Memories

Lots of memory

Memory is a pattern. It is a very special pattern. Without it there would be nothing but a chaos of random patterns everywhere and nowhere. There would be no universe, no stars, no worlds, no minds and no bodies. One can see that all experiences are nothing but a memory of one or the other kind. In this article I present this rather unconventional way of looking at an experience - it is a memory.

Introspection - 11 : The Illusion of Space

The black hole in the movie Interstellar

One of the questions that is often asked is - it is very clear that time is an illusion produced by the mind but what about the space? It is said that space is also an illusion. But how can we see that it is really so? Lets explore it using our own direct experience.

Dissemination of Knowledge

It is human nature to share what we know with others, and this is how we are initiated on the path of knowledge - by someone, most probably a teacher. We have a tendency to transmit what we know. Once you start gaining knowledge, the knowledge that really matters, you'd be delighted that you have found a treasure which only a few people know of and you'd rush to share it with all - your friends, relatives, as many people as you can get hold of.

What happens next? Whatever happens is very shocking and surprising to say the least. I will present here my own experiences with my own attempts at dissemination of knowledge. Later I offer some tips and tricks to effectively disseminate the knowledge you have gathered, if you wish so.

Secrets of Making Money

Goddess of wealth, Laxmi. The most worshiped deity in modern India

A seeker is exactly like any other ordinary person except for the presence of a bit of awareness and knowledge, and must fulfill his worldly needs just like others. A big difference is that the goals of a seeker are completely different and hence worldly matters take a low priority. Anyhow, one must act in the world in order to support a worldly existence, there is no escape from this.

Even though it is boring and seems like a waste of time, the issue of survival is important. We are here for something, and hence must manage it somehow. This article contains some tips on this matter, that are based on my own experiences. Note that this is written for seekers only, and will mostly fail for others. The lifestyle described below can be a disaster for a worldly person.

Spiritual Lifestyle and Stages of Awareness

By Min Wae Aung

This article is a short summary of a talk given during my personal meeting with a group. Its probably not exactly what I said in those 2 hours or so, but is essentially that, as far as I can recall. The group is a newly formed meetup.com group.

Its my own perspective on what being spiritual means and how does such a lifestyle look like. Then we go into deeper stuff - stages of awareness.

Going Home

Caravan - by Salvador Dali

A question that is often asked is - where does the path of knowledge or any spiritual path take us? Or in other words - what do I get from it all in the end? The short answer is - we do not reach anywhere, we return home and we do not get anything, we just lose many things.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Lets unpack this answer and see why this is so.

Origin of the World

We saw the mind in detail in last article - a very important part of the manifestation or creation, that we call Experience. We can now go deeper into the Experience and see what else lies there and how it all originated.

The metaphysical patterns and processes not only form minds, they form all kinds of structures. Minds happen to be a special kind. So what are those other structures? We see them all around us, they are things, objects, systems, physical or non-physical, we are surrounded by all kinds of patterns. A collection of objects is called a World. So we are going to take a look at the world in this article.

The Origin of Mind

We saw that all manifestation is essentially metaphysical patterns and movements of patterns aka processes. One of the interesting pattern is that of a mind. The mind is a collection of metaphysical patterns and processes that has properties like memories, knowledge, thought and perception. A mind is a system that is not only affected by other patterns, it also affects them back in a meaningful way. This capability is the capability of action. Usually actions are meaningful in the sense of self-preservation, growth and perpetuation of the mind itself.

The Creation

Inner Cosmos, Tapestry by Maximo Laura, Peru

One of the strange thing about experience, we noticed, is that it is ever changing. In fact, no change means no experience. So change, even though not existing independently from experience, is fundamental. It deserves the title of Truth. When we observe closely, we find that what is changing is patterns, all kinds of patterns. That gives us some clues about the manifested reality, because, manifestation is nothing but patterns, all kinds of patterns.

The Experience

After dissecting the Experiencer, we take a look at the other aspect of the Presence - the Experience. We immediately find that the Experience part is much more exciting, happening, rich and very mysterious. It is all that is manifested.

The Experiencer

The Ultimate Truth is that there is experience and there is an experiencer. Everything else is details. We can now descend into the details, not much, just the important ones. We will start with the Experiencer and note some of its characteristics by direct observation.

The Ultimate Truth

The Ultimate Truth is that there is experience and an experiencer. There is nothing beyond that, and even this apparent duality is an act of mind. When merged together, the experience and the experiencer are reduced to just Experiencing, a dynamic Presence.

