Talks on spiritual and philosophical topics, mostly related to the path of knowledge and Advaita Vedanta or Non-dualism. Subjects such as the consciousness, mind, reality, metaphysics and various ways to study these are discussed.
In the second part on the topic of the universal mind, some ways and methods to explore the universal mind are discussed in brief. There are three broad ways to approach the Universal Mind:
1. Logic
2. Ordinary experiences
3. Extraordinary experiences
3.1 Everyday extraordinary experiences
3.2 Rare extraordinary experiences
3.3 Brute force methods
3.4 Elegant methods
3.5 Permanent experiences
In this meeting the concept of universal mind is presented in brief. Universal mind is all that which can be experienced, all that which is manifested. There are various theories and models of its structure and organization or ontology. Some of them are presented here. This is the part one of two on this topic.
Link to the images shared in the meeting.
Once the unity of the experience and the experiencer is recognized, a question arises - why is the experience so varied, why are there so many forms instead of a simple plain experience of being. How does this colourful drama of experience come into being. We will attempt to explain that via direct observation and form a theory about the arising of a diversified experience out of simple change and necessity.
Since all experiences are mediated via the mind, which distorts what is into a subjective impression of it, all we can experience is necessarily a distortion. That means, we cannot know what is, we only know that which is not. It also means, all we can have is ignorance, not knowledge. Any knowledge is refined ignorance, nothing more. Reality stands on the foundation of ignorance and is unknowable.
Reality is infinitely potent. All possibilities exists, and they exists at the same time, timelessly. All that can be imagined and all that cannot be imagined already exists. There is no use of it, there is no purpose or meaning behind it and there is no cause of it. There is immense freedom in knowing this. We are all expressions of infinite potency of reality and our own nature is the same. We prefer infinite freedom, we are evolving towards that goal where there is infinite potency, infinite freedom. We are becoming one with existence.
Reality is impermanence, everything is changing. Astonishing observation is that all of the change is circular. It repeats itself eventually. It means that nothing new will happen, all that is happening has already happened, not once or twice, but almost infinite times. There are cycles of change, and there are cycles within cycle. Everything repeats, everything has happened countless number of times. What are the implications of this?
We continue our discussion on the multidimensionality. The mind is a multidimensional thing, and since it is the creator of reality, the reality also appears in multidimensional ways. In simple words, for every dimension of the mind, there is a corresponding reality, a different world for each of the different states of the mind. These worlds are enchanting and endless. Study of this world and other worlds is an interesting and never-ending adventure.
A dimension is a way to describe something. It can be seen as a conceptual quality or a group of qualities. When we say, something has more than one dimension, we mean that there are more than one ways to describe it. Reality is one such thing, it has multiple dimensions. In this talk, we will see what they are and why most of them remain hidden from the view of ordinary people. Multidimensional facet of reality is the most interesting facet of all.
Reality is not merely a plain and simple illusion, it comes with built in hierarchies. The metaphysical structures are arranged in self-similar hierarchies, where the lower structures resemble the higher ones but are simpler and lower resolution copies of them. This is a fractal reality. Minds, themselves are such structures. It is stranger than we think, because our own minds are a part of a grand hierarchy of minds.
While encountering various experiences, the mind assigns different amounts of reality to them. The mind calls, some experiences as more real and some as less real. It has no way of telling if something is less real, unless it encounters an experience, which it thinks is more real than the current one. Reality is relative to where we stand, depending on our ignorance or knowledge. We keep arranging experiences on a scale of varying reality, till finally, we find that all of it is relative. There is no absolute place to stand. There is no absolute reality.
The entropy reduction metaphysical processes drive the patterns into more structure, more organization, more complexity. This is what is seen as evolution. Evolution is a fundamental process. It applies to everything, and is the process that drives minds to become better, complex and more intelligent. Gives them innumerable abilities. With evolved minds, comes evolved perception, and evolved iconization of patterns. This means an evolved mind experiences a bigger reality. It is possible to speed up the evolution of our own mind. That is the ultimate goal for any human.
At the base of the diamond of reality, is the facet of entropy reduction, an inherent tendency of metaphysical patterns to transform themselves into meaningful structures. The structures are made up of pure change, or information, and do not last. They are a flow that sustains itself, via a variety of processes, as a dynamic equilibrium, which we perceive, as reality. The dance of creation is eternal and virtual, it is only apparantly there, it arises out of nothingness, and its nature is emptiness.
Since all that can be experienced is defined as reality, and all experience is nothing but a change, the reality is ever changing, by necessity, it cannot be anything else but a continous flow. In other words, reality is impermanance. How does a mind manage to make any sense of it? How does it create an illusion of permanency? If everything is ever changing, where should we stand? What can we hold on to, which is changeless and permanent?
All that is real, are the illusions, organized into symbols or icons in the mind. This necessarily means that, all of the reality is subjective or mental. In this episode, we will see the third facet of the reality which is that, it is all mind. We will see how the illusion of an objective reality is created and how an apparant separation, with what the mind cannot control, gives rise to an illusion of a separate self or an individual.
Mind produces an illusory reality, but it is not totally useless. The mind arranges it as symbols or icons. It assigns them a meaning and a purpose. The only reason for that is, survival. It ensures persistence of the structures of the mind. Icons are made up of fundamental experiences of Tanmatras. It is possible to manipulate the reality if we study its iconic nature.
We are going to continue the discussion on the first facet of reality, which is, illusion. We see the mechanics of perception, and we see that all experience is derived out of change. Change is nothing, but energy and information. We see that all experience must be necessarily a distortion of, what exists.
We are going to see the first facet of the diamond, reality is illusory, or it is dream like. The key here is the meaning of the word , illusion. It seems that this word is a cause of a lot of confusion. What is an illusion?
A brief introduction to the series of talks on the nature of reality. Even though it is highly nebulous and subjective concept, we can extract some essential characteristics of what exists. We find that existence has many facets. It is complex, but has simplicity at its core, it is chaotic, but in an orderly way.
For the purpose of this discussion, I will use the following model/metaphor of a diamond with many facets. The facets or characteristics of reality are - 1. Illusory 2.Iconic 3. Mental 4. Impermanence 5. Entropy reduction 6. Relative 7. Multilevel 8. Multidimensional 9. Cyclic 10. Infinitely potent 11. Based on ignorance 12. Identical to the Self 13. Unknowable.
After analyzing the four kinds, we merge the experiences of the world, body and the mind. We see that there is only one kind of experience - the non-physical kind. The physical kind are a subset of the non-physical and both of them are subsets of metaphysical kind, which is unknowable in essence.
Yet another taboo topic. Lets add more fuel to the fire. I will present my own perspective on the so called paranormal experiences. From the point of view of someone on the path of knowledge, everything is normal. Its nothing special at all.
However, we can turn the exciting and adventurous investigations into occult and paranormal into great learning opportunities. How to do that? Lets explore together.
