The "Right View" - What is Yours?

a reply to: Astrocyte

Awesome! Another great description of someone's view! This is exactly what I was hoping for when I wrote this thread up - different ways of interpreting experience that I haven't thought of before! I also agree that we will probably never achieve 100% of "knowledge" - looking for the truth in thought can easily lead to infinite regression. I agree that it makes life exciting though, as we can never know Ultimate Reality (no birth, no death).

Relative Reality is very exciting! I can't wait for science to start incorporating Subjective Reality into its Objective Reality framework (thus removing my need for two types of Relative Reality). I love your comment about "gnostics with a history major"! I had to look up Gestalt Psychology and The "Law of Symmetry", as I had never heard of the concept before, but it seems like it might provide me with some good info to incorporate into my View!

Am I right to say that the Law of Symmetry describes the way human brains group/arrange experienced symbols within their "scaffold" of mind/View? So humans would group all objects that their brain's "Pattern Seekers" identify as human with themselves? Could the "trauma" you talk about create the "othering" that certain human groups do to one another? So, in essence, the trauma breaks (or perverts/corrupts/re-wires) the natural ordering of symbols that the brain performs because the mind felt it was necessary for survival (due to previous, traumatic, experience with said symbol)? I could see how this could explain a LOT of different (non-physical) mental afflictions, so thank you for the new info - I need to read up on Embodied Cognition, I think!

I also really like your pole analogy. It seems similar to the idea of Contact in Buddhist Psychology. Your idea of co-dependence being tied to displaying the value we feel for the perceived object on our faces is a new concept to me - it honestly makes a lot of sense! A good reason keep working on Ethics as an attempt to increase total Compassion! I can't remember how many times I've been waiting for a shuttle in the cold rain for way too long, and found myself being angry at the driver for the rain/traffic. I've gotten better over the years, but noticing/explaining it is a big part of the battle!

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
This is a really complex subject. I believe there are some dreams that are to be taken  symbolically, and dreams are what they are.
...
Then there are the vivid dreams. Usually life like, yet disturbingly surreal. I always sense an external presences feeding ideas, delusions, temptations, into my stream of thought. Its like they're looking for my weakness and trying to intimidate me. Those seem to be a blend of literal interactions with symbolic principles.

This makes me think of Tibetan Dream Yoga. They say that there are two main categories of dreams - Karma Dreams and Wisdom Dreams. The following video is a quick breakdown of the subject if you're curious!:

Finally there are the sleep paralysis episodes. The astral projections. The old hag strangulations (my wife saw it happening to me too). Those I believe to be real entities directly attacking me after they fail at deceiving me during a vivid dream. I usually wake up from vivid dreams and nightmares into a paralysed state from which point I have left my body and actually wrestled with evil spirits in the astral plane.

I explained my View on this in an earlier post - I take these experiences to be a look at how the human mind is working behind the scenes. I played with the idea of them being objectively real, but I just never experienced any corroborating info. If I had a witness to any of my experiences, I would have gladly taken the info and integrated it into my View (you're lucky to have had a corroboration from your wife!).

This has been going on since around 2012, though I have had some intermittent sleep events as a child.

Mine started maybe 7 years ago, but that also lines up with when I started drinking more (a known risk factor for Sleep Paralysis). They have happened a LOT less in the 4 years since I stopped drinking, but they are still a part of my life.

I believe the existing universe is a medium (similar to water) that is being manipulated by various vibrational frequencies to form layers of superimposed energy densities. In short I believe parallel dimensions exist, and spirits can move from one to another. I draw a lot of my ideas from Quantum Field Theory.

That's a common element in many Views, and reminds me of many different Cosmologies/Cosmos Descriptions (Buddhist, Hindu, Norse, and many Esoteric Cosmologies, to name a few). I do think that there is something to this similarity across cultures, but I will admit that I don't have enough experience to say exactly what this is. I never heard the water analogy in relation to these layers though, so that's a fun new thing for me to think about!

