The Whole Truth

[SelfHealedMadman]

~ 

Well, I am certainly wiser than this man.  It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance.  At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.  Socrates  
Whadda ya’ know?  
Really.  What, with absolute certainty, do you know?  
Put aside all opinions, beliefs and theories for a moment and address this one simple question:  What do you know for sure?  Or, as Thoreau put it:  

Let us settle ourselves and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that allusion which covers the globe…through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin…  

In other words, let’s cut the **** and figure out what we know for sure.  

The cogito does exactly that, and it’s very simple.  The question is:  What do you know?  
The answer is:  I Am.  
All other so-called facts are really non-facts and belong in the category of consensual reality and relative truth, i.e., unreal reality and untrue truth.  

Cogito ergo sum is the equation that proves the fact.  But first, before we go on, let’s ask what else we know.  What else can be said for certain?  
Nothing.  We don’t know anything else.  And that’s the real point of the cogito.  The importance of I Am isn’t that it’s a fact, but that’s it’s the only fact.  
I Am is the only thing anyone has ever known or will ever know.  Everything else, all religion and philosophy and science, can never be more than dream interpretation.  There is no other fact than I Am.  
The cogito is the seed of the thought that destroys the universe.  Beyond the cogito, nothing is known.  Beyond the cogito, nothing can be known.  Except I Am, no one knows anything.  No man or god can claim to know more.  No god or array of gods can exist or be imagined that know more than this one thing:  I Am.  
We can’t avoid letting this topic drift briefly into the Old Testament.  When Moses asked God His name, God answered, “I am that I am.”  The name God gives for Himself is I Am.  
Note that I Am is unconjugatible.  It allows of no variation.  God doesn’t say, “My name is I Am, but you can call me You Are, or He Is.”  The cogito, the I Am pronouncement, does not extend beyond one’s own subjective knowing.  I can say I Am and know it as truth, but I can’t say you are, he is, she is, we are, they are, it is, etc.  I know I exist and nothing else.  Understood thusly, I Am, aka God, truly is the Alpha and Omega; the entirety of being, of knowledge, of you.  

The cogito is the line between fantasy and reality.  On one side of the cogito is a universe of beliefs and ideas and theories.  To cross the line is to leave all that behind.  No theory, concept, belief, opinion or debate can have any possible basis in reality once the ramifications of the cogito have fully saturated the mind.  No dialogue can take place across that line because nothing that makes sense on either side makes sense on the other.  

Everyone thinks they understand the cogito, but nobody does.  Descartes himself didn’t.  If professors of philosophy truly understood the cogito, they wouldn’t be professors of philosophy.  Alfred North Whitehead said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, but all philosophy, Plato included, is rendered obsolete and irrelevant by Descartes.  Nothing but the subjective I Am is true, so what’s the point of prattling on?  There’s simply nothing else to say.  
The cogito isn’t a mere thought or an idea, it’s an ego-eating virus that, if we are able to lower our defenses against it, will eventually devour all illusion.  Once we know the cogito, we can begin systematically unknowning everything we think we know, and unraveling the self we think we are.  To understand the cogito at the surface level takes a minute or so.  To let it devour you from the inside out can take years.  
Life is but a dream.  There is no such thing as objective reality.  Two cannot be proven.  Nothing can be shown to exist.  Time and space, love and hate, good and evil, cause and effect, are all just ideas.  Anyone who says they know anything is really saying they don’t know the only thing.  Any assertion of truth other than I Am is a confession of ignorance.  The greatest religious and philosophical thoughts and ideas in the history of man contain no more truth than the bleating of sheep.  The greatest books are no more authoritative than the greatest luncheon meats.  
No one knows anything.  
Disprove it for yourself.  Anyone wishing to deny these statements about the meaning of the cogito need merely prove that something, anything, is true.  By all means, give it a try; smash your head against it, but it can’t be done.  The cogito is like a Molotov cocktail with which we can firebomb our own mind, safe in the knowledge that truth doesn’t burn.  
This, however, is not the end of the journey of awakening.  
It’s just the beginning.



