It's a moving target - there is no goal post

[Jeff]

On 10/23/2018 at 11:18 AM, s1va said:

 

So, you are saying from one form to another, it is just one continuation of flow.  How does this differ from the Hindu traditional view with divides soul taking another form.  If we describe that process -- from the perspective of an individual life -- as change of clothes, or, choosing a different character and starting from Level 1 of a video game, would that match with your view?

 

No, I am not saying there is a continuous flow from one form to another.  More like "ultimately" there is a complete vase, but it is shattered into pieces within time and space.  The individual components have the potential to realize and then integrate with the other pieces.  It is not just some "spirit" flowing from life to next life in time.  Each piece, from there own individual perspective, more just dies /ends, until some wholistic integration where some piece brings it all together.

 

Another way to think of it, is that "you" bubbled up from the Dao to become a "One", but that One is not fully clear/integrated/conscious, and the "pockets" on conscious attach to the energy around them which are what you think of as individual lives (or a 10,000 thing).

 

[s1va]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:10 PM, Jeff said:

 

No, I am not saying there is a continuous flow from one form to another.  More like "ultimately" there is a complete vase, but it is shattered into pieces within time and space.  The individual components have the potential to realize and then integrate with the other pieces.  It is not just some "spirit" flowing from life to next life in time.  Each piece, from there own individual perspective, more just dies /ends, until some wholistic integration where some piece brings it all together.

 

Another way to think of it, is that "you" bubbled up from the Dao to become a "One", but that One is not fully clear/integrated/conscious, and the "pockets" on conscious attach to the energy around them which are what you think of as individual lives (or a 10,000 thing).

 

 

While this is fascinating and not the way I have thought of rebirth so far, there seems to be some issues with this concept of lives.  What about the learning our evolution from one life to other?  If they are separate unintegrated flows, then the transformation or the cultivation done in one life has no value or impact in another, right? How can this be?  Also, when one piece of the vase is manifested as a life in time and space, what about the rest, are they dormant or active in some other dimension?

[Jeff]

17 minutes ago, s1va said:

 

While this is fascinating and not the way I have thought of rebirth so far, there seems to be some issues with this concept of lives.  What about the learning our evolution from one life to other?  If they are separate unintegrated flows, then the transformation or the cultivation done in one life has no value or impact in another, right? How can this be?  Also, when one piece of the vase is manifested as a life in time and space, what about the rest, are they dormant or active in some other dimension?

 

Evolution from life to life?  Again, that implies some linear time framework.  Beyond time and space, it is all sort of concurrent. From the perspective of the individual body-mind it is one and done.  From the perspective of the broader "whole" beyond time and space, there are no such things as "dormant" as that is again some concept within time and between lives.

[s1va]

2 minutes ago, Jeff said:

 

Evolution from life to life?  Again, that implies some linear time framework.  Beyond time and space, it is all sort of concurrent. From the perspective of the individual body-mind it is one and done.  From the perspective of the broader "whole" beyond time and space, there are no such things as "dormant" as that is again some concept within time and between lives.

 

Yes, I am trying to view and make sense of it from within the linear framework of time and space

 

[Jeff]

1 minute ago, s1va said:

 

Yes, I am trying to view and make sense of it from within the linear framework of time and space

 

 

From a linear time view, there is no in-between or dormant time between the lives.  Maybe think of it like shattered pieces of that vase. Nothing of the vase in-between those shattered pieces, just space.

[s1va]

42 minutes ago, Jeff said:

 

From a linear time view, there is no in-between or dormant time between the lives.  Maybe think of it like shattered pieces of that vase. Nothing of the vase in-between those shattered pieces, just space.

 

This is still not clear to me.  But, it certainly seems completely different from both Buddhist and Hindu (or any traditional view) reincarnation

concepts.  I am just going to let go of this for now and revisit later

 

If and when it makes sense to me, I will come back and post here or ask any other questions that come up.  Thanks.

 

[3bob]

just to add another monkey wrench to the mix there is Mr. O's interesting material about reincarnation in his book,  "A New Model of the Universe" along with related material in several of his other books.  Mr. O is very logical in his thinking and writing, but for those that don't know the "4th way" has had a lot of troubles with cult spin offs so "buyer beware".

[s1va]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:10 PM, Jeff said:

 

No, I am not saying there is a continuous flow from one form to another.  More like "ultimately" there is a complete vase, but it is shattered into pieces within time and space.  The individual components have the potential to realize and then integrate with the other pieces.  It is not just some "spirit" flowing from life to next life in time.  Each piece, from there own individual perspective, more just dies /ends, until some wholistic integration where some piece brings it all together.

