Objections

This post was me dealing with objections to looking in to Anatta with someone I eventually freed on Ruthless Truth. He went by the handle of Wylo and used to hang about on LU for a while. He worked out that there was further to go on this journey and he started prodding me to start meditating and explore further. It took me a while to work it out (I know, I know) but hey I did eventually. If you have any misconceptions about doing some looking, this post deals with common objections but I am afraid you will have to sift through the RT rhetoric and the delusion that I was enlightened. 

Hey...

fascinating stuff ghostvirus, ive been reading bits of your blog, just finished the FAQ and I read this link also... http://www.haunteduniverse.net/What_is_Enlightenment.html

There was a bit in it that put me off,

This is the way real life is with enlightenment. You know there really is no one. You know that it is just a display, a machine-like emergence out of and as consciousness. Yet you must believe it at some level, or you will simply lose the ability to interact in the world.

I can see why some enlightened ones have isolated themselves or become hermits. For the last year this has been an issue I personally have struggled with. How to know the truth and continue to interact with the world as if you believe it?

You basically have to employ a little Orwellian “1984” doublethink. You have to pretend to believe, while always knowing the truth.

Some things are unavoidable of course; I was an avid reader but now can barely open up a book. I loved and played the guitar for years but now have zero interest in picking one up. Even writing these few words is a colossal effort. ,

First off this is just one persons view point. I can agree with him in so far as my motivation totally went at first. If you read anything by the so called sages, they often wallow out in zen because they become neutered. Instead of helping people, they wallow in their own vanity and spout useless insights and riddles.

Insights are not totally useless, in fact far from it, they are useful but very often if you have not seen no self, the insights do not offer much. They may sound deep and clever but people cannot understand what they mean. For instance the old “what is the sound of one hand clapping” springs to mind. This metaphor is useless. To the average seeker it sounds deep and mysterious but in reality it is of no use to anyone who has not realised no self. What is needed from liberated folk is clarity and not clever spiel.

For the first two months I was unmotivated, I spent it playing computer games when I could muster up the motivation and I became super lazy. One afternoon I read a blog post on RT that really struck a chord with me. On that day I witnessed first hand the so called enlightened new agers look at the fact there was a way to spread this and they just simply shrugged their shoulders and carried on. They had turned their backs on humanity because they were neutered, they had no motivation to do anything.

Liberation is a double edged sword in that respect. If you want to sit back and wallow in zen then you will have this fate. This quote from “Edji” I like but the last bit sentence sounds too new agey for me!

“In the end, after many of your remaining hindrances drop off, you will just rest, doing nothing special, in yourself, no longer making effort to explore or grow spiritually. Your journey and struggle will be over.

At this point, you will either become like something dead with no response to the world, which is the fate of some, or there will awaken in you the strongest conceivable sense that you are responsible for the world, for it does emanate from your mind. In a sense, though illusory, it belongs to you. You become Buddha, Christ, saving, helping.

You will make a decision to help all sentient beings in any way you can, from offering the shoes off your feet to some homeless person, to risking your life to save an animal. This to me is the real liberation—an immersion into a universal Mother Love.”

Some peoples fate will be to become neutered but others will help the rest of humanity. So you can simply choose to stand aside and watch, or to help people. The guy who wrote the essay was probably not doing anything to help people so he became neutered for a time. Even writing the essay was a real slog for him. Eventually he started his book and that was probably the motivation to help people that he needed.

Me personally, I still like doing the same stuff, I still like a beer and I still love my music but the part he talks about buying in to reality is spot on. The doublethink thing is true to a degree and when people spaz about trivial things it kind of makes you despair. I've not found it to be a problem too much yet, although this state keeps getting deeper.

some of this perhaps puts me in 'coward' category that you mention in the FAQ, reason being that maybe I am content with not seeing the truth, because surely happiness is the single most important thing in my bodies existence, whether its real or not.

Almost everyone is in that category to start with, I certainly was. The lie fears been discovered and it will twist and turn every way it can. You have convinced yourself that you could never be happy if you see the truth. This is not the case, there is happiness but no you to be happy. The liberated state is blissful and would I take back liberation? No way, this is real freedom from the human condition.

I think Jed Mckenna wrote a book about not becoming enlightened because of its draw backs but I've not read it yet, so can't comment. Maybe try and track this down, I think its the last book of the enlightenment trilogy.

As I said before there is nothing magic in this whole thing, it is simply the truth and nothing more. The whole enlightenment thing is a sham. There is nothing to enlighten and nothing to attain, there is just seeing the truth of reality. This truth has the power to stop dysfunctional thought, that is why we are trying to make this go viral. Imagine a world without dysfunction...

I fully understand and KNOW what you are talking about, knowing does not mean seeing or believing though.

Rightly so, do not believe anything I tell you, go and find out for yourself, take a look in real life with honesty, there is no you, there never was, it is an illusion.

