The difference between seeing and knowing

I agree with everything you say and yes it is greed due to the delussional "I" and not money that causes great many evils but what about revenge. There is a saying in the old Indian epic Mahabaratha that the state of revenge is the most sublime of human condition.for instance if someone hits you and have a laugh and runs away at you don't you run and chase around them desparate to have a go at them.what about feeling of vengence. Among animals only elephants are known to have them as they are capable of revenge but they are also capable of self recognition.

Revenge is hard wired in to us in that respect. There is an evolutionary function for it that relates to survival and it would also have played a role in early sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. There is a perceived threat to the life and social status in that respect and potentially, we could be seeing the beginnings of intelligence in elephants, they certainly have a large brain size, although I would hardly suggest it has the neural structure that we do. Unfortunately we won't be around to see if this conjecture is true.

Certainly it raises the question that if an elephant has memory recall and is self aware in the present, then we can ask does an elephant have the capacity for an imagination?

In order for revenge to occur, there has to be some kind of capacity in which the organism is able to future project revenge. Or could it simply be that as the perpetrator is recognised, this is an automatic response?

Well we know the saying “an elephant never forgets”. This indicates that elephants hold grudges!!! They do not apply “revenge” instantaneously, as elephant keepers will tell you, they will wait for an opportunity down the line. This indicates that it is not in fact reflexive and that there could be an element of future intention involved. This is mind blowing stuff.

Does these indicates "I" is at incapable to get rid.

Totally!

Just because this I function is realised as illusory: I.E there are thoughts about an agent in charge of the thoughts, actions and experience, that clearly does not exist. It doesn't mean that the thoughts themselves are illusory. The I function operates the same way as it always has, except that the idea of duality is no longer supported.

So yes, nothing really changes in that respect, the same thoughts arise but as there is non dual awareness, the notions of a false self to make meaning out of things, to have self esteem, to beat up with via thought, is removed. The engine of dysfunction is collapsed when this is seen in real life. There is no separation between life and experience, it is all one.

May be I am confused!

How knowing is different from seeing/realising?

Ok the brain operates on a cause and effect conditioning level, we can easily debunk cause and effect as an illusory concept but it is a breaking down of chunk level processing, similar to bytes for a computer. I.e it processes in packets and this give us the idea of cause and effect, which works great.... for neural processing functionality.

So if you were afraid of spiders, the body is conditioned to trigger the flight response upon a pattern match of a spider. Now, this fear is irrational (well if you live in the UK it is) because there are no venomous spiders in the UK. 

So even if if I reasoned with you that this was the case, showed you the test data of ever spiders toxicity, showed you the test results of spiders jaws power and how it was unable to break the skin, demonstrate all knowledge about every spider, reports from arachnologists, all the data on medical admissions due to spiders, I mean everything. I could spend weeks convincing you that this was the case but as soon as you see a spider, the flight response would still trigger.

If there is any irrational fear you can think of, the only way to overcome it, is to actually face the fear directly so the conditioning is broken.

Now if we apply this to the illusory “self”, we see that it still works the same. Just because we are aware there is no thinker, it is an illusion, it doesn't mean that thought patterns stop processing in terms of a self being there. Hence no matter how hard you try and think, you can not actually WILL your conditioning to be over ridden. This is simply because there is no self there to over ride the conditioning anyway!

We have to literally see that thoughts about self, refer to nothing, it is simply a tricking of the mind that has always been believed to be real and as such represents a deep core belief. But... it is simply only that; nothing more than a belief.

Just because we know what the real deal is, it doesn't mean the primitive systems of our brain update with new knowledge. I.E The neo cortex does not over ride conditioning stored from pattern matching. The only way to break this conditioning is to actually update the pattern matching faculty.

By seeing in real life that there is no you and this is actually what is happening in reality, this means the brains model is no longer cogent with reality and it must necessarily update itself. This gives rise to non – dual awareness. This is actually the final realisation in enlightenment but it can be simply witnessed in reality by anyone.

The result of seeing this, is the engine of dysfunction is rendered inert. Cognitive dissonance can not spiral out of control and hence suffering, finding meaning from external objects, outcome orientation, self esteem are all rendered defunct as there is nothing in reality to relate it to any more. The thoughts exist but there is no you, hence they do not feedback in to each other any more.

We can prove this by doing simple experiments, to come to a logical understanding and after that it is simply a case of doing some deep inner looking, to witness what is actually happening in real life and break the conditioning of a deeply entrenched core belief. So it takes some effort to see but this is freedom from the human condition. I'll blog this, as its a fascinating point you raised about revenge.

An Evolutionary Glitch?

A discussion about the "I" function from a forum incursion today (26/4/11)


Acc to evolution, development of speech, Language made us human.

Yep

As one saiad, we are homo grammaricus, we communicate as some mammals but we communicate with a language that has its own set of rules.

The illusion of "I",(owing to fault in perception of brain) is important in wide pattern recognition and matching.We are living in an illusion and that illusion has helped us to create our own reality apart from nature.

