I tend to agree with you Witnesser. Alas though, few, very few, would I imagine have attained union with the/our universal consciousness, and the few that I think may have attained this glorious liberation got crucified, shot, or died broken-hearted (I know, dying broken-hearted does not seem becoming unto an enlightened one, but such is this life . . .). Buddha perhaps peacefully moved on though this may only be ahistorical lore and legend. The only other avenue left it seems is the dissolution of the physical universe that divides us . . .

Nevertheless.

You are a joy to read, and I appreciate your wisdom Dr. Singh.

Peace

Thanks Avtar.

Since there is no time, it all happened already and we are One :), constantly looking back at ourselves.

This is the only way I can explain it.

Living backwards to me is the only way to comprehend it.

Love, Mieke

The objectivity of Consciousness to me:

When I experience it or express it (like making a painting): I am not

When I remember it or look at it (the painting): I am

To be or not to be?

or

To not be and be? :)

Mieke

Or the third one:

To let it be :)

#1 Yep Craig, I arrive at the same 'place' and expect a mind-blowing shaking of the foundations.
I'll look out for you as we fly free. We'd better believe it!

Hello Avtar and Everyone,

Avtar your writing this, "Objectivity is transcendence beyond the subjectivity of object-ism. However, it may be a hard scientific fact to be swallowed by the incomplete mainstream science founded solely on the fragmented and relative subjectivity of materialism."......

Is like Deepak Chopra explaining to Catholics, Jews, Baptists, Mormons why the realization of Self is absolutely a truer vision of Jesus's teachings than most of their mis-interpretations of the Bible. They would be like....HUH? WHAT? is this guy nuts or what?....

your argument is still just an argument as to why you think the mystery of consciousness can be solved objectively, nothing more, nothing less, imo.

You have not demonstrated ONENESS, you have des-scripted it, quite convincingly, for sure, but.....

have a great day ruth.....

One day Ed, and a good day to you as well Ruth.

peace

Dear Avtar,

Thank you very much for the wonderful explanation of the misapplication of the word objectivity.

I would like to refer you to a couple of sources that discuss the Ego Mind:

On Youtube.com there is "Michael Tsarion:2012 - The Future of Mankind 7/19" that discusses the ego mind and projection and inflation.

"Michael Tsarion: 2012 - The Future of Mankind" 3/19" discusses the Mayan Calendar and cycles of time and the ego.

Best Wishes,

"Betsy" S.

Dear Avtar

I had some art students look at me after along lecture about the dynamics of color, texture, composition, you know the elements of art. They were all around 12 years old.
One of them finally looked at me and said, " We don't want you to explain to us about art, we want to create some.

So we took some really long paper and a bunch of cheap paint and we slid each kid through the paint on this long sheet of paper, about 20 feet long. We put it on the wall and it was a perfect Chinese dragon, like the kind you see in parades. Completely accidental, completely beautiful.

Magic

I never had to lecture again.

It is often the case that when we stop trying to figure things out, the most brilliant of answers come seemingly by accident to create more than we ever expected.

if there is ever to be Oneness then it already must be

derek

I always thought "subjective" meant from the viewpoint of an observer (a location either in spacetime or mindspace), and "objective" meant that which is being observed.

As such they are interchangeable. A subject can become an object as viewed by another subject.

Actually, this is the old meditation technique most everyone here is familiar with: Observe (subject) your thought (object). Then observe (subject) the observer (who has now become an object of a new observer), and so on until the mind becomes overwhelmed and balks at creating anymore subjective viewpoints.

Koans work the same way on the mind.

The quest to become completely objective is as fruitless as finding the end of the possible number of subjective viewpoints.

As for the LHC, I have no idea what they are going to accomplish with it. I'm not even in a position to intelligently speculate on that.

But the LHC costs a heck of lot less than an oil war, so for my money, I'll take more LHCs and less oil wars any day.

Anytime you want to divert money from the war machine and put it into science, hey, I'm perfectly OK with that.

Even better, spend the same money on science and civic education.

I did some research on the Internet about objective consciousness and found some explanations that really say it all to me:

"Objective Consciousness is the guidance for the realization and development of one’s personal essence."

"What is personal essence? It is the personal experience of being and is therefore the true individual autonomy."

When you know your essence, you know how to create (intuitively); you know the deep inner guidance of your own being.

What is intuition: understanding without apparent effort or the ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning.

Intuition is something Deepak calls: effortless ease.

I guess one's personal essence is the zero point field, but how one creates from there is one's own autonomous intuitive unique way.

So no one is able to take the essential freedom of someone else away.

And in this essential freedom we are all one, expressing it in myriads ways.

The Buddha taught Anatta.
Consciousness is intrinsically non-local,
without substance.
When the belief in objects, matter, energy
even time/space itself disappears all that
survives is Pure Unbounded Awareness.
Free from all conceptual illusion.
No separation is even possible because there
is nothing to be separate from.
Todd

"...emptiness that is the single highest teaching of the Buddha"

'Knowledge and understanding can arise only in those people who have been taught that all things are anatta and should not be grasped or clung to.

Here we reach the word 'emptiness' of which it is said that having seen it one will find contentment in Nirvana. We must thoroughly understand that on the first level emptiness is the absence of the feeling of 'I' and 'mine'. If those feelings are still present then the mind is not empty, it is disturbed by grasping and clinging. 'Empty' meaning free of the feeling of self or that things that belong to self; and disturbed meaning confused, depressed, in turmoil with the feeling of 'I' and 'mine'.

