The Endless Mystery of Existence Itself

[axj]

I'm wondering if even 7D beings have an absolute complete cognition of ALL the universe/universes at any given moment of time themselves.

According to the C's, all consciousness units go to 7D together once everyone reaches 6D, I think. They never mentioned any other 7D beings, except mentioning that "some have already become everything".

And whether there is any kind of time at 7D (or even 6D) is another unknown.

The truly Infinite can't ever be completely seen or related in any one moment, ever.

That is an important thing to grasp regarding true infinity, I think. But we also do not know if existence is truly infinite or just very, very, very huge.

So in one sense, this discussion is meaningless.

At the very least, it helps us uncover our assumptions and maybe see new possibilities.

 

[Esote]

Individual reality lies here-now, which is all that there is

May every day be the first, may every minute be the last :
Extraordinary, intense awareness of the present moment,
in an infinite, incessant repetition of an elusive timeless instant.

Nothing to obtain, everything to give up :
Just total attention here and now,
playing with intuition through the movement of life,
being one with its immeasurable, unknowable presence,
mystery-miracle of what is, of what we are,
what I am

 

[NCfugee]

I think that trying to get closer to answers of the big questions can be beneficial on any level from 3D to 6D - even though our answers will necessarily be preliminary and evolve with us.

Such deep questions can also be a good practice to try to see more from the eyes of the soul, connecting to the more cosmic perspective and the higher centers in deep meditation.

Just using our lower mental (rational mind) for such questions seems less helpful, even though logic can also give some preliminary answers, eg. by ruling out some possibilities.

I was lucky enough to study philosophy at University, and it was fantastic training in how to think clearly and critically (and it's a pleasure to read such clear and critical thinkers here!), and it also pointed out the limits of language as a vector of communication.

So while I agree that exploring the Big Questions is a wonderfully mind-expanding exercise and to not do so is to miss out on a super highway to personal growth in many domains, to really profit from the exercise, rather than being overwhelmed by questions and ideas so abstract and so vast that we shrivel before them, it helps to take progressive steps, much as Laura uncovered the depths of existence over decades of painstaking work, and have the self-awareness to understand that those answers speak more revealingly about where we are on our path than about any discoveries about the ostensible subjects.

As for deep meditation, the most honest amongst the few advanced meditators I've spoken to (from an admittedly very small sample), say they struggle to find the right words to explain what they experienced. The most profound experiences transcend language, it would seem.

 

[bozadi]

Q: Is there not a state of absolute perfection which does not decay?

M: Whatever has a beginning must have an end. In the timeless all is perfect, here and now.

Q: But shall we reach the timeless in due course?

M: In due course we shall come back to the starting point. Time cannot take us out of time, as space cannot take us out of space. All you get by waiting is more waiting. Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action -- here and now. It is your behaviour that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect -- whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.

Q: Where do I find such courage?

M: In yourself, of course. Look within.

Q: Your grace will help

M: My grace is telling you now: look within. All you need you have. Use it. Behave as best you know, do what you think you should. Don't be afraid of mistakes; you can always correct them, only intentions matter. The shape things take is not within your power; the motives of your actions are.

Q: How can action born from imperfection lead to perfection?

M: Action does not lead to perfection; perfection is expressed in action. As long as you judge yourself by your expressions give them utmost attention; when you realise your own being your behaviour will be perfect -- spontaneously.

Q: If I am timelessly perfect, then why was I born at all? What is the purpose of this life?

M: It is like asking: what does it profit gold to be made into an ornament? The ornament gets the colour and the beauty of gold; gold is not enriched. Similarly, reality expressed in action makes the action meaningful and beautiful.

Q: What does the real gain through its expressions?

M: What can it gain? Nothing whatsoever. But it is in the nature of love to express itself, to affirm itself, to overcome difficulties. Once you have understood that the world is love in action, you will look at it quite differently. But first your attitude to suffering must change. Suffering is primarily a call for attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than happiness, love wants growth, the widening and deepening of consciousness and being. Whatever prevents becomes a cause of pain, and love does not shirk from pain. Sattva, the energy that works for righteousness and orderly development, must not be thwarted. When obstructed it turns against itself and becomes destructive. Whenever love is withheld and suffering allowed to spread, war becomes inevitable. Our indifference to our neighbour’s sorrow brings suffering to our door.

