Jeff Foster - Life Without A Centre Part 1

Interview by Iain McNay

Have Presence this Christmas, a talk on Non-Duality

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is the transformation of personal consciousness to universal consciousness. According to the wisdom traditions of the world, this transformation is not an anomaly or departure from human nature, but rather the actualization of human potential. The evolution of consciousness is a progressive journey back to the source of existence, to our source. This metamorphosis represents a shift in identify from the personal to the transpersonal, to the universal. It is the realization that as persons we are a transient impermanent pattern of a deeper consciousness that differentiates simultaneously into the observer and the observed. The maturation of awareness reveals that in reality we are ultimately not defined as either the observer or observed, but rather that consciousness which simultaneously differentiates into both.

Since enlightenment involves a journey from the personal to the universal, the qualities or characteristics of enlightenment are expressions of the unified self instead of the separate, personal self. As we move more fully into the universal values of the cosmos, we progressively express the qualities of love, compassion, intuition, insight, imagination, and creativity. We find that our thinking and behavior begins to function in harmony with the forces of the universe, and we notice more conscious choice-making , observations of synchronicity around us, the spontaneous fulfillment of our desires, and the manifesting power of our intentions.
As we step out of the complete identification with our body and sensory experiences, our attachment to the past and the future drops away, allowing us to experience the present moment in freedom and joy. This presence of non-local consciousness is our real Self. There is also a loss of fear, including the fear of mortality. There is a deeper knowing that the only thing that dies is the impermanent self (which was hallucination to begin with). The real Self exists outside the boundaries and time and space, has no beginning or ending and is therefore immortal. Enlightenment brings the experiential knowledge of immortality, infinite love, and infinite creativity. It reveals that the natural expression of human life is effortlessness, spontaneity, and joyfulness.

Enlightenment means bringing complete light to all areas of life that were in darkness before. All aspects of life that were trapped in unconscious conditioning and ignorance are now made fully conscious and self-aware. In Sanskrit, this light of knowledge is known as vidya, and ignorance of the self is called avidya.

When we embark on the spiritual journey of enlightenment in earnest, it is normal for our mind to want to know how long it will take? Great spiritual masters say that it takes time for fruit to ripen, and when the season is right it suddenly drops from the tree. For each of us the season may be different because of past karma and where we are in our evolution. The journey to enlightenment must always be regarded as a journey, not a fixed goal. To be rigidly attached to the idea of arriving at the destination takes away from the joy and spontaneity of the unfolding of consciousness. The search for the certainty of timetables and outcomes about enlightenment comes from our limited ego self, not our unlimited self. If we surrender to the wisdom of uncertainty, we remain open to the wonder of the process and resist the clutches of the ego's need to control by knowing the outcome. The art of spiritual evolution is to enjoy the journey as we continue to grow.

Source:Deepak Chopra

It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter.

Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks - but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton's mass. So what accounts for the rest of it?

Theory says it is created by the force that binds quarks together, called the strong nuclear force. In quantum terms, the strong force is carried by a field of virtual particles called gluons, randomly popping into existence and disappearing again. The energy of these vacuum fluctuations has to be included in the total mass of the proton and neutron.

But it has taken decades to work out the actual numbers. The strong force is described by the equations of quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, which are too difficult to solve in most cases.

So physicists have developed a method called lattice QCD, which models smooth space and time as a grid of separate points. This pixellated approach allows the complexities of the strong force to be simulated approximately by computer.

Click here for full New Scientist article

Science catching up with the Mystic, but why wasn't this on the news?

What is Nonduality?

Simple Answer:

Nonduality is the state or condition of not being separate and distinct while appearing to be so. It is the condition which allows us to say that there is no true separation between ourselves and anyone else or anything else in the world, for instance. When we say things like “We are all one,” or “God is in all things,” we are asserting that the condition we call ‘reality’ is a nonduality.

Nondualism is the systematic description of nonduality, or the systematic practice of nonduality.

More Complicated Answer:

Nonduality is the state that one arrives at when all distinctions and relations between ‘things’ are removed. Nonduality is thus a simple wholeness, rather than an “all in one” whole. It is very difficult to clearly contemplate such a simple wholeness, because by thinking about it and ‘conceptualizing’ it, we have lost the simple wholeness that is the real nonduality that we were trying to grasp.

Nondualism according to this understanding is an error.

The ‘As True As You Are Going to Get’ Answer:

Nonduality is ineffable.

Nondualism according to this understanding must be an apophatic* performance. In order to say that Nonduality is ineffable, we first posit 'Nonduality', making ‘Nonduality’ a creature of reason and thus positively identifying ‘Nonduality’ as some thing that can be reasoned about, and then in the same breath we take away this assertion by adding that this ‘what’ of which we speak is ineffable and thus beyond the reach of reason. The point is that Nonduality is not nothing, because then we would not even speak of ‘it’; but it is not something either, because if it were it could not be Nonduality; yet it is all things and no thing itself. Thus the name "Nonduality" is used to indicate a denial of multiplicity, yet the mind, seeing this denial may assume that it means 'one' as that is the opposite of multiplicity and in reasoning the mind is locked into certain forms of thought, amongst them the form of contradictories. But the name "Nonduality," while it denies multiplicity, also denies its contradiction and subsumes both. These words are an apophatic performance. If you can ‘see’ their meaning, you do not need any more definitions.

* Apophasis - the Greek designation for language that 'speaks away' or 'unsays' what it first affirms.

Here is a metaphor: Think of a light prism. On one side there is a single beam of white light, which includes all possible frequencies of light, yet the beam of light is a single beam. On the other side those frequencies are each separated apart, distinguished from one another. Yet they are not separate beams of light, nor is Blue light the same as Red light. And physics tells us today, that the photons of light that we see in that beam, and in the separated colors, are never independent no matter how far apart in 'space' and 'time' they are, because they originated in that single beam, and thus were 'entangled' (see "spooky action at a distance" in quantum physics). So even though we have apparent separation of colored light ‘beams’ there is still only one.

Source

Gurdjieff - Meetings With Remarkable Men

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's teachings might be summed up by the title of his third series of writings: Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', while his complete series of books is entitled "All and Everything."

Gurdjieff claimed that people do not perceive reality, as they are not conscious of themselves, but live in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep."

"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." Gurdjieff taught that each person perceived things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state were unconscious automatons, but that it was possible for a man to wake up and experience life more fully.

Gurdjieff at wikipedia