Spiritual Warfare
Jed McKenna

[Guest]

Absolute Being is beyond the I am , I see , beyond the knower , knowing and known, beyond the seer, the seeing and the seen.
In the first attention you identify with all things of your inventary, your tonal , the physical world : I am that .
In the second attention you indentify with the spirit , your dream or astral world . So long you are trapped in the first attention you believe liberation or the nagual lies in the second attention : I am .
In the third attention you identify with the pure first awareness of Being, or causal world of dualistic concepts like Freedom/Slavery ,Nirvana/Samsara etc.  . So long you are trapped in the dreamworld of endless ap-shifts you will seek liberation in the third attention : I (Atman, )
I am that, what is before the first dawning of the idea of I (Para-Atman). Before every dualistic concept of known and not known , good and bad etc.
The trinity of awareness ( state of deep sleep) , conciousness (state of dream) and known (awake) are not three aspects of one , they are one .
That , what awareness is , you can call it the black sun of the fourth attention, the state of deep-deep-sleep, pure existence , which dont care if it is or not.
It is not the presence of absence. It is the absence of the presence of the one,  who could be aware or not aware of himself.
The Reality , which becomes a realizer ,who realizes and who realizes as something is One. It does not matter if you experience yourself in the relative , in the I or I am or I am that. In all this three possibilities or attentions you realize yourself , but none of this realizations make you more real than you already are.
There is a verse in the Tao Te King which maybe throws a little bit more light on Existence as such, than the little  transcendental masturbation ™ above:
The Tao produced One;
One produced Two;
Two produced Three;

Three produced All things.
All things leave behind them the Obscurity

(out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the

Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are harmonised

by the Breath of Vacancy.

So to put it in a nutshell : God is an helpless eternal Wanker , fell in love with him/herself , tries desperately to find himself in the relative and after realizing that he/she will never find the Beloved in the relative 1.2.3. attention ,and after the merciful holocaust of the I or 3. -attention , implodes  realizes that he/she was, is and will  always be  the lover , the love and the beloved. Nice game ?

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



Chuckles.



That's a good one, isnobad.

[Eilias123]

All i know is how little I really know.

[Lunoor]

aaaaaah

[Nagual LoneWolf]

Nice post SHM...your input in these forums are wise and show great involvement . I for one anticipate your responses to subject matter.

[dreamgirl]

Isnobad, wow, reading your post I felt I had a little mini satori! Very clear and consise. Helpless eternal wanker.........hahahahahaha:lol

[Nagual LoneWolf]

When I was growing up I believed all things and all people were created in my mind. None of it was real. I had the "I am" but I never believed in "you are" and still to this day I have this nagging doubt about it. I would watch people and not understand them. I would talk to people and they seemed so different then me and I could not believe they were real. Everyone seemed slow and lifeless and robotic. I thought the world was a projection of my mind into a physical reality. I was so immersed in this I just about went crazy. What we know is what we experienced through our perceptions. Isnobad wrote a good response. I find it interesting because the question asked by SHMadman is the one which starts the seeker on the path to find Knowledge.

[Death Defier]

Nagual LoneWolf wrote:When I was growing up I believed all things and all people were created in my mind. None of it was real.That's the truth. The seer creates the illusion of the seen. If you follow the feeling of the *AM* with your attention, that becomes meditation. That's the way towards Freedom of the Enlightened Third Attention.

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habiation - a book should serve as an axe for the froze sea within us.



Franz Kafka

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



Every inch of ground takes everything I have. Lessons aen't delivered as quaint little parables and allegories, but as irreparable losses; lesson after lesson, loss after loss. Every step is a loss and as long as there's more to lose, there are more steps to take. Everything is lost. Nothing is gained.

[Guest]

Several weeks before Castaneda died Don Juan appeared in his dream and said :
"Stay where you are,  Freedom can not be found here where I am."
The goal of the new seers is the relative freedom of the third attention. You want freedom. The idea of freedom let you seek after it and that is already the prison of a concept.
You can never reach freedom, because if you could reach freedom, than it would be a conditional freedom, depending on circumstances of time and space.
Every Nagual who jumps will have to come back (sooner or later). Thats  the jojo - effect of existence.
I dont want to put down the achievements of the new seers. Their  level realization is very rare , their teachings are precious and indipensable for all modern seekers of truth.  We should always strive for the discipline of the warriors , the development of all three attentions and for an impeccable intent. But while doing so, we should  not limit our possible development to the conceptual, abstract or causal world of the third attention. When the last concept of "I "falls , than  the divine accident ,the quantum leap into the black sun of the 4. attention can happen .

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



Isnobad wrote: But while doing so, we should not limit our possible development to the conceptual, abstract or causal world of the third attention. When the last concept of "I "falls , than the divine accident ,the quantum leap into the black sun of the 4. attention can happen .



