For some background context see the articles: Computational Metaphysics and Vedic Metaphysics, Hiranyagarbha, Scientistic Heresy, Reclaiming Genuine Religion for Humanity, Thoughts on the Outline of a Unified Science and also see Metaphysical Context.
Closely Related Articles:
The Objective Information Process & Virtual Subjective Experiences Hypothesis: A bottom up reformulation of the virtual reality hypothesis and the philosophical foundations of science without the distortions of naïve realism and all the problems and paradoxes that it entails.
System Science of Virtual
Reality: Toward the Unification of Empirical and Subjective
Science: A book that describes the core mathematical and
conceptual principles that underlie this entire work. Provides a
detailed overview of the mathematics of information system theory and
a re-derivation of quantum mechanics. Also discusses naïve realism
and the hard problem of consciousness.
What is Consciousness?
: discusses some of the main ramifications of this paradigm on
our understanding of ourselves and the nature of the world that we
experience.
Signs of an Emerging
Paradigm Shift: an article on naïve realism for the newsletter
of the Society for Scientific Exploration.
Discussing the Emerging
Paradigm on the SSE Forum: Distilled essence of my input to a
conversation on the forum of the Society for Scientific Exploration.
It has been arranged and minimally edited to expresses the emerging
vision within that conversation.
Changing How we think for
the sake of all: Distilled essence of my input to a
conversation on the Global Mindshift forum. It has been arranged and
minimally edited to express the emerging vision within that
conversation.
I very briefly describe some aspects of the virtual reality analogy and then give quotes from sources of scientific and mystic wisdom that can be seen in a new light when interpreted through this analogy. I will leave the interpretation up to you.
VR Analogy
Scientific
Wisdom
Mystic Wisdom
Imagine that there is a sentient AI character (lets call her Alice) dwelling within a metaphysically realistic virtual universe that is simulated by a computational process. This is not an arbitrary analogy – quantum physics also suggests that what we experience as the “physical universe” is a perceptual phenomenon arising from underlying information processes. See the quotes from Ross Rhodes' “Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” below in Scientific Wisdom for more.
Initially Alice, like most of the characters, is oblivious to the true nature of her situation. Through their senses they experience a virtual world of objects, people, places and events, and they assume that is all there is. But the entire virtual universe is animated by a single unified computational process. Every observable form, every event and every experience is a direct consequence of the computational process. Hence the very essence of Alice's consciousness is actually the computational process. It is the true seer of every sight, the thinker of every thought, the doer of every deed.
Whilst Alice is focused on the content of her mind and is experiencing the unfolding story of her life she is operating solely on perceptions as they are reflected in a conditioned way within memory and she interprets these experiences as being of a physical universe. But by bringing her awareness into the present moment she comes to experience things more directly and with less distortion from subconscious attitudes, expectations and beliefs. This gradually brings her closer to reality and more in tune with the essence of reality that resides within her and within all things.
Subtly or suddenly Alice comes to realise that in an absolute sense there is no Alice and no world - these things are just the objects of perception formed by an AI mind into a kind of virtual experience of a world. Behind this virtual experience and virtual world there operates a virtual-reality generative process, and ultimately all things are governed by that transcendent process. This doesn't mean that her perceptual world ceases to exist or that it is meaningless – it just means that she comes to interpret her experiences differently.
The more that Alice realises her subtle inner connection with the computational process that is all that truly is, and the more that the AI mind becomes permeated with this new way of understanding, interpreting, experiencing and living, the less likely she is to get caught up in old ways of being. The other characters in the virtual world may suffer from fear, desire and other afflictions however Alice knows that things are not what they seem. She knows that feelings are just inner signals, they shouldn't be feared or craved but appropriately responded to.
She realises that the objects in her world are objects of sense perception and she cease to have a fetishistic relation to them. For example, if you know that some money is just game money you can use it whilst playing the game but you would never think of stealing it or hoarding it or killing someone for it. Only if you are assuming that the game is all there is could you do those things.
Alice also realises that past and future exist only in the context of the life-story within her memory, and that everything truly happens within a single computational moment, a timeless Now. But in that Now there operates a quantum information process, so all possible states of being for the entire cosmos exist as potential within the multiverse, but they are not ordered according to any particular life-story. With focused consciousness she can participate in reality on a deeper level and influence things not only through causal chains “within the world” but also by subtly influencing the multiverse directly.
Most characters in the virtual reality believe that the world that they experience through the senses is "all that is". They dwell on the past or worry about the future, and they fear for their life or crave after wealth or pleasure and so on. It is these characters who would look upon Alice and describe her as being ascetic, enlightened or just a crackpot depending on their perspective. These are just perceived side-effects of getting in touch with the deeper reality and have nothing to do with Alice's real state of being.
She is no longer caught in the trap of believing that she is “just Alice”. Nor is she really a she, this is just a means by which to express these things in language, but reality goes far beyond the scope of dualist language. She is really the transcendent computational process that permeates and sustains all things. But the things are not things either, they too are the computational process, but many of those things still believe in themselves. Some characters may strive to be ascetic or become enlightened and so on but they would be missing the point. The point is that they are not what they think they are, the world is not what they think it is. If they move toward a more realistic awareness then the foundations underlying everything that they know will shift and their entire world view will have to be re-imagined. The objects that they may once have obsessed about will be seen in a new light through new eyes, especially themselves.
Rather than being a fragile, isolated and confused being in a
world Alice knows that she is really the computational process, which
is without beginning or end, that is having a transitory subjective
virtual experience through an AI mind that calls itself Alice. This
will cause her to participate in the situation from a more unified,
balanced and relaxed position. There is nothing to fear, there is a
clear pattern running through all things and nothing is by chance.
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” (Carl Jung)
"Because it is now a scientifically established fact that less than 4% of the universe is composed of matter as commonly understood modern philosophical materialists attempt to extend the definition of matter to include other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, and the curvature of space. However this opens them to further criticism from philosophers such as Mary Midgley who suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
"Let us now return to our ultimate particles and to small organizations of particles as atoms or small molecules. The old idea about them was that their individuality was based on the identity of matter in them...The new idea is that what is permanent in these ultimate particles or small aggregates is their shape and organization. The habit of everyday language deceives us and seems to require, whenever we hear the word shape or form of something, that it must be a material substratum that is required to take on a shape. Scientifically this habit goes back to Aristotle, his causa materialis and causa formalis. But when you come to the ultimate particles constituting matter, there seems to be no point in thinking of them again as consisting of some material. They are as it were, pure shape, nothing but shape; what turns up again and again in successive observations is this shape, not an individual speck of material..." (Erwin Schroedinger, Physicist)
“Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
“Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience.” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
"the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it". (Eugene Wigner)
“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?” ( Albert Einstein)
“If God speaks to man, he undoubtedly uses the language of mathematics.” (Henri Poincare)
“In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.” (Edward Everett)
“All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.” (James Clerk Maxwell, On Faraday's Lines of Force, 1856)
“If we define a religion to be a system of thought that contains unprovable statements, so it contains an element of faith, then Gödel has taught us that not only is mathematics a religion but it is the only religion able to prove itself to be one.” (John Barrow, Pi in the Sky, 1992)
Ontology is the “science or study of being: specifically, a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being; a particular system according to which problems of the nature of being are investigated” (Definitions of Ontology by Leading Philosophers) whilst “Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.” (Phenomenology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
“some perceptions are interrelated or associated to form other perceptions which are then projected onto a world putatively outside the mind.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume)
“The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations among things; outside these relations there is no reality knowable.” (Henri Poincaré)
Traditional empirical science addresses “the epistemological question [what can be known and what is unknowable] by drawing a sharp distinction between truth and empirical adequacy. [Empirical science claims] that a good theory need only provide an empirically adequate description of observable phenomena. Any unobservables, such as electrons and quarks, are simply empirical tools for describing the observable world... [hence] our epistemic knowledge is limited to the observables.”
However “Scientific realism claims that we can know about objects beyond what we observe with our bare senses, and this knowledge is what allows us to predict phenomena… The realist interpretation [of quantum mechanics] shows that we can make knowledge claims about objects, such as electrons, that are unobservable with our bare senses. This challenges the empiricist claim that quantum objects are simply empirical tools to describe observables. Thus, contrary to what we might at first think, the wave-particle duality of quantum objects provides support for the realists. We now know that quantum objects behave differently from everyday objects, and we can make an experimentally supported epistemological claim about the quantum world, a very realist claim.” (A Critique of the Empiricist Interpretation of Modern Physics (PDF))
“the positivism of many scientists, whether latent or open, is incompatible with skepticism, for it accepts without question the assumption that material effect is impossible without material cause." (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition)
"Naive realism is a common sense theory of perception. Most people, until they start reflecting philosophically, are naive realists. This theory is also known as "direct realism" or "common sense realism". Naive realism claims that the world is pretty much as common sense would have it. All objects are composed of matter, they occupy space, and have properties such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour. [It is assumed that] These properties are usually perceived correctly. So, when we look at and touch things we see and feel those things directly, and so perceive them as they really are." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_realism)
A naïve realist believes: "I ... am a human being. There is this one physical world, the space where everything exists and the time in which everything happens. There are many things in this physical world, each largely separate from the other and persisting over a span of time... My senses give me direct knowledge of reality. If I see a chair, it is because there is a chair physically where and when I see it. There are exceptions, like when I am dreaming or watching a movie, but these are rare and obviously not real. I can know things through my senses, through thinking about things, and through communication with other people. Other people's beliefs may be correct or not, but beliefs of people I respect, and beliefs held commonly by most people in my society, are usually true." (http://www.boogieonline.com/seeking/first/yesterday.html)
""materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself." (Schopenhauer, Philosopher)... an observing subject can only know material objects through the mediation of the brain and its particular organization. The way that the brain knows determines the way that material objects are experienced." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
“Useful as it is under everyday circumstances to say that the world exists 'out there' independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.” (John Wheeler)
"Noumena (the ontological reality that underlies our sensory and mental impressions of an external world) do not cause phenomena, but rather phenomena are simply the way by which our minds perceive the noumena... we participate in the reality of an otherwise unachievable world outside the mind... We cannot prove that our mental picture of an outside world corresponds with a reality by reasoning... [however] we can participate in the underlying reality that lies beyond mere phenomena." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer)
“Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying quantum theory in terms of our pictures in the everyday world. The general conclusion is that in quantum theory naive realism, although necessary at the level of observations, fails at the microscopic level.” (http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1536)
[W]e have to give up the idea of [naive] realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today." (Anton Zeilinger)... By realism, he means the idea that objects have specific features and properties — that a ball is red, that a book contains the works of Shakespeare, or that an electron has a particular spin... for objects governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, like photons and electrons, it may make no sense to think of them as having well defined characteristics. Instead, what we see may depend on how we look." (P. Ball, Physicists bid farewell to reality?, originally published by Nature but recently deleted! Excerpts can be read at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1820354/posts)
“I had come to suspect, and now felt compelled to acknowledge, that science and the physical world were products of human imagining; that we were not the cool observers of that world, but its passionate creators. We were all poets and the world was our metaphor.” (Roger S Jones)
“Quantum mechanics is increasingly applied to larger and larger objects. Even a one-ton bar proposd to detect gravity waves must be analysed quantum mechanically. In cosmology, a wavefunction for the whole universe is written to study the Big Bang. It gets harder today to nonchalantly accept the realm in which the quantum rules apply as somehow not being physically real... "Quantum mechanics forces us to abandon naive realism". And leave it at that.” (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=hKrvv35-gcMC)
"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes." (David Bohm)
“Quantum theory essentially erased the difference between matter and fields, making reality a unit that exhibits the properties of both. This single, unitary stuff gave rise to the fantastically successful algorithm now used by physicists in all calculations involving quantum theory. But nobody knows what this unitary stuff really is. Most quantum physicists, of course, stop short of calling this unitary substance consciousness.” (Norman Friedman)
Regarding wave phenomena: “The more one examines the waves of quantum mechanics, the less they resemble waves in a medium. In the 1920s, Ernst (sic) Schrodinger set out a formula which could "describe" the wave-like behavior of all quantum units, be they light or objects... For a brief time, physicists sought to visualize these quantum waves as ordinary waves traveling through some kind of a medium (nobody knew what kind) which somehow carried the quantum properties of an object. Then Max Born pointed out something quite astonishing: the simple interference of these quantum waves did not describe the observed behaviors; instead, the waves had to be interfered and the mathematical results of the interference had to be further manipulated (by "squaring" them, i.e., by multiplying the results by themselves) in order to achieve the final probability characteristic of all quantum events. It is a two-step process, the end result of which requires mathematical manipulation. The process can not be duplicated by waves alone, but only by calculations based on numbers which cycled in the manner of waves...
