IMPORTANT NOTE: I am just an average a guy, a guy who happens to be a researcher. I don't pretend to know the truth. I. DO. NOT. KNOW. what happens after death. No one does for certain. This is just my speculation and opinions. They very well may be wrong. Each person needs to go within and see what resonates as truth.
The "meaning of life" is the "fine game of nil". 'Nil' means nothing. And, as we will see, all seems to appear out of or come from apparent nothingness. Duality and the separation are illusions. And for this reason the game of life is a dream within a dream.
We seem to live in a world of duality, where reality appears to oscillate between two extremes of polarity: light and dark; night and day; black and white; good and evil; god and the devil; heaven and hell; on and off; dead or alive; action and inaction; hot and cold; male and female; love and hate; true and false; the binary ones and zeroes of the digital computer; finite and infinite; something and nothing. But what about opposites such as something and nothing; wholeness and parts; whole and hole; fullness and emptiness (the so-called void)? Duality is an illusion, the illusion of separation as we will see. And thus there is no true separation between the so called emptiness or Void and Fullness or Completeness. We shouldn't think of the Void as empty any more than we think of the Void as being full. It is a full void or a pregnant void also as we will see when we look at the dozens of near death experiences in the void and also how physicists are currently describing the 99.99% empty space around us in the zero point field. When we see the term 'void' we tend to think of it as emptiness, but this is not the whole story (the "hole" story) so every time you see the word 'void' in this article, remember to think of it as the FULL VOID. There are many names for it such as luminous emptiness, the Illuminating Void and the Infinite Void, but it is non-duality.
Duality is "duelity". The dual nature is a duel nature where opposites fight or duel each other. The Polarity is a polling or pulling. This duality can be represented symbolically by the ying-yang symbol. But notice within the ying yang symbol there is a dot of white within the black part and vice versa. This focus on duality seems to ignore all the various degrees and experiences in between. We don't just experience hot and cold. There is also warm and cool and lukewarm and tepid. There is not just night and day, but also dawn and dusk. Between the two poles of a bar magnet -- positive and negative -- lies a "neutral point" or "null zone", a center where the charge is neutral, balanced. This is the knowledge of the "null edge". Matter is not comprised only of positive protons and negative electrons, but also neutral neutrons. But it is this duality which is pushed, trying to divide and conquer, to push us into one of two opposing camps. Us and them. Right vs left; conservative vs liberal; democrat vs republican; American or unamerican; patriotic or unpatriotic; religious vs atheist; male vs female; straight vs gay; black vs white. But we are all human. We all bleed the same same color. We are all flesh and blood. We all live under the same sun on the same Earth. We have almost the same identical DNA. It is these belief systems which divide us. However, we are all connected. There is only the illusion of separation. We are all part of the same waves of energy and fields of consciousness that connect everything together. There are literally dozens of people who had near death experiences and said they saw that life was an illusion. And hundreds of NDErs said separation is an illusion and that we are all connected. Plus there are many, many scientists who are saying that reality is not as it seems. Even Einstein said, "Reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one". Reality is a shared hallucination, but even that is an illusion.
The so-called Void is non-duality. I like the way philosopher Alan Watts described non-duality in a talk he gave: "what the Hindus called 'non-dualistic'... they always speak of the highest reality as being "not one" because 'one' excludes 'many'; "not nothing" because 'nothing' excludes 'something'; not "being" because 'being' excludes "non being" and vice versa. And so they use this word 'non-dual' to mean "that which doesn't exclude anything". More from Alan later on. He has hours and hours of great lectures available on YouTube.
Desire is yet another function of duality thinking. Desire / craving, always wanting more, and what is the cause of it? I thought about it and it became pretty obvious to me when I thought of it in terms of duality. Desire is really just a perceived lack of something, an illusion of emptiness. In other words, want/have is just another pair of opposites like light/dark, good/bad, etc. It all goes back to void and emptiness. We think we either have something or not. If we don't have it and succumb to the illusion of needing it, then we call that 'desire', or a perceived void in us. In reality, we are always complete and full. To need something you first need to believe that the thing you need really exists. Because if it does not exist then what's the point of needing it?
And what is it that causes the illusion of duality or separation? I think it is the will or intention of the awareness / consciousness / imagination itself that pretends or plays a game of hide and seek with itself. Separation has to be a function of movement or illusion of movement.
The Bible in Genesis I says the spirit moved. In The Matrix the buddha boy tells Neo it's not the spoon that bends but rather the mind that is bending. This illusion is perceived as vibration, oscillation of waves cycling up and down between two poles or pulsing in and out of existence. And is continued in the human body with the two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and two hemispheres of the brain, double helix of the dna, etc. a movement is needed first for the duality to occur. But the movement itself is not duality yet, it is the thought-belief that the moving forms are real and separate which makes the duality. And the dualistic perception occurs very easily and naturally if we do not recognize the awareness. The movement is only pretend. It's for play. It's a play, an act of "god" for god is only acting, pretending, playing. Karma means 'action' and what is action but movement. The director of the movie yells, "Action!" The movement creates friction and kinetic energy, heat, fire and light. And thus we are all sparks of god's awareness moving in this movie or moving pictures of image-ination. To move 'e', energy, in this movie is the same thing as light power.
And the movement or separation is an illusion. Here is an analogy. Suppose there is an ocean of water which is invisible in the visible light but can be seen in the infrared. But the water can reflect light so we can see the waves but we do not see the water.
Now, what would we see?: moving splashes of light here and there seemingly separate in space from each other. So we will naturally think those splashes are separate real "things" because that is how we see them. And then when the weather is calm and there are no waves we see nothing at all and perceive it as "void". Now, suppose we put on infrared glasses and suddenly able to see the ocean and we immediately realize that those waves are just moving shapes of the single inseparable ocean of water. The reality and separate existence of those "splashes" was simply an illusion. There is nothing apart from a single ocean of water. And when there are no waves there is still the same water, so the void is not really nothing. It's the same water just taking no forms, and fundamentally there is no difference between water with waves and water with no waves. This is what happens when we do not recognize the awareness: we perceive all phenomena in the world as separate and real "things". As soon as we recognize the ground awareness as the nature of reality and clearly see (not just understand intellectually but see experientially) that all phenomena are just forms that awareness takes, like waves on the ocean or clouds in the sky, then the illusion of duality just melts away and everything is seen as a dance of perfect forms in the limitless ocean of awareness in the eternal now. And when there are no forms at all the awareness is still there in the same eternal now, there is no fundamental difference.
It is others vs self and even the self or ego vs our Mind / consciousness. And on a larger level it is the individual memories of a life which we call a soul vs the Oversoul or spirit. Mind over matter or spirit over ego. These belief systems are dangerous since they lead to judgments and expectations, and ultimately create the perceptions of our reality. Belief systems are prisons for the mind which place limitations on what is possible and what our imaginations imagine as possible. If it is the Intention of our Imagination or Consciousness that manifests reality, then a religion that teaches that one must atone for sins or balance one's karma can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if one believes and expects that. The word karma comes from the sanskrit and means "action". It is this action or movement which brings about the imbalance itself because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Being in the void makes that karma (action) null and void, you see. It pays for that karma in that the karma or action no longer exists. Even an idea as noble as choosing to be a boddhisatva can be harmful in that for one to be a Boddhisatva there must be millions or billions of unenlightened souls to exist for one to play the role of Buddha. Does the very belief in Boddhisatvas then create the billions of souls who need saving or liberating? Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Or are they are interdependent upon each other?
Someone included something/nothing as part of duality and although it sounds right on the surface but I don't think that is so. Because the duality has to do with polarity and vibration, the oscillation between two poles. In the void, there is no movement and that is why there is no space and no time. I guess it is semantics and one could think of a duality between something and nothing, but it would be a duality at another level other than physical. Or it could be better stated as movement/stillness or action/inaction rather than something/nothing.
For every action there is equal and opposite reaction. If you think about it, Light is part of the duality. Light and dark. The Light is the positive pole of Polarity. The light has to be oscillation, vibration, frequency vibration, albeit a high one, but still consisting of waves with crests and troughs, highs and lows, and a cycle. Therefore, as a polarity within the Duality, the light realm must require a dim realm to exist for them to be able to stay in the light. Is this the dirty little secret that very few know about? For beings to remain in the light indefinitely then continual sacrifices need to be made.... souls volunteering or being forced to go to the Earth plane to offer the necessary balance to maintain the duality. The myths always speak of the need of a sacrifice to the gods of a human life in order to keep the god(s) sustained and likewise god sacrificed a spirit, part of itself, in order to pay for the sin or debt... the debt perhaps being what is needed to keep the gods in the positive pole. By comparison to the bright white light that near death experiencers talk about, this world is dimly lit and we are dimwits. So do the beings in the white light set up a facade of souls needing to learn or evolve in order to "grow" so that they can remain in the polarized white light? It is possible that some smart creatures out there are sending us here on "missions" to experience misery so that they can continue experiencing joys. And that could be why they are so "loving" out there.
In this all-important article on "the void", the so-called Void, that is. I will mention some NDEs, the clear light of Awareness mentioned in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the void as it is mentioned in various religious texts like the Tao Te Ching, and the zero point field in physics. I will be discussing The Void, null point, zero point, non-duality, neutrality, as well as balance and moderation. The void has no dimension since there is no space. For fifteen years now I have been writing about being careful about going to the white light at death. And for a while now I have been mentioning the Void as a viable alternative. This article will examine what the void is in detail and explore what various teachings of it have been from a historical perspective. Virtually every religion or discipline has included it in their teaching, if one looks closely enough. The whole idea of needing to "ascend" is false. Ascension is not necessary. Going to 5-D or above just takes one deeper into space since area, volume, etc is always calculated using length, width, height, etc. "Heaven" is 0-D, zero-D, not 5-D. Technically, we are already there since space and time are an illusion anyway. There is no need for us to go anywhere at death. We just need to recognize everything we see and hear as hallucination or external projections from within.
Strip away the illusion and we are no-thing in nowhere, the now-here of the here and now. Technically, there isn't even a here or now in the Void as it is beyond space and time. Paradoxically, what our senses sense is nonsense as there is no one to sense it. No one. None. Know thyself. Not one. Nought. So it seems that this point is not empty per se, but full of potential energy. The void is the ovoid or egg from which all came into being. Our ego came from the ovoid or egg through motion and sound. It was voiced from the voice or vo-ID. From this egg shell came the ego self, the ego cell. And what came out of the egg shell, ego-cell is ego-Sheol or Hell. The Void created something from nothing. One came from zero. And two came from one. The duo or duality then kept di-viding. That which divided and became a duo, dual in nature, became known as Diablo or the Devil, the false god of the physical realm, who is also the ruler of the underworld or the Duat. The sole became Sol and soul. Sun and son. We souled out. We Sol'd out. We sold out.
I think I would like to emphasize the position of not necessarily remaining in the void forever, but perhaps choosing a form just "outside" where we don't forget who we are and not become immersed in too complex of a reality such as the earth realm. One that is on the edge of Null or the "null edge" or "null ledge"... knowledge.
I am intrigued by the idea of neutrality, not being in duality but rather in non-duality... not separation, but the union of the polarities of duality which is "neutral" and represents a balance or moderation, I guess you could call it. One of the four noble truths of Buddha's teachings was the middle path or the Middle Way. The ying-yang symbol has a balance built in with the white dot in the black part and vice versa. The Tao means the way.
I think the quantum information field, the quantum computer, uses the non-duality of both-and instead of either-or that our present computers use where the data represents either a zero or a one. In quantum, it can be both zero and one, if I understand it correctly. So I am not advocating the either-or of duality. I am not advocating the neither-nor of nirvana, that is spiritual suicide. I am advocating the both-and. I am not sure what to call that, but it is a non-duality that transcends, or perhaps a union or merger of opposites.
That balance or neutrality is exactly the teaching of Dzogchen and many other Buddhist schools in general. When you are in the enlightened state (meaning that you see the fundamental awareness, and all phenomena appear as just "forms" of the awareness) then you also clearly see that there is really no difference between good or bad forms or no forms at all. Awareness makes no distinction.
I have noticed that Hollywood, especially Disney, seems to have a hidden belief in the "even-ing" star and the dawn and twilight, where the light and dark is "even".
Hollywood has programmed us to think of a void as scary. Subconsciously, we are told "avoid a void". Movies such as The Void portray the Void as an evil place or entity. And it is programmed constantly in movies and TV shows that we go to the light when we die. In fact, we are encouraged to go to the loving light at death in movies like Ghost. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Likewise, we are taught to be afraid of the dark where there are scary monsters hiding in the closet or under the bed. And no one wants to be "left in the dark" about something. But why is it when we want to get a good night's rest we turn off the lights and close our eyes so we can be in the dark?
It may be that there is no such thing as a Void, but that everything is Awareness. If there is no consciousness to observe something, then is there really a void? What we talk in terms of a void may be due to us not having sensitive enough instruments to measure the energy. Or perhaps the Void is synonymous with Consciousness or Awareness itself. If you are the primal substance then you are invisible to yourself and thus perceive yourself to be in a "void". I am inclined to believe there really is no such thing as "void", but from our limited perspective we can't perceive the energy there. It is either too slow or too fast to be observed. I mean, after all, how can there be "nothing"? It could just be the fabric or energy of everything and thus invisible or not able to be perceived. If you set your intention and expectation on going to a void when you die, then that is what you may experience. But understand the void is not truly a void. It is everything but a void. That is just a word that near death experiencers have used to describe it, compared to our conditioned sensual experiences here on earth, having been continuously fed false illusions to our five sense our entire lives.
An object at rest has more potential energy than each separate indviduated part that is produced in an explosion. If something is vibrating at the exact same frequency as you, then you are in resonance and join or merge as one due to string theory, web of life, waves. There is no void or empty space. It is just displacement like waves, the parts we can't perceive outside or beyond us. From the book Nothing by renowned particle physicist, Frank Close: "Could there be nothing if there were no one to know there was nothing?"...No-thing: for Thales, something cannot emerge from No-thing, nor can things disappear into No-thing... Thales posing the question: does thinking about nothing make it something?"...he argued that if things cannot come from No-thing, there must be some all pervading essence from which all things materialized."
Sometimes people say there is no time in the Light, but I question that. Sometimes they do estimate how long they were there. It's just that time passes by more quickly there and more slowly here. There is that passage in the Bible that says a day with the Lord is like a thousand years.
Spirit is the wave and thought collapses the wave into a solid particle. The experience of being spirit is energy, egoic thought leads to the action of doing and the interaction with physical matter.
In this cosmic movie called Life, we are characters, or care actors. The movie requires actions or acts which is why those who portray the plot are called actors and the director yells "Action!" to record a scene. But according to zen Buddhist philosophy there is no separation. Krishnamurti said, "Action is life itself. Then there is no division between action and actor; all is continuous."
We seem to crave an endless parade of external experiences hoping to fill what we perceive as a void in our lives or within us. We hope that these external experiences will fill this incompleteness within us and fulfill us. But once we achieve our goal it is not very long before we begin looking for our next goal to achieve or for something that is bigger or better of the same whether it be a bigger house, a better car, or a better companion. When is enough, enough? Will it ever be enough? We can always convince ourselves that there is more to be had. There is always someone who has more money than you. But even if you were the richest person in the world, materialistically, you would soon be envious of the respect that someone else has. Or the idea that they have a better spouse. Or are more athletically gifted. Or are a virtuoso at playing the guitar or piano, or writing songs. Or at painting. Ad infinitum. But what we fail to understand is that life is about the journey and not the destination.
NDEs in general
A Gallop poll in 1982 reported that about 5 percent of the American population has experienced an NDE. That means over 16 million Americans alone have had one. A German survey in 1998 reported 4.2 percent. This means that likely over 34 million people worldwide have had NDEs.
Dr. Jeffrey Long and his wife, Jody, have compiled an enormous database of over 4000 near dear experiences and included them in a web site, nderf.org. Jeffrey and Paul Perry have a 2017 book based on 3000 of those studies named God and the Afterlife, but in their 2011 book Evidence of the Afterlife, they included statistics from 617 near death experiences so I doubt the newer findings vary that much from the original ones. 64.6 percent of the near death experiencers surveyed said they saw a light (The updated 2017 book says 64.8 percent). That means 35.4 percent -- over a third -- didn't even see a light during their NDE let alone go to one. 95.8 percent of NDErs said the NDE was "definitely real". 74.4 percent actually reported had "more consciousness and alertness than normal" (the 2017 book says 74.4 also). 66.4 percent had no knowledge of NDEs before the incident. From the book: "The results of the study are astonishing. Of the 617 near-death-experience accounts, 287 (46.5 percent) described OBEs that contained observations of earthly events that would allow others to objectively assess the reality of their observations. Of this group of 287 OBErs, 280 (97.6 percent) were found to have had out-of-body experiences that were entirely realistic and lacked any content that was unrealistic. Finally, of the 287 OBErs, 65 (23 percent) of the OBErs described personally investigating the accuracy of their own OBE observations following their NDE. None of these 65 OBErs described any inaccuracy in their OBE observations based on their later investigations."
The updated 2017 book says 96.2 percent said their NDE was "definitely real", 74.9 percent experienced a "separation of consciousness from the body" (OBE), 74.4 percent had more consciousness or alertness than normal, 64.8 percent saw a light, 33.2 percent went through a tunnel or enclosure, and 21.8 percent had a life review.
Pim van Lommel
NDE researcher Pim van Lommel also published a book, Consciousness Beyond Life, in 2011 that contained many statistics. The Dutch title of his book is "Eindeloos bewustzijn" which would literally translate as "Endless consciousness". He writes about a Dutch study, "The Dutch study was published in The Lancet in December 2001. Within a four-year period, between 1988 and 1992, 344 consecutive patients who had undergone a total of 509 successful resuscitations were included in the study... Our study found that 282 patients (82 percent) had no recollection of the period of their unconsciousness whereas 62 patients (18 percent of the 344 patients) did report an NDE. Of these 62 patients with memories, 21 patients had some recollection; having experienced only a few elements, they had a superficial NDE with a low score. A total of 18 patients had a moderately deep NDE, 17 patients reported a deep NDE, and 6 patients had a very deep NDE.
Frequency of NDE Elements in the 62 Patients:
Awareness of being dead: 31 (50 percent)
Positive emotions: 35 (56 percent)
out-of-body experience: 15 (24 percent)
Moving through a tunnel: 19 (31 percent)
Communicating with “the light”: 14 (23 percent)
Perception of colors: 14 (23 percent)
Perception of a “celestial landscape”: 18 (29 percent)
Meeting with deceased friends and relatives: 20 (32 percent)
Life review: 8 (13 percent)
Presence of a border: 5 (8 percent)"
This means that only 14 of the overall 344 patients, or 4 percent, communicated with "the light".
So van Lommel says that only 23 percent of those who reprted having an NDE actually communicated with "the light". He included dark space as one of the common NDEs experienced. He writes, "People feel like they are pulled rather abruptly into a dark space, which they describe as an enclosed space, a void, or a well. Approximately 15 percent of people experience their stay in this dark space as frightening." So that means, according to the book, 85 percent of those experiences in the dark were not perceived as frightening. Van Lommel writes, "Perhaps 1 to 2 percent of people with a near-death experience linger in a frightening dark space, unable to escape."
Van Lommel writes about the NDE research of Kenneth Ring: "Ring starts with the affective phase, which includes feelings of absolute peace, calm, surrender, and bliss, with the end of pain. This phase is nearly always experienced as positive and occurs in 60 percent of all cases. For Ring the second phase is leaving the body and is reported in 37 percent of all cases. Whereas some people’s experience is limited to the sensation of no longer having a body and not feeling any more pain or restrictions, others can actually see their lifeless body and their surroundings from a position outside and above their body. They can clearly see and hear what is being said. They feel detached from their body and experience themselves as complete and transparent. In the third phase (23 percent), people arrive in a dark, usually peaceful environment. Some linger in this phase while others hurtle through a tunnel toward a nonblinding, exceptionally bright light, which radiates unconditional love and acceptance. This fourth phase is described by 16 percent. The fifth and final phase (10 percent) consists of entering another, unearthly dimension of unbelievable beauty, where people hear beautiful music and occasionally meet deceased friends and family." If correct, that might mean that only about a quarter of the 64.6 of NDErs from NDERF who saw a light actually went to it. And, more importantly, Ring's findings seem to imply that people are in darkness before they even reach the stage where they go through a tunnel and into the light.
Van Lommel also writes about a study that a doctor, Michael Sabom, did. He writes,"The second category covers the description of objects and events that transcend the earthly dimension (transcendental characteristics), described by 54 percent of the NDErs as a stay in a dark space or void, accompanied by feelings of peace. This was usually followed by an encounter with a brilliant and nonblinding light at the end of a tunnel, after which people found themselves in an unearthly or heavenly environment."
My research
I have talked at length in the past on near death experiences, focusing more on what happens when one goes to the white light. Check out this transcript from June 2017 of an interview I did with Marc Gray where I went into detail on 50 or so aspects of NDEs: Interview with Marc Gray I won't repeat it here, but it is important to note that many near death experiencers report realizing that life is like a game or dream and that separation is an illusion, that we are all connected. And, most importantly, some realized they were able to manifest anything at will just by using intention. Yes, all near death experiencers that went to the light reported feeling an incredible "love". But there are many definitions for love and it usually results in a dependence on someone else. We hope that an external person will give us love because we are needy. We feel as though we don't have love within ourselves. So in a sense we are insufficient and are looking to someone else to coddle us and complete us? Heck, it could even be that our own love is being reflected back to us like a mirror.
But what we do know is that most are sent back against their will or coaxed into doing so. Some say they were given a choice, but how do we know they wouldn't have been forced to come back had they chosen to stay? In this world when someone is forced to do something against their will, it is a crime. If we take money against their will, it is stealing or robbery. If we take sex against their will, it is rape. If we take a life against their will, it is murder. But somehow this being of light gets a free pass as being loving? Love is also a verb, an action. We should look at the acts, not a feeling. Feelings of love are frequently manipulated to get what others want. There are cases where the light beings impersonate religious figures. There was one case where the near death spirit had to ask "Are you really the Virgin Mary?" before it showed it's "true" idenitity. Some would call this lying or being deceptive.
It seems to be the case that most, if not all, NDErs find themselves in the void or darkness immediately upon death. That would not be surprising if it is our natural state. Rarely, if ever, does one find themselves immediately in the light and in the few cases where they did they may have just forgotten how they got there or were not allowed to remember. Since that is where we find ourselves immediately at death, then perhaps the void or darkness is how we "see" the true nature of consciousness or awareness? Near death experiences in the Void are mostly positive. Maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of them are negative. But that is usually because we manifest our reality via Intention and they reacted to their programming of fear of the dark. Thus they manifested the experience through their fear.
NDEs in the void are often viewed pretty pessimistically within the NDE community. For example, in their article Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The Basics Nancy Evans Bush, MA and Bruce Greyson, MD write, "An NDE of the “void” is an ontological encounter
with a perceived vast emptiness, often a devastating
scenario of aloneness, isolation, sometimes annihilation. A
woman in childbirth found herself abruptly flying over the
hospital and into deep, empty space. A group of circular
entities informed her she never existed, that she had been
allowed to imagine her life but it was a joke; she was not
real. She argued with facts about her life and descriptions
of Earth. “No,” they said, “none of that had ever been
real; this is all there was.” She was left alone in space.
Another woman in childbirth felt herself floating on
water, but at a certain point, “It was no longer a peaceful
feeling; it had become pure hell. I had become a light
out in the heavens, and I was screaming, but no sound
was going forth. It was worse than any nightmare. I was
spinning around, and I realized that this was eternity; this
was what forever was going to be. . . . I felt the aloneness,
the emptiness of space, the vastness of the universe, except
for me, a mere ball of light, screaming.”
A woman who attempted suicide felt herself sucked
into a void: “I was being drawn into this dark abyss, or
tunnel, or void. . . . I was not aware of my body as I
know it. . . . I was terrified. I felt terror. I had expected
nothingness; I expected the big sleep; I expected oblivion;
and I found now that I was going to another plane . . . and
it frightened me. I wanted nothingness, but this force was
pulling me somewhere I didn’t want to go, but I never got
beyond the fog.”
A man who was attacked by a hitchhiker felt himself
rise out of his body: “I suddenly was surrounded by total
blackness, floating in nothing but black space, with no up,
no down, left, or right. . . . What seemed like an eternity
went by. I fully lived it in this misery. I was only allowed
to think and reflect.”
An article in The Atlantic on frequent NDE speaker Eben Alexander's best selling book Proof of Heaven states, "Many of the NDEs people relate follow some version of this structure. In Proof of Heaven, Eben Alexander describes his experience as beginning with him trapped in a dark place, a kind of semitransparent mud or “dirty Jell-O,” filled with “grotesque animal faces,” that comes to feel progressively more claustrophobic and frightening. Eventually, something pulls him up into “the strangest, most beautiful world I’d ever seen”—an idyllic countryside. There he encounters a beautiful girl riding on a butterfly’s wing, who tells him he is “loved and cherished, dearly, forever,” and accompanies him on a trip to a light-filled void where he meets a divine being who unlocks for him many secrets about the universe. After spending some time going back and forth between the two realms, he descends one last time into the dark place where he began, only this time the grotesque creatures have been replaced by the faces of people praying for him."
Here are excerpts from more than a couple dozen near death experiences in the void which I feel are exemplary of what one would experience in the void if one had the right mindset. Yes, there are also some negative NDEs that result from going to the void and generating illusions from fear. I've compiled a more complete list of nearly 200 NDEs in the void -- good, bad and indifferent -- which can be read here: NDEs in the Void. I could just as easily list a couple dozen NDEs which began in the void that turned out as negative experiences. The point is that we manifest / dream / hallucinate the reality from the Intention of our Imagination and Consciousness and from desire, expectations, belief systems, etc. Life here is a dream. We even dream at night. When we dream at night it is but a dream within a dream within a dream because dying and waking up in the astral is still part of the dream.
Here are over two dozen NDEs which highlight what is possible when one understands the nature of duality of the dream game, and transcends it as I've been discussing for a while now.
"I hit a place where i didnt experience the white light like alot of people describe, no angels, no devils
It was a very interesting environment in that it didn't have an environment, it was no sense of light, no sense of sound
It was an intuition of a choice
It said, "Do you want to continue doing this? Do you want to stop?" ...
But it was a choice, it was literally, if you wanted to give it a label, i'd say 'pure neutrality'
It wasn't into the light, it wasn't into the darkness
There was no form, there was no structure, there was no light, there was no sound.
I didn't hear anything
It was bascially a sense that here's your choice:
Have you had enough? Do you want to play any more? Do you want to stop?" -- Glenn Parker
NDES FROM NDERF.ORG
I then felt myself being pulled up out of my body and out of the hospital into this vast void that was both dark and light. It was silent and still, strange but peaceful... More consciousness and alertness than normal The moment I entered the void. -- Jen C
During the first experience, I found myself slowly drifting out of consciousness until I was completely in a void of darkness. I had no sense of time or space. I watched as a bright light came out of the darkness toward me. I joined with the light. Then I became conscious and found myself on the ground.
The second near death experience built upon the first. This time, after I had joined with the light, I noticed how everything came to be. There was nothing in the void. All of a sudden, the light was created from the void. Then I came back to consciousness, lying in my bed, and not knowing how I had got there.
The third experience built upon the other two. I found myself alone in the darkness. I was the one particle of light in the void. I became lonely and bored, so I split myself into two parts. Then I split into four parts, then eight parts, and then sixteen parts. I kept doubling myself, repeatedly, until I became everything and everyone. I came back to consciousness from being passed out in the driveway...
In the end it is all meaningless. We as humans have been created in our own image. We are God split into separate beings. -- Kyle W
A strange sense of duality from time as physical beings perceive it. As if time had absolutely no real meaning in this form. So much was exchanged, and yet.....seemingly nothing at all. As if EVERYTHING was ''known'' to me, but that there was NOTHING at all. It was like being a part of absolutely everything at once, having no sense of a individuality, but also like a total void of anything, save a sort of sense of peace and contentment. So very hard to express. A glimpse into both everything and nothing I guess. -- Anthony S
I was aware that I was dying but there was no sense of regret, for there was no sense, as I said, of past (to regret) or future (to despair for). I just existed, and it was beautiful. As I was, in pain, and suffocating, but none of it mattered, for I was transcending eternity and in the void and I was the void and the void was me - and I would be in this place where I was forever - and if forever were to be an instant or a thousand years was immaterial and irrelevant. I felt, 'Abide with me, here, now, for I am at peace, and we are one'. I felt a oneness with whoever was in the room with me, and whoever was unconscious with me, and I was dying, and it was good.
It was just that - good. Nothing fabulous, miraculous, or brilliant. Just 'good'. Perfectly, clearly, good. I could have spent a trillion years right there, with that presence, whatever it was. But the hard thing to explain is that there was no 'trillion years'. There was just NOW. I had no sense of future. It's only now that I am alive that I know that I could have been content with an eternity like that. At the time, any concept of 'eternity' was beyond my experience, for 'time' was beyond my experience. The glorious euphoric peace, the presence, and the empty, falling, now-ness with no past or future - I can't recapture it, and it has changed my life. I need to talk to others about it, and as a scientist, I know that it was probably 'just anoxia' - but there is so much more to it that cannot be explained - and yes, it has changed my life. Not what I saw, or heard, but what I felt.
My priorities lined up, my values came into focus, everything in that void where one would think 'Nothing' existed - the only reason it is called 'Nothing', I believe, is that there is no Time, and existence is purely Being. That was my experience. Perhaps this is what the existentialist philosophers tried so hard to communicate, this 'being-in-the moment', this awareness of self - what they stated was paltry compared to this. What I felt was powerful and intense and life changing. It transcended any mere 'moment'. When I die, if this is what I will feel for all eternity, I await it. -- Alison D
The experience was void and yet all-encompassing at the same time. It was a state of de-manifestation with the seeming power to re-manifest should I choose to introduce thought. It was kind of like this; I wasn't thinking but if I did think, I would become what I was thinking. Therefore, I dared not think about anything because that would have meant that I would have manifested out of total awareness and bliss. Being in this state was beyond bliss, you want to stay there and not do anything to disturb it. I lost awareness of my body -- Victor C
I found myself in a black void completely at peace. I had no self-awareness, no memory of who I was but I somehow knew that I was separate from the void. I cannot describe the feeling of completely peace: no pain, no worries, no sense of self, it was fantastic...
While I was in the void, I was aware that I was somewhere but not aware of me. There was no ‘me’ or ‘I’. No awareness of having been anything before the void but I knew I was separate from the void and was travelling through it...
There was nothing to see, just a complete void which, although I describe as 'black' was actually nothing so I don't know how to compare it with human vision. I could 'see' that I was somewhere but not with my eyes because I had no form... there were no sounds in the void...
A vast, never-ending void where, although I was separate from the void; there was no earthly ‘I’, just peace; blissful peace...
In the void there is nothing but it is a peaceful, one could almost say, loving nothing...
Being (or rather not 'being') in the void was blissful and peaceful in a way that no words can really, usefully describe. I had always been scared of death and dying; having been dead and experienced the complete peacefulness of it, I am no longer afraid. -- Bonnie W
It was a void, darkness but yet I felt it contained all light at the same time...What I remembered was that I had completely merged again with God. It was a void, darkness, but unconditional love. I was no longer a separate being. I was where I belonged, where I came from. It was perfect. When it was time to return I had to again differentiate from God and become a separate soul again. Yet I was still a part of God. -- Gwen J
As I flew through the air, I was transported to a dimension of void or limitlessness where everything was very quiet and peaceful. I felt an overwhelming sense that this was indeed my death, and it did not bother me in that space one bit. Time was incredibly distorted, and for about ten minutes I watched the void, waiting for what came next.
An indigo light appeared as a field surrounding me from the furthest reaches of this 'space' and I became aware that I was a luminous body, transparent and gossamer. This indigo light was very far away but surrounded me on all sides like a bubble. It briefly turned orange and then began to close in on me, getting closer and closer over the course of the next twenty minutes. As it surrounded me closely, I could reach out my luminous arm and submerge it in this 'light of death' up to the elbow. I lost my sense of calm and fearlessness and became agitated.
Turning every which way, I found myself unable to escape the field which surrounded me. As the light crept inside my luminous body and towards my heart, I screamed a silent scream 'NOT MY TIME YET' and simultaneously stuck my middle finger up at the light. I mentally invented a surface under my ethereal feet which I pushed off of backwards in a back flip motion, looking backwards and upside down into this blinding white light. All of a sudden, I was back in my body, still flying through the air and I landed in the middle of the highway, almost run down by another car...
a void space without time or dimensionality in the classical sense. i have often wondered if it was xibulba of the mayan cosmological worldview, or a black hole???...
Upon realizing the truth contained in the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' (which I had not read before having my NDE) I adopted the doctrine of Vajrayana Buddhism, swore a bodhisattvas vow, and dedicated my life to the benefit of All. This is because the experience I had matched the description of the passing through the bardo of death described in the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead'... Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Yes As a student of the paranormal, I was well aware of NDEs. It affected my experience by creating in my mind the idea that I did NOT have to go with or into the light, that I could come close to death and 'escape' its clutches, temporarily speaking. -- Michael H, FDE
I was immediately bombarded with information that came to me from all directions, through multiple dimensions (as so it seemed). The information rushed at me like the last stages of some type of completion. It was perfecting the harmony in which I was part of now. It was as if my being had become a vacuum, opening up, allowing everything that ever was, or was to ever be, inside. Within what seemed to be a blink of an eye, the information retention was over.
I can only do my best at this point to explain what took place, for words fall miles short of the actual feeling. I will do my best to explain it as this. I now understood everything that ever was, or was ever to be. I didn’t need to think or even question anymore. I was complete; I was what I believe was the highest existence of peace that could ever be, for my mind was silent and I was simply being, and nothing more. I was a part of everything that ever was and with that I had no expectations nor thought, I was existing within everything and had no form or shape, just a complete perfect state of being. -- Burke
After this, I found myself in a black void. I felt nothing, thought nothing, knew nothing. I had forgotten all about life and earth and anything I'd ever known. This wasn't necessarily unpleasant, it was neutral. It felt like I was there a very long time: or, in a timeless type of way. It felt like I'd always been here and would always be here. I did not possess a mind it seemed. Then, suddenly and far off, as if it could barely be heard, I heard the cries of my newborn baby and all at once, I remembered everything and returned to my body at once. Once back, I felt strange and unreal, like I'd been gone for eons of time... Also the sense of timelessness, once I came out of it and back into my body, it seemed I was in there (seemed I was dead) for forever. It's like I could have been in that void for eons and eons and eons. -- Sarah
In The Beginning was the VOID, before thought, before mind, before time was created and before any physicality.
In The Beginning there was Great Divine LOVE in that Void. Consciousness was totally immersed in that Great Divine Love in the Void. Our Consciousness. One Consciousness.
Actually, this state existed before our understanding of The Beginning in a place called Eternity. Also, this IS before The Beginning. Eternity is NOW and always IS. Eternity IS after The End as well, beyond the Alpha and the Omega. The smoky vapor of Duality intentionally clouds our eyes from perceiving Eternity most of the time.
The VOID is not Nothingness. The Void is not empty, nor is it full. It is a spacious state of BEING beyond time and number. The VOID is not a scary place. My limited mind likes to think it is closest described as, "No mind, all heart." It is closest to the heart of the deepest meditation.
There is also something behind the Void, but that is another tale for another time once we have taken full ownership of our latent Divinity. How may we even speak of this Reality beyond the Void if we don't even understand The Void yet? I only suggest it now as a promise of something more. This is our Second Great Promise because we are ever growing. -- Twin Flames Vision
First thing I remember is traveling through a dark tunnel that seemed it would go on for eternity. The darkness was so heavy it was like tar, like a void, complete lack of creativity; the Great Nothing in Never Ending Story, a space of indifference. Finally the dark tunnel ended and I was floating over my body. Looking back, that tunnel may have represented the space between awareness of this life and the life to come. I could see all dimensions of my body. -- Sebastian X
Peace. It is all at peace, except when they showed me the grey-things, in the ‘void.’ I never remember asking, but I must have. It was light and grey, light and shadow or absence of light, or just less light. All creatures / beings are of light, but some have more light, some less. I'm not sure if where I was, was heaven, but I was at peace, I was loved, and I was HOME...
