He argues that the evolution of species is the evolution of consciousness seeking to express itself as multiple observers; the universe experiences itself through our brains:
"We are the eyes of the universe looking at itself".[88]
In his book Quantum Healing, Chopra stated the conclusion that quantum entanglement links everything in the universe, and therefore it must create consciousness.[91]
Chopra argues that everything that happens in the mind and brain is physically represented elsewhere in the body, with mental states (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and memories) directly influencing the human body.
He has stated, "Your mind, your body and your consciousness – which is your spirit – and your social interactions, your personal relationships, your environment, how you deal with the environment, and your biology are all inextricably woven into a single process … By influencing one, you influence everything."[94]
In it Chopra said that "there is a realm of reality that goes beyond the physical where in fact we can influence each other from a distance".[109]
Chopra was shown using his claimed mental powers in an attempt to relax a person in another room, whose vital signs were recorded in charts which were said to show a correspondence between Chopra's periods of concentration and the subject's periods of relaxation.[109]
Chopra states "The placebo effect is real medicine, because it triggers the body's healing system."[111]
Chopra sees the universeas having three layers:
1. the "material" world,
2. a "quantum" zone of matter and energy,
3. and a "virtual" zone outside of time and space, which is the domain of God, and from which God can direct the other layers.
Deepak Chopra - Wear a mask or join the company. (DJ DonnellonI thought you understood how consciousness creates our reality and how our consciousness can have a powerful effect on the health of our bodies. States of fear make us more susceptible to dis-ease. That’s why there is all this fear-based programming. All not for the best interest of humanity. Whose side are you on, man?)
Chopra has written that human beings' brains are "hardwired to know God".
In 2013, Chopra published an article on what he saw as "skepticism" at work in Wikipedia, arguing that a "stubborn band of militant skeptics" were editing articles to prevent what he believes would be a fair representation of the views of such figures as Rupert Sheldrake, an author, lecturer, and researcher in parapsychology.
The result, Chopra argued, was that the encyclopedia's readers were denied the opportunity to read of attempts to "expand science beyond its conventional boundaries".[131]
...
Transcript:
https://iamfearlesssoul.com/deepak-ch...
"We know nothing. Everything we know is made up. It is a human construct. We don't question: What is the source of this experience"
'Samadhi is the blissful return to our Divine origin - the eternally true existence and eternally blissful consciousness.'
With Samadhi, there is no longer any individuality.
With Samadhi, "consciousness and self-awareness continue to exist - but not in the previous duality of 'that is mine' and 'that is yours'."
'The person lives on, but from now on the inner Self remains with the Supreme Self.
'This means the end of all problems and pain, the end of suffering, of rebirth and death.
'The liberated one lives on the earth in eternal happiness and joy, and when the body is renounced the consciousness dissolves completely in the Divine Self'.
"In deep sleep, we experience a state of mental unconsciousness. The mind is free from restlessness and worries and we enjoy a deep, unspoilt rest and relaxation.
"But when we awaken everything is as before. The thoughts and worries return, our situation and ourselves have not changed in the least.
"In Samhadi, as in sleep, physical sensations such as heat, cold, hunger, thirst, etc., are strongly diminished.
"At any time one can return to “normal consciousness” just as one instantly awakens from a dream if touched or spoken to.
"We return from Samādhi consciousness fundamentally transformed.
"This means that even a completely uneducated and narrow-minded person returns as a scholar and sage when immersed in the infinite, divine consciousness of the highest level of Samādhi."
"Cosmic consciousness, can only be realised after death.
"Cosmic consciousness means to be one with the entire Universe, with every atom, and this is not possible on the physical level.
...
"When body and mind are correctly attuned and have become quiet and pure the meditative state occurs by itself – just as sleep overcomes us by itself when we go to bed in the evening.
"SAMADHI is the Supreme Consciousness in which knower, knowledge and object of knowledge unite.
"In reality we are that for which we are seeking!
"When, with this knowledge, our Self unites with the Divine Self it is like a radiant sunrise.
"All Karmas burn in the fire of the Divine Knowledge.
"The chains of Karma dissolve, and all associated attachments vanish.
"I am not this mind, nor intellect, ego or consciousness,
"My form is pure consiousness and absolute bliss
"In me exists neither attachment nor duality,
"Neither greed nor jealousy, neither hate nor anger.
"I have nothing to do with the illusion of the ego,
"I have neither sin nor virtue, nothing to do with either happiness or sorrow,
Imagine switching out of the SELF mode into the NON-SELF mode.