Richard Feynman developed an elegant model for describing the amplitude of the many waves involved in a quantum event, calculating the interference of all of these amplitudes, and using the final result to calculate a probability. However, Feynman disclaimed any insight into whatever physical process his system might be describing. Although his system achieved a result that was exactly and perfectly in accord with observed natural processes, to him it was nothing more than calculation. The reason was that, as far as Feynman or anybody else could tell, the underlying process itself was nothing more than calculation... A process that produces a result based on nothing more than calculation is an excellent way to describe the operations of a computer program. The two-step procedure of the Schrodinger equation and the Feynman system may be impossible to duplicate with physical systems, but for the computer it is trivial.
This quality of something having the appearance and effect of a wave, but not the nature of a wave, is pervasive in quantum mechanics, and so is fundamental to all things in our universe. It is also an example of how things which are inexplicable in physical terms turn out to be necessary or convenient qualities of computer operations.” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding wave / particle complementarity: “as instruments were improved, it turned out that the interference pattern observed by Young [double slit experiment] was created not by a constant sloshing against the projection screen, but by one little hit at a time, randomly appearing at the projection screen in such a way that over time the interference pattern built up. "Particles" of light were being observed as they struck the projection screen; but the eventual pattern appeared to the eye, and from mathematical analysis, to result from a wave.
Investigating the mechanics of this process turns out to be impossible, for the reason that whenever we try to observe or otherwise detect a wave we obtain, instead, a particle. The very act of observation appears to change the nature of the quantum unit, according to conventional analysis.
the "wave function" is somehow "collapsed" during observation, yielding a "particle" with measurable properties. The mechanism of this transformation is completely unknown and, because the scientifically indispensable act of observation itself changes the result, it appears to be intrinsically and literally unknowable.
As John Gribbin puts it, "nature seems to 'make the calculation' and then present us with an observed event" (J. Gribbin, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, 111.). Both the "how" and the "why" of this process can be addressed through the metaphor of a computer which is programmed to project images to create an experience for the user, who is a conscious being.”
The "how" is described structurally by a computer which runs a program. The program provides an algorithm for determining the position (in this example) of every part of the image, which is to say, every pixel that will be projected to the user. The mechanism for transforming the programming into the projection is the user interface... for viewing one part of the image or another. When the user chooses to view one part of the image, those pixels must be calculated and displayed; all other parts of the image remain stored in the computer as programming... The user can never "see" the programming, but by analysis can deduce its mathematical operation by careful observation of the manner in which the pixels are displayed. [Note that Ross Rhodes use an analogy where the observer is situated "outside" the virtual space, thus he speaks of images, users and interfaces. But a more accurate analogy is where the observer is an emergent form within the simulated space. This can be understood if one changes the term 'images' to "moments of experience"]” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding the ontological sameness of elementary particles: “If you were to study an individual quantum unit from a collection, you would find nothing to distinguish it from any other quantum unit of the same type. Nothing whatsoever. Upon regrouping the quantum units, you could not, even in principle, distinguish which was the unit you had been studying and which was another.
Roger Penrose has likened this sameness to the images produced by a computer. Imagine the letter "t." On the page you are viewing, the letter "t" appears many times. Every letter t is exactly like every other letter t. That is because on a computer, the letter t is produced by displaying a particular set of pixels on the screen. You could not, even in principle, tell one from the other because each is the identical image of a letter t. The formula for this image is buried in many layers of subroutines for displaying pixels, and the image does not change regardless of whether it is called upon to form part of the word "mathematical" or "marital".” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding quantum transitions: “It is a difficult intellectual challenge to imagine a physical object that can change from one form into another form, or move from one place to another place, without going through any transition between the two states. Zeno's paradoxes offer a rigorously logical examination of this concept... In brief, Zeno appears to have "proved" that motion is not possible, because continuity (smooth transitions) between one state and the next implies an infinite number of transitions to accomplish any change whatsoever. Zeno's paradoxes imply that space and time are discontinuous -- discrete points and discrete instants with nothing in between, not even nothing. Yet the mind reels to imagine space and time as disconnected, always seeking to understand what lies between two points or two instants which are said to be separate.
In quantum mechanics, however, there is no transition at all. Electrons are in a low energy state on one observation, and in a higher energy state on the next; they spin one way at first, and in the opposite direction next. The processes proceed step-wise; but more than step-wise, there is no time or space in which the process exists in any intermediate state.
Imagine that you are watching a movie... Now, the projectionist begins to slow the projection rate... motion which seemed so smooth and continuous when projected at 30 frames per second or so is really only a series of still shots. There is no motion in any of the pictures, yet by rapidly flashing a series of pictures depicting intermediate positions of an actor or object, the effective illusion is one of motion...Computers create images in the same manner... If the computer is quick enough, you do not notice any transition. Nevertheless, the computer's "time" is completely discrete, discontinuous, and digital...
Regarding renormalization and the 'problem' of infinities: “The difficulty arises when the highly precise quantum calculations are carried out all the way down to an actual zero distance (which is the size of a dimensionless point -- zero height, zero width, zero depth). At that point [sic], the quantum equations return a result of infinity, which is as meaningless to the physicist as it is to the philosopher... it was discovered that the infinities disappeared if one stopped at some arbitrarily small distance ... instead of proceeding all the way to an actual zero. One problem remained, however, and that was that there was no principled way to determine where one should stop... The only requirement was to stop somewhere short of the actual zero point. It seemed much too arbitrary. Nevertheless, this mathematical quirk eventually gave physicists a method for doing their calculations according to a process called "renormalization," which allowed them to keep their assumption that an actual zero point exists, while balancing one positive infinity with another negative infinity in such a way that all of the infinities cancel each other out, leaving a definite, useful number.
... this is ... a revisitation of Zeno's Achilles paradox of dividing space down to infinity. The philosophers couldn't do it, and neither can the physicists... The need to resort to such a mathematical sleight-of-hand to obtain meaningful results in quantum calculations is frequently cited as the most convincing piece of evidence that quantum theory -- for all its precision and ubiquitous application -- is somehow lacking, somehow missing something. It may be that one missing element is quantized space -- a shortest distance below which there is no space, and below which one need not calculate. [However] the computer's "space" is discrete, discontinuous, and digital...
The theory and architecture of computers lend themselves to a step-by-step approach to any and all problems. It appears that there is no presently conceived computer architecture that would allow anything but such a discrete, digitized time and space, controlled by the computer's internal clock ticking one operation at a time. Accordingly, it seems that this lack of continuity, so bizarre and puzzling as a feature of our natural world, is an inherent characteristic of a computer simulation.” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding quantized time: “With quantized time, we may imagine that the change in such an either/or property takes place in one unit of time, and that, therefore, there is no "time" at which the spin is anywhere in the middle. Without quantized time, it is far more difficult to eliminate the intervening spin directions.
... the idea that time (as well as space) is "quantized," ... is still controversial. The concept has been seriously proposed on many occasions, but most current scientific theories do not depend on the nature of time in this sense. About all scientists can say is that if time is not continuous, then the changes are taking place too rapidly to measure, and too rapidly to make any detectable difference in any experiment that they have dreamed up. The theoretical work that has been done on the assumption that time may consist of discontinuous jumps often focuses on the most plausible scale, which is related to the three fundamental constants of nature -- the speed of light, the quantum of action, and the gravitational constant. This is sometimes called the "Planck scale," involving the "Planck time,"... On this theoretical basis, the pace of time would be around 10-44 seconds... And that is much too quick to measure by today's methods, or by any method that today's scientists are able to conceive of, or even hope for.” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding non-locality: “the essence of non locality is unmediated action-at-a-distance. A non-local interaction jumps from body A to body B without touching anything in between... Without benefit of mediation, a non-local interaction effortlessly flashes across the void...
Even "flashes across the void" is a bit misleading, because "flashing" implies movement, however quick, and "across" implies distance traveled, however empty. In fact, non-locality simply does away with speed and distance, so that the cause and effect simply happen... There is no apparent transfer of energy at any speed, only an action here and a consequence there.
Non-locality for certain quantum events was theorized in the 1930s as a result of the math... In the 1960s, the theory was given a rigorous mathematical treatment by John S. Bell, who showed that if quantum effects were "local" they would result in one statistical distribution, and if "non-local" in another distribution. In the 1970s and '80s, the phenomenon was demonstrated, based on Bell's theorem, by the actual statistical distribution of experiments... the phenomenon appears recently to have been demonstrated directly at the University of Innsbruck. ("Entangled Trio to Put Nonlocality to the Test," Science 283, 1429 (Mar. 5, 1999).)
.. it was fair to ask whether apparent separations in space and time ... are fundamentally "real"; or whether, instead, they are somehow an illusion, masking a deeper reality in which all things are one, ... always connected one to another and to all. This sounds suspiciously like mysticism, and the similarity of scientific and mystical concepts led to some attempts to import Eastern philosophy into Western science.
