The Fact of Death

And it gets worse before it gets better. We can't go beyond the ego. We are the ego. The ego did not create itself and is powerless to remove itself. Although Christianity, Advaita, and Buddhism talk about it in very different ways they all seem to realize that the ego can't do anything about its own dilemma and its only recourse is grace. The reports from those who have experienced the loss of self is that life is never better. And most of us have been blessed with occasions when self forgetfulness gives us a taste of this condition.Perhaps you experienced a period of minutes, even hours, maybe days when the sense of self temporarily dropped away and the moment in all it's fullness was simply present and happening. Sometimes falling in love is like that for some people. Other have found it in moments out in nature. Some even claim to have found it in sport when suddenly they aren't playing the game of tennis, or golf or whatever but they feel like the game is just being played through them.lfen

If you wish to answer this I'd be curious what you love most.Do you love music, or nature, the ocean? What brings you the greatest sense of peace and fulfillment?lfen

Yes, you aren't your thoughts. What are you? What is it that is aware of thought?lfen

Ian,Of course.I'm going to toss in some links that you or someone else might find interesting. I was initially very excited on reading Bernadette Roberts first book because I recognized that she was a contemporary American who had known almost nothing about Buddhism and was describing the Awakening the Buddha went through in modern language. She was and remains a Christian so that made her thought more accessible to Westerners who if they aren't Christian themselves are at least much more familiar with that structure.BERNADETTE ROBERTS
Bernadette Roberts and the Experience of No-Self
Bernadette Roberts Interview - SpiritualTeachers.orgBear in mind that I myself am not a follower of any tradition. The image that just came to me is that in one hand I hold a rope that is woven of the conceptual approaches of science and in the other hand I hold a rope that is woven of the insights of the non dual traditions and I'm tugging on them bringing them closer together to see if they will fit. It's an awkward metaphor but nothing better has come to me.lfen

The links are there as I said for interest. I intend that what I write stands on it own. I can't think of the technical or latin term at the moment for that sort of further reading thing but I will continue to include links from time to time. I'm working out things along my own line. Links are just references and additional readings should anyone care to investigate some of the sources I refer to. Should I read that as "God divided by you is greater than separate"? Doesn't make sense but not sure what you meant to say with that. I would say that I'm just walking my path, wathcing it develope, and for whatever reason it doesn't emphasize dualism.lfen

For me anyway, English often makes using the word "mind" ambiguous. Most of the time I think of the problem as "consciousness". They are both slippery concepts and I really have yet to discover how to unslippery them.I'll just try this and we can see if it's useful although I see some problems with it already, but how about mind is the brain function? I'll say for now all of the brain function but that is mostly to save myself the work of trying to partition brain function. Consciousness then is that most intimate mystery of how we know that we are aware.Now there is a possibility that someday it can be shown that brain function or some subset of brain function is responsible for consciousness. There certainly seem to be strong correlate but at present that is about all I can think of.I'm just home from work and due to allegies or somethng my eyes are tired and itchy and this one step seems enough for now.lfen

Agreed. I am arguing there is no essential you and your points support that.That still leaves awareness to be accounted for and for me that there is awareness is a fundamental mystery.For me that anything at all exists is a mystery, call it a miraculous mystery. That it exists and is awaren that it exists is even deeper mystery. This personal response of mine to my experience of what I experience as the fact of being and awareness is my mystical or spiritual aspect. I like to keep it personal rather than clothe it in traditional organized religion and I like to integrate it as much as possible with my intellectual interest in knowledge about the universe.lfen

Ian,Damasio is a neurologists who has written some very fascinating popular science on this subject. He identifies two modes of awareness.
I've forgotten his terms but there is a form of epiletic seizure where people act without awareness, the so called sleep walking.There are also people who have lost the ability to move short term memory into long term memory. Any way I'm not suggesting you read the book but for anyone interested in this subject his book is readable, knowledgeable and excellent. Well, I suspect we have differnet models of this and if or when we find good ways of expressing this very difficult experience we might find we disagree. I was trying to express Ramana's point that the "I Am" primordial awareness mistakenly identifies with aspects of phenomena that is a particular body/mind and that identification constitutes the illusory experience of being a self, a discreet individual.Though you haven't formally presented this idea I imagine from your Christian position that you see individuality being the result of a created soul. I don't know if the concept of discreetness will apply to that soul or not in how it's constituted by the source which I expect you to call God.Hinduism particularly at the time of Buddha also posited a permanent soul, the atman. The Buddha quest was to discover it and his failure might be said to have been the occassion of his awakening. Later Shankara developed the nondual Hindu philosophy of Advaita which agrees with the Buddha on the soul but rather than refuse to speak about God, Shankara said the only thing that exists (aside from illusion) is Brahman, the self existing.In the context of this discussion I think the dicotomy will be dualism vs monism. Did God create separate discreet beings or is there only Consciousness manifesting in the diverse phenomena of the universe?busy morning, that's all for now,
lfen