In the NON-SELF mode there is no grasping of pain or pleasure.
But this is difficult for our minds to imagine, just as 'infinity' is difficult to imagine.
Some people write about the dangers of talking about the Oneness of everything.
"Holding to both the oneness and multiplicity of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires being present with the moment with all it's paradox and radicalness.
"Experiencing both the bliss and sorrow of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires us to be present to the entire situation of existence, our own and all others.
"In terms of our tradition, we describe this as the dance between emptiness and form and our path as the willingness to experience both and their mutuality.
"The main emphasis of our path is to show up wakefully to the play of emptiness and form..."
The belief that there is no essential difference between the physical and the conscious.
That they are different manifestations of the same essence.
The nature of reality and existence is intimately and inextricably connected to the nature of consciousness.
This is still more than a research problem. It is *the* research problem.
You are conscious. You know that.
You suspect that I probably am too, because there is a certain observational equivalence to our external behaviours. That is, you exercise empathy. You imagine what it's like to be me.
Is a chimpanzee or a dolphin conscious? For the same reasons, you think yes.
How about an octopus? An ant? An RSV retrovirus? An electron?
The only intellectually satisfying theory of consciousness is that everything is conscious. Only to a greater or lesser extent.
This is Tononi's Integrated Information Theory. Consciousness is a statistical emergent property of informational interconnectedness. Just as in statistical mechanics, temperature is an aggregate property derived from randomness and energy of particle movements.
I've had these sorts of discussions maybe twenty years ago. Colleagues insisted there was some sort of arbitrary dividing line: dogs are conscious but ants are not. To me this was nonsensical: where do you draw the line? Consciousness is an inherent quantifiable phenomenon of nature, like a natural force. But when you push the issue, they just get impatient. The notion that a molecule has some infinitesimally small degree of consciousness was just too radical for them.
There is also a physical basis for the notion of universal interconnectedness.
In quantum mechanics, better named as wave theory, a particle is actually a wave that spans all space but is mostly localized. So in a trivial sense, yes, everything is connected. (A gross oversimplification, I know.)
Anyway, that's just physics. It doesn't translate necessarily into the touchy-feely ideas we discuss here. But it does make you think the nature of the world could be very different from the standard view.
These points enforce two important principles:
1) The importance of reality checks like the scientific method and statistical inference. To try your absolute best not to fool yourself.
2) The importance of intellectual humility and keeping your mind open to possibilities.
The world is unutterably strange and subtle. You will never fully understand it. You can only increase your meagre understanding through a humble and childlike curiosity and wonder. Moreover, in a created world, you will only know what you are permitted to know.
The more interesting question, mostly what you're interested in here, is this: Is God personal?
Does God care about each of us individually? Of course, to keep track of every single individual you would have to be a god. The God, even. Which of course God is.
--- "I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it."
Like very many people, Nixon Scraypes does not like the idea of NON-DUALITY
Nixon Scraypes said...
Oh,come on.
I have a bowl of organic brown rice and a bowl of poison toadstools.
Which shall I eat?
You tell me which is good which is bad?
What we would argue is that poison mushrooms are a mixture of 'good' and 'bad'.
'Fly Agaric' is a poison toadstool.
It is 'good' in that it is used by people to eliminate flies.
"Medical practitioners in Siberia have used this mushroom to promote the creative conditions of the mind."
In your example of the uses of a poisonous toadstool, you still are making a dualistic judgment. You are saying: "these properties are good." You aren't doing away with a binary category, you are just applying it to specific qualities... I've always understood non-dualism to be a lot more radical than you are presenting it to be. Rudy M is correct in that we are not taking a radical position.
We should not label things, such as Poison Mushrooms, as being "all good" or "all bad".
When we describe 'the perfect game of golf' we are forced to describe certain moments in the game as 'good' and certain moments as 'bad'.
But the game overall can be described as perfect.
Some people believe that 'reality at the deepest level' cannot be described easily with words.
Some people believe that "Only the whole of existence itself can be said to be nondualistic, because there is nothing outside the whole of existence to distinguish it from."
Concentration camp victims. David C Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
"But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
"And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said:
"Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured."
Hawks eat doves and humans eat lambs.
However, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung also said:
"But the history of the mind offers a different picture.
"Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes."
Walking on hot coals. Detaching oneself from fear and pain.
Is it possible for humans to enlighten themselves so that they escape from a world of suffering?
