Bindi

‘I’ sit on a lotus in my heart, but without the bottle or the mudra or the halo…

How attached self-proclaimed nondualists are to nonduality is a question nondualists should ask themselves, often. One who is fully present in this very moment is fresher, I recall this was one of the attributes of anandamaya kosha, being present in the moment, fully absorbed in the task at hand.

The neidanist would say transmutation of the body is exactly what is required with the production of the immortal body, I think I would be able to present this as a Christian ideal as well in the transfiguration of Jesus when he reveals himself as an ineffable/indescribable manifestation of light and glory in the physical dimension. Jonathon Livingston seagull would also concur, but Buddha and Buddhists and nondenominational nondualists believe that this is not it. It may be that it is simply not a Buddhist or a nondualist attainment, therefore devalued. A well thought out philosophy will cover itself. A Nondualist walks into a bar where a man shining with ineffable light is drinking a beer, everyone in the bar is astounded and thinks they are seeing the face of God, and the Nondualist says Meh, a visible light body, how very dual. Because nondual philosophy is so absolute siddhis ar not of any import, but if someone is suffering physically and someone comes along who can remove their pain, cure their blindness, help them to walk again, is that really of no import? It is more noble to let the physically disabled remain disabled and in pain because the body is nothing anyway? What if you had the choice of action, say you were a naturally gifted healer who was also a nondualist and someone in your family is dying from cancer, or bed-ridden and suffering, do you say ahh, such is life let’s embrace this moment, or do you wave your hand over them and heal them? What would a disabled nondualist choose, the healing or accepting things exactly as they are?

Freud’s ‘Complexes’, yes I agree thoughts and feelings are clumped together, part of the method I use is methodically teasing them apart, acknowledging the mental aspect mentally and then feeling the feeling aspect feelingly (!) I have noticed that the feeling aspect is the harder to work with because the pain level involved tends to be so high, I would have spent a ratio of 1-2 weeks dedicated mental work to one year emotional work to resolve complexes over the decades. Just to be picky I would say mental obscurations are to me more like rubbish piles that have to be burnt, after my couple of days of free flowing thoughts I almost saw them suddenly stop flowing through and instead start piling up on the ground like leaves falling and the pile growing bigger, old thought complexes and karmic thoughts seem more like dense and compacted piles of rubbish than simple leaves but it’s along the same lines, and I think it can all be burnt.

I have a concept that a feeling once created remains with us until it is fully felt, Apech was saying something similar I believe in more Buddhist terms. I would use as an analogy for unfelt feelings, mud and sh** in an emotional stream, which ideally should be flowing freely and clearly. To be honest I think this is the fundamental human problem, how to re-establish the flow of the emotional stream, which to me necessarily involves removing the mud and sh** first. I have developed my own methods to do this, part of which is accepting and feeling these ‘forms’ until they have no energy left in them. This is a question for Stirling. The above is my position more than stirlings, but I wouldn’t use the word obscurations which sounds like a mental approach to me, Stirling uses the analogy of obscurations on a window which prevent a view, but feeling freely isn’t a view, it is more visceral than that, closer to rushing water or energy coursing through channels within the body than seeing out through a window. Stirling’s again. Knowledge of the subtle energy body is somewhat equivalent to knowledge of physics or biology, it’s a more complete picture of life which needn’t distract from our ability to function holistically. Interfacing between the subtle and the physical should itself be effortless, I as conduit, not as engineer, though setting the system up for this requires some very specific engineering initially. Is this a Buddhist conclusion or is it echoed in all philosophies? It may simply be a wrong conclusion which my end point is not required to integrate with. Seconded!

This is where I suspect disassociation can set in. In the earlier conversation about fear, there was the notion that an unresolved fear remains in the subconscious field, Apech mentioned Alaya, and whether this subtle form is disassociated from or resolved when it is noticed from the perspective of nonduality is the trillion dollar question to me. My best guess remains that it is disassociation, and this is my fear of premature nonduality, a bit like premature kundalini, the gain is not complete though people on either journey love the ride. I believe you are equating nondual perspective with reality as it is. I suspect nondual perspective is only partial reality, reality to me would involve complete knowledge of the subtle body, interfacing between the subtle and the physical, and evidence of multiple siddhis. I further suspect that these things are considered dual to the nondualist, which I can only explain as an error in comprehension.

