It makes me
sad every time I read, hear or see news in the media. By far the largest part
of all news can be easily sorted into one of only three categories:
No matter
whether religious or unbelieving, smoker or non-smoker, meat-eater or vegan
and, and, and, and ... Everyone raises his opinion to an ideology, to a dogma,
which has to be defended. Followers of their own ideology are good and are
always right, all others are evil and are always wrong. They must, therefore, be
excluded, converted, re-educated, fought against or, in extreme cases,
destroyed. We live in a dictatorship - a dictatorship of our mind, our
consciousness. This dictatorship has controlled humanity since the beginning and
has led to violence, torture, war, and bloodshed at all times. Everything that
happens around us is a consequence of this dictatorship of consciousness.
Because our consciousness creates our reality. If we want to survive in our
modern world with its weapons of mass destruction, genetic engineering,
robots, artificial intelligence, and all other modern achievements, impending
environmental and climate catastrophes, we need a new morality, a new awareness,
a higher level of consciousness. We still live with a version of consciousness
thousands of years old that no longer meets today's requirements. It creates
chaos, destroys our environment, is directed more and more against ourselves,
our children and our children's children. Our consciousness urgently needs an
update. But it is not new technologies, new laws or prohibitions, new theories
or ideologies that are leading us there. The further development of our
consciousness cannot take place on a material level, cannot take place in our
outer world. It must be achieved through our mind, through our consciousness
itself, it must take place in our inner world. Without a profound change in our
consciousness, our world will not change either.
But what is consciousness? How do we develop it in the right direction? How do we reach higher
levels of consciousness? And finally: What do we get out of it
personally?
I would like to answer these questions in this blog. It shows a method, a way,
to a higher level of consciousness. This path is not difficult, it is
independent of our knowledge. We need not belong to any particular profession,
religion, political party or ideology. We do not have to register anywhere, and
it does not cost us any money. Sounds suspicious? And justifiably so! Because
this path has one big, one very big disadvantage: we have to go it
ourselves!
That's hard. We are
used to getting an answer to everything, from doctors, scientists, teachers and
professors, politicians, TV stars and for the not so profane things from
priests, shamans or gurus. There are pills, seminars or other things for
everything, you just have to have enough money to afford them. We scold the
scientists, priests, and politicians. But here it is not enough to point the
finger at others. It's up to us, to every one of us. Freedom and
happiness never come in from the outside, they always come out from within.
Nobody can breathe for us, nobody can think for us, nobody can eat for us,
nobody can live for us, nobody can go our way. We have to do it ourselves. The
clarity within us cannot be given or forced upon us, nor can anyone take it from us. It was
and always is there. But we usually do not recognize them because we are
looking in the wrong direction.
That's why there are no unrestricted answers in this blog, it should lead you
to your own answers, to your own insight.
"It's not about stuffing what's in my head into yours. It is about
remembering you to your own knowledge"
(Anthony Paul Moo-Young, Advaita teacher)
This blog wants to help you expand your consciousness, overcome your
self-imposed limits and develop your full potential.
Plato is
one of the most famous of the many famous ancient Greek philosophers. He lived
around 427 to 347 BC, was a student of Socrates and one of his students was
Aristotle. Plato's teachings have influenced and shaped the faith and worldview
of millions of people at all times and all over the world. One of his teachings
says that man has an immortal soul that lives on after his death separately
from the body. His allegory of the cave is probably the best-known parable of
ancient philosophy. What's that about?
In this parable, the people live as prisoners in a cave. They are so tied up
that they can only see the shadows cast by a light on the wall, but not the
source of the light. People think the dimly shadows on the wall are reality.
Even their own shadows. When they stand up, cast off their shackles, turn
around, they recognize the light, the true origin of their images and can set
out on the path to the exit, on the path to freedom.
On the long path of evolution, man is the transition from an unconscious to conscious evolution. Man is the only being in the world able to cast off his
shackles, to turn away from the shadow play on the wall, to turn back and walk
the path to the true source of light, to the exit, to freedom. Some have turned
around and some have described how to get there. But only a few have followed
them. Even today the masses sit in this cave and follow the fascinating shadow
play on the wall. Why do we not use our potential? What's stopping us from
turning back?
