Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Oh, you are using 'formless consciousness' as Hindus use 'Brahman' for 'what exists in the universe'. But we do not make it into a being. Do you?
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If "everything is energy" then what does this mean?
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Yes, all is Brahman, including the maya that is the world it manifests. But unlike its maya, which comes and goes, Brahman does not come and go. One metaphor is gold and the chain from which is is fashioned. Whether fashioned into chain or not, gold always remains as gold. Gold has not become a chain. Nothing has been added. Only the formless has become form:
Brahman and Maya
Brahman has “become” the world through maya
Brahman is...absolutely real and formless. But then, there must be something with
that Brahman to be able to ‘become’ this world of forms. This power is called maya.
Maya is there because this is how Brahman is. We don’t ask, “Why is there
maya?" because we don’t say that there is maya; We say that there is only Brahman. Brahman ‘plus something’ doesn’t exist at
all. .....any ‘plus’ is dependent upon Brahman for its existence and is therefore maya.
The world is Brahman. If Brahman is limitless consciousness, without any particular form, then how could it become this world of
forms? It did not. Consciousness continues to be, without any change. The gold has not become a chain. Only if it becomes a chain do I have to answer the question, “How did it become a chain?” Gold continues to be gold. Once you understand that clearly, then we can say Brahman has “become” the world through maya.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati
http://www.discovervedanta.com/downloads/articles/brahman-and-maya.pdf
When we see the Universe (ie 'the gold chain) through the conceptual filters of Time, Space, and Causation, we see it as a material world that is changing all the time and composed of various 'parts'. But when we remove those filters, we see the Universe as it actually is: as The Changeless Absolute (ie; pure gold), because change takes place only in Time and Space.
godnotgod
Thou art That
Right. The Universe is not what it appears to be via the senses: real material that is interacting and changing. That can only mean that a real material changing Universe is non-existent. IOW, it is an illusion. There isn't REALLY a snake; there is only a rope SEEN as a snake; only The Absolute; Brahman; The Changeless SEEN as The Universe, composed of separate atoms, changing all the time.
You had previously stated that you were a materialist. Now you say that everything is illusory. Have you changed your position?
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Oh, but now there is evidence from the world of Quantum Physics that this world you think is a 'material' world is a completely virtual reality, since all of the mass of the atom is being created by fluctuations in the Quantum and Higgs Fields, mass which is virtual in nature.
The rest of the prisoners in Plato's Cave require zero evidence to know that the Sun is real. All they need do is go see for themselves. But instead, they refused to go see for themselves, and said to the prisoner who had seen it:
"I don't care about your personal "awakened" or "mystic" experiences for which you can provide no evidence. Okay?"
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godnotgod
Thou art That
We have never, not even for one millisecond, left the OP. Have you?
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Where do you see that I have? I have not referred to 'Brahma'.
Can you answer the question:
"Are the waves, rays, and streams the 'consciousness of the universe', or are they merely the outcome of that same consciousness, which is actually That which is formless behind their manifestation, something I believe you would call 'Brahman'?"
Ben Dhyan
Veteran Member
Brahman is ineffable....beyond description....any and all attempts to do so are maya.... To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching.....the Brahman which is spoken about is not the ineffable Brahman...
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
No, it is not paradoxical to the rational mind. Rational mind knows that we have to wait, learn more, and try not to answer this question now leaving it to future generation. A rational mind will not concoct scenarios like the theists do. A rational mind is never perturbed. A confused mind shows that it is not rational.
You see, 'the Absolute' itself whirls. Whirling (so to say, not actually a circular motion but constant change) is its natural property, like the electrons in an atom. It is changeless because under no circumstances, it stops whirling. That is why the virtual particles are come into existence and get dissipated.
I have answered it in my own way without using the word 'universal consciousness', but it is not much different (like you said in your post 223). I have problem with consciousness which I and most others will associate with a brain, intelligence. I do not believe in that.
I think you are very close to the Hindu thing. It is not non-existent, it is also non-interactive. But it changes by itself constantly, thereby not requiring an inter-action with some other thing. That is 'maya'. No other thing exists. Whatever we perceive is 'that' itself. The books said 'Ekameva adviteeyam' (Verily one without a second). It is dynamic and not static. I am sure godnotgod will agree.
Tao Te Ching (and the Indian philosophers) said that thousands of years ago. We know better than that. Though, of course, not wholly. Perhaps at sometime in future, they will be able to describe Brahman.To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching.....the Brahman which is spoken about is not the ineffable Brahman...
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Brahman is ineffable....beyond description....any and all attempts to do so are maya.... To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching.....the Brahman which is spoken about is not the ineffable Brahman...
True, but we can speak about it in negative terms, although it is not an object apart from ourselves. We, in fact, are the very essence of Brahman as reflected in the Hindu aphorism: 'Tat tvam asi' (Thou art That).