This is not true, the concept of “I” is redundant in pattern recognition, it arises because of it. In human communication, the pattern matching faculty communicates with the part of the brain responsible for language and as a result, this gives rise to an illusion of self. Part of the reason is because, we process reality in terms of cause and effect. Cause and effect is actually illusory as well but our brain just breaks down the world in to manageable chunks. Along with the language, pattern matching and this cause and effect view point, it gives rise to an “I” function.

Now there is evidence to say that it is a glitch (I used to think this) but there is also a conjecture that the “I” function was useful for the purposes of facilitating communication. We see that evolution propagates development of traits for survival at the expense of the organism's “comfort” on an individual basis.

 We need only look at cane toads in Australia to see this is true. As they evolved to move 100 times further in a day than they used to, their spines didn't keep up with this rate in development and unbelievably they encounter spinal problems!

There is an ongoing debate about how it appeared but the rise of the “I” function, is exactly that which you say; an illusion. It is not real, there is no “you”, there is no “I”.

Now there is nothing wrong with this in itself, there is an illusion of self and it gives the appearance that we have our own reality, that would be a good thing right? It facilitated communication and generally we see the world filtered through these thought patterns and it gives us a sense of separation.

This should be great right?

Unfortunately this is not the case. The problem that arises with this, is that it causes thought to feedback in to itself. We have a situation where there are thoughts about thoughts and literally they feedback in to themselves.

Whilst thoughts about thoughts are useful for skills like problem solving, thoughts about, “thoughts about the self” are not. Whenever we put a microphone by a speaker, we hear the sound feedback in to that horrible screech. This is because there is a closed loop and each soundwave multiplies in amplitude.

Now with the brain, we do not have this amplitude problem but... when we throw imagination and memories in to the mix, then we do get problems.

Have you ever imagined the future? Sometimes we can predict roughly what will happen but have you ever noticed that the future projection never matches the event?

Nothing exists outside of the present moment so whilst a predictive thought faculty is very useful, we can say any thought about the future that arises is technically illusory, even though it is part of a useful faculty.

However, because we believe an illusory thought means something, because we attribute it to being about an illusory self, we can get anxious about things for little reason at times. We have all been there. Even to the point where we can predict a catastrophe that never happened and beat ourselves up over it for sometimes days.

Well what about the past? What problems can this cause? Well you only have to look on this forum to see the problems I'm talking about. All it takes is a couple of dodgy core beliefs made in the past and these can be activated throughout life. Thank the pattern matching faculty for this. You see all these core beliefs are made about things that happen in reality, then there is a thought about it. Sometimes this process can go wrong.

There are thoughts about what this means to the illusory self and how this illusory self is perceived and then you have a negative spiral of thoughts. People frequently being depressed, low self esteem, feel the future is hopeless, simply because of this illusion we have been tricked in to believing all of our lives. This is another example of the engine of human dysfunction at work.

This whole engine is the core mechanism behind human dysfunction and needless suffering. This illusion is responsible for many of the problems we see in the world today and not just personal problems.

People talk about ego, so what is it? If you believe Freud it is a part of your “self”. This is just an attributing of thought patterns to an illusory self. The ego is not a real thing. There are thoughts that could be termed egoic in nature but no stand alone entity called ego.

 However these egoic thoughts are the product of the conditioning of an illusory self. We call it ego because it seems like there is a desire to be better than the next person, not come off worse in a verbal argument, do things to look good to other people the list goes on.

Whilst these are generally not harmless there are extremes of this. We only have to look throughout history, where people have taken it upon themselves to annihilate another race for their ideals, tried to wipe out another religion because they thought they were right, tried to take others resources and became responsible for the slaughter of innocents to forward their selfish agendas. These people are living in a delusion, yet they are guiding the destiny of the human race. Look at where we are heading right now, it doesn't look good.

Turn on your TV set now and look at the greed of corporations, look at Bophal in India, look at the oil slick in the gulf of Mexico, look at the financial crisis, look all around the world, you will see it. They say money is the root of all evil. No... money does not do evil things, it is human GREED. This greed is the product of an illusion of self.

All of this dysfunction

THIS THIS THIS

Is because of the illusion of self that we assumed was real from a young age.

When it is said that man is an social/politcal animal other animals live in groups but not society they live as animal societys(groups) whereas we live as social animals.That's why we need to have something larger than ourselves to hold on to.

Biological evolution and evolutionary psychology have developed humans to be social, the “I” function was maybe part of it but it was never supposed to be believed as a real thing.

In discovery channel they said that along with humans only a very few mammals are capable of self-recognition,Dolphins, Chimpanzees and Elephants.methinks, Self recognition is not only linked to intelligence but also living in groups and parental care and the way the animals relate ot the same members of the species, all these occurs only in mammals.What made us modern humans is actually a illusion of self due to some slight fault in brain during evolution in the course of early humans developing speech.

Yeah this totally makes sense. My dog recognised there was nothing worth spazing about after a while, it just made a pattern match regarding the location in the house, if it had of recognised itself it wouldn't have spazed out in the mirror at my friends house.

Whether it is an evolutionary glitch or not that the “I” function arose, it has become the engine of human dysfunction. For this reason alone, seeing the truth that there is no “you” can end the needless suffering and dysfunctional thought that arises.

Knowing this is not enough. It must be seen to have any effect. Basically the brain is conditioned to think in terms of a self since birth, once a behaviour is conditioned it needs to be undone. It is as simple as seeing in real life that there is no entity there, this requires some deep inner looking and it can be easily seen.

