What Happens When You Die?

[Thief]

Everything else is maya-illusion.

Change seems the only constant to my perspective to the point where I have said change is the only truth. It is the perspective of illusion.

Everything I identify myself with is illusion, impermanent. If that is all there is to me then I don't exist. Yet I exist. That, in my experience is the only constant.

Everything I perceive as "self" is constantly changing. Except I remain. The observer, the seer.

You're not perfect, I'm not perfect. How can we have the audacity to believe the only real thing about us is perfect?

I don't know what you think Heaven will be like. Full of change?

Heaven, Nirvana... Truth is the consciousness of bliss. Bliss, what else is there to want?

Bliss is real, accessible, available whenever you you want. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. So why don't people know of it?

We accept the illusion as who we are. We accept the imperfect as truth.

And shall God accept the imperfect into the kingdom?
Is it not written?....Be thou perfect as your Father in heaven.

Change is not an illusion.....it's real.

 

[godnotgod]

Ha ha. Who is saying this? The Absolute says so? Or an ego self is asserting this?

Does the Absolute ever come and say "Hey, I do not exist and neither do you."

It neither exists nor not-exists. It simply is, and that is Being; not Existence. Being is Absolute and intemporal; Existence and non-Existence are dual, and temporal.

 

[Thief]

It neither exists nor not-exists. It simply is, and that is Being; not Existence. Being is Absolute and intemporal; Existence and non-Existence are dual, and temporal.

Now here's the chance to show how great a fool can be....

Explain that post in greater detail.....'being is not existence'....

 

[atanu]

"I" do not exist, ...

That is a thundering declaration of no-self from a self that is very much evident.

(Can anything be more absurd? )

 

[godnotgod]

That is a thundering declaration of no-self from a self that is very much evident.

(Can anything be more absurd? )

Something is saying that "I" do not exist, but it is not the "I" that has a name, a history, an identity. That something is unborn, ungrown, formless, undifferentiated consciousness before the illusion of "I' became manifest, and will still be present when all that constitutes "I" is no more.

 

[godnotgod]

Now here's the chance to show how great a fool can be....

Explain that post in greater detail.....'being is not existence'....

Existence is temporal; Being is eternal.

 

[`mud]

a lot people will have memories of this thread.....

NOT !! :sarcastic
~
'mud

 

[Thief]

Existence is temporal; Being is eternal.

Which is God?

 

[godnotgod]

Which is God?

Both and neither.

 

[Nakosis]

And shall God accept the imperfect into the kingdom?
Is it not written?....Be thou perfect as your Father in heaven.

Change is not an illusion.....it's real.

If things were perfect why would there exist change?

If something was perfect it would not need to change.

For you to be perfect you would no longer need to change. As long as there is change, you cannot enter Heaven. As long as change is your reality, you cannot know Heaven.

Be thou perfect as your father in heaven...
If change is not an illusion, then we have no chance.

 

[atanu]

Something is saying that "I" do not exist, but it is not the "I" that has a name, a history, an identity. That something is unborn, ungrown, formless, undifferentiated consciousness before the illusion of "I' became manifest, and will still be present when all that constitutes "I" is no more.

There is "I am this body-mind". This is a mistake. It comes and goes.

There is the Fourth--the Turiya that is witness of waking, dreaming, sleeping. It is not mistake. It is God. It is the unborn. It's nature is Prajnana. It is the real I of every form ans name.

Let Shri Ramana speak of the two I-s:

Mrs. Chenoy (from Bombay) asked Bhagavan this evening (after reading Who am I?) whether it was the proper thing to do if she asked herself “Who am I?” and told herself she was not this body but a spirit, a spark from the divine flame.

Bhagavan first said, “Yes, you might do that or whatever appeals to you. It will come right in the end.” But, after a little while, he told her: “There is a stage in the beginning, when you identify yourself with the body, when you are still having the body- consciousness. At that stage, you have the feeling you are different from the reality or God, and then it is, you think of yourself as a devotee of God or as a servant or lover of God. This is the first stage.