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godnotgod
Thou art That
The rational mind can tell you certain things about The Universe. It can reveal certain patterns that are predictable and can tell you about certain behavioral characteristics. But because nature itself is not based upon Reason, it can never yield to us what the true nature of The Universe actually is. That is why mystics must go beyond the rational mind, as the approach of the rational mind is to conceptualize, and to conceptualize it must encapsulate. But The Infinite cannot be so encapsulated by the finite. And so paradox is the outcome. You cannot put what nature is about into a mathematical formula, though they keep on trying. The more details and facts we uncover about The Universe via Reason, Logic, and Analysis, the further away from a true understanding about the nature of Reality we become. It is not something that can be arrived at intellectually, nor 'figure out'. As Kant has told us, we are reaching the ineluctable limits of Reason.
from the video's notes:
"So The Theory of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Gravity, which were all created to explain gravity are all failures. "The equations no longer make any sense, and nobody knows what they're supposed to do about that. Physics is having a nervous breakdown. It means the collapse of physics as we know it. Something is fundamentally wrong.
NATURE IS SMARTER THAN WE ARE"
Theoretical physicists
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." Nikola Tesla, Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July, 1934
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
A difference of opinion, godnotgod. I value your views. But IMHO, there is a reason to all things in the universe.
godnotgod
Thou art That
Is there? Or, to put it another way: MUST there be? I ask you, then, if, as you believe, "there is a reason to all things in the universe", then what is the reason for the sheer existence of infinite number of stars, for example, which, on its face, seems to have no rhyme or reason whatsoever?
The Problem with Reason:
"We create a certain theory and then there is the honeymoon with the theory. For a few years things go perfectly well. Then reality asserts itself. Reality brings up a few things and the theory gets into difficulty because we had excluded a few facts. Those facts will protest, they will sabotage your theory, they will assert themselves. In the eighteenth century science was absolutely certain, now it is certain no more. Now a new theory has come: the theory of uncertainty.
Just a hundred and fifty years ago Immanuel Kant came across this fact in Germany. He said that reason is very limited; it sees only a certain part of reality and starts believing 'that this is the whole. This has been the trouble. Sooner or later we discover further realities and the old whole is in conflict with the new vision. Immanuel Kant attempted to show that there were ineluctable limits to reason, that reason is very limited. But nobody seems to have heard, nobody has cared about Immanuel Kant. Nobody cares much about philosophers.
But science in this century has at last caught up with Kant. Now Heinsenberg, in physics, and Godel, in mathematics, have shown ineluctable limits to human reason. They open up to us a glimpse of a nature which is irrational and paradoxical to the very core*. Whatsoever we have been saying about nature has all gone wrong. All principles go wrong because nature is not synonymous with reason, nature is bigger than reason.
Osho
http://thegreatmysticlibrary.com/reader/reader.php?author=osho&endpos=198003&page=91&book=Zen - The Path of Paradox, Vol 1
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godnotgod
Thou art That
There is a problem with your logic. Since The Absolute is Everything, including Space, it cannot 'whirl', since to know that something is whirling is to detect it doing so relative to that which is not whirling, and there is no relative 'other'; no reference against which one can determine the whirling of The Absolute. Secondly, to say that whirling is its natural property does not actually explain its behavior, and to suggest 'change' implies that there is something there that changes. However, Quantum Physics is now showing us that there is nothing 'there' of any substance, and even if there were, 'change' requires Time and Space, but isn't Brahman, The Absolute, beyond Time and Space?
"There is nothing wrong with your television set.....we repeat. there is nothing wrong with your television set........" The Outer Limits
I'm not sure what your talking about with saying the more we know then the less we know of reality. There is nothing wrong with physics, I can draw a picture of nature easier than a mathematician using math to explain nature.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Stop using the word illusion if what you really mean is hallucination. Seeing things that don't exist at all in any way or form is called a hallucination. Something which exists, but is not what is seems is called an illusion. The snake is not a hallucination, it was an illusion. Something existed to cause the illusion of the snake. The vision of a snake did not just appear out of pure nothingness, it appeared because there was something (a physically real and existing something), the rope, which caused it.
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nonsense, what in the world would we be "observing"?
no it doesn't, this is an assumption that cannot be tested, an assumption to break everything as separate from the absolute, Why? The absolute is not something separate, absolute means an ultimate oneness
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Perhaps this and the links in the article will be useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Cosmological_models. There is a reason for all things that happened. Some reasons we know, some we know partly, of others we may not have an inkling. What kind of reason are you looking for? Something esoteric? Something like "Why, for what purpose, did God create the universe and humans?" Being an atheist, I leave such questions for the theists.
I used the word 'whirling' because you used it first - to indicate change, and specified what I mean by these words, certainly not circular motion - I meant changes like in Feynman's diagrams.
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Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
He will surely tell you that the reason for all things we see or all things that happen in the universe is pure and absolute nothingness.
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