The Guru Dialogues V (Oneness, Self-centredness, Science)

Seeker – Recently you were talking about eliminating the intermediary, which you define as the ego and the mind, and then being able to perceive reality directly. You say that the natural relationship between oneself and the world, when the intermediary is not present, is one of love, but a love that is beyond definition and cannot be understood by the mind. A oneness.

Guru – Yes.

S – So what is happening, as I understand it, is that the sense of being a separate individual is eliminated from awareness, and then everything is perceived to be the self. But if perceiving everything to be the self is required to feel unconditional love for the world, then isn’t that a kind of evolved narcissism. I mean, you love the world unconditionally only because you see it as being the same thing as the self.

G – The difficulty comes from the attachment to the concept of “self.” The way you are seeing it, the awakened state is indeed a kind of solipsism, in which affection and tolerance is given to others only because others are identified with the self. I love you because you are me. This causes blockages as a concept. As a concept it creates a conditional love flowing in one direction. This situation arises if the concept of the other is weakened or let go of without the concept of the self also being weakened or dropped. Both must go. Then there is no direction in the flow of love. All is love.

S – It just is, then?

G –Yes. In such a state, love is not thought, not conceptualized, not remembered, not forecast, not clung to, or anything else…it simply is. You are moving in it. You are the same as it. It is everything. In fact, even the concept of “love” is itself a hurdle. Drop it all. Understand deeply that you are it. That everything is it. Know that you can only rest in such a state, and no thought can keep you there. You cannot achieve it or think your way to it. The second the mind kicks in and you believe your thoughts you are moving away from it.

S – It sounds like it’s all about not doing anything. Not thinking anything. Not, not, not…I don’t know. Weren’t we put here to think and to do things? To learn?

G – The mind is a tool in the way that a hammer or a car is a tool. It can be used constructively, for the greater good, or it can be used as a weapon. It’s grasp of truth, of what is, is incomplete at best. The most that the mind can do is recognize its limitations. That is the most profound realization it can have. Throwing open the gates to the infinite nature of reality is the closest the mind can get to the truth. Think of mental concepts as poses, postures in infinite space. Each one is part of the whole, but no thought or collection of thoughts will ever be able to capture the oneness and unlimited nature of reality. All thoughts are time-based poses in the infinite. That which is time-bound cannot describe the infinite.

S – But what about science? What about the progress we have made as a race though our scientific advancements. Science is thought, and it is validated by fact and experiment. Is that not a kind of truth?

G – As a product of thought, science must be incomplete. Anything incomplete or limited which measures up against the infinite reveals itself as infinitely limited, infinitely incomplete. That which is incomplete can only have incomplete truth. We see that science has caused great damage to the earth and to the people of the earth, this is a result of its partial truth, a kind of telescoped vision of a very narrow slice of reality—this is what science is. There is no harm in it if we are aware of its true nature, but if we begin to believe that science is somehow tied into truth in a fundamental way, we are going to get into trouble.

S – Wait a minute…now you’re saying truth can be partial?

G – Truth is always truth, complete and total. A perspective on that truth can be incomplete. Any mental attempt to capture truth will always be incomplete.




[edit on 10-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

wow thank you for this. its so true and something i experienced a year ago. when i try to think "i love all because this or that", then it didnt feel "right". i never felt centered until i stepped out of logic and realized all IS love. i just needed to step out of the mind and realize that.

its like in the last samurai. "no mind". at this point, everything becomes a feeling. which is where we need to be for the yin.

thank you for this and i hope my ideas didnt come as imposing

reply to post by just_another_yourself


Thanks for contributing. That is exactly the point. It takes a deep humility to realize and rest in that. Bye bye ego. Bye bye toys of the mind.

All of the spiritual work that people (I was one of them) try to do, including eliminating the ego, forcing the mind to love, all of that is not necessary and bound to fail. All of that can be accomplished instantly by simply resting in the natural state. Of course I say "simply" but that which is most simple requires a willingness to see with simplicity.

