Excerpt from a lecture on nature of perception

From a Rupert Spira Lecture: The Nature of perception
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjwBWE64fG0

"That which is never ceases to be. That which is not never comes into existence. Nothing stands out from infinite awareness. No finite object, no finite self ever comes into existence. Knowing and being only itself, never becomes another object, self or world. Matter, mind and consciousness are not 3 separate things, they are 3 ways of seeing one reality. Our experience appears in accordance with the belief we have. If we think we are the body, everything will appear that way. If we think we are the mind, we will become idealists. If we know ourselves to be unlimited everpresent awareness, then experience will appear in that understanding. Multiplicity, diversity, separation will no longer be seen as real. Apparent duality between inside self and outside will collapse.The experience of beauty (or love which is identical in feeling terms, beauty is for perception) is itself the collapse of the inside self and other, outside objects. There is no subject, object in our experience. Rupa - means both form and beauty. The experience of beauty is the essential nature of all perception just like love is the essential nature of all feelings. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. All experience will shine with the light of pure knowing."

Thoughts - 6 Oct 2013

Any kind of thought - feeling, image, motion combo I can generate now in thought space is based on my current state. I cannot believe any of that is really solid, substantial, essential because everything can change with a change in state. Its as if I am painting various pictures (thoughts right now) but the very color palette used is moving through various combinations of colors (my mood, or general state of mind).

It seems like there is nobody really solid or substantial existing. Its just a whole dance of interconnected movements happening by a universal force of which I am a witness. The only thing real is this witness which being empty by itself witnesses infinite variety. Environment triggers desire, desire triggers new environment etc. and so forth. Its like a continuously forward moving fractal (forward word itself is meaningless because its part of the fractal itself) where I have moments of free will or choice manifesting. Even manifestations like the identity, free will etc. are objects themselves to the subject, the observer.

Culture/Religion/Science is all games and not absolute in any sense. They all are part of the thought stream or the fractal. This is the de-conditioning that needs a much wider knowledge spectrum, exploration of thoughts and a general movement towards the higher unchanging dimensions. I am essentially moving towards the center of the black hole (metaphor for its gravitational pull towards the center, the infinite point of density) of experience where everything converges into a point and is finally transcended. A thing completely observed, is the same as transcendence of the thing. What's interesting is that, whatever your focus point, that is the center of the universe at that point. Its exactly akin to your visual field where the center point, i.e. the fovea centralis is what you are looking at in that movement and that is the center of your visual field in that movement.

I can extend this analogy and say, its like sitting inside a train and sitting in a window position where you feel it moving backwards. You eye's focus can be put anywhere in the continuously changing picture appearing in the window and that becomes your center of everything in that moment. Now even in this analogy, you may think there is still one solid entity, the observer himself with memory. This also gets mind-boggling. There is no observer apart from the observed and everything observed is changing. So in a way you are nothing and everything simultaneously and neither of the two. There is no subject too, because any act to describe the subject cannot be the subject because only objects can be described. So the situations is like this, all objects are changing and there is no subject. So you in essence are beyond everything, observing from a higher dimension outside of all manifestation but containing all of manifestation.

Thoughts - 28 Sep 2013

The preference for women body types seems to be a belief oriented cultural mime and not absolutely true. Our projections of 'perfection pyramids' is subjective and belief based. If this applies to body types for males and females, wouldn't the same apply to even personality, behavior? Wouldn't the invisible aspects also be equally powerful as body types and as illusory too?

I wish for the attainment of a girl with the following perfections:
- perfect body/visual aesthetics/complexion/texture/color/facial features
- perfect health
- perfectly compatibility
- perfect match of interests
- perfect complement
- perfect growth and adventure
- perfect syncing of life goals
- perfect companion
- perfect healer

It is the attainment of the most desirable object. Can any object no matter how desirable ever satisfy you? Especially transitory and ever changing objects? Wouldn't there always be a concomitant fear of losing it? Wouldn't I have to put EFFORT to keep it with me? If it is so desirable, wouldn't everyone else want it to? Wouldn't it not be a continuous struggle to ensure that it stays with you? In fact isn't that how value is created, the very definition of collective value?