I’m not actually working from any tradition, I follow my dream guidance and my mothers ‘seeing’ exclusively, and notice some similarities in my path to established traditions, but I don’t accept any of the multitude of possible outcomes these traditions propose until my actual outcome, and then I’ll look around and see which traditions resonate most. Any thing I say now would be at best an educated guess, and my educated guesses have proven to be wrong so many times in the past, I’ve learnt to not make them so much. I don’t really understand these words in a meaningful way, they’re too removed from my own understanding and my own way of going about things. edit to add: More meaningful to me would be the concept of Shiva and Shakti, where SHIVA symbolises consciousness, the masculine principle, and SHAKTI symbolises the feminine principle, the activating power and energy. 🙏

No, but that direct road wasn’t available to me perhaps given who I am. It might be that the four paths of yoga are a good model, and I am simply on another path. Thinking it through, my Christian hero St Seraphim of Sarov was an old man before he was cleansed enough to be a conduit for the divine when he was directed in a vision to “open the doors” to people in need. His path took him decades, and he completely relied on Jesus as much as a person can IMO. The thief might have just been given a new start in that story, not a new finish?

It’s like a program I’m running, it will be clear when I get to the end of it, I will literally be informed in some way because it is a feedback loop program. I don’t understand your saying “most of the major ones need to be cleared before insight”, and then say the nondual understanding makes this possible, which sounds like after the insight. What is the insight you’re referring to?

Much appreciated stirling It’s probably too hypothetical for me to answer, I could make up an answer but that would very likely miss the mark. On that Yin Yang dual level I know this much, they come to work together and don’t need me to direct or interfere, together they make a complete team, but before working together they were misfit, unable to work together. It’s likely that their workings filter down into the mental/emotional level so both these levels, Yin/Yang and emotional/mental operate perfectly, without ‘me’ being engaged at that level. I suspect the Self that interfaces between heaven and earth, left right duality is taken care of, but heaven earth duality requires my attention. 🙏

I can see how you can simplify the procedure, but at the same time doing a thorough job I have noticed the subtle energy level that is also mistakenly identified with, that more impersonal level described as true Yin and true Yang, I believe there’s no way I would have noticed that if I had raced through the process, I also don’t know how the invisible trunk/post conjoining can be pulled apart quickly, if rushing through how would anyone even know there is something to pull apart (because it is invisible). Subtle clinging and invisible clinging, hypothetically this could keep one returning for many lifetimes. I had my own mini experience of sudden freedom from emotional and mental distress, it lasted two days and was very pleasant indeed, especially in contrast to the distress I had been feeling, and I have thought on a number of occasions if that had continued then, my life would have been very peaceful for sure, but I don’t believe my subtle energy body would have been developed as it has, and my subtle body’s development has brought its own rewards and will continue to do so IMHO. I’m good thanks Someone once had a dream for me, in it she described a 4 stage process where first one had to face one’s fears, then one had to climb a mountain, then one had to disengage, and then one had to resolve the dual battle within oneself. Again step by step, in a certain order, it seems I am very into defined steps and stages

I have to disentangle my mind from the structure, and my entanglement is many hundreds of points between tendrils, sticks, and the apparently conjoined trunk and post. Even falling the whole thing is reinstated twice before finally turning my back on it all, getting the two apart doesn’t seem like a simple job to me, and in my dream I do the whole process very deliberately and methodically. I’d say I need to see what I’m doing, and be very clear about how to get it done, there is a lot of effort involved, and an order that I have to follow for it to come down fully, for instance starting at the trunk wouldn’t work because there would still be sticks and tendrils attached, and there would be no space above the conjoined trunk/post to find a handhold to start pulling them apart. I think the difference for me is that I see all vasanas and samskaras and karmas as needing to be divested before the grand happening, and I very much get the idea that the nondually realised on this board don’t see that as necessary.

Actually I pretty much agree with what you’re saying, I’m not quite sure how we’re seeing it differently?

I will refer to my dream which I posted earlier: I had a dream of a grape vine growing entwined on a pergola structure, it was so entwined that at its trunk it was almost impossible to tell what was vine trunk and what was pergola post. On top of the structure the branches had grown around the beams, and the tendrils had also wound themselves around the beams. In my dream I began separating the vine from the structure, starting at the tendrils, unwinding them, then unwinding the branches, and after some time coming to the trunk which had grown around the post to the point that it was was indistinguishable from it. I couldn’t unwind it as it was hard wood, not pliable like the tendrils and branches, so instead I held the trunk and the post above where they were enjoined and worked at pulling them apart. They did come apart but the whole structure started to topple over so I pushed it up again, and then this happened again, I pulled the trunk and the post apart from above where they were joined, the structure started to topple and I pushed it up again, and then pulling the post and trunk apart a third time it started to topple again, and this time I just walked away. When I looked back the overgrown heavy old vine had disappeared along with the structure, but in its place a new young vine had been planted with no structure around it, and I marvelled as I realised that the vine had never needed the structure in the first place, and was now free to grow. The structure, maybe best described as lifetimes of human conditioning and false identification, is what the ‘self’ has attached to and believes is necessary, so much so that the structure and the ‘self’ are at the deepest level indistinguishable from each other, whilst the ‘Self’ is the new young vine that has no structure, no conditioning, no false identifications, and never actually needed it. I claimed previously that the momentary experience of nonduality was not the ‘Self’, because the ‘Self’ being the new vine can only be established once all of the previous ‘self’ which is conditioned and has false identifications has completely disappeared. There can be a moments view of emptiness, but either the ‘self’ and conditioning and false identifications resume as they did in my dream when the toppled vine and structure were pushed upright by myself, or emptiness perhaps can be extended with no new ‘Self’ established. Going one step further in my view this new ‘Self’ develops and grows unhindered by conditioning and false identifications which is contrary to Advaita Vedanta, which holds that the Self is already perfect, so I can’t be an Advaita Vedantist after all, let alone a fundamentalist one. The proof for me is the absolute lack of any conditioning or false identification left, anything partial is necessarily in the land of ‘duality’ for me.