My current View is that it's a description of how different minds organize themselves, but that might eventually change as I encounter new info. The different cultures that created these Cosmologies probably did so by gathering many reports of odd experiences of mind (OOBEs, Sleep Paralysis, etc...) and assembling them into a coherent group view. I think that these other "Planes"/"Dimensions"/"Worlds" are just containers for thoughts (you could consider it your thinking space) - including composite objects, emotions, states of mind, degrees of fragmentation, etc.. I think the Buddhists have a good list of many different types of these containers, but it's probably impossible to account for how billions of different minds are organized. The Formless Realms are thought containers that you can only experience with a very concentrated mind (a mind in Jhana).

I can't comment on Robert Monroe, as I know very little about him.

I do like Monroe's three books (Journeys Out of Body, Far Journeys, and Ultimate Journey), and they contain a lot of interesting information about OOBEs that's fun to play around with! His personal View had a Physical Universe that was permeated with some sort of life energy - this energy was concentrated in rings around the earth of differing "quality". I believe that Monroe and his research team really did have the experiences that they said they did, but I take what they are saying as Relative Subjective opposed to Relative Objective. Some evidence of this is that one member of his research team had a different View from Monroe's, despite both of them having the same experience (a spiral of progress that a "soul" needs to move up in, starting with plants and moving well beyond human form compared to Monroe's rings). It's interesting stuff!

So right view is anything good.. and wrong view is evil?

Or is right view just anything that settles the mind.. whether it is good or bad?

In my opinion right view is open mindedness.. meditation.. yoga.. a will to live on.. a will to survive.. and a will to win.. life and games alike..

Compassion for the way, people and things..

Relative views will always be subjectively interesting..

Absolute views are only correct if the subjevtive mind has perfectly merged with reality.. as if the absolute is a host.. and all you gotta do is suit up in forgiveness and love!

Good or Bad can be seen as something below to the high mind.

So with regards to dreaming.. I've figured out that we sleep in absolute space or otherwise the Akashic Record Player.. so to understand that brings true Buddhahood..

To understand this absolute space is to Grandmaster reality.. to becone Buddha and become able to defeat dreaming all together..

And its from this absolute space that we deal and trade in our current ideas/beliefs and then they dissolve.. and the absolute place tells you what you should know.. and how much you understand that means how much you memorize your dreams..

This absolute space is made for reuptake of thoughts.. and refusing and renewal of energy.. thus we go to bed in absolute space and get refreshed.. and we need to go back when we get tired.. or otherwise run out of energy..

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
I usually wake up from vivid dreams and nightmares into a paralysed state from which point I have left my body and actually wrestled with evil spirits in the astral plane.

This also reminded me of a cool story that you might have already heard! It's the story where Jacob wrestles god from the the Bible. It sounds like Jacob had sleep paralysis to me:

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Robert Monroe also talked about a couple experiences where he hopped out of body to fight an incredibly fast shadow creature in his bedroom for hours. I luckily haven't had to do much wrestling in my experiences!

originally posted by: philosopheroftruth
a reply to: Astrocyte
Am I right to say that the Law of Symmetry describes the way human brains group/arrange experienced symbols within their "scaffold" of mind/View? So humans would group all objects that their brain's "Pattern Seekers" identify as human with themselves?

I just realized that I forgot to define a key symbol/idea here. I use the term "Pattern Seekers" for the processes that the human mind uses to identify the patterns/ideas/symbols in Objective Reality. A lot of these are built into the circuitry of the human mind (present at birth), but many others are composites - built out of the ones there from birth and defined by experience. Examples would include face detection, human body detection, food detection, distance estimation, movement detection, etc... This article talks about a woman with a condition known as Blindsight. This condition is the result of damage to the visual cortex (where the visual "Pattern Seekers" are stored in the brain), and causes afflicted individuals to be unable to see parts of reality pertaining to the damaged "Pattern Seeker" (like faces, for example).

originally posted by: philosopheroftruth
In a way, a person has 2 bodies - their physical body, and the mental map/idea of their body. These would be called the Objective Body and Subjective Body in my View, and the Created Body and Desire Body in Buddhism (Buddhism also posits a third body in Ultimate Reality called the Truth Body).