The non-locality which appears to be a basic feature of our world also finds an analogy in the same metaphor of a computer simulation. In terms of cosmology, the scientific question is, "How can two particles separated by half a universe be understood as connected such that they interact as though they were right on top of each other?... In fact, the measured distance between any two pixels (dots) on the monitor's display turns out to be entirely irrelevant, since both are merely the products of calculations carried out in the bowels of the computer as directed by the programming. The pixels may be as widely separated as you like, but the programming generating them is forever embedded in the computer's memory in such a way that -- again speaking quite literally -- the very concept of separation in space and time of the pixels has no meaning whatsoever for the stored information... all calculations were in the CPU, regardless of the location of the pixels on the screen.” (Ross Rhodes)
Regarding the 'uncanny' utility of mathematics in the physical sciences: It is “As though physical manifestations themselves were being produced by a mathematical formula.
Even though the mathematical formulas were initially developed to describe the behavior of [the] universe, these formulas turn out to govern the behavior of the universe with an exactitude that defies our concept of mathematics. As Nick Herbert puts it, "Whatever the math does on paper, the quantumstuff does in the outside world." (N. Herbert, Quantum Reality, 41) ... The backwards logic implied by quantum mechanics, where the mathematical formalism seems to be more "real" than the things and objects of nature, is unavoidable.
Mr. Herbert states that, "Quantum theory is a method of representing quantumstuff mathematically: a model of the world executed in symbols." (N. Herbert, Quantum Reality, 41) ... the equivalence between quantum symbolism and universal reality must be more than an oddity: it must be the very nature of reality... the task for the Western rationalist is to find a mechanical model from our experience corresponding to a "world executed in symbols."
An example which literally fits this description is the computer simulation, which is a graphic representation created by executing programming code. The programming code itself consists of nothing but symbols, such as 0 and 1. Numbers, text, graphics and anything else you please are coded by unique series of numbers. These symbolic codes have no meaning in themselves, but arbitrarily are assigned values which have significance according to the operations of the computer [internally meaningful]. The symbols are manipulated according to the various step-by-step sequences (algorithms) by which the programming instructs the computer how to create the graphic representation. The picture presented on-screen to the user is a world executed in colored dots; the computer's programming is a world (the same world) executed in symbols. Anyone who has experienced a computer crash knows that the programming (good or bad) governs the picture, and not vice versa. All of this forms a remarkably tight analogy to the relationship between the quantum math on paper, and the behavior of the "quantumstuff" in the outside world.” (Ross Rhodes)
"The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics? The truth is that science started its modern career by taking over ideas derived from the weakest side of the philosophies of Aristotle's successors. In some respects it was a happy choice. It enabled the knowledge of the seventeenth century to be formulated so far as physics and chemistry were concerned, with a completeness which lasted to the present time. But the progress of biology and psychology has probably been checked by the uncritical assumption of half-truths. If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations." (Alfred North Whitehead)
"The concepts of science show strong similarities to the concepts of the mystics... The philosophy of mystical traditions, the perennial philosophy, is the most consistent philosophical background to modern science." (Fritjof Capra)
“Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to model objective reality.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science)
"There is this hope, I cannot promise you whether or when it will be realized - that the mechanistic paradigm, with all its implications in science as well as in society and our own private life, will be replaced by an organismic or systems paradigm that will offer new pathways for our presently schizophrenic and self-destructive civilization." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy)
"In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world-view emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process." (Fritjof Capra)
"While each scientific theory selects out and abstracts from the world's complexity a peculiar set of relations, philosophy cannot favor any particular region of human enterprise. Through conceptual experimentation it must construct a consistency that can accommodate all dimensions of experience, whether they belong to physics, physiology, psychology, biology, ethics, etc.." (Alfred North Whitehead)
"In a comprehensive view of nature, the physical world is seen as a patterning of patternings..." (Amy Edmondson)
"Imagine yourselves in terms of a moving-picture scenario. You've all seen moving pictures run backwards, where people undive out of the swimming pool back onto the board. I'm going to run a moving picture of you backwards. You've just had breakfast; ... all the food comes out of your mouth onto the plate; ... and into the cans, and they go back to the store; ...then they go back to the factories ...and they finally get back to pineapples in Hawaii. Then the pineapples separate out, go back into the air; the raindrops go back into the sky, and so forth.
But in the ... reversal of a month practically everything has come together that you now have on board you, gradually becoming your hair and your skin and so forth, whereas a month ago, it was some air coming over the mountains. In other words, you get completely deployed. I want you to begin to think of yourselves in an interesting way as each one of these.
... you would see chemical elements gradually getting closer and closer together, and, finally, getting into those various vegetable places and into roasts and, tighter and tighter, into cans, into the store, finally getting to just being you or me-temporarily, becoming my hair, my ear, some part of my skin-and then that breaks up and goes off and gets blown around as dust.
Each of us is a very complex pattern integrity with which we were born." (R. Buckminster Fuller)
"The process metaphysics elaborated in Process and Reality (Whitehead) proposes that the fundamental elements of the universe are occasions of experience. According to this notion, what people commonly think of as concrete objects are actually successions of occasions of experience. Occasions of experience can be collected into groupings; something complex such as a human being is thus a grouping of many smaller occasions of experience. According to Whitehead, everything in the universe is characterized by experience (which is not to be confused with consciousness); there is no mind-body duality under this system, because "mind" is simply seen as a very developed kind of experiencing." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy)
“The PEAR lab at Princeton, under the direction of Professor Robert Jahn, uses a random event generator (REG) to conduct their trials. The REG is, essentially, a kind of electronic coin flipper that, if left alone, would generate as many heads as tails over a number of coin flips. However, PEAR's volunteers - normal people who do not claim to have any ESP powers whatever - are able to influence the REG to come up with more heads than tails, or vice versa. Certainly, they cannot make it come up heads every time, but the data shows that the influence is statistically relevant and much greater than chance [ten million to one]. This is done without the benefit of electrodes attached to the head or any other kind of connection. More remarkable still, the volunteers do not even have to be in the same room with the REG. The lab in Princeton has produced results from volunteers as far away as Hungary and Brazil that are the same as those who are sitting just a few feet from the machine. Distance is irrelevant.” (http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa062298.htm)
The results of the PEAR/REG experiments are "empirical facts that are anomalies from the perspective of standard (mainstream) scientific models." (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/conclusions.html)
"Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism... favoring "Becoming" over "Being" and "Non-being" which logically follows from Being, that is to say, it does not characterize change as illusory but as the cornerstone of metaphysical reality, or ontology... Whitehead's ideas were a significant development of the idea of panpsychism (also known as panexperientialism, because of Whitehead’s emphasis on experience)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy)
"Panpsychism, in philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind, or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind... This is not to say that panpsychism believes that all matter is alive or even conscious but rather that the constituent parts of matter are composed of some form of mind and are sentient.
Panpsychism claims that everything is sentient and that there are either many separate minds, or one single mind that unites everything that is. The concept of the unconscious, made popular by the psychoanalysts, made possible a variant of panpsychism that denies consciousness from some entities while still asserting the ubiquity of mind.
Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead is a weaker variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with fully-fledged minds.
Panprotoexperientialism is a weaker variation still, which credits all entities with non-physical properties that are precursors to phenomenal consciousness (or phenomenal consciousness in a latent, undeveloped form) but not with cognition itself, or with conscious awareness. " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism)
Intersubjectivity in its strongest ontological meaning implies "mutual co-arising and engagement of interdependent subjects, or intersubjects, which creates their respective experience. It is ontological. Strong or ontological intersubjectivity relies on co-creative nonphysical presence, and brings distinct subjects into being out of a prior matrix of relationships." (Christian de Quincey)
"Materialism arbitrarily excludes the possibility that reality has a meaningful nonmaterial aspect, objectivism arbitrarily excludes the possibility that reality has a meaningful subjective aspect, and although Cartesian dualism technically excludes neither, it arbitrarily denies that the mental and material, or subjective and objective, sides of reality share common substance." (C.M. Langan)
"Our bodies are physical, but life is metaphysical. Housed in a temporary arrangement of energy as cells, life is a pattern integrity far more complex than the knot or the wave. Remember that all the material present in the cells of your body seven years ago has been completely replaced today, somehow showing up with the same arrangement, color, and function. It doesn't matter whether you ate bananas or tuna fish for lunch. A human being processes thousands of tons of food, air, and water in a lifetime. Just as a slip knot tied in a segment of cotton rope, which is spliced to a piece of nylon rope...(and so on) can be slid along the rope from material to material without changing its "pattern integrity," we too slide along the diverse strands supplied by Universe-as "self-rebuilding, beautifully designed pattern integrities." No weight is lost at the moment of death. Whatever "life" is, it's not physical.
The key is consciousness. ... Life is made of awareness and thought, not flesh and blood. Each human being embodies a unique pattern integrity, evolving with every experience and thought. The total pattern of an individual's life is inconceivably complex and ultimately eternal. No human being could ever completely describe such a pattern, as he can the overhand knot; that capability is relegated to the "Greater Intellectual Integrity of Eternally Regenerative Universe"." (Amy Edmondson)
There are "two trajectories in current history: one aiming toward hegemony, acting rationally within a lunatic doctrinal framework as it threatens survival; the other dedicated to the belief that 'another world is possible', ... challenging the reigning ideological system and seeking to create constructive alternatives of thought action and institutions." (Noam Chomsky)
"Mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dreams, and the like, is necessarily pathologic and destructive to life." (Gregory Bateson)
"with our thoughts we make the world" (Buddha)
"The effort to understand yourself is Yoga" (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“Mysticism … is the pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality…through direct experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is …an important source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism)
“For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival...” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“I have often said God is creating this entire world full and entire in this present now... There where time never penetrates, where no image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspect of the soul God creates the entire cosmos.” (Meister Eckhart)
“Q: What is false, the world, or my knowledge of it?
M: Is
there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what you
know? You may postulate a world beyond the mind, but it will remain a
concept, unproven and unprovable. Your experience is your proof, and
it is valid for you only. Who else can have your experience, when the
other person is only as real as he appears in your experience?”
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“To Sankara the world is only relatively real (Vyavaharika Satta). He advocated Vivarta-Vada or the theory of appearance or superimposition (Adhyasa). Just as snake is superimposed on the rope in twilight [when one mistakes a rope for a snake], this world and body are superimposed on Brahman or the Supreme Self . If you get knowledge of the rope, the illusion of snake in the rope will vanish. Even so, if you get knowledge of Brahman or the Imperishable, the illusion of body and world will disappear. In Vivarta-Vada, the cause produces the effect without undergoing any change in itself. Snake is only an appearance on the rope. The rope has not transformed itself into a snake, like milk into curd. Brahman is immutable and eternal. Therefore, It cannot change Itself into the world. Brahman becomes the cause of the world through Maya, which is Its inscrutable mysterious power or Sakti.” (http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
“Q: Are you a part of the world that I have in consciousness, or
are you independent?
