Hope & ripening

[Guest guest]

Murali queried:

 

> What hope then is there for " somebody " like me who dwells in duality but see

> non-duality as a wonderful possibility?

>

Is there hope? Yes and no. No, if you focus on what you are hoping for.

(BTW, what exactly is this nonduality that you're hoping for?) Yes, if you

focus on your yearning for nonduality, however you conceive of it. Following

your yearning to its source is a variant of Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry.

Maharshi is a jnana approach (emphasizes cognition), where following your

yearning is a bhakti approach (emphasizes feeling). Either approach leads

beyond the specific and tangible to the undifferentiated and intangible

(emptiness).

 

We need to distinguish between heuristic structures and ordinary concepts.

Heuristic structures have no definable content (and therefore dwell in the

land of the nondual), but are conceptual structures on which we hang

ordinary concepts. They guide inquiry ( " heuristic " comes from the Greek

" heurein = to find out, discover " ). " Self " is a heuristic structure; " six

feet tall " is an ordinary concept, attribute, predicate. Ordinary concepts

dwell in the land of the dual; they help distinguish one thing from another.

Ordinary concepts are first order categories that we use to organize our

experience; heuristic concepts are second order concepts that we use to

organize our first order categories.

 

Heuristic structures are therefore never adequately expressed by ordinary

concepts. You can spend a lifetime attributing something to your self and

never exhaust the topic. You should therefore never identify with anything

(or with the sum of what) you say or think about yourself, since " you " will

always recede beyond the horizon of your thought. Self-inquiry and following

your yearning to its source trigger a switch in your focus from first order

categories to second order, empty structures about which your first order

categories gravitate.

 

Everything I'm saying, including this and the following sentences, is

dualistic. Of course! How can communication be anything but? However,

understanding the difference between heuristic structures and ordinary

concepts can help us see that we have an alternative to ordinary thinking.

Knowing that can help trigger a switch in our experience of ourself, so that

we no longer identify with any particular perception of ourself. One way to

trigger that switch is to ask ourself, " Who is hoping for nonduality? " At

first, we might be inclined to take the question as operating on the first

level of discourse, the level of ordinary concepts. Then we would answer it,

" Murali " or " Gary " or This person who is six feet tall, weighs 160 pounds,

etc. " *Hopefully*, however, we will eventually either get tired of this

endless inquiry or see its pointlessness, and *experience* a shift in our

focus to the second level, where there is consciousness not fully expressed

by any category. To use a traditional metaphor, this consciousness is the

ocean on which ordinary categories are ripples.

 

The advantage of the distinction between heuristic structures and ordinary

concepts is not only that it has meaning to empirical science, but that it

makes

understandable the relationship between the dual and the nondual, showing

how Realization can operate in the ordinary world, not escape from it. My

criticism of the way Judi, Dan, and Sandeep have been talking is not that

they have been wrong, but that they have been incomplete. Their talk makes

life in the everyday world inexplicable and makes the nondual sound

unnecessarily paradoxical.

 

> A ripe fruit falls off. Falling off is spontaneous. What about ripening?

>

*Everything* is gestation and then birthing. ‹ Rainer Maria Rilke, *Letters

to a Young Poet*

 

Your intuition is right, there is a ripening. Your understanding of the

limits of ordinary thinking can grow to a point where it triggers a switch

in your focus from first order thoughts about reality to an experience of

yourself that does not stop thinking and referring to yourself, which would

be literal non-sense, but which does stop identifying yourself with such

thinking and referencing. Dan is also right, there is no ripening. Ordinary

thinking about yourself will not produce nondual consciousness in the way

that premises produce their logical conclusion.

 

Gary Schouborg

Performance Consulting

Walnut Creek, CA

garyscho

 

Publications and professional services: http://home.att.net/~garyscho

[Guest guest]

Thanks a lot. Strengthened and narrowed down my concepts.