[edit on 10-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

reply to post by Silenceisall

I have experienced this no self unconditional love and found it completely overwhelming. I cannot see how one could live in this totality and continue to function in everyday life? This happened a few months ago and it took me some time to get over it, and I am a strong person. Perhaps in reality the world must be experienced at the centre of what is and ego?

reply to post by midicon


Hi there. The day to day world cannot be ignored. Hiding in a hermitage and organizing your life so your meditation will not be disturbed and your awakening will not be tested is not the point. As spiritual teacher Adyashanti likes to say, the real world is where the spiritual rubber hits the road. But just because we have to interact with the world, does not mean we have to loose our awareness that the nature of existence itself is love. You were overwhelmed because the deep realization of reality is overwhelming, but it is only ever overwhelming for the ego and the mind. Part of the problem comes when the ego snaps back in and says "wow, that was heavy...what the heck was that?" It can't understand because it is impossible for the ego to function when the true is realized, just like it is impossible to realize the true when the ego is functioning. You can handle that level of love and the world needs that depth and expanse of love. Go gently, though, there is no rush. You have made remarkable progress already.

[edit on 10-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

reply to post by Silenceisall


you just said exactly what i experienced!! i remember sitting there one evening thinking to myself "i am soo deep in!" by deep in i meant far away from the "average" person everyone used to know. it seemed so far it was overwhelming and scary to me. the unfortunate thing is that i believe that that moment sunk in pretty well into my subconscious. thank you though, i never recognized that it was the ego that feared where i was. but of course it seems so clear and simple now.

like you said the most simple things are the most difficult in this journey we are all on. i learned that one through meditation

reply to post by just_another_yourself


The amazing thing is that it is the nature of what is to only give you what you can handle. By you, of course, I don't mean your mind-ego. There is something at work, a beauty, complexity and subtlety that is beyond our grasp, and yet it is infinitely patient with us, gentle when it can be, harsher when it must be, but always made to order with infinite consideration for what we need for realization.

[edit on 10-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

reply to post by Silenceisall


Thank you for your kind words Silenceisall, if I may I would like to respond to your reply.
When I returned to myself after this event I was not thinking 'that was heavy' or 'what was that'. I realised intuitively what had occured but I found myself in tears and in fact had cried throughout this whole experience...and me a grown man. For days I couldn't think of what had happened without welling up and even to this day I have not related this to anyone I know. I did post a narrative of my experience on ATS as it was relevant to the thread I was debating on, and indeed my involvement may have indirectly led to it. May I also say, I was not meditating at the time although that may depend on one's definition of meditation, but I was deep in thought, primarily on the nature of love!
I still wonder, why the tears? and why so overwhelming?

reply to post by midicon


You say that you were deep in thought on the nature of love. Were there concrete thoughts, or were you focussed in a general way on the nature of love?

This is an account, available on the internet, of an an NDE experienced by a felow named Mark Horton. His description of what he felt is the natural state:


"Still moving (backwards always for some reason) I suddenly just relaxed completely and allowed "myself" to dissolve (?) open up (?) merge (?) into the "oneness" that surrounded me. The ex- plosion of emotion and (again words are almost useless) over- whelming "love" that I now felt made any previous feelings I had experienced even during this episode, however "long" it had/was/is going on, seem like nothing! I cannot possibly put into words that any human language has that feeling. I was ev- erything, I was nothing. I was everywhere, I was nowhere. I was everywhen, I wasn't. My intellect had expanded to contain every thing, time, place, and even being that was, is, or ever would be! I was unique yet I was the tiniest part of the whole. I know this is sounding like gibberish... it even does to me a times when I read it on paper; but to have been it! Words don't exist to describe the joy and love and warmth. It truly is inde- scribable! "

[edit on 10-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

reply to post by Silenceisall

I'm not too sure what you mean by 'concrete' and 'general'. I had posed the question 'is love an emotion?' and as I sat and considered my own thoughts on this something happened. This is a little simplistic, let me put it another way. The thread was one on enlightenment and as such different ideas/topics were involved. My thoughts seemed to circle around certain themes. These being, the 'now' as in the eternal present, 'I am' as in the ego and it's separation from what is, the travelling companion (for want of a better word) ie this inner self we seem to have and of course the nature of love. As my thoughts circled around concentration seemed effortless and there was no diversion, so to speak. As I did this, and this is the strangest thing, I became aware of something approaching me, I did not divert my thoughts and really just accepted and welcomed it. In truth I felt a sense of recognition. I ignored it and held my concentration and that's when I was touched, uplifted and swept away. In hindsight I think perhaps there was a shift in my awareness which I felt as an approach toward me. In all honesty I don't know, this experience was not sought in any way perhaps if if it had been it would not have occured. When I posted this experience I wrote about in the second person as it seemed easier, here is a some bits about love, I'm not sure if it's concrete or general!

