Of all the things the mind can perceive, that enable us to decide what is and what isn't. If it isn't, isn't it real? What is reality? how do we understand it? What is consciousness, our ability to be aware? This is an effort to collect some information I have stumbled upon in my amazing voyage of discovery. This is a blog about the Vedas and the String theory, the observer and the observed, the phenomenon and perception and finally about the amazing masters who saw it and their teachings.
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts

Amazing series of documentary movies investigating the nature of reality

All 4 parts of the film can be found at www.innerworldsmovie.com
Music from the film can be found at http://www.spiritlegend.com
Sacred geometry posters and products can be found at: http://www.zazzle.com/awakentheworld

Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds – Part 1: Akasha (2012)
Part one of the film Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds. Akasha is the unmanifested, the "nothing" or emptiness which fills the vacuum of space. As Einstein realized, empty space is not really empty. Saints, sages and yogis who have looked within themselves have also realized that within the emptiness is unfathomable power, a web of information or energy which connects all things. This matrix or web has been called the Logos, the Higgs Field, the Primordial OM and a thousand other names throughout history. In part one of Inner Worlds, we explore the one vibratory source that extends through all things, through the science of cymatics, the concept of the Logos, and the Vedic concept of Nada Brahma (the universe is sound or vibration). Once we realize that there is one vibratory source that is the root of all scientific and spiritual investigation, how can we say "my religion", "my God" or "my discovery".

Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds – Part 2: The Spiral (2012)
The Pythagorian philosopher Plato hinted enigmatically that there was a golden key that unified all of the mysteries of the universe. The golden key is the intelligence of the logos, the source of the primordial om. One could say that it is the mind of God. The source of this divine symmetry is the greatest mystery of our existence. Many of history's monumental thinkers such as Pythagoras, Keppler, Leonardo da Vinci, Tesla and Einstein have come to the threshold the mystery. Every scientist who looks deeply into the universe and every mystic who looks deeply within the self, eventually comes face to face with the same thing: The Primordial Spiral.


Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds – Part 3: The Serpent and the Lotus (2012) 
The primordial spiral is the manifested world, while Akasha is the unmanifested, or emptiness itself. All of reality is an interplay between these two things; Yang and Yin, or consciousness and matter. The spiral has often been represented by the snake, the downward current, while the bird or blooming lotus flower has represented the upward current or transcendence.The ancient traditions taught that a human being can become a bridge extending from the outer to the inner, from gross to subtle, from the lower chakras to the higher chakras. To balance the inner and the outer is what the Buddha called the middle way, or what Aristotle called the Golden Mean. You can be that bridge. The full awakening of human consciousness and energy is the birthright of every individual on the planet. In today's society we have lost the balance between the inner and the outer. We are so distracted by the outer world of form, thoughts and ideas, that we no longer take time to connect to our inner worlds, the kingdom of heaven that is within

 Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds – Part 4: Beyond Thinking (2012) 
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We live our lives pursuing happiness "out there" as if it is a commodity. We have become slaves to our own desires and craving.
Happiness isn't something that can be pursued or purchased like a cheap suit. This is Maya, illusion, the endless play of form. In the Buddhist tradition, Samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering is perpetuated by the craving of pleasure and aversion to pain. Freud referred to this as the "pleasure principle." Everything we do is an attempt to create pleasure, to gain something that we want, or to push away something that is undesirable that we don't want. Even a simple organism like the paramecium does this.
It is called response to stimulus. Unlike a paramecium, humans have more choice. We are free to think, and that is the heart of the problem. It is the thinking about what we want that has gotten out of control.The dilemma of modern society is that we seek to understand the world, not in terms of archaic inner consciousness, but by quantifying and qualifying what we perceive to be the external world by using scientific means and thought. Thinking has only led to more thinking and more questions. We seek to know the innermost forces which create the world and guide its course. But we conceive of this essence as outside of ourselves, not as a living thing, intrinsic to our own nature. It was the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung who said, "one who looks outside dreams, one who looks inside awakes." It is not wrong to desire to be awake, to be happy. What is wrong is to look for happiness outside when it can only be found inside.