Everywhere in the society game, there are pyramids and everyone wants is fighting to get to the top. Whether it is to be the most attractive person, have the most vied for job, have the best apartment, car, sense pleasure access, access to the most desirable objects (both material and invisible in the form of experiences), get the most attention, respect, fame, adoration, admiration and love. Whats the point in fighting for something that is eventually going to fall away. If you have the wisdom of their impermanance and emptiness, would you still fight?

What is the definition of perfection? Is it just based on the belief model that I am holding? And I move through various belief models even within a single day and while talking to different people. The core archetypes of my belief system is what gives the feeling of continuity of 'Me'. The auras around this core are changing at different degrees. But what is the core but an unexamined very abstract archetype? When these archetypal core beliefs are examined then all burden would dissolve. Maybe there is no such real thing as perfection because of relativity of everything. There has to be a viewpoint that is transcendent and free of relativity. From that viewpoint everything is perfect including everything in the matrix of relativity and the relativity framework itself.

Is it even possible to attain anything? Is the very notion of attainment a fallacy? The very fact that I think I exist as a person implies I am incomplete and have a purpose to complete/fulfill myself. So existing as a person implies by its very definition a 'purpose'.

The more I look at the mental space of thoughts and their contents and spaces of occurrence, I can see their transiency, impermanance, emptiness nature. I will not use unreal, but their reality is terrifically impermanent and insubstantial. Even memories are that way, all of them.

Reflection on what reality is not - 21 Sept

Whatever I've read, all the accumulation of information, knowledge is suddenly lost when talking in-depth topics to family, or in heated debate with people. If something is real, how can it just disappear like that? It's probably because its all part of memory and when your whole working memory is filled with something else, you have a totally different experience and you HDD contents no longer matter. This is exactly what happens after watching movies too. The altered consciousness is because of the altered contents of working memory. So its the whole game of convincing anyone: Why is it so hard if I really have the truth with me? Why is that not sticking to me? Everything, EVERYTHING! seems to be fickle, shaky, changing and carries the possibility of falling away. I seem to be vulnerable of influence almost anytime even for great truths.

It's as if with great difficulty I extricate myself from the gravity of earth and move to Mars, but on contact with earth again it pulls me back in. Once again I put put EFFORT in disabusing myself of the narrow beliefs into the larger spaces. I seem to be attached to the larger spaces and heights of perception. I am quite confused about what to do. Should I dissociate myself from all contact with the narrow to avoid getting sucked back into that limited thought process? Would that just be avoidance again? This does not seem to be in line with either effortlessness not fearlessness. It almost seems like there is an extremely tall mountain of enlightenment and I have climbed halfway but I need to overcome attachment to it. This is in line with the scripture too about "Seeing oceans of bliss and miraculous states of being, wonder, beauty, joy, ecstasy" but even that has to be let go of." It seems like the only thing real is the common denominator for all experience. What is that? Just a sense of bare existence. Probably even that falls away in the void. So if I get grounded in the VOID and totally see that I have no identity, then what I would be is unimaginable, but that would be the operating point for infinite freedom. But that seems to have nothing to do with miraculous, wondrous states. Enlightenment doesn't seem to have anything to do with changing anything. It does not remove anything - suffering, pain, struggle, discomfort, resistance. When the knowledge is there, you feel the bliss/rapture. But what's the guarantee that the knowledge will stay with me. It's after all impinging on memory which is ever so fickle and dynamic. Another saying that strikes me here as very close to the ultimate experience is that "If a phenomena had a beginning in time, its not real" and everything I possibly know had a beginning in time in my cognition. So none of that can be real including all of my accumulation, knowledge and exploration. Am I looking in the wrong direction totally? How do I get closer to understanding what is truly real? Is this a stage in my evolutionary process OR is the process about understanding that there was never such a thing called liberation and enlightenment and there is nothing to get liberated from?

What is the notion of self-actualization? Is it for the dreamed self which is not even real? What about all my desires? The seeking energies in me? Are they all just dream goals? I cannot even hold on to the concept of everything being a dream because even that has a beginning in time and can pass away and return anytime. How can any verbal thought be real? It obviously has a beginning in time because you can see that you think yourself into that state. I can see now that this whole notion of there being this 'world', notion of 'I' that has desires to experience x,y,z is all just beliefs in self-reinforcing loops.

