Hello

I'm currently reading the Upanishads and I was hoping someone might be able to help me try and understand a point I keep returning to.

We are not our body, our minds, our egos our senses. We are the true Self, the experiencer, the knower. I understand this, I am yet to directly experience this feeling of unity but I do understand what is being stated, that separateness is an illusion and all is one.
If one does not reach this state before shedding this body, then one is destined to be born again rather than to return to the source. Who is it that is be born again to this world? Is it the part of my conciousness that my ego thinks I am? If all is the Self then how do I return? it still seems like a individual journey when stated like this.

thanks
Woody

Hmmm... my current thinking is that if a finite soul is a creation of infinite spirit, and ego only forms from a soul incarnating, then ego is a creation of the soul... how, I am uncertain.

Of course, I have no way to verify this, but it feels like the reasonable explanation, to me, at the moment...

Staying within the context of Vedanta it's the Jiva that is reborn, the individual soul, otherwise known as the mind or the ego.

Just like you said, it's who you think you are... so your associations/identity/desires/karmic impressions carry on to another incarnation, unless of course ones identity as the Atman is realized and the cycle is broken. It's not necessarily the end though, some realized souls continue to return to the world out of love, in service of the liberation of all beings.

It's right that the question is raised, as upon investigation there is no individual entity, no birth, and no death.

This is a poem which might give you some inspiring thoughts.... Not saying this is the truth or anything, but I find this poem very inspiring.

The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.

The best technique that I've heard is from Ramana Maharshi, and that is: "Do not bother with what happens after you die. First, notice that you have no idea what life is. If you do not even know what life is, then focus on that. Investigate."

"The only thing you know is that you are. that existence is. Investigate that existence."

This advice fits perfectly with the Upanishads. Find your "beingness" or rather allow it in all its contradictory manifestations or its seeming unity.

It is probably not too wise to prematurely make a unity of what may appear to be discontinuous. In Zen, they liken that to placing another head on top of the one you already have.

You can do something, which is to be as real and as honest with yourself as you can.

Nobody has a clue as to what happens after you die or whether all talk of reincarnation is just a metaphor. Who were you when you were asleep last night? Who are you right now? It is not a thing. You can never find that which you are.

Your "not finding it" is the beginning with respect to yourself as you are.

Be careful not to fixate on the witness as a thing. It is no thing. What sees can never be seen. There is no place to stand.

Keep reading the Upanishads. They are full of paradox. Life is a paradox. You are both limited and in time and this True Self both/and. You "incarnate" in every moment.

Who is it that is born in this moment? Who are you? You alone have access to your direct experience.

A great danger in taking on a doctrine of "no ego" is that you may use such a doctrine to push away your own experience. The way of the Upanishads is investigation, not denial.

Find out for yourself with such capacity as you have right now. Forget rebirth. You have no experience of that right now. Except. Except perhaps the going to sleep every night and coming back into dream and then waking. Notice that many Upanishads focus on deep sleep, dreaming, and waking. Investigate these first.

I agree, that’s the best way to approach it. When I was initially interested in eastern philosophy I wanted to understand the theories of creation, reincarnation etc. I was reading about self-inquiry at the time, yet still wasn’t able to drop the questions I had and focus on who I am. I liked another way that Ramana often dealt with this question, explaining that on some level it appears to be true, but when investigated is unreal.

It's a pleasure reading your posts, drfaust.

As far as I can make out:

1. there is no scientific evidence for rebirth
2. people claiming to remember past lives have vivid imaginations but no insight into what they really are
3. people claiming to remember past lives all seem to have been Julius Caesar's general, Genghis Khan's uncle or Cleopatra's maid
4. if consciousness is boundless and limitless and that in which all manifests then each individual life appears in that unbounded space, may or may not have a false sense of self whilst "alive" and then disappears back into it without affecting consciousness a jot.

Maybe the energy from one "life" can somehow set up the basis for another life, a bit like the way a sinusoidal wave goes to a zero point but with the potential to recreate a new wave based on what had just occurred. Yet each wave is entirely independent. The preservation of personal identity is the pipe dream of many a religion.

But then what do I know - absolutely nothing

hello woody..

in terms of the Upanishads, as i understand it..

the Self is infinite..unbroken..un-alterable..Atman

the Jiva (individual soul) is, like thought forms and their projected objects, a limited or veiled projection from the Self...it is an ignorance of the totality, but the forms of Maya (illusion) are most beautiful, as is she...

the one question that can never be answered though (as some swamis say) is 'Why?'..

but yeah, as drfaust says, keep reading...layers get deeper and clearer..

