I received an interesting comment from Ali on my last article
regarding “behavioural sink”, overpopulation, experiments with rats and mice, and the dangers of being whipped up into a frenzy by love and hate.
Are you familiar with Universe 25 experiment, so called behavioral sink?
Those rats in the experiment were doomed yet they had anything they needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
What if no amount of love, safety and abundance is enough, what if certain amount of suffering is needed to keep the species balanced and going? Love and hate, all is One and One is Everywhere. What if when we strive for more Love, we also strive for more Hate? What if when we seek more Light with also find more Darkness?
What if endless Love withing human race is a destruction of everything else because there is no one stopping us anymore? What if we have hate and violence so the balance can be kept and other species have some of the world to themselves as well? Can this planet sustain so much Human Love?
In a nutshell, despite having all basic needs met, these animals only flourished to a certain point until they stopped being interested in survival and reproduction activities and perished.
Some fear, that a similar thing might happen to humans when herded up in an utopian prison of smart cities, universal basic income and nothing much left to do because robots and AI take care of all of our basic needs.
There is a high probability that most will perish similarly to the rats and mice. We are animalistic at our core.
However, those who make a jump in consciousness will have no problems with such a situation.
A jump in consciousness, in this context, means to realize who we are and free ourselves from our conditioned animal behaviour. This article gives some ideas about what that means and how to do this from a non-dual perspective.
We are more than mere animals and more than conditioned humans solely suffering to survive
Firstly, I don’t think these animals had all they needed to survive - otherwise, they would have. Reductionistic thinking makes us believe that rats only need food, shelter and safety to survive.
1. They didn't have freedom, for example. Why do we think this is only important for humans? Every visit to a zoo will show us signs of strange unnatural behaviour of caged animals that are well looked after physically but lack freedom of movement.
2. They didn't have meaning anymore. Striving for survival gives meaning. As you pointed out, "suffering" is part of that and a balance is usually sought between lazy comfort and stressful survival activity.
3. We don't know much about how self-conscious and therefore spiritual animals are. But we know humans are. We should be careful applying animal studies and behaviour to human behaviour. We are only part animal.
“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss.
Friedrich Nietzsche
4. As I pointed out in this article there are two kinds of love. I agree with your dualistic perception of emotions - the opposite of any emotion will, earlier or later, show up e.g. love-hate. They go together. They define each other.
There are two states of being in the world: Dual and Non-Dual
The dualistic worldview
Opening and widening the doors of our perception allows us to experience more love, but also more hate - the classic good/evil divide spiritual seekers and mystics have to transcend by disidentification from both and the realization of what we ultimately are: Not the experiencer of emotional states but the knower, witness or observer of them.
Rather than being identified with the content of consciousness - all conscious experience - we shift gradually or sometimes suddenly to become the opposing part - the witnessing of consciousness.
This can disidentify us from the sew-saw nature of love-hate and other dualistic pairs that keep us in their conflicting grip, creating a mental trance or hypnosis.
If we manage to gradually or suddenly disidentify we eventually wake up from the trance, and love-hate dualities lose their habitual power over our behaviour. It becomes neutral, like everything else.
In reality, there is no meaning. Everything is neutral. We allocate meaning.
Therefore, the survival of the body-mind becomes a neutral and automatic functioning that takes care of itself.
I also agree with your assessment that excessive identification with dualistic love-hate will wear out people and the planet. After all - love is the desire to create, and hate is the desire to destroy.
This process can't be helped and is natural, the fabric of life itself.
But this process is not the problem. We need not worry about overpopulation, and we need not intervene in this process - neither rejecting it nor supporting it. It will take care of itself perfectly if left alone.
We need not to be concerned about big social or political movements and trends. Two reasons:
It is an illusion that, as individuals, there is something we can do about it
The personal assessment of them - as good and desirable or bad and fear-inducing - is simply a reflection of the state of our mind. In reality, there is no way of knowing what the consequences for our body-mind will be. The notions of bad and good are extremely fickle everchanging relative considerations we should ignore if we want inner peace and joy.
Because it is exactly this egoic identification with outer events and inner processes that causes all our suffering and problems.
The non-dual worldview
Hence, spiritual practice and ultimately freedom from this egoic identification with everything.
As disidentification happens dynamically in the moment through practice the dual split between the content of consciousness and witnessing consciousness itself is slowly transcended and healed. The drop returns to the ONE ocean.
Sometimes this can happen suddenly and uninvited or pushed for by a big spiritual ego too early. Seemingly strange “spiritual” experiences happen. A period of shock and upheaval - a spiritual emergency often diagnosed as a mental disease - might be needed to ramp up suffering forcing ultimate surrender and integration. That can sometimes take decades.
The gradual path through patient and determined practice and the sudden path will lead to the same outcome. The drop returns to the ONE ocean.
This is also often described as love, bliss, peace or God- but it is a non-dual version of it, and any attempt to intellectually understand how that must be or feel is doomed. Dualistic perception and cognition can never experience nondual beingness.
That's simply how our mind and experience is structured. A law of nature.
