This is good!
For a free download of the demo tracks for “Nothing to Realise: Eleven Truths from Sri Ramana Maharshi” please click here:
http://files.me.com/billyspangles/ucbuud
Or visit here:
Archive for the 'Nondual Perspectives' Category
Ramana Maharshi’s Words Set to Music
April 23, 2010Busting Loose from the Business Game, by Robert Scheinfeld
April 9, 2010I’m enjoying this book by Robert Scheinfeld, Busting Loose from the Business Game. I’ll write a fuller review in the near future.
This book is nonduality for regular guys. Take your basic guy who’s working for a living, a guy who’s into sports, family, his friends. A guy who can’t figure out how to live like his rich boss who definitely isn’t any smarter than he is. A guy who doesn’t know or care about spirituality or anything in any depth except maybe golf, football, or hockey or his work, his car, or his outdoor grill. This book is nonduality for that guy. It’s not really a (stereotypical) girl’s book. It’s a guy’s book with references to tools, drilling, and sports.
It’s a radical book. Scheinfeld gradually builds up to the confession that business is made up. Not only business and every aspect of it, but your entire life, your work, your family, everything you value. Scheinfeld shows the reader, step by step, and with great patience and practicality, how to stop “pushing the river”, how to let go and allow … existence or whatever you want to call it … run things.
The author says to live your life reactively. Let the world unfold and respond simply and directly. He shows you how to do that. Scheinfeld admits that when you begin this process of busting loose from the business game, or the game of life, you could expect some difficult challenges and that the process could take two or more years to stabilize.
I still have a couple chapters to read, but I like what Scheinfeld has written and the world of nonduality or self-realization he is putting together.
I recommend visiting the Amazon site and “looking inside” the book. You can read the introduction, but more importantly read the index to see the depths this book strikes:
What Is Nonduality? Responses from the Science and Nonduality Conference 2009. Part Three.
March 16, 2010
3-DVD set, 21 interviews, 600 minutes
The following are excerpts from responses to the question, What is nonduality? They are found on Volume 3 of the DVD set:
What Is Nonduality?
Peter Russell, Author, Philosopher:
Nonduality … means the universe is not dual, there is one common essence to the universe. … Science is nondual. It’s basic philosophy is that there is a unified field, a oneness which we are approaching. In spiritual circles … the nonduality is where the essence is awareness … consciousness … a different sort of nonduality … both of them see the fundamental nature of things, the oneness behind everything.
Thomas Ray, Professor of Zoology and Computer Science, University of Oklahoma:
Nonduality involves absence of self or sense of self and the feeling of oneness or unity with everything, with the universe. I’ve believed that nonduality is just the plain truth. The universe is one thing and we’re all part of the universe and that it isn’t nonduality that needs explanation, it’s duality that needs explanation. In fact, there is a mental organ that produces duality, just one. Without the activity of that mental organ, we would experience nonduality as the normal state.
Shaikh Kabir Helminski, Author, Sufi teacher:
The way we see it in the Sufi tradition is that — particularly for mystic consciousness — we understand that everything is rooted in the divine. Everything is unified in a field of oneness. Practically speaking what that means is that my consciousness, my love, my will, my generosity if I have any, my capacity for forgiveness, all of these have their attributes in the source of the divine. … This nonduality has a kind of quality to it … that is deeply personal as well as cosmic and impersonal because we realize the human being is the ripened fruit of that nonduality. The nonduality doesn’t cancel our human individuality. … We don’t make a big deal about nonduality because we know and trust that everything comes from God. The God that we’re talking about is subtle and integral to this whole creation. … Poetry suggests it. We communicate more through poetry than through abstract theory.
John Prendergast, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology, CIIS
Nonduality, for me, points to the basic absence of difference between self and other, between subject and object, between perceiver and perceived. When the Buddha said form is emptiness and emptiness is form, this is statement of nondual perception. When nothing looks out and sees that it’s everything, this is the experience of nonduality. The apparent division between self and other is seen through. … The reality of the seamless wholeness nature of reality reveals itself. … It’s a deep understanding and knowing that there is essentially no separation.