I've met other friends, who are believers in only the VOID, and I've even been in love with some of them. Yet, I was thinking of the emptiness they embrace always makes me cry; and I wonder what will happen when they die. When I go HOME, will I ever see them again? Will they have consciousness? Will they have alertness? Much of what I knew when I was HOME was taken from me when I returned, or at least it faded somehow. At times bits and pieces seem to return. While I was HOME, I was more alive and at peace than I have ever been here. -- Carl D
Off to my right, at the crossroads, there was light, but not like a light from the sun or an electrical source. I tried to explain it at the time as a void, or place that was neither light nor dark, of no dimension, or infinite dimension and form. Not easy even today to describe it. When I hear other people describe the light of NDE, my interpretation is that their minds put this no-dimension into a known experience for the sake of making sense of it. I am satisfied describing it as no-dimension. -- Hal B
Keen understanding that I was "in" what the Buddhist call The Void. A no place where there is no such thing as time. -- Anita E
Once outside my body -as a consciousness- right above me, in that space between a physical body that had already been left behind in another dimension and a void, which I perceived as a black empty space, after all my concepts and the Creation itself had fallen off of me and disintegrated, there was a gigantic mass of luminous consciousness. Just as the Buddha described it. Huge. It was like an ocean but above, sort of upside down. A sea of pure consciousness, nothing but consciousness, just as Kabir had also described it. It started up and continued upwards, I did not see its end neither side wise nor upwards, I could only see its beginning above me. After I surrendered the Creation, which was the last of the concepts that I surrendered, I felt as if a magnet attracted me very quickly towards the mass of luminous consciousness that I immediately recognized as God. Then I realized that 'it'... was actually me! I was like a droplet of that gigantic mass of consciousness but in reality I was also that huge consciousness, the luminous consciousness. I, little drop of consciousness, now free from the illusion, returned to where I have always belonged: to the huge Ocean of Luminous Consciousness whom we call God. I saw myself, I felt myself, I existed as and I knew myself to be God... I was able to understand why the Buddha called it the Luminous Consciousness, why the Sikh Masters had called it the Ocean of Consciousness and why Jesus had said I and My Father are One. -- Myriam O (STE)
Near death experiencer Pam Reynolds said, "I asked if God was the light, and the answer was: 'No, God is not the light. The light is what happens when God breathes.' And I distinctly remember thinking: I’m standing in the breath of God."
"There was this Light shining. I turned toward the Light. The Light was very similar to what many other people have described in their near death experiences. It was so magnificent. It is tangible; you can feel it. It is alluring; you want to go to it like you would want to go to your ideal mother’s or father’s arms. As I began to move toward the Light, I knew intuitively that if I went to the Light, I would be dead. So as I was moving toward the Light I said, “Please wait a minute, just hold on a second here. I want to think about this; I would like to talk to you before I go.” To my surprise, the entire experience halted at that point. You are in control of your life after death experience. You are not on a roller coaster ride.
So my request was honored and I had some conversations with the Light. The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me. I really want to know the reality of the situation.” I cannot really say the exact words, because it was sort of telepathy.
The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not. As the Light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our higher Self matrix.
We all have a higher Self, or an oversoul part of our being. It revealed itself to me in its truest energy form. The only way I can really describe it is that the being of the higher Self is more like a conduit. It did not look like that, but it is a direct connection to the Source that each and every one of us has. We are directly connected to the Source. So the Light was showing me the higher Self matrix. I was not committed to one particular religion. So that is what was being fed back to me during my life after death experience. As I asked the Light to keep clearing for me, to keep explaining, I understood what the
higher Self matrix is. We have a grid around the planet where all the higher Selves are connected. This is like a great company, a next subtle level of energy around us, the spirit level, you might say. Then, after a couple of minutes, I asked for more clarification. I really wanted to know what the universe is about, and I was ready to go at that time. I said “I am ready, take me.”
Then the Light turned into the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen: a mandala of human souls on this planet...
Then the Light said, “You have a desire.” The Light knew all about me, everything past, present and future. “Yes!” I whispered. I asked to see the rest of the Universe; beyond our solar system, beyond all human illusion. The Light then told me that I could go with the Stream. I did, and was carried Through the Light at the End of the Tunnel. I felt and heard a series of very soft sonic booms. What a rush! Suddenly I seemed to be rocketing away from the planet on this stream of Life. I saw the earth fly away. The solar system, in all its splendor, whizzed by and disappeared. At faster than light speed, I flew through the center of the galaxy, absorbing more knowledge as I went. I learned that this galaxy, and all of the Universe, is bursting with many different varieties of LIFE. I saw many worlds. The good news is that we are not alone in this Universe!
As I rode this stream of consciousness through the center of the galaxy, the stream was expanding in awesome fractal waves of energy. The super clusters of galaxies with all their ancient wisdom flew by. At first I thought I was going somewhere; actually traveling. But then I realized that, as the stream was expanding, my own consciousness was also expanding to take in everything in the Universe! All creation passed by me. It was an unimaginable wonder! I truly was a Wonder Child; a babe in Wonderland! At this point of my near death experience, I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond Infinity. I was in the Void.
I was in pre creation, before the Big Bang. I had crossed over the beginning of time/the First Word/the First vibration. I was in the Eye of Creation. I felt as if I was touching the Face of God. It was not a religious feeling. Simply I was at one with Absolute Life and Consciousness. When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end. That’s a mind-expanding thought, isn’t it? Scientists perceive the Big Bang as a single event that created the Universe. I saw during my life after death experience that the Big Bang is only one of an infinite number of Big Bangs creating Universes endlessly and simultaneously. The only images that even come close in human terms would be those created by super computers using fractal geometry equations.
The ancients knew of this. They said God had periodically created new Universes by breathing out, and recreated other Universes by breathing in. These epochs were called Yugas. Modern science called this the Big Bang. I was in absolute, pure consciousness. I could see or perceive all the Big Bangs or Yugas creating and recreating themselves. Instantly I entered into them all simultaneously. I saw that each and every little piece of creation has the power to create. It is very difficult to try to explain this. I am still speechless about this.
It took me years after I returned from my near death experience to assimilate any words at all for the Void experience. I can tell you this now: the Void is less than nothing, yet more than everything that is! The Void is absolute zero; chaos forming all possibilities. It is Absolute Consciousness; much more than even Universal Intelligence. The Void is the vacuum or nothingness between all physical manifestations. The SPACE between atoms and their components. Modern science has begun to study this space between everything. They call it Zero point. Whenever they try to measure it, their instruments go off the scale, or to infinity, so to speak. They have no way, as of yet, to measure infinity accurately. There is more of the 0 space in your own body and the Universe than anything else!
What mystics call the Void is not a void. It is so full of energy, a different kind of energy that has created everything that we are. Everything since the Big Bang is vibration, from the first Word, which is the first vibration. The biblical “I am” really has a question mark after it. “I am—What am I?” So creation is God exploring God’s Self through every way imaginable, in an ongoing, infinite exploration through every one of us. I began to see during my near death experience that everything that is, is the Self, literally, your Self, my Self. Everything is the great Self. That is why God knows even when a leaf falls. That is possible because wherever you are is the center of the universe. Wherever any atom is, that is the center of the universe. There is God in that, and God in the Void.
As I was exploring the Void during my life after death experience and all the Yugas or creations, I was completely out of time and space as we know it. In this expanded state, I discovered that creation is about Absolute Pure Consciousness, or God, coming into the Experience of Life as we know it. The Void itself is devoid of experience. It is pre life, before the first vibration. Godhead is about more than Life and Death. Therefore there is even more than Life and Death to experience in the Universe!
When I realized this I was finished with the Void, and wanted to return to this creation, or Yuga. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. Then I suddenly came back through the second Light, or the Big Bang, hearing several more velvet booms. I rode the stream of consciousness back through all of creation, and what a ride it was! The super clusters of galaxies came through me with even more insights. I passed through the center of our galaxy, which is a black hole. Black holes are the great processors or recyclers of the Universe. Do you know what is on the other side of a Black Hole? We are; our galaxy, which has been reprocessed from another Universe. In its total energy configuration, the galaxy looked like a fantastic city of lights. All energy this side of the Big Bang is light. Every sub atom, atom, star, planet, even consciousness itself is made of light and has a frequency and/or particle. Light is living stuff. Everything is made of light, even stones. So everything is alive. Everything is made from the Light of God; everything is very intelligent.
As I rode the stream on and on, I could eventually see a huge Light coming. I knew it was the First Light; the higher Self Light Matrix of our solar system. Then the entire solar system appeared in the Light, accompanied by one of those velvet booms. I could see during my near death experience all the energy that this solar system generates, and it is an incredible light show! I could hear the Music of the Spheres. Our solar system, as do all celestial bodies, generates a unique matrix of light, sound and vibratory energies...
"We are literally God exploring God’s self in an infinite Dance of Life..."
"The Light came to me and turned into a huge golden angel. I said, “Are you the angel of death?” It expressed to me that it was my oversoul, my higher Self matrix, a super ancient part of ourselves. Then I was taken to the Light. "
In her book Backwards: Returning to Our Source for Answers Nanci Danison writes about her near death experience in the white light, "I deeply understood that I am Source, an integral part of Source. And Source so loved itself, and loved that little spark that became me, that it allowed me to venture out and experience this illusion of having a separate identity -- of being a separate person. Of having all these lives, and all these experiences, and all these wonders, and all these loves -- just so that I would feel separate and special, fulfilled, and excited. And then Source brought me back into itself so I could remember that I have never been alone. That I have never been separate. That all of those times of feeling small, worthless, or powerless and appreciate how much love it feels for me. How much power I really have. How incredibly spectacular we really are. Because I never would have appreciated those things without the contrast of human life.
I understood that rejoining Source would give me access to the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of the zillions of its other points of awareness or thought-forms in the same way I had shared merged energies with my five companions. And through merger I would know what Source does about its own existence and its source."
Nanci says in one of her talks, "This energy source existed alone. What I understand of its nature is just a little tiny bit. I'm not sure if that's because it doesn't understand its own nature or because that's all I got or that's all I remember. But my impression was that this energy is part of a greater energy source or a greater species of entities or... it's not the end-all be-all. There's something larger or greater, more powerful than it. But this energy source is definitely what we call God. This energy source was alone experiencing itself."
Incidentally, this is a quote from NDEr Pam Reynolds,"I asked if God was the light, and the answer was: “No, God is not the light. The light is what happens when God breathes.” And I distinctly remember thinking: I’m standing in the breath of God…."
"But the beauty was yet to be experienced and that was the beauty of following the Light.... After that light pierced the darkness which began as a pinpoint of light, just a speck of light, enough to attract my attention and I knew, Art, that anyone in this dark space with me, anyone of us, if we saw that light and we so desired it, we could all turn and go towards that light, but I also knew there could be spiritual beings who would not be prepared to go there. They would not release what they had here in this comfort and in this beauty, that they would not follow that light. But I wanted to... I think that some of them did not go to the light because they did not trust or believe in it. This may come from a person's belief system, you know, there are some of us that feel the minute we die, we're gonna go straight to Hell."
I asked a monk/teacher at our local Tibetan Buddhist temple about the clear light being experienced as darkness and he wrote, "yes it’s all true … darkness is light … light is darkness … thery’re twins … but at least you have directly experienced such. Don’t get distracted by the words like "void" or “emptiness" and such … these are translated words into the english language that may not convey the essence of the intended meaning … it’s an ancient problem of conveyance … "is your idea the same as my idea?" … truth is ... your experience is yours and totally yours! If it’s not real in your own mind… where should we go to find out where it is real? Shades of light may have interpretable meaning but who would be the interpreter is the real question. Intention is the only thing that we can affect. Ask yourself what your true and basic intention is. I love your powerful and real experienced communication. I can tell you are sincere. Wishing you happiness and loving kindness. Your experience is identical to mine … i’ve struggled with it for years … i’m 70 years old... and oh yeah … we should meet and talk about such sometime"
Looking at Betty Eadie's NDE and others, yes, there are many near death experiences that talk about how wonderful and loving the Light is. Almost all of them do, in fact. But the question remains how long can one remain in the extreme positive polarity before one is sent back to Earth on another "mission" -- whether by agreeing to do so or by force. And does the positive pole of the Light require there to be a negative pole somewhere where beings are suffering? In the Void, there is neutrality. Some say it is a combination, a union, merger, balance of both poles thus neutral. It is outside time and space in the eternal now. Some near death experiencers will say the Light has no time there, but I think it is just like a thousands years compared to an Earth day. Both time and space are a function of movement and there is no movement in the void therefore no time or space.
Of course, there are some negative experiences in the void too, but those were generated from fear of the dark or unknown. I received an email in early 2017 from a woman who was in a coma. She wrote, "I am very engaged in reading your article on the white light trap... I have been reviewing your article on and off for the past year - It changed my perspective on the afterlife immensely. Last year, I had a serious accident . I was in and out of a coma for days having spent two weeks in the intensive care unit. One thing I do remember is when I lost consciousness, plunging into total darkness; no bright light, no deceased family members... As the months passed by, a feeling of absolute love and peace would resonate from within me - still does. Strangers seem to be curious about me. At night, as I am drifting to sleep, internally, my head will start to glow...
I had read your article months before my accident, and so in essence it stayed with me. As I am lying on my hospital bed, I had momentary lucid thoughts which were: not to project any expectations of angels, guides,...etc. I was not going to be lied to which is why I am guessing the immersion into the void. Once I started to regain lucidity, one of the nurses confessed to me that she would often come into my room when I was unconscious because she said the room would fill with a feeling of peacefulness. This woman then went out of her way to take such loving care of me.
At times, this divine love within me is so intense I sometimes burst into tears...My happiest moments are spent in solitude, at peace."
So here is someone who has actually applied the knowledge of the white light not being where she wanted to go. She did not react in fear of being in a void. And she had a pleasant, wonderful experience.
The NDE in the void that said, "All creatures / beings are of light, but some have more light, some less. I'm not sure if where I was, was heaven, but I was at peace, I was loved, and I was HOME...I've met other friends, who are believers in only the VOID."
This sounds like the description of a world that is called "pure abodes" in Buddhist cosmology where souls spend time before complete merging with formless void.
The funny and sad thing is that this timeless void pure beingness-awareness is right here right now in everyone's direct experience but it is veiled by our wrong perception of the world. We do not see and do not recognize it as a substratum substance of all the objects of the world.
But here is the point. It's a good choice to stay in formless void. It's also okay to manifest forms and enjoy them if you like, as long as we do not leave the enlightened state of abiding in void awareness (you basically manifest forms but still clearly see them as empty forms made of the void awareness and not separate from it). The problem starts when we manifest something and then start believing that it really exists as something real and separate (separate "me", separate objects or other beings) - this is the point where we lose the state of non-dual awareness and enter into the ignorant state of duality (samsara).
Perhaps we were "created" (manifested-out) exactly like that guy in that NDE who became bored and started splitting himself into two-four-eight souls and so on. And each of the clones would most likely started from the same bored and ignorant state believing in its own separate existence and wanting to become someone real and to get all sorts of mental and sensual experiences. This is probably how we ended up incarnating into this material world.
So, after we die, yes, we can go to the state of formless void and stay there for good -- if we are ready spiritually. The question is: what do we do in the meantime while we are in the body? We can practice the formless state once in a while but it does not last for long, only while we meditate. It's like you can hold your breath for a minute or two but then you need to breathe again because your body needs breathing. Likewise, you can hold your mind in thoughtless state but the mind is connected to the brain and the brain needs thinking. Buddhism/Advaita, Dzogchen in particular, offer a practice (Rigpa or sahaja samadhi) of abiding in a relaxed non-dual state every minute of our life regardless whether we experience forms or not. In this way we can already start living (at the higher level of our consciousness) in the "pure abodes", free ourselves from fears, suffering and confusion of duality even in this life and prepare ourselves to go directly to pure abodes or to formless Void right after death. If Rigpa is the state that we get used to and get naturally and effortlessly rooted in even in this life, then there is no way we can be distracted, deceived and incarnate back into astral or material world when we die. True, many NDErs were lucky to go to Void and experience the bliss of it even though they were not prepared and did not know anything about it. But others were not so lucky and were attracted or went directly into the astral realm and then material incarnation again. So it is important not just to be aware of Void but also to be fully prepared by life-long practice. More on this later on in the section on Buddhism and in its own separate section before the Conclusions.
Art Bell was a radio show host who conducted thousands of interviews on topics like near death experiences, out of body experiences, aliens, etc. John Lear is the son of the inventor of the Lear jet, Bill Lear. He is a pilot who holds many records. He told Art Bell that going to the light is a trick and to go to the darkness, but qualified it as saying that's what Whitley Strieber told him.
Art: I recall you saying one thing to me, John, which has haunted me for years and haunts me today. We have had a number of guests on this radio program about life and death. Inevitably, in every warm and fuzzy life after death story, people rush toward the warm, inviting light. Down the tunnel into the light. And once you said to me, John, 'Don't go toward the light. It's a trick! Go toward the darkness.'
John: Well, now remember I qualified that by saying that's what Whitley Strieber told me.
Art: Well, it still bugs me to this day, John, because what if I had to make that choice?
John: Well, right now I'm going towards the darkness.
Art: You are, huh?
John: Yeah
Art: Oh, boy, I don't know. That really drives me crazy.
Art: John, why the dark light?
John: Why going there? Because, according to Whitley, if you go to the bright light, you have made a conscious choice of which direction to go and, supposedly, according to him, at that point if you go to the white light, the Greys -- whoever's in charge of this thing -- can decide what to do with you. Now they can either send you back into another body or they can put you in the black box. Now the reason I wouldn't choose the white light is I don't want to spend what Whitley says is anywhere from 12 to 40,000 years in the black box. He was in there and he said it's a very frightening experience. Now I don't mind being by myself. I could probably spend a couple years by myself, but I'm not sure I could spend 40,000 years whereas if you go towards the dark, you come right back into a terrestrial body and you can continue on with whatever body you got into.
Jeffrey Long is the creator of the NDERF.org web site which has over 4000 near death experiences catalogued. He has appeared on the Coast to Coast A.M. radio show many times.
Caller: Doctor, in your studies have you ever come across the concept of soul recycling?
Dr. Long: Caller, is that like reincarnation? In other words, someone dies. The soul leaves their physical body and then that same personality, that same soul, if you will, that represents or was that person enters another physical body later on in like reincarnation. Is that what you're asking?
Caller: That's what I'm asking but it's with a little twist at the end where there's a third party that's in control of the whole process. They are in control of the recycling where they actually wipe the memory of the soul and then after wiping the memory put them back into whichever body they choose to.
Jeff: That's interesting because we do have some near death experiencers that share their existence in an afterlife prior to being born, prior to living in our earthly life, and all of these descriptions describe that it's a voluntary process. In other words, if you will, premortal existence before birth very often they'll describe the description of being born to particular parents and particular circumstances often with the goal that this seems to be the life in which they can best learn their lessons or lessons that they need to learn through their earthly life. So I see no evidence whatsoever that there's a third party who's sort of controlling this or affecting people's soul going into that. If there's one thing that seems to be an overwhelmingly common theme in my near death experience research it's a sense in the afterlife that we have free choice, free will. In other words, we seem to be incredibly free to choose to be what we'll be, what we do. And that includes, if you will, the earthly life we incarnate into.
Art: Simon, again on the computer through the wormhole asks, "Art, please ask the doctor about the guy you know -- he means Dr. Lear, John Lear -- who has haunted me for years and years and years. John Lear came on the program and said, "Art, I've got an insight and that is if you die, if you have an NDE, don't go to the light. It's a trick. Go to the darkness." The talk show curse goes on John for saying that because I've never been able to get it out of my head.
Dr. Long: Okay. Well, I'll be glad to address that, Art. After studying over 4000 near death experiences I find absolutely nothing that suggests that that's a reality. If you're having a near death experience when that light's encountered it's typically not just an ordinary earthly light. You feel drawn to it, attracted. You have a sense of that overwhelming love, peace and compassion. I mean, it literally seems a part of you. It seems like where you came from before your earthly life. And where you're delighted to return to when your earthly life ends. But there's not a shred of evidence that says you should go to the darkness, I don't think people need to live in fear about making a wrong decision. The universe is overwhelmingly ruled by love and peace. And I think we all in the afterlife have a choice. We can make amends. We can choose to make a right decision and I have to disagree with John Lear. There's nothing in my research nor in research with any other near death experience researcher I'm aware of that suggests we need to have that concern about not going to the light, and going to the darkness.
So I was interviewed Tuesday January 8, 2018 on Joe Rupe's Lighting the Void. Joe was interested in my work because he had interviewed John Lear a couple weeks earlier on Wednesday. December 27, 2017 and so he was interested in the light being a trick. He's telling his audience that he might have a big guest lined up for the next night. During a commercial break I asked who it was and he said Whitley Strieber. I told him if he gets to interview Whitley then he should ask Whitley about the light being a trick because John Lear had told Art Bell it was Whitley who had told him that.
Whitley also wrote in his book Transformation: The Breakthrough , "I cannot forget my memory of the visitors' claim, "We recycle souls." It had also been said to other participants... More than one person had seen the visitors in the context of a near-death experience. 'We recycle souls,' they had said... The visitors have said, 'We recycle souls,; and-of the earth-that 'this is a school.' It may be exactly that-a place where souls are growing and evolving toward some form that we can scarcely begin to imagine."
So Whitley does indeed come on the show the next night, Wednesday January 9, 2018 and here is the relevant part.....a little background. Whitley's wife Anne died recently and he just wrote a book about after death communication with her and says she helped him write the book and is still helping him and others.
Joe Rupe: "And another question I wanted to ask you. You know, you may not have proof for it, but I want to know what you think. The connection between what happened to you a long time ago and that horrific experience. I talked to Wayne Bush last night about, you know, don't go into the light, it's a trick. And he actually told me, 'I thought maybe it was either Whitley Strieber said that to John Lear...' I don't know."
Whitley: "Yeah, I said it. It's not a trick. No, not a trick at all and most people are going to go into the light, but not all. And some of them will become companions of the light. And the highest state that we can attain is to become a companion of God. And God is... you'd be amazed. God is very humble. God is very approachable. You know, forget 'awesome'. He, She or It does not do that -- at least not to the likes of me or Annie..."
Joe: "So then the whole story of our Consciousness is trapped here by Archons and we're trying to escape this consciousness.... [Whitley laughs loudly.]
Whitley: "Don't worry about it. It's good entertainment. It's like enjoying a horror movie. But I just... you know, let it be. I mean, so what if there are Archons here. If you have a strong soul, they don't have anything to do with you. They're not going to have anything to do with you. I know a lot of things, secret things in a way. You know, there are negative presences here and they'd like you to believe that they are all-powerful. They have only the power you give them. And how do you give them power? You give them power by entertaining them. If you live through ego, then they have power over you 'cause ego is..when ego starts.. when a baby is born it has no ego and there's nothing wrong with ego. Ego is a very useful tool, it's a wonderful tool... don't get me wrong, but it's to be used as a tool. It's not us. What happens is you're given a name and over the first six months or so of your life, you begin to recognize yourself in the context of that name. And, you know, I'm John. I'm Whitley. I'm Anne. I'm Whoever. And by the time you're five or six, that name is you. But it's NOT you. This is something that has happened in your brain and you have built a personality by reflecting the world and behaviors of the people around you. And over time this personality will get richer and bigger and more complex, all attached to your name. But it is a brain function and when the brain dies, it will die. And so, yeah, part of us is very scared of dying because that will die. But what won't die is the soul and the soul is there gathering experience through the medium of the body and the personality, the ego."
"So if you learn to not realize that your ego is not you, that there's somebody else there... you know what happened to me when I first really felt this, was I burst out laughing and Annie said in her afterlife state... she said, "You know, The word at the beginning of universe, you know what it was? It was a laugh. It was a laugh, a surprise laugh. And Meister Eckhart says the creation story, his creation, is he was the great 14th century theologian and seer called by a man who knew God and he probably did.... he said, "God laughed. And his laughter begat the Sun. And the Sun laughed. And the father together and their laughter begat the Holy Spirit. And the three of them laughed and the whole universe poured out of their laughter." And you start getting into it at that level and you begin to ascend. You ascend on a stairway of laughter. Jacob's Ladder is laughter. So, you know, it's why Buddha is smiling. It's what nirvana is all about..."
"Like Annie says, this Earth is a soul factory and she said there's millions of them. So it's no big deal. we're here... it's a big deal to me because it's my soul, but we also have to remember that we're not alone and that's not a big deal either. We may or may not meet others in the physical plane. She did tell me that movement through the universe in the physical state, in the state that we're in, is really difficult and mostly never happens. And this why the Visitors are so ethereal. You know, you can't tell when you're with them, am I with something that is physical or not? And these are beings -- and they may be from here, by the way. There's no evidence that they're from anywhere else. But they do have the ability to change their density. They can make themselves more dense or less dense. And maybe it's something they evolved, or maybe it's something technological, or maybe it's just that their souls are that way, I don't know. But Annie can too. She's learning."
Linda Moulton-Howe
Speaking of Whitley, a researcher sent me a link to an interesting talk by UFO researcher Linda Moulton-Howe at the 2016 Conscious Life Expo. She mentions that she and Whitley talk frequently. She mentions how the gray and Eben aliens transfer souls into bodies and clones, how an Air Force officer said the recycling of souls is the mechanism of the universe, how the Ebens claimed, "We made you. We put you here. But you have to live it."
"I asked when the yellow book talked about the Supreme Being that created the universe, did it say anything about parallel dimensions, parallel timelines, or
anything else like that? Sherman said, 'No, no. The aliens talked about the vastness of the universe, that there are life-forms all over. It talks about a Supreme Being creating the souls and creating the containers and distributing the souls to the containers. To the Ebens it's just basic facts.' I asked Sherman,
'If the Ebens made us and put us here, there has to be a reason. Are we a garden growing containers for souls to be harvested for some reason?' Sherman answered, 'It's another good question and all I can tell you is that one elderly man within MJ-12 told me quote 'you don't want to know that' when I asked him about souls and why the Ebens made us.' "
One thing I found very interesting is how Linda keeps referring to "the divine field" which is another way of talking about the zero point field or the void. She said, "... the souls must come from something like a divine field and the divine field, I would think, is eternal and has no entropy and there's no destruction and there's no death and that the divine field is that which has created all matter worlds and that if the biggest picture of it all were known the challenge of it at every level might be that the divine field is waiting through in eternal patience that every soul that has been created will it choose on its own... no matter what forms of repression yet experiences.. will it choose to return to the divine field." Notice she doesn't say "the white light", but "the divine field".
She later emphasizes the need for the governments to divulge the truth, "If the truth continues to be buried for the rest of the century.... I can't believe that the divine field would support an entire planet of lies if you know what I mean. When I say that that I think there are rhythms and ethics and principles and we're in a universe that is confusing like the yin and yang with the dark and the white and those images at the end. And I'm struggling with this myself because I feel an ally ship with a divine field... maybe each one of us is a dvd/cd, the soul. We're afraid of AI which means we have to wake up to be liberated. But it might slow down Isis. It might stop the insanity of religions fighting each other and killing in the name of whose god is superior to another god. This tribal warfare on this planet has to come to an end. I, personally, I mean every fiber in me feels we have to break the lies. We have to move to truth. We have to let the chips fall where they may because I cannot believe that the divine field responsible for all the matter worlds would support an entire planetary system built for thousands of years on complete and total lies. I just can't believe this could be allowed."
In a 2017 interview with Dark Journalist, Linda said, "I recorded a whole huge volume of her talking too and at one point which comes to the heart of the so called resurrection technology, which I'll explain, she was describing how a praying mantis seemed to be in charge and that he was so scary to look at, but that she got a sense of profound sadness. And the profound sadness that seemed to emanate from this 8-foot tall praying mantis diluted her fear because in the telepathic download into her, not only did she feel profound sadness, she felt that he was as old as this solar system. Could there be cyborgs... could there be organic intelligences that could be 4.6 billion years old? I don't know, but that's what she felt and that he knew everything that there was possible to know about you, the earth, and life. And he is the one who shows her a oval-shaped cylindrical eye. It's not a container, would be more like if you're in a room, a large room, and then there is something that is more like another room in the middle of the room. But it was round so we're not talking about anything small. And the praying mantis sort of directs her attention, all of the sparkling light, all kinds of like she says it was like a million little fireflies inside of this round structure. And the praying mantis is standing next to it and the words that come into her head from him telepathically: 'This is where we do translation into the light.' quote, unquote. 'We do translation into the light.' "
"... in case after case after case of this related to this technology whatever the praying mantis, and the gray is working with the praying mantis, are about and doing, it's communicated to her very clearly it is vital that the entity -- and she gets the impression that an entity, when she gets the download, is her soul --she says that that the entity remain in the particular body container for a very specific period of time in this man. We must take out his entity and we are putting it into a younger clone of his body, and here are the tubes that have lied at the top of the bottom. And she sees various humanoids in these and one of them is her attention is directed by the gray being."
"... what is really mind-bending when we consider that, because just how multi-layered and deep is this interaction if this is all true, we are just waking up to the fact thatwe are some kind of an organic life-form that seems to have value to something that comes in and out of our consciousness that we don't understand right that's what it seems like if the MJ-12, CIA, NSA, and on and on etc but if they have come to the same conclusion: we are, as Charles Fort said, we probably begin as standing up primates, as somebody's property, true property to be manipulate,d harvested, provoked in dreams, telepathy and now we're in the 21st century and the earth seems to be falling apart in the environment, well, having violence and wars right to the point can't help but wonder is a conflict among other intelligences even about what to do with this conscious life that they put in motion. If we are alive and we are conscious because something else needed to find answers to its own survival but something has happened that puts a very special as the great Linda Porter puts a very special entity into the Homo Sapien body, and that is the human spirit. What an irony if most important contribution that this creation by other intelligences in other dimensions have done has created some kind of a soul that they are here and come from other dimensions in order to interact and harvest something or study something about the human spirit when humans on this planet every day, every hour, and every minute are treating each other as if we didn't have souls. "
"So when Linda Porter is face to face with the praying mantis and being communicated telepathically that what she's going to experience is the translation into the light, and she comes away with a sense that this praying mantis knows every single thing there is to know, and it's the profound sadness that overwhelmed her, a profound sadness as a human being that she felt emanating from this otherwise monstrous looking eight-foot creature. And that what follows for her was a demonstration that the soul spirit could be taken out of a human body container and put into a clone in a tube sustained by light, a translation into the light. And if you thought about the new material that's coming out. Physicist Lisa Randall at Harvard, she does remarkable work and her last book about black holes and dinosaurs... she is raising the most interesting possible concept that in addition to the photons that we associate with light, there could be a corollary: a dark photon just like the yin and yang symbol. Bright white / dark light, the two are juxtaposed in this universe and that the dark photon might have the explanation for dark energy, dark matter."
There is not a lot written in the remaining fragments we have of the ancient Sumerian texts about the origin of the gods, the origin of how everything came into being.
A "retelling" called Before All Befores states, "Before All Befores, there was Nammu, the Sea, She the Origin, Ever flowing Beginning. Nammu was the First, the Source, the Mother of the Universe, the Self-Procreating Womb of Abundance, Alone and All-In-One, Nammu was Primal Matter, the Deep Fertile Waters of the Sea. Before All Befores (for time was yet to be), Nammu revolved and flowed, squeezed, coiled and rushed like a double helix spiral. Love she made for the first time to HerSelf, and she in Pure Joy reveled. Nammu’s waters then opened up: she had given birth to Ki-An, Creation’s first born, She the Mountain, He the Sky.Before all Befores, wrapped around the liquid Body of the Mother, Ki the Mountain, An the Sky held each other close in a most tender embrace. Ki the Mountain, An the Sky lay in each other’s arms before all befores, when An was an empty Sky, Ki a stony earth, laying barren and unfulfilled within Nammu’s fecund body fluid...
Nammu feels and sees everything. She must now create space for her offspring. Under Ki, surrounding Enlil, above An, Nammu arches and stretches, her Watery Form to further Depths she directs. Nammu defines HerSelf as the First Ocean, cradle of other life forms to come. ‘Mine are the Depths reaching out to the Surface’, decrees the Fates Nammu, ‘mine is the Process of Becoming out of Nothing’s embrace. mine is the Nurturing Womb, Life’s first Mystery, mine is the Silence that all Life Created.’ "
There is also a "retelling" of an ancient Sumerian text called Ninhursag's Children that says "Ninhursag-Ki sighed deeply: 'Yes, Enlil, these are your brothers and sisters too, but let them be and follow their own destinies. Learn to see beyond appearances, my firstborn, to reach out for the True Essency, learn to reach out to the Source where yourself came from, the Union of all Opposites, The Holy Complementarity that was lost.' "
According to Wikipedia, "In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad were eight primordial deities worshipped in Hermopolis. The eight deities were arranged in four male-female pairs (the female names being merely derivative female forms of the male names), as follows: Nu, Naunet; Hehu, Hehut; Kekui, Kekuit; Qerh, Qerhet... The names of Nu and Naunet are written with the determiners for sky and water, and it seems clear that they represent the primordial waters. The fourth pair appears with varying names; sometimes the name Qerh is replaced by Ni, Nenu, Nu, or Amun, and the name Qerhet by Ennit, Nenuit, Nunu, Nit, or Amunet... Nu (also Nenu, Nunu, Nun), feminine Naunet (also Nunut, Nuit, Nent, Nunet), is the deification of the primordial watery abyss in the Hermopolitan Ogdoad cosmogony of ancient Egyptian religion. The name is paralleled with nen "inactivity" in a play of words in, "I raised them up from out of the watery mass [nu], out of inactivity [nen]". The name has also been compared to the Coptic noun "abyss; deep".
So Nu or Nun was known as a primordial deity and is associated with inactivity and the abyss or deep. Consider the variation in the English words "new" and "none".
"Hail, Naunet Protector of the void, Guardian of the abyss……”
"The Egyptians had many different versions of a creation myth. In all of them, the original God sprang from Nun (also called Nu) who was described as being ‘the primordial waters’. Nun was more than an ocean, He was a limitless expanse of motionless water. Nun was portrayed as a bearded man with a blue or green body, symbolizing water and fertility. In one hand He holds a palm frond, a symbol of long life and wears another one in His hair. Since He is known as the “Father of Fathers and the Mother of Mothers” and is sometimes shown with female breasts as well, His feminine aspect is known as the Goddess Inu. In another Egyptian version of the deities, rather than have a feminine version of Nun, He is said to have a consort named Naunet (sometimes called Nunet). Naunet is considered to be the Goddess of the Primordial Abyss of the Underworld. Naunet is a member of the Ogdoad of eight primordial deities who together personify the essence of the primordial chaos before the creation of the world. The Ogdoad created from Themselves the mound upon which lay the egg from which the sun god emerged. This Sun God, named Atum, became the first God of the earth. Eventually, Atum became associated with Ra. Ra-Atum was the coming of the light to disperse the darkness of Nun and is symbolized by the Phoenix in this context."
"Hermopolito-Theban cosmogeny, which was based on the emergence from Nun of an Ogdoad that created the sun disk" -- Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE by Francoise Dunand, Christiane Zivie-Coche
Wes Penre
I sometimes get asked about the work of researcher and author Wes Penre. Now is a good time to include some of his work since it does include the Void, which he calls Khaa. . Like my work, his spans across many cultures so I'm not sure where to put his section so this section is as good as any.
Wes wrote, "The first galaxies were born in the VOID, which later was named the KHAA (pronounced shaa or haa, like an outbreath—the outbreath of the Mother Goddess, the Primordial Dragon). From the center of the VOID, She had given birth to the Universe, and let Her creation spread out over unbelievably long distances. Like small oases in a great Ocean of VOID, galaxies, containing billions—sometimes trillions and quadrillions—of stars were forming, so that imaginary sailors on the vast cosmic ocean had islands where they could anchor their heavenly sailboats in order to explore. As time went by—as if time is even the correct word to use—the VOID was filled with beauty from the Creation by the First Dragon, and Her life force was present in everything She had created, and all of it was Her Creation—Hers and no one else’s. The Universe was created from the VOID, and life was created in the VOID."
"Then the Goddess’ s dress was lit up by the stars of the Universe, and everything disappeared in front and around Ninurta—all that was left was the Infinite VOID, which was the Goddess in her Ultimate Beingness."
