The truth is, we cannot think

[Nikolai1]

Thoughts are never our thoughts. They pass before us like the landscape outside the window of the train. We cannot create them or control them. They are simply the features of an absolutely external realm.

 

This landscape can be be busy or crowded, or it can be vast and serene.

 

The busy, crowded realm is flittered by spiky weeds and vermin. They are the 'I do this, I think that' thoughts. They capture our eye and scatter the light of our awareness.

 

As the train leaves this landscape the weeds and vermin gradually became scarce. Then for miles there is nothing to be seen. Suddenly a magnificent oak comes into view and we see it and know it and understand it with all the power of our awareness. These thoughts, these aboriginal oak like thoughts, full our existence with beauty and purpose. They are the reason we took the train.

 

But never forget that we are simply the passengers watching it all go by. The weedy 'I thoughts' distract us so much that our weak attention becomes wholly absorbed in them. We lose ourselves in them. But they are not who we actually are. They are nothing to do with us. We do not even think them.

 

Thinking is what the vermin thoughts do. Thinking is the abhorrent activity of an entirely alien breed. We, ourselves, do not think. We cannot think. All we can do is mistakenly believe that we can think.

 

Allow the thoughts that pass to be their own reality. This allowing is to take the journey from the pestilential plain, to the Oak studded highlands.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Nikolai1

[ThisLife]

.

You've got interested in and seem to be following some rather intriguing thought patterns. I spent a number of years myself trying to grasp where ideas like this were coming from. I enjoyed the process and from the evident sincerity of your writing imagine that you are as well. I found the 'detachment' from mainstream religions and personal philosophies that these ideas seemed to embody, to be highly attractive.


However, your conclusions seem to me to be quite strongly mixed with your own personal views - particularly in your perceptions of thoughts as "vermin", or statements like your "Thinking is an abhorrent activity of an alien breed." To the outsider, it appears that this kind of idea must stem purely from one individual's mind, and it seems highly unlikely that they could accurately represent some kind of universal truth.

For my own tastes I prefer writings like those of Nathan Gill, for instance. I'll stick in his take on the same ideas you're chasing and see if they hold any appeal for you :

*

{Q} : So there is this body-mind and a thought arises - for instance, ‘I am hungry’ - and the brain reacts to that thought.

{A} : No, it's simpler than that. There's no cause and effect. There is a play of images being presently registered. A body is appearing, simultaneously with a sensation of hunger, and also simultaneously with the thought, ‘I am hungry’.

{Q} : So what's doing the registering then ?

{A} : No-thing is registering every-thing. This registering, or no-thing, is what the concept 'awareness' points to.

{Q} : It can't be the ‘I’ thought because the ‘I’ thought, the person, doesn't exist anyway.

{A} : The ‘I’ thought is part of the content, part of what is being registered. No-thing is registering.

{Q} : So are we trying to understand this with the mind ?

{A} : There is no mind. The term 'mind' is used in a somewhat confusing way to represent the thoughts appearing and disappearing presently in awareness, and so seeming to constitute a stream of thoughts. This apparent stream of thoughts - when seen objectively as single images appearing and disappearing - is not problematic, but when labelled 'mind', it is presumed to constitute an actual entity. It is a phantom. No thought can understand anything. Thoughts are merely inert images - message balloons.

{Q} : Where do they arise from ?

{A} : It's a complete mystery, as is all of the arising content. They simply appear within awareness as part of the content.

{Q} : The difficulty of course is that the mind shifts these thoughts together into a time sequence and so spins its own story, doesn't it? Is that how it is ?

{A} : There is no mind. The mind is the succession of thoughts, so there is no mind as an entity that could do anything with thoughts or spin a story. The apparent succession of thoughts is already the story.

{Q} : So the thoughts are doing the weaving - it's the other way around ?

{A} : The thoughts aren't actually doing anything. They are merely images, arising in succession and so appearing to form a story.

{Q} : And we don't know where the thoughts come from - it's a complete mystery.

{A} : Yes.

{Q} : So we're on a hiding to nothing really! But who strings the thoughts together?

{A} : When the ‘I’ thought - the primary thought - has been assumed, then the succession of arising thoughts appears to form a continuous solid entity called 'mind'. It's like a propeller: when it's still, it's seen as two or three blades, but when it's whirling around - the apparent succession of thoughts - then it appears as an entity.

{Q} : The story.

{A} : Yes. This is what we're calling 'mind', but in fact mind has no existence - it's just an apparent succession of arising thoughts. The story formed in thought is no more real than a story formed by a succession of messages strung together to form a novel. There can be involvement in a novel, but only when it's picked up and read. It could just be left on the shelf.

