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      The 3 Gunas, Free Will, & emancipation of thoughts

      The Bhagavad Gita explains what is called the 3 Gunas or three strands that bind the deathless embodied Self to the mortal body.

      For those who have already read on this subject , what are your thoughts, and how do you see these in relation to free will and the emanicaption of thoughts?

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      ex-redhat ClouD's Avatar
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      Gonna get back to you on this tommorow.
      Last edited by ClouD; 11-02-2007 at 06:28 PM.
      You merely have to change your point of view slightly, and then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light.

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      Quote Originally Posted by NonDualistic View Post
      The Bhagavad Gita explains what is called the 3 Gunas or three strands that bind the deathless embodied Self to the mortal body.

      For those who have already read on this subject , what are your thoughts, and how do you see these in relation to free will and the emanicaption of thoughts?
      Personally, I would just consider these ideas to be outdated. Determinism killed free will a long time ago, and there is still no reason to assume that there is such a thing as a 'deathless embodied Self".

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      ex-redhat ClouD's Avatar
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      These 'ideas' are the only ones that have remained untainted throughout history...

      The claimed experiences that spiritualistic 'believers' have gone through have been consistent throughout it all.

      There just might be a reason for that...
      You merely have to change your point of view slightly, and then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light.

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      Quote Originally Posted by cloudWalker View Post
      The claimed experiences that spiritualistic 'believers' have gone through have been consistent throughout it all.

      There just might be a reason for that...
      Why are you always so vague?

      What experiences? Believers in what? Throughout...what?!

      Consistent experiences can almost always be explained by the fact that we are all humans. Nearly every culture which has ever existed has had some sort of idea of a God or Gods - does that mean that there is a god? No, it simply means that human nature causes us to seek purpose and meaning in the inherently purposeless and meaningless, and a god is often the easiest answer to these meaningless questions.

      The same phenomenon applies to many things, like the tunnel of light many people report during NDEs - this is speculated to be caused by a quirk in our eyes, perhaps the peripheral vision dying out or the macula being overexcited.

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      ex-redhat ClouD's Avatar
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      Lulz, i'm not here to debate

      At least not at this time of night...


      I wonder though... why do you believe what you believe?

      Why do you have no faith...
      Not that you actually need it...

      But i am curious, what do you actually believe?
      You merely have to change your point of view slightly, and then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light.

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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      Why are you always so vague?

      What experiences? Believers in what? Throughout...what?!

      Consistent experiences can almost always be explained by the fact that we are all humans. Nearly every culture which has ever existed has had some sort of idea of a God or Gods - does that mean that there is a god? No, it simply means that human nature causes us to seek purpose and meaning in the inherently purposeless and meaningless, and a god is often the easiest answer to these meaningless questions.

      The same phenomenon applies to many things, like the tunnel of light many people report during NDEs - this is speculated to be caused by a quirk in our eyes, perhaps the peripheral vision dying out or the macula being overexcited.
      Code:
      #include <hammer.h>
      #include <nail.h>
      
      using namespace std;
      
      int main()
      {
              Hammer hammer;
              Nail nail;
      
              nail.set();
              hammer.hit(nail);
      }
      Nicely said, TG54.

      std::

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      Quote Originally Posted by cloudWalker View Post
      But i am curious, what do you actually believe?
      My main belief is that I don't know much. Faith is pretending to know something for sure when you have no evidence in favor of it. I won't lie to myself like that.

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      ex-redhat ClouD's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      My main belief is that I don't know much. Faith is pretending to know something for sure when you have no evidence in favor of it. I won't lie to myself like that.
      I think exactly the same thing.

      Yet i also understand that everything is possible, because within our unlimited interpretation, everything literally is.

      I believe everything, yet nothing.

      Anyways... i'll stop chewing up this thread, and stay on topic.
      You merely have to change your point of view slightly, and then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light.

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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      Personally, I would just consider these ideas to be outdated. Determinism killed free will a long time ago, and there is still no reason to assume that there is such a thing as a 'deathless embodied Self".



      My main belief is that I don't know much. Faith is pretending to know something for sure when you have no evidence in favor of it. I won't lie to myself like that.

