An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Glostik91
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An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Glostik91 »

Finally! A real answer to the question that has surely been asked here a thousand times. What is enlightenment? And who else but Immanuel Kant could provide such a convincing and indubitable answer. Have a look.

https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/W ... enment.pdf
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the
guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of
understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the
guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude!
Have courage to use your own understanding!
a gutter rat looking at stars
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Russell Parr
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Russell Parr »

Pretty dangerous advice for anyone that doesn't first have proper understanding, i.e. 99% of humanity.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

All philosophy starts with serious and sincere doubt, including doubting ones own mind and logic.

But to doubt, trust is needed in the ability to doubt, otherwise how would one know that the doubt would be truly doubt? And for doubt courage is needed and as such a result of character, the pain of self-questioning and inquiry. The only way Kant makes sense here is that to start submitting to anything at all, including doubt and inquiry, a surrender to some process is needed. And yet, even that trust will, no will have, sooner or later, to be doubted as well. Knowing thyself means the ability to make everything the object of inquiry, even the inquiry and objectification itself. And hopefully it doesn't' all grind to a halt once it does. Perhaps there's trust or faith needed to pull through that one?
  • “I have the courage, I believe, to doubt everything; I have the courage, I believe, to fight with everything; but I have not the courage to know anything; not the courage to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life is not like romance, where opportunities are always so favorable. I complain that life is not like romance, where one had hard-hearted parents and nixies and trolls to fight, and enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together, compared with the pale, bloodless, tenacious, nocturnal shapes with which I fight, and to whom I give life and substance?”

    ― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
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Russell Parr
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Russell Parr »

Reminds me of Hakuin. As he put it, along with tenacity of purpose (courage in one's understanding), one needs a great ball of doubt and a great root of faith.

In great doubt one learns of the inherent uncertainty of all empirical things. A great root of faith refers to the knowledge of self as a conscious being capable of awareness of absolute truth. Tenacity is of course needed to stay on the path to prevent fading into egotistical delusions.
Pam Seeback
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Pam Seeback »

The only thing that grinds to a halt after doubting is done is doubt.

What is it to be doubt free? It is to know that awareness is without beginning and ending, that awareness is infinite and eternal.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:The only thing that grinds to a halt after doubting is done is doubt.

What is it to be doubt free? It is to know that awareness is without beginning and ending, that awareness is infinite and eternal.
All knowledge can and should be doubted and it can never stop like the Great Worm @ itself! Whatever might be seen as infinite and eternal, is still taken on faith. Or it's perhaps more like a surrender: that what remains when all knowing and believing subsides. But show me who can exist without belief, some knowing, some fundamental sun where his life, thought and feeling gravitates around like a dispersed cloud of planetesimals.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
movingalways wrote:The only thing that grinds to a halt after doubting is done is doubt.

What is it to be doubt free? It is to know that awareness is without beginning and ending, that awareness is infinite and eternal.
All knowledge can and should be doubted and it can never stop like the Great Worm @ itself! Whatever might be seen as infinite and eternal, is still taken on faith. Or it's perhaps more like a surrender: that what remains when all knowing and believing subsides. But show me who can exist without belief, some knowing, some fundamental sun where his life, thought and feeling gravitates around like a dispersed cloud of planetesimals.
Why do you still doubt your eternal and infinite nature? Is awareness not without beginning or ending?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:Why do you still doubt your eternal and infinite nature?
Where doubting knowledge stops, the cleansing ceases, cobwebs appear and old ghosts will take possession.
Is awareness not without beginning or ending?
Nothing is - like you are not - or any faith or state of awareness you might imagine to be the case.
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Russell Parr
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Russell Parr »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:All knowledge can and should be doubted and it can never stop like the Great Worm @ itself!
Even your very own statement?
Whatever might be seen as infinite and eternal, is still taken on faith.
Do you not think causation is infinite?
But show me who can exist without belief, some knowing, some fundamental sun where his life, thought and feeling gravitates around like a dispersed cloud of planetesimals.
I think most people live this way. I think people believe they have a fundamental center, but it's more like a fuzzy vagueness which is driven and manipulated by whatever emotions they are feeling at the moment.
Pam Seeback
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
movingalways wrote:Why do you still doubt your eternal and infinite nature?
Where doubt stops, the cleansing ceases, cobwebs appear and old ghosts will take possession.
Is awareness not without beginning or ending?
Nothing is - like you are not - or any faith or state of awareness you might imagine to be the case.
So much is explained in your answer above regarding the love of (attachment to) reasoning on Genius. One cannot imagine awareness because awareness is the house of imagination. Holding the imagination captive to emptiness/spirit/pure awareness (wakefulness) is the cleansing fire beyond the cleansing fire of reasoning. You are right to mention faith, for while doubt is present, great faith in reasoning the truth of one's nature is required. Fear of cobwebs and ghosts is a great motivator to continue reasoning the irrationality of their appearance.

