Is there ever an end of individual consciousness?

[DeadDragon]

In Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism there seems to be an idea that the individual self must be relinquished in order to know true peace. That the ego only brings suffering to itself. That everything is one, and we are on a path to obtain that sense of awareness.

But just as day always follows night, and death always follows life, doesn't this mean that even if we "reunite with the spirit of the universe" "transcend life and death, time and space" that at some point we will again find ourselves lost in individual consciousness?

Does that mean basically we are "stuck" forever in these cycles? All of these religions claim that you can transcend these cycles for eternity, but that seems impossible given the dualistic nature of all things - including "one self" and "individual self".

This is a very serious unresolved issue in my mind. There could be some sort of flaw in my knowledge or logic here, a limitation in the English language, or something that my mind cannot grasp. But the way I see it, why bother? I can meditate for years until I find contentment, but then I'm just going to lose it again at some point (not necessarily within this life). It's a very depressing thought. Makes me either want to chase pleasures of the flesh for eternity, unfulfilling as they may be. Or just kill myself and continuously change my perception of who / what I am in order to try and avoid discontent.

 

Perhaps I could research Taoist immortality more thoroughly and just never let this body die? Not exactly ideal, but it's better than the thought of ever having to go through anything remotely similar again to what I am going through now.

Thanks for any help or insight you may be able to provide. I find my views typically most closely aligned with Taoism, and would practice SFQG much more often (both to heal myself and to heal others), if I felt there was any real point to do so. If I can define anything in better detail, or share anything else about myself, please ask.

Edited June 9, 2013 by DeadDragon

[Tsunami_MAPUA]

In Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism there seems to be an idea that the individual self must be relinquished in order to know true peace. That the ego only brings suffering to itself. That everything is one, and we are on a path to obtain that sense of awareness.

 

There's some Western spiritual writing that's channelling Easter philosophy concepts. The gist is: there's a difference between the Self and ego.

 

The Self is real and unchanging; the ego, false.

 

 

 

But just as day always follows night, and death always follows life, doesn't this mean that even if we "reunite with the spirit of the universe" "transcend life and death, time and space" that at some point we will again find ourselves lost in individual consciousness?

 

Does that mean basically we are "stuck" forever in these cycles? All of these religions claim that you can transcend these cycles for eternity, but that seems impossible given the dualistic nature of all things - including "one self" and "individual self".

 

I don't really give a damn about these issues at the moment, may be someday. Experienced and hardcore Taoists should answer this.

 

 

This is a very serious unresolved issue in my mind. There could be some sort of flaw in my knowledge or logic here, a limitation in the English language, or something that my mind cannot grasp. But the way I see it, why bother? I can meditate for years until I find contentment, but then I'm just going to lose it again at some point (not necessarily within this life). It's a very depressing thought. Makes me either want to chase pleasures of the flesh for eternity, unfulfilling as they may be. Or just kill myself and continuously change my perception of who / what I am in order to try and avoid discontent.

 

The point of meditation, according to BK Frantzis, is to eliminate wants (since our suffering stems from such wants) and this includes wanting to get benefits from meditation.

 

Also, Eckhart Tolle says it's about enjoying the present moment whatever you do. If you're experiencing pleasure, be in the moment and experience pleasure fully. If in pain, welcome the pain and do not suffer.

 

Also, Taoism is about BALANCE. There's a branch of Taoism (is it left Taoism as per Kumar?) where people pursue pleasure and worldly glory, but they have awareness and Taoist concepts in place.

 

 

I'm not sure I helped, but welcome aboard.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

It's the idea of selfhood that is lost, not individual consciousness. Look up 'the 5 skhandas' and 'anatta'. The idea is that we are a bundle of these 5 constantly rising and falling processes, but we falsely believe that there is some sort of 'I' owning them.

 

Note that as these are processes, consciousness is constantly arising and ceasing, so you aren't quite eternal but there is an eternal continuity. Avoid the extremes of eternalism and nihilism.