LOL NotTwo, this really happened: a guy (not me!) "channels" previous lives, that he was Merlin, and she was "The Lady Of The Lake", and she fell for it and he got her in bed.

* * *

Life and dead:
The following are just remarks that want to speak for themselves, or not if you like.
Nothing too personal to you here drfaust, just sparking points of view, that's all.

"You are already dead"
is one of my favorites and actually I dunno why it still strokes such a string.
Google finds only BS on it, but I got it from a spiritual context somehow.

Death is part of life as life is part of death, why the distinct? Because of its looks?
Once mass and time and energy looked pretty unrelated too, it still does. Looks deceive.

Separating the both from each other is like taking the mirage for real, and it darn looks real. For your investigation efforts: will you settle for the looks and choose on that base?

Investigating life is as pointless as investigating death, the one is not easier nor wiser nor more possible. Finding "answer" to one (or just familiarity for that matter) cannot exist outside finding answer to both, excluding one blocks all chances far in advance. The paradox exist only in the minds mind, acting or choosing accordingly equals to self limitation.

Within (a part?) of Tao-ism, is to get to know death before dying. The chi-cultivating exercises are no means to itself, they have a purpose to become able to set one's consciousness into a chi-vessel of sorts, enabling one to soar above the life/death boundaries. For this the exercises are extremely life-oriented (very physical) to find deep within death. Not as a goal, but as a bonus along the way. A hoax of Tao-ism? Cute Mantak Chia marketing? I don't know.

I think drfaust, if you deepen on the passion, emotions, life aspects of life, the heading is not really that "away" from dampening life or away from the aspect of death. I think whatever one does, it comes closer to both in one move un-avoidable. That there is no choice actually



Rambling! Where is that stash?

Jees <3

He was definitely lying - cos I was Merlin in my last life! (Send me The Lady Of The Lake's email address too if you've got it. )


That's a lovely quote, Jees


I think life without an appreciation of death is true death. In a way life is only what it really is when we die to every second of it. There's nothing that survives from one second to the next.


Just as an intellectual exercise ... OK, I'm on the Starship Enterprise and they're just beaming me over to another spaceship. These transporters, as you probably know, are always going wrong. Because of some malfunction each of my atoms, instead of being turned into energy, moved and then returned to atoms at the destination, are each turned into two energy packets. At the destination each stream of energy packets is materialized into atoms and two versions of this body appear there. Each has the same memories, history, thought patterns, desires, unresolved emotional issues. Each remembers standing on the transporter pad on the Enterprise and leaving. I know "I was me" when I left and each knows "I am me" on arrival. If you stay with the illusion of me it's unfathomable.

I'm enjoying your presence, Swarupa. I've been reading your posts and I dig your avatar, that sweet mountain, Arunachala.

I spent some time there many moons ago and a blessing it was. Was it the mountain or Ramanashram and it's atmosphere or the spirit of Ramana? Was it my effort and/or my availability that created a space of openness in my being?

I just don't know. I feel a fondness for the mountain and the paradox of my relationship now to the eternal. The mountain flickers in my mind's eye as an image of that eternal Self. I love the last quote you put up from the Ribhu Gita. That so beautifully captures the wisdom of "whatever you come to, go beyond that" that I remember from reading Nisargadatta.

That one simple phrase keeps coming up for me. And that too is another place to let go.

Something that seems to me essential is what I saw you write in another post. Ramana said "Jnana and Bhakti are one." That is a beautiful meeting of two strains of two aspects of our nature.

I appreciate your presence here and your honesty very much. Thanks.

There is no other way.

Inherent in the Self is the power of creative ideation. It is merely motion of thought on the background of pure awareness. This motion "solidifies" into a perceived form concurrent with a "naming" into a concept of "that which is perceived". That is why name and form are really inseparable and are appropriately joined together as "nameform" (namarupa). In reality nothing solidifies, it is mere perception and forgetfulness of the still "base" before the motion arises. That forgetfulness is "incarnation". It never really occurs, neither does reincarnation. Reincarnation is perpetuation of the forgetfulness of the base reality. In a sense, incarnation is suicide - a "killing" of the real nature of the Self by forgetfulness. This power of creative ideation of the Self has alternatively been deemed the male or the female aspect of Creation. These are mere concepts that occur within the process of creative ideation and could be entertaining to play with for a while, but ultimately are devoid of value (as is the concept just expressed by me).

