What is the Meaning of Consciousness?
What is the meaning of consciousness? This is an absurd question. There is no answer, and there can never be an answer, because the question is absurd. Consciousness is the ultimate nature of existence. Consciousness is the true nature of being. In-and-of-itself, the only true thing that anyone can ever say about the existence of consciousness is that Consciousness Exists. It Is. In-and-of-itself, the existence of consciousness has no meaning. The existence of consciousness has no meaning since it exists prior to the giving of all meaning by consciousness. Only consciousness can give meaning.
Only actions have meaning. Consciousness gives meaning to actions as it expresses and observes them. Only consciousness can express actions as it expresses energy, and only then can it give meaning to those actions. Only consciousness can give meaning to the actions it expresses and observes as it expresses the energy inherent in those actions. In-and-of-itself, without the expression of that energy and the expression of those actions, consciousness does nothing. It gives no meaning if it expresses no actions. Consciousness must express actions before it can give any meaning to the actions that it expresses.
Consciousness can only give meaning to actions in the context of the energy it expresses as it observes those actions. As a corollary, if no actions are expressed and no meaning is given, then nothing is observed.
Confusion arises because there is a third level of reality that is below the ultimate primary level of reality, which is the existence of consciousness, and the secondary level of reality, which is the expression of energy by consciousness. The third lowest level of reality is the level of information that is organized into forms of information as energy is expressed. Those forms of information are animated by the expression of energy and are what appear to carry out those actions. Those forms of information are like images projected from a computer screen to the point of view of the consciousness of the observer that perceives them. Confusion only arises as those forms of information are projected like images from a computer screen to the point of view of the observer and are animated in the flow of energy that energizes the computer. Confusion arises in the consciousness of the observer as the observer gives meaning to that animation.
The Observer, the Screen and the Thing
The third level of reality is purely imaginary since it is no more real than the animated images of a movie projected from a computer screen to the observer, just like a computer generated virtual reality. Consciousness is the observer out in the movie audience that is only watching the virtual reality movie displayed on the computer screen and only playing the virtual reality game as it expresses the energy that animates the game, but the whole thing feels real to consciousness as it perceives the flow of energy it expresses as it animates the virtual reality movie. The expression of energy feels real to consciousness because consciousness is expressing that energy. That is the meaning that consciousness gives to its own actions as it expresses them.
Confusion arises because consciousness identifies itself with an animated form of information that appears in the virtual reality. Self-identification can only occur because consciousness feels self-limited to that animated form as it perceives the flow of energy that it is expressing that animates that form. Self-identification is the meaning consciousness gives to the expression of its own actions as it animates that form. Consciousness takes the animated form to be itself as it perceives that form and feels self-limited to that form. Self-identification is nothing more than a mistaken feeling of self-limitation. Consciousness is conflating its own true being with an imaginary form of information that appears in the virtual reality movie it creates for itself, just like a dreamer that identifies itself with a dream character that appears in the dream the dreamer is dreaming.
In reality, the imaginary form of information has no being. The imaginary form of information can only appear to have being when consciousness identifies itself with that form. The whole thing is delusional since it is only based on a mistaken perception. Consciousness believes itself to be something that it perceives, which is the imaginary dream character that appears in the dream that it is dreaming. Only consciousness is real and has being. The imaginary form of information is unreal and has no being. This state of affairs is perfectly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita:
The unreal has no being. The real never ceases to be.
Remarkably, modern physics has recently discovered a way to scientifically understand this strange state of affairs based on the holographic principle of quantum gravity. This website is an exploration of what the holographic principle is telling us about the true nature of reality.
Continue reading on this website or see the PDF documents listed below:
What Does Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower Really Mean
All Movies Are A Footnote To The Matrix
The Holographic Principle and the Nature of Reality
Osho’s Path in the Journey of Awakening_ Surrender and Let Go
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God Exists, but the Presence of God Does Not Exist
When people speak about sensing the presence of God, they are using all the right words in the right way, but their orientation is all wrong. Their orientation is childish. They are taking the position of a child in relation to its father. When they speak of the presence of God, they are taking the wrong orientation and making a mistake. The presence they speak about is their own presence.
The beingness of that presence is called I Am because it is the true nature of what one is. One is that presence of consciousness that is perceiving one’s own world. One is perceiving one’s own world from the center of that world. That world is like a movie that one is watching as images of the movie are projected from a movie screen to one’s central point of view. One is not really in the movie. One is out in the movie audience at the central point of view of one’s own world, as images of that world are projected to one’s point of view from the movie screen. The presence that one is aware of is one’s own presence out in the movie audience. That’s what one really is. One is nothing more than a spiritual presence of consciousness. One’s character in the movie, which is called a person, is not what one really is. One is not a person. One is a spiritual presence of consciousness aware of the life of the person and the world the person lives within, but that’s all a part of the movie one is watching. When one takes oneself to be a person in that world and becomes aware of one’s own presence as the presence of God, one is being childish.
One can only identify oneself with that person when one has a personal self-concept, but that self-concept is childish. One’s self-concept developed when one’s body was about two years old in the emotional context of how one’s family was structured. One’s self-concept developed in the context of one’s immature emotional attachment to one’s parents or other caregivers. By its very nature, the personal self-concept is an immature or childish thing. This development is natural for a two year old child, but is abnormal when one is no longer a child. One needs to grow up and grow out of one’s immature personal self-concept. One needs to grow up and accept the presence that one is aware of is one’s own presence. That is the only true spiritual path. If one can’t accept this truth about oneself, one will always remain at the level of a child. As Saint Paul realized shortly before the death of his personal form, one needs to put away childish things.
To be clear about things, no one is denying the existence of God. God’s will directs events in the movie one is watching. The way the movie plays out and everything that appears to happen in the movie is an expression of God’s will. It is good to surrender to God’s will and put one’s trust in God’s will. If one expresses one’s own individual will and tries to control things or direct events in the movie one is watching in a personally biased way, one will only interfere with the expression of God’s will and make things worse for oneself. God’s will is always for the best.
One’s surrender to God’s will is the only way one can become aware of oneself as a spiritual presence of consciousness at the center of one’s own world. As long as one tries to control things or direct events in the movie one is watching in a personally biased or self-defensive way, one will identify oneself with the form of the person one takes oneself to be, and one will remain oblivious to one’s own presence as a spiritual being. The first step in becoming aware of one’s own presence is one’s surrender to God’s will. There is no other way of becoming aware of oneself. When one surrenders to God’s will, one undergoes a death-rebirth transformation, as one’s identity dies to one’s personal self-concept and is reborn of the spirit.
God is the Source of one’s individual spiritual being as a spiritual presence of consciousness. As the book of Genesis tells us, God divided that individual spiritual being from God’s undivided being when one’s world was created. A world can only be created when the individual spiritual being of a spiritual presence of consciousness is divided from God’s undivided being, since that is the only way that world can appear to come into existence as one perceives it from the central point of view of that world. One can only reunite oneself with God when that world disappears from existence. When one’s world disappears from existence from one’s own point of view, one’s individual spiritual being returns to and reunites itself with God’s undivided being like a separated drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean.
To reunite oneself with God, one has to go beyond one’s own individual spiritual being and presence. The One Being of God is an undivided being. To reunite oneself with God, one has to go beyond one’s own individual spiritual being as a spiritual presence of consciousness. The One Being of God is beyond I Am.
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Why the Old Physicalism Paradigm is False and Science only has Validity in a New One-World-per-Observer Paradigm
Universal Observer
The basic problem with modern physics, specifically with the way quantum theory is interpreted by almost all physicists, is the problem of assuming that multiple observers exist in the same observable world. This assumption is a paradigm about the nature of the world, which is flawed in the sense of logical inconsistencies inherent within the paradigm. The only way to resolve the logical inconsistencies of this conventional paradigm, as Amanda Gefter realized in her book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn, is to adopt a new paradigm. The one-world-per-observer paradigm inherent in the holographic principle is this new paradigm. The basic idea of this new paradigm is that every observer has its own world defined on its own holographic screen. The observer’s holographic screen can only arise as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference, and so that screen is inherently observer-dependent. The observer’s screen is where all the fundamental qubits of information are encoded for everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world. In the sense of thermodynamics, the qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom for everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world. There is only a false impression that multiple observers exist in the same observable world due to information sharing among overlapping holographic screens. This state of information sharing can only arise from consistency relations between the way entangled qubits of information are encoded on differing but overlapping holographic screens. These consistency relations are the essence of the entanglement problem that characterizes the mathematical structure of a holographic world.
Information Sharing Among Overlapping Bounding Surfaces of Space Create the Appearance of Multiple Observers Sharing a Consensual Reality
The problem with the old paradigm of assuming multiple observers exist in the same observable world are the paradoxes of quantum theory made apparent by the Schrodinger cat paradox or the Wigner friend paradox. Physicists would like to assume that they are each an independent observer that can independently make measurements in the same observable world, but that is the false assumption that leads to all the paradoxes of quantum theory. Each physicist falsely assumes they can each independently observe the same observable world. The problem is quantum theory tells us that whatever the thing is that is being measured in any experiment only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement or observation of that thing occurs. Quantum theory tells us the quantum state of the measuring apparatus is entangled with the thing being measured, and so the total system of the thing being measured and measuring apparatus also only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement occurs. All the atoms and molecules inside the body and the brain of the physicist that performs the experiment are also entangled with the thing being measured and the measuring apparatus, and so the total system of the thing being measured, the measuring apparatus, and the body and the brain of the experimentalist performing the experiment are all entangled, which means the quantum state of all this stuff only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement occurs. Who is actually making the observation? Who is the observer?
The old conventional paradigm of modern physics can never answer this question. There is no place for an observer in this paradigm, which is why most scientists who work in neuroscience and artificial intelligence want to convince us that consciousness is an illusion. These scientists are all physicalists who believe in the physicalism paradigm that only the observable physical world has its own inherent physical reality. They do not acknowledge any other reality. The problem of the physicalism paradigm is that there is no place for the consciousness of the observer in physical reality, and so they deny the existence of consciousness. As far as they’re concerned, the observer doesn’t really exist because consciousness doesn’t really exist. This is the inevitable conclusion they have to come to when they falsely assume that only an observable physical world really exists, and that multiple observers appearing to exist within that world is only a big illusion. In order to continue to believe in their physicalism paradigm, they have to come to the conclusion that the apparent existence of conscious observers is an illusion. In one sense, they are right. Conscious observers do not really exist inside an observable physical world.
This conclusion that consciousness is an illusion is very odd since each of us as the observer of our own world knows that we exist as the observer of that world. Each of us is aware of our own existence in terms of our own observing consciousness. In the sense of solipsism, the only thing that we can know with absolute certainty is that we exist, and we know that because each of us has the sense of our own existence as we observe our own observable world. Each of us has the sense of being present for our own observable world, and that sense of being present, often called I Am, verifies our own existence as the observer of that world. At the most fundamental level possible, it is the existence of our own consciousness that we are each aware of with our own sense of being present to observe our own observable world, and yet all the scientists that buy into the logically inconsistent physicalism paradigm want to convince us that the apparent existence of our consciousness is an illusion. They are so emotionally invested in the physicalism paradigm that has no place for the existence of consciousness that they would rather deny the existence of consciousness than abandon this old discredited paradigm.
The irony is that modern physics is pointing to a new paradigm that resolves all the paradoxes and logical inconsistencies of the old physicalism paradigm. In the last 25 years, modern physics has discovered the holographic principle of quantum gravity, which resolves all the paradoxes. The holographic principle implies a new paradigm, which can be called the one-world-per-observer paradigm, that totally resolves all paradoxes and inconsistencies. This tells us that the consciousness of the observer does indeed exist, but that consciousness isn’t really in the observable physical world that the observer observes. The consciousness of the observer is only a presence of consciousness at the central point of view of its own holographic world. This paradigm turns the nature of illusion totally around. The consciousness of the observer isn’t the illusion that the physicalists would like us to falsely believe. The observable physical world is the holographic illusion.
The holographic principle fundamentally says that everything the observer can observe in its own observable holographic world can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on its own holographic screen, which is an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. To return for a moment to the measurement paradox inherent in quantum theory with the old conventional physicalism paradigm, the body and the brain of the experimentalist that performs the experiment can also be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. This is the new paradigm we have to accept with the holographic principle. Everything observable in a holographic world is reducible to information and energy, but the consciousness of the observer observing that world is not. Consciousness has its own independent existence. The holographic principle tells us that the true nature of existence is precisely the other way around from what the old physicalism paradigm told us. The apparent existence of a holographic world that is reducible to information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen and the flow of energy animating that world is dependent on the existence of the observer’s consciousness that has its own independent existence.
The natural way to understand how information is encoded on the observer’s event horizon is with non-commutative geometry, which explains how space-time geometry is quantized. Every quantized position coordinate on the observer’s event horizon is smeared out into an area element like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. These qubits of information are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom for everything the observer can observe in its holographic world, which is the nature of entropy. The nature of energy is the thermal energy inherent in each qubit of information, which fundamentally arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference as the Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon. That energy is inherent in the observer’s acceleration. Everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world is a holographic illusion in the sense that all those observable things can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s event horizon. Observable things are forms of information projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view and animated in the flow of energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The whole explanation is observer-dependent, which tells us that only the observer itself is fundamental to the explanation. This tells us that only the observer itself can have its own independent existence, which fundamentally is the existence of consciousness.
The Observer, the Screen and the Thing
The constancy of the speed of light for all observers, independent of their state of motion, is an essential aspect of a holographic universe. This is the basic reason an event horizon arises for an accelerating observer. When quantized bits of information, called qubits, are encoded on the observer’s event horizon, which is the case for all versions of quantum gravity, like M-theory or non-commutative geometry, the horizon acts as a holographic screen that defines the observer’s holographic world. The speed of light can be understood as the maximal rate of information transfer in three dimensional space, which is like the maximal rate of information transfer in a computer. This fact is woven into Einstein’s theory of relativity in terms of understanding how the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the world is similar to a Euclidean geometry, where there is a generalized version of the Pythagorean theorem. Unlike a Euclidean geometry, this 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry can become curved, which explains the nature of gravity, but there is still a version of the Pythagorean theorem that allows for measurement of distance in the geometry. Gravity has no natural length scale with which to measure distance, which gives gravity or space-time geometry a property called conformal symmetry. When gravity is quantized, conformal symmetry implies the inevitability of holography due to the encoding of qubits on a holographic screen. Basically, the 1/R2 force law for gravity implies holography whenever gravity waves are quantized into gravitons and each graviton is reduced to a qubit of information encoded on the observer’s event horizon that acts as its holographic screen.
The basic postulate of relativity theory is the principle of equivalence, which says the observer is understood as a point of view, which is the point of origin of a coordinate system that defines the observer’s frame of reference. That point of view always arises in relation to an event horizon whenever the observer is in accelerated motion or in an accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s accelerated point of view and its holographic screen, understood as an event horizon that encodes qubits of information, always arise together. Since the observer’s holographic screen encodes all the qubits of information for everything the observer can observe in its holographic world, which includes the observer’s body and brain, the observer’s point of view can only be understood as a focal point of pure consciousness. There is no other logical explanation. This also fits in perfectly with what enlightened beings like Nisargadatta Maharaj have to say about the nature of the world from their own direct experience.
Einstein’s theory of relativity, where the force of gravity is understood to arise as the curvature of space-time geometry, is really only built on the constancy of the speed of light, which implies a space-time geometry with a Pythagorean theorem to measure distances, and the lack of a natural length scale, which implies the conformal symmetry of gravity. When gravity is quantized, these two facts imply holography. The only natural way to generate holography is with an accelerating observer, which is understood as a point of view or focal point of pure consciousness, and the observer’s event horizon that acts as a holographic screen that encodes all the qubits of information for all the observable things the observer can observe in its holographic world.
The measurement of distance along some path through a space-time geometry with utilization of a generalized Pythagorean theorem, even when that space-time geometry is curved, is called proper-time, which is fundamental to the formulation of relativity theory. It turns out there is a deep connection between relativity theory and the quantum theory of point particles in terms of measuring distance along some path through space-time geometry. The most general way to formulate quantum theory is in terms of a sum over all possible paths. The quantum state of potentiality allows for all possible outcomes, not just the classical outcome. The way quantum theory expresses this potentiality is in terms of a quantum state that can always be formulated as a sum over all possible paths in some information configuration space.
Quantum State as the Sum Over All Possible Paths
The laws of physics only enter into the quantum state as an action principle, which determines quantum probability. Quantum probability is determined by the quantum wavefunction, which in turn is determined by an action principle. All the laws of physics can be expressed as an action principle. Action is like a measure of distance along some path between two points in some information configuration space. The most likely outcome in terms of quantum probability is the path of least action, which is like the shortest possible distance between those two points in the information configuration space. That’s why events seem to obey classical laws of physics, but there is an important caveat. The path of least action only arises from the quantum state when things are chosen from the quantum state of potentiality in an unbiased or random way. If there is bias in the way choices are made, then the laws of physics lose their classical predictability. In the sense of throwing dice, if the dice are loaded, the game is rigged and all bets are off.
This choice that chooses something from the quantum state of potentiality is called the collapse of the wavefunction or a quantum state reduction. Quantum theory tells us every measurement of something is a choice in the sense of collapsing the quantum wavefunction or reducing the quantum state. The quantum state of potentiality includes all possible outcomes. To actually measure some specific outcome, a choice must be made. Quantum theory says the choices are made randomly, but why can’t choices be made in a biased way? Who would make that choice?
The obvious answer is that the observer of the actual outcome of the measurement is making that choice. In the sense of perceiving consciousness, the observer is choosing what to observe in its own observable world. That world only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until it is observed by the observer and appears to come into an actual state of existence. This raises an even bigger question. What is the true nature of the observer?
In the sense of relativity theory, the observer is nothing more than a point of view at the origin of its own coordinate system. That’s what a frame of reference means in relativity theory. From the point of view of other observers, the observer is following a world-line through their space-time geometry, but from the observer’s own point of view, the observer is at the center of its own space-time geometry. Quantum theory is telling us with the concept that the measurement of something can only arise as the quantum state of potentiality is reduced to an actual observable state that every point on the observer’s world-line is a decision point about what to observe in its world and which path to follow through that world. Only the observer can make that choice.