Wes connects the word Khaa to the Egyptian ka which is related to breath. He wrote, "How the Word “KHAA” is Used in Egyptian and Sanskrit Languages -- The KHAA is a very ancient Orion expression, pronounced haaa, where the “a” is pronounced like in “car.” If pronounced correctly, it should sound like an outbreath, which is what the KHAA literally is—it’s the outbreath of the Goddess, according to mythology, and in this outbreath, which still hasn’t stopped, the Universe is created. 20 This is why particles in the Universe is in constant motion. Legend tells us that sometime in a distant future, the Goddess will stop breathing out, and particles will slow down considerably. Then, when She decides to end this experiment called the Universe, she will breathe in, and swallow the entire Universe, which then ceases to exist. A new outbreath will potentially take place, and a new universe will be created. The word KHAA has then been adopted from the Orion language, and used by different ancient cultures here on Earth, and both the Egyptian and the East Indian cultures have the word KHAA in their languages, although it is spelled differently, and in the old Egyptian language, it had another meaning. In ancient Egypt, the word “Ka” has regularly been translated as “life-force” in lack of a better English translation. For a while, it was translated as “male potency,”21 typically enough. However, mostly Ka has been connected with intellectual and spiritual power—i.e. it was the word for “spirit” or “soul.” The Ka was often depicted as two raised arms (fig.5). The Ka, in Egypt, was also associated with dying. The phrase, “going to one’s Ka” is an euphemism of dying.22 However, when we go back to the much older Sanskrit language, we get closer to the real meaning of the word KHAA, or Ka..."
"So, what the scientists have gathered is that the Universe is 4% “matter,” about 23% “dark matter,” and about 73% “dark energy.”103 However, the scientists know very little about what dark matter and dark energy are or what they consist of, although there are plenty of wild guesses. In Level II, we learned that due to the Grid and our limited access to our total DNA, we only see and perceive 4% of the Universe, and the rest I call the KHAA or the VOID, although some say that the 4% is part of the KHAA as well, but the only part of the KHAA that we can see, while others say that the 4% is just a hologram within a hologram and is not really real..."
"Here, however, we need to separate the 96% Mother Goddess Universe (the KHAA or the VOID) and the 4% physical universe, which we call the 3 dimensional universe or 4-space/time, if we include time in it as well. These two terms need some extra attention to be understood.
In the KHAA is where nano-travel happens. As I have explained earlier, the KHAA is the dark energy and matter between stars, nebulas, and galaxies. The KHAA is a universe by itself, with its own, for us unseen planets, stars, nebulas, and galaxies. Those who dwell in the KHAA dwell in the 'body of the Mother Goddess'. The KHAA had its own dimensions and densities as well, and to travel in the KHAA, you 'shrink' yourself into nano-particles and travel space distances instantly. No stargates or vortexes are necessary -- you think yourself somewhere and a nanosecond later you are there... The KHAA starts in the 12th and 13th Dimension and goes on from there. The KHAA, or the VOID, is also called the Orion Empire. No technology whatsoever is required there to travel between stars and planets. You travel in your thoughts and manifest with your avatar. Your everlasting soul is your Fire -- the Fire of the Mother Goddess. "
On May 1, 2019 he wrote a new article about the Gnostic goddess, Sophia, and her role. "She created the KHAA, i.e. the VOID. Void means emptiness, and that was exactly what it was—a Nothingness, void of Spirit. A metaphor would be that we humans, who are Spirits “inside” a body (to use a workable analogy), have no way of knowing how our bodies look like, unless we look ourselves in a mirror, take a photo, look at our reflection in water, or in some other way see a reflection of our body from outside. If we look ourselves in a mirror, the mirror is not us—only an inverted reflection of us—and therefore, it’s not spirited. In the same manner, the VOID, which is a reflection of the DF, is also void of Spirit. The reflection She created thus became the VOID. The VOID was, and still is, existing within Her, but She perceived it as being external."
With Vedic texts everywhere you see the word "Self" (with capital S) in English translations of Vedic texts has the Sanskrit original word "Atman". The meaning of the word Atman is usually translated as "Self" but the original ancient meaning of the word is more like "breath" or "spirit" which is closer to "Consciousness" or "Awareness" then to "Self". Atman simply means the "individuated awareness" (each of us own awareness) and Brahman or Sat-Chit-Ananda (Beingness-Consciousness-Bliss) is the "universal Awareness". Then the famous Vedic phrase "Atman is Brahman" simply means that our individual awareness in no different form the universal Awareness, or, in other words, there is only one Awareness.
But even if you interpret Atman as your "Self" it is important not to confuse this "Self" with our sense of individual "I" that is ego or "selfishness". The Vedic phrase "I am Brahman" means "everything in the world is Brahman including me, so everything that I thought that I am - body, mind, thoughts, feelings etc - are actually not "me" but Brahman (Awareness) only".
Hinduism teaches Moksha, that is that one needs to liberate one's spirit from the cycle of rebirth into the physical plane of illusion.
Rig Veda
The Hindu religious text, the Rigveda, states, "The non-existent was not; the existent was not. Darkness was hidden by darkness. That which became was enveloped by The Void."
The Creation hymn of the Rigveda states, "Then even nothingness was not, nor existence. There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed? Then there was neither death nor immortality
nor was there then the torch of night and day. The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other. At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness. All this was only unillumined cosmic water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat. In the beginning desire descended on it -
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is kin to that which is not. And they have stretched their cord across the void,
and know what was above, and what below.
Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse. But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen? Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know."
There are many different English translations for the creation. Here is another translation: "Non-being then existed not nor being: There was no air, nor sky that is beyond it. What was concealed? Wherein? In whose protection? And was there deep unfathomable water? Death then existed not nor life immortal; Of neither night nor day was any token. By its inherent force the One breathed windless: No other thing than that beyond existed. Darkness there was at first by darkness hidden; Without distinctive marks, this all was water. That which, becoming, by the void was covered, That One by force of heat came into being. Desire entered the One in the beginning: It was the earliest seed, of thought the product. The sages searching in their hearts with wisdom, Found out the bond of being in non-being. Their ray extended light across the darkness: But was the One above or was it under? Creative force was there, and fertile power: Below was energy, above was impulse. Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it? Whence was it born, and whence came this creation? The gods were born after this world's creation: Then who can know from whence it has arisen? None knoweth whence creation has arisen; And whether he has or has not produced it; He who surveys it in the highest heaven, He only knows, or haply he may know not."
"Brahman is Life, Brahman is Joy, Brahman is the Void. Joy, verily that is the same as the Void, The Void, verily that is the same as Joy."— Chandogya Upanishad
The Ribhu Gita (The Song of Ribhu)
*Thus did the exalted Ribhu explain the limitless Reality to the sage Nidagha
*Lay aside the ghost of doubt and fickle phantom of duality by the mantra of the contemplation of the Absolute. Those who listen and follow the endless strategies here described will attain the complete Brahman-Knowledge. Thus did Ribhu propound to Nidagha the undivided Supreme Reality
*The Self is beyond duality and nonduality, transcends the fourth state, exists as the blemishless self-illumined, to be looked upon as our real, natural state
*Listen blemishless Nidagha ! There never is any such word as duality, always all is of the nature of Brahman Indeed I am only the supreme Brahman, which unfragmented, the Supreme light, without dawn or day, without cause and effect, which is everywhere, without a second. Realize this ever, son, without any delusion
*There is no duality or non-duality, which are talked about.
[NOTE: the meaning of this is that "duality" and "non-duality" are our mental concepts. They are only pointing to the Reality (Brahman), but the Reality itself is beyond concepts. It's incomprehensible. Also, these concepts still do not grasp the Reality even close because the Reality is in a way mysteriously both dual and non-dual: it is always One in essence but has the ability to appear as multiple forms without actually dividing into multiple entities. So our human logic just breaks here. One important point of Advaita and Buddhism (also especially emphasized in Zen) is that we need to stop conceptualizing about the Reality and start directly experiencing it.]
*Only the peaceful Brahman is ever
existent, hence, you should start
inquiring into this
*I am ever of the nature of the
Supreme Brahman, the Supreme
Siva, the Supreme Self, higher than
the highest, pure, perfectly full,
undivided.Inquire steadfastly into this
everyday
*I transcend time, space, all objects, I
ever transcend everything, I am of the
nature that has not an atom of conceit
or attachment. I am of the nature of
the immaculate Supreme Brahman,
inquire steadfastly into this everyday
*I am ever of the nature of Existence alone, Consciousness alone, only the good, the middle path, the non-dual. I am of the nature of the Self of all, without intellect and such, the abode that transcends the intellect, inquire steadfastly into this everyday
*Those who sincerely practice the Knowledge that I am the Supreme Brahman – the eternal, partless, ancient mass of bliss, the Reality, the utterly peaceful Consciousness – will have the awareness of non-duality and thereby become the undivided Supreme
*First, contemplate that all the seen is the
seer, that is Brahman and then proceed to even cast off that thought.Then, being lost
in the silent meditation in the void will
confer unsurpassed bliss and rid oneself of
all fear.Because of this certitude turn your
attention to abidance in meditation
*Casting aside all and becoming the void is
the renunciation of all, by all is meant only
the mind.Casting off the mind is the
renunciation of all and it is the renunciation
of mind that is the renunciation of thought
*Attain the natural state(sahaja). There is
nothing more to be taught here
*I am Brahman, indeed, which transcends wakefulness, the dream state and deep sleep state. Which transcends duality, beyond the bodies, all experiences, which is pervasive and pauseless. Such is the certitude of the peerless sage
*Continue in the “I am Brahman” bhava forgetting all this duality, when this knowledge culminates, in sense-free, mindfree, boundless Being, become motionless like a stone of the nature of Brahman and, rid of all weakness, enjoy unhindered Bliss
*Leaving off even that abide as the Self,
leaving aside that, abide as Brahman
alone.Leaving all the said so far abide as
the true Void. Leaving aside the Void,
whatever nature remains, exist as that
nature
*This duality does not exist at all at any time. All is of the nature of the Supreme Brahman, which is the One I am that non-dual Supreme Brahman, be of this steadfast contemplation always
*Brahman, indeed, is
certainly the Void, hence it said to be
impossible to meditate on
*Forgetting, forgetting again,
renouncing, renouncing again, leave
off all activities with the attitude that
I am established as the Void.
*Only the non-dual Supreme Brahman is the Truth – Be of the deep conviction that I am That
There is no individuality, no duality, no multiplicity. No cause, no effect, no doer. No appearances to see, and no one to see. Only the non-dual Supreme Brahman is the Truth. Be of the deep certitude that I am That
*Being void with no thought of anything, indeed, transcends all ever
*The exposition of the truth of Advaita(Non-duality)
*To strengthen the knowledge of the undivided Supreme Brahman, I shall tell further, noble soul ! The conclusion that it is only Brahman that exists, the mass of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, the nondual, that is the quintessence of the Veda-s
*There is only one great Self which fascinates the mind, I am the only One without second, I am the only One and none other. I am the only One, devoid of worlds, intellect, desire and delusion
*Be of such conviction without a doubt and immediately you are Liberated in Non-duality.
*Ribhu said, I am indeed Brahman, I am indeed Consciousness, I am of the eternally pure nature, I am without the duality of beginning and end
*Chapter Twenty Six -- Topic of the instruction of abiding as That itself *Undifferentiated abidance in the Nondual nature
*That which is the Supreme Brahman, the
Self of all, of the nature of ExistenceConsciousness-Bliss – ever abide as That
itself
*The meaning of the word “Brahman” is
the Reality, which is Truth-KnowledgeBliss, of the nature of the substratum of the
entire universe which is superimposed on it
and not apart from Brahman, the Reality,
indeed, is of the nature of Absolute
Knowledge
*Thus after having understood the
meaning of the texts, throw them away and
practice daily constant meditation intently
for gaining complete Knowledge
*The wavering mind will not easily let
itself be controlled. To be in that very same
state day in and day out, one should be in
profound, constant meditation upon “ I am
the Eternal Supreme Brahman”
*... be of the
certitude that I am the Absolute, which
remains as Existence-Consciousness-Bliss
*The idea that I am Brahman, the concept
of Guru and disciple, the experience that I
am Liberated, the understanding that all is
Brahman – all is Brahman, be of this
certitude
*It is only to those of profound meditation
that this experience will result and never to
those who are dominated by the hopping
mind. Hence, always practice the onepointed profound meditation that all the
illusory appearances are indeed, the
Supreme Brahman, the substratum and I
am this Brahman myself
*There is only One and no second, the world composed of parts with pairs of opposites, the defects of the world, the samsara, the mode of duality, the witness mode, the undivided mode, the undivided essence do not exist
*Sage Nidagha continued: Master ! by
your steadfast compassion I do not
perceive the body that appears as
gross,subtle or causal. I do not perceive the
deluded mind, time or space and such. I
have become the Supreme Brahman
without a trace of anything illusory
*I do not perceive any duality or
nonduality, any joy or sorrow, any praise
or blame, any differences of multiple
religions, any words of instruction, I have
become the changeless Supreme Brahman
*It is only to those, who, in adherence to
the axioms of the great aphorisms of
Vedanta, continuously meditate with love,
without confusion, for a considerable
period that the rare compassion of the
Supreme Siva will flow and the blissful
Supreme Knowledge, the Awareness, will
result
Avadhuta Gita (Chapter 1)
*Chapter 1
1. Through the grace of God alone, the desire for nonduality
arises in wise men to save them from great fear.
Nonduality - monistic Consciousness, in which the knower, knowledge, and knowable - soul and God - become one; the highest realization
of Divinity.
4. All is verily the absolute Self.
Distinction and nondistinction do not exist.
How can I say, "It exists; it does not exist"?
I am filled with wonder!
5. The essence and the whole of Vedanta is this Knowledge,
this supreme Knowledge:
That I am by nature the formless, all-pervasive Self I do not know how or in relation to whom
joy and sorrow exist.
9. The mind indeed is of the form of space. The mind indeed is omnifaced. The mind is the past. The mind is all. But in reality there is no mind.
10. I, the One only, am all this, beyond space and continuous.
How can I see the Self as visible or hidden?
12. Know the Self always to be everywhere, one and unintercepted.
I am the meditator and the highest object of meditation.
Why do you divide the Indivisible?
15. Union and separation exist in regard neither to you nor to me.
There is no you, no me, nor is there this universe.
All is verily the Self alone.
16. You do not belong to that which is composed of the five objects
of sense, such as sound; nor does that belong to you.
You indeed are the supreme Reality. Why then do you suffer?
17. For you there is no birth or death, for you there is no mind,
for you there is no bondage or liberation, no good or evil.
Why do you shed tears, my child?
Neither you nor I have name and form.
18. Oh mind, why do you wander about deluded, like an unclean spirit?
Behold the Self indivisible.
Be happy through renunciation of attachment.
19. You verily are Truth, devoid of change, motionless, one,
of the nature of freedom.
You have neither attachment nor aversion .
Why do you suffer, seeking the objects of desires?
20. All the scriptures say that the Truth is without attributes, pure,
immutable, bodiless, and existing equally everywhere.
Know me to be That.
21. Know that which has form to be false, that which is formless
to be eternal.
Through the instruction of this truth there is no longer rebirth
into this world.
32. There is no pot; there is no pot's interior space.
Neither is there an individual soul nor the form of an individual soul.
Know the absolute Brahman, devoid of knowable and knower.
33. Know me to be that Self who is everything and everywhere
at all times, the one who is eternal, steady, the All, the nonexistent, and the Existent.
Have no doubt.
34. There are no Vedas, no worlds, no gods, no sacrifices.
There is certainly no caste, no stage in life, no family, no birth.
There is neither the path of smoke nor the path of light.
There is only the highest Truth, the homogeneous Brahman.
36. Some seek nonduality, others duality.
They do not know the Truth, which is the same at all times and everywhere,
which is devoid of both duality and nonduality.
37. How can they describe the Truth, which is beyond mind and words,
which is devoid of white and other colours, of sound and other qualities?
38. When all these appear to you as false, when the body and so on
appear to you like space, then you know Brahman truly, then for you
there is no dual series.
61. The whole universe shines undivided and unbroken.
Oh, the maya, the great delusion - the imagination
of duality and nonduality
73. The avadhuta (liberated soul) alone, pure in evenness of feeling,
abides happy in an empty dwelling place.
Having renounced all, he moves about naked.
He perceives the Absolute, the All, within himself.
In the King James version of the Bible, the very first three verses of Genesis declare, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." This is the creation story of God creating the heaven and earth. Notice it mentions a formless void and darkness. Then Spirit moved so there was vibration. God spoke so there was sound. Then, finally, Light is mentioned as a product of voice and sound. So Light, according to the Bible, was not Source (although there are verses that declare God to be light as well).
Now the typical assessment of the text is called creatio ex nihilo, that is God created the world out of nothing. But one could also argue that the darkness or void is god itself. For as we will see pure light, unreflected, is perceived as darkness itself as we see in outer space when the light is coming from the sun to Earth. It is only when it is reflected off of planets or the moon that we can see the light as color, or when it is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere and we begin to see it as red/orange etc at sunrise or sunset.
I was thinking about Genesis 1 and I wondered what the Hebrew words actually were and how they were translated. I was trying to do the translation myself (even though I don't know Hebrew), but I was looking up dictionaries and noun declensions etc and I found this that Genesis 1:1 transliterated is "b'reishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz". As I was translating the words verbatim before trying to order them I had something like, "In the Beginning it created the Gods the heavens the land..." But apparently there is a mistake in how they transcribed the very first word... https://www.rebjeff.com/blog/bereshit-in-the-beginning-of-what This guy says it would be more accurate to say: "In the beginning of the beginning that is always beginning....this gets into the realm of Awareness or the eternal Now. On another note "Elohim" actually is plural and probably should be "Gods", not "God". Plus there is a bit of a question as to whether Gods would be the subject or object of the sentence too. So we could even conceivably have something like: The Eternal now (Void?) is continually creating God....
According to Wikpedia,"Ayin means "nothingness". According to kabbalistic teachings, before the universe was created there was only Ayin, and the first manifest Sephirah (Divine emanation), Chochmah (Wisdom), "comes into being out of Ayin."... "Ein Sof, or Eyn Sof (/eɪn sɒf/, Hebrew: אין סוף), in Kabbalah, is understood as God prior to any self-manifestation in the production of any spiritual realm, probably derived from Solomon ibn Gabirol's (c. 1021 – c. 1070) term, "the Endless One" (she-en lo tiklah). Ein Sof may be translated as "unending", "(there is) no end", or infinity. It was first used by Azriel (c. 1160 – c. 1238), who, sharing the Neoplatonic belief that God can have no desire, thought, word, or action, emphasized by it the negation of any attribute. Of the Ein Sof, nothing ("Ein") can be grasped ("Sof"-limitation). It is the origin of the Ohr Ein Sof, the "Infinite Light" of paradoxical divine self-knowledge, nullified within the Ein Sof prior to creation. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the first act of creation, the Tzimtzum self "withdrawal" of God to create an "empty space", takes place from there... According to Gershom Scholem, the Ein Sof is the emanator of the ten sefirot. Sefirot are energy emanations found on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life."
So the Ein Sof, the unknowable aspect of God, is empty space and this infinite emptiness is the emanator of all the energy emanations.
In a lecture by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh he begins by saying, "We've learned that the soul has three levels to it. The highest level of the soul, its absolute root is called ayin, the Divine nothingness. Ayin mazal leyisra'el ["Nothingness is the mazal of Yisra'el"] so teaches us the Ba'al Shem Tov that the Divine nothingness is the mazal. The mazal is the shoresh, the root of the soul." In the glossary of his book Body, Mind, and Soul: Kabbalah on Human Physiology, Disease and Healing he writes, " The Ba’al Shem Tov teaches that the Divine “nothingness” itself is the true mazal of the Jewish people."
Israel Regardie, author of many books about the Order of the Golden Dawn, writes in What You Should Know About the Golden Dawn, "So far as concerns the Boundless Light, the Qabalah teaches that it is an abstract impersonal principle, an exalted condition of consciousness rather than of substance —an essence or spirit which is everywhere, and at all times, expressed in terms of Light. Though wholly impersonal in itself, and without characteristics cognisable to our human minds, Ain Soph Aour is, to all intents and purposes, what is commonly thought of as God. In the system of Tibetan Buddhism, the concept analogous to this is the Void, Sunyata. The realisation of the Void by means of the processes of Yoga and the technical meditations of the Sangha is, to quote Dr. Evans-Wentz's book The Tibetan Book of the Dead, to attain "the unconditioned Dharmakaya or the Divine Body of Truth, the primordial state of uncreatedness, of the Supramundane Bodhic All-consciousness—Buddhahood." In man, the Light is represented by a mighty activity within his soul, the intrinsically pure essence of mind, the higher and divine Genius." Even the rituals incorporate the Void: "Thus, at the altar, the three principal officers form about the candidate a Triad, representing again the Supernal Clear Light of the Void, and these again are represented by the number of the circumambulations." In The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, Israel writes, "The Ceremony of the Neophyte in the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn will, on various considerations, remain one of the most important of the system, because it corresponds to the first enunciation of the Spiritual Light in the void of the universal darkness..."
Eliphas Levi
Eliphas Levi wrote extensively about the Kabbalah and the astral light. In his book Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual he wrote about the dualistic symbolism of Baphomet as well as the astral light. He writes, "The Astral Light, or Soul of the World, was the instrument of Adam's omnipotence; it became afterwards that of his punishment, being corrupted and troubled
by his sin, which intermingled an impure reflection with those primitive images
which composed the Book of Universal Science for his still virgin imagination.
The Astral Light, depicted in ancient symbols by the serpent devouring its tail,
represents alternately malice and prudence, time and eternity, tempter and
Redeemer; for this light, being the vehicle of life, is an auxiliary alike of good and
evil, and may be taken not only for the fiery form of Satan but for the body of the
Holy Ghost. It is the instrument of warfare in angelic battles, and feeds indifferently both the flames of hell and the lightnings of St. Michael. It may be compared
to a horse having a nature analogous to the chameleon, ever reflecting the armour
of his rider. The Astral Light is the realization or form of intellectual light, as the
latter is the realization or form of the Divine Light...
As a fact, the Universal Agent,
or latent Astral Light, ever seeks equilibrium; it fills the void and draws in the
plenitude, which makes vice contagious, like certain physical maladies, and works
powerfully in the proselytism of virtue..."
"To subdue the serpent,
that is, to govern the circle of the astral light, we must place
ourselves outside its currents, that is,we must isolate ourselves."
"The Astral Light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis.' This subtle agent, ever active, ever vigorous, ever
fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images; this force, which of itself is blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil; this ever-renewing circulus of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent; this corporeal
spirit; this fiery body; this impalpable omnipresent ether; this monstrous seduction of Nature – how shall we define it comprehensively and how characterize its
action? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good as to evil; it
transmits light and propagates darkness; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent but it is also an aureole; it is a fire, but it may belong
equally to the torments of infernus or the sacrifice of incense offered up to heaven.
To dispose of it, we must, like the predestined woman, set our foot upon its head."
"To direct the Astral Light we must understand also its twofold vibration, as
well as the balance of forces termed magical equilibrium, expressed in the
Kabalah by the senary"
"We are saturated with the Astral Light, and we project it unceasingly to make room for and to attract fresh supplies. The nervous instruments which are specially designed either for attraction or projection are the eyes and hands."
"It is for this reason that electricity, caloric, light, and
magnetism, produced by ordinary physical means, not only
do not originate, but rather tend to neutralise the effects of
animal magnetism. The astral light, subordinated to a
blind mechanism, and proceeding from arbitrary automatic
centres, is a dead light, and works mathematically,following
given impulsions or fatal laws ;"
"When we die, our interior light in
departing follows the attraction of its star, and thus it is that we live in other universes, where the soul makes for itself a new garment, analogous to the development or diminution of its beauty; for our souls, when separated from our bodies,
resemble revolving stars; they are globules of animated light which always seek
their centre for the recovery of their equilibrium and their true movement. Before
all things, however, they must liberate themselves from the folds of the serpent,
that is, the unpurified Astral Light which envelops and imprisons them, unless the
strength of their will can lift them beyond its reach. The immersion of the living
star in the dead light is a frightful torment, comparable to that of Mezentius.
Therein the soul freezes and burns at the same time, and has no means of getting
free except by re-entering the current of exterior forms and assuming a fleshly
envelope, then energetically battling against instincts to strengthen that moral liberty which will permit it at the moment of its death to break the chains of earth
and wing its flight in triumph towards the star of consolation which has smiled in
light upon it. Following this clue, we can understand the nature of the fire of hell,
which is identical with the demon or old serpent; we can gather also wherein consists the salvation and reprobation of men, all called and all elected successively,
but in small number, after having risked falling into the eternal fire through their
own fault."
In his books like Transcendental Magic Levi talks at length about the astral light and says it is the world soul. This is similar to what near death experiencers say about the white light being a "collective soul" of all mankind. This astral light is dualistic and is in the symbol of the caduceus. The two snakes forming the ring or circle is the symbol in the Neverending Story. The ouroboros. So I think there is this void which seems like nothing but is infinite potential energy and when the energy leaves it is created as astral light and is duality, the two serpents. It is also the Demiurge and that energy comes to earth through the sun.
Some Gnostic teachers such as Samael Aun Weor taught that the top three sefirot of the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life are within the Void which he called the Illuminating Void, a term his syncretism may have borrowed from Zen Buddhists.
Here is how the Gnostic text The Apocryphon of Thomas describes the Monad or One: "it has nothing over it and no lord above it, everything exists within it alone" (no one can get beyond awareness)... "illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it" (Can you find a limit to awareness?).... "invisible, since nothing has seen it" (Can you "see" the awareness?)... "unutterable, since nothing could comprehend it to utter it", "For no one can understand it. " (awareness is totally inconceivable. No philosophy or science or spiritual wisdom can ever understand it.)... is perfect in incorruptibility" (can awareness be damaged or corrupted in any way?)... "Its eternal realm is incorruptible, at peace, dwelling in silence, at rest, before everything." (in its own Voidness so to speak).
"The One is a sovereign that has nothing over it. It is god and father of all, the invisible one that is over all, that is incorruptible, that is pure light at which no eye can gaze. The One is the invisible spirit. We should not think of it as a god or like a god. For it is greater than a god, because it has nothing over it and no lord above it. It does not exist within anything inferior to it, since everything exists within it alone. It is eternal, since it does not need anything. For it is absolutely complete. It has never lacked anything in order to be completed by it. Rather, it is always absolutely complete in light. The One is illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it, unfathomable, since there is nothing before it to fathom it, immeasurable, since there was nothing before it to measure it, invisible, since nothing has seen it, eternal, since it exists eternally, unutterable, since nothing could comprehend it to utter it, unnamable, since there is nothing before it to give it a name. The One is the immeasurable light, pure, holy, immaculate. The One is unutterable and is perfect in incorruptibility. Not that it is part of perfection or blessedness or divinity: it is much greater. The One is not corporeal and is not incorporeal."
The Gospel of Thomas mentions uniting polarities: "They said to him, "Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
The Pleroma
In Gnosticism, the Pleroma is the fullness and below it is the Void (kenoma) into which the spark or light of man has fallen or was stolen.
According to Wikipedia, "The word itself is a relative term, capable of many shades of meaning, according to the subject with which it is joined and the antithesis to which it is contrasted. It denotes the result of the action of the verb pleroun; but pleroun is either to fill up an empty thing (e.g. Matthew 13:48), or to complete an incomplete thing (e.g. Matthew 5:17)... In Gnosticism the use becomes yet more stereotyped and technical, though its applications are still very variable. The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (e.g. Iren I. iii. 4), and the word retains from it the sense of totality in contrast to the constituent parts; but the chief associations of pleroma in their systems are with Greek philosophy, and the main thought is that of a state of completeness in contrast to deficiency (hysterema, Iren. I. xvi. 3; Hippol. vi. 31), or of the fulness of real existence in contrast to the empty void and unreality of mere phenomena (kenoma, Iren. I. iv. 1). "
Gnosticism was its own distinct brand of Christianity which grew out of the Egyptian mystery schools and Greek philosophy and emphasized Knowledge and Wisdom over faith. Some Egyptians and Gnostics, specificially the Valentinians, favored the idea of an Ogdoad. Wikipedia says, "In the earliest stages of that evolution we have (Iren. I. i.) eight primary Aeons constituting the first Ogdoad. The ultimate conception of God, named the Ineffable Father and who has existed since before the beginning, is described as Depth or Profundity (Bythos). All around him exists a female power that has been named Silence (Sige). These two deities, Depth and Silence, become the cause, through a process of emanation, of the other archetypal beings or Aeons. The Aeons are always born in male-female pairs (as syzygies), each of which is in itself a divine principle but at the same time represents one aspect of the Ineffable Father, who otherwise could not be described nor comprehended as he is beyond all names. The emanation takes place in the following manner: Depth-and-Silence gives birth to Mind-and-Truth (Nous and Aletheia), who gives birth to Word-and-Life (Logos and Zoe), who gives birth to Man-and-Church (Anthropos and Ecclesia). These Aeonic pairs comprise the Fullness of Godhead (Pleroma), and the first eight Aeons that have been expounded here are the Valentinian Ogdoad."
So the conception of God is described as Profound Depth and Silence. So first cause could be called The Deep Silence.
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who had Gnostic leanings spoke of the Pleroma as being simultaneously nothing and everything. In his Seven Sermons to the Dead, he begins by saying, "The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they found not what they sought. They prayed me let them in and besought my word, and thus I began my teaching. Harken: I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma. In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution..."
"We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are pairs of opposites, such as— The Effective and the Ineffective. Fullness and Emptiness. Living and Dead. Difference and Sameness. Light and Darkness. The Hot and the Cold. Force and Matter. Time and Space. Good and Evil. Beauty and Ugliness. The One and the Many. etc. The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature is distinctiveness, therefore we have these qualities in the name and sign of distinctiveness, which meaneth—
1. These qualities are distinct and separate in us one from the other; therefore they are not balanced and void, but are effective. Thus are we the victims of the pairs of opposites. The pleroma is rent in us.
2. The qualities belong to the pleroma, and only in the name and sign of distinctiveness can and must we possess or live them. We must distinguish ourselves from qualities. In the pleroma they are balanced and void; in us not. Being distinguished from them delivereth us..."
Jung also mentioned the god, Abraxas, in the sermons. "This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it by its name Abraxas. It is more indefinite still than god and devil. That god may be distinguished from it, we name god Helios or Sun. Abraxas is effect. Nothing standeth opposed to it but the ineffective; hence its effective nature freely unfoldeth itself. The ineffective is not, therefore resisteth not. Abraxas standeth above the sun and above the devil. It is improbable probability, unreal reality. Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general... Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas. Its power is the greatest, because man perceiveth it not. From the sun he draweth the summum bonum; from the devil the infimum malum; but from Abraxas life, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil... Abraxas is the sun, and at the same time the eternally sucking gorge of the void, the belittling and dismembering devil. The power of Abraxas is twofold; but ye see it not, because for your eyes the warring opposites of this power are extinguished. What the god-sun speaketh is life. What the devil speaketh is death. But Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time. Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness, in the same word and in the same act."
Samael Aun Weor claimed to be Gnostic, but his teachings in my opinion fit more into the realm of the esoteric schools since they were a syncretism of various schools of thought, including Gnosticism, Qabala, Theosophy, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Gurdjieff, etc. Though he had some deep truth, I found many red flags including the name Samael being that of the demiurge and devil, him claiming to be the archangel Mars/Ares, etc. Nonetheless, he said in a lecture, "We need to follow the third force... the positive is useful, fulfills its work; the negative is useful, but we need a third force, the neutralizing force. The third resolves the struggle between the opposites, it jumps towards the synthesis. The third force is a neutralizing force, the third is a deep interior force, it leads us towards the Being...Thus, we need to separate ourselves from the currents of the extreme right and the extreme left, and, in order to experience the truth, march inwardly, profoundly, along the revolution of the center. We need to know ourselves; only in this way is it possible to arrive at the true experience of that which is beyond time. Therefore, by forgetting the struggles and conflicts between the extreme right and the extreme left, we explore ourselves directly in order to know ourselves, and discover through real experience what the henchmen of the various schools on the right and left do not know; the truth."
FREEMASONRY
The book Morals and Dogmas by Albert Pike is required reading for freemasons. In it Pike writes, "The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry. For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend."
He also writes, "The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree, the Apothesis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darknesss! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls ? Doubt it not! for traditions are full of Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of one Creed." Here Pike is noting that the Darkness is the bearer and bringer of light itself. Light is dark and dark is light. They are twins.
HERMETIC ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN
Aleister Crowley writes in , "In this way let every idea go forth as a triangle on the base of two opposites,
making an apex transcending their contradiction in a higher harmony..."
"Any idea that is thus in itself positive and negative, active and passive, male and
female, is fit to exist above the Abyss; any idea not so equilibrated is below the
Abyss, contains in itself an unmitigated duality or falsehood, and is to that extent
qliphotic«See The Qabalah for the use of this word, and study the doctrine
concerning the Kings of Edom.» and dangerous. Even an idea like "truth" is
unsafe unless it is realized that all Truth is in one sense falsehood. For all Truth is
relative; and if it be supposed absolute, will mislead. «See Poincare for the
mathematical proof of this thesis. But Spiritual Experience goes yet deeper, and
destroys the Canon of the Law of Contradiction..."
"These plastic "Portraits of the Artist as a Young Man" are well enough for those who have heard "Know Thyself". They are necessary, even, to assist that analysis of one's nature which the Probationer of A.'. A.', is sworn to accomplish. But "Love is the law, love under will." And Our Lady Nuit is "... divided for love's sake, for the chance of union." These mirror-mirages are therefore not Works of Magick, according to the Law of Thelema: the true Magick of Horus requires the passionate union of opposites..."
"He identifies his Angel with the Ain Soph, and the Kether thereof; one formulation of Hadit in the boundless Body of Nuith. "Line 2,3,4" He asserts that His Angel has created (for the purpose of self-realization through projection in conditioned Form) three pairs of opposites: (a) The Fixed and the Volatile; (b) The Unmanifested and the Manifest; and (c) the Unmoved and the Moved. Otherwise, the Negative and the Positive in respect of Matter, Mind and Motion... "Line 9" He acclaims His Angel as having laid down the Law of Love as the Magical formula of the Universe, that He may resolve the phenomenal again into its noumenal phase by uniting any two opposites in ecstasic passion."
The television series Strange Angel is based on the life of Jack Parsons who was intimately involved with Crowley and the Golden Dawn and even recommended by Crowley as his successor as Outer Head of the Order. One quote from the show: "As the Master Therion tells us, all our suffering arises from the great schism between two primary forces of existence: male/female, masculine/feminine, the dark/light. It is only in the union of our opposites that we are freed from this pain and made whole." And from s01e10: "The true magic of Horus requires the passionate union of opposites."
BAPHOMET
In his book Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi writes, "The Baphomet of Mendes, a pantheistic and magical figure of the Absolute. The torch placed between the two horns represents the equilibrating intelligence of the triad. The goat’s head, which is synthetic, and unites some characteristics of the dog, bull, and ass, represents the exclusive responsibility of matter and the expiation of bodily sins in the body. The hands are human, to exhibit the sanctity of labour they make the Sign of esotericism above and below, to impress mystery on initiates, and they point at two lunar crescents, the upper being white and the lower black, to explain the correspondences of good and evil, mercy and justice. The lower part of the body is veiled, portraying the mysteries of universal generation, which is expressed solely by the symbol of the caduceus."
ILLUMINATI / ILLUMINISM
Mike Hockney
There are Illuminists and people who promote the Illuminati. One of them is Mike Hockney who in his God series books promotes a god of Mathematics. He writes, "THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BOOKS detailing the cosmology, philosophy, politics and religion of the ancient and controversial secret society known as the Illuminati, of which the Greek polymath Pythagoras was the first official Grand Master. The society exists to this day."
