In this reflexive universe, there are stages and substages. Both number seven.
The seventh substage of any given stage in this reflexive universe of evolutionary self-awareness requires the first substage of the next stage to be pre-existent.
This evolutionary universe is not propelled forward by its past but is being beckoned back by the future.
Not only is truth beyond words, words have never existed in truth. With great imagination comes a world of words.
Like a dream, it’s not real. That it feels real is an attribute of dreaming. Reality, like deep sleep, doesn’t feel a thing.
It's like the classic trope of snake and rope. Just because the snake appears to be real doesn’t mean it is. Perception is the very stuff of dreams.
Even these observations are things perceived and aren’t to be believed. Nonduality is not a belief system but a method for the practice of disbelieving.
Creation myths are made to be destroyed. Theories explaining all phenomena are constructed to be deconstructed. Worshiping the gods is prologue to seeing through them.
The texts of the Upanishads that are most obviously of benefit to man are those which teach him that he is identical with the Absolute, for the knowledge accruing from them is said to result in the 'fruit' of 'immediate intuition of truth' and 'immortality' and 'eternal freedom from fear'.
Such knowledge is not only 'fruitful' but final and uncontradictable. Once it is gained, it is inconceivable that there either should or could be any further knowledge to add to it, further it, modify it or correct it.
This cannot be said of the knowledge accruing from the creation-texts, which consequently carry less authority when they conflict with the great metaphysical teachings about the true nature of man as one with homogeneous Consciousness, the sole existent reality.
Further, if the creation-texts had been relating anything true, they would not have disagreed amongst themselves as to the details of creation. The texts that teach that the creation of the world took place on the analogy of some worldly kind of creation, such as the production of pots of showing that effects are non-different from their material cause.
And there is the further principle of exegesis that all the texts can be reconciled and combined into a single view.
According to this principle, the supreme texts of the Upanishads like 'That thou art', which affirm the identity of the individual soul with the Absolute, may be taken as fundamental, while all the rest of the texts of the Veda can be taken as auxiliaries to understanding these.
Some parts of the accounts of creation are plainly mythological, as when 'speech' is spoken of as 'desiring food' or 'food' is spoken of as 'running away'. These again should not be taken as statements of fact but as indirect aids to certain phases of the process of coming to understand the great truth that the individual soul is none other than the supreme Self
In the same way, the doctrine that, having created the world, the Absolute 'entered' it as the principle of life and consciousness is not to be taken as a statement of historical fact, but as a pictorial representation of the truth that the Absolute is already manifest in the world-appearance, in the sense that it is the only reality in it.
Both the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the ‘entry’ of the Absolute into its own creation have to be viewed in a wider context and seen as part of the process of gradually conveying to the pupil a notion of his own true nature by the method of false attribution and subsequent denial.
Alston, Creation, p.231
For some the summer solstice is midsummer. The summer solstice is beginning of the summer for some others. Maybe our highest daily average temperature floats your boat. I know it’s summer when this tidal Merrimack turns on its air conditioning originating from that Gulf of Maine.
Self-awareness is the nature of awareness. The bliss of self-awareness is the nature of brahman. Awareness to self-awareness is this dreamlike appearance of space-time in changeless satcitananda. Because reality is indescribable, paradox is one way to describe it.
As pure consciousness is the ground of reality, god is the floor of the people. All players in this world need a stage to act their part upon. Everyone has a god whether they believe in it or not. The hardest part of deconstructing the personal is unraveling its gods.
Your god may be political, scientific, materialistic, all three or more. Your god may be the one true god and no other god is true for you. Self-awareness has always been my greatest god. I might not have known it but self-awareness has been telling me I am the livelong June.
Śańkara was a good deal less exuberant than his later followers came to be in his references to the Absolute or the Self as bliss.
This may be illustrated from the case of the famous work called 'The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom', attributed to him but now known to have been composed centuries after his death by some member of his school.
Of the 580 verses of the 'Crest-Jewel' almost a tenth refer in one way or another to the topic of bliss, whereas in Śańkara's one independent work of guaranteed authenticity, the Upadeśa Sahasrī, there is only one appearance of the term bliss (ānanda), and the Absolute is regularly described as 'Being-and-Consciousness-only (sac-cin-mātra)' and not according to the later formula 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sac-cid-ānanda)'.
Nevertheless, the Upanishads do speak of the Absolute as bliss, and this note is not absent from Śańkara's genuine texts:
-the bliss of the Absolute available in dreamless sleep when nescience is absent
-under the influence of nescience, the bliss of the Absolute manifests in fragmentary and temporary form as worldly joy
-the bliss in the 'ether of the heart' enjoyed by those who realize the true nature of the Self
-the bliss of the Self is permanent, and, unlike that derived from objects, not dependent on activity
-the bliss of the Self is not anything experienced like an object
~Alston, Absolute, p.260
Gaudapada says both the dreamless state and both dream states are appearing in the fourth.
Even the midnight of a moonless night is appearing in that alpine crystal lake.
It goes without saying if the mind is appearing in consciousness only, I cannot be the mind.
Every person has a god and every god has a godhead.
I Am is god singing to its godhead. Sing along with me.
In a self-reflexive universe, I Know I Am is the holy trinity.
Belief is knowing a lot of things and loving only some of them. Viveka is seeing through everything while loving all of it.
Two is old-time religion. One is into the mystic. Zero is postmodern deconstruction.
Nonduality is the reality of satcitananda.
