Saturday, December 12, 2009

What part of the brain are you?

What will finally be required to resolve the spiritual search?

If we try to analyze all these paradoxical pointers, will we ever come to an intellectual certainty?  Will some experience arrive which validates?  Will there finally be some spiritual "state" which is the end?

Are these pointers describing an experience?  Are they describing a special "state"?  No.  But there is still an insistence from a seeking perspective, on the future arrival of some experience which will finally come, like a light from Heaven, to bring enlightenment upon you.  That fallacy will continue to stand as a brick wall until it's finally let go of.

What is being pointed out is not something to attain, not something which will arrive.  It is something which is ever-present.  It is something which is not hidden, although it cannot be known through the standard filter of mind, through the template of "thingness", which is what reality is generally built upon.

It cannot be known in that way, yet it is ever known.  It is already known.  It is already obvious.  It is already here.  It isn't yet to come, when all these pointers have finally been digested, when all thoughts have been manipulated correctly, when some worldview has been changed.  That's not what this is about at all.

THIS is what it's about.  Just THIS.  What is THIS?  Just this moment, right here, right now.  THIS.

You may say, "THIS is me, looking at the world."  But that right there is where THIS is taken to be duality.  Taken to be a world made up of parts.  Is it?  How can you say that with certainty?

Where are you seeing from, right here and now?  Can you pinpoint a location?  Where exactly is this "person" you've taken yourself to be?

You say it's "in the head".  Where exactly in the head is it?  What is in the head?  A brain?  Does that brain completely fill up the head?  Yes.  So the entire content of that head is brain.  And are there gaps in that brain?  Is there a space somewhere in that brain where you reside?  No - it's all brain, tissue, cells.

So are you tucked away somewhere in the brain matter?  Are you a little entity wandering through the curving matter of the brain?

The brain generates electrical and neuro-chemical reactions.  Are you a reaction?  Are you a chemical?  Are you a jolt of electricity?  Are you blood ? Are you a cell?  What else is in there?

Are you behind the eyes, sitting there?  What exactly is the makeup of that "person"?

Isn't this idea that you are somewhere in there just a nice idea, just a convenient concept?

If there is an openness, an honesty which allows for the challenging of these mere assumptions, then what are you left with?  The "person" is and always has been only an assumption, a learned belief.  There is no person residing in the head.  So what is left?

The pure functioning is left - the brain is generating thoughts, the heart is beating, the lungs are breathing, the body moves in various ways, in concert with these thought.  Life IS...  There is nothing wrong with the obvious nature of this functioning, yet when the erroneous concept of "person" comes in, then all of this is applied to "someone", to "ME".  That is the "person"-al.  It's personal.  It's individual.  It's all relative to ME.

You are not a person.  There is no such thing as a person.  But you are certainly there.  So what can you be?

You must be Life itself, seeing itself, presently looking at itself.  Aware-ness IS nondual Being - no individual - nothing personal.  Only ever THIS, right here and now.

9 comments:

J. said...

Great pointer!!

tom said...

dear randall, we are not the body as it appears in awareness, but what about the 99,9% of the body we are not aware of? the inner structure of the brain and the cells and the content of those cells that only science can reveal, the marrow and the spine,... so much of the body is hidden for direct experience. much like a ice-mass in the water only the top is showing. could not the observing reside there? kind regards, tom

tom said...

Reading previous comments, I see you already answered this question in many ways. Thanks.Kind regards,tom

donommen said...

THIS is a beautiful knowing...Thanks for sharing...Keep it coming...I LOVE YOU

Anonymous said...

perfect, just perfect, and I am life itself giving in endlessly to this perfection. x

Anonymous said...

RB says: I know nothing; "I know" arises in unexplainable, undefinable spaceless awareness. Words, thoughts, feelings, all rise like a picture in bright nonconceptual present awareness. A mirage in a desert but not a desert: SEEING IS ALL. Feelings follow words and suffering and more seeking; we think! And we think, if a think more about this and read more and ask more questions THEN, THEN I will awaken.

!STOP NOW!

See the dream as a dream. But there is no knower, nothing to figure out. Be economical in thoughts and ask the sharp pointed questions when they arise, WHEN THEY ARISE. These are pointers also. This is your GURU shining through.

Are you aware? YES!

The above is a story. LOL!

mike goldswain said...

really great nuts and bolts stuff !!

Mulla said...

Dear Randall;

The mind builds its virtual world using the template called 'thing'; the world is full of separate things some of which are tangible while some others are abstract. In this way too the mind comes to know the world; by perceiving things or objects and manipulating them with thinking.

Through the use of this template since the beginning of history we came to believe in the absolute reality of this template and have thus extended it to all aspects of our life.

This paradigm that reality is made up of things has proved to be of tremendous practical use which makes it difficult to experience what is happening in a different way. This lead to extending this way to all realms of living and being at the tremendous cost of continuously living in internal and external strife and suffering.

Such a situation would have been intolerable if it had happened in the field of physics. The paradigm would have been recognised as being of limited applicability and new principles would be searched for to account for what is seen by observations and experiments as happened when Newtonian Mechanics was abandoned in favour for Quantum Mechanics for understanding and predicting the behaviour of atomic particles. Yet, people and even physicists (who should know better by reflecting on the history of their field) seem to tolerate the conflicts and suffering in our life that arise from the paradigm of viewing the world as being made of separate things!!

Why is that?

Because no one has appeared in their life to point out the real cause of conflict and suffering and plant the seed of doubt in their minds and hearts that may be the whole foundation of the world which they see, touch and think about is false after all. Then their search will begin but still using the same old paradigm. The search will be for an object that will finally do away with conflicts and suffering and bring peace and happiness. There is no way around this. The search will go on until the search itself is seen to be bounded by the same paradigm and a knowing will arise that there is away that has never disappeared or gone away. It is the primary way. It is not different from the previous way. It contains it. It is in fact the mother of all that is; of illusions, delusions and of reality that exists before perception and thinking, the reality that is simply is.

Thank you Randall for keeping to point out the real cause of conflict and suffering.

Mulla

Einrich said...

Personally, I don't really know the answer, but someone has suggested to me before that it may be the Claustrum that is responsible for our consciousness (as well as everything else of course... :P). Approximately speaking, the brain is a localized self replicating pattern in nature, inconsistent, like a river perhaps, but overall looking generally stable. Then again, all separation is approximation. ;)

But I'm also an engineer. :P