Olga Louchakova, Director, Neurophenomenology Research Center, ITP Prof.:
Nonduality is the certain perspective on self and consciousness which makes one to experience being and consciousness as undivided and nonseparate from every other consciousness which can be perceived initially as different. It’s the experience of consciousness as being undivided, experience of your own being as being connected with the rest of the universe, and being one with the rest of the universe even though you may not have the perception of the whole universe at the moment. Most importantly, the experience of nonduality is the experience of authenticity, of authentic, unlimited, nonconstricted being, experience of being yourself, experience of living life with no fear.
Tim Freke, Scholar, Author, Stand up Philosopher:
My experience is that fundamentally reality is characterized by polarity. For me it’s not nondual or dual. It’s both at the same time. … Polarity is opposites, but they can only exist together. … They’re two and one at the same time. The paradox of our predicament is that it’s two and one at the same time. I see no reason to prejudice one over the other. In fact, I see a necessity to be conscious of both. What I’ve looked for is an image that can capture that experience. For me the image is lucid living, which is a state comparable to lucid dreaming, only now. … On the one hand I am Tim … I’m actually so individual that I inhabit this unique point in space and time and no one else can or ever will inhabit it. Then there’s the discovery of this deeper nature, the subject itself, not the object, the “I”, that which is witnessing this, and if I go deeply into that now it is a vast spaciousness in which all this is arising just like in a dream. And those two exist together, so “here” it’s all one, “here” it’s all separate. Which is true? They’re both true.
Stanley Sobottka on Quantum Theory and Nonduality
March 2, 2010Stanley Sobottka summarizes his view on quantum theory and nonduality.
Dear Friends,
As my tenure on the OASG [Open Awareness Study Group] comes to a close, I would like to summarize, and perhaps correct, what I have said about quantum theory and nonduality.
Physics in general, and quantum theory in particular, began as the study of objective reality, i.e., a reality that exists whether or not it is being observed. Classical physics had no problem with this approach. When classical physics proved inadequate to the task of explaining the results of certain experiments, quantum theory arose. It was spectacularly successful in explaining these results and many more, too. Then a few physicists began to ask, is this all that quantum theory means–the explanation of experimental results? Does it have any ontological value, i.e., can it tell us what objective reality _is_, not just what it _does_? This is what an _interpretation _of quantum theory is supposed to do, to describe what objective reality is. So a few physicists worked very hard to come up with an interpretation in terms of an objective reality….and failed. But the failure was that there were too many contenders, not too few, and there was no way to determine which one, if any, was correct. Furthermore, most of them pretend that the quantum wavefunction, which is a probability wave rather than a physical wave, is an objectively real object rather than being simply the mathematical formula that it is. However, rather than this being cause for despair, it actually can liberate us from the prison of objective reality. As long as we believe that objects are real, we will find it difficult to escape the belief that we are objects, and consequently to feel separate from all other objects. The failure of physicists to find an objective interpretation of quantum theory has the potential to liberate us from this fatal belief in separation.
So now that we don’t have to believe in the existence of separation, what is left? We are free to believe in the absence of separation. Better still, we don’t have to leave it to mere belief, we can _see _that there is no separation. This is where the teaching of nonduality comes in. There are many statements of nonduality, e.g., consciousness is all there is, love is all there is, there are not two, there is only oneness, etc. These are useful to begin with but the statements themselves don’t take us very far. To believe the statements is to make nonduality into a religion rather than accepting it as a teaching. Instead of belief, what is necessary is a clear, direct seeing of truth. The essence of direct seeing is to see that there is no separate me. If there is no separate me, there is no separation.
How do we see that there is no me? Simply speaking, we just look for the me. If we don’t find it, then we look for what-it-is that sees that there is no me. We might think that then is the true me. In that case, we just take another step back and look for what-it-is that sees that. We might think that we will have to keep on stepping back forever but that proves not to be the case. Once we see that there is no me, the next step, the step of seeing the witness of no-me, is likely to be the last one because the seeing of the witness likely dissolves the witness, and then there is only pure awareness.
