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http://www.davestewart.com/eim_video.htm

_____________________________________________________________

JAN SULTAN

God, Consciousness, Truth, Absolute ... whatever
you want
to call it cannot be put in a box. There are no fixed
rules
and regulations, or dos and don'ts. You choose
your game,
you choose your path, you choose your dos and
don'ts. You
choose your beliefs and concepts. What to you is
so
important, so solid, means nothing to another. Your own map
is inside you. No one else knows which way you should move.

Ultimately you have to go beyond all this. Even beyond the
concept of God.

Scratching my head, "Who is this 'you' I am referring to?"
You, I, God are all chess pieces in the games that are
going on. "What Is, Is." The undifferentiated changing into
the differentiated and back again. No two 'chess pieces'
alike, no two scenes alike, no beginning, middle and ending
alike. [No finger print or snow flake alike! Just imagine
that, yet you dare impose limitations on God.]

There is no difference between the humble ant or Adolph
Hitler or Christ or Buddha. They are all part of the game
... no higher, no lower. All flowing/interchanging into
each other. It is 'you' who are playing all the parts!

Make a move or don't ... makes no difference to the overall
picture.

Who am I? Who are you? The air inside a balloon thinks it
is separate from the air outside. All it needs is a pin
prick! Find your own pin prick or continue suffering ...
ultimately makes no difference.

So relax and live, fully aware, fully in the pristine now!
The now where there are no opinions, no preferences, no
distinctions, no love or hate, no like or dislike, no loss
or gain, no right or wrong ... no duality.

__________________________________________________________________

Question: "Can we at least have a glimpse of the real self
everyday?"

Sri Ramana: "Between sleep and waking there is a momentary
twilight. The waking consciousness begins with the 'I'
-thought. Just before the upsurge of the 'I'-thought there
is a split second of undifferentiated pure consciousness.
First unconsciousness, then the light of pure
consciousness, then the 'I'-thought with which
world-consciousness floods in. This is the order. The
middle state is self awareness. We can sense it if we are
sufficiently alert and watchful."

(Ramana Maharshi Anwers 100 Questions, question 43) [fwd
from RM group]

_____________________________________________________________________

S.H.
note: apostrophes and quotation marks came out in computer
code. the codes were deleted, but the marks were not inserted.

I am merely a 25 year young dude, but based on all my
readings and experiences, here is my current theory about
the state of
"Enlightenment/NonThoughtNonDuality/Samadhi/etc"...

I think the state we are really attempting to talk about is
Unconsciousness.

Yes, I know I know, many people say attaining Consciousness
is the ultimate goal, but I am taking a contrarian tack
here, and I think you may agree or at least enjoy.

(PS - Im going to go ahead and talk like a regular person
talks here, even though I know that if someone doesnft
agree with my over- all theory, they can always act dorky
and get picky and say things like, Well, you used the
word I, which shows you are not in the state of
NonDuality because there really is no I, blah blah
blahh or You used the word experience, which shows
you are not in the state of NonDuality, because there is
who is there to experience it? the ego is non-existant
yah yah yah... OK, as we all know, every single word in
the dictionary can easily be pointed out to be NonDual,
because all words perpetuate our illusions, yes, silence is
the only absolute truth, but hey, we want to communicate
here, so lets just enjoy the words and have fun! :-) )

OK, back to the theory...

Ahem, when we are in a deep deep sleep, we are in the state
of Unconsciousness. And, in my opinion, the state of
Unconsciousness IS the state of
Enlightenment/NonThoughtNonDuality/Samadhi/etc. The catch
is, during those moments of Unconsciousness You
(Consciousness) is not there to experience the black,
silent, restful state of Unconsciousness. So Enlightenment
happens every night, if you sleep deeply, but you just
dont realize it.

Now, about a closely related state, when you start to
dream, you begin to project various imaginings, which means
your mind is starting to become partially Conscious... but
you are still Unconscious to a certain degree because you
do not quite realize you are dreaming. Lets call the
average dream state Unconscious, with just 10%
Consciousness in the background conjuring up images.

Then, when you actually wake up and start looking around
and thinking about things, well, Consciousness is back in
effect once again. (Yeay? Boo? Its up to You.) Of course
what degree of Consciousness you are in will vary from
moment to moment, from person to person, but on average
lets call the average waking state 90% Conscious, with
just 10% Unconsciousness secretly lingering in the
background.

Based on the above belief, here is what I currently think
about Enlightenment...

A person in deep sleep is in the state of Enlightenment,
because they are Unconscious.

A baby is less conscious and thus is relatively more
Enlightened than an awake adult.

A very old person is less conscious and thus is
relatively more Enlightened than an awake adult.

A retarded/special-person is less conscious and
thus is relatively more Enlightened than an awake adult.

An animal is less conscious and thus is relatively more
Enlightened than an awake adult.

Even though beings in these relatively unconscious states
do not consciously experience their Enlightenment as
much as you and I get to experience consciousness
(Unenlightenment), I think the relatively Unconscious are
relatively better off for it.

Anyway, OK, I have thus split absolute oneness into 2
distinct states (Consciousness and Unconsciousness) which
was a very Dualistic thing of me to do of course. And then
I even went further into Dualism by taking sides I like
the Unconscious side, its Better! Sorry about that, but
please bear with me a little bit further, for my real goal
is to reconcile...

Now, the question is, how to Unify these 2 states?

