Hare Krishna! Dear Param, Joining date 16.08.08, total number of posts 91 ! I am sorry, even after so many posts I could not get to your exact points. It seems utter confusion has covered everything. Probably, effect of reading the Vedas and not understanding even a bit of it ! Dear, if God is not awareness, what else is ? If He is Nirakar, He is Sakar as well through His creations. Param, you are God but minus the awareness of being Him as one of His countless Sakar forms. Your hands, feet, head , ... everything is His. Still would we say He does not have awareness. He is Chaitanya, Param-Chaitanyamay, He is Sat-Chidanandamay. As Sakar He is everything, He is all pervading Nirakar as well. Read less, practise more is the answer to all the questions and confusions. Practise and know the truth by yourself. No Veda, No Gita, No Guru can take you to the truth. Only God's Compassion and Grace can do that and that you receive only when you sincerely try to practise to know Him. Love, Kumar.
Dear Friend - don't you see how by posting such an excessive amount you are acting as your own worst enemy? People will see the large amount of posts and take the view that this constitutes spamming. It doesn't matter how wonderful you think what you have to say may be, the approach is certain to put people off before they've even looked. You won't impress anyone by trying to force them to look at this stuff, but it's more likely that they will think you lack courtesy. This then will reflect on whatever guru you are trying to draw to our attention in a negative way. So please use your awareness, whether or not you believe it comes from God. A little bit of sensitivity might not go amiss either.
kumar; God is neither formless nor has form. In the creation both formless objects like air and form-full objects like earth exist. Because of this reason God is neither formless nor form-full since both are imaginable. Veda says that God is unimaginable. But God comes in human form, which is useful to the humanity in all directions. But such unimaginable God comes in human form in every human generation. The main aim of the human form is preaching Divine Knowledge. That is why God has taken a human form which is very much useful to the humanity in various angles. You have to worship such form taken by God. He is not your servant to come in the form you desire. In Gita the Lord said that He will approach the devotee in the same path as the devotee approaches. This does not mean that He will take the form as you like. You can take any form you like which can be a representative of God (Pratika) but God does not exist in it.
This is incorrect. So far as our ordinary sensory apparatus goes, it might appear that air is formless. However, science has extended the reach of our senses to some limited degree, and we can say with certainty that air has a definite form, just as do other gases and mixtures of gases which exist in the cosmos. Furthermore, these gasses each have their exact molecular form. For long ages yogis have been saying that our senses are continually decieving us; and modern science has shown this to be true. What looks to us on the surface, or as a result of naive observation very simple, turns out to be very complex. The balance of gasses in the air is in fact extremely important. Currently, the rise in levels of C02 is a huge cause for concern as regards our future as a race on this planet. Thus not only does air have a definite form, but that form is maintained in a fine balance in order to support physical life on earth in all its huge array of diversity. God, on the other hand, is both with and without form - He is Saguna and Nirguna Brahman. He has no form, yet all forms. He is nowhere and yet He is everywhere and in everything. Air is not a good metaphor for the formless. Personally I doubt that the formless is imaginable by anyone. It may be concievable, but that is a different thing. It simply means we have a word, a tag which has no actual referent in our experience. To imgagine a thing means more to give it some actual form for our own inner awareness.The experience of the formless would be a divine grace.
BlackBillBlake; All the worldly items have dimensions of the space and hence are not beyond space. If the items are beyond space, they will be also unimaginable. But all the items of the world are imaginable only. No imaginable item can be a simile to the unimaginable God. Hence, a complete simile for God is absent in this world. A simile among the worldly items also is never perfect in all aspects. The face is compared to the moon. Moon increases and decreases in the month but the face has no such increase and decrease. An imaginable item cannot be a perfect simile to another imaginable item in the world. Then, how can you bring a perfect simile from the imaginable items to the unimaginable God? Of course, God enters into an imaginable item as medium. In that case the medium itself is said to be God as the live wire is said to be the current itself. Here also the medium is treated as God but actually the medium is not God directly. All the non-God items are worldly objects, which are parts of creation. All these items are known first and then only their existence is mentioned. When you say that a pot exists, it means that you are stating the existence since you know the pot already. Hence, the existence of any worldly item requires the knowledge of that item already. If you do not know anything about an item, you will not say that it exists. Hence, the existence always requires the prior knowledge of the item. But God is beyond world and is unimaginable since God is not known. Hence, the existence of God is not similar to the existence of the worldly items. Since the existence of worldly items, which requires prior knowledge of the item, is absent in the case of God, God can be said as an item not having the existence of worldly items and hence God is non-existent (Asat) in this sense. This does not mean that God is really non-existent because God really exists as per Veda (Astityeva….) and hence God exists (Sat).