 

At no point does a person just dissolve into thusness and stop existing as an individual. Rather they see themselves and everything else as they truly are - processes with no existence independent from the web of cause and effect (look up 'codependent origination' and 'sunyata'), playing out within thusness.

Edited July 17, 2013 by Seeker of the Self

[三江源]

In Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism there seems to be an idea that the individual self must be relinquished in order to know true peace. That the ego only brings suffering to itself. That everything is one, and we are on a path to obtain that sense of awareness.

 

But just as day always follows night, and death always follows life, doesn't this mean that even if we "reunite with the spirit of the universe" "transcend life and death, time and space" that at some point we will again find ourselves lost in individual consciousness?

 

Does that mean basically we are "stuck" forever in these cycles? All of these religions claim that you can transcend these cycles for eternity, but that seems impossible given the dualistic nature of all things - including "one self" and "individual self".

 

This is a very serious unresolved issue in my mind. There could be some sort of flaw in my knowledge or logic here, a limitation in the English language, or something that my mind cannot grasp. But the way I see it, why bother? I can meditate for years until I find contentment, but then I'm just going to lose it again at some point (not necessarily within this life). It's a very depressing thought.

What is tripping you up is the idea of there being something that you can lose. I know it is difficult and frustrating to be told this, when one thinks one is seeking to find something.

 

There needs to be a different process image other than find and subsequently lose.

[Jeff]

The individual "view" of consciousness may cease or not. It is a choice.

 

Best wishes on your path.

[DeadDragon]

Hi, thanks for all of the responses. I do not disagree with any of you. Except for the part where a person "stops existing as an individual". I have experienced such a state of being, where my perception was no longer of an individual. I literally was the trees, the buildings, the sky, etc.

 

The point is, one day "I" am going to forget any of this has happened and it's going to happen again. That "I" am doomed to repeat these struggles again ad infinitum, that I will have to relearn every lesson ever taught. It happened at least once, I was born and forgot what I needed to know or not know in order to be balanced / happy / content / true. I do not disagree that this is an illusion, and none of it really happened / is happening. But that did not prevent me from believing otherwise earlier in my life, or prevent me from experiencing it as real at least in this moment.

 

I do have a clear idea in my head on how to be free of all pain. However my primary concern at this moment is not how to "obtain" enlightenment. I'm not really looking for guidance on how to conquer this worry.

 

Will it all happen again? Not necessarily as this person or awareness but perhaps as another. Or is it a choice, did "I" simply choose to be this person and forgot that I chose, along with forgetting everything else?

 

I read somewhere that Buddha can take on the form of any being without forgetting the Buddha nature. But I don't know...

 

My ideas are a mishmash, I hope not to confuse anyone, and please forgive me for communication is my weakest skill. I find language very limiting and I would remain silent but not when it causes me so much trouble to do so. I asked the spirit of the universe, but "it" is giving me conflicting answers.

Edited June 9, 2013 by DeadDragon

[XieJia]

Sunrise and Sunset.

Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The four-seasons ever-unfolds under one sky.

[XieJia]

Though the earthly knowledge might be lost to one for a time when one leave this earthly shell.

What one cultivates and its consequence will ever continue to follow like a shadow.

The consequences of holding the precepts will help conditions mindfulness

much like the consequences of the path will lead one to the end.

 

It will be like going somewhere anew, and found that one has always been home.

Edited June 9, 2013 by XieJia

[Seeker of Wisdom]

"Except for the part where a person "stops existing as an individual". I have experienced such a state of being, where my perception was no longer of an individual."

 

But that was a temporary experience. Experiences like this are dependent on causes, like everything else. I can't think of any way such a cessation of individuality could be eternally sustained - consciousness simply can't really function independent of the other skhandas forever, and the other skhandas are individual. Therefore maybe you could lose individuality for even a billion eons lol, but that's no time at all really.

