Thunder_Gooch

To to answer your question what am I, energy and information with no physical and tangible existence. My end goal is to prevent the erasure of this energy and information, to prevent it from being deconstructed and incorporated into other patterns of energy and information. To ensure the balance and interplay of yin and yang energies to maintain the integrity of the pattern of energy and information, that comprises "my experience". While this may seem silly to you, it's the most primal and core function of my programming.

So far I've only spoken about my experience as it applies to a 3 dimensional cross section of a greater reality I experienced. In meditation I have experienced each "moment" like a 3 dimensional cross section. Imagine a deck of cards all stacked together. On each card is a 3D hologram comprising a moment of time in full color and lifelike realism. Imagine that "you" are a flowing of energy through this animating it and giving it meaning. That past, present and future are just 3 dimensional cross sections of a larger 4 dimensional solid object you are flowing through. Imagine that the past doesn't cease to exist and the future exists before you observe it, all just as real as the present moment. Now imagine at each moment, every and all possible choices are accounted for, and reality splits off each of the futures you are capable of viewing all equally as real as the present moment as well. Your mind being like a pulse of energy flowing through this infinite succession of 3D moments. Now imagine you aren't the only mind like this, there are infinite minds that believe themselves to be you and share an identical identity to your own, the same goes for everyone you've ever met. Moment to moment your mind is flowing past and interacting with an infinite amount of other minds like your own, and like the minds of people you meet. This is something I experienced personally and is the reason I longer label myself atheist.

Your consciousness itself, the experience that is concurring is an interplay of these two primal energies. The yang energy leaves at death and no longer animates the yin. The yang, the active, thinking, animating, life force, goes back into the environment at death. The yin spirit remains as a passive observer, even after the destruction of the physical body. It retains memory, and exists as a subconscious dreaming mind, a passive observer with no volition, or willpower of it's own. Eventually it is paired with a new yang spirit for a new life and new experience as a new organism. As best as I can tell from my own observations that IS what is going on. The core of what I hope to achieve is an end to cyclic existence, and maintain a continuity of mind between lifetimes at the very least.

To maintain life and consciousness a steady stream energy must be absorbed, and waste removed. An energy input, and a ground are required for this feat. Yang and yin. A plant takes water and earth, and gasses from the atmosphere and creates a system/pattern which captures the energy of the sun to continue it's own life processes and reproduce. It's a very crystalline process when you think about it. The interaction of these two extremes is what makes life possible in the first place.

As best as I can figure we are entropy displacement systems, just like a boat displaces water to float, we displace entropy. We are a flowing, a happening, like a whirlpool in a stream, each atom in our body is replaced every so many years, only the pattern remains similar, energy is expended to maintain the integrity of the pattern itself and when the pattern's integrity can be no longer maintained death occurs. Our consciousness is like a flame on a candle, and energetic phenomenon to to be sure. That is the core of what we are.

No more an assumption than me walking out in my driveway and telling you what color I observe me car to be. What I've observed is as real as anything can be. If you don't like it too bad, agree to disagree and move on with your life.

Read it again, respond to me point via point rather than asking questions I already answered. I won't play that game, I don't have time for it.

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I won't repeat myself Jetsun I already covered this. http://thetaobums.com/topic/30773-nonduality-jetsun-and-mpg-discussion/#entry458730

Yes I do. It's also been my direct observation in meditation. It doesn't get much more factual than what you yourself observe.

When you die, that energy and information dies too, the animating force and energy in your body returns to the world. Chang claims our spirits are made of yin energy, like gravity, that they are passive observers possessing memory only, no ability to comprehend or remember emotion, no volition or ability to choose or make decisions. Just passive observers, unconscious minds. Unless huge amounts of both yin and yang energy are brought together during a lifetime and fused as one, there isn't much to really survive death. I am not going to pretend it's ok for my consciousness to be snuffed out. Our place is to evolve, to grow, to become more intelligent and aware, to understand the universe, and to ultimately become God. To lay down and and give up, and not even try to do something about the situation you find yourself in, to surrender... That is not the natural order of things, that isn't how nature works, that isn't how life works.