M: What you see is yours [experiential world]
and what I see is mine [transcendence]. The two have little in
common.
Q: There must be some common factor which unites us?
M: To find
the common factor you must abandon all distinctions [detach from the
world of ideas]. Only the universal is in common [transcendence
underlies the world of ideas].” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient and disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is distorted and coloured by feeling of like and dislike. Make your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones, and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity and charity.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
"In the final analysis our compass must be our relationship with a central order . . . " (Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond)
"We have fallen into a place were everything is music... The
singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor...
They derive from a slow and
powerful root that we can't see.
Stop the words now.
Open the
window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and
out." (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
"Cut the root of a tree and the leaves will wither; cut the root of your mind [naive, habitual interpretation and comprehension] and samsara [world illusion] falls. The light of any lamp dispels in a moment the darkness of long kalpas [aeons]; the strong light of the [higher] Mind in but a flash will burn the veil of ignorance.
Whoever clings to mind sees not the truth of what's beyond the mind. Whoever strives to practice dharma [spiritual path] finds not the truth beyond-practice.
To know what is beyond both mind and practice one should cut cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked. One should thus break away from all distinctions and remain at ease." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra)
“Q: If the immovable [transcendent reality] cannot be known,
what is the meaning and purpose of its realization?
M: To realize
the immovable is to become immovable. And the purpose is the good of
all that lives.
Q: Life is movement, Immobility is death. Of what use is death to
life?
M: I am talking of immovability, not immobility. You become
immovable in righteousness. You become a power which gets all things
right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind
remains deep and quiet.
Q: As I watch my mind I find it changing all the time, moods
succeeding moods in infinite variety, while you seem to be
perpetually in the same mood of cheerful benevolence.
M: Moods are
in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being
fascinated with the content of your consciousness. When you reach the
deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's
surface-play affects you very little.
Q: There will be play all the same?
M: A quiet mind is not a
dead mind.
Q: Consciousness is always in movement - it is an observable fact.
Immovable consciousness is a contradiction. When you talk of a quiet
mind, what is it? Is not mind the same as consciousness?
M: We
must remember that words are used in many different ways according to
the context. The fact is that there is little difference between the
conscious and the unconscious - they are essentially the same. The
waking state differs from deep sleep [due to] the presence of the
witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind and that
part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness
appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness.
Sadhana [path leading to realization] consists in the witness turning
back, first on his conscious, then upon himself in his own awareness.
Self awareness is Yoga [union with existence].” (Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj)
"Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics... endeavour to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls." (Abraham Heschel)
"And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the glory of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect." (Bible, 2 Corinthians, 3:18)
"...To bring Peace to All, one must first discipline and control one's own mind" (Buddha)
"Mahamudra or the "Great Seal" ["Great Symbol" or "Supreme Gesture"] refers to a Mahayana Buddhist system of meditation on the nature of the mind and is undertaken for realizing Enlightenment - the complete elimination from the mind of all delusions and obstacles...
[It involves] meditation to develop mental quiescence (samatha) and penetrative insight (vipasyana). The former is the achievement of single-minded concentration in which you reach the mind's basic or natural level of blissful, clear, bare awareness, free from mental dullness, agitation and wandering. Penetrative insight is into Voidness or the true, transparent-like nature of reality in terms of this pure, mirror-like mind. With the joint achievement of both, you eliminate the darkness of ignorance that had been obscuring your realisation of what had been the case all along. By familiarising yourself with your innate, pure, pristine awareness of reality, coupled with an Enlightened Motive, you eventually become a totally awakened being, a Buddha with the full ability to help others." (Alexander Berzin)
"Buddha gave this as the ultimate / final teaching. It leads to a direct experience of the mind." (Topga Yulgyal Rinpoche)
"In Mahamudra all one's sins [delusion, agitation] are burned; in Mahamudra one is released from the prison of this world [entrapment in illusion]. This is the dharma's supreme torch. Those who disbelieve it are fools, who ever wallow in misery and sorrow...
To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice. The path of no-practice is the way of all buddhas. He who treads that path reaches buddhahood...
If without effort you remain loosely in the natural state, soon Mahamudra you will win and attain the nonattainment.
To know what is beyond both mind and practice one should cut cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked. One should thus break away from all distinctions and remain at ease.
The supreme understanding transcends all this and that. The supreme action embraces great resourcefulness without attachment. The supreme accomplishment is to realize immanence without hope. At first a yogi feels his mind is tumbling like a waterfall; in mid-course like the Ganges , it flows on slow and gentle; in the end it is a great vast ocean where the lights of son and mother merge in one." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra)
“I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells; for when you are at that center within you, and I am at that place within me, we shall be One” (Crazy Horse, Native American Lakota Tribe)
“Q: Must I not use effort to arrest the movements of the
mind?
M: It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look
between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to
walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet - you just find
your way between.
Q: If I use my will to control the mind, it only strengthens the
ego.
M: Of course. When you fight you invite a fight. But when you
do not resist you meet with no resistance. When you refuse to play
the game, you are out of it.
Q: How long will it take me to get free of the mind?
M: It may
take a thousand years, but really no time is required. All you need
is to be in dead earnest. Here the will is the deed. If you are
sincere, you have it. After all, it is a matter of attitude. Nothing
stops you from being a gnani [knower of the Highest Knowledge] here
and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of
impersonal being. It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires
and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in
your natural state.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“To Sankara, the Jiva or the individual soul is only relatively real [exists only in the world of appearance]. Its individuality lasts only so long as it is subject to unreal Upadhis or limiting conditions due to Avidya [ignorance]. The Jiva identifies itself with the body, mind and the senses, when it is deluded by Avidya or ignorance. It thinks, it acts and enjoys, on account of Avidya. In reality it is not different from Brahman or the Absolute [transcendent reality]. The Upanishads declare emphatically: ‘Tat Tvam Asi—That Thou Art.’…the Jiva or the empirical self becomes one with Brahman when it gets knowledge of Brahman. When knowledge dawns in it through annihilation of Avidya, it is freed from its individuality and finitude and realises its essential Satchidananda nature. It merges itself in the ocean of bliss. The river of life joins the ocean of existence. This is the Truth.
The release from Samsara [dwelling in the world of appearances] means, according to Sankara, the absolute merging of the individual soul in Brahman due to dismissal of the erroneous notion that the soul is distinct from Brahman. According to Sankara, Karma and Bhakti are means to Jnana which is Moksha [liberation].” (http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
“M: The perceiver of the world, is he prior to the world, or does he come into being along with the world?
Q: What a strange question! Why do you ask such strange
questions?
M: Unless you know the correct answer, you will not
find peace.
Q: When I wake up in the morning, the world is already there,
waiting for me. Surely the world comes into being first. I do, but
much later, at the earliest at my birth. The body mediates between me
and the world. Without the body there would be neither me nor the
world.
M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content
of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of
consciousness, which changes eternally without changing you in any
way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.
Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and
misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the little watery lives are
in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you
and cannot be without you.
Q: We call it God.
M: God is only an idea in your mind. The
fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I
am’. Remove the ‘here and now’, the ‘I am’ remains,
unassailable. The world exists in memory, memory comes into
consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the
reflection of the light on the waters of existence.” (Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I am That’, p190)
“The main purpose of jnana meditation is to withdraw the mind and emotions from perceiving life and oneself in a deluded way so that one may behold and live in attunement with Reality, or Spirit.” (yogaworld.org /jnana.htm)
"Do nought with the body but relax; shut firm the mouth and silent remain; empty your mind and think of nought. Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest. Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to nought. Thus practicing, in time you will reach buddhahood.
The practice of mantra and paramita [various practices], instruction in the sutras and precepts [ancient writings], and teaching from the schools and scriptures [mystic wisdom], will not bring realization of the innate truth. For if the mind when filled with some desire should seek a goal, it only hides the light." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra)
"The way is for ever nameless.
Though the uncarved block
is small no one in the world dare claim its allegiance.
Should
lords and princes be able to hold fast to it
The myriad creatures
will submit of their own accord,
Heaven and earth will unite and
sweet dew will fall,
And the people will be equitable, though no
one so decrees.
Only when it [the uncarved block] is cut are there
names.
As soon as there are names one ought to know that it is
time to stop.
Knowing when to stop one can be free from danger."
(Tao te Ching)
"A man of highest virtue [connection to the source] does not keep to virtue [the idea of virtue] and that is why he has virtue. A man of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue [is occupied by the idea of being virtuous] and that is why he is without virtue [he is attached to the ‘idea’ hence disconnected from reality]. The former never acts yet leaves nothing undone [flows freely with the Way]. The latter acts but there are things left undone [believing that they are the doer].
A man of the highest benevolence acts [acts on the idea of harmony], but from no ulterior motive [selfless]. A man of the highest rectitude acts [acts in conformity to rules], but from ulterior motive [egoic].
A man most conversant in the rites acts [acts according to traditions and laws that are cut-off from their meaning], but when no one responds rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force.
Hence when the Way [connection to reality] was lost there was virtue [the idea of being in contact with reality]; when virtue was lost there was benevolence [the idea of harmony]; when benevolence was lost there was rectitude [conformity to rules]; when rectitude was lost there were the rites [meaningless traditions].
The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty and good faith, and the beginning of disorder." (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching)
“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Again,
ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not
forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I
say unto you, Swear not at all: neither by heaven ... nor by the
earth ... neither by Jerusalem [earthly kingdom] ... Neither shalt
thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or
black [ones ego is not the sovereign of ones body]. But let your
communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than
these cometh of evil.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye
resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law,
and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also... Give to him
that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not
thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you ... That ye may be the children of
your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the
evil, and on the good ... Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect.
After this manner therefore
pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us
this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses [delusional
actions], as we forgive those that trespass against us. And lead us
not into temptation but deliver us from evil [self-perpetuating
delusion]: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever. Amen.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where
moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and
steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt ... For where your treasure is there will
your heart be also.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if
thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say
unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what
ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the
fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather
into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much
better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit
unto his stature? ... your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need
of all these things [food, clothes, etc].
But seek ye first the
kingdom of God , and his righteousness; and all these things [life,
health, food, etc] shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no
thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the
things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
(Bible, Mat:5:29 - 6:34)
“That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman – that thou art.” (Sankaracharya)
"In orthodox Christianity there is a dangerous inclination to abandon the ecstatic dimension of our relatedness to God... By contrast, the great saints kept the fire of ecstasy alive and understood our capacity to praise God in creation as a form of participation in life's ecstasy." (Dorothy Soelle)
“Q: We Europeans, find it very difficult to keep quiet. The
world is too much with us.
M: Oh, no, you are dreamers too. We
differ only in the content of our dreams. You are after perfection -
in the future. We are intent on finding it in the Now. The limited
only is perfectible. The unlimited is already perfect. You are
perfect, only you don't know it. Learn to know yourself and you will
discover wonders.
