The Conscious Process

In Search of Self and Beyond

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Bob OHearn

“Stop acting so small.

You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

~ Rumi

One of the most confusing and debated issues in philosophy, theology, psychology, anthropology, and now in the emerging neurosciences and quantum consciousness explorations, is the concept of the self. To be succinct, the matter may be condensed into the question, “Who or what am I?”

The purpose of this essay is not to summarize the current state of the investigation, nor to champion any particular position that has already been advocated by far more accomplished minds than mine. Rather, I am here to suggest that most of the confusion around the subject is based on a fundamental misunderstanding — one that relies on the conditioned filtration system of the limited human organism.

Just so, we will never be able to accurately account for that which utterly transcends the human intellect, any more than we can hope to view the grand procession of celestial galaxies by using our curled fingers as a telescope, since the essence of it vibrates at a much higher frequency than is accessible by human 3-D receptive/interpretive hardware.

To get a rudimentary sense of the matter, we can begin with the observation that most of us take the individualized body-mind-self to be representative of who and what we are — hence the “me-story”, or personal narrative. The prime misunderstanding generated from that conviction is the belief that we are human beings in a world of other human beings, all vying for survival and prominence. That mistaken identity is further complicated by sub-programs of gender, race, social affiliation, and cultural belief systems.

It is all an innocent enough assumption, since by inserting ourselves into this vibrational frequency, we necessarily assume a kind of amnesia regarding our true nature. The purpose of this amnesia is to create the illusion that we actually are the human animal which we have temporarily inhabited. The ensuing self-sense is not some troublesome critter that needs to be extinguished (as some human religious systems claim), but simply a way to navigate the objective human realm for the duration of the experience.

The illusion of the “person” is necessary in order to grant the incarnational adventure a sense of reality. For the experience to have a vivid impact, we need to identify with the fictional avatar in the virtual reality game of being human to the extent that we momentarily forget ourselves and believe we are the game character itself. In that regard, all those systems which deny that we are the so-called self are somewhat correct, as long as they are pointing to the fact that we are not truly the body-mind vehicle, the flesh and blood human character, or “person”.

However, even those systems which claim that we are humans with souls actually have it backward, in the sense that we are much more like spiritual beings who have infused a portion of our light energy (which are then called souls) into human animals in order to enjoy the visceral human experience. In doing so, we create a two-in-one opportunity to gather interesting human experiences by acting as both the Witness and the Do-er (although in reality we are neither) in the virtual reality scenarios or psycho-physical realms of the 3-D vibrational frequency.

When we return to our purely spiritual state after dropping off the material body costume, we expand the knowledge base of our familial “soul group”, of which we are more like cells, with the fresh experiences we gleaned while fused with the human animal. In this way, the whole group is able to share in the experiences of any of its constituent parts, and thus continuously expands its level of self-awareness in the process.

By investing a percentage of our light energy through a process of focused attention into the human host, we come to identify with the human character for the duration of its lifespan, enjoying the unique sense of self that results from the fusion. Nevertheless, we are not that human self, any more than we are the body-mind organism with which we are identified.

At death, the human does not move on — we do. The human returns to the atomic elements, but we eventually re-integrate that percentage of energy previously incarnated with our apparent “higher self”, or Spirit, which manifests as a seemingly immortal being of Light in what appear to be heaven-type worlds, dimensions which vibrate at a much higher frequency than the denser human circumstance. At this level, we enjoy increasingly greater access to the Universal Knowledge, so much so that it renders even our most seemingly profound human concepts of enlightenment comparable to the vague murmurings of sleepwalkers.

This higher or “Whole Self” or “Spiritual Self” appears to be, for all intents and purposes, much more like our real and immortal nature than any human illusion, just as the world of Spirit seems infinitely more real than our lower density 3-D earthly sojourn. However, regardless of our luminous radiance, we are still very much like characters in a dream, a dream being dreamt by the Source of all the universe, in the same way that humans are like a dream we seem to create when we incarnate that portion of our energy into the illusory environment of the human bio-vehicle.

Just as the human/soul entity populates its dreams with all sorts of characters at night while asleep, so too do we appear in the Mind of Source. Kashmir Shaivites have depicted it (metaphorically) as the dream play of Shiva, which in today’s quantum terms would correspond to the image of a projected super-holograph.

As “spiritual” beings, we have been infused with a sense of individuality by Source, just so that It can experience itself from every possible angle and thereby enjoy its creation through our various perspectives as co-creators of all manifestation. In order to be able to appreciate Itself, Source manifests the conditions for the appearance of innumerable sentient forms, which are nevertheless still indivisible shards or projections of Itself. As Spirit beings of light and power (Source Energy), we are perfect vehicles and conduits for Source’s creative play of consciousness.

In that regard, one could say that what we actually are is Source Itself, “pretending” to be multiple distinct selves. Consequently, those who claim that we are not even souls at last are also ultimately correct. In any event, Source is not some kind of Super Personality or Ultra-cosmic Entity (which are mere human concepts), but much more like a vast, fluid, ineffable holographic energy field of transparent Clear Light, an interconnected and resonant web of reality to which no human terms or descriptions can ever truly apply, but which includes all creation as manifest aspects and dynamic reflections of its own unconditional loving.

Indeed, as the great mystic Meister Eckhart proclaimed: “Love is nothing other than God. God loves himself and his nature, his being, and his divinity. In the same love, however, in which God loves himself, he also loves all creatures, not as creatures but he loves the creatures as God. In the same love in which God loves himself, he loves all things. Now I shall say something I have never said before. God enjoys himself. In the same enjoyment in which God enjoys himself, he enjoys all creatures. With the same enjoyment with which God enjoys himself, he enjoys all creatures, not as creatures, but he enjoys the creatures as God. In the same enjoyment in which God enjoys himself, he enjoys all things.”

Fundamentally, there are no sentient beings in the universe — there is only Source, playing all the roles, wearing every mask, engaged in all the functions, and purely for the joy of the dance. Any sense of separate self which we might clothe ourselves in is merely a temporary dream costume of Source, as is any illusion of substantial and enduring personhood. As the bliss-permeated saint Ananadamayi Ma poetically remarked: “Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him?”

Indeed, whatever we interpret from our limited human point of view as the “Divine” is simply “That” which is looking out of our eyes, living us as Its own life, and replicating that same process in an infinite numbers of ways, an infinite number of lives, yet each distinct to the eyes through which It lives and sees and creates. Here, the mystics’ claim that “there is only God” is actually the literal truth, or as Alan Watts said: “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

When even the illusion of being an independent and exclusive higher light being self finally drops away in the Light of Love’s unconditional grace, we recognize that our highest human conceptions of liberation and Nirvana were simply crude representations of the reality of our infinite loving potential. Although uniquely individual expressions of Source Energy, we have also never been other than Source Itself. Pointing to this paradox, the sage Ramana Maharshi noted: “The ‘I’ casts off the illusion of “I”, but remains as ‘I’.” How amazing! Furthermore, there was never anything to acquire, attain, or become that was not already true of us. We have never been other than “That”. We are the whole thing, and simultaneously no-thing. It is the Universal Reality itself – the matrix of all that is — which is manifesting as the Great Perfection, a super-hologram (to use a quantum term) in which past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, in a divinely joyous choreography beyond human comprehension.

In seeing through and transcending any exclusive identification with all provisional self-constructs (whether sacred or mundane), it might seem that this is as far as we can go — to recognize that we are in reality extensions or shards of infinitely expanding Source Energy — but we need not stop here. If we consider the intrinsic logic of the manifesting hierarchy of self/Self Realization — ascending from human creation to spiritual being and then to the Source of the whole manifest and un-manifest totality — we can also intuit that Source Itself may be more like a super-holographic cell within an even vaster cosmic body, one far beyond our conceptual reach, populated with holographic thought-universes more numerous than grains of sand on a beach.

In that regard, the noted Quantum Physicist David Bohm suggested that the superholographic level of reality is a “mere stage” beyond which lies “an infinity of further development”. Just so, there might very likely be no limit nor circumference which could somehow account for, define, or contain it all, no true and final self-existent Absolute behind conditional appearances that can be established, but simply a dependently arising thought within another thought, ad infinitum. Moreover, there may never have been a singular “big bang” where it all began, no actual beginning nor end to Love’s Play, no origination and therefore no destruction, no place to plant a flag and claim some surety, no end of the line where the “buck stops”, but more like a dream within a larger dream within even larger, more exquisitely confounding dreams, far beyond any progressively sublime conception — human or divine. Truly, it is all open-ended, limitless, and unknown, and that is the elegant glory of it — its sheer magnificent Mystery!

“Merely assuaging fears and satisfying desires will not remove this sense of emptiness you are trying to escape from; only self-knowledge can help you. By self-knowledge I mean full knowledge of what you are not. Such knowledge is attainable and final; but to the discovery of what you are there can be no end. The more you discover, the more there remains to discover.”

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Near Death Experience, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, NDE, Nonduality, Self-Improvement, Spiritual Practice | 36 Comments

The Futility of the Search for Meaning

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Bob OHearn

soul sm

“Incarnation is nothing more than a thought. A thousand incarnations are but a thousand thoughts. And this amazing miracle of a mirage we call the world reappears as it was before, but now you know. That’s why you usually have a good laugh, because you realize that all your struggles were made up. You conjured them up out of nothing — with a thought that was linked to another thought, that was then believed, that linked to another thought that was then believed. But never could it have been true, not for a second could it have actually existed. Not ever could you have actually suffered for a reason that was true — only through an imagination, good, bad, indifferent. The intricacies of spiritual philosophy and theologies are just a thought within Emptiness.”

~Adyashanti

First off, we need to remember that, in regard to any proposition, doctrine, principle, or belief, it is all conceptual – all of it. Those who suggest otherwise are merely conceptualizing. It is what the human brain does. Any and all meaning is dependent on various applicable conditioning factors which the brain sorts out into concepts and then superimposes on experience after the fact.

Of course, we are not the brain, but that remarkable organ does come in handy as long as we are appearing in these skin suits. Without the conceptual faculty, we’d be pretty helpless in terms of navigating the objective world. The popular strategy propounded by the various esoteric wisdom schools of “going beyond concepts” is itself a concept, and really only relevant at a specific level of spiritual endeavor in which one has exhausted the intellectual component of the search.

In the meantime, why try to escape concepts? All we need do is see them for what they are and discard them when they have served their purpose. They are props in the play on a make-believe stage — that is all. It’s only when we start to take our thoughts seriously, creating belief structures that in turn imply an actual enduring and independent self, that we run into problems.

What the truly wise do is inspect the whole mechanism, eventually recognizing that there is a space between thoughts. In that space, there is no person, no self, no meaning or lack thereof, and no requirement that there even be such fantasies of the imagination. Indeed, from that aware spaciousness, things are revealed to be just what they are, without any conceptual designations whatsoever. It’s the natural state, but it seems just the opposite for those addicted to the search for some meaning to add to it, an endeavor comparable to painting legs on a snake.

As for myself, irrespective of whatever temporary states, views, emotions, experiences, imaginations, or subtle perceptions arise in the course of life, I have never been able to separate myself from that mystical condition of being essentially clueless in regard to any and all of them. This recognition took a while to sink in, but it is frankly undeniable.

Certainly, I could usually grab a handy concept in retrospect and superimpose it on the field of chaos that passes for this human experience, and it might have even made some eccentric sense. I might have even paused in awe at the pseudo-clarity that this ingenious mind can conjure up from its impressive storehouse of self-confirming interpretations on filtered perceptions, despite the fact that a frog in a well knows nothing about the birds in the sky.

