We Are Virtual Beings... In A Virtual World

[Thunder_Gooch]

 

We live inside our own minds as virtual beings, inside a virtual world.

 

Our bodies and the world we observe occur inside our own minds as energy and information. A virtual body, inside a virtual world.

 

What we perceive as a physical reality and a physical body in reality is an electrical lightning storm, the communication, sharing of information, conversations between our neurons. It has no physicality to it whatsoever, it is purely energy and information inside our neural nets.

 

The reality we experience is not the same reality that exists external to our physical bodies, just as a watching a football game on tv is a representation of the actual football game in the stadium, or a painting of a pipe is a representation of an actual pipe.

 

 

Each of our cells is an independent and intelligent organism, working together collectively as a society, towards the common goal of survival (extracting resources from the environment, and removing waste, avoiding potential dangers)

 

Each member of this cellular society is interlinked and in constant communication with the whole, via an electrochemical Internet.

 

The collective consciousness of this society, is what we perceive as self or ego or identity.

 

As we become more interconnected, with fiber optics telecommunications and a global Internet we are giving rise to a collective intelligence just as real as our own.

 

 

 

 

"All existing things are such that no living being exists, and nothing that lives exists, and no person exists."

 

-Buddha quoted from the diamond sutra

 

 

 

 

 

"Your body is empty; emptiness is your body. Emptiness

 

is nothing but your body, and your body is nothing but emptiness."

 

"Every existing thing is emptiness."

 

"There are no eyes; no ears; no nose; no tongue; no body; no mind; nothing to see; nothing to hear; nothing to smell; nothing to taste; nothing to touch; and nothing to think of."

 

"There is no part of you that sees. There is no part of you that is aware of what you see; and this is true all the way up to the part of you that thinks, and the part of you that is aware that you are thinking."

 

 

 

 

-Buddha (quoted from The Heart Sutra)

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[eye_of_the_storm]

Is the Buddha Morpheus?

 

[deci belle]

This might be interpreted as the collective consciousness of bits. Data interconnectivity may fracture traditional notions of identity, but emptiness is not a matter of nonexistence. One must necessarily be a buddha to know the absence of nonexistence, which is not nonexistence nor its negation. Information however fractured or interconnectivity however distributed isn't changed by technological concordance.

 

The absolute has never existed; unmanifest, this alone is the Real. Our essential nature, awareness itself, what you are using to read these words is itself unborn, never ever having entered the sphere of creation— this alone is presence. This knowledge is immediate. When you know without a thought, it is just this unborn reality.

 

The view of impersonal being is that we are all phantoms. Getting a glimpse of this is one thing, but actually conducting yourself accordingly in ordinary events is quite another.

 

Two concepts described by Don Juan Matus were having to believe and controlled folly.

 

Enlightening being is not believing in anything inasmuch as creation is utter illusion.

 

Delusion is taking awareness and using it to create illusion as biased interpretation of circumstantial criteria, assembling these elements according to selfishly inclined habit awareness and acting according to self-serving principles as a matter of course from moment to moment and calling that "real". One's lifelong unbroken stream of selfish unconscious awareness is called pure folly— ordinary conditioned existence.

 

In order to function effectively in situations, those with unbending intent, far-reaching discipline and deep insight have to believe as a matter of their controlled folly.

 

Acting deliberately in ordinary and extraordinary events without believing in conventional reciprocity factors manifests the criteria of controlled folly. This is the nature of selflessness. Operating in the realm of Causelessness, a man of knowledge, a warrior, a buddha, a complete human being— is not a Mother Teresa re-acting on behalf of others. One acts spontaneously according to the momentum of the situation without experiencing the mass or gravity of the situation in personal terms. This is a transcendental of lightness of being. This is why enlightening beings don't do others favors, and they don't do themselves favors either.