This does not take years of meditation or practice, it can be easily seen within a matter of a few days, once the person intellectually understands that the concept of self is completely illusory. 

In an expment shown in NGC or Discovery Chimpanzees could not cooperate to complete a task that procures them food for they don't share thier foods with strangers, they seem unable to develop mutual understanding.

Co-operation,sharing and mutual understading(among strangers not mother offspring) are the thing that makes us different from animals according to scientists.

We stood erect and We are mammalian and if any other mammal during the course of evolution stands and walks erect it too will become like us.

Agreed that sounds highly plausible to me.

Hey xxxxx have you seen no self? Or do you just understand it is illusory?

Mr Whippy's cannibal adventure

I will have to rewrite this post eventually as the ideas are under developed.
The piece is pertaining to the philosophical problem of other minds and divisions in reality. I needed to make a distinction between the following types of reality.

Meta reality - that which is beyond our sphere experience and would include Kant's conception of noumena.

Mesa reality - taken from the Greek word for middle and a unique piece of word smithery by my own hand. An example of a mesa reality would be the type of reality you would experience if you were plugged in to the matrix. You would believe it was the totality because of the limitations imposed.

However, this distinction came later and as such, this post is a bit of a word salad and comes off as confused because I only used the word meta reality and did not distinguish between the two. Ghost 2014

First of all, we know there is existence. This is one thing we can be certain of. There is a body that is writing these words right now and I'm pretty certain that there is a body reading these words on a screen, although I could never be certain, without experiencing it for myself. I can picture someone reading this but I could never be sure they were experiencing it. For all I knew, the whole world is an illusion being fed in to the neurons of my brain that was in a stasis jar! I can not know anything for sure apart from the fact that everything I perceive exists in some capacity. Imagine if you were sat in front of me reading this, all there would be from my point of view, is my experience of watching you read the words, I can never know your experience.

Now read back the preceding paragraph again, to make sure you get it. You will see from this, the nature of the experience each of us has in existence, actually leads us to believe in a division, or separation in reality. Reality is divided in to your experience and my experience of this situation. Your experience is the reading of the blog and wondering what I am thinking about you, while I watch you. My experience, is of watching you read the blog and wondering what you think about it. With this division in reality labelled “you” and “I”, it completely makes sense for us to make this distinction and label our experiences as separate.

So whilst I could never say our experience is the same (of course it most certainly is not), we do have to make some kind of distinction and the system of language we have in place, is perfect for this, we use pronouns to denote a subject. But... in doing so, we have actually created a paradox.

How can we divide reality?

It is actually indivisible, it contains everything that exists. Even if we cannot be aware of certain things in our experience, they exist in reality, it is simply we are unaware of them. God could be a good example of this. Suppose it did exist, no one has ever seen it and so whilst it could be imagined that it exists, it would still have to be contained in reality.

No one has seen heaven on the way to outer space

but... if it did exist, we would be oblivious to its existence. It would still have to exist in reality though. There may be many things we are not aware of but they are all contained within reality. We can go the opposite way and look at things that we are aware of within our reality. Virtual reality or cyberspace are good examples, they are contained within reality.

Where is the division in reality for these things to exist in?

They exist in the digital realm and without transistors, there would not be a digital realm. But there is no division in reality, the digital realm simply exists within our reality, there is no division at any point. Cyberspace is a part of reality, virtual reality is not a separate reality, it just exists within reality. There is not a reality within a reality, we can only have one reality. We could perhaps make up a new word and call them “meta-realities” but in reality (sorry couldn't help myself) they are not realities, they are just objects that exist within reality. They are not separate in any way from reality, we are only making a simple distinction between objects in reality.

Suppose we had a child who was plugged in to “the matrix” from birth. It would be living in its meta-reality but it would be contained within reality and there would just be the rest of reality it was totally unaware of. Therefore, there never can be a division at any point in reality.

This is an impossibility

Each of our experiences is contained within reality, there are only things that we are aware or unaware of, within reality. In other words, the only limitation on a meta-reality is imposed by that perception within a meta-reality. Or to put it even more simply, the confines of a meta-reality, are simply that, which we are not aware of in this reality.

We can delve in to quantum physics if you like and we can go with the multi-verse theory, where every story has played out from every decision ever made by every creature in the universe and these are all being played out in their own universe. Even if this was true, (it has been debunked) then each parallel universe would have to exist within reality. There would be no division in reality, as they would all co exist in the same reality. In each universe we would simply be unaware of the other universes but they would all HAVE to be contained within reality, or they would not be real. We can go with string theory which stipulates 10 (or 11 for M - field theory) dimensions in reality but we are only aware of four of these. These other dimensions would still have to be contained within reality, even though we were unaware of these other dimensions.

Reality therefore is all encompassing, all that is in existence., exists inside reality.

How does this relate to our experience? Basically our experience must also be contained in reality, yours, mine, our mothers, everybody's is contained inside of reality. We cannot divide it because it is all encompassing. Nothing can exist outside of reality. If it is not in reality then it can not be possible for it exist, by the very nature of reality. It is either real, or unreal, it either exists or it does not exist at all. It is really that simple. Luckily for us, this IS black and white, there are no shades of grey involved in this equation, we have found some pieces of universal truth.

