bodhicitta

bodhicitta is a compassionate tendency towards respect and understanding and the willingness to help other sentient beings to become liberated themselves of ignorance and separation.

Is this also a part of human nature?

Something to reflect on

If somebody would tell us that the man in the picture above was a hero that saved a little girl from being killed......we would believe it. We would even look at his face with some admiration.....

If somebody would tell us that he was the initiator of a compassionate movement towards a minority group in south east Asia......we would believe it....

But, no. He is Kang Kek Iew, also known in the khmer rouge years as "Duch". He worked as a school mathematic's teacher, and became head of the the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. During this time 17000 people were tortured and killed in that prison. Only six survived. In an interview in 2008*, he said "No answer (from the prisoners) spared them from death".....

This is something to reflect about. Without judging.....

(in the lower picture, Kang Kek Iew at the age of about 17)
*: interview by Valerio Pellizzari

Is there a perception without the senses?

Is all seeing done with the eyes?
When I "look" at my fear or my tendencies,
do I "look" with the eyes?.....
So let's call it "perception", instead of "seeing"....
but, then......how does this perception come about?.......

what is seeing?

"The eye, who would believe that so small
an object could contain the images of
all the universe."
Leonardo da Vinci

What is seeing?
Is seeing conditioned?
Is there a seeing which is NOT conditioned?
Or.....is there a seeing which is also aware of its own conditioning?

What is conditioning?

There is an interesting passage about Hercule Poirot, the fictionary detective in Agatha Christies’s novel “Death in the Clouds” (1961. Pages 169-170):

“….. Poirot groaned and dropped his head into his hands. ‘I must think. I must think…... Can it be possible that all along my ideas have been entirely wrong?..… It is possible that all along I have attached too much importance to one particular thing. I expected to find a certain clue. I found it, and I built up my case from it. But if I have been wrong from the beginning’….. Poirot pressed his hands upon his temples. ‘It is all wrong’, he murmured. ‘I do not employ the little grey cells of the brain in an orderly and methodical way. No, I leap to conclusions. I think, perhaps, what I am meant to think”.

What is conditioning? Is it the most common, yet the most difficult to be aware of, factor influencing the way we think, feel and live?

direct contact

What keeps us going in a certain path?
Is just readings, practice, theory......or glimpses of direct contact?
Is there another "reality" which is not the one we normally "see", "live in"?, and if so, is it posible to contact it, really, not just theorize about it?

(Dedicated to Itay)

(video clip from the 1979 film "Meetings with remarkable men" based on Gurdjieff book of the same title)

what is anger?

An article appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), on its 1st of September issue, titled:

"Formidability and the logic of human anger?":

"Eleven predictions derived from the recalibrational theory of anger were tested. This theory proposes that anger is produced by a neurocognitive program engineered by natural selection to use bargaining tactics to resolve conflicts of interest in favor of the angry individual. The program is designed to orchestrate two interpersonal negotiating tactics (conditionally inflicting costs or conditionally withholding benefits) to incentivize the target of the anger to place greater weight on the welfare of the angry individual. Individuals with enhanced abilities to inflict costs (e.g., stronger individuals) or to confer benefits (e.g., attractive individuals) have a better bargaining position in conflicts; hence, it was predicted that such individuals will be more prone to anger, prevail more in conflicts of interest, and consider themselves entitled to better treatment. These predictions were confirmed. Consistent with an evolutionary analysis, the effect of strength on anger was greater for men and the effect of attractiveness on anger was greater for women. Also as predicted, stronger men had a greater history of fighting than weaker men, and more strongly endorsed the efficacy of force to resolve conflicts—both in interpersonal and international conflicts. The fact that stronger men favored greater use of military force in international conflicts provides evidence that the internal logic of the anger program reflects the ancestral payoffs characteristic of a small-scale social world rather than rational assessments of modern payoffs in large populations."

(authors: Aaron Sell, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides)

And this is a press release about the above article, which is easier to read:

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Anthropologists, psychologists, and other experts in human behavior have long recognized anger as a universal emotion. Evident in humans across all cultures, and in babies as young as 6 months old, anger is demonstrated by certain facial expressions and changes in physical demeanor. Until now, however, the exact function of anger –– the advantage that led to its evolution –– has remained mysterious.

