It's not that we aren't real. Obviously we are.
However the concept that we are an 'I' is the illusion..
In fact our thoughts are the illusions.

I ask again. Where do thoughts come from? Where do they go?
I don't think anyone can actually ponder this enough.
It's not just an idle question to read and think about.
It's something to really sit down and get to the heart of: Personally

Now assuming you agree that thoughts are an illusion
then we can extend this line of thinking.

thoughts are an illusion
thoughts create things.
therefore things are also an illusion.
..BUT they are only an illusion in as much as there are thoughts about them.


I'm only claiming two things.

1) Thoughts are an illusion. 'I' is a thought. Therefore 'I' am an illusion.

2) Things come from thoughts and are also an illusion. This is deduced.
However quantum field theory is largely proving this as well via induction.

So beyond this I can't really comment. If others disagree that thoughts are illusions then I can understand why they arrive at different conclusions, but for "me" nothing happens without thought. nothing. I have no INDIVIDUAL experience separate from thoughts... There is however awareness that can exist separate from thoughts. I am this awareness and so are you. It permeates all of space.

This is my take on it thus far and I'm certain that I don't have every detail correct either, but I have experienced awareness, of literally everything, without any ego what-so-ever. For that my ego likes to declare that it is eternally grateful.

Cool, and welcome back to the cyber-dimensional Satsang. I can certainly relate to this practice. Without internal cultivation and the mad-cap gumption to grab the tiger by the tail, it's all so cerebral. And you raise a fine point, when a human organism approaches the mystical state, all of it's previously held notions of what it this... and what is that... dissolves like so much Alka-Selzter in a glass of sparkling water.


Exactly, bingo, I hear you loud and clear... and that's what I'm talking about! What can we gain form some weird friction amongst ourselves, which serves no collective purpose, other than to sadly, divide us and agitate our mutual composure?

Words, words, words... how shy they fall from hitting the mark. Mine, yours or anyone else's. Even great sages fail to impart the direct experience to others with just vowels, syllables, verbs and nouns or eloquent sermons alone. No poetic verse can shifts one's awareness until we follow their trail. It requires a mystical encounter by the individuals themselves, an immersion into the current which so many world-wide philosophies and most religions, preach so effusively about. Entheogens sure do help in this regard but I have found that in my own life, without meditation they would simply be psychedelics.

But as you clearly suggest, we ought to be more psyched to leap end-over-end into the unknown, back-flipping into another paradigm and so, AMPING our attention to another frequency of intelligence. Naturally, as sequential entities, we seek methods for contentment and pursue the next avenue which yields definitive results. We attune to the vibration which most draws our attention to the deeper vision. And to the degree that we see beyond our habitual horizon lines, we see things in a new and more spontaneous way. Call it Sacred, call it Spirit, call it G*d, or call it the opposite twin to sheer coincidence... we are all eventually called for the mystical and the spiritual eclipsing, by some innate Divine urge (of one kind or another).

So we leap headlong into the immeasurable Void. Nothing we talk about, think about or imagine can prepare us for the mystical experience. There are no preparations. We can burn a ton of incense, sit in Padmasana, play hours upon hours of ambient music or run our eyes across revered scriptures... but until we step beyond our own self-hypnosis, we are simply posturing and hypothesizing. Now is the only time and we are the only one's who can open our own minds. We can actualize our journey, find the infinite light within.
Let's jump right in, shall we?

"Things come from thoughts and are also an illusion. This is deduced.
However quantum field theory is largely proving this as well via induction."

Do you have any links for that Joedirt? I want to know more about it..

simply beautiful .............much respect



same boat i guess , i am just too amazed , awesome



i very much agree , also apologies for misunderstanding Buddha's philosophy of Anatman vs Atman , i should have looked deeper and done my homework rather than pouring out my frustrations without proper understanding ...



its great to see you back brother , there was'nt much i could disagree with your post thus i guess i had forgotten to respond as i was deep in the AKL mode ( the argumentative mode ) and had forgotten about agreements

much peace and respect everyone ,

Link? No my friend I have no links for that.
How awesome would it be if we could indeed find links to enlightenment?

All joking aside, I suspect you are reading it very literally.
"Things" don't exist to us without thoughts adding labels about them is perhaps a better wording for the first half of my words above.

The quantum mechanic aspect is referring back to the Copenhagen Interpretation, which to the dismay of some perhaps, is still the most widely accepted theory for the double slit experiment. If it is indeed correct then the very act of conscious observation appears to influence the fundamental building blocks/fields of reality into behaving in a particular way. Did you know this experiment has been performed with molecules as large as Bucky Balls?

On another note don't you find it quite peculiar that as you zoom into matter it literally vanishes? Why is that? Why do we perceive (have thoughts about) solid tangible objects when in reality they are uniform fields of energy spread out over all space...with obvious probability density function arising directly where we are perceiving. I find this behavior strange and yeah I worded it in as mystical terms as I could. I find it mystical what can I say.