In his book The Omega Point he writes about this Illuminist idea that Abraxas is the true god. "The Angel Religion is of course pagan and anti-monotheist. It has male and female couple as its Gods (El and Asherah, or, in Illuminist terms, Abraxas and Lucifer). The religion has a wicked antagonist = Satan = Yahweh = Allah. ...Thomas Aquinas produced five rational proofs for the existence of God. They certainly don’t prove the existence of the Christian God, of course, but they do prove the existence of Abraxas, the evolutionary God of mathematics.... In Illuminism, the first God – the first monad to attain divinity – is called Abraxas. In human terms, he is associated with the Illuminati Grand Master Simon Magus (the first human to become God)... In Illuminist terms, Abraxas is the rational counterpoint to Satan (“Me”) and Lucifer (“We”). Abraxas is linked to the free individual within a creative community... Abraxas, as opposed to Satan (the individual – the thesis) and Lucifer (the community – the antithesis), is all about the synthesis of the individual and community, and proclaims, “All for one and one for all!”, i.e. the community must help the individual, and the individual must help the community... The worst disaster is, of course, Satan, the God of the Abrahamists. Lucifer – with all her hippie “love and light” nonsense – hasn’t delivered much either. What we need is Abraxas, the rational God, the God of mathematics, the God of the Ego which obeys the reality principle and mediates between, and controls, the Satanic Id and the Luciferian Superego. Morality is ultimately a matter of opinion, but, in general, we can say that Satan is the force of immorality, Lucifer the force of morality and Abraxas is amoral, i.e. he acts with regard to rational considerations and not opinionated moral diktats and customs... There will come a Luciferian Age and finally an Abraxian Age, as the ultimate cosmic synthesis and the rational culmination of existence... "
"There are three types of divinities: 1) Satanic: Satan (the Abrahamic Creator God) is the perfect example of the supremely evil type, who wants everyone to worship him. He is the quintessence of selfishness, self-interest and narcissism. Satan is the testosterone God of absolute masculinity, power and dominance. 2) Luciferian: Lucifer (reviled by the evil Abrahamists) is the archetypally good type of deity: all about positive empathy, sympathy, compassion, love, light, enlightenment, tenderness, forgiveness, caring and altruism. Lucifer is the oestrogen and oxytocin Goddess of absolute femininity and cooperation. 3) Abraxian: Abraxas is the final and highest type of divinity, existing beyond good and evil, as absolute rationality. Abraxas is the God who alchemically transforms testosterone from its basic manifestation of primitive power into its highest manifestation of intellectual power. He has allied testosterone, oestrogen and oxytocin in their highest forms. He is the dialectical culmination and grand synthesis of all other dialectical strands. He is the summum bonum: the highest, greatest good, the sum of all perfections. In him, all of the contradictions of existence are finally resolved. He’s the cosmic omega point, the point of ultimate existential convergence. "
TAOISM
The first chapter of The Tao Te Ching (Book of The Way) by reputed author, Lao Tzu states, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery."
"Tao (The Way) can be infused into the nature and put to use without being exhausted. It is so deep and subtle like an abyss that is the origin of all things... ... Tao is so profound and yet in invisible, It exists in everywhere and anywhere. "
Chapter 11 states, "Thirty spokes unite around one hub to make a wheel. It is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle. Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel. Doors and windows are chisel out to make a room. It is the empty space in the room that gives its function. Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial. While the emptiness of void is what can be utilized."
Chapter 14 declares, "What cannot be seen is called the invisible. What cannot be heard is called the inaudible. What cannot be touched is called the intangible. These three cannot be examined and comprehended. And hence are mixed together as one. This “Oneness” is not much brighter in the sky, as It is not much dimmer on earth. It is not more glorious in a saint as It is not more fainter in an ordinary person. It is everlasting and cannot be named. It is the original void of “non-being.” This “Oneness” is the Tao which is invisible, and formless."
"The true void of Tao has no desires and may seem small. Yet all things entrust their lives to It and It does not act as their master."
"All things in the world originate from the manifestation of Tao, The manifestation of Tao is the form of being, Which originates from the non-being of the void, the Great Tao." -- Chapter 40
"Great Tao is formless, It is invisible and has no name. It benefits all and fulfills all."
In his book, Peat: Primordial Energy Activation and Transcendence and the Neutralization of Polarities, Zivorad Slavinski wrote, "On the deepest level, inside Tao or the Great Unmanifest, Yang and Yin are inseparable. Polarities are in essence only two extremes of the same thing. A metal coin has two sides, and those two sides are the two sides of the same one coin. You can’t spend only one side of a coin. The integration of Yang and Yin gives us the true power which, if it is used wisely, affirms the life of true spirituality. Taoist Ni Hua Ching says: “The way to restoring Unity with the universe is the canceling of duality, and resolving the polarity not only on a philosophical level but in inner spiritual life.” According to Taoist cosmogony, before the beginning of the manifested universe, there existed the state of complete Emptiness. In that primordial state there was no movement, nor was there time, because there was nothing in relation to which you could measure time. Everything was absolute Emptiness. Old Taoists called that Emptiness “Wu Chi.” The word “Wu” means negation, that is to say the lack of something. The word ‘Chi’, even though it is pronounced the same way as the life energy Chi, has a much different meaning. In the term Wu Chi it means the peak, final or ultimate. Thus, Wu Chi means the highest state of Nothingness. In one timeless moment, in that nothingness, the first movement began, caused by an unknown impulse. That first impulse manifested itself as life energy Chi through the Primordial Polarities Yin and Yang, positive and negative. The cosmic game of Yin and Yang is essentially the representation of One Highest or Wu Chi. The infinite variety of existing phenomena, visible and invisible, in the manifested universe is the result of the interactions of Yin and Yang. In the spiritual, un-manifested universe however, everything is Oneness. All that exists in the manifested universe has dual or polar manifestation, because it contains active and passive components, Yin and Yang. Achieving their perfect balance is the goal of the Taoist practice. In it, duality becomes Unity. In one ancient Tao text it is said: “In the beginning, before anything existed, only Wu Chi existed. He moved and created Yang, and when he came to rest, He created Yin.” That is the way of the creation of Yang and Yin, breathing out and breathing in, moving and staying still, male and female, expansion and contraction, light and dark, life and death. Yang and Yin are complimentary dualities, because together they are interdependent and inseparable. Darkness exists only in relation to light. Stillness and movement can only be perceived in relation to one another. Everything contains in itself its own opposites and when it is extremely developed primordial polarities or primes it gives up its opposition."
From the book Darkness Technology: Darkness Techniques for Enlightenment by Mantak Chia: "All spiritual traditions have used Darkness Techniques in the pursuit of enlightenment. In Europe, the dark room often appeared in underground form as a network of tunnels, in Egypt as the Pyramids, in Rome as the catacombs, and by the Essenes, near the Dead Sea in Israel, as caves. In the Taoist tradition caves have been used throughout the ages for higher level practices. In the Tao, the cave, the Immortal Mountain, the Wu San, represents the Perfect Inner Alchemy Chamber. Meditating and fasting in the cave is the final journey of spiritual work. The caves are the Earth Mother and its energy lines. Like the hollow bones, caves contain the earliest information of life stored inside the Earth. Caves contain the vital essence of the Earth Power. The Tao says: ‘When you go into the dark and this becomes total, the Darkness soon turns into light.’ In the Darkness, our mind and soul begin to wander freely in the vast realms of psychic and spiritual experience. When you enter this primordial state or force you are reunited with the true self and divinity within. You literally ‘conduct’ the universal energy. You may see into the past and future, understand the true meaning of existence, and begin to understand the order of things. You return to the womb, the cocoon of our material structure and Nature’s original Darkness. Complete darkness profoundly changes the sensory sensibilities of the body/brain. We are deprived of all visual reference. Sounds begin to fall away as we lose contact with the external world and turn the senses inward. The effect of darkness is to shut down major cortical centers in the brain, depressing mental and cognitive functions in the higher brain centers. Emotional and feeling states are enhanced, especially the sense of smell and the finer senses of psychic perception. Dreams become more lucid, and the dream state manifests in our conscious awareness. Eventually, we awaken within ourselves the awareness of the Source, the spirit, the soul. We descend into the void, into the darkness of deep, inner space. The light appears..."
I apologize if this article's use of Buddhist terms and philosophies is offputting. But once one becomes aware of the suffering in this world and that it is like a prison for our spirit. And once one discovers through near death experiences that life is like an illusion and that separation is an illusion. And that we have a hyperaware state once we shed our physical bodies. And that many near death experiencers report having been in what seemed like a void -- their own words -- and some of them even recognized it as the bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, then it is at least worth looking into the Buddhist philosophies. Buddhism, like Hinduism, teaches that one needs to become liberated from the cycle of rebirth which is reincarnating onto Earth which is based in illusion. They directly address the issue of suffering here on Earth. And they delve deeply into the nature of consciousness itself. Here are some interesting quotes from Buddha:
"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others." -- Buddha
"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." -- Buddha
"Doubt everything. Find your own light." -- Buddha
"Be a lamp for yourselves. Be your own refuge. Seek for no other. All things must pass. Strive on diligently. Don’t give up." -- Buddha
"The root of suffering is attachment." -- Buddha
"Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think." -- Buddha
A man asked Gautama Buddha, “I want happiness.” Buddha said, “First remove “I,” that’s Ego, then remove “want,” that’s Desire. See now, you are left with only “Happiness”.
"Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won’t play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle." -- Buddha
"Everything in moderation, including moderation." -- Buddhist saying
"Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These mental qualities are skillful; these mental qualities are blameless; these mental qualities are praised by the wise; these mental qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them." -- Buuddha
"But as for any brahmans or contemplatives who do know, as it actually is present, that 'This is suffering; who know, as it actually is present, that 'This is the origination of suffering... 'This is the cessation of suffering... 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of suffering: They don't revel in (thought-) fabrications leading to birth; don't revel in fabrications leading to aging; don't revel in fabrications leading to death; don't revel in fabrications leading to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. Not reveling in fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, they don't fabricate fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. Not fabricating fabrications leading to birth... aging... death... sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, they don't drop over the drop-off of birth. They don't drop over the drop-off of aging, don't drop over the drop-off of death, don't drop over the drop-off of sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. They are totally released from birth, aging, death, sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs. They are totally released, I tell you, from suffering & disappointment... Therefore, monks, your duty is the contemplation, 'This is suffering... This is the origination of suffering... This is the cessation of suffering.' Your duty is the contemplation, 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of suffering." -- Buddha
"Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick —
this has been taught
by the Kinsman of the Sun.
However you observe them, appropriately examine them,
they're empty, void to whoever sees them
appropriately. Beginning with the body
as taught by the One
with profound discernment:
when abandoned by three things— life, warmth, & consciousness —
form is rejected, cast aside.
When bereft of these
it lies thrown away,
senseless,
a meal for others.
That's the way it goes:
it's a magic trick,
an idiot's babbling.
It's said to be
a murderer.
No substance here
is found. Thus a monk, persistence aroused,
should view the aggregates
by day & by night,
mindful,
alert;
should discard all fetters;
should make himself
his own refuge;
should live as if
his head were on fire —
in hopes of the state
with no falling away." -- Buddha (Phena Sutta: Foam)
"Those who are ignorant of the void cannot achieve liberation. These confused minds wander in the prison of the six realms." —Bodhichittavivarana
In 1959 in The Practice of Zen, Chang Chen-Chi wrote, "Buddhist Enlightenment is not gained through holding onto or inflating one’s self-awareness. On the contrary, it is gained
through killing or crushing any attachment to this illuminating consciousness; only by transcending it may one
come to the innermost core of Mind—the perfectly free
and thoroughly nonsubstantial illuminating-Voidness.
This illuminating-Void character, empty yet dynamic, is
the Essence (Chinese: ti) of the mind."
"The important point here is that when the word “Essence” is mentioned, people immediately think of something quintessentially concrete; and when the word
“Void” is mentioned, they automatically envision a dead
and static "nothingness.” Both of these conceptions miss
the meanings of the Chinese word ti (Essence) and the
Sanskrit word Sunyata (Voidness), and expose the limitation of the finite and one-sided way of human thinking.
The ordinary way of thinking is to accept the idea that
something is existent or nonexistent, but never that it is
both existent and nonexistent at the same time. A is A
or not A; but never is it both A and not A simultaneously. In the same way, the verdict of common sense on
Voidness versus existence is: “Voidness is not existence,
nor is existence Voidness.” This pattern of reasoning,
regarded as the correct and rational way of thinking, is
advocated by logicians as a sine qua non and is accepted by common sense for all practical purposes. But
Buddhism does not invariably follow this sine qua non,
especially when it deals with the truth of Sunyata. It
says: “Form does not differ from Voidness, and Voidness does not differ from Form; Form is Voidness and
Voidness is Form.” Buddhism also says that it is owing
to Voidness that things can exist and, because of the
very fact that things do exist, they must be Void. It
emphasizes that Voidness and existence are complementary to each other and not in opposition to each
other; they include and embrace, rather than exclude
or negate each other. When ordinary sentient beings
see an object, they see only its existent, not its void,
aspect. But an enlightened being sees both aspects at
the same time. This nondistinguishment, or “unification” as some people like to call it, of Voidness and
existence, is the so-called Nonabiding Middle Way Doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. Therefore, Voidness, as
understood in Buddhism, is not something negative, nor does it mean absence or extinction. Voidness is simply
a term denoting the nonsubstantial and non-self nature
of beings, and a pointer indicating the state of absolute
nonattachment and freedom. "
"Voidness is not easily explained. It is not definable or
describable. As Zen Master Huai Jang has said, "Anything that I say will miss the point.” Voidness cannot
be described or expressed in words. This is because human language is created primarily to designate existent
things and feelings; it is not adequate to express nonexistent things and feelings. To attempt to discuss Voidness within the limitations of a language confined by the
pattern of existence is both futile and misleading... The Essence of mind is the Illuminating Void Suchness. An enlightened Zen Buddhist not only
knows the illuminating aspect of the consciousness but,
most important of all, he also knows the void aspect of
the mind."
THE MIDDLE PATH
The Four Noble Truths comprise the essence of Buddha's teachings. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. The fourth Noble truth is called the middle path because it is avoiding two extremes. ... Buddha found that the Middle path gives vision and knowledge leading to Nirvana (release from suffering). It is also called the Noble eightfold path. The essence of Buddha's teaching was not actually in the middle path but in pointing to three problems (poisons) of our ordinary way of existence: ignorance (wrong interpretation and perception of the reality), attachments and aversions. These are exactly what keeps us (or rather unconsciously forces us) reincarnating again and again in samsara (illusion). So they have to be unrooted/removed if we want to liberate ourselves from these compulsive rebirths. His "four noble truths" and "eightfold path" offered a lifelong practice that can lead to liberation from compulsive rebirths in samsara.
He also taught about different realms beyond the material world and their rulers so that people are aware of what to expect when we die, but he did not elaborate much on that. His point was: it's not the traps and deceits of Brahma, Mara, Demiurge or whoever that keep us trapped in samsara. It's our own ignorance and addictions to pleasures that forces us to agree to reincarnate.
Buddha's monastic rules were pretty strict in denial of sensual pleasures (celibate, no sex, no possessions etc) it was still a moderate way compared to extreme self-mortification practices of some of his contemporary ascetics. Here is how the Middle Path was given in the original Buddha's words:
In the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism, the term "Middle Way" was used in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which the Buddhist tradition regards to be the first teaching that the Buddha delivered after his awakening. In this sutta, the Buddha describes the Noble Eightfold Path as the middle way of moderation, between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification:
"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."
“When you are at the top you only see shadows and when your at the bottom you are blinded by the light but from the middle everything is pleasing... day and night” ― Robert Wesley Miller
“It's not about binary but awareness of Oneness riddle. Between two extremes I choose the way in the middle.” ― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Tao of Physical and Spiritual
MAHAYANA BUDDHISM
In Mahayana Buddhism, the Middle Way refers to the insight into śūnyatā "emptiness" that transcends the extremes of existence and non-existence, the two truths doctrine.
DZOGCHEN
Here is what Buddhist Dzogchen text says about it:
"From the beginning you beings are deluded
Because you do not recognize the awareness of the ground,
And you are thus unmindful and indecisive,
Which is the very state of unawareness,
The cause of going astray.
From this delusive state
Comes a sudden fainting away and then
A subtle wavering fear.
From that wavering there arises
A separation of self
And the perception of others as separate beings and enemies.
Gradually, the tendency of separation strengthens,
And from this the circle of samsara begins.
Then the emotions of five poisons develop
And the actions of these emotions are endless.
You beings lack awareness because you are unmindful,
And this is the basis of you going astray.
May all you beings
Recognize your intrinsic awareness!"
(Samantabhadra)
The point is: if you see the ground awareness and you cleared your mind of all illusions of separation, you also clearly see that all "things" and "selves" are unreal. In this situation it makes absolutely no sense to have any desire to reincarnate, it just seems very stupid thing to do. You do not develop the desire to become "someone". But (you have to believe me here) you do not get bored, although you can still do a lot of activities without falling into delusion of separation, but you are not drawn to these activities because of the impulse from boredom. You become truly free and liberated of any mental conditioning.
And another point: if the Source manifested the astral and material planes out of boredom and desire to experience separation, this simply means that he is not enlightened. He is in samsaric state of mind. He does not know his own origin, the ground awareness (and that is literally what Nanci) said:" he does not know his own origin"). Then what's the benefit of merging with him? Yes, you will experience all sorts of unconditional love, bliss and rapture, and then what? Become bored again? You will not get enlightened and truly liberated from merging with him because he is not enlightened.
In Dzogchen there is a belief that Samantabhardra, the primordial Buddha, who emanates all Buddhas in material and other universes (including Buddha Shakyamuni, Padmasambhava etc) IS the enlightened Source. He does not manifest any universes, he has no desire or reason to do so. But he emanates the enlightened state of mind, Nirvana, through all universes, and those who get enlightened automatically merge their higher consciousness with his state of Nirvana and become Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. I actually think it is true based on my own experience. The quote that I gave you was from a text attributed to Samantabhadra and channeled through one of the Dzogchen masters.
PS: Samantabhadra is not a kind of dictator-Source that you have to merge with. It's just that all enlightened souls merge into the same non-dual state of Nirvana, awareness of Awareness, where Samantabhadra always resided. We do not become one with him, we become one with Awareness, which he has always been one with. There is no hierarchy and dictatorship in Nirvana, there is just respect to more experienced, knowledgeable and advanced souls.
Samantabhadra is not a dictator, he does not need to be worshipped :) Only unenlightened Sources like our Brahma want to be worshipped because they have a sense of self (God's ego :). In the enlightened state the notions like who is who, who is the Source and who is the center and so on don't make much sense anymore. Everything is experienced as just forms of one and only Awareness, any hierarchy dissolves.
Basically, all our "selves" are illusory, they do not exist as separate beings, they are just self-sustaining mental activities in the ground awareness, like whirlpools of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and manifestations. But some of these mental activities develop a sense of separate self-existence, which is a delusion. In Nirvana these whirlpools do not have the sense of separate self-existence, which does not mean that they cease their mental activity. So, in reality there is no merging of anyone with any Source, it's just that the mental activities become in consonance with each other, get in the same state of awareness so to speak.
From Dzogchen text (Longchenpa's Treasury of Natural Perfection):
"The actual essence, pristine gnosis, cannot be improved upon, so virtue is profitless, and it cannot be impaired, so vice is harmless; in its absence of karma there is no ripening of pleasure or pain; in its absence of judgement, no preference for samsara or nirvana."
Here is an example of famous Zen-buddhist Hsin Hsin Ming text https://terebess.hu/
"The Great Way is not difficult
for those who do not pick and choose. When preferences are cast aside
the Way stands clear and undisguised. But even slight distinctions made
set earth and heaven far apart. If you would clearly see the truth,
discard opinions pro and con. To founder in dislike and like
is nothing but the mind's disease. And not to see the Way's deep truth
disturbs the mind's essential peace. The Way is perfect like vast space,
where there's no lack and no excess. Our choice to choose and to reject
prevents our seeing this simple truth. Both striving for the outer world
as well as for the inner void condemn us to entangled lives. Just calmly see that all is One and by themselves false views will go."
Here is a better translation of the first phrase of Hsing Hsing Min: "The Great Way is effortless for those who live in choiceless awareness. To choose without preference is to be clear." That is exactly to the point. Awareness is preference-less by nature. So when you abide in awareness you will naturally have no preferences although you can still make preference-less choices.
Regarding this idea of choiceless awareness, Buddhists were the earliest, I believe. It comes from the Buddha's original teaching that described the three fundamental problems ("three poisons") of our existence: delusion, attachment and aversion, and a way to free ourselves from them. Buddha did not specifically talk about choiceless awareness, but if you are free from delusions, attachments and aversions to anything then how would you have any preferences? But it does not really matter when was this teaching first explicitly espoused. The point is: Buddha's original teaching is about recognizing the fundamental awareness and everyone who achieves this will also clearly see that the awareness is choiceless/preferenceless by nature, so no special teaching was needed for that.
"Awareness without feature, without end, luminous all around: Here water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing." (Buddha, Kevatta Sutta)
("luminous" = reference to its clear light,"have no footing" - reference to its emptiness)
But later in Buddhism it was still espoused as Buddhists elaborated more on philosophy and spiritual practice. The Zen-buddhist Hsin Hsin Ming text talks more specifically about freedom from preferences https://terebess.hu/english/hsin.html#13
It was written by 3rd Zen/Chan patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan who lived in 529-613.
In Dzogchen this teaching, as far as I know, first appears in this early text The Six Vajra Verses (The Cuckoo's Song of Total Presence) dated to 8th century (http://keithdowman.net/dzogchen/cuckoos-song-of-total-presence.html ):
"The nature of multiplicity is nondual and things in themselves are pure and simple; being here and now is thought-free and it shines out in all forms, always all good; it is already perfect, so the striving sickness is avoided and spontaneity is constantly present."
"O nobly-born (so-and-so), listen. Now thou art experiencing the Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Reality. Recognize it. O nobly-born, thy present intellect, in real nature void, not formed into anything as regards characteristics or colour, naturally void, is the very Reality, the All-Good.
Thine own intellect, which is now voidness, yet not to be regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself, unobstructed, shining, thrilling, and blissful, is the very consciousness, the All-good Buddha.
Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful, -- these two, -- are inseparable. The union of them is the Dharma-Kāya state of Perfect Enlightenment.
Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light -- Buddha Amitābha.
Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood, and looking upon it as being thine own consciousness, is to keep thyself in the [state of the] divine mind of the Buddha.
Repeat this distinctly and clearly three or [even] seven times. That will recall to the mind [of the dying one] the former [i.e. when living] setting-face-to-face by the guru. Secondly, it will cause the naked consciousness to be recognized as the Clear Light; and, thirdly, recognizing one's own self [thus], one becometh permanently united with the Dharma-Kāya and Liberation will be certain..."
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying states, "At the moment of death, the Ground Luminosity or Clear Light dawns in all its splendor. The Tibetan Book of the Dead says: "O son/daughter of an enlightened family ... your Rigpa is inseparable luminosity and emptiness and dwells as a great expanse of light; beyond birth or death, it is, in fact, the Buddha of Unchanging Light."
The author warns, however, "The reason the moment of death is so potent with opportunity is because it is then that the fundamental nature of mind, the Ground Luminosity or Clear Light, will naturally manifest, and in a vast and splendid way. If at this crucial moment we can recognize the Ground Luminosity, the teachings tell us, we will attain liberation.
This is not, however, possible unless you have become acquainted and really familiar with the nature of mind in your lifetime through spiritual practice. And this is why, rather surprisingly, it is said in our tradition that a person who is liberated at the moment of death is considered to be liberated in this lifetime, and not in one of the bardo states after death; for it is within this lifetime that the essential recognition of the Clear Light has taken place and been established. This is a crucial point to understand."
"... what is revealed is the primordial ground of our absolute nature, which i-encompassing space of truth. The Tibetan Book of the Dead says of this moment:
'The nature of everything is open, empty and naked like the sky Luminous emptiness, without center or circumference: the pure, naked Rigpa dawns.' "
"Even though the Ground Luminosity presents itself naturally to us all, most of us are totally unprepared for its sheer immensity, the vast and subtle depth of its naked simplicity. The majority of us will simply have no means of recognizing it, because we have not made ourselves familiar with ways of recognizing it in life. What happens, then, is that we tend to react instinctively with all our past fears, habits, and conditioning, all our old reflexes. Though the negative emotions may have died for the luminosity to appear, the habits of lifetimes still remain, hidden in the background of our ordinary mind."
Luminous Emptiness
Francesca Fremantle, who helped translate The Tibetan Book of the Dead wrote a book called Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In it she writes, "According to the teachings of Natural Liberation, the instructions concerning this bardo are in three parts: illusory body, dreaming, and luminosity (or clear light). The practice of illusory body trains us to see waking life as a dream and to realize that our whole subjectively experienced world is the creation of the mind, just like a magician's illusion, insubstantial and impermanent. This realization is fundamental to all practices related to the bardos. It is a particularly necessary preparation for working with dreams, because dreams arise from karmic traces deeply imprinted in the mind, and so they are very hard to influence directly. Only after our intense attachment to our ordinary concept of reality is loosened does it become possible to perceive the world of dreams, too, as our own creation and to control it. The practice of luminosity is simply to recognize and rest in the basic nature of mind itself, in its emptiness, radiance, and clarity. A momentary glimpse of luminosity appears at the moment of falling asleep, just as it does at the moment of death, but ordinarily we are unable to recognize it or even to notice anything at all...
The brilliance and clarity in which all phenomena appear as they really are, yet are seen to be empty in essence, is called luminosity. As we shall find later on, luminosity is a key term in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There are several different views or ways of understanding emptiness among the Buddhist philosophical schools, and vast amounts have been written about it. These views arise from increasingly subtle realizations of the nature of mind, which in turn produce more and more profound and subtle experiences of emptiness, ranging from the basic insight into nonself to resting in the luminous emptiness of the ultimate nature of mind. Emptiness is not simply a void that is left when illusions have been cleared away. Like the mind itself it is a continuous process, the living essence of each moment of experience...
When the scriptures tell of buddhas and bodhisattvas entering states of samadhi and giving teachings, as in the Heart Sutra, they are describing states of meditation that are accessible to human beings. It is possible for us to look into our own true nature just as Avalokiteshvara did. What he saw was emptiness not just as a negative condition, but as a positive one. The void naturally and spontaneously manifests as the universe, with all its marvelous and varied phenomena. Existence may not be real in the way we have always imagined, but it is real in a far more wonderful way, as the play of wakefulness...
The luminosity experienced in meditation is called the path luminosity, simile luminosity, or child luminosity. The true luminosity of our awakened nature is called the basic luminosity or mother luminosity; it dawns at the moment of death, and if it is recognized, the mother and child meet and become one in liberation. Luminosity is often translated as "clear light," which is a literal rendering of the Tibetan rather than the Sanskrit. Trungpa Rinpoche did not like that term, although he did sometimes use it in his talks, which form the basis of his books, because it is so well known. He felt it had become inextricably associated with such notions as the light at the end of the tunnel in near-death experiences, and that it gave too much of an impression of ordinary, visual light, whereas what is meant is an extremely subtle concept that he thought would be conveyed better by "luminosity." The two terms luminosity and clarity are frequently not distinguished and are translated by the same word in English, so that we find "clear light," "luminosity," or "clarity" for both. They are certainly very close, since clarity here is not just clear and transparent, but also bright and luminous: the illuminating potential of the mind. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, we used only luminosity, but on looking at the text very carefully with this in mind, it is evident that it does distinguish between them, and so it now seems best to do so in the revised passages of translation that follow in part 2. Luminosity is the ever-present background of Liberation through Hearing, out of which the visions of the peaceful and wrathful deities appear. In fact, it is at the heart of the experience of bardo. As Trungpa Rinpoche said, it "comes up as subtle gaps of all kinds" in all six realms of existence. It seems frightening because it offers nothing to grasp at or hang on to; "clear light is the sense of desolation of complete open space."... " If we can let go into it and merge with it so there is no longer any sense of perceiver and perceived, "when clear light ceases to become an experience, then that itself is space."
"Space is emptiness and luminosity: luminous emptiness. Because it is empty, nothing exists, yet because it is luminous, everything arises from it."
"The final teachings of dzogchen are found in the instructions section of atiyoga. They consist of two stages called cutting through (trekcho) and surpassing (thogal) These two stages are the basis of the instructions given in Liberation through Hearing, They transcend the stages of creation and completion by dissolving every last subtle trace of clinging to self or conceptual thought, even the concept of enlightenment. This is no longer a path of transformation, but of spontaneous self-liberation resulting from direct recognition of reality. The first stage, cutting through, is sometimes interpreted to mean cutting through what is hard, through obstacles or solidity, but it can also be cutting hard, directly, and fearlessly. In it, the meditator is taught to identify naked awareness, the very basis of mind, as distinct from the operations of mind or consciousness. Thoughts are self-liberated at the moment of their arising, and one remains continuously in the presence of awareness. One recognizes with complete certainty the original, pure, empty nature of all phenomena, beyond both samsara and nirvana, which is known as primordial purity. This means that all the coarse elements and skandhas are self-liberated in their natural state; it is not a question of their being purified or transmuted into that state, but of being recognized as they really are. The practitioner who has accomplished the practice of cutting through can attain the rainbow body: at death, his or her mind merges with the dharmakaya, while the body simply dissolves away into the five colored lights of the subtle elements."
RIGPA, THE DHARMAKAYA & SELF-LIBERATION
The Tibetan Book of the Dead states, "Now when the bardo of dying dawns upon me, I will abandon all grasping, yearning, and attachment, Enter undistracted into clear awareness of the teaching, And eject my consciousness into the space of unborn Rigpa; As I leave this compound body of flesh and blood I will know it to be a transitory illusion... This self-originated Clear Light, which from the very beginning was never bom, Is the child of Rigpa, which is itself without any parents—how amazing! "
As for learning how to live every moment of your life in mindful meditation in order to be prepared to recognize Rigpa and the void, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and Dzogchen Teachings by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu are a good start. Dzogchen practices aim to recognize "rigpa" and integrate this into everyday life.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying describes rigpa as "a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself... The whole point of Dzogchen meditation practice is to strengthen and stabilize Rigpa, and allow it to grow to full maturity." It says, "The essence of meditation practice in Dzogchen is encapsulated by these four points:
• When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn't there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair's breadth of concept, a luminous, naked awareness? Well, that is what Rigpa is! • Yet it doesn't stay in that state forever, because another thought suddenly arises, doesn't it? This is the self-radiance of that Rigpa. • However, if you do not recognize this thought for what it really is, the very instant it arises, then it will turn into just another ordinary thought, as before. This is called the "chain of delusion," and is the root of samsara. • If you are able to recognize the true nature of the thought as soon as it arises, and leave it alone without any followup, then whatever thoughts arise all automatically dissolve back into the vast expanse of Rigpa and are liberated..."
"Clearly it takes a lifetime of practice to understand and realize the full richness and majesty of these four profound yet simple points, and here I can only give you a taste of the vastness of what is meditation in Dzogchen. Perhaps the most important point is that Dzogchen meditation comes to be a continual flow of Rigpa, like a river constantly moving day and night without any interruption... Dzogchen meditation is subtly powerful in dealing with the arisings of the mind, and has a unique perspective on them. All the risings are seen in their true nature, not as separate from Rigpa, and not as antagonistic to it, but actually as none other—and this is very important—than its "self-radiance," the manifestation of its very energy. Say you find yourself in a deep state of stillness; often it does not last very long and a thought or a movement always arises, like a wave in the ocean. Don't reject the movement or particularly embrace the stillness, but continue the flow of
your pure presence. The pervasive, peaceful state of your meditation is the Rigpa itself, and all risings are none other than this Rigpa's self-radiance. This is the heart and the basis of Dzogchen practice..."
"This opening of the door in Dzogchen practice is called the "meeting of the Ground and Path Luminosities" or the "meeting of Mother and Child Luminosities." Another way to say this is that as soon as a thought or emotion arises, the Path Luminosity—the Rigpa—recognizes it immediately for what it is, recognizes its inherent nature, the Ground Luminosity. In that moment of recognition, the two luminosities merge and thoughts and emotions are liberated in their very ground. It is essential to perfect this practice of the merging of the two luminosities and the self-liberation of risings in life, because what happens at the moment of death, for everyone, is this: The Ground Luminosity dawns in vast splendor, and with it brings an opportunity for total liberation—if, and only if, you have learned how to recognize it. It will be clear now, perhaps, that this merging of the luminosities and self-liberation of thoughts and emotions is meditation at its very deepest level... As abiding by the flow of Rigpa becomes a reality, it begins to permeate the practitioner's everyday life and action, and breeds a deep stability and confidence... You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa..."
"Supreme practitioners of Dzogchen, as I have said, have completely realized the nature of mind during their lifetime. So when they die, they need only to continue to rest and abide in that state of Rigpa, as they make the transition through death... just relax in the Rigpa, without doubting. "
Norbu says rigpa is the "state of instant presence". He mentions the three aspects of rigpa. "Its Essence is emptiness; its Nature is clarity; and its Energy is without interruption. Our Energy is in fact constantly in motion, like a waterfall. This continuation is related to our real condition, our inherent potentiality, which manifests as sound, light, and rays." You observe yourself so that you can discover your real nature. Although the teacher gives many methods in order to have different experiences, first we need knowledge—understanding what it means to be in our real nature.
Even better are the classics such as Padmasambhava's Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness or Longchen Rabjam's The Precious Treasury of The Basic Space of Phenomena, but you need to read introductory texts first (like Namkai's ones) to get familiar with terminology and basic concepts. Also, a scientific/philosophical insight into the same subject such as David Chalmers The Conscious Mind is also very helpful. They are all talking about the same fundamental awareness, but from different perspectives - spiritual and philosophical/scientific. I think it's important to have both so that we do not have any misconceptions or narrow views.
Padmasambhava, the author of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, wrote in Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness, "It is the single (nature of) mind which encompasses all of Samsara and Nirvana, Even though its inherent nature has existed from the very beginning, you have not recognized it.. Therefore, your active dharmas and your inactive ones both should be abandoned... Now when you are introduced to (to your own intrinsic awareness) the method for entering it involves three considerations: Thoughts in the past are clear and empty and leave non traces behind. Thoughts in the future are fresh and unconditioned by anything. And in the present moment, when (your mind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything, awareness at that moment is quite ordinary. And when you look into yourself in this way nakedly (without any discursive thoughts), since there is only this pure observing, there will be found a lucid clarity without anyone being there who is the observer; only a naked awareness is present... it is certain that the nature of the mind is empty and without any foundation whatsoever. Your own mind is like the empty sky...and is like the sun rising in a cloudless illuminated sky... this self-originated primordial awareness has not been created by anything -- amazing!...even though it exists within yourself (and nowhere else), yet you seek for it elsewhere -- amazing!... ... in this state which is without meditation and without any distraction, it is the luminous clarity of the Essence itself... This intrinsic awareness is free of the eight extremes, such as externalism and nihilism, and the rest. Thus we speak of the Middle Way where one does not fall into any of the extremes, and we speak of the intrinsic awareness as uninterrupted mindful presence... this self-liberation through seeing with naked awareness is of such great profundity. And, this being so, you should become intimately acquainted with self-awareness." In The Light of Wisdom, Vol IV Padmasambhava wrote, "The spontaneously present nature is the unconfined expression of wakefulness; Like light from the sun in the sky, It pervades everywhere and abides as the life-force of everyone, Indivisible from anything and without being partial to samsara or nirvana. These two are beyond the constructs of'one' and 'many'. This natural state of unformed unity."
Duality is semantics. Duality is an illusion, according to Buddhism. Separation is an illusion. But we need to wake up from the illusion so that the mind can be liberated from it. Duality is not when forms appear in the (out of) void or when there is a appearance of space or time. Duality is when we think that the space and time and forms (objects) are real and have separate existence. At least this is the meaning of term "duality" in the Buddhism and Advaita traditions. Even when there is an appearance of time or space or manifested forms/objects, it is an illusion! Time, space and objects never really exist at all as anything real or separate from the Void. They are just imagined in/by the universal awareness (Void). Close your eyes and imagine a glass of water. Does it really exist? No, it's just imagination in your mind. So if you know and see it as imagination then you do not believe it's a real glass existing somewhere separately from your mind. And then we can say that this glass is non-dual from your mind (so it does not seem to be separate from mind). So, as long as you clearly see the manifested world as an illusion unfolding like a mirage within the Awareness and made of Awareness and not separate from it, then there is no duality. Everything is still one Beingness-Awareness just appearing as multiplicity of forms. So duality is not the world of forms: it's a wrong perception of it and wrong interpretation of what those forms are.
So in Buddhism and Advaita there is a difference between the state of formless void (void with no forms at all) and a state of non-duality where forms can appear or can be manifested but they are not wrongly perceived/interpreted as anything separate from One. In Advaita the first state is called nirvikalpa samadhi and the second is sahaja samadhi.