Of my experience, which most likely you will doubt which is as it should be, reasoning/doubting is the dark night of the soul while standing in the fire of truth once reasoning is done is the dark night of spirit. In using the story of Jesus as an example, up until he completes his forty days in the wilderness of being a solitary battling Satan, the tempter of the world/the doubter of spirit, he is in the dark night of the soul. However, the moment he successfully banished the tempter/doubter, he entered into the dark night of the spirit. The same could be said for the story of the Buddha in relation to his battle with Mara and his ministry of the truth of emptiness.

Is it not unreasonable, even hellish to be eternally in doubt? What is the point of seeking (doubting) truth if once truth is found, doubting continues?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: You are right to mention faith, for while doubt is present, great faith in reasoning the truth of one's nature is required. Fear of cobwebs and ghosts is a great motivator to continue reasoning the irrationality of their appearance.
It's not a matter of fear but of observation: all your words and my words, my actions, my beliefs are too cobwebs and ghosts. The mind, so powerful, so miraculous is as well a treacherous thief. The path to Enlightenment unfolds through the mind but, by its very nature, it will derive, distract, distort and tempt the whole thing to be something else than it actually is. It's what it does.

The goal is not to fight the mind or abandon it. Therefore one has to deal with it. And the way to deal with the mind truthfully is called doubt. That is to actively undo and unwind whatever is being thought to be done and is being wound. While it might take conviction and certainty to develop this, it doesn't even need faith to operate.
Is it not unreasonable, even hellish to be eternally in doubt? What is the point of seeking (doubting) truth if once truth is found, doubting continues?
But what you'll ultimately find is nothing. More nothing than you can allow yourself to imagine or experience. So one keeps finding things, truths, depths, states and eternities.

You might not like the following but I did notice that this point is usually hard for women to even approach. Their own psychological void has them geared towards clinging to a rock, a truth, a man, the material or a faith of the same substance. While for those stupid, clunky, insensitive men, embracing emptiness would in the end be like diving into a woman. He can sail the seven seas without fear. He can cross because he's something coming to terms with becoming nothing at all. This is why philosophy is for men.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Russell wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:All knowledge can and should be doubted and it can never stop like the Great Worm @ itself!
Even your very own statement?
Sure, I do hope so! Even if my statement was the most Profound Philosophical Truth Ever Said, chances are it becomes something entirely else through the various translations, interpretations and contextual differences. And before I wrote it, I threw up many challenges to it as the mind comes up with too much, most of the time. Does it even need to be written? Is my mind slipping into comfortable repeats or sophistry here? Doubting something does not mean rejecting or devaluing -- it just means fighting with it. If you don't then you might miss out on something good or mindlessly absorb something that isn't. Neutral reading doesn't really exist, not in philosophy any way, where at the deeper levels the challenge will always be there to answer.
Whatever might be seen as infinite and eternal, is still taken on faith.
Do you not think causation is infinite?
Yes, I believe causation can be called infinite. This is caused by what I take "infinite" and "causation" to mean. But surely I cannot claim to see the infinite as a whole, eternal entity. My view is limited by definition!
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Russell Parr
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Russell Parr »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Sure, I do hope so! Even if my statement was the most Profound Philosophical Truth Ever Said, chances are it becomes something entirely else through the various translations, interpretations and contextual differences. And before I wrote it, I threw up many challenges to it as the mind comes up with too much, most of the time. Does it even need to be written? Is my mind slipping into comfortable repeats or sophistry here? Doubting something does not mean rejecting or devaluing -- it just means fighting with it. If you don't then you might miss out on something good or mindlessly absorb something that isn't. Neutral reading doesn't really exist, not in philosophy any way, where at the deeper levels the challenge will always be there to answer.
I see. For a minute I thought you were saying there's nothing but doubt, no certainty at all, a la run of the mill post-modernism/agnosticism.
Whatever might be seen as infinite and eternal, is still taken on faith.
Do you not think causation is infinite?
Yes, I believe causation can be called infinite. This is caused by what I take "infinite" and "causation" to mean. But surely I cannot claim to see the infinite as a whole, eternal entity. My view is limited by definition!
Hmm, I don't think it's a matter of belief. I think we can logically conclude that causation is necessarily infinite. Beliefs are for empirical matters, in which, as you say, there must always be doubt. Absolute logical truths are the only realm of certainty to be had for a sentient being.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