I used the wrong terms from Buddhism here (it should be Created/Desire Body and Enjoyment/Form Body), but the Subjective Body from my View would be created from these pattern seeking processes.

originally posted by: Boundless1
So right view is anything good.. and wrong view is evil?

Or is right view just anything that settles the mind.. whether it is good or bad?

I'm not sure I can completely explain the Buddhist concept of Right View, but I think some of the links I posted throughout this thread might help define it better! I personally think that Nagarjuna's View of Madhyamaka is the closest you could get. The earlier texts have Dependent Origination as the key element of Right View.

Realized Bodhisattvas can apparently utilize different Wrong Views in order to lead sentient beings to Liberation (one part of the Method aspect of the Bodhisattva Path).

In my own View, I would say that settling the mind is the core idea, but different people might need different Views to bring peace (depending on what they are clinging to). Any experienced contradiction to their View could easily bring a major disruption to that peace, so constantly ironing out the wrinkles is necessary to the process. Clinging to a contradictory View causes a lot of people to butt heads with the world.
The tool of Equanimity points out that "good" and "bad" are subjective conceptual designations, which I also use in my View. Instead, there is skilful and unskillful (and the best tools to accomplish the skillful).

In my opinion right view is open mindedness.. meditation.. yoga.. a will to live on.. a will to survive.. and a will to win.. life and games alike..

Compassion for the way, people and things..

I like this - really simple and Zen. Seems similar to the ethics presented in the Noble Eightfold Path.

So with regards to dreaming.. I've figured out that we sleep in absolute space or otherwise the Akashic Record Player.. so to understand that brings true Buddhahood..
...
its from this absolute space that we deal and trade in our current ideas/beliefs and then they dissolve.. and the absolute place tells you what you should know..

Cool - so dreams might be thought of as an interface with Ultimate Reality in your View? And could be thought of as a puzzle, that once solved, would lead one to Ultimate Reality (peace from all conceptual elaboration)? I would love to hear some of the info you used to form this idea!

I posted what my View says about this subject earlier - basically dreams are what your thoughts actually look like behind the scenes of your mind (this is why they seem to be a reflection of your mind). I can sometimes get a glimpse of what the world of my current thought looks like (my thought while writing the OP was based in the office that I work in, for some reason).

This absolute space is made for reuptake of thoughts.. and refusing and renewal of energy.. thus we go to bed in absolute space and get refreshed.. and we need to go back when we get tired.. or otherwise run out of energy...

That's a cool idea - taking a break from thinking to refresh your mind! Since Robert Monroe is on my mind, I'll mention how he once explained certain dream experiences:

While out of body (in his Subjective Body, in my View), he was finding himself being thrown into many stressful scenarios that would repeat until he "solved" them - while in these experiences, he was unaware that he was out of body and thought he was in Objective Reality (just like standard dreams). He was pretty well experienced in OOBEs at this point, and was unsure exactly why this was happening. After talking to his "Non-Physical Being" helper, he learned that the helper was the one giving him the experiences. He was told that it was necessary, and allowed him to "smooth out" his attachments/emotions. He was apparently unable to control his OOBEs until he had those attachments/emotions "solved".

a reply to: philosopheroftruth

Interesting video, though I don't subscribe to the notion of past lives. The human mind and brain are too easy to manipulate and influence. It's possible that past life experiences are simply false memories implanted into our dreams by evil spirits. I've had a few dreams where I woke up 'remembering' things that couldn't have ever happened. I believe that when I have an OoBE, my soul is actually traveling into another dimension. I often feel a sensation that can only be described as diagonal acceleration through time.

originally posted by: philosopheroftruth
There are MANY different types of meditation
...

The goal is to first develop Calm Abiding, and then start adding Special Insight bit by bit until it all comes together into Single-Pointedness. This can be broken down as follows:
...