 

[bozadi]

Please check the above excerpt regarding the concepts of "time", "meaning of life/creation", and "widening/deepening of consciousness and being".

As for the meaning of (or reason for) existence/creation, the following dialog in the excerpt attracted my attention:

Q: If I am timelessly perfect, then why was I born at all? What is the purpose of this life?

M: It is like asking: what does it profit gold to be made into an ornament? The ornament gets the colour and the beauty of gold; gold is not enriched. Similarly, reality expressed in action makes the action meaningful and beautiful.

It's interesting that Maharaj explains the issue with an example of "ornament"; the etymology of the word "cosmos" seems to involve Greek kosmein "to arrange, adorn," from kosmos "order; ornament".

 

[Ian]

There is a good video on Youtube from Federico Faggin in which he talks about consciousnes being a starting point, and essentialy talking abou “One” being the source of creation which is creating “units of consciousness” which have the capacity of “One” and so every time one consciousness learns everything about it self it creates new units with purpose to know it self even more and that just goes on and on in infinity.
It’s a nice video, I would deff recommend it to everyone who is trying to further their understanding of “What this is” and of “Who we are”.

 

[aragorn]

Great thread! This is the Mother Of All Questions (MOAQ ) with which we end up with when we think "everything" through. As you guys, I've asked myself this question many times, and more often recently.

Two years ago I asked the C's the following:

Session 22nd October 2022:

(Aragorn) I believe you have said that the system of 7 densities, in other words all that is, has existed forever. That would mean that we have done an infinite number of Grand Cycles in the past and will do so also in the future. Is this correct?

A: Yes

So, according to the C's, if I'm anywhere close in my understanding, our souls do these Grand Cycles in which we with varying success evolve and rise to higher densities until we reach 7D, and the cycle starts over. And I believe the C's have said that all souls (the number might be infinite?) that are now in existence have always existed, that no new souls are evern born. This means that all of us, as souls, have been doing these Grand Cycles forever.

I know I'm repeating what has already been said, but this makes you, indeed, wonder 1) what new, if anything, can the soul or the whole Grand System learn through a cycle if we've done those an infinite amount of times? 2) what is the purpose of this Grand System?

I come to think of an analogy. Think how vastly different the lived experience and knowledge/awareness of 1D is from 2D or 3D, not to mention higher densities. So, a dog's (2D) understanding of time must be fundamentaly different than humans. A dog can't plan what he's going to do on Thursday next week etc. There is no way and no method we could make a dog understand this concept, because the dog is missing a fundamental 'thinking-component' that the dog doesn't even know he's lacking, and even less would know how to describe.

What I'm getting at is that when it comes to concepts like time, infinity, and purpose, it could very well be that it's just simply impossible for us to understand them with our 3D awareness/knowledge. These concepts probably have 'expanded' meanings that can solve the paradoxes they present, but we just can't grasp those in 3D. Another example is how many NDE experiencers describe how after death they have a 360 degree vision. No matter how I try to imagine how this would feel and how I could see in every direction simultaneously, I just cannot, its' impossible! Can you guys?

In many NDE books, the experiencers describe how in 5D (or Summerland) they were doing stuff just as on Earth (working, eating, smoking) and also sleeping. It has been said, which I suspect is close to the truth, that the experiences in 5D (at least on the initial level) is a collective dream of likeminded souls. The dream feels super-real, but is newertheless an illusion. However, as some have described, in 5D you can 'move on' to higher planes when you've evolved enough. This means, in our 3D understanding, that there is a before and after this 'moving on'. How can this be if there is no time and it's all just a dream?

Also, as deceased individuals are contacted through a medium, they sometimes say: "Gotta go now, I can't stay longer!" If there is no time in 5D what's the hurry? You'd think that they could 'talk' to us as long as we want.

Although as a child the Christian version of heaven scared me. I imagined a static pleasant existence, that lasted forever. Now forever is a hard concept to get your mind around, especially as a child. I thought that eventually you will have to get bored, no matter how nice it is. It felt a bit like a prison. So I can sort of see the appeal to "turn off the lights".

Funny you should mention that. That is exactly what my deepest horror was as a child, and maybe also later. To be stuck in a 'limbo' forever!

Okay, now my brain hurts and I gotta stop.

 

[bozadi]

And some of the excerpts about "time":

M: (...) There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated. There is the ‘stamp of reality’ on the actual, which the past and the future do not have.