If we’re fortunate, we realize sooner rather than later that all of our cherished spiritual notions and elegant philosophical insights are essentially a big pile of steaming mush, and then we either shut up, or else, if we’re devilishly compelled, we may start scribbling poetry.

Regardless, and to the point: that famously perpetual search for meaning, so earnestly celebrated and/or pursued by the philosophers, internet gurus, and mid-life crisis enthusiasts — who said we actually needed such a ponderous thing? Did it do any of them any enduring good – the meaning makers — to have some reassuring meaning? Were they able to re-direct the fluids swishing about in their neural viaducts in such a way that simply taking another breath amounted to something more significant than a reflexive impersonal automaticity?

And what’s the harvest from that great endeavor, that noble quest for meaning? An endless circus of competing personal, religious, and political belief systems, rife with war and conflict, all beginning when we think we know something, and then convince ourselves of its unassailable import and meaning. Those who think that they know something usually tend to be contentious, especially when their assumed knowledge is challenged by a contrary “knower” with their own competing arsenal of meanings.

The truly humble ones don’t habitually find themselves in conflict, because they’ve done the due diligence necessary to ultimately recognize that they don’t know, and so they have no complaint, nothing to defend or leave home to go to war for, and certainly no presumption of attainment in the meaning-making department. As Tulku Urgyen noted: “When we realize that all the achievements of the six realms of samsara are futile, insubstantial, and meaningless, we lose our appetite for them.”

It’s only when we think we know something — that we are in possession of some particular meaning that in turn demands assertion and protection — that things get testy. We can get pretty reactive when our carefully constructed meanings are challenged, is it not so? After all, our meanings are often essential to our self-images, and despite our grafted-on spiritual idealism to the contrary, those colorful stories of fascinating “me” won’t go down without a fight (or flight)!

Granting our personal story some sense of fanciful meaning often leads to a humorless sense of self-importance, which in turn requires a lot of care and feeding. Furthermore, defending our personal sense of meaning implies taking offense at anyone who might challenge said cherished meaning, and so we set ourselves up for a life of being offended by this, that, or the other.

If somebody or some collection of somebodies is moved to bicker and fuss about whether the so-called ego is an illusion or not, whether we are going to be annihilated or ascended or not, whether one religion or political party is superior to another or not, or whether enlightenment is a many splendored thing or not, let them have at it. Really, what concern is it of ours?

Nevertheless, most of us chronically go about the business of manufacturing and modifying meanings morning, noon, and night, like little cranial factories that never shut down for the week-end so that everyone can rest, and maybe have a little meaningless fun on Saturday Night.

Moreover, when one meaning is outgrown and discarded, we are quick to find another with which to carry on the facade of security and pretense. Heaven forbid we find ourselves with a spare moment unburdened by some arbitrary and self-confirming “meaningfulness” in our lives!

On the other hand, we need not go to an extreme and make “meaning” the bad guy. If one feels the need to tote around a little meaning in their lives, they could do a lot worse than follow this excellent pointer offered by our old friend Rumi: “Nothing is meaningful except surrendering to love. Do it.”

Those who claim that the only reason for living is to get out of life as fast as possible actually have it backwards. In their amnesia, they seem to forget that this world is a stage filled with magical props, we are the actors playing all the roles, and moreover – we chose this adventure ourselves.

In the shock of human embodiment, just about everyone forgets that the reason they incarnate here in the first place is precisely to have this human experience, in whatever form it might take, and that is its meaning, its purpose — simply to be here, as it is, as we are. Nothing need be added to that, and there is no need to run off chasing some ideal of “liberation” from life when we still haven’t come to terms with who and what we are, right here and now.

Moreover, the surest way to insure that we will be returned again and again to this classroom is to harbor and fuel some notion of escaping life. Such an attitude will merely indicate that we have not yet been able to properly appreciate the gift and invitation this circumstance represents — an opportunity to plumb our own depths and discover what kind of stuff we’re made of, when apparently left on our own in the midst of the Unknown.

For reasons as varied as there are humans, we wanted this, we came to enjoy this creative human experience, and that is enough. That is the gift — just to have this, be this, live this. Any meaning we might attribute to any of it is a product of our own choosing, fabricated from our own intention and attention. We are not victims of reality — it is we who grant reality to any and all of it.

Joseph Campbell, in “The Power of Myth”, made a good point when he wrote: “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

The truly free are those who recognize that their freedom is not elsewhere, dependent upon some hopeful, imaginary future circumstance where they can at last exhale and disappear. Meaning or meaninglessness, self or not-self, liberated or bound — all such notions are for the ones who still rely on the logic, reason, and propaganda of man-made religions and philosophies to account for their appearance, and so they build and fortify their own prisons, and wage a war within themselves, because none of that truly satisfies.

After years of ambivalent effort expended on trying to figure it out, I let go of that struggle and realized that I already am and have always been — just as I am – the meaning of myself, with no need or motive to look elsewhere, or to add or subtract anything from whatever that might be.

Instead, I find that I’d rather just stand in the resonant silence of this awesome mystery, let the sky breathe through me, the wind and sun and rain pour through me, the irresistible call of love draw me into its consuming embrace— all without any demand for some contrived meaning to momentarily pacify the monkey mind.

When it comes right down to it, both meaning and any lack thereof are both flimsy fantasies of interpretation that are arbitrarily superimposed on life — dreamy smoke rings drifting through space on another Saturday Night in timelessness, dissolving in the same emptiness from which they emerged, an emptiness more beautiful, more radiant and true, than any words could say.

“Everybody is trying to understand the meaning of all this. You are not understanding because you have all the swaddling clothes of “I-am-this-or-that.” Remove them. The ultimate point of view is that there is nothing to understand, so when we try to understand, we are only indulging in the acrobatics of mind.

Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion; all your activities, material and spiritual, are in this illusion; all your activities. All this is happening in the objective world, all is dishonesty, there is no truth in this fraud.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 25 Comments

Self-Realization

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Bob OHearn

“When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself.”

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

When asked about whether we have a self or not, the Buddha remained silent. His silence served eloquently as an indication that both views (“I have a self” and “I do not have a self”) were inaccurate ways of viewing our experience. The real issue which he was interested in pointing out in that regard was how clinging to some notion of a separate and enduring self, some fixed identification with name and form, leads inevitably to suffering. Moreover, like all the great sages, he was not suggesting that we take that proposition as a matter of mere belief, but rather taught that we needed to test it in our own lives, to see if it is true.

Certainly, with the benefit of earnest and conscious investigation, the person we take ourselves to be — the one we conventionally consider to be “our self”, or “me” — can be recognized as a fabrication, a mental creation, that almost everyone nevertheless bases their whole life around. Our dominant priority is the care and survival of this person, and such an attitude is seemingly hard-wired into the human animal at a very primal level.

In his book, “Buddha’s Brain”, Dr. Rick Hanson noted:

“Then the brain indexes across moments of subjectivity to create an apparent subject who– over the course of development, from infancy to adulthood– is elaborated and layered through the maturation of the brain, notably regions of the prefrontal cortex (Zelazo, Gao, and Todd 2007). But there is no subject inherent in subjectivity; in advanced meditation practices, one finds a bare awareness without a subject (Amaro 2003). Awareness requires subjectivity, but it does not require a subject. In sum, from a neurological standpoint, the everyday feeling of being a unified self is an utter illusion: the apparently coherent and solid “I” is actually built from many subsystems and sub-subsystems over the course of development, with no fixed center, and the fundamental sense that there is a subject of experience is fabricated from myriad, disparate moments of subjectivity.”

When we characterize someone as “selfish”, all it really means is that they are identifying with and absorbed in their own sense of self, though often to the detriment of their fellow beings. However, just about everyone is selfish to one degree or another, short of true and complete awakening to the emptiness of the “me-story” and the subsequent birth of selfless compassion. In fact, without a properly operating self-sense, we would be very nearly rendered dis-functional in terms of our ability to navigate the objective world. In other words, subjectivity may be necessary, but the reification of a subject is optional (and the cause of mistaken identity, with its attendant confusion and consequent suffering).

In traditional spiritual terms, the direct recognition of the insubstantiality of that imaginary creation qualifies as “Realization” (unless it is merely intellectual, in which case it is just more borrowed information that must be discarded so that true realization can eventually emerge). In any case, with such an awakening to, or recognition of, the unreality of the person, liberation from the earthly vexations can eventually pertain, but not to the fictional character previously believed to represent who and what we are. As the great disciple of Ramana Maharshi, Annamalai Swami, noted: “Liberation comes when you fully understand and experience there is no one who needs liberation.”

That is the paradox of self-realization — there is not now, nor has there ever been, an independently existing self to be realized. Although it seems to appear, it has no intrinsic nature. There are only conceptual fabrications that are to be seen through and thus rendered obsolete — mental superimpositions and fantasies of conditioned interpretation that have obscured the appreciation of our original innocence. When they end, so too does the whole weary narrative of “me and mine”.

Nevertheless, a sense of individuality will continue to persist, even beyond physical incarnation, but not in the sense of solid entification, but more like a point of transparent wakeful awareness. Ultimately, however, even that sense will be superseded by the recognition of one’s prior or absolute nature as an ineffable expression of Source Itself, indivisible from the totality of the universal manifestation.

Nisargadatta Maharaj puts it this way:

“Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realization of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness — flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization.”

What is recognized is that there has never been any actual separation, but only temporary dream-like illusions arising and dissolving in consciousness. It is not unlike a video game’s virtual reality in which the player becomes totally identified with this or that game character, literally forgetting themselves in their absorption in the game. In reality, of course, the characters are simply expressive figments, thoughts, in the mind of the player. They only possessed the sense of separated, independent individuality that was granted to them so as to make the game viable and interesting.

Again, in such realization, the game itself is seen to be an appearance in consciousness, and that includes all the phenomena associated with the game. It has no substance other than consciousness, but consciousness itself has no inherent solidity either. Indeed, what we might call “the objective world” is only another perception appearing in consciousness, and that is actually how it is experienced – as a flash of images in consciousness, to which values are subsequently attached, dependent on one’s various conditioned filters or “software programs”.

Thus, it is seen that consciousness and its contents are equally empty of any inherent existence, even though everything we can think or know or experience is appearing in that emptiness, as that emptiness itself. All of our seeking and avoiding, all of our hope and fear, all of our “selfing” stories, are only figments or shards of this empty consciousness, and therefore possess no independent existence apart from the evanescent dream-like play of consciousness. However our current energy form happens to appear, in reality it is a transient manifestation of awareness. Essentially, we are being lived.

As the contemporary teacher Adyashanti wrote:

“When you’re not thinking yourself into existence, there really isn’t a self. All you have to do is try it for a moment. Just be still for five seconds. What happens to your name, your gender, and the person you imagine yourself to be? If we’re to find a way beyond suffering, we’re going to have to look at this sense of self that’s really nothing but a collection of memories projected into the present moment and then into the future. We’re going to have to begin to notice that what we think we are is just that: simply a thought. What we imagine ourselves to be, it’s just that. It’s imagination. Neither our thoughts nor our imagination can tell us who we are.”

Just so, when it is realized that there is no substantial concrete reality to the seeker or the sought, then the desperate search for self-confirmation and validation grinds to a halt. Nor is there any longer anything to protect and defend, except empty fantasies of consciousness. It’s reminiscent of the line from the famous Bob Dylan song, “Like a Rolling Stone”, which goes: “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

Now, there are some teachers who claim that the self is merely a thought creation, a dream illusion, unreal. However, that’s actually only a fraction of it. Stopping there would be a premature conclusion, an error in recognition and appreciation. The “self-sense” is an expression of something much more than a mechanical assemblage of mental events, and those who tend to conceptually write it off as that are missing its real purpose.

