In my vision, from a very abstract view, experience has only 3 qualities:
* Vision = The extent of your seeing.
* Power = The extent of your power.
* Sustainability = The extent you can sustain the power.
Power, in its purest form, is self-transformation.
Everything else is a kind of shadow or substitute.
* Control over others or environment = A consolation for lacking the power to see and transform oneself.
It’s reactive and it needs endless force and maintenance.
It is also just blind loyalty to a self you have falsely identified with.
* Self-control = An intermediate step.
It’s internalized power, but limited.
You can restrain impulses or habits, but you’re still structually bound to the mind or circumstances.
It’s like steering a boat along a river you didn’t build.
* Self-transformation = The ultimate power.
Especially when Vision + Power converge: You see what you truly are + actively shape your consciousness and being.
It’s the ability to remodel the very field/structure of existence you inhabit.
True agency is always inward first; everything external is secondary.
Ofc, generating a massive burst of power is not as difficult as sustaining it.
The real challenge is in re-engineering your system to sustain that power/voltage.
Metaphysical inversion principles
I saw a video on the Vsauce Youtube channel speaking about how mirrors do not show us the 4th dimension but rather show us what the 4th dimension can do to us.
I found this endlessly fascinating, and it sparked a ton of new insight related to my previous idea of “Every display is driven by its dual”.
So I came up with these metaphysical inversion principles that expound on the relationship between the apparent self and the world.
Metaphysical Inversion: Key Principles
– The external world is the Self, rotated through a higher dimension – but what appears in that rotation is shaped by what you dis-identify from.
– The outside is the dimensional inversion of identity.
– You can only perceive what isn’t held inside. What you are, you can’t see – only what you are not you see.
– The world becomes an inverted mirror of what you cling to. Whatever you fixate on internally, the world compensates by displaying its opposite.
– The world you see is not a reflection of you – it’s a reflection of what you are not seeing in yourself.
– Your inner pole becomes the blind spot, and the external world shows the counterweight, maintaining the hidden symmetry of totality.
The only reason you feel attracted to an other
The only reason you feel attracted to an other,
Is if they make you feel better than you would feel by yourself alone.
Identity and the world projection, relaxation and evolution
The world that is seen,
Is not the real nature of the world,
Rather, it is that which is filtered through the identity structure and gets projected as ‘out there’.
The identity is the prism that breaks down the universal white light into the world projection.
The world that one sees and lives in, is really a reflection of the nature and structure of one’s identity itself.
Grosser the identity structure = Grosser the world projection i.e. the world that is experienced/seen/felt etc.
Identity is a kind of tension, a kind of flexing.
This tension makes up its very structure.
The “I” is the unconscious.
It is the unconscious tension held and identified with.
When one relaxes, one loosens this identity.
Theoretically, if one relaxes “Totally”,
The identity tension itself would get relaxed,
The identity would disappear, the world projection too would consequently disappear,
And there would be a fall into Samadhi.
Though, generally when people relax,
They never relax past the identity structure/tension itself.
They only relax until the foothills of their identity tension and stop there.
After all, it is that identity that initiates the relaxing itself right,
Why would it relax beyond itself?
It would only relax until itself and stop there.
The LOC (level of consciousness) is the sophistication/subtlety level of the subtle body.
‘David Hawkins’ has explained this in great detail, outlining various LOCs levels from 0 to 1000.
There are various structures, world views, orientations, occupations, that are germane to these difference LOCs.
A person in the 100s LOC would experientially live in a totally different world compared to someone whose LOC is in the 400s.
The higher the LOC, the more rarefied and subtle the identity structure would be.
The capacity to understand, see, know, intuit would increase with the increase in LOC.
Thinner/subtler the identity, more of the world and its information pours in.
The veil is thinned, and now it deals with way more information and reception.
Generally put, subtler the identity, higher is the level of information received.
The identity structures span from gross to subtle.
The movement of the identity structure/tension into the subtle is accomplished by relaxation.
So the different levels of gross to subtle identity structures are attained by progressively higher and higher levels of relaxation.
Initially the relaxation simply moves to the foothills of the identity struct.
If this is taken further and further, it will start to dissolve the very identity tension itself.
One would then enter a period of chaos of not knowing anything – a dark night of the soul would happen.
This would persist until the new subtler station is reached, and a new identity would form and function at that level.