A new study by scientists at UC Santa Barbara provides evidence that anger serves as a nonconscious bargaining system, triggered when someone places too little weight on one's welfare. The researchers' findings are published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study, titled "Formidability and the Logic of Human Anger," was co-authored by Aaron Sell, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology, along with the center's co-directors, John Tooby, professor of anthropology, and Leda Cosmides, professor of psychology.

The anger system implicitly guides the angered person to take steps that are designed to motivate the offender to treat the angry person better. The two bargaining tools humans have at their disposal are the ability to confer benefits and the ability to inflict costs. Angry expressions and behavior signal a threat –– implicit or otherwise –– to withhold future benefits or to inflict costs. These incentives pressure the other individual into giving the angry person's welfare a higher priority.

The theory that anger evolved for bargaining predicts individual differences in anger-proneness, the authors point out. Using anger to renegotiate how one is treated will be more effective if one has more bargaining power, and this will be a function of one's ability to inflict costs or confer benefits. Stronger men, for example, are better able to harm others in a fight, giving them social leverage during our evolutionary history. That should also be the case now, if our minds are designed to respond to this ancestral selection pressure. As predicted, the study showed that men with greater upper body strength feel entitled to better treatment, anger more easily and frequently, and prevail more often in conflicts of interest. Attractive women should also have social leverage, by virtue of their ability to confer benefits. The study found that women who see themselves as more attractive behave as stronger men do: They also feel entitled to better treatment, anger more easily, and have more success resolving conflicts in their favor.

One of the study's more intriguing findings concerns attitudes toward the use of force. "Not surprisingly, stronger men more strongly endorse the use of force as an effective way to settle personal disputes. However, this relationship could have been learned by payoffs," said Sell. "Because of this, we wanted to show that the system is not designed to be rational in the modern world, but rather was designed to operate in the much smaller social world of our ancestors."

Tooby added: "In that world, with conflicts among a handful of men, a man's individual strength was relevant to whether his coalition would win. If our minds are calibrated to the ancestral world, then stronger men should more strongly favor the use of military force to settle conflicts, compared to weaker men. That is what we find. Muscle mass shapes our political opinions."

Cosmides emphasizes how strange a finding this is, according to conventional theories. "An American man's upper body strength has no rational relationship to the efficacy of the American military and its deployment overseas. Yet stronger men favor the use of military force more than weaker men do." The authors say that they designed the study in the run up to the war in Iraq, when they noticed that people would draw opposing conclusions from the same facts. "That raised the possibility that individuals are responding to the same facts differently. At least part of that response involves muscles," said Sell.

At the center of the study is the recalibrational theory of anger, which proposes that the function of anger is to recalibrate how much weight others put on the angry individual's welfare compared to their own. "The fact that anger is connected to violence is widely known," said Sell. Tooby added "What is not widely grasped is that anger evolved to play a central role in cooperative relationships as well."

What is anger?

Is anger, deep down, just an attempt to get a profit, an advantage?

What is the relationship of anger and violence?, and war?

Is anger a very old, simple reflex?, is war this simple reflex blown to a big scale by human thought?

Words.....

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu’s dictum: "Those who know do not say; Those who say do not know".

When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant.

Said the master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?"
All of them indicated that they knew.

Then he said, "put it into words."
All of them were silent.

(Anthony de Mello)

Are we aware of the limits of words?.......

why this religious sense?

Is religion an exclusive human phenomenon?

Does it say anything about us? does it reveal something about our true nature?

Listen to the Gayatri mantra

the conditioning of the opposites

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

(Tao Te Ching, poem 2. Translated by S. Mitchell)

Are we conditioned to know things by reference to other things, by comparison?

If this is so, can we perceive something that has no opposites, for instance oneness?



(photograph by Silvia Diaz Chica)

what is inspiration?

What is inspiration?

Does it come from our brain, contained in the bones of the skull?

Is there an inspiration that does not come from the brain?

do we connect with it?, is it personal?

THIS WE HAVE NOW

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy.

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.

Those come
and go.

This is the Presence
that doesn’t.

It's dawn, Husam,
here in the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?

When grapes turn to wine,
they’re wanting
this.

When the nightsky pours by,
it’s really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this!

This
that we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.

- Rumi

(video: Kavita Seth sings in the International Sufi Festival in Mumbai)

change......

Two days ago we talked about "change". Here is a clip, a small passage of that dialogue:

A: We need to change to save the planet.