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Diebert: It's not a matter of fear but of observation: all your words and my words, my actions, my beliefs are too cobwebs and ghosts. The mind, so powerful, so miraculous is as well a treacherous thief. The path to Enlightenment unfolds through the mind but, by its very nature, it will derive, distract, distort and tempt the whole thing to be something else than it actually is. It's what it does.
Which is why your treacherous thief of a mind said:
Diebert: The goal is not to fight the mind or abandon it. Therefore one has to deal with it. And the way to deal with the mind truthfully is called doubt. That is to actively undo and unwind whatever is being thought to be done and is being wound. While it might take conviction and certainty to develop this, it doesn't even need faith to operate.
Who is this “one” that is dealing with the mind? Is it not mind? What you are putting forth is mind battling mind, the perfect storm of dualism. No wonder you believe in doubt, how else can the mind reconcile the folly of believing itself divided in two?
Diebert: But what you'll ultimately find is nothing.

So why is your mind busy dealing with itself?
Diebert: More nothing than you can allow yourself to imagine or experience.
There cannot be more of nothing. Nothing is nothing. This is precisely why when one comes to their nothingness and they are truthful to this discovery, they do the courageous, truthful thing which is to stand on nothing so nothing can be revealed.
Diebert: So one keeps finding things, truths, depths, states and eternities.
Mind battling mind keeps on finding things it calls truths, depths, states and eternities, Mind (spirit) waits until the thing is revealed.
Diebert: You might not like the following but I did notice that this point is usually hard for women to even approach. Their own psychological void has them geared towards clinging to a rock, a truth, a man, the material or a faith of the same substance. While for those stupid, clunky, insensitive men, embracing emptiness would in the end be like diving into a woman. He can sail the seven seas without fear. He can cross because he's something coming to terms with becoming nothing at all. This is why philosophy is for men.
Your attachment to the old saw of women vs. men is preventing you from seeing that you and I are talking about the same thing, becoming nothing. Or should I say, being the nothing we already are. Becoming enlightened is simply to clear or cleanse away all attachments to human relativism mistaken for absolute truths, such as “this is why philosophy is for men.”

In the spirit of bringing the mind's ignorant attachment to qualitfying gender to an end I speak from genderless spirit when I say what biological men and women of their spirit do in the name of procreation of thought, be it to have a child or to sail the seven seas is the same vis a vis the mind's attachment to making something out of nothing or flesh out of spirit. For a spirit dressed in a biologically male body to say that sailing the seven seas brings him closer to realizing his nothingness than a spirit dressed in a biologically female body bearing a child is a blatant example of mistaking the absolute truth of spirit for relativism of flesh. The same truth applies to the biologically female spirit that ignorantly mistakes her relativism of child bearing to be an absolute truth of the nothingness of spirit.

The spirit of thought is always in (its own) darkness waiting for (its own) light to shine (be revealed). I who is currently dressed in a female body have no idea of my next thought any more than you who is currently dressed in a male body have any idea of your next thought. The only difference between our unknown moments is that where yours are clouded with the doubt of relativism, mine are not.

Look carefully at your response to Russell above. It is soaked through and through with the doubt born of dualism/relativism..."I hope", "I believe", "I take", "but surely". Why, when spirit is everything (the light of things waiting to shine out of the darkness of things) would it need to hope in or for its things or believe in its things or take its things? Of what use does the spirit of everything have for the shadow covering of "but?"

"But" is the imaginary gap you have wedged between yourself.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:Who is this “one” that is dealing with the mind? Is it not mind? What you are putting forth is mind battling mind, the perfect storm of dualism. No wonder you believe in doubt, how else can the mind reconcile the folly of believing itself divided in two?
Mind is nothing else than "itself divided in two" or mind dealing with itself. Take that away and there's no mind to speak of. And nothing to speak of either.
Diebert: But what you'll ultimately find is nothing.