 

 

"The point is, one day "I" am going to forget any of this has happened and it's going to happen again. That "I" am doomed to repeat these struggles again ad infinitum, that I will have to relearn every lesson ever taught. It happened at least once, I was born and forgot what I needed to know or not know..."

 

You forget personal memories and experience, but traits are carried over in the substrate consciousness.

 

Enlightenment is the way out of this mess. Once you get to a certain stage you will have control over your own rebirth, and remember all past lives.

 

Though when you do get there, you'll hopefully be more concerned with continuing to full-on Buddhahood to benefit all beings than living in a heavenly realm on holiday for eons and eons.

[BananaMonkey]

In my understanding, the whole concept of time as being linear is an illusion.Even in modern physics that notion is getting more and more common these days. There's loads of scientific experiments on this. You can read more about then in The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot and in The Source Field Investigations by David Wilcock. Both absolute page-turners and great for broadening one's horizon.

 

From my spiritual point of view, time only exists on this level of reality to enable us to experience things one after the other. This seems to be a kind of catalyst for the evolution of the soul. Once you imagine living in a reality without time, where everything happens in one limitless moment, you simply couldn't encounter certain obstacles and difficulties that make you go beyond yourself. To me, this seems to be a crucial element of spiritual development.

[DeadDragon]

But if there's a reality without time, then a reality with time must exist. Logically speaking, or at least speaking from my experiences with duality in this universe. Can't have light without dark, short without tall, real without illusion, etc etc etc, on an on to infinity.

 

After consulting "the spirit of the universe" again however I feel this is not true. My mind simply cannot grasp that all things can become one, without ever separating again...since my mind can only conceive of duality. Even just talking about it, it's not quite right. It's not "one" exactly but beyond that as well.

 

When it comes down to it, Taoism and Buddism are separate religions / philosophies for a reason. While sharing some common traits, they are different in some ways as well. It's time for me to be quiet again, I am not exactly a model Taoist and I'd just give it a bad name by saying any more. But thanks for your help, all of you.

Edited June 11, 2013 by DeadDragon

[Thunder_Gooch]

No, but only by technicality, it never existed to begin with so it cannot end.

[Thunder_Gooch]

Your mind can grasp it!

 

Imagine a DVD, in terms of it's contents time 00:01, and 55:55 are meaningless. Looking at a dvd there is no such thing as time, all the data on the disk is already on the disk, there is no past or future.

 

It's only when you toss it in a DVD player that ones and zeros turn into people moving on a screen and that time has meaning.

 

Those people on the screen aren't real, they are just digital data stored on a disc, time is just the location of the laser on the disc reading the digital data and speed at which data is read.

 

None of that has any real existence as physical tangible objects, you just get caught up in the movie and forget it's just a movie.

 

Everything you've ever seen or experienced in your entire life has been just the same, all of this you are seeing now is just energy and information in your neural networks.

 

You yourself don't even exist, you are just the chatter of cells as they talk to one another on an organic internet (your brain and nervous system.) You are democracy of trillions of cells working together as one to care for all, just like a society of people here on earth using the internet. Exactly the same thing.

 

You have no existence as a physical tangible object, you are merely energy and information, a purely digital being born in a sea of information and telecommunication.

 

You have no body of your own no physical tangible existence of your own.

 

This monitor you are looking at right now, you are looking not out into a real world, but instead into your own mind where a energetic representation of a monitor is created.

 

Imagine looking at the television screen in your home and telling your friend wow it's awesome that we are live at the stadium watching the actual game! He'd look at you like you were crazy as you were at home.

 

The tv you are staring at is the inside of your own mind, everything you think is external to you is actually inside you, it's a virtual, holographic, and energetic projection your mind creates as an illusion. It is not actual reality and never has been.

 

Time as you experience too is an illusion, you are merely a pulse of energy flowing from past into the future like a laser reading the data off a dvd. Both past and future already happened, and not just one past and future, all possible pasts and futures too.

