u/Zestyclose-Rule-2581

As the title states.

This is just a strange thought that I had pop up into my mind, but I had a part of my really young years where part of me was unsure if I was actually a human being or I was simply a robot or advanced artificial intelligence that thought it was a human being and imitated a human being, but really was not. Thinking about it now, if I were to only reference my own subjective perspective, I can't really say that is impossible, even though more external data would refute it.

As the title states.

I accept non-duality, and intellectually its truth is in some sense quite obvious to me. However,perhaps it sounds strange, and I know it's a roadblock I need to overcome, but I find it impossible for me to meditate, because I can't let go of my ego. Not because I would consider myself egocentric, but rather I am afraid that when I (the ego) is lost, the world will also really be lost, irremediably. I do not even mean this in some cryptic sense, but in an almost literal nihilistic one, since I will no longer be directly aware of it, or even be a background field for it. I know or believe at a certain level this is not a well-founded or rational fear, but when it comes to non-dual teachings and the stilling of the mind, there cannot be any real room for doubt, since you are fundamentally giving up control. And I don't know how you can give up control when you aren't certain it won't end horribly, even if on a more discursive mundane level when you are very strongly dictating the mind you can kind of somewhat convince yourself it won't end badly.

As the title states.

Perhaps this unhealthy, but I increasingly find the part of myself that has to engage in "ordinary life" (i.e. most conversations, physical health, job/work, etc.) to be completely killing my vitality. That is, I only really find any satisfaction by being completely lost in what I can in broadest terms describe as the transcendent: i.e. non-duality, the God's-eye-perspective, attainment of real interior knowledge (which is not the interior of the individual soul, but the deepest secrets of reality that go well beyond the individual soul or ego) or actual metaphysics, contemplation, etc. Nothing else even comes close in comparison.

Unfortunately, it is just not realistically possible to exist in such a high-minded place all the time, since at least some aspect of you is a human being that exists with a body and dependent on other human beings. Even on a more mundane level if you neglect your health you will eventually suffer from some consequence earlier or later. Yet having to live in ordinary life feels like constantly living in binds that are taking me away from what really matters; nevertheless I cannot just pretend like ordinary life does not exist forever.

Thus in a way I feel like a part of me has two completely opposed parts, with one of them insufferable which I yet cannot just imagine as if it never existed, while the other is loftier and perhaps even superior but which I cannot completely live in.

How do I resolve this tension? Inventing masks/personas for ordinary life roles as needed (though not really for selfish reasons) or acting a chameleon just feels too draining and fake. So what then? As much as an infernal or inferior part of me simply wants to see the world completely obliterated in one painless instant for all of its grotesqueness, that's simply a quasi-nihilist / despairing fantasy that is simply an escape from whatever trials have been given; that's no answer.

(To be clear, I don't really hate people nor do I really want ill will for them. Quite the contrary. However, it feels like they more or less serve or work to manifest certain systems (you can pick any number of them and are all true in a certain respect; some more mundane and less esoteric ones would be international capitalism, globalism, phony political oppositions, liberalism, fundamentalism, etc.) beyond their control whose draining quality is too apparent to me even if such people are not really at fault for making such systems what they are in the ultimate sense. Consequently, I just don't really see the point of interacting with just about anyone, but alas I am still at least in part a human being.)

As the title states.

Well, I don't know how this happened, but it did. I kind of wish it never did (but maybe I do wish it did?), but it is what it is.

So, I have a short-term job (about 9+ months left) while preparing for graduate school, and it just so happens that I have a coworker who has a lot of overlapping shifts (though not always overlapping) who is like 30 feet away and easily within eyesight range much of the time. Different department. Well, she's not just cute, but genuinely quite beautiful. So you have some bad ingredients for limerence right there: impossibility of NC, intermittent, somewhat permanent presence, striking appearance, etc.

I think what probably sparked her as an LO for me was what felt like fairly intentional and decently prolonged eye contact that almost felt like it went into my soul. Sounds a bit too much like poetic bullshit I'm fantasizing about, but it's the most succinct description I can give.

