I appreciate your writing this.

Throughout the time I’ve written this article, and then until now, I have learned more things yet again.

You will not have to accept everything I have written here, since sometimes, I realized that I wrote it out of ego, out of the chatter of the mind, out of animal insticts without knowing it.

At the same time, I also found out that there is never an ending on this journey of knowledge here, because as time passes, I was always forced to see the world from another side.

Indeed I agree, we post to each other to share.

And I am grateful that you’ve shared something with me as well, without loading your opinions on anyone.

Thank you.

I also agree with you that we have no control over our destinies, indeed the question of “our” destiny is a little funny–like watching a movie and thinking of the destiny of the protagonist as being “our” destiny. And it is our destiny, in a way, despite our lack of control.

Until recently, however, I didn’t know that the understanding that awareness was fundamental is actually a fairly widespread realization. My background was in Physics, not Philosophy. I knew that my friends accused me of seeing the world completely the wrong way around, and they expressed some surprise that this didn’t interfere with my ability to function. “You know if you listen to Shack, he seems rational, but his conclusions are entirely absurd!” Of course, while they just knew one person (me) who lived “upside down”, to me it seemed that the whole world was living upside down–by absurdly treating awareness as arising out of the objective rather than seeing the objective as arising within awareness.

Where others saw reality as an interaction of large numbers of parts, to me reality was necessarily grounded in a unity, without parts. Awareness was at least an attribute of this unity (and perhaps it was the foundational unity itself). Awareness was prior to any material manifestation.

I was also fortunate in stumbling on to Berkeley at some point. I see no conflict between these ideas and Christianity. Berkeley was, after all, a bishop. But that is another side-track.

In any case, last year my wife noticed a course description for a class on Advaita offered by Stanley Sobottka (whom I think you know), and she mentioned to me that it seemed very related to the views of reality that I had been talking about. I have been very happy to find that the “upside down” perspective is not unique, but is shared by a great many others, who have been very helpful to me in exploring and enjoying life lived from the perspective of transcendent awareness (i.e. transcendent of any object within awareness).

Of course, there are some ideas that I have developed in my isolation that don’t jibe with that wider understanding–what Stanley refers to as my “sandcastles”–but until my understanding changes, I don’t think I have a choice but to believe that which I think is true. But at least these difficulties point to places where I might benefit from further investigation.

A difficulty I have with what you wrote here is that it seems to disparage the manifestation as being some kind of flimsy illusion. I agree that it is not material or external, but to me it is not a “mere” arising in awareness, it is rather a fundamental property of awareness that this happens. At least it self-evidently does happen. When I kick a rock, my toe really does hurt! That is real. Even if the toe is, essentially, a dream toe and the rock is a dream rock, the perception of the toe, the rock, and the pain are all real and self-evident. Their immateriality does not take away from their reality (quite the contrary, in fact).

This relates to a difficulty on the topic of free will. I think that my difficulty on the topic of free will has to do with its definition. It seems to me that you have taken free will to mean that an agent could have decided differently, and thus it seems you equate free will with indeterminacy.

I agree that we are not free in that sense. However, I disagree with that definition of free will. My understanding of free will is more in line with the discussion here (See section 1, Rational Deliberation)…
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

In this view, I think free will represents an accord between one’s choices and one’s desires. Since we do not have control over our preferences, we don’t necessarily have free will in the sense of indeterminacy, so you are correct in that sense. And we don’t have complete free will–my desiring to fly will not make it so. But there remains the question of the alignment of desire and destiny, which is related to such ideas as hope and the meaning in life.

If I am offered my choice of ice cream, I will select the one I prefer, but I did not choose to have that preference. So I have free will to act in accord with my preference, but there is no indeterminacy because I can’t choose to have a different preference. I might toss a coin or use some other random process to select the ice cream, and that might give me indeterminacy, if the outcome of the random process is truly non-deterministic, but I don’t think that is what most people mean by free will since the outcome wouldn’t have anything to do with my desire. Or, on the other hand, indeterminacy may mean that my preference itself is decided by a random process, but so long as outcome corresponds to preference, I think that there is free will. So, by this definition, the question of “free will” is a different question from indeterminacy.

I think this points to a different issue, however, which is more fundamental than a difference over the definition of a term. This is the issue of whether desires have reality. My suspicion is that, since desires actually arise in awareness, they are a fundamental reality in that it is the nature of awareness that desires arise in the way that they do. To me, this raises the possibility that life has meaning. The ultimate meaning is the the the satisfaction of the deepest desire, perhaps this is the attainment of bliss in awareness.

I get the impression from what you wrote, that you see these arisings in awareness as “mere” arisings, an illusion, rather than an awesome expression of the fundamental nature of awareness. Thus, desire has no meaning and thus there is no meaningful judgment on which to base a choice. There is no meaning and there is no hope. To me, there is nothing “mere” about these arisings, they are reality (even if they don’t represent external objects), so life has real meaning and there is real hope.

