Tag: Experience

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The blind men and the elephant analogy describes our experience with time

Time = Kala/Darkness/Blankness.
When it comes to time, we live like blind men.
Unable to see beyond the present moment,
Living moment to moment.

Someone whose time is good says life is good,
Someone whose time is bad says life is bad.
Who is right?
Someone who is dying says life is destruction.
Someone who is at a thriving stage says life is constructive.
Who has the correct view of what life is?

This reminds me of the analogy of the blind men and the elephant.
Depending on what they feel,
They create a model of what life is based on that.

We live moment to moment, unable to sense time itself.
With our eyes open we can perceive reasonably large amounts of space.
But when it comes to time, we have no such sense.
The longer we live, the more we use our memory to model what life is like.
But we only base our idea by retrospect.
If time changes in a way that is different from our immediate past,
We cannot know.

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There is only the ‘perception flow’

The winds of life,
The way they blow…,
Take you along,
For that kind of ride.

What you are now,
Is the result of past winds,
What you will become,
Is the result of winds that are yet to be.

But all becoming is transient too.
We are ever-transforming,
Becoming and unbecoming various things,
And changing with the winds.

The winds of time,
Give all gain and loss.
Time is the giver and also the taker of everything.
But all that we experience as gain or loss, are only of illusions.

The real is the underlying substrate of everything,
Which is ‘nothing’.
Only ‘nothing’ actually exists,
All else are its appearances and creative potentials manifesting.

Everything will change,
Because all of it is ultimately the dance of ‘nothing’.
There is only the dream,
There is only the ‘perception flow’.
The ‘nothing’ is your true nature.

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About transformation and the revelation of faith

Faith is revealed in times of uncertainty/lack of control,
When your model of life (formed from your past) does not explain your current experience.
It would also apply when your experience is not stable and consistent, flickering all the time, where the doors and access to perception keeps opening and closing beyond your control (appearing to do so at their own whim).

A person will always judge “transformation” as negative since all judgment is only based on the past.
When there is the nulling of everything you were in the past, how can it be judged as positive in any light?
The only way transformation can be judged positively is by faith.
Transformation: Judging by past (negative) —–vs—— Judging by faith (positive)
What is loved has been lost —-vs—– What is loved has not yet come.
To live itself is to step into the unknown and it is to have faith.

The lowest nadir point in transformation,
Is like the point where the caterpillar has entirely de-structured and become the cocoon.
It is like where one walks alone into the unknown into pitch darkness.
It is here, where all movement happens through faith and faith alone.

Faith is the vehicle that carries you through such dark times,
Where one knows not where one is,
Where one knows not whether what is happening is a blessing or a curse,
Or even how to make any sense of what is happening.

Suicide, Depression, Bitterness, Alienation/Separation/Anti-social feelings, Thoughts of destruction of everything, all show a crisis or a lack of faith.

This faith is actually the force of life itself that moves everything inexorably.
In deeper reality, that is the underlying condition at all times anyway.
When growing or dying or transforming, there is a lot more uncertainty.
At such times there is a lot more of stepping into the unknown,
But also, in a sense, a lot more of change/life.
Life = change/unknown/mystery/spirit.

The vortex of time moves you through various stations.
When things are stable and repetitive, there is a chance to build something of your own.
There is then this transition to feeling like an independent individual capable having personal power.
Here, this underlying movement of faith/life sort of veils itself into a clear knowledge of the world/certainty.

However, the greatest mystery of death still lurks somewhere in the recesses.
Although greatly veiled in a steady structured predictable lifestyle lived in the known,
Death has still been the intrigue for all of mankind for all time.
‘What is before birth’, and ‘what is after death’, are still 2 unknowns.
We find our present self and its condition sandwiched between these 2 unknowns.
We know not where we come from, and we know not where we are going,
But life/god makes itself more or even most visible in times of great change/transformation, removing all apparent refuges/securities, and revealing that this was the only thing that was real and all else was only its appearance.