How to Die Like a Seeker

You will find tons of literature and advise on how to live, but very little information is available on the topic of dying or how to conduct one's own death. As you know, we do not have a choice about whether or not to die, we can only decide about how to act or be when the time of the death is near. So this article is a discussion on how to arrange situations and how to ready yourself for this important event. Its obviously not about how to kill yourself, just in case you thought so.

Principles of Astral Projection

Astral Projection is an experience involving non-physical realms. It gives us a glimpse of what lies beyond our limited perspective as humans. It enables a journey into the vastness we call the Universal Mind. We will enlist some basic principles of this practice and will note some do's and don'ts.

Path of Knowledge

Path of knowledge is about knowing and understanding the nature of existence and essence of our own self. It is a gradual dispelling of ignorance. On this path we seek truth. Not only that, we embody this knowledge and apply it in day-to-day life. In this article I will present my understanding of what this path means to me.

Introspection 10 : Purpose of Human Life

Objective : We will try, by direct observation only, to arrive at the answer of an often asked question - Why are we here? Or in other words - What is the purpose of this human life?

Mind Map

Iconic Map of Universal Mind

It is our direct experience that Presence is dynamic. There is activity, there is change. Although there is this static unchanging aspect of it which we know as the experiencer, or "I" or pure consciousness. Ultimately both dynamic and static aspects are just one. That which changes becomes an experience and that which is changeless becomes the experiencer. There is not much to the experiencer part, it is just empty awareness, a silent witness, the light that illuminates the changing part, except that it is essential and necessary for all the experiences, it is plain boring :). The interesting things are the dynamics, the endless activity, unceasing and ever-creating patterns. This is seen as the manifested Presence, the Universal Mind.

We will try to create a map of it all - the biggest possible picture.

The Flip !

When you start progressing on the path of knowledge, you will notice a strange pattern - your old beliefs will be most of the time an exact opposite of new knowledge. This is quite amusing and enlightening. Everything you "knew" gets reversed gradually. I call this - the flip !

As you progress, your views go on flipping and soon the entire picture changes, the foreground becomes the background, and the background jumps forward. This is the figure-ground reversal that you will notice. We will take up some examples to demonstrate this. What's the point? Well, besides fun, it can be a good indicator of your progress. More things you flipped, more you have progressed. What's your score?

States of Mind

It appears that Consciousness cycles through states, but Consciousness is changeless, its the mind that changes state. We explore various states of mind here. All of them are highly interesting and educating.

Layers of Ignorance

By Julia Molloy

All there is, is Experiencing. Its pure and perfect. Something interesting happens in the Experiencing - appearance of a Mind, the universal Mind, organizer of all experiences. Mind starts building structures - knowledge. The Self finds itself surrounded by structures. Structures hide the "what-is" or Presence and instead Self gets a "view" that is made-up, artificial. This view is nothing but knowing, knowledge itself. Mind presents that knowledge incrementally. While the structures are still forming, the knowledge appears incomplete and is seen as ignorance. It takes more experiences to complete the knowledge, which is done, but not before incomplete knowledge does its job - of causing suffering.

This incomplete knowledge is Ignorance. In essence, knowledge is ignorance. Mind is limited, it brings in immense amount of knowledge, still it remains incomplete. For a human mind, which is a part of the Universal Mind, the situation is even worse. Humans spend their whole life (or lives) under the spell of ignorance, well most of them do.

Introspection - 9 : There is only one Self

Unity, by Vrindavan Das

Goal: We will try to arrive at a conclusion via direct experience and logic that there can be only one Self. So the Self (consciousness) that you are experiencing right now is identical to the one I'm experiencing.

Introspection - 8 : I was never born

Masters will tell you that the consciousness was never born, will never die, is immortal, is eternal, is beyond time. It never started and it can never end. A religious person might simply believe it all blindly, which really does nothing for him, but a seeker will not settle for anything less than a direct experience of it. So how to get that direct experience?

Surrender

The content below is an expanded version of a forum post.

You must have noticed that people have huge egos. I'm one of them :D. I'm slowly hacking away its ever growing branches. I noticed that the less I let my Ego rule me, the faster I progress. I've come to recognize it as surrender.

The Ego is an automated defense mechanism, which has evolved for only one purpose - survive and procreate. Its very useful, brutal and is like an autopilot, you don't need to think much, it does it for you. Now, the problem is - it has very limited wisdom, its like an AI, a machine, and it decides on its own what it needs to defend. So it defends the body (of course that's wise), it defends your food, shelter, your hoard of shiny stuff. That's why you don't like when someone touches you, or stares at your food, or enters into your house or steals your belongings. You want to obliterate the intruder. That's Ego in action.

