The Oneness enigma

[utopiandreamchild]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

***

For those who have been so blessed to experience Oneness in deep meditation ... the question is that having merged our in-form consciousness with Oneness awareness in the boundless sea of bliss and absoluteness, why are we dissolved and yet distinct?

To be more specific, among other possible paths provided by the Universe, during in-form awakening when we as consciousness or energy move up along the spine to the crown and then dissolve in the flow to enter space into the Oneness field, we are one with Oneness and yet in as ordained, distinct. Of course, reverse Oneness experience also happens when the Universe Itself descends into form ... there being no here and there or coming or going in actuality. So we then know that energetically or let us say vibrationally, all is One. Yet the aspect of duality or separateness of our consciousness remains.

Theory being meaningless from the practical standpoint ... all the stuff about self & non-self, being and not being, observing vs witnessing, knowing what is not to know what is and so on ... what we are saying is that in actual lived experience in the state of being flowing in the now continuum employing intuition rather than analysis (ego rested or disassociated) with a detached orientation of acceptance, fearlessness and desirelessness, there is a continuation of renewal of bliss with us as a receptor ... meaning that there is a separate person ... a receiver who feels blissful in the Oneness connectedness.

Connectedness is good but it is still separateness. A connected to B but not B. A is separate and B is separate.

The understanding by experiencing Oneness imparts the definitive wisdom of all being One no doubt but the state of so being restricted to the duration of the deep trance meditation when we are dissolved in the flow but even there as Oneness but not The Oneness in permanence.

So we emerge from the unified field back to the dualistic field wiser but not enabled.

I’ll be happy to get views from all who have so experienced Oneness and then plonked back into duality. How do we handle this oscillation?

***

Anyone whom is so inclined to experience oneness can do so and will do so as part of their education and growth until life is perfected in them then there is no thing to search for any more once one has found their unique perfection. Perfection we all crave and desire. Amen

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by utopiandreamchild

Anyone whom is so inclined to experience oneness can do so and will do so as part of their education and growth until life is perfected in them then there is no thing to search for any more once one has found their unique perfection. Perfection we all crave and desire. Amen

Hi DreamChild - what you call a soul's 'perfection' (I think) is what I regard as a soul;s reaching 'maturity' to the point of where it 'graduates' (as described in my treatise) from the 'school' of earthly-life 'incarnation':

When a soul reaches the point where it truly grasps and fully embraces the fact that it really is an integral aspect of The Entity of (all!) Life, as Jesus (clearly!) did, it just ceases to psychospiritually ‘i’dentify with the physiosocial constellation of its personal self and/or whatever galaxy of affiliated selves (or philosophical constructs pertaining thereto) it may currently have the most immediately consequential involvement with and affiliation to, and so (logically then) stops being egotistical (i.e. selfish in the ‘petty’ sense of the word) and commits itself to living with the aim of maximally fulfilling its Love and Joy imperative in relation to others in the context of The Flow of Life-at-Large, doing whatever it can (given its present situational context as a self) to optimize and augment not just its own or any particular set of associates’ immediate Love and Joy processes, but environmentally (hence ethically in the most comprehensive sense of the word) taking into account any and all ‘ripple effects’ which might conceivably stem from its ‘doings’ in ways that (ultimately) impact the Love and Joy processes of everyone around, the well‑being of future generations also being included in said calculus of course!

Souls ‘graduate’ from Earthly-life’s ‘school’ when their reincarnational learning and development ‘curriculum’ has thus been completed. Having realized their Cosmic ‘I’dentity (termed ‘Christhood’ by some and spoken of as [every]one’s ‘Buddha Nature’ by others) to be The Spirit of Life Itself, such souls operationally function as full-fledged colleagues of what Jesus referenced as ‘the Father’ from then on.