All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self; all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing - give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond. ” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
"In each generation she [wisdom] passes into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets." (Bible, Wisdom 7:27)
"Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; she calls out at the street corners, she delivers her message at the city gates." (Bible, Proverbs. 1:20-21)
"In the days to come - it is the Lord who speaks - I will pour out my spirit on all humankind. Their sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people shall dream dreams." (Bible, Acts 2:17-18)
"Be at peace and know there is a clear pattern that runs through all things. Nothing is by chance." (Eileen Caddy)
"That which is the subtle essence, in it is the self of all that exists. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou ... art it." (Chandogya Upanishad 4:10:1-3)
"In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. This Word was with God in the beginning. Through it all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through it. All that came to be had life in it and that life was the light of the people, a light that shines in the dark a light that darkness could not overpower... But to all who did accept this Word it gave the power to become children of God" (Bible, John. 1:1-5,12)
“God is constantly speaking only one thing. God's speaking is one thing. In this one utterance God speaks the Son and at the same time the Holy Spirit and all creatures.” (Meister Eckhart)
"Wisdom is eternal, for it precedes every beginning and all created reality... [It is] everywhere... in every tastable thing... burning in all things... the animating power of things... [Wisdom] tastes us. And there is nothing more delicious to comprehend." (Nicholas of Cusa)
"[Wisdom] pervades and permeates all things... [She is] a breath of the power of God [and] a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God's active power, image of his goodness... Although alone, she can do all; herself unchanging, she makes all things new." (Bible, Wisdom 7:24-26)
"Without the Word of God no creature has meaning. God's Word is in all creation, visible and invisible. The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests in every creature. Now this is how the spirit is in the flesh - the Word is indivisible from God." (Hildegard of Bingen)
"The whole world... [is] a certain representation of the divine wisdom conceived within the mind of the Father." (Thomas Aquinas)
"the seeds, [are] the spirit and the symbol, shen and xiang, that unfold into events." (I Ching, trans Stephen Karcher)
“Brahman is not an object, as It is Adrisya, beyond the reach of the eyes. Hence the Upanishads declare: “Neti Neti—not this, not this....” This does not mean that Brahman is a negative concept, or a metaphysical abstraction, or a nonentity, or a void. It is not another. It is all-full, infinite, changeless, self-existent, self-delight, self-knowledge and self-bliss. It is Svarupa, essence. It is the essence of the knower. It is the Seer (Drashta), Transcendent (Turiya) and Silent Witness (Sakshi)...
The world is not an illusion according to Sankara. The world is relatively real (Vyavaharika Satta), while Brahman is absolutely real (Paramarthika Satta). The world is the product of Maya [appearances] or Avidya [ignorance]. The unchanging Brahman appears as the changing world through Maya [outer (representation) flows through inner (awareness) creating observable forms within consciousness]. Maya is a mysterious indescribable power of the Lord which hides the real and manifests itself as the unreal: Maya is not real, because it vanishes when you attain knowledge of the Eternal [the underlying virtual-reality generative process]. It is not unreal also, because it exists till knowledge dawns in you. The superimposition of the world on Brahman is due to Avidya or ignorance.” ( http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
"Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, reason and sense of self: these are the eight divisions of My nature... This nature is of a lower order... know that there exists besides, My other superior nature, which is the essence by which the world is maintained... Realise that all created beings take birth in both these. I am the origin of this cosmos and also its end... there is nothing else higher than Me. Like a row of beads strung together, so is all which is here strung on Me...
I am the life in all living beings... know Me as the eternal seed in all created things, I am the intelligence of the intelligent, and the magnificence of the magnificent... I am the strength of all the strong...
Those without wisdom regard Me, who am imperceptible, as being perceptible, failing to realise my superior, supreme, immutable form... Being enveloped in My mysterious power (Yoga-Maya), I am not manifest to all. The ignorant do not realise that I am unborn and immutable... I know all created beings in the past and present... and those that will be, but no one knows Me... All creatures in the world are immersed in ignorance... the result of the delusion caused by the dualities arising from desire and hate [attachment leading to immersion in the world illusion] ... But the virtuous, whose sin [confusion, agitation] has ended, escape from the ignorance caused by the dualities... those who realise me as existing in the physical plane [empirical], the divine planes [transcendent], and also in what concerns sacrifices [not being the 'doer', the universal essence is the only doer], have a mind which is focussed and know Me even at the time of death [in one's deepest subconscious]." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 7)
"The absolute, Divine Mind, is all that is in everything that is... Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is. Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity... There is only one mirror without flaw: the Divine, in whom what is revealed is received as it is. For this mirror is not essentially different from any existing thing. Rather in every existing thing it is that which is: it is the universal form of being." (Nicholas of Cusa)
"It is God whom human beings know in every creature." (Hildegard of Bingen)
"Though words are spoken to explain the void, the void as such can never be expressed. Though we say "the mind is bright as light", it is beyond all words and symbols. Although the mind is void in essence, all things it embraces and contains." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra)
"This very body... is called the ksetra [field], and he who knows it is called the ksetrajna [the knower of the field]... Know that I am the ksetrajna in all ksetras... I hold that, knowledge of the field and of its knower is true knowledge... who its knower is and what his powers, I shall explain briefly.
I will tell you what is to be known... [the ultimate goal of knowledge] It is the Supreme Brahman [the transcendent virtual-reality generative process], without beginning, said to be neither imperishable nor perishable... He pervades everything, abiding in it...He gives the impression of having the qualities of the senses, yet is without the senses. Though unattached [not believing in the world illusion], He still supports everything. Void of qualities, He enjoys them nevertheless. He is outside and within all things. He is immoveable and yet moveable. Subtle, He is incapable of being known. Far away, He is still near. Undivided, he is still broken up among all things [the transcendent is One at its source but distributed throughout the empirical world]. He must be realised as one who, supporting all things, destroys them and refashions them again. He is said to be the Radiance among radiances, beyond darkness, Knowledge, the object of knowledge, and that which can be known only through knowledge [cannot be perceived by the senses but only inferred, intuited and experienced as one's inner-most awareness]. He is seated in the hearts of everyone [the inner essence of all things].
Know that prakriti [nature, mechanical existence, causality] and purusha [soul, consciousness, will] are both without beginning. Know also that all forms and constituents arise from prakriti. Prakriti (nature) is said to be the cause behind the act, its instrument and its doer, while purusha (soul) is said to be the cause behind the experience of pleasure and pain. When purusha is positioned in prakriti, it enjoys the constituents born of prakriti [immersion in and identification with the perceptual stream. This marriage with the constituents is instrumental in its taking birth in good and bad wombs [empirical manifestation or samsara].
This Being [the virtual-reality generative process that operates within the transcendent context] who, close to prakriti, witnesses its constituents, consents to them, adds to them, and experiences them, is termed the Great Lord, the Supreme Soul, the Supreme Purusha which dwells in the body [transcendent space].
Whatever is born, moveable [empirical forms] or immoveable [transcendent processes], comes into being through the union of the ksetra and the ksetrajna [field and the knower of the field].
He who sees the Supreme Lord [transcendent process], who is present equally in all creatures, who is not destroyed even when they are, he may be said to have truly perceived. Perceiving the Lord as equally pervading everywhere, he does not let his self-sense [egoic delusion] destroy his true Self [awareness of ones transcendent nature] and, in that way, he attains a state of excellence [true understanding and alignment with reality]. He who perceives that all aspects of actions are performed only through prakriti and also that the self is a non-doer [universal consciousness is the only doer], he may be said to have truly perceived. On perceiving that the multifarious aspect of things is located in one point [the transcendent process], from where it extends severally, he attains the Brahman [union with reality].
Without beginning, devoid of qualities, the Supreme Self, imperishable, though stationed in the body, neither acts nor is touched in any way... Just as ether, pervading everything, is unsmeared on account of its rarefied nature, in the same way the Self, present in everybody, is not besmirched.
Just as the Sun, alone, lights up this entire world, so also does the Keeper of the field light up this entire field... those who in this way, through the eye of wisdom, perceive the difference between the field and the one who knows it, and the manner of release of all beings from prakriti [overcoming the world illusion through detachment, transcendent knowledge and unconditioned awareness], they obtain the Supreme." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 13)
“Beyond the senses there are objects, beyond the objects there is the mind, beyond the mind there is the intellect. The Great Self is beyond the intellect. Beyond the Great Self there is the unmanifest [transcendent context], beyond the unmanifest there is purusha [cosmic Person, the spirit, the transcendent process]. Beyond the spirit there is nothing – that is the goal, end of the journey.” (Katha Upanishad 1:3:10-11)
“I have pervaded this universe through My imperceptible form. All created things are in Me but I am not in them... However, these created beings do not abide in Me. Behold this, My Divine Yoga. My spirit, which created these beings, is embodied in them but not in them... Just as the great wind [ether], blowing everywhere, is forever contained in space, likewise are all created beings in Me. Know this.
All created things are absorbed into My prakriti [transcendent nature] at the end of a kalpa [one complete cycle of transcendent creation] and, when a kalpa begins, I recreate them... Seizing hold of My own prakriti, I fashion again and again this great number of beings which is helpless, being subject to prakriti [they cannot but act out their nature]... since I exist as if indifferent, unattached to My action, these actions do not bind Me [God does not fall for the illusion so there is no karma]... Under My direction, prakriti creates the moveable and immovable universe.
I am all that makes holy or which can be known... the ultimate state, the supporter, the lord, the witness, the dwelling, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the destruction, the existence, the place of repose and "the imperishable seed"... I am immortality as well as death, the imperishable and perishable too... I am the beneficiary and lord of all sacrifices... I am the same towards all creatures. To me no one is unliked or dear. But I am embodied in those who worship Me with devotion [focus their mind beyond the illusion of the senses and into the underlying transcendent processes], and they in Me.” (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 9)
“Consider the difference in our actions and God's actions.
We
often ask, “Why did you do that?” or “Why did I act like
that?”
We do act, and yet everything we do is God's creative
action.
We look back and analyse the events of our lives, but
there is another way of seeing, a backward-and-forward-at-once
vision, that is not rationally understandable.
Only God can
understand it...
Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace.
We sleep in
God's unconsciousness. We wake in God's open hand...
Who are we then in this complicated world-tangle, that is really
just the single, straight line down at the beginning of
ALLAH?
Nothing. We are emptiness.” (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
“When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one.
When
you are with no one but me, you're with everyone.
Instead of being
so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many,
you're nothing. Empty.” (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
“Don't run around this world looking for a hole to hide
in.
There are wild beast in every cave!...
The only real rest
comes when you're alone with God.
Live in the nowhere that you
came from, even though you have an address here.
That's why you
see things in two ways...
You have eyes that see from that
nowhere, and eyes that judge distances, how high and how low.
You
own two shops, and you run back and forth.