What are the characteristics of the state empty of
ego-consciousness? In the scriptures there is a teaching of the Buddha which list four points:

Na aham kavicini - feeling that there is nothing
that is me.

Na kassaci kincanam kisminci - without worry or doubt that anything might be me. This makes one pair, the second pair is:

Na mama kavacini - feeling that there is nothing that is 'mine'.

Kisminci kincanam natthi - without worry or doubt that anything might be mine. (Anenjasappaya Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya)

At the moment that anyone's mind is freed from these four things the Buddha held that to be emptiness. The commentary sums it up concisely as 'na attanena' - not taking things to be self and 'na attaniyena' - not taking things to belong to self, and that is sufficient.

Try and imagine what it would be like when this grasping consciousness is not present. One doesn't look on anything anywhere as ever having been, as currently being, or as having the potential to be self or belong to self. There is no self in the present and no basis for anxiety regarding self in the past or future. All things are dhammas, simply parts of nature. This is the mind that is identical with emptiness. If we say the mind has attained or realized emptiness it leads some people to understand the mind is one thing and emptiness another. To say that the mind has realized emptiness is still not particularily correct. Please understand that if the mind was not one and the same thing as emptiness, there would be no way for emptiness to be known. The mind in its natural state is emptiness, it is an alien foolishness that enters and obstructs the vision of emptiness. Consequently, as soon as foolishness departs, the mind and emptiness are one. The mind then knows itself. It doesn't need to go anywhere else knowing objects, it holds to the knowing of emptiness, knowing nothing other than the freedom from 'self' amd 'belonging to self'.

It is this emptiness that is the single highest teaching of the Buddha, so much so that in the Samyutta Nikaya the Buddha says that there are no words spoken by the Tathagata that are not concerned with sunnata. He says in that sutta that the most profound teaching is that which deals with emptiness, any other subject is superficial. Only the teaching of sunnata is so profound that there must be a Tathagata enlightened in the world for it to be taught.'

From: Heartwood from the Bo Tree
Ven.Buddhadasa bhikkhu

Excellent Irvine!

Thanissaro Bhikkhu says:

The Concept of No-Self in Buddhism is one of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on Anatta, often translated as no-self.

This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of Karma and Rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of Karma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit well with the predominate Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali Canon -- the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings -- you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the BUDDHA WAS ASKED POINT BLANK WHETHER OR NOT THERE WAS A SELF, HE REFUSED TO ANSWER.[my emphasis]

When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible (Samyutta Nikaya XLIV.10). Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of Anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers. The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: Those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer.

Those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question.

Those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court.

Those that deserve to be put aside.

The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside.

If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted.

The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him:

Those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them.

Those who don't draw inferences from those that should. These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the Anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored.

Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside.

Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.

So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self

-- interconnected or separate, eternal or not

-- the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress.

This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness -- one's own or that of others -- impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as

"Do I exist?" or
"Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to SELF or OTHER, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each.

Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the Anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not

"Is there a self?

What is my self?" but rather

"Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?"

These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging

-- the residual sense of self-identification

-- that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.

In this sense, the Anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside.

Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?

Copyright © 1996 Thanissaro Bhikkhu

IMHO, I see no conflict in any religious discipline, a training of the mind...

In Buddhism, there is the concept of no self. In advaita vedanta the no-self is seen for Who/what it is-- a separate thought of "I am" that disappears in the awareness of the Light of Seeing. God/One/Avatar's "Universal Consciousness"...always was the pilot, the driver, fills in that empty space with these burning words: I AM THAT I AM,

Now true life begins, Being. And this BEING does not depend on any thought of motivation, influence or discipline. It Is What It Is.

Peace
Love
Joy
Bliss
Truth
Clarity

The Gifts of This Miracle called Life.

"Copyright © 1996 Thanissaro Bhikkhu"

O Great Reprint!! O Great Reprint!!

Who was that asshole who said we shouldn't have reprints here on the alleged "killed" IB?

If we meet him on the road, if we don't kill him, at least let's cut off his balls, hahaha.

Love,
John

Vanesse, you're rock n rolling today I see.

Sorry, D, but I just got this song bubblin' up in me and I want to sing it to my precious V:

Ain't nothin' like the Real Thing, baby
Ain't nothin' like the Real Thing, baby.

Wanna do the astral tango? That can get pretty Hot and Heavy, you know.

Love,

Sunyata Johny

"In the true sense of objectivity or universality, the nature of pure consciousness is totally objective because it represents a state wherein all relativity or subjectivity of matter dissolve into an absolute ONE wholesomeness of fully dilated space, time, and zero-mass or zero-point energy. The true objectivity of pure consciousness lies in the dissolution of all objects of materialistic relativity or subjectivity. Objectivity is transcendence beyond the subjectivity of object-ism. .. The ocean of universal consciousness, unfortunately, would remain only a subjective reality to the frog living in the well of mainstream object-ism." ~ Avtar

Great post and I especially enjoyed the paragraph above, and the 'frog living in a well' made me laugh.

Thanks Avtar!

Love,
Char

Beloved Johny:

We are the Only Dance There Is.....And if I remember correctly we've been dancing for awhile;-)

We are every song.

We are Being singing One song:

This . with a capital T
Being. with a capital B
Love. with a capital L

v