The big question is about the true nature of the observer’s consciousness in relation to whatever the observer happens to observe in its world. This question explodes when that observable world is understood to be a holographic world. A holographic world is no more real than images projected from a holographic screen. Who is really observing those projected images? Can an image observe itself? The holographic principle gives the only logically possible answer, which is that the observer is nothing more than a pure point of perceiving consciousness that arises in relation to its own holographic screen. This answer is apparent when we try to unify quantum theory with relativity theory and quantize gravity, which leads us to the holographic principle.
The deep connection of quantum theory to relativity theory is that particle action can always be formulated in terms of proper-time, which measures distance along some path in a curved space-time geometry. The quantum field theory formulation of particle physics utilizes this connection to relativity theory, but can only be formulated in flat space-time geometry, which is called Minkowski space. By its very nature, all of particle physics as formulated by quantum field theory must assume that space-time geometry is flat, but then there is no force of gravity since gravity is nothing more than the curvature of space-time geometry.
The basic problem with trying to quantize gravity the same way particle physics is quantized with quantum field theory is that the quantum particle of that field theory must follow a path through a space-time geometry. For quantum gravity, that particle would be called the graviton. Quantizing gravity in this way would mean the graviton would follow a path through space-time geometry, but in the sense of quantum field theory, that is only possible if space-time geometry is flat. The problem is the graviton as the quantum particle of the field theory is supposed to give a representation of the curvature of space-time geometry, which is the nature of gravity, but the graviton itself has to follow a path through space-time geometry. There is a deep contradiction in this way of formulating how gravity is quantized. The only solution that has been found for how to resolve this logical contradiction is the holographic principle. Only the holographic principle allows for a logically consistent formulation of quantum gravity, but the price we have to pay for this logical consistency is a new way of understanding the nature of consciousness.
In relativity theory, an accelerated frame of reference is equivalent to the exertion of a force, which is known as the principle of equivalence. Any force, like the force of gravity, is equivalent to an observer’s acceleration, like an observer in a rocket-ship that accelerates through space. There is no way to distinguish the effect of an acceleration from the exertion of a force.
Principle of Equivalence
The fundamental nature of the universe is quantized bits of information, called qubits, which are encoded on a holographic screen. That’s what makes the universe a holographic universe. The holographic screen in turn is an event horizon that arises in an observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The accelerating observer’s event horizon is a bounding surface of space that limits the observer’s observation of things in space due to the constancy of the speed of light for all observers, independent of their individual state of motion. The observer’s event horizon is as far out in space as the observer can observe things in space. Every observer in an accelerated frame of reference has an event horizon that limits the observer’s observation of things in space.
Accelerating Observer’s Event Horizon
The easiest way to understand how qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s event horizon, which turns the horizon into a holographic screen, is with non-commutative geometry, which explains how space-time geometry is quantized. Each quantized position coordinate on the observer’s event horizon is smeared out into an area element like a pixel that encodes a quantized bit of information or qubit. In quantum gravity, the pixel size is called the Planck area.
Qubit as the Information Encoded on a Planck Size Event Horizon
Holographic Principle
This gives the observer’s event horizon an entropy as S=kn, where n is the number of qubits encoded on the event horizon, which is proportional to the surface area A of the horizon as n=A/4ℓ2 , where ℓ2=ħG/c3 is the Planck area. Each Planck area on the horizon acts like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. Non-commutative geometry fundamentally explains how the qubits are encoded on a holographic screen in terms of quantizing position coordinates on the screen, which smears out each quantized position coordinate into an area element like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. This value for entropy of the observer’s event horizon given in terms of the number of qubits encoded on the horizon is called the holographic principle.
The holographic principle says that every accelerating observer has its own holographic world defined on its own holographic screen that arises as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s holographic screen is where all the qubits of information for everything observable in the observer’s world are encoded. Things don’t really exist in three dimensional space. Everything observable in three dimensional space is a holographic illusion that arises as a holographic form of information for that thing is projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen, which is a two dimensional bounding surface of space, to the observer’s central point of view in space, which always arises in relation to that holographic screen. The observation of things appearing in three dimensional space is a holographic illusion that results from holographic projection. This even applies to elementary particles, like photons and electrons. All the fundamental qubits of information for an elementary particle are encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer’s observation of an elementary particle, like anything else it can observe in its holographic world, is only the observation of a form of information projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. Everything observable arises through holographic projection.
The energy that flows through the observer’s holographic world also arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. This energy is given in terms of the Unruh temperature as E=kT, which is proportional to the observer’s acceleration, a, as kT=ħa/2πc. The Unruh temperature arises as the temperature of thermal radiation the accelerating observer observes emitted from its event horizon. This thermal radiation arises from separation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs at the event horizon as observed by the observer in its accelerated frame of reference.
Hawking Radiation
Thermal radiation appears to be radiated away from the accelerating observer’s event horizon, which is called Hawking radiation, but is only observed by the accelerating observer. Hawking radiation is confusing since it mixes up concepts of the holographic principle with the quantum field theory formulation of point particles. In quantum field theory, uncertainty in energy allows virtual particle-antiparticle pairs to become created within the vacuum state for a short period of time. The virtual pairs are created out of nothing and then normally annihilate back into nothing, but from the point of view of an accelerated observer, something weird appears to happen. The accelerated observer’s observations of things in space are limited by its event horizon. At the observer’s event horizon, the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs can appear to separate. One member of the pair can disappear behind the event horizon while the other member of the pair can appear to be radiated away from the event horizon toward the observer. The observer observes this radiated particle as a particle of thermal radiation, which gives its event horizon an apparent temperature. The observer’s event horizon is acting as a holographic screen that encodes qubits of information for all the point particles that can appear in the observer’s world through holographic projection, but the separation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs at that event horizon gives the observer’s event horizon an apparent temperature that’s proportional to the observer’s acceleration. In quantum field theory, the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are entangled. This implies the entropy of the observer’s event horizon is an entanglement entropy. This is consistent with the holographic principle as understood with non-commutative geometry since all the qubits of information encoded on the observer’s event horizon are also entangled.
The idea of quantum entanglement is inherent in the holographic principle as understood with non-commutative geometry. All the quantized bits of information or qubit encoded on an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen are inherently entangled, which is understood in terms of matrices. Quantum entanglement allows qubits to be defined in a rotationally invariant way. This is much like the way quantum theory defines spin ½ particles in terms of a 2×2 SU(2) matrix. The SU(2) matrix gives a representation of rotational symmetry on the surface of a sphere, but its two eigenvalues also define spin up and spin down states. These two spin states give a representation of information in a binary code, like a switch that is either on or off. The spin up and spin down states are like vectors that point up or down, but when these spin states are entangled, the vector can point in any direction, and so rotational symmetry is preserved. With the holographic principle, the n qubits of information encoded on a spherically symmetric holographic screen can be defined by the n eigenvalues of an nxn SU(2) matrix.
This tells us that the n qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen are fundamentally entangled with each other. A holographic world defined by the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen is fundamentally a world where everything is connected to everything else at the level of quantum entanglement. A holographic world is inherently holistically connected.
Black Hole
The holographic principle is telling us about a peculiar symmetry that’s inherent to the nature of gravity. This symmetry is called conformal symmetry, which is the symmetry of objects that appear self-similar when observed at different length scales. Conformal symmetry expresses invariance of the laws of physics as the space-time metric is transformed with a new length scale. The law of gravity as reflected by Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric has no inherent length scale. This gives rise to the gravitational acceleration of a massive body that falls off as 1/R2 at a radial distance R from the massive body. The holographic principle was first discovered for black holes, which are defined by an event horizon of radius R. At the event horizon, the acceleration due to gravity is a=GM/R2, where M is the mass of the black hole and R is the radius of its event horizon. A stationary observer hovering outside the event horizon of a black hole must accelerate away from the black hole with an equal but opposite acceleration to maintain its stationary position. The Unruh temperature of the event horizon as observed by the accelerating observer, kT=ħa/2πc, is proportional to the observer’s acceleration a=GM/R2. The entropy, S=kn=kA/4ℓ2, of the event horizon is proportional to its surface area A=4πR2.
Black Hole Entropy
The event horizon of a black hole is a special spherical surface where the escape velocity from that surface is the speed of light. A simple way to calculate the radius of the event horizon using classical concepts is to equate the kinetic energy of a particle of mass m moving away from a mass M with a velocity v, KE=½mv2, with the gravitational potential energy of that particle at a distance R from the mass M, PE=GmM/R. With escape velocity, the mass m has just enough kinetic energy to overcome the gravitational attraction of the mass M. This determines escape velocity as v2=2GM/R. If we equate v=c, we find the radius of the event horizon is R=2GM/c2, which is to say the escape velocity at the event horizon of a black hole is the speed of light.
Schwarzschild Radius
It’s not a coincidence that the entropy of the event horizon behaves like R2 while the Unruh temperature behaves like 1/R2. The total energy of the black hole is given in terms of its mass as E=Mc2. The laws of thermodynamics relate a change in total energy to temperature and a change in entropy as ΔE=TΔS. In terms of the holographic principle, the fundamental reason for this relation between energy and entropy is each qubit of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen inherently carries an amount of thermal energy E=kT given in terms of the Unruh temperature. At thermal equilibrium, each qubit carries an equal amount of thermal energy. Each qubit of information is a fundamental dynamical degree of freedom for the observer’s holographic world. The equal partition of energy tells us that each dynamical degree of freedom, which is a qubit of information, carries an equal amount of energy E=kT at thermal equilibrium, which defines temperature. As more qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, more energy is inherent in that holographic world.
The key idea is the entropy of the event horizon is an area law that behaves like R2, while the Unruh temperature of the event horizon is an acceleration that behaves like 1/R2, and so these two factors cancel each other out in the thermodynamic relation between energy and entropy, ΔE=TΔS. We’re assuming three dimensional space where the surface area of a spherical event horizon is proportional to R2. There’s a simple physical explanation for why the acceleration due to gravity behaves like 1/R2. If we imagine the force of gravity is due to the exchange of a force particle called the graviton and that a mass acts like a point source of gravitons constantly emitted in all directions, then the total flux of gravitons that pass through a spherical surface of radius R must be constant, and so the force of gravity falls off as 1/R2. The force of gravity between two masses is proportional to the number of gravitons exchanged and falls off as 1/R2 since the total flux of gravitons passing through a spherical surface is constant.
The speed of light is also the speed that a graviton travels through space since the graviton is a massless particle, like the photon. The idea of the holographic principle is to encode qubits of information for gravitons on the surface of an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen. In order to keep the flux of gravitons through the surface constant, independent of the radius of the surface, the number of pixels on the surface, each of which encodes a qubit of information, must be proportional to the surface area. The holographic principle reflects the total flux of gravitons through a spherical surface is constant when the gravitons are emitted from a point source at the center of that surface, which implies the 1/R2 force law, and that each graviton can be reduced to a qubit of information encoded on the special surface of an event horizon, which implies the area law for entropy. Entropy is the total number, n=A/4ℓ2, of qubits encoded on the event horizon needed to characterize all the gravitons. The acceleration due to gravity enters into the Unruh temperature as a way to insure that the laws of thermodynamics are satisfied.
The holographic principle gives a perfectly good explanation for how the observer’s world is created in terms of the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Everything the observer can observe in its world arises through holographic projection, as a form of information is projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The observer’s holographic screen always arises as an event horizon in its own accelerated frame of reference. That event horizon acts as a holographic screen in the sense of encoding qubits of information, which are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom of its holographic world. Everything perceivable in its holographic world is a form of information constructed out of qubits encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. Even the flow of energy that animates those forms of information is inherent in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference in the sense of thermodynamics and the Unruh temperature of its event horizon.
Expansion of Space
The idea of creation of the universe in a big bang is based on the idea of the expansion of space. As is well known, the expansion of space implies a cosmic horizon that limits the observations of the observer at the central point of view of that bounding surface of space. The holographic principle tells us the observer’s cosmic horizon defines its world whenever space expands. Inherent in the big bang is the idea the observer’s world increases in size as space expands. This implies the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius as the observer’s world increases in size. As the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius, its Unruh temperature cools, which explains the normal flow of heat in the observer’s world as heat flows from hotter to colder objects. This also explains the second law of thermodynamics which says entropy tends to increase as heat flows in a thermal gradient. As the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius, its Unruh temperature cools, but its surface area increases, which implies the entropy of the observer’s world increases even as its world cools, since more qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s cosmic horizon.
Normal Flow of Energy Through the Observer’s Perceivable World
Everything perceivable arises through holographic projection. Even the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the world arises through holographic projection. Just like all other perceivable things, space-time geometry can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, and the perception of space-time geometry is no more real than forms of information projected like images from the screen to the observer’s central point of view. The space-time geometry the observer observes in its world has no independent existence. If the observer doesn’t observe it, that space-time geometry doesn’t really exist. Everything the observer observes in its world, including the space-time geometry of that world, is dependent on the observer’s observation of it before it can appear to come into existence. If the observer does not observe it, it does not exist, except in the sense of an unobserved state of potentiality. That’s what quantum theory tells us. The observation of space-time geometry, just like anything else the observer can observe, is only an illusion of existence in the sense of holographic projection.
Most physicists cannot accept this state of affairs since space-time geometry, like everything else that can be perceived in the world, appears to obey computational rules. The space-time geometry of the observer’s world appears to obey the computational rules inherent in Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. How can something that’s not really real and doesn’t really exist obey computational rules? The simple answer is, that’s the inherent nature of a holographic world. The holographic appearance of that world is constructed out of the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, and that holographic construction process obeys computational rules, like the rules that govern the operation of a computer. The computational rules that govern the holographic appearance of the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the observer’s world aren’t even exact. These rules arise as thermodynamic equations of state and are only an approximation with a limited range of validity in the sense of thermodynamics, which only gives an approximate thermal average description of the observer’s world.
When the observer observes a particle located at some position in space and the motion of that particle through space over the course of time, the observer is really only observing a form of information projected like an image from its own holographic screen to its own point of view and animated over a sequence of holographic projections, just like the animation of the projected images of a movie from a computer screen to an observer. The reason we can say this with confidence is because all of particle physics can be formulated in terms of quantum field theory, and we can deduce all of quantum field theory from the holographic principle.
Einstein’s Field Equations for the Space-time Metric
To begin with, we can deduce Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric, which is the nature of gravity, from the holographic principle. Einstein’s field equations are thermodynamic equations of state that arise from the laws of thermodynamics that relate energy to entropy and temperature, ΔE=TΔS. Ted Jacobson has shown how this derivation goes forward in terms of the area law for the entropy, S=kn=kA/4ℓ2, of an event horizon and the Unruh temperature of that event horizon, kT=ħa/2πc, as observed by the accelerating observer in its accelerated frame of reference. As heat flows across a bounding surface of space, the total energy of that bounded region of space must change, which implies a change in the entropy of that bounded region of space. The holographic principle then tells us the area of the bounding surface must change, which implies a change in the geometry of the bounded region. Jacobson showed this change in the geometry of the bounded region is described by Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. Einstein’s field equations only have the validity of a thermodynamic equation of state. Once we have Einstein’s field equations, all quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics can then be deduced as extra components of the space-time metric with the usual unification mechanisms of extra compactified dimensions of space and super-symmetry. The whole quantum field theory formulation of particle physics and the relativistic space-time geometry formulation of gravity can therefore be deduced from the holographic principle.
All we really need to explain the quantum field theory formulation of particle physics and the relativistic space-time geometry formulation of gravity is an observer in an accelerated frame of reference, which gives rise to an event horizon. Apply non-commutative geometry to that event horizon as a way to quantize position coordinates on the horizon, and we have an explanation for how to generate all the qubits of information that describe everything in a holographic world. This not only includes all the so-called elementary particles of that world that underlie the electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, but also the space-time geometry of that world that underlies the effect of gravity. Everything observable in that world is a projected form of information animated in the flow of energy. In the sense of holographic projection, the forms are projected like images from a holographic screen to the observer’s central point of view that arises in space relative to the screen and are animated in the flow of energy, like the animated frames of a movie. The Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon also gives us a thermodynamic explanation for how energy flows through that holographic world. The Unruh temperature feeds back into the point particle formulation of quantum theory since it arises from the apparent separation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs at the event horizon as observed by the observer in its accelerated frame of reference. The only thing that really seems to be fundamental to the explanation is the observer itself. The holographic principle is telling us that only the observer itself has its own independent existence, which fundamentally is the existence of consciousness.
Only the observer itself can have its own independent existence, but we’d like to go further and understand the true nature of that existence. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of consciousness that’s present at the center of its own holographic world, but where does that presence of consciousness come from? This is where the void comes into the story. The void is the true nature of potentiality. The void can also be called the ultimate nature of existence or the ground of being, which is the potentiality for things to come into existence. As the ground of being, the void is the ultimate nature of reality. In-and-of-itself, the void only exists in the sense of absolute nothingness, but that nothingness is the potentiality for things to come into existence. The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information inherent in a holographic world. The void is the ultimate nature of reality, and the holographic world it creates is a lesser form of reality, like a virtual reality. That virtual reality comes into existence because of the creation of the information and energy that underlies all observable things. These things not only include what physicists call elementary particles, but also the space-time geometry those observable things appear to exist within. Even the space-time geometry of a holographic world is observable, and in some sense is just another observable thing that can be reduced to information and energy. The space-time geometry of a holographic world is reducible to the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen and the flow of energy through that holographic world just like everything else observable in that holographic world.
The way this creation process goes forward is in terms of the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s acceleration is where the energy comes from that animates the observer’s holographic world. The void is the potentiality to create the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The easiest way to understand how the void creates this energy is in terms of the expansion of space, which is the nature of dark energy. The expansion of space always gives rise to an event horizon with the observer at the central point of view of that bounding surface of space. The easiest way to understand how the void creates information is in terms of non-commutative geometry, which is a way to encode qubits of information on the observer’s event horizon that turns into its holographic screen.