Nothing can exist outside of reality

Reality can not be divided

All experience is contained within reality

A double ice cream cone can have two flavours simultaneously co-existing on the same cone

But wait, we are missing one thing we have already discussed, from this list and that is that each of us has our own experience. I am not going to include that on the list for the simple reason being that it is not universal truth. I am sure there is another person experiencing life in the world but without ever experiencing your point of view I can never be 100% sure.

I can go back to the brain in the jar example or use the matrix metaphor again. I could never 100% prove that there is anything other than my direct experience because I could never know what is not my own direct experience.

For all I know, I could be a brain in a jar, that is projected in to a prime time comedy TV show on an alien world called “Humans”. I'm certainly convinced this is not the case (99.99999% recurring) but I could never know this for certain, because anything outside of my direct experience is not knowable to me at all.

Another simpler example of this, is pain. I can imagine your pain but never experience it. I can only experience my own pain but not yours.

Whoa!!! Don't worry this is not rocket science, this is reality we are dealing with so luckily we can not break the boundaries as discussed.

You could ask the question “What about the earth then, can you be sure that exists, can you be sure the sun rises and sets?”.

Well in my experience it exits, even if it was an illusion projected on to the brain in the jar, it would be a meta-reality, which would be contained in reality anyway. The experience exists, the experience of an illusion exists in reality. It is in existence because it is being experienced, that is as far as we can really boil it down: There is “the experience of” that, which “exists in reality”, whether illusory or not. Illusions are actually “real illusions” that are contained inside of reality.

So to some degree we all have a meta-reality but it is all contained within reality. We cannot have our own reality and there are always things that we are unaware of. But wait a minute. Very often, we talk as if we have our own reality, how can this be?

We cannot have our own reality this is impossible. Not one of us can own reality. To own reality means to be separate from reality. This is impossible. Ok then, maybe we can have the thoughts and feelings that occur. In order for you to have a thought, you must be separate from thought or else you cannot have a thought. It is the same as saying I'm having an ice cream. Either you are the ice cream or you are having the ice cream. If your having ice cream, you can not be the ice cream unless you were called Mr Whippy and decided to chew your arm off.

So what is the deal with thought?

Can you have thought? Well if you are a body, the body can not have a thought. Let us say this again, a body can not have thought. Thought occurs within the body, the body does not have thoughts, how can the body be separate from thought? Can thought be separate from the body, or by necessity does there have to be a body present for thought to occur? Does there have to be neurons firing in the brain in order for thought to occur? It is physically impossible for human thought to occur, without a human body, does that make sense?

What about “you?”

Do you have thoughts and feelings? Can you be separate from them to have them? Or do they just arise? We need to think about this one. In order for you to have thoughts, you must be separate from the body. If you are an entity who is watching the 3d visual movie with stereo sound, kinaesthetic sensors, smell and taste sensors, you are having the experience of life. You are observing and interacting with reality through your thoughts, feelings and the sense data. You totally own this experience, the past is yours, the future is yours, everything that you can experience is yours right?

Where do you put yourself in the equation?

Can you be separate from thought or experience? Well if you want to have thought or experience then you must be separate from it.

If thought occurs in the body, that would mean you have to be separate from your body. How could this be, how can there be any separation from the body?

If experience occurs in reality, to have experience means that you have to be separate from it. How could this be, how can there be any separation from reality?

By the nature of what we are dealing with, an external observer has to be separate from reality to have the experience. What is separate from reality?

Are “you” separate from reality?

So you have two options, you could claim that you were not a part of reality, or would it actually be more realistically feasible to say that there is no you and it is only an illusion of self that you have been tricked in to thinking is a real thing?

Another set of tips for looking

Exactly what it says on the tin - Ghost 2014

I actually decided to write more tips for looking because this is what everyone gets hung up on. Even though I have some new realisations to share, I thought I would spend more time stating the obvious... To be fair that is what I am doing but I spent a few days repeatedly asking myself “how do I look?” So I totally sympathise with you :)

1. LOOK

The first thing you need to realise is that thinking IS NOT actually looking. This is the core problem, thinking is the biggest obstacle to looking.

My flag metaphor, which goes “Hey look at the flag, what do you see?”

Person 1: I see the national symbol of England, I see a symbol of nationalism, I see blah blah...

Person 2: There is a metal pole with a square piece of material flapping in the wind.

The first person is thinking about it.

The second is looking in real life.

This is because person one is analysing the concept of the flag and what the flag represents.

Person 2 is observing what is in reality. There is the direct experience of looking at a metal pole and the material. No assumption has been made.

Self does not represent anything in real life. “You” is a concept and any thought about self is also a concept. Any idea you have about self no matter what, is a concept that you have thought about. This is not looking.

2. Dishonesty

This one pisses me off. (Do shutup Mr Virus)

You actually have to use honesty when you do this. You can not make assumptions, you can only see what is real. If you expect a result and don't do the work, then just go away, I don't want to help you. Honesty is in what can be directly experienced in real life. Anything that is not directly experienced, is a concept about what direct experience is and as such is thinking. NO EXCEPTIONS

3. Meditation

Ok, you don't need to use your eyes to see no self but you need to use your inner vision as it were.