 

Another way to think of it, is that "you" bubbled up from the Dao to become a "One", but that One is not fully clear/integrated/conscious, and the "pockets" on conscious attach to the energy around them which are what you think of as individual lives (or a 10,000 thing).

 

 

I thought some more about this and feel I understand what you meant by the vase shattered into time and space.  It is a profound concept.

 

To me, the linear view also makes sense.  Even though the pieces of the vase got shattered into time and space, there is a pattern to that shattering and how it fell in time and space.  Perhaps this can be seen as the linear past births like how Buddha did.

 

Another way I thought of this was, not simply past lifes, even the past in this life and the future in this life can be seen as fragments of that one vase, right?  Yet, we do generally see or interpret a linearity within the current life.  Perhaps the past lifes could also be viewed in similar way!

 

[Jeff]

6 minutes ago, s1va said:

 

I thought some more about this and feel I understand what you meant by the vase shattered into time and space.  It is a profound concept.

 

To me, the linear view also makes sense.  Even though the pieces of the vase got shattered into time and space, there is a pattern to that shattering and how it fell in time and space.  Perhaps this can be seen as the linear past births like how Buddha did.

 

Another way I thought of this was, not simply past lifes, even the past in this life and the future in this life can be seen as fragments of that one vase, right?  Yet, we do generally see or interpret a linearity within the current life.  Perhaps the past lifes could also be viewed in similar way!

 

 

If I understand what you are asking, then yes future lives are also possible to notice/access.  In some cases, what people think of as higher beings could be noticing/connecting to your own "future self" that has a more integrated whole of the vase.

 

But, more broadly, you seem to be thinking about this as building/creating as a process, but it is really more like the vase is not actually broken into pieces, rather aspects of the broader whole are "obscured" by karma/issues/fears.  So rather than really integrating past and future lives, at higher levels, it is more about clearing away the crap the obscures the direct knowing of the broader being.  Very much like with becoming fully Siva (in KS).  It should just also be realized that Siva is also ultimately empty too.  

 

Or, you could also say that each 10,000 thing (individual life) is really a Third (potential of all 10,000 things - Integrated lives), that is the independent layer of the One, which emerges from the Dao.

[s1va]

3 minutes ago, Jeff said:

If I understand what you are asking, then yes future lives are also possible to notice/access.  In some cases, what people think of as higher beings could be noticing/connecting to your own "future self" that has a more integrated whole of the vase

 

I was not asking about future lives, but it makes sense that it can be noticed and accessed.  Ultimately, the past and the future just seem to be projections similar to space and distance.  While exploring this, the time itself feels like just an illusion of the mind.

 

5 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But, more broadly, you seem to be thinking about this as building/creating as a process, but it is really more like the vase is not actually broken into pieces, rather aspects of the broader whole are "obscured" by karma/issues/fears.  So rather than really integrating past and future lives, at higher levels, it is more about clearing away the crap the obscures the direct knowing of the broader being.  Very much like with becoming fully Siva (in KS).  It should just also be realized that Siva is also ultimately empty too.  

 

Yes, I was focusing on the building/creation process.  But what you described makes very good sense to me.  Once a person integrates into all of the pieces, that One whole is also ultimately found to be empty.  Because there seems to be no tangible entity as that One, just like how there is no tangible entity at the local body and mind level.

 

10 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Or, you could also say that each 10,000 thing (individual life) is really a Third (potential of all 10,000 things - Integrated lives), that is the independent layer of the One, which emerges from the Dao.

 

Makes sense.  I am understating it this way.  Third or individual life of 10,000 also feels like it was always just the One itself.  Some obstructions just made it feel or get caught up in time and space and feel as the second or third.  When this obstructions clear, the third expands or finds itself as the One.

 

[Zen Pig]

Great discussion all.  My 2 and 1/8 cents from my experience, which is a work in progress, is that the idea, (yes, it is an idea), that mind, thoughts, the changing body, earth, is not the same as consciousness, in that one is "real" and the other is "illusion" , like many things is a good learning tool, kind of like training wheels on my bike.  I am starting to see more and more that my journey, (hexagram 56, the traveler going down the unknown road without a destination, but to go, to just see the sights).. leads me right back to here where nothing is separate, nothing disconnected, thoughts are fine, the changing so called reality is fine. ego is fine. and for me it's about seamless integration of the whole sh-bang.  lucid dreams have shown me that reality, like dreams are not real, and not unreal.  I have little doubt that I will never come to the end of the road, but then again, what would be the fun in that. happy Friday 

[s1va]

3 hours ago, Zen Pig said:

