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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Non Duality

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  #21  
Old 10-02-2020, 12:59 AM
davidsun davidsun is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
Using the stream analogy we aren't little fish in the stream, we aren't the stream nor are we the ocean the stream eventually reaches. We are water.

Water = Cosmos. Little fish, brook, stream, river, even ocean = crumbs.
You are water manifesting/creating as 'you' - I am water manifesting/creating as 'me'.

What you are doing is an attempt to hocus-pocus sleight-of-mind attempt 'disappear' 'you' and 'me'.

You basically imply/proclaim that (only) 'water' is just conversationally engaging with (only) 'water' here now.

Who/what is talking to and with you here now, Bro? As I have said, give logic a break!
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  #22  
Old 10-02-2020, 11:51 AM
JustASimpleGuy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidsun
You are water manifesting/creating as 'you' - I am water manifesting/creating as 'me'.

What you are doing is an attempt to hocus-pocus sleight-of-mind attempt 'disappear' 'you' and 'me'.

You basically imply/proclaim that (only) 'water' is just conversationally engaging with (only) 'water' here now.

Who/what is talking to and with you here now, Bro? As I have said, give logic a break!

I'm not hocus-pocusing anything. It's standard non-dual Vedanta. Have you ever asked yourself, deeply and honestly asked yourself, what about that philosophy so disturbs you?

Here's something interesting. Non-dual Vedanta says you and me aren't real and in the sense that you and me are ephemeral and somewhere deep down is the reality of our being that isn't ephemeral.

Material reductionists also say you and me, as far as consciousness, ego and free will are concerned, aren't real. It's all illusion and they do have some laboratory experiments seemingly backing up the claim about free will being illusory.

Physicists have some proofs the reality we experience isn't real. One example is electromagnetism and the nuclear weak force aren't fundamental forces though we think of them as such. Crank up the energy and they merged into the electroweak force. Beyond that GUT and TOE are hypothesized and TOE is the Unified Field.

The little wave has too much invested in its own identity and will not realize or even consider its true nature - Water.

https://youtu.be/kHRmFtzoaYg?t=911
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  #23  
Old 10-02-2020, 03:53 PM
davidsun davidsun is offline
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Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
I'm not hocus-pocusing anything. It's standard non-dual Vedanta. Have you ever asked yourself, deeply and honestly asked yourself, what about that philosophy so disturbs you?
I have already stated (in other threads) that I think that what you call 'standard' Non-Dual Vedanta distorts the thruth about and leads people to deny the reality and abdicating their response-abilities, and consequently, their soul-growth potentials in the context of incarnational Life. I am not 'disturbed' that some choose that route. As in the case of 'standard' Christianity, however, my spirit (of Life) impels me to speak out in ways which aim to expose such Life-betrayal when I and as others propound it as being the way to full soul-realization (in my treatise I reference it such growth/development process) as a soul-maturation). Why? For the same reasons that proponents and teachers of greater awareness/consciousness are moved to expose 'false' advertising and educate naive novices (in terms of Truth pertaining to Life) so they are as susceptible to 'falling for' such pitches.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
Here's something interesting. Non-dual Vedanta says you and me aren't real and in the sense that you and me are ephemeral and somewhere deep down is the reality of our being that isn't ephemeral.
That's what many 'flag-waving' (self-proclaimed) 'Non-Dualists' like you believe and say, but that doesn't make what they believe and say the truth about Life, any more than what 'flag-waving' (self-proclaimed) 'Christians', 'Muslims', 'Buddhists', etc. believe and say is the truth about Life.

To (hopefully) expose the falsity of such claim, in this thread I have quoted The Bhagavad Gita as clearly saying: "This phenomenal creation [referencing the reality of our Creation] ... is both ephemeral and eternal, is like a tree, but having its seed above in the Highest and its ramifications on this earth below…. When the Supreme Lord enters a body or leaves it, He gathers [the] senses together and travels on with them, as the wind gathers perfume while passing through the flowers. He is the perception of the ear, the eye, the touch, the taste and the smell, yea and of the mind also; and the enjoyment of the things which they perceive is also His. The ignorant do not see that it is He Who is [really!] present in life and Who departs at death.” The Bhagavad Gita, 15:1-10.) [Note: This quote is from the translation, downloadable here, by Shri Purohit Swami.