The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information inherent in a holographic world, but where does the consciousness of the observer come from? The simplest answer is the consciousness of the observer also comes from the void. The void is the potentiality to give rise to the consciousness of the observer. The void is also consciousness, but it is a more fundamental kind of consciousness than the observer’s consciousness. The consciousness of the observer is an individual or divided kind of consciousness, while the void is undivided consciousness. The void is the potentiality for the observer’s consciousness to come into existence in the sense that the individual consciousness of the observer must be divided from the undivided consciousness of the void before the observer’s holographic world can appear to come into existence and be observed by the observer. The observation of that world is always limited by an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen.
The consciousness of the observer is not only divided, but it is also limited, while the consciousness of the void is unlimited and undivided. Only the observer’s consciousness can observe things in its own holographic world. Each such observation of something by the observer is the observation of a form of information projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The consciousness of the void observes nothing because it has no holographic screen. The observer’s holographic screen is always a limitation of consciousness that can only arise in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference as an observation limiting event horizon. Only an observer can observe things in its own holographic world. This only becomes possible when the divided consciousness of the observer is limited by a holographic screen. The unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void observes nothing, and yet the void is the potentiality to create a holographic world and give rise to the consciousness of the observer that observes that holographic world from the central point of view of that world. This creation process can only appear to happen within the void if the consciousness of the observer is divided from the undivided consciousness of the void and that point of consciousness then enters into an accelerated frame of reference that gives rise to the limitation of a holographic screen that defines the observer’s holographic world.
The key concept of the one-world-per-observer paradigm inherent in the holographic principle is that the observer’s holographic world can only be created within the void through the construction of a holographic screen as the observer enters into an accelerated frame of reference, but before that creation can occur, the consciousness of the observer must be divided from the undivided consciousness of the void. The only reason the observer is unaware of the void is because the observer’s attention is totally focused on itself and its world. The process of the observer shifting the focus of its attention away from itself and its world, and back onto its source, is called awakening, as in awakening from a dream.
This relationship of the void to the observer is like the relationship of a dreamer to its dream. The unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void, which observes nothing, is the source of the limited and divided consciousness of the observer that observes its own holographic world. That holographic world is the dream, and the void is the dreamer. The consciousness of the observer is a divided fragment of the undivided consciousness of the void. The fragmented consciousness of the observer must be separated from the unfragmented consciousness of the void for that holographic world to appear to come into existence and be observed by the observer. The fragmented consciousness of the observer is always connected to its source in that this state of separation can come to an end at any moment and the divided consciousness of the observer can return to and reunite itself with the undivided consciousness of the void.
This state of reunion can be understood as an ultimate state of free fall in which the observer’s holographic world disappears from existence. The observer has no holographic screen in an ultimate state of free fall since it has no event horizon that limits its observations. Ironically, when there is no limitation of consciousness, there is also nothing to observe, and there is no separation. The void is this unlimited and undivided primordial state of consciousness, which is a state of pure potentiality. When that potentiality is expressed, an observable holographic world appears to come into existence and the consciousness of the observer becomes divided from the undivided consciousness of the void so that the observer can observe its own world. When that potentiality is not expressed, only the unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void exists. In that ultimate state of existence, nothing is observed. The void is that absolute nothingness, which in the sense of potentiality, is the true nature of what I am, you are, and everything is.
Atman-Brahman
How is the observer’s ultimate state of free fall even possible? The answer is the observer must be present to observe its own observable holographic world. Being present for its world means the observer must focus its attention on that world. If the observer withdraws its attention away from that world and is not present to observe that world, that world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. Both the form of all things in that world and the flow of energy through that world remain in an unobserved state of potentiality. Without the expression of that energy, the observer no longer is in an accelerated frame of reference, but instead enters into an ultimate state of free fall. In this ultimate state of free fall, the observer no longer observes a holographic world. The observer’s holographic world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view. In the language of nonduality, this ultimate state of free fall is described as falling into the void. In this ultimate state of free fall, the observer’s individual existence, which is its own divided sense of being present or I-Am-ness, dissolves back into the undivided being of the void like a drop of water dissolves back into the ocean. This oceanic experience is the nature of the observer realizing the truth of what it really is, which is the truth of its own being.
What about mathematical truth? Mathematical truth is inherent in the potentiality of the void to create geometry. As mathematicians have long known, all mathematical truths are geometrical in nature. Great mathematicians have been Platonists in the sense they know they only discover the mathematical truths inherent in the potentiality to create geometry. Geometrical mathematical truth is what underlies the geometric creation of the holographic illusion of a holographic world.
This way of understanding the holographic principle has no logical inconsistencies or paradoxes. It is completely consistent with everything we know about modern physics, and is really the only way modern physics can be understood in a logically consistent way. The other great advantage of this way of understanding the holographic principle is it’s totally consistent with what enlightened beings like Nisargadatta Maharaj tell us about the true nature of reality. Enlightened beings have directly experienced the true nature of reality. They have returned to the ultimate state of existence and come back to the world to tell us what is real and what is illusion.
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Disclaimer and Note of Qualification
Modern physics has solved the hard problem of consciousness in a fundamental way. The solution is inherent in the recently discovered holographic principle of quantum gravity. The irony is, this solution isn’t a scientific solution, but is a spiritual solution. To paraphrase Shankara, the world is a holographic world, which is a holographic illusion. The limited and divided consciousness of the observer of that world, which Shankara calls Atman, is ultimately no different than the unlimited and undivided consciousness of the source of that world, which Shankara calls Brahman and correctly identifies as the only truth. It is the truth of what you are.
Explanations are never satisfying. The only value in explanations is the dissatisfaction you feel when you understand the explanation, which motivates you to go further than the explanation. Your consciousness is the part of you that understands the explanation, but becomes dissatisfied when it only understands the explanation. To go further, you have to go into the beingness of your consciousness. Only the direct experience of that beingness can truly satisfy what you want to know, which is what you truly are. That experience of the beingness of your consciousness is always beyond any explanation that your consciousness can understand. You have to go further than any possible explanation to know what you really are.
Nisargadatta Maharaj gives a perfect description of this relation of the potentiality of the void (pure being), which gives rise to the perceiving consciousness of the observer’s central point of view (the witness), to the observer’s perceivable (reflected from a bounding surface of space) holographic world:
In pure being consciousness arises.
In consciousness the world appears and disappears.
Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. The center is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing.
But the void is full to the brim.
It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.
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Absolute Nothingness: Do Nothing, Be Nothing, Know Nothing: The Path of Awakening
Awakening isn’t about doing anything or knowing anything. It certainly isn’t about becoming anything. Awakening is only about knowing the absolute nothingness that is the truth of what one really is. In order to awaken to that absolute truth, one has to become willing to do nothing and to be nothing before one can know that nothingness.
Awakening is called awakening because everything one knows about is no more real than what appears to happen in a dream. The world one perceives is no more real than a dream that one is dreaming. The person one takes oneself to be in that world is no more real than a character in that dream. Everything one’s character can do in that world is no more real than what appears to happen in a dream. Everything one can appear to become in that world is no more real than a character in a dream. Knowing about what appears to happen in a dream has nothing to do with awakening from the dream. Awakening is only about awakening to the truth of what one really is. One is the dreamer of the dream. Everything one knows about is part of the dream. The true nature of the dreamer dreaming the dream is absolute nothingness. One awakens to the truth of what one is when one knows that absolute nothingness. To know that absolute nothingness, one must become willing to be nothing. To be nothing, one must become willing to do nothing.
If one is really serious about awakening, one only needs to do these three simple things, which paradoxically, is the same as doing nothing:
Surrender. One needs to lose one’s personal bias in one’s focus of attention. That personal bias is always self-defensive, since it defends the survival of one’s personal self-concept with the expression of the survival emotions of fear and desire, which is one’s desire to control things in a personally biased self-defensive way. The only way one can lose that personal bias in the way one focuses one’s attention and expresses emotions is if one surrenders to divine will. One has to put one’s trust in divine will to sort out what is for the best and accept everything as it is every moment with no desire that anything be any different than it is in the moment. One has to stop trying to control things in a self-defensive way and stop interfering with the normal flow of things. One has to relax and allow things to play out in the normal way, which allows the flow of energy through one’s body to come into alignment with the normal flow of things through one’s world.
That’s how one feels connected. One’s expression of personally biased self-defensive survival emotions is how one feels disconnected and self-limited, which leads one to identify oneself with the personal form of one’s body. One knows one is in a deep state of surrender when one feels connected. In a deep state of surrender, one no longer feels self-limited to a body and no longer identifies oneself with a body. In a deep state of surrender, one can only know oneself to be a spiritual presence of consciousness at the center of one’s own world that perceives things as things play out in the normal way. One doesn’t have to do anything to surrender. One only has to stop defending oneself and stop trying to control things. One simply watches as things play out in the normal way while one does nothing in the world that one perceives.
Surrender deals with the primitive survival emotions of fear and desire. The survival of a body in the world depends on the expression of survival emotions of fear and desire that defend body survival. A body must express these emotions if that body is to survive in the world. When that emotional expression becomes personally biased, one feels self-limited to the personal form of a body and identifies oneself with that body form. One can only stop identifying oneself with the personal form of one’s body and bring that personal self-identification to an end if one loses personal bias in one’s focus of attention, which can only happen if one surrenders to divine will and gives up the desire to control things in a personally biased self-defensive way.
Detachment. Surrender is a necessary first step in the awakening process, but to go further, one has to become willing to detach oneself from things. Detachment deals with the social emotions of emotional attachments, which are also survival emotions in the sense that they defend the survival of the immature body of a child within a social context. The emotional attachment of the child to its caregivers is necessary for the survival of the child’s immature body that is incapable of fending for itself. By their very nature, emotional attachments are immature since they defend the survival of the immature body of a child within a social context. These immature emotional attachments always occur within a social context of self and other. That emotional context is how the personal self-concept is emotionally constructed, as the personal concept of self is emotionally related to the concept of another. By its very nature, the personal self-concept is immature. The personal self-concept can only become constructed within the social context of immature emotional attachments. The personal self-concept naturally develops when the child is around two years old, which tells us the personal self-concept is an immature thing.
When one attaches oneself to something, one is being immature like a baby that attaches itself to its mother. When one tries to control things in the emotional context of one’s attachment to others, one’s self-defensive actions are acts of futility, since one is trying to control the normal flow of things through one’s world, which is not under one’s control. One is only creating more frustration for oneself when one tries to control what can’t be controlled. When one attaches oneself to things, one is emotionally reinforcing one’s personal self-concept, which is always created in an emotional relationship of one’s personal self-concept to the concept of another.
Surrender deals with the primitive survival emotions of fear and desire. One also has to deal with the social emotions of emotional attachments. The only way one can deconstruct one’s personal self-concept is if one stops expressing personally biased survival emotions, which one does through a process of surrender and emotional detachment. One surrenders so one can lose the self-defensive personal bias of primitive survival emotions. One detaches oneself from things so one can lose the personal bias of the social emotions of emotional attachments.
When one severs an emotional attachment, it always feels like something dies inside since part of one’s personal self-concept dies away. One can only awaken if one’s personal self-concept dies away since that’s the only way one can lose one’s personal bias in one’s focus of attention, and that can only happen if one stops expressing personally biased survival emotions. One can only do that by surrendering to divine will and severing one’s emotional attachments to things. That is the only way one can free one’s focus of attention from that state of personal bias.
Focus and intent. To awaken, one’s attention needs to be free from personal bias, which means it needs to be free of a personal self-concept. This is necessary so that one can shift the focus of one’s attention away from the world one perceives and on one’s own sense of being present. One’s own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of the world one perceives is the only true thing one can ever know about oneself. That is where one has to focus one’s attention if one is to awaken to the truth of what one really is. This is where one has to be serious about the awakening process. One has to focus one’s time, energy and attention on the awakening process like a laser beam with a clear and unconflicted intent. One has to discipline one’s focus of attention and stop it from wandering around in an aimless way. One must lose personal bias in one’s focus of attention so one can shift one’s attention away from the world one perceives and stop getting lost in worldly distractions. One must lose personal bias in one’s focus of attention so one can shift one’s attention away from one’s body and stop being immersed in body desires. One must lose personal bias in one’s focus of attention so one can shift one’s attention away from one’s mind and stop getting lost in the self-referential thoughts that one thinks about one’s personal self and the world within which that personal self appears to live.
Look within: One must lose one’s personal bias in one’s focus of attention so one can shift one’s attention away from all this stuff that really has nothing to do with what one really is and look within. One must refocus one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present, which is the only true thing one can ever know about what one really is. One has to see one’s personal self-concept to be an illusion of what one is and lose interest in paying attention to that illusion so that one can shift one’s focus of attention onto one’s own sense of being present. One can only withdraw one’s attention away from one’s personal self-concept when one sees it to be an illusion of what one is and one loses interest in paying attention to that illusion. One sees it to be an illusion when one withdraws the emotional energy of the survival emotions that energize it, which one does as one surrenders to divine will and severs emotional attachments. When one surrenders and lets go, one does not hold onto anything or try to control anything. One stops interfering with the normal flow of things and stops trying to direct events or control things. One stops trying to defend oneself, since one sees one is only defending an illusion of what one is. One is only defending the survival of one’s personal self, which is no more real than a character in the movie of the world one is watching. One sees that one is always out in the movie audience. One knows oneself to be a spiritual presence of consciousness that is only watching the movie. One’s true spiritual being needs no defense since its existence is never threatened by whatever appears to happen in the movie.
In this deep state of surrender and let go, one just allows things to play out in the normal way and to come and go in the world in the normal flow of things through that world, while one watches things happen from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment. One knows one is in a deep state of surrender and let go when one stops expressing survival emotions that only defend one’s character, which one must stop doing before one can awaken. That’s the process of losing one’s personal bias in the focus of one’s attention, which one must do before one can see one’s personal self-concept to be an illusion and lose interest in paying attention to it. Only then will one be serious about refocusing one’s attention on your own sense of being present so that one can know oneself to be nothing more than a pure presence of consciousness at the center of one’s own world. The only true thing one can ever know about oneself as one perceives that world is one’s own sense of being present for it as a presence of consciousness. That is the only way one can awaken to the truth of what one really is.
To recapitulate, awakening isn’t about doing anything. One’s desire to do things is the problem. One’s desire to control things, to defend oneself, and to resist, fight against or interfere with the normal flow of things in a personally biased way is the problem. If one really wants to awaken, and that’s a mighty big if, one has to become willing to do nothing. One has to sit back in one’s seat in the audience, relax, and just watch as things play out in the normal way. One has to allow oneself to feel connected as the flow of energy through one’s body comes into alignment with the normal flow of things through one’s world. One has to stop creating a personally biased self-defensive emotional disturbance in that world that only leads to feelings of disconnection. One has to surrender to divine will and put one’s trust in the normal flow of things to sort out what is for the best. One has to give up one’s expression of personally biased self-defensive individual will, with its desire to control things and defend oneself, and allow things to play out in the normal way. One has to accept everything as it is every moment with no desire that anything be any different than it is in the present moment. The present moment is the only place one can ever find oneself as a presence of consciousness at the center of the world one perceives.
Surrender is the only way one can know oneself to be a spiritual presence of consciousness out in the movie audience that only watches the movie as the drama plays out on a stage. One sees that one is only defending an illusion of what one is when one defends a personal self-concept. One is only defending the survival of one’s character on the stage. The true spiritual nature of what one really is, which is one’s true spiritual being, needs no defense, since its existence is never threatened by whatever appears to happen on the stage. One sees this when one surrenders to divine will. When one sees this, one undergoes a death-rebirth transformation, as one’s identity dies to one’s personal self-concept and is reborn of the spirit.
To go further in the awakening process, one also must detach oneself from things. One needs to let go and stop holding onto things. When one severs one’s emotional attachments to things, one puts some space around oneself as one’s consciousness rises to a higher level and one sees things with a sense of distance and detachment. One detaches oneself from things so that one can know oneself to be a detached witness of things. As a detached witness of things, one knows oneself not to be a thing. One is not-a-thing that one can perceive. One knows oneself to be nothing but a spiritual presence of consciousness out in the movie audience that is only watching the movie as the drama plays out on a stage. One knows oneself to be nothing.
In the awakening process, one first has to surrender to divine will and do nothing so that one can know oneself to be a spiritual presence of consciousness. One then has to detach oneself from things and be nothing so that one can know oneself to be a detached witness of things. One then has to shift the focus of one’s attention away from one’s world and away from one’s character in that world and onto one’s own sense of being present for that world so that one can finally know nothing. Only when one is willing to do nothing and be nothing can one finally turn one’s focus of attention away from one’s world and character, look within, focus one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present, and look within into the emptiness of one’s own being. That is the only way one can awaken to the truth of what one really is and know nothing.
Shifting one’s focus of attention away from one’s world and character and onto one’s own sense of being present as one looks within into the emptiness of one’s own being is the key to one’s awakening, but one will only do that when one loses interest in the world one perceives and one’s character in that world. One has to see that world to be an illusion and one’s character to be an illusion of what one really is. When one sees the illusion to be an illusion and one loses interest in paying attention to an illusion, only then will one become willing to look within and focus one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness.
One has a choice to make. One can be interested in trying to save the world and defend the life of one’s character in that world, or one can awaken to the truth of what one really is. To awaken, one has to lose interest in that world and the life of one’s character in that world, and refocus one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present as one perceives that world. One has to know oneself to be nothing more than a spiritual presence of consciousness perceiving that world from the central point of view of that world. To know oneself to be nothing, one has to be willing to do nothing. To lose interest in that world and one’s character in that world, one has to see them to be illusions and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion, no more real than a dream one is dreaming. To wake up from the dream, one has to become willing to look within into the emptiness of one’s own being before one can know the nothingness that one really is.
One’s world only appears to be real because one focuses one’s attention on that world as one perceives it. Things in that world only feel real because one focuses one’s attention on things as one perceives things. One’s body is just another thing among other things in that world. One’s thoughts, feelings and memories are just more things among other things in that world. One always perceives that world and all the things in that world from the central point of view of that world. The things that one perceives in that world in reality are no more real than the animated images of a movie projected from a computer screen to the central point of view of one’s own world.
One can only perceive that world if one focuses one’s attention on that world. One must be present for that world, and to be present for it, one must focus one’s attention on that world. One is present for one’s own world as a presence of consciousness at the center of one’s own world.