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Robert Wilson on the Nature of reality

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-NEVER) One of the most profound and important scientific philosophers of this century, Wilson has written many important works of fiction and non-fiction. His vast intelligence and sharp wit are sufficient to shock and enlighten the most heavily imprinted domesticated primate nervous system. He is American and an author of 33 influential books, became, at various times, a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, futurist, libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized as an Episkopos, Pope, and a Saint of Discordianism by Discordians who care to label him as such, Wilson helped publicize the group/religion/melee through his writings, interviews, and strolls. Wilson described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth." "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."

In this video Robert describes the nature of reality.

The possibility of changing consciousness was discovered in the Orient 2500 years ago, at least. Techniques were discovered to quiet the mind, pacify the mind, remove emotional compulsions. These were organized into the science of Yoga. As John Lilly says, “Yoga is the science of the East. Science is the Yoga of the West.” Science is a yoga, too. Science is a way of trying to reach an objective level in which your emotional compulsions and prejudices aren’t twisting all the facts to fit in with your reality tunnel.

The scientific worldview grew up in the west between 1500 and 1750, largely due to mystics who were known as Hermeticists. This Hermetic scientific revolution saw theology as its enemy, and there was no conflict between Hermeticism and science. They were both based on experiment, find out what happens if you “do this,” and they were both opposed to the authority of the Church.


Shortly after 1600 this began to split, and this Hermetic tradition faded into the background, and we developed for the first time in history a science that had absolutely no connection to anything except pure reason. The hermetic tradition was that there is no such thing as pure reason, you have to first work on your own perceiving apparatus to correct your prejudices, and the scientist is not separate from what the scientist observes.

The general yogic attitude, “you are the master that makes the grass green,” –western science lost that insight, and from Newton onwards we have the idea that it doesn’t matter who you are, if you follow scientific procedure you’ll find the truth.

This began to break down after 1900, due to Sigmund Freud, who pointed out that even scientists, they’re human beings, they may have neurosis, and they may have elaborate rationalizations for neurosis. The influence of Karl Marx pointed out that no matter what you’re theorizing about it’s a mirror of your economic status.

So, science began to have data to look at science itself critically. That’s how intelligence increases, when intelligence looks at intelligence and criticizes intelligence. So we got to the point where we could look at science and say, “science is the product of people!”

People are doing this, and their prejudices are getting into it. It’s not just enough to say you will be objective, you’ve got to learn to change yourself from the inside out before you can even approximate towards objectivity

When Albert Hoffman, after accidentally ingesting LSD, when through a profound experience… It took him 40 years to figure out what LSD meant. In 1982 he wrote an essay in which he said, “There is no objective reality separate from us.”

This became obvious to others due to quantum physics. Physicists discovered that the atomic world is just not describable in terms of Aristotilean logic. You can’t describe anything on the quantum level accurately unless you include the observer in your picture. So quantum physics turned out to be saying exactly the same thing as the psychedelic revolution was saying: That there is no objective reality separate from us, all we know is the reality that we are co-creators of. The reality conceived, put together by our nervous systems.

At this point it becomes obvious that intelligence can be raised, consciousness can be altered, all we have to do is learn how to change our nervous system and we can go to wider and wider reality tunnels, and bigger and bigger levels of perception. The government made drugs illegal…if you’re a politician, the last thing you want is intelligence increase.

But nobody has made pranayama illegal yet because it is impossible to enforce. You just have to read a book on yoga, learn how to breath, and you find you go into an entirely different consciousness state. Then you go back into your ordinary consciousness, think about that state, then go back into that state and think about ordinary consciousness. Already you’re in I- squared, you’re finding out how your nervous system works.

We are moving more and more to the place where we can change our nervous system, change our reality tunnels. Once you look down on your reality tunnel…methodist, Jewish, hippy, capitalist..iranian Muslim fundamentalist… you can compare reality tunnels, and then you’re on a higher level of intelligence already. Because you’re no longer a conditioned mechanism just following the reality tunnel that was accidentally imprinted or conditioned, and you can start choosing your reality tunnels.

