TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
"Science will someday advance to the point that it will confirm the validity of the non-dual teachings."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
[See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a video which includes a discussion of all seven of the steps on the path used by Maharaj]
[Continued from yesterday]
To clarify the terms used when discussing
(A) the "three bodies" and
(B) the process of taking mahasamadhi and
(C) the process of the conscious-energy manifesting,
the following is offered from the "Glossary of Terms" in the back of the eBook FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven Step Journey to Reality) as well as from this site during a post nearly thirteen years ago in 2005:
Manifesting:
The act of conscious-energy / consciousness entering into (manifesting within) a particular elemental space.
As for human forms on earth, the conscious-energy “moves” from plants to humans or from plants to animals to humans. While the consciousness is eternal, the manifestation of consciousness is always temporary and will eventually unmanifest from the space (the plant or the plant-food body of insects, animals, humans, whatever) in which it is manifested.
Unmanifesting:
The movement of consciousness (which was temporarily-manifested into a space) back into that "universal field or pool of conscious-energy" from which it came.
Some speak of three bodies to help students picture the movement. Consider the gross body to be the space housing manifested consciousness; take the subtle body to represent something shifting beyond the personal, gross body; and take the causal body to correspond to the transpersonal stage which precedes total transcendence to the Unmanifest, to the no-body and no-mind Reality.
(The erroneous beliefs in ghosts, angels, spirits, and an eternal life with a body were first given credence when the consciousness that was still manifested in some gross body became aware of subtle or causal stage manifestations of consciousness in the transition stage of unmanifesting. A woman who looked as if she'd seen a ghost approached me and told me her grandmother had just appeared to her and told her "everything is going to be OK." Fifteen minutes later, a call came that her grandmother had died fifteen minutes earlier.
That event was nothing more than manifested consciousness being aware of unmanifesting consciousness. Rather than suggesting that some "magical world" exists out there or that "bodies last forever" or that myths and superstitions about "ghosts and the afterlife are real," that event merely illustrated that consciousness can know consciousness NOW.
In fact, it is only NOW that can consciousness know consciousness. Unmanifested from a space with a nervous system, consciousness is at rest in the "field of consciousness," and no exact same "cluster" of consciousness will ever remanifest in the same "clustering" again.)
Only use the "three body stages" to help you picture consciousness not unmanifesting in a micro-second but fading out of the manifestation and into the unmanifest. Then, see beingness not ending in the flash of a micro-second but fading from a state of beingness, shifting beyond beingness, and striking a non-being state for a brief period until even non-beingness is transcended into the Unmanifest.
[Some scientists report that weight of the conscious-energy to be twenty-one grams, released at the time that consciousness unmanifests. That is probably more detail than is needed. Many persons claim that consciousness is "the soul" and that the soul will go to another world and remanifest there into the same body it was in on earth--along with the same "mind" it had at the "time" of "death." Of course that is impossible since dust does not regroup and since "the mind" was a complete illusion...the storehouse of all illusions.]
To understand how the manifesting and the unmanifesting “fits into” the Functioning of the Totality, consider the following regarding the consciousness that has been manifesting and unmanifesting in the space called “humans” for millions of years: the formation of this universe happened just under 14 billion years ago.
On this planet in this universe, “human-like beings”—capable of making tools—roamed about at least 700,000 years ago. In fact, "human-like beings" have moved across the surface of the earth for millions of years (not the 6,021 years that many Christians claim to be "the age of the world"),
[Note: Homo sapiens likely split off from those ancestors more "recently" - about 350,000 years ago.]
The manifestation of consciousness in what persons call “life-forms” began at the depths of the oceans where certain organisms thrive by obtaining their energy from thermal vents rather than sunlight. Over millions of years, the surface environment of the planet evolved in a manner that allowed for the formation of plants. The sunlight’s interaction with plants led to the process of photosynthesis which results in the separation of water molecules, the production of oxygen and glucose, and a means by which energy can manifest in organisms that obtain their energy indirectly rather than directly.
Plant-eaters acquire their energy by consuming plants. Carnivores receive their energy by consuming animals that ate plants. But since the earliest forms evolved at the ocean’s depths, energy-consciousness first manifested there as far as earth's life-forms are concerned. Eight-legged forms--still the most common on the planet--left the water for brief periods until they were able to live above the surface as easily as below. On the surface, they thrived on the oxygen produced by plants and photosynthesis.