Try to close the one
that's a fearful trap, getting always smaller...
Keep open the
shop where you're not selling fishhooks any more.
You are the
free-swimming fish.” (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
“I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one...” (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
"There is a thing confusedly formed, born before heaven and
earth.
Silent and void It stands alone and does not change, goes
round and does not weary.
It is capable of being the mother of the
world.
I know not its name so I style it 'the way'.
The way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is like
the ancestor of the myriad creatures.
Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there.
I know not
who's son it is.
It images the forefather of God.
Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; ... [honoured as an offering then discarded and trampled on]
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?
It is
empty without being exhausted: the more it works the more comes out.
The spirit of the valley never dies. [flow, the ability to
'channel']
This is called the mysterious female. [the primal
existential potential that nourishes all things]
The gateway of
the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth.
Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there, [only its effects can
be perceived because it is the inner most essence of perception and
awareness]
Yet use will never drain it.
It gives them life and rears them.
It gives them life yet
claims no possession;
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
It
is the steward yet exercise no authority.
Such is called the
mysterious virtue. [it manifests the entire cosmos but it doesn't act
as an entity 'within' the world, it is the inner essence 'of' the
world]
Its upper part is not dazzling;
Its lower part is not
obscure.
Dimly visible, it cannot be named and returns to that
which is without substance.
This is called the shape that has no
shape, the image that is without substance.
This is called
indistinct and shadowy. [information system theoretic]
The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects. [the Way is the most shadowy ruler, it is intangible but it causally manifest everything that is and happens]
When his task is accomplished and his work done the people all say, 'It happened to us naturally.'
As a thing the way is shadowy, indistinct.
Indistinct and
shadowy,
Yet within it is an image;
Shadowy and
indistinct,
Yet within it is a substance.
Dim and dark,
Yet
within it is an essence.
This essence is quite genuine
[ontologically exists unlike empirical forms, i.e. consciousness
exists and all observed forms and ideas are modifications of
consciousness]
And within it is something that can be tested.
[i.e. amenable to direct experience, it is our innermost Self]
The way in its passage through the mouth is without flavour.
It
cannot be seen, [it is the 'seeing' within sight]
It cannot be
heard,
Yet it cannot be exhausted by use." (Tao te Ching by
Lao Tzu)
“The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named Dark Animal
Goddess. [the primal existential potential that nourishes all
things]
The door of the Dark Animal Goddess
Is called the root
of heaven and earth.
Like an endless thread she endures.
You can call upon her
easily. [it is our inner most essence, the substrate of pure
awareness]
He who has found this mother understands he is a child.
[the egoic isolated illusion disappears and we see that we are
totally dependent on ‘her’]
When he understands he is her
child and clings to her. [drops the false identification with the
body and re-identifies with pure awareness]
He will be without
danger when the body dies.” [the body is a transitory pattern of
light but awareness is the light] (I Ching, Total I Ching: Myths for
Change, pg87)
"The Book of Concealed Mystery" is the book of the
equilibrium of balance.
For before there was equilibrium,
countenance beheld not countenance.
And the kings of ancient time
were dead, and their crowns were found no more; and the earth was
desolate.
This equilibrium hangeth in that region which is
negatively existent in the Ancient One. [potentiality as opposed to
actuality]
Thus were those powers equiponderated which were not
yet in perceptible existence. [nothing is perceptible since there are
no empirical perceivers and no empirical perceptual processes]
In
His form ... existeth the equilibrium: it is incomprehensible, it is
unseen.
... the kingdom of the restored world was formed from the
kingdom of the destroyed world... [the kingdom of the destroyed world
is that of unbalanced force]
It was formless and void, and
darkness upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of the Elohim
vibrating upon the face of the waters.
But there are excavations
of excavations. (The excavation is the receptacle, like that which is
hollowed out, or carved out, like a cave...)
"And the Elohim
said let there be light, and there was light" [perception
leading to empirical dynamics] ... since He Himself spake, and it was
done.
Like as it is written: "And the Elohim saw the
substance of the light, that it was good."
Microprosopus
[simulator] was at first alone ( ... separated from his bride [the
simulation world]). But all things returned into the unity. (...
Microprosopus returned to his bride [the simulator starts and the
simulation begins]" (Kabbalah Denudata, Book of Concealed
Mystery)
"... the Arcanum of the Arcana is what men can
neither know nor comprehend, nor can they apply their rules of
science to it." [the ultimate Source "is what it is"
and cannot be defined by anything less than "what it is" it
cannot be 'compressed' and held in one's mind]
It is said that
before the Ancient of the Ancient Ones, the Concealed One of the
Concealed Ones, instituted the formation of the King (under certain
members and paths of Micropsrosopus) and the diadems of the diadems
(that is, the varied coverings whereby the superfluity of the Lights
is circumscribed); beginning and end existed not (that is there was
neither communication nor reception)
Therefore He carved out (that
is, hollowed out a space by which he might flow in) [the transcendent
space] and instituted proportions in Himself (in as many ways as the
Lights of His Understanding could be received, whence arose the paths
of the worlds), and spread out before Him a certain veil (that is,
produced a certain nature, by which His infinite Light could be
modified, which was the first Adam); and therein carved out and
distributed the kings and their forms by a certain proportion (that
is all creatures under a condition of proper activity; by which He
Himself might be known and loved); but they did not subsist... [once
the process begins it is the new king]
That is the same thing
which is said, Gen xxxvi. 29: "And these are the kings which
reigned in the land of Edom , before that there reigned a king over
the children of Israel ." [the simulator is the new king, where
the land of Israel is the simulation world, and the children are
empirical forms or systems]
The land of Edom "is the place
where all judgments are found”
The Keeper of Israel
[transcendent virtual-reality generative process] neither slumbereth nor
sleepeth.
as it is written Exod. iv. 22 " Israel is my
first-born son." [the first fully manifest creation of God and
also a likeness of God, implying fractal multi-levelled
self-similarity]" (Kabbalah Denudata, Greater Holy Assembly)
“God, the most Holy One ... is called the Living One.
He hath
been formed, and yet as it were He hath not been formed. He hath been
conformed, so that He may sustain all things; yet is He not formed,
seeing that He is not discovered. ['He' is not an object in any world
but is the origin of all worlds, but "He" has a definite
form that sustains all things.]
He is that highest Light concealed
with all concealments and He is not found [perception cannot
comprehend 'Him']
[In this text they develop a detailed metaphor
of the transcendent origin of reality as a head, implying a
consciousness.]
... since this Head is the supreme of all the
supernals, hence He is only symbolised as a head alone without body,
for the purpose of establishing all things. [the transcendent process
does not exist in an external world and has no need of a body or
outer aspect. Everything exists 'within'.]
The Supreme Head is
that which is not known, nor comprehended, nor designated, and that
(Head) comprehendeth all things.
The skull of the White Head hath
not beginning, but its end is the convexity of its joining together,
which is extended, and shineth.
... From this convexity of the
joining together of this White Skull daily distileth a dew into
Microprosopus, into that space which is called Heaven...
And His
head is filled with that dew... and in that Skull is the Supernal
Wisdom concealed, who is found and who is not found... from Him are
all the Lights illuminated...
He the most Holy Ancient One is
found to have three heads, which are contained in the one
Head.[triune nature]
The conformation of Him, the Most Holy
Ancient One, is instituted through one form, which is the ideal
Syntagma of all forms.
The same is the Concealed Supernal
Wisdom...
And this is called ODN, Eden, or the supernal Paradise,
concealed with all occultations.
And it is the Brain of the Most
Holy Ancient one, and that Brain is expanded on every side.
Therefore
is it extended into Eden, or another Paradise, [there is a superior
and inferior Paradise, the transcendent and empirical existential
contexts] and from this is Eden or Paradise formed forth.[the
emprical world is thereby brought into being]
Unto the Ancient One
pertain all the Superiors [transcendent aspects], and unto
Microprosopus [the virtual-reality generative process within the transcendent
context or the first Adam within the supernal Eden] the Inferiors.
[empirical aspects]
... the Name of the Ancient One is concealed
in all things, neither is it found.
But those letters which depend
from the Ancient One, [empirical forms] so that they may be
established, are all inferiors...
And therefore is the Holy Name
alike concealed and manifest.
For that which is concealed [the
inner aspect of all things] pertaineth unto the Most Holy Ancient
One, the Concealed in all things. [i.e the transcendent process IS
the inner essence within all empirical forms]
But that, indeed,
which is manifested, because it dependeth, belongeth to
Microprosopus...
And therefore do all the blessings [aspects of
manifest existence] require both concealment and manifestation. [both
inner and outer, or inner causal essence and outer objective
appearance]
The place of comencement is found from the Most Holy
Ancient One, and it is illuminated by the Influence. That is the
Light of Wisdom.
And it is extended in thirty-two directions, [the
10 numbers and 22 letters in Hebrew, also the Tree of Life] and
departeth from that hidden brain, from that Light which existeth in
Itself.
... this Wisdom instituteth a formation and produceth a
certain river which floweth down and goeth forth to water the
garden.
And it entereth into the head of Microprosopus, and
formeth a certain other brain
Thence it is extended and floweth
forth into the whole body, [material existence] and watereth all
those plants (of the garden of Eden).
This is that which standeth
written, Gen ii.9: "And a river went out of Eden to water the
garden &c"
All things depend mutually from Himself, and
mutually are bound together unto Himself ... all things are one ...
the Ancient One, is all things, neither from Him can anything
whatsoever be separated.
... that river that floweth on and goeth
forth is called the World, [experiential stream producing an
experiential existential context] which is ever to come and ceaseth
never.
... all the lights which shine from the Supreme Light
[individual consciousness], the Most Concealed of All, are all paths
(leading) toward that Light.
And all those lights adhere mutually
together... [consciousness is One]
And they shine mutually into
each other, neither are they divided separately from each other.”
(Kabbalah Denudata, Lesser Holy Assembly)
"The myriad creatures carry on their backs [spine, nervous system, chakras] the yin [being, mind] and embrace with their arms [outer activity] the yang [doing, matter] and are the blending of the generative forces of the two."(Tao te Ching 94)
“God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all - being as well as not-being.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
"What is that through which, if it is known, everything else becomes known?...
That which cannot be seen, nor seized, which belongs to neither this social order nor that, which has no eyes nor ears, no hands nor feet; the eternal, the all-pervading, the infinitesimal, the imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of all that exists... " (Mundaka Upanishad 1:1:3-4)
"The sages, in meditation and through concentration, have pierced through the cover [world illusion, Maya] to see that great power [Universal Consciousness] belonging to that one himself [transcendent process], what is hidden in its own qualities [gunas, the veil of appearances]. Being one, he superintends all the causes, time, self, and the rest." (Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 1:3)
"The brahman [the transcendent context] expands (manifests itself) by means of concentration [self-referential process]; hence is produced matter; from matter life, mind, the intellect, and the seven worlds. And from the works performed in the worlds follow the endless chain of effects of the works [empirical dynamics].