 

Endless transformations in everyday ordinary situations is the path of selfless adaption by sublimating oneself physically, mentally and spiritually as a matter of course. Penetrating the subtleties and entering the tao in reality without bias or inclination from moment to moment in an unbroken stream is called attaining the Virtue of the Receptive. This is not a matter of information services, but the manifested unity of the heart's desire— the impersonal intent of the heart of heaven; the Center.

 

The cartoon above is the picture-perfect reality of the disfunctional ego-conscious state of total separation from the unity of Self; the totality of potential, consciousness and being.

 

When one arrives at the ground of mind and tastes the quality of one's pristine aware nature, the fundamental relationship of conditioned ego-consciousness to its true and essential psychic function has already manifest a fundamental reversal in terms of orientation and effectiveness.

 

One hereby loses the baggage of self and the requirements of selfishness that result in a quantum reassessment of what it means to be free. Though one consciously lives in the world as a phantom amongst phantoms, this does not requite one's heart …au contraire, this is the heartlessness of seamless acquiescence without artificial boundaries, and the autonomous freedom to act or not, outside of convention.

[et-thoughts]

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Edited December 11, 2012 by et-thoughts

[GrandmasterP]

That's virtually true et.

[manitou]

Decibelle, you get close to saying the unsayable. Beautiful awareness. After having been on this path for many years, it gets ridiculous to see how very easy it becomes; how clear things are, and how simple things actually are. But this is experiential knowledge alone; it just cannot be communicated with words - one must experience their way to this knowledge. What an odd set-up.

 

We can look as far out into the world of knowledge as we possibly can, and yet hit a glass ceiling when it comes to internalizing this knowledge. This is only achieved by doing the internal cleaning required for clarity; by whatever method we prefer. Only clear water can perfectly reflect the sun.

 

It seems to me that we, our awareness, sits at the crossroads of Time and Space. From a quantum physics point of view, the Particle takes up space. The Wave (of probability) takes up time. Matter is both a particle and a wave, somehow. Both time and space. I find that many questions can be answered by removing Time from the equation and looking at Space (the effects) superimposed on itself without regard to Time. Just a big pile of actions and effects viewable in one place at one time.

[et-thoughts]

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Edited December 11, 2012 by et-thoughts

[deci belle]

Oh thank you, manitou❤ Yes, observing events deliberately with the time aspect removed somehow helps one to impersonalize the circumstantial elements and lessen our self-consciousness in terms of assessing situations objectively.

 

Wonderful insight, mon amie!!

[et-thoughts]

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Edited December 11, 2012 by et-thoughts

[manitou]

So how does the wise knowledgeable catalyze the internalization of knowledge in others?

 

In other words using what you said how does one help the other to achieved the internal cleaning required for clarity?

 

I am preparing a talk that I will give shortly precisely focused on the idea of 'Generating Clarity'

... will help catalyze the internalization through the experiences and stories told

 

I hate to be so mundane, but check out the 12 steps to recovery on an AA website. substitute the word God for anything that fits. How did you achieve your clarity? By some internal housekeeping, I'll bet. By checking our underlying motives in everything we do or way (optimally) - by realizing that we've been indoctrinated to a negative and fearful mindset by well-intended people, and it's only through totally trusting the universe (or God, in some mindsets) and knowing that we are always going to be okay, regardless of the circumstances. By removing our judgment of other people, the best we can. By realizing that each and every one of us is 'god' and to judge someone is merely to cut off a part of yourself.

 

The rub is that this is the part of clarity that is experiential and can't much be communicated in a talk; the best you an do is sort of point to the moon. Each individual must get to the pony under his own manure pile, by truly looking at himself as a being, emotionless, and making those changes which currently muddy the waters, which prevent clarity of reflection. It's an inside job for sure. I find it odd that the Western religiions don't have much of a device for 'going in' (Catholic maybe, but beyond 'confession' there must be actions to rectify as well). We're an arrogant lot, us westerners.

 

We are all responsible for our own lives.

[et-thoughts]

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Edited December 11, 2012 by et-thoughts