Eventually, following one mutation after another, one especially-mutated branch of those eight-legged forms with outer shells evolved into four-appendage forms with inner shells (skeletal structures) and eventually came to be called "humans." Those who decry the suggestion that humans evolved from apes have not gone back nearly far enough to know that the earliest ancestors of “humans” were crustaceans. Humans are, in fact, the epitome of mutation, far from being the “glorious creation” that the ego and modern cultures would have persons believe.
Rather than "O what a glorious piece of work is man," the fact is that "man" is the epitome of mutation and distortion . . . one of the most mutated and distorted of all forms in the history of the planet. No "creature" is farther removed from its original, natural form. Human beliefs now render them not only the most physically-distorted "creature" walking the planet but also the most mentally-distorted. "The most glorious of all living things?" BS. "Given dominion over all other living things?" BS.
Thus, no creature is farther removed from living a natural existence with pure consciousness manifested, and "humankind" today is living with a level of consciousness more blocked or corrupted than ever before. Persons now live unnaturally and / or try to live supernaturally as a result of the extent of all the distorting or blocking of consciousness. It is that corruption which drives persons to accept the ideas and beliefs of others which, in turn, always generate emotional intoxication and misery. Why understand this?
Only the re-purification of consciousness - via taking all seven steps of the "journey" from a belief in the false "I" as a real identity to knowing what you are (presently, just a composite unity) and what you are not (namely, all of the false identities assigned or assumed) - can eliminate the misery. Awareness of humankind's actual status as the most distorted and corrupted form on the planet might facilitate the elimination of ego and ego-states which lead to all the misery on the planet.
The main pointer here is, energy-consciousness has been manifesting and unmanifesting in life-forms in general for billions of years but in human-like forms for at least one million years and possibly up to fourteen million years. The manifesting and unmanifesting of conscious-energy has been happening on this planet for millions of years, and the cyclings will happen until the sun expands to a point whereby it consumes this planet.
Yet even then, the conscious-energy will continue, and it will continue to cycle . . . manifesting and unmanifesting eternally. Such is the Functioning of the Totality.
Most significantly, know that what I am and that which we both truly are is beyond both the beingness and the non-beingness. Anyone believing otherwise has been fooled. If you realize, you'll never be fooled again (by anybody or anything).
So that covers possibility number one, which is rare. Possibility number two—imagining such sightings and then believing that they were real—happens in the Theta state of consciousness. In that state, persons can dream or envision and be totally convinced that the dream or vision was real. You know that dreams can seem so real that people can often awaken from the dream state with screams or with cold sweats.
That’s how real an illusion can seem to be. Which of those two types was the wife experiencing when she "saw" her message-carrying grandmother? What she actually glimpsed was the temporary-manifested but unmanifesting causal body of her grandmother?
However, rather than concern yourself with any of that, why not find if any dreams are being taken as the real? A far more positive impact on your relative existence could then happen. Of course the Theta state can provide visions that can reveal an understanding of the Functioning of the Totality. Regarding any “positive messages,” though, realize that truth does not come from without, whether that which is outside of you is the image of a deceased relative or is an imaginary power or Power.
Truth is found from within after all dreams and lies are seen and discarded and after any revealing vision is understood.
And part of the truth revealed via that speck of universal consciousness called "Maharaj" is that there is manifesting and unmanifesting but that there is no pre-life of a human, no birth of anything, no death of anything, and no afterlife of anything.
[I heard this while inside a grocery store:
Little Girl: "Mommy, do dogs go to heaven?"
Mom: "Of course they do."
Child: "So I'll see Scamper again someday?"
Mom: "Of course you will, as long as you are good and get to go to heaven, too."
Here's evidence of the peace and restraint which realization can provide: I did not sneak over to the child after the mother became distracted, hand the little girl my business card, tell her that her head is being turned into one big crock of ca-ca, and that she might want to look me up in twenty or so years and see if we can arrange for a purifying mind-colonic to flush out all of the BS."]
A key point: there is only cycling, and elements which come together will eventually come apart.
Furthermore, the operative law (The Second Law of Thermodynamics) applies as well to everything else which comes together but is guaranteed to come apart, be it bridges or houses or mountains or governments or religions or businesses or relationships or marriages or "floyd" or "you" or heavens or earths.
As Yeshu'a (Jesus) said after he was exposed to the non-dual teachings, "Heaven and earth shall fade away." Why? Because those are concepts, stored in the parts of the elemental brain which form the fiction-filled human mind, and as the conscious-energy unmanifests, it fades away as it moves beyond the confines of an elemental plant food body as the elements slowly return to the universal pool of elements and as the consciousness slowly returns to the universal pool of conscious-energy.
To be continued.
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