"When Jack Schwarz sticks a long sailor's needle through his bicep, he feels no pain, does not bleed and has no infection.
"Why? He uses a detachment visualization technique.
"It is not HIS arm attached to HIS body, but instead it is AN arm away from his body and therefore no feeling is possible.
"Amputees sometimes suffer from the phantom limb 'itch' where they feel an itch on a limb that does not exist."
Duality can mean that we label things as either 'good' or 'evil'.
The problem is that some Nazis labeled the concentration camps as good, vultures label dead humans as good, and some people even like the game of cricket.
The problem is that a pleasant game of golf is always a mixture of plus and minus.
And even 'Suffering' can be positive if it leads to progress on a spiritual path, or if it reminds you that it's time to visit the dentist.
Concentration camps?
Of course concentration camps are 'bad'.
But, the reason we got concentration camps in Germany was because the Nazis labeled certain Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and handicapped people as 'bad'.
Ideally, we see that "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
What is Non-duality?
There are many different descriptions.
Imagine that you do not label anything as being entirely good or entirely bad.
Imagine you can see some good in your pet cat, which has just killed the bird.
Should we believe in Duality or Non-Duality or both?
In this world it is only natural that some people label things as being entirely good or entirely bad.
But, ideally we should try to understand Non-Duality.
The US military labeled this Asian child as unimportant. The child is a victim of the Pentagon's Agent Orange. www.documentingreality.com...
If the Nazis had adopted the idea of Non-Duality, they would have seen that they were related to the Jews.
(The top Nazis were said to be crypto-Jews)
If the Pentagon adopted the idea of Non-Duality, they would stop murdering dark-skinned children all over the world.
There are various descriptions of Non-Duality.
Imagine pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss, which is so enlightened that it is free from suffering.
Imagine that your 'mind' and the universe are, in a sense, One.
The spiritual teachers of the past seem to have had a lot in common.
From Luke 9:48
The one who is least among you is the greatest.
From Taoism:
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
The enso on the other hand is the simplest symbol that exists.
Which in symbol terms makes it pretty much perfect. (Or is that word bad? How about 'ideal'?)
enso "It symbolizes absolute enlightenment. In Zen Buddhist painting, ensō symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body/spirit create." And then there's the enso's unconnected appearance in mathematics wherein it represents zero. Or is it unconnected? Where's Jung when you need him?
Regardless, zero is interesting - it didn't exist until really quite late in history. It took a long time for people to get their heads around it. I also like the fact that zero is (arguably) the antithesis of mathematics. I never did like maths - it's the language of priests - and zero (qua zero) is pretty much of no use to them.
From maths to religion and back again: zero equals nothingness, and nothingness equals a transcendence of duality. So we've two priesthoods, one embracing numbers, and the other embracing duality, and both find themselves stymied by the simplest symbol in the world.
Which happily brings us full circle.
But then it would, wouldn't it?
best etc. etc.
Anonymous comments:
It's funny how you mention the Lisbon earthquake and Voltaire. Only a month ago I finally got round to reading Candide. What an extraordinary book. It's as funny as anything I've ever read and yet it details nothing but a long list of utter disasters. All of the episodes are related in a truly curious tone of sanguine naivete. Disaster follows triumph follows disaster, ad infinitum, with each as real as it is absurd.
Perhaps it is fair to say that there is no 'attachment' to anything? Regardless it all ends with Pangloss and his clapped-out Leibnitzean philosophical platitudes being ignored in favour of that most mundane of things, gardening.
What if I was to say that: some things just are. Or simpler yet: things just are. Disasters, triumphs, they are both just things to be survived. To define oneself by either would be foolishness. Imagine a man who never got past a tragedy that befell him. Or a one-time celebrity who never got over their sense of deserving. Tedious.
Thus, the mushrooms are survived or they aren't. The rice is survived or it isn't. The concentration camps are survived or they aren't. The guilt of surviving is survived or it isn't.
May I come back to Paul Rassinier? The entire war spent in Treblinka and yet he felt no great antipathy towards the Germans. He viewed what was done to him as being much like what he'd participated in in the French army in Morocco. A variation on Candide it seems. Further, he put the extremity of those survivors howling bloody murder down to their own sense of shame due to having been guiltier than the SS in terms of their infliction of misery and suffering. The 'un-Candide' perhaps?
