“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you- don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want- don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doors where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open- don’t go back to sleep”- Rumi
blog #12
How does the Infinite become finite? Can the Absolute ever be known? This is the great mystery. The conundrum that has faced those who have attempted to unravel it since, well… since forever.
Trying to grasp what is noumenal (the thing in itself) in the phenomenal (relative reality of duality) is quite a trick. I mean, we cannot know the Absolute with our mind because what we call knowledge comes from a mind that is limited by time and space. What we know of the Absolute, where there is no time and space, is no longer the Absolute because we know it from a mind that is limited by time and space.
A God known by the mind, then, is no more God for God is the Unknowable One and inexplicable.
The finite world is only a superimposition on the Absolute. Owing to ignorance we think the finite world is the only or truest reality. When the light of illumination (enlightenment) is brought to bear, the veil of illusion (termed Maya in Vedanta Philosophy) is removed and the knowledge of oneness dawns. The objective/phenomenal/finite world disappears as an object of experience, and only the Absolute/noumenal exists.
The experience of the Absolute is possible only when all divergence disappears. It lies in the undifferentiated mass of the experiencer/knower, the experience/knowledge, and the experienced/object known.
So here is the conundrum, when we can no longer differentiate the knower from the knowledge and the object to be known, where is the knowledge and of what?
Does this implies that the Absolute is unknowable? Hmm…
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
(is this like the shortest blog in my one year blogging history… ? i must be learning… remember the first blog?)
I once heard of a pharmacologist studying plants in South America (I think). Anyway, he had built a relationship with the local Shaman, who was a healer.
One day, the Shaman told his protege to gather certain plants. The pharmacologist asked the Shaman how he knew which plants to pick. The Shaman said, “They sing to me.” Now I suspect it was not a literal song the plants sung, but they must radiate some form of communication.
That story, is true, and blows me away. From then on, I have realized that I don’t know everything, and I have forgotten/lost/had burned out of me a whole way of knowing. And probably many ways of knowing.
Bottom line: who knows?
But don’tcha get the sense sometimes that somethin’s goin’ on?
On the other hand, some folks’ idea of god would be enough to turn me to atheism.
It seems to be true that everyone starts out with faith. Faith that there is some meaning to all this. Even an atheist’s explanation is a type of religion. And at the other end of the spectrum, there seems to be agreement of the existence of some sort of nondualistic realm. All the fighting is about the stories in between.
As Joseph Campbell said, Jews, Christians and Muslims all have the same God, and they’re fighting over what to call him.
And so it goes …..
elaborate…
Elaborate.
Hmmm.
This is why I defaulted to stories in response to the most recent blog.
I don’t know if I can elaborate as much as just tick off some talking points.
–The story about the shaman (and the movie, What the Bleep Do We Know) is about a way of knowing that we have lost, or I have, at least.
– Vedanta & Advaita wring out my mind and makes it go into spasms, which is probably the intent. I sense they are correct, but tying my experience to their words is really … well, I don’t even have a word for it.
–The point of Yoga, to me, is to maintain our abhyasa so that we can, in some measure, regain that way of knowing. The other half of the coin is vairagya, but that’s another story.
– The ‘experience’ (if we ever have one) is what turns us around.
– Any attempt at explanation is deficient.
– Any attempt to explain is religion (to bind back), an attempt to bring us back to, or renew, the experience.
– There’s the experience. Then, there are the thoughts about the experience, Then there’s our words to try to express the thoughts. And all we have are 5 vowels interrupted by various grunts, stops, and spitting.
– But we try anyway, because we have to. It’s too big and too monumental to try to hold it in.
– I wonder if we really don’t know what we know. Egad, I’m becoming Rumsfeld-esque
– And, in another way of looking at it, we already know.
This is why, for now I believe that thinking is overrated. I am tired…
Good work ! Keep us posting, you are good writer.
You have a way with writing, but remember by and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth
Sent via Blackberry
Nice piece. Hari Om Tat Sat!