SHM: Good post.



Yet, by labeling the fourth attention, aren't you doing what the new seers did with the third, or what you mentioned above, limiting ourselves?

[Guest]

You are right. But who cares ?

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



Understood, Isnobad.



Would you care to speak more in regards to the 4th attention??



It seems I'm ignorant on this...

[Guest]

Dear SHD,
if you understand there is no need to explain. If you are ignorant no explanation will make you understand.
But I dont think that you are ignorant , you are like every human being curious and that is the beginning of every understanding. To speak about the 4th . attention (and also the 2. and 3.th) is little bit like trying to put the empty into the void. Before I speak a note of caution: The Truth is something I have never said.
I am not a qualified 4.th- attention realizer , also far away of the attainments of a fully blown 3.th attention Nagual.  So I can offer you merely some personal insights and information.
I think, that human evolution is naturally leading from development of the first attention , to the 2.3. 4. attention ad infinitum. There are spiritual teachings for the accelerated personal development these various attentions. Generally spiritual Traditions put their emphasis on the development of one or two of these  attentions.   The old seers concentrated mainly on the development of the 2.th attention. With the coming of the new seers a quantum leap into the 3. attention happened . They became frustrated with the achievements of the 2. attention and saw to  remain  there , it would be an evolutionary  dead end street. So their main interest became naturally  the development of the 3.th attention.
Spiritual seekers feel attracted to teachings of a particular attention according to their level of development and evolutionary needs. So , if you are developing for some time (could be many , many incarnations) your 3.th attention you become frustrated with concepts of the 3.th attention like evolution , freedom, reincarnation  etc.Then there can happen a moment of total resignation -your personal crucification - which I call the "divine accident", because you cannot reach it with your efforts (but without efforts you have also no chance) .  When all your conceptual striving stopps,  you start to get glimpses of the 4.th attention and become naturally attracted to the teachings for the development of the 4.th attention.
It is not known to me , if  the Nagual - Tradition has teachings for the development of the 4.th attention. As far as I know in the Indian spiritual tradition there are exampels of 4.th level teachings in the Advaita Vedanta , Pantajalis Raja Yoga , the Siddha Yoga of  Kashmir Shivaism  and Tibetan maha ati (dzogchen and mahamudra) and last but not least : Chan or Zen.
A good philosophical approach to the concept of the 4 attentions you can find in the works of the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo (Integral Yoga , the Divine Life).

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao


The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.



The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.



Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.




Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.



Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

[SelfHealedMadman]

~



So Isnobad, would you say that reaching the Fourth Attention would make one fully Enlightened?



SHM

[Guest]

No , I dont
think so. I believe that there is no limit to the evolution of conciousness. There
is the old hermetic saying : as above so below . So there are probably , still
higher attentions 5. 6. and ad infinitum. The evolution of the attentions can
be desribed in  three phases  1. a sudden shift in the higher attention 2. a
phase of stabilisation 3. a crisis situation which makes a new  shift urgently necessary. In the phase of
stabilisation , there is the highest indentification with that particular
attention . Here you might come to the  conclusion , that you have reached the non
plus ultra of realization. The old seers believed for a long time, that they
reached the highest possible level of realization . Same thing with the new
seers...




 


"I died as a
mineral and became a plant;

I died as a plant and rose to animal;

I died as animal and I was a man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as man to soar

With angels blest. But even from an angel

I must pass on: all except God must perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel soul,

I shall become what no mind ever conceived."


 


Rumi

[SelfHealedMadman]

~
Ah, thus the importance of the word, Futher.
[edit]  After I read this....
Not the importance of the 'word' further, the importance of the Action.

[SelfHealedMadman]

SelfHealedMadman wrote:

~
Every inch of ground takes everything I have. Lessons aen't delivered as quaint little parables and allegories, but as irreparable losses; lesson after lesson, loss after loss. Every step is a loss and as long as there's more to lose, there are more steps to take. Everything is lost. Nothing is gained.
Adding to this, it’s become apparent that the deeper one delves into Nagualism, the less one has to say.

[SelfHealedMadman]

~
"Uh, let's see, is enlightenment a natural evolutionary step?"  
"Oh, that's a good one. The answer is no. If anything, enlightenment is evolution derailed.  
I mean, I take the question to mean evolution of a reincarnating individual or an evolving species, but the answer is the same either way.  
Evolution is about change and enlightenment is about truth, which is unchanging.

