Tag: Philosophy

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The suffering of trying to gain self in anything of this world

I’ll go over a list of pleasures.
Sexuality:
Sexuality is a very limited pleasure.
The orgasm is very brief, but the regeneration is much longer in comparison.
If that is the only source of pleasure in life, it is woefully inadequate.

Technology:
Video time, Music time, Internet browsing etc.
All of it has great limits.
For instance: Hearing too much music removes all pleasure and makes you numb to it.

Supplements/Stimulants/Sugar:
Alcohol gives a pleasure for a while, but has a long hangover too.
A recharge period is needed too, to re-experience that pleasure.
Tea/Coffee if taken too often can drain you a lot, make you irritable/antsy.
Supplements also have their limits.
Eating too much sugar brings ‘Insulin Resistance’ and depressive moods.

Hot water bath:
Hot water bath feels good,
But stay too long and you risk burning your skin.

Talking to People/Relationships:
The pleasure of talking to others has a lot of limits too.
Usually there is a charge between 2 people (assuming they get along), and once that charge is neutralized they must do their own things to allow this charge to regenerate.
The same holds true for romantic relations too depending on the level of ‘potential difference/energetic charge’ that has to be diffused and neutralized from both people.
They may still continue to stay together for other reasons, but the pleasure comes only from the ‘charge’ which is also referred to as ‘chemistry’.

Intellectual pleasures/learning:
Pleasure from learning has a lot of limits too.
And a lot of breaks are needed for assimilation/digestion of what you learnt.

Food:
Pleasure from food has great limits too.
You can only get pleasure when you are hungry.
And once the hunger feeling is neutralized, the pleasure goes with it.
And you can get this pleasure only a few times a day basically.

Experiences/Movies/Novelty/Drugs:
A lot of experience seeking pleasure is about novelty.
So it is all a one shot thing mostly.
Once over, you cannot recapture the magic again.

Fulfilling images/Achievement:
The pleasure may be projected to a certain image/goal.
As you come closer to fulfilling that goal, you get more and more pleasure, until it peaks when you achieve it.
But then it gets empty after that, and the mirage updates its location to something else.
Achievements also hide a sacrifice in them. So they are not the ideal deals too.

Sleep-Wake/Birth-Death
Sleep recharges our pleasure as part of the wake-sleep cycle.
But the waking experience exhausts it, and then we have to go back to sleep for the next recharge.
This could be said about birth-death also.
We get most of our pleasures before the age of 25.
After that things sort of plateau.
We would have to wait to be reborn to experience the joys (and pains too) of childhood/learning/growth/teenage hormones and so on.

There are many more examples,
But it seems like the bottomline is,
The pleasure got from everything is:
# Too limited/short
# Followed by a long rest period for its regeneration.
Because all this pleasure is only a tiny part of the cycles.
None of them can deliver pleasure continuously.
Also it is not even 50-50.
Often the regeneration period is far greater.

This got me thinking about the philosophical aspects of Maya itself.
It is as if Maya is never going to satisfy.
Chasing anything totally, leads to its opposite paradoxically.
Pleasure leads to pain,
Achievement leads to burnout,
Gain leads to loss,
And so on.

All is empty,
All is paradoxical/contradictory.
What looks like pleasure today turns into pain tomorrow.
What was an asset in the past, becomes a liability later.
What was a profound source of meaning today, turns into an empty burden tomorrow.
Even the 120 year life-cycle of Dashas from Vedic Astrology,
Is fractal in nature, and it seems like each next phase contradicts the previous phase in some way.

Reality/Source has its own laws,
And it seems like the only option is to abide in and as them.
The cyclic processes of the body mind and the pleasures they bring look ultimately empty.
It’s like there is nothing in it for me.
Nothing will add anything to me.
Everything gets nulled (Shunya).
There is only the empty divine play appearing.
There is no holy grail, no philosopher’s stone, no ultimate prized thing.
All is nothing, All is the same Maya substance,
The same Maya just transforming itself into all these opposites and cycling between them.
It appears as everything, but is itself no thing.
It is that nothing, that 0, which is the union of all opposites.