{Q} : Can you say also that there's actually no control over whether there is mesmerisation or not — it just happens ?

{A} : That's right, yes.

{Q} : And the apparent unfolding - you have no control over that either.

{A} : No, there is simply unfolding.

{Q} : So to say that you’re going to do something or not do something...

{A} : That's the thought story. But it's not 'your' thought story - it's just the thought story presently appearing or happening.

{Q} : So you just let it all happen.

{A} : 'You' don't let it all happen - it's already happening. Maybe the ‘I’ will be undermined, maybe not.

{Q} : It seems that, for me, all this keeps getting heard over and over and over,…yet it nevertheless still seems that 'me-doing-something', takes place. And that feels wrong in the light of what you're saying.

{A}: All of this is the thought story - maybe it appears within this play that it seems to need to be heard over and over again. That is the nature of these talks. There is simply this continual reminding of our true nature, that there is only `Already Awake-ness'; Oneness.

{Q} : Is this conceivable in any way ?

{A} : No, not in the relative sense. It is not knowable by the mind, by the intellect. It is not knowable by the senses. In order to know something, one must be separate from it; in order to perceive something, one must be separate from it. And you are not separate from It.

{Q} : From the "not-two" ?... Well, I think that's beginning to sink in.

{A} : That's what this is about : Waves temporarily appear,.... then crash into oblivion leaving everything exactly as it was.

Edited April 9, 2015 by ThisLife

[Nikolai1]

As we distance ourselves from the thoughts and let them flow past, the thoughts themselves change in nature.

 

They become much more vivid, and also much more authentic. In fact they start to approach a level of authenticity that we associate with actual objects. Thoughts, you could say, evolve into objects which have a much higher level of reality and are therefore much more rewarding to observe.

 

This is why I disparage the everyday level of thought and call it vermin. Although in its nature it is identical to higher thought, it is unrewarding and often downright painful.

 

I liked the material you posted a lot, but the speaker didn't point out the change that occurs in actual experience once we start to dissociate from thought and disown its activity.

 

Thanks for posting

[Everything]

You mean the words are not important, but the thoughts are essential. 

[ThisLife]

As we distance ourselves from the thoughts and let them flow past, the thoughts themselves change in nature.

 

They become much more vivid, and also much more authentic. In fact they start to approach a level of authenticity that we associate with actual objects. Thoughts, you could say, evolve into objects which have a much higher level of reality and are therefore much more rewarding to observe.

 

This is why I disparage the everyday level of thought and call it vermin. Although in its nature it is identical to higher thought, it is unrewarding and often downright painful.

 

I liked the material you posted a lot, but the speaker didn't point out the change that occurs in actual experience once we start to dissociate from thought and disown its activity.

 

Thanks for posting

 

 

Your comments continue to be stimulating and thought-provoking for me so I thought that at this juncture I should point out that  Nathan Gill and the author I've taken an extract from below, (Richard Sylvester), are both Non-Duality teachers. I'm not sure where your philosophical attractions lie, but within Non-Duality teachings your closing objection, i.e. "the speaker didn't point out the change that occurs in actual experience once we start to dissociate from thought and disown its activity." - simply have no ground to stand on for the reasons Richard points out below. In his book, "I Hope You Die Soon", he describes these thoughts as the first realizations that came to him after 'Awakening' happened.

 

*

 

*

 

 

Liberation is freedom from the burden of being a person who apparently has to make choices and decisions; choices and decisions which have consequences. What a wonderful relief it is to see that there is no choice, no person, no separation. Nothing you have ever done has ever led to anything because you have never done anything. No one has ever done anything although it appears that things have been done.

 

One thing that is immediately seen is the nature of all the apparent spiritual experiences that arose during the years of searching and following false paths and gurus. Suddenly they are seen for what they really are, emotional and psychological experiences happening to an unreal person and no more significant than putting on a shoe or having a cup of coffee.

 

 Spiritual experiences are not difficult to evoke. Meditate intensively, chant for long periods, take certain drugs, go without food or sleep, put yourself in extreme situations. That will probably do it. I had done all of these things and there had been many spiritual experiences. I had chanted for hours and meditated to the beating of mighty Tibetan gongs. I had seen the guru, sitting on a dais in impressive robes, dissolve into golden light before my eyes. Personal identity had refined and dissolved into transcendental bliss. The universe had breathed me as my awareness expanded to fill everything.

 

So what ?

