stops at the relative and attempts to attain the absolute.

Based on whatever has been dragged along into the present experience..

= our present universe

= a projection, in limited perception of, a relative universe containing the idea of the absolute.

.... I like this statement.

The relative and the absolute are mutually posited. Both are required for either, as each is known by the other.

Or, put another way, the relative must be relative to something. To what could the relative be relative? Only the absolute.

But then, the absolute is relative to the relative.

Woohoooooooo..... *frolics off into the rabbit hole*

Sounds like a semantics trap or contradiction. As in "Everything is relative": Wouldn't that make the concept aforementioned relative too? And, would that mean that nothing is relative then? Is philosophy just the intelectuals' way of spreading dogma? Enquiring minds want to know!

There is a story about three blind men who would get together once a week when their families would travel into town to shop for their supplies. The families would gather in the center of town where they would leave their blind relatives to visit with each other as they went about their business.
The three would be busy chatting about whatever was relevant for them during the course of the week sharing their experiences and catching up on the latest gossip.
One day a traveler passed through town on an elephant. The event was something to speak of since not many elephants passed through their part of the country.
The town instantly came alive with the excitement of the event. The three old men were wondering what all the excitement was about and asked some boys who were passing by what was making everyone excited.
“There’s an elephant passing thru the town,” one of the boys replied.
“I’ve never seen an elephant nor do I know what it might look like,” said one blind man. “Neither have I" chimed the other two in harmony.
The boys somewhat amused that the three blind men didn’t know what an elephant looked like immediately offered to take them to the elephant, to let them experience for themselves what an elephant might look like.
The boys being somewhat mischievous thought it might be fun to play a trick on the three men when they arrived, so when they came to the elephant they took them each to a different part of the elephant to feel the elephant and experience it.
The first was led to the Leg where he felt around the rough skin, and upward to what seemed a gigantic immovable object firmly planted in the ground.
He was then led back to his friends who listened to his description of a beast, “so big and solid it was like a Tree standing firmly in the ground.”
The second man was then led up to the front of the elephant where he began exploring the long trunk of the beast, the elephant being uncomfortable with the grasping hands of the man twitched his trunk sending the man flying to the ground. When the boy led him back to his friend he gasped in exasperation, “This elephant is a wild snake, most unpredictable and dangerous.” The first man said to them, “this cannot be, you cannot have touched the same beast as I.”
Finally the third man was led to climb upon some stacked crates at the side of the elephant and his hands guided to the ear. As he explored the huge ear he exclaimed, “Finally, I have solved this mystery, neither of my two friends have accurately described this elephant for it is like a giant living carpet.”
The boys thoroughly amused with themselves led the men back to the square where they argued over which description and experience was the correct one.

For the next few weeks the men relentlessly argued over the differences in their experience of the elephant.
Then one day, a man who had a reputation of being a wise sage and a great healer happened to be passing thru town and caught wind of the arguing blind men.
He listened to their arguments of the elephant, each describing the different experiences and refusing to acknowledge any truth in either of their friend’s experience.
The sage then stepped into the conversation and introduced himself. The three friends having heard of the sage asked if he could settle this dispute once and for all.
He then said to them, ”your blindness far exceeds your physical senses, it is not your eyes that do not see but your beliefs in the separation of your experiences. If you were to work together to discover the truth of the elephant I would heal your eyes that you may truly see this elephant for yourselves.”
The sage promised to return the following month to see if they could come to an agreement about what they had felt with their experiences of the elephant.

For the next few weeks to the irritation of their respective families they talked incessantly about their experiences of the elephant trying to solve the mystery of their differences.
Finally one of the three men remembering the snickering boys as they were each led to the elephant suggested that maybe they had been misled to experience different parts of the elephant and neither had quite grasped the entirety of the elephant at all.
This started the men to thinking about incorporating their experiences, and to piece together the mystery of this beast.
The first man said, “Perhaps this tree that I had wrapped myself around was only a leg of this huge beast and the snake one of many tentacles of this hideous creature, and the huge living carpet, a wing or some other appendage.” And so the contemplation continued until the sage would arrive.