For anyone interested, I learned this meditation process from the book Stages of Meditation. This book is a text from the 9th century by the monk Kamalashila, and has commentary by the 14th Dalai Lama. The book is not quite a beginner's explanation, but I think most people here could understand the basics (it's only 158 pages long). The first six or seven chapters of the book are more about Boddhisattva preperation (shrine setup, ethics, visualiziations, prayers, Fruit/Path/View identification, etc...), but chapters seven, eight, nine, and ten go over general meditation in depth.

...
Next you develop Mental Pliability (a pleasant heaviness in the mind with conscious center moving up in your forehead).

Then comes the Physical Pliability (a pleasurable body buzz/vibration that eventually paralyses/numbs your whole body).
...

There is also a stage between here and Special Insight that I left out:

-Physical Pleasure arises following Physical Pliability

-Mental Pleasure arises from Physical Pleasure

and fiinally

-Special Insight arises from Mental Pleasure (this pleasure is from investigating the object you are meditating on).

I originally left this out because there is no pleasure in the deeper Jhanas, and the pleasure itself could be an impediment if you think of it as the goal.

Since it looks like the majority of my responses have been from people who hold a View of Emptiness (to put it generally), I'll mention my thoughts on that. I used to hold this View, so I would love to hear how each of you came to this View, and how you have reconciled the idea that there is only Emptiness with the Relative Reality of day-to-day life (like working at a conceptual job, having children, choosing a spouse, selecting the best path for the future, etc...). I could have only reconciled these issues by going into complete Renunciation, so I am curious!

My current View includes both Relative Reality and Ultimate Reality (Emptiness), but Ultimate Reality is not the same as Absolute Reality in my View - Relative Reality and Ultimate Reality are different ways to experience the same Reality (neither have an inherent existence by themselves - they are created through causality). Instead, they are tools to get things done - in my case, I use Ultimate Reality to temper my Wisdom (no inherent existence of self or phenomena), and Relative Reality to temper my Compassion (the cause of the existence of suffering).

Hopefully this post was easy enough to follow - I left the wiki links out of this post since there was nothing I haven't linked elsewhere.

The easiest way to follow the eightfold path including right view is to honor all of the precepts. If you mediate meditate just sit. If anything else arises while sitting it is not sitting... when all ceases including the sitting then you'll be making progress, eventually everything grasped at including all concepts fall away and only the bear absolute reality remains. Nibbana is extinction meaning the same as everything ceasing in body, speech, and mind.

Such a thing is not easy to accomplish outside of an aesthetic setting, as a house holder a lot of time has to be devoted to practice, the precepts will help erase past negative kamma and generate good kamma for the continual rebirths in a positive direction needed for progress. In continued practice one will come to clearly understand what the deathless really means, and not some rote grasping. this is what vipasana is all about of course samatha goes along with it as to whatever arises also passes and generates calm and fearlessness no matter what occurs.

Maya is the illusion that we continually self create and all the illusions arising and passing grasped at in the bava-cakra are also self created and perpetuated by exactly what you speak of being our own mara or lord of death by ego attachment. Such a thing has gone on for infinity already other than generating empathy and loving kindness absorbing all of that dukka is pointless as a pursuit as it has already occurred in countless lifetimes and world systems. Of course one has forgotten such things and in direct experience as it grows from meditation one will see why the blank spot occurs as experiences of death will be consciously lived through.

The is in such cases nibbana with and without remainder... communion is always taking place whether aware of it or not, whether grasping or not. Of course infinitely being as a continual experience requires shedding all of the finite limitations; which is why grasping, craving, and desire is never the way for such an experience of being to present itself as reality.