To give an idea of the subtlety and complexity difference,
Imagine the difference between a Nokia 3310 and an Iphone 15 Pro Max.
The difference is in the sheer subtlety and therefore complexity.
The Iphone 15 Pro Max is like a wholly different dimension of complexity and capability, right.
The subtleization/sophistication of identity is the process of spirituality.
It is the conscious/voluntary yielding more and more of the identity into the ultimate subtle (the movement towards no-thing).
The rules of identity dissolution by relaxation and its reconstruction are demonstrated very well in the field of ‘Cymatics’.
To demonstrate the ‘Cymatics’ principles, there is a metal plate with sand on it, and a frequency generator is placed below the plate.
As the frequency is raised, the sand particles form various geometric patterns.
There are different milestone frequencies where a clear geometric pattern is formed.
In between these milestone frequencies however, the sand on the plate is in a state of chaos, with no clear discernible pattern.
All these terms are connected.
For instance, “Infinite frequency” is essentially a state of “Absolute Rest/Absolute Relaxation”
So the more one relaxes, higher is one’s frequency.
Those in-between periods of disarray are the different ‘dark nights of soul’ that the person has to to pass through, before the new subtler structures emerge.
A very advanced spiritual seeker may go through many such ‘dark night of soul’ periods,
As he/she moves through multiple milestones of identity subtleization and evolution.
This concept is also explained well in “Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration”.
Generally what carries a person through such periods of chaos/disarray is faith.
This faith comes from the beyond.
It may come from one’s own hidden spiritual potential, or this process may be initiated by a Guru at a higher level.
The identity by itself will never initiate a relaxation beyond its own structure/tension.
Only something beyond it can move it beyond itself.
We see the world as we are, not the way it actually is.
The more subtle our identity is, the richer the world will appear to be.
Time makes and ends all
This post is some of my ramblings/excursions/visions about the nature of time.
Please leave your thoughts in a comment if any of this sparked something in you.
Time is the creator and destroyer of all forms.
Time is the creator and dissolver of all worlds and all beings.
Time is like the great potters wheel,
From which multifarious forms/worlds emerge and dissolve.
Time is not a thing, or anything, it is a no-thing, because all things are transformed in time.
Time is change, and everything changes, so there are no real things in time except as passing phenomena.
Time is like the ultimate player of forms, time can make or dissolve any form as it pleases.
Time is like an LED screen, that can manifest or null anything it desires.
Time is not bound to linearity or process, it just chooses to appear as such.
Time is both continuity and discontinuity, and can abruptly change 100% of contents if it wills it so.
An example of that would be the way a dream spawns itself in experience.
In the dream at night, time makes a non-linear shift in experience and there is a distinct discontinuity.
Though, once the dream spawns it may appear to have somewhat of a linear fluid story,
But the stage and its starting contents emerge instantly.
One experiences a completely different time process when in the dream state vs the waking state, and both have their own sort of linear continuity, but emerge instantly when the shift happens.
All the laws of physics are like specific linear processes that time chooses to manifest itself as.
The appearance of time should not be mistaken as the essence of time anymore than the nature of the movie should be taken to be the nature of the LED screen that shows it.
Gravity bends the flow of time into cycles.
They say, gravity is the effect and not a cause.
Gravity is created by the dips in the space-time fabric.
Like the sun makes a massive dip in the fabric, and therefore creates a large cone of gravity causing all the 9 planets to revolve around itself as a result.
But what created the sun, and what placed the sun in that position, to create that kind of dip to make all the 9 planets orbit around it?
One can regress with a linear story about formation of stars etc.
But this would be an endless regression, a kind of endless backstory, and maybe in reality none of that actually happened.
Like if your long lost school friend suddenly appeared in your dream, and you go on questioning him about his back story, it may sound convincing in the dream, but all that time never happened, the dream simply emerged/spawned all at once with him suddenly instantly standing in front of you.
The deeper I think about it, I feel there is no causation in reality.
The causation back stories we make up are like a projection backwards or forwards from the mind stuff.
That is why stories often begin with “Once upon a time…”, and the elements are simply laid out as facts at that point.
That is the junction point where non-linear time suddenly took on a linear story appearance (like the dream example).
The idea of Agents, Agency, and the Exercise of Agency are all illusions/appearances.
