The self/I is not ego-mind. The ego-mind is not the sense of I/self.

[Miss Hepburn]

Reality - always reminds me of this quote:


If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.
They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality.
If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.

-C.S. Lewis

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Reality - always reminds me of this quote:


If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.
They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.
They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality.
If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.

-C.S. Lewis

We are being sprayed by that reality but under the illusion we are not.

[hallow]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Well, if you learned the World's Thought System --you could interpret this as competitive, 'me first',
(ha, you see this best in Boston traffic!~!), um yes.
Or
You have the higher, spiritual, godly Thought System, which is opposite of the Worldly Thought System like crazy!

It's a flip in actions and words ...like George Kastanza, (TV show in the USA, "Seinfeld") ---it can be tested.
Do the opposite of what the World might tell you to do.

The World says, logically -"The homeless guy is just going to buy alcohol. So I'm not going to help him do that!"
What would your higher self say, your innocent heart, the one like a child's?
"Here's a 20, God bless you." (Now how does that feel?)
(It often goes against logic...I'm glad it does!)

ok.... I get it now. Boston traffic???

[Godspark]

Simpleguy, you don't need omniscience just to understand what reality is and how it functions. You could understand it's general nature, the basic foundation of what it is or how it works, or understand it from a scientific point of view (if science fully understood it). Once you have a grasp on the foundation it's built from, it allows you to learn and understand everything else. It's not enlightenment or omniscience, just an intellectual knowing.

I know what you mean though that enlightenment is similar to becoming lucid in dream (although even becoming lucid you can still hold on to ego), it's about realizing all is self, and you can understand it somewhat from an intellectual perspective but you can't think yourself into enlightenment. There is a shift that takes place in the way you consciously perceive everything when becoming enlightened. And this is the point I've been trying to make in my earlier post so thank you.

However, because I've been a lucid dreamer my entire life, I've seen what's capable in dreams and essentially want this in reality. I believe anything is possible, and if that is true then I should be able to achieve this. It won't be enlightenment, it will be empowerment and mind-over-matter. Understanding reality intellectually and holding onto ego is crucial for this to happen. I also know it's possible because I've had direct experience of mind-over-matter/psychokinesis in the past. If everything really is consciousness, then mind-over-matter should be fairly simple but is actually hardest thing to ever try and achieve.

Originally Posted by Godspark

Simpleguy, you don't need omniscience just to understand what reality is and how it functions. You could understand it's general nature, the basic foundation of what it is or how it works, or understand it from a scientific point of view (if science fully understood it). Once you have a grasp on the foundation it's built from, it allows you to learn and understand everything else. It's not enlightenment or omniscience, just an intellectual knowing.

I know what you mean though that enlightenment is similar to becoming lucid in dream (although even becoming lucid you can still hold on to ego), it's about realizing all is self, and you can understand it somewhat from an intellectual perspective but you can't think yourself into enlightenment. There is a shift that takes place in the way you consciously perceive everything when becoming enlightened. And this is the point I've been trying to make in my earlier post so thank you.

However, because I've been a lucid dreamer my entire life, I've seen what's capable in dreams and essentially want this in reality. I believe anything is possible, and if that is true then I should be able to achieve this. It won't be enlightenment, it will be empowerment and mind-over-matter. Understanding reality intellectually and holding onto ego is crucial for this to happen. I also know it's possible because I've had direct experience of mind-over-matter/psychokinesis in the past. If everything really is consciousness, then mind-over-matter should be fairly simple but is actually hardest thing to ever try and achieve.

I disagree and here's why. Show me one being who's even close to mastering all existing human knowledge. Let's just limit it to physics. It's a theory, a model in its infancy. How many people did it take to tease out the Higgs Boson and at what cost and over what timeline and only because of standing on the shoulders of all the giants who went before? We think of it as a fundamental "particle" of the Standard Model, but that too is just a model.

We perceive electromagnetism and the nuclear weak force as two distinct and fundamental forces, however if one runs the universe backwards and to a high enough energy level they are revealed as different aspects of a more fundamental force - the electroweak force.