There is a tendency of many aspirants to get lost in concepts about emptiness, without also recognizing that emptiness is form. To cling to the emptiness of the self or ego is even worse than clinging to its form in many respects, because it paralyzes the natural functioning. Seeing through the substantiality of the self is merely a preliminary recognition. It then returns as servant, rather than master, so to speak.

Essentially, it is a unique and ingenious “space suit” that Spirit employs to navigate and thus enjoy the human experience, and so is absolutely necessary for life and relationships. We came here to enjoy the experience of manifest 3-D human being, and so attempting to eliminate the very vehicle by which we would do that is rather ridiculous.

All that is really necessary is to understand that it is not who we are, anymore than we are the automobile we drive to get from one geographical location to another. With that recognition, we are then free to create with it like a paint brush on the canvas of experience, appreciating it for what it is in the context of the play of consciousness itself.

Recognizing the real nature of the play is called “Moksha” in systems such as Kashmir Shaivism, in which Shiva (the practitioner) realizes that it has been he all along, playing the game of duality in all the various multiplicity of forms, forgetting himself in order to experience the joy of remembering himself. Of course, that is all just human poetic metaphor for a process far beyond the human pay grade in terms of comprehension. This is why the sages will typically revert to silence, rather than confusing minds with more conceptions that only vaguely reflect the true situation.

For example, we might hear the phrase “entering Nirvana”, but that is again just a human characterization of something far beyond the human perceptive and descriptive capacity. Is it true “Self-Realization”? One might say so, depending on their cultural/religious conditioning, though it is not at all a matter of achieving some sort of ultimate entification. Rather, it is more like letting go of all limitation or contraction of the movement of infinite expansion.

Another way of putting it is that what we always and already ARE simply becomes evident, once we break free of the trance of identification with all that we are not. Buddhists might employ the term “Tathagatagarbha”, or Buddha Nature, to indicate the original “divinity” inherent within all sentient beings (although still dormant and unrecognized by those who are yet deluded by the amnesia accompanying the separate self-sense).

Just so, in true realization, nobody has actually entered into nor exited anywhere — nothing has happened in Reality — which is why some sages use the analogy of the dream to point to this great Mystery. In that regard, both “self” and “Self” can be equally recognized as fantasies of interpretation on perception. Indeed, no conceptual designations, regardless of how sublime, are really applicable to the fundamental and ineffable Reality, the ground of Awareness, of which all manifestation is a luminous expression — an expression of unconditional Love.

“The state of Self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realized, one is that alone which ‘is’ and which alone has always been. One cannot describe that state. One can only be that.”

~Ramana Maharshi

self or Self

For further exploration of this subject, see: https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/in-search-of-self/

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Self-Improvement, Spiritual Practice | 17 Comments

The Pursuit of Happiness, Part 2

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Bob OHearn

“Love is the only cause of happiness.

Its nature is all-pervasive like space.

Love is the sunlight of the mind.”

~Garchen Rinpoche

What do we really want? Although this is truly a fundamental inquiry, with so much depending on its resolution, how often is the question seriously and thoroughly explored prior to our embarking on the various life choices and endeavors in which we find ourselves – our schooling, relationships, acquisitions, careers? More often than not, it seems that we merely go along with what we believe is expected of us by others, only to find some years later that our life is haunted by a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction, which in turn merely prompts a more desperate version of the search.

If we had taken the time to honestly investigate our deepest motivations right from the beginning, perhaps we could have skipped a lot of the ensuing suffering and confusion that invariably results from jumping into adventures without proper preparation, based on second-hand opinions and consensus programs. Although it may initially have seemed that the most convenient way was to just conform, sooner or later we come to realize the price we have paid in terms of peace and happiness at the heart.

Moreover, even in the spiritual realm, this is something that most aspirants don’t really make the effort to do. They just plunge into the religious marketplace and start imitating and doing practices that may seem interesting, but which they don’t really understand. We rarely make the effort to discover what is in our own heart right from the very beginning, but instead rely on information we have heard or read about in books.

We are attracted by the hopeful promise of various schemes, methods, and strategies that promote idealistic visions, and so build our subsequent practice on these borrowed notions, dressing up in cultish costumes and assuming a “spiritual” identity, be it Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Moslem, or even Atheist (not to mention the plethora of “New Age” groups and affiliations that attract the seeker with the allure of personal ascension, salvation, redemption, or just the fulfilment of material desires).

Alternately, if we are able to pause (for as long as it takes) and truly ponder the true nature of our deepest longing, inspecting what it is that we really want in this life with which we have been blessed, then we will already be well along on the path of wisdom, regardless of the name or form we might attach to it, or even any religious/spiritual affiliation whatsoever that might be superimposed on the journey.

In that process of inquiry, one of the first things we will notice is that, in order to understand what we really want, we must necessarily also delve into who/what we really are. What is our true nature, prior to the consensus reality programs that provide us with generally unquestioned identities, albeit ones which we nevertheless cling to for dear life? The vast majority of us typically resist challenging our conditioning programs, because we have been taught to fear the unknown. Indeed, many of our core personality program files have been put in place as a defence against the unknown, and so asking “Who am I?” can be quite a revolutionary act.

Of course, part of the reason for accepting society’s conditioned descriptions and labelling tags is due to the primacy of the inborn animal herd instinct. The fear is that, by departing from the prescribed consensus program, we risk ostracism from the tribe, a fate which is anciently interpreted as equating with certain death. This is such a powerful fear that it is hardwired into our genetic structure, and for good reason, because death was often the result for those cast off from the village.

However, a complementary aspect of that herd instinct is the innate human need to love and be loved, and so this territory – the realm of love — is where our deepest desire can be found. Because we are each unique beings, its expression will forever vary, but the one thing we all share in common as our one deepest yearning is the wish to be happy. For most of us, there is no greater happiness than loving and being loved. Indeed, the motive to love and be loved is right at the heart of our human incarnational adventure, determining our choices and behaviours regardless of what field of experience we find ourselves in.

The problem arises when we invariably imagine that there is something obstructing our native happiness, and thus we make tremendous efforts to attain or re-gain it at any cost. Indeed, one might say that, for most of us humans, the entirety of our lives is dedicated to that motive and ensuing effort, first and foremost. Both our triumphs as well as our tragedies can be traced back to the foundational motive to realize some conceptual ideal of happiness and love.

Consider, for example, how the propaganda of this world is perpetually expounding and reinforcing the message that we are somehow separated from happiness. Likewise, we are told that we are not innately lovable, although we can become so for a price, if only we follow this program, wear these clothes, drive this car, follow this physical routine, have this mate, this job, say these prayers, meditate this way, follow this teacher, preacher, iman, or guru, adopt this belief system, and perform as instructed by the book, the bible, the sutra, the koran, or the latest best-selling happiness plan.

Perversely, all the evil in the world, all the unhappiness, stems from our misguided efforts to become happy. Because that innocent yearning is still filtered and conditioned by the poisons of greed, envy, ignorance, and hatred, its expression is corrupted and we suffer the results of love’s failure. Rather, it is not truly love’s failure, but our own failure to properly recognize and actualize love’s invitation, and it is just such failure that repeatedly returns us to the stark mirror of our discontent.

Furthermore, as long as we are striving to “become happy”, it will always be a future ideal, precluding the possibility of actually being happy now. When becoming happy becomes a mission, then it can never be a present experience, and that is why all the schemes and methods promising happiness will never deliver. As I pointed out in the first essay in this particular series here, it is only when the search for happiness itself becomes suspect that there is a chance for the recognition of our already-always-existent happiness to manifest. Until then, all we will be doing by seeking for happiness is reinforcing our present perception of unhappiness.

Upon observation, it can be recognized that the confused ego-mind is all too ready to grant a substantial reality to the proposition that happiness is chronically lacking and hence must become an object of pursuit, because by doing so it creates another “me project” with which to occupy itself, thereby confirming its enduring existence. Invariably, this is how the perpetual cycle of craving and aversion is birthed and fueled — by just such an assumption of lack and insufficiency, all revolving around the “me-story”.

Wisdom, on the other hand, awakens in the realization that we have been going about things in the wrong way, that all our desperate effort has merely prolonged an internal conflict. In such true recognition, surrender spontaneously happens. Relief. The failure of our strategies has paradoxically inspired a great exhalation, a profound letting go.

There is an old saying: “To find yourself, you must lose yourself”. Just so, only by releasing all old tapes and belief programs that suggest we are lacking in love and happiness and must struggle to grasp it, will the unconditioned reality of true love and inherent happiness be revealed. All along, it has been the search for happiness itself which has prolonged the sense of dissatisfaction. Love and happiness have never been absent – they are our very nature!

By relinquishing all self-absorption and giving oneself gratefully in service to life and relations without hesitation or ulterior motive, one naturally becomes an offering to the world, a lover of life without conditioned preference – already free, happy, and spontaneously in harmony with whatever arises.

“Happiness is not to be found with
many efforts or will.

It is here, nearby, in
your relaxing and surrendering.

Don’t worry,
there is nothing to be done.

Everything that comes up to your mind
has no importance because it
has no reality.

Don’t conceive
any attachment for it.

Don’t judge yourself.

Let it be.

Let it come up and down
without changing a thing.

It all vanishes and begins again,
Endlessly.

Nothing but the quest for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.

It is like a rainbow that
one is always chasing without ever
reaching it.

It is because it has no existence.

It has always been here and
goes with you all the time.

Don’t believe in
the reality of experiences,
good or bad.

They are like rainbows.

Because we want to grasp
what is not to be grasped,
we exhaust our strength in vain.

As soon as we relinquish our hold,
space is here, open, welcoming &
comfortable.

So, do enjoy it.

Everything is yours already.

Stop searching.

Don’t go into the jungle to
look for the elephant that
is quietly waiting for
you at home.

There is nothing to do.

There is nothing to force.

There is nothing to desire.

And all comes by itself.”

~Lama Guendune Rinpoche

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Self-Improvement, Spiritual Practice | 21 Comments

Views

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Bob OHearn

“When in the midst of things you do not give rise to views, it is called comprehension. Comprehension means not engendering thought in relation to things, not engendering covetousness for things, and not engendering defilements in connection with things.”

~Bodhidharma

What is it within us which is always judging, weighing, and measuring? The term “Maya” is often used to describe some cosmic illusionist, often portrayed as a feminine deity, but it technically means “to measure.” Naming it grants it a certain substantiality, but it is neither solid, fixed, nor independent. In reality, it is not even an entity, regardless of how we tend to fancy it. Rather, it is an activity, the activity of delusion, which we nevertheless habitually indulge to navigate this realm of duality. Of course, to maintain the delusion, we must cling to the sense that phenomena and self are two separate things, that there is an “out there” versus an “in here”, when in reality both are mental figments. Indeed, the great Tibetan Adept Longchenpa succinctly noted: “Not realizing that everything is nothing other than the manifestation of one’s mind is called samsara.”

Based on numerous testimonies of near death experiencers (those who were on the “other side” long enough to have been granted access to what we might call “Universal Knowledge” or “Expanded Consciousness”), all human views regarding the nature of existence — including our highest conceptions of Enlightenment — are instantly recognized as merely primitive approximations at best, and actually quite naive in the larger scheme of things, as if a toddler were trying to describe celestial mechanics, for example.

