Journey to the Abstract

Metaphysically speaking, what is pain?

Pain is loss of freedom, pain is a hijack of attention, pain fills your awareness with itself, seizes your attention/focus and does not allow you to access your loved objects. Pain has the experience of gravity. You cannot access other loved objects in your awareness when the pain’s gravity pulls you towards itself. Like say you are depressed. Then the depression fills up your awareness and you cannot access other emotional states when the gravity of depression is holding you down. Pain itself is not the problem. It is just a sensation. It is the gravity of the pain that binds you to it and prevents you from accessing any of your other loved objects. So we fear this loss and we apply resistance and desperately try to push against the gravity of pain and hold on to at least the nearest loved objects reachable to us. This resistance = suffering and its the suffering that is the problem, which arises because of attachments to the loved objects. The gravity of pain forces you to apply resistance against it to access your loved objects and this is the suffering that pain causes. If you simply allow pain to fill your awareness and surrender completely, there will be no suffering and pain is no problem (then we would not even call it pain colloquially, we would simply call it sensation).Now the interesting corollary of this is that, even pleasure is pain, because what is pleasure after all, it is a sensation that binds you to it with a gravity of its own. So metaphysically they both are almost the same. The difference in the case of pleasure is that, you want to be tightly bound to this pleasure object with an equal and opposite force as that of pain. In the case of pain, you wanted to desperately escape the pain object. In the case of pleasure, you want to desperately be with the pleasure object. They both are equal and opposite vectors.

As long as you are bound to the object of pleasure it is bliss, but as soon as it begins to leave, you feel a craving to be with it and that is suffering again. In the case of pain, you are repelled but helpless to move by the gravity of the pain object. In the case of pleasure, you are attracted but you are unable to access the vanished pleasure object.

In the immediate experience, pleasure is good and pain is bad.
But seen from a broader picture, pleasure is pain when the object is gone, which is inevitable.
Also, from a broader picture, pain is pleasure once the pain object is gone.
This is because pain and pleasure are relative and are verbs.

Lets start with the pain journey:
If the pain object takes you from 0 to -50, that journey from 0 to -50 is the experience of pain. Now as the pain object leaves you it takes you from -50 to 0. This journey from -50 to 0 gives you pleasure.
In the pleasure journey:
The pleasure object takes you from 0 to +50. The journey from 0 to +50 is experienced as pleasure. Then when the object leaves it takes you from +50 to 0. This journey from +50 to 0 is experienced as pain.

When it comes to intensity, pain and pleasure intensity is based on the acceleration of movement in the positive or negative direction.
Also, we can see here, that if pleasure or pain is the DELTA(change number), then all starting state numbers whether -50, 0 or +50 are equivalent, in terms of their potentials for pain or pleasure.

So in the larger picture we can say:
Both pleasure and pain torture you.
Pleasure tortures you when it leaves.
Pain tortures you when its present.

When seen in the scope of its full cycle:
You either get: Pain-Pleasure or Pleasure-Pain.
The both are equivalent.
Constant pleasure is impossible. Constant Pain is impossible.
What goes up comes down.
What goes down comes up.
The down and the up co-create each other.
This was a linear explanation.

If we go higher to the next dimension beyond time:
We see pleasure and pain are ONE object.
Just like a magnet is one object with 2 poles.

Gross pain – Gross Resistance – Physical – Solid

Subtle pain – Subtle Resistance – Mental – Water

Subtlest pain – The very subtle substance is in resistance – Spiritual – Gas

Can all 3 exist together? They can.

Infact the gross pain tends to dominate.

Grosser the pain, more the domination.

In the domination scale, it is – physical pain 1st, emotional pain 2nd, mental pain 3rd, spiritual pain 4th.

When there is great physical pain it is impossible to do anything. It demands all of your attention.

That is why hell is such a physical torture place. Hell No. 1. This pain is the most dominating.

When there is emotional pain. It is possible to do physical things with it. The emotional pain however permeates the body too. Torture in this place is the Hell No. 2. This pain is the 2nd most dominant.

When there is mental pain. It is possible to emote and physically move. But there is mental pain and it permeates into the emotional and physical. Torture in this place is Hell No. 3. This pain is the relatively less dominating.

When there is spiritual pain, it permeates all 3 areas of your life and you have this constant discomfort which nothing seems to relieve. It is all encompassing. Torture in this place is Hell No. 4. However this pain is the least dominating.

Remember the subtle pain permeates all the grosser forms (just like there is air inside all solids).

Also gross pain also pulls the subtle into it – like if you break a rock, not only does the rock break, but you would have also disturbed the air and water element in it.

So in the freedom giving scale:

(LEAST)Gross pain(Physical) ——Less Gross(Emotional)——-Subtle Pain(Mental)——- Subtlest Pain(Spiritual)(GREATEST)

Gross pains dominate all of your attention and preclude you from freedom in the other bodies – emotional, mental, spiritual.

The subtlest pain on the other hand gives you a lot of freedom in all its grosser bodies (physical, emotional, mental) however absolutely nothing relieves this pain. For example if you are in the spiritual pain of the dark night of the soul, you can do whatever you want – physically(go running), emotionally(watch movies) or mentally(read concepts) and so on. But nothing will seem to relieve that pain which is constantly simmering subtley across the entire background.