According to Wikpedia, "Ākiṃcanyāyatana आकिंचन्यायतना or Ākiñcaññāyatana आकिञ्चञ्ञायतन (Tib: ci yang med; Chinese: 无所有处/無所有處; Jpn: 無所有処 mu sho u sho; Burmese: အာကိဉ္စ ညာယတန; Devanagari: /) "Sphere of Nothingness" (literally "lacking anything"). In this sphere formless beings dwell contemplating upon the thought that "there is no thing". This is considered a form of perception, though a very subtle one. This was the sphere reached by Ārāḍa Kālāma(Pāli: Āḷāra Kālāma), the first of the Buddha's original teachers; he considered it to be equivalent to enlightenment." However, Buddha did not consider it as enlightenment. Another point: according to Buddha the beings that dwell in the Arupadhata eventually "run out of good karma" and return to samsara to be reborn in lower realms. So the key is: it's the enlightenment that liberates from samsara, not attaining the formless state.
In the book The Collected works of J. Krishnamurti vol 5: Choiceless Awareness, Krishnamurti is quoted as saying, "So, our problem is, how to free the mind from the known. To free ourselves from the known, any effort is detrimental, because effort is still of the known. So, all effort must cease. Have you ever tried to be without effort? If I understand that all effort is futile, that all effort is a further projection of the mind, of the "I", of the thinker, if I realize the truth of that, what happens? If I see very clearly the label "poison" on a bottle, I leave it alone. There is no effort not to be attracted to it. Similarly - and in this lies the greatest difficulty - , if I realize that any effort on my part is detrimental, if I see the truth of that, then I am free of effort. Any effort on our part is detrimental, but we are not sure, because we want a result, we want an achievement - and that is our difficulty.
Therefore, we go on striving, striving, striving. But God, truth, is not a result, a reward, an end. Surely, it must come to us, we cannot go to it. If we make an
effort to go to it, we are seeking a result, an achievement. But for truth to come, a man must be passively aware. Passive awareness is a state in which there is no effort; it is to be aware without judgment, without choice, not in some ultimate sense, but in every way; it is to be aware of your actions, of your thoughts, of your relative responses, without choice, without condemnation, without identifying or denying, so that the mind begins to understand every thought and every action without judgment. This evokes the question of whether there can be understanding without thought."
Krishnamurti also says, "Obviously, most of us want to know the experience of reality. Surely, it can be known only when the experiencer stops experiencing; because, the experiencer is creating the experience. If the experiencer is creating the experience, then he will create god; therefore, it will not be God. Can the experiencer cease? That is the whole point in this question. Now, if the experiencer and the experience are a joint phenomenon, which is so obvious, then the experiencer, the actor, the thinker, has to stop thinking. Is that not obvious? So, can the thinker cease to think? Because, when he thinks, he creates, and what he creates is not the real. Therefore, to find out whether there is or there is not reality, God, or what you will, the thought process has to come to an end, which means that the thinker must cease. Whether he is produced by thoughts is irrelevant for the moment. The whole thought process, which includes the thinker, has to come to an end. It is only then that we will find reality."
"Where there is duality, where there are opposites, there must be the consciousness of incompleteness. The mind is caught up in opposites, such as punishment and reward, good and bad, past and future, gain and loss. Thought is caught up in this duality, and therefore there is incompleteness in action. This incompleteness creates suffering, the conflict of choice, effort and authority, and the escape from the unessential to the essential.
When you feel that you are incomplete, you feel empty, and from that feeling of emptiness arises suffering; out of that incompleteness you create standards, ideals, to sustain you in your emptiness, and you establish these standards and ideals as your external authority. What is the inner cause of the external authority that you create for yourself? First, you feel incomplete, and you suffer from that incompleteness. As long as you do not understand the cause of authority, you are but an imitative machine, and where there is imitation there cannot be the rich fulfillment of life. To understand the cause of authority you must follow the mental and emotional process which creates it. First of all, you feel empty, and in order to get rid of that feeling you make an effort; by that effort you only create opposites; you create a duality which but increases the incompleteness and the emptiness. You are responsible for such external authorities as religion, politics, morality, for such authorities as economic and social standards. Out of your emptiness, out of your incompleteness, you have created these external standards from which you now try to free yourself. By evolving, by developing, by growing away from them you want to create an inner law for yourself. As you come to understand external standards, you want to liberate yourself from them, and to develop your own inner standard. This inner standard, which you call "spiritual reality", you identify with a cosmic law, which means that you create but
another division, another duality.
So you first create an external law, and then you seek to outgrow it by
developing an inner law, which you identify with the universe, with the whole.
That is what is happening. You are still conscious of your limited egotism, which
you now identify with a great illusion, calling it cosmic. So when you say, "I am
obeying my inner law", you are but using an expression to cover your desire to
escape. To me, the man who is bound either by an external or an inner law is
confined in a prison; he is held by an illusion. Therefore such a man cannot
understand spontaneous, natural, healthy action.
Now why do you create inner laws for yourself? Is it not because the struggle
in everyday life is so great, so inharmonious, that you want to escape from it and
to create an inner law which shall become your comfort? And you become a
slave to that inner authority, that inner standard, because you have rejected only
the outward picture, and have created in its place an inner picture to which you
are a slave.
By this method you will not attain true discernment, and discernment is quite
other than choice. Choice must exist where there is duality. When the mind is
incomplete and is conscious of that incompleteness, it tries to escape from it and
therefore creates an opposite to that incompleteness. That opposite can be either
an external or an inner standard, and when one has established such a standard,
he judges every action, every experience by that standard, and therefore lives in
a continual state of choice. Choice is born only of resistance. If there is
discernment, there is no effort.
So to me this whole conception of making an effort toward truth, toward reality,
this idea of making a sustained endeavour, is utterly false. As long as you are
incomplete you will experience suffering, and hence you will be engaged in
choice, in effort, in the ceaseless struggle for what you call"spiritual attainment."
So I say, when mind is caught up in authority, it cannot have true understanding,
true thought. And since the minds of most of you are caught up in authority -
which is but an escape from understanding, from discernment - you cannot face
the experience of life completely. Therefore you live a dual life, a life of pretense,
of hypocrisy, a life in which there is no moment of completeness.
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Since few are aware of the deep cause of their suffering, they feel the desire
to escape from that suffering, and this desire for escape has created and vitalized
our moral, social, and religious systems. Here I have not time to go into details,
but if you will think the matter over, you will see that our religious systems
throughout the world are based on this idea of postponement and evasion, this
searching for mediators and comforters. Because we are not responsible for our
own acts, because we are seeking escape from our suffering, we create systems
and authorities which will give us comfort and shelter.
====================================
So security is but escape. And since most people are trying to escape, they
have made themselves into machines of habit in order to avoid conflict. They
create religious beliefs, ideas; they worship the image of an imitation which they
call God; they try to forget their inability to face the struggle by losing themselves
in work. All these are ways of escape.
Now in order to safeguard security, you create authority. Isn't that so? To
receive comfort, you must have someone or some system to give you comfort. To
have security, there must be a person, an idea, a belief, a tradition, that gives you
the assurance of security. So in our attempt to find security, we set up an
authority and become slaves to that authority. In our search for security we set up
religious ideals that we, in our fear, have created; we seek security through
priests or spiritual guides whom we call teachers or masters. Or, again, we seek
our authority in the power of tradition - social, economic, or political.
We ourselves, individually, have established these authorities. They did not
come into being spontaneously. Through centuries we have been establishing
them, and our minds have become crippled, perverted through their influence.
Or, suppose that we have discarded external authorities; then we have
developed an inner authority which we call intuitional, spiritual authority - but
which, to me, differs little from the external. That is, when mind is caught up in
authority - whether external or inner - it cannot be free, and therefore it cannot
know true discernment. Hence, where there is authority born of the search for
security, in that authority are the roots of egotism.
Now what have we done? Out of our weakness, our desire for power, our
search for security, we have established spiritual authorities. And in this security,
which we call immortality, we want to dwell eternally. If you look at that desire
calmly, discerningly, you will see that it is nothing but a refined form of egotism.
Where there is a division of thought, where there is the idea of "I", the idea of "mine" and "yours", there cannot be completeness in action, and therefore there
cannot be the understanding of living reality.
=======================================
Your conception of life is based on this principle. Your striving for spiritual
achievement, spiritual growth, is the outcome of your desire for further securities,
further aggrandizement, further glory, and hence this continual and ceaseless
struggle.
So I say, do not seek a way, a method. There is no method, no way to truth.
Do not seek a way, but become aware of the impediment. Awareness is not
merely intellectual; it is both mental and emotional; it is completeness of action.
Then, in that flame of awareness, all these impediments fall away because you
penetrate them. Then you can perceive directly, without choice, that which is true.
Your action will then be born out of completeness, not out of the incompleteness
of security; and in that completeness, in that harmony of mind and heart, is the
realization of the eternal.
======================================
Now when we consider growth or evolution as a series of achievements,
naturally our actions are never complete; they are always growing from the lower
to the higher, always climbing, advancing. Therefore, if we live under that
conception, our action enslaves us; our action is a constant, ceaseless, infinite
effort, and that effort is always turned toward a security. Naturally, when there is
this search for security, there is fear, and this fear creates the continual
consciousness of what we call the "I". Isn't that so? The minds of most of us are
caught up in this idea of achievement, attainment, climbing higher and higher,
that is, in the idea of choosing between the essential and the unessential. And
since this choice, this advancement which we call action, is but a ceaseless
struggle, a continual effort, our lives are also a ceaseless effort and not a free,
spontaneous flow of action.
=================================
"Why do you cling to the ideal of freedom when you are in a prison? You create or invent that ideal of freedom because you cannot escape from your prison. So also with your ideals, your gods, your religions: they are the creation of the desire for escape into comfort. You yourself have made the world into a prison, a prison of suffering and conflict; and because the world is such a prison, you create an ideal god, an ideal freedom, an ideal truth.
And these ideals, these opposites, are but attempts at emotional and mental escape. Your ideals are means of escape from the prison in which you are
confined. But if you become conscious of that prison, if you become aware of the fact that you are trying to escape, then that awareness destroys the prison; then, instead of pursuing freedom, you will know freedom.
Freedom does not come to him who seeks freedom. Truth is not found by him who searches for truth. Only when you realize with your whole mind and heart the condition of the prison in which you live, when you realize the significance of that prison, only then are you free, naturally and without effort. This realization can come only when you are in a great crisis, but most of you try to avoid crises. Or, when you are confronted by a crisis, you at once seek comfort in the idea of religion, the idea of God, the idea of evolution; you turn to priests, to spiritual guides, for consolation; you seek diversion in amusements. All of these are but escapes from conflict. But if you really confront the crisis before you, if you realize the futility, the falseness of escape as a mere means of postponement of action, then in that awareness is born the flower of discernment.
So you must become aware in action, which will reveal the hidden pursuits of craving."
===============================
What do we mean when we talk about the "I"? You are conscious of the "I" only when you are caught in the conflict of choice, in the conflict of duality. In this conflict you become conscious of yourself, and you identify yourself with the one or the other, and from this continual identification results the idea of "I". Please consider this with your heart and mind, for it is not a philosophical idea which can be simply accepted or rejected.
I say that through the conflict of choice, mind has established memory, many layers of memory; it has become identified with these layers, and it calls itself the "I", the ego. And hence arises the question, "What will happen to me when I die? Shall I have an opportunity to live again? Is there a future fulfillment?" To me, these questions are born of craving and confusion. What is important is the freeing of the mind from this conflict of choice, for only when you have thus freed yourself can there be immortality.
For most people the idea of immortality is the continuance of the "I", without end, through time. But I say such a concept is false. "Then, " you answer, "there must be total annihilation." I say that is not true either. Your belief that total annihilation must follow the cessation of the limited consciousness we call the "I", is false. You cannot understand immortality that way, for your mind is caught up
in opposites. Immortality is free from all opposites; it is harmonious action in which the mind is utterly freed from conflict of the "I".
I say there is immortality, immortality which transcends all our conceptions, theories and beliefs. Only when you have full individual comprehension of opposites, will you be free from opposites. As long as mind creates conflict through choice, there must be consciousness as memory which is the "I", and it is the "I" which fears death and longs for its own continuance. Hence there is not the capacity to understand the fullness of action in the present, which is immortality.
==============================
So I repeat, there is a way of living without effort, without the constant strain of achievement and struggle for success, without the constant fear of loss or gain; I say there is an harmonious way of living life that comes when you meet every experience, every action completely, when your mind is not divided against itself, when your heart is not in conflict with your mind, when you do all things wholly, with complete unity of mind and heart. Then in that richness, in that plenitude, there is the ecstasy of life, and that to me is everlasting, that to me is eternal.
==================
What is it that we call actual life? Earning money, exploiting others and being exploited ourselves, marriage, children, seeking friends, experiencing jealousies, quarrels, fear of death, the inquiry into the hereafter, laying up money for old age - all these we call daily life. Now to me, truth or the eternal becoming of life cannot be found apart from these. In the transient lies the eternal - not apart from the transient. Please, why do we exploit, either in physical things or in spiritual things? Why are we exploited by religions that we have set up? Why are we exploited by priests to whom we look for comfort? Because we have thought of life as a series of achievements, not as a complete action. When we look to life as a means to acquisition, whether of things or of ideas, when we look to life as a school in which to learn, in which to grow, then we are dependent upon that self-consciousness, upon that limitation: we create the exploiter, and we become the exploited. But if we become utterly individual, completely self-sufficient, alone in our understanding, then we do not differentiate between actual living and truth, or God.
==========================
Friends, Today I want to explain that there is a way of living naturally, spontaneously, without the constant friction of self-discipline, the constant battle of adjustment. But to understand what I am going to say, please consider it not only intellectually, but also emotionally. You must feel it; for you can bring about fulfillment of life only when your emotions as well as your thoughts are acting harmoniously. When you live completely in the harmony of your mind and heart, then your action is natural, spontaneous, effortless.
=======================
We have made life into a school of continual learning. But to me life is not a school; it is not a process of gathering in. Life is to be lived naturally, fully, without this constant battle of conflicts, this distinction between the essential and the unessential. From this idea of life as a school, there arises the constant desire for achievement, success, and therefore the search for an end, the desire to find the ultimate truth, God, the final perfection which will give us - at least, we hope it will give us - certainty, and hence our attempts at the continual adjustment to certain social conditions, to ethical and moral demands, to the development of character and the cultivation of virtues. These standards and demands, if you really think about them, are but shelters from which we act, shelters developed through resistance.
This is the life that most people are living - a life of constant search for gain, for accumulation, and therefore a life of incompleteness in action. The idea of gain, which divides action into past, present and future, is always in our minds; therefore there is never complete understanding in action itself. The mind is continually thinking of gain, and hence it finds no meaning in the action with which it is occupied.
So this is the state in which you are living. Now to me that state is utterly false. Life is not a process of gathering in, a school in which you must learn, in which you must discipline yourself, in which there is constant resistance and struggle. Where there is this constant gathering in, this desire for accumulation, there must exist incompleteness which creates want; if you do not want, you do not gather. And where there is want there is no discernment, even though you may go through the process of choice... understand when I say that life is not a school in which to learn; life is not a process of constant accumulation, a process in which there is continual want which is blinding.
=================================
First of all, what does one mean by the "I" consciousness? When are you aware of this "I"? When are you conscious of yourself? You are conscious of yourself as "I", as an entity, when you are in pain, when you experience discomfiture, conflict, struggle.
You say, "If that 'I' does not exist, what is there?" I say you will find out only when your mind is free of that "I", so do not inquire now. When your mind and heart are harmonious, when they are no longer caught up in conflict, then you will know. Then you will not ask what it is that feels, that thinks. As long as this "I" consciousness exists there must be the conflict of choice, from which arises the sensation of happiness and unhappiness. That is, this conflict gives you the sense of limited consciousness, the "I", with which the mind becomes identified. I say that you will find out that life which is not identified with the "you" or the "me", that life which is eternal, infinite, only when this limited consciousness dissolves itself. You do not dissolve that limited consciousness; it dissolves itself.
==========================
The highest bliss - and to me this is not a mere theory - is to live without effort.
Now I am going to explain what I mean by effort. For most of you, effort is but
choice. You live by choice; you have to choose. But why do you choose? Why is
there a necessity that urges you, impels you, forces you to choose? I say that this
necessity for choice exists as long as one is conscious of emptiness or loneliness
within oneself; that incompleteness forces you to choose, to make an effort.Now the question is not how to fill that emptiness, but rather, what is the cause
of that emptiness. To me, emptiness is action born of choice, in search of gain.
Emptiness results when action is born of choice. And when there is emptiness,
the question arises, "How can I fill that void? How can I get rid of that loneliness,
that feeling of incompleteness?" To me, it is not a question of filling the void, for
you can never fill it. Yet that is what most people are trying to do. Through
sensation, excitement, or pleasure, through tenderness or forgetfulness, they are
trying to fill that void, to lessen that feeling of emptiness. But they will never fill
that emptiness, because they are trying to fill it with action born of choice.
Emptiness exists as long as action is based on choice, on like and dislike,
attraction and repulsion. You choose because you don't like this and you like that;
you are not satisfied with this but you want to satisfy yourself with that. Or you are
afraid of something and run away from it. For most people action is based on
attraction and repulsion, and therefore on fear.
Now what happens when you discard this and choose that? You are basing
your action merely on attraction or repulsion, and thereby you are creating an
opposite. Hence there is this continual choice which implies effort. As long as you
make a choice, as long as choice exists, there must be duality. You may think
that you have chosen the essential; but because your choice is born out of
attraction and repulsion, want and fear, it merely creates another unessential.
That is what your life is. One day you want this - you choose it because you
like it and want it because it gives you joy and satisfaction. The next day you are
surfeited with it; it means nothing more to you, and you discard it in order to
choose something else. So your choice is based on continuous sensation; you
choose through the consciousness of duality, and this choice merely perpetuates
the opposites.
As long as you choose between opposites, there is no discernment, and
hence there must be effort, ceaseless effort, continually opposites and duality.
Your choice, therefore, is ceaseless, and your effort is continuous. Your action is
always finite, always in terms of achievement, and hence that emptiness which
you feel will always exist. But if the mind is free of choice, if it has the capacity to
discern, then action is infinite.
I shall explain this again. As I have said, if you say, "I want this thing", in that
choosing you have created an opposite. Again, after that choice you create
another opposite, and so you go on from one opposite to another through a
process of continual effort. That process is your life, and in that there is ceaseless
struggle and pain, conflict and suffering. If you realize that, if you really feel with
your whole being - that is, emotionally as well as mentally - the futility of choice,
then you no longer choose; then there is discernment; then there is intuitive
response which is free from choice, and that is awareness.
If you are aware that your choice born of opposites but creates another opposite, then you perceive what is true. But most of you have not the intensity of desire nor the awareness, because you want the opposite, because you want sensation. Therefore you never attain discernment; you never attain that rich, full awareness that liberates the mind from opposites. In that freedom from 20 opposites, action is no longer an achievement, but a fulfillment; it is born of discernment which is infinite. Then action springs from your own fullness, and in such action there is no choice and hence no effort. To know such fullness, such reality, you must be in a state of intense awareness, which you can attain only when you are faced by a crisis
===========================================
Questioner: We are seeking to fill the deep, hidden inner void.
Krishnamurti: We are then seeking something to fill our emptiness; this filler we call knowledge, wisdom, truth and so on. So we are not seeking truth, wisdom, but something to fill our aching loneliness. If we can find that which can enrich our inward poverty we think our search will end. Now can anything fill this void? Some are painfully conscious of it and others are not; some have sought to escape through activity, through stimulation, through mysterious rituals, through ideologies and so on; others are conscious of this void but have not found a way of covering it up. Most of us know this fear, this panic of nothingness. We are seeking to overcome this fear, this emptiness; we are seeking something that can heal the aching agony of inner insufficiency. As long as you are convinced that you can find some escape you will go on seeking but is it not part of wisdom to see that all escape, no matter how alluring, is useless? When the truth about escape dawns on you will you persist in your search? Obviously not. Then we accept inevitably what is; this complete surrender to what is, is the liberating Truth, not the attainment of the objects of search.
Our life is conflict, pain; we crave security, permanency, but are caught in the net of the impermanent. We are the impermanent. Can the impermanent find the Eternal, the Timeless? Can illusion find Reality? Can ignorance find wisdom? Only with the cessation of the impermanent is there the permanent; with the
cessation of ignorance is there wisdom. We are concerned with the cessation of the impermanent, the self.
=============================================
Now what is this emptiness? Have you ever examined it? To understand it you must cease trying to fill it. It is like a man filling a bucket with a hole in it. It is
always leaking and it can never be filled and you will say that such a man is unbalanced.
===========================
The mind becomes restless, it busies itself with escapes. So what is it that we are doing? We try to fill this extraordinary void with the known. We discover how to be active, how to be social, we know how to study, how to turn on the radio. So we are filling that thing which we do not know, with the things we know. We try to fill that emptiness with various kinds of knowledge, relationship or things. With these three we are trying to fill it. Is that not so? That is our process, that is our existence. Now when you realize what you are doing, do you still think you can fill that void? You have tried every means of filling this void of loneliness. Have you succeeded in filling it? You have tried cinemas and you did not succeed and therefore you go after your gurus, your books or you become socially very active. Have you succeeded in filling it or have you merely covered it up? If you have merely covered it up, it is still there. Therefore, it will come back and if you are able to escape altogether then you are locked up in an asylum or you become very, very dull. That is what is happening in the world.
Can this emptiness, this void be filled? If not, can we run away from it, escape from it? And if we have experienced and found one escape to be of no value, are not therefore all other escapes of no value? Therefore it does not matter whether you fill the emptiness with this or with that. Meditation is also an escape. So it does not matter much that you change your escape.
How then will you find what to do about this loneliness? You can only find what to do when you have stopped escaping. Is not that so? That is, when you are willing to face what is, which means you must not turn on the radio, which means you must turn your back to civilization, then that loneliness comes to an end because it is completely transformed. It is no longer loneliness. Because if you understand what is, then what is, is the real. Because the mind is
continuously avoiding, escaping, refusing to see what is, it creates its own hindrances. Because we have ever so many hindrances that are preventing us from seeing, we do not understand what is and therefore we are getting away from reality; and all these hindrances have been created by the mind in order not to see what is. Because to see what is, not only requires a great deal of capacity and awareness of action, but it also means turning your back on everything that you have built up, your bank account, your name and everything that we call civilization. When you see what is you will find how loneliness is transformed.
==========================
The questioner wants to know, why he feels loneliness? Do you know what loneliness means and are you aware of it? I doubt it very much because we have smothered ourselves in activities, in books, in relationships, in ideas which really prevent us from being aware of loneliness. So, what do we mean by loneliness? It is a sense of being empty, of having nothing, of being extraordinarily uncertain, with no anchorage anywhere. It is not despair, nor hopelessness, but a sense of void, a sense of emptiness and a sense of frustration. I am sure we have all felt it, the happy and the unhappy, the very, very active and those who are addicted to knowledge. They all know this. The sense of real inexhaustible pain, a pain that cannot be covered up though we do try to cover it up.
So, let us approach again this problem to see what is actually taking place, to see what you do when you feel lonely. You try to escape from your feeling of loneliness, you try to pick up a book, you follow some leader, or you go to a cinema, or you become socially very, very active, or you go and worship and pray, or you paint, or you write a poem about loneliness. That is what is actually taking place. Becoming aware of loneliness, the pain of it, the extraordinary and fathomless fear of it, you seek an escape, and that escape becomes more important and therefore your activities, your knowledge, your gods, your radios all become important. Don't they? I said, when you give importance to secondary values, they lead you to misery and chaos; and the secondary values inevitably are the sensate values and modern civilization based on these gives you this escape - escape through your job, escape through your family, escape through your name, escape through your studies, escape through painting, etc; all our culture is based on that escape. Our civilization is founded on that and that is a fact.
Plato
The Timaeus of Plato by R.D. Archer-Mind, M.A. : "In conceiving the laws and relations of mind and matter, the whole thing rises up before his imagination as a grand spectacle, a procession of mighty events passing one by one before him. First he sees the unity of absolute thought, personified as a wise and beneficent creator, compounding after some mysterious law the soul that shall inform this nascent universe: next he describes a doubtful and dreamlike shadow, formless and void, which under the creator's influence, gradually shapes itself into visible existence and is interfused with the world-soul which controls
and orders it, wherewith it forms a harmonious whole, a perfect sphere, a rational divine and everlasting being. Next within this universe arise other divine beings, shining with fire and in their appointed orbits circling, which measure the flight of time and make light in the world. Finally, the creator commits to these gods, who are the work of his hands, the creation of all living things that are mortal : for whom they frame material bodies and quicken them with the immortal essence which they receive from
the creator."
"For Nature, seeing that she is a living soul, evolves herself after a fixed inevitable design, in which all existence, visible and invisible, finds its rightful sphere and has its appointed part to play in the harmony of the universe. But there is more to be said ere we can enter upon the nature of matter. 28. The universal mind, we say, must exist in the form of plurality as well as in the form of unity. How does this come to pass ? The hint for our guidance is to be found in the Philebus, where we learn that, as the elements which compose our bodies are fragments of the elements which compose the universe, so our souls are fragments, as it were, of the universal soul. Hence we see how the one universal intelligence exists in the mode of plurality : it differentiates itself into a number of finite intelligences, and so, without ceasing to be one, becomes many. These limited personalities are of diverse orders, ranging through all degrees of intellectual and conscious life ; those that are nearest the absolute mind, if I may use the phrase, possessing the purest intelligence, which fades into deeper and deeper obscurity in the ranks that are more remote. First stands the intelligence of gods, which enjoys in the highest degree the power of pure unfettered thought ; next comes the human race, possessing an inferior but still potent faculty of reason. Then as we go down the scale of animate beings, we see limitation fast closing in upon them intelligence grows ever feebler and sensation ever in proportion stronger, until, passing beyond the forms in which sensation appears to reign alone, we come in the lowest organisms of animal and vegetable life to beings wherein sensation itself seems to have sunk to some dormant state below the level of consciousness. Yet all these forms of life, from the triumphant intellect of a god to the green scum that gathers on a stagnant pool, are modes of one universal all-pervading Life. "
Pythagoras
PYTHAGOREAN NUMBER THEORY
"The number theory of the Pythagoreans derives from their cosmology and, in its principal aspects, is cosmology. From number-determined first principles proceeds a One that is the universe. From this One and its surrounding void proceed number things—stars, elements, creatures—that make up our world. So far, Aristotle’s account is unambiguous. However, it leaves important questions regarding origin and internal mechanism unanswered, or answered only indirectly, in hints the interpretation of which is dubious.
The cosmology of the later Pythagoreans
held that the universe is spherical and finite.
Outside it was a void. At the center of the
universe was a central fire, and next was a
counter-Earth which cannot be seen from
Earth because the side of the Earth on which
we live is turned away from it. After the
counter-Earth came the planets in this order:
Earth, the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the sphere of the
fixed stars. This makes ten spheres revolving
around the central fire. The motion of these
bodies resulted in the harmonious music of
the spheres.
The universe came into being from the
central fire or the Hearth of the Universe. It
was the original unit or monad. The fire is
limited; from the unlimited void outside the
universe comes the breath which the universe
breathes, and which separates things keeping
them distinct. Hence, there is a duality
consisting of the central fire or unit and
the void."
The 17th century philosopher Leibniz, who invented calculus independently of Isaac Newton asked why is there something rather than nothing.
"In exploring the theme of The Web of Life, I have thus far discussed two principal topics. First, the web considered as selectivity. Experience considered as what we pay attention to, on the one hand, and what we ignore on the other. And I showed how the way in which we pay attention to the world creates isolates—I'm using that as a noun—isolates that we call particular things, events, and persons, and they seem to be disconnected, and to be alone, because we ignore the connections between them...
"When you lose sight of the fact that the order-principle and the random-principle go together, that’s exactly the same predicament as losing sight of the fact that all individually delineated things and beings are connected underneath...
"When the tree falls, if there is—anywhere around—and ear with the appropriate nervous system, there will be a noise. Because noise is a relationship between motion in the air and ears. If there is not any ear around, there won’t be any noise—although there will be vibration in the air. And if there is some instrument around, such as a microphone attached to a tape recorder, which is a mechanical copy of a human ear, then, according to that, there will be noise; there will be a vibration. In the same way, let’s suppose the sun sends out light into space. Now, the space surrounding the sun will be black darkness as if there were no light in it, unless a planet happens to float by. When a planet floats by, there will be light. In the darkness. But if there isn’t anything to relate to the sun in that way, then comes no light...
"Now, this is what I really want you to understand: to get into the unitive world underneath, underlying, and supporting the everyday practical world, there have to be certain alterations in one’s common sense. There are certain ideas—and beyond these ideas, certain feelings—that are difficult to get across not because they’re intellectually complicated—not at all because of that—but because they’re unfamiliar. They’re strange. We haven’t been brought up to accommodate them...
"Now, in exactly the same way, there is, here—what I’m trying to explain—a new idea that most people don’t assimilate, and that is the idea of the total interdependence of everything in the world...
"The outside thing that you see, and the inside thing that you are, are poles of the same magnet. Or back and front of the same coin. And without one there isn’t the other...
"Now, most people are brought up to be tone-deaf in respect to their own existence and the rest of the universe. They don’t see the relationships. They’re not aware of the unity. And so, once you spot that, you spot how everything goes with the thing, but you are one end and that, out there, is the other end. And they really go together. Then you may be said to be living a harmonious life...
"And so, in exactly the same way, our world is a manifestation of relativity, and this requires a balance, a combination, a relationship of opposites in every domain of life. And although these opposites are explicitly different, and even antagonistic, they are implicitly one—and that's the secret. See, there are these two secrets that we went into. The connection between what are supposed to be separate things and events, and the mutual unity between what are manifestly—that is to say, openly, for purposes of publication—opposites.
Now, this afternoon I'm going to take two other aspects of the web. The web is a trap, like the spider's web is a trap for flies. Also, the lovely embroideries are worn by women as traps for men—from a certain point of view. And I want to consider the web as something playful. You see, there are so many ways of looking at it, and you will find that all these ways are right, but what we need is the fullness of the view.
There are people, for example, who can see the web as a trap and get stuck with that. There are people to whom existence is simply hateful. They see it as nothing but a ghastly mistake. The Lord really erred when he created this world, because he arranged it in such a way that everything lives by eating something else. And what I'm doing is, I'm describing a certain point of view, you see? I'm not exactly philosophizing, I'm describing a point of view. You can look at life in such a way that the whole thing is this ghastly mistake... "
"Now then, the question arises: who's deceiving who? Who's fooling who? I'm fooling me? What is fooling? Fooling is playing like you're there when you're not. You know, getting somebody else to answer your name in the roll call. So we're all—you see, this is the metaphysical basis of it, this is what the Hindus mean by māyā: the world-illusion. The world is playing it's there when it isn't. And it's a trap. And it sucks you in. And you can't get out of it. And it's a thorough, big trap, too...
"The game that we are playing, mostly, is the survival game. That is to say, the game ought to go on. Only, the way we play the survival game has a kind of element in it which makes it difficult, because we tend to say, The first rule of this game is that it's serious, and that messes the whole thing up...
"Now, you see, the thing is—that really is a puzzle—is that they don’t admit they are playing games. And when a person is playing games, and doesn’t admit that they are playing games, then you have some kind of a trickster who isn’t really being fair to you. Now, of course, the game that this game is not a game has a certain kind of a fascinating quality to it. How mixed up can we all get? Let’s try. See? There’s a certain possibility in that. I would like to go insane, and be as insane as anybody has ever been, and be the far-est out crazy nut in the world. See, that’s a game. But it’s not a good game. It’s a game being played by a person who didn’t really understand that everyday life was a game too. And I think the most important thing is to admit this...
"But so, also, all humane people should admit that they’re jokers; that they are playing games and playing tricks. That I am doing it on you; I am most ready to admit this. I hoaxed you all into coming here to tell you—what? It was a trap, you see? But I’m going to make it an entertaining trap so that you won’t feel so badly about it...
"So, if you can admit that—that that’s what it’s all about—you have a little problem. Because there’s not only the threat that it really might be serious, and that you shouldn’t be laughing about this, but there’s also a kind of opposite. Then are you saying it’s merely just fiddling around? I mean, are you saying that it’s only a game? Is that all there is to it? What do you think? You see, this again is a question that everybody has to think things through. What did you want? Didn’t you want a game? Did you want it to be serious in the end? Think about the question. What kind of a thing would you like God to be? What would you like to do for eternity? Really?"...
"The question is then, you see—in you heart of hearts—you can take the attitude that all this is terrible, or that it’s dreadfully serious. You see, you can play comedies, or you can play tragedies, farces, histories and romances, and all that kind of thing, and you can take these various attitudes to it. But if you are awakened, and, as it were, you’ve been let in to the secret—which is what we’ve been talking about, see? Because the web is also the curtain, you know?...
"But however, you see, this whole idea that the universe is nothing at all but unintelligent force playing around and not even enjoying it is a putdown theory of the world. People who had an advantage to make, a game to play by putting it down, and making out that because they put the world down they were a superior kind of people. So that just won't do. We've had it. Because if you seriously go along with this idea of the world, you're what is technically called alienated. You feel hostile to the world. You feel that the world is a trap. It is a mechanism, it is electronic and neurological mechanisms into which you somehow got caught. And you, poor thing, have to put up with being put into a body that's falling apart, that gets cancer, that gets the great Siberian itch, and is just terrible...
"In the Sanskrit saying tat tvam asi, ‘that art thou,’ Zen is concerned with ‘that.’ ‘That,’ of course, is the word which is used for ‘Brahman,’ the absolute reality in Hindu philosophy. And you’re it—only in disguise, and disguised so well that you’ve forgotten it. But unfortunately, ideas like the Ultimate Ground of Being, the Self, Brahman, Ultimate Reality, the Great Void—all that is very, very abstract talk, and Zen is concerned with a much more direct way of coming to an understanding of ‘that.’ Or ‘thatness,’ as it’s called; tathātā in Sanskrit.
The Game of Hide-and-Seek
"Consider the world as a drama. What's the basis of all drama? The basis of all stories, of all plots, of all happenings--is the game of hide and seek. You get a baby, what's the fundamental first game you play with a baby? You put a book in front of your face, and you peek at the baby. The baby starts giggling. Because the baby is close to the origins of life; it comes from the womb really knowing what it's all about, but it can't put it into words. See, what every child psychologist really wants to know is to get a baby to talk psychological jargon, and explain how it feels. But the baby knows; you do this, this, this and this, and the baby starts laughing, because the baby is a recent incarnation of God. And the baby knows, therefore, that hide and seek is the basic game...
"See, when we were children, we were taught '1, 2, 3,' and 'A, B, C,' but we weren't set down on our mothers' knees and taught the game of black and white. That's the thing that was left out of all our educations, the game that I was trying to explain with these wave diagrams. That life is not a conflict between opposites, but a polarity. The difference bewteen a conflict and a polarity is simply--when you think about opposite things, we sometimes use the expression, 'These two things are the poles apart.' You say, for example, about someone with whom you totally disagree, 'I am the poles apart from this person.' But your very saying that gives the show away. Poles. Poles are the opposite ends of one magnet. And if you take a magnet, say you have a magnetized bar, there's a north pole and a south pole. Okay, chop off the south pole, move it away. The piece you've got left creates a new south pole. You never get rid of the south pole. So the point about a magnet is, things may be the poles apart, but they go together. You can't have the one without the other. We are imagining a diagram of the universe in which the idea of polarity is the opposite ends of the diameter, north and south, you see? That's the basic idea of polarity, but what we're trying to imagine is the encounter of forces that come from absolutely opposed realms, that have nothing in common. When we say of two personality types that they're the poles apart. We are trying to think eccentrically, instead of concentrically. And so in this way, we haven't realized that life and death, black and white, good and evil, being and non-being, come from the same center. They imply each other, so that you wouldn't know the one without the other.
"Now I'm not saying that that's bad, that's fun. You're playing the game that you don't know that black and white imply each other. Therefore you think that black possibly might win, that the light might go out, that the sound might never be heard again. That there could be the possibility of a universe of pure tragedy, of endless, endless darkness. Wouldn't that be awful? Only you wouldn't know it was awful, if that's what happened. The point that we all forget is that the black and the white go together, and there isn't the one without the other. At the same time, you see, we forget, in the same way as we forget that these two go together.