Well, during the state of Unconsciousness (deep sleep) one
can attempt to increase the level of Consciousness so that
You are partially there to experience that state of
silent blackness. One possible technique is to become Lucid
while sleeping, kinda like Ramana did by the way, which
means you Consciously realize Hey, my body is not awake,
my body is sleeping, but I am Semi-conscious of this fact,
what a trip! Stay mellow, because if you get too excited,
and become too Conscious of this fact, youll simply wake
up into the usual waking state, oops. On the other hand, if
you get too mellow and slip back into total Unconsciousness
again you wont be there to experience it so you miss
out. But, if you stay right in between the 2 states, lets
call it 50% Unconscious and 50% Conscious, well, then
you can have a little taste of Unconsciousness. So
maybe this is what Balance is all about, what the sages
have been saying for ages, maybe they were actually
pointing towards balancing between Consciousness and
Unconsciousness.

(Small note about the above technique, some people get into
the Lucid Dreaming thing, and they end up choosing to allow
their Conscious side to gain the upper hand during sleep,
like 70% Conscious and 30% Unconscious, because they want
Consciously project images of their fantasies, like flying,
sex, etc, and mentally experiencing it, and all that is
fine and fun, but its just not what I am talking about
here today. Im talking about remaining in the 50/50 state
of just barely halfway experiencing the Unconscious
state of silent total blackness.)

So at night, one can attempt to Consciously enter the state
of Unconsciousness, feel free. Just remember, even though
you will wake up with pleasant memories of the void, you
will also wake up with less rest than if you had just
stayed totally Unconscious. Thatfs the trade off.
Experience or rest, which do you want tonight?

OK, and in the day... well, about the Day side, Im gonna
leave the rest of this never-ending Conversation up to you
folks to go deeper. There are many wonderful daytime
techniques (or non-techniques, if you want to claim that)
which get discussed in this lovely realm of NonDuality,
like going deep inside to the source by pondering gwho am
I? to negation Neti Neti to reading heart stirring
poetry, its all great (I mean uh, Great/NotGreat,
yeah, thats the ticket.) :-)

I guess the main idea I really wanted to share here, is the
idea that

Consciousness is what allows you to experience,
Unconsciousness is Enlightenment because you are not there,
Semi-consciousness is the closest you can get to
Enlightenment.

_____________________________________________________________

GREG GOODE

Includes links to things such as:

The Self
The Self Is
I Am the Self
The Growth of the Self
The States of the Self
The Forms of the Self
The Thoughts of the Self

etc.

http://selfknowledge.com/outline_of_the_self.shtml

____________________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

We Should Talk about This Problem

This is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.

So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and mil
Beside your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem -

Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.




(I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

_______________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

INFINITY SYMBOL IN SPACE

Subject: Hubble Heritage Astronomical Image of ESO 510-G13:
BIG JPG

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2001/23/big.html image

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2001/23/table.html#caption info

Hubble Photographs Warped Galaxy as Camera Passes Milestone

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of an
unusual edge-on galaxy, revealing remarkable details of its
warped dusty disk and showing how colliding galaxies spawn
the formation of new generations of stars.

The dust and spiral arms of normal spiral galaxies, like
our own Milky Way, appear flat when viewed edge-on. This
month's Hubble Heritage image of ESO 510-G13 shows a galaxy
that, by contrast, has an unusual twisted disk structure,
first seen in ground-based photographs obtained at the
European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. ESO 510-G13
lies in the southern constellation Hydra, roughly 150
million light-years from Earth.

Details of the structure of ESO 510-G13 are visible because
the interstellar dust clouds that trace its disk are
silhouetted from behind by light from the galaxy's bright,
smooth central bulge.

The strong warping of the disk indicates that ESO 510-G13
has recently undergone a collision with a nearby galaxy and
is in the process of swallowing it. Gravitational forces
distort the structures of the galaxies as their stars, gas,
and dust merge together in a process that takes millions of
years. Eventually the disturbances will die out, and ESO
510-G13 will become a normal-appearing single galaxy.

________________________________________________________________

JAMES TRAVERSE

I feel that we have six sense doors. Eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, skin and brain.

The sense doors perceive movement, what we call change. Yet
there is "_______" which is the groung of being that never
changes. Any attempt to describe the unchangung ground of
being is a movement within the sense door called brain - it
is simply not possible for movement to describe stillness
because they are different forms of the same thing.
Movement is Stillness in another form.

When there is perception of something like a sound, one
realizes that it is possible to allow the movement to be
there without being caught up in it. In other words there
is a Silence that is not disturbed by the sound. The sound
comes from Silence, it is surrounded and supported by
Silence and it returns to Silence - And there was never a
time that it wasn't Silence.

It is like a wave in the ocean, the wave comes from the
ocean, it is surrounded and supported by the ocean, it
returns to the ocean and there never is a time when it
isn't the ocean (one can also see the fundamental nature of
both wave and ocean as water).

This is true for everything the sense doors perceive. In
this way it is possible for the sense door called 'the
brain' to be active without *identifation* with its
activity.

So, the brain can be active without disturbing the ground
of being and further ***its movement is an extension of our
real being*** - just like a wave and ocean are different
forms of water.

In other words, Movement and Stillness are *** different
forms of the same thing ***. (its is like seeing the
movement we describe as time in the stillness of what we
call now - they are different forms of the same thing)

So what has all this to do with
consciousness/unconsciousness? They are different *forms*
of the same thing.

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