Q: What gives the present that 'stamp of reality’?

M: There is nothing peculiar in the present event to make it different from the past and future. For a moment the past was actual and the future will become so. What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality. The past is in memory, the future -- in imagination. There is nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real. It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock. In spite of our knowing that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous one and the next -- as remembered, or expected. A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event.

M: (…) It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.

Q: The fact is that here and now I am asking you: when did the feeling 'I am the body' arise? At my birth? or this morning?

M: Now.

Q: But I remember having it yesterday too!

M: The memory of yesterday is now only.

Q: But surely I exist in time. I have a past and a future.

M: That is how you imagine -- now.

Q: There must have been a beginning.

M: Now.

Q: And what about ending?

M: What has no beginning cannot end.

M: The sense 'I am a person in time and space' is the poison. In a way, time itself is the poison. In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in their turn. Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously: 'what next, what next?' Step out of time and see it devour the world. Say: 'Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end to everything. Let it be. It does not concern me. I am not combustible, nor do I need to collect fuel'.

Q: How difficult it is to see the world as purely mental! The tangible reality of it seems so very convincing.

M: This is the mystery of imagination, that it seems to be so real. You may be celibate or married, a monk or a family man; that is not the point. Are you a slave of your imagination, or are you not? Whatever decision you take, whatever work you do, it will be invariably based on imagination, on assumptions parading as facts.

Q: Here I am sitting in front of you. What part of it is imagination?

M: The whole of it. Even space and time are imagined.

Q: Does it mean that I don't exist?

M: I too do not exist. All existence is imaginary.

Q: Is being too imaginary?

M: Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence which is limited. All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real.

Q: I am not afraid of being cheated. I am afraid of cheating myself.

M: But you are cheating yourself in your ignorance of your true motives. You are asking for truth, but in fact you merely seek comfort, which you want to last for ever. Now, nothing, no state of mind, can last for ever. In time and space there is always a limit, because time and space themselves are limited. And in the timeless the words 'for ever' have no meaning. The same with the 'proof of truth'. In the realm of non-duality everything is complete, its own proof, meaning and purpose. Where all is one, no supports are needed. You imagine that permanence is the proof of truth, that what lasts longer is somehow more true. Time becomes the measure of truth. And since time is in the mind, the mind becomes the arbiter and searches within itself for the proof of truth -- a task altogether impossible and hopeless!

Q: All I know is the stream of consciousness, an endless succession of events. The river of time flows, bringing and carrying away relentlessly. Transformation of the future into past is going on all the time.

M: Are you not the victim of your language? You speak about the flow of time, as if you were stationary. But the events you have witnessed yesterday somebody else may see tomorrow. It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.

Q: What does it mean -- time will cease?

M: Past and future will merge in the eternal now.

Q: Is there any relationship between pure being and particular being?

M: What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be? Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves? The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. the succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don't look for it in consciousness, you will not find it there. Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the contrary, it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes everything visible while itself remaining invisible.

Q: Sir, of what use to me is your telling me that reality cannot be found in consciousness? Where
else am I to look for it? How do you apprehend it?

M: It is quite simple. If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid.

M: (…) Go beyond the 'I-am-the-body' idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time. Once you have understood this, the main obstacle to realisation is removed.

M: Wherever you go, the sense of here and now you carry with you all the time. It means that you are independent of space and time, that space and time are in you, not you in them. It is your self-identification with the body, which, of course, is limited in space and time, that gives you the feeling of finiteness. In reality you are infinite and eternal.

M: (…) And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent.

Q: Are you serious? Do you really mean that you exist everywhere and at all times?

M: Yes, I do. To me it is as obvious, as the freedom of movement is to you. Imagine a tree asking a monkey: 'Do you seriously mean that you can move from place to place?' And the monkey saying: 'Yes. I do.'

Q: How is it that the person, which to you is quite illusory, appears real to us?

M: You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. ‘Being' applies to the now only.

Q: Is not eternity endless too?

M: Time is endless, though limited, eternity is In the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused.

Q: What arouses interest?

M: Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Q: And how does maturity come about?

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.

Q: Is such concentration at all possible?

M: Try. One step at a time is easy. Energy flows from earnestness.

Q: I find I am not earnest enough.

M: Self-betrayal is a grievous matter. It rots the mind like cancer. The remedy lies in clarity and integrity of thinking. Try to understand that you live in a world of illusions, examine them and uncover their roots. The very attempt to do so will make you earnest, for there is bliss in right endeavour.