Furthermore it's posited if one runs the universe further backwards and to an even higher level of energy the electroweak force and another fundamental force - the nuclear strong force - are aspects of an even more fundamental force and that's the goal of GUT (Grand Unified Theory). It's thought to produce enough energy to tease it out will require a particle accelerator 10,000 light years in diameter.

Beyond that and if we run the universe back to the Big Bang it's believed GUT and gravity will be different aspects of an even more fundamental force and that's the goal of TOE (Theory of Everything) however it's believed there's not enough accessible energy in the entire universe, short of collapsing it into a singularity, to tease it out.

Whatever reality actually Is, the ground-stuff within which everything appears, is most likely deeper than that. Much deeper.

When attaining lucidity within a dream one knows the reality of one's identity (the dreamer), though one does not know the neuroscience and psychology behind the experience. Similarly when one attains Enlightenment one knows one's true identity (Consciousness for lack of a better word), though one does not know its actual nature or that of the illusion of Maya (objective reality) aside from it's born out of ignorance. It's all analogy and metaphor.

By the way, Enlightenment and thoughts of gaining supreme knowledge and control of nature are mutually exclusive concepts. One negates the possibility of the other. One is the dream of Self and the other the dream of the ego-self. To realize the primacy of Self one has to let go of the primacy of the ego-self.

[MikeS80]

Originally Posted by JustBe

Adya says something along these lines...

Ego’s innate nature is sticky, our true nature isn’t sticky,it’s not pushing and pulling with itself..

In his view, I take it that most of that stickiness is ‘attachment’ rather than being in an ‘openness’ to all things within..

it is more true to say the unbalanced conditioned ego with subjectivity and fear is sticky.

The balanced unconditioned ego without conditioning and fear is our true nature.

[MikeS80]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

I disagree and here's why. Show me one being who's even close to mastering all existing human knowledge. Let's just limit it to physics. It's a theory, a model in its infancy. How many people did it take to tease out the Higgs Boson and at what cost and over what timeline and only because of standing on the shoulders of all the giants who went before? We think of it as a fundamental "particle" of the Standard Model, but that too is just a model.

We perceive electromagnetism and the nuclear weak force as two distinct and fundamental forces, however if one runs the universe backwards and to a high enough energy level they are revealed as different aspects of a more fundamental force - the electroweak force.

Furthermore it's posited if one runs the universe further backwards and to an even higher level of energy the electroweak force and another fundamental force - the nuclear strong force - are aspects of an even more fundamental force and that's the goal of GUT (Grand Unified Theory). It's thought to produce enough energy to tease it out will require a particle accelerator 10,000 light years in diameter.

Beyond that and if we run the universe back to the Big Bang it's believed GUT and gravity will be different aspects of an even more fundamental force and that's the goal of TOE (Theory of Everything) however it's believed there's not enough accessible energy in the entire universe, short of collapsing it into a singularity, to tease it out.

Whatever reality actually Is, the ground-stuff within which everything appears, is most likely deeper than that. Much deeper.

When attaining lucidity within a dream one knows the reality of one's identity (the dreamer), though one does not know the neuroscience and psychology behind the experience. Similarly when one attains Enlightenment one knows one's true identity (Consciousness for lack of a better word), though one does not know its actual nature or that of the illusion of Maya (objective reality) aside from it's born out of ignorance. It's all analogy and metaphor.

By the way, Enlightenment and thoughts of gaining supreme knowledge and control of nature are mutually exclusive concepts. One negates the possibility of the other. One is the dream of Self and the other the dream of the ego-self. To realize the primacy of Self one has to let go of the primacy of the ego-self.

I have to agree with Godspark. Reality is I am present/presence in the right here and right now. Meaning I am present/presence in ultimate reality, objective reality, physical reality, spiritual reality all at the same time, because in reality, none of those realities are separate from each other. Any other reality or separating those realities from the right here and right now is not reality or truth at all and is purely based on subjective information/conditioning, feelngs, likes, not likes, biases, fear etc etc.

The right here and now leads one to pure omniscience/all knowing, whereas subjective information/conditioning and fear leads one astray.