Lets see examples of each to understand:

1. Physical Pain – spasm in the upper back, muscle cramp

2. Emotional Pain – Depression, Sadness

3. Mental Pain – Struggling with understanding certain concepts, struggles with clarity of thought

4. Spiritual Pain – Dark night of the soul.

Today I was pondering on intuition.
The joy I feel when reading/video watching the 100000s of works – is the confirmation of my intuition.
Everything I have read, watched and heard with my will and interest has been a confirmation of my intuition.
This is the joy of confirmation of intuition.
In a way I can say all real learning that makes an impact is the confirmation of intuition. And it is this intuition that matures as it is fed by knowledge, just like a child eventually turns into an adult, physically. In the invisible space, the intuition grows into expansive maturity reaching trans-personal levels.
That is why when a person reads spiritual texts and say his intuition does not confirm its value, then he simply does not give much heed to it. This is because the spiritual text did not appeal to his intuition strongly. He may have other beliefs, other world models and so on in which there is still a lot of passion and investment.
It is only after a substantial level of soul maturity, the intuition develops and expands enough to understand the ABSTRACT and its significance.

The maturity of intuition appears to tie in great with the concept of soul age (Infant soul, child soul, youth soul, mature soul, old soul).

This explains how “old souls”, before the age of 30, acquire vast and abstract knowledge rapidly. They simply rapidly seek more and more knowledge, and the knowledge they seek out of interest, constantly validates, refines and confirms their intuition. Intuition itself can grow but that is a much slower process.

<How effectively they mirror, and how much good/damage they cause depends on their level of awareness, knowledge, past experiences/learning (life philosophy), intelligence and power. The driving force will nevertheless be equivalent.>

Give anger to them – Get anger projected back to you.

Give disapproval to them – Get disapproval projected back to you.

Ignore them – They ignore you in return.

Give acceptance to them – Get acceptance projected back to you.

Desire them – They desire you in return.

Want them – They want you in return.

Now this dynamic gets complicated because of the wearing of masks.

Say that you are really angry at someone, but you are wearing a mask of being nice to them.

Now, the acts from a mask are full of inconsistencies that can be spotted.

For example, say the person gives you a broad smile momentarily and then looks away and becomes poker faced, you can sense the inconsistency right?

Inconsistency is a straight give away that ‘Someone is acting’.

Now putting on any act takes a lot of effort. And no effort can be perpetual, let alone stay consistent in quality and quantity. So you can clearly see that – the degree of inconsistency observed shows the degree of pretense.

Another example would be, if someone portrays and shows great interest in what you say, engages participates and everything. But never ever talks to you about that topic again, then again there is an inconsistency right.

So all these inconsistencies are proofs of a mask.

People can subconsciously detect this and tend to avoid such people.

Sometimes people who are very sad, put on a mask of happiness.

An astute observer can spot this.

If the observer wishes to avoid accepting that person’s sadness, their resistance to it and the fact of them hiding it with a mask, if this knowledge is too uncomfortable for him, he would then avoid that person.

But the sad person who is putting a happy face may wonder why are so many people rejecting him, in spite of him putting on a happy face or a nice act. This is because it is not the happy face or nice acts that are rejected. What is rejected could be a combination of 1. The person’s original sadness, 2. Their Resistance and Hatred of that, 3. Their covering up or hiding of it, 4. Their Acting Mask for the fact that it is a put on and not really felt (not for the act itself or what it attempts to personify).

Sometimes the masks mirror too. Like if 1 person puts on a mask in the interaction, the other puts one on too because once a mask is put, the other person is obscuring his real feelings. Now this could be because he is just ashamed which is fine OR it could be something more evil like the other person is trying to exploit or use you by putting on a disguise. How would you know? You cannot know right away, but you can observe the behavior and a pattern would emerge.

The former case if verified would be just a question of your acceptance, and the fact that you are making a relationship with essentially a hollow act, which can be dropped anytime. You have to accept the insubstantiality of the whole relationship and many people are not ready to invest in something that is like a fragile castle made of sand.

The latter case however, would actually put you in danger. If that person is going to exploit you, you have to detect that fast and be hyper-vigilant. So you have to constantly live in fear when with that person. This case is worse than the former, because not only is the relationship phony and empty like the former, it is also going to exploit and harm you, and to top it up, leave you empty like it never existed.

Luckily acts can never be foolproof, they take substantial effort and its impossible to maintain a perpetual act in terms of quality and quantity. So they are full of holes that can be seen through.

Imagine someone numbs their hand with an injected anesthetic.

Then later he decides he is not the hand and is not identified with it.

He beats the hand with a stick.

He does not feel anything, but lets assume the hand still flinches.

He finds this fun, and beats the hand again and again

He enjoys watching the hand struggle every time, but feels no pain.

Later he beats himself on his leg, which is not numb and normal.

He feels pain.

Then he extrapolates that the hand must technically be feeling a similar pain as when he hit his leg.

This is cognitive empathy.

