M.J. Rose

We do all this work in a lifetime to discover who we are, to become enlightened, less selfish, more productive, thinner, nicer, cooler… And to what end exactly? If we don’t maintain our egos in the next life, what exactly is the point of all this self discovery over and over and over again? Why not just sit on a log for 75 years eating insects and twiddling our thumbs until the next life overtakes us? I think the answer exists somewhere within that mysterious bit of truth about how the self is not really just ourselves, but is a part of a vast self-knowing whole…

Here is a pleasant little article from The Times of India addressing this mystery.

The self is a projection from the unified source of consciousness.

by DEEPAK RANADE

Any attempts by the self to be enlightened are based on the premise that this projection has a unique identity. Like a bubble in the ocean. There is a fine distinction between the bubble and the surrounding water. But the bubble is within the water, it is made up of the same water. If the bubble were to make any attempt to understand itself, it would momentarily feel that it is separate with an identity of its own. But that remains only till the thin separating membrane exists. Once this assertive margin gives way, it is revealed that there has been no change in either the content or the nature of the water. It was water, and will remain water.

All creation is analogous to bubbles in the vast expanse of consciousness. Realisation involves loss of this separateness from the surrounding water, a sense of just merging into the water. It is dissolution of that membrane of separateness called the ego. If this dissolution occurs during the journey of life, it would be similar to the bubble losing the differentiating membrane on the way travelling from the bottom of the sea to the top. When the mind-body organism ends (death) it would be the equivalent of the bubble reaching the surface and then just popping. This bubble has a plethora of forms and shapes. But still just a transient identification of being separate.

This feeling of separateness motivates all our attempts and endeavours to embark on the path of understanding the Self. Like the bubble trying to understand itself as a separate entity when actually it is surrounded by and made up of the same water. The separateness that desires this enlightenment is the ego, the identification with the mind-body organism. The consciousness that animates this mind-body form is the true Self.

The true Self creates a projection which has great conviction of separateness and independent existence. It is a distortion induced by the perceptive apparatus. Religious orientation and beliefs are not congenital. They are a product of conditioning.

Many cultures believe in reincarnation or rebirth. Which entity takes rebirth? The identity that each of us has is an entirely man-made nomenclature of convenience. So what would reincarnate?… [Complete article here.]

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

Check out the Free Will Astrology podcast here:

…and in the meantime, a tidbit…

“We are experiencing the initiation of the human race into a new level of
consciousness, and that is a very terrifying experience. It does no good to
turn and run from the terror of our darkness into light; we must sit it out:
zazen.

“We must take our counsel from *The Tibetan Book of the Dead* and
realize that these frightening projections of famines, economic disasters,
ecological catastrophes, floods, earthquakes, and wars are all only the
malevolent aspects of beneficent deities. If we sit and observe them, do
not identify with them, but remember our Buddha-nature, we will not be
dragged down by them into an incarnation of the hell they prefigure.

“If we run from them, we validate them; we give the projections the very
psychic energy they need to overtake us. Then, as Jung has pointed out,
the situation will happen outside as fate.”

-William Irwin Thompson, *Evil and World Order*