As I sit typing this, the organism doing the typing is digesting food, circulating blood, synapses are firing, cells are dividing etc. But what is it, how is it that some of these things: the sound of the clicking of the keys, the pressure on my fingers, I can hear the fan whirring in the computer, I can note my breathing, or swallowing saliva then my attention is elsewhere and I'm no longer aware of those things but of my thinking. Awareness is that conscious or self conscious experience of functioning?There is functioning and then the attention areas of the brain are aware of functioning. The awareness has it's own quality that seems to be the inside. Looking at a finger or feeling a finger vs. touching something with the finger and "feeling" the experience of the finger.That there is this responsive interaction of organism and environment most of which I'm not aware of. Some of which I can be aware of or not such as my breathing.Awareness and attention seem to be related and perhaps synonymous terms. In some way I can't put my finger on the sense of "I" is tied in to this attention, "my" awareness, what "I" am aware of, or experience.This experience is so intimate that it seems to be myself and I can be aware of it and reflect on but when I try to grasp it it's a hand trying to grasp itself or an eye trying to see itself seeing.Frustrating to try an define it. It seems so fundamental. Would I even be writing this if I weren't aware?lfenedit typo:by changed to beThis message has been edited by lfen, 05-10-2006 08:53 AM

I've a pretty good idea of your experience I think from a non traumatic setting. Years ago I worked in a preschool. Everynow and then I would be talking to another adult (staff or parent) when I would become aware I was holding this child, I call her Annie. I wouldn't remember picking her up and I'd even ask her "how you get here?" And she would laugh.Finally, after some weeks of this I caught her trick. When I was deeply focused in conversation she approached to my side just within my peripheral vision and lifted her arms as children do when wishing to be picked up and I just responded by bending down and picking up while still deeply involved in the conversation. Only that time I finally caught what was going on.I've also had the experience of falling deep into thought leaving a lecture and being surprised to find myself at the door of my apartment some blocks away with no memory of having walked there. So do I. I'm still trying to figure out what my sense of 'I' consists of. Is it an idea or sensation for example? It seems very elusive. UG Krishnamurti says that the result of his awakening was not that he had any answers but that he had no more questions.Other accounts of awakenng sounds a bit similiar in that regard and it may be that brain function is changed so it's not so self reflective and that is experienced as a relief, as indeed it is claimed to be by Buddha and many since him. The Buddha said it was the result of the turning of consciousness in it's deepest seat. Bernadette Roberts also points to a massive change in function moving from the self to the no-self mode of living.So perhaps these ancient Hindus, Buddhists, and Taoists as well as contemporary awakeners are experiencing an unusual permanent alteration in the way the brain organizes it's functioning? I think that is one possibility.lfen

Sorry, but I've no idea what you mean by this.lfen

Javaman described his experience as strange. I certainly don't think they are unique or even uncommon just that it can feel strange when the brain reacts faster than consciousness. Can certainly happen in danger situations. I remember once when driving coming out of a train of thought wondering why I had taken my foot off the gas and put it on the brake. Then I noticed that several hundred yards down the road a car had pulled up to the road from a drive way. It is my habit to drive defensively and that was apparently very well engrained, just like I knew my way home even if not consciously thinking about it.I've been reading the speculation on the function of consciousness since it seemingly doesn't iniate action but simply is aware of it. I have never used the adjective "superhuman" for awakening and I don't know why you are introducing it here.In Buddhism there is a division of opinion that might in some ways parallel the works vs. faith arguments Christians having been having here. There are those who believe that enlightenment is gradually developed and there are those who think it's sudden. Sudden enlightenment is one of the defining assertions of the well known Zen (in China, Chan) sects of Buddhism.lfen