In my own case, although I had studied spirituality for several decades, including seven years in a Catholic Seminary and three years in a Buddhist monastery, I eventually came to the recognition that all of my beliefs and views were essentially based on false premises. It became unmistakably clear to me that the whole system and description of reality that we as humans buy into, based on our conditioning, is a somewhat humorous staged pretense (Divine Comedy), although from the human persona’s perspective it is often far from funny, and indeed sages like the Buddha speak of this world as a realm of ignorance and suffering.

At best, it seems to be like a running software program within the confines of a holographic-type environment, a type of mandala designed for the much denser and slower frequency of vibration that pertains to the human 3-D mechanism. This program includes all the religious, philosophical, and cultural assertions which we as humans cling to and depend on to become self-aware and define our place in the universe.

To most of us, it comes as somewhat of a shock when we discover that there is no religion “beyond the veil”, nor any need for one. Religions are recognized to be purely human contrivances (and rather obsolete ones by now), and they invariably melt away when we separate from the human bio-vehicle and its environment, release our identification with its accompanying vexations, and resume our truer nature as immortal spiritual beings.

Nevertheless, although all human views are ultimately incomplete (the physical receptor itself is far too dense and rudimentary to hold anything but tiny fragments of Universal Knowledge), there is still the need for discernment in determining the more skillful views from the less than skillful, as we encounter the various experiences and challenges presented to us during this earthly sojourn. In other words, some views will lead to more expansive and harmonious levels of awareness, and some to narrower, more contracted and conflicted levels of awareness.

Based on our limited view of things, it appears that we can move up or down, liberating ourselves from afflictions or adding to our emotional burden. I say “appears”, because in reality, we never truly move, but only project ourselves into creative adventures composed of consciousness alone. Actually, it is the Universal Source which is expressing itself in the form of you and me and everything – the whole world is its self-generated projection, wherein there is no actual separation into subject-object dualities, except as a kind of ineffable play!

Moreover, non-identification with and non-dwelling on any views whatsoever (whether right or wrong, good or bad, high or low, pure or impure, positive or negative), can serve to reveal a transparent spaciousness right here and now, in which all opposites are recognized as void. Such a practice or discipline of stepping back from the passing parade of thoughts, emotions, memories, and perceptions, and bringing full attention to awareness itself, can in fact provide a portal to the dawn of recognition of our fundamental luminous nature.

Indeed, such a disposition is recommended by the more advanced teachers among us, the sages who have appeared to shine a light on the developmental process. A few levels further up in awareness, and even the greatly expanded views we attain in the afterlife will come to be regarded as lingering yet in the realm of children’s fantasies, and beyond that, no human imagination can begin to comprehend.

Essentially, views (mental positions) are produced by and in turn produce mental conditioning in this virtual reality scenario called human life. They are fabrications of consciousness, interpretations on perception, and due to the limitations of the human perceptive mechanism, are based on insufficient information to actually correspond to reality.

In other words, all human views are by-products of conditioning within a dream-like realm, and since consciousness itself is impermanent (comes and goes), then no view is anything but a provisional and non-binding modification of evanescent consciousness. As the great Chan Master Mazu affirmed: “All phenomena are mental; all labels are labeled by the mind. All phenomena arise out of mind; mind is the root of all phenomena.”

The Buddha, according to the legend, having attained the state of unconditioned mind, is said to have “passed beyond the bondage, tie, greed, obsession, acceptance, attachment, and lust of view.” He furthermore states that he himself has no viewpoint. The so-called “Right View” (the first part of his Noble Eightfold Path) leads ultimately not to the establishment and maintenance of “correct” views, but to a detached form of cognition, free from all mental positions.

“Does Master Gotama have any position at all?”

“A ‘position’ is something that a Tathagata (Awakened One) has done away with. What a Tathagata sees is this: ‘Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is perception . . . such are mental fabrications . . . such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.’ Because of this, I say, a Tathagata — with the ending, fading out, cessation, renunciation, and relinquishment of all construings, all excogitations, all I-making & mine-making and obsession with conceit — is, through lack of clinging/sustenance, released.”

~ Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta

Indeed, regardless of the views and dogmas we may have espoused, defended, and even evangelized in our human life, we will be made vividly aware, upon “crossing over”, that what really mattered was not the clarity of our brilliant insights into existence or emptiness, nor any adherence to some human religion and its doctrinal views, but the love that we shared (or didn’t) while alive. As Nisargadatta noted: “Clarity is not enough. Energy comes from love — you must love to act — whatever the shape and object of your love.”.

If our religious/philosophical views served to help us in leading a life of integrity, gratitude, and compassion, eliminating greed, envy, pride, ignorance, and hatred whenever those tests presented themselves, then they could be considered expedient means, enabling us to make the best use of this human opportunity. On the other hand, if our convictions led to divisiveness, arrogance, squabbling and bickering, and self-righteousness, then there is a very good chance we will find ourselves back for another round in a comparable 3-D environment, mostly because we do not want to leave a mess behind.

As Nisargadatta wisely put it: “You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. The mess will bog you up. ‘Pick up your rubbish’ seems to be the universal law. And a just law, too.” In this case, rubbish includes all of our attitudes and behaviors that qualify as less than loving kindness, less than humble honesty, and less than open receptivity. All such holding back falls short of the heart’s own deepest yearning for true self-awareness.

Alternately, by releasing all limiting viewpoints, all judgments, all “me stories”, and all egoic claims of “mine”, we approach a transparency that is both liberating and satisfying to the soul. That is the fulfillment, the sufficiency, and the birth of genuine heart-felt gratitude.

“If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there~ are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.
Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end.”

~Corinthians 12:31- 13:8

Beyond Religious Provincialism and Scientific Materialism

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Bob OHearn

sky circle

“The best method for humans to investigate the true nature of the universe is by studying consciousness itself. It is the fault of the system in which human society and progressive development is governed and funded. Scientists and researchers are expected to produce physical measurable and applicable results to perpetuate further funding for their studies. Studying consciousness in the way which is required to significantly advance yourself as a species is not adequately funded or supported because there is no immediate benefit or financial gain for produced results, which are not easily defined, proven or contained into a marketable product or service. The motives and criteria for funding research needs to change, so too the approaches which are often dismissed, criticized and avoided need to be pursued. There are many individuals outside of the field of science who have mastered miraculous feats and abilities of consciousness, of creation and of perception; these individuals are simply ignored by the greater scientific community. This has to change.”

~Sparrow

Much of human history comes to us, fabricated, from religious-based teaching institutions and/or secular based public educational systems. Plainly, learning industries are biased in their particular conditioned beliefs, and of course greatly influenced by the human proclivity for story-telling and myth-making. Speaking bluntly, I would submit that most of the history that we are taught is contrived by humans to serve expedient human agendas, and does not reflect anything close to actuality.

Consequently, for those with open minds who reject the official Kool-Aid of consensus reality dished out in churches, schools, and media outlets, or at least find it suspect to one degree or another, there is an alternative paradigm. This model extends beyond the two major propaganda industries which the majority of humans have affiliated themselves with for most of their lives — religious provincialism and scientific materialism.

Contrary to the usual core assumption, we are not our bodies. We did not create them, but rather occupy them. Immortal Spirit infuses a portion of its light energy, called “soul”, into temporary organic mechanisms. These bio-vehicles with which souls are fused for the lifespan of the individual were fabricated, just like everything else in the universe (though not by some creator deity who subsequently demands eternal worship).

When entering 3-D virtual realities (AKA illusions) such as Earth, our memory of who and what we truly are is usually suppressed so that we can concentrate on this current life, as if it were the first and only one. The ensuing amnesia gives us the freedom to experience the unknown, and to enjoy our human ride with maximum visceral impact.

The type of adventures typically pursued on the more primitive planets such as Earth will most often include integrity issues revolving around greed, envy, hatred, ignorance, and pride. Most of us will not find out (remember) that we are forever until we die.

While in human form, the whole creative process of manifestation may seem like magic, but it is actually more in the nature of an advanced technology that accounts for the appearance of the world and its props that we typically believe to be concrete reality. The whole material plane itself is more in the nature of a convincing illusion, or holographic projection. Essentially, it is an extension of what we might call the “spiritual” realm, which is without beginning and will never end.

Everything in the physical and ethereal existence is created. Planets, suns and all forms of life, intelligent or otherwise, existing on planets, moons and space cities throughout the universe are all compounded, fabricated phenomena. The concept of “random” is nothing but a human contrivance – a speculative fantasy with which to amuse ourselves while asleep in the dream.

Nothing happens by chance or accident, although humans in their physical incarnation are not generally conscious of the programed, choreographic nature of their existence. If they were, it would defeat the purpose of the illusion, which is to provide a realistic experience (holograph) of what human life entails for each experiencer. In essence, it’s a customized ride, and is called “empty” by some, because it is composed of the very same stuff of which dreams are made. As the late great sage Ramana Maharshi noted, “you will find the world of which you are now aware is just as unreal as the world in which you lived your dream.”

In terms of being able to fathom the mysteries of this universe, both religious fundamentalists and scientific materialists are like children in the kindergarten playground feuding over whose Dad is tougher. People tend to imagine that there are only animals, humans, and some Creator Entity they call God, or else that matter on its own somehow formed itself into San Francisco, London, and New York over time. However, it is more likely that in reality there are millions of levels of beings on the spectrum between Source and humans, some of whom create solar systems and all the stuff that comes with star fields.

Humans are pretty much confined to this planet, which means they are still in a kind of baby play pen, relative to the rest of the galactic community. Naturally, babies see their mother or father as God, because they don’t know any better — they have no basis for comparison. Either that, or they enter a rebellious adolescent phase in which they refuse and deny any parental authority. Both cases can be recognized as developmental stages, rather than fixed positions to be clung to as if they represent any enduring reality.

In the same way, early humans may have encountered beings who landed here in spacecraft and regarded those beings as God. Over time, they may have gone on to make up stories and legends about them, which then got edited repeatedly by other ignorant humans. Such myths in turn come down to us as texts like the bible, which some people who are either too lazy to investigate for themselves, or else are so indoctrinated from birth that they can’t imagine any other possibility, take as the literal truth of their origins and history. Either that, or we imagine that our sciences alone have finally answered the question of our appearance in this realm, even though science itself is regularly updating its theories on consciousness, human origins, as the nature of the universe itself.

In reality, this phenomenal universe itself is nothing more than a grain of sand on an infinite beach of the totality, which has no limit, no beginning, and no end. It is unimaginably vaster than what is currently perceived by humans with all of their primitive instruments and speculative theories which change from year to year. Moreover, it’s occupied by countless numbers of distinct energy forces more numerous than the stars. In contrast, human reality is a pinprick on a strand of vibrations that make up the smallest part of an atom.

The scientific materialists may critique the religious believers as backwards, but what they don’t realize is that they are simply identifying with another belief system themselves (and an incredibly confining one at that). Human belief systems always compete with each other, hence the current and enduring nature of this realm — perpetual warfare. On the other hand, were they as truly open-minded as they claim, the materialists might take the time to inquire into their own beliefs.

What they would eventually discover (if they were sincere and persistent) is that no belief is true, but merely a subjective and provisional mental formation, conditioned by various causes, and subject to ongoing modification due to the very nature of consciousness itself. Additionally, they will come to recognize that consciousness is not a brain phenomena, as they now contend, but actually just the opposite.

Moreover, if they persist in sincere inquiry, they might come to recognize that the human intellect, with all of its reason and logic, can only take one so far, before it too becomes an impediment to the revelation of the Mystery of the Unknown which transcends human comprehension.