What if we find a me in the first step? The process is the same as above. We step back and see what-it-is that sees the me. If we find the witness of the me, we take another step back and see what-it-is that sees the witness of the me. That seeing will likely dissolve the witness, leaving pure awareness.
Even if we can find no me and no witness of no-me, we might still feel that our awareness is confined to the skull. In that case, we look for what-it-is that sees that awareness is confined to the skull. If we see an awareness that is confined to the skull, we immediately see that what seems to be confined awareness cannot be true awareness. Again, as we step back and look for what sees this, we might find a witness of no-confined- awareness. Once again, we step back to see what-it-is that sees the witness. In so doing, the witness again dissolves into pure awareness.
Once we see that there is no me, no witness of no-me, and no-confinement, all separation dissolves. This seeing might have to be repeated many times for it to be a continuing awareness of no separation. It is very helpful to realize that both the apparent me and apparent confinement are just arisings. Since all arisings rapidly come and go, the me and confinement are never permanent, even for a short time. There are many times when there is no me and no confinement but we are not aware of it because we are not at the moment suffering from separation. Consequently, we can save our practice times for the times that we are suffering.
Love,
Stanley
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/
Paradoxica: Nondual Psychology – Psychotherapy Conference in Alberta, Canada
February 22, 2010I have heard from Will Joel Friedman and Gary Nixon about what looks to be a great nonduality conference happening in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, June 17-18, 2010.
The links will take you to a fine website with clear, detailed descriptions of the proposed talks as well as the contents of Volume #1 of Paradoxica: Journal of Nondual Psychology.
Here is their announcement of the Conference:
2010 Paradoxica Nondual Psychology Conference
EXCITING NEWS: Announcing the first nondual psychology & psychotherapy conference in Canada.
The Paradoxica Institute is hosting the Nondual Psychology (and Beyond) Conference, June 17-18, 2010 at the University of Lethbridge in beautiful Lethbridge Alberta nestled in the coulees, and close to the Waterton Mountains.
We want this to be a dynamic and transformational conference including powerful and insightful clinical workshops in addition to ground breaking presentations and energizing workshops.
Join in June’s festivities as we celebrate and embrace the flowering of Nothingness together!
Full Program & Registration: paradoxica.ca/index.php/conference
Paradoxica: Journal of Nondual Psychology: paradoxica.ca/index.php/issue-1
What Did Lao Tzu Mean? Part 4
February 20, 2010What did Lao Tzu mean when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say”?
In this series entitled What Did Lao Tzu Mean? are entertained some responses. You are welcome to include yours as a comment. This part is by several contributors:
Hi dear Jerry:
Re: Lao Tzu’s efforts to express the in-expressible — I would tend
to go with the first….”Those who say do not know” BEcause, !! ..what any one of us “knows” – is only valid for that “one – me- belief”. It isn’t valid for any other.
All us seekers are looking for a universal remedy (primarily) because of our own “need to fix/help/save/enlighten>>>>) others.
Usually meant in great kindness and love; yet…still “our” goal, or
essence… OUR “smell” … OUR “taste” etc. When time to exit comes, we still have to in-breath “our smell, our taste, our belief(s) …so humility has the last word. How can these ideas be expressed – or “given”?? Thus.. saying is empty, even when with great love.
Jenny/Center For Awareness
Don’t know what Lao meant but maybe something like: Knowing is seeing 256 million colors and saying is having a vocabulary that consists of only these 5 words: red, green, blue, black, and white.
Tom Allen
“Those”, who know do not say. Those who say, do not know.
-geo-
Those who know do not say “those”; who say, do not know.
-geo-
Perhaps the koan points to there being ‘no separate knower’ to ‘know anything’ and ‘therefore ‘can say’ no thing. Or in other words there was never a split of ‘knower’/'known’ to utter anything just as there is no split of ‘subject’/'object’, ‘dynamic’/'static’, ‘knowing’/'unknowing’, ‘dual’ / ‘nondual’ or any apparent ‘set of correlates’.
And maybe although inseparable of ‘This inescapable completeness’ notionally any split may seemingly ‘arise’ yet no apparent ‘arising’ actually ‘utters a word’.
skeanea
What Did Lao Tzu Mean? Part 3
February 20, 2010What did Lao Tzu mean when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say”?
