The idea of the Observer, nonduality, Advaitism - struggling with this - need some help please!

I'm reading Deepak Chopra's, "Everyday Immortality." The rules are simple, read each page, and when you gain insight on each statement or koan, you can go to the next page. Now I know I sound like I am rushing here, perhaps I am a little. But I also do genuinely want to grasp this, and would appreciate some alternative viewpoints to guide me. The sentence I am on is, "In my decision to become the Observer, I create the experience of my physical body, and also that of the physical Universe" (Everyday Immortality, page 27).

Now I understand this a little... The idea here is that we are all connected at some universal level, and in that connection were are also a part of God. In the scientific field this is called the "Unified Field Theory" or something like that. I read George Goode's, "The Direct Path" and had my eyes opened a little, but somehow I just can't get past that my body is basically a puppet that the real me is wearing to experience the world (that's my body), never mind that Chopra is saying that I created the puppet and the entire Universe!

I guess you have to believe that you are God, the natural extension of God is in you. But I do not feel I am God. This is partly my Christian background speaking. What did Lucifer, before being cast out of Heaven, do? What turned him into Satan, according to the Bible? Pretty much this very idea! But I doubt the accuracy of the Bible, and my stance is that of going with the truth. Either Lucifer was cast out for thinking of himself as God, or that's a story thought up a few thousand years ago to keep people form the truth, and we are all part of God, and are all God. I don't think there's another option here, but even if there is, only one can be completely true.

So I can get as far as I have part of God in me, as does the entirely of Creation. I can also believe that God is in all of us, the Bible says as much, even though Christians seem to willfully ignore this. I know, with as much certainty as can be had, that at the very least we are all indeed connected at a deeper level beyond the physical, that there is more to life than physical reality, that indeed something lives on after the physical body is dead - energy changing form. I can even sort of get that nothing exists unless I am aware of it. That whatever I am on a deeper level may indeed be pure awareness or consciousness. But this is as far as I can get.

Do you think you could help guide me here? Show me how this koan may be true, help me grasp this idea I'm struggling with? I would very much appreciate it!
:hrm: DreamBliss

I can't help you reconcile with your christian background but I can help you understand that koan better.

Read it more carefully.

"In my decision to become the Observer, I create the experience of my physical body, and also that of the physical Universe"

I'd also like to ask, what makes you so sure of exactly what or who God is and what being (even a small part of) him/it entails? It doesn't say anywhere that you gain special powers because of this, or maybe you have them and simply take them for granted.

I would say all that is irrelevant, however--Omnis is right. What I think it's trying to say is that the universe is subjective, it will always be how you perceive it.

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Originally Posted by DreamBliss

I'm reading Deepak Chopra's, "Everyday Immortality." The rules are simple, read each page, and when you gain insight on each statement or koan, you can go to the next page. Now I know I sound like I am rushing here, perhaps I am a little. But I also do genuinely want to grasp this, and would appreciate some alternative viewpoints to guide me. The sentence I am on is, "In my decision to become the Observer, I create the experience of my physical body, and also that of the physical Universe" (Everyday Immortality, page 27).

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I know this one.

You see, the observer is timeless, he doesn't experience time in the same linear manner as we do. Instead of seeing things in terms of past/present/future, he see everything as a whole. The observer picks points in time in which to manifest his physical body (meaning he creates his own experience) and through his awareness of the whole is able to shape the course of the universe.

http://tvovermind.zap2it.com/wp-cont...Observer21.jpg

OK that helped a lot, thanks!

So it's no so much that I created myself and the universe, it's that I experience it, and how I do this is a choice or decision. Furthermore the "I" here is not the me that I associate with my physical body, it is whatever I am on the deepest, energetic or soul level. The experiences of my true self are not necessarily the same ones of I experience in my physical body. "I", referring to the ego, see things a certain way, so my experiences are subjectivity filtered through that.

In other words the true state of a lake in a storm whee the waves are roiling on the surface and the rain is striking it may seem to the fisherman in his tiny boat to be violent. But if he pulled out a wet suit and dived into the water he would see the lake as it really is. The subjective experience is shallow, filtered through ego, the "I" associated with a physical body, while the true experience is deeper, under the surface, below the level of "I".

Am I getting this right? Anyone else's brain starting to melt and ooze out through their ears, or is that just me, having another subjective experience?
- DreamBliss

Sounds like you're ready to turn to the next page.

Thanks everyone!
- DreamBliss