Well if God is not known, I'd suggest getting to know Him might well be the best solution. Then we won't have to rely on imprecise metaphors or imagination anymore, nor be tied to just one guru or set of doctrines.
param ... i agree with blackbillblake, you are filling the forums with your beliefs. Simply copying scripture. You've said too mutch already without regard to whether others are even interested - This is spamming and is against the rules of posting on these forums. Maybe you could take these few complaints as a cross section of the whole and understand that we don't wish you to continue posting in the excessive way you have been until now. You have noted our concern but have you understood?
Even though God is unimaginable He comes in human form to give His presence to us in every human generation. The unimaginable God needs the imaginable human form as a medium for expressing Himself to His devotees. In the case of human incarnation of God also, you have only understood the existence of the unimaginable God and you have not imagined the nature of God as in the case of the limits of the Universe. You have only seen that the limits of space are beyond the sight and this does not mean that you have seen the limits of space. In all these examples, Maya (Unimaginable item) exists in the imaginable items to give a proof for its existence just like the unperceivable electricity exists in the perceivable metallic wire to give experience of its existence. The wire with electricity can be treated as the electricity itself and there is no other way than this to perceive the electricity. The electricity has to be treated as the wire containing electricity. But every wire is not electricity. Therefore, the unimaginable Maya has to be treated as the imaginable world, which shows the unimaginable limits. This does not mean that every imaginable item in the world with definite limits is Maya. Therefore, this world can be treated as Maya (Mayamtu Prakrutim….Gita). Here the word Prakruti stands for the world with unimaginable limits and it does not stand for any imaginable item in the world with definite limits. Similarly, the person charged by God (human incarnation) can be treated as God but not every person. The world with unimaginable limits and human incarnation with unimaginable miracles can be treated as God (Viswam Vishnuh.., Vasudevah Sarvamiti…..) and this does not mean that the world or the human body of human incarnation itself is God (Avyaktam Vyaktimapannam…Gita).
The marraige in Hinduism made the world just absolutely. And the Ganges River will dry up one day and heav your skeletal remains onto the parched Global Warmed Earth.:cheers2:
Awareness requires something to be aware and something to be aware of. Therefore it is dual in nature and cannot be Ultimate Reality. However, Ultimate Reality plays the game of awareness and things to be aware of in a number of different stages. At the Ultimate level awareness will disappear along with things and objects.
Hare Krishna ! From Param ... "God is neither formless nor has form. In the creation both formless objects like air and form-full objects like earth exist. Because of this reason God is neither formless nor form-full since both are imaginable. Veda says that God is unimaginable. But God comes in human form, which is useful to the humanity in all directions. But such unimaginable God comes in human form in every human generation. The main aim of the human form is preaching Divine Knowledge. That is why God has taken a human form which is very much useful to the humanity in various angles. You have to worship such form taken by God. He is not your servant to come in the form you desire. In Gita the Lord said that He will approach the devotee in the same path as the devotee approaches. This does not mean that He will take the form as you like. You can take any form you like which can be a representative of God (Pratika) but God does not exist in it." God is neither having form, nor He is formless, He is unimaginable, can be a representative of Himself in human form without existing in it .........Eh !... what's happening ? It is all very funny and silly ! Dear Param, there is something terribly wrong somewhere. Do you mean to say that we should give a damn to the word 'God' and stop bothering ourselves looking for Him. Why worship and look for Him as He is so incapable that God cannot make himself imaginable to us, cannot have form, cannot become a small tortoise, a dwarf, a fish, a Rama or Krishna... not even a small baby. Why worship and break our head and heart when He can become only a representative in a form but cannot become the form Himself. If He has limits then it is better we live and let Him live peacefully. In The Gita Lord Krishna said He was God himself.... it is all false ! Please dear, let us live with the truth that He is the limitless absolute with all compassion for us. From time immemorial He himself has had come to us in all conceivable forms to bring us up with love and care. If He does not wish He is everything that you said and if He does He is so close to us, in the tiniest and the largest revealations. Love, Kumar
So what will be left? Unconsciousness? A void? It would seem so by definition. To me this seems nihilistic.