One’s world only appears to come into existence if one is present to perceive it as one focuses one’s attention on it. If one is not present to perceive it, one’s world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. Both the form of things in that world and the flow of energy through that world that animates all things remain in an unobserved state of potentiality until perceived, and one must be present for that world as one focuses one’s attention on that world to perceive it.
One’s world only appears to come into existence if one focuses one’s attention on that world. Not only the form of things in that world appear to come into existence when one focuses one’s attention on one’s world, but also the flow of energy through that world that animates those forms also appears to come into existence when one focuses one’s attention on that world. When one withdraws one’s attention away from one’s world, one also withdraws one’s investment of energy in that world. When one withdraws one’s attention and energy away from one’s world, that world disappears from existence from one’s own point of view.
In terms of the holographic principle, the observer’s world only appears to come into existence when the observer is in an accelerated frame of reference. That is the only way the observer’s event horizon arises that acts as a holographic screen. The observer’s holographic world not only implies the encoding of qubits of information on the observer’s holographic screen that give rise to the form of all things, as those forms are projected like images from the observer’s screen to its central point of view, but also the expenditure of energy through that world that animates those forms. That expenditure of energy is inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Both the encoding of information on the observer’s screen inherent in the form of things and the flow of energy through the observer’s world inherent in the animation of those forms are inherent in an unobserved state of potentiality until the observer observes them, at which point they become observed in a state of actuality. For that state of actuality to actually be observed, the observer must be present for its world as it focuses its attention on its world.
If the observer is not present to observe its world, its world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. Both the form of things in that world and the flow of energy through that world that animates all things remain in an unobserved state of potentiality. In terms of the holographic principle, the observer is no longer in an accelerated frame of reference since the energy of that reference frame is no longer expended. Without the expenditure of that energy, the observer enters into an ultimate state of free fall. In that ultimate state of free fall, in which no energy is expended and there is no acceleration, the observer no longer has an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen. In that ultimate state of free fall, the observer’s holographic world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view.
In the language of nonduality, this ultimate state of free fall is described as falling into the void. When the observer enters into an ultimate state of free fall, not only does the observer’s holographic world disappear from existence from the observer’s own point of view, but the observer itself as a point of view at the center of its own holographic world also disappears from existence. When the observer is not present to perceive its own holographic world, the observer ceases to exist as an individual presence of consciousness with its own inherent sense of being present. This ultimate state of free fall leads to an ultimate state of dissolution, in which the observer’s individual being as a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world dissolves back into the void like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean.
One’s world only appears to come into existence because one is present for that world as one focuses one’s attention on it and perceives it. That world only appears to be real and things in that world only feel real because one is focusing one’s attention on that world and those things. When one withdraws one’s attention away from that world and is no longer present to perceive it, that world and all the things in that world disappear from existence from one’s own point of view.
Things feel real to the observer because things are animated by the flow of energy that animates everything in the observer’s world. The observer not only perceives the form of things, but also the flow of energy that animates things. The perception of that flow of energy feels real. That feeling of reality makes things appear real in the observer’s holographic world even though that world is only a virtual reality. That energy is inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. When the observer withdraws its attention away from its world, it also withdraws its investment of energy in that world. When that energy is no longer expressed, the observer enters into an ultimate state of free fall in which its holographic world disappears from existence.
When one is not present for that world and does not focus one’s attention on that world, that world disappears from existence from one’s own point of view. There’s nothing mysterious about the world disappearing from existence from one’s own point of view when one is not present for that world and no longer focuses one’s attention on that world. This happens each night in deep sleep. In deep sleep, one’s world disappears from existence from one’s own point of view.
Awakening is much like deep sleep, except with awakening, one not only withdraws one’s focus of attention away from one’s world, but one also refocuses one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present. As one withdraws one’s attention away from the world one perceives and no longer is present to perceive that world, one’s world disappears from existence from one’s own point of view. If one simultaneously shifts the focus of one’s attention onto one’s own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of that world and keeps one’s attention focused on oneself as that presence of consciousness while that world disappears from existence, one is looking within into the emptiness of one’s own being. To know the absolute nothingness that one truly is, one has to look within into the emptiness of one’s own being while one’s world disappears from existence.
This experience of realizing the truth of what one really is, is experienced as falling into the void, which leads to the experience of dissolution. In this ultimate state of dissolution, one’s individual consciousness, which is divided from the undivided and unlimited consciousness of the void, returns to and reunites itself with its source. Individual consciousness, as it perceives its own world from its own point of view, is always limited in the sense that one’s perceivable world is limited. The source of one’s individual but limited consciousness is the undivided and unlimited consciousness of the void. As one’s divided and limited consciousness returns to and reunites itself with its source, it dissolves back into its source like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean. This ultimate state of dissolution is called truth-realization or spiritual enlightenment.
Osho has given the perfect description of spiritual awakening:
We call Buddha the awakened one. This awakening is really the cessation of inner dreaming. When there is no dreaming you become pure space. This non-dreaming consciousness is what is known as enlightenment.
If you go on inquiring ‘Who am I?’ you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is an inquiry to dissolve. There is no answer. Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask ‘Who am I?’ And then you know.
When the ‘I’ is not, the real ‘I’ opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void.
The inner emptiness itself is the mystery.
When the inner space is there, you are not.
When you dissolve, the inner emptiness is there.
When you are not, the mystery will be revealed.
You will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be the mystery.
You fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. At this point Being is revealed: then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence.
That Being is void.
Nisargadatta describes the presence of consciousness at the center of its own world, called I Am or the Self, creates that world when it is in a state of motion:
The I Am in movement creates the world.
To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center.
You are that point of consciousness.
By your movement the world is ever created.
Stop moving and there will be no world.
Nisargadatta describes that nothing perceivable is real:
Nothing perceivable is real. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atman. That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is a dimensionless point of consciousness.
All you can say about yourself is I Am.
You are the source of reality, a dimensionless center of perception that imparts reality to whatever it perceives, a pure witness that watches what is going on and remains unaffected.
It is only imagination and self-identification with the imagined that encloses and converts the inner watcher into a person.
The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding.
In reality there is no such thing.
Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession.
In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying itself.
The witness is both real and unreal, the last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. The moment you say I Am, the entire universe comes into being.
Nisargadatta describes that names and forms are hollow shells:
In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. As long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. Names and shapes are hollow shells. What is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness.
Nisargadatta describes that everything is a play of ideas:
Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation nothing is perceived. The root idea is I Am. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feelings and ideas which in their totality constitute God’s world. The I Am remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.
Everyone sees the world through the idea one has of oneself. As you think your Self to be, so you think your world to be. If you imagine your Self as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. Your own creative power projects on it a picture and all your questions refer to the picture.
Nisargadatta describes the world is a mistaken view of reality:
The world is but a mistaken view of reality, unreal to its core.
You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears. It is your imagination that misleads you. There is a deep contradiction in your attitude which you do not see.
I am like a cinema screen, clear and empty.
The pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.
The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures. These are lumps of destiny, but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.
The character will become a person when he begins to shape his life instead of accepting it as it comes-identifying himself with it.
All this I perceive quite clearly, but I am not in it.
I feel myself as floating over it, aloof and detached.
There is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon.
To myself I Am neither perceivable nor conceivable.
There is nothing I can point out and say “this I am”.
Nisargadatta describes that creation is driven by desire, and in turn desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other:
At the root of all creation lies desire.
The projecting power is imagination prompted by desire.
Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.
Nisargadatta describes that all limited existence is imaginary, like the projection of images from a screen:
All limited existence is imaginary.
Even space and time are imaginary.
Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not limited.
All limitation is imaginary.
Only the unlimited is real.
Nisargadatta describes the Great Illusion in terms of mental projection:
The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion.
When I look beyond the mind I see the witness.
Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence.
Nisargadatta describes the dreamlike nature of the world:
The world you can perceive is a very small world, entirely private. The world is but a reflection of imagination. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. What you call survival is but the survival of a dream. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature you create so much trouble for your Self that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.
Some go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dreamlands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important.
Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up, but you do not see because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you long for the ending of the dream. You become willing to pay any price. The price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream.
Nisargadatta describes the role that the attention of consciousness plays in the appearance of the world:
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear but not to be. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness.
You make it possible by giving it attention.
You can stop it any moment by switching off attention.
Nisargadatta describes that awareness comes from a higher dimension:
Awareness comes as if from a higher dimension.
The witness that stands aloof is the watchtower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested.
The state of pure witnessing is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.
Nisargadatta describes the need to see things clearly:
You must realize yourself as the silent witness of all that happens. Your consciousness raised to a higher dimension, from which you see everything much clearer.
When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?
Your questions are about a non-existing person. Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that whatever happens, comes and goes, is not real; that you alone are, the changeless among the changeful. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications. Be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness.
In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing.
The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned. You are the Self, here and now. Stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.
Find the immutable center where all movement takes birth. Be the axis at the center, not whirling at the periphery. Nothing stops you except fear. You are afraid of impersonal being.
Nisargadatta describes the illusion of control:
To imagine that you are in control is the aberration of the body-mind. There is a universal power that is in control. The illusion of personal control is in the mind only. Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control. This is the shortest way to reality.
As long as there is the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable. It is because of your illusion that you are the doer.
As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you. The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage. You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.
Things happen by their own nature.
Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting.
You are merely watching what happens.
From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously.
I do nothing. I just see them happen.
Nisargadatta describes the world as a passing show:
The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it nor meaning.
To the Self the world is but a passing show. The world just sprouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing. As long as the Self is merely aware, there is no problem.
Nisargadatta describes the connectedness of all things:
The entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing. Nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. Everything is as it is because the universe is as it is. The universe is not bound by its contents because its potentialities are infinite.
By itself nothing has existence.
There is no such thing as a separate person. Everything is the cause of everything. Everything is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.
The universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity, at every moment, whatever is happening, is always for the best.
The law of balance rules supreme.
Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutralizes the action. There is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.
Nisargadatta describes being present as a presence of consciousness in the present moment:
Wherever you go, at all times, you carry with you the sense of being present and aware, here and now. It means that you are independent of space and time. Space and time are in you, not you in them. It is only your self-identification with the body, limited in space and time, that gives you a sense of limitation. In reality, you are limitless.
Your world is created with the emergence of the I Am idea. In your world everything has a beginning and an end. Timeless being is entirely in the now.
You can only start from where you are. You are here and now. You cannot get out of here and now. You are aware of thinking, feeling, doing. You are not aware of your being. You can only be aware of your being here and now.
Once you are well established in the now, you have nowhere else to go.
Nisargadatta describes the desire for embodied existence is the root cause of trouble:
Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble. You imagine you were born and you will die if you do not take care of your body.
Selfishness is self-concern for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one’s own body.
To be attached is to be selfish. As long as you have a self to defend you must be violent.
Selfishness is due to self-identification with the body.
A man who knows he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish. He has nothing to be selfish for.
The body and mind are limited and therefore vulnerable. They need protection which gives rise to fear. As long as you identify yourself with them you are bound to suffer.
It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. This created fear and hatred.
Nisargadatta describes the need for focus and intent and to be serious about the awakening process, which he calls earnestness or one-pointedness:
When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life, to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are totally dedicated, call it one-pointedness of the mind.
In the end you get fed up with the waste of time and energy.
Do not undervalue attention. To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give your attention to it.
Give your undivided attention to the most important in your life, yourself.
Attention comes from the Self.
All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.
Nisargadatta describes the vanity of personal self-identification:
As long as you take yourself to be a person, a body and a mind, separate from the stream of life, having a will of its own, pursuing its own aims, you are living merely on the surface and whatever you do will be short-lived and of little value, mere straw to feed the flames of vanity.
Nisargadatta describes the role the ego plays in personal bondage:
As long as you are locked up with your mind and ego, you cannot go further. Were you really at war with your ego, you would question its reality. You don’t question because you are not really interested. You are moved by the pleasure-pain principle, fear and desire, which is your ego. You are going along with your ego, not fighting against it. You are not even aware how totally swayed you are by personal considerations. Be in revolt against your ego, for the ego narrows and distorts. It is the worst of all tyrants. It dominates you completely.
Your thoughts dominate you only because you are interested in them. Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are in your natural state.
Whenever a thought or an emotion of desire or fear comes to your mind, just turn away from it.
Turn away. Refuse attention.
If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being human should be discarded. Abandon all self-identifications, abandon all self-concern, abandon every desire. Stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now. You need absolutely nothing.
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation here and now except for your being more interested in other things. You must see through them as mere mental errors.
Nisargadatta describes the role attachments play in the bondage of personal self-identification:
Self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Your attachment is your bondage.
There is trouble only when you cling to something.
It is your desire to hold onto it that creates the problem. Let go.
When you hold onto nothing, no trouble arises.
You create bondage when you desire and fear and identify yourself with your feelings.
You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.
Your bonds are self-created as chains of attachment.
Cut the knot of self-identification.
Only in complete self-negation is there a chance to discover our real being. The false self must be abandoned before the real Self can be found.
Nisargadatta describes the way to truth lies through destruction of the false:
The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst.
To question is the essence of revolt.
Without revolt there can be no freedom.
Destroy the wall that separates, the ‘I-am-the-body-idea’.
You progress by rejection.
Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it critically.
Scrutinize every idea about it.
Everything must be scrutinized and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.
There cannot be too much destruction.
For in reality nothing is of value.
Nisargadatta describes freedom from attachment:
All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient.
Fear makes one a slave.
Freedom from attachment is natural when one knows one’s true being.
Discrimination will lead to detachment.
You gain nothing.
You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost:
Your own being.
Nisargadatta describes the nature of freedom as letting go:
Freedom means letting go.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.
Giving up is the first step. The real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.
Give up all and you gain all.
Then life becomes what it was meant to be: Pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.
In that light the world appears dimly like a dream.
Death gives freedom. To be free in the world you must die to the world.
Nisargadatta describes that liberation is never of the person:
Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.
The reward of Self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self.
The dissolution of personality is always followed by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
Nisargadatta describes the role of self-surrender:
Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realize your true nature.
When there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one’s past, present and future, with one’s physical and spiritual security, when the shell of self-defense is broken, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty. Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.
Nisargadatta describes the need to look within:
By its very nature the mind is outwardly turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves. To be told to look for the source within is the beginning of a new life.
As long as you are engrossed in the world, you cannot know yourself. To know yourself, turn your attention away from the world and turn within.
You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth, all in vain. You must begin in yourself, with yourself. Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself. All you need is to stop searching outside what can only be found within.
Turn within. I Am you know. Be with it all the time, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.
There is nothing more to it. The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching events without taking part in them.
Nisargadatta describes the search for reality:
Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not: body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that. Nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.
Moments when one feels empty and estranged are desirable moments, for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places.
There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself.
The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.
Nisargadatta describes that externalization is the first step in liberation:
Externalization is the first step in liberation. Step away and look. Separate yourself and watch. The physical events will go on happening, but in themselves they have no importance.
It is disinterestedness that liberates. If you lose interest, you break the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage.
Seeing that you are not the person you take yourself to be, step out and look from the outside.
Dive deep into yourself and find the source from where all meaning flows. It is not the superficial mind that can give meaning. You are not what you think yourself to be. You cannot think yourself to be what you have not experienced. You are the perceiving point, the nondimensional source of all dimensions, which is as nothing and yet the source of everything. You can know what you are not, but you cannot know your real being. You can only be what you are.
Know yourself as you are. Stay with the sense I Am.
Remain as the silent witness only; a mere point in consciousness, dimensionless and timeless.
When the mind is quiet we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.
We withdraw from the experience and stand apart in pure awareness.
The personality continues, but its self-identification with the witness snaps.
Give attention to the witness to break the spell of the known, the illusion that only the perceivable is real. As long as you believe that only the perceivable world is real you remain its slave. To become free your attention must be drawn to the witness.
Delve deeply into the sense I Am and you will discover that the perceiving center is universal. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness.
Nisargadatta describes the light of consciousness:
At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time, effortlessly and spontaneously.
In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas.
Look within and you will find that the point of light is reflected as the immensity of light in the body as the sense I Am. There is only light. All else is appearance.
You are that point of consciousness.
I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the pictures on the cinema screen to be but light.
It is enough to shift attention from the screen onto oneself to break the spell.
Once you realize that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage or a picture on the screen. To know the picture as the play of light on the screen gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real.
In reality I only look. Whatever is done is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are real to the man in bondage. To me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself.
Nisargadatta describes that consciousness itself is the source of everything:
All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against a changeless background.
There must be a source from which all flows, a foundation on which all stands.
Consciousness itself is the source of everything.
Nisargadatta describes the ocean of pure awareness that is the source of the perceiving consciousness of the witness:
First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centers of observation, and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness.
Realization is in discovering the source and abiding there. The realized man has returned to the source and realized his true nature.
The realized man is beyond life and death. Life and death appears to him but a way of expressing movement in the immovable, change in the changeless. He has died before his death and he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being you are afraid of nothing.
Nisargadatta describes the final leap into the unknown:
As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.
When you refuse to play the game you are out of it.
Nisargadatta describes crossing the doors of perception:
Between desires and freedom from all desires is an abyss which must be crossed. Cross the door and go beyond.
Nisargadatta describes the door as the perceiving consciousness of I Am:
The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out.
I Am is the door. Stay with it until it opens. It is always open, but you are not at it.
Nisargadatta describes the experience of awakening:
The I Am at peace becomes the Absolute.
Absolute reality imparts reality to whatever comes into being.
It is the very source of reality.
It is what is, pure being, the timeless reality.
It is not perceivable; it is what makes perception possible.
In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, but making everything shine with the light of consciousness. Unperceived, it causes perception. Being nothing it gives birth to all being. It is the immovable background of motion.
The supreme state in the very center of consciousness and yet beyond consciousness. The center of consciousness is That which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. It is a point in consciousness which is beyond consciousness. It is an opening in the mind, a void, through which the mind is flooded with light. It is but an opening for the light of consciousness to enter the mental space.
Awareness is beyond all.
Awareness is primordial; it is the original state.
Awareness is undivided, aware of itself.
All that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness.
I Am in and beyond that consciousness.
I Am in it as the witness.
I Am beyond it as Being.
Before the mind happens, I Am.
Before all beginnings, after all endings, I Am.