Q: Where will it lead me?

M: Where can it lead you if not to its own perfection? Once you are well-established in the now, you have nowhere else to go. What you are timelessly, you express eternally.

 

[bozadi]

The two statements that strike me the most:

space and time are in you, not you in them.

Yeah, I think one of the main problems about the concept of "time" is that we feel we are "in it", contained by it like a prison.

It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.

Wow, quite interesting! Think of meditation!

And also remember the "spinning" excercise and compare it to the following:

M: (...) First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth. Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always at the axle in the centre and not whirling at the periphery.

 

[bozadi]

Also let's remember:

Q: (L) If everything is an illusion, from what does this illusion spring, and into what space does it spring?

A: Your consciousness.

Q: (L) Where did this consciousness originate?

A: Consciousness is the absolute, the center point.

Q: (L) Where is it centered?

A: Within the access.

Q: (L) What is the access?

A: The prompt that begets energy.

Q: (L) Of what is this energy made?

A: The consciousness.

Q: (L) Was there ever a time when this consciousness did not exist?

A: No, but there never was a time.

Q: (L) What prompted this consciousness to dream up all these illusions?

A: Need for balance. Energy cannot exist within a vacuum, therefore it must pulse. Hence you have waves.

Q: (L) You say that the impetus for dreaming up all the illusions was the need for balance; that implies imbalance, and that the imbalance was existence in a vacuum...

A: No.

Q: (L) What was the impetus for the need for balance?

A: Not a need, per se, just a natural function.

Q: (L) Well, when you have a pulse, you have a wave, and if you have a wave, that implies time.

A: Therein lies the crux of your 3rd density illusion. Why assume that any given aspect of the pulse is not occurring simultaneously with any other. And if any are, all are. Until you once and for all break free from the illusion of time, you will not advance.

 

[bozadi]

Time, duality, illusion... These are all closely related.

 

[HyperdimensionalApe]

Q: (D) Okay, then, are there certain abilities needed to do this connection into the collective consciousness?

A: You all have all you need.

Q: (D) Well then, if this.. (T) By sitting here, we tap into them and they tap into us. (D) If this collective consciousness is a collection, haven't all lessons been learned by someone at some time?

A: Yes.

Q: (D) Then can we tune into the collective consciousness to find how our same lessons have been solved before?

A: Yes. But what is "before?"

Q: (D) Before? No, I didn't ask... (J) Before, during, after, these are all time concepts. (D) Oh, yeah.

A: Yes.

Q: (D) Well, my real question is if all the answers are there, and we can get there, why are we going through the lessons again? I mean, why do we have to go through these lessons if the solutions are already there?

A: Its all just lessons.

Q: (D) I know, that's what made me ask... I just.. I can't understand this.. we already have the answers, and we're going through the lessons again... (T) Not all of us have learned all the answers, that's why we're all going through the lessons again.... (D) But, you see, all the answers are there...

A: Who said "again" ?

Q: (J) Is it more like "still" ? (D) But if all the answers are there...

A: You are still thinking at 3rd level.

Q: (D) Yeah, but I'm still trying to understand.. Sorry, guys

A: Don't "try" so much, just go with it.

Q: (T) It's like Master Yoda said in Star Wars, "Don't try, do" .... Just do it.

A: Yes.

Q: (T) See, I knew Star Wars had a redeeming social value. (J) So did Relationships. The how is to do it. (D) But if the answers are there, and we can find the answers, to our lessons... (T) We don't have to find the answers, we have the answers. The answers are within all of us. (D) It seems so redundant... (T) Most of the lessons are to find the right answers... (D)...to actually go through the doing of the lessons....

A: No. Not correct idea.

Q: (T) Where were we going with this? (D) Oh, it was just a wonder of mine, it's just like, if we have the answers, I didn't understand why we do it. (J) We're not supposed to know. (T) Well, if we have all the answers, they're all in us, and we all know the correct solutions to the lessons, we should always be able to do it right, but we're doing it wrong, that means we haven't learned it right yet.

A: Retrieval.

Q: (L) I know what she's hanging up on here - what's the point? (D) Yeah! (L) That's the whole question, what's the point? And I guess the point is, is that it's just...

A: Lessons.