Originally Posted by MikeS80

it is more true to say the unbalanced conditioned ego with subjectivity and fear is sticky.

The balanced unconditioned ego without conditioning and fear is our true nature.

Originally Posted by MikeS80

I have to agree with Godspark. Reality is I am present/presence in the right here and right now. Meaning I am present/presence in ultimate reality, objective reality, physical reality, spiritual reality all at the same time, because in reality, none of those realities are separate from each other. Any other reality or separating those realities from the right here and right now is not reality or truth at all and is purely based on subjective information/conditioning, feelngs, likes, not likes, biases, fear etc etc.

The right here and now leads one to pure omniscience/all knowing, whereas subjective information/conditioning and fear leads one astray.

The ego-self (Ahamakara, I-maker) is at the heart of duality. I, me, mine. Not me, not mine.

I'm not even saying it's necessarily a bad thing as the Ramakrishna order (and Vivekananda) embrace(d) the idea all paths are valid and have as their goal the same end. I'm only saying it's helpful to know one's path otherwise the possibility of getting confused or lost is ever present.

Pick a path, understand the path, follow the path. Following one path and conflating it with another has to introduce a great deal of cognitive dissonance and just doesn't seem a good or helpful approach.

[Godspark]

Simpleguy, I think you misunderstood what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to know absolutely everything there is to know, that's ridiculous and absurd. Just trying to understand the basics and go from there learning whatever else helps along the way to get the broader idea and see the bigger picture. It's merely a means to make informed decisions, and by understanding some of the fundamental concepts of reality can open a lot of doorways to greater knowledge, power and control over reality. "Some rules can be bent, others can be broken" and I have seen this firsthand multiple times just by understanding some of the basics and implementing that knowledge.

Mike, I would say we only think about the future and past in our mind, but it all exists here and now in the present moment. It's a multiverse, with multiple dimensions and timelines with infinite possibilities but we can only experience one particular thing at any given moment based on our previous frame of reference, and the conditioning and beliefs we hold which limit our potential.

The way I see it is that God is infinite and eternal, and created infinite ways of experiencing himself within existence. Every possible reality and version of reality exists simultaneously, and we are God experiencing just one version. Put it this way, if you were God and you were infinite and eternal, everything there ever is or was, what would you do? what could you do? it would make sense to me, to create infinite realities and explore every possible outcome seeing and experiencing all existence from multiple vantage points.

Originally Posted by Godspark

Simpleguy, I think you misunderstood what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to know absolutely everything there is to know, that's ridiculous and absurd. Just trying to understand the basics and go from there learning whatever else helps along the way to get the broader idea and see the bigger picture. It's merely a means to make informed decisions, and by understanding some of the fundamental concepts of reality can open a lot of doorways to greater knowledge, power and control over reality. "Some rules can be bent, others can be broken" and I have seen this firsthand multiple times just by understanding some of the basics and implementing that knowledge.

Mike, I would say we only think about the future and past in our mind, but it all exists here and now in the present moment. It's a multiverse, with multiple dimensions and timelines with infinite possibilities but we can only experience one particular thing at any given moment based on our previous frame of reference, and the conditioning and beliefs we hold which limit our potential.

The way I see it is that God is infinite and eternal, and created infinite ways of experiencing himself within existence. Every possible reality and version of reality exists simultaneously, and we are God experiencing just one version. Put it this way, if you were God and you were infinite and eternal, everything there ever is or was, what would you do? what could you do? it would make sense to me, to create infinite realities and explore every possible outcome seeing and experiencing all existence from multiple vantage points.

The only thing I'm aware of is the claims of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

Attaining the Siddhis: 25 Superhuman Powers You Can Gain Through Practicing Yoga and Meditation https://www.consciouslifestylemag.co...n-yoga-powers/

Pretty sure we're talking about a lifetime of absolute renunciation and dedication to the practice to attain the more spectacular powers. Those beyond the rudimentary stuff like clairvoyance and precognition. This is purely anecdotal but I seem to be more attuned to both of these since beginning meditating a decade ago and many others report similar perceptual increases after extensive meditation practice.