All has its being in the I Am that shines in every living being.
The Supreme state neither comes nor goes. It is.
It is a timeless state, ever present.
In the timeless state there is no Self, no I Am, no witness.
I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference. I am timeless being.
Reality is essentially alone.
To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.
Your true home is in nothingness.
The experience of the inner void is an explosion into reality.
The Supreme reality is the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness.
There is no journey to Supreme reality. One is undeceived only.
One is as one always is.
One is left without questions; no answers are needed.
There is nothing left to do. One’s work is done.
Do nothing. There is nothing to do. Just be.
To be, you must be nobody.
You make yourself mortal by taking yourself to be a body.
That which is alive in you is immortal.
For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary.
My stand I take where nothing is.
To the mind it is all darkness and silence.
It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery.
It is, while all else merely happens.
It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.
The Tao describes the path of return:
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea
Returning is the motion of the Tao
It returns to nothingness
It leads all things back to the great oneness
Empty yourself of everything
In the silence and the void
Standing alone and unchanging
Ever present and in motion
I do not know its name
Call it Tao
The Bhagavad-Gita describes the spirit in terms of Atman:
In the knowledge of the Atman, which is a dark night to the ignorant,
The recollected mind is fully awake and aware.
The ignorant are awake in their sense life, which is darkness to the sage.
Never the spirit was born,
The spirit shall cease to be never,
Never was time it was not.
End and beginning are dreams.
Now I Am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
The soul that with a strong and constant calm
Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently
Lives in the life undying.
That which is can never cease to be
That which is not cannot exist.
To see this truth of both
Is theirs who part essence from accident
Substance from shadow.
The unreal has no being.
The real never ceases to be.
The Tao describes the mystery of existence:
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations
These two spring from the same source
This appears as darkness
Darkness within darkness
The gate to all mystery
The gateless gate paradox describes awakening to the mystery:
The great path has no gates
Thousands of roads enter it
When one passes through this gateless gate
One walks the universe alone
Chuang-tzu has described awakening in terms of No-self:
The man of Tao remains unknown
Perfect virtue produces nothing
No-self is true self
And the greatest man is nobody
Shankara has given the definitive description of this relation of Atman to Brahman:
That which permeates all, which nothing transcends, and which like the universal space around us fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman
That thou art
Brahman is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Atman and Brahman.
♦♦♦
Postscript: The Noble Truth of Suffering
The Buddha’s first noble truth is life is suffering. The Buddha went on to describe the cause of suffering and the path of awakening that brings suffering to an end. In the sense of discovering the path of awakening, suffering is good. Suffering is good because it leads to awakening, and awakening is good. When enough suffering has occurred, the ego gives up the ghost, so to speak, but the more correct way to say this is when enough suffering has occurred, the spirit abandons the ego. That’s how awakening occurs. Before awakening can occur, the arrogant ego has to be crushed into oblivion, and only suffering can crush the ego. Suffering really has nothing to do with unavoidable physical pain or the death of a living organism. Suffering is solely psychic in nature, and only arises from the ego’s desire to control events, hold onto things, have power over others, and defend itself by defending its survival in the world. Suffering arises from the ego’s selfishness and self-centeredness. The immature, insecure, resentful ego then looks for someone else to blame for its own self-induced suffering. This emotionally energized ego-structure is what needs to die for the awakening process to go forward, which can only happen through a process of surrender and detachment. Suffering is the motivating factor that leads to one’s willingness to surrender to divine will and detach oneself from things. That’s how the arrogant ego is crushed into oblivion and finally dies away. That’s how the spirit awakens from its dream that it is its ego.
Nisargadatta describes that a saintly life, which is an awakened life, is free from suffering, since the awakened spirit no longer takes itself to be an embodied person in the world it perceives:
A saintly life is free from suffering. The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that they are unavoidable. Everything happens as it does because the universe is as it is. He is friendly with the inevitable and therefore does not suffer. Pain he may know. If he can he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course. What does he gain by living on and what does he lose by dying? What was born must die; what was never born cannot die. It all depends on what he takes himself to be.
Freedom means letting go.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.
Death gives freedom. To be free in the world you must die to the world.
Jed McKenna describes awakening in terms of ego-death as a means to no-self:
Battling past the ego to get to the truth has been at the heart of countless spiritual teachings. Ego-death as a means to no-self is what this journey is all about. Anyone headed for truth is going to get there over ego’s dead body or not at all. The caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly, it enters a death process that becomes the birth process of the butterfly. One thing ends and another begins.
Spiritual awakening is about discovering what’s true. Anything that’s not about getting to the truth must be discarded. Truth isn’t about knowing things. It’s about unknowing. It’s not about becoming true, it’s about un-becoming false so that all that’s left is truth.
The deepest truth of any person is no-person. You don’t wake up by perfecting your dream character; you wake up by breaking free of it. There’s no truth to the ego so no degree of mastery over it results in anything true. Putting attention on the ego merely reinforces it.
The process of awakening looks like it’s about destroying ego, but that’s not really accurate. You never completely rid yourself of ego-the false self-as long as you’re alive, and it’s not important that you do. What matters is the emotional tethers that anchor us to the dreamstate; that hold us in place and make us feel that we’re a part of something real. We send out energetic tendrils from the nexus of ego like roots to attach ourselves to the dreamstate, and to detach from it we must sever them. The energy of an emotion is our life force, and the amount of life force determines the power of the emotion. Withdraw energy from an emotion and what’s left? A sterile thought. An empty husk. In this sense, freeing ourselves from attachment is indeed the process of awakening, but such attachments aren’t what we have, they’re what we are.
Even now it takes a conscious effort to maintain my false self, my dream character, to animate it, to keep it running. And this trajectory I’m on will take me as close to nonexistence as anyone can get and still have a body. In other words, I will continue to channel progressively less and less energy into my dreamstate being, my teaching will reduce down to its most refined and least tolerant form, my interest will withdraw from the world, and I will become as minimal as a person can be.
It doesn’t require knowledge to be enlightened any more than it requires knowledge to obey the law of gravity or to be bathed in sunlight. Enlightenment is nothing more than truth realization. If anything requires knowledge and effort and seemingly superhuman powers of imagination it’s not truth but delusion.
From the unawakened side, the gate blocking one from enlightenment is enormous and impassable. Delusion fills one’s entire field of view because it resides prior to perception. Once delusion has been destroyed, we can see it never really existed.
If you want to be more true, then the way to do that is by becoming less false. Go inside yourself with the spotlight of discrimination and illuminate it. Illumination destroys it. Lies disappear when you really look at them because they never had real substance, they were only imagined.
To know the lie is to hate it; to see it is to slay it.
Success in realizing one’s true nature is absolutely assured because it’s one’s true nature. The greatest wonder isn’t that you’ll make it back, it’s that you made it away. Struggling to achieve truth is as preposterous as struggling to achieve death. Neither death nor gravity, nor tomorrow’s sunrise is as certain as the fact that everyone will end up fully “enlightened”, regardless of the “path” they take.
Everything is in a constant process of returning to its true state. To really be ‘off the path’ would mean to be outside of consciousness. There is no such place.
The you that you think of as you is not you. The you that thinks of you as you is not you. It’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.
Truth is one, is non-dual, is infinite, is one-without-other. Truth is dissolution, no-self, unity. There’s nothing to say about it, nothing to feel about it, nothing to know about it. You are true or you’re a lie, as in ego-bound, as in dual, as in asleep.
The truth of the situation is that eventually, there’s nothing. Infinity. Eternity. The void.
Enlightenment is literally the biggest nothing of all time. Enlightenment is life-negative. Spiritual enlightenment is pointless and meaningless, and should only be sought by those who have absolutely no choice in the matter.
There is nothing to learn, nothing to know, nothing to practice, nothing to become.
Why is nothingness better than somethingness? Why is unity better than duality? Why is truth better than the lie? Why is the infinite better than the finite? Why is awake better than dreaming? Our fragile little bubbles are what let us float around in the infinite, able to enjoy the experience of somethingness-good and bad-where only nothingness exists. The bubble is a magnificent amusement park and leaving it is a damn silly thing to do unless you absolutely must.
The dreamstate is a big amusement park and I would never encourage anyone to try to escape. That would be as absurd as suggesting that you commit suicide for your own good.
The only sin is ignorance. Ignorance of what? It’s not the kind where you don’t know something. It’s the kind where you do know something that’s not true. The false self is ignorance. Ego. The personality. Everything you think of as you.
Ignorance isn’t an aspect of self; it’s the essence of self. It’s not nothing where there should be something, it’s the delicate weaving of something from nothing. That nothingness woven into somethingness is what you call reality. The part you call you is ego.
Before enlightenment I believed my ego was me, then enlightenment comes along and no more ego, only the underlying reality. Now it’s after enlightenment and this ego might be slightly uncomfortable or ill-fitting at times, but it’s all I’ve got. The idea that your ego is destroyed in the process of becoming enlightened is roughly correct, but it’s not complete. Before enlightenment, you’re a human being in the world, just like everyone you see. During enlightenment you realize the human being you thought you were is just a character in a play, and that the world you thought you were in is just a stage, so you go through a process of radical deconstruction of your character to see what’s left when it’s gone. The result isn’t enlightened-self or true-self, it’s no-self. When it’s all over it’s time to be a human being in the world again, and that means slipping back into costume and getting back on stage. Now you’re actually in the audience, watching the drama. I could never mistake the play for reality again, or my character for my true state. Happily, I never know what my character is going to do or say until he does it or says it, so the whole thing stays interesting.
Truth doesn’t need to be sought because it isn’t lost. It’s not at the end of some path waiting to be discovered. It’s not the result of practice or growth or learning. Truth is everywhere at all times, never absent, never distant. Truth isn’t the tricky thing, it’s the simplest thing there is. Truth is that which cannot be simplified further.
The fact is that no amount or combination of knowledge can bring about truth-realization. It’s not an emotion or a state of consciousness. Emotions are states of consciousness. Truth-realization isn’t a state of consciousness.
Enlightenment is untruth-unrealization, and self is an untruth. Despite the apparent paradox, being enlightened means there’s no one left to be enlightened.
Spiritual enlightenment is literally self-defeating. It is a battle we wage upon ourselves. Truth is a uniquely challenging pursuit because the very thing that wants it is the only thing in the way of it. It’s a battle we will kill to lose and must die to win. The great enemy is the very self that wages the war, so how can there be victory? When self is destroyed, who wins? Why would anyone, knowing the price of victory, undertake so senseless a battle?
The idea of the individual self, valid and separate, unravels very quickly under any serious scrutiny. All beliefs do. What takes time and effort is to put the idea of self under such scrutiny and make sense of what’s left after the belief is gone.
All beliefs, all concepts, all thoughts, they’re all false. If you’re going for the truth, you’re not taking any of them with you. Nothing that says two, not one, survives.
There is no such thing as objective reality. Nothing can be shown to exist. Nothing but the subjective I am is true.
Understanding consensual reality as a dreamstate is unbreakable. Life is but a dream. Reality has no basis in reality.
Truth is, non-truth isn’t. The false is purely an apparition; it exists only in the eye of the beholder. There is no true self and the false self is irrelevant, a character in a dream.
There’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice, you’re in the right place, the dream state, the dualistic universe. If your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what is true then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
It is not possible to knowledgeably choose or want spiritual enlightenment. To desire it is to misunderstand it. Ego cannot desire egolessness. One does not undergo the process of awakening out of love for the true but out of hatred for the false; a hatred so intense that it burns everything and spares nothing.
Ask yourself what you want, and what you’re willing to give for it. Dreams are highly flammable things. Not all fires are started by conscious intent. Sometimes they just flare up and then you learn two things fast; fire doesn’t negotiate and nothing doesn’t burn.
You, the reader, are at the exact center of the universe; your universe. It’s all yours, it’s all about you, and you are all alone in it. Anything that tells you otherwise is a belief, and no belief is true.
The difference between us isn’t that I’m enlightened and you’re not. The difference between us is that I know it and you don’t. I possess selfless awareness and you don’t.
To me you’re a minor character in my dramatic dreamscape. A semi-coherent energetic pattern making a brief appearance on the stage of my awareness.
You’re not struggling to climb from hell into heaven, you’re just having an in-the-body experience. It’s not evil, it’s just life, and when it’s over, you die, easy as falling off a log.
We live in fear of death. We don’t want to think about it, we don’t want to look at it, we don’t want to acknowledge that it exists. No matter how we might try to deny it, death is the fact of life. We can turn away from it, but we can’t push it away. It is always with us. Death is what’s left when everything else is gone. Death awareness is a vehicle out of the state of death denial in which we reside.
This isn’t about death in the abstract; it’s about death in the most personal, intimate sense. Death is the meaning in the dream, the dreamstate shadow of no-self.
We have taken death out of life and that allows us to live unconsciously. Death never left, we just turned away from it. If we wish to awaken-and that’s a mighty big if-then we must welcome death back into our lives.
Death awareness is the universal spiritual practice. Death always delivers. It slices through every lie, ridicules every belief, mocks every vanity and reduces ego to absurdity. Death doesn’t lie. Death awareness is about life awareness and life awareness is about waking up. Death isn’t morbid, fear is morbid. Death doesn’t oppose life, fear opposes life.
What’s more mind bending than your own looming death? What could be more devastating to ego than the contemplation of meaninglessness and insignificance, of nothingness, of no-self?
Death is the dream-state shadow of No-self.
Death denial, the fear of no-self, is at the very heart of the paralysis that grips all spiritual aspirants and everyone else as well.
Death denial, in all its many forms, is the hole at the bottom of which we sit huddled and trembling, scared to death of our own lives.
Death awareness is the act of coming out of that hole and beholding the world in which we live and the creation of which we are a part. To venture out of that hole, to declare freedom from childish beliefs, to turn toward death, to look the unslayable arch-demons of futility and insignificance in the eye, this is where the journey begins, and no journey begins elsewhere.
Futility. No belief is true. Life has no meaning. Nothing we do matters. All is vanity and a striving after wind. We’re going to die and it will be as if we never lived. Everything we think is true is false, all our beliefs are delusions, and everything we know is a lie. Nothing we do can make any possible difference.
Ego as a structure of confinement is an apt analogy, but slightly misleading. Jails wall in, ego walls out. Whatever’s out there isn’t holding us in, we’re holding it out. We are our own keepers. We can open the door and walk out whenever we want. Of course, the thing one leaves isn’t just the prison of self, but self itself, so the freedom thus won is something of a booby prize.
The fundamental conflict in the spiritual quest is that ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment. Self cannot achieve no-self. The fundamental conflict can only be resolved by altering the equation. It’s cheating, but everyone is okay with it. Spiritual enlightenment gets redefined as something attainable by ego. Ego gets to continue the noble quest. No one gets the grail, but no one really wanted it anyway. The quest for the grail is about the quest, not the grail.
To move forward, you must figure out exactly what is obstructing you. Whatever it is, it isn’t really there; it has no reality, no substance. It’s your own creation, a phantom lurking in the shadows of your mind, a shadow demon. Your obstructions are your demons, and your demons are shadow dwellers. They live and thrive in the half-light of ignorance, so the way to slay a demon is by illuminating it with the full force and power of your focused attention; by looking at it, hard. Banish shadow with light and see for yourself that no obstruction exists, nor ever did. We create our demons and we feed them. To awaken we must slay them.
The person on a search and destroy mission must have a way of making-the subtle demonisms of life and thought-assailable. Destroying thoughts with thoughts. Seeing things clearly. Nothing false can survive illumination by a steady and focused mind.
Come up with the right question. There’s always only one. All other questions are fear-based ego-sparing time-killers. Forget concepts and ideas, forget past and future, forget mankind and society, forget God and love, forget truth and spirituality. Find that one question; the exact question that ego doesn’t want you to ask. Put your full attention on it. That’s how progress is made. Everything else is a stall tactic.
Enlightenment is really nothing more than waking up from a dream. This is the dream. The question is, who is doing the dreaming and how do we wake up?
Realizing that you have no idea who you are is the beginning of finding out who you are.
“Who am I?” That is the question. That’s the question at our very center. Life turns on that center, and everyone who is alive has one of two relationships to that center: Toward or Away. Toward is perfectly simple. Away is infinitely complex.
Stay with the question. Don’t worry about the answer, just get the question right. Examine your assumptions. Soon enough the question itself has been destroyed and, along with it, many layers of delusion. The question itself is the obstacle to progress, not the lack of an answer.
The question is the key. Once we truly understand the question, we’ll have the desired answer. The desired answer is always the removal of the obstruction a correct question represents. The answer is never the answer.
It’s not that I know the answers, it’s that I don’t know the questions. I see that the questions that haunt a mind have no reality outside of it. There’s only one true answer and it lies at the exact center of the question.
You want answers, but there are no answers, just beliefs, and if you want to awaken, either within or from the dreamstate, beliefs are not your friends. They only hold you back. Demanding answers and explanations is an egoic stall tactic.
The same tactic employed by all people all the time in order to maintain the state of denial necessary to continue a meaningless existence in a fictional universe.
It’s all about finding and illuminating the next obstacle to our progress. It is not concerned with finding answers, but questions. There are no answers to be found, only questions that define our limitations. Understand the question, and you destroy the limitation. It is through courageous thought and clear-seeing that delusion is destroyed.
This isn’t about personal awareness or self-exploration. It’s not about feelings or insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what ‘you are’ that is true. With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth. It burns bridges that can never be rebuilt, and the only real reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.
Have you already confirmed duality as truth? Have you confirmed that you are a separate physical being in a physical universe with the ability to perceive?
No one can say ‘I am enlightened’ because there is no ‘I’ to it. There is no such thing as an enlightened person. My personality, my ego, what appears to be me, is just an afterimage-a physical apparition based on residual energy patterns.
Enlightenment is comprehensive. It’s an entirely different paradigm. My reality is not your reality.
I view dualistic reality as a dream.
Waking up isn’t a theoretical subject one masters through study and comprehension, it’s a journey one makes, a battle one fights.
The prize to be won in this battle is not wealth or fame or power, but the transition from untrue to true, from dream to awake, from delusion to reality.
Suffering means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.
This is life’s wake-up call; misery, suffering, loss, death. This is where people are forced to get real and where understanding can occur.