This reminds me of the 3 truths in Buddhism:
# Annicha (impermanence)
# Dukkha (suffering)
# Anatma (insubstantiality)
The Dukkha is actually the result of trying to gain self,
In the impermanent and the insubstantial.

There is no real independent essence/substance,
To anything that is appearing/visible/known here.
It is the same Maya substance, but it appears as everything we experience.
It is the great illusion, and we have been bamboozled/tricked into its spell.
But that would be the very purpose of Maya, so it is doing a great job at concealing the actual reality.
Sort of like the game of hide and seek.
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VR analogy for Turiya

In Vedanta,
There are the following different states of consciousness:
# Turiya
# Deep sleep = Turiya + Deep sleep
# Dreaming = Turiya + Deep sleep + Dreaming
# Waking = Turiya + Deep sleep + Dreaming + Waking

Turiya is not really a state,
But it is the transcendent reality,
That underlies all the 3 states,
Of waking, dreaming, sleeping.

A great way to experientially imagine this,
Is to take the analogy of a VR headset.
You are Turiya.
You first wear the VR headset ‘switched off’ on your head first = Deep sleep
Say the VR headset cycles through these 3 states of:
# Being switched off = Deep sleep
# Movie mode = Dream
# ‘First person’ avatar game mode = Waking
Let’s imagine there are 2 screens on the VR:
# The screen closer to your eye is the movie screen.
# The screen farther away from your eye is the game screen.

The 2 can play simultaneously also, but generally,
When the game screen is switched on,
The movie screen turns translucent,
And serves as a sort of AR (augmented reality) for the game screen.

Imagine you forgot you were wearing this headset,
And got immersed into the game screen appearance,
Then you will believe the game world shown on it is the ground reality.
Supposing you snapped out of the trance,
And realized you were wearing the headset,
This real you that woke up to this is ‘Turiya’.
The VR headset still cycles between being switched off, movie mode, and game mode.
However now the real you is awake behind all of these states.

Imagine trying to convince another avatar in the game mode,
That he is actually another person like you wearing the headset.
How would you go about it?
Whatever he points to in that VR game world,
And even his avatar body, would have nothing to do with what you are trying to point at.

Similarly the other implication of this analogy would be that:
If you went to deep sleep in the game mode for the other players,
It means your headset is in its turned off state.
The real you wearing the headset is still awake.
However, since your headset is switched off, you would receive no information from the VR game world.
Other players would find you motionless/asleep/dead.
And even if they waved at you from within the game,
You would not receive that.
But however the real you, is still awake,
Just observing the blankness of the switched off screen.
This real you that is transcendent of the VR headset and its simulated worlds = Turiya.
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Zero, Black, Silence, and Infinity

ZERO:
In math, we can see 0 as nothing or everything.
In conventional math we take 0 to be nothing.
However, we can also take 0 to represent ‘everything’,
Which would mean 0 would represent ‘infinity’.
Many concepts in spirituality would fit in much better,
In this system of ‘infinity math’ (0 as everything).

LIGHT:
Generally, we think black is no color and white is all colors.
But the truth of this is more intriguing.
A black object absorbs all the wavelengths of light,
And therefore emits nothing.
Whereas the white object reflects all the wavelengths of light,
And therefore absorbs nothing.
So really it is the ‘Black’ that contains all the colors.

SOUND:
Silence we generally see as the absence of sound.
But actually, silence is “ALL SOUND”.
The term “deafening silence” fits in well with this.
Silence can be too intense to take,
Hence we make sound.

So Infinity/Whole/The ALL/The Everything/God/Superset = Black, Silence, Zero.
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The 5th chakra

magic carpet

The 5th chakra is the world of communication.
It is like the global web of internet, that connects us all.
You and your mind are one in this space.
It is where you are in deep sync, trance, and absorption,
With that which you commune with.
Every union (comm-union) here is its own unique ecstasy.

It is like the vast blue sky.
Generally blue in nature is found in the ocean and sky,
And this emotion that is felt in their presence,
Is very akin to this world of the 5th chakra.

It’s the freedom and vision of the gliding eagle.
It’s like the world of imagination and contemplation.
It’s to wonder, ponder, and behold great mysteries.
In Upanishad terms, it is like the “Hiranyagarba” (Golden/Cosmic Egg).
It is the field of Ether/Aakash.