Essentially, all “isms”, even the most seemingly comprehensive, still represent the human intellect’s attempt to organize chaos into manageable conceptual designations, and thus are artificial superimpositions on “what is”. They are fabricated stories we tell ourselves around the tribal campfire, to shield ourselves from the looming unknown of the dark night. Ironically, it is only be letting go of such mental constructs and surrendering to the vastness of the unknown that the infinite reality in all of its wonder can begin to reveal itself.

When we become truly humble enough to recognize that we don’t know, we may become available to a spark of the true knowledge, which our arrogance has thus far obscured from us while we’ve been debating about which religion or “scientific” point of view can more accurately account for the totality of universal manifestation.

We try to apply human knowledge to that which transcends human knowledge, and most of us carry our fixed beliefs with us to the grave, never bothering to consider that everything we’ve been told about life and accepted as our personal belief may simply be somebody else’s second-hand story – and only as real as the reality we ourselves have granted it.

Human souls have existed prior to coming to earth and will never stop existing even after death. Indeed, there is no such thing as death – we wake up after this life into another life. Once on the “other side”, what do we find? What some call “heavens” are just more sophisticated classrooms a little further on and higher up in the development of the soul, and like our earth-type planets, are still temporary environments. There are far more profound realities, inconceivable to the human imagination, which await us beyond the utopian realms we might take to be “heavens”.

Ultimately, even the concept of some individual soul may be seen through and transcended, but for us humans, that is putting the cart way before the horse. There is a whole lot more work to be done before that recognition is anything other than another intellectual fantasy, and in fact clinging to such an idea (“anatta” in Buddhism) can be merely another impediment, conflating absolute and relative views.

One thing is certain – there is no longer the need for any religion or philosophy once we have left this rock behind in the rear view mirror. Such pastimes are for those who can only guess and speculate about the nature of reality. Once awakened, we will no longer need to indulge in such fantasy – it will all be startlingly clear.

“Conclusively, in my opinion, religion was a useful vehicle to gravitate awareness to a new resonation of values in Earths history. It was useful, in their former original forms and values to begin to invite spiritual thought and self-reflection. It is my view and understanding that religions, in their current form, no longer sustain or gravitate humanity in the same way they once did. This is simply because such religions cannot meet the demand for higher forms of information, of science and of validation which so many human beings now seek. In a sense, human beings have evolved beyond the appeal and promises of religion and seek answers, experiences and validations which religion cannot provide. The original values of unconditional love, brotherhood and harmony with the Earth must be reintegrated into the modern world, within modern living and modern thinking.”

~Sparrow

For more elaboration, see:

Science and Spirituality

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Religion, Science and Spirit, Spiritual Practice | 19 Comments

Suffering

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Bob OHearn

“Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person, is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.”

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why do we suffer? Although whole libraries of texts have been devoted to the issue, in reality it is not that complicated. We suffer because we want what we don’t have, and don’t want what we do have. We like one part of our experience of life, and want more of it. We don’t like another part of our life experience, and so strive to avoid it.

We want more food, more sex, more power and prestige, more love and admiration, more health and longevity, more knowledge and cleverness, and we especially want whatever others have. Terms such as “greed and envy” are often used to describe the craving and sense of present dissatisfaction that is behind all of our suffering – wanting what we don’t have.

On the other hand there is fear, hatred, and aversion, or not wanting what we already have, such as pain, sickness, loneliness, poverty, despair, impotence, old age, and death. These two — craving and aversion — alternate in a vicious cycle, which in turn serves to create and then reinforce the sense of an independent and enduring self who suffers from perpetual seeking, sense of lack, fearfulness, and stress.

If we are willing to set aside our pursuits and assumptions for a moment and really investigate the matter, we can notice how we habitually tend to cling to our “suffering” role. Indeed, the last thing we want to do is question its reality! The ego-mind loves that self-image, because it conveniently confirms its existence. “Don’t tell me there’s no sickness, old age, and death — I’ve got a whole persona invested in that identity!”

The projection of this person — “me” — into all that we think and do constitutes a narrative, or story line, of a solid and independent self, and is the basis for the fundamental ignorance that keeps us addicted to the same low level realms of conflict and strife in which most of us currently find ourselves as incarnated humans. That repetitive activity is called ignorance because we don’t realize that the “person” who seems to be in charge and ruling our lives is, in fact, just a collection of emotions, feelings, thoughts, and impulses, all dependently arising based on various causes and conditions, with no inherent existence apart from them.

In other words, the “me” which observes events, experiences, and phenomena is actually no different from the “me” consisting of all the observed thoughts, perceptions, memory associations, and emotions. All is arising in the mind, as a projection of mind. However, because mind has no inherent substance or solidity, it is said to be “empty”, and so too whatever content appears – it is all essentially empty. With the recognition that the I-thought, and the whole “me-story”, has no real basis, it dissolves. There is no self-identity presenting itself any longer.

Just as the sense of self cannot persist without dependence on conceptual designation , so it is with suffering. As Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche notes: “What is more, suffering cannot exist apart from any thought of it—it must depend upon the thought of the suffering in order to exist. Without the concept of suffering, there is no suffering in the slightest. Since it cannot exist on its own, it cannot have any objective or true existence. The fact that suffering is just a thought and nothing else is something we definitely know from our own experience. For example, people can be very upset before they go to sleep, but when they are in deep sleep they do not suffer at all, because they do not have the thought of suffering. Then when they wake up again in the morning, they do not suffer at all until they start thinking of their suffering. Once they start thinking of it, then it begins, but not before.”

Now, when we read “Suffering cannot exist apart from any thought of it—it must depend upon the thought of the suffering in order to exist. Without the concept of suffering, there is no suffering in the slightest”, we might take it to our head and make it a belief, based on some intellectual agreement, but when the shite hits the fan in our lives, any merely verbal knowledge will do us little good, and we will find ourselves granting reality to the suffering, despite our fine concepts.

However, if instead of making the liberating wisdom a mere conceptual file in our memory program, we actually explore our experience to see if it is true — that without the concept there is no suffering — then we may come upon a direct verification of the truth. We may in other words go beyond the pointing finger and actually see the moon. Then, when the conditions for suffering happen to ripen in our life, we can recognize their true nature, and refrain from any investment in them. Suffering will have no place to land, no target.

Simultaneous with recognizing the basis of all mistaken identity, we can begin to appreciate that there is a background of spacious awareness and native happiness, utterly distinct from and untainted by that whole trap of chronic suffering and dissatisfaction.This fundamental awareness does not change, whereas the person who seems to be in control changes all the time. Our concepts, opinions, emotions, judgments and preferences continuously change, but even so we typically identify with them as who and what we are. We think all this is “me”, but actually it’s just something that arises and dissolves both within and also as that space of awareness, like a breeze in the vastness of sky.

Through expedient practices such as true meditation, attention can come to rest in the open, spacious transparency of awake awareness itself. By ceasing to grant reality to whatever notions and conditioned interpretations on experience that might momentarily dance and flicker across the screen, craving and aversion have less and less power to distract and define us. By returning to the space between our thoughts for small moments, repeated many times, our sense of identity is naturally released from the small cramped cage of the self-fixation.

This is how ignorance is dispelled, because the story of “me” and its elaborated drama of suffering and lack, dissatisfaction and seeking, is seen through and recognized as a dreamy fiction, empty of independent existence, and thus is more and more replaced by the natural happiness arising from the recognition of our true nature.

I say “more and more”, because the afflictions that constitute our suffering are usually not vanquished in one stroke (by the direct, non-conceptual perception of the emptiness of the self-image, for example). The mind is so complex and the deluding vexations can be so sophisticated and powerful that one single realization alone cannot eliminate all negative states completely. Bringing one’s life into alignment with true realization takes a lot of devoted work, and the effort will encounter many obstacles in the form of “speed traps” and “sting operations” along the way, which is why genuine compassion and forgiveness is so necessary.

“Letting go” is not as easy as it sounds. After all, attaching and clinging to the separate self-sense and all of its elaborations is almost hard-wired into us by our conditioning, and the last thing the self-absorbed mind wants is to be dethroned from its power position and made to face its own essential emptiness. The anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing is one thing, but the prospect of selflessness is even more daunting for most of us.

However, if we were to set aside our fears and borrowed notions about what true selflessness entails, we would begin to discover what love is – unconditional love — unlimited by the demands for personal confirmation and gratification. Indeed, it is only in the recognition and embodiment of true love that we will at last be able to let go of the compounded burden of the suffering persona which we have imposed on our own innocence through cumulative ignorance.

The more we surrender that obsolete me-story, the more we awaken to the boundless, joyous reality that awaits us once our hearts are liberated from the attention traps of hope and fear, and the self-imposed prison cages of identification with and fixation on alternating cycles of craving and aversion. At such point, we may finally be able to enjoy this life as the adventure it is, free of the demand that it be anything other than what it is.

“I know there are some of you who believe, “Well I must have committed some great sins in the past, perhaps in previous lives, because I’m sure suffering now.” Are you really suffering? Is there such a thing? Think about that. The only reason you think you are suffering is because the world is not turning the way that you want it to. Isn’t that true? You think you should be this instead of that, you should live here instead of there, you should have this instead of that, and that’s what causes you to suffer. But when you become one-pointed, and focus your attention on your Self – with a capital S – it is virtually impossible to suffer because suffering doesn’t exist. Now you can see, perhaps, why people like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Christ, and many others, who appeared to be suffering when they died, literally told their disciples, “No body suffers. I am not suffering. You’re suffering because you see me suffer.” That’s been difficult to understand up to now, but when you realize that you’re not your body and nothing is the way that it appears, it’s literally easy to understand.”

~ Robert Adams

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Self-Improvement, Spiritual Practice | 28 Comments

My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Bob OHearn

“Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does.
Your mind training doesn’t matter when you don’t have compassion.
Your meditation doesn’t matter when you don’t see your own faults.”

~Phakchok Rinpoche

Whether it be in the arena of competing political ideologies, religious beliefs, esoteric spiritual systems, cultural preferences, economic theories, philosophical conceptions, or mundane matters such as sports teams or beauty contestants, we humans chronically have “a dog in the fight”, struggling to establish and maintain some purported superiority in its class.

Indeed, competition for resources, territory, and social dominance is at the very core of the historic human effort to survive and prevail over other humans. All one need do is browse the daily news to recognize the never-ending manifestations of this prime dynamic, and the inevitable suffering attendant to the human game.

Moreover, with the advent of the internet, people from around the world now can and do gather at specific topical forums to proclaim and promote their opinions and affiliations online. There, we can observe in extended detail the litany of conflicting positions being asserted and defended, or attacked and vilified, in an endless war of words, reflecting the conditioned investments of the various participants in their cherished belief structures, personal views, and intellectual/emotional convictions.

Since this blog is dedicated to illuminating the Conscious Process for human understanding and awakening, I’ll focus the consideration here on a brief investigation into competition at the level of so-called spiritual liberation systems.

Internet forums are where people go to play with views — accumulating them, espousing them, denouncing them, refining them, elevating or deriding them. Regardless of any superficial religious affiliation, most of our play involves some sort of confirmation of our current sense about ourselves, reflected in our view du jour.

People try on views like clothes, then run to see how they look in the cyber mirror. Although they may claim that their purpose is directed at some kind of spiritual edification, in reality, it is just a favorite past-time for humans to play head games with views. Consciousness is fascinated by its modifications, just as ego mind is thrilled to confirm its solidity via exercises of philosophic one-upmanship and conceptual hand jive.

The fact that, historically, a lot of such play has led to religious and political wars, is simply indicative of the level of social maturation of humans on planet Earth. In other words, we as a species are still pretty much at the sandbox level of spiritual development, regardless of whether we consider ourselves Buddhists, Nondualists, Christians, Democrats, or Vegetarians.

