Death

How many of you have an awareness of death that is cherished equal to life? 


If you were to die today would you be okay with that? Would you think it too soon? Would you have regrets, or feel like there are things left unfinished? Things you still want to do one day but haven't had the chance to? How much would it matter if you never got to? If you knew death was to knock on your door tomorrow, would today, would this moment, feel unfulfilled?


Death is something that has become quite removed from our culture. In general we've become desensitised to it. Mortality, and my relationship with it, is something I really try to explore and embrace. I can't honestly say what it will be like when I'm on my deathbed. Maybe it will scare the shit out of me, and maybe none of this stuff I'm saying now will hold up at all. I don't know. I have come very close to death already more than once, which I am grateful for. It's amazing how, when death pulls you close, life can pull you closer.


I have no idea what happens after I die. How could I? Reincarnation, Heaven, etc. Maybe they are real things? However, my current experience with life, and what is being seen right now with open eyes, as well as a basic common sense, tells me that these things in a classical sense are unlikely. As far as I can gather, when I die that's it. Gone. This here "reference point" in experience, a.k.a. Nemo, will be no more. Beyond that, I just don't know.


My reference point/experience/life is the only one knowable. You guys can tell me about yours but it's only ever words in my experience. So if this reference point is all there is, can it still really be called a reference point? 


When death comes, when this reference point ceases to exist, does the world and everything in it continue along without me? (One thing I used to have fun and frustration tripping myself over were the endless paradoxes, but they all make sense now, because ala Schrodinger's cat, it seems two opposites can be true at the same time. Often it just depends on where you're looking.)


Yes, possibly life without 'me' still goes on, even probably. Also - No. In fact most likely not. Gone, nothing, nada. Experience melts away back into the void and the whole world with it. Existing stops, existence with it. In this life, as this life, I am completely alone, always. But thankfully, somehow never lonely. Death is an exquisite, essential part of life, and is the one thing that makes life so wonderfully precious. Death makes you appreciate life.


A few nights ago I was in the backseat of a car with some friends driving at night along a freeway, and then up a treacherously windy mountain road towards home. MUCH too fast and dangerously. I started to say something to the driver, but I couldn't. I was so overcome by life that evening that I could do nought but welcome death with open arms. I willed it, I invited it, I surrendered and gave myself completely over to "fate" (for want of a better word) as if I could ever do otherwise. There was absolutely nothing more that I needed or wanted from life. The perfection of that moment was, IS, eternal.


Fear didn't exist whatsoever. There was no room for it in my cup overflowing with love and gratitude. I was completely without context. My mind was away somewhere contemplating it's own existence. And existence itself had burst wide open, all words, labels and concepts were gone. (I fully appreciate the irony and futility in attempting to capture wordlessness with words... I can only hope I don't do it too much of a disservice, and hope it has as much of a sense of humour as I do..!)


Awareness was comprised solely and entirely of this omnipresent gratitude, which couldn't be distinguished from the icy cold wind blasting my skin. There was such a lack of framework that I didn't realise until much later, the icy cold wind, which was all that existed, had completely frozen me without my noticing, and I started shivering uncontrollably as it suddenly hit me as feeling "cold" and uncomfortable. No distinguishing between, or categorising something as pleasant or unpleasant or anything. Including, and especially, death.


I'm curious as to how awakening may have affected anyone else's relationship with death. Do any of you relate to any of this? Any similar stories? Maybe a completely different perspective?

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Turiya

I asked about something called Turiya in a group on Facebook recently. The reason I asked about it, is because someone called it "4th consciousness", and someone else said it's "an ongoing stream of awareness, even throughout your sleep" and it made me think of something that happened around the time of my awakening.

I'd been living in solitude out in the rainforest for some years, and at the time I was in the process of 'spiritual autolysis'. I thought I needed a break, and to be around people, so I went to a party in the city. I malfunctioned, thought I had lost my mind, couldn't interact. Broke down. I'd cracked, and the last piece seemed to fall away in an entirely apocalyptic manner.

For weeks after that my consciousness was different. It was like a new state of consciousness. I stopped writing out the autolysis because it was on automatic pilot in my head, 24/7, and completely detached. There WAS an ongoing stream of awareness, even throughout my sleep, relating to Turiya as it had been described to me. Images of a scorched earth. The line between asleep and awake was gone. Complete lucidity, wide awake even in sleep, in my dreams. Not lucid dreaming, which happens quite frequently, something completely different. Every moment clear as a bell. I felt like my mind - that being, that everything - had been ripped right open. it was incredible, intense, and exhausting, and I was utterly gobsmacked by it all and often on the verge of tears. My body rushed in big waves of energy.

I had this sensation that in my compulsion to "gaze at the moon", I had leaned too far out the window and was falling through the abyss. The thin fabric separating "me" from "reality" had been poked at until it had ripped. This is not just a metaphor, this was the physical sensation. At times I was extremely scared, and at times I thought it was never going to stop and I had broken my brain. But as I let go of fear and resistance I realised, "this too shall pass". And it did.

