Originally posted by no1marauder
Consider this: remove all the attributes of the universe, one by one. Its shape, its vastness, etc. etc. etc. What remains?
Apparently to you, nothing - the universe can be created or destroyed by something else. But to the disciplines I am referring to there was still an Ultimate Reality. The Tao, the Void, Brahman different names for the ...[text shortened]... about whether a universe with all its attributes eliminated would "look" like a singularity.
I think it's interesting to think about whether a universe with all its attributes eliminated would "look" like a singularity.
Interesting question. Also illustrates the difficulty, once one starts to grasp non-duality, of expressing it in a language that has subject-predicate (-object) duality built into it. I think some of my more long-winded posts have come about simply because of my stumbling all around that problem.
It is also difficult for the constructed ego-self (a valuable thing that ought not be denigrated), which is based on duality/separability, to realize that that duality/separability is transient, is ultimately inseparable from the whole.
Based on something Starrman said, I’m trying to think about it in terms of fluctuations within a field (like energy fluctuations within an electro-magnetic field, yin and yang polarities within the Tao...).
I think what the Hindu rishis of the Upanishads, and the Taoists, did was “look” inside. Stripping away the onion-peels of thought, concept, emotions, they arrived at a realization of a consciousness that is simply aware. Now, our consciousness is always aware of something—visual impressions, sound, touch, etc.—and so what they sometimes call “empty-mind,” or the like, is simply a mind that is not making thoughts, concepts, emotions in addition to the awareness.
In that awareness, one realizes three inter-related things, all of which you have mentioned:
(1) The non-separability of ourselves, our consciousness, and the field, and the other form/fluctuations in the field—the Buddhists say it is all “mutually arising.”
(2) That our “true self” (the
atman) is just that consciousness as it is—perhaps it is best thought of as a verb, as a going-on, rather than a thing.
(3) That
atman is Brahman emanated or manifest or expressed.
And so the Upanishads say
tat tvam asi—“You are [/i]that[/i];” and
ayam atma brahma—“This very self is Brahman.”
Now, after that, some of them do begin to speculate and argue about the nature of that Brahman, arguing from both that realization of non-duality/non-separability and transient nature of the forms arising and passing away. Some say that ultimately it is just Being, and that consciousness is a form manifest from that Being; others say it is ultimately consciousness, and being and its forms constitute its dreamlike manifestation. Others probably say other things. All of which means that these folks have been thinking about your question of attributes and their removal for a long, long time.
I am just really at that basic realization, and trying to let it deepen and ripen and clarify, so to speak. That I can try to talk about—beyond that, no. But trying to talk about it—as long as I don’t get too caught in the makings of my own mind as I do, and lose touch with that realization (which happens; and then I take time off)—also seems to aid that deepening/ripening/clarification process. And I can’t say much about Brahman, except that it seems to be ultimately coherent and harmonious, in which—if we can clear away our illusion, confusion and clutching-mind—we can live
eudaimonic lives, not painless, but with a minimum of inner turmoil and anguish.
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With regard to your thought-experiment of removing attributes from the Brahman, you might have come across this from the Isha Upanishad (it’s kind of like a Zen koan):
All this is full. All that is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.
🙂
much ado about nothing (again!)
07 Mar '07 22:45
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