ardy wrote:Diebert van Rhijn wrote: But most of what you are is not born in that sphere and will not leave either after your death.
Diebert - aren't you making an assumption based on your own mental processes? The reality of who I or you are is beyond you and I. This statement is the basis of just another religion. If you are just moving the goal posts where does that take you?
Lets just rewind for a minute here and understand that any assumption of a life
after death is intimately coupled to any assumption to what this
life before death is about. This is a reasoned, firm understanding based in logic. And for the time being I'll assume logic is sufficient as opposed to merely "assumption". Of course the way to arrive at such understanding is bit more complex than some logical declaration: it's a road.
Anyway, many of the issues around the fact of bodies dying has to do with identification with that body. But even here what "you and I" are transcends the bodily. Even our conception of our body, looks and internal organs are through abstraction and chaotic senses: all mirrors darkly. The order that one distills with the body awareness is just one layer of a complex of being. Just a functioning body is not a whole identity. The
fictional self only arises as part of a supplied narrative, supplied by community, culture , ritual, habit and such patterns. Even animals have their own versions if complex enough social interactions are in place to organize "selves" that way, even when it's diffuse. And certainly the last ages the individual body awareness has grown in a very particular way through our cultures. It always was there but the focus has changed significantly.
So when I'm talking about anything "beyond you and me", I'm starting at a very physical and experimental level. Beyond the head, beyond the body, beyond what happens in this room. The boundaries are vague because identities are all about where to put goal posts: but who is putting them where for what reason? And aren't they being shifted all day long at will? Isn't that what makes us layered beings?
The wise man, however, has already found himself reflected in the universe which will not go anywhere or come from somewhere. The uniqueness of the individual, inner thoughts, feelings, specific memories somehow embedded into locality and circumstance, for the best or the worse, aren't they all assumptions? Perhaps, more likely even, it's all fairly common and repetitive, even our innermost stuff. Why assume it's not? Probably because this exclusive knowledge is asserted first? The deeper one descends and explores one true nature the more one will see we're not that private after all. But to function as individual assertions have to be made and language needs to be conflicted and limiting.
Of course it's easy to type or read this line of reasoning but spirituality is to actually embody and live that outlook to the degree one learns to see unity and connectivity as clear as anything else is seen. When this vision would be ingrained deeply enough and the turning of the body allows clarity of mind, there will be no death to taste. But that's not the immortality most humans are busy with in their religions but even there,
to some degree, it's telling this story in easier to understand symbols - and easier to misunderstand. Luckily such misunderstanding dies for sure in man.