"The other thing we forget, is that self and other go together, in just the same way as the two poles of a magnet. You say 'I, myself; I am me; I am this individual; I am this particular, unique instance.' What is other is everything else. All of you, all of the stars, all of the galaxies, way, way out into infinite space, that's other. But in the same way as black implies white, self implies other. And you don't exist without all that, so that where you get these polarities, you get this sort of difference, that what we call explicitly, or exoterically, they're different. But implicitely, esoterically, they're one. Since you can't have the one without the other, that shows there's a kind of inner conspiracy bewteen all pairs of opposites, which is not in the open, but it's tacit... So, tacitly, all of you really inwardly know--although you won't admit it because your culture has trained you in a contrary direction--all of you really inwardly know that you as an individual self are inseparable from everything else that exists, that you are a special case in the universe. But the whole game, especially of Western culture, is to conceal that from ourselves, so that when anybody in our culture slips into the state of consciousness where they suddenly find this to be true, and they come on and say 'I'm God,' we say 'You're insane.'...
"But you see, we are playing a game...
"So then. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death--or shall I say, death implies life--you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but FEEL yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. So, say in Hindu mythology, they say that the world is the drama of God. God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, 'Satchitananda.' Which means 'sat,' that which is, 'chit,' that which is consciousness; that which is 'ananda' is bliss. In other words, what exists, reality itself is gorgeous, it is the fullness of total joy. Wowee! And all those stars, if you look out in the sky, is a firework display like you see on the fourth of July, which is a great occasion for celebration; the universe is a celebration, it is a fireworks show to celebrate that existence is. Wowee.
"And then they say, 'But, however, there's no point in just sustaining bliss.' Let's suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power to dream in one night 75 years worth of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say 'Well, that was pretty great. But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control, where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be.' And you would dig that, and come out of it and say 'That was a close shave, now wasn't it?' Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of the choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God. Because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he's not...
"So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama. When you come into the theater, there is an arch, and a stage, and down there is the audience. Everybody assumes their seats in the theater, gone to see a comedy, a tragedy, a thriller, whatever it is, and they all know as they come in and pay their admissions, that what is going to happen on the stage is not for real. But the actors have a conspiracy against this, because they're going to try and persuade the audience that what is happening on the stage IS for real. They want to get everybody sitting on the edge of their chairs, they want you terrified, or crying, or laughing. Absolutely captivated by the drama. And if a skillful human actor can take in an audience and make people cry, think what the cosmic actor can do. Why he can take himself in completely. He can play so much for real that he thinks he really is. Like you sitting in this room, you think you're really here. Well, you've persuaded yourself that way. You've acted it so damn well that you KNOW that this is the real world. But you're playing it. As well, the audience and the actor as one. Because behind the stage is the green room, offscene, where the actors take off their masks...
"So then, this means that you're not victims of a scheme of things, of a mechanical world, or of an autocratic god. The life you're living is what YOU have put yourself into. Only you don't admit it, because you want to play the game that it's happened to you...
nevertheless this was a game, which was a very far out play. It was a kind of cosmic masochism. But I did it.
"Isn't that an optimal game rule for life? Because if you play life on the supposition that you're a helpless little puppet that got involved. Or you played on the supposition that it's a frightful, serious risk, and that we really ought to do something about it, and so on, it's a drag. There's no point in going on living unless we make the assumption that the situation of life is optimal. That really and truly we're all in a state of total bliss and delight, but we're going to pretend we aren't just for kicks. In other words, you play non-bliss in order to be able to experience bliss. And you can go as far out in non-bliss as you want to go. And when you wake up, it'll be great....
"So then, here's the drama. My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, are that there the central self, you can call it God, you can call it anything you like, and it's all of us. It's playing all the parts of all being whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And it's playing the game of hide and seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself. And when you're ready to wake up, you're going to wake up, and if you're not ready you're going to stay pretending that you're just a 'poor little me.'...
"I'll call the Dramatic Myth. The idea that life as we experience it is a big act, and that behind this big act is the player, and the player, or the self, as it's called in Hindu philosophy, the 'atman', is you. Only you are playing hide and seek, since that is the essential game that is going on. The game of games. The basis of all games, hide and seek. And since you're playing hide and seek, you are deliberately, although you can't admit this--or won't admit it--you are deliberately forgetting who you really are, or what you really are. "
The Game of Black-And-White
"When we were taught 1, 2, 3 and A, B, C, few of us were ever told about the Game of Black-and-White. It is quite as simple. but belongs to the hushed-up side of things. Consider, first, that all your five senses are differing forms of one basic sense--something like touch. Seeing is highly sensitive touching. The eyes touch, or feel, light waves and so enable us to touch things out of reach of our hands. Similarly, the ears touch sound waves in the air, and the nose tiny particles of dust and gas. But the complex patterns and chains of neurons which constitute these senses are composed of neuron units which are capable of changing between just two states: on or off. To the central brain the individual neuron signals either yes or no--that's all. But, as we know from computers which employ binary arithmetic in which the only figures are 0 and 1, these simple elements can be formed into the most complex and marvelous patterns. In this respect our nervous system and 0/l computers are much like everything else, for the physical world is basically vibration. Whether we think of this vibration in terms of waves or of particles, or perhaps wavicles, we never find the crest of a wave without a trough or a particle without an interval, or space, between itself and others. In others words, there is no such thing as a half wave, or a particle all by itself without any space around it. There is no on without off, no up without down.
Although sounds of high vibration seem to be continuous, to be pure sound, they are not. Every sound is actually sound/silence, only the ears don't register this consciously when the alternation is too rapid. It appears only in, say, the lowest audible notes of an organ. Light, too, is not pure light, but light/ darkness. Light pulsates in waves, with their essential up/ down motion, and in some conditions the speed of light vibrations can be synchronized with other moving objects so that the latter appear to be still. This is why arc lights are not used in sawmills, for they emit light at a pulse which easily synchronizes with the speed of a buzz saw in such a way that its teeth seem to be still. While eyes and ears actually register and respond to both the up-beat and the down-beat of these vibrations, the mind, that is to say our conscious attention, notices only the up-beat. The dark, silent, or "off" interval is ignored. It is almost a general principle that consciousness ignores intervals, and yet cannot notice any pulse of energy without them.
If you put your hand on an attractive girl's knee and just leave it there, she may cease to notice it. But if you keep patting her knee, she will know you are very much there and interested. But she notices and, you hope, values the on more than the off. Nevertheless, the very things that we believe to exist are always on/offs. Ons alone and offs alone do not exist. Many people imagine that in listening to music they hear simply a succession of tones, singly, or in 23 clusters called chords. If that were true, as it is in the exceptional cases of tone-deaf people, they would hear no music, no melody whatsoever--only a succession of noises. Hearing melody is hearing the intervals between the tones, even though you may not realize it, and even though these particular intervals arc not periods of silence but "steps" of varying length between points on the musical scale. These steps or intervals are auditory spaces, as distinct from distance-spaces between bodies or timespaces between events. Yet the general habit of conscious attention is, in various ways, to ignore intervals.
Most people think, for example, that space is "just nothing" unless it happens to be filled with air. They are therefore puzzled when artists or architects speak of types and properties of space, and more so when astronomers and physicists speak of curved space, expanding space, finite space, or of the influence of space on light or on stars. Because of this habit of ignoring space-intervals, we do not realize that just as sound is a vibration of sound/silence, the whole universe (that is, existence) is a vibration of solid/space. For solids and spaces go together as inseparably as insides and outsides. Space is the relationship between bodies, and without it there can be neither energy nor motion. If there were a body, just one single ball, with no surrounding space, there would be no way of conceiving or feeling it as a ball or any other shape. If there were nothing outside it, it would have no outside. It might be God, but certainly not a body! So too, if there were just space alone with nothing in it, it wouldn't be space at all. For there is no space except space between things, inside things, or outside things."
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Now once one has seen the nature of the game it doesn't matter because all negative things pair with positives. There is no positive without negative and there is no negative without positive....reality is an invisible state of affairs but it has been striped black and white so to be seen... up and down, sound and silence, the whole vibratory. the whole game the universe is playing is to forget this is..... god is itself forgetfulness and the visibility of the world is the game being played. The nature of the game is let us pretend that the positive and the negative are not really identical. You see they're explicitly different but implicitly the same because they always go around together and that reveals an implicit conspiracy between black an and white. You cant have one without the other... pretend they're actually enemies we can play all sorts of games.... from that position you can develop all the games you want. Many of our table games like chess, dominoes, checkers etc use the black and white pieces...."
"The real joker is Brahman, the ultimate player of the game.... the divine of the universe. If you look upon the world as play, what the hindus call 'lila' meaning sport or play, then Vishnu or Brahman is the big joker and anyone who realizes this is the little joker. And the art of the joker is very paradoxical because it is to give the show away that it is a game yet to keep the show going on. 'Now you see it. Now you don't' character.... "
"... when they're discussing one's awakening to the very final secret somehow there is the feeling of well what did we get? Because you step into a new dimension. you see from the standpoint of this awakening that really and truly you were awake all the time... you don't have to stay in ecstasy, that ordinary consciousness is okay too. Everything is right where it stands....so it doesn't matter whether you're a big pearl or a little pearl, you all constitute the whole... everybody is seen to be a perfect manifestation of the godhead or of the Void or whatever you want to call it. and even though the very fact they don't know it and are unhappy they quarrel is still a manifestation of this....
... all of it is an integral part of the game.... the whole thing is beyond good and evil. That's the way it is whether one likes it or not. It's all up to you how you want to behave..... those powers we call positive are always in the process of overcoming those we call negative. the nature of the positive to win and the negative to lose but win and lose always goes together. Nobody wins unless someone loses... other way around, if the negative were to always overcome the positive, you would get a universe that would not be a continuing game. It would be one percent tragedy. The positive and negative together constitute existence. We have to use existence as a neutral word that doesn't non existence, Existence already includes nonexistence. sound is constituted by sound-silence is very rapid alternation... and existence is something of which the game is worth the candle if it weren't it wouldn't be... good, bad good captial 'G'. Humanity is a curious combination of reason and passion and if human beings didn't have those two sides he wouldn't be human. He is redeemed by passions of being something of a rascal...... the middle way. When the buddha first discussed the middle way he put it like this: by trying to solve by immersion only results in hangover. to ret by asceticism you get tied up in a kind of masochism by saying 'I know I'm right'...infantile guilt since as he said there is a middle way between asceticism and hedonism but actually the middle way is more subtle than that..... most difficult thing to accept oneself completely. You as you are now are the buddha. We are always trying to get away from ourselves now.... only stop doing that though a series of experiments to try resolutely to get away from ourselves as we are. So that is the middle way... yogi, fakir and the monk the individual makes a big thing out of the way of liberation and especially likes a teacher who will put him through the most severe paces. schools in the west someone offering.... liberation is getting out of the toils of karma... you've done all kinds of deeds good and bad reaping, setting up future consequences. Before you can be liberated you have to pay off karmic debts.... that the meaning of wú wéi in Taoism not to force things so he just drops it like that....
"he is so invoked in the seriousness of the game he is playing, he is lost.. because he is actually under the cover of his assurance of his status position in society he is an anxious person.... they're so involved from the joker's standpoint he doesn't condemn people but congratulates them for getting so lost and involved, there to be far in people are those who keep contact with the original goings on behind the scenes prompters in the theater, actors on stage relying on memories, conceal prompter with script in front of him... in this dramatic analogy of he universe the green toom is the central point, still point of turning world, how god is when he's back home not involved in all these games and takes off the mask. In Hindu theory, everyone is a mask of god... the million masks of the joker is the playee, the trick player, who plays the ultimate trick on himself so there is no one to blame because it is ultimately you who are responsible.
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What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience? They cover simply our actual experience, our human knowledge of facts or events. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things.... This darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the gods. They alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens; that which now comes to us in bits and pieces, the "accidents" which exist only in our heads, in our limited perceptions.
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This mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, Substance, Energy, Space, Ether, Mind, Being, the Void, the Infinite—names and ideas which shift in popularity and respectability with the winds of intellectual fashion, of considering the universe intelligent or stupid, superhuman or subhuman, specific or vague. All of them might be dismissed as nonsense-noises if the notion of an underlying Ground of Being were no more than a product of intellectual speculation. But these names are often used to designate the content of a vivid and almost sensorily concrete experience—the "unitive" experience of the mystic, which, with secondary variations, is found in almost all cultures at all times.
In one of his lectures Alan says, "what the Hindus called 'non-dualistic'... they always speak of the highest reality as being "not one" because 'one' excludes 'many'; "not nothing" because 'nothing' excludes 'something'; not "being" because 'being' excludes "non being" and vice versa. And so they use this word 'non-dual' to mean "that which doesn't exclude anything"..."
"In Hindu philosophy the highest state of consciousness in Samadhi is called nirvikalpa Samadhi which means literally "non-conceptual". 'Vikalpa' means a concept. 'Nir' is a negation. So the non-conceptual knowledge. Now people have greatly misunderstood this. They have imagined that unknowing the state of the highest contemplation, was the acquisition of a blank mind from which you first discarded thought, you went on to discard perception, you went on to discard any kind of sensory content in awareness until you were, so far as anyone could say, aware of nothing. And they supposed that this kind of catatonic state was mystical consciousness. This is often believed in India. If you go to the Vedanta Society and ask, 'what do you mean by nirvikalpa Samadhi?', they will tell you that the one in that state has no consciousness whatsoever of the sensory world, that he is completely absorbed, as you sometimes see Hindu holy men sitting in a state where they are blind and deaf to everything going on around them. The founder of Chinese zen known as Ch'an(?) described people like that as no better than pieces of rock and lumps of wood. He said it's a very serious mistake indeed to confuse Sunyata, the sanskrit word for the great Void which is both the ultimate reality and the consciousness thereof -- it is a great mistake to confuse it with nothingness. It is rather to be thought of as space or like space because space is not empty. It contains the whole universe and so in the same way the State of Mind of a person who is truly enlightened is not empty. It contains everything but, like space, it is not stained by what it contains. And it's often said in Zen imagery 'you can't hammer a nail into space', 'you can't spit on the sky inside it'. If you try, the spit will just return and hit your own face so they go on to say the consciousness in all of us, your basic mind, is like space. It is completely pure, but of course by purity they don't mean unsexual which is of course what purity generally means in the Western world: 'blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God'. A person who's pure in heart is generally understood as one who never has any naughty thoughts. You know what 'naughty' means means: vain, negative, empty. A naughty person, therefore, is one who doesn't amount to anything, was just nothing. That's the real meaning, but this misunderstanding of the nature of contemplation existed not only in India from which it was transmitted to China, but also in the West.
You read many treatises on Western mysticism and the still feeling that getting into a deep, deep trance sometimes called 'rapture'. Again, the word 'rapture' has undergone some transformations. We talk about rapture as people being beside themselves with pleasure but to be 'rapt' means to be 'taken away' from the body. Also 'ecstasy' we now interpret as meaning 'in a state of high pleasure', but it means to be outside yourself, to stand outside yourself. Your soul has left you. It is with God as Arabs say of all crazy people: 'Be kind to them. They are not here. Their soul is with God.' But actually if it can be true as Buddhists say that Nirvana and samsara are one. And if it can be true as Christians say that the spirit can be made flesh, the word could be made flesh, then obviously the highest form of man is not sitting in a trance like a lump on a log with a perfectly blank mind because if that were the highest state of consciousness it would be an exclusive state of mind, a state of mind that shuts out life and in that sense it could not qualify for being what the Hindus called 'non-dualistic'. They always speak of the highest reality as being not 'one' because one excludes many; not 'nothing' because nothing excludes something; not 'being' because being excludes non being and vice versa. And so they use this word 'non-dual' to mean 'that which doesn't exclude anything', which, as it were, has no outside as we say space has no outside. you can only have outsides inside space. You can't have any outsides outside space. There is no outside space even though space may be curved and finite...
So what I'm getting to... I'm giving you something out of the general history of religions to show that what has been meant by the mystical state, the state of Samadhi or awakening in certain traditions, is not this state of trance, but the state of consciousness in which you can perfectly well carry on your daily affairs. And, of course, what is meant by a bodhisattva as the ideal type of Buddhist person is that he is not rapt -- that he is actively engaged in the life of the world because he has gone beyond the illusion that Nirvana is to be found away from everyday life. So what is then the point of meditation? Why meditate? Why do you have to crawl off into a hole, or go to a Zen monastery, or retire and be quiet when this is only a withdrawal? Is there anything to be said for it? Meditation is, in that sense, as a practice, as a discipline is a very curious problem because from one point of view it's a help and from another point of view, a hindrance. And I think we have to understand, first of all, that meditation exercises are medicinal rather than dietary..."
"If you ever do momentarily slip into some sort of a mystical experience, you become aware of this tremendous gamesmanship going on and you see it as sort of continuous with all sorts of cosmic games that are going on -- of creatures eating other creatures up; and the creatures that get eaten, of course, transform themselves into the creatures that eat them; and then, in turn, eat other creatures. And you see the whole hide-and-seek game going on and then you realize very clearly that the state of development that you are in now is no better and no worse than anybody else's state because it's like space again. Which planet is an... or which star is in the best position? Well, it's all equal. They're all in the middle. Anyone can be considered as the center one. Any point on a sphere is the center of the surface of the sphere...All the manifestations are just like the leaves on the trees. And in each being in a unique way these as Christians would say manifesting the will of God. So they're really from that point of views there is nothing to do to attain Buddhahood, nothing at all. But, you see, that's very difficult to understand because a lot of people when they hear that there's nothing to do, try to 'do nothing', and you can't because you are karma, and karma means 'action'. You can't do nothing, but the thing you're looking for, or think you're looking, it is what you're doing. is what's called 'you' only, of course as we all know, we've got ourselves into the idea that oneself is so difficult to see. Because it's like as I've often said trying to bite your own teeth or look into your own eyes, and you can't find it. It's always behind. It's like your head is, from the optical point of view, a blank space, neither light nor dark. It's right in the middle of everything..."
"but the problem is we keep running into this thing that all constant stimulations of consciousness become unconscious. And when we take it as a matter of course to have certain comforts, then we switch the level on which we worry. When you solve a whole set of problems, people find new ones to worry about and after a while you begin to get that 'haven't we been here before?' feeling. Aren't we just going round on a cycle and doing the same old thing over and over and over again because we don't realize that we're chasing our own tails by an eternally recurrent process of not knowing who you are? That is the hide-and-seek. That is the nature of what the Hindus call the manvantara and the pralaya, the period of the manvantara in which the worlds are manifested and the period of the pralaya in which the worlds are withdrawn from manifestation. In and out. In and out evermore came out by the same door as in I went. The thing is to get to the point where you can see that you are doing that in every moment of your existence with every tiny little atom of your body. You, now at this minute, you see, are the whole, the whole system of inning and outing. In other words, you often think perhaps maybe a long, long time ahead 'I shall reach the point where I wake up from manifestation and overcome the world illusion and discover that I am the supreme reality behind all this diversification'. My friends, there is no diversification. In other words, what you call diversification is your game in the same way as you chop the thing and then you say it is made of pieces. Well, you forget that you cut it so when you see the world is complicated and that there are life problems and that you might one day succeed.. see, hundreds and hundreds of people are running like mad after something that they thought, that is success, and they have no idea what it is. So in exactly the same way that guru is keeping you running and running after spiritual attainment. You don't know what you want...
"The basic form of the cosmic game according to the Hindu view is the game of hide-and-seek—or you might call it the game of lost-and-found. Or, again, now you see it, now you don’t. In examining the nature of vibration we find a very peculiar thing. If you represent vibration as a wave motion you will notice that there is no such manifestation as half a wave. We do not find in nature crests without troughs or troughs without crests. No sound is produced unless there is both. Both the beat, as it were, and the interval between.
"Now, this wave phenomenon is happening on ever so many scales. There is the very, very fast wave of light, the slower wave of sound, then there are all sorts of other wave processes—the beat of the heart, the rhythm of the breath, waking and sleeping, the peak of human life from birth to maturity and down again to death. And the slower the wave goes the more difficult it is to see that the crest and the trough are inseparable, so that we become persuaded in the game of hide-and-seek that it is possible for the trough to go down and down and down for ever and never rise again into a crest; forgetting that trough implies crest just as crest implies trough. There is no such thing, you see, as pure sound. Sound is sound-silence. Light is light-darkness. Light is pulsation, and between every light pulse there’s the dark pulse. And so the Hindu image is that the Self eternally plays a game of hide-and-seek with itself...
"But now, you see, what happens is: if you take one third of the treta yuga as being on the bad side, half of the dwapara yuga as being on the bad side, and all of the kali yuga, and you add those figures up, you will get the bad side occupying only one third of the total time. So what’s going on here? It is not quite a situation, you see—it is not a view of the cosmos in which good and evil are so evenly balanced that nothing happens. ‘Evil’ is just troublesome enough to give ‘good’ a run for its money. It’s as if the game that is being played here is playing order against chaos, but you gotta have some chaos in order to play the game of order against it. But if order wins there’s no further game. If chaos wins there’s no further game. If they’re equally balanced it’s a stalemate. So what happens is this: chaos is always losing, but is never defeated. It’s the good loser...
"But according to this mythology there are—you have to realize the Lord, the Brahman, in three aspects. One is Brahma, the creative principle; two is Vishnu, the preserving principle; and three is Shiva, the destroying principle...
"So they call it the void, but Nagarjuna went on to say you mustn't cling to the void. You have to void the void. And so the void of non-void is the Great State as it were of Nagarjuna's Buddhism. But you must remember that all that has been voided, all that has been denied, are those concepts in which one has hitherto attempted to pin down what is real. In Zen Buddhist texts they say you cannot nail a peg into the sky. And so to be a man of the void is also called a man not depending on anything."
"So you see, when you ask 'How to I obtain the knowledge of God, how do I obtain the knowledge of liberation?' all I can say is it's the wrong question. Why do you want to obtain it? Because the very fact that you're wanting to obtain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there. You already have it. But of course, it's up to you. It's your privilege to pretend that you don't. That's your game; that's your life game; that's what makes you think you're an ego. And when you want to wake up, you will, just like that. If you're not awake, it shows you don't want to. You're still playing the 'hide' part of the game. You're still, as it were, the self pretending it's not the self. And that's what you want to do. So you see, in that way, too, you're already there."
"So if you really go the whole way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing, of all your efforts and all your achievements and your all your attainments turning into dust, nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you? That's what it's going to all come to, and for some reason or other, we're supposed to find this depressing. Do you see in a way how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing? But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness, where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how it looks behind your eyes, you see. So, in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality and you see it's your reality, then how can anything contaminate it? The idea of your being scared and put out, worried, and so on, is this nothing. It's a dream because you're really nothing. But this is the most incredible Nothing. So cheer up, you see. The essence of your mind is intrinsically pure. Pure means clear, void. See, if you think of this nothingness as mere blankness, and you hold on to the idea of blankness, and kind of grisly about it, you haven't understood it. He said nothingness is really like the nothingness of space which contains the whole universe. All the Sun, Moon, stars and the mountains and rivers and the good men and the bad men and the animals and the insects, the whole bit, all are contained in the void. So out of this void comes everything and you are it. What else could you be?"
Jim Holt
American philosopher, atuhor and essayist Jim Holt wrote an interesting book called Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story and also did a cool, entertaining TedTalk on the subject called Why Does the Universe Exist? In it he summarizes Buddhism as "...to a Buddhist, the world is just a whole lot of nothing. It's just a big cosmic vacuity. And we think there's a lot of something out there, but that's because we're enslaved by our desires. If we let our desires melt away, we'll see the world for what it truly is, a vacuity, nothingness, and we'll slip into this happy state of nirvana which has been defined as having just enough life to enjoy being dead." Now that description of nirvana is humorous, but it is a clever way of describing it. Holt said, "So maybe physics can 'fill this blank', and indeed, since about the late 1960s or around 1970, physicists have purported to give a purely scientific explanation of how a universe like ours could have popped into existence out of sheer nothingness, a quantum fluctuation out of the void... Lawrence Krauss, who wrote a book called A Universe from Nothing, and Lawrence thinks that he's given — he's a militant atheist, by the way, so he's gotten God out of the picture.
The laws of quantum field theory, the state-of-the-art physics, can show how out of sheer nothingness -- no space, no time, no matter, nothing -- a little nugget of false vacuum can fluctuate into existence, and then, by the miracle of inflation, blow up into this huge and variegated cosmos we see around us... The laws have some sort of ontological power or clout that they can form the abyss, that it's pregnant with being. They can call a world into existence out of nothing."
Later in his talk Holt said, "Why this set of laws? Why quantum field theory that describes a universe with a certain number of forces and particles and so forth? Why not a completely different set of laws? There are many, many mathematically consistent sets of laws. Why not no laws at all? Why not sheer nothingness? So this is a problem, believe it or not, that reflective physicists really think a lot about, and at this point they tend to go metaphysical, say, well, maybe the set of laws that describes our universe, it's just one set of laws and it describes one part of reality, but maybe every consistent set of laws describes another part of reality, and in fact all possible physical worlds really exist, they're all out there. We just see a little tiny part of reality that's described by the laws of quantum field theory, but there are many, many other worlds, parts of reality that are described by vastly different theories that are different from ours in ways we can't imagine, that are inconceivably exotic. Steven Weinberg, the father of the standard model of particle physics, has actually flirted with this idea himself, that all possible realities actually exist. Also, a younger physicist, Max Tegmark, who believes that all mathematical structures exist, and mathematical existence is the same thing as physical existence, so we have this vastly rich multiverse that encompasses every logical possibility."
"Now, in taking this metaphysical way out, these physicists and also philosophers are actually reaching back to a very old idea that goes back to Plato. It's the principle of plenitude or fecundity, or the great chain of being, that reality is actually as full as possible. It's as far removed from nothingness as it could possibly be. So we have these two extremes now. We have sheer nothingness on one side, and we have this vision of a reality that encompasses every conceivable world at the other extreme: the fullest possible reality. Nothingness, the simplest possible reality. Now what's in between these two extremes? There are all kinds of intermediate realities that include some things and leave out others... Reality has to turn out some way. It can either turn out to be nothing or everything or something in between... "
"So what kind of reality do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a special reality? What if we were living in the most elegant possible reality? Imagine the existential pressure on us to live up to that, to be elegant, not to pull down the tone of it. Or, what if we were living in the fullest possible reality? Well then our existence would be guaranteed, because every possible thing exists in that reality, but our choices would be meaningless. If I really struggle morally and agonize and I decide to do the right thing, what difference does it make, because there are an infinite number of versions of me also doing the right thing and an infinite number doing the wrong thing. So my choices are meaningless. So we don't want to live in that special reality. And as for the special reality of nothingness, we wouldn't be having this conversation. So I think living in a generic reality that's mediocre, there are nasty bits and nice bits and we could make the nice bits bigger and the nasty bits smaller and that gives us a kind of purpose in life. The universe is absurd, but we can still construct a purpose, and that's a pretty good one, and the overall mediocrity of reality kind of resonates nicely with the mediocrity we all feel in the core of our being."
"Black is the true face of Light, only we do not see this." -- Nikola Tesla
"All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, 'What are light quanta?' Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.... For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is." -- Albert Einstein **
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein
"When man sees the light of the sun he believes that he is actually seeing light when the nerves of his eyes are but 'feeling' the intense, rapid, shortwave vibrations of the kind of wave motion which he senses as incandescence." -- Walter Russell, The Secret of Light
"A few brine shrimp die and a plant feels their death. I think it's the smallest of the event that makes it so significant. It means that even on the lower levels of life there's a profound consciousness or awareness that binds all things together." -- Cleve Backster
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." -- Max Planck
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter. -- Max Planck
While philosophers held objects in the visible world came from the intelligible forms and archetypes of the Absolute, scientists have given various names to the Void. The Ether or aether. The Vacuum. The plenum. Subspace. The Zero point or Zero point field. And other words have developed in relation to this unknown. Dark matter. Dark enegry. Antimatter.
When physicists look at atoms with an electron microscope they tell us that the atoms that make up our matter are almost entirely empty space. There is 99.99% empty space between the electrons orbiting the shell around the nucleus. Likewise, when astronomers look out into outer space with a telescope they say it is made of 99.99% empty space. Furthermore, this matter can not be directly observed. It is forever playing a game of hide and seek, blinking in and out of existence. Light itself is dualistic. When light it is not observed it behaves as a wave. Only when it is observed will it behave as a particle.
What is this Void of space? Scientists have been calling this empty space that makes up the fabric of space itself different names. Some call it the Zero Point or Zero Point Field. Others a Vacuum. There have been books released. The Divine Matrix. The Field. One book I recently read was Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness by Itzhak Bentov. His writings mirror much of what I have been writing and saying recently. And is probably what inspired the person to write and tell me about his book.
The Void has been described as Nothing, "no thing". It is zero point, not even a point but what lies beyond the singularity, before the big bang. Think of our supposed so-called 3d reality. It is LxWxH...cubes , spheres etc with volume. 2d would be a plane....LxW... rectangles, circles, etc with area. 1d would be a line, a bunch of points. Length, no width or height at all. In math, 0d is a point. The Void or Emptiness would be beyond 0d since it is nothing, or no-thing.
In the Void there may still be pure Awareness, pure energy or potential energy (as opposed to kinetic energy) as well as something akin to "bliss", but I'm not sure. Energy at rest may be considered Potential energy. Once it is set into motion it causes separation and eventually becomes kinetic energy which may involve light and heat as well and eventually cooling into solid matter. I'm not a scientist so an attempt at using scientific language is probably a massive fail, but hopefully you can get the gist of what I am trying to convey.
"Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing"), was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light." Eistein wrote, "The introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an 'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties, nor assign a velocity-vector to a point of the empty space in which electromagnetic processes take place." The Morley-Michaelson experiment appeared to have proved his prediction correct. So I guess instead of a lumniferous ether we were left with the concept of a vacuum that is light-bearing.
Experiments in quantum physics have shown that there is no objective, real world out there. It is subjective and only collapses from a waveform into a point as a result of the interaction of consciousness observing it. So there's really no real prison to escape from or archons to fear. It is a prison of our own mind or consciousness. It is game of hide and seek we play with ourselves.
I am not a scientist so take everything I speculate about frequency with a boulder of salt!
Some near death experiencers sometimes talk about the Light as being God. And experiencers often express the desire to return to Source. But is the light really God and the Source? Light here on earth seems to come from the Sun, fire, heated filaments, etc. It has sources, but is not the source. Light can even come from sound. It is called sonoluminescence. I also recall in the book Catching the Light the author very carefully conducted an experiment to detect what light looks like when it is not reflected. His experiment concluded that pure light, unreflected, is darkness! Think of outer space. The light coming from the Sun travels through space and is reflected off planets and the moon so we can see them. But what does it look like as it travels between them? The darkness of outer space.
The following is from the beginning of the book Catching The Light by Arthur Zajonc and shows just how tenuous our understanding of light might be: "As part of what I call "Project Eureka", a friend and I have designed and constructed a science exhibit in which one views a region of space filled with light. It is a simple but startling demonstration that uses only a carefully fabricated box and a projector whose light shines directly into it. We have taken special care to ensure that light does not illuminate any interior objects or surfaces in the box. Within the box, there is only pure light and lots of it. The question is: What does one see? How does light look when left entirely to itself?
Approaching the exhibit, I turn on the projector, whose bulb and lenses can be seen through a Plexiglas panel. The projector sends a brilliant light through optical elements into the box beside it. Moving over to a view port, I look into the box and at the light within. What do I see? Absolute darkness! I see nothing but the blackness of empty space.
On the outside of the box is a handle connected to a wand that can move into and out of the box's interior. When I pull the handle, the wand flashes through the dark space before me, and I see it brilliantly lit on one side. The space clearly is not empty but filled with light. Without an object on which the light can fall, one sees only darkness. Light itself is always invisible. We see only things, only objects, not light." -- from Catching the Light
I am a bit skeptical as to the veracity of that emperiment. Even the act of observing something with consciousness affects the experiment. But, if true, it does make sense.
Philosopher Alan Watts states in his book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, "Apart from your brain, or some brain, the world is devoid of light, heat, weight, solidity, motion, space, time, or any other imaginable feature. All these phenomena are interactions, or transactions, of vibrations with a certain arrangement of neurons. Thus vibrations of light and heat from the sun do not actually become light or heat until they interact with a living organism, just as no light-beams are visible in space unless reflected by particles of atmosphere or dust."
Scientists say that 99.99% of matter is empty space, a vacuum, as is outer space. But perhaps there is energy in the Void between everything and our instruments are just not sensitive enough to detect it? Maybe it is like echos or faint vibration. Perhaps bleeding over from another dimension even. We still don't understand what dark matter is though it makes up most our universe. If this zero point energy is vibrating so slowly that we can't detect it, as it approaches zero point or total rest, does it become Potential Energy, energy that hasn't been converted into the kinetic energy of movement yet?
David Bohm was a well respected scientist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. His first book, Quantum Theory, published in 1951, was well received by Einstein and others.
In 1980 he published the book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, in which he put forth his theories on the implicit nature of the vast energy contained in the nothingness of the plenum.
"This order is not to be understood solely in terms of a regular arrangement of objects (e.g., in rows) or as a regular arrangement of events (e.g. in a series). Rather, a total order is contained, in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time. Now, the word ‘implicit’ is based on the verb ‘to implicate’. This means ‘to fold inward’ (as multiplication means ‘folding many times’). So we may be led to explore the notion that in some sense each region contains a total structure ‘enfolded’ within it. It will be useful in such an exploration to consider some further examples of enfolded or implicate order."
"To indicate a new kind of description appropriate for giving primary relevance to implicate order, let us consider once again the key feature of the functioning of the hologram, i.e., in each region of space, the order of a whole illuminated... In all cases, the content or meaning that is ‘enfolded’ and ‘carried’ is primarily an order and a measure, permitting the development of a structure...
More generally, such order and measure can be ‘enfolded’ and ‘carried’ not only in electromagnetic waves but also in other ways (by electron beams, sound, and in other countless forms of
wholeness and the implicate order
movement). To generalize so as to emphasize undivided wholeness, we shall say that what ‘carries’ an implicate order is the holomovement, which is an unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases, we can abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g., light, electrons, sound, etc.), but more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and are inseparable. Thus, in its totality, the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable way at all. It is not required to conform to any particular order, or to be bounded by any particular measure. Thus, the holomovement is undefinable and immeasurable."
"It is being suggested here, then, that what we perceive through the senses as empty space is actually the plenum, which is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The things that appear to our senses are derivative forms and their true meaning can be seen only when we consider the plenum, in which they are generated and sustained, and into which they must ultimately vanish. This plenum is, however, no longer to be conceived through the idea of a simple material medium, such as an ether, which would be regarded as existing and moving only in a three dimensional space. Rather, one is to begin with the holomovement, in which there is the immense ‘sea’ of energy described earlier. This sea is to be understood in terms of a multidimensional implicate order, along the lines sketched in section 4, while the entire universe of matter as we generally observe it is to be treated as a comparatively small pattern of excitation."
"It may indeed be said that life is enfolded in the totality and that, even when it is not manifest, it is somehow ‘implicit’ in what we generally call a situation in which there is no life. "
"Thus, as we have seen, the easily accessible explicit content of consciousness is included within a much greater implicit (or implicate) background. This in turn evidently has to be contained in a yet greater background which may include not only neuro-physiological processes at levels of which we are not generally conscious but also a yet greater background of unknown (and indeed ultimately unknowable) depths of inwardness that may be analogous to the ‘sea’ of energy that fills the sensibly perceived ‘empty’ space.
Whatever may be the nature of these inward depths of consciousness, they are the very ground, both of the explicit content and of that content which is usually called implicit. Although this ground may not appear in ordinary consciousness, it may nevertheless be present in a certain way. Just as the vast ‘sea’ of energy in space is present to our perception as a sense of emptiness or nothingness so the vast ‘unconscious’ background of explicit consciousness with all its implications is present in a similar way. That is to say, it may be sensed as an emptiness, a nothingness, within which the usual content of consciousness is only a vanishingly small set of facets."
This is from a Ted Talk by scientist, Ron Garret.
"What I want to talk about here is the quantum information theory which I
have dubbed the “zero-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s
an extension of classical information theory with complex numbers. And if
you run through that math you get some very interesting results...
So, this has some philosophical implications. I call it the zero universe
interpretation of quantum mechanics. If you really — if you buy this as a
description of what the physics of the universe is really like, then it tells you
unambiguously that it is not the case; that the reason that measurements
are consistent across space and time is because there’s a real underlying
metaphysical reality out there. It tells you in fact, the exact opposite, that
what we really are is, as David Mermin puts it, “correlations without
correlata.” We are not made of atoms, we are actually made of bits. We are
our thoughts and these thoughts actually reside, if you will forgive
stretching a metaphor to the breaking point, we are a simulation running
on a quantum computer...
Quantum mechanics actually
predicts a comprehensible universe but at the cost of forcing you to believe:
that what you perceive as physical reality is not actually real, it’s actually
an illusion...