[utopiandreamchild]

Originally Posted by davidsun

Hi DreamChild - what you call a soul's 'perfection' (I think) is what I regard as a soul;s reaching 'maturity' to the point of where it 'graduates' (as described in my treatise) from the 'school' of earthly-life 'incarnation':

When a soul reaches the point where it truly grasps and fully embraces the fact that it really is an integral aspect of The Entity of (all!) Life, as Jesus (clearly!) did, it just ceases to psychospiritually ‘i’dentify with the physiosocial constellation of its personal self and/or whatever galaxy of affiliated selves (or philosophical constructs pertaining thereto) it may currently have the most immediately consequential involvement with and affiliation to, and so (logically then) stops being egotistical (i.e. selfish in the ‘petty’ sense of the word) and commits itself to living with the aim of maximally fulfilling its Love and Joy imperative in relation to others in the context of The Flow of Life-at-Large, doing whatever it can (given its present situational context as a self) to optimize and augment not just its own or any particular set of associates’ immediate Love and Joy processes, but environmentally (hence ethically in the most comprehensive sense of the word) taking into account any and all ‘ripple effects’ which might conceivably stem from its ‘doings’ in ways that (ultimately) impact the Love and Joy processes of everyone around, the well‑being of future generations also being included in said calculus of course!

Souls ‘graduate’ from Earthly-life’s ‘school’ when their reincarnational learning and development ‘curriculum’ has thus been completed. Having realized their Cosmic ‘I’dentity (termed ‘Christhood’ by some and spoken of as [every]one’s ‘Buddha Nature’ by others) to be The Spirit of Life Itself, such souls operationally function as full-fledged colleagues of what Jesus referenced as ‘the Father’ from then on.

Thank you. Well educated you are. Sowing the seeds of love is what most intrigues me about Buddha and Christ they definitely left a legacy behind and acted in the highest interest of humanity. Praises. Amen

[davidsun]

This is from the newsletter sent out by SAND (scienceandnonduality.com) Don't know a better place to share this. Thought some readers might find it pertinent to some of the issues explored here.

Discovering the nature of reality has always been a fundamental pursuit of human beings. Throughout time sages and scientists have dedicated their lives to the question of truth—what is real and how do we know what we know? It turns out, seeing reality-as-it-is is neither as straightforward or intuitive as we might imagine. From Plato’s allegory of the cave to the Hindu lila, or divine play, the notion that Reality is somehow in disguise is a universal theme. The reality we take for granted is not what it appears, we are warned. Even Einstein famously said "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

But why is the truth so hard to see? Is there any objective reality to speak of at all? Even if everything is an illusion, don’t we all agree that it is better not to stand in the middle of a busy intersection, or as professor Donald Hoffman puts it, "mess with a lion?" In his paradigm-shifting new article Is Reality Real? How Evolution Blinds us to the Truth About the World, he argues that we actually evolved specifically not to see the truth! "Seeing objective reality will make you extinct," he assures. You see, rather than evolving to give us an accurate representation of objective reality, the sense organs actually evolved to help us know only what we need to know to survive. "Evolution ruthlessly selects against truth strategies and for pay-off strategies," he explains, the pay off, of course, being to escape from the proverbial lion.

If knowing reality-as-it-is for a mystic is enlightenment—and for a scientist, Eureka!—for a caveman, knowing what’s really going on beneath our sense experience is completely useless. Imagine needing to learn code just to interpret what can otherwise be represented by an icon on your desktop. And so we evolved a friendly user interface for the world. "What we perceive isn’t objective reality, but an interface with it," Hoffman writes. The lion we know, in other words, is an icon of a lion.

So, can objective reality be known at all? Certainly, the search for the nature of reality will never end. But we might be a little more humble knowing that we weren’t wired to know very much at all, a little more gentle with our path of awakening knowing that illusion is not just a big problem to solve, but a great protectress paving our way, a little more grateful that a mascarade of beauty is guiding us through our precious evolutionary journey, and a little more aware that, as Nisargadatta put it, "The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind."

Love,
Vera and the SAND Team

Except I would qualify the last (Nisargadatt statement to say "The mind that only focuses on sensory data cannot know ... etc."

Obviously, as clearly implicit in the statement by Rumi quoted directly above this in the same newsletter , there are no limits to mind's capacity to 'soar'!

"You knock at the door of Reality.
You shake your thought wings,
loosen your shoulders,
and open." - Rumi

[zorkchop]

Reading threads like this . . . one cannot be anything but numbingly amazed at minds ceaseless, well-designed, and unending practice of analysis, definition, and categorization. Mind can spin the “meaning” of this word or that endlessly . . . and make it sound SO delightful and fulfilling. But it is still . . . mind.

I had to smile and nod at Unseeking Seeker’s example of sugar dissolving in water. Though that certainly can and does happen . . . it is *still* sugar and and it is *still* water. Sugar . . . does not become . . . water . . . nor was sugar ever . . . water.