Is this not ripening? (even if at a conceptual level)

 

Murali

 

 

 

 

Realization, Gary Schouborg <garyscho@a...> wrote:

>

> Murali queried:

>

> > What hope then is there for " somebody " like me who dwells in

duality but see

> > non-duality as a wonderful possibility?

> >

> Is there hope? Yes and no. No, if you focus on what you are hoping

for.

> (BTW, what exactly is this nonduality that you're hoping for?) Yes,

if you

> focus on your yearning for nonduality, however you conceive of it.

Following

> your yearning to its source is a variant of Ramana Maharshi's self-

inquiry.

> Maharshi is a jnana approach (emphasizes cognition), where

following your

> yearning is a bhakti approach (emphasizes feeling). Either approach

leads

> beyond the specific and tangible to the undifferentiated and

intangible

> (emptiness).

>

> We need to distinguish between heuristic structures and ordinary

concepts.

> Heuristic structures have no definable content (and therefore dwell

in the

> land of the nondual), but are conceptual structures on which we hang

> ordinary concepts. They guide inquiry ( " heuristic " comes from the

Greek

> " heurein = to find out, discover " ). " Self " is a heuristic

structure; " six

> feet tall " is an ordinary concept, attribute, predicate. Ordinary

concepts

> dwell in the land of the dual; they help distinguish one thing from

another.

> Ordinary concepts are first order categories that we use to

organize our

> experience; heuristic concepts are second order concepts that we

use to

> organize our first order categories.

>

> Heuristic structures are therefore never adequately expressed by

ordinary

> concepts. You can spend a lifetime attributing something to your

self and

> never exhaust the topic. You should therefore never identify with

anything

> (or with the sum of what) you say or think about yourself,

since " you " will

> always recede beyond the horizon of your thought. Self-inquiry and

following

> your yearning to its source trigger a switch in your focus from

first order

> categories to second order, empty structures about which your first

order

> categories gravitate.

>

> Everything I'm saying, including this and the following sentences,

is

> dualistic. Of course! How can communication be anything but?

However,

> understanding the difference between heuristic structures and

ordinary

> concepts can help us see that we have an alternative to ordinary

thinking.

> Knowing that can help trigger a switch in our experience of

ourself, so that

> we no longer identify with any particular perception of ourself.

One way to

> trigger that switch is to ask ourself, " Who is hoping for

nonduality? " At

> first, we might be inclined to take the question as operating on

the first

> level of discourse, the level of ordinary concepts. Then we would

answer it,

> " Murali " or " Gary " or This person who is six feet tall, weighs 160

pounds,

> etc. " *Hopefully*, however, we will eventually either get tired of

this

> endless inquiry or see its pointlessness, and *experience* a shift

in our

> focus to the second level, where there is consciousness not fully

expressed

> by any category. To use a traditional metaphor, this consciousness

is the

> ocean on which ordinary categories are ripples.

>

> The advantage of the distinction between heuristic structures and

ordinary

> concepts is not only that it has meaning to empirical science, but

that it

> makes

> understandable the relationship between the dual and the nondual,

showing

> how Realization can operate in the ordinary world, not escape from

it. My

> criticism of the way Judi, Dan, and Sandeep have been talking is

not that

> they have been wrong, but that they have been incomplete. Their

talk makes

> life in the everyday world inexplicable and makes the nondual sound

> unnecessarily paradoxical.

>

> > A ripe fruit falls off. Falling off is spontaneous. What about

ripening?

> >

> *Everything* is gestation and then birthing. ‹ Rainer Maria Rilke,

*Letters

> to a Young Poet*

>

> Your intuition is right, there is a ripening. Your understanding of

the

> limits of ordinary thinking can grow to a point where it triggers a

switch

> in your focus from first order thoughts about reality to an

experience of

> yourself that does not stop thinking and referring to yourself,

which would

> be literal non-sense, but which does stop identifying yourself with

such

> thinking and referencing. Dan is also right, there is no ripening.