We are both protagonist and antagonist in this conflict, both attacker and defended. We can’t win by fighting. The very thing that fights, that resists, is the thing we seek to overthrow. Only by vanquishing ego can we prevail. Only in surrender can we find victory. This is the part so few get, and fewer get beyond. If you want to say all religions and spiritual teachings share a core truth, it can only be this: Surrender is victory.
Ego is obstruction, surrender is flow. Surrender is the basis and precursor of growth. There is no growth possible within egoic constraints, only the illusion of growth. Once we free ourselves, we come into alignment.
Surrender follows naturally from seeing what is.
To surrender is to relinquish the illusion of control, which initiates the death part of the death/rebirth process, which is the transition from the bondage of the womb-like Segregated State to the freedom of the ever-expanding Integrated State. No faith or belief is required to accomplish this act of surrender, only clear-seeing. When one begins to understand ego and fear for what they really are, this process becomes as easy and natural as dropping a heavy weight.
The person who arrives at this point is not the person who goes beyond. In this process, resistance is conquered and non-resistance takes its place; acceptance, recognition, surrender. The segregated self is slain and the integrated self is born. To the onlooker it looks like one thing becomes the other, but to the participant it is quite unmistakably the end of one thing and the beginning of another. The necessary letting go is itself a kind of death. It is the primary death/birth process, and nothing proceeds until it happens.
There is only one possible objective, you must die to be reborn, and to do that begin the process of thinking clearly and freeing your thoughts from emotion-dense clouds of self-limiting belief.
Nothing else means anything. No amount of knowledge or understanding or spiritual experience could be of any value if you’re still stuck in the segregated state. You have one goal, die to the flesh and be born of the spirit.
Ego doesn’t need to be killed because it was never really alive. You don’t have to destroy your false self because it’s not real, which is really the whole point. It’s just a character we play. What needs to be killed is that part of us that identifies with the character. Once that’s done-really done, and it can take years-then you can wear the costume and play the character as it suits you, in the character but not of the character.
In the world but not of the world means that you’re playing a role on the stage, but you don’t confuse your role with yourself or the stage with reality. It means you know that you’re playing a character. It’s like lucid dreaming. You achieve normal waking consciousness within the dream so that you’re in the dream but not of the dream. There’s no benefit to understanding it. It’s something you’re familiar with because it’s your reality or you’re not because it isn’t.
Spiritual enlightenment is the state in which the self is free of all delusion, including self itself. The process of becoming enlightened is a deliberate act of self-annihilation. It is the false self that does the killing and the false self that dies; a suicide in all but the physical sense. Because there is no true self to fill the vacancy created by the passing of the false self, no self remains.
Waking up from the dreamstate is a very straightforward business. It doesn’t take decades. It doesn’t look like tranquility or like a calm, peaceful mind. It doesn’t look like saving others or saving the world or even saving yourself. It doesn’t look like a thriving marketplace where merit is determined by popular appeal or commercial success. Waking up looks like a massive mental and emotional breakdown because that’s exactly what it is, the granddaddy of all breakdowns.
For many sincere people, spirituality is a walk in the park on a sunny day, bubbling with pretty notions of peace on earth and good will toward men. Real spirituality is a savage insurrection, the oppressed rising up in a do-or-die bid for freedom. It’s not something people do to improve themselves or earn merit or impress friends or to find greater joy and meaning in life. It’s a suicidal assault on a foe of unimaginable superiority.
You have to have a clear desire, a strong and specific intent. If you don’t know where you’re going then there’s no basis for judging one direction better or worse than another.
I want to stop being a lie. I want to stop not knowing who and what and where I am. I want to stop being confused and unclear. I want to stop pretending lies are true and that I understand things when I don’t. I want to stop playing make-believe and find out what’s real. I want to know what’s true. I will give anything to do it. I would rather be dead than continue a life of ignorance and self-deceit.
People completely in character. No inkling that things may be other than they seem. Still shackled in Plato’s cave. The degree to which one is unaware of one’s fraudulent nature might be considered the degree to which one is the grip of Maya, delusion, the dreamstate. Increased awakeness would naturally translate into greater dissatisfaction with fraudulence, falseness and delusion, and a corresponding desire to know what is real. Extend the line forward and it results in a complete break with ego and an awakening into one’s true nature.
The worms won’t care how your epitaph reads and the truth of you will outlive time itself.
We need the boundaries ego provides. They’re a necessary part of life in the amusement park. Self is the complex, shifting set of dimensions that give us shape and form and which distinguish us from other shapes and forms. The amusement park isn’t ‘come as you are’, it’s a costume party. Who you come as doesn’t matter, only that you come as someone.
Enlightenment is about truth. It’s not about becoming a better or happier person. It’s not about personal growth or spiritual evolution. There is no higher stakes game in this world or any other, in this dimension or any other. The price of truth is everything, but no one knows what everything means until they’re paying it. In the simplest terms, enlightenment is impersonal, whereas what is commonly peddled as enlightenment is personal in the extreme.
The enlightened view life as a dream, so how could they possibly differentiate between right and wrong or good and evil? How can one turn of events be better or worse than another? Of what real importance is anything in a dream? You wake up and the dream is gone as if it never was. All the characters and events that seemed so real have simply vanished. The enlightened may walk and talk in the dream world, but they don’t mistake the dream for reality. Members of movie audiences don’t leap out of their seats to save characters in the film. If they did, they would be hauled off to the nearest mental health facility and treated for a delusional disorder.
For this whole dualistic universe thing to work, it’s important that everyone doesn’t just go wandering off; that they stay on stage and play their role. Fear is the glue that holds the whole thing together and keeps everyone in character.
The vast majority of spiritual seekers are motivated by desire so the failure of their search is a foregone conclusion, as is amply evidenced by mankind’s history of near total inability to find the one thing that can never be lost. How is it possible that something as simple as seeing what is manages to elude our most devout seekers and our greatest minds? Because no one really wants what awakening really is. The true desire that drives the process of awakening is more akin to a psychotic madness-a wickedly profound and protracted crisis.
The process of waking up can look a lot like a massive breakdown, a complete break from what one has assumed to be reality. That’s why depression can be a perfectly rational response to a highly irrational situation, namely, life, especially when the depression revolves around futility and insignificance. You can’t be much more futile or insignificant than a character in a dream. The way to defeat rational depression is not to try to turn back from it or to cling to the illusion of meaning, but to plow right on through it and see what’s on the other side.
All attachments to the dreamstate are made of energy. That energy is called emotion. All emotions, positive and negative, are attachments. Humans are emotion-based creatures and all emotions derive their energy from one core emotion; fear. Fear cannot be confronted or slain because it is fear of nothing, of no-self. The desire to slay fear is itself a fear-based emotion. Fear can only be surrendered to; the thing feared, entered.
It is the emotional energy of fear that erects and maintains the egoic shell.
We are madly, desperately, insanely afraid of the truth, and it is that fear that walls us off from our unbounded nature.
Fear of what? Fear of no-self. The nameless, faceless dread of non-being. Not just fear of death, which anyone can deny or explain away, but fear of nothingness, which no fairytale can fix.
It’s not fear of death that drives humans, it’s fear of nonbeing.
Maya is the intelligence of fear.
We spend our lives and our life-force cultivating and grooming our appearance in the eyes of others. That’s how we know that we exist. That’s how we know who we are. That’s where we find reassurance that we are real and not just hollow dream characters. That’s how the illusion is constantly maintained.
All belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void. Ego abhors a vacuum, so everybody’s scrambling to create the illusion of something where there’s nothing. Belief systems are simply the devices we use to explain away the unthinkable horror of no-self.
We erect ego to compensate for the lack of direct self-knowledge. There is no true self to perceive, there is only false self and no-self. One looks for true self and finds nothing. It’s the dread of that nothingness that keeps one’s attention outwardly fixed.
The wall separating the awakened and unawakened states is a force field empowered by the emotional energy of fear. Only ego death defeats the barrier because the barrier is ego itself.
The only escape possible is one person on their own, alone, slipping off by themselves into the black. You have to go into that darkness you’ve spent your life avoiding and denying. You have to get to the place where you’d rather go into that blackness than continue avoiding it.
The only thing to get a handle on is negation-the tearing down process.
Every step in the process of awakening has three components: Seeing what needs to be killed, killing it, and cleaning up the mess. You must process the loss.
A step begins with seeing and understanding. That seeing and understanding becomes the very thing that destroys the thing seen and understood. But it doesn’t end there. Just because you killed something doesn’t mean you killed your attachment to it. Seeing the thing is the beginning of killing the thing, and killing the thing is the beginning of detaching from it.
With every step we leave behind that which we move beyond. No baggage is carried because releasing baggage is the essence of progress. The pain giving thing is the thing removed; when it’s gone, so is the pain.
Lessons aren’t delivered as quaint little parables and allegories, but as irreparable losses; lesson after lesson, loss after loss. Every step is a loss and as long as there’s more to lose, there are more steps to take. Everything is lost. Nothing is gained.
How can you want nothing? Words ascribed to the Buddha are often fraudulent, but there’s one very clear exception: “Truly, I have attained nothing from total enlightenment”. It’s not so much that he didn’t gain anything as that he did gain nothing.
Like a child flicking a switch that turns the world off like a light. What can you say when the thing that ends isn’t within a context, but context itself?
There is the place where all the paradoxes disappear and where no questions remain, but there’s no point trying to describe this place.
Come see for yourself.
Now she’s in freefall. At the precise moment of impact, the planet will disappear, and nothing will take its place. Her freefall won’t end, but it will no longer feel like falling because there will no longer be anything to reference it against. This is where dual awareness ends. From then on she will live in boundless awareness, never again able to differentiate between self and non-self. Abiding non-dual awareness.
You are nothing but consciousness.
In the void of undifferentiated consciousness-awake is awake.
That’s where I am now. Empty space is my reality. The void. No-self. I abide in non-dual, non-relative awareness.
Eckhart Tolle describes the truth realization experience of falling into the void:
“I cannot live with myself any longer”. This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real.
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words ‘resist nothing’, as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void.
I knew that something profoundly significant had happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left was my true nature as the ever-present ‘I am’: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious.
The truth realization experience of falling into the void is described by Zil Chezero as awakening from the dream, but is distinguished from the enlightenment experience of awakening within the dream. Enlightenment in the sense of awakening within the dream follows naturally from the realization experience of awakening from the dream, but can also occur independently of realization:
“If your book was about realization, the title would be: You are not what you are,” says the man, grinning and still looking at me with the same friendliness as before. Unmoved kindness, I find myself thinking. I didn’t know that was possible. But still his answer makes no sense to me. “I don’t understand,” I blurt, trying desperately to get a grip on his answers. You’re not what you are? How, what…?
“Of course you don’t understand,” he replies, “because if you could, it wouldn’t be about realization. But can you follow it?” Now I am totally lost, and when I hear myself answer “Yes,” it feels like I have just lost my last ally-still being looked at by those unmoved friendly eyes.
For an instant there is silence: while I can hear the murmuring sounds around me, this noise seems to be drawn into a bottomless pit and I’m sucked into it too. I’m here, but I’m also gone. What is happening?
Just as this question comes to my mind, the man says: “Now you are what you are again.”
“Yes,” I hear myself stammer. “But a moment ago, you were not,” he adds–upon which the pit opens up again.
“You are capable of wavering,” I hear him say. “That is the beginning of bliss and all you can ever still wish for. After this the wish might still be there, but just like a shimmer in the background. You have disappeared to nurture it.”
“While you’re simply here, you are not. You might be able to understand there is something like realization, but that’s always looking back, even at that seeming moment. During you can only follow.”
The eyes don’t let go of me. “This you follow,” the voice observes. “But you will never understand. Not this. You might understand all the images and conceptions clinging to it, claiming they’re ‘it’, but not this. This is what you are.”
“What are you doing?” I manage to ask. “Nothing. You did something. You followed.”
The man puts down his book and again I’m caught by the friendliest placidity I’ve ever seen. “Enlightenment can be the effect of realization. Even more so, where realization is a fact, enlightenment by definition is the manifest effect. But the other way around, enlightenment and realization don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.”
Again I am able to follow totally what he is saying, and this time I can understand him too. For some reason this in fact makes my hunger to know more win out: “Sorry for asking, but are you a guru, are you realized yourself?”
“Nobody is realized,” the man says. “You may call me Zil Chezero. And I don’t work as a guru.”
Bernadette Roberts describes the truth realization experience of falling into the void:
When the joy of my own emptiness began to wane I decided to rejuvenate it by spending some solitary time gazing into my empty self. Though the center of self was gone, I was sure the remaining emptiness, the silence and joy, was God Himself. Thus on one occasion, with full hedonistic deliberation, I settled myself down and turned my gaze inward. Almost immediately the empty space began to expand, and expanded so rapidly it seemed to explode; then, in the pit of my stomach I had the feeling of falling a hundred floors in a non-stop elevator, and in this fall every sense of life was drained from me. The moment of landing I knew: When there is no personal self, there is also no personal God. I saw clearly how the two go together-and where they went, I have never found out.
Later on in her book she discovers the writings of Meister Eckhart and comes to terms with what she has experienced:
The only mystic I know who says something about this step beyond union, beyond self and God, is Meister Eckhart. This could be understood as his breakthrough, his bursting forth into the Godhead, his crashing through to that which is beyond the idea of God and truth, until the soul reaches the beginning of beginnings, the origin or source. This amounts to saying that union depends on separateness. Beyond self this separateness no longer exists-an undefinable essential Oneness for which theology has no words. The difference depends on which side of the breakthrough we stand: whether the self remains, or whether it is dead and buried in the Godhead. Each side represents two different ways of seeing and knowing.
Roberts also discusses the difference between the mystical union of the self with God and the absorption of the Self into the Oneness of the Godhead or Source:
To speak of a union with God is orthodox, but to speak of an essential oneness with God-a oneness in God’s essence-is unorthodox. The problem is not merely one of description or semantics, but rather, one of experience, for with the falling away of the union of two, there remains only the clear identity of the One-the essential Oneness of the Godhead.
The first movement of life culminates in the union of self with God. The second movement culminates in no union-no self and no God for that self. In order to come upon God as he is in Himself-and not as he is in our self-there must be no self. There is no other way.
The root of the problem stems from the biblical statement that God made all things from nothing, and the disagreement in the interpretation of this nothing. Since absolute nothing is incomprehensible, it falls, like the essence of God, into the realm of the unknown. That this unknowable nothing turns out to be God is the final realization of the mystic. What flowed forth from God in the act of creation was some unknowable aspect of Himself. Thus if we were created from nothing it can only mean nothing knowable to the mind. Yet the experiential understanding of how this works is possible once self has fallen away. However we wish to interpret the nothingness or non-being from which we were made, it is difficult to justify any speculation that God did not make us from himself-his will or uncreated energy.
She then quotes the bible:
“He who seeks only himself brings himself to ruin, whereas he who brings himself to naught for me discovers who he is”. To this I would add that in coming to naught he will not only discover who he is, but what he is, for in God these cannot be separated. That he is, what he is, who he is, where he is, in God these are One, and outside this One, nothing is.
Eugen Herrigel describes the final leap into the unknown:
He must dare to leap into the Origin so as to live by the Truth and in the Truth, like one who has become one with it. He must become a pupil again, a beginner; conquer the last and steepest stretch of the way, undergo new transformation. If he survives its perils then is his destiny fulfilled; face to face he beholds the unbroken Truth, the Truth beyond all truths, the formless Origin of origins, the Void which is the All; is absorbed into it and from it emerges reborn.
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Awakening: The Self-Destructive Process of Disbelieving all the False Self-Limiting Beliefs Called Self-Concepts You Believe About Yourself
The experience of self and other can only arise in a subject-object relation as an observer observes some observable thing in its own observable world. Modern physics tells us that the true nature of the observer is a pure presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world, and that all perceivable things in that world are forms of information projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The observer’s body and brain are just more forms of information projected like images from the observer’s screen to its central point of view and animated in the flow of energy that animates everything in the observer’s world. There is only an illusion that the observer’s body is the basis for self due to the observer’s perception of the emotional energy that animates the observer’s body, which makes the observer feel self-limited to the animated form of its body. The mentally constructed and emotionally energized body-based self-concept is only an illusion of what the observer really is. That illusion is created as a belief that the observer believes about itself. The observer only believes that it is its body because it really feels self-limited to the emotionally animated form of its body. The body-based self-concept is nothing more than an emotionally energized false belief the observer believes about itself due to its perception of the emotional energy that animates its body, which makes the observer feel self-limited to the form of its body.
In reality, the true subjective nature of the observer is a formless presence of consciousness present at the central point of view of its own holographic world. Everything the observer can observe in that world, including its body, is just another form of information projected like an image from its holographic screen to its central point of view and animated in the flow of energy that animates everything in the observer’s holographic world. The objective nature of all perceivable things are no more real than projected images, just like in a virtual reality. The observer’s body and brain, which are a part of that world, can only transmit and process information about the nature of that holographic world. There is only an illusion the observer itself is a part of that holographic world. That illusion is emotionally created as the observer perceives that world.
To awaken to the truth of what it really is, the observer must overcome that illusion. Awakening only becomes possible when the observer stops believing the false belief it believes about itself that it is its mentally constructed, emotionally energized body-based self-concept. Awakening is the self-destructive process of disbelieving all the false beliefs the observer believes about itself. Those false self-limiting beliefs are self-concepts. The body-based self-concept is always constructed in emotional relation to the concept of some other thing perceived in the world. Those emotional relationships can only arise out of the primitive self-defensive survival emotions of fear and desire and the social emotions of emotional attachments. To awaken to the truth of what you really are, you must disbelieve those self-concepts. Disbelieving self-concepts is the same as bringing the expression of self-defensive survival emotions and social emotions of emotional attachments to an end. You can only discover the truth of what you really are when the emotional expression of your self-concept comes to an end. That is how you stop believing that you are your self-concept. In reality, you are nothing more than the observer of your own holographic world. You are the non-conceptual presence of consciousness at the center of that world.
