Reading the scientific books one might think that we have everything explained quite well.
Let’s take for example perception, and out of all forms of perception let’s look at vision.
Everybody knows that the light coming from a source it is reflected by different objects and is then captured by our eyes and changed into nervous impulses - images.
So we see light. – No light, no vision. – Right?
Wrong!
These letters are actually black; so you shouldn’t see them at all since they do not reflect light.
Right? As non scientifically it might sound, you are seeing no light after all :)
But if the letters were white; thus reflecting light – you wouldn’t see them at all!!!
Right? As non scientifically it might sound you wouldn’t see light after all :)
So what the hell are we seeing; light or no light?
What we are actually seeing is neither, nor!
What we are actually seeing is the contrast between light and darkness.
Without a contrast there is no perception. – Light or no light.
So perception, vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch is possible only as long there is a contrast.
It is this contrast that makes everything perceivable.
Same rule apply to everything else we perceive; thoughts, emotions, feelings, morals.
Whenever we talk about a bad behavior we have in mind the opposite god behavior.
They go hand in hand like front and back and left and right.
Same goes about God or the rest of existence – if that is what you want to call her :)
You need the ego to perceive the rest of existence.
Without an ego the whole universe would be an oneness.
By practice, one may attain liberation from the bondage of the ego – enlightenment – and see the reality as oneness.
In that moment one doesn’t see and feel as a separate part from the whole.
The reality doesn’t change but the way you see it is so perfect, so profound, so beautiful.
(It is a wondrous experience I have been blessed to experience for brief moments.)
It is not like understanding one thought or feeling one emotion but understanding and feeling everything at once.
It is like looking at this page and instead of seeing a lot of separate black characters on a white piece of paper you would see nothing separate, but a whole white page with some intricate holes cut into it – and understand what it says all at once.
I know it is a very poor example but it is the best I can do in words.
But the point that I was trying to get to is that God, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t look at you as separate from him, and it might come as a little shocker and disappointment to the new age crowd but you are not God after all; it is the other way around :)
PS: I just realized that my blog background is gray and you could actually see white letters :(
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11 comments:
The idea of Oneness with the Universe is straight out of the Buddhist handbook.
Ramble ahead:
One question I have is one of strategism. Where we should define the boundaries of our ego. I, for instance, consider my computer a mere extension of my brain, and my webpages as well. Other parts of me include my favority TI-89 calculator, and to some degree my truck and bicicle when I'm using them. Then there is the next level up, that is groupism. I belong to a family, a political affiliation, a philosophy, a country. Perhaps the next step above belonging to my country is being a citizen of the world, in particular that of the universe. In that last sense, I do indeed group myself plus all my extensional possessions, plus all my affiliations and relationships as being one with the Universe. We've all evolved over billions of years through the most improbable survival situations, and therein is the point. We're made of matter, that material made up from elements on the periodic table makes up only about 4% of the known universe, the rest being completely unkown properties. Am I to be one with the dark matter and dark energy? Never! That would be treason against all that I know.
....well, unless of course I can somehow fuel a rocket ship with dark energy and fuel the brakes with dark matter....
Hi Quantum!
That was really fast :)
There is no matter black or white.
Matter is a quality of existence like say cheese.
There is not such a thing as cheese.
If you take a piece a cheese apart to atomic level the quality of cheese disappears.
If you take atoms apart to subatomic particles the atoms disappear.
At quantum level even the particles disappear.
The whole universe turns into a field of possibilities.
I am just one of the infinite possibilities of that universe to manifest as you are too.
but we are just qualities of the universe there is not such a thing as you like you are made of you and I am made of something totally different called me :)
I am a part of the universe calling himself Buddha of Hollywood talking to another part of the universe calling himself Quantum Flux pretending we don't know that we are one and the same :)
It is like looking at this page and instead of seeing a lot of separate black characters on a white piece of paper you would see nothing separate, but a whole white page with some intricate holes cut into it – and understand what it says all at once.
When I read that I was reminded of the opposite of holes cut into, and instead bumps rising up...braille. And I thought you are right, braille for the blind wouldn't be possible without contrast.
This was a thought-provoking post, obviously!