Evolution takes place in a larger context than day-to-day existence, but it's still encased within a dualistic context. In other words, evolution, growth, development, change, whatever, are all parts of the dramatic event of dualistic being. Enlightenment isn't."  
"But wait," injects Mark, "is enlightenment the end of the evolutionary line?"  
"That's fine," I say.  "It's an amusing question. Will I myself experience growth beyond truth-realization in this life? No. Will I reincarnate back into an ignorant state, which is to say, will unseen forces put me back to sleep? No. The question assumes the existence of a differentiated true self, like a separate entity, and uh, that wouldn't be an accurate assumption. Differentiated and true are mutually exclusive."  
"Then who are we talking to?"  
"You mean Jed McKenna? I have no idea. A character in a dream."  
"You're enlightened and you don't know who you are?"  
"Can't know, doesn't matter, don't care. You're talking about reconciling the dream-state with reality, like it all has to add up.  
Everyone seems to get hooked on that, but you can't do it. Truth and non-truth are irreconcilable. Truth is, non-truth isn't. The false is purely an apparition; it exists only in the eye of the beholder.  
True and false aren't opposites; they're not like the black and white of the yin-yang symbol. There is no true self and the false self is irrelevant.  We can't insist on a truth that makes sense in light of what we know because we don't know anything.  
Again, differentiated and true are mutually exclusive, not two halves of the whole."  
Jed McKenna
Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment

[Guest]

"Laws as such do not make people better," said Mulla Nasrudin to the
King; "they must practice certain things, in order to become attuned to
inner truth. This form of truth resembles apparent truth only slightly."

The King decided that he could, and would, make people observe the
truth. He could make them practice truthfulness.

His city was entered by a bridge. On this he built a gallows. The
following day, when the gates were opened at dawn, the Captain of the
Guard was stationed with a squad of troops to examine all who entered.

An announcement was made: "Everyone will be questioned. If he tells the
truth, he will be allowed to enter. If he lies, he will be hanged."

Nasrudin stepped forward.

"Where are you going?"

"I am on my way," said Nasrudin slowly, "to be hanged."

"We don't believe you!"

"Very well, if I have told a lie, hang me!"

"But if we hang you for lying, we will have made what you said come
true!"

"That's right: now you know what truth is - YOUR truth!"

[another spirit]

yes had a trip hard. died. and saw that it was all reflections of self. it was indeed very dark but not in the classical dark way. just too fine for light.

but it was exactly like isnobad said. some helpless wanker myself creating reality for my own reflections. because it was blissful

if you read the upanishads they speak of what they call the 'fourth'. they recommend also meditating on aum - as am - as brahman. fourth is not this not that. sounds like total freedom with total acceptance. also total bliss they say. but then that wouldnt, by that perspective, be not that.

and i too believe in the infinite evolution of consciousness. like each level just keep leveling up. impeccability. death

[Wei Shan Yang]

Great thread!



Death, the unreachable. To die in the truest sense would be to lose all consciousness, and if that happens, who would know it? So perhaps death never happens, yet its what the void or emptiness "is". The 'I am' is the life made possible by the awareness of nothingness (death), and being that it is awareness, it is not truly dead, yet not alive in any essential way either.



Why is death feared?...if one were to die then they simply would not know and thus not suffer in any way. Total oblivion, could not even morn their lost self. And if bodily death occurs but consciousness goes on, then obviously death of body is not really death. So in either case, a true death (not even aware you died and not suffering as a result) or semi-death (shedding a body only), either way there is no pain involved. In the first case, no pain becasue no awareness, in the second, no pain (from fear) because no death is even possible (realizing consciousness continues with or without physical body for eternity).



So, in what circumstance should death be feared then? If one fears complete annihilation, at least it should be considered that such annihilation would end all pain, all fear completely. Such as, if one feared their life being cut short when there are so many things here they love and seek to do, so if one fears losing this opportunity 'to live', if such actually occurs, they would not even be around to reflect upon (regret) the event of their death.



I'd say its not death that is feared, what is feared is pain and suffering. Its much harder to lose contact with one you love then to lose your own consciousness. And if those we love are just 'creations' of our own mind, thats pretty sad too. Again, total annihilation would be far easier to face. Yet, 'I am' IS all that is known for certain.

[another spirit]

agree about death. and great thread.

what is the i that is that you know. that is what is reflected in the world. and that can be known. and if we can get past the i then we can know the world more fully. question is balance - for power, and which will you prefer. to me, i gets boring.