All at once.

But wouldn't you say if something is temporary, it is just an illusion and by definition not real?

 

Well yea, everything is like that lol

 

I'd say everything after pure awareness is like that.

 

But even pure awareness is composed of 'something', probably just a deeper awareness! So the tunnel doesnt really ever end, as Xexon was getting at

 

yeah but no matter what depth of awareness you are operating at, the whole tunnel is awareness, ya know?

That's what I mean when I say pure awareness, if you say it's deeper awareness or a different level of awareness, you are just adding to the thing that already precedes those descriptions.

 

If we don't have free-will or any freedom to choose our actions, which is what a pre-determined future would imply, then we are no more than robots. Any idea that we can actually change things implies we do have freedom.
To accept a predetermined future can lead to nothing but fatalism and apathy.

 

Or subtracting. But even in that case, the 'deeper' levels are not deeper in the way we think, I meant deeper as in more simple but smaller components of reality fabric. We really dont know what is composing reality, it could be an unnamable God consciousness, or it could be some beings on a different plane. I believe that the smaller components of consciousness are like the particles lending mass to matter, little 'thoughtrons' and therefor much more simple. But even then when you get to what looks like the end (or the beginning) you seem to burst out of a mirror image on a spiritual plane. I dont think there is any pure awareness, just a balancing act in the middle

 

Why?

I'd say reality is something which is constantly shifting and evolving in its manifestations.

 

But why? Isnt the challenge to discover even mindedness in any situation? And if our 'creations' are extensions of what we are in nature, then what are robots?

 

Ok I'm going to admit that I didn't understand most of that lol.

I think awareness is what this reality fabric is held in. Awareness is what facilitates or allows everything else to manifest, b/c it precedes everything else. You can think of it in terms of awareness being space, and reality being wind. Or awareness being a river bed, and reality is the water. Everything flows through it.

Your last line really confused me though. If you don't think there is any pure awareness, then what are you?

 

Because reality is that which is shifting and not that which is being shifted.

actually, this depends on what you consider "reality" I suppose.

what is reality to you?

 

If we believe we can't affect the future, then what is the point of seeking to act in a moral way or to change anything here for the better? Or to engage in any kind of process of self-development - because every choice we make would be actually not a choice at all, but something entirely automatic.
It's the same as believing our karma is fixed and can't be changed.

 

Both that which is shifting and that which is being shifted.

But what is un-reality?

 

For me, reality can only be that which is unchanging and eternal.

Not sure what you mean by "un-reality" but I guess that would have to be anything that is changing and temporal. Illusions. Perhaps they are a part of reality, and not reality in and of themselves.

I should say though that I dont think sensory perception is substantial enough proof for that which is "real"

This goes back to platonic themes of forms and physical representations.

 

And even if you CAN affect the future, what is then the point of seeking to act in a moral way or to change anything here for the better? Does changing the future imply some grand purpose to it all?

 

But how powerful is moral behaviour when it is rooted in a desire to get closer to God and rid oneself of karma?
I mean I believe karma is fixed, and yet I still find moral behaviour to be appropriate. The difference is that I dont feel like I am who decided to act this way, but rather that this is my alotted time to be able to receive God. And truly if you believe reality to be fixed by God, then what is deviation from morality other than denying what you believe temporarily?

 

The cosmic manifestation is in my view, a form of the eternal, changeless and un-manifest. However, it is not as some believe an illusion because it is changing. It is a real manifestation of the real which exists behind it.

 

Then we just have different definitions of what reality means.

I have dreams every night where I think they and everything in them are 100% real. Then I wake up and all of it is gone. Who is to say that in 10 minutes from now, I wont be a different person waking up from my bed, and the 19 years of "neodude1212" and everything he thought he was and everything he experienced is gone in a flash. Then I'll be in a new "reality".

The only thing that remains the same no matter what state I'm experiencing or where I am is the awareness. It permeates all.

 

The aspiration for God is not mere desire. Moral behaviour is only really one preliminary step on the path.

Really I can't think how to express what I mean here about pre-determination, other than to re-state the obnoxious idea held by Saint Augustine and Calvin that because God knows the future, He already knows who are the elect, those pre-destined to be saved. This IMO turns the whole of Christianity into a complete farce.
If I go out and murder someone, I can say it wasn't me who did it - it was inevitable becsaue we live in a pre-determined universe where I have no choice whatsoever in any of my actions, and all my ideas that I do have any choice is simply illusion.
Under such a scheme there is no moral superiority of Mother Theresa or Yoganada to Hitler.
I simply find any such position impossible to accept or reconcile with the idea of a progressive evolutionary universe.

 

So the universe is shifting all the time in its manifeststions. That doesn't make those manifestations unreal.
Dreams come and go. Clouds form and break up again.Civilizations rise and crumble - Why should reality be static?

There is a state of consciousness known to vedantic philosophy called 'sahaja'. In this state, the diversity of the constantly changing universe is seen as God - the Brahman or Reality, whilst simultaneously, the One beyond all manifest existences is also experienced as God.