Even if we do not have free will (i.e. even if fate does not accord with desire), the mere reality of desire, of hope, is enough to give life meaning. I suspect that free will is not universal, in other words that the desire for bliss within awareness is universal but the condition is not. Thus the idea of “liberation” is also meaningful, perhaps such liberation is itself the meaning of life. Not that such liberation is a process or a journey, nevertheless it is something that happens.

It is akin to the idea of bad faith. We may attempt bad faith, and feel that we are not free, that we are victims, but the fact of the matter is that we are free, even when we imagine that we are victims. We are free despite the fact that, in our roles as human beings, we have a fate and a history. On the other hand, there are those who seemingly truly are victims, so I have difficulty accepting that liberation is a universal condition.

In any case, I enjoy exploring these ideas and am happy to have found your article, despite my experience of struggling with some of the ideas. It is a part of the joy.

My intention for these posts are meant to inform, and not push any opinions to others.

If others feel the need to push their opinions onto another, I can only say:

Prove yourself right. Convince me of your truth. Because otherwise, you’ll only establish evidence in your ignorance.

Anyways, the way I see it – all opinions are part of the play.

In the course of history, the difference of opinions will always be present.

My intention for these posts are meant to inform, and not to push any opinions onto others.

For people who feel the need to push their opinions onto me, I can only say:

Prove yourself right.

Convince me of your truth.

Because otherwise, you’ll only establish evidence in your ignorance.

Anyways, the way I see it –

All opinions are part of the play.

And it looks like I’ve been writing to entertain it.

Just food for thought.

Author’s reply:
I could almost imagine that if you bump into someone who suffers from anorexic disorders, this might be the comment that ensues:

“Why won’t you just eat? Please do not continue this ridiculous line of thought that you’re fat. I can’t believe you’re wasting your life away with constant thought about being fat. Please for the sake of your own sanity and your usefulness to others stop wasting time and eat something. Regardless of what you think put food in your mouth and swallow it, just stop wasting time. Just food for thought.”

If the speech healed the person on the spot just like that, great job.

But chances are, the commenter would be ignored for being deemed shallow.

I’m asking questions about thought because the answers may potentially solve much of the mental distresses that people are suffering from today.

So that we can have greater understanding about life, to have peace, to have fulfillment in our hearts.

That’s why we have doctors/psychologists/therapists who’re willing to investigate into the causes of physical/mental disorders.

The purpose is to figure out ways to solve the problems that we face.

Sorry, but I’d have to deny your advice for its depth.

On the topic of the bible – my father’s a pastor. I’ve lived decades of years as a Christian, in a strict Christian environment. Surely, I have reasons why I eventually steered away from the book. If you’re interested to know why by any reason, check out my blog post titled “#70 Religions and the Theory of Oneness”. It’d explain more.

In the end – reading your comment, I can only wonder what the book(s) you’ve read have taught you.

Author’s reply:
I agree. With the conventional way of thinking, I couldn’t agree more. The reason why I accepted nonduality is because I’ve eventually inquired far enough.

More often than not, people accept what they have been told, without inquiring further into the truth of a situation. For example – we believe in the free will of choosing what to do. The question is: Where is this free will coming from?

If you think it came from the brain, the brain is just matter. In science, it’s just referred to as a machine that interprets/works with electromagnetic waves. By itself, it’s like a chip in a computer – without electricity, it’s a static object that serves no purpose. If you’d research into the source of matter, you’d find out that everything is energy. Even atom – magnified down into its core, is just energy that appears from and disappears into nothingness constantly. In other words, despite seeing your body as a solid object, emptiness is actually its base. You may even have learned that your body when you’re 30 is a completely different body than when you’re 10. So where is this you who created thoughts?

Then, we have people who believe in the existence of the soul as religions refer to the word. However, are you satisfied with the explanation that free will is generated from the soul? Is it a belief, or is it the truth?

Given the choice, which of the previous two options would you prefer to know more about?

Back to your view about free will. I had the same belief, until I realize how many things are not within my control. e.g. You’re rushing for work. Once you’re out of the home, you realize you forgot your keys. Now, did you, as the person with free will, planned to forget about taking your keys beforehand?

If you believe that you came up with your thoughts, then where do your thoughts come from? Did they – appear out of nowhere? If this is the case, can you prove me wrong when I say that they may not come from the character named as [your name], but is served to you from somewhere?

That they have arisen, but not created?

When you try not to fear, but nervousness still arise, did you will the circumstance to happen?

You mentioned that the few authors above have bended logic to their premise.

What if because of classic conditioning, we have accepted a faulty premise and thus bended all logic?

We can hold on tightly onto our age-old beliefs, which could be based nowhere close to truth. Or we can simply be present and observe, with clarity, what is nearer to it. We can believe a movie is real, or we can see it as it is, and work on what counts.

All I did was ask questions that allow me to do more of that.

Some people may not want to do ask these questions.

And even that, by itself, is not wrong after all.

Because at the end of the day, no one is ever wrong.

It is all perfect.