Hi BBB, The point is awareness can only exist in the realm of objects. No objects, nothing to be aware of. When you are aware it must be through one of the six senses, touch, smell, taste, sound, seeing, or mind. And those senses need an object to function. (The object of mind is thoughts and ideas.) Take away these senses and objects and you also take away awareness. Now, when we die the senses are terminated. So what is left to be aware of, or with? The only possible answer would be Ultimate Reality, or God, or whatever you wish to call it. Now if Ultimate Reality, which is non dual, becomes aware of itself, duality has arisen and we have subject and object, awareness and that which is aware; the beginning of the universe. There is no nihilism as nihilism is a dualistic concept. You cannot have nothing without something. Same with unconscious, and void.
I see what you mean, but I think the ultimate reality is conscious of itself, so its self relation solves the problem of awareness with no object. If we say the absolute has no self relation, then its hard to see how it could have any relation with anything else, such as the cosmos of which we assume it is the source. Even if we say the cosmos is an illusion (which I don't think it is) it's still very difficult to say how it could have arisen from a relationless absolute.
First: I think the problem lies with the terms consciousness and awareness. We are using them on two different levels. Individual consciousness (awareness) and Ultimate consciousness (awareness). As to the second part: Ultimate Reality seems to be divided into all sorts of dualities such as you and I, but these are illusions as there is only The One. If the absolute becomes conscious of itself then there must be a change in that consciousness, which by definition (Ultimate Reality) is impossible. But we know that objects do appear in this consciousness so they must be one and the same thing. For the third: The cosmos is an illusion (a very good one) as can be seen by the seeming appearance of objects to consciousness. (Remember consciousness and objects are really one and then same). There can be no objects arising in reality, and so they are an illusion, for something to arise it must come from something else. But if it comes from something else then it is that thing and not the thing that has arisen. If it arises of its own then it comes from nothing and nothing can not produce something as it would not be nothing but something to begin with. If it is one thing to begin with and then changes into something else, how can this happen as the two are then unrelated separate things? If they are related they must touch at some point and therefore are one and the same. The same goes for dissolving. So nothing arises, exists, or dissolves. Illusion.
Perhaps I'd better enlarge on that. I mean if the world is an illusion with nothing behind it, then what's left? Only a kind of stoic resignation I'd assume. To quote King Lear 'nothing will come of nothing'.
I don't know, Nihilism sort of denies meaning, a greater power then displayed by the human condition, etc. By stoic resignation I assume you mean that there is no meaning to life so just resign yourself the the fates? I don't know a lot about Stoicism but I do know the common usage of the word today is not the same as the actual Stoic beliefs and practices of old. When I say that the world is an illusion I really need to explain what I mean in detail. This takes time and becomes very complicated. So let me just say that we each construct the world and we are each other. There is only one condition that varies and it varies constantly. The world is constructed every time you have a thought and disappears at the end of each thought. The time between thoughts is not noticed as it is outside of time as when you sleep a deep sleep time disappears. We each construct the world with our thoughts. Of course in my last post I said nothing arises, exists, or dispels...... Anyway what's left is the illusion and the constructor of the illusion, which are the same.
I don't think we construct the world with our thought or our minds. The universe existed for long ages prior to the emergence of the human form or mind on this small planet, so who was constructing it then? I said 'nihilism' because if the supreme is not conscious, then it is really nothing - a nihil or void. If the supreme is not conscious, then our powers would be greater then those of God. As for illusion - I think the world is real, but we have a false view of it, hence the illusion.