This is the same as mind verses Soul . . . since Soul Itself is NOT mind . . . and mind is NOT Soul Itself. Mind can “dissolve” into something . . . whatever label and definition one wishes to entertain . . . but mind does NOT become Soul at any point on the path. The two are very distinct. Soul does not interact with LIFE in the same way as mind does . . . but . . . ( and it’s a big “but” ) . . . since it is the discovery of just what Soul is verses the mind is one of the classic discoveries one makes on the Path . . . and since Soul has “used” mind as the main tool to interpret all life experiences . . . to discover Self as the pure Soul that It is . . . verses the mind . . . takes seemingly forever. Soul has never experienced Itself . . . free of mind . . . or verses the mind. How can It discover what It has never experienced?

Mind can be trained to slow down and stop . . . and then the individual can claim floating in an endless sea of bliss . . . or some similar experience . . . and claim to be beyond mind. That’s like saying . . . I am walking around inside my house . . . and I stop . . . and now I am outside my house. Or . . . I am driving in my car . . . and I stop the car . . . and now I am outside my car.

Um . . . no.

But . . . most everything that is discussed in this and similar threads is a necessary and vital step amongst the many taken as one travels the path. In no way does this suggest that these steps are insignificant, unnecessary, or inferior. It is simply where each individual is.

The only real questions are . . . now what . . . and . . . who has been to where I want to go . . . how do I discern that . . . and how do I make contact.

And make no mistake about it . . . Soul can and will discover Itself as the pure Soul that It is . . . sans the mind, the emotions, and the physical body . . . given eternity to make that discovery. It can and does happen . . . and then . . . and only then . . . can the distinction between mind and Soul be understood.

[Unseeking Seeker]

@ zorkchop

The mind-thought-senses body construct as different from eternal consciousness is clear. The question is ... apparently Vedanta too has different views on this ... are we talking about the many being interconnected or there being only one supreme awareness (God) and all else, including all separate souls* (*our presence without the body/mind) being an illusion.

Exiting polarity of duality during meditation we experience ourselves as formless consciousness and going in deeper, in the void as one with Universal consciousness. Profound experience, congratulations and all that ... However we are yet distinct.

Going in deeper, we may be present with the primal sound Aum or see the spiritual light and so on ... all great in as far as imagery is concerned ... in fact we may even become speechless! However, be that as it may, in the sense of being, we are distinct. That’s my experience so this oneness concept does not resonate ... yet.

There is divine love. Sure. We feel it. We are enveloped by it. We feel interconnected to all.

My submission then is, let us call all consciousnesses or souls as interconnected, not as one.

That’s the enigma or dilemma.

***

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by zorkchop

This is the same as mind verses Soul . . . since Soul Itself is NOT mind . . . and mind is NOT Soul Itself. Mind can “dissolve” into something . . . whatever label and definition one wishes to entertain . . . but mind does NOT become Soul at any point on the path. The two are very distinct. Soul does not interact with LIFE in the same way as mind does . . . but . . . ( and it’s a big “but” ) . . . since it is the discovery of just what Soul is verses the mind is one of the classic discoveries one makes on the Path . . . and since Soul has “used” mind as the main tool to interpret all life experiences . . . to discover Self as the pure Soul that It is . . . verses the mind . . . takes seemingly forever. Soul has never experienced Itself . . . free of mind . . . or verses the mind. How can It discover what It has never experienced?

Very clever (cleavor?) Zork. But WHAT IF 'Mind' is an organic (inseparable!) 'faculty' or 'power' OF (the) 'Soul'? What happens when a clever-cleaver like you tries to separate the 'two' and then (stupifiedly?) 'believes' s/he has 'successfully' done so?

I submit that Mind and Spirit are dynamic capabilities/powers OF the Soul.

Without Mind, Soul is 'blind' and so cannot meaningfully choose anything. Without Spirit, Soul is 'lame' and so cannot go anywhere or do anything. In either case, It's (the Soul's) Life is compromised/short-changed.

Give me a break, clever/cleaver Dude!

You subscribe to this kind of stuff to your own (Soul's!) detriment (IMO), oxymoron-embracing Unseeking-Seeker.

[Phaelyn]

Great post. I'll add some thoughts.