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About time

Time in ‘experience’ is change.
It is a subjective experience.
One could say, there is only psychological time,
Objective/clock/mechanical time is only an inference and not an experience per se.

Time itself has infinite potentials/possibilities,
Because it is a whole dimension.
Any dimension that way is infinite in its nature.

So the determinant of what time is experienced,
Is based on the ‘psyche-lens’ through which the time-dimension is modulated.
This ‘psyche-lens’ I see as different layers of memory and their energetic activations.

In a sense, we are always experiencing eternity at every moment.
Every moment is a combination of …past…present…future…
All 3 are experienced as a single swath/continuum in experience.

They are all completely intertwined and inter-influence each other.
The past memory that is held in mind sets the expectation/imagination for the future.
The present experience influences which past memory is accessed and also the predictions about the future.
A promise from the future can influence your entire present experience and past memories,
And so on.

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Fixed self in a changing world or changing self in a fixed world

How do you experience reality?
# Do you feel like a [relatively fixed self] in a [changing world]?
OR
# Do you feel like a [changing self] in a [relatively steady world]?

This relationship between self and world experienced,
Depends on the relativity of rates of change between the 2.
# A more changing world, unchanging self = fixed self in a changing world experience.
# A more changing self, and unchanging world = changing self in a fixed world experience.

Time is the creator, maintainer, and dissoluter of the self.
Time is the ocean, that pushes out the wave of self -> makes the wave ride through -> and reabsorbs the wave back into itself.

This process is however not a single linear chain.
There are multiple overlapping dimensions.
For instance, the biological cycle itself is one of the important dimensions.
There is the process from:
Childhood -> Teens -> Adulthood -> Old age.
So in childhood, the self is growing and changing much faster than the environment around.
Something similar happens in teenage years too, there is a lot of change and growth in other dimensions.
So in both these times, you are relatively changing much faster than the world around you which may appear to be more fixed/steady/cyclic of sort.
In adulthood, once the self is stabilized, there is the maintenance (more or less) steady stage, there might be an experience of:
# Being a fixed self in a fixed world
# Or fixed self in a changing world (if there are catalysts from the environ).

The other dimension I can think of is the astrological sign,
Whether it is: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable.
# Cardinal signs not only maintain but also build/grow the self further.
They are like the rising wave.
They are equivalent of the Brahma creation principle.
# Fixed signs maintain the self, like the steady wave.
They are the equivalent of the Vishnu maintenance principle.
# Mutable signs are like the returning wave,
Merging back into the ocean.
They are the equivalent of the Shiva dissolver/redeemer principle.

Then there could also be the soul’s age as another dimension,
The larger cycle on which the subtle body rides in time.
From: Infant soul -> Child soul -> Young soul -> Mature soul -> Old soul.
So this is similar to the biological stages in principle but pertaining to the subtle body.

I have outlined 3 dimensions,
But there might be a plethora of such dimensions,
Determining the character of one’s experience.

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Doors open, Doors close

When something looks possible/doable to you, that door is open.
When something looks impossible/undoable to you, that door is closed.

Every relation/person is also a door,
That is open or closed to you.
They in-turn open other doors to things,
And/or open doors to other people,
Who then act as doors to more things and people,
And so on…

Doors can open in a cascade, like dominos falling,
And open a whole new vista of experience for you,
And all of it could be from a single door (a person you suddenly made contact with).

The reverse can happen too,
That is, all of your current vast arrays of doors can also start closing up in a rapid cascade.
A bodily problem can do that, it can just shutdown your open doors rapidly in no time.
Similarly a single relation with an difficult person can bring so much destruction,
That most of your doors could close off from that.

A good time in your life is when doors were opening and opening for you,
Keeping fresh enjoyments piling over one another.
A bad time is when doors keep on closing imprisoning you further and further,
Giving you the grief of loss again and again.