The best way to explain this, is by meditation experience. When you are starting your session, you are trying to let thought arise without engaging in it. You are aware of thought and your attention is turned inwards. You notice thought arise. Your attention is turned inwards. Use the same methodology in looking in real life.

If you can't meditate, don't worry it is not rocket science and is not a prerequisite for this. You may benefit from a 20 minute session though just to give you an idea, it may be useful for you.

If you can meditate, go in to a trance and then look at the entity producing the thoughts... Who controls the thoughts during meditation or do they just arise on their own?

4. Indication

How to tell easily if you are looking. Basically you are aware of sight, sound, thought etc...

Close your eyes, stop thinking and then whatever you are aware of is what can be known in direct experience. Then you know you are looking. How do you know your heart is beating? You can't see it but you can know it. As soon as you engage in thought again, then you are not looking. It really is that simple.

5. Hung up

Don't get too involved with cultivating looking. Seriously it is just looking, it is as easy as seeing the computer screen in front of you. There is no special looking involved it is just turning your awareness to what is happening in reality. It seems like a new skill as you have never tried to look at how thought manifests, as you have always assumed there was a “you” doing all the work.

6. Attention

To start out this trick is pretty useful. Be present and focus on the here and now, then watch as your attention will soon become consumed in thought. Then try and focus back on the present moment again. When you have done this a few times, look at this experience and then look at what is deciding to switch awareness. Don't think about it rely on your direct experience for the answer.

7. Caught in the act

As you are doing stuff in your busy routine day, start to notice your unconscious reactions to stuff. Maybe you jump when the Rottweiler jumps up at the fence as you walk past, maybe you jump out of the way of a car, maybe you feel gooey when you see that nice looking person, maybe you shout “fucks sake” when you drop something... Start to look out for these things, as you get better at catching this when it happens, you will start to notice the lack of a thinker behind anything.

8. Frustration

This process is frustrating... I'm sorry but just know I didn't actually condition you to think this way. Keep plugging away at it. If you keep at it, there is no way that you can't not see it. It is so obvious. At times it feels like your banging your head against a wall but generally this means you are on the right track

9. Watch out

The lie has a funny way of tricking you in to thinking your looking when your not. The temptation is to go over the basic stuff without looking. Very often we start out by asking you to start typing and start to watch the thoughts. People some times will just give a stock answer they have heard before from RT instead of doing it. Realise that this first step is important as it gives us a handle on where you are at. If you think it is not worth your time, realise that this is the lie in survival mode.

10. DON'T do this

Looking in reality does not mean looking with your eyes :) Don't be weird!

The power of NOWT

This post is more aimed at the post self crowd rather than any noobs, however, it has an important idea about how we conceptualise time and construct our fictional self. This is worth exploring in real depth post self and is also useful for anyone who is looking. Ghost 2014 

Read Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now and it will tell you about what he calls presence. This is just basically being in the present moment. There are many names for this, zen, mindfulness, awareness whatever. But what is the problem with being in the present moment? When you come out of it and everything is back to normal, the problems arise again, all your worries come back and your life returns.

Being present is just like a refuge from the stream of thought we are engaged in. Eckhart tells you to focus on living in the present moment whenever you can. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this in itself, do you think you can become a zen master by simply imitating what Eckhart does? Can you become a pig by mimicking what a pig does?

What Eckhart doesn't make clear is that all you are doing is repeatedly going back to this refuge. If you do the same thing repeatedly, you will get the same results. Maybe you get in this refuge more often at best but making it your default state? Impossible. Eckhart is sharing his wisdom for sure and I'm sure many have benefited from his work but he ain't so great at cracking people out.

I got my first person out of the delusion this week and so whilst I'm glad that I managed to liberate someone, there is nothing to celebrate really when the whole world is living this delusion called self. I'm just pleased that I've woken some one up from their slumber. I have no idea of how many Eckhart has freed but I'm led to believe it is 0.

No this is not going to be a slur against Eckhart at all, he has played his part in raising mainstream awareness of this thing called presence. I enjoyed reading his books and his insights helped to change my life a few years ago but at no point did he offer a road map on how to become liberated from “ego”.

That is what he is lacking and telling people to repeat the same thing and try and get a logical understanding of what he is saying. He becomes like the other gurus who become a block to becoming liberated from self. You can read all Eckhart's books, listen to his audio presentations and subscribe to his website for 6 months for $99 and guess what? You will still be at square one and none the wiser. He is a great author though and makes it easy for sceptics to get in to spirituality. However, you have to hope these people don't get mired in all the spiritual trappings out there which only serve to divert the average person from realising no self.

Enlightenment is not what you think it is, whatever you think it is, that's what it is not.

Yawn... lets stop with the mysteries and riddles and actually deal in what is real.

When I see stuff like that above I have to chuckle these days about my grandiose delusion of enlightenment! How silly. Ghost 2014

When you are in “presence”, what happens when you come back out of presence?

