Sundar

Indeed, we never meet the same river twice. Everytime I have read this analogy I wonder why people don't get the dynamics of flow and change in life from such a powerful and simple law.

"when we connect , do we connect to images created out of our mind associations or do we connect to people?" That's a very good question and I am going to be looking out for this over the next few days in my interactions with people. If I were to try and guess, I know the answer would be the mind associations.

Sunder, Jasjit,

The game of life is such a wonderful thing that at times all our philosophies seem to turn on their head.

Just as at our cultural level first it was accepted that God created everything. Then came Darwin with his philosophy of evolution and changed our thinking on its head. Now there is coming what is called design which again is going to turn Drawinism on its head.

Similarly, excuse me if what I say below may seem to be going just the opposite to what you are saying.

You have said above:'Isn't life all about relationships?'

I would say no. We begin from One (or even from childhood)where there are no relationships, then as we grow we begin to get into relationships, then we begin to suffer because of them, because every relationship is really a bondage, every so-called love is really tinged with an equal amount of hate in it, and consequently we again begin to go beyond all relationships. In fact it is also our whole evolutionary goal.

Jung calls it our reaching the stage of individuation. We have now become complete individuals, authentic human beings.

I think until we first reach this stage of individuation, in which we are standing on our own physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual feet and not in relation with any other in which case we are really dependant on another may be physically, may be emtionally, intellectually or spiritually, we really cannot address each others biological needs/desires without in some way an element of exploitation coming into it. We can deceive all the world but finally we cannot deceive ourselves.

So it is only in our being complete individuals as above that we can really address each other's needs without any trace of deception/abuse/subtle-abuse involved. We are very clear that we have no relationship, we are totally free, we will not even have to speak inanities like 'I love you' or 'I am doing this in love' or whatever. We are meeting each other in total knowledge and acceptance of the fact that we are meeting for addressing each others needs. No subterfuges.

We will not be in what I call usual love and which is tinged with an equal amount of hate, but if one can understand it we will be what I call Love with capital L. Our usual love is the recognition of our identical souls within our bodies and then through sex we in fact try to reach those souls. But in that case in come our egos and so in comes an equal amount of hate in the process.

Now what happens in the case of Love as I am discussing above is that as we have already gone beyond our egos we have really spread in our whole bodies and now in meeting we are not really trying to reach any soul but just trying to touch the whole body with the whole other body.

It is a stage where total love which I call Love and non-love seem to be on the same dividing line. It is like a stage where total knowledge and no knowledge in the case of knowledge are on at the same dividng line. Yet it is the line on which people like Socrates and LaoTze stood in the case of knowledge. I am refering to Socrates saying that he knows only that he knows nothing. Can anybody imagine that Socrates knw nothing? Similraly depedning upon the person I think it will be the stage of total Love in the case of our aboce discussion. One may eventually even develop a bondage even in such cases but it will then be to what I call bondage in freedom and fredom in bondage. One cannot go beyond it in trying to satisfy one's biologial needs.

Sunder I suspect perhaps you have also tried to say the same thing in a slightly different way, is it? In that case I am sorry.

I hope I have made some sense lol. Happy NEw Year 2006!!

Harb, no need to be sorry about anything...it is perfectly ok if we may see things differently...truths , in my opinion , have to be our truths...personally authenticated..i respect your views from your platforms of emergence...i do not claim absoluteness to what i share...they are contextual to a universe as seen by me...i see the universe as a manifest in infinite possibilities, centred in each one of us...i also have encountered domains in consciousness where so called paradoxical concepts emerge and rest in peace..everything is but a concept...until we merge in the oneness of being...Thank you for your sharing...

just to add, maybe we are saying the same things , albeit in different ways..LOL...
Cheers to a gr8 new year...

Harb,

Very well said. "I think until we first reach this stage of individuation, in which we are standing on our own physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual feet and not in relation with any other in which case we are really dependant on another may be physically, may be emtionally, intellectually or spiritually, we really cannot address each others biological needs/desires without in some way an element of exploitation coming into it. We can deceive all the world but finally we cannot deceive ourselves".