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Dokkodo (独行道 Dokkōdō; The Path of Aloneness

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645), also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke, or by his Buddhist name Niten Dōraku, was a Japanese swordsman and samurai famed for his duels and distinctive style. Musashi, as he was often simply known, became renowned through stories of his excellent swordsmanship in numerous duels, even from a very young age. He was the founder of the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū or Niten-ryū style of swordsmanship and the author of The Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho), a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today.

 

The precepts

  1. Accept everything just the way it is.
  2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
  3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
  4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
  5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
  6. Do not regret what you have done.
  7. Never be jealous.
  8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
  9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
  10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
  11. In all things have no preferences.
  12. Be indifferent to where you live.
  13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
  14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
  15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
  16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
  17. Do not fear death.
  18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
  19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.[1]
  20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.
  21. Never stray from the Way.
Also checkout this excellent Video lecture on Dokodo. (Thanks for the comment Zhao An Xin)

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Symptoms of inner peace

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:
* A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
* An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
* A loss of interest in judging other people.
* A loss of interest in judging self.
* A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
* A loss of interest in conflict.
* A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
* Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
* Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
* Frequent attacks of smiling.
* An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
* An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it

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Simplicity of character

Internet technology is amazing these day eh? Never in the history of mankind was so much valuable information at the fingertips of so many! My orkut daily fortune popped up this message "Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought" naturally I was intrigued. I Googled that entire sentence and found this was part of an essay called Characteristics by William Hazlitt

Apart from the gem above, I found more gems as under from this essay :-) What luck! I already feel like a school kid accidentally finding precious stones on the river bed one after another after another...

  1. What makes it so difficult to do justice to others is that we are hardly sensible of merit, unless it falls in with our own views and line of pursuit, and where this is the case, it interferes with our pretensions.
  2. To be forward to praise others, implies either
  • Great eminence, that can afford to part with applause
  • Great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments
  • Great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.
  1. The greatest talents do not generally attain to the highest stations
  2. For though high, the ascent to them is narrow, beaten, and crooked
  3. The path of genius is free, and its own
  4. Success in business is therefore seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power, which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of common-place capacity.

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An amazing collection of Sadhu photographs


See the entire photo gallery here

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The Goal of Life?

To many it is not given to hear of the Self. Many, though they hear of
it, do not understand it. Wonderful is he who speaks of it. Intelligent
is he who learns of it. Blessed is he who, taught by a good teacher, is
able to understand it.

The truth of the Self cannot be fully understood when taught by an
ignorant man, for opinions regarding it, not founded in knowledge, vary
one from another. Subtler than the subtlest is this Self, and beyond all
logic. Taught by a teacher who knows the Self and Brahman as one, a man
leaves vain theory behind and attains to truth.

The awakening which you have known does not come through the intellect,
but rather, in fullest measure, from the lips of the wise....

Words cannot reveal him. Mind cannot reach him. Eyes do not see him.
How then can he be comprehended, save when taught by those seers who
indeed have known him?

Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart.
Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes
Lives in the Self. He is the source of love
And may be known through love but not through thought.
He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!

The shining Self dwells hidden in the heart.
Everything in the cosmos, great and small,
Lives in the Self. He is the source of life,
Truth beyond the transience of this world.
He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!

Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.1-2

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Is the truth out there?

There is no "Out There" out there independent of the "In here" so the truth is not our there, it' in here...

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John Dobson - Equations of Maya

Modern cosmologists usually take non-existence for granted and hope to get the Universe out of nothing. But must we assume that in the absence of the Universe and in the absence of space and time there would be nothing? Or can we, without so rash an assumption, find clues to what might remain if instead we take existence for granted but leave out space and time? Could what remains, through apparition or maya, appear as this Universe? Can we, from what remains, get a Universe of gravity, electricity and inertia?

Swami Vivekananda said in one of his lectures (6) that the Universe is the Absolute seen through the screen of time, space, and causation (kala, desha, nimitta). He said that time, space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen, and when It is seen on the lower side, It appears as the Universe. So not only is the Universe apparitional, it's the Absolute seen through time and space, and that allows us to understand why the physics of the Universe takes the form that we see.

Read the rest of the article here

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