 

There had always been someone there, having the spiritual experience. A person, no matter how refined, had always been present. These events had all happened to ‘me’. None of them had anything more or less to do with liberation than stroking a cat.

 

.

Edited April 10, 2015 by ThisLife

[thelerner]

I think the OP is right.

[9th]

Edited April 10, 2015 by 9th

[Nikolai1]

Hi Thislife,

 

Thank you for all this great material you are posting. I have no doubt that all these non-dualists have had truly liberating breakthroughs and I admire the purity of their message.

 

But at the same time I can't help but think that there is a difference in degree between their awakening and that of, say, Ramana Maharshi or Buddha or Jesus. And the difference between them has something to do with the way they understand their experience. Although they deny that there is anyone to understand anything, still, their manifestation of the truth has a shallowness. And this shallowness is due to their insistence that their phenomenal existence has nothing to do with their actual identity.

 

I'd be interested to know what you think? Is there a difference between Ramana Maharshi and Tony Parsons? (and of course everyone else please contribute!)

[Nikolai1]

Just a few more thoughts to contribute...

 

The worldview of the average person is fundamentally dualistic. Reality is split up into that which we can control by individual will, and that which occurs of it's own accord.

 

Events in nature occur according to their own inviolable law. We can learn to understand them and participate in this laws, but their fundamental nature is fixed and external to us. We must accommodate ourselves to them.

 

Standing against this is our individual will, which can purposefully interact with nature according to our own desires. We can use our understanding of the laws of nature to our own advantage and, within their constraints, carve a creative individual path.

 

Laws of nature are either secular or divine, it makes no difference. Whether God's inviolable decree, or just the way he universe exploded, either way things are as they are and the rules can't be changed by us.

 

Individuality is the freedom to choose and create according to our own vision. It is also not knowing what will come next, and considering tour human brothers and sisters more unpredictable and inscrutable than the cosmos.

 

The normal view is to hold both of these side by side and to not feel the logical conflict. It is to switch between freedom and necessity as the situation requires.

 

Once we have felt the conflict there is a tendency to subsume one view into the other. The determinist considers freedom of the will an illusion, along with creativity. The novel occurrence is simply the part of the pattern not previously noticed.

 

The existentialist, on the other hand, points out that the future can never be discerned from the past and so we must always live our life at the frontier, never knowing where our behaviours will take us. This radical unknowing is experienced as a dizzying freedom.

 

These two viewpoints can be elaborated even further and made transcendental. In terms of experience this flight into transcendence is to rise above the duality of self and other. But at the intellectual level this transcendence is still susceptible to two types of explanation.

 

The transcendental determinist recognises that the world continues as it does according to its own mysterious ways, but that the Self does not and can not participate in the world. Any illusion of participation must be radically surrendered. Any given experience of the world is a transient irrelevance. Nathan Gill, Tony Parsons both take this view.

 

The transcendental existentialist recognises that the world itself, even the laws of nature, are part of our own creation. We have the power to shape and mould events on a cosmic scale. We must radically renounce any dependence on God or the universe and take absolute responsibility. In doing this we can learn to love and enjoy our experience and take proud ownership of it. This is reminiscent of much of he channeled stuff eg the Seth Material.

 

I think any awakened being is likely to carry their former tendencies into their awakened state and their new worldview will fall into one or other category. And this will shape the kind of sage that they are.

 

What do we all think?

Edited April 10, 2015 by Nikolai1

[ThisLife]

Hi Thislife,

 

Thank you for all this great material you are posting. I have no doubt that all these non-dualists have had truly liberating breakthroughs and I admire the purity of their message.

 

But at the same time I can't help but think that there is a difference in degree between their awakening and that of, say, Ramana Maharshi or Buddha or Jesus. And the difference between them has something to do with the way they understand their experience. Although they deny that there is anyone to understand anything, still, their manifestation of the truth has a shallowness. And this shallowness is due to their insistence that their phenomenal existence has nothing to do with their actual identity.

 

I'd be interested to know what you think? Is there a difference between Ramana Maharshi and Tony Parsons? (and of course everyone else please contribute!)

 

 

Thank you for raising yet another set of most intriguing questions. As I said in an earlier post, I have long been fascinated by this type of question myself. Unfortunately I have never had any direct experience of any of the realizations such as many of the writers I am attracted to, talk about -  so I have been limited to searching for answers in the world of books. Hence, in trying to reply to your questions, I can only do so by trotting out extracts from literature that particularly held my attention when I first came across them, (at least to the  degree that I copied them out from whatever book I was reading at the time and filed them away on my computer as Word Docs).