The chain of thoughts starts again, you begin associating with the mind again. Lets just say that you had something major going on like you suspected your partner was cheating on you. You could go in to presence and as you do, the thought subsides for a brief moment and maybe you can hold this state for a short time before you are plunged back in to the cognitive dissonance and negative feelings associated with this situation. How does this really help you?

Going in to presence achieves what?

A temporary respite at best but then straight back to suffering.

Now as we come out of presence, immediately a thought grabs you. Then every other subsequent thought is about this thought. It probably starts with a thought about it, then maybe a mental image pops up of your partner being with someone else, then thoughts about what it says about you as a person, how your going to be hurt, your joint account and all the problems...the negative spiral has begun. You suffering starts again and you have achieved nothing.

However, what is the one thing that is happening when you are being in the present moment? You are actually looking at life as though there was no self for a brief moment even though this is done in the context of a self being responsible for it.

When you are in the present moment, what is it that actually exists in that present moment?

The answer is everything that is real.

What is real?

Everything that is in the present moment... existence.

So what about tonight? It doesn't exist yet it is not real

Yesterday? It already existed it is not real any more

Next week? It doesn't exist yet it is not real

Last year It already existed it is not real any more

Only the present moment exists in reality. Nothing can actually exist outside of the present moment. However, humans have a concept of past and future and that is why we think they are real things.

They are only thoughts in the subjective realm, they are not real things in objective reality.

The only way they become real is when we experience the thoughts in the present moment. Now the thoughts are about something that is not a real thing in objective reality but are of a concept that deals with the measurement of time.

They are not about anything real but the direct experience of these thoughts IS real. In other words one can only directly experience thought in the present moment.

A thought is real, a concept about time is a real “concept about time” but the concept itself is of something that doesn't exist in reality.

Yes... time is an illusion in that respect but only in the same way that numbers are illusory.

We have just adopted a useful measurement system that serves us well. The number 5 is not a real thing, it is just a label assigned to a quantity to make life easier. Should we drop it? Hell no. Should we discuss this further? Hell no. We are just demonstrating that subjective labelling of objective reality is useful but it doesn't make it an objective thing in reality. All time is, is an arbitrary measurement of movement, within a three dimensional space. We happened to use one particular measurement of time standard all over the world, from the phase of a full rotation of the earth on its axis.

So all that really exists is the present moment and what happens in that moment. We have the direct tacit experience of the present and that is it. That is all there is and ever can be or as Eckhart puts it: “The eternal now”.

The present moment = existence = reality

Outside of the present moment = non existence = concept of reality

So what is happening when you focus on the present moment? You are focussing completely on your direct tacit experience of life. What happens when you come out of it? you are directly experiencing life but through an illusion of self/ ego that does not exist in reality. It is merely a concept of “you”. Concepts only exist in the subjective realm, they do not exist in reality.

Concepts are part of reality DoH!! Should edit this to say 'you' is a concept (which of course the concept exists) but I don't mind leaving the errors in, I hope I have since learnt to argue more coherently than when I did back then lol! Ghost 2014

So we go back to our example. The suffering starts when you suspect your partner is cheating on you. It probably starts with a thought about it, then maybe a mental image pops up of your partner being with someone else, then thoughts about what it says about you as a person, how your going to be hurt, your joint account and all the problems...

This next bit may sound incomprehensible but it is completely true:

The problem does not actually exist.

It is a concept about something that has not existed yet, therefore it is not actually real it is simply a concept. The thought is real, thought arises and is experienced in the present moment but the thoughts are actually about that which is imagined or could potentially exist.

They are concepts of reality, therefore they are not real in the sense that they really exist.

I.E in this case they exist as real concepts of that which does not exist yet.

Now this is little comfort for you if you are in this situation. You may be getting angry about your partner, you may be feeling hurt. But lets look at this again.

Lets just say that you had something major going on like you suspected your partner was cheating on you

Now we look again at this and lets put two and two together. What do we know to be true?

There is direct experience of existence.

In the subjective realm, there is suffering, negative feelings and thoughts

The thoughts being experienced are of a concept that doesn't exist yet.

It is not known if what is suspected is actually the truth.

So is the suffering real? Yes but it is all because of an illusory concept. The lie of self actually causes feedback through an imaginary concept of self, that can even be produced from an imaginary concept of what could happen and then causes us the excessive negative thoughts and suffering.

In other words this suffering is because of something that doesn't exist in reality, it is entirely a product of imagination.

 The suffering is actually delusion.

Being able to think ahead is useful for humans but the trouble is with this mechanism that very often we think the worst and we create suffering with our own imagination. Don't forget, it is not a real reason in the very sense of the word real. It exists as a concept in the subjective realm but it is of an illusory outcome that may or may not come to be.

Yes pain generated that is totally imaginary in source.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF?

THE ANSWER IS YOU CAN'T, THE BRAIN IS TRICKED IN TO FEEDING BACK IN TO ITSELF THROUGH A FALSE ILLUSION OF SELF.

All the while though, the thoughts are nothing more than projections about an imaginary scenario. They are not about anything that really exists. We know what is real, it is the experience of existence but if the thought is about nothing that IS real, then what is the problem?