When the anesthetic wears off, now when he beats his hand, he feels pain.

He understands the hand is himself and treats it just like he treats his leg.

This is experiential empathy.

So technically one cannot be afraid of death as a noun. Because death as a noun is not an experience at all. You would not longer exist to know that you do not exist. Similarly life cannot exist as a noun.

All change is a simultaneous creation and destruction.

It is the destruction of the old and creation of the new.

Like the ouroboros snake.

Whether you see change as a “destruction of the old” or a “burgeoning of the new” is a matter of perspective. This problem is exactly like the necker’s cube. BOTH THE PERSPECTIVES ARE TRUE.

So in a way, there is no death, there is no life, when seen from the dimension above, there is only constant endless transformation. It is the perpetual dance of seeing different perspectives of the same infinite object.

Why is emptiness so unbearable?

Because emptiness is loss.

It is felt when just about anything is lost.

Loss of what you love and even loss of what you despise.

Because what is loved is the relationship.

(Even the relationship of despising something can be loved.)

The objects carry the relationships.

In fact there are no separate objects at all.

The objects have no essence.

Objects themselves get created by the relationships you project.

The only essence of the objects are the relationships projected by you.

The objects and the relationship are in-fact ONE.

One can say,

Emptiness is the loss of these relationship projections

It is the collapse and flattening of relationships.

Both existing ones and potential ones.

Without the relationships as we looked at earlier

The objects that you see around are emptied of essence

Everything flattens out in your world

Your formerly rich 3D world is reduced to a flatland (2D).

As the emptiness grows, it can potentially reach a point

Where even the flatland (2D) becomes ONE infinite nothing or 1D.

Lets look at the dimensions in greater detail.

This is just a exercise to get one thinking.

6-D is maybe what you feel in childhood in the magical stage

Where impossible possibilities are believed in the imagination

Then say as you grow up you enter 5-D realms

Where the limitations of reality have revealed themselves to you

And now your imagination gets narrowed onto what is realistically possible.

Then as you further grow up even more limitations get imposed

You reach 4-D, when you get anchored to a specific career path

OR commitments like marriage and so on

which further limit the diversity or riches of possibility.

Then on meditation exercises like vipassana

You focus on the present moment experience, Right now

You narrow your attention to relationships you have with specific objects

i.e. Objects which are happenings right now,

In immediate time, like your in-breath and out-breath.

This makes you reach 3-D

Then when you develop equanimity

Now, the 3-D collapses to 2-D

Because there is even(single) relationship to everything appearing in your immediate present

Then finally on further experiential inquiry

The 2-D collapses to 1-D.

That is everything becomes unified, ONE.

There is oneness, wholeness.

In which case there is no relationship at all.

How can there be a relationship when there is only one.

The 1-D is the final union of the witnesser and the witnessed

So the journey to oneness in other words,

IS the collapse of time.

OR the collapse of dimensions from 6-D to 1-D.

OR the collapse of multiplicity.

The corollary of this would be,

The creation of new dimensions

Creation of new possibilities

The creation of new worlds and so on

Which would be the movement away from oneness.

If all happiness is relative then we could divide experience into 2 parts:

The background and You.

Also, another factor is where you plot yourself on the background.

1. Lets say this is the background you see:

-ve ———————|———————- +ve

It is basically all the possibilities appearing in your imagination.

Now this background itself shifts with your changing moods and perceptions even during a single day.

It may not shift around much though most of the time.

But it can dramatically move around, when your doing deep inquiry and elevating consciousness into the nature of everything.

2. The next factor is where you plot yourself on this imagination spectrum that appears in awareness.

Case 1: If you consider yourself unfortunate and cursed

-ve ——-|You|—————|———————-+ve

Case 2: If you consider yourself blessed and fortunate

-ve———————–|————–|You|——–+ve

 This is a heavy simplification, but could be an interesting train of thought to pursue.

Normally we believe that the chain of causation infinitely backwards.

For example: Your forefathers determine your genes.

Your childhood determines your adulthood and so on.

However we can also see it in the reverse way i.e. the chain of causation could also be seen as running infinitely forward too.

How could this be so?

Because, we believe the past determines the future.

But what if the future determines the past?

Meaning your experience now could be a building block towards some experience you are to have in the future.

For example: Maybe your bad experiences now are so that you can master them and help somebody 10 years in the future.

So in that case, then event ‘now’ is caused/determined by the future event and not by the past.

So lets see the continuum:

Past ———- -> ———-Now———— -> ———- Future

Is the driver moving from left to right? – in which case the now is determined by the past.

OR Is the driver moving right to left? – in which case the now is determined by the future.

Both are true and its a matter of perspective.

We can shift this perspective to and fro just like looking at the cubes below:

Now Time is created by the mind or Thought.

No Thought implies No Time.

So No thought would bring you to the ‘Eternal screen’.

Now Past = Analogous to ‘known’, and Future = Analogous to ‘Unknown’ right?

Another way to look at it would be – Why should the ‘known’ be the determinant of the future?

Couldn’t it be equally so that the unknown/mystery is the real determinant of the future?

I guess here too, the answer is both are true.

Depending on how you see it – just like the cubes shown above.