The whole moves the whole, no part moves the whole.
All of these exist when not seeing the bigger picture.
We use these ideas for convenience because the bigger picture is too complex.
Initially there is no self in time, there is only the flow of time.
Then time hardens up its own section forming a Self (the formative years), and the later part of its own flow is experienced as the outside world wrt. that formed self.
So good times create a good self, bad times create a bad self.
Subsequent good times may dissolve the bad self etc.
In the larger picture, the self we think we are is the gathering of a certain time segment.
It is like how we go on trips and carry our video cam with us.
Once the trip is finished, our recorded footage + our own memories become the trip we carry with us in time.
Similarly the Self is the recorded memory of times.
Your gain or loss of anything is not personal, it is the time path that creates those things.
All will power is just movement upstream, and eventually all that is gained through upstream movement is nulled.
Of course even all that is gained through downstream movement is also nulled, but the consolation is at least you did not put any effort to get any of those things.
An agent feels a sense of defeat once the downstream of time starts to work against his dreams/goals/wishes etc.
Like say you admired your older cousin when you were 12 years of age and he was 25.
You wanted to become 25 and possess all that independence, freedom, knowledge, strength, power, pleasure possibilities etc.
Then as you grow to be 25, time may grant you the same stature, you are happy and you have become the self you desire.
But now if you want to endlessly keep growing that, then time will bring old age, infirmity, sickness, death, losses and make that same self suffer.
The same time bestowed those graces and that same time took all of it away too.
The ignorance here is that, the self is taken to be independent of time and subject to it,
While the knowledge is that, the self itself is nothing but a hardened version of a time segment itself.
Even ones becomings/gatherings of personality/memory/possessions/relations etc. also belong to the time path.
A good person is a gathering/aggregate of good times, a bad person is the gathering/aggregate of bad times.
Even ones potentials, proclivities, predelictions, tendencies, possibilities belong to time.
So the self we believe we are is time’s property.
We falsely believe we are that hardened piece of time.
Our true self is only the witness.
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.
The ego is the internalization of other’s expectations from you, which you do for survival
We internalize, maintain, and forward the structures of all the others who loved us in whatever way, at whatever level, to continue to attract similar such people who will like and support us in future, and so on.
This is like a memory driven cyclic process, that strives to maintain its core identity, and expand and enhance it.
The relational-ego usually starts with the parents, and then extends itself from there.
The love for the offspring from the parents side and for the parents from the child’s side is biologically supported.
The wheel-hub is created from those primary relations, i.e. the core self-concept, and then it extends its spokes from there as more interaction and exposure to the world happens.
It is a sort of primary imitation and emulation.
I’d say deep devotion/admiration/respect evokes mirroring/imitation.
This may be happening naturally to an infant born into this world.
A deep and vast subliminal absorption takes place in the formative years.
Keeping the individual’s past (karmic memory) aside,
Even just observing the tangible transmission of genetics from generation to generation in the lineage,
I feel the blueprints (genetic memories) are transmitted through and across each generation.
For instance, all the people that loved and supported your grandparents/parents, those faces will look familiar and appealing to you too in some way,
And you may be repelled towards all those who hurt and rejected them in the past.
Literally, the word familiar, points to something to do with familial.
One perspective of all of this is that, this is all Prakriti/Nature.
And that it is all survival based.
Whatever enabled the survival of your ancestors for 7+ generations prior to you,
The memory of all of it is functioning as a blueprint.
Could this be a huge basis of all of our attractions/repulsions to things/people/places etc.?
It is as if this 7-generational worth memory is firing within your experience signaling all kinds of desires/aversions and so on, in experience.
Another aspect is that:
“Every action is propelled from its dual.”
Potential charge -> Kinetic charge.
It is like a battery discharge.
So in this context,
“One could be discharging the potential charges of the family lineage one was born into.”
For example:
Say, if generations have nurtured a deep desire for wealth and due to lack of opportunity they could only keep dreaming about it intensely,
It may happen that the new offspring born into the lineage may have a much better environment and loads of opportunities for wealth.
This offspring may then feel a massive desire to seek wealth with an unstoppable inner force driving it.
The deeper force could be from the imagination of the sheer enjoyment/pleasure of it and/or for the atonement of family/lineage shame (low status) about being poor/unworthy/undeserving etc.
