I think this is where it may be difficult for everyone to follow what you are saying. Words are surely no more fundamental (with regards to any “origin”) than the mouths that speak them, fingers that write them (or tap them out), or brains that remembers them. In this sense everything is “metaphysical” - all matter, all energy - because everything goes back to the “origin.” But words - at least human words - happened relatively late. What came before words is what we see in animals: sounds, calls, cries, barks, growls, whines, clicks, etc; as well as scents, gestures, grimaces, colours, chemicals, and so on - the whole panoply of nonhuman communication.
So words are not more “metaphysical” than a dog barking or a bird singing or a porpoise clicking. They are more capable of generalisation and abstraction no doubt, and so are capable of communicating much more complex ends. But they aren’t much more than what urine is for cats and dogs, what coloured feathers are for garden birds, or what whoops are for macaques etc. Right?
Psychologically there is my psyche, sense of self, me. Nothing is realer than me. I am the center of all existence. When I blink the universe disappears!
All I know directly, empirically are my perceptions. All I can say that is not to some degree speculation is: I sense this, I feel this, I perceive this. These sensations, feelings, perceptions are experienced only by me, not by anything else anytime else in the universe. You might sense, feel, perceive similar things, but never the same things. We might share a mind like we share the Internet, but what I see through my mind window and what you see through yours is never the same.
‘The One’ - sees it’s own manifestations by it’s own senses, where senses/manifestations emerge from it’s own thoughts. But when it starts to see - ‘I’/ignorance begins due to the duality caused by movement from ‘this’ to ‘that’. (movement of light from eyes(perceiver sense) to objects (perceived), etc…)
Both Duality and Non-duality schools - accepts that “Everything is ‘Lila’ of his/Brahman”.
In Upanishads, Bible and Quran - the words like “Let be light,etc…” - represents that “Everything his wish” - and the words like “I will be back” represents that “everything is pre-determined”
It’s upto us - after our inquiry - to surrender or not.
That’s the whole point. That’s the entire thing we have been talking about. My perceptions are forever clouded by thought. Yet thought refuses to perceive itself. It says, ‘I have all these problems, what on earth shall I do about them?’ and keeps on going, producing the same problems over and over again in different guises, differently nuanced, differently placed, differently explained, but without ever resolving the core of its difficulty, which is its own desire for continuity.
When there is an object to look at or an object to be known, it is only ever another object that looks at them and knows about them. So there is no who as a separate, living individual. The only living part of me is my body; internally, while there is a me that looks there is only a movement of dead images, which provides the semblance of life through its reactivity. I am thought; I am an entity already dead and gone. Yet I keep giving great importance to my reactions, my feelings, my emotions, as though they are completely unrelated to thought, even though this relationship is constantly on view. And this is what we have been looking at. Can we see it now? Can thought see its involvement in every particle of existence? And whatever thought touches it must kill by turning into yet another object.
Don’t we along probably with all living things share this sense of 'Being". The ‘feeling’ that ‘I am’? Not ‘my’ being or ‘your’ being. Isn’t this essentially what ‘we’ are? Isn’t this the ‘eternal’? The eternal that the self-process obscures?
Yes! I think we all have both: the individual sense that “I am” and the universal sense that “I am.”
I don’t know what we (truly) are. I don’t even know if the question “What are we?” makes sense, at least not in the linear rational way we are used to thinking of things that make sense.
I think that a misunderstanding or obsession with the individual self obscures things, and that a misunderstanding/obsession with the universal self does too.
Like any living creature, which is what it takes itself to be, thought wants to survive. But … IS thought actually a living creature? Does it have agency … a mind/agenda of its own?
This may be true. But it cannot be proven or falsified. In Advaita, it comes down to trusting the scriptures (Upanishads, etc.) and, eventually, to simply knowing it is true (enlightenment). Neither of these is the case for me. I’m far too skeptical to accept the word of an ancient book as absolute truth. And I am not enlightened.
On a personal note I think Advaita might be ‘righter’ than any other Eastern philosophy I’ve encountered. But I have my doubts.
The self is obsession. Not I who am obsessed with self, I am self, no? Now self might be obsessed with speculating about a higher or universal self. But it can’t know what would be a different dimension than the material. But I can speculate that such a dimension is. I can’t understand ‘it’ because it isn’t available to the senses. It’s not within my grasp but I am speculating that I can’t grasp it because it is what I am, what you are, what every thing is. Yet we as humans with this new more complex brain can resonate with this other possible dimension. The “Immensity” JK has called it and pitied us for living and dying without realizing it. Isn’t that why he used the word “evil” to describe the ‘I process ‘, the Self? That is the way it seems to me. So self knowledge is our responsibility because we can’t ‘know ‘ what is at stake in all this, living blindly in our self image, can we?
We can question “can it see itself or can it see it’s involvement ?” as such.
We cannot answer it as ‘yes/no’ and when we see as such, we also don’t know/find “whether it actually sees or not”.
We may delude us as “it is or it is not”. But actually we don’t know and we might not know. Because as it is ‘thoughts’ - we may unconsciously come to a conclusion.
Even for two months here, I was deluding myself by questions/statements that - ‘thought sees itself as a whole’ by the knowledge of the teachings.
Only now I come to actually know that - “whatever we know is only ‘words’ used by humanity to communicate for thousands of years”. From those words - we compare it with our experience and so deluding ourselves.
More than those words “we actually know nothing”.
We don’t know “‘what energy is” “what ‘me’ is” “what thought is” “why body hungers for food” “why there is food for hunger” “why there is senses” “why there is objects” “what is it that sees/seen”. If I say something to those questions - it is only through thoughts. And we don’t know - those thoughts are knowledge/awareness/intuition.
We may question - but actually we don’t ‘know’ answers for those questions. And we also cannot differentiate “thoughts and observation”. We don’t know - whether we inquire/observe/attend/listen through thoughts/awareness/whatever it is. We may express it as probably. But actually “we don’t know”.
This is the truth. We don’t know anything - we don’t create/destroy anything. We don’t start/control/stop thoughts. Those thoughts comes and goes. So, there is something, more than ‘me’ behind everything, who creates and destroys thoughts/atoms/objects. Whatever we act/thought/do is only through intuition and we know that - we don’t create those intuitions. So, through intuition - that ‘something’ does everything and we are ignorant to that and say “I do”.
So, why not place a request to that ‘something’ by surrendering to it - to show us everything.
Viswa,
Yes, I know about that and I may accept it or not. From a slightly different angle but I would say meaning the same thing we read in the Bible that there’s nothing new under the sun and that many are called but few are chosen. But this is a different plane than that in which we human beings are living, so all we’re doing is using words to speak of transcendental matters. That’s why Krishnamurti spoke of what he called facts because if you talk of transcendental matters it’s all a matter of belief or speculation. Krishnamurti meant to bring a transformation in human society and for that matter what’s the use of sticking to a belief trying to get someone or a few others who may share it with you and then organise one more group or party or sect? It’s easy to speculate about what is beyond but you’re going to find just as easily those who will oppose it and you know what the result is, it’s just what we find everywhere.
How we know something as a fact and transcendental matter?. A fact may be a belief too.
I can leave now today - and be dovoted to him always. I don’t come here to increase followers. But to show how we delude ourselves by ‘thoughts’ and ‘words’.
But yes, I done my best. I expressed what I felt. I shown through many means that “we don’t know anything and until there is thoughts we cannot know anything”.
Viswa,
Thank you for your words and sincerity. What we may know is much much less than what we don’t know, but let us all learn from each other about how to live the right way.