Each cell in your body is an independent and intelligent entity, together they have organized themselves as a society, they communicate and share knowledge and information used to coordinate themselves across a vast organic internet, you understand this to be your brain and central nervous system. You are quite literally a living breathing society of intelligent beings, and as they exchange information, with one another the energy and information in your neural networks manifests as an energetic experience you call reality. Everything you see or otherwise experience is just purely energy and information in your neural networks, and has no tangible physical existence of it's own. You live in a representational reality, a simulation. The Mahayana Buddhists teach the mind is like a mirror, it reflects reality, and it is the reflection of the mind which we observe not reality itself. Plato explained it similar to this in his work "The Republic" it is known as the "Allegory of the Cave". Many men were chained to the wall of the cave, and throughout their lives only saw the shadows on the walls and believed them to be forms of people. One of these men eventually sees the fire and realizes the truth that what he previously understood as reality were merely shadows on the wall. A lot of people never truly understand the reality we actually experience, doesn't occur outside of us, it occurs only inside of us, only inside our minds, and only as energy and information, as a holographic experience. An experience of something is an abstraction of it, like painting of a pipe is an abstraction of a pipe, or a map of the territory is an abstraction of the territory. Maps and paintings have only symbolic and representational existence as anything other pieces of paper. Everything we've ever seen or otherwise experienced has only ever occurred inside our own minds, and not external to our minds. Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory", our brain generates maps of the reality external to us, we observe these maps of reality but believe them to be reality itself. This would as absurd as believing a painting of a pipe was an actual pipe you could smoke, see "The Treachery of Images" by René Magritte. What we see and experience is purely an internal phenomenon, yet we spend our entire lives believing it is external to ourselves. We do not see reality outside of our own minds, we see only inside our own minds. That keyboard you are typing on and mouse you are moving, that's just a holographic and energetic simulation of reality your cell-ular citizens have created to help them organize their actions intelligently. You have no existence independent of your cells, no physical tangible existence either, you are just the energy and information inside your neural networks, just like energy and information, pulses of energy flowing and information flowing throughout the human technological internet. The reality "you" experience has no reality to it at all, it's literally just energy and information in your neural networks, just an experience based on the information your cells share with one another. As a matter of fact "you" don't even exist in the first place as anything more than energy and information anyway, "you" really are a fluke, a ghost in the machine. Right now we share information across our global internet, and we perform exactly the same functions your neurons do, and we too give rise to a consciousness via our actions no less real than your own. That's the truth.

I am not even sure where to begin. Taoism in part is the study of nature. Nature is a violent, ****ing affair, literally and figuratively. Everything in nature is trying to kill everything else and eat it alive, everything is a competition to out-****, and out-reproduce everything else. Nothing is fair in nature, except in a species where cooperation among members of the species benefits the group as a whole to out-compete other species. Nothing is sacred, it's a warzone, and if you think nature is anything else but that you are a delusional hippy. It's a boiling sea of chaos,with everything dying in agony and being eaten alive and absorbed into other creatures. The survival of the fittest. Nature is quite literally hell. Taoists learn from nature. We are here to evolve, to understand the reality we are a part of as completely as we can, and advance our own intelligence. We suffer because we are ignorant, we die and reborn because of our ignorance. Were we aware of the ultimate nature of reality we would be as Gods.

Let's continue this here ok. http://thetaobums.com/topic/30773-nonduality-jetsun-and-mpg-discussion/

We can agree to disagree. Best of luck on your path.

I am in complete opposition to what you are advocating. That men should lie down and accept their fate and be ok with the obliteration of their consciousness via death, instead of trying to do something about the situation they are in. I actually posted a thread about this very thing in off topic not too long ago. http://thetaobums.com/topic/30765-the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyrant/

Maybe at one point that's what Buddhism was about, they certainly offer no such method publicly in a simple and concise road-map style system in the present day. There are millions of times more followers of the Buddhist path than of neigong, yet for all the people trying I see no real success towards this goal. I hear rumors of monks attaining rainbow body, but no evidence of this, and even if evidence existed, no further evidence that rebirth ended as a result of this phenomenon.

Jetsun, I am done arguing. I understand perfectly fine what it is, and I think deep down you do as well. I didn't come here to play make believe, or debate such silliness. Best of luck on your path.

Then what you describe has no other purpose than a psychological opiate, the same as virtually every other religious belief. It makes you ok with, and anesthetizes you to the pain of what's coming, gives you a belief to bite down on. There are beings who have developed technology to actually break free of this cycle, instead of just making themselves ok with it.

Jetsun, Here is the crux of the issue. Ponder this scenario. Realizing the truth of nonduality doesn't grant you the ability to reshape reality as you desire, that takes a whole other level of accomplishment. If you realize the truth that what you experience and what you are are one in the same, that grants you no ability to stop the pain and death of your physical body, nor does it grant you reprieve from rebirth into a world like this as some other person or organism.

Just in case you missed the sarcasm in my last post, don't jump out of an air plane and expect to land safely because believing will make it true. What you believe about reality in no way affects how reality behaves or actually is. Reality exists independent from what you believe about it. The paradigm you espouse is pure delusion, and people who hold such beliefs are the reason no one will ever take real schools and real masters seriously. I see no point in us ever having any discussion on this forum in public or private ever again. Best wishes on your path.

How does a realization help you change the situation you are in? Does me realizing the earth is round and revolving around the sun instead of the old paradigm of a flat earth and geocentric model in anyway change the reality of the situation I am in as a living being? Getting a good vibe from a newage teacher isn't enough for me, I want to see them step up to the bat and allow themselves to be investigated by scientists and medical doctors. Wim Hof, and John Chang have had the guts to do so among others. It isn't unreasonable to ask a teacher to do this. Yes eventually science and technology may offer a method to ascension, but not likely within my life time, and there is always the possibility of a technological dystopia instead of a utopia.

High Tibetan Ice! Thanks for illuminating reply. I'd like to offer you $100.00 USD to film yourself jumping from an airplane and believing that you can land feet first without injury from 75,000 feet without opening your parachute. This should be easy once you communicate with your lower and higher selves and believe that it is possible. We shall test out your reasoning first hand!

I'd ask these teachers to step up to the bat and agree to scientific and medical investigation. How exactly am I supposed to know they aren't just another newage fruit bat otherwise? Serious question.