You have chosen and continue to choose not to relate to the significance of said quote, continuing to dualistically (illegitimately! IMO) split 'the ephemeral' from 'the eternal' and relegate the former to insignificance. Paul Simon's exquisite lyric come to mind in this regard: "Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" (from the song, The Boxer) is the only comment I wish to make in this regard.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
Material reductionists also say you and me, as far as consciousness, ego and free will are concerned, aren't real. It's all illusion and they do have some laboratory experiments seemingly backing up the claim about free will being illusory.
This is some of what I say pertaining to 'materialists' in my treatise:
"Every aspect of Life (i.e. of Being-n-Doing) is an emanation of Life’s omnipresent Essence (d/b/a Source) that, by virtue of Its Power, is endowed with (1) the capacity to be conscious to some degree, which consciousness, or presence of ‘mind’, enables ‘it’ to ex·peer·ience whatever vibrations (occurrences, data-packets, etc.) ‘it’ is therefore capable of perceiving (i.e. registering) and so possibly responding to, and (2) the motive‧ation, or ‘spirit’, to ex·press ‘itself’ by way of causing, (generating, transmitting, propagating, etc.) whatever vibrations (occurrences, data-packets, etc.) ‘it’ is thereby motivated to ‘make’ in response thereto. In full‑zoom perspective, every nodal and multi-nodal feature of Life may be ‘seen’ to be a subsidiary soul, or gestalt of Life, which is facultatively imbued with ‘mindandspiritby, and consequently both experiences and expresses ‘itself’ in relationship to and with other nodes of Life ‘in’* the matrixial framework of, a (supranodal!) Soul, which is the Mind-n-Spirit constellation (which many regard and relate to as having personal attributes, though all personal attributes actually derive from It**) of That which is All That Is.

[Footnotes:
* “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28)
** As channel-spoken and recorded in Ch.10 of The Bhagavad Gita: “I am the Seed of all being, … no creature moving or unmoving can live without Me.”]

Orthodox materialists dismiss such idea as being no more than an example of wishful‑thinking because they believe that consciousness (i.e. ‘mind’), and motivation (i.e. intention, will, or ‘spirit’), are just epiphenomena which derive from the electro-chemical activity of molecular-chain linked ‘neural’ circuits, and that any differential discernment and directional movement must therefore simply be the result of innately unconscious and involitional matter-energy configurations (such as photons, atomic particles, molecules, DNA gene sequences and amalgams thereof) all just auto‑mechanistically responding to the influence of equally mindless [like you think 'you' really are, maybe?]and innately purposeless tempero-spatial (nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational) power-‘fields’. They therefore ‘see’ what we know as Life as being no more than the composite cause‑effect result of everything and everyone in the Universe just ‘acting out’ essentially soulless, theoretically completely mathematically delineable scripts. Embedded in the above-articulated soulfull☺ model of Life, however, is the possibility that, when and as the fantastically complex aggregation of associated beings which constitute the vehicular platform for one’s earthly experience and expression eventually disintegrates (in other words, when one’s body ‘dies’), the gestalt of one’s mind-n-spirit characterized soul-constellation may nevertheless continue to function as a disembodied psychospiritual entity which ‘lives on’ in the ‘bosom’ (idiomatically speaking☺) of the superordinate, eternally-ongoing because supraphysical (i.e. not temperospatial) Mind-n-Spirit composed Matrix of All That Is. This is the logic that gives rise to otherwise nonsensical scriptural exhortations such as “Labor not for the ‘meat’ which perisheth, but for that ‘meat’ which endureth unto everlasting life” (John 6:27), for instance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
Physicists have some proofs the reality we experience isn't real. One example is electromagnetism and the nuclear weak force aren't fundamental forces though we think of them as such. Crank up the energy and they merged into the electroweak force. Beyond that GUT and TOE are hypothesized and TOE is the Unified Field.

The little wave has too much invested in its own identity and will not realize or even consider its true nature - Water.
That's what you believe. I would say that physicists have only 'proved' that nothing is solid (I point to this in my book) but the 'spirits' of thangs and people are all REAL and though ever-changing (i.e. evolving) eternally ongoing as (sub)'entities'.

It is my sincere hope that what I have said here serves to help some previously closed-minded readers to open themselves up to genuinely considering the implications of this.
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  #24  
Old 10-02-2020, 10:18 PM
JustASimpleGuy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidsun
I have already stated (in other threads) that I think that what you call 'standard' Non-Dual Vedanta distorts the thruth about and leads people to deny the reality and abdicating their response-abilities, and consequently, their soul-growth potentials in the context of incarnational Life.

So you're the arbiter of spiritual truth.