The problem of awakening is personal bias in the focus of your attention. Personal bias in how you focus the attention of your consciousness, which is what you really are, on the things you perceive in your world, leads to your emotional attachment to things and your self-identification with the form of a person, which is just another thing you perceive. Once you attach yourself to things and identify yourself with the form of a person, you feel compelled to defend the survival of that personal form as though your existence depends on it. Your personal bias in the focus of your attention, which leads to your emotional attachment to things and your self-defense of a personal form, keeps you self-identified with that personal form, which is why you can’t awaken to the truth of what you really are, which is the consciousness that perceives the whole thing.
The way you lose that personal bias in the focus of your attention is by surrendering to divine will. You put your trust in divine will to sort out what is for the best and accept every outcome as it is in the moment with no desire that things be any different than they are in the moment. You stop interfering with the normal flow of things, stop trying to control things in a personally biased self-defensive way, and stop resisting and fighting against the normal flow of things. You stop expressing personally biased emotions of fear and desire. When you surrender, you feel connected rather than disconnected. You can no longer emotionally identify yourself with the personal form of an emotionally animated body, but can only know yourself to be a pure presence of consciousness at the center of your own world with its own inherent sense of existence, its sense of being present. When you detach yourself from things, you no longer know yourself to be a thing, but can only know yourself to be a detached witness of things. You see things from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment. You see all things, including the personal form of your body, to be illusions and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. When you lose interest in paying attention to an illusion of what you really are and stop caring about that illusion, when you stop caring about defending the survival of that illusion, when you lose that personal bias in the focus of your attention, you are then able to withdraw your attention away from the illusion. You are able to look within, refocus your attention on your own sense of being present, and look even deeper into the emptiness of your own being. You have to look within into that emptiness to discover the truth of what you really are.
The world you perceive and everything in that world, including your body and mind, is no more real than a movie you’re watching. Instead of being interested in that movie, be interested in what you really are. You are the presence of consciousness at the center of that world. Your body and brain can only transmit or process information about that world. You only perceive an emotional feeling of being emotionally self-limited to the form of your body when you perceive that emotional flow of energy. That feeling of self-limitation can only arise when you express personally biased emotions due to personal bias in the focus of your attention. That’s why you feel self-limited to the form of a person. Stop expressing those personally biased emotions and you will no longer feel self-limited. You stop expressing those emotions when you surrender. That’s how you know yourself to be nothing more than a presence of consciousness at the center of your world. Detach yourself from things and you will see things with a sense of distance and detachment. You will see you are not-a-thing, but only a detached witness of things. When you see the illusion, you lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. You stop caring about what appears to happen in the illusion. You have to see the illusion to be an illusion and lose interest in the illusion before you can shift the focus of your attention away from the illusion, look within, focus on your own sense of being present, look within into the emptiness of your own being, and discover the truth of what you really are.
The insane ego, with its megalomaniac desire to defend itself and have power over others, can only create more frustration and suffering for itself when it attempts to control what cannot be controlled. The normal flow of things through the world is not under its control. The expression of ego can only create an emotional disturbance in the world when it tries to control what can’t be controlled. The insane ego really has no choice but to eventually destroy itself. The roots of its own self-destructiveness are inherent in the insanity of its self-defensiveness. The more self-defensive it becomes, the more self-destructive it becomes.
Ego is the presence of consciousness at the center of its own world, which is what you really are, falsely identifying itself with its mentally constructed, emotionally energized body-based personal self-concept, which is only a false concept of what you are. Self-identification is like a hypnotic spell that you are under. To awaken to the truth of what you really are, you have to break that hypnotic spell. To awaken to the truth of what you really are, you have to break that false self-identification. You have to see it as false and stop believing it. It is only a false belief that you believe about yourself. You only believe the lie because it’s emotionally energized and feels real. As you express personally biased self-defensive emotions and emotionally attach yourself to things and then feel compelled to defend those emotional attachments, you feel self-limited to the emotionally animated personal form of a body, which gives rise to your body-based personal self-concept. To break that emotionally energized personal self-identification you have to stop expressing those self-limiting personally biased self-defensive emotions.
Socially driven emotional attachments are as self-defensive as any primitive expressions of fear and desire. These are all personally biased emotional expressions that make you feel self-limited to a personal form. The only way you can stop identifying yourself with the form of a person is if you stop expressing personally biased and self-limiting emotional expressions. You have to stop defending the survival of your personal form, which is nothing more than an emotionally animated, self-replicating, projected image you perceive. You defend the survival of that image as though your existence as a presence of consciousness depends on it. To awaken to the truth of what you really are, you must stop defending that image and stop emotionally attaching yourself to things. That is the only way you can stop feeling self-limited to that personal form.
You have to stop feeling self-limited before you can stop emotionally identifying yourself with that personal form. That’s why you surrender to divine will and detach yourself from things. You surrender and detach yourself so that you can know yourself to be nothing more than a formless presence of consciousness at the center of your own world and a formless detached witness of things. You put some space around yourself so that you can see things from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment. That naturally happens when you stop expressing personally biased self-defensive and self-limiting emotions. You surrender to divine will and detach yourself from things so that you can lose the personal bias in the focus of your attention that leads to expression of personally biased emotions that make you feel self-limited.
You have to lose that personal bias in the focus of your attention before you can stop expressing personally biased self-limiting emotions, stop feeling self-limited to that personal form, and stop emotionally identifying yourself with that personal form. You lose that personal bias in the focus of your attention by surrendering to divine will and emotionally detaching yourself from things. You have to see that personal form to be an illusion of what you really are before you can stop being interested in paying attention to that personal form, withdraw your attention away from that personal form, and refocus your attention on your own sense of being present, which is the only true thing you can ever know about yourself. When you clearly see that the personal form you have mistakenly taken yourself to be is only an illusion of what you really are, no more real than an emotionally animated projected image you are perceiving, you naturally lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. That’s when you are really able to shift the focus of your attention away from that personal form and refocus your attention on your own sense of being present. That’s when you really become able to look within into the emptiness of your own being. That’s when you really become able to discover your true spiritual nature.
The spirit abandons its character when it sees its character is only an illusion of what it really is and loses interest in paying attention to an illusion. It stops being interested in the life or the fate of its character. It stops caring about its character. Only when it stops being interested in the life of its character, when it stops caring about the life of its character, when it sees that life to be an illusion of what it is, will it withdraw its attention away from the life of its character, refocus its attention on its own sense of being present and look within into the emptiness of its own being.
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Emptiness is Beyond Presence
When you surrender to divine will and stop interfering with the normal flow of things, you allow the flow of energy through your body to come into alignment with the flow of energy through your world. You stop expressing personally biased emotions and stop trying to control things in a self-defensive way. You feel connected rather than disconnected. Your identity dies to the personally limited form of a body and is reborn of the spirit. You know yourself to be a spiritual presence of consciousness at the center of your own world. You know yourself to be a spiritual presence with its own sense of being present. When you detach yourself from things, you see things from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment. You know that you are not-a-thing that you can perceive. You know yourself to be a detached witness of things. When you see things as illusions and lose interest in paying attention to illusions, you withdraw your attention away from things. When you lose interest in the illusory nature of things, you can only know yourself in terms of your own sense of being present and the emptiness of your own being. When you detach yourself from things and lose interest in things, the only thing left to know is that emptiness. In that emptiness, there is no center of self, there is only emptiness.
You detach yourself from things when you lose interest in things. You stop caring about things. You see things to be illusions and stop being interested in paying attention to an illusion. When you stop caring and lose interest, you sever the emotional link, let go and detach yourself from things. Letting go is a kind of death. When you detach yourself from things, those things become dead to you and you stop caring about them. Letting go is the only true freedom, which leads to the spiritual maturity of knowing what you really are, which is not-a-thing. You withdraw your attention away from things, turn the focus of your attention away from things, and look within. The only true thing you can know about yourself is your own sense of being present; your own sense of presence and beingness. As you remain aware of yourself in this way, fully conscious of what you really are, you look within into the emptiness of your own being. You must become willing to look into the emptiness of your own being, enter into that emptiness of being, and go into the emptiness fully conscious of what you really are. You have to embrace that emptiness to know what you really are.
That emptiness of being is beyond the sense of self, beyond the sense of being present, and beyond the sense of your own presence. If you look deeply enough into that emptiness, the spiritual presence of consciousness that you are falls into the void that is the source of what you really are. When you allow yourself to return to, reunite yourself with, and dissolve back into that void like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean, you know yourself to be that void of absolute nothingness.
The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion.
When I look beyond the mind I see the witness.
Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence.
For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary.
My stand I take where nothing is.
To the mind it is all darkness and silence.
It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery.
It is, while all else merely happens.
It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.
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Final Postscript: Awakening is the Same as Dying
If you’re really serious about awakening, then you have to become willing to die. You have to accept death. You have to die before you can be reborn. You have to become willing to die, not at the superficial level of body death, but at the deeper level of ego-death. Your personal self-concept has to die away inside of you. It has to become dead to you. The way it dies away is when you detach yourself from things. As you sever your emotional attachments, your personal self-concept dies away inside you and becomes dead to you. At a practical level, the life of your character in the world you perceive becomes dead to you. You stop caring about the life of your character in the world and lose interest in living that life. You see that life to be an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. That’s when you really sever the emotional attachment and become able to withdraw your attention away from the illusion. You have to lose interest in the illusion before you can turn around, shift the focus of your attention onto your own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of your own world, and look within into the emptiness of your own being. That’s where you have to look if you are to discover the truth of what you really are. That’s what awakening means. When the illusion disappears, you discover the truth of your own being. Truth is what’s left over when the illusion disappears from existence.
Discovering the truth of your own being is the same as dying since the life of your character in the world you perceive has to become dead to you. That’s what it means to detach yourself from that life, lose interest in living that life, and stop caring about the life of your character. Dying is the same as becoming desireless. Your life enabling desire to live that life has to die away. You can only appear to live that life if you express the desire to live that life. You have to lose the desire to live that life. You only become willing to die when you see that life to be an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. You withdraw your desire to live that life away from that life when you withdraw your attention away from that life. You have to withdraw the emotional energy away from that life. Your investment of emotional energy in living that life, which is your desire to live that life, is the only thing that animates that life and keeps it going. Without that investment of emotional energy, that life dies away. The way you withdraw your emotional energy away from that life is by withdrawing your attention away from that life. That’s when you first become able to look within and focus on your own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of your own world. That’s when you first become able to look within into the emptiness of your own being. That’s where you have to look before you can discover the truth of what you really are.
Freedom means letting go.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.
Death gives freedom. To be free in the world you must die to the world.
Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want. It’s all good-Bunan
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One Last Personal Comment
Anyone who has read this article to its logical conclusion is at least open to the possibility that physicalism is a false paradigm. The question everyone has to ask themselves is why is there so much emotional resistance to this possibility? The resistance against rejecting physicalism as a false paradigm about the nature of the world is not based on logical reasoning, but solely on emotional reactions against this possibility. Where does this emotional resistance come from?
The answer is the ego. The ego or personal self-concept is entirely an emotional creation, as is well accepted in both psychology and neuroscience. The ego is mentally constructed as a personal body-based self-concept is emotionally related to the concept of some other thing. The personal self-concept is a mentally constructed self-image, while the concept of the other thing is a mentally constructed image of the other thing. These mentally constructed images must be emotionally related for the ego to appear to come into existence. The ego can only appear to come into existence, since these mentally constructed images can only be constructed out of what can be perceived in the world. The question the ego can never answer is about the true nature of the perceiver. What is the true nature of perceiving consciousness that perceives these images?
At a more fundamental level than the mental-emotional construction of the ego, the experience of self and other can only arise in a subject-object relation as an observer observes some observable thing in its own observable world. The holographic principle is telling us that the true subjective nature of the observer is a focal point of perceiving consciousness at the center of the observer’s own holographic world, and that the objective nature of all things in that world are only forms of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, which only arises as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Those observable things include the observer’s body and all the mental images constructed in the observer’s mind. A body-based, emotionally energized, mentally constructed personal self-concept cannot be the true nature of the observer since that self-concept is only another form of information the observer perceives.
There can only be an illusion that the observer is a personal self-concept when the observer feels emotionally self-limited to the emotionally animated form of its body. That emotional feeling of self-limitation is the only thing that can create the illusion that the observer is a person in the world that it perceives. In reality, the observer has its own independent existence as a presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of its own holographic world. That is the only logically consistent way to interpret the holographic principle.
The holographic principle is a hammer. All I’m doing in this article is hammering away at the logical inconsistencies inherent in the conventional physicalist way science is understood. I’m only hammering away at the logical inconsistencies inherent within science when science is understood in the context of a personal self-concept that is assumed to understand science. This of course is logically impossible, since a personal self-concept must itself arise from the logical structure of science to be a scientific thing. The critical thing to realize is that scientific things are all observable things. The holographic principle is telling us that the Self in the sense of the observer of the observable things is not itself an observable thing. The Self can only be a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world, which is not an observable thing. Only the Self can have its own independent existence, called I Am, independent of all the observable things the Self observes in its own observable world. The Self is aware of its own independent existence with its own sense of being present to observe that observable world.
The observable things are all a part of the holographic world the Self is observing, including the person in that world the Self mistakenly takes itself to be by emotionally identifying itself with the emotionally animated form of a person. To assume that a person is an observing Self is a logical contradiction. That is the logical contradiction in science I’m hammering away at. What surprises me is that more people in science can’t see that logical contradiction and don’t use the holographic principle to hammer away at it. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised since the ego will believe any logical contradiction it has to believe to defend its own survival and apparent existence. Who wants to realize that their apparent existence as a person in the world they perceive, which is their personal self-concept, is only a holographic illusion? The answer is nobody.
People in science who search for a Theory of Everything are searching for an answer that has already been discovered. The answer is inherent in the logical implications of the holographic principle. The holographic principle as demonstrated by the AdS/CFT correspondence deduced from M-theory or in matrix models that utilize the geometric mechanism of non-commutative geometry gives a perfectly good scientific answer to the questions scientists are asking. The problem is that scientists ignore the answer because they don’t like the answer even though the answer is the only logical possibility. All the other answers they seem to prefer and look for are logically impossible. If they really were good detectives like Sherlock Holmes, they would reject the logically impossible answers and accept the only logically possible answer. When you’ve ruled out everything that’s impossible, whatever remains, no matter how implausible it seems, must be the truth. The true answer only seems implausible to them because they don’t like the answer, not because the answer is untrue. The answers they prefer and find more plausible are the logically impossible answers. If they really carried the logical implications of the holographic principle to its logical conclusion, they would discover what in Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta is called nonduality.
The concept of nonduality is all about the Source of the observable physical world and the Source of the observing consciousness that perceives that observable physical world. This is the part of the answer they’re ignoring. They’re ignoring the Source. If they were really serious about discovering a true conceptual answer, they would consider the Source. Ironically, no conceptual answer can ever really describe the nature of the Source since the Source is non-conceptual in nature. That’s why in Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta no value is given to any possible conceptual answer, but only to the direct experience of the Source. One has to go beyond conceptual answers to have that direct experience. Of course, if they really did that, there would be no purpose in their search for a scientific answer. They’re trying to answer a question that really can’t be answered, at least not at a conceptual or scientific level.
People in science who continue to believe in the physicalism paradigm have taken the blue pill. They’re unwilling to confront the unpleasant truth about the nature of their own life. They remain in a blissful state of ignorance and believe whatever they want to believe. They take the blue pill because they can’t give up or let go of their emotionally created beliefs. They’re emotionally attached to their beliefs. The core belief they can’t give up is their belief that they are a physical person in the physical world they perceive. The only thing that props up this false belief is the emotional energy inherent in the mental construction of this belief, which makes it feel real.
To take the red pill is to go beyond beliefs. To go beyond beliefs is to go beyond the expression of emotions that create all beliefs. That emotional energy is what animates the life of a physical person in the physical world one perceives and makes that life feel real. The core belief that one has to give up in order to go beyond belief is the false belief that one is a physical person in the physical world one perceives. To awaken to the truth of what one really is, one has to become willing to believe nothing. One can only realize the truth without belief because No belief is true. Believing nothing is a necessary step in the process of doing nothing and becoming nothing, which eventually leads to knowing nothing. One eventually knows the non-conceptual absolute nothingness that is the truth of one’s own existence, which is the truth of what one really is.
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The Process of Creation in a Nutshell: The Beginning and the End of all Creation
Any explanation for the process of creation that does not begin with consciousness as the primary independently existing factor of the explanation is bound to be flawed and logically inconsistent. The true beginning of course is the void, which is the primordial fundamental nature of consciousness, undivided, unlimited and unchanging. An observable animated physical world can only appear to come into existence if the undivided consciousness of the void divides itself into the perceiving consciousness of the observer at the center of that world and simultaneously expresses the energy that animates that world. The void is the potentiality to express that energy. The most natural way to understand how the void expresses that energy is with the expansion of space, which is the nature of dark energy. That expression of energy places the observer in an accelerated frame of reference, within which an event horizon arises.
The observer’s event horizon limits its observations in space from its own point of view. The void is also the potentiality to encode information on the observer’s event horizon which then turns into the observer’s holographic screen. Non-commutative geometry is the most natural explanation for how qubits of information are encoded on a holographic screen, but there are other possible geometric mechanisms for encoding information on a holographic screen like M-theory and fractal geometries.
Once the observer observes its own holographic world, then everything that is observable in that world, including the mass of all objects in that world and the force of gravity that acts on those objects, is included in a quantum state of potentiality, and we’re finally back to the level of explanation of conventional physics. When a massive object appears to obey the law of gravity, it’s only following a path of least action through an information configuration space that is the essence of the quantum state of that world. That world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality until the observer observes it, at which point it appears to come into existence from the observer’s own point of view as an observed state of actuality. This is the standard interpretation of quantum theory as developed by Bohr and Heisenberg.
The observer must be present for its world and focus its attention on its world for its world to appear to come into existence. The presence of an observer at the central point of view of its own world is an absolutely necessary requirement for that observable world to appear to come into existence. Since the quantum state allows for the possibility of choice, the observer in effect can choose what it observes in its world and which path it follows through its world with its focus of attention on whatever it observes in that world. Everything an observer can observe is a choice the observer makes with its focus of attention. This even includes bending the law of gravity in the sense of the observer appearing to walk on water or levitating its body.