      As to the deathless Self, I need not assume, and I need no evidence. I am My own evidence. I need not convince you of anything, nor could I if I tried. self must experience Self directly. There is no other way to understand, no way to know such by any other means. It requires letting go of who and what you believe yourself to be, and that requires faith, and faith requires direction. Direction comes from within, not without. Let go of all the external "proofs" and let inner intuition guide you in all that you do. Intuition is the soft whispering voice of the Self that most rarely hear much less stop and listen to.
      You are young yet, do not close doors before you get to them. You never know where one may lead you.

      Be patient and let this topic grow without being a critic. Let those of faith post. I am looking for something to unlock some clarity. Seeing through the dirty cloudy lenses of the self obscures things. I am seeking to wipesome of the grime away with this topic..... I know I will find what it is I am looking for.

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      Quote Originally Posted by NonDualistic View Post
      As to the deathless Self, I need not assume, and I need no evidence. I am My own evidence. I need not convince you of anything, nor could I if I tried. self must experience Self directly. There is no other way to understand, no way to know such by any other means. It requires letting go of who and what you believe yourself to be, and that requires faith, and faith requires direction. Direction comes from within, not without. Let go of all the external "proofs" and let inner intuition guide you in all that you do. Intuition is the soft whispering voice of the Self that most rarely hear much less stop and listen to.
      You are young yet, do not close doors before you get to them. You never know where one may lead you.

      Be patient and let this topic grow without being a critic. Let those of faith post. I am looking for something to unlock some clarity. Seeing through the dirty cloudy lenses of the self obscures things. I am seeking to wipesome of the grime away with this topic..... I know I will find what it is I am looking for.
      ...and while you're at it, write a book about life on Neptune, and publish it as 100&#37; factual evidence to the scientific community.

      std::

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      Quote Originally Posted by NonDualistic View Post
      Let go of all the external "proofs" and let inner intuition guide you in all that you do. Intuition is the soft whispering voice of the Self that most rarely hear much less stop and listen to.
      That voice is not intuition, it is the voice of wishful thinking in response to the primal fear of death.

      We are both humans, with very similar brains. You will never be able to communicate exactly what you feel, that is true - but you can still try to make me understand your feelings.

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      Drivel's Advocate Xaqaria's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      Personally, I would just consider these ideas to be outdated. Determinism killed free will a long time ago, and there is still no reason to assume that there is such a thing as a 'deathless embodied Self".
      You do know that determinism is not in any way a fact right? Current theoretical science shows a good chance that it is false.

      The ability to happily respond to any adversity is the divine.
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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      That voice is not intuition, it is the voice of wishful thinking in response to the primal fear of death.

      We are both humans, with very similar brains. You will never be able to communicate exactly what you feel, that is true - but you can still try to make me understand your feelings.
      This is the gateway to true knowledge, leaving that gate open is what keeps one going forward towards realization of knowledge and truth. Those that shut this gate have lost the capacity to learn what is truly relavant and truly worth knowing.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Seismosaur View Post
      ...and while you're at it, write a book about life on Neptune, and publish it as 100% factual evidence to the scientific community.

      std::
      I must thank you for stopping in , for you have unwittingly and unknowingly provided some of what I have been looking for, and your short commentary has ironically tied in well with the theme of this thread.

      For starters, it has brought to light the necesity for a correction in the title of this topic. Rather than "emancipation of thought", it should read emancipation from thought.
      More specifically it is the idea of grasping at ones thoughts that one must be free from. When one is in the in the state of awareness, beyond the I sense free of consciusness and body, there are no thoughts to arise. While one is embodied where consciosness then arises from the awareness, thoughts then arise. Ignorant of our natural state of awareness we grasp at our thoughts either pulling them towards us and acting on them or pushing them away and trying to block them. The point brought to experience by this reply, demonstrated that once one is aware of this awareness, to be free of grasping at thoughts one must simply acknowledge or recognize the thought and its arising without grasping at it at all. Doing so thoughts simply arise and fall again just as waves on the surface of the ocean or temporary gusts of wind on a summer afternoon.