Q: (L) In other words, just to have something to do (J) Hang on a second, I want to read something to you. Corinthians 13... (D) I can't handle this... (J) just listen. This is from Corinthians 13, the one about love. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as I also am known." And that's what going from 3rd to 4th is going to be like. (D) Is that part of the... (T) Think so? (Tea kettle starts to whistle.....)

A: Yes.

Q: (J) That's it. We're not supposed to know it all now. In moving from 3rd to 4th, is part of the knowledge process. (T) We gain insight moving..

A: Yes.

Q: (T)...insight we don't have yet, but we can start working with what we may not understand what it is we're doing.

A: Close

Q: So when you said we're thinking in 3rd...

A: Stop noise.

Q: (L) Somebody turn off the kettle... (T) It's bothering us too, we're taking care of it..... (....Tea kettle whistle is turned off) ....that's one 3rd density thing we can do! So when you say that we're thinking in 3rd density, you're not always telling us we're not thinking correctly, you're just indicating that we're thinking in 3rd density, because we can't think in any other way.

A: Close.

Q: (L) Well, that leads back to: what is the wave going to do to expand this awareness? Because, if the wave is what "gets you there," what makes this so?

A: No. It is like this: After you have completed all your lessons in "third grade," where do you go?

Q: (L) So, it is a question of...

A: Answer, please.

Q: (L) You go to fourth grade.

A: Okay, now, do you have to already be in 4th grade in order to be allowed to go there? Answer.

Q: (L) No. But you have to know all the 3rd density things...

A: Yes. More apropos: you have to have learned all of the lessons.

Q: (L) What kind of lessons are we talking about here?

A: Karmic and simple understandings.

Q: (L) What are the key elements of these understandings, and are they fairly universal?

A: They are universal.

Q: In a cosmic sense, cosmic consciousness, in the sense of The One Unified Consciousness, what is the stimulus there for the ability to choose?

A: When the journey has reached union with The One, all such lessons have been completed.

Q: But, that doesn't answer the question.

A: Yes, it does!

A: Everything that exists at all levels is just lessons.

I know I'm repeating what has already been said, but this makes you, indeed, wonder 1) what new, if anything, can the soul or the whole Grand System learn through a cycle if we've done those an infinite amount of times? 2) what is the purpose of this Grand System?

I mean if the lessons are known then, it seems to me it's all just for the sake of experiencing, continuous experiencing, and each different experience is a new kind of learning essentially.

 

[Tomiro]

Also, as deceased individuals are contacted through a medium, they sometimes say: "Gotta go now, I can't stay longer!" If there is no time in 5D what's the hurry? You'd think that they could 'talk' to us as long as we want.

Perhaps it has something to do with energy / connection issues when communicating between densities, or not interfering too much with our lives? I'm just randomly guessing here. I actually have a recent dream where my deceased mother explains this scenario to me (her communicating with us via a medium). I can't remember exactly what she said in the dream, but the process was described as draining, as if some kind of veil was blocking it. Something about translating 5D concepts into 3D also made it challenging.

However, a related thing that I have wondered about; if linear time does not exist on higher densities, still the C:s have said that someone who recently passed away might be "recovering" or something to that effect, and not ready to communicate just now, only at a later "time".

 

[bozadi]

I think 5D experiences of the students of 3D might not reflect “timelessness” perfectly, but nonetheless, I suppose, they too are aware of the timelessness of the utmost reality. It’s the “awareness” that matters. They have not yet arrived at the level of “absolute timelessness” (7D), but still, they are at such a level (5D), even if for “contemplation” purposes, that now they “cannot fail” to be aware of the timelessness of the absolute reality. They openly “see” it and can’t act like they don’t. Of course, there can be exceptional situations to some extent, but this doesn’t break “the rule”.

 

[axj]

Great work in finding more C's statements on these questions, @aragorn, @bozadi and @HyperdimensionalApe!

The C's seem to confirm that existence is a true infinity without a "starting point". And that all possible lessons have already been learned "before" - or from the perspective of "no time" are being learned right now? Do all the infinite cycles really occur at the same time?

One idea I liked in this thread is @Joe pointing out that true infinity implies that there is always something new to experience and learn, never ending. Yet the C's answer that all possible lessons have already been learned seems to contradict that idea.

Which kind of leaves us with "existence just is" with seemingly no purpose behind endlessly repeating everything, except that it is in its nature to do so. Not a satisfying answer, in my view.