One might visit a Buddhist internet forum, for example, and find multiple sectarian conflicts brewing over what constitutes the most efficacious Buddhist path amidst the many variations that have sprung up over the centuries. Passionate arguments for this or that sect typically dominate such message boards.

Beyond the clannish one-upmanship of advocates for one particular “vehicle” (yana) or another within the Buddhist arsenal itself (“I’m more Buddhist than you”), there is commonly another wad of energy expended on establishing the superiority of Buddhism over other systems (such as Hinduism, for example), as a means of arriving at the most complete and authentic state of “enlightenment”.

Alternately, one can visit a Christian online forum and find comparable examples of the same provocative activities, with fervent voices vying over which competing denomination qualifies as the most sublime, pure, and correct holder of the keys to the kingdom, while unanimously condemning, say, the scientific materialists or “new age” heretics. Virtual burnings at the stake have replaced the real life ones, but not much else has changed in that regard.

The above examples, of course, are merely a few out of a mind-numbing plethora of such websites that one could discover by browsing the religion/spirituality categories proliferating on the web. This is not to mention the real-life conflicts where religious fundamentalists, such as the Islamic Jihadists, are currently beheading their rival clans at a furious clip in the Middle East.

Cumulatively, such examples simply reflect the fact that Earth itself is still very much a war planet, beset by a wilderness of conflicting views and egocentric agendas — all based on a fundamental ignorance regarding the true nature of our appearance in this multiverse.

In fact, any identification with name, position, or form is purely a mental fantasy. Nevertheless, we are habituated to fabricating identities based on gender, race, age grouping, career choices, national and religious affiliations, and so forth ad infinitum. In the objective sphere, that might be unavoidable to some extent, and can even be expedient enough for certain utilitarian purposes. More often than not, however, such discrimination will reveal its ugly side, and humans will hurt other humans (not to mention other non-human species), even to the point of genocide.

When we take our provisional identities to be who and what we really are, clinging to them as defining characteristics, we become fixated in an illusion, and so fall prey to the poisonous fruits of such limiting identifications – ignorance, greed, envy, fear, pride, and hatred — all based on a false sense of separation and misunderstanding of our true nature.

As the great Chinese Zen Master Linji Yixuan noted over 1200 years ago: “If you take the robe that a person is wearing to be the person’s true identity, then though endless aeons may pass, you will become proficient in robes only and will remain forever circling round in the threefold world, transmigrating in the realm of birth and death.”

Moreover, the real irony of the whole matter is not generally appreciated until our vision is clarified when we drop off the human form at death. For just about everyone, it comes as quite a shock. There, we see indisputably that even the highest human conceptions of enlightenment that we so enthusiastically clung to and perhaps even fought over while incarnated in the 3-D illusion are at best naïvely simplistic, and that all of our fabricated divisions were pure foolishness. How could we have been so blind, we might wonder, when it is now so clear and obvious that all that really mattered was love.

Nevertheless, the way in which the human brain processes information will simply not allow for full comprehension of that which is beyond the range of its immediate consciousness, which itself is a form of amnesia. Consequently, human beings cannot experience an accurate vision of the greater reality until they have fully detached from the animal bio-vehicle, although there are certainly enough hints floating around in consciousness itself that separation equals suffering, and that there is more to this human adventure than being right by making others wrong.

Just as the toddler’s toys of childhood lose their luster to an adult, so too do the fixed positions about spirituality that may have once seemed so meaningful and important while we acted out our roles on the earthly stage pale to insignificance when revealed in the clearer, brighter light that we encounter beyond this dense vibrational frequency.

Just so, should we then regard all human religions and spiritual systems as fraudulent and fit to be discarded, or is there still something worthwhile about them? As mentioned earlier in this essay, such affiliations may contribute to society as “expedient means”, serving social functions such as the creation of cooperative communities, for example.

Moreover, to the degree that they help their adherents in differentiating right from wrong behaviors, encouraging lives of integrity and compassion, and replacing the toxins of greed, envy, and hatred with loving kindness and selfless generosity, then to that extent they can certainly be of substantial value. Additionally, by pointing to that which transcends materiality, they provide a more expansive perspective from which to appreciate existence in this universe.

Because humans are a varied lot, different elements of religious/spiritual emphasis may apply to different individuals and cultures, depending on their level of developmental adaptation. It’s not that one system is necessarily better than all the others – that’s an ego trip, and cause for endless strife and division. Those who have seen how things really work in the bigger picture recognize that there is a different door for each person, and moreover, that door is none other than oneself. Nor does any door open into some final state or condition, but if anything, each door opens into limitless realms of infinite expansion.

Competition among the sects and systems, however, only undermines their value, creating the opposite results from what they were originally designed to provide – a source of inspiration in a confusing and challenging realm, and a comfort to those who suffer the alienating harshness of this temporal world.

To use another analogy provided by Buddha, they can serve as a raft employed to cross the waters to the other side, but once on the other side, the raft can be discarded. Rafts come in all sizes and shapes, but none of them ultimately amount to anything more than that – a temporary means of conveyance beyond this low level war planet, with a built-in obsolescence.

There is one reliable rule of thumb that does prove useful in regarding the multitude of religious strategies, schemes, and belief systems that humans devise: if it leads to fear, conflict, and division, it can be avoided from the outset. Alternately, if it leads to kindness, humility, and a sense of shared humanity, or oneness, it can serve as a skillful means.

In any case, with only vague access to the “bigger picture” while incarnate, humans are the least qualified to judge each other’s paths. Claiming otherwise is not only arrogant, but also serves to defeat the intent of any genuine wisdom system in the first place – that is, to lift humans beyond their animal nature and guide them to the recognition of their shared divinity.

“All the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching that is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching’s value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. There is no sense in trying to judge it as more or less elevated in relation to other paths to realization.”

~ Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

Prison Planet Samsara

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Bob OHearn

“Today, I am released from Central Jail forever.”
~Final words of Neem Karoli Baba (Ram Dass’ Guru)

A famous quotation by the Roman playwright Terence reads: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”, or “I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.” Just so, if we are genuinely interested in discovering what we truly are (and are not), we need to explore the “shadow”, as well as the light, of our nature and appearance. Although Joy and Light are the truer and more predominant reality by far, while the shadow is illusory and fleeting, it is still a fundamental element of our human experience, and needs to be both acknowledged and properly understood, or we will continue to be confronted by it.

Carl Jung made an excellent point when he noted: “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

In my previous essay Notes from the Other Side, I elaborated on testimonies from near death experiencers regarding the luminous and loving aspect at the core of our being, and the reports that many of us are here in a kind of elementary or primary educational format, learning basic lessons about how to behave, for example, or working on unresolved emotional conflicts, completing unfinished projects, or simply enjoying the human experience of physicality and all the interesting adventures that come with that form. Some are here out of curiosity, and may never return again, after once getting a taste of what human life on Earth entails, while others may return repeatedly “on assignment”, serving in the betterment of their communities as teachers, healers, and so forth.

However, if I were to stop there, I would be ignoring the totality of our collective existential condition. As Joseph Campbell wrote: “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Consequently, I am using this opportunity to briefly consider another suggested aspect of our sojourn in this material realm. It is one in which a certain percentage of us may seem to find ourselves (depending upon our angle of vision) with a woeful sense of forced incarceration or involuntary confinement.

Indeed, for a portion of humanity, this theatrical stage we call Earth certainly might be experienced as more in the nature of a prison planet, rather than a school or tourist destination. From one perspective, many may feel they are here, not so much as students or joy-riders, but more as inmates, doing time in the furnace of the harsh psycho-physical reality that this realm can and often does provide.

2500 years ago, Gautama the Buddha experienced a profound insight into human life, and soon thereafter proclaimed what was to become known as the First Noble Truth of Buddhism: “Life is suffering (dukkha).” The Sanskrit term “dukkha” has also been translated as dis-satisfying, or stressful, but it certainly does not take a spiritual genius to recognize that for most of humanity, this existence is difficult, challenging, and typically fraught with hardship, pain, disappointment, loss, and sorrow, which are only occasionally interrupted by little glimmers of fleeting happiness.

Another term the Buddha applied in describing the prevailing realm of dukkha was “Samsara”. Specifically, samsara refers to the wheel of re-birth, or vicious cycle of craving and aversion — that chronic habit we indulge — always running around in circles, chasing after the same experiences again and again, lifetime after lifetime, while each time expecting a different result. In that, we are not unlike a dog chasing its tail.

According to Buddhist cosmology, this wheel spins us through a continuous cycle of incarnations. These many births, deaths, and rebirths are all based on our own choices, which generally stem from ignorance about who and what we are, and what mature life in this universe really requires, especially in terms of personal integrity.

Again, according to the Buddhist description of the process, all of these successive lives are governed by the driving force of our “karma”, the principle of being reborn according to the nature and quality of our past actions. “Positive” or “skillful” deeds result in an “upward” movement to more agreeable circumstances, while “negative” or “unskillful” deeds lead in the opposite direction. In any case, we ourselves are the sole authors of our good and bad fortune, and we are our own judges too.

By this theory, if we want to know our future life, we can consider our present thoughts and deeds, for they are the building blocks for what follows. For instance, regardless of our religious or political affiliations, how well (or poorly) do we treat others? In either case, it will come back to us, because we are not separate from each other in reality, and so what we do to another we literally do to ourselves. In this regard, there is perfect justice in the universe.

Consequently, if we wish to gain some insight into why there is so much apparent evil in this world, we need look no further than our own backyard (or even our own mirror). There is evil in this world because there are beings that are responsible for perpetrating evil acts every day. A quick scan of the daily news clearly reveals the situation. Sometimes it appears as if we are drowning in a relentless epidemic of human stupidity and destructiveness.

Moreover, if we were to visit a regular prison, we would not expect to find a lot of do-gooders there. Rather, we would invariably encounter people who have been sent there for committing serious crimes. So too do some commentators apply the analogy to planet Earth, roiling as it is in violence and blood lust, hatred and prejudice, sociopathy and psychopathy, cruelty and selfishness.

Once when the great swami Parmahansa Yogananda was finished with a Sunday morning meditation service, a young man approached him and asked, “Swamiji, Is there really such a place as Hell?” Yogananda paused and then replied: “Where do you think you ARE?”

One can find many accounts which portray this earthly stage as a kind of incarceration facility for certain beings, due to the evil which they have perpetrated. Ironically, such beings are their own jailers to a very large extent, as long as they are still prone to the level of immaturity which breeds the horrors we regularly witness on this globe.

As one proponent of the “prison planet” paradigm, writer Lou Baldin, noted: “If life was easy none of us would be here now. Life is not easy for the same reasons that being in prison is not easy. Prison is designed to keep inmates from coming back. And yet the prisons are filled with repeat offenders.”

Keep in mind that such a scenario is seen through the lens of one relative level of consciousness, and although it may resonate to a certain extent, there are other vantage points from which to regard the problem of apparent evil (and karma) that may differ significantly from the one outlined above. Indeed, one’s subjective level of awareness will certainly be a major factor in the interpretation they superimpose on perception and experience, and for the human persona, it will typically be one heavily conditioned by the fear-based myths and superstitions of the old religions.

Alternately, many of those who have experienced “the bigger picture” through expanded consciousness (either based on a near death-type experience or mystical insight), report discovering that we are not on earth to be punished, we are not imprisoned on any wheel, there is no karmic debt in need of being paid off, we need not return to get any lessons, and immortality does not have to be earned. Those concepts are merely figments of superstitious mythology and human speculation and misunderstanding, and don’t really apply in terms of how things actually work.