 

My own feeling is that the answers to all this type of question are completely unknowable and inconceivable to standard issue, dualistic human minds such as my own. Hence your ideas are every bit as likely or unlikely as my own. Or anyone else's.  I think all of us who find ourselves drawn to these kinds of questions, in the end simply plump for the one that temporarily best soothes the itches that we can't reach. However, in my own life I have found that quite often our itches move, and scratching posts that once worked so well,.... after a time, disappointingly fail to do the biz any longer.

 

Anyway, in my case this Non-Duality stuff has eased my particular collection of frustrations for about eight years now. But I'm not sitting here trying to tell you that it is 'true.' I really have no idea whatsoever what Truth is, (in the spiritual sense of the word)

 

As for your questions, Ramana Maharaj is one of the earlier, (and best known), practitioners of Advaita, which is the Indian form of these widespread Non-Duality teachings. Tony Parsons is a current day, living spokesman for the same tradition. In the two extracts below I'll let someone who knows from personal experience, give you his take on what you seem to be asking. This chap is an American guy from California, called Wayne Liquorman. The extracts were taken from his book, "Acceptance of What Is".

 

As for your queries about Buddha's and Christ's teachings, I feel there is a danger in spreading oneself too thin by attempting  to unite all manner of different paths under one umbrella. There's a saying that goes something like, "A man can only ride one horse, effectively, at a time."

 

Anyway, I'll let you take a snifter through these differently expressed ideas below :

 

*

 

*

 

{1} :

 

{Wayne} :  Advaita is usually traced back to Shankara. His writings are the traditional Indian lineage, if you will, of Advaita. In the same way Taoism can be traced back to Lao Tzu. They both were the first writers that were associated with their teaching, although they can’t really be said to have originated it, because all they were doing is simply pointing to that which is.

 

Advaita differs from a religious structure in that it lacks the qualities and characteristics of a religion,… priests, temples and all the trappings associated with those things.

 

{Q} :  Advaita doesn't seem like a thing that would lend itself well to becoming a religion.

 

{Wayne} : Not in its essence. It has no tenets, it has no morality. It has no rules for living - all of those things which are the qualities associated with religions. So people tend to label it a ‘mystical teaching’ – that seems to be the preferred umbrella. All of the major religions have mystical wings. Thus, Hinduism has Advaita,.. Islam has Sufism,.. Buddhism has Zen,.. Judaism the Kabala - these are the mystical wings of those religions.

 

    Though you have these root mystical traditions within all the religions, the longer the mystical traditions are around, the more likely they are to start bordering on being religions. So when you get into lineages and those kinds of things, those are the seeds of religions, because out of that comes hierarchies, structures, authorities - whereas the essence of the mystical tradition is to point the individual to his own intuitive understanding. They’re not bodies of knowledge to be acquired. None of them are.

 

 

*

 

 

{2} :

 

 

For those of you who are hearing me for the first time I want to emphasize that nothing I say is the Truth. I make no claims whatsoever that one word comings out of my mouth is the Truth.

 

Now I am not unique in this. None of the teachers that you've either read or heard are speaking the Truth. Truth can't be spoken. All of these concepts are simply pointers, indicators of a Truth that is right here - that is ever-present - as clear, and as unmasked as it could possibly be.

 

So, I personally have no trouble with anybody else’s teachings. If one teacher says you exist and another one says you don’t exist, and this one says that you’re God incarnate and this other one says that you’re nothing, I don’t care. They are all understood to be relative teaching tools. There is never a question of the hammer being Truer than the screwdriver. What I find objectionable (in an aesthetic sense) is when someone says, “What I am saying is the Truth and what the other teaching is saying is bullshit.” Such an assertion lacks the essential clarity of understanding that it’s all bullshit, and that a given teacher’s teaching is a matter of enculturation and personal programming that determine how their teaching is expressed.

 

Ramana Maharishi used the image of a concept, (or religion, or philosophy), as being like a thorn that is used to remove some other thorn that is, let's say, embedded in your foot. So you have a thorn (which is some concept about how things are) and it's embedded in you. The sage comes and uses another concept in the hopes of removing that embedded concept with this second concept. If the embedded concept is removed both concepts become superfluous - they get discarded. The thorn that's being utilised to remove the other thorn has no intrinsic value. After it has done its job you don't wax rhapsodic over what a great thorn it was. Its value was only as a tool. The purpose of all religions and philosophies is exactly the same.