Jamie, the second half of what I said, that which you quoted, is ultimately far less important than the first part. The first part however, that thoughts arise from nothing, stay a spell, and return to nothing...implying that thoughts have no real substance make them very illusory to me.

I guess a lot of this come down to this question. Do people believe that their conscious awareness crosses death or not. If you do then what I am claiming is probably not very heart warming and likely not acceptable at all. I just want people to know I'm not claiming that there isn't a surviving of death. I'm claiming there is no death and there is no birth except for our ego's. Energy is neither created nor destroyed.

As was noted above trying to do full justice with words here is kinda hard.
It's far easier to say what it is not than to say what it is.

This is really quite a profound line of thought. And it's beautiful to see such a scientific view of the Great Mystery. I only wish more of the established scientific community had such a depth of vision. For that, amongst many other fine qualities, I do love you dearly, my brother-friend. Rock on, my man!

There really is quite an interplay between esoteric mysticism and Quantum Theory, especially with the modified String Theory prevalent in M Theory. I also am most eager to further explore Field Theory (what little of it I understand). joedirt, have you read The Tao of Physics by physicist Fritjof Capra? I would imagine you have but if not,it's a fascinating read, although somewhat controversial. But I really love the basic premise in the epilogue of the book:

"Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both."

So, from the fundamental stance that what we perceive is not exactly what actually is... we can glean a whole new level of understanding about the wisdom of the Sages. It's more than simply saying, "Reality is subjective", which it is PERSONALLY. There is also reality in it's own terms, without our quantification or thoughts about what is reality and conversely, what is illusion.


I honor your position, jamie. Your view so reminds me of Sufism, minus the concept of a Supreme Deity (one which alone is divinely shimmering effulgently on a transcendental, Heavenly Plane) . But all God talk aside, your perspective, to my mind, seems to be Pantheistic in nature and points towards immanence over transcendence. Forgive me if I err in judgement about your ideas, I can be quite obtuse in my own right.

But reading your words always seems to pull me out of an abstract metaphysical line of thought, back into my living, breathing body with a heart beating like a drum, to the rhythm of the universal oscillation. Each perspective sees the Sacred as the unifying principle. And both suggest that most of what we perceive is illusory in nature. Thoughts about this or that create the mirage of mortal vantage points.One cannot exist without breath, hence Spiritus is immanent for the human experience.

As joedirt said, thats one thing I always noticed when meditating for prolonged periods of time, that the strata of the mind appear to thin out bit by bit and dissapear like apparitions. In the beginning, as I focus on my breath, im flooded with many random thoughts of people, places, things, and as the minutes pass all these thoughts begin to phase out. Eventually after enough time, im in a state where there's a thought a minute, then................................... straight no thought. The light in my mind becomes very clear/bright and I immediately become weightless, and im suspended in this INTENSE state of coherence and bliss. No thoughts, feelings, etc, just awareness. There's no Tat, just this everpresent awareness.

Behind my eyes, the birds eyes, the dogs eyes, and every other perceptual manifold in existence, lies this sacred awareness, truly novel and infinite. Nothing more needs to bw said, nothing more needs to be known. Tat Tvam Asi

tat

Sweet.

I know this level of unraveling the illusion, and do not contradict it... I would merely extend it a bit. I see not just thought and ego as illusory, but "reality."

Illusory may be a poor choice of words, but we have so few that approach this conception well. My experiences have led me to believe that the nature of all of THIS... is dream.

Dreams within dreams within dreams. All the way up and all the way down.

Only the sum of all infinite dreamworlds and the consciousness with which they are composed can be considered real. Impermanence and all the rest are merely functions of our dreaming.

It is not that there is some illusion we must overcome... or see beyond. It is that dream is the nature of all things. And dreams are ephemeral by nature. Even these rather dense and knotty collective dreamspaces we think of as being material.

(if this doesn't incite some debate nothing will)

;-)

Yeah.

I have been discussing this point a lot of late... since TED took Rupert Sheldrake's talk on his SCIENCE DELUSION book down. [for those who haven't seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg] Graham Hancock and the other censored Teddies are naturally also close to my heart, but it is Sheldrake who stepped up and put the 10 DOGMAS of science on the table... and anyone who thinks on them seriously, without defending their worldview, can recognize the obviousness of those massive holes in reductionist materialism.

These are things I have been yammering about for decades, but it seems the time is ripe to really face the music finally on this. I will check quickly to see if there isn't already a thread on this... because if not, we will definitely be starting one.

I imagine that there are plenty of folks here on the Nexus that will have just as strong reactions to such a thread as TED had about Rupert's talk. Free & open exchange of ideas generally falls by the wayside when someone points a flashlight at a gaping hole in the crotch of your jeans.