In this series entitled What Did Lao Tzu Mean? are entertained some responses. You are welcome to include yours as a comment. This one is by several authors:
“Truth is a pathless land”. J. Krishnamurti
Vijayan Paliath
there are no words there is actually no there there is only…………..
its just on the subject of Reality[or what he called the Tao] not ordinary knowledge which is essentially just information
Kirk Crist
I think he meant that anyone who says they know, do not know. So that rules out Tolle, Foster, Parsons , Buddha, Christ himself etc. In other words he had no idea and just like most non dualists liked to play with words.!
Fun though!
Best wishes
alan murphy
If you read the whole book of Tao Te Ching, the message floats around this concept:
There are no boundaries.
There are no no’s.
There are no yes’s.
Bruce Lee put it rather appropriately – he said:
“Be like water, my friend.”
Seth Chong
http://www.hislatestwords.com
What Did Lao Tzu Mean? Part 2
February 20, 2010What did Lao Tzu mean when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say”?
In this series entitled What Did Lao Tzu Mean? are entertained some responses. You are welcome to include yours as a comment. This one is by Gene Poole, with a brief comment by Yosy.
Gene Poole:
What was stated is simply this:
The speaker is not the knower.
- speaking is a process which
the knower cannot do
- the speaker cannot know
- thus, the knower is served by the speaker.
‘The speaker is not the one who knows’
‘The knower is not the one who speaks’
As we have seen (but not knowing what we see?)
this boggle can be very confusing. An ‘audience’
usually assumes that the moving mouth, belongs
to the knower.
But that is not the fact, in the case of genuine ‘masters’.
I would go so far as to say that the speaker does not
know ‘jack shit’ about anything, except perhaps an
impending mealtime.
The knower has no mouth, and if desires to communicate,
must utilize some faculty of a living body. Thus, we have
a knower and a speaker.
It is this situation, which has led to centuries of
incredible confusion, and need I say, bullshit.
The ‘knower’ is one, but speakers are many.
If further clue is needed; if you do not grasp what
I have said above; here is a quote and a link:
“THE VESTURES (Verses 72–107)
“Formed of the substances they call marrow, bone, fat,
flesh, blood, skin and over-skin; fitted with greater
and lesser limbs, feet, breast, trunk, arms, back, head;
this is called the physical vesture by the wise–
the vesture whose authority, as “I” and “my” is declared to be a delusion.”
(Thus is described, the moving mouth; the speaker.)
From here:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Crest_Jewel_of_Wisdom/Self,_Potencies,_Vestures
The root of the article:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Crest_Jewel_of_Wisdom
The article, a translation of an important text,
may seem complex, but it is not.
==GP==
speech does not come necessarily from the mouth… and the only knowing is being.
“actions speak louder then words”.
there is knowledge, and there is speech; but there is no knower nor speaker.
Yosy
What Did Lao Tzu Mean? Part 1
February 20, 2010What did Lao Tzu mean when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say”?
In this series entitled What Did Lao Tzu Mean? are entertained some responses. You are welcome to include yours as a comment. This one is by Nathaniel:
Well, to start with, for a man who said that “those who say do not now”; he surely had plenty to say. Thus, he must not have known a whole lot…with that in mind, it seems as though he was attempting to explain the anti-knowledge knowledge for minds that eagerly gobble up candy-coated ideas.
In my own experience, it has been far easier to put into practice the principles he put forth than it is to relate them. Through his teaching I have learned the value that multiple views can have for the individual. I have made use of nothingness and I have cast off many burdensome intellectual possessions and I must admit, I have less of an idea what “truth” is today because of him, but far greater freedom to seek the truth if I choose to.
His words came to me mysteriously, at first, everything I read was so unique that I almost had no frame of reference to work with—it was so far out of the pale to me and so foreign. Initially he sounded like a genius. Yet, what I eventually began to recognize was that he wrote from a place that was not “advanced” at all. His words were so damn obvious that he could also be seen as the greatest idiot philosopher of all time as well without stretching the imagination one bit.