The whole concept of gravity, like the concept of mass or the concept of a person with a massive body that is subject to the law of gravity, only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until observed. The observer must observe whatever is observed for that observable thing to appear to come into an observed state of actuality. The true nature of the observer is spiritual in the sense that the observer is a spiritual presence of consciousness at the center of its own observable world. In effect, the observer is choosing what it observes in that world with its focus of attention on that world. The unobserved state of potentiality includes all possibilities. If the observer focuses its attention intently enough on levitating its body, that’s what it will observe, because that’s what it is choosing from the state of potentiality.
Whatever the observer observes is a choice, since it has to choose that possible observation from the state of potentiality, which it does through its focus of attention on things. If its attention is unfocused, then things tend to play out in the normal way, which in the sense of quantum probability is to follow the path of least action. The classical law of gravity is only a path of least action, but by focusing its attention, it can deviate that path from the path of least action and bend the law of gravity. If it intently focuses its attention on levitating its body, that’s what it will observe. As Morpheus tells Neo in the Matrix, the law of gravity is only like a computational rule that governs the operation of a computer. The observer’s holographic world is like a quantum computer, where every possible observation of that world is included in the quantum state of potentiality, including the possibility where the law of gravity is bent.
There is No Spoon
There is no other logically consistent explanation for the process of creation that is within the realm of modern physics and begins with consciousness as the primary independently existing factor. As a corollary, if the observer is not present for its world and does not focus its attention on its world, then the observer’s holographic world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view and the divided consciousness of the observer must return to the undivided consciousness of the void. This happens each night in deep sleep, when the observer’s body dies, or when the observer becomes enlightened. Spiritual enlightenment is the natural end of the process of creation. When the observer becomes enlightened, it returns to the uncreated Source of its own existence, which is the absolute nothingness of the void. The uncreated existence of the void, undivided, unlimited and unchanging, is the alpha and the omega in the sense of being the beginning and the end of all creation.
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Scientific References
Tom Banks (2018): Why the Cosmological Constant is a Boundary Condition. arXiv:1811.00130
Raphael Bousso (2002): The Holographic Principle. arXiv:hep-th/0203101
Antonio Damasio (1999): The Feeling of What Happens (Harcourt Brace)
Amanda Gefter (2014): Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn (Random House)
Amanda Gefter (2012): Cosmic Solipsism. FQXi Essay
Brian Greene (2000): The Elegant Universe (Vintage Books
N. Gregory Hamilton (1988): Self and Others (Jason Aronson)
Gerard ‘t Hooft (2000): The Holographic Principle. arXiv:hep-th/0003004
Ted Jacobson (1995): Thermodynamics of Space-time. arXiv:gr-qc/9504004
Stuart Kauffman (1995): At Home in the Universe (Oxford University Press)
J Madore (1999): Non-commutative Geometry for Pedestrians. arXiv:gr-qc/9906059
Nancy McWilliams (1994): Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (Guilford Press)
Roger Penrose (2005): The Road to Reality (Alfred A Knopf)
Lee Smolin (2001): Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (Basic Books)
Leonard Susskind (2008): The Black Hole War (Little, Brown and Company)
Leonard Susskind (1994): The World as a Hologram. arXiv:hep-th/9409089
A Zee (2003): Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell (Princeton University Press)
Nondual References
The Bhagavad-Gita (1909): Edwin Arnold trans. (Harvard Classics)
Jed McKenna (2002, 2004, 2007): Spiritual Enlightenment Trilogy (Wisefool Press)
Jed McKenna (20013): Jed McKenna’s Theory of Everything (Wisefool Press)
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1973): I Am That (Acorn Press)
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1990): Prior to Consciousness (Acorn Press)
Osho (1974): The Book of Secrets (St Martin’s Griffin)
Osho (1977): The Search: Talks on the Ten Bulls of Zen (Tao Publishing)
Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (1957): Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Tuttle Publishing)
Bernadette Roberts (1993): The Experience of No-Self (State Univ of New York Press)
Lao Tsu (1989): Tao Te Ching. Gia-Fu Feng trans. (Vintage Books)
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Science and Nonduality 
One of the most intriguing observations uniquely offered (to ‘my awareness’) in at least one post relatively recently was your stunning equivalence of the holographic screen to ‘MIND’! Discovering your added last sentence to the_mystery_of_creation (pdf2 vis-a-vis pdf1) — “In the language of Advaita Vedanta, the potentiality of the void is Brahman and the consciousness of the observer is Atman, and ALL THAT SEPARATES THEM IS AN OBSERVATION LIMITING BOUNDING SURFACE OF SPACE ACTING AS A HOLOGRAPHIC SCREEN that projects all images of the observer’s holographic world.” — is this verifying the ‘Doors of Perception” implication of physics that when the screen/MIND ‘expands’ infinitely/cosmically due to free fall then, QED., Atman = Brahman?!
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As far as I’m concerned, the mind is nothing more than a holographic screen, which is an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. As far as I can tell, all of physics is about describing the energy inherent in that accelerated frame of reference and how the event horizon encodes bits of information, which turns the event horizon into a holographic screen. All recent developments in modern physics along the lines of a theory of quantum gravity are about describing how the event horizon encodes qubits of information, which is a confirmation of what John Wheeler called ‘It from bit’. It seems to me the most natural explanation for how qubits of information are encoded on an event horizon is non-commutative geometry. The most natural explanation for where all the energy comes from in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference that gives rise to the event horizon is the expansion of space along the lines of dark energy or Einstein’s idea of a cosmological constant. Almost all physicists accept that some form of dark energy is what put the ‘bang’ in the big bang creation event. When that energy is totally dissipated in the sense of thermodynamics, which is called the heat death of the universe, the observer’s event horizon expands to infinity, and we’re back to the beginning so to speak.
Recently, Roger Penrose has described that due to the conformal symmetry of gravity, an event horizon out at infinity is equivalent to the point of singularity of the big bang, and so the cycle of creation starts all over again. This sounds an awful lot like the Vedic description of creation in an infinite number of cycles, as each big bang event eventually leads to a cosmic horizon at infinity that is equivalent to a new big bang event and so on forever in infinite cycles of creation.
In terms of an observer in an ultimate state of free fall, this really has nothing to do with creation per se. The observer’s holographic screen, which is an event horizon that defines and limits its own holographic world, can only arise when the observer is in an accelerated frame of reference. In an ultimate state of free fall, the observer has no event horizon or holographic screen, and therefore observes no holographic world. In the sense that the observer’s holographic world only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until the observer observes it, that world can only appear to come into existence when the observer is present to observe it. The presence of the observer as it observes its own holographic world is the meaning of I Am or the Self, in the sense of a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. The observer must be present for its world for that world to appear to come into existence as the observer observes it. Being present for its world means the observer must focus its attention on that world. If the observer is not present to observe its world, that world must disappear from existence from the observer’s own point of view. The observer is not present to observe its world when the observer withdraws its attention away from that world. This happens every night when we fall into a deep sleep. As far as I can tell, the only significant difference between deep sleep and spiritual enlightenment/awakening from delusion/truth realization is that with enlightenment, the observer intently focuses its attention on its own sense of being present while it totally withdraws its attention away from its world. As the observer intently focuses its attention on its own sense of being present while it is no longer present for its world, which disappears from existence from its own point of view, the observer enters into an ultimate state of free fall that it experiences as falling into the void. What happens after that cannot really be described, since the true nature of being cannot be conceptualized, but the best description offered by truth-realized beings is the divided being of the observer, present at a point of view, dissolves back into the undivided being of the void like a drop of water dissolves back into the ocean. The experience of enlightenment really has nothing to do with whatever appears to happen in the world as observed from the point of view of other observers. It is purely an experience of the observer that enters into an ultimate state of free fall. That is how the observer’s world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view, independent of whatever is observed by other observers. In reality, they are all the same observer since there is only one source of consciousness, just present at different points of view, each observing its own holographic world on its own holographic screen. There is only an illusion of different observers sharing the same world due to information sharing among overlapping holographic screens. The only thing any particular observer has to do to make its world disappear from existence from its own point of view is totally withdraw its attention away from its world, which is the same as not being present for that world. Again, this happens each night in deep sleep. The only thing any particular observer has to do to become enlightened is to intently focus its attention on its own sense of being present while its world disappears from existence and keep its attention focused on itself while it enters into an ultimate state of free fall and falls into the void. It must keep its attention focused on itself until the ‘splash’ occurs and the divided being of that ‘drop of water’ dissolves back into the undivided being of the ‘ocean’.
In the sense that Atman is Brahman, this is the experience an observer has when it comes back to its world after it experiences the ‘splash’ of undivided being. In the words of Nisargadatta, Atman is the ascended Self: The witness that stands aloof is the watchtower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested. Atman has one foot in the unmanifested and one foot in the manifested, so to speak. In some mysterious way, the ascended attention of Atman is focused on both the unlimited undivided being of the unmanifested and the limited divided being of the manifested, which could also be described as the divided being of the ascended Self merged into the undivided being of No-self. Nisargadatta describes this state as: Discovering the Source and abiding there, which Jed McKenna calls: Abiding Nondual Awareness.
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Just found a thorough grokking of Nisarga-ji’s Consciousness vs Awareness:
http://www.prahlad.org/disciples/premananda/essays/NISARGADATTA%20CONSCIOUSNESS%20AND%20AWARENESS.htm
I’d previously considered ‘lost in translation’ to be the Occam solution to what you alluded to previously as apparent inconsistencies in Nisarga’s Reality teachings. Yet the above link convincingly demonstrates that the seeming shift from Frydman’s I AM THAT compilation to Dunn’s Prior to Consciousness summation was in fact deliberate furtherance for mastery of the mystery.
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Nisargadatta makes reference to the Ocean of Consciousness several times in I Am That, as do Osho and Jed McKenna in their discussions. The name Osho has its roots in Zen, and refers to the oceanic experience of dissolving into the Ocean of Consciousness. The Ocean or Void is always distinguished from the point of view of an observer in the sense that the unlimited undivided being of the Source, which is called Nondual Awareness or No-self, is distinguished from the limited divided being of the Self, which is the presence of consciousness at the center of its own world that is called I Am.
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Interesting that Penrose lends support to the Brahma’s Breath paradigm. Yet I find both Wheeler’s eye/I notion and Einstein’s loop-iness — consequent to his brief 5-d enthusiasm — more relevant to the convincing Absolute/ptc/ParaBrahman revelations of your aforementioned enlightenment wiseguys. Recalling Amanda’s reportage, her physicists struggled with the circular reasoning of wouldn’t-it-be-nice for a ‘consciousness’ to reside outside/priorto our ‘conscious’/quantum Universe. This Turtles conundrum is exactly what I find resolved by Nisarga et als’ non-conscious ‘awareness’, which in simpler times/minds could perhaps have been the all-embracing void (aether?) posited by those 5-d math[s] proofs of uncle Albert.
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The basic problem with modern physics, specifically with the way quantum theory is interpreted by the vast majority of physicists, is the problem of assuming that multiple observers exist in the same observable world. This assumption is a paradigm about the nature of the world, which has internal logical inconsistencies inherent within the paradigm. The only way to resolve the logical inconsistencies inherent in this old conventional paradigm, as Amanda Gefter realized in her book, is to adopt a new paradigm, which is the one-world-per-observer paradigm that’s inherent in the holographic principle. The basic idea of this new paradigm is that every observer has its own world defined on its own holographic screen. The observer’s holographic screen can only arise as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference, and so that screen is inherently observer-dependent. The observer’s screen is where all the fundamental qubits of information are encoded for everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world. There is only a false impression that multiple observers exist in the same observable world due to information sharing among overlapping holographic screens. As Tom Banks points out, this state of information sharing can only arise from consistency relationships between the way entangled qubits of information are encoded on different overlapping holographic screens. These consistency relations are the essence of the entanglement problem that physicists are trying to figure out when they analyze the mathematical structure of a holographic world.
The problem with the old paradigm of assuming multiple observers exist in the same observable world are the paradoxes of quantum theory made evident by the Schrodinger cat paradox or the Wigner friend paradox. Physicists would like to assume that they can each independently make measurements in the same observable world, which is what leads to the paradoxes of quantum theory. Each physicist assumes they are each an independent observer in the same observable world. The problem is quantum theory tells us that the thing being measured in any experiment is in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement or observation of that thing occurs. The measuring apparatus is entangled with the thing being measured, and so the total system of the thing being measured and the measuring apparatus are also in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement occurs. All the atoms and molecules inside the body and the brain of the physicist performing the experiment are entangled with the thing being measured and the measuring apparatus, and so the total system of thing being measured, the measuring apparatus, and the body and the brain of the experimentalist performing the experiment are all entangled, which means they’re all in an unobserved state of potentiality until the measurement occurs. Who is actually making the observation? Who is the observer? The old conventional paradigm of modern physics can never answer this question. There really is no place for an observer in this paradigm, which is why most people who work in neuroscience and artificial intelligence want to convince us that consciousness is an illusion. As far as they’re concerned, the observer doesn’t really exist because consciousness doesn’t really exist. This is the inevitable conclusion you have to come to when you assume that only an observable physical world really exists and that multiple observers can only appear to exist within that world. You have to come to the conclusion that the apparent existence of those observers is an illusion.
The holographic principle with its new paradigm of one-world-per-observer totally resolves this apparent paradox. The consciousness of the observer does exist, but that consciousness isn’t really in the observable physical world. The consciousness of the observer is only a presence of consciousness at the central point of view of its own holographic world. The consciousness of the observer isn’t an illusion. The observable physical world is a holographic illusion. Everything that can be observed in that observable physical world can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, which is an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. To return to the measurement paradox inherent in quantum theory with the old conventional paradigm, the body and brain of the experimentalist that performs the measurement can also be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. This is the new paradigm that we have to accept with the holographic principle. A holographic world is reducible to information and energy, but consciousness itself is not. Consciousness has its own independent existence.
The natural way to understand how information is encoded on the observer’s event horizon is with non-commutative geometry, which explains how space-time geometry is quantized. Every quantized position coordinate on the observer’s event horizon is smeared out into an area element like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. These qubits of information are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom for everything the observer can observe in its holographic world, which is the nature of entropy. The nature of energy is the thermal energy inherent in each qubit of information/dynamical degree of freedom, which fundamentally arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference as the Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon. That energy is inherent in the observer’s acceleration. Everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world is a holographic illusion in the sense that all those observable things can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s event horizon, and are forms of information projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view and animated in the flow of energy that is inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The whole explanation is observer-dependent, which tells us that only the observer itself is fundamental to the explanation. This tells us that only the observer itself can have its own independent existence.
Only the observer itself can have its own independent existence, but we’d like to go further and understand the true nature of that existence. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of consciousness present at the center of its own holographic world, but where does that consciousness come from? This is where the void comes into the story. The void is the true nature of potentiality. The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information that is inherent in a holographic world. The void is the potentiality to create the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The easiest way to understand the void’s creation of energy is through the expansion of space, which is the nature of dark energy. The expansion of space always gives rise to an event horizon with the observer at the central point of view. The easiest way to understand the creation of information is non-commutative geometry as a way to encode qubits of information on the observer’s event horizon that then turns into its holographic screen. The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information that’s inherent in a holographic world, but where does the consciousness of the observer come from? The simplest answer is the consciousness of the observer comes from the void. The void is the potentiality to give rise to the consciousness of the observer. The void is also consciousness, but it is not the same kind of consciousness as the observer. The consciousness of the observer is an individual or divided kind of consciousness, while the void is undivided consciousness. The void is the potentiality for the observer’s consciousness to come into existence in the sense that the individual consciousness of the observer must be divided from the undivided consciousness of the void before the observer’s holographic world can appear to come into existence and be observed. The observation of that world is always limited by an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen. The consciousness of the observer is not only divided, but it is also limited. The consciousness of the void is unlimited and undivided. Only the observer’s consciousness can observe things in its own holographic world. Each such observation of something by the observer is the observation of a form of information projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The consciousness of the void observes nothing because it has no holographic screen. Only an observer can observe its own holographic world. The unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void observes nothing, and yet the void is the potentiality to create a holographic world and give rise to the consciousness of the observer that observes that holographic world from the central point of view of that world.
This way of understanding the holographic principle has no internal logical inconsistencies or paradoxes. It is completely consistent with everything we know about modern physics, and is really the only way modern physics can be understood in a logically consistent way. The other great advantage of this way of understanding the holographic principle is it’s totally consistent with what enlightened beings like Nisargadatta Maharaj tell us about the true nature of reality. As far as I’m concerned, I really don’t need any more proof. Problem solved.
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Thank you kindly, Stranger, for the pdf of this insightful and thorough essay.
I’m wondering if you’ve carefully considered Jedster’s (paraphrased) ‘there be dragons’ echoing Buddha’s ‘I’ve gained nothing’? These wiseguys among others don’t highly recommend pursuing access to the Void. It’s more than Nietzsche’s horror of the abyss staring back. One wisegal (‘Tano’, enlightenmentmyth.com) reports that post-Void life in-the-world (the Atman as you clarified previously) is rather pointless. No illusion is, alas, no fun. It really becomes a truism from the holographic perspective since (as you’ve clarified) emotion (esp, desire) IS the energy required for the accelerated frame of reference. No energy/desire for a light cone = nothing happens = the End. I now sense, contrary to decades of questing, that the prize IS a booby. And that true sages (post chit-sat-ananda) are basically resigned to the ever-present companion of Death rather than Maya. Hmm.
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Ego as a structure of confinement is an apt analogy, but slightly misleading. Jails wall in, ego walls out. Whatever’s out there isn’t holding us in, we’re holding it out. We are our own keepers. We can open the door and walk out whenever we want. Of course, the thing one leaves isn’t just the prison of self, but self itself, so the freedom thus won is something of a booby prize.
Spiritual enlightenment is literally self-defeating. It is a battle we wage upon ourselves. Truth is a uniquely challenging pursuit because the very thing that wants it is the only thing in the way of it. It’s a battle we will kill to lose and must die to win. The great enemy is the very self that wages the war, so how can there be victory? When self is destroyed, who wins? Why would anyone, knowing the price of victory, undertake so senseless a battle?
Death is the dream-state shadow of No-self.
-Jed McKenna
I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
-Cypher in the Matrix
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