So far so good, the trouble starts when it encroaches into mind stuff, and calls it its own part. So things you know, things you say and things you believe all become something that must be defended from anyone or anything that dares to oppose or destroy them. So the things you "know for sure" must remain so, ego will stand between them and any new knowledge that might try to replace it (Oh I know everything now). The things you have already said must not be changed, no one should dare to call them stupid, they are just perfect, the total truth, and same for your actions (I cannot be wrong, I am fair and just). The Ego will hang on to the last straw to "prove" and thus save your words and deed.

Consciousness and Machines

By Cameron Gray

The content below appeared first in a forum post.

AI is almost knocking on our doors. Everything that is needed for a fast development of AI is available at this time (2017). Which is -

• Superfast and cheap hardware
• High level programming languages
• Enough know how on brain and mechanisms of intelligence
• Cross pollination in the fields of electronics, software, neurosciences, psychology and philosophy
• Big data for training
• Corporate will and ample funding
• A good number of talented scientists and engineers in the field of AI (and AGI)
• Emergence of large immersive realistic virtual worlds (VR) for easy development and sandboxing of AI agents.
• Emergence of new theories that encourage out of the box thinking
• Destruction of old paradigms, end of dark age of AI 

Perhaps I missed a few, but you get the point - AI is inevitable.

Paradox

By Hans Kanters

The following content is an expanded form of a forum post.

The whole point of the path of knowledge is to arrive at perfect answers. By perfect I mean those that are obvious, self-evident and based on direct experience, direct knowing, and sound reason and logic. However, a seeker will soon encounter serious issues if he tries to be so strict and rigid. He may find that there are many answers, all of them can be called perfect in above sense. Sometimes they are contradictory, and still make sense. Soon he will find that this is the norm, not an exception. Almost everything is a paradox.

Cessation Of Mind

Patanjali

The content below is an expanded version of a forum post.

Union or realization of oneness happens on cessation of mental activities. This is the age old formula (by the father of yoga Patanjali himself). All very good, but what is really meant by cessation of mental activity?

Does it mean I stop using my mind? Does it mean I stop the continuous chatter (monologue) that goes on inside my head? Does it mean I should stop perceiving things, recognizing things, naming/knowing them etc? Does it mean I bring the mind to a standstill like a dead or unconscious or asleep man? Do I need to be brain dead to get the experience of oneness?

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-5

Extraordinary experiences: of heavenly kind is just another weapon the Mind uses to distract a seeker. May be it is a side effect of getting aware of the larger universal Mind, and various hidden realms of the Mind start showing up during meditation, or sometimes even in the normal waking state. Initial newbie experiences are typically lights, sounds and bodily sensations. Later on people report a sense of connectedness, infinity, oneness, being the almighty creator of everything, world may start appearing like a dream, aversion from worldly existence, indifference towards daily activities like eating, working or talking to others, so on and so forth.

Well, that sounds like progress, how can it all be obstacles? What happens is, seekers hear about such experiences and immediately judge themselves as lacking cool stuff. I want what the other has – is the feeling and desire. They start hankering after such experiences. They cling to the tiniest of straw if that assures them that they are making progress. They seek confirmation, they brag about their “achievements”. They treat them like trophies or currency in their bank account. They immediately get jealous of those who have more. They look down on those who did not see all those fireworks in the mind. They feel the need to be special. A fancy experience proves for them that they are “enlightened” now, and nothing more needs to be done. Of course, except getting more experiences of “spiritual” type.

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-4

The following may read like total BS to those who haven’t experienced any of it. Such events/experiences do not seem like natural and get classified as supernatural. But anything goes in the realm of the Mind, its all natural there. Anyhow, I don't claim the below as factual, it is all mysterious, if its your experience, it is a fact, else not. I do not have an extensive and in depth knowledge or experience in such matters, but have encountered enough weirdness so that I’m not anymore amazed if someone tells me about some odd thing that happened. I’m amazed, however, when someone tells me such things are impossible [1].

Paranormal phenomena: are a norm when your path is not so normal. By not normal I mean its trajectory goes via unknown or unknowable terrain of the Mind. When you encounter something that you do not encounter so frequently, it gets classified as paranormal. A smartphone is an example of a paranormal thing for an Amazonian tribal, who never encountered a modern man with a smartphone before. When you take up above kinds of paths, you are like that Amazonian tribal. Things are neither normal nor paranormal, you are either inexperienced or experienced.