And I’ll leave you with this quote from an ancient Japanese Zen master and
open the floor for questions.:
Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is
moving." The other said, "The wind is moving." The sixth
patriarch, Zeno, happened to be passing by. He told them, "Not the
wind, not the flag. Mind is moving."
Audience: I’d like to make a short pitch for the multiple universes and hear
your response. The multiple universes, one way to look at it is the natural
equation, it allows for — because it’s linear, you can have things occurring
that live in the same equation and sometimes, say, with the dead and a live
cat, you can see that you can actually sort of separate them, each goes its
own way, they don’t interact much, so a very good approximation is to
consider them one at a time. However, when real quantum effects go, then
you cannot do it this way. So, there are some things that you can separate
and some not. So, now, you’re saying that you have an interpretation of a
one universe so –
Ron Garret: No, not one. Zero. Very important distinction. One universe,
one classical universe really is untenable. That’s Copenhagen. So the
question was, what do I think about multiple universes? Multiple universes
are just as tenable, according to the math, as zero universes. The only
thing that’s not tenable is one classical universe, that’s the only thing that
the math tells you unambiguously does not exist. And it’s a matter of taste.
You know, I personally — one of the things that the math tells you if you
think about it in terms of multiple universes, is that once you get beyond a
certain level of separation, these universes are forever inaccessible to us,
even to any reasonable degree of approximation. And then there’s this
philosophical question of is the thing actually real and the analogy that —
the best analogy that I’ve heard is imagine a photon that leaves the back of
the sun and goes away from us and so it’s forever outside our light cone.
Is that photon real? And my reply to that is, there’s a difference between
the photon that leaves the back of the sun and travels away from us
because there’s always the possibility that somewhere out there, there’s a
mirror that’s going to reflect that photon back to us. And we won’t know
that until that mirror actually reflects it and it comes back and we can see.
But in the case of multiple universes, we know unambiguously the math
tells us so that once another universe splits off, it’s never coming back.
There’s no way to bring it back."
In his book, Psychology in Alchemy, Jung wrote: “Although young, the psychology of the unconscious succeeded in discovering some facts that slowly are becoming generally accepted. One of those is the polar structure of the psyche which is evident in all processes of nature. Natural processes are energetic phenomena, which are constantly generated from the tension that exists between polarities. This formula has specific significance for psychology because the conscious mind usually rejects seeing or accepting polarity of its own fundament, although that is where it gets all of its energy…” “The problem of opposites…plays a great – indeed, the decisive – role in alchemy, since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hieros gamos or ‘chymical wedding’. Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in Chinese Yang and Yin) are melded into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore incorruptible.”
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”
“The enlargement of the light side of consciousness has the necessary consequence that the part of the psyche which is less light and less capable of consciousness is thrown into darkness to such an extent that sooner or later a rift occurs in the psychic system. At first, this is not recognized as such and is therefore projected – i.e. it appears as a religious projection, in the form of a split between the powers of Light and Darkness.”
“The situation which is more common and more familiar to the average man is that in which the ego identifies itself with the ethical values. The identification takes place by means of an identification of the ego with the persona. The ego confuses itself with the façade personality (which is of course in reality only that part of the personality that is tailored to fit the collective), and forgets that it possesses aspects which run counter to the persona. This means that the ego has repressed the shadow side and lost touch with the dark contents, which are negative and for this reason split off from the conscious sector.”
“Closer examination of the dark characteristics – that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow – reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality.”
“This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly difficult, because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality.”
“…this integration [of the shadow] cannot take place and be put to a useful purpose unless one can admit the tendencies bound up with the shadow and allow them some measure of realization – tempered, of course, with the necessary criticism. This leads to disobedience and self disgust, but also to self- reliance, without which individuation is unthinkable.”
GESTALT THERAPY
Friedrich Salomon Perls, better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term 'Gestalt therapy' to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife, Laura Perls, in the 1940s and 1950s. Gestalt psychology is based on understanding and perceiving the whole sum of an object rather than its components. Fritz said, "Lose your mind and come to your senses."
From a talk about his book, The Cosmic Game: ""Now one of these states is a state which can be called Void. Some people, sophisticated people, talk about it as supracosmic and metacosmic Void. It means it's emptiness that is supraordinated to everything and also, in some, sense underlies everything. You can find in Buddhist scriptures statements like, 'Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.' So there's a state of mind that you can into in a nonordinary state of consciousness which is a state of absolute metaphysical emptiness. Nothingness. There's nothing there yet it's conscious of itself. There's a point of consciousness that's aware of that emptiness and there's paradoxically also the sense that there's nothing missing in that state. There's potential for all of existence but none of it is concretized in any way. You can link it to quantum physics. This is exactly what quantum physics has come to, talking about the dynamic void, talking about the probabilities, everything ultimately being just probabilities, that nothing is manifested until it's observed, and so on. So that is one state where you have the feeling you are... there is a sense of understanding where things come from. It's not understanding here. It's experiential understanding at the gut level. This is the Source of existence. It comes from Nothingness."
Now this is tremendously important in understanding the psychology of Western cultures and in comparison, for example, the Oriental cultures. We had a meeting in '85 in Kyoto which was the ?? and this was the time when there was tremendous conflict between Japan and the United States in business, you remember these difficulties? And they were having conferences trying to straighten it out and there was a Jungian Japanese psychologist at the conference, Dr. Kawai(?), and he gave a talk on the differences between the Japanese mind and the Western mind in Jungian terms, in terms of the underlying archetypes, in terms of the underlying mythology. And he showed that the Oriental philosophy is a system with an empty center. Creation comes out of nothing. Creation comes out of emptiness. Our mythology, the center is the power station. There is creative power. The creation comes out of the creative impulse and then if you follow that you get a totally different cosmology that is a reflection on the hierarchies in culture, and so on. Whether you see the whole system as being self-supported interconnected or whether you see it as Eastern where you have selected hierarchical control over things, and so on, which is very much the Western psychology.
So people who have very powerful experiences of the Void they emerged basically with a new philosophy which is different from Western and they feel a tremendous resonance with things like the I-Ching which expresses this kind of philosophy, that Taoist type of thinking. Now when you are in that state you can also understand how something can come out of nothing, how creation can come out of emptiness. This is something that is absolutely inconceivable for the left hemisphere thinking. You know that we have a system in Science where we believe everything is cause and effect, only when you take it all the way back and you're in trouble because then you have the question 'What was the first cause? What was before the first cause? There was a first mover who moved that mover, and so on. And you see the absurdity of the system. Of course, Science doesn't deal with it untl quantum physics, until people like Hawking and so on again talking about creation out of nothing. If you read Hawking, Steve Hawking, he would say things like, "Nothingness has no other choice than to create existence." But you don't get very far with the cause and effect thinking which we are dominated by in Science and in our culture. It simply doesn't work and we just draw a line there. We don't deal with that in Science and we play a game. We think we have it down. Everything is very resonable and we ignore that big hole. It's like that Sufi story when a man goes and sees somebody under a lamp. sort of looking for something on the ground. /he says, "What are you looking for?" He says, "I'm looking for a key." He says, "Where did you lose it?" He says. "Over there." He says, "Then why are you looking for it here?" He says, "Well, it's dark there. I won't have a chance."
So you have a very reasonable scientific system only you don't deal with things where it wouldn't have a chance like you don't ask questions. You just say, "Conscious somehow comes out of method, from your brain." You're not asking the question, "How does that happen? How can that kind of thing happen?" because you wouldn't have a chance so you deal with those kinds of manifestations that make sense in your system . So you can talk about causes and effects except when you go to the beginning. So there that kind of thinking doesn't apply. We're just not going to deal with that stuff.
So in the nonordinary state you get a sense of how that can happen. Something comes from out of nowhere, but you have to understand that you are also in a situation where you don't believe anymore that this is matter, this is solid stuff, this is Newtonian stuff. On that level you're not really dealing with the question, "Where does matter come from?" You are dealing with a question of consciousness technology. "How is the experience of method created?" and it's a whole other ball game. You might be able to do it electronically ten years from now. I mean, you can fool yourself with a hologram. You can fool yourself optically. You can create innate form. With holophonic sound you can sort of synchronize it with acoustics. You can have a talking person, holographic person, and your only remaining sense is touch in this kind of holographic... you go there and you go through it's a hologram something tells you can't go any further and you get the tactile sensation and you say, ".....
Anyway, so when you go to the point of the Void you understand the creation, but not the creation of matter. You get the understanding of the creation of the illusion of the world. You get the kind of Hollywood aspect of the divine play of Lila. How is that show created? What kind of technology goes into it?
Now the first more tangible expression of the Void, the first stage of creation, then is a different state of mind. And again it's very difficult to describe in words because not having words, not having language for it. But it will tell you something. So when I started those descriptions when people talked about that state, it boiled down to basically three different things. One is if you are in that state, you know that you exist. There is existence. There is consciousness, awareness, knowledge and the state is blissful. There are no forms yet. you know, nothing specific, nothing tangible. It's just a state of being in which you know you are. You know you are conscious and you know that you are experiencing your existence as being blissful. It's a state of overwhelming bliss.
Now if you go into Oriental scriptures esoecially into Sanskrit you'll find the term for this. This is called Sat-chit-ananda. Sat means "exist" or "existence". Chit means sometimes translated as "awareness", "consciousness" and so on. And ananda is "bliss". So this is the supreme principle. This is creative principle. This is out of which all this seems to come. And if you are in that state, you are experiencing it, you know that it's you. I mean. you have become that principle so at that point you don't see it as something outside of yourself and this is the message from the Upanishad ???? "Thou are that". Now the way to think about it is that as you move through an altered state of consciousness, boundaries become illusory. I can become another person. I can become an elephant. I can become, you know, something twenty years ago. I can become the dancing Shiva. So again if you move out of our cognicentric state where everything you're experiencing in a nonordinary state of consciousness doesn't count, you start questioning whether you are your body ego because htis is also based on your experience body. If you experience yourself in a very convinced way you are not being a body or being another body, you know, that is an interesting piece of information. And once you start taking those states as significant, you start redefining who you are. And if you had a few transpersonal experiences all the way to the Sat-chit-ananda principle you realize that your identity is not fixed. You are the body-ego. That's certainly one interesting relevant aspect of it, but you are also the Sat-Chit-Ananda principle. And you're also anything inbetween and around it because you can experience boundaries of these kinds. If you experience as an elephant you also have boundaries, boundaries of an elephant. So there are all kind of things you create boundaries within an infinite continuum, but they're all relative. You can movie through it. You realize that they are not mandatory. They're not absolute states. So your true identity then if you take the message from nonordinary states is you are the totality of cosmic energy or totality of consciousness and within that at different times and different levels, you can experience yourself locked within systems that have boundaries, but those boundaries are not absolute. They feel very real. They feel very solid at the time that it's happening but it's all negotiable. You're not really ultimately bound by any of them. So this is the idea we are all god, all the totality of cosmic energy, because none of us have boundaries so it doesn't mean "I am the divine. You are not." That awareness has little to do with the body-ego. It's like a pyramid where there are a lot of stones here and then on each higher level there are less and less stones until at the top there is just one entity then. And on that level, because we are also that, on that level we are all one. On this level there's a sense of separateness has some meaning.
So this identification with Sat-chit-ananda, infinite being, infinite awareness, infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss. Then when people reach that state then certain questions start emerging particularly those who are more inquisitive and curious than others. And that is it's obvious to you that creation somehow comes from there. It's obvious that it's the cosmic furnace, the stuff that's throwing out the forms and creates the different levels and different kinds of reality.
The Pregnant Void
"The encounter with Absolute Consciousness or identification with it is not the only way to experience the supreme principle in the cosmos or the ultimate reality. The second type of experience that seems to satisfy those who search for ultimate answers is particularly surprising, since it has no specific content. It is the identification with Cosmic Emptiness and Nothingness described in the mystical literature as the Void. It is important to emphasize that not every experience of emptiness that we can encounter in nonordinary states qualifies as the Void. People very often use this term to describe an unpleasant sense of lack of feeling, initiative, or meaning. To deserve the name Void, this state has to meet very specific criteria. When we encounter the Void, we feel that it is primordial emptiness of cosmic proportions and relevance. We become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness; however, at the same time, we have a strange paradoxical sense of its essential fullness. This cosmic vacuum is also a plenum, since nothing seems to be missing in it. While it does not contain anything in a concrete manifest form, it seems to comprise all of existence in a potential form. In this paradoxical way, we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and nonexistence."
"The Void transcends the usual categories of time and space. It is unchangeable, and lies beyond all dichotomies and polarities, such as light and darkness, good and evil, stability and motion, microcosm and macrocosm, agony and ecstasy, singularity and plurality, form and emptiness, and even existence and nonexistence. Some people call it Supracosmic and Metacosmic, indicating that this primordial emptiness and nothingness appears to be the principle that underlies the phenomenal world as we know it and, at the same time, is supraordinated to it. This metaphysical vacuum, pregnant with potential for everything there is, appears to be the cradle of all being, the ultimate source of existence. The creation of all phenomenal worlds is then the realization and concretization of its pre-existing potentialities. When we experience the Void, we have a sense that while it is the source of all existence, it also contains all creation within itself. Another way of expressing it is to say that it is all of existence, since nothing exists outside of its realm."
"The experience of the Void as the source of creation can also be associated with the recognition of the fundamental emptiness of the material world. The realization of the voidness of everyday reality is the core message of one of the most important spiritual texts of Mahayana Buddhism, the Prajñaparamita Hridaya Sutra or Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra. In the text Avalokiteshvara addresses Buddha’s disciple Shariputra: “The nature of form is emptiness, the nature of emptiness is form. Form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form. … Feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are also like this.
It is interesting that the concept of the vacuum that is a plenum and of the “pregnant void” also exists in modern physics. A statement by Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum physics and the “father” of antimatter, describes it in these words: “All matter is created out of some imperceptible substratum and … the creation of matter leaves behind it a ‘hole’ in this substratum which appears as antimatter.”
"In the light of these insights, the material world of our everyday life, including our own body, is an intricate tissue of misperceptions and misreadings. It is a playful and somewhat arbitrary product of the cosmic creative principle, an infinitely sophisticated “virtual reality,” a divine play created by Absolute Consciousness and the Cosmic Void."
"Absolute Consciousness and the Void exist beyond the world of phenomena and thus transcend all polarities. Good and Evil as separate entities come into existence and manifest in the initial stages of creation when the dark and the light aspect of the Divine emerge from the undifferentiated matrix of the Void and Absolute Consciousness. While these two aspects of existence represent polar opposites and are antagonistic toward each other, they are both necessary elements in creation. In a complex and intricate interplay, they generate the countless characters and events on many different levels and in many dimensions of reality that constitute the cosmic drama."
"In holotropic states, we can transcend the boundaries of the embodied ego with which we usually identify and have convincing experiences of becoming other people, animals, plants, and even inorganic parts of nature or various mythological beings. We discover that the separation and discontinuity that we usually perceive within creation are arbitrary and illusory. And when all the boundaries dissolve and we transcend them, we can experience identification with the creative source itself, either in the form of Absolute Consciousness or the Cosmic Void. We thus discover that our real identity is not the individual self, but the Universal Self."
Dr. Christopher Bache was one of Stanislov Grof's clients. Has a new book coming out soon.
In this lecture he talks about his 20 years of experiences and research into LSD and consciousness.
He experienced a bunch of deaths and rebirths and the evolution of humanity as a collective
After 20 years....he entered into a hyper clear state of consciousness, into the light of dharmakaya, absolute clear light of being and entered diamond luminosity.
1. the death state 2.diamond luminosity 3. universal field of light 4. nature of mind
50th trip into diamond light was deep absorption into pure light, boundaries lost entirely. He was hit by a ray of light as far off as the diamond light is from where we are. The light hit him and shattered him -- he calls it the absolute light. He understood it's an infinite progression, there's no end to the journey.
He had believed there was an end to the journey whether oneness with god or the supercosmic void. He had before entered dimensions and depths to oneness and depths of void within void,
but this taught him the divine is infinitely large. He stopped the sessions because of pain and heartache. He could not literally take coming back out of the divine. He says
once you have dissolved completely into light, known the joy of being light, time-space reality can begin to kind of feel dried up.
It's crazy how he describes literally hundreds of thousands of years evolving as humanity and all the pain and suffering he went through in deaths and rebirths etc.... sure, we finally reach the clear light.... but anyone can enter at death and avoid all that drama.
There is a terminological confusion here. Because people (including NDErs) do not know experientially what the void is they think that the void is just a state of no forms (perceptions, thoughts feelings). They still do not discover the clear light of Void in the state of voidness. When no forms are present this is just pure formless state of Void. But when forms are present it is exactly THE SAME fundamental Void taking forms. Forms are not something different or separate from Void. They don't come out "from" the Void and become something non-Void. All forms are always the same Void and inseparable from the Void. They are "made" of Void so to speak.
Void means not an absence of forms. It means absence of self, absence of independent existence, absence of "matter", "substance", tangibility. Forms are not "things". They are just imaginations in the voidness of awareness. Awareness is not a "being", not a "thing", not a "self". It's totally empty of any attributes, signs, meanings. That is why it is also called Void. That is why it is impossible to adequately name it or describe it or point to it, and that is why it is so difficult to recognize it, although it is right here in our most direct experience every second.
Prajnaparamita sutra:
"forms are NO OTHER THAN emptiness (void)"
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STALKING THE WILD PENDULUM: ON THE MECHANICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In Stalking the Wild Pendulum, scientist Itzhak Bentov wrote, "Next we focus on the atoms. At first, they appear as little shadowy balls vibrating about fixed points in the molecule. As we magnify, we see less and less. The electron shell has somehow dissolved, and we are looking at a vacuum. As we further magnify, we see something tiny moving about. We focus on what we suspect is the nucleus of the atom, located in this vast space within the atom. If we take the diameter of the nucleus of a hydrogen atom to be 1 mm., then the diameter of the electron orbit will be about 10 meters, a ratio of 1 to 10,000, and the intervening space is vacuum.
As we zero in and further magnify the vibrating nucleus, it seems to be dissolving. We are looking at some shadowy pulsation; some more magnification, and the nucleus is almost gone. We are sensing the pulsation of some energy; it seems to be a rapidly pulsating field. But where did the bone go? We thought that we were looking at a solid piece of matter!
Well, it seems that the real reality — the microreality, that which underlies all our solid, good, common-sense reality — is made up, as we have just witnessed, of a vast empty space filled with oscillating fields! Many different kinds of fields, all interacting with each other. The tiniest disturbance in one field carries over into the others. It's an interlocked web of fields, each pulsating at their own rate but in harmony with the others, their pulsations spreading out farther and farther throughout the cosmos.
Whenever a focus of disturbance tends to drive these fields out of their harmonious rhythm, the irregularity will spread and disturb the neighboring fields. As soon as the source of disturbance is removed, orderly rhythm will return to the system. Conversely, when a strong harmonizing rhythm is applied to this matrix of interlocking fields, its harmonic influence may entrain parts of the system that may have been vibrating off key. It will put more orderliness into the system.
We may look at a disease as such out-of-tune behavior of one or another of our organs of the body. When a strong harmonizing rhythm is applied to it, the interference pattern of waves, which is the organ, may start beating in tune again. This may be the principle of psychic healing. So by taking an imaginary trip into a highly magnified image of our "solid" reality, we found a new underlying reality. Our solid reality dissolved into a rapidly pulsating matrix of fields of energy, an interference pattern of waves filling the vast vacuum of our bodies and continuing beyond them in a more diluted fashion. We have also seen that the application of any kind of energy to this matrix of fields is somehow going to affect the behavior of our by now rather abstract "matter" or tissue. Whether that energy is electric, magnetic, gravitational, or acoustic, it will always interact and affect us somehow, whether it is applied from a distance or directly to our skin. "
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Now let us look at this state of "being." It is becoming clear that we can equate the state of being with the absolute, since both imply no motion, no action, and total rest. At the same time, though, it is a state of high potential energy, because this state of rest is equivalent to infinitely fast motion. In fact, we may say that the two contrasting concepts of movement and rest become reconciled in the absolute. We can take this state or reality as the baseline, an absolute reference line against which all else in creation can be measured. This will then be an ever-present component in all our realities.
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The absolute is thus a state in which contrasting concepts become reconciled and fused. Movement and rest fuse into one.
Ours, then, is a vibratory reality — from subnuclear to atomic, to molecular, to macrolevels. Everything is oscillating between two states of rest. Everything is producing "sound."
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The hierarchy of realities is topped by the "absolute." The absolute is the basis of all realities. In its nonmanifest form, it is a potential, intelligent energy. When rippled or modulated, it becomes the basis of our tangible physical matter and individual objects.
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Suppose now that we, the outside observers, somehow arrived on the scene before this universe was created. All we could then see would be darkness (as the good old Bible says) because even if all the matter of which the universe is made were present, we could not see it because it would be in a black-hole state with no matter flowing into it or out of it, and space-time would be curled up tightly around it. All we could see in the endless darkness would be some more darkness. In short, we could never see a potential universe; we could see only one that started acting — i.e. we would be able to see only a universe in the process of creation. By creation we mean the eruption of matter from the white-hole side of the nucleus (Fig. 44).
Let us contemplate for a moment the boundless dark space we are in as we are about to witness the act of creation or the unfolding or our familiar space-time torus. We are floating in a space in which there is no time because there is no motion. Matter introduces motion and with it time. This space is the stage within which creation is taking place; it is the unchanging, eternal, immutable background from which all creation arises. This may sound familiar to you if you remember Chapter 5. It sounds as though this space, which we have called protospace, fits closely our lengthy description of the absolute. It has all the needed characteristics used to describe the absolute. Are the two identical? Or is this protospace only one component of the absolute?
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A BRIEF TOUR OF HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS: A COSMIC BOOK ON THE MECHANICS OF CREATION
In his second book, A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, Itzhak wrote about the extensive out of body experiences he had: "That the truths revealed are far older than their appearance in western tradition is evinced by a letter received by Bentov from a renowned authority on yoga in India, who wrote: What you say about the nature of the Universe is authentic .. . the "point of rest" of your "wild pendulum" is technically called "spanda" in Shaivite philosophy. It is the initial impulse, throb, Shakti, energy or cosmic will of the Supreme Reality. It is all-pervasive energy. What you call the "off-state" of consciousness is called samadhi, or the super-conscious state in the language of Yoga. It is true that instantaneous communication throughout the Universe is possible. The Ultimate Reality of Supreme Consciousness is beyond the limitations of time. Empirical time or objective time has no meaning in that state."
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Bentov speculates that our universe is a torus with white and black holes at the center. "At the end of Stalking the Wild Pendulum, we left the Creator of our universe hanging out there in the cold, vast void. Perhaps it would be good to begin by refreshing our memory about the Creator and His universe.*
Our universe has the shape of a torus, like an elongated hollow doughnut. In the center of it is a focal point, a consciousness, or the Creator, represented by the white and black holes back to back. The Creator is like a seed containing all the information about the universe in potential form, as the acorn contains the pattern of the oak tree.
A jet of radiation emerges from the white hole and begins to flow around the Creator, forming a skin or the surface of the torus, which is the universe. Matter is born as it issues from the white hole, at first in the form of light radiation"
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"In a continuous bang universe, the white and black holes in the center of the torus are not only the points of birth and death of matter, but also the birth and death of time, for time appears where there are motion and matter. Time becomes a measure of the distance of matter from the point of its emergence from the white hole, and this distance reflects the stage of evolution of matter and its consciousness as it makes its cycle back to the source.
The universe is a hologram or interference pattern in which all parts are interconnected, containing information about each other and thus about the entire universe. As galaxies move along the surface of the torus, they radiate information waves about themselves. These waves interweave into an interference pattern and form a hologram, which fills the hollow space inside the torus, as well as extends into the surrounding void.
This hologram of information could be called the Universal Mind, because it contains all the information there is about the entire structure. Each individual human consciousness is part of that hologram; therefore, by projecting one s consciousness into the Universal Mind in a heightened state of awareness,
one can obtain knowledge about the whole universe."
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"Now let us examine the properties of the void in which the Creator and His universe are located. There are two things that can be said about the void, or the Absolute: It is pure consciousness and at the same time it contains all there is in potential, that is, nonmanifest or nontangible form. It is infinite creative energy in a potential or resting nonvibratory state. In order for matter to appear, and later for forms to appear, a vibratory motion has to be introduced into the Absolute.
Vibration means simply the movement of anything between two points of rest or two poles, as in a pendulum when it stops and reverses its direction. In other words, whatever vibrates fluctuates between its extreme poles. The movement of a pendulum can be represented by a sine wave. The crests of the
waves are the points at which the pendulum stops before swinging back.
"As the frequency of a wave increases, its amplitude (vertical distance between crests) becomes smaller. In other words, the points of rest come closer together. Imagine now a wave of such intense frequency that the points of rest come so close together they overlap, turning the sine wave into a straight line. This would represent infinite speed and total rest at the same time. In the Absolute, opposites merge and are reconciled. At infinite speed it takes no time to get anywhere; one is everywhere at once, omnipresent, in a state of total rest. The paradox is resolved. "
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"It reverts to a state of just being which is a state of unity after duality disappears.
The same happens to our void or Absolute, or pure consciousness. When it is stirred by someone or something, it wiggles, and these wiggles spread through the void like waves to form an electromagnetic field. When this wiggly consciousness interacts with the retina of our eye, it may appear to us as
a particle of light, or a photon. A photon is just a small piece of this vibrating void or electromagnetic field. Now, if someone or something insists on wiggling the void faster, then we get, say, X rays, which are a more powerful radiation than light. And if the void is wiggled even faster, we may get gamma rays, which can break up into electrons and positrons, which are particles of an atom, the basic component of matter. In other words, this wiggly, vibrating consciousness is producing physical matter. It follows that the faster consciousness is vibrated, the more matter or particles of different kinds we can get.
In short, consciousness in a vibratory state manifests itself as our familiar matter, from which the different forms that we see around us are made. The table, the flowers, the scent of the flowers, and our bodies are all made of rapidly vibrating consciousness. You may recall from your high school physics that an atom consists of a shell of orbiting electrons with a nucleus in the center. To get an idea of their relative sizes, visualize the nucleus of a hydrogen atom as being about one millimeter in diameter, or the size of a pinhead. The size of the electron's orbit would be a circle approximately thirty feet in diameter. That is the size of a very big balloon, with the pinhead lost somewhere in its center. All the space between the nucleus and the shell is—you guessed it—void, vacuum! So, the atom is made mostly of void, which is pure consciousness, and whatever vibrates in the atom and is manifest (the electron and the nucleus) is made of vibrating void or consciousness. It is quite sobering to realize that the interstellar medium—the void between the stars and galaxies—is the same void that fills the atoms of our bodies. It is one continuous medium.
Visualize our bodies as being composed of very thin, filmy sponges. These sponges are immersed in an infinite ocean (the void), and the water is penetrating them throughout. When we, the sponges, move, the water or the void just flows through our bodies. It fills us and we are inseparable from it. This is the way things are on the microlevel, as they also are on the galactic or macrolevel. The void is everywhere, a matrix in which everything exists and which permeates everything. Fortunately, our senses disregard all these facts and assemble lovely faces, flowers, and houses from hunks of void for us to enjoy. But we know now that our senses are deceiving us. The gruesome facts still remain. We are hunks of vibrating, wiggly voidl Sorry about that!
The situation gets even worse if we consider the following. As you read this book, you are thinking (we hope). Most people believe that we think with our brains. That's not quite so, but let us assume that it is. We know that our brains are made of wiggly atoms. And these wiggly atoms are made up, for the most part, of void. Right now your thinking processes are occurring on the background of the interstellar void, which is filling your brain. Consequently, your thinking consists of modifications in the vibratory processes of the void, or pure consciousness. But remember that this void is not your private void. Everybody and everything is made up of this vibrating void whether you like it or not. Your thinking processes spread out and affect all Creation; there is no privacy, and at this point, it is too late to complain.
Now, what would happen if whoever is vibrating this consciousness ceases to do so? (Remember what happened when we stopped moving the flyswatter?) The forms that we see— and those that we are—will disappear in short order, and consciousness will come to a state of rest. It will stop fluctuating between two extremes or two poles and will revert to a happy, although monotonous, state of just being—pure consciousness. Everything will revert to a potential, unmanifest form. By everything we mean All-there-is, including TVs, traffic cops, rhinoceri, umbrellas, planets, washing machines, and galaxies. This is not to say those forms will stop being.
They will only become potential, unmanifest cops, umbrellas, rhinoceri, and galaxies. In short, consciousness comes in two forms: vibratory and therefore manifest, or what we call matter; and nonvibratory and therefore unmanifest, but containing All-there-is in a potential state, serving as a blueprint for matter. They are two different aspects of the Absolute or pure consciousness."
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"As you go through bigger and bigger structures, you finally come to the real end—a tremendous, luminous bluish sphere, containing All-there-is, shimmering in the dark void. This is the Manifest Creation. All forms, physical and nonphysical, are contained within it. All that was ever created is here—all the millions and billions of Creators and universes, cosmoses and super-cosmoses, with all the beings human and nonhuman. It floats in the void, and there is absolutely nothing you can do with it. You can't tax it; you can't make money on it. It just sits there.
The Manifest Creation is made up of anything and everything that vibrates. Beyond it is the void, the Absolute, or pure consciousness, which is nonvibratory, containing everything in its potential state. As soon as the Absolute vibrates, it manifests as Creation. Basically, they are one and the same.
Within the sphere of Manifest Creation, communication is instantaneous. Whatever you do is known immediately throughout the whole Creation, because it is such a tight structure, a hologram, with all parts interrelated. This is the basis for the law of karma or the principle that to every action there is a corresponding reaction. The whole Manifest Creation is affected by and reacts to our thoughts and actions. The Manifest Creation is constantly growing and expanding. It is a living organism, whose every atom is filled and permeated by the void or pure consciousness. As you approach it more closely, you see that its surface is covered by what appear to be rotating disks. Then you discover that these forms resemble Sanskrit letters, with straight lines on top and wiggly lines underneath. There are three layers of those fifty-two rotating forms or letters covering the surface. As the straight top lines rotate, they look like rotating disks. Like the Hebrew letters, these cosmic shapes were seen by man in an expanded state of consciousness and incorporated into the Sanskrit alphabet. The fourth, outermost layer is made up of forms that represent the OM. "
"What is the meaning of these rotating forms? You are given to understand that as the sphere expands, its surface extends further and further into the void, which flows through the four layers of letters. Their function is to modulate the void, like a flute, to make it vibratory, to produce the first sound of Creation. This is the first word, and its first letter is OM. As pure consciousness flows through the three layers of Sanskrit letters or modulators (gunas),* they impart certain tendencies to consciousness, making it vibratory. As the different vibrations interact, they create an interference pattern, a hologram of sounds, filling the whole Manifest Creation with infinite variations and reverberations of the original sound.
At the surface boundary line, the first basic structures found in nature are produced, the primordial archetypal forms, created by the interaction of the creative word with itseE Just below the letters, Creation is very plastic and can be manipulated* According to Hindu teachings, gunas are the three tendencies in Creation—sattwa, tamas, and raja—producing the effects of expansion, contraction, and energy (or activity, inertia, and balance), respectively. lated. The so-called supernatural powers of the yogis come from the siddhi level, which is located here. If you can raise your level of consciousness to this level and put in a desire, it will be manifested somewhere inside the Manifest Creation.
Infinite energy comes in at this level, and you can manifest it into anything you want. This is what Jesus did when he manifested fishes and bread.
As the Manifest Creation grows, owing to new cosmoses being produced, more and more complex forms are created as the combinations and permutations of sound frequencies increase. At first it is sound; then it becomes light, then form.
Having seen all this, you are again faced with the question: Where do you go from here? And what other surprises are there in store for you."
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"Why is there such lively activity in the Absolute? What or who is the something that explains things to you out here, in the void? And, finally, who is running the show?"
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Meeting Your Higher Self
You are almost merged with your body, when suddenly you just click into it, and—BANG! The whole thing explodes! There are no bodies, just the void. You have become the void. You are the void. It takes a while to get oriented in this new situation. But it is quite clear now that the SELF is the void. You have been the void all along. You are pure consciousness or pure awareness, and that is the supreme SELF that has been guiding you through the long and eventful trip back to itself. This was the observer looking through the pupils of your eyes over hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, making sense of your experiences. That pure awareness, which is the void, gave you your awareness of self, or self-awareness.
So, you are the Supreme God of the system! At the same time you are the person doing a nine-to-five job, pushing a pencil or driving a truck, paying income tax and phone bills.
And not only are you this Supreme God, but so is everybody else. We are all part of pure consciousness, the void. The consciousness breaks down into units, and each has an awareness of self and thinks that he is different from everybody else."
"The home of the Supreme SELF is the Absolute, the void. Then after a long time, this SELF, sitting in the cold, dark void, gets bored and wants to do something. Being creative, He wants to play, since there is no work to be done out there. (He does not need to earn a living.) He finds no company and,
therefore, starts playing with Himself. He decides to play hide-and-seek, because it's an easy game to play. He quickly manifests a blanket made of ego-stuff (in the Absolute everything is possible.) Then He separates a part of Himself and covers it with this blanket of ego, and goes "Boo!" Well, this is a very interesting and delightful game. So, He gets another blanket of ignorance of Self and wraps it around the previous blanket. This looks like fun, he thinks, and adds a blanket of intellect and of emotion, more ignorance, and a thick physical blanket.
Soon the part that is all wrapped up in ignorance and ego stops recognizing the original SELF. He is so involved in the goings-on inside His cocoon of blankets that He completely ignores and forgets His playful part. He is now down to the physical level of consciousness, the so-called physical reality.
Unaware of himself, He is like the king, so the tale goes, who put on,rags and went out among the people, to find out what real life is all about. Unfortunately, the king became so involved in real life, he forgot about being a king. It seems that it took quite a few traumas to remind him of his real status.
And so it goes with us. We are so deeply immersed in this rat race of ours that we have all but forgotten our real status. "
"You?" "Well," says the SELF, "I am you! Don't you remember, silly? Just a few eons ago we were one and the same. We started playing hide-and-seek, and you got all wrapped up in your blankets and lost sight of me. But I kept watching you all along."
Then a glimmer of ancient memories starts coming back to you. You realize that He is you and you are He. So, you hug your SELF—the quest has ended. Now you know that you are the SELF, the Supreme God of this system. You also know that you contain the infinite void and it contains you. In short, you are IT! Self-realization has occurred. "
From email:
"Hey how's it going. I recently listened to one of your interviews. I've learned some new stuff since the last time I talked to you. For starters I've run into the white light a few more times. It's pretty easy to get away from. Also I've learned how to block memory wipes and other psychic attacks that entities might try. I can just put up a mental barrier and the memory wipe can't get through it. I've also learned that I can just make myself immune to memory wipes. And immune to the influence of other entities. I recently had a lucid dream where some entity was trying to memory wipe me. So I just used the intention that memory wipes don't work on me. As a result the memory wipe had no effect on me. Then I got tired and they tried to memory wipe me again. But I used the intention again and the memory wipe stopped working on me. I held off a memory wipe for what seemed like half an hour. So you can pretty much intend not to be influenced by other entities and they won't be able to do jack to you. I ran into the white light in a lucid dream once and I used the intention that entities can't influence me. As a result the light had no effect on me. I ran into the white light before I learned to do this and it actually grabbed me with testicles and started pulling me somewhere. So I imagined that the testicles were cut and it worked and I was able to get free. Usually though when something tries to grab me I just make myself intangible so they can't touch me. So we have a lot of power in the afterlife. We're pretty much gods over there. If you don't want other entities to effect you they won't be able to. I also had an OBE in the real time zone recently and there were high winds going through my bedroom like a tornado. I knew some entity was doing that to harass me. So I froze the wind with my mind. So I've learned how to do some pretty amazing things. I've also learned some interesting things about the afterlife. I had one dream where someone tried to overwrite my personality. Because of that I realized that our personalities are just programs. And then in another lucid dream/OBE someone tried to shut off my conscience. I wouldn't let them obviously. But then this ball of light yellow energy appeared and it was like it was made out of empathy. So it caused me to feel even more empathy towards people then usual. And so I realized that you can create anything you can imagine over there. You could make a building that makes everyone drunk as soon as they walk in the door. Yeah you can get drunk over there. I've also created energy that memory wipes people. I wouldn't use it on anyone I just wanted to see if I could do it. Oh I also had an OBE where I could sense the force and manipulate it like the jedi do. In that OBE I did the mind trick and I could feel the energy coming from my hand. I've used the jedi mind trick a few times on entities. They've tried to use it on me a few times but it doesn't work on me. So you can do anything you can imagine over there. And probably a lot of things you can't imagine. It's pretty mind blowing once you realize that there are almost no limits in the afterlife. I'm always trying to push those limits and I've found that there is almost nothing you can't do. Even things like black holes that used to freak me out don't bother me that much anymore. Because you can just make yourself immune to gravity. I did that during an OBE recently. I was in a house and I was having a little bit of trouble getting off the ground so I just made myself immune to gravity. Then gravity had no effect on me and I could fly much easier. That weightless feeling when there is no gravity is just awesome. So I've learned a lot. Entities still harass me in dreams and OBEs but they rarely show themselves anymore. I think they are actually afraid of me. I know they don't like me very much. So like I said I've learned a lot. Let me know what you think..."