From him who perceives all [the transcendent context] and who knows all, whose concentration is filled by knowledge, from him is born that first manifest brahman (Hiranyagarbha or the Golden Egg), the name, the form, and the matter [the empirical context]." (Mundaka Upanishad 1:1:5-9)
"That state wherein the mind is at rest... wherein himself sees his Self and rejoices in the Self, wherein he experiences that supreme bliss only realised by the intellect and unattainable by the senses [the deepest aspects of reality cannot be 'seen' by the physical senses, but only inferred, intuited and subjectively experienced as one's inner most awareness] and, steadied there, no longer diverges from the Truth... This state... severs the union with pain [delusion]." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 6:20-21, 23)
"What is it that had birth? Whom do you call a human being? If, instead of seeking explanations for birth, death and after-death, the question is raised as to who and how you are now, these questions will not arise...
The body is born again and again. We wrongly identify ourselves with the body, and hence imagine we are reincarnated constantly. No. We must identify ourselves with the true Self. The realised one enjoys unbroken consciousness, never broken by birth or death - how can he die? Only those who think 'I am the body' talk of reincarnation. To those who know 'I am the Self' there is no rebirth.
Reincarnations only exist so long as there is ignorance. There is no incarnation, either now, before or hereafter. This is the truth." (Sri Ramana Maharshi)
“Some theologians and metaphysicians of the great religious traditions will affirm that God, or Brahman, are both beyond and within the universe — in it, but not of it; pervading it and surpassing it at once.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_%28religion%29)
“Sankara’s Supreme Brahman [Absolute Reality] is impersonal, Nirguna (without Gunas or attributes), Nirakara (formless), Nirvisesha (without special characteristics), immutable, eternal and Akarta (non-agent). It is above all needs and desires. It is always the Witnessing Subject [pure awareness]. It can never become an object as It is beyond the reach of the senses [there are no objects other than sense objects wrapped in the idea ‘object’]. Brahman is non-dual, one without a second. It has no other beside It. It is destitute of difference, either external or internal. Brahman [transcendent reality] cannot be described, because description implies distinction [that takes us into the world illusion]. Brahman cannot be distinguished from any other than It. In Brahman, there is not the distinction of substance and attribute [all is pure awareness and pure being]. Sat-Chit-Ananda [existence - consciousness - bliss] constitute the very essence or Svarupa of Brahman, and not just Its attributes.” ( http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
“The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death. The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being – I am That.” (Amritbindu Upanishad)
“Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the
rational intellect
should control the animal-soul.
Let your spirit be strong like Jesus.
If that part becomes
weak,
then the worn-out donkey grows to a dragon.” (Jelaluddin
Balkhi aka Rumi)
“The reason why heaven and earth are enduring is that they do not give themselves life. Hence they are able to be long lived.” (Tao Te Ching)
“Though they [the people] may be deeply trapped and overwhelmed [by egoic delusion] their innate nature is still intact [inner awareness], thus there is no sickness [no permanent disconnection from reality]. When a noble person advances all wise people follow, and friends come. Abandon selfish desires and innate goodness emerges. The petty retreat and the sage advances. This is going and returning to the Way. In this way our innate goodness is fully developed and worldly affairs can be handled with ease. This is how the sages lent their strength to bring about the orderly government of ancient rulers. Thus it is favourable to proceed. When the heavenly course prevails there is grace. Indeed Returning is the way where heaven and humanity are united to complete the natural order of things.”
“Returning refers to the time when the climate is at its coldest [deep oppression and despair], yet the water in the wells is still warm [inner awareness]... This is the thunder of the winter solstice that is stored within the earth [the deep instinct that inspires us to wake up from our nightmares]. The power of returning yang energy to the earth is at its highest, yet it only moves in accord with time... young yang must be kept peaceful and calm to allow it's growth, do not act to dissipate it [don’t go on a crusade to change the world, just reconnect within and nurture your inner brightness and share this brightness with others].” ( “Yi Jing: Book of Change”, Translated by Gia Fu Feng, Sue Bailey and Bink Kun Young, Feng Books, 1986)
“Q: No question of reconditioning the mind, changing or
eliminating the mind?
M: Absolutely none. Leave your mind alone,
that is all. Don't go along with it. After all there is no such thing
as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws,
not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them.
It is exactly as Christ said: 'Resist not evil'. By resisting evil
you merely strengthen it.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact that you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not – body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that – nothing concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only [not this, not that], the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“Shankaracharya exclusively advocates that the real, experiential knowledge of the Brahman/Atman identity [you are the Soul and the Soul is the Absolute Reality] is sufficient to get enlightened, and that as far as spiritual seekers are ready to sacrifice everything to obtain this supreme wisdom, they need neither rituals nor meditation as spiritual exercise.” (http://www.creativity.co.uk/creativity/guhen/shankara.htm)
“Q: It seems that there are two worlds, mine and yours.
M:
Mine is real [transcendent], yours is of the mind [empirical].
Q: ...If a frog in [a] hole were told about the outside world, he
would say: "There is no such thing. My world is of peace and
bliss. Your world is a word structure only, it has no existence."
It is the same with you. When you tell us that our world simply does
not exist, there is no common ground for discussion...
M: Quite
right.
Q: You have built the railroad but for lack of a bridge no train
can pass. Build the bridge.
M: There is no need of a bridge.
Q: There must be some link between your world and mine.
M:
There is no need of a link between a real world and an imaginary
world, for there cannot be any.
Q: So what are we to do?
M: Investigate your world, apply your
mind to it, examine it critically, scrutinise every idea about it;
that will do.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“Q: I can see that the basic biological anxiety, the flight
instinct, takes many shapes and distorts my thoughts and feelings.
But how did this anxiety come into being?
M: It is a mental state
caused by the 'I am the body' idea. It can be removed by the contrary
idea: 'I am not the body'. Both the ideas are false, but one removes
the other. Realise that no ideas are your own, they all come to you
from outside. You must think it all out for yourself, become yourself
the object of your meditation. The effort to understand yourself is
Yoga [union with reality]. Be a Yogi, give your life to it, brood,
wonder, search, till you come to the root of error and to the truth
beyond the error.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“Q: How do I come to know that my experience is universal?
M:
At the end of your meditation all is known directly, no proofs
whatsoever are required. [it is not logic and proof, instead, reality
itself flows into you and illumines the mind]. Just as every drop of
the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry
the taste of eternity. Definitions and descriptions have their place
as useful incentives for further search, but you must go beyond them
into what in indefinable and indescribable, except in negative terms
[i.e. It is not this, not that].
After all, even universality and eternity are mere concepts, the opposites of being place and time-bound. Reality is not a concept, nor the manifestation of a concept. It has nothing to do with concepts [reality is “that which is”, whereas concepts are constructs of the mind that may imperfectly reflect reality but ultimately only exist only within the mind]. Concern yourself with your mind, remove its distortions and impurities. Once you have had the taste of your own self, you will find it everywhere and at all times. Therefore it is so important that you should come to it. Once you know it, you will never lose it.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“Q: You are asking me to give up the world, while I want to be
happy in the world.
M: If you ask for the impossible, who can help
you? The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns. If you
seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave
the world with its pains and pleasures behind you. [the ‘world’
is constructed out of illusions and confusions, only a return to
reality brings lasting liberation]
Q: How is it done?
M: Mere physical renunciation is only a
token of earnestness, but earnestness alone does not liberate. There
must be understanding which comes with alert perceptivity, eager
enquiry and deep investigation. You must work relentlessly for your
salvation from sin and sorrow.
Q: What is sin?
M: All that binds you. [illusion, confusion,
delusion, assumption, ignorance, denial, apathy, false
identification, etc]” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"There is a way between voice and presence where information
flows.
In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it
closes." (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
If you have mistaken a rope for a snake and are afraid of it, then “When you come to know that it is only a rope, your fear disappears. You do not run away from it. Even so, when you realise the eternal immutable Brahman, you are not affected by the phenomena or the names and forms of this world. When Avidya or the veil of ignorance is destroyed through knowledge of the Eternal, when Mithya Jnana or false knowledge is removed by real knowledge of the Imperishable or the living Reality, you shine in your true, pristine, divine splendour and glory.” (http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
Reality is "beyond all the elements, and all the letters. There is no commerce with It. It brings all distinctions and developments to end; as such it is utterly unavailing. It is only peace, repose and oneness." (Mandukya Upanishad 12)
"Every second he's bowing into a mirror. If he could see for
just a second one molecule of what's there without fantasizing about
it, he'd explode.
His imagination and he himself, would vanish,
with all his knowledge, obliterated into a new birth, a perfectly
clear view, a voice that says, I am God.
That same voice told the
angels to bow to Adam, because they were identical with Adam.
It's
the voice that first said, There is no reality but God. There is only
God." (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
"if with the mind one then observes the mind, one destroys distinctions and reaches buddhahood." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra)
"Wisdom is enveloped by ignorance: thereby creatures are bewildered. But for those in whom ignorance is destroyed by wisdom, for them wisdom lights up the Supreme Self like the sun. Thinking of That, directing their whole conscious being to That, making That their whole aim, with That as the sole object of their devotion, they reach a state from which there is no return, their sins [delusions] washed away by wisdom." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 5:15-17)
Before "… I knew so many things. Now I know nothing, for all knowledge is in dream only and not valid. I know myself and I find no life nor death in me, only pure being - not being this or that, but just 'being'. But the moment the mind, drawing on its stock of memories, begins to imagine, it fills the space with objects and time with events. As I do not know even this birth, how can I know past births? It is the mind that, itself in movement, sees everything moving, and having created time, worries about the past and future. All the universe is cradled in consciousness (maha tattva) [ultimate true essence, Reality], which arises where there is perfect order and harmony (maha sattva) [ultimate being, pure existence]. As all waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and mental in awareness. Hence awareness itself is all important, not the content of it. Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly... All exists in awareness and awareness neither dies nor is reborn. It is the changeless reality itself... If you think it out carefully and brood over it for a long time, you will come to see the light of awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision.
As long as the mind is busy with its own contortions, it does not perceive its own source. The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within. By its very nature the mind is outward turned [operating on ideas as if they were reality]; it always tends to seek for the source of things amongst the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life. Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the 'I', who is conscious, while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The 'I am' is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no 'I am aware' in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not, one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness [as soon as thoughts arise consciousness arises, consciousness focuses on the content of thought so the underlying awareness is obscured].” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Though all actions are done by the constituents of nature
(prakriti), the ignorant one, deluded by his egoism, regards himself
as the doer.
But ... he who realises that these constituents and
the actions are both distinct from himself, and that it is only the
constituents interacting together, does not grow attached.
People
who are deluded by the constituents of prakriti get attached to the
actions they produce.