Survive, not survive, might we declare we're in Darwin's turf now? In spite of not being a philosopher as such, Darwin was, ahem, a philosopher. He attains this by the simple expedient of attaching no judgement to anything. It should be noted that the word 'fittest' was not his but rather a later foreword writer's. He himself never uttered it. That would have been judgemental. For Darwin things were survived or they weren't and that's all there was to it. Or to put it another way, they were neither good nor bad, they merely were.
Of course it's no surprise that the church loathed Darwin. Where was the judgemental God in this world that just was? And of course the same went for Voltaire's Candide. It was banned most everywhere with the US still cracking down on it in the 1930's. "Let us eat a Jesuit" ha ha ha.
Otherwise God forbid we should view the world in anything other than a simple dualistic fashion. No really, it must be that way or else what need of God would there be?
It's a laugh isn't it? In a logic-free world it's as sensible a response as any other.
1. How old is your child?Three 2. How often does your child see ghosts/entities?Pretty much all day 3. What type of "being" does your child see?My grandfather who died 13 years ago
4. Where around town will your child most often see these beings?Anywhere
5. Do these beings ever approach your child around town?I believe he is always there 6. At what age did your child being seeing ghosts? We noticed it around 9 months Anything else you would like to add?She tells us he keeps her safe
...
Spiritualism is a belief that spirits of the dead have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living.
He believed that that certain aspects of living organisms, such as intelligence and morality, cannot be explained in terms of purely materialistic processes.
5.We should practise non-attachment to lots of things. "All the delightful things of the world - sweet sounds, lovely forms, all the pleasant tastes and touches and thoughts - these are all agreed to bring happiness if they are not grasped and possessed.
"But if you regard them merely as pleasures for your own use and satisfaction and do not see them as passing wonders, they will bring suffering."
6. It is not a good idea to 'suppress' our feelings.
Research shows that people who are able to talk about their grief, anger or fear get rid of these negative feelings more quickly.
People who are not able to talk about these feelings are more likely to suffer ill health, mental or physical.
Some people get angry when there is a long queue at the airport.
Some people learn not to get angry.
They are not supressing their anger; they just don't feel anger.
We see ourselves as separate selves.
Our body feels the pleasures and pains of life.
Imagine switching out of the SELF mode into the NON-SELF mode.
In the NON-SELF mode there is no grasping of pain or pleasure.
But this is difficult for our minds to imagine, just as 'infinity' is difficult to imagine.
Some people write about the dangers of talking about the Oneness of everything.
"Holding to both the oneness and multiplicity of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires being present with the moment with all it's paradox and radicalness.
"Experiencing both the bliss and sorrow of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires us to be present to the entire situation of existence, our own and all others.
"In terms of our tradition, we describe this as the dance between emptiness and form and our path as the willingness to experience both and their mutuality.
"The main emphasis of our path is to show up wakefully to the play of emptiness and form..."
Some people have suggested that only one 'entity' has real free will.
And only that one 'entity' is good.
That one person is 'God'.
Or the Tao, or the Force, or the Holy Spirit, or the divine...
Paradoxically, it may be that if we give up our supposed 'free will', we can then follow the will of 'God' (or go with the flow, tune into the Tao, realise that we are part of 'God') and live happily ever after.
Some Taoists would argue that every 'thing' and every 'action' is a mixture of 'good' and 'evil'.
"Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived."
The Mohist philosophers in China believed that the purpose of life was universal, impartial love.
Mohism promoted a philosophy of impartial caring - a person should care equally for all other individuals, regardless of their actual relationship to him or her.[48]
"We can test the problem with my most perfect identical twin: myself!
"Trying to remember the most important decisions I took in my life, I ask myself what I would have done if I had had the possibility to relive again any of the decisive moments of my life - with the same imperfect knowledge and with the same external constraints I had.
"The results of analyzing my perfect twin’s behaviour are, in my opinion, absolutely clarifying: reliving my life would have rendered a life identical to the one I actually lived.
"I can distinguish between two types of events as determinants of every minute fact that occurred in my life.
"Some were the result of conscious decisions, in many cases taken as the result of an evaluation of pros and cons (always with incomplete knowledge of the real situation).
"As it is impossible for me to take stupid decisions (the stupidity defined by myself), I was forced to decide in a determined way, searching the best results.
"In other cases my behaviour was the result of random and/or uncontrolled external factors. In the first case I would repeat my action; in the second, my response would be forced.
"However, if the external random factors would be the same, I also would repeat my action
"Ruben Rial Planas shows in his 'twin analysis' that he has made two types of decisions in his life:
"Those which were conscious, determined decisions.