So why is your mind busy dealing with itself?
Because that has been shown to be the nature of mind, to my mind.
Diebert: More nothing than you can allow yourself to imagine or experience.
There cannot be more of nothing. Nothing is nothing. This is precisely why when one comes to their nothingness and they are truthful to this discovery, they do the courageous, truthful thing which is to stand on nothing so nothing can be revealed.
Touché.
Diebert: So one keeps finding things, truths, depths, states and eternities.
Mind battling mind keeps on finding things it calls truths, depths, states and eternities, Mind (spirit) waits until the thing is revealed.
It might be surprising how that is actually the same mind and the same battle even when there would be different tactics. Every war is full of brief and longer pauses. It's like people living in peace time forgetting about the centuries of war before and after. And how they live so passively now on a brief and dangerous balance of destruction, while regrouping, recuperation and shifting alliances continue under the surface of things.
Look carefully at your response to Russell above. It is soaked through and through with the doubt born of dualism/relativism..."I hope", "I believe", "I take", "but surely". Why, when spirit is everything (the light of things waiting to shine out of the darkness of things) would it need to hope in or for its things or believe in its things or take its things? Of what use does the spirit of everything have for the shadow covering of "but?"
Doubt is being introduced where doubt is required. And I certainly wouldn't dare, like Kierkegaard, to know or own anything. There's no need or use here for any of your ghostly "spirits"!
"But" is the imaginary gap you have wedged between yourself.
It might be just the language.
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Russell Parr
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Russell Parr »

movingalways wrote:In the spirit of bringing the mind's ignorant attachment to qualitfying gender to an end I speak from genderless spirit when I say what biological men and women of their spirit do in the name of procreation of thought, be it to have a child or to sail the seven seas is the same vis a vis the mind's attachment to making something out of nothing or flesh out of spirit. For a spirit dressed in a biologically male body to say that sailing the seven seas brings him closer to realizing his nothingness than a spirit dressed in a biologically female body bearing a child is a blatant example of mistaking the absolute truth of spirit for relativism of flesh. The same truth applies to the biologically female spirit that ignorantly mistakes her relativism of child bearing to be an absolute truth of the nothingness of spirit.
Hate to interrupt, but a man sailing the seven seas is probably around a billion times closer to realizing spirit than a woman bearing a child. Emotionalism might be the biggest enemy to philosophical enlightenment, and it doesn't get much more emotionally overwhelming than child bearing.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

And I wasn't really talking literally about seven seas, to praise men as explorers or something as opposed to birthing seven daughters.

The context, I hope, indicated a more spiritual journey, like the seven heavens, stages, spheres etc. The concerns of the body are a part, a fraction of bigger spheres which need wider visions, dare, risks and deviations from the norm. This needs a certain psychology which in many cultures have been the domain of men. For this reason the term "masculine" makes sense and largely it still holds when looking at the whole population and the sum of cultures on this planet.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Russell wrote:For a minute I thought you were saying there's nothing but doubt, no certainty at all, a la run of the mill post-modernism/agnosticism.
Doubt is fundamental but even the average nihilist doesn't take it really that far. The certainties of ones own mind should not be discarded but instead fully understood: to arrive beyond certainties and doubts. But it's unlikely anyone could come that far without tremendous trust in the abilities of the mind, the power of logic and the application of absolute truth in the most simple, natural way. But this is like all wisdom, it appears only in contrast with ignorance like certainty works in contrast with doubt. The absolute cannot be successfully doubted simply because it's not knowledge to own or capture. For that reason doubt should be encouraged, because as long it's still possible to raise any, the subject is not absolute yet.
Hmm, I don't think it's a matter of belief. I think we can logically conclude that causation is necessarily infinite. Beliefs are for empirical matters, in which, as you say, there must always be doubt. Absolute logical truths are the only realm of certainty to be had for a sentient being.
The context was initially Pam's phrase: "it is to know that awareness is without beginning and ending, that awareness is infinite and eternal". So it was more about assigning the quality "infinite" to anything but the infinite. It's this split where knowledge is assumed, like some universe, consciousness, pi, spirit -- anything at all. Causality is a special case here, perhaps it's better to just call it a description of the metaphysical infinite or an explanation of it? Like totality.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Elizabeth Isabelle »