At the end of the month the sage returned with an elephant to see if the three blind men had come to a conclusion in their quest for truth about their differing experiences.
He went to the square where the men were waiting anxiously for his return and greeted them on his approach.
“Have you come to a conclusion regarding the argument of what the elephant looks like?” he asked.
We have come to the conclusion that each of our experiences is valid. Even though our experiences and descriptions are different we have come to think that we have each a piece of the puzzle. We think we were misled by the boys who led us to different parts of this huge beast to deliberately set us apart in our experiences of the elephant. Together we think we can get closer to the truth rather than separately, but unfortunately we have only had one brief experience of the beast and without further examination would not be able to accurately solve the puzzle.”

“Very good,” said the sage, “If you would please follow me I think we can put an end to this mystery.” He then led the three blind me to the elephant. There he stopped and produced a salve which he administered to the eyes of each of the three blind men.
Within a few short minutes they each exclaimed that they were beginning to see shadow and light. Following that, the vision of the elephant became clear to each of them and they saw for the first time the huge leg that the first man had described as a tree, the long twisting trunk which was first thought to be a snake, and the third man exclaimed, “Look, look, the carpet is the beasts ear!”
The sage turned to each of them and said, “Each man is born with the senses to experience life, yet we each will experience it as we wish to experience it. God and his creation are not set in any stone or single experience but lives in all experiences. To fully understand Gods creation one must not exclude any part, or the experience of someone who does not see or experience the same as another, one must integrate all of the experiences or parts of the whole in everyone’s experience in order to begin to see the whole more clearly.

Philosophy is a reflection of the absolute, not the reflection of the absolute. Those that take their senses inward are likely to get a bigger picture of the absolute in its formlessness and see it outwardly as it continues to move in and out of form.
The absolute cannot be seen or experienced because it is beyond sight and experience. What we do see and experience are reflections of it in thought and sensory perception. The less we project on it the more it opens and expands into potential. The more we project on it the more it gives us what we believe it to be, in form and changing beliefs of reality.

"What you focus on grows"

That's a great story and hyper/higher dimensional analogy.

Maybe not.... but many have come close to ascertaining the larger objective truth.

Yes because it resonates in and around us on a subtle level in which we can be cognisant of through refined awareness.
That subtle level of awareness moves the intellect into servitude. The Ego which clings the identity of itself in form and memory resists the idea of being something as it morphs into being everything. The complexity of expanding awareness into all things at once is threatening to its personal reality.
All the things it doesn't like have to be accepted as part of itself and it would much rather compare itself to others and refine itself as its own island in perfection rather than to reduce itself to a piece of a larger body and become intimate with all that surrounds its self in what it has clung to in the identity of who I am and how I understand my universe.

Inspired by Mr. N. K. Bhat.
Written by Rashmin
4/8/99.

Joesus, you cannot rule out that, like CD said, "everything is relative". Many want to believe in an Absolute, perhaps because it offers an anchor and feeling of security. Perhaps it makes you sleep better at night. Personally, I have no need for such crutches. Or rather, I should be asking you, why rely on this crutch called the Absolute? Why not embrace the fact that there is no anchor, that there is no Ground of Being... that our existence, our Being, is a bottomless abyss where the Absolute simply does not exist. Are you familiar with the Special Theory of Relativity, and specifically, why it is that there are no "absolute" spatial frames of reference?

I'm not ruling anything out. Everything is relative. Any description of the absolute can only point toward it, through the reflection of it.


Beliefs change regardless of the absolute. Wanting to believe is also a different experience than believing in it. Regardless of changing beliefs the nervous system is sufficiently flexible to accomodate the changing beliefs of the mind and also to resonate with something much more substantial than appearances, sensations, feelings, both sensory and intuitive, to connect or be aware of the absolute and its relative reflections.


Reliance is not the way I would approach it, I would approach it in awareness. Any relationship to either need and independence of need is going to be relative to the separation one feels or experiences in themselves with their surroundings.
In the approach to union one begins to become aware of the absolute, as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. First it is something separate but as it grows in awareness it becomes one with you and expands outward in awareness into objects of perception. One literally experiences themselves in everything they perceive. Every thought feeling and action.