People, especially white, middle-class, vegetarian, yoga instructors who drive an Escalade like to make a big to-do about the “illusory” quality of this existence and they will quite often put Lao Tsu in the same category as Buddha and others—perhaps because he was Asian—I don’t know.
I don’t think that Lao Tsu saw this life as illusory though. I think his writings were merely those of a man who liked to shoot from the hip a lot; to my mind Lao tsu observed how Real this world was to him and he noticed how everything worked; teaching the illusion of intelligence rather than the illusion of existence.
~Nathaniel
Nonduality, by Colin Drake
February 18, 2010Nonduality
by Colin Drake
Nonduality – not ‘the quality or opposition of being dual (two).’
— not ‘the opposition between two concepts or aspects.’ (Oxford English Dictionary)
Or to put it simply ‘not two’ (of anything). It is put this way, rather than saying ‘all is one’, for the very term ‘one’ implies (that there could be) two or more… In fact the term ‘nonmultiplicity’ would be more accurate for what is being suggested here is ‘not many’ rather than ‘not two’.
What we are trying to get a handle on here is that there is actually no (permanently existing) thing in existence, and that all apparent ‘things’ are manifestations of the same essence.
This can be shown by investigating the nature of our own subjective experiences, which is actually all that any of us have to investigate. For each of us any external object or thing is experienced as a combination of thought (including mental images) and sensation, i.e. you may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on … Thus everything in the external world is experienced as a mixture of thoughts and sensations, and when we attempt to investigate any ‘thing’ it is these that we are investigating.
In any given moment of direct experience there are only three elements: thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything detected by the senses) and awareness of these thoughts and sensations. All thoughts and sensations are ephemeral objects (the perceived) which appear in this awareness (the perceiver) which is the constant subject. So at a deeper level than the ever-changing objects (thoughts and sensations) we are this constant subject, awareness itself.
To put this in a slightly different way, we can easily notice that every thought and sensation occurs in awareness, exists in awareness and dissolves back into awareness. Before any particular thought or sensation there is effortless awareness of ‘what is’: the sum of all thoughts and sensations occurring at any given instant. During the thought or sensation in question there is effortless awareness of it within ‘what is’. Then when it has gone there is still effortless awareness of ‘what is’.
Reiterating, for each of us any external object (or thing) is experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you see it, touch (feel) it, know what it is called, etc. Therefore in our direct experience everything arises in, exists in and subsides back into awareness itself.
Awareness can also be defined as universal consciousness when it is totally at rest, completely still; aware of every movement that is occurring within it. In our direct experience we can see that awareness is still, as there is awareness of the slightest movement of mind or body. In fact this is the ‘stillness’ relative to which any movement can be known. Every ‘thing’ that is occurring in consciousness is a manifestation of cosmic energy, for the string theory and the earlier theory of relativity show that matter is in fact energy, which is consciousness in motion (or motion in consciousness). For energy is synonymous with motion and consciousness is the substratum, or deepest level, of all existence.
Now all motion arises in stillness, exists in stillness, is known by its comparison with stillness, and eventually subsides back into stillness. For example, if you walk across a room, before you start there is stillness, as you walk the room is still and you know you are moving relative to this stillness, and when you stop once again there is stillness. In the same way every ‘thing’ (consciousness in motion) arises in awareness (consciousness at rest), exists in awareness, is known in awareness and subsides back into awareness. Awareness is still, but is the container of all potential energy which is continually bubbling up into manifestation (physical energy) and then subsiding back into stillness.
Thus there is no dichotomy or duality between the physical world and ‘awareness’ for they are both manifestations of the same essence. The physical universe is just cosmic energy (consciousness in motion) when it is manifest into physical form, and awareness (consciousness at rest) contains this same energy in latent form as potential energy. Therefore there is in reality no multiplicity (nonduality) as there is only consciousness existing in two modes, in motion and at rest.
~ ~ ~
Colin Drake is the author of
Beyond the ‘Separate Self’
The End of Anxiety and Mental Suffering
A Simple Guide to Awakening
Based on the Meditations, Contemplations, and Experiences
of Forty Years of Spiritual Search and Practice