Originally Posted by zorkchop

since Soul Itself is NOT mind . . . and mind is NOT Soul Itself. Mind can “dissolve” into something . . . whatever label and definition one wishes to entertain . . . but mind does NOT become Soul at any point on the path. The two are very distinct.

Soul can become mind using a human body on this earth. That's what most souls are doing here. Soul just identifies with mind and fully embraces it's reality, in effect, "becoming it" while the body lives.

Mind cannot dissolve into soul, but soul can and does "dissolve" or merge into mind.

Soul is choosing to manifest as mind. To present itself as mind and to experience minds interpretations. This is human life. So one cannot really say soul cannot become mind. We can and do and this body and this earth is the place we use to accomplish this.

Originally Posted by zorkchop

the discovery of just what Soul is verses the mind is one of the classic discoveries one makes on the Path . . . and since Soul has “used” mind as the main tool to interpret all life experiences . . . to discover Self as the pure Soul that It is . . . verses the mind . . . takes seemingly forever. Soul has never experienced Itself . . . free of mind . . . or verses the mind. How can It discover what It has never experienced?

What have you experienced that is not mind? Great little question to ponder there!

Here's another one.

You posted: since Soul has “used” mind as the main tool to interpret all life experiences....

Question: Isn't all spiritual paths and spiritual goals coming from mind? Isn't all thoughts of self or interpretation of what is from mind? Then what is one to do knowing this?

takes seemingly forever..... does it?

it doesn't take any time at all if one drops mind.... all mind

Originally Posted by zorkchop

Mind can be trained to slow down and stop . . . and then the individual can claim floating in an endless sea of bliss . . . or some similar experience . . . and claim to be beyond mind. That’s like saying . . . I am walking around inside my house . . . and I stop . . . and now I am outside my house. Or . . . I am driving in my car . . . and I stop the car . . . and now I am outside my car.

Um . . . no.

But . . . most everything that is discussed in this and similar threads is a necessary and vital step amongst the many taken as one travels the path. In no way does this suggest that these steps are insignificant, unnecessary, or inferior. It is simply where each individual is.

The only real questions are . . . now what . . . and . . . who has been to where I want to go . . . how do I discern that . . . and how do I make contact.

And make no mistake about it . . . Soul can and will discover Itself as the pure Soul that It is . . . sans the mind, the emotions, and the physical body . . . given eternity to make that discovery. It can and does happen . . . and then . . . and only then . . . can the distinction between mind and Soul be understood.

It's already happened. We are just choosing to place our attention on mind.To live in mind and not reality.

[utopiandreamchild]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

***

For those who have been so blessed to experience Oneness in deep meditation ... the question is that having merged our in-form consciousness with Oneness awareness in the boundless sea of bliss and absoluteness, why are we dissolved and yet distinct?

To be more specific, among other possible paths provided by the Universe, during in-form awakening when we as consciousness or energy move up along the spine to the crown and then dissolve in the flow to enter space into the Oneness field, we are one with Oneness and yet in as ordained, distinct. Of course, reverse Oneness experience also happens when the Universe Itself descends into form ... there being no here and there or coming or going in actuality. So we then know that energetically or let us say vibrationally, all is One. Yet the aspect of duality or separateness of our consciousness remains.

Theory being meaningless from the practical standpoint ... all the stuff about self & non-self, being and not being, observing vs witnessing, knowing what is not to know what is and so on ... what we are saying is that in actual lived experience in the state of being flowing in the now continuum employing intuition rather than analysis (ego rested or disassociated) with a detached orientation of acceptance, fearlessness and desirelessness, there is a continuation of renewal of bliss with us as a receptor ... meaning that there is a separate person ... a receiver who feels blissful in the Oneness connectedness.

Connectedness is good but it is still separateness. A connected to B but not B. A is separate and B is separate.

The understanding by experiencing Oneness imparts the definitive wisdom of all being One no doubt but the state of so being restricted to the duration of the deep trance meditation when we are dissolved in the flow but even there as Oneness but not The Oneness in permanence.

So we emerge from the unified field back to the dualistic field wiser but not enabled.

I’ll be happy to get views from all who have so experienced Oneness and then plonked back into duality. How do we handle this oscillation?

***

Love unites us hate devides us. Love is one. Amen

Hello Phaelyn,

It's the first time I get to read you on this forum.

Namaste