Admittedly, the shadow play became more and more extensive, more and more
fascinating. The possibilities in this game seem endless. We are attached to
this illusion, we cannot detach ourselves from it. In Buddhism, this is called adherence.
This shadow world is our outside world and we are attached to it, to its
comforts, our successes, our possessions. We have learned to ignore all the
unpleasantness of this world, its unreality, its suffering, its transitoriness.
We constantly see how other shadows are affected, but we believe and hope that
our shadows will be spared. We enjoy the shadow play and completely ignore the
fact that the curtain will fall soon.
When we turn around, when we turn back, we see the source of light. We see
things as they really are. There are no more illusions. We can't fool ourselves
anymore. Death shines in the light and we recognize the transience of shadows,
even our own shadow. Since we still identify us with our shadow, we fear death.
We fear death because it is something we do not understand, at least not from our own
experience. We do not understand it because we have repressed it and when it suddenly
appears before us, we panic. But death is no more the end than birth is the
beginning. No one can teach us more about life than death and if we do not
understand death, we will not understand our life. But only if we understand
our life, we can live it self-determined.
If we let go of our outside world and take the path to our inside, we cannot
block out death. But we can see what it really is. Death is not passing away;
it is an awakening. With this awakening, we pass through the gate to a higher
level of consciousness – the conscious death. For thousands of years, mystics
from all cultures and religions have experienced this level of consciousness
and some have tried to describe it. We can simply believe them, but we can also
experience this state ourselves and pass through the gate to a higher level of
consciousness.
"Nothing
comes from nothing" is a saying that I often heard in my childhood. Since
there is definitely something there now, e.g. something writing or reading this
text, this something cannot have come from nothing. So, there must be something
there from which the something has been created. But also this something, from
which the something has arisen, must have arisen from something, and so on. Is
there a beginning without a beginning? A beginning from which everything has
come into being and what is this beginning?
If such a thing exists, then it must have always been there, there can be no
before it. It's eternity. If everything has been created from it, it must
encompass everything. It's infinity. When we speak of infinite or eternal, we
often mean an unimaginably long distance or a very long time. But
every distance, every space and every time is always finite. Infinity is
spacelessness and eternity is timelessness. The beginning was before space and
time. The beginning was dimensionless.
Something dimensionless has no extension, no weight, not even duration. Laotse,
a philosopher who lived long before our time, called this primordial state the
Tao, the Buddhists call it the void, the Hindus Brahman, the Christians call it
God and physicists perhaps quantum field or zero-point field. We do not want to
argue about names and terms here. We call this primordial state, the primordial
ground, in this blog pure consciousness. Of course, if you want, you can
give it any name you like.
Something dimensionless is information. The Information has no extension and you
cannot weigh it. This primal ground, pure consciousness, is thus something like
an infinite, timeless field of information. Information is derived from the
Latin "in-formare“, which means "to bring into form", "to
imagine something". This "imagining something" describes
possibilities, potentiality. We, therefore, call the information about
opportunities potential information.
The potential information is infinite. Pure consciousness is, therefore, potential
information, is potentiality.
The infinite potential information is all kinds of things. It's everything, but
somehow it's also nothing. It is of little consequence. In terms of information
technology, it can therefore also be described as non-knowledge. If we
want to know something, we need something concrete, we need facts. We need to
get something potential in form, in shape. We call these facts, what is brought
into shape, classical information. Classical information is knowledge.
All knowledge comes from potentiality, from not-knowing. All knowledge, however
great it may be, is always just a tiny fraction of non-knowledge. The "brought
into form" is only that in which the formless is expressed; knowledge is
only that in which non-knowledge is expressed. Everything that exists is only
the expression of nothingness, of potentiality.
Each expression, each section, each knowledge, is finite, is different in size.