All of this written here is just conceptual noise and utterly meaningless, sound being what has created the all of everything being a wave form that has progressed into visual wavelengths is only the difference in form and formlessness which are also grasped at as real and existent conglomerating together. Of course the dualistic shift is the positive and negative attraction that goes round and round without a seeming end or beginning, neither of either is not an indecision it is just simply being and immeasurable, as something that cannot be reduced or remunerated, to anyone else. It all has to be directly experienced to be known as there is no quantification that could be accomplished as an expression... except the ol Zen "Zero".

www.whale.to... "ASTRAL DREAMSCAPE MANIPULATION"

www.maps.org...

a reply to: airowineSailorcat


All of that being spoken of is various bardos of becoming. Many people go through them unconsciously all the time... die but are unaware of having died. But yet still live... going through such bardos is common, seeing that there are quite a few being consciously aware during them... although they sound horrific and in Naraka or the various hells what isn't? Ignorance is still pervading the experience by grasping at them as the underlying truth as a reality instead of merely experiences while in the bardos of becoming with shared motif. These bardos occur on average every 7 to 45 days for everyone including animals hell beings etc. attaching to the appearances is not recommended what is recommended is continual practice of whatever it is that one does as a practice.

I have been through Naraka bardos and no they are not pleasant they are not meant to be; they are trials, tests and tribulations to reincarnate somewhere in the wheel of life on the way to nibbana the various lights are vibratory planes of that existence one is born into, in the animal realm for instance? They do not know they are animals but think themselves human, the Buddha's Jataka tales are of incarnating into that realm of becoming after the bardo has ended. One can eventually with practice incarnate in any realm having broken free from the fetters dispelling the skandhas.

Conglomerating together and speaking about such experience does have a benefit; and yet when taken as such as presented in the link? They become sources of paranoia and even more delusion and ignorance to be feared than what they actually are in truth. If one practices fearlessness and restraint as found and cultivated in meditation, they will be seen clearly as mere appearances that arise and pass, no differently than any other phenomena and have no power other than what one in ignorance gives them or takes them to have.

Honestly it is better to look to a path that is very familiar and has adepts in council and in dealing with such things and appearances as Buddhism, Jainism etc. for over five thousand years than someone that has written a books from is bardo experiences massed imagery together for a clearer view of them which has brought together a cult following, that really has nothing to do to arm themselves properly with right knowledge in the face of such things, which only allow for more wallowing in delusion and suffering due to such experiences when seen wrongly and not rightly.

Of course this goes in line with the Right View topic and well with the motto of ATS itself as in Deny Ignorance. Don't give ignorance/delusion a place to dwell is my take on that, and it's tail/tale will not end up in your mouth as false speech.

originally posted by: philosopheroftruth
Since it looks like the majority of my responses have been from people who hold a View of Emptiness (to put it generally), I'll mention my thoughts on that. I used to hold this View, so I would love to hear how each of you came to this View, and how you have reconciled the idea that there is only Emptiness with the Relative Reality of day-to-day life (like working at a conceptual job, having children, choosing a spouse, selecting the best path for the future, etc...). I could have only reconciled these issues by going into complete Renunciation, so I am curious!

My current View includes both Relative Reality and Ultimate Reality (Emptiness), but Ultimate Reality is not the same as Absolute Reality in my View - Relative Reality and Ultimate Reality are different ways to experience the same Reality (neither have an inherent existence by themselves - they are created through causality). Instead, they are tools to get things done - in my case, I use Ultimate Reality to temper my Wisdom (no inherent existence of self or phenomena), and Relative Reality to temper my Compassion (the cause of the existence of suffering).

Hopefully this post was easy enough to follow - I left the wiki links out of this post since there was nothing I haven't linked elsewhere.

Speaking to your new request for the direction of this thread; it sounds as if you have moved into what is known as tathagatagarbha or wearing the robe of suchness... where samsara and nirvana are one as an indivisible whole. Neither either is the thus gone way for myself known as Nirodha Sammapatti. The Arhat does not fall into states for the benefit of other beings as the bodhisattva does... of course putting off enlightenment one re-enters world after world in ignorance to become a manifested problem yet again and again to rise and then put off enlightenment... lol not true of course but the way it is put into english as putting off enlightenment that is how such a thing manifests :p putting off nirvana would be more accurate in translation so others would no fall into err in how it is meant or intended. In such a manner nirvana with remainder is the goal and the grasping on death in the nirvanic state would be to help other sentient beings as a guide on the path.