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What is ‘Vision’

From my contemplation and experience,
Vision is to “See through”.
Vision is the act of penetration through the phenomenology of the world,
So as to never lose sight of the essence,
Which is the “ineffable infinite mystery” that underlies all.

Vision comes from transcendence.
The greater the transcendence, the greater the vision.
Vision is the capacity to recognize emptiness (appearances) and no-thingness.
To see that no thing/form is real,
And that the reality underlying things/forms is not a thing at all.

It is to see that every point of perception in your experience,
Is a doorway or window into the infinite.
It is when your light passes through everything,
And is not stopped by anything.

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Mistaken essence is the cause of sorrow

Mistaken essence is the cause of sorrow/suffering.
There is only God/Brahman/Field/Consciousness.
That is the only essence.
All else that is experienced is the play of this singular essence.
So no part of what is seen is essence.
The mistake is to mistake any part of this play to be essence.

It is like gold that is continuously being remodeled and smelted.
Here gold is the essence, and all of the ornaments made with it are subject to change.
So no ornament-form is essence.
Similarly no form in existence is essence.
Essence is formless and quality-less,
And it is not graspable as an object.
One can only be it and experience it directly.

Another analogy would be a VR game,
Where only the “hardware/software/power” are real.
The rest of experience is just the play-out of those 3 as the flow of time.
This is analogous to our essence play as the BME (Body, Mind, Energy) process in time.

No thing is real, and no thing exists.
Only god/brahman/field/consciousness exists.
The evolution process is the play/dream of this field,
And our individual experience is like a figment of this evolution process.

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The 3 levels of knowledge

The 3 levels of knowledge are:
# 1st level: Knowledge based on Belief
# 2nd level: Knowledge based on Logic/Deduction
# 3rd level: Knowledge based on Direct Experience

Knowledge based on belief interestingly is often reasonably well backed.
The belief is generally not totally blind.
For instance, we may place our faith on various qualifications, accreditations, positions, institutions, brands, and so on,
Because they have worked well for us and our friends/relatives so far,
And show no reason to suspect anything.
Here, there is a good reliance on statistics, public opinion, popularity etc.

Knowledge based on Logic/Deduction is a deeper kind of knowledge,
Where we investigate the ideas/concepts/laws for ourselves,
And gain an understanding of all of it by ourselves by objective experimentation.
This is generally the realm of science.

The third level is knowledge based on direct experience.
This is the deepest form of knowledge.
Fields like spirituality, meditation, yoga, mysticism etc. come under this.
Here, you know directly by being/union-ing/becoming whatever it is you desire to know.
This is usually where it starts to sound esoteric and mystical.

Generally, we possess all these 3 types of knowledge to varying degrees.
However we may prize one more than the other.
# A person may feel satisfied relying on trusted and proven authorities,
Who have say also received many great testimonials from relatives and friends.
This would be the 1st level of knowledge.
# A scientific person may prize the 2nd level knowledge the highest,
Where he feels satisfied only after he has grokked the concepts fully by himself.
# Then lastly, there are some people who will not be satisfied until they directly experience something. This is the 3rd level of knowledge.
The initiation into the 3rd level of knowledge, is knowing that you do not know anything.
Then the deeper seeking begins at the 3rd level.

So capability being one thing,
The other difference between these 3 types of people,
Is regarding what level they feel satisfied with.
It is to that degree, that they pursue,
Through the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level of knowledge.

Each of these levels use different languages,
And they are often dimensionally apart from each other.
# The language of belief based knowledge relies on testimonials, statistics, numbers, reputation, fan following, popularity, general level of crowd-validation and so on.
# The language of logical deduction based knowledge involves: scientific notations, equations, mathematics, labeling of different components, logical symbols, flow charts, relationship diagrams, modeling etc.
# The language of direct experience is like the language used in esoteric, mystical, and spiritual texts. Direct experience is indescribable, so the descriptions that come closest to that belong in this category.