It depends on the undercurrents that are running through the lineage finding expression through the offspring.
If the parent is already successful, then the child simply derives meaning and purpose from that. It would emulate that and try to get those same rewards.
If the parent himself/herself is seeking, then the child also furthers that search as the purpose.
So a settled parent begets a settled child.
A seeking parent begets a seeking child.
This may not be all in the open and articulated.
In fact very little of it may be openly spoken about and conscious to the parent.
The seeds even reveal their potencies only after they sprout up a bit after some opportunity to develop is present.
Else they are too feeble and will not be detectable except by the most sensitive person.
This genetic lineage can be at different stages of maturity and evolution.
The role you play here is an emergent one.
It builds over time as you deepen your relationship with it.
I’ll now try to fit in karmic memory (one’s individual past) into this equation.
This is how I understand it:
For a soul with karmic memory identity, it joins into the genetic memory lineage something similar to how someone with some IT work experience joins a new IT company.
The role/position/environment of this new IT company, I see as genetic memory and its conditions/forces/pressures.
The person’s prior experience (“transferable skills abstracted” as opposed to the concrete discrete knowledge he carried when in each of the roles in his prior companies) before he joined the job = karmic memory.
So just like one did not create anything in the new company one has now joined, the genetic lineage is something that you did not create.
You simply join into it at some role/responsibility and then figure it out from there and get familiar with it as time goes on.
So entering into a genetic lineage is something you become conscious of over time with exploration.
An analogy for this could be of: A mahout and an elephant.
The mahout is the soul (karmic body) and the elephant is the genetic body inherited.
So there are different dimensions of intelligence that work independently and interdependently.
For instance, the elephant can take care of itself without the mahout too.
It knows when it wants to eat, sleep, drink water etc.
It has a life, instinct, and intelligence of its own.
Even an experienced mahout, would have to learn about the new elephant he has been given, and then develop a good relationship with it, before he can direct it to his will.
In the order of identities therefore there are 3 dimensions:
The numinous -> The abstract -> The concrete/literal
Pure spirit/pure consciousness/pure intelligence -> Soul (karmic memory identity) -> Ego (genetics + person’s relational memories from interaction with the world – from the various time-space-people paths it has passed through).
So it is technically possible to transcend and go beyond the soul karmic identity too and move into pure intelligence/spirit.
In terms of dimensions in this realm, in my understanding:
6th dimension = The space of all genetics
5th dimension = The space of your lineage genetics
4th dimension = The astrological ‘time-path-trace’ for your lifetime
3rd dimension = The current space-time location you are in.
The absurdity of the ‘love yourself’ mantra
This is something that has perplexed me since childhood.
I’d keep hearing slogans like ‘be yourself’, ‘love yourself, ‘believe in yourself’, and so on.
I used to wonder, what is this self that they are referring to, while pointing at me.
Where is this self? What is it?
Is it my image of their idea of what I am, what I should be, or what I think they want me to be?
Is it my own image of what I am independent of them being around me?
But generally my own image of what I am, is heavily and actively conditioned/influenced by who is around me (in silent or talking level interaction with me) and the larger surroundings in that place.
Even if nobody is around me, my self is some sort of a more diffused response to the environment around me.
My general personality/disposition/investments/ways of thinking-perceiving-feeling etc. are part nature and part nurture.
I can recall an active self forming at the age of 6, then a more developed one at 11, and I think after the age of 28 it seems to have stabilized itself.
But what was that active self that first formed? What existed before the age 6?
It feels like I just emerged from a bunch of situations throughout early childhood.
Ok, then was I born a clean slate? – I don’t relate with that too.
I have no continuous memories of anything below the age 4-5, but I intuit I could have already had a seed with its potentials/proclivities/tendencies/patterns (what they call samkharas and vasanas in vedic literature).
So maybe the selves that formed through 6, 11, 20, 24, 28 etc. were different milestones where a distinctive evolving pattern emerged in my vibrating sands (like the sand patterns in Cymatics as the frequency is raised).
So my deeper self then could be my bio-memory embedded in the whole body (in its trillions of cells)? – Coming from my forefathers, ancestry, genetics, lineage.
That genetics could have passed on its own fantasies, ideals, projects, works, characteristics, goals, preoccupations etc. that I identify with or dis-identify with depending on my own past lives?