After that? I felt like I've caught a number of glimpses from her to me that weren't all mere coincidence or accident. From today? Two weird behaviors I felt like I noticed today. First, LO Coworker felt like she almost got a bit too physically close to my personal space, though not in a way that you could call harassment or truly creepy. In fact, I almost suspected it a couple of times earlier, but could always perhaps somewhat plausibly write them off as Second, it felt like she gave me a "Deer and Headlights" stare for decently long that kind of crept me out.

Kind of feels like part of me is just imagining what I want to be the case, but just assuming I'm just imagining it seems like I'm just trying to distort whatever the facts really may be because I just want to dismiss it out of fear.

Am I just being intentionally dense and avoiding the painful step? Even if I took it, what the fuck would I even do?

I feel like dynamiting it would be for the best, but I feel like I just can't without it really just being a rationalization for cowardice on my part. After all, it's not as if I'm strictly speaking unavailable.

But it just doesn't feel real. I mean, I suppose I can be considered conventionally attractive by others, but I don't really see it unless I fantasize/impose an archetype over myself to distort what I am seeing; I almost dread and am always to some extent disgusted by having to look at my bathroom mirror everyday. I'm decently thinly built (though not thin) without much visible musculature (though far from fat -- I have an unusually narrow waist) and just short of 5'8, so I'm not particularly tall or strong. With all of that, seriously? I feel like I'm just imagining what I want to be true.

Well, that was enough cringy mumbling. Doesn't change the fact that no matter what I do, I can never really get her out of my head frame in some way even at a more subtle level. I guess it's made the grind of work more tolerable.

As the title states.

There's no question that it does, and even necessarily, but why it must. That is, what is metaphysically impossible about the One not emanating anything at all? Obviously from the perspective of the One there is a sense in which the emanation "vanishes", but not because it is literally destroyed but because it is included in some sense in something that goes beyond it, or that the One in what it is must include the emanation in itself even if in a way there is no emanation (as an appearance) for it, because the emanation really is the One in essence; in the final analysis nothing is not the One; even the appearance is the One too. And apart from the One the emanation can have no reality whatsoever anyways.

I think the easiest way to look at this for those who have not attained henosis (and so there is no problem here) is to consider the alternative and its impossibility. The alternative would be that the One would be a rigid particular, or have nothing further included in it, unlike a universal which does in a sense include particulars. Thus we would have to ask why this situation with the One would be metaphysically impossible, as it must be clearly.

The clearest answer I can think of is that a rigid or pure particular at the ultimate level would strictly speaking be nothing at all (since it could only be strictly speaking empty of anything or null) but also be something, and hence contradictory. Admittedly, this feels like a petitio principii or a sophism to me, but this seems like the general problem with such a notion of an ultimate pure particular.

As the title states. This is less a historical question and more a philosophical one, though I am fine with reference to specific texts.

Logically, I can make sense of the world being eternal (or perhaps more precisely perpetual). The One, as an eternal cause (or if preferred, principle), must have its effect(s) also be eternal (or perpetual) in some sense. Emanation as of the activity of the One must be perpetual; were the emanation to have a beginning the One would be in time, which is incoherent insofar as it is unconditioned, while if it had an end the One would undergo a change in terms of what it is, or it would in some sense be limited.

However, I am having trouble in some sense trying to comprehend a perpetual universe. The closest I can get to is to conceive of it as a constantly moving circle, or cycle (which also makes it stable in a certain sense) where each temporal moment (or duration) in some sense never really is, but rather is just in becoming, where no moment is truly real (in the sense of stable reality) in a certain sense. Insofar as this holds, the world never undergoes a real change in a certain sense, but simply remains a flux whose aspects only have being in an illusory sense by participation in Being (so the world is real, just not in itself -- hence an illusion), while this movement itself in a sense is indistinguishable from the One's activity or even reality ultimately (since I take Neoplatonism to be fundamentally non-dual).

The trouble with this model is that it seems like it would be impossible to talk about the past, which seems implausible at the very least. Although from the perspective of the One there is no time and so no past, so perhaps this is correct, although I don't know what past-talk would amount to.

As the title states. The question is (necessarily) being asked from the relative point of view in a certain sense (though also about the Absolute point of view).