The experience of the absolute is not something that is physically without change, therefore there is no anchor to experience, or relative anchor to the grounded aspects of intellectual measure.
The awareness is beyond any appearance or intellectual anchor. It is bottomless, without form, without limits of any kind.


The Special Theory of Relativity?

My experience is that there are no spatial frames that are absolute, but that all spatial frames of reference are attracted to thought in the changing points of reference of beliefs and that they are flexible enough to fall away in the greater experience of the absolute.

Well, we're on the same track, you and I. You can say that something's relative, but then so is everything... so relativity would seem to be absolute, and that leaves the relativist in a spot of bother.

The bottom line is that "absolute" and "relative" are two fabricated conceptual poles, neither of which is logically tenable to describe the true nature of reality. We can reject them both.

Then (and here's the real trip) since they're both rejected, the true state of affairs cannot be anywhere between them.

(This, in case you are interested, is the philosophy of the Middle Way...)

That is a relative description of one understanding of the middle way.

The middle way is also known as the ability to move in and out of creation and apply either the relative or the non relative with commitment and knowledge. Choice being motivated by wisdom and surrender to True judgment which is True knowledge and wisdom, which is relative and absolute at the same time.

There are though, certain cultural absolutes that do help keep individual subjectivess grounded and connected to the larger whole subjective experience. the things that we have in common and experience as a whole and agreed upon as to the experience.

.... the cultural devices that any given society, even collections of societies, develop to organize and harmonize their thinking processes

Yeah, sets of mutually agreed ideas. Helluva convenient, to be sure

Hey, Someone here just reinvented the circle!

Of course there is.

Check out http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/Elegy.htm
"ELEGY WRITTEN IN
A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD"

By Thomas Gray (1716-71)

The first verse is:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Further on there is poignant verse about those who died
without the oportunity to learn because of poverty:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Then lets make use of the middle way by using True judgment, and true knowledge to not make this idea

There is no One Truth, or True knowledge the absolute reality.

The relative is a reflection of the one absolute, the one truth in all reflections.
Consciousness is omniscent and enlightenment is a clear mind, choice, without complication, hesitation, connected without obstructions to consciousness and its reflection of human life perfecting awareness of itself.

Ezek 18:8 He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man

Jn 8:16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.

Better we raise ourselves in Glory and praise choice, lest we deny our selves and God in the experience of life.

Or as Maharishi Mahesh put it, "Live 200% of life" One foot in the absolute 100% and One foot in the relative 100%

Some choices expand and others lead away from expansion.
Love (God) is real, and fear is an illusion relative to beliefs of reality.
What we choose to expand in awareness affects the direction of the manifest experience.

Knowing the difference and utilizing this knowledge is the middle way.
Utilizing Judgment that is true (because it is anchored in union with God rather than judgment that is anchored in illiusions of fear), is True Knowledge.

Knowledge is merely your best educated guess. Knowledge is explicitly propositional & implicitly procedural.

Knowledge which is formed within the restrictions of educational process and projected, is limited to a best comprehensive determination.

Omniscience is one pointed and always focused when channeled through the clear mind of the enlightened, and represents true knowledge.

how is Cogito ergo sum implicitly procedural?

"The Cogito" is not an instance of knowledge; as far as I can tell it's only a postulate.

When the awareness is moved away from the idea rather than inward from where the idea came.
That would be a choice


When its all relative consciousness is condensed into the idea.


The mind in this example never went below the surface of the idea. The Knowledge wasn't clear or True. Changing points of reference which come from surface appearances and those projections made from changing values are relative.
If you cannot experience yourself beyond the relative then you can only experience your Self as relative, yet all relative ideas have a source and a system of support. The Absolute cannot be experienced, it is beyond relative experience, but a reflection can be experienced and the absolute can be cognized and experienced. Every Thing is relative including all experiences. The absolute is a name (which is relative) for that which is not relative.

That absolute is the underlying Truth for all the relative. When the intellect uses the known absolute as its point of focus then all relative choices are not made from the relative. They are released from the absolute through Clear, True knowledge, rather than filtered and convoluted through imaginings based on reference points in belief of the relative.