Communication in essence means to ‘commune’.
A kind of yielding, including, absorbing,
relating, aligning, synchronizing, harmonizing, unioning…].
Communing happens at many deep levels.
When 2 people talk with each other,
They have already profoundly communed on many levels.

Another great image for this would be,
Aladdin flying on his magic carpet.
Imagine the thrill, exhilaration, ecstasy, and freedom,
And wonder felt at the sheer possibility of this image!
That’s the emotional vibe germane to this plane.

It is the world of the deep abstract,
Having bird’s eye vision of everything.
It is like the image of ‘Indra’s net’,
Where each dew drop on a spider’s web reflects all the other dew drops.

It is the world of all sound/reverberation/vibration.
It is the world that rules the ecstasies of all harmonies.
(Generally all ecstasy itself is from harmony only imo)
Words like:
Sky, Vastness, Blueness, Ocean, Oneness,
Freedom, Wonder, Rapture, Union, Ecstasy, Harmony,
Capture the flavor of this chakra.

 

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The reflections from others

Every other is a kind of mirror,
Where their behavior towards us,
Reflects how they see us.

How real the reflection is,
And how much we are reflected,
And how selective or whole it is,
Is based on how much the other desires to truly see at all.

Not many desire to truly see things.
Some folk are almost entirely manipulative,
In which case, they see very little of you,
And exaggerate whichever aspect they deem,
Will help them achieve their vested interests,
Which maybe unconnected to you.
This kind of seeing is subservient to their vested interest.
So when that interest is over, the seeing of you will also end,
And they will direct that seeing to their next interest.
Any manipulator always works off a seed of truth.
But the rest of the fruit is usually fabricated fluff.
When this is done consciously, it is called manipulation.
When this is done unconsciously, it is called madness.
But even in the former case,
Conscious manipulation does serve a deeper unconscious madness.

We like to gravitate towards reflections,
That portray us as being lovable and wonderful.
We like to seek people who reflect aspects of ourselves,
That we ourselves love/like/value/cherish,
Which is based on the structures of our beliefs and identifications.

We cannot see who we are,
We can only see our reflection as a perceivable graspable object.
So this attachment to reflections,
Is a subset of attachment to objects(abstract) themselves.

Every person reflects us in their own way,
Setting up a unique dance/music of interaction in time,
Between us and them.
All of these comprise the riches of life.
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The descent into chaos

chaos

Essentially this experience of mine,
Is a descent into chaos,
Where my body loses its coherence,
And organizes itself around a swarm of chaotic desires,
That form the full backdrop of my experience (as shown in the picture),
While the foreground has me doing all the usual jobs to survive.

It feels like the state in-between lives,
Like a kind of bardo,
Like the night sky full of stars (unlimited possibilities),
Vs. the sunny sky (few overruling possibilities).

But this chaos is also the breeding ground,
For offshoots of creativity,
Because of the sheer awareness of swarms of possibilities.
I feel like I’m swimming in the very same ocean of chaos,
That the psychotic drowns in,
Because my eyes are open here in this ground.
I intuit that this seems like the precondition for psychological rebirth,
Where when the season is right,
A certain powerful creative influx will spring me out of this place/phase,
And organize my life into the next higher freq struct.

This lack of organization diminishes vitality though,
And puts me in a state closer to death.
Birth is really a state where an desire/inspiration seed is sprouting.
So in this case, one sort of returns closer to the seed,
Which is likely to sprout again from a new desire/inspiration,
When the outer conditions are favorable, like the Spring season.

Birth is like Spring, Death is like Winter, for the seed.
The cycle of seasons continue,
Resulting in cycles of birth and death continuously,
Until one transcends in their identity,
And when all desires are sublimated.

Birth and Death follow each other.
Every death heralds a birth following it.
This is the principle.
How long it takes is not as relevant,
That is only a matter of degree.
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Representation, Recognition, and Essence

Essence is from the non-local qualitative space,
Something similar to the 5th dimension ‘Plato’s world of forms’.
From where we are, we connect to these essences and experience them.
We connect to these essences through representations.
All sensory and mental objects are not the thing in itself,
But are all representations of the thing.
The thing itself exists in a transcendent form we connect/access and experience.