"And the others 'the result of random and/or uncontrolled external factors'.
"To my astonishment he concludes: 'In either case I am not free', although he just made a brilliant analysis of the really free decisions: the conscious determined ones."
We choose; we have free will.
"Ultimate reality is consciousness."
According to Amit Goswami, a theoretical nuclear physicist:
"Consciousness is the ground of all being... Our free will is real...
"Reality is not two things - God and the world - but one thing, consciousness."
The problem of evil can perhaps be explained by looking at the equation 0 = +X -X.
When there are created 'things', we get dualism.
In other words, when we have 'hot' we also have 'cold'.
When we have 'good' we also have 'bad'.
We could perhaps see 'God' or the 'Ulimate Reality' as being '0', and the world as being +X -X.
Or we can see 'Reality' as being '0' which can be +X -X.
"The mystics of all the great traditions agree that all distinctions are imaginary and that the Ultimate Nature of Reality is non-dual."
The Taoists would argue that there is always Yin and Yang.
There is only a problem if there is a lack of balance.
Of course the mystics would also say that Ultimate Reality is much more complicated than we normally imagine, and that Ultimate Reality cannot be described in words.
Dr. Ian Stevenson:
"Twins in Sri Lanka.
"We did testing that showed they were identical, yet they were markedly different in their behaviors and physical appearance.
"One twin began to talk about a previous life as a Sinhalese insurgent, said he was shot by police in April 1971. Anyway, his family laughed at him, so he shut up and nothing could be verified about what he said.
"The older twin talked copiously about the previous life of a young schoolboy. He made several specific statements that ultimately checked out. He said he lived in a place called Balapitiya and traveled by train to a school in another town called Ambalangoda. He made comparisons between the families' property.
"He referred to an aunt, by name, who had cooked chilies for him.
"Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that when the two families met, the boy pointed to some [writing] in a wall that turned out to be the name of the deceased boy he was remembering. The subject said he had made that when the cement was wet. No one in the deceased boy's family had noticed it before."
Ros Barber's new novel Devotion is about God and parallel universes.
Finlay Logan's daughter has died, in a parachute accident.
And Finlay Logan, who is a psychologist, is assessing the sanity of April Smith, a Christian fundamentalist who has blown up a bus.
Finlay says: "There is no fucking God. Because it simply wasn't possible that God the Father would smear your twenty-one-year-old daughter across a field in the Surrey Hills."
Finlay meets Gabrielle Salmon.
Gabrielle Salmon is a scientist who studies consciousness.
She claims that she can help people to connect to God, and thus find peace.
She has managed to reproduce Religious, Spiritual and Mystical Experiences (RSMEs).
Author Ros Barber now presents two parallel universes for Finlay.
Finlay can choose.
We should note that the scientists now tell us that this is possible.
According to the scientists, when you come a cross a 'particle' it does not have a 'fixed state' - until your mind decides what its 'fixed state' will be.
In other words, if you come across Mr Schrödinger's cat lying very still on the grass, the cat is neither dead nor alive - until your mind decides what its 'fixed state' will be.
Let us imagine that you have a very strong feeling that the cat will be alive and well next year.
Christians believe that things go better when you tune into the Holy Spirit.
The Taoists would call the Holy Spirit the Tao.
When you are tuned in, the cat is not dead.
Some Taoists and Christians and others believe that bliss can be achieved when:
1. You believe that, when tuned in, life works out for the best.
2. You are compassionate
3. You are moderate (Avoid extremes)
4. You are humble (The selfish ego is switched off)
5. Everything is in balance
6. Being tuned into the Holy Spirit or the Tao or whatever you want to call it, you go with the flow.
(You are not battling against the Holy Spirit or Tau)
7. You avoid the use of force; you avoid pitting your will against the universe.
Eventually the cat will die, but it will continue in the Spirit.
Spirit and body?
"It stretches our own humanity to love a child who is less than perfect... And that is an important lesson for us.'" (Dr. Frank Oski) Christians refer to both 'spirit' and 'body'.[4]
There is a belief that spirits inhabit and animate beings.
The body is like a computer.
The spirit is like the person who operates the computer.
The New testament refers to evil spirits. Luke 11:2 "When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.'"
Mark 16:9 "He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons."
How might a spirit achieve bliss?
Lao Tzu taught that we should eliminate all that is dark and negative in ourselves.
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