B: Is there a change that can come about without a reason?. If there is a reason for a change, is it a real change?

That question still hangs on our minds....

A beautiful film about our earth, its inhabitants and its troubles...."Home"

what is freedom?

What is freedom?

and....what is fear?

and also....what is compassion?



(the video is a homage to "tank man", the human being who stood up in front of a tank line in China on June 5th, 1989. From Wikipedia:The incident took place near Tiananmen on Chang'an Avenue, which leads into the Forbidden City, Beijing, one day after the Chinese government's violent crackdown on the Tiananmen protests. The man stood alone in the middle of the road as the tanks approached. He held two bags, one in each hand. As the tanks came to a stop, he appeared to be trying to wave them away. In response, the front tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action. After blocking the tanks, the man climbed up onto the top of the lead tank and had a conversation with the driver. Video footage shows that anxious onlookers then pulled the man away and absorbed him into the crowd and the tanks continued on their way).....nobody knows who was or what happened to this human being.....

inner revolution

So you are left with yourself, and that is the actual state for a man to be who is very serious about all this; and as you are no longer looking to anybody or anything for help, you are already free to discover.

What we are now going to do, therefore, is to learn about ourselves, not according to me or to some analyst or philosopher - because if we learn about ourselves according to someone else, we learn about them, not ourselves - we are going to learn what we actually are.

Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority in bringing about a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals. You had an experience yesterday which taught you something and what it taught you becomes a new authority - and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years.

To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday, we will fail to understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that movement.

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.

So now we are going to investigate ourselves together - not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or disagreeing with him as you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discovery into the most secret corners of our minds. And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices and conclusions - all that old furniture we have collected for the last two thousand years and more. Forget all you know about yourself; forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as if we knew nothing.

is wisdom possible?

Questioner: Are we permitted to request you to tell us the manner of your realisation?

Maharaj: Somehow it was very simple and easy in my case. My Guru, before he died, told me: Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality. Don't doubt my words, don't disbelieve me. I am telling you the truth -- act on it. I could not forget his words and by not forgetting -- I have realised.

Q: But what were you actually doing?

M: Nothing special. I lived my life, plied my trade, looked after my family, and every free moment I would spend just remembering my Guru and his words. He died soon after and I had only the memory to fall back on. It was enough.

Q: It must have been the grace and power of your Guru.

M: His words were true and so they came true. True words always come true. My Guru did nothing; his words acted because they were true. Whatever I did, came from within, un-asked and unexpected.

Q: The Guru started a process without taking any part in it?

M: Put it as you like. Things happen as they happen -- who can tell why and how? I did nothing deliberately. All came by itself -- the desire to let go, to be alone, to go within.

Q: You made no efforts whatsoever?

M: None. Believe it or not, I was not even anxious to realise. He only told me that I am the Supreme and then died. I just could not disbelieve him. The rest happened by itself. I found myself changing -- that is all. As a matter of fact, I was astonished. But a desire arose in me to verify his words. I was so sure that he, could not possibly have told a lie, that I felt I shall either realise the full meaning of his words or die. I was feeling quite determined, but did not know what to do. I would spend hours thinking of him and his assurance, not arguing, but just remembering what he told me.

Q: What happened to you then? How did you know that you are the Supreme?

M: Nobody came to tell me. Nor was I told so inwardly. In fact, it was only in the beginning when I was making efforts, that I was passing through some strange experiences; seeing lights, hearing voices, meeting gods and goddesses and conversing with them. Once the Guru told me: 'You are the Supreme Reality', I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: 'I know nothing, I want nothing.'

Q: Were you genuinely free of desire and knowledge, or did you impersonate a jnani according to the image given to you by your Guru?

M: I was not given any image, nor did I have one. My Guru never told me what to expect.

Q: More things may happen to you. Are you at the end of your journey?

M: There was never any journey. I am, as I always was.

Q: What was the Supreme Reality you were supposed to reach?

M: I was undeceived, that is all. I used to create a world and populate it -- now I don't do it any more.

Q: Where do you live, then?

M: In the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me. It is like a man saying: 'I have done my work, there is nothing left to do'.

Q: You are giving a certain date to your realisation. It means something did happen to you at that date. What happened?