Understanding Mind
Energy flows between the two poles of a battery. Biological human life flows between the two poles of dualistic conditioning, love and hate, desire and fear. This provides the energy and motivation to do anything. The motivation to strive.
There is nothing wrong with it, of course.
M: What do you consider to be wrong with your mind?
Q: It is restless, greedy of the pleasant and afraid of the unpleasant.
M: What is wrong with its seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant?
Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows.
It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem.
By flowing with life I mean acceptance -- letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens.
Ultimately even the observer you are not.
You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression
Nisargadatta Maharaj, I AM THAT
That's why the mind is often described as the veil that keeps us from nondual Oneness, Bliss, Peace and God. But only if we cling to it.
The final and ultimate understanding, the mother of all deep realizations, is that God or non-duality can't be understood.
In fact, nothing is ever understood or can be understood. Understanding itself is an illusion that tricks us into believing that we in charge of our destiny. The illusion of understanding creates duality and a false “I” that thinks it understands.
I know, that I know, that I don’t know
Socrates
Using understanding as a way to God is the very activity that divides us from God.
Nor can God be “achieved” by any doing or striving. Because all doing and striving is mind-based and facilitated by the mind. Nothing from within our mind can lead us to what IS - God - beyond our mind.
If we think deeply about what the mind entails - thoughts, ideas, sensations, beliefs, emotions, intuitions, imaginations, hunches, all the senses, in short, the totality of all perception and conception - we realize that the mind is everything we experience. It is the creator, facilitator and experiencer of all our experiences. All that we deem "us" and all that we deem "the world" is made from that stuff called mind.
Some liken the mind and its activity to a spider that creates his world, the spider net, from within himself while simultaneously being part of it.
This is a complicated concept for the mind to grasp that can lead to madness. We can’t eliminate our minds through thinking. This process will give the mind all the attention it craves and this intense ego state becomes unbearable.
The opposite needs to happen. The understanding that all mind activity, all understanding - while inevitable and automatic like the river between the banks - is simply unsuitable to attain nondual existence.
To the contrary. It is the very activity of the mind - when taken seriously - that prohibits the nondual existence.
That’s why we should never try to stop the mind either.
To start with, this is as impossible as stopping the river. We can build a dam but that won’t stop the water from flowing - it will only distort and pervert its flow.
The same will happen when we try to stop our minds from flowing. There is nothing wrong with flowing minds. They are natural and beautiful.
The attachment, identification and resulting attempts to manipulate our mind for a perceived personal benefit or protection transform the mind into an object of attention.
As soon it is objectified, the mind takes on the nature of a veil, keeping us from non-dual reality.
Of course, we learn that very early in life and it becomes our default mode. Undoing that, leaving our mind alone, is part of our spiritual work.
The end of all striving
The deep realization that understanding is not only not needed to reach nondual beingness but prevents it leads to a major shift in behaviour in our illusionary dualistic world.
In short, all striving - even spiritual striving - stops because it is realized as meaningless.
But this meaninglessness is not nihilistic and depressing at all.
To the contrary.
This meaninglessness is deeply peaceful and incredibly liberating.
Suddenly, everything just IS, everything we need is provided freely, and everything that needs to happen, simply happens.
And whatever happens is perfect from the perspective of the whole, the One.
Whatever happens can't be any other way because it is based on an infinite, unknowable number of circular multi-dimensional cause-and-effect relationships.
Real-life cause-and-effect is not a flowchart.
It is a living interacting connected vibration of events - the ultimate potentiality Nisargadatta mentioned above.
The illusion of free will gets obliterated.
This leads to the full acceptance of whatever happens in a given moment, independent of whether it might benefit or hinder the survival or well-being of this particular body-mind we call "me, myself and I".
Then there is this recognition that it is impossible to predict if a certain event, that seems good or bad for our body-mind, is good or bad in reality.
All worries stop.
All good and bad considerations are based on the idea that we are this finite body-mind that frenetically attempts to edge out an advantage over others to prolong its existence.
This is seen as illusionary foolish child play because life and its unimaginable complexity can't be manipulated by this tiny organism we call "us".
Q: I am tired of promises. I am tired of sadhanas (spiritual practice), which take all my time and energy and bring nothing. I want reality here and now. Can I have it?"
M: Of course you can, provided you are really fed up with everything, including your sadhanas.
When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!
Closing the circle
It is impossible to know if overpopulation, smart cities, and transhumanism will happen. As with all other things we imagine, desire and fear.
Whatever happens, loses any significance when we reside in nondual beingness. The trust that these things will be dealt with in the best possible way is solid and unwavering eliminating worries and fear completely.
Our minds and bodies will be used appropriately and in sync with what is best for the whole. Self-concerns are abandoned because we have abandoned the self and vibrate with the whole, as the whole, as One.
Many people might say: “That sounds lovely, but I don’t think I can get there.”
Or they say: “It will take me a long time to get there and we are running out of time”.
To start with, the moment people are convinced that nondual beingness exists - maybe even remember significant moments in their lives where they experienced it - they are on the path and everything they do in remembrance of it will lead them automatically.