In a way, I do not feel extremely far from Self-realization in some ways, but I feel like I cannot make a final but necessary step for it. Namely, I cannot sacrifice or give up ego-centricity (in the most metaphysical sense of the word, not the ethical sense) because I am stuck with a fundamental doubt concerning how something can be possible without one being aware of it, and insofar as Self-realization fundamentally involves negating ego-centricity in the metaphysical and epistemological sense, and thus the negation of "real" subject-object duality, this is a fundamental doubt and question I have that is making a step towards Self-realization basically impossible for me. Extremely deep meditative practice involving negation of objects and the subject seem in some sense necessary, but out of reach for me as of now. I cannot entirely let go, even though at some level I know I need to.

For some intellectual context, as far as I understand it, I can somewhat make sense of Brahman being the "container" of all reality, insofar as Brahman is Infinite / unlimited, it must in some sense be/contain all that is possible, or in other words it is not "self-enclosed" or limited. Brahman is no particular being -- such a notion in fact is incoherent (it would have to have no specific nature or identity and still be something "defined" or determinate, which is a contradiction in terms). This to me seems the truly definitive sense of Brahman -- the unbound / undetermined Infinite as such. Consequently, Brahman must in some sense contain what appears inferior or more determined than it, though these are nothing other than Brahman in some sense since Brahman cannot have a "second" to it. That is to say, the universe is real (it is not an impossibility such as "a ball that is red and not-red in exactly the same way"), even in its multiplicity, as Brahman. It's just that the reality of the universe is not found in itself or in its distinctiveness. On this point, one may well say that the possibility of/a world is necessary in a certain sense, and even that all non-contradictory worlds will be/have been/are realized as well. (Perhaps this is more in the vein of Kashmiri Shaivism rather than Advaita Vedanta, but I am not sure I really see any significant differences between them).

All of the above intellectually makes sense in a certain way to me, though I cannot really say I entirely "get" it either. I think at a base level, I am having difficulty making sense of things being possible or even existing without being aware of them. Namely, it seems in some sense whether something exists or not has nothing to really do with one's awareness of it. That some stranger may die on a random part of the planet that I have never met would be true even if I was never aware of it or even thought of it. As for historical examples, the Roman Empire really fell, but I was never aware of it actually falling. One could even conceive of possible scenarios one will never be aware of or even understand (as a human being) that will be the case, but never be known by us. In fact, even phenomenologically, when one is in deep sleep the world (even our current world for some of us) does not really cease because the jiva is not the cause of it (in its reality).

This is my own understanding, not an authoritative one, as I do not want to mislead or confuse; this post is for those who have already completed the path or are very far along.

That all being said, it also seems like I can only establish or know whether something is really possible or not by some kind of awareness of it; I cannot know if it is impossible or possible with respect to its form -- "particular X ate lettuce on particular location Y" is not something I as a human being can just know in virtue of its form.

However, I suppose if Brahman in some sense knows, it is just because that something is not impossible and is both the cause of it (when considered in its distinctive apparent form) and that something is just Brahman (when considered in its reality). That is to say Brahman can just know it in virtue of that something's character since that something when considered in its appearance or distinctiveness is caused by Brahman, while in its reality (even as the appearance) is just Brahman. In fact, the only difference between the two perspectives is whether one operates from the relative point of view or from the Absolute point of view, where the Absolute point of view in some sense is correct while nevertheless containing the relative point of view.

That all can be said intellectually, but I cannot make effective or real the sense of Brahman as the source (or isness) of all contingent reality (in some sense) while also not being aware of it (since such contingent reality is not different from Brahman it cannot be a distinct object to be aware of). One might say there is a certain duality with regards to Ishvara (or Saguna Brahman) dreaming the world, but even that is subordinate to Nirguna Brahman's non-duality that is beyond even that.

(Also, saying that it just appears to cause the world but in some sense really does not is correct, but not useful or meaningful; the question is why it appears to, not whether it appears to).

Again, all of the above is just my own understanding, not an authoritative one, as I do not want to mislead or confuse to reiterate; this post really is just for those who have already completed the path towards Self-realization or are very far along.