I woke up in the middle of the night here drinking a half gallon of water, couldn't sleep because I poored myself a too powerful of a Jameson Irish Whiskey Lager earlier, oops....anyhow, my philosophy describes existance as 3 fundamental parts:
Form (the structure of the quantum field probabilities existing in time and space), function (the processes those integrative field possibilities perform, being consciousness in my case but could be the function of technology or of any other natural object), and logic (that which comprises the infinite set of quantitative relationships which exists independent of form and function). Perhaps it's a utilitarian philosophy, but I think it's actually something more.
@ Lydia - I love your metaphor even better:
The universe as Braille inscriptions on the firmament of space!
Brilliant :)
@ Quantum – This is how the universe works:
“As simple as possible!”
Your theory as fascinating and original might be doesn’t pass the “simplicity” test :(
You need more work :)
"Things should be made as simple as they are, but never simpler than that amount." Einstien
You see, BOH, Buddhism or your style thereof only focuses on form, being one with all nature as it is. You completely miss the points of functionality and logic though. There is the problem in your attempting to acheive oneness with all nature is that of boundaries. The boundaries of form are defined by the functionality of that form, i.e. the boundaries of yourself is defined by the functionality of yourself, and the boundaries of the functionality of yourself are defined by logic. It's actually a simple matter of Occum's Razor of how you define yourself and divide the lines of yourself and that which is external to yourself, which is nothingness if you define youself as being the entire universe.
In effect, I've got a question for you BOH....What is it that causes you to snap out of your Oneness with the Universe? (My prediction is that it's when your mind begins to focus on logic or functionality instead of pure form....if that's the case, then I'll have you know that you're going about it all wrong. You need to embrace the other two points of functionality and logic in order to be truly one with the universe, which is reality.)
QF asked what snaps us out of "oneness" and I had a thought that went something like this: what snaps us out of 'oneness' is a shift in perception. For example, when we look at the letters on this screen our minds are built to form patterns and because of that quality we see the letters and then the words, etc. But what if instead, our perception couldn't focus on a letter or a word and all our focus was on the background? What was once individual 'parts' becomes a unified whole.
Now for a moment try to extend that awareness and focus to include the rest of the computer, the table it's sitting on and the extended environment. Isn't that the 'god's eye' view?
Perhaps you wish to do that, but I'm not letting anything become a part of me unless it's also a part and extension of my functionality. That's my strategy. When the camera is in my hand, I'm a part of that camera and I'm taking pictures, but as soon as that camera goes back into it's case, then it's not being utilized other than storing data, but I consider that to be a separate system from myself until later when I need to utilize it once again. For you see, functionality defines the boundaries of the ego.
Another example is when two people are having sex, that and perhaps the bed and candle lights is a closed system, it's external from the neighbors in the next room over, well unless the people are being conscientious about things in which case they take their neighbors into consideration and move the bedframe away from the wall and decide to distribute their energy in a horizontal plane instead of a verticle up-down direction so to not annoy their downstairs neighbors either (of course the tradeoff is less degrees of freedom). Anyhow, as soon as one of the neighbors bangs on the wall or ceiling with a broomstick, then they too become a part of the system, assuming the lovers take notice.
@ Quantum – First of all; lets all agree to disagree.
I am not running a contest of who is right and who is wrong.
There is no right and wrong only different points of views.
…
You are talking about boundaries, but what you call boundaries I call bridges.
What you call separation I call oneness.
You can’t exist out of this oneness.
Put a plastic bag over your head and isolate yourself from the oneness for 5 minutes and you will die!
So your so call independence and sole existence is only relative.
And it doesn’t make any difference if you are rational or illogical about it.
On the other end, as you mentioned, cross that bridge – which I have done for brief moments – and in becoming one with the universe you are killing who and what ever your ego is.
Now to answer your question: “What is it that causes you to snap out of your Oneness with the Universe?”
If I have to be totally honest I would have to say “fear”
@ Diego – very nice argument :)
Hi BOH. I've also had those moments of nonduality where there is no seperation between color or sounds or anything at all! When there is no observer, just intellegence. Its alomst like the present moment doesn't even exist. Everything is so vibrant!
I've talked with someone who said that after a long time it starts to always be like that, but that's really hard to imagine. I find that the effort to imagine that there is someone who is watching everything is what causes the nonduality perception to go away. That or any kind of comparison also shifts the mind back to its old state. Do you have any insight into this? Do you know how to maintain it or invoke it? Maybe it's just a rare blessing.
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