I realise all this probably has just as much or as little to do with 'enlightenment' as anything else, and I'm not sure how much it has to do with Turiya either, but I am really curious as to whether anyone else has also experienced or heard of anything like this before...

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THIS IS IT

An example of an interpretation of something that might said to be "unreal" is misidentification (eg. self). But this is the nature of thought. Whatever is directly known is reality, it's when thought and words and labels and descriptions come into play that it stops being that thing - the moment is gone and cannot be remanufactured. This is because thoughts/words/descriptions are relaying information second hand, and although the can point to something, they are not the thing itself.
THIS IS IT. This is truth, reality, it cannot be anything else. We have never known or experienced anything else whatsoever. How could we? This is all there is. To call it a dream or illusion would be missing the point because there is no "Real world" going on out there, external to this, that you are unable to access, or can one day wake up to. Direct experience is incapable of being "unreal". If there is illusion, it merely comes after the fact, in interpretation.

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Who is looking?

I'm thinking..... looking at the looker and not finding him puts the mind to a blank. A silence. This is the same as "Who am I?" question somehow. But it s indeed not the same as "There's no looker! look", or "there's noone there, look!", or "check it!". Putting the mind to rest with an open question is not seeing no-self.
Also, I've been wondering around what guys like Ramesh are saying about the inquiry. Basically, the self-inquiry puts you in silence, killing the questionner for a while. But the seeing the inexistence of self cannot happen throough the efforts of anyone. It's the "will of God" or the Totality deciding, noone else...care to shed some light about this subject that noone can decide or excpect or do anything about the actual seeing of no-self, vs look look look and pop?

Sure, there's no free will. There's no separate agent making decisions. All "decisions" are a direct result of the combining environmental and phenomenological factors. So, what "makes you look", or the act of looking, is the coming together of just the right elements in just the right moment. No external entity needed.

Maybe that's what you meant by the Totality deciding. But it stops even seeming like a decision. Just unfolding.

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The only reference point

Wherever we go we are local to where we are. That locality is vast enough to contain everything that is - which is whatever is being experienced first hand. The idea that there is a big word out there may or may not be true - it's just an idea, or speculation (handed over through external, secondhand sources, ie. people, books, TV, media, etc). 


Hence the directly known universe - the local universe - is the only universe. Your reference point is the only reference point. When you die, it's the end of everything. The world does not continue. 
Consciousness, reality, the universe, will crumble away back into the void. 


But the beautiful thing about this is, there are actually 7 billion reference points, and each of them is the only reference point. It's one of the paradoxless-paradoxes, both things are true a the same time.


However - there is no projecting out or looking in. Internal and external don't appear to be mutually exclusive. Everything that IS, is right here and now, yes? Nothing can be separate from it. Therefore the thought of some entity - either projecting or experiencing - would be outside the known universe, and also just that - a thought.

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Psychedelic drugs and Enlightenment

I spoke a little about how psilocybin played a role in my first satori in a blog post about my "epic tale". This conversation was interesting too so I thought I would share it as well.

Ever done Ayahuasca? If so, what do you make out of that experience and the things percieved under its influence?


I smoke DMT very occasionally, which is like a condensed ayahuasca trip (it's the primary psychoactive in ayahuasca).

Psychedelic experiences can be really amazing. They have potential to teach or unteach you things, be incredibly profound, clean the slate, and/or give a fresh perspective. But only in that moment. What is experienced is true and real and valid, and can even have a lasting effect, but it wont necessarily be any kind of permanent reflection of ongoing reality.

Any idea, or any experience, that is held onto or carried forth from one moment to the next, will impinge on the purity of being open to, and experiencing, the here-and-now at hand.


Ayahuasca is like direct experience of another reality. Last time I did it, it really made me question the validity of this reality. Things seen there cant possibly be a projection, because the thing that projects is dumbfounded by the experience. So I guess my real question is......... how do we know we're done for sure?
Ayahuasca shows you things about this reality that you wouldn't otherwise see. Not only that (I know I'm gonna catch hell for this) there are "beings" there (Yes I know how completely ridiculous that sounds). I've seen through the conceptual self, how can one know with any certainty that we dont have 'further,' to go? I thought liberation would clear up these questions......... it hasn't.


Well yes, I get what you're saying. It's like what Aldous Huxley describes in the Doors of Perception (which he wrote while on mescaline). If I remember correctly, he theorises that there are filters over our perception of reality that certain psychoactives can remove, making us sensitive to things happening around us that we are usually unaware of, thus bringing us closer to the reality of what's "really" going on. This was my own conclusion too. Psychedelics open up the senses, making the body the predominant experiential organ over the mind, which usually filters and distorts pure experience through categorising, judging, making assumptions, telling narratives, etc. Thus it makes sense that the body, and sense, has a more direct contact with "reality", than the mind and it's contents. The body's voice is heard far more clearly.