Kant wrote:Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Very close, but I can't completely agree. Man's immaturity is not self-incurred, but caused by preceding factors. Although there have been individual exceptions, mankind has not ever been a mature species.
Kant wrote:Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.
Again, close, but not wholly accurate. A small part of immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the
guidance of another. Immaturity also includes such things as short-sighted self-centeredness, a lack of a proper grasp of Reality, and a lack of self-control.
Kant wrote:This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another.
I reiterate, a lack of a proper grasp of Reality is also part of immaturity.
Kant wrote:The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude!
Have courage to use your own understanding!
This is not all-inclusive, and likely dangerous in the minds of those who falsely believe that they are mature or enlightened.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

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Diebert:There's no need or use here for any of your ghostly "spirits"!
The ear that hears the Word of spirit sees nothing, certainly not ghosts.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Pam Seeback »

Russell wrote:
movingalways wrote:In the spirit of bringing the mind's ignorant attachment to qualitfying gender to an end I speak from genderless spirit when I say what biological men and women of their spirit do in the name of procreation of thought, be it to have a child or to sail the seven seas is the same vis a vis the mind's attachment to making something out of nothing or flesh out of spirit. For a spirit dressed in a biologically male body to say that sailing the seven seas brings him closer to realizing his nothingness than a spirit dressed in a biologically female body bearing a child is a blatant example of mistaking the absolute truth of spirit for relativism of flesh. The same truth applies to the biologically female spirit that ignorantly mistakes her relativism of child bearing to be an absolute truth of the nothingness of spirit.
Hate to interrupt, but a man sailing the seven seas is probably around a billion times closer to realizing spirit than a woman bearing a child. Emotionalism might be the biggest enemy to philosophical enlightenment, and it doesn't get much more emotionally overwhelming than child bearing.
Sailing the sevens seas or bearing a child are futile attempts to find truth in temporal things which makes both equal in the sense that both quests must be given up if one is to find the truth of temporal things. The irony here is that before one can give up the futile search they must first experience the suffering of its futility.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

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Diebert: The context was initially Pam's phrase: "it is to know that awareness is without beginning and ending, that awareness is infinite and eternal". So it was more about assigning the quality "infinite" to anything but the infinite. It's this split where knowledge is assumed, like some universe, consciousness, pi, spirit -- anything at all.
Knowledge of awareness is not the illogical, self-righteous claim of objective knowledge, it is to be given the wisdom that because awareness cannot be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched, awareness is not finite or of time. Keeping in mind of course, that words given without image that suggest a quality of the Unseen God are for the sake of the mind that requires words, i.e., "awareness" or "nothing" or "spirit."

A post I wrote using biblical metaphors:

"The Word of God is the Christ principle expressing Itself for the sake of the mind. If the mind were not able to hear the image-free Word of the Spirit of God, the futility of its seeking for the beginning of things in the realm of visible things cannot hoped to be turned around to find the truth of God's "endless beginning".

The Word of God is not knowledge of the Unseen God, the Word of God acknowledges the Unseen God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."


Being purified of one's language of attachment makes one ripe for more purification. :-)
Pam Seeback
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Pam Seeback »

For Diebert:

You said in November of 2012: "Meister Eckhart said it right: "To be poor in spirit, a man must be poor of all his own knowledge: not knowing any thing, not God, nor creature nor himself".

Meister Eckhart also said:

"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there."

These two statements of Eckhart's seem contradictory, but for one who realizes one must go through the mind to go beyond the mind, they are perfectly in sync.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:Knowledge of awareness is not the illogical, self-righteous claim of objective knowledge, it is to be given the wisdom that because awareness cannot be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched, awareness is not finite or of time. Keeping in mind of course, that words given without image that suggest a quality of the Unseen God are for the sake of the mind that requires words, i.e., "awareness" or "nothing" or "spirit."
All the problems of knowledge still prevail. All you do here is raising a special kind, a logical, subjective or non-verbal kind. But what you might be missing here is your own first step: dividing all knowing in two kinds! But there's really only one kind, any other kind is simply not knowing.
The Word of God is not knowledge of the Unseen God, the Word of God acknowledges the Unseen God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Being purified of one's language of attachment makes one ripe for more purification. :-)
Still this imaginary distinction between acknowledging and knowing while quoting a text in which and through which God died.
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Re: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Post by Bobo »

Diebert wrote: All the problems of knowledge still prevail. All you do here is raising a special kind, a logical, subjective or non-verbal kind.
That's exactly what I think you were doing. You were saying that only the infinite has the property of being infinite. Something P that has the property P and nothing else. That is the same as solipsism where only awareness has awareness. You were saying that awareness isn't infinite, but it has the same property as the infinite as an unique property.
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