What the middle way means is pretty literal for the time; not Hinduism that seeks godhood and not Jainism or a natural force of being as a manifestation as an element commonly known as the Djinn. Buddhism being neither extreme as a path to freedom under no godhead or force of nature as slave to either... as both of those are still bound to the realms of becoming. Of course Buddhism has been influenced by both... From the Brahmanic of becoming a god attachments grow and fester and soon the heaven one has created is far beyond ones control, Buddhism even evolved into such a thing before the Buddhas paranirvana people clamoring and desiring Buddhism so much many didn't even know who the Buddha was when he would be arriving it would be: out of the way you the Buddha is supposed to speak here and people would have to be no no that is the Buddha leave him be. Then Jainist influence of disavowing of eating meat... as a beggar on an alms round the only thing to descriminate against placed in it was thats enough for my daily meal in sustenance not discriminating the lumps placed in the bowl. The Buddha even made this his final teaching by consuming spoiled meat knowing it was just as spoiled as his teaching had become even before his final entrance into nibbana.

So if right view was lost even before he left this world for the other... I am sorry to say very few can even teach a single word of dhamma.


no point to be made

a reply to: philosopheroftruth

What is the right view, if there can be any at all?

They say the more one knows, the more they don't know, and if they don't know when they think they know more, it would be a delusion...a state of being asleep while being awake.

I revere buddhism to some degree even though I'm no practitioner of it, I do find it tedious, an cynical, logical even...which can lead to its own form of dogmas but hey everybody a critic.

It did stem from the caste system of Hinduism, even the myths that originated from it once up on a time ago.

originally posted by: BEBOG
The easiest way to follow the eightfold path including right view is to honor all of the precepts.

Awesome! Glad to have another interesting response (and a detailed one at that)! Everyone who has responded so far has gotten me to think and define my own View a bit better, so thanks!

So to get to your view - it sounds like your View is heavily influenced by Buddhist thought (much like my own). I personally hold that many Buddhist tools/ideas describe mind in a very accurate way.

It also sounds like you might follow the Buddhist path of the Hearers (or Hinayana, if you want to use the more offensive term)? I used to try and follow this View, but it just made me less effective at Relative relationships. I will admit that it's a great system for eliminating your own suffering though! I might be wrong though, since you also sound very Zen, which I prefer over the Sravakayana system.

If you mediate meditate just sit. If anything else arises while sitting it is not sitting... when all ceases including the sitting then you'll be making progress, eventually everything grasped at including all concepts fall away and only the bear absolute reality remains. Nibbana is extinction meaning the same as everything ceasing in body, speech, and mind.

I agree with you here - meditation isn't about conceptualizing, but Special Insight (along with Bliss and other conceptual things) does arise in the early stages. I'm not a master mediator by any means, but I've been able to get to the 3rd Formless Jhana (the "Dimension of Nothingness") many times. I actually use this meditation to buy myself time if I get stressed (like before work) - spending half a minute there in Objective time feels like years in Subjective time!

the precepts will help erase past negative kamma and generate good kamma for the continual rebirths in a positive direction needed for progress. In continued practice one will come to clearly understand what the deathless really means, and not some rote grasping.
...
absorbing all of that dukka is pointless as a pursuit as it has already occurred in countless lifetimes and world systems. Of course one has forgotten such things and in direct experience as it grows from meditation one will see why the blank spot occurs as experiences of death will be consciously lived through.

This is a tricky spot for me. If we are supposed to meditate to remove thoughts, then why should we believe in visions of past lives? Wouldn't those be conceptual thoughts? I could see using the idea as a tool to help release fetters, but I couldn't see it being an actual Objective thing. I have had quite a few past life experiences while meditating, and I believed them 100% when in my previous View.