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidsun
That's what you believe. I would say that physicists have only 'proved' that nothing is solid (I point to this in my book) but the 'spirits' of thangs and people are all REAL and though ever-changing (i.e. evolving) eternally ongoing as (sub)'entities'.

And scientific truth too.
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  #25  
Old 11-02-2020, 11:57 AM
davidsun davidsun is offline
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Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
So you're the arbiter of spiritual truth.
Methinks you'd like to muddy the water to 'suit' your preference by way of such aspersion.

I critique what strikes me as being non-sensical and articulate what makes logical sense to me. Every one of us, you included, is the arbiter of the truth-value of what one thinks and shares.

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  #26  
Old 11-02-2020, 12:16 PM
davidsun davidsun is offline
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Originally Posted by davidsun
I critique what strikes me as being non-sensical and articulate what makes logical sense to me. Every one of us, you included, is the arbiter of the truth-value of what one thinks and shares.
From my book:
"... so you’ll approach such endeavor in the right spirit, I must reemphasize and ask you to keep being conscious of the fact that, even when they represent and facilitate understanding of aspects of absolute truth and goodness, concepts and principles and derivative codes of conduct are basically just situationally useful simplifications and props—the scope of [Life's] Creativity is much too grand to be completely delineated by ideational logic. Interactional policy and procedure therefore cannot be unequivocally prescribed by or for anyone.

Personal discernment and contextual decision-making is always necessary: Life’s multidimensionality and the multimodality of our interconnectedness and interdependence make it such that the best of descriptions will not fully inform you, and the best of guidelines will not indicate exactly what will and what won’t be constructive in relation to others around you, at least not for certain. And even when you are sure of what’s what and what would be best, either because of your own limitations or the positions and actions taken by differing others, you will often find you aren’t able to successfully implement what you think would be the consummate course of action. In such case, identifying and executing the most creative practicable alternative will be epitome of wisdom.

Assertions to the contrary don’t alter this truth a jot, no matter how authoritative or persuasive the person who makes them. Think about it: Life depends on there being an ever-evolving diversity of different and, therefore, in one or another way competing, sets of feelings and perceptions regarding what is and isn’t essential. If everything was absolutely consonant, there would be no progression in terms of learning and development, these being a function of the creative exercise of Intelligence and the intelligent exercise of Creativity. Existence, for it could not even be called Life in such case, would just be a round of the same set of symphonic notes endlessly repeating, because everything would then simply operate like clockwork.

So, though consensus may occasionally be arrived at and, even without it, certain value systems and hierarchies may prevail for periods of time, such a state of affairs is bound to be temporary. Sooner or later Life’s exigencies will change, just like the weather. What works for the best at one point won’t at another. The bottom line to what I’m saying is that, in the arena of involvement and interaction, there just aren’t any always-apropos rules. Making the most of relationships therefore requires that one recognize and creatively deal with contention and change regarding the viability of alternative modes of behavior and desirability of different goals. It follows that it is very unwise to simply adopt and aim to always function, or to try to get others to likewise adopt and function, in accordance with any particular set of precepts and priorities, however well-touted by however many, and however comprehensive they may seem from your present point of view.

(I belabor this point to such an extent because such course of action is as seductive as it is harmful. ... Inasmuch as they provide a framework for making coherent judgments and decisions, they often dramatically help immature and undiscerning individuals and groups to function, if not actually better, at least more stably, for a while. But they are as dangerous as any drug. Since they eliminate all sense of dilemma and simplify choice for the moment, they enable those who ‘use’ them to artificially feel both self-righteous and self-satisfied. If and as people continue to depend on such crutch, they become ‘addicted’ to this mode of operation. Instead of growing and expanding, via observation and synthesis of actual experience, their natural capacity to distinguish and evaluate creative possibilities atrophies and deteriorates. Ultimately, they reach the point where they can no longer perceive and so lose touch with what is most essential in Life.

Present trends illustrate what then happens: As absurdities are not recognized for what they are, people delude themselves and bluff others past the pales of reason. And, as youngsters don’t learn to how to make intelligent assessments from those who don’t know how to make intelligent assessments themselves, succeeding generations become progressively more dimwitted, more easily misled and confused. Intercourse based on true discernment and appraisal becomes more and more of a rarity. Grosser and grosser aberrations, of course, naturally ensue. The end result of convention-based choice and behavior is something akin to what would happen to a team in the course of a field-game, say of soccer, if its members played wearing head-gear that restricted their view to particular sectors or quadrants.a Many of the more unfortunate happenings we must now experience and deal with are a direct result of the fact that so many have persisted in functioning along such lines, to such a great extent, for such a long while.)"
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  #27  
Old 11-02-2020, 12:23 PM
JustASimpleGuy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidsun
Methinks you'd like to muddy the water to 'suit' your preference by way of such aspersion.