The satisfaction from all the videos I watch is derived from my intense curiosity (desire) to know what is actually knowledge, substantial, real etc. I keep calling myself a dream object in a dream created by dreamed beliefs. But what if there is nothing apart from this dream to wake up to? OR what if what I am is all the appearances (objects in my experience) and there is nothing apart from that? How can I trivialize a dream or an illusion if all of reality is made up of that? Who is writing all of this? It's another desire inside me to kind of lay out my thoughts and understand. But even this has a beginning in time and cannot be real?
Who is making my experiences move/change? I cannot say that 'I' have no control, because the 'I' itself is imagined including the notion of 'control', notion of 'having' and the notion that 'I do not have it'.

It is incorrect to say that 'There is nobody doing it' too. Because duality gets instantly stamped on anything I say/write/think in language.
The actual reality transcends language, space, time, thought and all phenomena (appearances).

Higher Rules:
- There is no self or other.
- There can be no contradictions. Contradictions indicate there is some belief.
- There is no doer. The doer itself is being done.
- Any phenomenon/perception that has a beginning in time is not real
- No verbal thought can be real.
- Reality transcends language, space, time, thought and all phenomena (appearances).
- Time and space are imagined into being.
- There is nowhere to go, nothing to do.
- Everything 'is'
- All 'effort' implies effort from the dreamed self which would not lead to getting closer to reality. It would just be cultivation.
- Everything can be safely experienced.

If everything happens by itself and if I can do away with all future planning and completely absorb myself in the present NOW, imagine how much energy would be available.

The whole enlightenment is a de-conditioning/deconstruction process. You return your identity to the unborn self. It's de-hypnotizing yourself. It has nothing to do with changing any phenomenal experience.

Life is a dream unfolding

 
In the common model of operation, there is the outside world, the inner psychic complex - a compartmentalization of the 2, and the outside stimulus is perceived by the inner psychic complex but very mildly. So whatever you see will look ordinary and fairly insignificant. But when the inner psychic complex opens up, we start to feel full with beauty, wonder etc.

Now everything described here along with the definitions, is one such model, we are forever moving into different models by change/time. Its exactly like the dream at night, we may believe and experience all kinds of things, but its all a dream and the reality is pure nothingness/unborn infinite potential. Once you realize you are that very thing (the invisible, formless, unborn, infinite, quality-less pure potential) then you can completely live this dream without identification and non-identification is freedom.

The catch here is, the desire arising and consciousness movement happens by itself. You cannot make the desire arise, because that would be another desire arising in the present moment. Also, the movement of expansion and understanding towards waking up also happens by itself. Waking up itself, happens by itself just like you don't wake yourself up in the morning, it just happens and your consciousness shifts into this configuration of reality. Even me thinking in this direction and writing about it is happening by itself. It's like, there are no individual wills, there is only God's will (universal force) moving everything.

Experiential Links to Digestion issues

Digestion problems seem to have clear experiential connections.
Pipeline: Perception entry (How much enters? How often?) - Information processing (How much is processed?, how long?) - Decision outcomes (final outcomes of the processing) - Archiving/Back burner storage (for processing later) - Excretion of the unused/unwanted (clearing storage)

Digestion problem summary: The gate valve allows too much in, the processing center is overwhelmed, everything is pushed to archival storage for later processing leading to lots of accumulation - hardly anything is excreted out since I want to extract so much and don't want to lose anything.

Simplified summary: So the issue is I'm trying to do TOO much beyond my available resources. This is resulting in fatigue and burnout. Therefore there is not enough energy for happily fulfilling daily expectations and surplus is limited.

Questions to investigate:
Why am I trying to do that? What am I seeking? What is the emptiness I want to fill? What is unsatisfactory right now?