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-3

People and relatives: are often the biggest and most difficult obstacles for many. They are unpredictable, dynamic and active obstacles, which makes it a bit difficult to deal with them. Parents may oppose your every move, criticize you, shame you and may try to pull you back into a dogma they prefer, however outdated or moronic theirs is. Sometimes they will threaten you, especially if you are still young and a dependent. Parents also try to emotionally blackmail to have their own way, to “fix” you, just like your partner/spouse may. You may find that parents and partner will erect all kinds of hurdles on your path, may try to overpower you giving you a reason that they “love” you. Children become an obstacle if they are young and are dependent on you, because your responsibility makes you less free to devote time for your practice, to switch jobs or to travel and stay in solitude if required.

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-2

Purified - by Tomasz Alen Kopera

Sleep: is the way of the Mind to excuse itself out of a deep meditation. But it can also happen naturally, say because of sleep deprivation or tiredness. You are highly alert, your mind is not so noisy, you are totally motivated and you sit upright and turn inwards towards the Self. So far so good, the next thing you know is you are getting up from a nice six hour long sleep.

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-1

Remover of obstacles. We invoke him first before we start on a path.

We have studied in much detail what can go wrong when you start on a path or even before that. All those pitfalls and traps that trap you even before you start your journey were discussed. To summarize, these are –

• Absence of a path itself 
• Afflictions of the Mind 
• Afflictions of the Ego 
• Solidified beliefs and conditioning 
• Physical limitations of the body 
• Absence of a good teacher 
• Lack of certain qualities in the student 
• Resistance, lack of effort or lost opportunities 

If you expand this list it can fill up pages. Somewhat disheartening I must say, but then I've said many times, this path is not for weaklings. It is not like walking on a carpet showered with petals. Deeper the ignorance, more are the obstacles. The good news is - once you start jumping past hurdles, it becomes easier and easier to overcome them. You pick up speed exponentially and if you stick to it, it shouldn’t take a very long time. There is a learning curve of sorts that makes everything seem impossible at first, there is an entry barrier for people and only those who are seeker material are allowed past it. Once you get past the hurdles, and fall into a few pits, you start getting the knack of it all, you learn the art of not falling and of picking up yourself as soon as you fall.

Resistance, Effort and Opportunity: Part-2

In the last article we saw how resistance slows a seeker down on his path. Lack of effort and lost opportunities are other reasons that can slow one down. Are these three the only hurdles? Of course not, but one can classify most of the hurdles under these three broad terms conveniently. I’m not saying that there cannot be other strange forms of hurdles (like Karmic hurdles, or evil entities, or jealous deities), but its beyond my pay grade to write about them, I can write about things I directly know of or at least somewhat sure of. In the end, its all Mind, you see, and we can use Mind itself (its more favourable parts) to defeat Mind.

Effort

The dilemma of effort is a familiar one for most of the seekers. Do I reach there by enough effort or can I achieve it effortlessly? The answer usually given is familiar one too, which is – It is not possible to reach there by effort, but one must still make some effort.

Resistance, Effort and Opportunity: Part-1

A path is rarely seen with a red carpet laid on it, padded with rose petals, mostly, especially for new travellers, it is full of thorns, pits and steep climbs. It may sound discouraging and ironical since this blog is about encouraging people for taking up a path. But then, instead of showing a rosy picture its better to share something useful which provides you instant solutions in case you fall, and something which warns you beforehand, to prevent the fall. Following is a brief write up of things I found that may cause trouble and some solutions that I found useful.

Introspection - 7 : Illusion of Bondage

By Michelle Wiarda

Goal

We will attempt to gain a direct experience of the free nature of the Self and will see that there is absolutely no bondage of any kind.

Prerequisites

Nothing more than that which is already mentioned for other introspections. See introspection - 1.

Question your bondage

Ask – Who is bound? Who is not free?

Those who are identified with the body will immediately find themselves answering how they are not free to do this or to do that, to remain young and healthy forever and to evade death or to have all the riches and pleasures of the world. That is deep ignorance, but it is ok.

Introspection - 6 : Consciousness Without Content

Goal

We will attempt to gain a direct experience of the pure consciousness, in other words, Self that is not engaged in experiencing anything, or when there are no contents to experience. Note that its not possible to even remember such a state, because there will be no memories of it, so we will just try to get a taste of it.

Prerequisites

Nothing more than that which is already mentioned for other introspections. Although sometimes a friend who can ask you questions mentioned below can be useful. Best done with eyes closed, but it is not necessary.