A Simple Fact

I don't get your meaning. What do you mean by 'the void which is the future'?

How does life come out of it, where does intent come from, what is intent?

What is 'the 'physical'~?

 

The future = the void, the past = physical and the present is where they merge with intent(intelect+will). On a side note the word Amen in the Bible means the hidden that is becoming so and is another name for Christ in Revelations. The father=void, son=physical and holy spirit= intent are the three in one right NOW.

 

So - you're saying that the Christian trinity is a void, the physical, and intent.

Novel.

Still haven't a clue though what you mean by 'intent'.

 

The void is the source(father) of creation. Intending is becoming one with him and co-creating with an end goal or purpose in mind. If the purpose involves serving others you can't go wrong.

 

Hare Krishna!

 

Life is. It transcends time and space, so we cannot say life comes from somewhere. All things come from life. Indeed, all things ARE life.

 

Disagree. Minerals are not alive in the sense that organic beings are. I don't know if it transcends space and time. The only life we have experience of is here on planet earth, and it seems there was a time before life appeared here. Once, there was no more life on the earth than there is now on the moon.
Life shouldn't be confused with being.
For instance, many people believe in beings who exist on purely spiritual or energetic levels, they are not 'alive' in the sense animals are.
The soul itself must be able to exist when the body and other sheaths are 'dead' in order to re-incarnate or exist in an afterlife.

 

'Vital' here means life. The Vital plane is the life plane, as distinct from the Physical and the Mental.

 

......or all things are energy. Even rocks are composed of energy just at lower levels.

edit; consciousness creates thought, thought creates matter and energy.

 

I echo this sentiment. lol

 

Bill, I am using the term life as synonymous with existence/consciousness. You are using it to mean prana or the individual experience of life.

 

The consciousness that is unknown due to human limitation was what I meant by the void or source. When I said the void is out of the future I meant that it comes from what would be considered the Supermind. The mind that knows what it will become before we do. That was my thought anyway.

edit; I found Sri Aurobindo's description of it. Hope it's not too long.

Something ineffable and mentally inconceivable not because of its unity and indivisibility, but because of its freedom from even these formulations of our mind

"Consciousness and Force are the twin essential aspects of the pure Power of existence; Knowledge and Will must therefore be the form which that Power takes in creating a world of relations in the extension of Time and Space. This Knowledge and this Will must be one, infinite, all-embracing, all-possessing, all-forming, holding eternally in itself that which it casts into movement and form. The supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time and Space."

 

Hare Krishna!

From Monkey Boy....

The consciousness that is unknown due to human limitation was what I meant by the void or source. When I said the void is out of the future I meant that it comes from what would be considered the Supermind. The mind that knows what it will become before we do. That was my thought anyway.

edit; I found Sri Aurobindo's description of it. Hope it's not too long.

Something ineffable and mentally inconceivable not because of its unity and indivisibility, but because of its freedom from even these formulations of our mind

"Consciousness and Force are the twin essential aspects of the pure Power of existence; Knowledge and Will must therefore be the form which that Power takes in creating a world of relations in the extension of Time and Space. This Knowledge and this Will must be one, infinite, all-embracing, all-possessing, all-forming, holding eternally in itself that which it casts into movement and form. The supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge which perceives certain truths of itself and wills to realise them in a temporal and spatial extension of its own timeless and spaceless existence. Whatever is in its own being, takes form as self-knowledge, as Truth-Consciousness, as Real-Idea, and, that self-knowledge being also self-force, fulfils or realises itself inevitably in Time and Space."
..................................

Dear MB,

Very nice, thanks. I would like to further add the following from the Great Yogi's vast ocean of knowledge.

Rishi Aurobindo wrote :

" The psychic being is formed by the soul in its evolution. It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or caitya purusa. At first it is veiled by mind, vital and body, but as it grows, it becomes capable of coming forward and dominating the mind, life and body..... When the psychic being can by sadhana become dominant and freely use its instruments, then the impulse towards the Divine becomes complete and the transformation of mind, vital and body, not merely their liberation, becomes possible."

Does it take us anywhere to know about life ? It does, I find echo/reflection of The Gita in this explanation by the great Yogi.

Love,
Kumar.

 

Nice quote. If you read more deeply into Sri Aurobindo's work however, you'll find that He does not concur that the void is the supreme reality, or behind the supreme reallity.

 

Let's not get caught in words. All the traditions that use the term void only refer to the absence (or transcendence) of all that we know through our current means of experience - the senses and the mind/intellect.
As the great Zen master Dogen put it, "Emptiness or void is not absence of existence, but it is the absence of everything other than existence."

I haven't studied Sri Aurobindo's works so I cannot quote him, but i am confident this is in tune with his teachings.

Sri Ramana Maharshi also often used the term mati-shunya which means a void mind, or empty mind (empty of ego).
My own Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says that when we talk of emptiness we must say empty of what. And the emptiness in Buddhism, Thay says, is the absence of a seprate self. This emptinss is synonymous with fullness. Full of what? Full of everything.

Any interpretation of the void as non-existence is logically fallible, becaus if you say the void exists then you're saying non-existence exists. In which case it is not non-existence!

 

If it contains existence it can't be a true void, as a void is empty of everything.
As Krishna says though, 'both being and non-being are in Me'.

In 'The Life Divine', He makes it pretty clear that He considers the experience of the 'void' is only a step on the way, a partial spiritual experience. But one which has often been taken as final by those who have the experience.

 

Hare Krishna!

From Bhaskar .....

"
Let's not get caught in words. All the traditions that use the term void only refer to the absence (or transcendence) of all that we know through our current means of experience - the senses and the mind/intellect.
As the great Zen master Dogen put it, "Emptiness or void is not absence of existence, but it is the absence of everything other than existence."

I haven't studied Sri Aurobindo's works so I cannot quote him, but i am confident this is in tune with his teachings.

Sri Ramana Maharshi also often used the term mati-shunya which means a void mind, or empty mind (empty of ego).
My own Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says that when we talk of emptiness we must say empty of what. And the emptiness in Buddhism, Thay says, is the absence of a seprate self. This emptinss is synonymous with fullness. Full of what? Full of everything.

Any interpretation of the void as non-existence is logically fallible, becaus if you say the void exists then you're saying non-existence exists. In which case it is not non-existence!

..............

Dear bhaskar,

I think you are right. The whole problem is lack of our own advancement in the right direction to understand the point, "the void".

Dogen, Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Thich Nhat... all are saying same thing but we are getting entangled by their ways of expressing things. There is void and at the same time there is nothing or no state of being absolutely void. By state of emptyness in spiritual realm we understand going into a state oblivious of everything including 'deha-buddhi' (Sense of the body- the last stage). That is a state of void but it is definitely not empty, that is when we come to know of 'Chaitanya', we understand that the void is filled with the power/energy of Chaitanya (Divine Consciousness). We realize that there is unbroken chaitanya shakti in the limit and boundaryless 'Void'. We start wondering, crying like Swami Vivekananda did when Thakur Ramakrishna had touched him.

Rishi Aurobindo is difficult to understand because of his own unique style of writing and use of not-so-simple words. But as we go deeper into our search and try repeatedly to cultivate into his prepared soil, we can reap only gems and nothing less.

With love,

Kumar.

 

Hare Krishna!

 

I agree that in general this is good advice.

However, I think we're already caught in words, and destined to remain so as long as we are using the forums, as other than words we have no other way to communicate here.

 

Makes me wonder .....maybe I should have titled this thread 'A Complex Fact'....