The second stage is when you think of yourself as a spark of the divine fire or a ray from the divine Sun. Even then there is still that sense of difference and the body-consciousness.

The third stage will come when all such difference ceases to exist, and you realise that the Self alone exists. There is an ‘I’ which comes and goes, and another ‘I’ which always exists and abides.

So long as the first ‘I’ exists, the body-consciousness and the sense of diversity or bheda buddhi will persist. Only when that ‘I’ dies, the reality will reveal itself. For instance, in sleep, the first ‘I’ does not exist. You are not then conscious of a body or the world. Only when that ‘I’ again comes up, as soon as you get out of sleep, do you become conscious of the body and this world. But in sleep you alone existed. For, when you wake up, you are able to say ‘I' slept soundly.’You, that wake up and say so, are the same that existed during sleep. You don’t say that the ‘I’ which persisted during sleep was a different ‘I’ from the ‘I’ present in the waking state.

That ‘I’ which persists always and does not come and go is the reality. The other ‘I’ which disappears in sleep is not real. One should try and realise in the waking state that state which unconsciously everyone attains in sleep, the state where the small ‘I’ disappears and the real ‘I’ alone is.” At this stage, Mrs. C. Asked, “But how is it to be done?” Bhagavan replied, “By enquiring from whence and how does this small ‘I’ arise. The root of all bheda buddhi is this ‘I’. It is at the root of all thoughts. If you enquire wherefrom it arises, it disappears.”

(From 'Day by Day with Bhagavan' 24-11-46)

 

[Nakosis]

There is "I am this body-mind". This is a mistake. It comes and goes.

There is the Fourth--the Turiya that is witness of waking, dreaming, sleeping. It is not mistake. It is God. It is the unborn. It's nature is Prajnana. It is the real I of every form ans name.

Let Shri Ramana speak of the two I-s:

I know the error in, well I didn't before but I do now...

I know the error in the physical I that seems apparently separate from Brahman. I have recently realized the I which is the spiritual I, I think of as the mind that also seems apparently separate from Brahman. This creates the dualistic thinking which continues in error.

I'm still trying to understand the non-dualistic "I". However it seems difficult to convey any understanding of this in English. I think it is also hard to conceptualize in western thinking.

In my experience "I" cease to exist, both the physical and mental "I". Start to cease to exist, what remains, I don't know since I remain attached to the idea that for "I" to exist it needs an separate identity. What happens to the observer when there is nothing separate to observe? Seems impossible to understand.

 

[godnotgod]

In my experience "I" cease to exist, both the physical and mental "I". Start to cease to exist, what remains, I don't know since I remain attached to the idea that for "I" to exist it needs an separate identity. What happens to the observer when there is nothing separate to observe? Seems impossible to understand.

Could it be that both "I" and the observer are merely ideas? That, at the bottom line, there is nothing but the action of pure observation? Watch for the precise moment of inception of "I"; when it appears. It is very subtle and almost unnoticeable. 'The Observer' is another name for The Fourth State of Consciousness; Self-Transcendence, or Self-Remembering:

Self-transcendence
A man's chance of attaining the fourth state of consciousness depends on whether or not he has
experienced this state. If he does not even know it exists, he will not long for it any more than a bird
born and raised in captivity can know what freedom is like or long for freedom. Man can, and from
time to time does, experience the fourth state as a result of some religious emotion, under the
influence of a work of art, in the rapture of sexual love or in situations of great danger and
difficulty. In these circumstances it is said that he "remembers himself." This term is not entirely
descriptive of the fourth state but it is the best available. Self-remembering is a certain separation of
awareness from whatever a man happens to be doing, thinking, feeling. It is symbolized by a two-
headed arrow suggesting double awareness. There is actor and observer, there is an objective
awareness of self. There is a feeling of being outside of, separated from, the confines of the physical
body; there is a sense of detachment, a state of non-identification. For identification and self-
remembering can no more exist together than a room can simultaneously be illuminated and dark.
One excludes the other.
Several characteristics of the fourth state of consciousness have been described by A. Maslow in a
chapter entitled "Peak Experiences as Acute Identity Experiences." He emphasizes the paradoxical
quality of this state: "The greatest attainment of identity, autonomy or selfhood is itself
simultaneously a transcending of itself, a going beyond and above selfhood. The person can then
become relatively ego-less."
One statement in this chapter by Maslow calls for some elaboration: "Peaks are not planned or
brought about by design; they happen." This may be perfectly true, but does not have to be. The
whole practice of Creative Psychology is based on the hypothesis that man can change his level of
being through intentional effort properly guided and persistently exerted. As a result of this effort,
he will attain the fourth state of consciousness (roughly corresponding to Maslow's peak
experience) with increasing frequency. He will also get glimpses of the fifth state of consciousness.
The difference between experiencing these states by accident and inducing them deliberately is like
that between finding money in the street and earning it by the sweat of one's brow. One may find
money now and then, but it is not an event to be relied upon. In the same way, some drug
experiences may produce a state akin to self-remembering and generate what Baudelaire called
"The Taste of the Infinite." There are several ways of getting glimpses of the interior of the fourth
room or even the fifth which a person may stumble upon more or less accidentally. This is not at all
the same thing as finding the key and unlocking these chambers. For this, both effort and
knowledge are required.
Once a man knows that the fourth room exists, he reaches a parting of ways so far as his life is
concerned. He can either try to forget all about the fourth room, behave as if it does not exist, lapse
again into the state of total identification, or he can decide to play the Master Game and set about
looking for someone to teach him the technique. Two factors will influence his decision: the
intensity of his dislike of sleep and the intensity of his longing for real awakening. These are the
stick and the carrot which between them get the donkey moving. The struggle to unlock and enter
the fourth room and, having entered it, to remain there, is a task so difficult under the conditions of
modern life that few undertake it and even fewer succeed. It may well be that even the appetite for
this adventure is gradually disappearing from the psyche of man. In this respect, the words of
Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra may be relevant:
Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond
man. . . .
Lo! I show you the last man.
The earth has become small and on it hops the last man who makes everything small. His species is
ineradicable like the ground flea; the last man lives longest.
It may be asked at this point why should one make great efforts to enter the fourth room when
things have been made so easy and pleasant in the third room.... When the
third room is comfortable, safe and full of delights, why should we strive to ascend to the fourth?
What does it have to offer that the third room does not?
The answer, of course, is freedom. Only when he enters the fourth room does a man become free.
Only in the fourth state of consciousness is he liberated from the tyranny of the personal ego and all
the fears and miseries that this entity generates. Once he has attained the fourth room and learned to
live in it, a man becomes fearless. The words "I" and "mine" have ceased to be meaningful. He does
not identify the self with the physical body or attach much importance to the possessions of that
body. He feeds it, dresses it, cares for it and regulates its behavior. In due course he leaves it. One of
the powers conferred by entry into the fourth room is the capacity to die at will.
Man in the third room may think he is his own master but actually has no control over his actions.
He cannot so much as walk down a street without losing his attention in every stray impression that
"takes his fancy." Man in the fourth room really is his own master. He knows where he is going,
what he is doing, why he is doing it. His secret is that he remains unattached to the results of his
activity, measures his success and failure not in terms of outward achievement, but in terms of inner
awareness. He is able, as a result of his knowledge of forces at work about him, to know what is
possible and what is impossible, what can be achieved and what cannot be achieved.
This may sound like a small accomplishment but it is actually a very large one. Dabblers in various
forms of occultism and theosophy, dilettantes who play with what they imagine to be yoga, show a
pathetic naivete when it comes to evaluating what can and what cannot be obtained by these means.
All sorts of miraculous achievements are accepted as possible, for man in the third state of
consciousness tends to love miracles and to believe all sorts of nonsense that could not possibly
happen. In the fourth state of consciousness such naivete disappears. A man knows what
combination of forces can produce what sort of result. He knows that everything happens in
accordance with certain laws governing the relations of matter and energy. He knows that there is
no miracle and anything that appears to be a miracle is merely a manifestation of some rare
combination of forces, like the rare combination of skill and knowledge that enabled the master
magician, Houdini, to extricate himself from every form of restraint that was ever applied to him.

