The Thinker of Thy Thoughts
The Seer of thy sight thou shalt not see; the Hearer of thy ear thou shalt not hear; the Thinker of thy thoughts thou shall not think; the Knower of thy knowledge thou shalt not know- this is thy Real Self, all-pervading, everything besides is but mortal.
-Brhadaranyakopanishad
What could be more pertinent than understanding that all-pervading Something alluded to in the quote? What could be a matter of more consequence? Basic necessities aside, what could have a greater impact on our quality of life? It seem so clear to me that all of our problems stem from ignorance of what that Something is. Is this wishful thinking on my part, or is it routed in reality?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mark Kusek on
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Sure, but if you follow the pattern from Brhadaranyakopanishad, then:
"The understanding of thy understanding thou shall not understand."
I don't think you can assume to such an understanding and remain a you, everything beside is but partial, limited and incomplete.
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Permalink Reply by Seth Edwards on
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I don't think you can assume to such an understanding and remain a you, everything beside is but partial, limited and incomplete.
What would it look like for someone to no longer remain a "me?" Would it just be childlike absorption in the world around you, without attachment to that said world?
What would it look/feel like to look at this partial, limited, and incomplete existence with the perspective of the full, unlimited, and complete underlying reality simultaneously in your mind?
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in my view, the finite mind is illusory as a thing in itself existing independently from everything else and therefore, by itself, can never contain full, unlimited, complete reality unless all other finite minds similarly do.
The finiteness is the illusion as is the sense of finite "you."
The answer to your question of what it would look like: it looks like all of this.
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Permalink Reply by David Allen on
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Wouldn't that be "The understander of thy understanding thou shall not understand."
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I agree Seth,
If I may, I am going to relate what I see in that quote.
"The Seer of thy sight thou shalt not see; the Hearer of thy ear thou shalt not hear; the Thinker of thy thoughts thou shall not think; the Knower of thy knowledge thou shalt not know- this is thy Real Self, all-pervading, everything besides is but mortal.
-Brhadaranyakopanishad"
"The Seer of thy sight thou shalt not see" to me this is repeated 4 times, The other 3 instances are all saying the same thing. The seer, hearer, ect., is non-physical. The seer doesn't see because it has no eyes, the mortal part has the eyes.
So the real self is not mortal.
"all-pervading" to me means everywhere. So the real self is all around us, represented by everything,
So the real self within me, that expresses it's self as me, is the same real self in everything else, being expressed in different ways.
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Right, that's kind of what I meant too. Life is expressing itself as all of this, including us.
Look for it, and you only find the illusory appearances. Try to understand it and you will only ever know what you know or understand what you understand.
The absolute is unknowable even to the Logos, or so HPB in the SD states.
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To me, it is more than life, life is a product. There were many, many evolutions before life (as we know it) emerged (as a representation "it").
The absolute is unknowable because it is all things, all representations, (including us).
In my understanding "The Absolute" reduces down to a "pattern" or "process".
The one thing I can safely say about it is that it is creative. It repeats itself and becomes more (as in "the whole is more than the sum of it's parts") than it was.
So to me, the vague "The Absolute", is a little more defined as a "creative force".
If I am an expression of a "creative force", that would indicate that I am a "creative force".
If I keep creating representations of this "creative force", then "all things" or "all representations" is a non-finite variable so is unknowable.
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Right.
What you are calling creative force "representations" is what I mean when I say "interpretations."
These can be man made expressions or not ("because it is all things, all representations, including us).
What you are calling a "pattern" or a "process" is like the understanding of the ineffably vague Chinese term Tao as "Way."
"If I keep creating representations of this "creative force" - then you put your individuality in actual accord with the source of all being. That is the key to art as a spiritual practice.
Well said.
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In classical Chinese painting, especially from the writings of Hseih-Ho, the first principle or canon of the art is "Chi-Yun Sheng-Tung"
Translation (roughly): "Spirit-Resonance, Life-Movement."
A very similar idea.
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Exactly, these are my same beliefs.
All we can really do concerning the "Real Self" is explain what it isn't (intellectually, at least). If you can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, feel it, or think it, its not your Real Self. The underlying REALITY is underlying all of those things.
Seeing as we fundamentally, and necessarily, are that Real Self, seeing as we fundamentally are that underlying Reality, is it really that absurd to believe we could understand it in some form while we're here, in this current existence? I don't think it is. We ARE the thing itself. Our physical and mental structures might be illusory, but we ourselves ARE REALITY. Why would we not be able to grasp what that Reality then is?
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Thanks Seth, and "Hi!"
I get what you mean and agree, (at least in my own way)
This all depends on view.
In my current view, for example, I think we CAN and DO explain "what it is" or "isn't." We do it all the time.
It's just that no matter what we say, either affirmatively or not ...
all we can ever say is ... just "what can be said".
Coming as such sayings do, i.e., from individuals, all such sayings are of necessity relativistic interpretations we each have to make based on our own unique experiences, associations, understandings, etc. No such sayings are absolute by themselves.
The only way anything any of us say can be taken as ultimate or absolute truth, etc., is if everything any of us said, can or ever will ever say, including anything that can possibly be said, is similarly taken.
That's the "all voices as one voice" attitude of inclusion, you might say.
IOW, the underlying reality is manifest all around us as everything and everybody.
Even sensory and psychological experience is IT.
So from that point of view, it's perfectly fine to go ahead and affirm particulars. Just know that no individual particular can represent the absolute except in considering all of it's relationships and interdependencies as well, and we can only do that so much until it trails off into what we "do not know", have not experienced, don't remember, are unconscious of, etc.
Knowledge is always relative to unknowing, as consciousness is to the unconscious.
I don't think it's absurd at all to think that we can understand it "in some form." as you say, ... but the "in some way" part needs close attention, because that means it is an interpretation we are making and so relative and not absolute. We each have numerous ways we interpret "it."
The idea that there is one uber manifestable form that fits the All is the idea of abstract space.
We can grasp what is graspable with our mechanisms for grasping (senses and mental factors, i.e. the Buddhist skandhas) but we cannot grasp the ungraspable.
That's why theosophy speaks about "that about which nothing can be said." itself a kind of koan.
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Thanks for that reply Mark. You're really good at explaining topics that are inherently super hard to explain. That's a talent.
IOW, the underlying reality is manifest all around us as everything and everybody.
Even sensory and psychological experience is IT.
Do you think there is anything underlying these experiences? Everything we can observe or experience is the product of cause and effect. What was the initial cause? What will be the final effect? If there is nothing more than the experience of the cause and effect, that would mean our entire existence is set in stone before we're even born. If our sensory and psychological experiences were IT, it would mean EVERYTHING is devoid of free will. But what is that experiencer behind the sensory stimuli? That undefinable internal thing, that experiencer, seems to predate the stimulus, and will likely still be there when all of the stimuli disappear. Knowledge of that thing is what I think would bring infinity into the minds of those advanced people still living and breathing around us.
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