I critique what strikes me as being non-sensical and articulate what makes logical sense to me. Every one of us, you included, is the arbiter of the truth-value of what one thinks and shares.


Aspersion? Perhaps you should go back through your replies.

The difference between us is you directly attack and demean some belief systems you seem to dislike or hold a grudge against, including their proponents. I do no such thing and in actuality one of the reasons I do like Advaita Vedanta, and particularly the Ramakrishna order, is its recognition all religious paths are valid and worthwhile and not to be disparaged. That has always resonated with me from a very young age.
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  #28  
Old 11-02-2020, 01:56 PM
MikeS80 MikeS80 is offline
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Originally Posted by Moondance
Hi JASG

I’m enjoying many of your posts here. But I would take issue with the statement that ‘consciousness is fundamental’ is the core tenet of non-dualism. True enough, it IS the core of Advaita Vedanta. Understandably people often assume that Advaita and non-duality are synonyms (a-dvaita literally means non-duality.) Yet although Advaita certainly IS non-dualism, non-dualism is not necessarily Advaita Vedanta. The term (non-duality) can be applied to a wider domain of traditions, sub-traditions and philosophical perspectives.

A nondualist/absolute monist outlook is simply to attribute Oneness/not-two-ness or singleness to reality (it’s not necessarily to formulate what the ’substance’ or essence of that Oneness is.) Pantheism, for instance, is the view that everything is God/Nature. Buddhist, Madhyamaka describes the nature of reality as Emptiness - which is inseparable from all conceivable forms and conditions. This is sometimes interpreted as a monist view although Buddhist deny any form of ultimate reality. Taoism is similar to Pantheism in that it describes the primacy of a singular unifying force. Nondualistic thought can be found in much Christian mysticism and Neoplatonism. Even materialism can be described in nondualistic (or absolute monist - ultimately the same thing) terms:

“Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. This concept directly contrasts with idealism, where mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is subject and material interactions are secondary.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
I really enjoyed this response to JASG. Pantheism goes perfectly together with Panpsychism (of quantum physics?), which Is the belief that the singularity, universe, god etc Is Conscious of Itself. Which means there must be duality for the singularity, universe, god to be conscious of itself.
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  #29  
Old 11-02-2020, 02:11 PM
JustASimpleGuy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeS80
I really enjoyed this response to JASG. Pantheism goes perfectly together with Panpsychism (of quantum physics?), which Is the belief that the singularity, universe, god etc Is Conscious of Itself. Which means there must be duality for the singularity, universe, god to be conscious of itself.

Singularity is a way of saying Einstein's relativity calculations break down, resulting in strings of infinities. In other words Relativity is wrong, however it's the best model we have for spacetime and works quite well until it reaches the point of massive spacetime curvature. Just like Newtonian mechanics work quite well at non-relativistic velocities even though in the big picture they are not as accurate as Einstein's relativity. They are good enough to send men to the Moon and back.

If you want to discuss QM in the context of consciousness then the only hypothesis that's close to legitimate (and many physicists would disagree) is Orch OR and it has absolutely nothing to do with singularities.

I know all about the various philosophies and also a lot at a laymen's level about consciousness from a neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of mind and physics perspective. It's been the topic of single-most interest for the past decade and that has shaped my views and when I did stumble across Advaita Vedanta instantly recognized its core tenets of non-duality.
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  #30  
Old 11-02-2020, 02:29 PM
MikeS80 MikeS80 is offline
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Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy
Singularity is a way of saying Einstein's relativity calculations break down, resulting in strings of infinities. In other words Relativity is wrong, however it's the best model we have for spacetime and works quite well until it reaches the point of massive spacetime curvature. Just like Newtonian mechanics work quite well at non-relativistic velocities even though in the big picture they are not as accurate as Einstein's relativity. They are good enough to send men to the Moon and back.

If you want to discuss QM in the context of consciousness then the only hypothesis that's close to legitimate (and many physicists would disagree) is Orch OR and it has absolutely nothing to do with singularities.

I know all about the various philosophies and also a lot at a laymen's level about consciousness from a neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of mind and physics perspective. It's been the topic of single-most interest for the past decade and that has shaped my views and when I did stumble across Advaita Vedanta instantly recognized its core tenets of non-duality.
What I meant by singularity, is oneness/god. I did not mean singularity in relation to relativity.
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