On a personal level, about 90% of the time I will have a subtle - to full - blown kundalini awakening when taking most psychedelics.  

It IS another reality from the "usual" reality, certainly. But they're both equally as real. Whatever is currently happening, or being experienced, in this moment, is the real reality.

And since there IS no solid, permanent reality we can grab a hold of and proclaim, "THIS is the one and only definitive reality", it seems to imply there is certainly further to go, and there is no done. Done is when you die.

This is why, as I said earlier, I think it's really important not to hold on to any past experiences, thoughts of being done, or conclusive ideas about what constitutes reality,  in order to remain open to the present and what IS actually going on, right now.
This is what it means to be "awake".


I'm not holding onto anything, merely pondering the experiences. I used to know so much for sure. What a relief I don't know shit.


Haha, nice. Yes.
If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that I don't know anything.
Very liberating :)

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What is all this nonduality stuff anyway?

"Nondual" is simply the english term for the sanskrit "advaita", both meaning "not two."


It's an interesting and fun concept to roll around in the mind. On face value it looks like one of those endless zen-like paradoxes that come up when you look deep into these things. Everything is one and at the same time obviously separate. How can that be?


Carl Sagan said, "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."


This implies, simply, that everything is interconnected. This moment right now and everything in it, exists the way it does because of the precision of the ever-changing conditions, factors and elements that have come into play and combined since the first moment of the universe. Pretty amazing, huh?


This seeming paradox of " everything is the same but separate" can be understood just by looking at the fingers on your hand. And if you look even closer at one of your fingers you will see that it's made up of separate molecules, together forming a finger. And those molecules are made up of atoms, those atoms of hadrons, those hadrons of quarks, et cetera... and not only this, but this is the recipe for all matter. Fundamentally, everything is made up of the same stuff. 

Everything in the universe is so perfectly interwoven and harmonic and conducive, because anything that wasn't entirely cohesive simply could not occur. And if it could, it wouldn't last long. Nothing can survive outside or independent of this perfect, well-oiled machine.


That is, more or less, a way to look at nonduality in a physical manner. We can approach this sensually too, which is important because our senses are the tools with which the universe is perceived.


Firstly, one should verify that everything that exists in reality, arises in direct phenomenological experience. And anything outside of that realm is purely conjecture, at best. In other words, whatever you can verify with your senses in the here and now, you can say exists. Anything that doesn't can only be speculation or hearsay, and must therefore be thrown out. Finding out what is real, is more often a process of negation than confirmation.


You can look at any of the senses, but let's start with hearing. I'm sure you've heard the old zen koan, "If a tree fell in the woods and no-one was around to hear it, would it make a sound?"


Hearing relies on sound to exist, and sound could not exist unless it was heard. You can even bring other elements into play here like the thing that hears, and the thing that makes the sound, like an eardrum and a voice box. You could then go on to say that it's the voice box of a bird and the eardrum of a human. These are all the elements that are separate (fingers), but are all crucial and necessary elements of the one phenomenon, hearing (the hand). They are not only necessary for the existence of hearing, but of each other. Look into any of the senses this way and see what you come up with.


Before the birth of the universe, and that which in the universe is contained, is the void. It's the only thing can can ever be outside of direct experience. I've heard it described as the "voidless void", because it can't really be much of a void if it contains everything, right?


The void. It can be a hard thing to get your head around and not just see it as empty space. Before the universe there wasn't empty space, there was literally nothing. Can you imagine nothing? I mean, really imagine it?


It has been spoken about the void replacing self upon enlightenment, the "no" in no-self. The self is seen as being the experiencer of reality, of the universe, looking in, outside of it. When the illusion is taken away, what is outside is nothing, the void. That in which everything arises. The nothing between thoughts. This is not to say self is the void, it's to say self is nothing.
I'll elaborate.


I've said before that advaita and anatta, nonduality and no-self, are in many ways the same revelation.
Direct, subjective, phenomenological experience. Nonduality says that everything that exists, exists here, and is interconnected. Nothing outside of direct, verifiable experience, can be said to be... 
nothing can abide, dependent/external to this perfect, well-oiled machine. This is what self is. It is separate. It separates. It removes internal from external. 


Self does not exist in subjectivity. It's core implication is that it is something that exists outside of experience, looking in. The idea of an experiencer means that it removes itself from experience, and nothing can be removed from experience. An experiencer cannot, itself, be experienced. It creates false objectivity where there can only be subjectivity. 


Self does not exist in phenomenology. It cannot be found here, anywhere. It cannot be perceived or verified by any of the senses. Don't take my word for it, try to locate it yourself. Seeing through the illusion of self is the same as seeing through the illusion of separation. It reunites internal and external. Can you locate a separate self? Do you exist? Or can you only see this one life, unfolding, in all it's harmony?

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