      This reply also touches on both the Gunas and free will. You really had no choice but to reply as you did, You were compelled to by nature and the gunas born of nature. You have no real free will of your own in regards to the body , its mind, and personality. All are products of circumstance or Gunas.Such circumstance is influence by what is called Karma. Karma and the Gunas seem to work hand in hand.
      My watered down way of looking at Karma at this moment is that such is based on the only real free will you do have, that being the decisions to move either towards non-duality or towards duality. Moving towards duality is selfishness, ignorance and delusion. Such creates karma and continues to carry one further in such direction. Moving toards Non-Duality is selflessness, more specifically towards abandoning the I sense all together. It is enlightenment and true reality Such removes Karma and carries one further in that direction.
      The circumstances of your birth, ie race, nationailty, economics, family type, etc, determine how you will see the world around you and you yourself in it. Such molds your personailty and your consciousness.Everything around you works to physically determine what you will do in every decision you make. It is the duality that makes the decisions for you. Likes/dislikes, pleasure/pain, attraction/aversion rules your embodied self. The only free choice one has is whether or not to reach outside of the physical and grasp at the non physical, faith again required herein grasping for something one has no hard evidence for. Hence the scriptures of one religion or another become the starting point of true free will.

      Enough for now. I want to hear from those who are aware, as I am still looking for more yet to be uncovered.

      Again, I thank you for your contribution, and working to keep this thread on track.

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      ex-redhat ClouD's Avatar
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      Why is trandenscential peace and knowledge, greater than material values?

      This is my confusion.
      Shattering and trading one shroud of illusion for a greater shroud... is it not the same?

      Dorothy Thompson~
      Disillusion comes only to the illusioned. One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in.
      You merely have to change your point of view slightly, and then that glass will sparkle when it reflects the light.

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      Quote Originally Posted by cloudWalker View Post
      Why is trandenscential peace and knowledge, greater than material values?

      This is my confusion.
      Shattering and trading one shroud of illusion for a greater shroud... is it not the same?

      Dorothy Thompson~
      Disillusion comes only to the illusioned. One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in.
      The duality of greater or lesser than has nothing to do with what is being looked at. It has everything to do with the non dual existing and percieving from within the dualistic. The Awareness "Seeing" and "being" through the conscious self.

      That is the threshold Herein.

      That is precisely where the confusion is unraveling for me, or is it Me? What is the difference really in the end? Only an aquired idea, only a constructed self perception it would seem.

      Seemingly a great inversion is taking place. I bear witness to this directly within and without.

      As this Ego construct fades, it grasps desperately at thoughts and feelings just as one in a capsizing ship desperately grabs onto the fixtures present to keep oneself oriented as they are used to.
      As it grasps it works to drag One into the illusion of being itself.

      Through the Gunas I can see the self, consciousness, personality, lifes circumstances and so on and so forth all as one indivisible phenomenon. In that "seeing" I find the key to letting go of the thoughts and feelings that arise, the thoughts that self so desperatly clings to.

      When this ego construct fades and "dies" for all intents and purposes, all it seems there will be left in the consciousness is Self, just as it is, just as it has always been and always will be.

      What then? .....though I cannot feign total gnorance, I cannot go there as yet while the ego construct yet persists as it will use such to further the illusion.

      Watching this unfold is quite something to experience. Patience and a persistant "letting go" is required. I am the source of My own experience it would seem.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Xaqaria View Post
      You do know that determinism is not in any way a fact right? Current theoretical science shows a good chance that it is false.
      I'm well aware of that.

      However, if indeed causal determinism is not true, then that only means that true randomness exists. This would allow for 'random will', but not for free will.

      Free will requires the ability to do something simultaneously non-random and non-predictable.

      It is a logical impossibility.

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      actually it is not. Current scientific evidence points to the fact that gravity is to blame for a seemingly solid and causal reality. Particles without gravity or with infinitesimal gravity are capable of purely random movement and spontaneous generation/destruction. Once a significant gravitational field is present however, it takes exponentionally larger quantities of energy in order to force particals in to random configurations or "superpositions." This energy requirement, however, does not pose an impossibility and it is possible that effecting the world with a free will on the small scale could cause signifigant large scale fluctuations in a causual chain of events. Also, there is nothing scientifically that says a causual chain of events has to follow a strictly forward line through time. It is theoretically possible as far as modern physics is concerned for current events to effect outcomes in the past.