M: The mind ceased producing events. The ancient and ceaseless search stopped -- l wanted nothing, expected nothing -- accepted nothing as my own. There was no 'me' left to strive for. Even the bare 'I am' faded away. The other thing that I noticed was that I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that 'I do not know' is the only true statement the mind can make. Take the idea 'I was born'. You may take it to be true. It is not. You were never born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal. Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely, and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever recreated. Stop moving, and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as the sense 'I am'. There is only light, all else appears.

(a dialogue between Nisargadatta Maharaj and a questioner, in the book "I am That")

What is awareness?

what is awareness?

Can awareness be conditioned? Is there an awareness which is not conditioned?

Is this the same question as who are we really? or not?

what are we looking for?

We were having a dialogue today. Three people. Many silences between the spoken language. We were trying to taste non-intellectually the different subjects that came out during the dialogue.

We were reading a chapter of J. Krishnamurti´s "Freedom from the known". Each one of us read a paragraph, very very slowly. And from time to time we paused to talk about what was read.

At one point K said: "...for most people love means comfort, security, a guarantee for the rest of their life of continuous emotional satisfaction"

And one of us asked "what does it mean to you "continuous emotional satisfaction"?".
And another answered something, and in his response mentioned the word "pleasure".
And the third said: "we have been conditioned during thousands of years to take pleasure as good and desirable, and pain as bad and avoidable. What is the full extension of this conditioning?"......
Another one added: "how is it that there is something in all human beings that make us always look for something, do something, search for something?"....


(photograph: Transiting the Sun: NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault)

How do we see reality?

We were talking about Kepler´s work, and having a look at his work and contribution to our understanding of the motion of planets around the sun.



Kepler was not seeing the reality because he had already an image of how the universe should be: if it was God´s creation it had to reflect the "perfection" of the creator, so the orbits should have the "perfection" of the circles.........

We live according to what we see, we interpret things according to how we see them, we act according to what we beleive.........

But......How do we see things? do we see them as images? can an image ever be free from the influence of the person that makes the image? have we ever questioned how we see, the process of seeing? is there a perception which is pure, which is a direct perception? do we "tell" reality how it has to be?............questions........

These questions were also relevant in the "social environment" that surrounded Kepler´s life:



(videos from Carl Sagan´s Cosmos series)

Who are we?

And a dialogue between a visitor and Nisagardatta Maharaj:

Questioner: I have come from England and I am on my way to Madras. There I shall meet my father and we shall go by car overland to London. I am to study psychology, but I do not yet know what I shall do when I get my degree. I may try industrial psychology, or psychotherapy. My father is a general physician. I may follow the same line. But this does not exhaust my interests. There are certain questions which do not change with time. I understand you have some answers to such questions and this made me come to see you.

Nisagardatta Maharaj: I wonder whether I am the right man to answer your questions. I know little about things and people. I know only that I am, and that much you also know. We are equals.

Q: Of course I know that I am. But I do not know what it means.

M: What you take to be the ‘I’ in the ‘I am’ is not you. To know that your are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of consciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Generally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely to his guiding and molding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your personal desires and fears must be disregarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way. You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts, guided by your inner star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody

worthy of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and understanding, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.

Q: I am lucky to have come here: though I am leaving tomorrow, one talk with you may affect my entire life.

M: Yes, once you say ‘I want to find Truth,’ all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation.

Q: Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?

M: It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor.

Q: What is the source of earnestness?

M: It is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to the earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.

Q: And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?

M: You already have all the experience you need, otherwise you would not have come here. You need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method (sadhana) you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or spiritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.

Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.

M: This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and ask the noble to help the ignoble. You separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn—in the name of truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate truth denies it, because it cannot becontained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of the false—in action. For this you must see the false as false (viveka) and reject it (vairagya). Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.

(Nisargadatta, in the book “I am That”)

sufism

She was an elderly lady, blind for several years, dignified, humble, kind, with a reverence for the world, a joy for life and a deep respect for others.....she was a sufi, and the descendant of a long chain of sufis.....

I asked her: "what is sufism?"
And she answered: "Sufism is union"....
I did not asked "union with what?"...as in that moment I knew clearly, and at the same time hazily, what she meant......


A beautiful scene of a beautiful film, Bab´Aziz, a sufi story......





Rumi's poetry is essentially about tawhid – union with his beloved (the primal root) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof – and his longing and desire to come back to it.

THE WORM'S WAKING

This is how a human can change:
there's a worm addicted to eating
grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it grace,whatever,
something wakes him,
and he's no longer a worm.