Analogy:

Archival, Storage - working memory, short term, long term memory
Processing center (Intelligence center) - Intellectual, Analytical functions - Categorizing, Hierarchy, seeing relationships, patterns, interrelationships, connections, dependencies
Decision centers - Buddhi, Discriminator, Emotional clarity for decisions, clarity on goals and desires, world model, deciding what is useful - what is not, what to keep, what to reject
Excretion centers (Colon) - Completely removing the unwanted, discarded and processed stuff to make way for new stuff to enter.
Input - Perception centers, gatekeepers (RAS in brain), openness qualities

Virgins and first sex

 
We dislike porn stars, sluts, hookers, prostitutes etc. because the specialness quality of sex is removed. Most things revolve around this 'feeling of specialness'. There is a whole spectrum we use to evaluate. For sex with an ordinary girl, we would like her number of previous partners to be between 0-10. Once it gets much more than that, the specialness factor is drastically reduced. Say she has slept with 100 men and you are the 101th person. Your relative value is 1/101 vs. a virgin who would make your relative value an absolute 1. That's why virgins are rated so highly because they give you the highest 'special' value. You are their first experience and its incomparable for them. First experiences are special because their relative value is the highest.

Thoughts - Aug 23

I think my basic revolt, rebellion, dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, anger, irritation, rage, fight, struggle is because of the perception of being reduced to a robot in the work system of the world. The minute I can conceive of something completely, it becomes something automatable or robotic. Everything I do at work can be automated easily. I want operate at the edge or forefront of whats possible. I seem to have an instinctive rebellion against all forms of routine, habit, coercion, effort, restriction, imprisonment, self-control, discipline, force against one's will, any action against values. Its an exhaustion of will power that has happened with me.

The solution I feel can be found by exploring the dark side and seeing the mechanics on how its creating the bright side. Then once the mechanics is understood, I can move towards the bright side until its splendid bright, a kind of ascension. This is because any desire is ultimately seeking balance. Its like if your on -50 of the number line of experience you want a +50 experience to fulfill you. As you approach +50 you would feel the fulfillment increasing. This would lead to a complete balancing and me existing as a person (i.e. a lack) will disappear. Thereafter, there would not be any persistent lack driving me as a stable personality. I would be in a state of beyond everything until I am pulled back into ignorance. It seems like ignorance and knowledge also move in cycles like the Yugas in Hinduism  - alternating between Kalyug and Golden ages. Everything becomes much clearer when you see beyond narrow bounds of time going far beyond your 100 year lifetime and seeing causes and effects.

I cannot see how intense bottomless passion can exist without you simultaneously polarizing yourself as severely lacking. Maybe passion is the fun you have when you create a -100 for fun which makes you race towards +100. The more you think you lack something, the farther away you would be from the center of the wheel of experience. You need to have been intensely sad to know what extreme happiness is, because its relative. That is the nature of knowledge/perception/awareness/consciousness itself. They exist inseparably as one, like poles of a magnet.

There are 2 ways you can make a person extremely happy in the relative sense. Make him intensely suffer with a deep memory imprint of it and then bring him back to normal state. Now, when perception happens, it would compare the present experience with memory and make the person feel extreme gratitude and happiness. This is another way. Giving the person Methamphetamine is not the only way. In fact, giving a person an extremely powerful temporary euphorigen would amplify the person's dissatisfaction with his current state because perception would then use the euphoric memory and interpret the present as dull, uninspiring, depressing, frustrating and induce deep cravings. It seems like taking euphoriants creates a lot more karma/passions. It seems like passions and karma are equivalent, anything that creates passions is creating karma.

Intense suffering will definitely potentiate you for happiness. Thinking much beyond the time frame of your life (80 years) helps in thinking at this height. All this makes me rethink suffering, ignorance, limitations, dullness etc. because they exist inseparably with their opposites.

Perception and memory are so tightly interlinked. It seems having an experience is impossible without memory. Because perception itself happens by contrasts. Without memory there is nothing to contrast against. It would essentially be a non-experience. Which is why it is said the samadhi state is a non-experience literally, but it greatly potentiates your waking life experiences almost converting you to a child again because of the deep contrast between nothingness and aliveness. You need to plunge into the depths of nothingness to feel supreme aliveness. Just like music can only be heard clearly only in the background of silence. In childhood that's why things seem so much more intense and more towards simplicity or black and white. In adulthood experiences start becoming more sublime, rich because now there is much greater variety in memory.