Great discussion all.  My 2 and 1/8 cents from my experience, which is a work in progress, is that the idea, (yes, it is an idea), that mind, thoughts, the changing body, earth, is not the same as consciousness, in that one is "real" and the other is "illusion" , like many things is a good learning tool, kind of like training wheels on my bike.  I am starting to see more and more that my journey, (hexagram 56, the traveler going down the unknown road without a destination, but to go, to just see the sights).. leads me right back to here where nothing is separate, nothing disconnected, thoughts are fine, the changing so called reality is fine. ego is fine. and for me it's about seamless integration of the whole sh-bang.  lucid dreams have shown me that reality, like dreams are not real, and not unreal.  I have little doubt that I will never come to the end of the road, but then again, what would be the fun in that. happy Friday 

 

How did you learn from lucid dreaming that reality like dreams is not real.  I am just curious if you want to elaborate.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience.  Happy Friday!

[3bob]

how is it that the real can be connected to the unreal?  Thus the dichotomy is only in perception not fact. 

[steve]

16 hours ago, s1va said:

 

How did you learn from lucid dreaming that reality like dreams is not real.  I am just curious if you want to elaborate.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience.  Happy Friday!

 

Zen Pig will hopefully respond as I like reading his thoughts, but I just thought I'd suggest that the answer to your question lies in the full quotation - 

 

19 hours ago, Zen Pig said:

lucid dreams have shown me that reality, like dreams are not real, and not unreal. 

 

[s1va]

3 minutes ago, steve said:

 

Zen Pig will hopefully respond as I like reading his thoughts, but I just thought I'd suggest that the answer to your question lies in the full quotation - 

 

 

 

To me, there is a clear distinction between the dream state and waking state.  One is just a projection of local body/mind.  The other is much more complicated and can be termed as a collective projection or virtual reality.

[3bob]

everything except the Brahman or Self beyond categories could be termed an ever changing relative reality....

[steve]

4 hours ago, s1va said:

 

To me, there is a clear distinction between the dream state and waking state.  One is just a projection of local body/mind.  The other is much more complicated and can be termed as a collective projection or virtual reality.

 

To me the distinction is far less solid. Sleeping dream is a projection of local body/mind. Waking dream is a projection of non-local body/mind or absolute body/mind. I don't see one as necessarily more complicated than the other. It's just that the non-local projection of the body/mind it's much more difficult to see as illusory because we feel we are it, just as we feel we are it while actively dreaming during sleep. When we are able to readily wake up in the dream, or in a dreamless sleep state, and maintain that awareness in dream or sleep in a stable fashion, it has a profound effect on how "real" it feels both during the dream and during waking. 

[Zen Pig]

As far as lucid dreams go, that is kind of a long story. 

I did not intend to have lucid dreams,  and at this time, i feel that most folks who have a daily long term meditation practice will have the same kind of lucid dreams. nothing special. 

Real and unreal are only thoughts, not good, not bad. What IS, this suchness, is beyond our logical understanding, from what I have seen so far. 

When we have dreams that are not lucid, we believe that we are living in the real world at that time, then we wake up and either laugh or cry because the dream is over.  This life for me, is now much like a lucid dream.  Or what I call a semi-lucid dream, where I play the story of the dream, until it starts to go a direction I do not wish it to go, then I either change it , or start over.

For me, this so called real life is like this.  I love it, I love playing the part, and do not see it as "unreal" or real. for me it is all one thing. hard to explain.

One of the stories I tell about lucid dreams, is one I had a few months or years ago, (time is weird) , where I had the classic dream that i was naked in a room full of people. and like this common dream, I was the only one who knew I had no clothes on.  So knowing it was a dream, i thought. "this is a very common archetype dream, that most folks have, so I am going to shake things up a bit:"..........  So I stood there buck naked and  started to yell at everyone,  "Hay, Look at me, I am standing here completely naked"... everyone ignored me except one man, who started to laugh at me.  I walked up to him and stuck my hand into his chest, and he dissolved into a kind of brown smoke.  the very second I did that, I felt that I did something very wrong...... Now I knew that this was a dream,  and I thought that i was playing, but the second I took that "life", I felt the same way I did when I had to take other lives in this "real" world.  have not come to terms with this, but know it was something more than "just a dream".. so not real, not unreal.  that is as close as i can get to explaining. 

[s1va]

6 hours ago, steve said:

 

To me the distinction is far less solid. Sleeping dream is a projection of local body/mind. Waking dream is a projection of non-local body/mind or absolute body/mind. I don't see one as necessarily more complicated than the other. It's just that the non-local projection of the body/mind it's much more difficult to see as illusory because we feel we are it, just as we feel we are it while actively dreaming during sleep. When we are able to readily wake up in the dream, or in a dreamless sleep state, and maintain that awareness in dream or sleep in a stable fashion, it has a profound effect on how "real" it feels both during the dream and during waking. 