He's the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need
to devour.

Rumi

contexts

Dr. P.W., a scientist, joins our dialogue group for a couple of dialogues.
He talks to us about the multiple "influences" on the fetus during pregnancy, like the stress of the mother, nutrition, chemicals, etc.....

His words inspire in us the feeling of the tremendous number and multiple forms of the influences we receive while being a fetus and the influence of all these in our future life....

We also get a "feeling" that these "influences" come also from a long evolutionary past......that we are the result of an incredibly long chain of influences during the evolution of the species......and that we are not aware of them, but that they are still "acting" right now.......

This brought about the feeling that we are not aware of this "context", the extent of the context of the past, still "working" today.....

And on the same line, we became aware of how unaware we are of another "context", the context of the present......everything that is happening right now in the whole universe.....an explosion of activity and creativity....millions and millions and millions of things happening at this very moment........our "context" in the present....

Is our awareness very "local", circumscribed to a small radius around us?
If we were to be more aware of the immense context of the past and of the present, would our concept of the "me" change?...........

teaching and learning.......

I was reading a friend's blog, and the post said "se puede enseñar un arte? se puede aprender un arte?", meaning "is it possible to teach an art?, is it possible to learn an art?"

And it comes to my mind what I heard to a veteran teacher long time ago: "Maybe what is most important to learn cannot be taught"...........

where is the manual to learn inspiration?........
Is there a theory or a method that will lead us inevitably to feel love?........

In what chapter of what book generosity is taught?........
How to teach the perception of beauty?........
And, what method leads us to proper intuition?........

......and where can we learn to know oneself?........

....and how to learn the meaning of a 'suspension point' ............., that is to say, how to understand the meaning of silences........how to learn about the things not-manifested yet?........

Is there any path, technique or method to perceive truth?

So, if the most important things cannot be taught.......what is the role of education?
Is education the addition of things into a person or the uncovering, the removal of layers?

extraterrestrials and love

Today we were walking through a village and we heard a love song (see link below)....

If some extraterrestrials would be approaching Earth for the first time, they would be detecting radio waves coming out of our planet......to analyze what kind of planet and living creatures lived on it.....

They would find that very often radio waves referred to something called "love", with many confusing aspects about it.......and normally spoken about in a peculiar way that was called "singing"....

What conclusion would they reach about Earth?.....what is love?...is it only human or a much more widespread phenomenon?

E: Perhaps we could begin by asking the connection between "love" and feelings or sentience. It is commonly accepted that love is a very strong feeling or emotion. Maybe we could talk about that?


"O mio babbino caro"

humans

There is something different about humans.....what is it?

We have been appalling...many times....

But there is also something moving about humans...

What is it that makes us human....really? who are we?

Susan Boyle

"know thyself"

Since I was very young I heard the statement "know thyself" or "It is important to know yourself"....It sounded like a good idea....a reasonable idea....but i did not know exactly why.....

The other day in a dialogue, a group of us was talking about the possibility that all in the universe, even though it looks and feels as separate entities, could be just one.......

And then an idea came to my mind. If (and this is a big "if") all in the universe shares or partakes the same essence, then the mind shares its essence with the whole universe....

Meaning that if I know "my" mind, I would know it all....all life......all that exists, both manifest and unmanifested......

Is that the meaning of "knowing thyself"?......

But then a question came up automatically: How to look at the mind?......and this is the question we want to post today....for all of us.......

Images and Self

Our brains work with images.....is a thought an image?.....is the past an image?.....is a word an image?.......is the future (as projected from the present) an image?........

We project the image we call ego to protect us......and we end up being hurt because we have that image........

..........the floor is open for discussion.......

fractals and holograms

It was David Bohm (1917-1992) the one that spoke about the universe being "holographic", meaning that all parts partake of the same essence.
An atom is not essentially different to a galaxy....
Implied in this is the notion that all is one?.......

See this beautiful video about fractals


Beautiful word used by Bohm. To partake. According to the dictionary:

intransitive verb
1 : to take part in or experience something along with others ("partake in the revelry") ("partake of the good life")
2 : to have a portion (as of food or drink)
3 : to possess or share a certain nature or attribute ("The experience partakes of a mystical quality")
transitive verb : to take part in

synonyms: see "share"

Please, send your comment, and share (partake) your understanding.......