Friday, June 21, 2013

21st June 2013

Ten of us today, first of all we watched a video showing the unknowable external world and the mind dimension. This left everybody confused and unwilling to accept that reality. My feeling is that there is no external reality at all. This non dual experience is all there is.

Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Religion
Science and religion often seem poles apart–and in many ways they are. But I believe the two can, and will eventually, be united, and their meeting point will be human consciousness.
That we are conscious beings is the most obvious fact of our existence. Indeed, all we ever know are the thoughts, images, and feelings arising in our consciousness. Yet as far as Western science is concerned, there is nothing more difficult to explain. Why should the complex processing of information in the brain lead to an inner personal experience? Why doesn’t it all go on in the dark, without any awareness? Why do we have any inner life at all?
This paradox–the undeniable existence of human consciousness, set against the absence of any satisfactory scientific account for it–suggests that there may be something amiss with the current scientific worldview. Most scientists assume that consciousness emerges in some way or other from insentient matter. But if this assumption is getting us nowhere, perhaps we should consider an alternative worldview–one found in many metaphysical and spiritual traditions. There, consciousness is held to be an essential component of the cosmos, as fundamental as space, time and matter.
Interestingly, expanding the scientific model to include consciousness in this way does not threaten any of the conclusions of modern science. Mathematics remains the same, as do physics, biology, chemistry, and all our other discoveries about the material world. What changes is our understanding of ourselves. If consciousness is indeed fundamental, then the teachings of the great sages and mystics begin to make new sense.
Those who have penetrated to the core of their minds have frequently discovered a profound connection with the ground of all being. The sense of being an individual self–that feeling of I-ness that we all know so well but find so hard to define–turns out to be not so unique after all. The light of consciousness that shines in me, is the same light that shines in you–the same light shining through a myriad of minds.
Some have expressed this inner union in the statement “I am God.” To traditional religion, this rings of blasphemy. How can any lowly human being claim that he or she is God, the almighty, supreme being? To modern science, such statements are nothing more than self-delusion. Physicists have looked out into deep space to the edges of the universe, back into “deep time” to the beginning of creation, and down into “deep structure” to the fundamental constituents of matter. In each case they find no evidence for God; nor any need for God. The Universe seems to work perfectly well without any divine assistance.
But when mystics speak of the divine, they are not speaking of some supernatural, supreme being who rules the workings of the universe; they are talking of the world within. If we want to find God, we need to look into the realm of “deep mind”–a realm that science has yet to explore.
When it does, it may find it has embarked upon a course that will ultimately lead it to embrace spirit and–dare we say it–God. To the scientific establishment, rooted in a material worldview, this is anathema. But so was the notion of the solar system four centuries ago.
Nondual Psychotherapy and Working Through the Separate Self Contraction 
        Many therapists have awakened to similar insights as mine:  they have moved beyond the illusion of the separate self.  Hence, there has been a swelling growth of nondual therapists practicing nondual psychotherapy in which the illusion of the separate self existence is challenged as a pivotal part of therapy. Prendergast (2003) pointed to transpersonal psychologists who mapped out nondual awareness as a rarely experienced state at the pinnacle of self-realization.  However,  a new generation of clinicians and teachers are beginning to see how accessible nondual awareness is in psychotherapeutic work with clients.  Nondual awareness is at the heart of countless pathways to enlightenment through disciplines including Hindu Vedanta, most schools of Buddhism and Taoism, mystical Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It refers to the understanding and direct experience of fundamental consciousness that underlies the apparent distinction between perceiver and perceived. Transpersonal therapists embracing the nondual tradition can simply rest in presence as Prendergast (2003) made clear:
They realize, at least to some degree, that they are not limited to being a “therapist” (although they may function in that role), or even a “person.” Their locus of identity is either resting in or moving toward unconditioned awareness, or Presence. The result is the emergence of a natural simplicity, transparency, clarity, and warm acceptance of whatever arises within themselves and their clients. Since they increasingly do not take themselves as some “thing,” they also do not take their clients as objects separate from themselves. They understand that there is no separate mirror and someone mirrored; there is only mirroring. (p. 3)

Prendergast (2003) further observed that embracing nondual awareness adds a depth dimension to existing schools of psychology. Psychotherapy typically involves working within the horizontal dimension; the evolution of phenomenal life in time and space. Nondual awareness refers to what is formless and exists outside of time and space thereby adding a vertical dimension. In addition, Prendergast (2003) observed that it is not so much that nondual therapists integrate being but instead are absorbed by it, and thus presence is enhanced, the effects of which can be contagious, “When we are in the Presence of an individual who has awakened from the dream of “me”, we can sense an unpretentiousness, lucidity, transparency, joy, and ease of being”

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