The most vivid of these was of being the leader of a tiny aboriginal community somewhere in Central or South America before colonization. I experienced the entire lifetime of this man - his growing up, learning to hunt with blow dart tubes, getting a wife, having MANY children, becoming the leader, and dieing as he was surrounded by his family - at least 80 years were experienced. As he/I was starting to pass away, I popped out of his body. I started to look down at the family and think of how much I'll miss them in the afterlife, when I suddenly thought of my name in Objective Reality. This caused all of my "past life memories" as this man to abruptly exit my head, and my "current life memories" to re-enter it (I changed my thought container). I was still in the scene (in OOBE), but it felt so sad to realize that I spent 80 years being attached to these people, only to realize that they were illusions. When I came back from the meditation, I found that I had been away from Objective Reality for less than 5 minutes.

Nowadays, I have realized that those visions are just more subtle forms of thought (what thoughts look like "behind the scenes").

The is in such cases nibbana with and without remainder... communion is always taking place whether aware of it or not, whether grasping or not. Of course infinitely being as a continual experience requires shedding all of the finite limitations

This is very well put, and reminds me of one if my favorite monks, Seongcheol. He talked about how everyone is a Buddah, but they just don't realize it. He also had cool ideas on sudden vs gradual enlightenment. I actually just started doing his mantra meditation during my work day ("Not mind, not thing, not Buddha - what is this?"), and it seems to be a benefit to my mind.

I do get concerned when people choose to passionately put limitations on themselves (designating themselves into conceptual boxes to make it easier to "define themselves" and their choices). It seems like a sure way to cause yourself suffering. Objective Reality has limitations, but it seems like mind can be cultivated infinitely.

All of this written here is just conceptual noise and utterly meaningless
...
It all has to be directly experienced to be known as there is no quantification that could be accomplished as an expression... except the ol Zen "Zero".

I don't think it's meaningless, but I understand your point about how tricky it is to explain. Middle Path would say that there is no meaning Ultimately, but meaning does exist Relatively - we can't even talk about Absolutely.

This is also the first time I've heard of "Zen Zero". I looked it up - are you talking about the Zen tool of Enso? It's something I'll have to read more about, so thanks for the info!

a reply to: airowineSailorcat

Cool! Interesting View - I'm assuming that your first link is the explanation of your View, so correct me if I'm wrong! I'll give a long response split into 2 posts for this one.

So your View has Objective Reptillian entities attacking the minds of humans for their own benefit. There are a lot of interesting experience reports on the website you linked, so I'll just explain one of them in my View for the sake of discussion. I'll try to detail what I've been able to deduce after having many experiences myself (since sharing tools/ideas can be helpful in dealing with these experiences and working out a View).

I guess I'll take the experience where the author engaged in "relations" with a woman entity, only to find himself being raped by a male Reptillian entity as soon as the "relations" began:

This experience, when taken literally/Objectively, can be very scary. What is actually happening though (in my View), is that the author fell into a "Thought Container" loaded with a specific set of Composite Symbols/Pattern Seekers. These "Thought Containers" are where your thinking takes place. In order to simulate a chair in your mind, for example, you need to have a Composite Symbol in your mind that determines what a chair is. To likewise simulate a person (with their own mind and personallity), you need a Composite Symbol of their mind in your current container. The verbal words you think in your head are being given to you by other simulated minds within the container- this is necessary because they can see the container more clearly than you can in waking life, and can help you work out ideas.

The trouble with simulating different minds within your own mind, is that it takes a LOT of processing power compared to something like a chair. This results in your own mind being separated into many different ones. So in this vision, the author had a "Fall-In" vision into a container, and his mind was split into at least 2 different personalities within (himself, the woman, and maybe the Reptillian).

When something happens to one simulated personallity, the whole (overmind, brain - whatever label you want to use) can feel it happening to itself. This is why you feel empathy or get grossed out when thinking about or watching certain images - you are simulating that scene in your head, and feeling what the simulation is feeling. When you have a "Fall-In" vision into a container, you feel like you are just one personallity, but your whole can still feel what the other personalities are experiencing (similar to how you can sometimes feel your sleeping body while also in a lucid dream or OOBE). In this case, the author felt himself having "relations" with the woman, but also felt the woman having "relations" with the man (so it felt like he was being raped by an invisible Reptillian while also having sex with the woman).