There is a useful function of the brain in this thinking capacity, sure it is useful as a predictive faculty but that is the extent of its use. When it has been twisted by the lie of self it becomes an instrument that causes us to worry about something that may or may not happen. This is where anxiety comes from. It is a direct result of this process and is the mechanism of dysfunctional thought. Anxiety is a perfectly natural reaction to certain situations but prolonged anxiety attacks and constant worry are a product of the dysfunction of self as is suffering over imaginary future projections. This is extreme. We have just demonstrated how suffering is frequently generated from the imagination.

This is not to say that being liberated makes you immune to what is going on. You can't just pretend all this is not happening and it is not denial. It is happening but you just don't buy it. There is pain, it does not make it easier to bear but... the negative thought spirals and suffering are just not there. Well the negative thought spirals start but there is just a witnessing of this illusion and they carry no weight. You just don't buy it any more. Pain is useful to an organism. Suffering is not. Negative thought is useful to an organism. Negative thought feeding back in to itself is not.

So how can we fix ourselves and live in the present moment. The answer is you can't fix yourself as there is no self there. What Eckhart is telling you to do is to stay trapped in the confines of self and just enter the present moment. When you do this your focus is on direct experience which is a respite but as we have demonstrated, when you have an undesirable concept on the mind, this is not a respite from your troubles, it is nothing more than a simple distraction. Once liberated, then it becomes a real thing like Eckhart describes, then it is actually a state of bliss as it were.

Look at any of these teachers or guru's they all provide convenient distractions from looking at no self. Be it formalised meditations, opening chakras, developing spiritual energy, learning all the Neo – Advita speak, reading Buddha’s cryptic riddles and god knows what else. All the while it is distracting those from doing the one thing they need to do, in order to see no self: LOOKING IN REAL LIFE

Yeah, but Anatta is only a piece of the puzzle and these things are useful to explore further. If only I had been so militant about carrying on my journey instead of preaching! Ghost 2014

There it is. I have just outlined the blue print for liberating yourself from ego.

All you need is this:

There is no “you” in real life, “you” are an illusion.

Take a LOOK in reality and see the truth in this statement.

It is never quite that easy though but it is not exactly difficult.

Check the “FAQ's”, check “How to L@@k” and then do the “experiments” to see if there could be any truth in this.

DO NOT TRUST WHAT I SAY, TEST WHAT I SAY IN REALITY.

“Resistance is futile”

This post tries to strictly delineate between thinking and looking. If you can excuse the informal style and the RT rhetoric it does outline this aspect well. However, the cries to look at reality will bore you and there are a couple of nonsensical bits in there lol!

Whilst looking at resistance to looking yesterday, it became clearer to me what we are really dealing with. Well I already knew, I just didn't know how to state it clearly, in a way that people can understand.

So here is another attempt to look at this for the layman, that hopefully will not confuse too much... I hope :)

Basically what you need to do is look in real life. This is ALL you need to do. There is nothing to understand intellectually. It takes 5 seconds to see universal truth, seriously. It is not a big deal, it is just the truth. Forget about all the new age crap, there is just seeing the truth, this is all it is.

Its like if I told you that the earth revolves around the sun. You can conceptualise it as much as you like, you can draw pretty pictures. Books will tell you the same thing. Hell you can even study the effects of quantum gravity on time dilations through the  ionosphere and the implications of this for a tribal nomad in Outer Mongolia.

But all you are doing is mentally masturbating over a concept. That is all. You are not really looking. You are only resting on your intellectual understanding.

TAKE A LOOK AT REALITY

This is what you must do. You think you have the answer, you won't look because you think you have it all worked out. You conceptualise your understanding, you make these fancy little models and guess what? This is the self trying to protect itself from being exposed as an illusion. Every time you create a concept, it is distracting you from the task of looking. This is the self twisting and turning in every way it can, to prevent you from looking. All you need to do is look in reality. There is no special looking, there is only inner looking at existential reality.

“I thought you said there is no you, how can a self stop itself from looking at itself if it is an illusion”

I did say that, there is an illusion of self. FFS stop with the questions and just look in real life god dammit!!!

Seriously, this is getting annoying now. I can not explain this to you, this is beyond language but I will try and illustrate this.

There is thought, it is real. Pictures can be imagined, memories occur, future projections can be made, things are labelled and analysis of objective reality is done in the subjective realm.

There are feelings, they are real. There are feelings in response to the environment, there are feelings in response to people, other stimuli and there are feelings in response to thought. Feelings come in various colours and range from mild to intense.

There is conditioning, this conditioning is real. This conditioning makes the organism act in certain ways to a given stimulus. Sometimes this conditioning is good but sometimes it hampers an organism as it reaches the adult stage.

The illusion of you is real. There are thoughts that construct the self tied up with feelings and conditioning. These building blocks of false self are absolutely real, look above at the 3 items, these are real things in real life. 

But....

There is no you it is only an illusion. The illusion is real, you are not. Basically the self is a conditioned thought pattern nothing more. You have been conditioned to think in this way from as soon as you were born. “You” is only a thought, it is not a real thing. “I” refers to nothing.

It exists in reality as a thought, thought exists we know this for a fact.

But you is not a real thing, it is a thought.

A thought about a cup of tea is referring to an object in objective reality, a thought about “you” is not referring to an an object in objective reality.

There is a body that “you”, could be referring too... as an object.