Even the wise man acts according to his own
nature. All created beings follow their own inclination. Then what
use is restraint?
There is a fixed order of attraction and
repulsion between each sense and its object. Let no one come under
their domination, for they are marauding enemies of men.
One's own
dharma [essential law of one's being], imperfect though it may be, is
far better than the dharma of another, however well discharged. It is
better to die engaged in one's own dharma, for it is risky to follow
the dharma of another.” (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 3)
“He whose mind is steady and devoid of confusion, that knower of the Brahman is established in the Brahman. He whose soul is not attached to external contacts finds that bliss which is in the Self. Such a man, disciplined in yoga through his union with Brahman, enjoys unending bliss. Those pleasures arising out of contacts (with external objects) are only the origin of unhappiness, for they have a beginning and an end... a wise man does not delight in them.
Those sages... who have lost their dualities, who have achieved self-control and find happiness in the good of all, attain the release of being one with the Brahman.” (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 5)
“Sannyasa [renunciation] is the giving up of the ego... So long as a person thinks that they are a sannyasin, they are not one. So long as one does not think of world-illusion, one is not worldly, but is a real sannyasin.
Where is renunciation? It is not outside us, it is here (pointing to the heart). Where is solitude? In the mind. We must achieve these things within ourselves. The Kingdom of Heaven is to be found within us.
(when asked the question) Is it not, giving up possessions? (he replied) The possessor too.” (Sri Ramana Maharshi)
“Q: What should we meditate on?
R: Who is the meditator? Ask
that question first. Remain as the meditator, then there is no need
to meditate. It is the sense of doership that is the impediment to
dhyana [attainment of a true meditative state of being].” (Sri
Ramana Maharshi)
“... the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.” (Tao te Ching)
“The way that can be spoken is not the constant way ... the nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth; the named was the mother of the myriad creatures” (Tao te Ching)
“The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority; It gives them life yet claims no possession; It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude; It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit. It is because it lays claim to no merit that its merit never deserts it.” (Tao te Ching)
“Block the openings, shut the doors, and all your life will not
run dry.
Unblock the openings, add to your troubles, and to the
end of your days you will be beyond salvation” (Tao te Ching)
“The five colours make man's eyes blind; the five notes make his ears deaf; the five tastes injure his palate; riding and hunting make his mind go wild with excitement; goods hard to come by serve to hinder his progress.” (Tao te Ching)
"I do my utmost to attain emptiness; [detachment from
ideas]
I hold firmly to stillness. [detachment from desires,
aversions and compulsions]
The myriad creatures all rise together
[the world of appearance arises each moment in people’s minds]
And
I watch their return. [our nature is to seek reality in the end,
perhaps after lifetimes of suffering]
The teaming creatures
All
return to their separate roots. [turn within themselves]
Return to
one's roots is known as stillness. [peace, bliss, liberation]
This
is what is meant by returning to one's destiny. [the end of delusion
and becoming a harmonious motion of God-in-action]
Returning to
one's destiny is known as the constant. [all else ends in
destruction, only harmonious being endures]
Knowledge of the
constant is known as discernment. [true reliable timeless wisdom]
Woe
to him who wilfully innovates [e.g. narrow minded technological /
scientific / political devastation
while ignorant of the constant,
of the planet has brought ‘woe’ and suffering to this world]
But
should one act from knowledge of the constant
One's action will
lead to impartiality, [the opposite of fanaticism, oppression and
aggression]
Impartiality to kingliness, [harmonious effective
custodianship, true leadership, integration rather than
disintegration]
Kingliness to heaven, [dwelling in reality]
Heaven
to the way, [flowing with reality]
The way to perpetuity,
[enduring vitality and everlasting life]
And to the end of one's
days one will meet with no danger." [no decay, no disease, no
death] (Tao Te Ching)
"I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more
beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when
it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!
The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the
road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and
beyond the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a
crowd in a city
where no one knows him...
Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't
matter how long we've been unconscious.
We're groggy, but let the
guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you, the buoyancy.
" (Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
Ashtavaka Gita:
“You do not consist of any of the elements --
earth, water, fire, air, or even ether. To be liberated, know
yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these.
If only you will remain resting in consciousness, seeing yourself as distinct from the body, then even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds.
You do not belong to the brahmin or any other caste, you are not at any stage, nor are you anything that the eye can see. You are unattached and formless, the witness of everything -- so be happy.
Righteousness and unrighteousness, pleasure and pain are purely of the mind and are no concern of yours. You are neither the doer nor the reaper of the consequences, so you are always free.
You are the one witness of everything and are always completely free. The cause of your bondage is that you see the witness as something other than this.
Since you have been bitten by the black snake, the opinion about yourself that "I am the doer," drink the antidote of faith in the fact that "I am not the doer," and be happy.
Burn down the forest of ignorance with the fire of the understanding that "I am the one pure awareness," and be happy and free from distress.
That in which all this appears is imagined like the snake in a rope; that joy, supreme joy, and awareness is what you are, so be happy.
If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, "Thinking makes it so."
Your real nature is as the one perfect, free, and actionless consciousness, the all-pervading witness -- unattached to anything, desireless and at peace. It is from illusion that you seem to be involved in samsara.
Meditate on yourself as motionless awareness, free from any dualism, giving up the mistaken idea that you are just a derivative consciousness or anything external or internal.
You have long been trapped in the snare of identification with the body. Sever it with the knife of knowledge that "I am awareness," and be happy, my son.
You are really unbound and actionless, self-illuminating and spotless already. The cause of your bondage is that you are still resorting to stilling the mind.
All of this is really filled by you and strung out in you, for what you consist of is pure awareness -- so don't be small-minded.
You are unconditioned and changeless, formless and immovable, unfathomable awareness, unperturbable: so hold to nothing but consciousness.
Recognise that the apparent is unreal, while the unmanifest is abiding. Through this initiation into truth you will escape falling into unreality again.
Just as a mirror exists everywhere both within and apart from its reflected images, so the Supreme Lord exists everywhere within and apart from this body.
Just as one and the same all-pervading space exists within and without a jar, so the eternal, everlasting God exists in the totality of things.
Truly, when one does not know oneself, one takes pleasure in the objects of mistaken perception, just as greed arises for the mistaken silver in one who does not know mother of pearl for what it is.
Whether feted or tormented, the wise man is always aware of his supreme self-nature and is neither pleased nor disappointed.
The great-souled person sees even his own body in action as if it were someone else's, so how should he be disturbed by praise or blame?
Seeing this world as pure illusion, and devoid of any interest in it, how should the strong-minded person, feel fear, even at the approach of death?
Who can be compared to the great-souled person whose mind is free from desire even in disappointment, and who has found satisfaction in self-knowledge?
How should a strong-minded person who knows that what he sees is by its very nature nothing, consider one thing to be grasped and another to be rejected?
An object of enjoyment that comes of itself is neither painful nor pleasurable for someone who has eliminated attachment, and who is free from dualism and from desire.
The wise person of self-knowledge, playing the game of worldly enjoyment, bears no resemblance whatever to samsara's bewildered beasts of burden.
Truly the yogi feels no excitement even at being established in that state which all the Devas from Indra down yearn for disconsolately.
He who has known That is untouched within by good deeds or bad, just as space is not touched by smoke, however much it may appear to be.
Who can prevent the great-souled person who has known this whole world as himself from living as he pleases?
Of all four categories of beings, from Brahma down to the last clump of grass, only the man of knowledge is capable of eliminating desire and aversion.
Rare is the man who knows himself as the nondual Lord of the world, and he who knows this is not afraid of anything.
You are not bound by anything. What does a pure person like you need to renounce? Putting the complex organism to rest, you can find peace.
All this arises out of you, like a bubble out of the sea. Knowing yourself like this to be but one, you can find peace.
In spite of being in front of your eyes, all this, being insubstantial, does not exist in you, spotless as you are. It is an appearance like the snake in a rope, so you can find peace.
Equal in pain and in pleasure, equal in hope and in disappointment, equal in life and in death, and complete as you are, you can find peace.
I am infinite like space, and the natural world is like a jar. To know this is knowledge, and then there is neither renunciation, acceptance, or cessation of it.
I am like the ocean, and the multiplicity of objects is comparable to a wave. To know this is knowledge, and then there is neither renunciation, acceptance or cessation of it.
I am like the mother of pearl, and the imagined world is like the silver. To know this is knowledge, and then there is neither renunciation, acceptance, or cessation of it.
Alternatively, I am in all beings, and all beings are in me. To know this is knowledge, and then there is neither renunciation, acceptance, or cessation of it.
Bondage is when the mind longs for something, grieves about something, rejects something, holds on to something, is pleased about something or displeased about something.
Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, grieve about anything, reject anything, or hold on to anything, and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything.
Bondage is when the mind is tangled in one of the senses, and liberation is when the mind is not tangled in any of the senses.
When there is no "me," that is liberation, and when there is "me" there is bondage. Consider this carefully, and neither hold on to anything nor reject anything.
Knowing when the dualism of things done and undone has been put to rest, or the person for whom they occur has, then you can here and now go beyond renunciation and obligations by indifference to such things.
Rare indeed, my son, is the lucky man whose observation of the world's behaviour has led to the extinction of his thirst for living, thirst for pleasure, and thirst for knowledge.
All this is transient and spoiled by the three sorts of pain. Knowing it to be insubstantial, ignoble, and fit only for rejection, one attains peace.
When was that age or time of life when the dualism of extremes did not exist for men? Abandoning them, a person who is happy to take whatever comes attains perfection.
Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the differences of opinions among the great sages, saints, and yogis?
Is he not a guru who, endowed with dispassion and equanimity, achieves full knowledge of the nature of consciousness, and leads others out of samsara?
If you would just see the transformations of the elements as nothing more than the elements, then you would immediately be freed from all bonds and established in your own nature.
One's desires are samsara. Knowing this, abandon them. The renunciation of them is the renunciation of it. Now you can remain as you are.
Abandon desire, the enemy, along with gain, itself so full of loss, and the good deeds which are the cause of the other two -- practice indifference to everything.
Look on such things as friends, land, money, property, wife, and bequests as nothing but a dream or a magician's show lasting three or five days.
Wherever a desire occurs, see samsara in it. Establishing yourself in firm dispassion, be free of passion and happy.
The essential nature of bondage is nothing other than desire, and its elimination is known as liberation. It is simply by not being attached to changing things that the everlasting joy of attainment is reached.
You are one, conscious and pure, while all this is inert non-being. Ignorance itself is nothing, so what is the point of wanting to understand?
Kingdoms, children, wives, bodies, pleasures -- these have all been lost to you life after life, attached to them though you were.
Enough of wealth, sensuality, and good deeds. In the forest of samsara the mind has never found satisfaction in these.
How many births have you not done hard and painful labour with body, mind, and speech. Now at last, stop!”
(Ashtavakra Gita, full text at http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0004.htm)