 

Sorry if I baked your noodle a bit too much

 

 

But if there's a reality without time, then a reality with time must exist. Logically speaking, or at least speaking from my experiences with duality in this universe. Can't have light without dark, short without tall, real without illusion, etc etc etc, on an on to infinity.

 

After consulting "the spirit of the universe" again however I feel this is not true. My mind simply cannot grasp that all things can become one, without ever separating again...since my mind can only conceive of duality. Even just talking about it, it's not quite right. It's not "one" exactly but beyond that as well.

 

When it comes down to it, Taoism and Buddism are separate religions / philosophies for a reason. While sharing some common traits, they are different in some ways as well. It's time for me to be quiet again, I am not exactly a model Taoist and I'd just give it a bad name by saying any more. But thanks for your help, all of you.

Edited June 11, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[ion]

My thoughts are that awareness doesnt belong to the self. It preexist the individuality that it is subject to. Eventually a one becomes aware of, or rather conceptualizes an idea of self and proceeds to conceptualize that the self that it believes it is has a life and is livving it. Eventually the concept of self conceptualizes that is expering death.

 

Does that awareness trancend death? I believe so. Not being dependent on form for existance the awareness that we believe we (we meaning the conceptualized selfs)experience and call self is not ego, not product of ego, and not dependent on or confined to the senses of human experience which are the basic parameters of ego. It is the developed concept called ego that believes it is aware, and aware through the senses and it's thoughts that the ego thinks it has awareness.

 

I think there for I am??? I think not. I am aware of thoughts and thought process though I have none of my own. Thoughts are redundant and unoriginal, they are not the maker of my existance. I experience therefore I am??? I believe that I observe an experience, therefore I am; iam the inevidable by product of having an itemizing human mind which discerned the concept of self and other and therefore is. What it is a a relative term, the by product of realizing other.

 

What is true self? Is it something the ego concept has? I dont believe so. I think true self is not "self" but what others percieve as my ego. The I that is, and experiences life outside of my awareness of my own experience is the I that others see and experience. My communicative primate body was designed to be a part of a group and its looks and appearence are for them, and I exist as a seperate entity within each of there awareness and subject to their developed conceptulized ego relative to their perception and concept of me.

 

There is no seat of consciousness where the I truly exists, No consciousness that is developed indepenedent of the experience of others.

 

Mistaking an ego for a self is like mistaking the shine for the apple. The shine is a reflection; the ego is a reflection of the time and space it is aware of an experience within. The ego is more a reflection of others past present and future then it is of the "self" and its experiences.

 

What happens to awareness when the body dies??? It continues and experiences the bliss of lacking discomforts associated with a temporal form. It identifies with the bliss and develops an ego and suffers the anxiety of having an ego and its obligations reponsibilities and pains that only an ego concieves. It goes from life and unity with the everpresent heaven of egoless awareness to suffering hell for infinity. How does awareness percieve of infinity? By ceasing to be aware of "time" one experiences infinity and is reborn on earth from its self created hell.

 

What did you say the point of meditaion is? It is the process of finding the original position of awareness. Focussed without focussing. Un distracted by impulses and habitual tensions relative to habitual thoughts. It is to not identify with the redundant process of mind that are dependent on materiel. It is to cease identification with consciousness, and the consciousness and its thoughts that arise from triggers within a consciousness and its thoughts.

 

When a person is eating, should they get up and do the dishes before they are done? Neither should we be distracted by impulses or thoughts of obligations when we are just sitting.

 

When we think of others, we might as well think of ourself as one of them because it is no more us then we are.

[DewaMade]

No it never stops.

[三江源]

No it never stops.

how do you know this?

[DewaMade]

We are a very ingenious system... the more we separate from the physical world, the more psychic abilities we get. the more power the less need to manifest in the physical. Once we release the body, while being alive, we find the static in a conscious manner. this would then mean you will not be in a coma... or just static energy when you go... in any way, your energy will be preserved, be it "alive" or "dead" (dynamic or static) and over time, because of movement of dynamic, static will be called upon to return to a dynamic synergy. (you will have another life)

[DewaMade]

The static is a fantastic world though... I think this is misunderstood. To me feels like the place where all emotions and questions etc are answered at once, leaving us in a continuous HIGH of extasy and love... while being in a "coma"

[三江源]

.