Personally I have seen many people on the path of self realisation who begin to take the spiritual concept of 'relating' and begin to project the same unmet needs/desires through it. More dangerous, in my opinion, is this kind of subterfuge/denial/distortion.

just to clarify my perceptions in the light of the comments, my emphasis is more on love as i perceive it...i do not identify with the tendency of it being person or activity specific, which i observe to be the norm more often than not...i perceive love as an underlying state of being like a river in flow...my intention in presenting a radical eg was to drive home this perspective..i do make a distinvction between "love" and "like" .. Thus one may "like" sharing spaces of any kind with certain people, but love is more intrinsic to our very being..and so is awareness...
i do not see any fundamntal dissonance in the points of view..
tx for ur feedbacks...

Anusheh, exactly, that is it. I say why not be plain honest. To me, it should be the way of the real masters of life, it will be the real celebration of the highest of life.

I think it was what was really depicted in the caves of khajurahos in the days of the highest understanding of sexuality.

Harb

Harb

Couldn't have said it better. Unless individuation is experienced (and it cannot be first understood it must be only known, for the ego fuelled mind cannot even concieve what this state of self-referral is) love/like/relating etc are just new words with old patterns. How can it be otherwise? Unless the needing, projecting, incomplete self is seen in its entirety how can it not be devising some new antic for self engagement.

"It is a stage where total love, what I call love and non-love, seem to be on the same dividing line." Perfect articulation of the stage of autonomy or individuation where all is a reflection of one self.

Sundar
I think Harb is saying something different from you and yet very powerful. You see I believe that the categories of love/like are illusory and mere projections of one's many subtle selves (unresolved still needy). At the point of individuation you are the play. All is relevant, lovable and yet indiscriminately irrelevant too.

Hope this is not too turgid etc and that too on the first day of the Year!!!! Can't imagine what the rest of it is going to be like.

Jasjit,

Thank you, I think there is going to be no problem when such understanding individualities like you and Anusheh are here. Your each word is soaked in established wisdom and obviously born out of experiences followed by long times of conscious realization of what was first received in flashes thanks to those experiences.

And more so because Sunder too seems to me to be trying to convey the same things from the heart, the difference seems to be only in putting them into words. It is also possible that he yet needs to go a little further but even this will not be a problem because he has also learned everything through experiences and in the hard way and so will not be taking it long.

May be we all are here to walk those few miles which may yet be remaning in some way on that long road to complete mastery. Well met, cheers! The new years will not be allowed to be otherwise.

Harb

tx for your feedbacks again...as i have already mentioned, i respect perspectives and points of views as they occur(and this includes mine)...i do see them as being contextual and inabsolute in that sense...it is also possible we may not tune in to some...in my opinion,realization is not a matter of certification or attestation in some vertical scale of reference; we are all learners and teachers to each other; personal convictions wherever and whenever they occur have their own energies of intent in personal spaces as they expand...it is intensely and uniquely personal...and needless to add, they are snapshots in moments of time, as and when they occur...so should perspectives differ, i am comfortable agreeing to disagree...with no disrespect intended...in all our spaces , our truths are eternally evolving and our learnings would happen as we need them...
and as i have read in a sufi text...
'WHAT is good for one may be very bad for another. For one, it may be very good to be a nun or sit all day in a church or a mosque, but for another it may be needed to go to the cafe and learn the meanings of the experiences gained there.'
Pir Inayat Khan.
Winning arguments or bringing people over to my point of view is not what i seek...it would not help my evolution in any form or dissolve my miseries, if any...in this context, I am reminded of a quote attributed to the Buddha on paralyzing positionalities..I read it in works of Jonathan Cainer....
'(In a controversy)......The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth and have begun striving for ourselves.'

integral acceptance of where one is , to me qualifies as sacred space...what i share are realizations that have helped me in my journey so far even as it continues...sharings are purely in that context...i do not intend to challenge perspectives that maybe different from mine, because i honestly see the possibility of different and paradoxical perspectives co-existing..whichever way a river turns, it finally wends its way to the ocean...the approaches are many...
tx again..no offence ever intended to anyone...and none taken...