The interesting thing is we assume we don't know a zillion things in the world that we are yet to  learn, discover etc. The belief in the notion of growth is a fallacy in the absolute sense. We assume a child is born as a clean slate with extremely limited knowledge. As he or she grows up, we believe he is 'Becoming' and 'Accumulating knowledge'. The notion of 'becoming' and 'accumulation' is a another fallacy. When you look at the real picture, its more like only the movie that has changed, the brilliant projector light is eternally operating. It can show infinite diversity of experience like a projector can show infinite pictures but is using the same light. Experience is always whole. There is only the transcendental reality operating beyond time and space eternally. Time, space, memory, intellect, physical laws, scientific stuff, notion of a separate body, notion of other people, notion of success, notion of growth, achievement, accumulation, becoming etc. are all characteristics or properties of the movie. But its all ultimately white light which is you.

Every moment is whole

All experience is in one space. There is only one giant space in which everything appears and disappears. The sense of doership, I, desires, ordinary physical reality laws, dream laws, rationalizing, memory, intellect, feelings, all of them appear and disappear in this space. Every night as I sleep I go back to the 0 point of experience and get back energy to move on the experience wheel. The 0 point has to be the true source of energy. That's how we get energy from our sleep every night. The relaxation potentiates arousal/action, arousal potentiates relaxation/rest. Whatever is there in this moment, is everything there is, in this moment. In the next moment, its a different experiential space appears. Even moment can be observed this way and you will notice that the observer is always transcendent of the thing being observed. Even time and space can be observed in this manner and the observer of these phenomenon has to be beyond them. There is a certain height of awareness where you are eternally conscious and whole all the time. Infinite diversity in varying intensity can arise and pass, but consciousness is the white light of the movie projector, always projecting white light in essence and you are that very light. The projected light can create infinite pictures, but you are the light itself and not the pictures it creates.

The ultimate 0 point

We move in the direction of our own momentums. When people around me desire to have the same momentum, there is a union experienced. If I encounter a profoundly similar matrix of momentum, then I have a soul mate. If the momentum's are totally different, there is the experience of individuality (being and feeling distinct, separate). Individuality and Merger also move in cycles, and potentiate desire for each other. If you move too far into sameness, you want to be individual (distinct). If you move too far into being individual (distinctness, separateness) a longing arises for belonging, acceptance. It appears we all are moving towards the ultimate 0, balance point of experience (non-experience in a way since experience is by contrasts). This 0 point would be the 0 point from which all dualities stem forth. A multidimensional 0 point, just like in a graph we have 0 point for x, y and z axis. The 0 point is like a universal attraction singular point from which everything is bobbing, dancing back and forth like pendulums. Whenever any point moves far enough from the 0, it is pulled back with a force proportional to its distance from center. Greater the distance, greater the force. An absolute relaxation should bring everything to 0 like a waking sleep where only the pure substance is seen like white light.

About momentum/karma/habits and self

Each person has - different momentums, accumulations, habits, tendencies, drives, desires - but all stemming from the ground of being.

Its like seeing the entire universe as it is, from a safe distance i.e. seeing all potentials as points, seeing all the stars as equivalent points of light from that distance. The subtler ones would get invisible as you go higher, as you go lower, you would see the smaller planets but the nearby star like the sun would be so bright, it would prevent you from seeing other stars.

Everything is momentum. Outside expectations are certain milestone points on the spectrum of potential directions. Which 'direction set' to choose? If this changes often, it results in in-decision because there is no stable point of view or perception.

Every behavior at every moment you choose is adding momentum to that direction. You are creating momentum every second of your life. When enough momentum is accumulated in some directions the other potentials become very very subtle almost invisible. Like how the sun obscures the other stars in the night sky, we develop a pattern of high level movement representing our personality.

There is only 'Me' and 'My accumulations/karma'. If I dissolve my accumulations, then only I remain in my freedom. Psychedelics temporarily take you out into unfamiliar places. Your accumulations are your prison.

The doer is not constant, it arises and passes. Doer's are basically desires. Each desire is an 'I' that is driven to fulfill itself. There are multiple competing I's but continuously changing. The desire matrix is what is 'You' or what you call 'You'. A certain attachment to certain directions, a certain momentum, accumulation. It can be said that the desire matrix gives us our experience of the doer. In this matrix again, it is continuously changing, however at different rates.

For Example:
Broad changes - childhood, adolescent, early adulthood etc.
Medium changes - when you move to a new place, change jobs etc.
Immediate - your current mood and how talking to a new person suddenly changes it