When we lose connection to this higher world of essences,
Which all of our representations basically cue to,
We get depressed.
So depression I feel is fundamentally from this disconnection.
Even if you logically lay it out in language,
Like:
“I have xxx bank balance,
I have all these xxx items with me,
These great xxx relationships,
etc.”
If you cannot connect to the higher world of essences,
You would feel depressed.

On the other hand, if you do connect to this higher world of essences,
You would experience great joy/riches/bliss.

This connection is entirely invisible and cannot be directly seen,
But rather it can only be felt and experienced.
Only representations can be studied and seen.
And all of the objects in the sensory and mental worlds are representations.
They all cue/point to these higher world essences.

This connection is quite a bit independent from the circumstances of life,
Apart from fulfillment of all the usual basic needs.
That is why it is difficult to see any direct correlation,
Between a person’s circumstances and his/her level of happiness.

This may explain how some of the pioneers of the LSD experience,
Described their experience in terms like: ‘seeing the whole world in a grain of sand’ etc.
Logically you might think, ‘pff, that makes no sense, how can a sand grain be the world?!, nonsense etc.’
But on deeper inspection, I see that the grain of sand is only a representation,
And it is cue-ing/pointing to the higher object which is the “5th dimensional numinous essence of the world itself”.

There are many games right, where a portion of an animal is shown to you,
And you’d have to guess the animal.
The picture that is shown, (say of the animal’s eye alone) is not the animal right?
The animal that you guess it represents (say correctly) is because you mapped that picture to your mental object.
So the animal really exists only in your mental space as a representation.
And even the picture shown to you is also a fractional representation of it.
But however neither of these 2 things can give us the real connection we desire.
Because both are only representations at some level.
The true connection is to connect everything to god (in religious terms),
Or in philosophical terms I could say, it is to connect the representational forms to their essences.

It could be speculated that this ‘world of essences’ really exists, like Plato speculated.
But the real nature of it, I feel, is entirely mysterious.
All we know is when we connect to it through our representation,
We experience all the sought after feelings of wonder/comprehension/profound understanding/knowing and so on.
It is this recognition I long for,
I wish I could connect through everything to their higher essences.
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Real knowledge must be rooted in direct perception

Many times, when I ask people about what they feel about a certain thing,
They would respond with: I don’t know, or I’m blank, or no idea.
That is usually in the colloquial context.
However, when examined existentially, that is not true at all.
They do know.
They do have lot of preexisting beliefs, frameworks, ideas, imaginations, and preconceptions about that thing.

When it is said ‘The enlightened one is the one that realizes that he does not know’,
We wonder: ‘Ok, what about all the commoners who also say the same about everything?’
In reality, the latter set of people do believe they know,
And have all sorts of conceptions, imaginations, ideations, associations about it, but it is in unconsciousness/darkness and unexamined.

What holds back people from proper atma-vichara is that they do not contact and work with the proper seed essences from the point of view of consciousness.
Generally, as a thumb rule: ‘You always start from what you do know, and from that seed essence, you grow the tree of knowledge.’
It is a kind of contradiction to say, “I don’t know X”, because in that very statement you have already shown you have a conception of what X is.
It is like saying: “Can you see this tumbler, THIS tumbler (you hold it in your hand or point to it), I can’t see it”.
Or pointing to the tumbler and saying, “This is not a ceramic vessel”.
The next question then would be: “Then…What is it?”
When people say “I don’t know, I’m blank, no idea” = it is a sort of negative definition.
They are not seeing the knowing/ideas they do have about that.

‘NOT’ is always a comparative statement.
Like defining: A as A, and B as ‘not A’.
But B is also B, it is its own thing.
Nothing can not exist. There is only existence.
‘Not’ simply means that thing which exists, is not something else.
So contemplation and gaining knowledge requires you to contact “the essence object/the root rasa” in your consciousness first,
I.e. the knowing/ideas/concepts you do have about it.
Then you can proceed to add on/investigate/deconstruct and so on.
Without contacting this essence, the foundation of all your knowledge is belief based and therefore unstable (relatively unreal).
It is without rooting in your own direct experience.