And for the brave ones, it is not even a path. Nothing needs to be done or achieved. The nondual world is right there now. It is the background of all experience.
Some might be familiar with the simple idea of a Gestalt. Most simply put, it is an object of attention in the foreground like a beautiful painting on a wall.
It is a German word meaning “figure”.
A Gestalt is never in isolation. It needs a contrasting background - the wall - to form a Gestalt. A completely white painting using parts of the white wall as canvas would be invisible and therefore no Gestalt.
Replace the painting with “human experience - all of it - as facilitated by our minds” and you have a Gestalt. If you find the background to that Gestalt you found God.
But we are not trained to look at the background. We are trained to always look at the paintings. We never see the wall. But the wall is always there. Not only that - it is essential for the painting to exist. No wall - no painting.
The same applies to a TV screen. It is the background. The movie on it is the Gestalt. We usually don’t notice the screen while watching a movie.
Our mind can only see Gestalt. It moves from one Gestalt to the next endlessly and gets aroused and attached to all of them.
Replace the screen with “nondual beingness, nothingness, Nirwana”.
Replace the movie with “all experience perceived or conceived by our minds”.
All experience arises from the background and disappears into the background again. That is the river of life. Every experience is therefore temporary and finite.
The background, however, is permanent and eternal, beyond time.
The mind is programmed to only “see” experience.
To “see” the background - God - we need to ignore the mind.
Not stop the mind.
Leave the mind alone and let the mind do its thing but unfocus our attention away from the mind and let this attention expand and unfocus from everything.
It is like looking beyond all that is.
There you go. You found it.
Not what you expected, not what the mind, the scriptures, and the imagination told you God looks like. You have been fooled all your life by your own mind.
It is the absence of all experience. It is right there in the background.
In the gaps between the paintings, you find the wall.
In the gaps between experiences, you find God - the Absolute - nondual beingness.
No striving or doing or believing or praying or sadhana is needed.
It is so simple, our complicated minds just can’t handle it.
And lastly a note to all the millions of seekers who have been led astray by false religious doctrines. There is an important reason why we should not create any image of God. One of the cornerstones of Islam and Jesus also warned of it. It will keep you from finding God because your mind fixates on that image or idea about God - the Gestalt - and you miss the formless, shapeless and nameless God - the source and background of all experience and life itself.
Seeing God is becoming God
The moment we totally ignore the mind - the no-mind moment - something strange and beautiful but very simple and natural happens - we don’t actually “see” God or “experience” God.
That would require a “seer” and an “experiencer” and if that happens you are back in non-duality, back in the mind.
True lovers never meet
Rumi
One of the wisest and deepest and most beautiful poems ever written.
We will never ever see, meet or talk with God. If that happens you are in a dualistic illusion.
The only way to ever meet God is when you become God.
The moment your attention on the mind and the ever-spinning wheel of experiences ceases completely - by pure logic - everything ceases to exist including you, this last remaining separate peace of consciousness watching, and God.
What is left is just Oneness. And the only way to know this Oneness is by being it. It is eternal - meaning beyond time.
Language can’t get there. Only when the mind kicks back in, the mind turns it into dualistic conceptual language.
Q: What happened to you then? How did you know that you are the Supreme?
M: Nobody came to tell me. Nor was I told so inwardly.
In fact, it was only in the beginning when I was making efforts, that I was passing through some strange experiences; seeing lights, hearing voices, meeting gods and goddesses and conversing with them.
Once the Guru told me: 'You are the Supreme Reality', I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple.
I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: 'I know nothing, I want nothing.'
To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom.
To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness.
Only such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust me.
Not making use of one's consciousness is samadhi.
You just leave your mind alone.
You want nothing, neither from your body nor from your mind.
1. Thank you for helping me open door to a new room of my dualistic thinking. I do understand the concept but then again... I'm still here thinking about it. So be it. It is as determined not by me.
2. Please extend my apology and deepest gratefulness to you wonderful understanding and patient wife while so generously sharing your spiritual guidance.
3. I do ponder about one more thing. Or two. I can't help it. My mind is intoxicated by all this, perhaps more than only my mind, it is that feeling when one searches for a word being on tip-of-the-tongue but still out of reach.
So about
"want nothing, neither from your body nor from your mind."
3A: It reminds me of "Wanting nothing and be happy" by WEF. So this makes me uneasy. I tread carefully.
3B: when we want nothing, don't we become passive observers of life? We do not strive for meaning, hence our survival? Doesn't such state invites an abuse from those who still live dualistic lifes and with whom we occupy the same physical space? And if all dualistic way of being is state of Ego/Mind, do we even exist without it? Who am I when not defined by boundaries of where I begin and Other ends? If there are none, I do not exist anymore and the Other does not exist anymore, what is left is just Oneness. Isn't that in a way our Death?
4. Now I completely understand this cannot be solved by the mind. I was wondering if I should ask these questions but it seems it was decided so.
PS: English is not my native language but hopefully good enough to convey the essence through my questions
As always, love and appreciate your Stacks. TY