Indeed, there is good reason to suggest that we would be much better off not perpetuating those obsolete notions, which can tend to trap minds in fear-based fixations, which in turn will need to be seen through and transcended sooner or later. The rather prevalent theme among religionists that the human realm is a place from which we need to escape is essentially a negative projection of mind based on concepts fabricated by the limited and ambivalent human persona.

With the benefit of expanded consciousness, however, we begin to realize that there is actually nothing in need of fleeing, but only of being recognized and appreciated for the opportunities the physical dimension provides for our Spirit’s infinite expansion in Self-Realization. Suffice it to say that, in the final analysis, the grand mystery which constitutes the real process of reincarnation is still far beyond the reach of human comprehension.

One seer with who I have come to resonate a great deal (Sparrow) has this to say:

“There is never any need to return to Earth or in fact the physical plane of existence again, unless you so wish. Those that preach that the sentient being behind the physical form has to keep incarnating back into this challenging species simply do not understand what takes place in the spirit world. They are so caught up in personifying the Earth as the only school for a sentient spirit that they do not even comprehend the extent or nature of learning and growth in the spirit world. They simply do not understand that this physical universe is merely one miniscule classroom in a kindergarten, next to millions of other schools, colleges and universities in existence for your spirit journey. The conclusion that your infinite consciousness is somehow limited or boxed into repetitious cycles of rebirthing upon a small water planet works only to make you feel worth-less. Compare both vantage points and feel which one resonates a higher universal truth.”

Furthermore, he writes:

“It is a misconception human beings have that they must lay captive within a cyclical prison of reincarnation in order to ‘get it right’ and achieve some egotistical notion of hierarchical Self-value. This notion is very frowned upon by many within the spirit world who observe the implications of this mentality as damaging to the growth of individual character and life experience. This fear based mentality has no basis in truth as many discover when they choose never to have a physical existence again, yet advance beyond anything known in your current universe. This idea that souls keep on returning to Earth to re-experience the same limited existence through some fictitious reincarnation theory is religious myth. This is not to say you cannot choose to return, but to say most do not bother, having already experienced it.”

Nevertheless, all of our actions do have consequences, for which we are responsible. Even though this may be a virtual, or holographic reality, those consequences are still very real. The apparent fact that we are currently appearing in this extremely dense and slow vibrational plane on a small planetary frontier outpost on the outskirts of the galaxy — a realm seething with conflict, blood lust, and ignorance — is not the result of an accident, an arbitrary happening, or glitch in consciousness, but rather is the direct consequence of previous thoughts, actions, and decisions we have made.

prison mind

Experiencers report that, according to what they have been shown, everything we encounter is a result of our own choice, and always fitted to purposes that lead to expanded self-awareness. Once fused into the human incarnational adventure, we might wonder why we chose our particular lot, such as a debilitating illness, or a tortuous circumstance like a ghetto or concentration camp.

However, even if we in our human guise do not typically understand “the bigger picture”, we are nevertheless aware on the soul level of the value and significance of every experience, regardless of whatever human judgments we might apply to any of it. In that sense, attempting to escape this world might be counter to our soul’s actual intent. As one near death experiencer, Anne Horn, reported: “If there is any message I can give, it’s not about meditating and leaving your body and taking your Light Being out of this Earth. Indeed, not. It is about bringing the Light into this Earth. Stay here. Be an anchor. Let the Light come in through you into this world. Don’t abandon this world. We need you. We need you here. We need you to be present. And we need you to be open, with an open heart… Everybody must be open. To bring this new age in, it is about opening your heart and letting it sing through you. It is coming! And it is a matter of all of us. Just open your heart and let It come in. Don’t leave. Don’t meditate and think this place is a bad place and we’re going to get out of here. This is a wonderful place. And it’s going to get even more wonderful. You’re here to anchor the Light so It can come into this dimension and be here.”

In any case, it is only through the benefit of expanded consciousness that we eventually are able to see through whatever pain and suffering we might experience, and recognize its intrinsic purpose as part of our curriculum. However horrifying our experiences might seem to be from the human angle of vision, in reality it is but an eye-blink, a brief movie that nevertheless is useful for us as we evolve in soul-recognition.

Every day we are presented with numerous choices, all revolving around love. The reason most of us are experiencing this realm as samsaric – suffering – is because we habitually choose selfishness over love. If we want to understand how the chains that bind us are fabricated, we can inspect our hearts for the creeping strands of greed, envy, arrogance, judgments, and hatred that are rooted there.

Alternately, if we wish to find the key to unlock the jail doors and liberate ourselves, we need to tear those poisonous vines out by the roots. Prisoners remain prisoners because of their love affair with evil emotions, and the more they are indulged, the dimmer the light grows, whereas those who break free from the binding trance of ignorance and hate, envy and greed, will move up and away from dimensions in the thrall of darkness and evil and never return. A good first step in the process of positive transformation, as the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa wrote, is to “learn to stop being a nuisance to the world.”

Nevertheless, no façade of gentility, no high philosophical realizations, no profound meditations, nor colorful transcendental experiences will free us until we have rooted out the vexations born of our resistance to and avoidance of love. Developing a conscience is a good first step – that is, learning how to “do the right thing” with grace and humility as life’s tests and challenges present themselves during our time here, and then accepting the consequences of our thoughts and deeds without complaint or blame. A good sense of humor helps a lot too!

Every choice we make contributes to the level or frequency of consciousness with which we identify, and which becomes our reality as we do so. We tend to often weigh ourselves down with our own stinky baggage, and so letting it all go – completely surrendering all our self-importance, resistance, fear and anger – is the means of self-forgiveness and atonement.

Liberation begins with recognition – really seeing what we have been up to, and also realizing that none of that is who or what we are. We always have the option to either transform our evil intentions and desires into humility, gratitude, and compassion, or just let the crazy monkey run wild. It’s always up to us. Both heaven and hell are our own fabrications, but it is not enough just to recognize that. We all have work to do.

“Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me the world is a home, not a prison.”

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Posted in Consciousness, Near Death Experience, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, NDE, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 25 Comments

Notes from the Other Side

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Bob OHearn

“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is –
infinite.”

~William Blake

In reviewing hundreds of near death reports, there are of course many variations of experience, suggesting that the subjective element of one’s belief structure contributes appreciably to the quality and tone of the super-conscious event. Apparently, the beliefs and mind states we invest in while alive serve to define our death experience to a large extent (at least in its initial unfolding). As one adept succinctly noted: while alive, we make mind; after death, mind makes us.

Regardless of the variations, however, there do seem to be certain recurring thematic elements that stand out as significant and consistent across the spectrum. In this brief consideration, I will present some of the more salient life insights gleaned from the testimonies of experiencers from around the world.

To peruse a substantial collection of these reports, I refer the reader to the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website: http://www.nderf.org/

into the light

The purpose of human life is primarily for experience and expansion, and the essential experience is Love. Love is all that matters, and ultimately, we come to recognize that Love is all there is. Once freed from the temporal shell, Love is most frequently experienced as unbounded, joyous Light – Living Light beyond the ability of human words to describe, or human intelligence to comprehend. This Living Light is Love without judgment or condition, our true Source and essential nature. Our “home”.

Linear time and distance are illusions, as are our dreamy flesh bodies and the complex phenomena that we call “the world”. This human experience is recognized as being of the same nature as a virtual reality game. Here in the physical dimension, our carbon-based senses are designed to perceive and interact with this carbon-based reality –a spectacular illusion indeed, but one that is very real to us as long as we are identified with the human bio-vehicle. Nevertheless, reality itself is not bound by concepts such as past and future, near or far, but is simultaneous, multi-dimensional, and omnipresent.

All life events are adventures in probabilities. Nothing is “set in stone”. It is only our rigid and uninspected beliefs that keep us stuck within ourselves, fixated on the fractal and unaware of the whole. We tend to over-identify with our external self-images and under-identify with what’s “inside” – the heart. Any sense of unhappiness that we experience is the result of our own resistance to Life and Love. Even that resistance is a play of Love, not unlike a game of “Hide & Seek”. In any event, there is no real “winning” or “losing”. It’s a game of make-believe.

Contrary to many religious assumptions and practices dedicated to escaping from the incarnated condition, in reality the soul wants to experience the physical state. Life is what the soul clamors for, and consequently experiencing the physical dimension is something to be honored and thankful for. The material plane is where we come to “walk the walk”, and test ourselves on what we have learned between lives, but mostly just to have the experience of being human itself, however that might play out. There is only life as it is, to be enjoyed as it is, with “no strings attached”. Whatever concepts we may be inclined to superimpose on it can never stick. With the benefit of direct recognition, we know deep down that everything is as it should be – all is well.

As indicated, many choose to come to arenas like Earth to simply enjoy the unique experience that this psycho-physical realm affords. Perhaps others in the spirit realm recommended the tour. Others might come to fulfill a plan of some sort, or to learn directly about a particular interest. Some return to accomplish unfulfilled desires, while others may incarnate just to help a soulmate realize a particular lesson.

As powerful and immortal spiritual beings, we have infinite choices for experience in the vast playground of the multiverse. Some of us may enter into human bodies and fuse with them for the lifespan of the bio-vehicle in order to experience human life and all its challenges, as a way to test ourselves and gather experiences that help contribute to our soul evolution, as well as the evolution of our spiritual family, or soul group.

The more experienced among us might choose the most difficult lives (knowing that they are not actually “real”) because we seek increasingly more demanding challenges, to probe into what we are really made of, so to speak. As it so happens, we all participated in the design of our present lives while we were in-between incarnational adventures. We are fascinated to discover how we will react to all the various experiences that come with being human, in the same way that those who play video games enter into difficult situations in order to test their ability to take on various challenges and increase their gaming skills.

What is important to understand, but is not clear at all, even to experiencers, is that the human persona does not have the capacity to understand the choices that the soul makes, and so we may claim that we would never come back here (based on our human persona’s understanding), but once we are able to resume and stabilize in our natural state in the spirit world, we may have a totally different understanding, and choices that don’t make sense to the human persona may make perfect sense to the fearless soul.

Another way to regard this adventure might be in terms of costume changes. We like to try on different costumes, different self-images, to see how they fit. Eventually, we find that none of them are permanent, so we resume our natural nakedness. It’s all fun, like playing dress-up. None of the costumes were “wrong”, it’s just that we tend to identify with them and forget that we are not the costume, no matter how appealing or interesting or glamorous or even raggedy it might appear. We came here to try on the human costume, which includes a lot of wardrobe changes in the process.

One experiencer described the mechanics this way: “As I was shown around, it was explained to me how most of our celestial, eternal knowledge is blanked-out during our chosen life spans on earth. We must temporarily forget most of what our higher-self already knows so we can immerse ourselves in the roles we have chosen to play. Furthermore, they said that it might take a while for all my knowledge and memories to return. To ease the transition back into this realm, I was told to think of my time on earth as an extended visit to the ultimate theme park. Consider it a place with thrilling rides and various adventures that I could choose to experience or not. I was also reminded that the reason we leave the celestial realm at all was for the excitement, variety, adventure, and entertainment that different incarnations offer. However, to take all our celestial knowledge with us on our various adventures would have ruined the very experience that we had chosen to live. Someone there said that I should think of our trips to other realms as choosing a new novel to read. I can choose a new book, depending on what I am in the mood for. Furthermore, if I knew every turn and twist of the story, line by line, prior to reading it, it would spoil the fun.”

One of the big draws of human life is the opportunity to experience physical love. Bringing the “spiritual light” down into the denser vibrational frequencies of the material plane is an engaging challenge for many souls, and it most often revolves around variations on the love theme. Indeed, as varied as any of our incarnational motives may seem, behind them all is the call of Love and self-awareness.