You are the root which the tree of your knowledge must be attached to, and come from.
If this root is in unconsciousness, then your knowledge will be a flimsy tree without real rooting.
It would live only off consensus.

There is experience/knowing all the time.
Generally, if you ask someone to close their eyes and ask them what do they see, they would say “nothing”.
What they mean in a way is: nothing relevant/significant/important,
Or nothing worth even calling a thing.
But it is important to note that, it is never nothing because nothing does not exist.
They are seeing something (some inchoate murky patterns/fluctuations/forms etc.) which can be artistically and imaginatively described.
By saying nothing, they are essentially saying that whatever is seen is irrelevant and therefore “ignorable”(treated as nothing).
But this is where ignorance lies too.
Seeing is always on, whether your eyes are closed or open, because really it is the mind that is tuning to the sense of seeing, and therefore seeing.

There are essences and degrees.
The essences you perceive in your inner/outer space, are your real riches.
They are the 5th dimension, all the possibilities of your current condition of existence.
This direct perception of essences is your REAL KNOWLEDGE.
These essences are the seeds of real knowledge from which you can build trees and connect them up.
Once the “essence” is perceived, you have the fundamental riches, you can then play around with “degree”, and manifest them fully.
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Society as a giant

The whole human organization is:
Giants standing on top of shoulders of giants, standing on top of shoulders of giants…and so on.
Differences are obvious —- Similarities/connection/unity are non-obvious.
The process of “enculturation/socialization” is the programming that initiates a child into the mega-giant of society/culture.
All the smaller giants stand on the shoulder of this giant, and the fractal goes on getting more and more refined.

There is a difference between:
INTERNALIZATION/IDENTIFICATION —and—– CONFORMITY
They both may look the same from the outside in actions/behavior.
But they are coming from vastly different places.
Identity is the passport to get into anything in society.
There are doors and doors everywhere.
You are let in, if you conform.

But without identification/internalization = there is no actual deep investment.
All investment in society then is only out of “VESTED-INTEREST”.
And it is difficult then to take on too much.
Because heart of hearts you would want to return to your identification.
Society in such a case, is not perceived as a HOME w/ BELONGING,
Rather it is perceived as a place you have to conform to get certain needs met for your real identity which lies elsewhere.

There is a difference between:
INSECURE SOCIETIES —and—- SECURE SOCIETIES.
When insecure, societies impose that all its denizens cooperate. It is forced to a much higher degree.
While secure, societies include people who do their own thing also, as long as they do not disturb the working of the societal machine much.

In the light of all this:
Deep mental illness is an ALIENATION of COLOSSAL PROPORTIONS,
Because you are literally disconnected from the largest giant itself (that of
Humanity),
And are dehumanized and sent to the mental asylums,
And other such quarantine-institutions etc.
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Symbolic systems/models

# Myers Briggs
# Strengths finder
# Big 5 personality traits
# Psychological DSM disorders
# Attachment theory types
# Role in family = Hero, Problem child, Mascot, Lost child.
# Physique type = Ectomorph, Endomorph or Mesomorph (Fat %, Muscle %)
# Astrology [ Eastern = Nakshatra, Birth Chart, Dashas | Western = Sun sign ]
# David Hawkins LOC (level of consciousness)
# Ken Wilber AQAL chart
# Debraoski theory of positive integration (5 levels)
# MCTB (Mastering Core Teachings of Buddha): Stages of insight and 8 Jhanas
# Michael Newton: Journey of souls (infant, child, young, mature, old)
# Ra Law of One: 7 Densities/Dimensions.
# Dark night of the soul theory
# Kabbalah Tree of Life
# Kabbalah: Five Levels of Desires
# Tom Campbell’s theory
# Sant Mat model
# Hinduism = Chakra system, Koshas, 3 gunas
# Ayurveda = 5 elements, 3 body types.
# Joseph Campbell = Hero’s journey
# Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development, Susanne R. Cook-Greuter.
# Ego and the dynamic ground.
# 8 circuits of consciousness – Timothy Leary
# Advaita Vedanta
# TCM (traditional chinese medicine) = Meridian system accupressure
# Scientific Model of human body: as superposition of 10 systems: digestion, respiratory, nervous etc.