      The ability to happily respond to any adversity is the divine.
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      Quote Originally Posted by Xaqaria View Post
      actually it is not. Current scientific evidence points to the fact that gravity is to blame for a seemingly solid and causal reality. Particles without gravity or with infinitesimal gravity are capable of purely random movement and spontaneous generation/destruction. Once a significant gravitational field is present however, it takes exponentionally larger quantities of energy in order to force particals in to random configurations or "superpositions." This energy requirement, however, does not pose an impossibility and it is possible that effecting the world with a free will on the small scale could cause signifigant large scale fluctuations in a causual chain of events. Also, there is nothing scientifically that says a causual chain of events has to follow a strictly forward line through time. It is theoretically possible as far as modern physics is concerned for current events to effect outcomes in the past.
      We do not know that those events are truly random - they could easily be examples of extremely complex causality which is beyond our understanding (and probably are). Even so, none of this solves the real issue - how can you make a simultaneously non-random and non-predictable decision?

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      Quote Originally Posted by thegnome54 View Post
      We do not know that those events are truly random - they could easily be examples of extremely complex causality which is beyond our understanding (and probably are). Even so, none of this solves the real issue - how can you make a simultaneously non-random and non-predictable decision?
      Easily enough; make a decision based on illogical suppositions.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Xaqaria View Post
      Easily enough; make a decision based on illogical suppositions.
      No - illogical suppositions are physical properties of your brain, and they would be part of the deterministic way of predicting your decisions.

      It doesn't matter how you think, the point is that if you follow natural law, you're predictable because of causal determinism. If true randomness exists, then you're just being random and not experiencing true free will. There is no middlegrounds in this issue - either you follow physical law and are predictable (despite the apparent lack of logic in your mental processes), or you are influenced by randomness and are just... well, random.

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      Consciousness Itself Universal Mind's Avatar
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      Randomness is impossible. Uncaused events cannot happen.

      How do you know you are not dreaming right now?

    24. #24
      Consciousness Itself Universal Mind's Avatar
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      How do you know you are not dreaming right now?

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      Quote Originally Posted by NonDualistic View Post
      The Bhagavad Gita explains what is called the 3 Gunas or three strands that bind the deathless embodied Self to the mortal body.

      For those who have already read on this subject , what are your thoughts, and how do you see these in relation to free will and the emanicaption of thoughts?
      Guna literally means 'cord', but is applied more particularly to a bowstring - representing 'tension' at various degrees. Perhaps 'tendency' is more accurate in this case, since each guna, or condition, implies a direction. Sattva, rajas, and tamas represent, respectively: conformity to the pure essence of Being (upward tendency), the urge to expand in the being's given state (horizontal tendency), and the lower states of obscurity and ignorance (downward tendency).

      There is much geometrical symbolism to be drawn from this, but I will not go into it here. There is one idea relating to the topic that I'd like to share. Sattva and tamas represent the two extreme poles of manifestation, and rajas the expansion of one of the indefinite possible degrees between them. If a vertical line is drawn between sattva and tamas, then rajas is the horizontal line completing the cross. At the center of the cross is the point that is the source and essence of all three directions, or tendencies.

      Most people only concern themselves with the horizontal direction (and only a very limited part of it, at that) - expanding one's given possibilities in the given state of their existence. But here is where you can relate this to free will and the emancipation from thoughts: since each being contains the principle essence, point, within themselves, it is possible to change one's perception from the horizontal to the vertical. This change of perspective does not come about, nor can it, by physical causes since the physical world is a limited state that does not have influence on things outside of its given limitations. Because this change implies a transcendence of the horizontal, it must have its root in something outside of the present state of the being. And since thoughts are expansions of a being in a limited state, they have no value to something that is 'beyond' that state. For how could you express the pure essence of Being except by experiencing it - 'becoming' it ?
      ars sine scientia nihil

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