Hehehehehe.

I think the world dreams, but the point now is for us to activly dream with it..in a new way.

You will not incite much debate from me.
I think the dream analogy is pretty spot on.
Dreams are after all quite illusory themselves.

I mean once one achieves full lucidity in a dream it's hard to deny that this is a very plausible theory.
I'm not talking partial lucidity either. I'm talking full blown Neo waking up in the Matrix lucidity.
It is something that is so accessible I wish more people would actually try to achieve it.

I know I'm speaking to a large group of people that have achieved it here, but for me full lucidity rivals any psychedelic experience as far as philosophical implications go. It's just plain bad ass.

Peace

^^^ Yep.

Being fully lucid is the optimal state in any dreamfield.... for sure.

Most of the noise and detritus comes because dreams, by their very nature, are empowered to suppress lucidity. Even once achieved, lucidity is a fragile state. It is oh-so-easy to fall back into pleasant dreaming (read: willing suspension of disbelief).

Nice to chat with you jd. I always enjoy our exchanges.

HF

Well said, Brother.


I agree wholly and think that our lucid dreams reveal much and speak volumes. Just for fun, how do we know that this isn't a lucid dream, right here and now? I often wonder if each time I awaken from my prior night's sleep and the myriad, ensuing dream states, am I REALLY the same person who went to sleep or am I still dreaming that I am myself, awakening from some unreal slumber? You know, what if what we refer to as "lucid dreams" are only perceived as dreams because they just aren't lucid enough to be mistaken for waking reality? Just saying... because I will never really know.

Say, am I am being a jerk by re-posting this? I am so looooooong-winded lots of folks skim through or completely skip my verbosity. It sure seems to apply the the above statement in spades.


Reminds me of gibran2 and his experiences with Salvia Divinorum. He relates a similarity to the question of reality, lucid dream scenarios and his sojourns to paralleled universes under the explosive rush of Salvinorin A. He has stated, he will never know if he returned to the same reality he initially voyaged away from.
"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily... life is but a dream."


I like that idea very much. It reminds me of something that Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk), Medicine Man/mystic visionary of the Oglala branch of the Lakota Sioux, said so beautifully and oh so plainly, "Dream a good dream." Meaning? We are behooved as blooming consciousnesses, to utilize positive intent and harmonious movement, through any and all of our dreamscapes.

BTW, it was Black Elk's prophesies that inspired the Rainbow Gatherings, which were quite a trip, back in the good ole days. I can't say anymore, cause I haven't been to one since the national gathering in 1993. It was an acid-drenched celebration in those days! Kind of Sacred, kind of a load of hippy-dippy bullshit, depending on who you ask. My contact was thoroughly delightful but I could see a lot of con artists pulling as much as they could get away with.

And I am taking about the predatory hipsters, looking for women to seduce and whatever they could steal from others when they were way too high to notice. But I will say this, at the national gathering in 1991, I saw the White Wolf and we danced around the fire. I had the most powerful whiteout experience of my entire life! I actually hit a saturation-point of sorts, on very clean liquid. and for myself, real LSD is just as powerful as DMT, just a much slower ascension.

Now, this was quite different from the next evening, when I ate peyote butons. The mescaline seemed less abstract and more enchanted. More like I feel on shrooms, interconnected with bazillions of inter-dimensional Shamans, who have woven this lovely Spirit tapestry of collective intent and most Sacred design. I sometimes get lost in such a pattern, as it is so entrancing and mesmerizing. KABOOM! The mystical experience in a few bitter-tasting buttons. Sigh... such beautiful spaces to fill with our interaction. Err... do I digress (as usual)?

Well, part of the digression is intentional and not divisive, as I just wanted to bring the Native American sentiment into this discussion, that of The Great Spirit. Because it is a vantage point naturally attuned to the way jamie expresses himself. And I do feel that there is a significant correlation to the OP's original topic, as I have spoken to a few tribal elders on the subject, they emphatically maintain that just about EVERYONE who imbibes of the Sacred Medicine, will have Sacred Visions. Not so for the rest of us non-native Americans.

Now this stands in stark contrast to what Albert relates with his experiences turning on a bunch of people, with no significant spiritual experiences. Receptivity is key to mystical epiphanies. So, is it simply the vast psychological difference between the minds of tribal Native Americans and our modern civilized minds?

Or for that matter, Mazatec shamans in Mexico, those in the Amazon & Peru, the Bwiti peoples in Gabon, as well as Northern shamanic peoples in Europe/Asia sweeping from the Sami in Finland to the shamans in Manchuria and Siberia. Me thinks that it is so because these folks already live in a partly mystical world, where mythic experiences are a routine way of life. Nowadays this is changing fast, though. So, cultural beliefs and outlook would also play heavily in one's own psychedelic experience and it's direction. That could easily be a thread in it's own right, if it isn't already.