Another thing that can happen here is that by falling into a container and taking it for reality, you might start making a simulation of the original container. What I mean here is that you might be thinking (in waking life) about the meaning of a poem. This sounds like words in your head. If you went out of body, you would see the thought as a simulated environment, loaded with symbols pertaining to your thought. While there though, you might not see this as your thought, but rather as an actual place. This causes you to think about this place, creating a simulation of that thought that is not actually the original thought. This is how you might get successive experiences where a certain entity (like a Reptillian) starts to get a life of it's own. The best thing to do here is to just close the container holding that symbol (if you stop thinking about it, you will stop splitting yourself into that other mind - meditation helps).

a reply to: airowineSailorcat

Here are 3 examples from my own experience:

1.) I was meditating early on, and I finally got to the Mental and Physical Pliability stage in my practice. I then got excited and decided to try an OOBE. I was able to tumble out of my body and into the container that is simulating/rendering Objective Reality. I then decided to visit a friend of mine while out of body to see if I could get Objective evidence of my experience (I never have gotten this evidence after many experiences, but that's another story). Well it appears that my simulation of Objective was only rendering my apartment, because I had a "Fall-In" vision just as I was passing through my front door (felt like I fell down into another environment). This was a new container, and contained different symbols than the container for the objective world. This new environment contained many "entities" but they were mindless, thus easy to simulate (lots of women and children in suits who didn't seem to respond to anything, including my inquiries). The environment in this container was a park by the ocean, with a Ferris Wheel. I yelled for someone to help me, and this caused my mind to break into a different personality (a young asian girl who looked like the "Why not both?" taco commercial meme) and engaged in conversation with myself. I won't explain the rest, since it's not relevant, but I can post the whole thing if someone asks.

2.) I was sleeping in a strange location, which is a sure fire way to experience sleep paralysis (your mind makes more guesses when it doesn't know the environment very well). Sure enough, I woke up paralysed. At first I didn't care, but then I thought of things that commonly happen in sleep paralysis. This caused me to think about Alien Abductions. Next thought was "What should I do if an alien comes for me?". This caused the feeling of a presence in the room. I then decided to go with it if it happened. This caused me to think about all the alien abduction experiences, and caused me to pull the symbols into my container (anal probes, drilling up my nose, etc...). This first caused fear, and next caused a hand to grab my face from behind (I was laying on my side, facing a wall). The hand was cold and clammy, and I freaked out. I then decided to abort the experience and rolled out of body. Looking back at my body, I saw a tall (over 6 foot) alien grey grabbing my face. I stared at him with amusment, and he looked at me with a VERY confused look. I waved at him with a smile, wished him luck, and then had an OOBE.

3.) I woke up in a state of sleep paralysis one day - a state I'm very familiar with at this point. I stayed calm, but could feel my mind making guesses about my environment despite me trying to stay empty. This caused a simulation of my mom and little brother to enter the room (they live very far from me, so I knew they weren't really there). They said something was wrong and I needed to follow them. I was sleepy, and just told them to go on without me (knowing they were illusions). They said they would be back. I went back to sleep, only to be awoken by them again, only this time my mom was tying my brother up and trying to get me to save him. I just told them to stop trying to get me to react, and just let me sleep. My brother untied himself, and my mom said she would go get my wife. I stayed awake this time (still paralysed) and waited. Finally my mom, brother, and wife came into the room, and the simulation of my wife said I needed to listen to them. This made me aggravated, so I figured I would fix this by introducing new symbols to the container I was stuck in. I wobbled out of body, sat up, and explained my View to them. This went on for at least 16 minutes, and it was a debate about the reality of their View vs mine. I ended up convincing them that they were simulations, and they finally agreed to leave me alone. This is why praying can work sometimes in these situations - you change the symbols in your container.

Hopefully that made sense! I also downloaded that PDF you linked and will love reading through it. Robert Monroe also explains many experiences where (while out of body) he realized that his past experiences with "Non-Physical Entities" were actually experiences of him talking to himself (this is in his last book "Ultimate Journey"). Another (possibly similar) book that you might like is Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shannon. Lots of great information!