Ordinary

> thinking about yourself will not produce nondual consciousness in

the way

> that premises produce their logical conclusion.

>

> Gary Schouborg

> Performance Consulting

> Walnut Creek, CA

> garyscho@a...

>

> Publications and professional services:

http://home.att.net/~garyscho

[Guest guest]

Realization, Gary Schouborg <garyscho@a...> wrote:

> Gary Schouborg

> Performance Consulting

> Walnut Creek, CA

> garyscho@a...

>

> Publications and professional services:

http://home.att.net/~garyscho

 

 

.....Well, so far I've tried Il Fornaio and PF Chang's in Walnut Creek.

Any other suggestions?

 

Thanks,

 

b

 

ps: I also tried a nice french bistro in Pleasant Hill, where they

had excellent pomme frites, but wouldn't you just know -- the name

escapes me just now!

[Guest guest]

Realization, " Murali " <murali@g...> wrote:

> Thanks a lot. Strengthened and narrowed down my concepts.

> Is this not ripening? (even if at a conceptual level)

>

> Murali

 

 

....no, silly!

 

what is there to ripen? and whose concepts are " my concepts " ?

 

Now, if you want to talk about ripening, let's get to the real thing,

eh?

When was the last time you were able to get a really properly ripened

fruit at the store? Have you not noticed how they all come in hard as

rocks, but when you take them home, they don't actually ripen, they

just sort of rot from the inside out? Kind of like some advaitins

around these parts here, what with their ropes and such tryin' to

lasso you into their little ranch, or so i've heard.

 

Heads up!

 

LOL!!!

[Guest guest]

Realization, hrtbeat7 wrote:

>

> what is there to ripen? and whose concepts are " my concepts " ?

>

 

Let me ask the same question I asked Judi.

 

Did you have this kind of understanding or intuition ever since the

birth of this body/mind entity? Was there at any stage, a " somebody "

who had the sense of doership before losing that sense accidentally

or otherwise?

 

Please treat this as an earnest seeker's question however stupid it

may seem from your point of view.

 

Thanks.

 

Murali.

[Guest guest]

Realization, " Murali " <murali@g...> wrote:

> Realization, hrtbeat7 wrote:

> >

> > what is there to ripen? and whose concepts are " my concepts " ?

> >

>

> Let me ask the same question I asked Judi.

>

> Did you have this kind of understanding or intuition ever since the

> birth of this body/mind entity? Was there at any stage,

a " somebody "

> who had the sense of doership before losing that sense accidentally

> or otherwise?

>

> Please treat this as an earnest seeker's question however stupid it

> may seem from your point of view.

 

 

 

.......you imagine yourself to be an earnest seeker, and thus prolong

the seeking, which is actually the activity of separation itself.

Sandeep might say this is " appropriate " , but i am not so elegant as

my esteemed Shoobie Doo.

 

i am actually a lot more stupid than you, Dear! LOL!!!!

 

oh well, sharing this:

 

 

He had recently turned 8, and was returning from his first week away

from home, at a Catholic Youth Organization Summer Camp near the

Russian River, in Northern California. It was 1957, although it could

have been any year, or no year. Why even keep track? For the boy,

such numbers carried no meaning.

 

As he dismounted the bus and saw his family waiting there for him,

smiling with love and anticipation, he experienced such an

overwhelming rapture of bliss that he suddenly staggered and

collapsed on the pavement. With a great surging roar, a powerful

energy/awareness had somehow been unleashed within him, which

immediately shot up his spine and literally expanded out beyond his

perceived bodily limits – and " it " just kept going, ecstatically

gathering all of infinity into an ever-widening embrace!

At a certain point, a kind of fear arose - not of death - but of not

being

able to return. From a timeless ocean of undifferentiated awareness,

he now found himself as a pinpoint of consciousness riding the frothy

curl of this wave of fear. With a gentle splash he was unaccountably

deposited on the shore of vague and dreamy embodiment, and opening

his eyes he found his family hovering around, worriedly studying him.