Moreover, there is no such thing as a “wrong” life, since all are perfect just as they are – unique expressions of the infinite Source. There is no such thing as failure. Such a concept is purely a human convention, and does not apply in reality. The wonderful writer Kurt Vonnegut put it succinctly when he said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

We can experience dis-incarnate life on many different planes, but our life here on Earth is one consisting of physical experiences, which require a 3-D body as a vessel. This life here is just a drop of water in the ocean of lives which we all experience — some taking place here on the material level, and many in other realms of existence too numerous to catalogue. Regardless of whether our circumstances may sometime seem to indicate otherwise, our main purpose in being here is to progress and blossom in Love. Love is the real challenge, and Love is the true reward.

There is no separation in the universe other than in temporal appearances. Nor is there some external god outside ourselves, but rather, everything is a holographic fractal of Source-Energy, as is life itself, which is simultaneously everything and nothing. The holographic appearances of reality are created by Source, and composed of the mind projections of all of us who ever were. All temporal phenomena within this dimension emanate from the blueprint of a shared dream of Source that is repeated indefinitely until we understand what is essential or real — Love. To the degree that we live by true Love — unconditional and universal — the closer we are to real wisdom, happiness, and peace.

Our creative mind plays a game of self-deception in the creation of events. “I” includes “We,” and as in a mirror, we perceive the reflection of our reality in its many facets and illusions. As the contemporary sage Namkai Norbu notes: “Because all of samsara and nirvana, everything that we consider positive or negative, everything that we differentiate, defining it as good or bad, and so forth, can be compared to a reflection in a mirror. The State of Consciousness, on the other hand, is like the condition of the mirror that remains clear and pure without changing.”

The essence of life is its total no-thingness (elsewhere called “Emptiness”). In other words, it has no intrinsic or independent substance or origin, but is rather constructed of a multitude of phenomena, which in turn are formed by other untold multitude of phenomena, to the point of infinity. This intangible, indescribable life is all that exists, although its true depth and breadth is barely suspected by us while on the human plane.

Consciously living in and as Love is the aim of life itself. In this play of Love’s radiance, emptiness recreates or expresses itself in temporary, illusory events. The known universe itself is but a mere fraction of infinite reality which becomes our ever-changing stage in the luminous dance of Love. We are the “point of emptiness” where the void or no-thingness of the universe becomes aware of itself as nothing but Love. Phenomena do not emerge from emptiness and then later dissolve back into it. Rather, all appearances, just as they are, are themselves emptiness.

In terms of the spirit world, one commentator described it in similar terms when he noted: “The spirit world is actually empty, void, until you place some-thing inside it, such as consciousness that crosses over from the physical world. What happens? That consciousness is added to emptiness and that emptiness becomes something. The consciousness manifests itself onto emptiness, and so it becomes filled with consciousness. Thoughts are living things. The spirit world is full of thought. So, in a sense, when you enter this paradise called heaven, you will experience only that which you are capable of comprehending within that consciousness you have. This is why you will only gain access to realms that your vibration allows you to, simply because you would not be able to comprehend or process it otherwise. There is no judgment in the spirit world apart from that which you ‘bring in’ to the spirit world. Meaning your own. So, it is actually you which places judgment on yourself and your deeds, not some God figure.”

From the perspective of spirit, which can operate on multiple levels of awareness, we can recognize that consciousness itself is far richer than the human intellect can fathom. As Natalie Sudman, an insightful and articulate voice among current near death experiencers notes: “Although we arbitrarily assign consciousness to only a few things in our current definition of what is real in this physical universe, it becomes clear in the expanded consciousness perspective that all form has consciousness. And all of consciousness cooperates to co-create and maintain what we think of as our physical world reality.”

Everything is recorded in a universal memory, even the most insignificant things, and can be accessed with the right intention and attention, especially once we have transitioned to our life between lives. Many near death experiencers have reported that they are able to review hundreds and even thousands of previous lives, lived both on earth as well as throughout the universe in myriad shapes and forms. Moreover, since time does not exist in the linear fashion we conceptualize, all these lives are inhabited simultaneously, when viewed from expanded awareness.

As unique expressions of Source, we each assume the form of these physical bodies voluntarily, for as many reasons as there are people. Primarily, we design (co-create) the life we are to experience in order that we may learn how to love more profoundly and consistently, beyond all fear — particularly in the midst of the tests which we fabricate to plumb our own depths and discover what we truly are made of. For spirit, physical incarnation is typically both a creative and enjoyable endeavor, even the kind of lives which might seem painful or even disastrous from the human perspective.

We choose life to start with, and we can choose reincarnation into this world or another world, this universe or dimension or another, and this form or a different one. We can also choose to remain in the whole Oneness, and it is all flexible, not permanent, just as this life on earth isn’t permanent, either. We need not fear death, recognizing that it is not an end but a beautiful togetherness, flexible, unending — another exciting journey.

The only real redemption we have on earth is love. Love is what makes us: we ARE love, it’s our very essence, not something we do. It is only fear and resistance that seem to take us to a lower realm of experience after death, whereas, surrender grants access to the realm of enlightened gnosis which is called by some “the clear light” — the ultimate refinement and source of creation, pure being-ness and beyond.

That Light receives every human being to her womb. The Light (God) understands our limitations and does not condemn us for not being able to overcome our traumatic experiences or our shortcomings that spawn unskillful and counter-productive behaviors. If any hell exists, it is empty.

For many, the Divine initially appears as a sphere of light, but light that is aware. This Light is awareness itself — an aware light that is both the substance and the medium of communion within its own spherical spaciousness, an aware light that creates and sustains the possibility of shared awareness on a universal basis.

This infinite space of aware light is occupied by all the individual spheres of aware light that ever have or ever will exist. It is also described as the One Mind, occupied by all the individual Ideas it ever has or ever will conceive, or a timeless, limitless Oversoul, occupied by all the individual souls that ever have or ever will enter the realm of time, space, and personality.

In any case, there is no limit where we end and someone or something else begins. We are one, inseparable, independent but not separate — we are all made of that same light, or “universal sphere of communion”. We are God, playing for brief moments in these human forms, as part of an infinite expansion in all directions. Love transcends time, it stops it and becomes everything in an instant and forever. Just as one cannot hold on to the flow of time, neither can one hold on to the uncreated love that comes to us at every moment. That which is Life lives within us, as us. It is always waiting patiently there.

Among the “lessons” many experiencers claim to have learned in their near death sojourn is the recognition of the futility of taking things seriously, of fixating on the superfluous, and especially of carrying grudges. We must forgive everybody everything, again and again, because we truly are each other – there is only one, wearing a billion masks, beyond all notions of duality or even non-duality. Any harm we have done to others is keenly felt by us, because we are not separate. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is more than just a pious slogan, but represents the literal truth of our oneness.

One experiencer describes our prior unity within the Light in this way: “Each of us, as an individual sphere of communion seems the embodiment of two complementary halves: Understanding and Memory. While Understanding seems the principal characteristic of the higher soul, Memory seems to be the principal characteristic of the lower soul. As I experienced it, Understanding is our individual portion of the limitless Knowledge of the One Soul, the evolving insight we possess into the Way of the One, our individual spark of immortality. Memory, on the other hand, is the accumulated impressions of all the lifetimes we recall, the sum of all the personalities we have yoked to our soul, our enduring storehouse of mortal treasures.

I was fully awake when I realized that whenever another sphere of aware light came into contact with me, there was an immediate and spontaneous exchange between us of our respective Memory and Understanding. This is why I say we are individual spheres of communion within the Universal Sphere of Communion. Because when we come into contact there, all that we know and all that we are passes uninhibited between us in a natural and open communion of shared being. Spheres of aware light touch and so exchange the totality of their experience and assimilate one another’s experience into their own.

I was fully awake when all the individual spheres of communion came into contact with one another at the same time, breaking through every dam of individuality and flooding us all in the totality of our shared being. This is why I suspect its name is the Sphere of Universal Communion – because when all the individual spheres of aware light periodically come into contact at the same time, every individual awareness that ever has or ever will exist is spontaneously and immediately At-One with the One. I cannot say what it is that periodically draws all of us together at the same time but, cause aside, its effect is the complete and overwhelming experience of every drop of awareness in the ocean suddenly merging into the single sea of awareness.”

Synchronistically, a very similar scenario was described by the 20^th Century Sage, Sri Aurobindo, when he wrote: “And what is the end of the whole matter? As if honey could taste itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the end be with God and the soul of man and the universe.”

Most humans, however, do not have the benefit of a transcendental near death or spiritually transformative experience to refer to, but must find their way in the dark, usually with only borrowed knowledge and beliefs to fall back on, like man-made religions for example — most of which only obscure the truth and create division. This is a very challenging realm in that respect, a realm of uncertainty and apparent suffering on many levels. Just about everyone lives a life suffused with fear — often fear of each other, fear of lack, and definitely fear of one’s own mortality. Moreover, only a rare few will even get a glimpse of something approaching the truth while embodied here, but only by passing through the portal of death and returning to the spirit world will most even gain a clue about any of this.

Realizing that, compassion can awaken in our hearts, compassion for the suffering of our fellow beings. Even though we may recognize that this world is really like a movie, a dream, an illusion, nevertheless, the suffering is felt to be real, and so we are called by love itself to do whatever we can to help relieve that suffering (even if it is only to be quiet). Once we know that we are not separate from each other, then we can cease indulging in pointless conflict over issues that are relatively meaningless within the bigger picture, and instead learn to act with intelligence and mercy.

While embodied in the material realm, relinquishing greed, envy, ignorance, pride, and hatred creates a life-experience of real integrity, which in turn opens us to the increasingly expansive revelations of the multiverse. The potential of our spirit is indeed infinite, but as long as we remain fixated on the alternating cycle of craving and aversion, our attention will remain bound in the lower densities of possibility.

When we wake from a dream at night we cease to exist in that dream world. Essentially, we die from that world and wake up in this one. So too with this life — at death we awaken to another existence. As the great poet Rumi wrote:

“On the day I die, don’t say he’s gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets, and the moon sets but they’re not gone. Death is a coming together. The human seed goes down into the ground like a bucket, and comes up with some unimagined beauty. Your mouth closes here, and immediately opens with a shout of joy there.”

Truly, there is no true death, only a continuous stream of life with many branches and realities. Some people come back to this place (or one like it). Others will remain in the spiritual sector and continue their work from there. Some humans will become other types of beings working in this solar system or one of the billions of other star systems in the galaxy.

The biggest mistake most make after any spiritually transformative experience, such as an NDE, is trying to figure it all out by using their limited human intellect and logic, expecting it to match someone else’s experience, or attempting to superimpose a preconceived framework onto it (such as one of the human religious beliefs). Those are much happier who renounce all such efforts and just live day to day, enjoy the little things, extend kindness to all, and refrain from taking things too seriously.

At the culmination of our 3-D adventure, nobody judges us but ourselves. Our own loving, super-lucid consciousness reviews our life experiences in the Light of Love. We exist in the total embrace of Love. Nothing is withheld. What’s most important to remember, in the midst of, and even beyond any provisional experience, is that Love is all that matters – all that we take with us, and all that we leave behind.

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”

~Jack Kornfield

The Conscious Process

In Search of Self and Beyond

The Futility of the Search for Meaning

Self-Realization

The Pursuit of Happiness, Part 2

Views

Beyond Religious Provincialism and Scientific Materialism

Suffering

My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog

Prison Planet Samsara

Notes from the Other Side

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