In some of your FAQ you talk about memories being latched onto the illusion. I find it difficult to agree with you, like your example of snowboarding. For ease of writing when I say "my, me, I "etc im referring to the body that is typing this. When I went for a run yesterday I have a memory of it, My brain can conjure up the memory of this happening, what is the difference between "me" remembering that, and my brain conjuring up this memory. Isnt my brain "me"??

But there is no “me” to conjure it up. The memory just arises. There is a brain and there is thought but no “me”. There is no conjuring, there are memories that arise due toi a stimulus. So there is no difference, one is what is really happening, the other is also what is really happening except there is an illusion of an entity being responsible.

Try the thought experiments (exp 1) and you should be able to see what I mean. When I say latched on to, I mean this: We have the illusion that we can recall any memory at will. In actual fact, a trigger is needed for a memory to arise. Because we do not see the trigger, we have an illusion of control over this facet of thinking. This forms part of the reasoning behind why we think there is a self having thoughts. It is only an illusion but it is a very powerful illusion. When we look, there is always a trigger for a memory, it is not down to an entity deciding to recall a memory.

Also if someone can truly see existance and the universe as it really is, then why would they ever have a reason to be happy or sad again. I am very sorry to hear about your friend in a motorbike accident and I hope you dont mind me questioning this. But why would someone suffer if they lost a friend if they truly see that every mammal on this planet is just a combination of chemicals. Just like why would someone fall in love. Why would they even feel the need for survival or to reproduce? Surely if every human in the world saw the truth they would no longer bother trying to interact with each other , or no longer bother try to survive as a race.

You talk like this is oblivion, again this is the self twisting and turning. There is no suffering because there is no me to suffer there is only pain. Pain is useful to an organism, suffering is not useful to an organism. Do you think that if you see universal truth then the drive for survival just stops? How could this ever be? There is life, that is it. It doesn't matter what understanding an organism comes to it still follows the same biological programming.

You reasoning is that there is a self and without this self then nothing can be, no love, no desire, no drive. I said there is no “you”, why does their have to be a “you” to have sadness or happiness? These emotions are part of real life. Even though there is an illusion of self, these things still happen anyway right? Or else if there was a self required to have them, they would not exist now because “you” is simply not there, it is a complex illusion of thought. Look at what I'm saying “you” is nothing more than a thought.

In reality the drive for survival and replication is in every living thing. For your conjecture to work, then bacteria would have have to have a “self” as would plants and every other biological organism or else they could not function also. What is special about a human that means it MUST have a self to function properly?

Dont get me wrong I believe everything your saying, but Im just trying to pick holes and argue for the sake of it to learn more.

Ok this is good but really it is futile, we can argue every point and take years over it but to be honest why don't you just look instead? Just look with honesty at what I am saying.

The more I read about it the less I feel I will have the ability to see the truth. I just cant see how my brain will suddenly switch off that illusion and I just begin to truly deeply acknowledge that I am just a combination of chemicals.

This part is wrong. Here the illusion is trying to rationalise why you shouldn't even look at what I'm saying. Also at the end you seem to think that that you have to acknowledge you are just a bunch of chemicals? At what point did you draw this conclusion? This is nihilism you are talking about, I'm talking about non – duality. There is a world of difference, check it on wikipedia.

Again the brain cannot shut off an illusion, it can only see it AS an illusion.

But I guess its like a magic eye drawing , you can stare and stare at it and see nothing, you will focus and unfocus your eyes till the cows come home and still see nothing, but as soon as that moment of clarity appears,you see the 3d shape and there is very little effort needed to see it again.

This part is right

Just because you see an illusion doesn't mean it does not exist. Going back to the mirage, just because you know it is a mirage, do mirages just suddenly stop appearing? No, basically everything you are aware of is real, there is no change, shutting off or shift. There is simply the knowledge of  truth, in this case there is no water in the distance.

After it is known that self is an illusion then it is not possible for the mind to feedback in to itself. It is the end of dysfunction and the beginning of clarity. It takes some effort to see but it is worth the effort. Basically it is returning to normal, the human default. Life without a delusion of self. That is all. This is not a magical thing, it is just a knowing of what is.

Morpheus said it best “All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more”.

You seem apprehensive about this but I will tell you that the lie will resist at every opportunity. Your “sense” of self is under threat and it tricks the mind in to thinking this could be impending doom. If you don't feel discomfort then you are not doing this right basically. This is where you simply have to look at reality with absolute honesty. You may be afraid of what you might find but all it really is... is the truth.

Why should you fear the truth? Only a false illusion of self is afraid of being exposed, nothing more. Once it is seen then you are free from the lie of self and you will see reality for the first time.

Seriously just take a look at what I'm saying. I'm going to blog this exchange as I answer some  reservations you have about looking that others could relate to. I'll hide your user name. Cheers ;)