He thought about love, and the nature of love. He saw how ‘I am’ tried to hold love, tried to keep love, tried to bridge his separation from love, with attachment to things, impermanent things. He saw how ‘I am’ never realized the impermanence of himself

He thought about love, and the nature of love. He thought about ‘conditional love’, ‘unconditional love’, ‘self love’ and ‘real love’. He saw how love could not be compartmentalized, categorized, divided or subdivided. Love would always be love.

He thought about love and the nature of love. He saw how love can never be defined. He saw how words could not describe the ultimate truth of love and how words can’t describe anything in itself. All he could say about love was, love is.

Edit to add, I just saw your above post and thought I would add another piece of my enlightenment post,

He did not feel fear, he had not thought of fear, fear is born of thought and his thoughts had been elsewhere. He felt warmth, he felt recognition and friendship, Midicon felt love. He was embraced by love, he was uplifted by love and he was filled with love. There was no self surrender, or annihilation of self, instead there was freedom, elation and joy. Midicon was love and love was Midicon. He was transfixed by love, he was transported by love and he transcended. There was only love and love was eternal.




[edit on 10-6-2009 by midicon]

reply to post by midicon


Thanks Midicon....there's nothing I can add but to say that you have seen/been IT.

reply to post by Silenceisall

Thanks Silenceisall, I did realise after posting that there probably wasn't much you could say in reply, in fact I was tempted to delete my post but thought it would be nice to hear your opinion/thoughts on it. I have re-read your opening dialogue and/also your quote from the internet and the similarities between those and what I experienced are quite striking. Perhaps in a way the overwhelming impact on me was partly due to my unpreparedness as I had not been striving towards anything. From your OP I see that the goal of enlightenment/unconditional love etc...is the path you have chosen, have you experienced this? You do appear to have some insight regarding the dissolution of self.

reply to post by midicon

Enlightnemnent is a tricky word and very much a concept. But I'll try to sum up as best I can: For me it came from realizing the limitations of my mind. I went through an intense period, beginning about three years ago and lasting about a year, in which I suddenly decided to discover the ultimate nature of reality. I had no ideas about enlightenment or the self, ego...any of that. I just explored rather intensely...quantum physics, NDEs, read about psychadellic drugs like '___', became interested in aliens and UFOs (had some strange experiences which are covered in earlier posts from that time)...all of that...I eventually began to have very confusing insights where I saw very clearly that thought is innnately contradictory and contradictable. The effect of this is like detonating a nuclear bomb of nothingness in the consciousness. I saw that thought is increadibly incomplete and has little or no bearing upon the truth that I was seeking. It was literally like I would think to the limits of causality. From that space I was able to see clearly that thought is not at all what I believed it was. Left with nothing else, I began to persue enlightenment, read lots...finally I came to the clear realization that I was what I was seeking. That there was nothing to do. With this came an awakening of my heart, so to speak...it is still ongoing, but I have never cared so much or been so forgiving...I see that this is it..nothing more. So simple...I never knew. I can see clearly from your posts that you have had the same sort of experience although it mave have happened first on the level of the heart for you. I really do wish you all the best. The consciousness that you have realized is so badly needed now, so I hope you share it as much as you can with others.




[edit on 11-6-2009 by Silenceisall]

reply to post by Silenceisall


I will make this my last post my friend as I don't wan't your thread to turn into a two-way conversation!
I can see there are similarities between us and I am in complete agreement with your insights/realisations, everything as you say is completely simple!
I had not thought about the idea of sharing my experience with others, or indeed that it could have value in this regard!
Lastly, I have given you a star for your opening post, you should feel honoured as it is the first I've ever given! LOL
Love and peace.