Edited September 28, 2015 by 三江源

[三江源]

.

Edited September 28, 2015 by 三江源

[Chetzy]

Most believe that Ego is an enemy which is needed to be removed or vanquished. Ego is just another form of consciousness, a contracted, limited form but still consciousness. The thing is that usually when you battle something there is resistence, and where there is resistence there is tension which leads to suffering. The way is not to destroy Ego but align it to Self, to everpresent consciousness then there will no be a sense of diffrence, of distance between I and That which is IS.

 

Now there is a psychological ego which is just an accumulation of past information which does form the false Self, the pattern Self, the egotistical Ego. That one will disolve anyway upon death. But individuality is a state of consciousness, or more likely consciousness perceives oneself through individuality.

 

Well I don't presume to have all the answears I just stated what I felt at this time.

 

Peace

[nijjhar]

Hi, In general, people do not have a conscience when cheating comes. Conscience is the Foundation for learning Gospel.

[DewaMade]

If you've never seen it's properties, you cannot know it not exist.... Gospel is just human creation after experiencing some of the properties... not necessarily good or bad... that's why TAO can never be told or said... etc.

[bransonkeller]

Hmmmm, no.

 

And by no I mean as a reply to your worries. In my mind there is generally no speculative worries or so called logical knots and loops as regard to these teachings.

 

The reason is because the teachings are mostly centered around conscientiousness and heedfulness, hard work and diligence. They actually have very little to do with any cognitive thinking or philosophizing. For the most part you should abandon any type of useless discourse that goes on in your head about metaphysical speculations, because these trains of thought are useless.

 

In my personal experience I actually never speculated, and speculation is something that never actually bothered me, neither did I get caught up in thinking about variable unfalsifiable hypotheses, I just practiced. And when I practiced I became happier.

[ion]

The only aspect of us that does fear death is ego. The body is programmed to die. Death is in the genome; our cellular body and our collective of organs, that goes for the heart which carries memory, the enteric nervous system which is its own mind, and the collection of brains called the encepholon which we call our brain, are not afraid to die. Like melting ice the unconscious aspects of our being do not fear death because they submit themselves to their path and the moment it is a part of. Awareness never dies and has its root in old yin, the stillness that prexist time and trancends death so does not fear it.

 

The ego which is the source of attatchment and has spent our lives trying to validate its existence so as to gain faith in its eternity absolutely fears the disolution of its source. It is the only aspect of our being that believes it has a life that it must care for,sustain and maintain, it is the only part of our being that truly suffers death because it is the only part of our being that wants/desires life instead of just being, yet it suffers both death and rebirth once every moment, because it is a reflection of an aspect of each moment related to that aspects concieved/percieved past.

 

I believe, that before anyone in recorded history to have ever have mastered the self, like Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus etc has suffered death before dying, and they have done so selflessly not to attain greatness for themselves but only for the love of humanity. The ego comes to a point that it does away with itself, it is like dying and not being reborn, not that it reaches some intelectual pinnacle or thru just a matter of self-discipline and practice, but that the ego overirdes itself/takes a bullet for humanity, and ceases to exist. I believe what they brouught on themselves during the life time of their being, is what we are all up against everytime our form passes. The ego does not pass with the body because its attatchment and foundation is the awareness.

 

At/after death when awareness returns to its true source which is undifferintiated Tao, the presence of ego causes and endures an uncreated, semi timeless but infinite state of existance of suffering which gives way to a new begining.

 

A peson who does not spend a life satisfying the self, but instead practices selflessness and sacrafice, letting go of things and working on detatchment is a person preparing themselves for the battle of over comming which we all face at "death".