 

There is no reality to the dream world, the people we meet in the dream don't exist and are just projections of the local mind.  When our dream ends, the existence of everyone one and the dream world itself vanishes.  But the waking state is different.  There is subjective reality and there are others ( relatively) in the waking state.  This is the difference I see and this difference is important in my understanding.

[steve]

2 hours ago, s1va said:

 

There is no reality to the dream world, the people we meet in the dream don't exist and are just projections of the local mind.  When our dream ends, the existence of everyone one and the dream world itself vanishes.  But the waking state is different.  There is subjective reality and there are others ( relatively) in the waking state.  This is the difference I see and this difference is important in my understanding.

 

Yes, the waking state does seem different as it is what we live in and know best. 

[3bob]

granted there are different areas of the mind, but to the Self it's still all of the mind which is like a stage full of actors moving about in their identified parts...so why get finicky about the different areas of such a temporary and changing stage and how real those parts are? 

[z00se]

The paradoxial nature of philosophicalising about these types of questions makes it difficult in the discussion.

 

For me, being very spiritual, expanded out, seeing the larger picture gives me the calmness and emptiness i need to see clearly, along with the greatly expanded insight i need to know what needs to be done to achieve my souls destiny. This view alows changes on the macro level to be acieved very quickley and create huge external material changes, like business profits, creating health and wellbeing in the community, or spreading the good word. These destinys can be achieved with great speed and with great power, however this can leave me feeling empty inside, instead i get propped up by my community that i help improve. Yet alas its not enough, and none the less it becomes meaningless internally, so much so that if i continue along this path i would give it all away and have nothing.... The light side.

 

Then on the other hand, contracting, attention to detail, and the feeling of inner power while losing the strength of that spiritual connection gives me the desire and the drive to put plans in motion that came to me through realizations while being in an expanded spiritual state. This is how i can create heaven on earth. The joys and the thrills of achieving and self fulfillment feels glorious and tremendus as each next milestone is reached.... until the attention to detail changes to perfectionism. Relaxant type drugs create the space to allow more of this joy, and drive further to bring this heaven to earth in a percieved even greater, yet forceful way, the thirst for more becomes insatiable... destroying ones self in the process, the dark side.

 

The joy is perhaps what i began to develop first in my practice some 15 years ago when i became sick, it drew me to the practice of qigong and the pleasure gave me the patience to practice for hours on end, yet it fell to the wayside as it felt meaningless to be estatically happy without reason, and of percieving there to be more power in both the yin and the yang, or the heavens and earth. The joy is now my least developed power and having a job and business i love where i make great money doing few hours, helping alot of people, an awesome family, yet all the work to get to here has the pleasure associated with having such treasures fade. I need now work on my practice of joys again, whilst i know that during this process i will lose some of my treasure, and so the cycle will continue.

 

The stars in the sky that catch my eye twinkle red green blue and white. That is what i think we need to be like. Sometimes the proton, sometimes the electron, and sometimes the neutron. Transitioning between the spiritual, the physical and the joy isnt easy, each gains momentum and the power lies in that momentum, but it is a contantly changing path we need to take to keep happy in our lives and maintain them.

 

 

[dwai]

On 11/3/2018 at 7:10 PM, s1va said:

 

There is no reality to the dream world, the people we meet in the dream don't exist and are just projections of the local mind.  When our dream ends, the existence of everyone one and the dream world itself vanishes.  But the waking state is different.  There is subjective reality and there are others ( relatively) in the waking state.  This is the difference I see and this difference is important in my understanding.

It seems though that the dream state can put us in touch with other beings (like meeting divine beings, sages, etc). For eg: my master often visited me in my dreams. It is not specifically "unreal" in that sense. There is still transactional reality to the dream world. It is not *just* a projection of the local mind it seems

[s1va]

1 minute ago, dwai said:

It seems though that the dream state can put us in touch with other beings (like meeting divine beings, sages, etc). For eg: my master often visited me in my dreams. It is not specifically "unreal" in that sense. There is still transactional reality to the dream world. It is not *just* a projection of the local mind it seems

 

Yes, I have had some experiences like that.  But that seems to be the exception from the way dreams generally play out.

[dwai]

1 minute ago, s1va said:

 

Yes, I have had some experiences like that.  But that seems to be the exception from the way dreams generally play out.

It depends on how much awareness one retains in the dream state (not just dream awareness, but awareness of the fact that it is a dream). The entire realm of astral travel uses this primarily.