"I don't know yet. Anywhere is better then here. Hell is better then here. Of course with the tricks I know fire and brimstone aren't much of a problem. Probably on a beach somewhere. I love the beach in the astral. I love flying over the ocean. "
"Yeah it's the original series episode shore leave. They were on a planet that was creating whatever they were thinking about. In the afterlife you can create anything you want. The nexus is probably the closest thing that I can think of to what it's really like. It's kind of like the holodeck but it makes the holodeck look primitive by comparison. I had an OBE once where I was in one world then I changed it to another and it was like switching programs on the holodeck. So you can do pretty much anything over there."
I told him, "I don't think you need to do all those fancy things -- invisibility, energy balls, etc. Remember in The Matrix when Neo asks Morpheus, "you mean I'll be able to dodge bullets?" and Morpheus tells him when he is done with his training and self-realized, he won't have to. Likewise, Whitley Strieber was asked about the archons and he said they are "good entertainment" and not to give them your attention or entertain them. Maybe you are still caught up in the fun of all the drama, the chase. "
He said, "I had an OBE once where I caught bullets with my bare hands like superman. So I don't bother dodging bullets. You can just intend to not to be influenced by other entities. Then they won't be able to effect you. I've found that's the best way to deal with them. Still it's best to know as many tricks as you can. I don't go looking for the archons. They mess with me in dreams and OBEs. Of course they usually just end up teaching me something new. Most of what I've learned in the astral I learned to defend against them. "
I suggested, "Maybe the whole purpose of the greys is to distract you so you won't ask questions about the meaning of life or the true nature if our prison while you are there? That could be why they see you as truly dangerous. They don't want that info out."
He replied, "That's a good point. I'll have to try asking questions during dreams and OBEs and see what answers I get. I've already learned a hell of a lot though. I've only been doing this for four years and already I know things that some people who have been doing it for decades don't know. But I'll try asking questions and see what I find out."
A few days later I wrote him about an out of body experience I had: my first. No reply at all. Then a few weeks later I saw he had posted on reddit not to go to the white light and related a lot of his experiences with the light in OBEs and told all these fascinating stories. I wrote him and said I saw his post and it should be interesting to see what people say. No reply again. I think he is just seeking attention and someone to tell all his amazing stories to. So take it all with a grain of salt.
I'd like to look at a couple of songs that may pertain to this topic of non-duality and the clear light of awareness. They are songs about the path to enlightenment. The first one is the classic rock song Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. No this may be bit of a new radical interpretation. To me the song is all about transcending duality. There are quite a few examples of duality in the song. The song is about the soul / spirit. It mentions white light and shadow. There are male and female characters, namely the lady who shines white light (positive, white, good) and the Piper (usuallly interpreted as the Devil) who is calling to join him. The song deals with deception and illusion. The lady is sure all that glitters is gold seems to imply that all that glitters may not be gold, or good. Another symbol of duality is that the song deals with the stairway to heaven which is in opposition to the highway to hell. It says there are two paths you can go by, but there's still time to change the road you're on. And that words have two meanings.
The song also mentions thoughts and feelings, but also "wonder". The lady may be symbolic of desire since she's buying a stairway to heaven and is enticed by the glittering gold and, in fact, is shining white light to show how everything still turns to gold. Conversely, the Piper wants to lead you to reason. So we have two opposites here: desire for materialism (the emotional and material/physical planes) and reason (the mental plane). When he looks to the west (sunset) is spirit is crying for leaving, but a new day will dawn (sunrise in the east).
But I believe the song is about uniting or transcending the opposites as it mentions the shadow being taller than the soul. The song seems to be about pantheism or "the All", a spirit that flows through everything. It mentions nature as a whole. The song of the songbird. song. The whispering wind. The forest echoing with laughter. The song seems to be encouraging the listener to merge or integrate the soul or ego with the shadow self. And ultimately becoming still and silent in order to hear the tune. The final verse "And as we wind on down the road, our shadow's taller than our soul. There walks a lady we all know who shines white light and wants to show how everything still turns to gold. And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last when all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll."
The other song I'd like to mention is Silent Lucidity by Queensryche which is clearly about lucid dreaming. Beyond that it encourages us to wake up from this dream of life.
The opening verse questions whether we are still dreaming when we wake up from a dream at night. The song seems to show the higher self or our true self talking to our ego, trying to console it: "Hush now, don't cry. Wipe away the teardrop from your eye. You're lying safe in bed. It was all a bad dream, spinning in your head. Your mind tricked you to feel the pain of someone close to you leaving the game of life. So here it is, another chance. Wide awake, you face the day. Your dream is over -- or has it just begun?"
The song may be referring to more than just the astral plane. It may be referring to the Void or clear light of awareness which can be seen not only in the title, Silent Lucidity, but also in the second verse: "There's a place I like to hide, a doorway that I run to in the night. Relax child, you were there, but only didn't realize it and you were scared. It's a place where you will learn to face your fears, retrace the years, and ride the whims of your mind. Commanding in another world, suddenly, you hear and see this magic new dimension." The Higher Self is giving advice to the soul in the chorus: "I will be watching over you. I am gonna help you see it through. I will protect you in the night. I am smiling next to you, in silent lucidity." The term "silent lucidity" seems to be similar to phrases such as clear light of awareness, the luminous emptiness, the illuminating void, and the golden silence.
In the next verse we see the song is clearly about lucid dreaming, that is, becoming aware you are dreaming, taking control of the dream and creating your own reality through visualization. "Visualize your dream. Record it in the present tense. Put it into a permanent form. If you persist in your efforts, you can achieve dream control. Dream control. How's that then, better? Dream control. Dream control (hug me). Dream control."
The final verse is about transcending the duality and being in both realms at once. It's about waking up from the dream and seeing true reality, dismantling the ego, setting the soul free, transcending the pain of duality, achieving self-realization, then mastering the illusion and guiding it. "If you open your mind for me, you won't rely on open eyes to see. The walls you built within come tumbling down, and a new world will begin. Living twice at once, you learn. You're safe from pain in the dream domain. A soul set free to fly. A round trip journey in your head. Master of illusion, can you realize your dream's alive? You can be the guide."
I mentioned the Star Trek movie Generations in one of my previous articles where Captain Kirk goes into the Void which is a paradisical setting where he manifests his own personal heaven. Another franchise which pertains to the topic of this article is the Star Wars series. The Force in Star Wars is the Tao of Taoism and there are many references to the balance between the Light side and the Dark side. The Jedi knight warriors learn how to control the force. Yoda is a yogi like master who is a guru.
The first epsiode, The Phantom Menace, mentions the "prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force." Obi Wan is learning how to use the force. "Don't centre on your anxieties, Obi-Wan. Keep your concentration here and now where it belongs."... "But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future." "But not at the expense of the moment. Be mindful of the living Force." Yoda says, "Be mindful of your feelings... Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
In episode two, Attack of the Clones: "Are you allowed to love? I thought that was forbidden for a Jedi?" "Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life so you might say that we are encouraged to love."
In the third episode, Revenge of the Sith, Anakin is recruited to join the dark side, "Let me help you to know the subtleties of the Force." "How do you know the ways of the Force?" "My mentor taught me everything about the Force. Even the nature of the dark side." "You know the dark side?" "If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force. Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi... Become my apprentice. Learn to use the dark side of the Force."
Let me help you to know the subtleties of the Force. How do you know the ways of the Force? My mentor taught me everything about the Force. Even the nature of the dark side. You know the dark side? If one is to understand the great mystery... one must study all its aspects... not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader... you must embrace a larger view of the Force. Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the dark side of the Force...
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=star-wars-episode-iii-revenge-of-the-sith
Let me help you to know the subtleties of the Force. How do you know the ways of the Force? My mentor taught me everything about the Force. Even the nature of the dark side. You know the dark side? If one is to understand the great mystery... one must study all its aspects... not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader... you must embrace a larger view of the Force. Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the dark side of the Force...
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=star-wars-episode-iii-revenge-of-the-sith
Let me help you to know the subtleties of the Force. How do you know the ways of the Force? My mentor taught me everything about the Force. Even the nature of the dark side. You know the dark side? If one is to understand the great mystery... one must study all its aspects... not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader... you must embrace a larger view of the Force. Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the dark side of the Force...
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=star-wars-episode-iii-revenge-of-the-sith
In the fourth episode, A New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi instructs Luke Skywalker, a jedi knight warrior how to use the force. He says, "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force." "The Force?" "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together."... "Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him." "You mean it controls your actions?" "Partially, but it also obeys your commands." Han Solo is skeptical and says, "I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense." "I suggest you try it again, Luke. This time, let go your conscious selfand act on instinct. Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. Stretch out with your feelings." "You know, I did feel something. I could almost see the remote." "That's good. You've taken your first step into a larger world." "The force will be with you, always... May the force be with you... Luke, the force will be with you... Luke, trust your feelings... Use the force, luke. Let go, Luke. The force is strong with this one... Remember the force will be with you always."
My Buddhist friend gave me some helpful tips on how to recognize the clear light of pure awareness. So they may be useful for some of you.
"There is a reason why the experience of formless void (at the moment of death or in deep shamatha meditation) is so important: you are not distracted by forms and have a better chance to discover the void directly and experientially. In that state you can not think or analyze, but you will remember it. Then you can go back to thinking, experiencing forms and will also now clearly see that all forms in their essence are the same void just taking different forms.
There a metaphoric phrase in Dzogchen: "On a golden island everything is made of gold". You just discover that everything in your direct experience is made of golden-clear-light Void Awareness. And there is no difference between formless Void and Void taking forms, the Void-Awareness never changes or goes away, it only manifests itself in forms or in a formless state.
Using your "light" analogy": when light is not reflected by objects it is seen as darkness. But a hologram is the same light, only taking some forms. In both cases there is only light, the objects you see in the hologram do not really exist as something real (so they are empty, void of independent self existence), they are just holographic images made of the same light...
What I can suggest is for us to stop discussing all those ideas and books, I think we already found a lot of info and know enough.
And instead just do very simple meditations and enquiries into your direct experience... Don't rush, take time to think and answer one by one, and really meditate and focus on these questions, try to find the answer from your actual experience, not from conceptual thinking.
Look at any object around you. Are you aware of this object? So you are the one who is aware, the "subject" of experience, and that thing is the "object'. So because that thing is the object that you are experiencing then that thing is not "you", it is "outside" of you.
Now, you probably think that your body, your mind, thoughts, feelings, your sense of self is what you are, they all constitute "you", right? But here are the questions:
Who is aware of your body? You? Then how can your body be part of "you" if "you" are the one who is aware of the body? Basically, you are the "subject" who experiences the body, and the body is the "object" of your experience. Then how could the body be "you"?
Once you get it try to apply the same enquiry to your feelings/thought? Try to think about something and at the same time look at your thought like from a distance. We say "I think" and we believe that "it's me who is thinking". But who is aware of the thoughts? If you are the one who is aware of the thoughts then how a thought can be part of who you ARE, part of who is aware? A thought is an object of your experience and you are the one who is aware of it. Then how can it be part of you? A thought can not be aware of itself, there must be someone/something fundamentally different from a thought that is aware of the thought, right?
Basically, try to think about it really hard and clearly see that "you" who is aware of your body and thoughts and sensations can NOT be at the same time the one who is (or has) the body, thoughts, sensations. So, you are NOT the body, thoughts, sensations, you are only the one who is aware of them. Do you see it in your direct experience? "
Me: Yes, I can successfully answer those questions as me being an awareness observing that body. But the awareness seems to be directly tied, attached or linked to this body somehow. I mean, I don't hear other peoples thoughts (except for a couple times experienced what may have been telepathic communication), feel someone else's emotions or pains (other than through enpathy/compassion via imagining myself in their shoes so to speak. And the awareness has not been able to experience remotely outside of this body other than 2 or 3 times while sleeping, and who knows what that was.
It does not matter, that's just how the movie is programmed to trick you that the awareness is somehow "tied". Awareness is only what is watching the movie, but in this movie there is a false "idea" that awareness is "tied" to whatever appears in the movie (that "idea" is also part of the movie!). How can awareness be "tied" to anything? It's not possible, no way. The movie and all it's content has nothing to do with the awareness. It's the same as to say that the screen is "tied" to a character in the movie that is being shown on the screen.
Yes, there are other "parts" of the screen where other movies are being shown, and "this" part of the screen is not aware of what is going on at the other parts. But so what? It's the same screen, there is just no information flow between those parts, but this fact does not make the parts fundamentally separate. It's not common information flow that makes them one but the fact that they are made of the same "substance" - awareness.
Me: Conceptually, I believe my awareness isn't only linked to this body, but experientially I can't say that for certain yet other than I can experience awareness without being aware of my body's thoughts, emotions, etc.... I guess. Truth is I don't know anything for certain and words are so deceptive and limiting.
Ok, we are getting there. here is where the problem is. When you say "experientially I can't say that for certain" I think you are mistaking interpretations as experiential facts. Try to go through this process step by step in meditation:
1. Close your eyes and touch something, say a glass. Try to go down to the very bottom of your direct experience and analyze the process. The first thing that appears in your experience is the bare sensation of touching, agree? This is a 100% non-doubtful experiential fact:
- an experience of touch sensation appears in your field of experiences (field of awareness) and you are aware of it - 100% true experimental fact
- you can not separate the touch sensation from the awareness of it, they go together inseparable - 100% true experimental fact
- all other sensations, feelings and thoughts also appear in the same field of experience/awareness and are inseparable from the experiencing/awareness itself
- the field of experiencing is inseparable, it's a whole "space" in where various sensations, feelings and thoughts appear are experienced and being awared -- 100% experiential fact
So if you look closely at this level of perception without interpreting it in any way you see that it is quite amazing: it is direct, immediate and nondual (because it is whole and inseparable into pieces) but at the same time it is not one (because at appears as multiplicity of appearances and perceptions). There are no "things" and "selves" at this level yet, that is why it is "shuniata" void - it is empty of any real "things". But the experiencing and awareness of all this experiences is very clear and lucid - that is why it is called "clear light". This is it, you are at the very bottom of reality and you are perceiving it directly with no misinterpretation.
2. What happens next? Your mind does signal processing / pattern recognition (subconsciously) and recognizes the patterns of a finger touching and glass being touched. That's ok, as long as you don't make any further assumptions or interpretations of what those patterns actually represent. The recognized patterns again appear in your field of experiences as subtle thoughts and you are again aware of them. These thoughts do not represent experiential facts anymore, they are only recognized patterns in the mind and nothing else. And you need them to be able to function in your life.
3. Next: your mind subconsciously produces implicit interpretations of what those patterns actually represent: "the pattern of glass represents the real material glass outside of my body", "I, Wayne, a real self, am touching it with my finger that belongs to my real body, and my body is part of me". These subtle thoughts again appear in your field of experience. But here is where the problem is: these thoughts are only interpretations of the bare experiential sensations, but you are implicitly accepting them as true experiential facts without any doubts. This is wrong! First, they are not facts, only thoughts-interpretations. Second, how do you know if they are true? What if you are in a hyper-realistic dream, or a Matrix, or a virtual reality game? How can you distinguish, how can you verify these interpretations? There is no way. Third: these interpretations actually constitute the illusory dualistic perception, it's exactly at that level of our mind signal processing where we "mentally" divide our continuous field of experience/awareness divided into "seemingly" separate objects and selves.
So these unprovable and most likely wrong interpretations are exactly where the problem is. And it's important to understand that they are NOT experiential facts, they are only thoughts-interpretations of our bare experiences.
4. Next: why do you actually need those interpretations? Are they necessary for you to live and function? What would happen if you would not have or would not use them at all? The problem is: they not only unnecessary. They actually make our life much harder and cause a lot of unnecessary confusion and suffering. They are the fundamental cause of our ego-complex. They are the cause of our desires and passions. Why do I want that car? First because I believe it is real, then there are other reasons. Why do I want myself to be praised? First because I believe I am real, etc. And more important, because we had them even before we incarnated into the bodies, they were the fundamental causes of our desire to reincarnate. If we do not dismantle them we will keep reincarnating."
Me: I get that there is no real separation. It's just the brain interpreting electrical signals that are likely oscillating waves, pulses of electromagnetic energy, information packets of ones and zeroes, however one wants to describe the matrix.
But like Einstein said, it's a persistent illusion. I guess it would be helpful to witness a baby first learning to understand the world, how it took the very first object it was given and touched, say, a rattle. And it moved its hands through the patterns and began to read or interpret them with the help of the parents feeding it names for the patterns which collectively it was told were "objects".
It would probably be critical at death to avoid any beings that approach us externally, ones that we didn't encounter via Intention. And, if we did intend to experience interaction with a being perceived as separate, to understand that is just an illusion or fabrication. Everything is. And that's alright if we wish to have that dreamlike fantasy as long as we understand that and don't forget that's what it is. And therein lies the trap. One can get too immersed in the dream or illusion and forget the original intention and think it is something that is happening "to" me ... to "me".
That's right, exactly.
But practically there are some parts/steps of the process of dismantling the dualistic illusion/perception:
1. Understand exactly the process how it happens and where it originates (what I wrote earlier) and get a habit of "catching" its action, first in meditation and then in everyday life. That's where meditation really helps.
2. Get familiar and comfortable with non-dualistic perception (Rigpa), also in meditation first where you are not so distracted and can focus better.
3. With everyday continuous mindfulness practice continuously counteract the dualistic perception with the non-dualistic. They will run in parallel for quite a long time so you will have a funny way of looking at the world from two perspectives simultaneously, but eventually the non-dualistic will be replacing and weakening the dualistic because the non-dualistic is way more simple, efficient, comfortable/blissful and free of mental suffering and fears. Once you get a sense of non-dual perception state you will be naturally drawn to it because it is so comfortable. But the dualistic one is VERY persistent and habitual, hardwired deeply on the unconscious level in our neural networks and takes a long time to dissolve. It actually takes years and decades but I can tell you it works. That is basically what the Buddhism mindfulness and awareness practice is about, quite simple but requires patience and persistence. It's basically re-wiring our mind to perceive the world in a different non-dualistic way, not just on the level of conceptual understanding, but on the level of actual and experiential perceiving.
>>And, if we did intend to experience interaction with a being perceived as separate, to understand that is just an illusion or fabrication. Everything is. And that's alright if we wish to have that dreamlike fantasy as long as we understand that and don't forget that's what it is. And therein lies the trap. One can get too immersed in the dream or illusion and forget the original intention and think it is something that is happening "to" me ... to "me".
I can't believe I was so stupid to step away from non-dualistic way of living/perceiving into the dualistic one. It makes no sense and I don't think it actually happens to enlightened souls. I don't remember but most likely I was in dualistic state in the first place and just wanted to incarnate to experience more "exiting things" to happen "to me" in the human body. But, as they (Buddhists) say, on the other hand, human life is where we have the best chance of getting enlightened, so eventually it may be no so bad that we ended up here.
Me: I want to dive in deep to the meditation aspect, maybe even trying to go a while without using words or labels. And switching my focus on the space between objects. For instance, I went on my walk this morning. And I could sense the hardness beneath my feet and I would normally say 'wow, the street sure is hard'. But it would be better to just think of 'hard'. But even better to just think I am identifying a pattern in a portion of the awareness that has this sensation. And then not even "I" am identifying it, but this portion of Awareness senses another portion of the same awareness as being unique, but they are actually connected and part of the whole awareness. So if this habit is done continuously for a long time, then the clear light should be recognized sooner or later (soon -- or NOW!).
Is that perceived as a flash of brightness? A flash of clearness? a flash of whiteness? A blissful, euphoric feeling? A feeling of knowingness? How will I know I have experienced the clear light once (or more)?.... since this is the point of the exercise.
I was listening today on the way the Longchenpa Treasury, here is what he says at 36:00, exactly what we were talking about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmPIo7dJQmc
"There is simply realization (liberation, non-dual perception) or its lack in the basic state of phenomena For those with realization who reached the state of bliss there is pure (=nondual) perception For those without it there is non-recognition of awareness and habitual patterns of dualistic perception form which sensory appearances manifest (as dualistic separate objects) in all their variety, although (in reality) none of them stray from the basic (non-dual) space (of awareness)"
>>Is that perceived as a flash of brightness? A flash of clearness? a flash of whiteness? A blissful, euphoric feeling? A feeling of knowingness? How will I know I have experienced the clear light once (or more)?.... since this is the point of the exercise.
As we discussed before (and was also in that quote from Sogyal) the "clear light" is nothing other than the clarity and lucidity of your awareness, it's just a metaphor. When you perceive the phenomena, you "feel" them, you "see" them within the space of your awareness "as if" they are all illuminated by some sort of "light". Even when there are no forms and phenomena (voidness) in your experience there is still the "presence", lucidity, you (awareness) are still clearly aware, the "light" of the awareness clarity is still there. This is it. The problem is that it is very hard to notice and recognize for people because it is always present in our experience and never changes. We take it for granted and never notice because we usually notice things that change, that come and go. Some people (what happened to me) when they first recognize it get quite dramatic "enlightenment" experience like an euphoric explosion, but that's just a reaction of the mind to such dramatic and unexpected shift in the perception. But most people just have a simple and quiet "aha!" moment like "yes, of course, so simple and obvious!'. So there is no need to expect any euphoric experiences, they may or may not happen, it does not matter, it's the recognition itself that matters. May be you already recognized it but still expecting something else to happen?
You were a SW designer, think of it: let's say we designed a computer that exactly mimics the human brain. Can you program it so that it will actually experience, be aware, like we do, of the "blueness" of the sky? No way, it will only process the information in exactly the same way we do, with colors encoded as digital or electrical signals, but it will do it in a zombie way, it can never experience or "see" the "blueness" of the sky. So in a way we can say that it perceives the world in total blackness, in the lack of the clarity/light of awareness. But we perceive the world in the "light" of awareness, we can clearly "see" and "feel", something that no computer can ever do. (This is why the awareness is never reducible to matter, as Chalmers proved).
So I am going to try these exercises of mindful meditation to recognize the clear light of awareness. It is extremely important to be able to do so now while in the body so that we are prepared upon death to not be fooled by the external projections or illusions of our Awareness. I encourage you to practice these exercises as well. Please report back to me whether you found them to be helpful or not, and if you are able to have any success using them. I can be reached at waynejbush@gmail.com.
So what can we conclude from all this research into the so-called void? It can sometimes get or be confusing for sure. One person says this. Another person says that. I'm sorry if I inundated you with Buddhist philosophy. I think it can be helpful, in moderation. It is something that is worth knowing since it tackles the biggest questions head on and is confirmed by many near death experiencers. Some NDErs said they saw that life was an illusion or a game. Others went to the void and described it in eerily the same terms as what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes as the "clear light". I am not trying to push you toward making any certain decision. One does not necessarily automatically escape the matrix game just by going to the Void. After all, those who were in the Void did come back. One has to weigh all the data and see what resonates as truth within the core of your own being. I think having as much information as we can is a good thing.
I don't think there is any reason to be fearful at all. Only one percent of near death experiencers reported seeing or experiencing a hell and they usually saw other beings there, not themselves. And one can leave any time just by setting their Intention on doing so and believing. Worst case scenario, you go to the light, feel extremely loved, stay there for an unknown period of "time" and then get convinced you need to return to Earth again. I still think you could teleport out of there once you know the game. But, if not, you can always negotiate for a much better planet or life.
Best case scenario, we stay in a blissful, formless state or alternatively manifest whatever peaceful, formed reality we "will".
The "meaning of life" is the "fine game of nil, or nothing. As we have seen, all seems to have appeared out of or come from apparent nothingness. Duality and the separation that creates it are illusions. And the game of life is a dream within a dream.
Duality is an illusion, the illusion of separation. The so-called 'void' of non-duality is not void at all. It is the true reality, the completeness, balance, the merging together or union of the separate illusions of the imagined positive and negative, the evening of light and dark polarities, that allow us to play this game of make-believe or hide and seek. The void is the neutrality, the union of polarities. Based on the evidence I've compiled from NDEs, ancient texts, quantum physics and more I believe the Full Void is the true source and not the light that near death experiencers talk about going to. I believe the Void is a better choice at death, at least intially, than going to the Light which as one of the two extreme poles of polarity is still part of the duality. And as is the case with all oscillation, it requires an opposite pole -- in this case, a negative pole or realm -- to maintain its existence. For that positive reality to persist requires there to be beings that must be in the dark somewhere, and ignorant or unenlightened which causes much suffering. That polar opposite of darkness and suffering, a hell, has to exist to maintain the balance in a reality of duality in order for those in the Light to experience their positive existence. How long can one remain in the Light before being forced to go back to Earth again for another "mission" -- whether known or unknown, volunteered or forced -- or sacrificial offering?
We've been conditioned over and over to believe that light is good and that a Void is bad. After all, we can see what we're doing in the light of day and the night time is when all the scary predators come out. But why is it when we want to get a good rest and recharge our batteries we turn out the light to be in complete darkness? We have also been conditioned over and over again in movies to believe that we go to the light when we die. But is that necessarily the case? Do we have a choice? The idea of going to the light at death has been brought into the public's eye most recently during the 1970s when Raymond Moody's groundbreaking book, Life After Life, was released on the near death experience. In it are many glowing accounts of people who had been near death and had traveled through a tunnel and gone into a brilliant Light full of love. Some who even called it God. But is that light that the near death experiencers reported seeing really God?
Near death experiencers often express the desire to return to Source. Well, I would say that the Light is still a part of the creation just like we are and not the true origin or "Source". Light usually has a source like fire or a heated filament. Light can even be produced by sound. Sonoluminecence. Even The Bible says that in the beginning was a Void or emptiness. Then God (the void?) said "Let there be light." So you have a void or emptiness, then sound (voice) and then finally light. In the book Catching the Light, the author very carefully conducts an experiment to see what light trapped in a box looks like. The conclusion was that unreflected light is darkness! It is only the reflection of light bouncing off of objects that allows us to see colors and light itself.
In my recent article on The Neverending Story I wrote, "In my opinion, it really is the drive or desire to constantly to be creators of experiencial stories that keeps us coming back into form, whether astral or physical, over and over again. Michael has presented The Nothing as the villain in the story and indeed it would be the enemy for the neverending story of creation. But perhaps that is not a fair or true assessment. Consider Michael's influence of Aleister Crowley in the writing of the book. After all, Crowley was known as "The Beast" and "the most wickedest man in the world". The Void may be preferable to the neverending drama and conflict of life in Duality with all its ups and downs, pleasure and pain, "good" and "bad", positive and negatives. Each one of us needs to make that assessment for ourselves." I concluded by saying, "Here are my thoughts currently. The Void: It is Emptiness yet perhaps everything. It is the silence. The Stillness. There is no movement and movement is what creates space and accordingly time as well. It seems to be the womb of creation, the creatrix. It is pre-creation. It is outside of time and space, thus outside of the Duality which needs positive-negative, good-bad, pleasure-pain, light-dark, etc. If you want to keep living the dream literally then don't go to the Void. Thoughts and emotions lead to judgment which in turn leads to Intention. Intention and wishes of dreams generate this reality and all its misery which is a necessary evil for pleasure to be experienced. Our wishes usually involve a need for external objects to fulfill the desire."
It's a question of deciding what reality you want to wish into existence with your Intent. Or whether you wish to stay in the Void and not have any external experience. Will the Void be too boring and too empty? Who knows? We won't know until or unless we are "there". If we wish to have an existence, the Buddhic Fields would be a fairly pleasurable one without too much suffering. Maybe thoughts themselves are to be avoided. And maybe even emotions too. If one can just exist as Pure Awareness without any passing judgments, that might be ideal.
And consider even in the Bible darkness existed before light and light was created: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
Maybe we were unsatisfied in The Void and are looking for the perfect balance of good/bad, light-dark. Or just want an infinite variety of possible worlds to explore whenever we want. Who can say? Unfortunately, there is a lot of suffering in this world and it is not equally proportionate among all people. But maybe just feeling alive is preferable to sitting on the fence. Perhaps we get tired of both, and go back and forth often between the two."
Hollywood almost always portrays the light as being good and Darkness or The Void as being bad or negative. For example, the movie The Void is a horror movie. And from the near death experiences of those who were in a void, although there are some negative or hellish experiences -- for those who are in a state of fear or a negative mindset -- most experiences in the Void were pleasant and some were wonderful. So I think the Void is a place where our Intentions can instantly manifest our reality. But if the Void is so bad, then why is it when we want to go to sleep and get a good night's rest, we turn out the lights to be in darkness to recharge our batteries? And consider even in the Bible a Void is mentioned before light. Then movement of Spirit is mentioned. Then sound. Then finally light was created: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." Also, consider that after six days of creation on the seventh day God rested.
By most accounts the Void is also pleasant or blissful, but is neutral, perhaps the merging or union of the two opposite poles or the pre-existence of the emergence of those opposite poles of duality. Therefore, one has a better chance at staying there forever as long as one can avoid the initial stage of wishing for form from past attachments.
But it must be cautioned that making one's intention to exist in this Nothingness may not be the best path to take. If you set your intention on going to a void and you imagine that void to be only nothingness, then that is exactly what you may experience. As with all of our languid language and spelling, the word 'void' has been charged with a connotation of emptiness.
All our experiences here on Earth and in the astral realm whether OBEs or lucid dreaming -- It's all fake, all hallucinations, dreams. Our life on earth is a hallucination too and there is infinite amount of other hallucinations on all planes of existence going on in this unlimited Awareness. There are no truths in them, nothing really to discover, they are all faked fantasies. Universal consciousness split into multitude of centers trying to entertain themselves with dreamy trippy fantasies, that's all :) Yeah, if you somehow got into a bad trip you need to figure out how to get out. But the key point (any drug tripper knows ): do not get scared, always remember that it's all just a trip, a fantasy, nothing is real here. But it's also true that in this trippy game some beings take advantage and exploit others, as long as those exploited believe that it's all for real.
In short, maybe one should not set intention on going to the void or a void since, literally speaking, that may not be technically true. By its very definition nothing doesn't exist. How can nothing exist? And the souls who say they were in a void at death.... How can it be a void? After all, they are there! Their consciousness, their awareness. If they are the only one there and they have no form then that is most likely their true essence! Pure and naked. The void is a misnomer, but describes their surroundings or what is around them. There is no space there.... and thus no time. They are outside space-time in the eternal now. Infinite awareness. Infinite energy. Pure energy. Pure awareness.
Instead of setting one's intention on going to "the Void", it might be better to set your intention instead on "the true essence of my being". But maybe it would be okay to set intention on going to the void since it would only be your true essence that is "there" anyway . Some may be afraid of being in the dark or a void because it seems like absolute zero, absolute nothing. But consider that maybe it is just that the frequency or vibration is so high or so fast you are everywhere at once and, therefore, it appears the same as at rest. This would seem that you are outside time-space. From that perspective, space-time is but an illusion and only experienced by parts that are separated from that highest frequency, that is are vibrating at a different frequency. It could be that you are technically at rest since you are everywhere at once.
Once one understands that the so-called void or darkness is the true nature of your Awareness, then all one needs to do is immediately recognize that at death, accept that, and merge with what the Tibetan Buddhists called the "clear light", the "ground luminosity". Once one has awakened and recognized that state of Awareness, one has been liberated from the endless cycle of incarnations and karma. Then one can remember and more accurately assess if one wants to once again manifest a reality of form or not, and if so, what kind.
All material world as well as the astral world is "manifested" by some "light beings" (Source and his close co-workers). So what it means is that it's a collective intentional mental manifestation (intentional fantasy) that one group of beings manifest and other beings participate in and experience (with the majority of them taking it for real). In other words, something fantasized and faked by one group of beings is taken for granted as true and real by others. A virtual reality game . So who cares what those "manifestors" are manifesting here? It's all just a fake fantasy. There is not even a least bit of any truth in it. There is nothing really to learn here. And each of us has as much manifesting power as those guys do once we are released from the limits of this earthly reality game. We can manifest for ourselves whatever fake stuff we like (if we really want to entertain ourselves) instead of fooling ourselves into stupid and childish manifestations of those other beings.
The whole world is only Awareness dreaming fake dreams. There is no truth and nothing to know in those dreams whatsoever. The real mystery is the very nature of this Awareness, how it exists, what's its cause, but there is NO way to know this from inside of the fantasies and dreams. It's like you can not know who you are in "reality" from inside your dream (plus the fact that our "reality" is just another dream). If you say that "God" manifests the world because it wants to know itself then this is not a good argument because there NO way this Consciousness can know itself through exploring its own fantasies. There is nothing really to learn in these fantasies. There is NO way the Consciousness can get "out" of itself, look at itself at a distance and see what it really is, how and where it exists, what is causing it. But it can certainly entertain itself for the eternity with these unlimited manifestations inside its own mind.
Because it's all FAKE. It's a childish fantasy only. There is nothing real and true in it. There is a good word for it, exactly as Buddha said: "it is all FABRICATED". But if you look at how Buddha taught - he almost never engaged into discussing the content of those fantasy worlds and he himself had no interest in their content. Instead he always pointed to the core problems: how fantasies occur; is there anything real in them; what is their nature; how they trap and deceive people; how to free ourselves from their "magic" falsity.
The material realm is a "collective manifestation of a group of Light Beings"
- the astral scenes that NDErs are experiencing is either manifestation of the NDErs themselves, or other "Light Beings" who try to make the scene "comfortable" for the NDErs, or both.
The bottomline is: it is ALL manifestation. And what is manifestation? A fake and fabricated virtual reality. That's what the majority of souls are doing here - being "mystified", or simply deceived or deceiving themselves to make it interesting, and creating so much confusion, ignorance and suffering in that process. I don't buy into that.
There are other, more healthy ways to entertain ourselves. Creating fake mysteries, exploiting and deceiving ourselves or other beings, or, as another extreme, going into a coma/vegetable state of formless nothingless are not the only alternatives. You can entertain yourself without mystification and lies. There is endless potential for creativity: art, music, math. It's also manifestation, but you know it is fake, so what? Music is all fabricated, fake, but it's so much fun to listen and play. Creativity is beautiful, unlimited, positive and with no suffering, no lying, no exploiting of other beings. Healthy, never boring.
So what do we need to do when we die? Nothing. You don't have to do anything. You don't need to "go" anywhere. You don't need to go "home". You're already home. You don't have to return to "source". You are original source. You don't have to "learn" anything. Or "believe" in anything external. Just know. Just be. Everything -- the demiurge, the being of light, the white light, angels, archons, aliens, guides, masters, family, etc. all are external projections. Illusions. Hallucinations. Fabrications of awareness. Do not fear archons. They have no power over you, only the power you willingly choose to give them. Set the power of your unwavering, focused Intention on the reality you Will into existence, but don't ever forget that you are playing a game. That may be the hidden "meaning of life". "The meaning of life" is hidden within itself as an anagram: "the fine game of nil".
And in my next article, which might be called "Wish"-craft, I may write about exploring the possibility of manifesting an afterlife, only if one chooses not to stay in the so-called void forever, if for some reason one is not satisfied. It's not technically "wishing", but rather "willing". The wish or desire/want (what you perceive to be lacking) becomes "reality" with will power. You aren't lacking anything, but you temporarily fabricate a game of illusion for your own entertainment. I'm not sure I would recommend manifesting anything. If you read the near death experiences I have included in this article, they all seemed perfectly content indefinitely. But if one did choose to manifest an external reality, we can look at what options might be available. There are the Buddhic planes where the "gods" live. But manifesting anything is possible from the pregnant void. It's really up to you and your imagination. Just be careful because if it involves duality, then one would have to choose how big of a seesaw one wants to ride, whether one with minimal swings between the poles or large ones. But the key would be never to forget you are Pure Awareness and never ever forget that you are playing a "fine game of nil".