But you is only an illusion, there is no entity called you in any shape or form.

You are not awareness, you are not an entity and you are not having the thoughts, there is only thought. There is no you whatsoever in real life, just look at this in reality.

How do I look?

Ok so going back to our earth revolving around the sun metaphor. You base your understanding on knowledge but it is not known to you. It is assumed by you. Your whole understanding of the solar system is second hand knowledge. You have probably not studied the solar system by starting again from scratch. This is a complex undertaking however but to “know” the solar system, this is what you would have to do. You would have to start off from scratch, ditch all the maths and just start again with a telescope and a pen and paper to devise the whole theory of astrophysics from scratch.

At the  moment, you merely understand the current model of the solar system and have applied it, this is understanding the solar system. To know the solar system you must be intimate with the very nature of the solar system. To truly know it, you would have to make all the observations and see them with your own eyes. Now the volume of knowledge is immense, all the work that has been done on the solar system is immense. Such an undertaking would take many life times of work and would require the intellect of some of the great minds like Galileo, Newton, Einstein to name a mere few.

To know “no self”, the same idea is required. All our knowledge has to be dropped and we have to start from scratch. Fortunately we don't need to do a fraction of the work required in our metaphor!

Maybe we can understand no self, maybe we could even apply the model of no self with enough understanding. Whoa I gotta stop there: No you can not apply this model trust me but people do actually do this, I've seen them. Take new agers or spiritualists in “ego” denial.

There is no ego but they identify with having no ego or rising above ego.

But denying what is (an illusion of self/ ego), is resisting what IS that is in their perception of reality.

There is an illusion but it is through this illusion that virtually everyone engages on reality. So an illusion of ego is a component of the perception of reality, for someone who has not seen no self.

They are denying that a product of the illusion of self exists, they are denying it is there and this is akin to resisting a component part of what their perceived reality is, as they think in terms of a self even though they try to deny it. This is utterly useless.

This is why the self persists in these people. They understand no self but they have not looked to see no self. It is the same as thinking about a tree and then denying there is a thought about the tree. This is resistance of what IS.

Without looking we can never “know” no self. We can only understand the idea using logic but even then it is not something that we can apply. A “concept” of “no self” is only as useful, as “no concept” of “no self”.They are both nothing except one concept should lead to looking for those who can muster up the courage to take an honest look at reality.

Fortunately, we are only dealing with an illusion in reality. We don't have to rewrite the rule book of classical and quantum physics and look with a telescope. We are dealing with a lie, simple as it is.

You is an illusion. To see this we have to cultivate some deep inner looking and look at reality without our rule book of the way we think things should be. We have to drop our knowledge and start again from the ground up with no preconceptions about anything.

We are dealing with a lie, so it cannot remain in the presence of truth. The truth burns lie on contact, A lie cannot stand up to the truth and this is how we can know no self. People say “you can't prove this either way”. Yes you can, JUST LOOK IN REAL LIFE WITH HONESTY. You cannot convince yourself of “no self” any more than you can convince yourself the sky is green and the grass is blue. You can only look in reality to ascertain what IS. This is knowing the true nature of reality, this is called enlightenment by some but we can just call it KNOWING universal truth.

Drop what you think you know and look at reality. Take a look at reality, see that there is no self. Every concept that is made about reality is actually the lie moving to stop you from looking at reality. This is why the mind is conjuring up all these fancy models, this is actually the lie trying to defend itself as it is threatened.

Ok, its time to grow some balls (metaphorically speaking) and face reality. Seriously that is all it is, a matter of courage. Muster up the guts to face up to reality, that is all that is required from you. You may have objections but why do you have these?

This is reality we are dealing with here and this is merely truth. Why should we resist or fear the truth?

Look at the major religions of the world. They have the belief that there is an eternal soul, this protects them from the thought of death and the end of self. The illusion fears non existence, this is why it throws up all these objections to looking. They cling to their blind belief, they denounce anything that threatens their belief system. If this belief was so solid they could look upon anything and not fear it. If it was universal truth, it would complement everything that is observed in reality. If it was truth then they would not have to cling to any belief based in circular logic. There would simply just be knowledge of what is but they cling  to blind unquestioned belief. They have no faith, for faith means to test your belief.

If you have made it here  you have already shown that you have a shred of courage within yourself. I'm asking you to be afraid and undertake this looking anyway. That is real courage. You should be afraid somewhat, there is fear but all there is to discover is  universal truth in the end. There is no way you can not see it, if you look in real life. It may take a short time to develop this inner looking but really there is no way you cannot see it if you actually look.

OK ONE LAST TIME: GROW SOME BALLS AND LOOK IN REALITY AT THE TRUTH “THERE IS NO YOU, IT IS AN ILLUSION”. LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO THINK, JUST F**KING TAKE A LOOK!!!!!!!

Phew... rant over, just LOOK at reality seriously this is all you need to do.

I'll paraphrase this statement, (can't be arsed to find the post to quote it) from Stephven's (very good) blog, for you to play with for the next few days if you still have any reservations.

Then you can look at the truth in this statement:

“The opposite of truth is cowardice. It is not a lie that is the opposite of truth. A lie cannot be the opposite of truth because a lie cannot exist with truth”.