I will always stick by my guns The 'self' is all the mistaken identities, it doesn't exist when the 'Self' is realised, if it does exist then the Self has not been realised, there is no room for self and Self, only room for one. What then are you comprehending?

The self that I am not has to be comprehended, not recognising those multiple selves leaves me being those multiple selves. When they all fall away completely and permanently the Self is established for the first time. Before that, the “moment of complete understanding”, that is a momentary collapse of self identifications, but that is not the establishment of the Self, this can only happen when non-identification is absolute and final.

As a fundamentalist nondualist, it boggles my brain that any clinging is seen as acceptable, root it out I say! A nondual approach doesn’t seem that expedient if it leads you to accept and defend clinging. Indeed

Perhaps, but reading that article made me start googling traditional Advaita Vedanta to see if what the author said was correct, and I think it might be, as self-knowledge is key in Advaita Vedanta, and “It’s impossible to have only partial knowledge of the Self.” I can agree with these statements. I have to fully comprehend the limited self in order to be the Self, and moments of nondual view, even if it were up to 99% of the time, do not mean I have full knowledge of the Self. Buddhists don’t even believe there is a Self which is a whole other can of worms when Buddhists become nondualists.

Along similar lines, this is a quote from an explaining advaita Vedanta type article, with my additions in brackets: It is rare to find that person who has the conviction to challenge herself to really discover herself, to go so deep that the way one lives, the internal structure of identity that has been created by the confusion of not knowing who one really is, has the opportunity to be [completely] dissolved or destroyed, so that something more pure is [permanently] revealed. Im not interested in the halfway land of ‘nonduality’ with its fears and smugness and whatever else the I clings to lying just beneath the surface. How to remove the entire substratum is the only method I’m interested in (and I don’t need a psychiatrist to help me do it). Fundamentalist Advaita Vedanta maybe 🤔

This seems worth a read, one sentence in particular “In the spiritual tradition, one must first understand dualism in order to reach nondualism.” “Sometimes we believe that we are further along our spiritual path than we actually are. The increase of inner peace or an awakening of higher consciousness has overwhelmed us and makes us believe we achieved nonduality. But actually we have just scratched the surface and confused the step with the actual goal. This is not union with our Higher Self/Enlightenment/Nonduality. As long as we continue on this path, we will gain new improved truth of our truths.” And within the logic of the above at least, how would one continue on this path, by chasing nondualism, or continuing to work to “understand dualism in order to reach nondualism”?

You posted "I've always had this undercurrent of fear inside me, stemming from who knows what. It manifests as a tendency toward anti-socialism, staying apart from people, mentally (and subtly) pushing people away. Sometimes pretending that I don't see them, sometimes purposely turning a corner so I don't have to socially interact with them. I realized just this morning how very subtle this is, as I was about to turn a corner before having to say good morning to someone else. How ridiculous! Pleasant Experience doesn't have to do that any more!" You explicitly state that you noticed a subtle undercurrent of fear inside you, therefore you were not "one with the whole" with “no room for fear” up to that morning. Perhaps you think you are “one with the whole” now, though practically speaking there may be and probably are other subtle undercurrents that you haven't yet noticed.

Maybe not for the meditator but the followers knew how long he was in samadhi for and how many dirty loin cloths they cleaned.

Diapers/loin cloths aside, I thought ralis was referring to Ramana being in samadhi for great lengths of time and having his bodily functions looked after by his followers. Some people spend years in this type of samadhi on and off, it’s an extreme way to get to experience the “Self”, I personally think there are better ways to become at one with the Self or however you’d like to term it.

Then clearly this is not inevitable for all of us.

Was this throughout his life whist in Samadhi or at the end of his life when he had cancer?