What you are now is what you always are - and it has no form, but the dance of the forms seems to take place in/on it. It is a matter of direct experience, not philosophy. Yet the philosophy can be an aid towards the remembrance of that which was never lost.

My friend Jees,

Have at me brother! I love your willingness to dream these spaces and ask yourself and me questions, to investigate in a lively and open way. Even to challenge! Wonderful.

I think I can hear you. I think I understand what you are getting at. And I don't want to dodge too easily the heart of the challenge.

If I might say it in my own words, the one whole of life-death is a paradox in which we don't know but in which we are. And there is a danger in my emphasis on life, on the passions, on emotion that I might be looking at the highlights, that I might be going to the "fight-flight" and missing out on its relationship to "rest and digest."

Maybe there are as many ways of dying as living? Goethe's "die to live" seems delightful to me, arising from his encounter with Hafiz and our mad Sufi friends. Intezam might tell us something here.

I love how you ended with, "there is no choice" and that you started with "you are already dead". I like that one as well. One way I play with that is, "We are already in the Bardo."

But back to death. I experience many different ways of falling asleep, based on what is in my mind stream in the waking state. I'm curious about that. What is this deep sleep? What is shallow sleep? Some subtle thread of awareness remains even in deep sleep, but it has no object, so it is not hardly noticed. Can I shift my field of noticing enough to register that objectless knowing? Is that akin to death?

Part of my earlier question was to investigate not life, but the "not knowing of life." And this could be a bit of a dodge of the challenge. But I think it fits. I am investigating in my own life, the "not knowing" of life or death. With the only difference that I do have some immediate experience of what can loosely be called "living" but perhaps it is premature to give it the label "life" and oppose it to death? And what of sleep? Is that what mercy changed death into so that we might know it?

My immediate experience is something I can investigate, be curious about. And investigation throws me into to "not knowing" and being curious at the same time. To hold off on certainty but to remain curious does "enliven" my experience, for lack of a better word.

Is all this just Bardo training? Am I learning to swim in ambiguous spaces? I am swimming in ambiguity.

My experience is richer for it. And my appreciation grows. Thanks for your thoughts.

How does an eye see? Light has no intrinsic value in itself, and it is the vibration and motion of the photons that excites the photoreceptor cells in your eyes. With this excitation, or contrast, comes a form of duality that can be interpreted by the nerves as an electrical signal. In such a small way, you can see that the five senses are rooted in a limited form of duality-sensation. When one is rooted in duality, duality is exactly what allows perception to happen. Having duality, there is you and me, there is life and death, there is your karma and my karma.

To be more accurate, the Buddha meant it more of taking the five aggregates as non-self, not that you have to dwell that you are not a self. Therefore, the physical body or form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and cognition are not the self. The important thing to note here is that you should not form a concept of having a self, but approach this "self" not by thought, but by negation of the five skandhas.

well, if you're not the body, then you certainly can't shed it. Or get reborn as a worm.

It's pretty easy in these days of Amazon Prime and free books on the internet to end up with a library of wonderful texts from many traditions, but then due to different translators and even different meanings of the same word, such as the word "self", to miss a point now and then, or get confused.

Moreover, these teachings, many of which were oral for a long time before they ever got written down, were designed for widely different audiences and environments....the "9 vehicles" in some yogic traditions, for one example, come to mind.

But poke around this material for a while and this kind of stuff might pop up:
there is no subject, no object
there is no enlightenment, no path, no karma, no samsara, no nirvana
no doer, nothing to do, no birth, no death
no self spinning around a wheel of life and death.

Personally, I like that point of view, but it may not be the perfect cup of tea for others.

"If you use your mind to study reality, you'll understand neither your mind nor reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both."
-Bodhidharma

An unlit candle wick lit by the fire of another -
is the fire born or is it transferred/transmitted?
Think of this when you want to understand the mystery of reincarnation.

I am born. The fire burns.
How did the fire start?