I do nothing of Myself. Refined Choice

Jn 8:28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

Jn 10:30 I and my Father are one.


Relative objects as an idea of potential is imagined, True potential is not of a finite nature nor does it appear as an object of perception. When it does, potential has been narrowed into an idea. Even if it changes it is only the appearance of the change in the idea.

This is what is called the enlightened Ego. This is as far as you have chosen to go with this as a result of the anchor you have surrendered your intellect to.


When it is absolute and never changes, when the reflection is of stillness and clear perception.


The absolute filtered through relative truth is not absolute, therefore the imagining of an absolute is only an imagining. This is not enlightenment.


Some have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, The Traditions of enlightenment are consistent through Time and changing values of relative realities.

This is a choice, not a point of reference, the choice can be made by anyone and choice affects perception which can be clear in the cognizance of love or clouded by beliefs in fear.
In Love one acts in accord with the direction of humanity, In fear one maintains themselves as separate within humanity attempting to manipulate circumstance to protect ones own system of values separate from another. This is the essence of maintaining the idea of True for you. You sit as a separate entity in and amongst the perception of others. Unity then becomes an abstract idea rather than a living experience.


Imagining that something is united is not the same as knowing Unity above and beyond all experience of unity and separation.
The middle way is stabilizing the awareness in knowing rather than in imagination.


Point of reference Dianah. For the relative point of reference all that is needed, taken and used in this point of reference is time..
The mind is then anchored in change.

As is this
But the intellect can comprehend the nature of reality beyond duality and relativity.

Enlightenment (the intellect and heart united as one in experience) as a reflection above and beyond the divided concept is much more enlivening and destroys all relative boundaries.

If one has no guidance to take themselves out of the box of self concieved (relative) Truths.


Never be fooled by appearances.

I think we need to unify these polars.... the current search for the grand unified theory in a way dictates that we gravitate towards this mode of thought, about unifying multifarious fragments.

That's the ticket!

Relativity.... the contraction of bodies in motion, the expansion of their times, and the breakup of simultaneity into succession.

Then stay in the box. Inspiring someone to change when they don't want to change is not anyones job.
An enlightened Ego is identified with the relative box, knows what it thinks is outside the box but can never step outside of it.

Can perception create something from nothing or does perception follow impression?
Is perception open to omniscence or is perception narrowed to relative forms and ideas?

Is "everything is one" or "Nothing is Separate" a statement of Truth that applies to all things regardless of perception, or does perception rule this statement of Truth?

If the multiple planes of space are con tinually expanding (at an accelerated rate), then it should hold that consciousness also expands continually at an accelerated rate ( as it seemingly does) to higher/broadened and enlightened states?

...the expansion of space on mutiple levels.... including individual and cultural mobility, movement and migration, via various modes and methods of spatial and temporal navigation.

You follow vibrations?

Joesus plays the role of black Ishaya? What does that mean?

And is there a direction you take when following vibrations?

It means I took/proclaimed my vows as an Ishaya Monk 9 years ago.

What's not to love?

Who's intent? The perceived intention or the actual intention?

Well, what is clear perception?

I like the basis of this idea - very much. I haven't heard it before. At last I have seen a light. Thanks indeed trip. Take it to the Expanding Consciousness Board and let it develop there, as it could get lost in the bickering here.

bickering, what bickering?

Perhaps it is only awareness reflecting the layers of its multidimensionality and the space never really changes.

Never say in few words what you can say in many!

Do you have one jot of evidence for that statement?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge

Knowledge is what is known....

.... fluctuating surfaces are more likely to gravitationally attract both pure and infective particles of thought.

.... 'I dunno, I'm just out on a beach in half moon bay'.

Does this mean you're considering the feasibility of this statement?


Sometimes less is better.

...the expansion of space on mutiple levels.... including individual and cultural mobility, movement and migration, via various modes and methods of spatial and temporal navigation.

I just had to edit this post.

.... and yes, you are right, because things do become simplified in higher dimensions.

....sometimes, but not always.

Is knowledge the same as information?

IMO in-formation is related to "structure". The way energy or matter is structured provides "in-formation". If the structure changes the in-formation changes. You can see that in binary systems and in analogue systems.