If we look at these sections of not-knowing, then we start with the smallest
section, without anything concrete, without facts, i.e. the nothing, and end at
the largest section, the all-embracing, the all-knowing, the omniscience. The
Nothing and the All are only different sections (the smallest and the largest)
of the one, pure consciousness. All sections, from the smallest to the largest,
are also referred to here as states of consciousness or levels of
consciousness. The only difference between these levels is the information
content, the amount of information. The lowest level, the nothingness, is death
and the highest level, the omniscience is conscious death. In between lies a
multitude of states, some familiar to us, such as being awake, asleep or deep
sleep.
The source,
pure consciousness, is an infinite potential field, an infinite, timeless
information field. It contains all knowable, i.e. potential information, but no
actual knowledge. It is the indeterminacy, the not-knowing. The potential
information, the not-knowing, can comprise an infinite number of states. Actual
information, the classical information or facts comprise finite definite
states. It is knowledge. How does not-knowing become knowing? How does
something become something out of nothing?
A static potential field would exist forever and ever without anything
happening in it. In other words, if there were no working God, there would be
no one to ask such questions. No reality can arise from potentiality without
effect. A God who does not work cannot be recognized. When all is one, we can
know nothing. We need the Two, duality, creator and creation. Information only
makes sense if there are at least two states. Duality enables the transition
from non-knowledge to knowledge, from nothing to something.
God never left heaven. He sent out an inner entity of him, his son. Father and Son are two
instances of the one God. In the Vedic religion of ancient India this inner
core is called Atman. This inner instance is identical with Brahman, the
eternal source. In the individual human being, it is called Atman, in the cosmos, it is called Brahman. Atman and Brahman are eternal, are one. "The cosmic soul," it is said
in the Upanishads, "is one and
present in all beings." We call this inner instance of pure
consciousness in this blog subjective consciousness.
The subjective consciousness creates our
reality from potentiality. Subjective
consciousness is the gateway through which the manifestations of potentiality
enter our world. Everything that is, originates from pure consciousness and
also returns to pure consciousness. In the end, the subjective consciousness
also returns to its original state.
The
subjective consciousness is an inner instance of pure consciousness. An inner
area, a section of the infinite potential field. Let us imagine this instance
as a potential pot, like a bucket of water from the ocean. From this pot,
subjective consciousness generates our reality. How does it do that?
Emergence
is dynamics, is an effect, movement. Physicists call the beginning of everything
that came into being the Big Bang. In the old Indian philosophies, it was a
sound. The sound of the sacred syllable AUM (OM). In Christianity, it was the
word. So says the gospel according to John:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and God was the Word. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things are made by the same, and without the same nothing is made that
is made."
Different
names, different terms, different metaphors, all trying to describe the same
thing that cannot be described by terms, names and metaphors. Whether loud
bang, soft sound or spoken word, every vibration is energy, is information.
What is a word? A word is not a material thing, it is something immaterial. We
use words to communicate, to exchange information. Words are information.
Information is the beginning of our world and the basis of all things.
In quantum
Physics, one speaks of wave-particle duality. The wave is a superposition of all
possible states. It is fixed to a certain state by an observation. By an
observation the wave becomes real, becomes a particle. A probability
distribution, an abstract wave function, a potentiality, becomes something
specific, a concrete particle. In order for something to emerge, dualism needs
a third thing, a kind of observer. Which brings us to the trinity.
In the
Christian Religion, the Trinity consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. In the ancient scriptures of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, one speaks of
the three Gunas: tamas (the inertia), rajas (the movement) and sattva (the
light). Physics deals with matter, energy and information, and in psychology, Sigmund Freud speaks of the id, ego, and superego. Trinity is eternal change, is
coming into being and passing away.
In many ancient mythologies and philosophies, the number three appears again and
again. Lao-tse, a Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism, writes in chapter
42 of the Tao te Ging:
"The Tao creates one.
One produces two.
Two produces three.
Three produces all the creatures of the world."
Translated into the language of this blog:
"Pure
consciousness (potential) creates subjective consciousness.
Subjective consciousness produces subject and object.
Subject and object produce classical information, energy and matter.
Classical information, energy, and matter produce all the creatures of the
world."
