the Self. Buddhists don’t even believe there is a Self which is a whole other can of worms when Buddhists become nondualists.

Along similar lines, this is a quote from an explaining advaita Vedanta type article, with my additions in brackets: It is rare to find that person who has the conviction to challenge herself to really discover herself, to go so deep that the way one lives, the internal structure of identity that has been created by the confusion of not knowing who one really is, has the opportunity to be [completely] dissolved or destroyed, so that something more pure is [permanently] revealed. Im not interested in the halfway land of ‘nonduality’ with its fears and smugness and whatever else the I clings to lying just beneath the surface. How to remove the entire substratum is the only method I’m interested in (and I don’t need a psychiatrist to help me do it). Fundamentalist Advaita Vedanta maybe 🤔

This seems worth a read, one sentence in particular “In the spiritual tradition, one must first understand dualism in order to reach nondualism.” “Sometimes we believe that we are further along our spiritual path than we actually are. The increase of inner peace or an awakening of higher consciousness has overwhelmed us and makes us believe we achieved nonduality. But actually we have just scratched the surface and confused the step with the actual goal. This is not union with our Higher Self/Enlightenment/Nonduality. As long as we continue on this path, we will gain new improved truth of our truths.” And within the logic of the above at least, how would one continue on this path, by chasing nondualism, or continuing to work to “understand dualism in order to reach nondualism”?

You posted "I've always had this undercurrent of fear inside me, stemming from who knows what. It manifests as a tendency toward anti-socialism, staying apart from people, mentally (and subtly) pushing people away. Sometimes pretending that I don't see them, sometimes purposely turning a corner so I don't have to socially interact with them. I realized just this morning how very subtle this is, as I was about to turn a corner before having to say good morning to someone else. How ridiculous! Pleasant Experience doesn't have to do that any more!" You explicitly state that you noticed a subtle undercurrent of fear inside you, therefore you were not "one with the whole" with “no room for fear” up to that morning. Perhaps you think you are “one with the whole” now, though practically speaking there may be and probably are other subtle undercurrents that you haven't yet noticed.

Maybe not for the meditator but the followers knew how long he was in samadhi for and how many dirty loin cloths they cleaned.

Diapers/loin cloths aside, I thought ralis was referring to Ramana being in samadhi for great lengths of time and having his bodily functions looked after by his followers. Some people spend years in this type of samadhi on and off, it’s an extreme way to get to experience the “Self”, I personally think there are better ways to become at one with the Self or however you’d like to term it.

Then clearly this is not inevitable for all of us.

Was this throughout his life whist in Samadhi or at the end of his life when he had cancer?

When you saw your children having mental breakdowns, did you see this as somehow just illusory? Were you unmoved by the situation?

If you’re already engaged in actively doing your best to avoid death then fear would get in the way, fear just motivates activity, perhaps when there is no action possible to avert the danger the fear just starts echoing beyond the actual moment. Perhaps it’s whatever is the best state for survival, sometimes cold hard mental processing unhampered by emotion, sometimes fear followed by action. I do wonder if fear is a conditioned response actually, after being bitten by a dog I developed a fear of dogs, it was a learnt behaviour.

I was once out with my kids when they were a toddler and a baby strapped to me, walking along a bush track, when a tiger snake reared up half a metre in front of where my toddler was walking towards, and a sound came out of me, it reminded me of a monkey howling ‘owowowowow’ and my toddler stopped and came towards me, and the snake ‘stood down’ and slithered off. My fright was so intense I bypassed words, but apparently to very good effect

Yes probably that, I am not the actor, emotions and thoughts happen but I am not the actor or the director, I am the witness perhaps. To me emotions and thoughts, maybe body identification and karma as well, are functions of the two subtle side channels, when flowing freely they are perfect duality in action, the Yin and Yang operating perfectly together, but instead of no-self after separating from these as sense of self I suspect the sense of I instead becomes established in the central channel, and this channel is the realm of alchemy, it’s where earth and heaven can meet, it’s where the ‘immortal’ body is created, not as a thing to be disassociated from, maybe more as a vehicle for consciousness after death, though I know far less about the central channel than the two side channels for now.

I like your answer, next time maybe you could just answer your own question right away Agreed, fear is required for survival. We can even be afraid of the idea of something happening when actual situations aren’t there to stimulate the stored fears. I don’t mean as a general anxiety state, more specific, for example fearing being abducted by aliens, in the past fearing vampires, creating threatening characters in the imagination to trigger the stored fears. I see it as once created, the fear has to be fully felt and processed before it can dissipate and stop repeating itself, sounds like ghosts of our pasts that have to be put to rest. The question is, is nonduality in and of itself enough to actually resolve these fear echoes?

I have no issue with this as a personal experience, though to believe that it describes reality is just a belief. I might also believe that consciousness is not dependent on the physical body, but this doesn’t make it true either. I don’t feel these experiences are really so hard to comprehend, lots of people have experienced different states, I think they can be described well enough. What I find unconvincing is the depth of change in self-proclaimed awakened non-dualists, it seems to me that parts of life that don’t fit the nondual story are remodelled and adjusted on a shallow level, eg., fear, oh I’m feeling fear, I’ll just stop feeling that because fear is just a story, and I don’t need to run that story anymore. I find this unconvincing, and just another story to tell oneself. A turning point it may be, but it doesn’t appear to be a complete and final disassociation from all physical and emotional and mental and karmic identifications, and this complete disidentification seems to be the greater achievement (to me).

Is it? Fear is at bottom life saving, designed I believe to protect the organism, but major early fears do tend to reverberate in dysfunctional ways into adulthood. I see the dysfunctional manifestations as a restriction on our freedom to live happily/peacefully and achieve personal goals, but the subconscious source of dysfunctional fears can be confronted.This is actually empowering, and certainly emotionally healthy.

“Be in service to heaven, obey the earth, and store the Essence where they join.” ~ Yellow Court External Illumination Scripture

Wouldn’t the nondualist accept that fear is present, not wishing to change it or the manifested action in any way?