Jamesh: I lack the earnestness, as I have a nature that is too undisciplined and I don't really accept that the reward is real, so faith is missing.
Bob: Sensitivity of the organism and its accompanying passion are the source of earnestness. Though most people lack these necessary qualities.
Jamesh: In any case being 50 I'm way too old, experience has made my brain non-enlightenable. It is far easier to travel mostly along well worn neural paths, viewing the scenery, than to work myself into a state where I have to be born again by fracturing my mind in order to get away from the self-imposed need to be enlightened. Such desires are for the youthful.
Bob: Enlightenment is possible at 50, though it's not all that likely to happen. U. G. Krishnamurti was 49 when he experienced enlightenment. Which he preferred to call the
'natural state'. Tolstoy I think was over 50.
Jamesh: Are not you still judging right and wrong, in which case your break is not total. That is nature of deep philosophy - it goes in circles, then swallows it's own tale.
Bob: I'm simply pointing out what I perceive things to be. Just as we all do.
Jamesh: You also need to ensure your ego is not getting the better of you, there is a smell of ego about your words - take care of elitist delusions of grandeur. I've yet to sense any referred-to-as-maybe-enlightened person who wasn't fundamentally still human, still subject in some way to emotions and current affects, still imperfect or lacking in some way, no matter whom you may quote.
Bob: I've said previously and often that all the heretofore enlightened men fell short of the fully glory of the Infinite. Yet their minds and bodies definitely functioned differently than those of the unenlightened masses. And where there is no 'self' there can be no ego, no pride, no conceit, no "elitist delusions of grandeur." Just a stating of the truth as one understands it.
Jamesh: It is possible to be closer to enlightenment than anyone else, but there is no point where one can say they are enlightened. That is just an ideal. Absolute poles exist only as imagined things. Apart from time, there is no thing that is an absolute end point in the spectrum of opposite appearances within nature. The closest thing to an absolute is the speed of light, but really it isn't, the ultimate would be instantaneous, such as exists with a continuum such as time or the totality.
Bob: Once again, enlightenment is a real, extraordinary, and absolute state of being in which one's mind especially functions in a revolutionarily different manner then the old mind and the minds of the multitude.
Jamesh: As for my delusions of grandeur, well I truly believe I understand the "why and how" of the universe, so I'm philosophically content (as opposed to emotionally content, which I suppose an enlightened person would be at all times). That is not at all to suggest I know much particularly about the detail within. I'm only referring to the overall process. The how and why is quite simple - it is simply that time is the only form of real existence. It is both causality and content. With that as the base fact, resting below but in tandem with, the various QRS's logical observations about reality, and Newtons, Einsteins basic universal laws of nature, I have been able to foresee a path to anything we observe in the physical world. I just lack the discipline, interest, memory recall ability, and time to prove it scientifically :)
Bob: Due primarily to lack of sensitivity, most people are quite
'content' living in delusion and self-will. Thus the fire of fully authentic human life and being is not in them. Consequently there're piling up negative karma including contributing to the ills of the world around them.
Jamesh: Details within are simply reality causing emotional reactions (I class all feelings of any kind as emotions - they are the two-way interaction between the brain and chemicals that inform consciousness how to categorise one's current state). Facts are essentially emotional entities, as without the emotion underlying the fact they become meaningless. I'm more interested in entertainment and stimulation. I like that side of being human and accept the negative cost - the suffering of desire and shorter life than otherwise may have been. Is your active desire for enlightenment really that different at core?
Bob: The "desire for enlightenment" no longer exists here, it has been achieved. Though the organism must continue to be perfected. And continued uncomfortability and suffering direct it along that course.
Albert Einstein wrote: The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our 'modes of thinking', and thus we drift toward 'unparalleled catastrophe'.
Here Einstein states a tragic fact that I suspect he himself lacked a deep and comprehensive understanding or certainy of.