In my own past lives, again the same situation might have been there, of genetics, upbringing, conditioning, social environment (the yuga at that time) and its influence etc.
So it sort of loops on itself. When did it all start?
The dilemma is like, when you are a tree, you search for your source.
You find out, you grew from a seed.
But a seed cannot grow without the fertile ground.
So the ground is also responsible for the tree.
But that seed itself has come from a previous full grown tree (the past life), and so on.
It goes into an infinite regress loop.
My whole quest to find an independent self eludes me.
I just cannot grasp a ‘me’ that exists independently.
From my contemplation, I see none of any of this is me.
Because if I can perceive it as an object,
Then the me must be separate from the object right?!
The deeper I contemplate this, I realize that what I am is transcendent of language itself.
It is a transcendent dimension, what they call consciousness.
The holographic field
We live in a holographic field.
We are the holographic field in essence.
Birth into form and Death into the formless,
Is from the crystallization and dissolution of the ‘organic structure’,
That creates the ‘point of view/lens/focal apparatus’.
A fully crystallized self structure creates/projects a fully crystallized world.
On the other hand, when the self structure is in transformation,
The world seen/perceived/experienced also appears to undergo a transformation.
Birth and Death is like the shifting of the point of observation/attention/focus.
For visualization: Imagine a 360 degree camera moved around your room.
At all times, all the contents of your room would be visible in the video.
However, you would see the details and sizes of objects varying wildly depending upon the camera’s position.
Similarly, we experience the same general field from all the points of view within it.
Since the field is holographic,
Every point in the field contains the whole in principle,
Just like a drop of water contains the same essence as the whole ocean.
Or just like the structure of the atom is said to mimic the structure of the universe itself.
So through studying the self, all knowledge of the world/universe too can be gained.
The self and the world are complements of each other.
As is the self, so is the world.
As is the world, so is the self.
They both go together.
They arise together and pass away together.
Studying the self is also a study of the world.
Studying the world is also a study of the self.
You are only aware of the world, to the extent you are aware of the self.
You are only aware of the self, to the extent you are aware of the world.
I could say, from more practical terms,
The lens through which you perceive the world,
Would be the entirety of your biochemistry (inc. all neurotransmitters).
So the biochemistry and neurotransmitters would be the switching station to access all possible worlds in the human body.
I am generally witnessing the play of the field/existence/god through a point of attention within my body.
If I move this point of attention outside/beyond my organic body, then it would be called an out of body experience.
Generally when we say out of body, or this concept of beyond or outside, we imagine a certain direction or a different point in space-time.
But in my experience, out of body experience is far vaster than that conception.
It is a non-linear, non-Euclidian movement in the field.
It is like the idea of ‘concepts’.
All ‘concepts/ideas’ actually transcend space and time. Even simple ones like a ‘chair’ etc.
When you shift your mind from one concept to another, what direction are you moving in?
(x, y, or z axis?)!
When you move from between the states of consciousness from waking to dreaming, what direction do you move in?!
Even in general science today, we speak about movement in the 4th dimension, but this is quite inconceivable. What direction would you move in to move in the 4th dimension?!
There are many such movements possible in the consciousness field that are outside of the space-time physical reality framework we generally think in.
The observer and the observed world
You see the world not as it is (idea of 1 objective world),
But as you are (idea of observer-observed relationality).
The world appears to you in the way you are.
The world changing is you changing.
You changing is the world changing.
There is perfect correspondence.
The self-world pair appear together as one process,
And they also vanish together in the same process.
Generally if the self is relatively more stable than the world it is in relation to,
Then, you feel like a stable person with a stable view of a fast moving world.
On the other hand, if the self is rapidly changing compared to the world it is in relation to,
Then, you feel like the very viewpoint is shifting and experience of the world becomes more like a dream.
When you open up, the world (as you perceive) opens up.
When you close down, the world closes down.
The violence within you is the violence in the world.
The peace within you is the peace in the world.
When you are unstable, the view of the world is unstable.
When you are stable, the view of the world is stable.
The true objective nature of the world is Shunya/Indeterminate.
The body-world appears like a hologram.
Like how every drop of the ocean is the ocean contained in the drop.
Both the body and mind are actually external to your real nature.
When both the body and mind are witnessed as objects,
Then you realize the transcendent space.
Journey to the Abstract 