I would suggest that this fire is a metaphor for the consciousness of the Soul, the Great Self,
and the candle wick represents the particular coming on of a mask of some kind.
And you might think of the Great Self as a vast river with little whirligigs and whirlpools all around in it.
Those little whirligigs and whirlpools represent the manifestation of the Great Self
taking on an infinite multiplicity of identities, personalities, (s)ouls.
Look a whirlpool! inseparable from the Great River.
Look a Lucy Smith! inseparable from the Great Self.

Lucy Smith's soul is the whirlpool in the Great Stream, the Great Soul, the Self, the One.
This is why Maharshi always throws questions put to him back to the source of the question, the questioner.
He wants one to find out, to investigate, inquire inquire inquire into "who is asking the question - who am I? ?"
One might ask him, "Who was I in my past life?"
And he'll say, "Who wants to know?"

Exercise / Method of Practice:
Imagine always with every person you meet and interact with that they are all actually the same person.
The same blackness of the pupil from which one reads this text
is the exact same blackness from which everyone else also sees.
The nothingness from which I spring, is the same nothingness from which every other person springs.
After awhile, you may begin to realize that the only being that truly exists is You, the Self.

Then, it occurs to you that You can never actually die.
Sure, this body may decay and die.
But to the degree one is identified with the body,
then that is like the turkish proverb that says:
He who sleeps on the floor,
never falls out of bed.

Identify with the body, and you are sleeping on a high bed.

When it is realized that one's conception of oneself is an illusion,
then automatically one begins to have the sense that "I will 'be' forever" .
The mask of the ego falls away like sand from my hand,
and then one sees through the egos of others, the false conception everyone is duped into buying as their identity script,
and realizes there isn't a difference between minds initially having been thought totally separate.
My friend said to me the other day, "we are much more psychic than we think we are".
He is right, I believe.
There is but one mind, the omnidimensional imagination of God. And You're That.

So, therefore,
reincarnation in this context becomes a simple matter,
because one understands that death is not the end, but actually an intermediary stage.
Because if death did not exist, then what we call living wouldn't exist either.
Like breath that comes in and out,
consciousness undulates on and off,
from small cycles like waking and sleeping,
to large cycles like being born and crossing the yawning grave.

Many worry about who they were in their past life, and who they might be in the next.
The answer is You were and will be everybody.

Probably smarter then, that we help and love each other, instead of generating hatred and consequences that will destroy the earth and skies of our children's children. If one thinks that death is literally the end, and shall have not to worry about what consequences ensue from their actions across the spider-web of effects that continue after death, then one can understand why people are so incredibly selfish, and their sight limited to this immediate time, not one hundred years from now, not a thousand years from now.

But you see, what happens? when one sees death as a necessary complement to the wave of life-death, which is an intermediary stage? Well, I think one becomes more sensible about what actions are taken in this immediate life, mitigating as much suffering in the world as possible - because you understand that it's not merely our descendants that will inherit the momentum and progress of the past action of the species, but You that will inherit these spectra of effects. That is the Real sense of karma, which simply means "doing" or "action". That's why when someone says to you, "well, it was just your karma", as if they think that you simply got what was coming to you, you can now understand that what is actually being said is "well, it was just your own action, your own doing". Because everyone else's action is also yours, because everyone is a manifestation of the selfsame Self. And You're That!

Hope this helped.

I love the thread

* * *

The "confusing" is the paradox' fruit and represents potential. Lets make something nice with it as I see happening in this very thread and thank you all for that.

* * *


Yes it is wonderful and I love the thoughts crossings, the opposites they carry and all must be right in the end.

The inescapable paradoxes molded in expressed thoughts, clinging sparks, fireworks, and like fireworks ending in wooow how beautiful they are. Thinking of it like art, not with paint or a music instrument, but with heavily lived through feelings launching at each other, dynamics. They can't be right while they can't be wrong, how wondrous. They cross and interchange, needing each other to live. They thoughts seems to fight but make love actually.

Have no doubt I dive in the lively aspects of life too, taking the confrontations to shattering heights as it leaves a trail of tremble.
No dodge on that part, there was no place to hide for that anyway, I get your point, some do try to hide.
Though in this I notice change, luckily. Learning to wield the challenge, lessening the hearth load as it does. Less victim, more artist and more joy. Fireworks benefit greatly from responsibility.

And then there is the silence away from all it, leaving it all for whats it worth. Into the deep, the void. No wonder people have a hard time deciding between the silent source and it's frantic manifestations.
Let's not decide at all