Yeah, I may even have met you there....

I gave Journey To Jah a trip report about my first DMT experience which was at a Rainbow National... on the 4th. He has been offline, but I think he is still compiling the Nexian, so that doozy of a tale should soon be out there for people to enjoy.

As for the old "are we dreaming now" idea, I say there is nothing that is not dream. Dreamtime encompasses all. You are either lucid... or you think the dream is real.

Even those of us who know better get caught up in reality.... but it is all illusion. Or rather, it is all a cosmic dream.

This does not mean it isn't real. Real is a term that only asserts that something seems stable and constant enough in any given dream to be consistently reliable. The laws of nature are just the habits of this particular dream.

Hehehehe.

What if we aren't lucid within this dream now...
What if enlightenment is becoming lucid within this dream?



You are ever changing so yes you are definitely a different person upon awakening as when you went to sleep. Your mindstream is ever flowing, ebbing morphing. You are similar, yet certainly different. You can never step in the same river (mindstream) twice.

"What if we aren't lucid within this dream now...
What if enlightenment is becoming lucid within this dream?"

what if there is no enlightenment? What if that is just another linear trap of the ego trying to place one state above another?

What if enlightenment is just another dream?

What if the cosmic spirit who dreams itself is being dreamed itself, by the dream itself?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC3rB001TcA

one of his best.

That may be, but it seems impossible to have any idea unless one first achieves enlightenment so they can then compare. BTW From my limited experience this train of thought doesn't make sense because there is no ego to be trapped in once one is enlightened. As long as there is an ego intact there is no enlightenment as least as I understand it.



It could be, but it would be a dream without a dreamer as enlightenment, as I understand it, is the permanent extinguishment of the concept of self. I do however speculate they are quite a few other dream levels, or realms if you want to call them that.

BTW Terrence was a fascinating indivdual for sure. I like a lot of his stuff and I get irritated when people act like he took himself serious. He didn't do that at all. in fact I figure Terrence would have very much entertained a thread like this and gotten his rocks off like the rest of us speculating about such things. lol I'll try to watch the video a little later as I don't believe I've seen that one yet. Thanks

"BTW From my limited experience this train of thought doesn't make sense because there is no ego to be trapped in once one is enlightened. As long as there is an ego intact there is no enlightenment as least as I understand it."

I dont know any enlightened people. For me it is all just stories and myths at the moment so I dont take it too literally and I obviously cant be assured that what anyone else claims about enlightenment is true. Someone can say they experience enlightenment or that they are enlightened but for them to even make that claim requires an ego..so I just sort of get confused about how we can assume that is even possible unless you actaully die or smoke DMT etc and experience a transient state. It seems timeless at the time..but then you come down and you still have an ego.

Ratsch once said that people got it backwards. You experience enlightenment and then you go and live your life and integrate that, and then go back experience enlightenment again. I think he made a good point.

That is all too linear still though. Egoless states are timeless states in and of themselves. So it does not matter so much if and when you come back down..because you are comming from a state on non-linear consciousness back to a linear state of consciousness. I guess it doesnt matter when in that line of linearity the non-linearity occurs..thats the whole point of non-linearity.

Some of the most beautiful, spiritual and fully integregated people I have met definatly still had egos. They just understood that the ego has to be fully integrated into a balanced mind/body/spirit system in order to be a balanced person.

So, when we are talking about enlightenment, are we just talking about what religious texts say about it? I really just dont understand how if enlightenment means one has no ego that anyone can be enlightened unless they are a vegetable with someone catering to them all day long.

This is why I always say I dont seek unity, and I dont seek oneness. I dont seek ego death. I seek coherance and ego integration.

Maybe I am just stuck in the world. I an happy to live and love on earth( I stole that from Barbara Marciniak ). I just seek coherance with the rest of gaia and the cosmos at this time. I think that is where humans need to be headed more than anything else. For me at least equally imporant as ego death when I work with DMT is the dialogue that opens up between me and Gaia/Cosmos. That is what humans are missing.

This.

The non-linear, exo-temporal, stuff is unbroken by your not being tuned into it for a space of time. When you return to it, it matters very little whether it was moments, days, months, or decades that have seemed to occur in between.

jamie, brother... there is certainly nothing wrong with focusing on the earthly existence. Shit, that is about all that most people can ever hope to work with anyway. It is just that if you do manage to come to work in higher, more archetypal frequencies of this thing... you can accomplish things that would be miraculous or otherwise impossible solely from within the virtual dreamworld we call reality.

My... I am starting to sound like a true freak. But there it is.


[I never get enough of Terrence McKenna. We could stop all our jibber jabber and just listen to that Dreaming Awake lecture on a loop, and it would probably be more profound than anything we would have said here anyway.]