 

Generally, by the time you've gotten here you've read a lot, you've been to a lot of teachers, you have absorbed a vast number of concepts, and many of them are contradictory. How do you reconcile what this teacher said with what that teacher said ? I mean, you've sat with this teacher; you know that this person is a genuine teacher. There's no question of him scamming you. And yet he's saying something that is utterly and completely different from what this one over here is saying. How do you reconcile these conflicting explanations ?

 

The way you reconcile them is to understand that none of these teachers' concepts are true. All concepts, religions, and philosophies are simply tools, and their applicability is only in the moment.

 

*

 

Edited April 12, 2015 by ThisLife

[Perceiver]

Thoughts are never our thoughts. They pass before us like the landscape outside the window of the train. We cannot create them or control them. They are simply the features of an absolutely external realm.

 

This landscape can be be busy or crowded, or it can be vast and serene.

 

The busy, crowded realm is flittered by spiky weeds and vermin. They are the 'I do this, I think that' thoughts. They capture our eye and scatter the light of our awareness.

 

As the train leaves this landscape the weeds and vermin gradually became scarce. Then for miles there is nothing to be seen. Suddenly a magnificent oak comes into view and we see it and know it and understand it with all the power of our awareness. These thoughts, these aboriginal oak like thoughts, full our existence with beauty and purpose. They are the reason we took the train.

 

But never forget that we are simply the passengers watching it all go by. The weedy 'I thoughts' distract us so much that our weak attention becomes wholly absorbed in them. We lose ourselves in them. But they are not who we actually are. They are nothing to do with us. We do not even think them.

 

Thinking is what the vermin thoughts do. Thinking is the abhorrent activity of an entirely alien breed. We, ourselves, do not think. We cannot think. All we can do is mistakenly believe that we can think.

 

Allow the thoughts that pass to be their own reality. This allowing is to take the journey from the pestilential plain, to the Oak studded highlands.

 

Sorry, but I'm gonna be a bit cheeky here and say that the above concept is so 90s .

 

It's been a recurrent topic in spirituality since the mid 90s (and possibly before) that "we are not our thoughts". Like Eckhart Tolle, Ken Wilber and nowadays pretty much every spiritual blog out there.

 

And that's of course true, if you take it to mean that we are also more than just our thoughts.

 

But a true non-dual concept - so I believe - is that we are both our ego and not-our-ego. We are both of these things at the same time. The conceptions of our mind come and go however - only the timeless "I" remains. Over time though, our ego diminishes and we wake up more to our non-ego.

[9th]

thoughts and ideas and concepts are mind in the same way the sky and the trees are mind

[Yasjua]

Thoughts are never our thoughts. They pass before us like the landscape outside the window of the train. We cannot create them or control them. They are simply the features of an absolutely external realm.

 

This landscape can be be busy or crowded, or it can be vast and serene.

 

The busy, crowded realm is flittered by spiky weeds and vermin. They are the 'I do this, I think that' thoughts. They capture our eye and scatter the light of our awareness.

 

As the train leaves this landscape the weeds and vermin gradually became scarce. Then for miles there is nothing to be seen. Suddenly a magnificent oak comes into view and we see it and know it and understand it with all the power of our awareness. These thoughts, these aboriginal oak like thoughts, full our existence with beauty and purpose. They are the reason we took the train.

 

But never forget that we are simply the passengers watching it all go by. The weedy 'I thoughts' distract us so much that our weak attention becomes wholly absorbed in them. We lose ourselves in them. But they are not who we actually are. They are nothing to do with us. We do not even think them.

 

Thinking is what the vermin thoughts do. Thinking is the abhorrent activity of an entirely alien breed. We, ourselves, do not think. We cannot think. All we can do is mistakenly believe that we can think.

 

Allow the thoughts that pass to be their own reality. This allowing is to take the journey from the pestilential plain, to the Oak studded highlands.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way, but... this is the biggest crock of spiritual dissociative bullshit I have ever read in my life. And by biggest I mean, I am going to lump this with every other crock of spiritual bullshit I have seen in my life (and it's a lot). I do care about this issue, so I care to voice my opinion about it, but I guess it's not in my interest or benefit to engage any further in correcting this.

[Nikolai1]

Hey Yasjua - I won't be offended if you attack it. Show me what's wrong with it. Which bits did you particularly hate?

 

I wrote this because it is the description of an ultra dualism. Like the chasm between God and man, this is the chasm between Self and all else. It's a view we don't often hear I think. I actually wrote this semi-ironically but at the same time I can see that the argument is as valid as anything else out there.

[Perceiver]

Most people talk in a relaxed and friendly way on this forum Yasjua. Because It's a nice and enlightened thing to do, even when disagreeing with other people. Would appreciate if you did the same.