They had apparently taken him back home, although he had no memory of

being moved. In their concern, they had also called the family

doctor.

Curiously, they all looked like people he vaguely recognized, and

somehow he knew they were supposed to be " his family " , and yet he

could no longer be the " person " he had been. He was the Mystery,

although he had no such words for This at the time.

He no longer felt himself to be a body exclusively, and if anything

he seemed to float behind and above it. It was perplexing, in a way,

and it would actually take him weeks to finally inhabit this body to

any significant degree.

 

The doctor arrived and examined him thoroughly, and it was funny,

because

as he was leaning over the boy, the boy was simultaneously looking

down on himself through the eyes of the doctor!

Suddenly he began to weep. The doctor asked him what he was feeling.

The boy replied:

" These tears are the eyes' way of kissing you. When I look up at you,

I see only God looking down at God. It makes me smile, it makes me

cry. "

The doctor glanced over to the boy's parents, and they exchanged

uncomprehending stares.

" Strange, these beings -- giants convinced they are midgets… " the boy

mused.

The doctor continued with his exam, and finding no physical

abnormality, prescribed some rest and aspirin. He also suggested that

a talk with the parish priest might be advisable.

 

When Father Antonelli arrived a few evenings later, he found the boy

on his back on the lawn behind the house, gazing into the cloudless

night sky. He came and sat down beside him, and remarked on what a

beautiful warm summer night it was. The boy made no reply, and in

fact gave no indication that he was even aware of the priest by his

side. The older man reached over and took the boy's hand in his and

asked:

" Son, what are you doing here? "

The boy remained still for a long moment, and then spoke softly:

" We float adrift, hand in hand, on a sea of unimaginable wonder. I

gently squeeze your perfect hand and, nodding upward, point silently

to the starry majesty of our truth ablaze across the infinity of

space. "

" Who taught you to say such things, Lad? " the priest exclaimed.

" The same one. " the boy replied.

" Which one do you mean? " asked the puzzled cleric.

" The one who is living us right now, " answered the boy, " the one who

shines these stars, who pumps our blood, who breathes us into all

these forms and draws us back into itself again, and again, and

again. "

" Do you mean God the Father? "

" Father. Mother. Sister. Brother. Sky. Tree. You. Me. "

The priest fell silent. All of his possible responses bubbled up in

his mind, but the bubbles burst before he could wrap words around

them. Finally, he lifted the boy's hand, which was still in his, and

kissed it. He stood up, walked back into the house, and without

saying a word embraced the boy's parents and went on his way.

 

The boy soon returned to school for the fall semester, but for a long

time after that, he really seemed to take no interest in the

subjects. He was gradually moved to the back of the class, and placed

with the hopeless ones who " didn't have a clue. "

Actually, he really didn't have a clue! He would arrive at his desk

in the morning with no idea how he had gotten there, and then

suddenly it was time to go home, as if some time had actually passed!

When he got home, he would lie on his back on the soft, green lawn

behind the house. Opening out into the vast blue sky, the endlessness

of blue, and steadily inhaling the earthy aromas, the grassiness, the

tree-ness, the shrub and flower-ness, he could feel the whole planet

gently rolling in the midst of the universe, and it was his very own

body – this globe of color, sound, and dreamy form.

And then it was time to eat, but he hardly touched the food. When the

parents had gone to bed, he would get down on the floor and lose

himself in Mystery, which he knew in his heart was only this

unbearable Love pulsing through him into the limitless space.

He " knew " he was that space, more than he knew he was anything or

anybody.

 

Eventually, he began assuming the conventions of his peers -- joining

in the sports games, laughing at the jokes, collecting baseball

cards, and listening to the ingenious little portable transistor

radios that had just come on the market. It was all a kind of a game,

like " Let's Pretend " , although they all seemed to take everything so

seriously. At any rate, he went along. There was no resistance. It

was " no big deal. "

In time, it became second nature –

just going along,

pretending.