excerpted from: The Master Game, by Robert S deRopp

The entire book downloadable for free in .pdf format, here:

http://selfdefinition.org/gurdjieff/Robert-S-De-Ropp--The-Master-Game.pdf

 

[godnotgod]

'Buddha says forget the self, because there is no self; the self is just in the grammar, in the language – it is not anything existential. You just observe the content. By observing the content, the content starts disappearing. Once the content disappears, watch your anger – and watching it, you will see it is disappearing – once the anger has disappeared there is silence. There is no self, no observer, and nothing to be observed; there is silence....'

Osho, This Very Body the Buddha, Talk #4

George Gurdjieff | OSHO | Meditation - Mindfulness and The Science Of The Inner
​

 

[Thief]

Both and neither.

Are 'you' not the one who claims there is no duality?

 

[Thief]

If things were perfect why would there exist change?

If something was perfect it would not need to change.

For you to be perfect you would no longer need to change. As long as there is change, you cannot enter Heaven. As long as change is your reality, you cannot know Heaven.

Be thou perfect as your father in heaven...
If change is not an illusion, then we have no chance.

Indeed!

But I do not believe heaven to be static.
I strongly suspect a continual interaction with other souls.

 

[godnotgod]

Are 'you' not the one who claims there is no duality?

What is meant by 'you'?

 

[Runewolf1973]

Indeed!

But I do not believe heaven to be static.
I strongly suspect a continual interaction with other souls.

That right there, that is the key. What happens when you die?... continual interaction in some form or another. It is not "consciousness", it is simply interaction on a fundamental level.

 

[atanu]

....What happens to the observer when there is nothing separate to observe? Seems impossible to understand.

This is the most important state to experience and abide in. Does the observer vanish? No.

Let me relate a story.

In Shri Ramana Maharshi's asrama, devotees used to sing (and even now sing) "Ramana Satguru Ramana Satguru ......". For common folk like us it is supposed to be a praise for the physical person who was known by the name of Ramana. But oddly, people often noticed that Shri Ramana was himself singing and clapping with the song. Perplexed some asked "Guruji, how you are singing your own praise?" Shri Ramana anwered "You think that Ramana is confined in this space occupied by this body? Since your outlook is still of body consciousness you are in doubt. Ramana is the all pervading being."

So, a Seeker may join intermittently with the Universal mind or may merge with it, depending on the grace of the Universal Consciousness. Since, ego consciousness has no power of its own, the grace is paramount. Even our effort is due to grace of God. But whatever be the case, existence/consciousness abides. To say otherwise means that the mortal man is concluding non-existence of God . It means an ego is claiming knowledge of God. An Ego is killing off its source.

OTOH, does God eever lose its Seership? To claim such is foolishness.


Can an ego exist, if the Universal Consciousness does not exist?
....................


There is a tricky point here.

It is said that "Brahman is of nature of Existence, Consciousness, Bliss". However, it is also said "Brahman is neither existence nor non existence." The first depicts the manifest nature. The second explains Brahman itself as Transcendental.

But nowhere it is said that Brahman is "Non-Existent".

And this is not said in Buddhist scripture also.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

This thread should be moved to the Dharmic Religions DIR because it's basically all babble to people who believe that we have an eternal soul ala Christianity.