cause of suffering and why we exist another view! at Near Death Experiences Support Forum (NDE)

U • ni • verse (yoo’ ne vurs):
One song; the totality of all the things that exist.

According to Vedanta, there are only five reasons why humans suffer. The first is not knowing who we are. The second is identifying with our ego or self-image. The third is clinging to that which is transient and unreal. The fourth is recoiling in fear of that which is transient and unreal. And the fifth is the fear of death.

Vedanta also says that the five causes of suffering are all contained in the first cause — not knowing who we are. If we can answer this one basic question, Who am I? we may find the answer to all other related questions like, Where did I come from? What is the meaning and purpose of my life? Where do I go when I die?

Now, if someone were to ask, ‟Who are you?” your response would probably be “Oh, my name is so-and-so. I’m an American, or I am Japanese, or I am the president of this company. All these answers refer to your self-image or to an object outside your self: a name, a place, a circumstance. This process of identifying with your self-image or the objects of your experience is called object referral.

You may also identify with your body and say ‟This is my body. This bag of flesh and bones is who I am.” But then the question is, What is the body, and why call it yours? The body that you call yours, is really the raw material of the universe: recycled earth, water, and air. But so is the tree outside your window. Why call the body yours when you do not call the stars, the moon, or the tree outside your window yours? Of course your body seems nearer to you, but this assumes that you know where the “I am” that you think you are is physically located.

Many people somehow feel that the “I” they call themselves, the skin-encapsulated awareness, is located somewhere in their head. Other people think it’s located somewhere behind the heart or solar plexus. But no scientific experiment has ever found a center of awareness in any one location in space or time.

An interesting insight that comes to us from both Vedic Science and the Jewish Kabbalah is that the center of our awareness is the center of all space and time. It is at once everywhere and nowhere. But let’s assume for a moment that indeed your awareness is located where you are physically sitting. If this universe has infinite dimensions - and physicists assure us that it does - then infinity extends in all directions from where you are.

You are in the center of the universe, but so am I because infinity extends in all directions from where I am. Infinity also extends in all directions from a peasant in China, a dog in Siberia, and a tree in Africa. The truth is, I am here, but I am also everywhere else because here is there from every other point in space. You are there, but you are also everywhere else because there is everywhere, or nowhere specifically.

In other words, location in space is a matter of perception. When we say the moon is near, the sun is far, that’s only true from one vantage point. In reality, there is no up or down, north or south, east or west, here or there. These are only points of reference for our convenience. Everything in the cosmos is non-local, meaning we can’t confine it to here, there, or anywhere. But my eyes tell me this is not the case. I am here, you are there, wherever you are. So maybe we should not trust our senses that much. My eyes tell me that the Earth is flat, but nobody believes that anymore. Sensory experience tells me that the ground I am standing on is stationary, but I know from science that the earth is spinning on its axis and hurtling through outer space at thousands of miles an hour. Sensory experience tells me that the objects of my perception are solid, but that’s not true either. We know they are made up of atoms, which in turn are particles that whirl around huge empty spaces. These are all superstitions that I’ve developed because I’ve learned to trust my senses.

The universe is actually a chaos of energy soup, and we ingest this soup through our five senses, and then convert it into a material reality in our consciousness. Our senses transform massless energy into form and solidity, texture and color, fragrance and taste, sound and vibration. And our interpretation of that energy soup structures our reality and creates our perceptual experience. Most of the time we do this unconsciously as a result of social conditioning. Scientists have called this the hypnosis of social conditioning. I call it the superstition of materialism.

The superstition of materialism relies on sensory experience as the crucial test of reality. In this world-view, reality is what we can see with our eyes, what we can touch with our hands, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our mouth, or touch with or hands. If energy or information is not available to our senses, we tend to think it isn’t there. And the intellect, with its linguistically structured system of logic, serves to justify this mistaken perception of reality.

Sensory experience is totally illusory; it’s as transient as a fantasy or a dream. Is there really such a thing as the color red? Every color you see is a particular wavelength of light, and the light you can actually detect is a fraction of what exists. How long can you cling to a world of illusion? You may think you are the body that your senses can locate in space and time, but the body is a field of invisible vibrations that has no boundaries in space and time.

So maybe you are not the image you identify with, and maybe you are not the body. Then at least you must be your thoughts and feelings. But who can honestly claim to know where thoughts and feelings come from? Where do thoughts come from, and where do they disappear?

If you can’t claim exclusivity over the objects of your experience, your body, or even your thoughts and feelings, then what can you call your own? And here the knowledge of Vedanta saves us. If we replace the word exclusive with the word inclusive then you are not just these objects, you are not just this body, you are not just these thoughts and feelings. You are all things, you are all bodies, you are all thoughts and feelings. You are a field of all possibilities.

The essential you, your real essence, is a field of awareness that interacts with its own self and then becomes both mind and body. In other words, you are consciousness or spirit, which then conceives, constructs, governs, and becomes the mind and the body. The real you is inseparable from the patterns of intelligence that permeate every fiber of creation.

At the deepest level of existence, you are Being, and you are nowhere and everywhere at the same time. There is no other “you” than the entire cosmos. The cosmic mind creates the physical universe, and the personal mind experiences the physical universe. But in truth, the cosmic mind and the personal mind are both permeated by infinite consciousness. Infinite consciousness is our source, and all manifestation is inherent within it.

Infinite consciousness observing itself creates the notion of observer, or the soul; the process of observation, or the mind; and that which is observed, or the body and the world. The observer and the observed create relationships between themselves; this is space. The movement of these relationships creates events; this is time. But all these are none other than the infinite consciousness itself.

In other words, we are infinite consciousness with a localized point of view. And yet our whole system of thought divides the observer from the observed; it divides the infinite consciousness into a world of objects separated by space and time. The intellect imprisons us in a cage of fictitious images, a suffocating web of space, time, and causation. As a result, we lose touch with the true nature of our reality, which is powerful, boundless, immortal, and free.

We are all prisoners of the intellect. And the intellect’s mistake in one simple sentence is this: It mistakes the image of reality for reality itself. It squeezes the soul into the volume of a body, in the span of a lifetime, and now the spell of mortality is cast. The image of the self overshadows the unbounded Self, and we feel cut off or disconnected from infinite consciousness, our source.

This is the beginning of fear, the onset of suffering, and all the problems of humanity from our minor insecurities to our major catastrophes like war, terrorism, and all other acts of human degradation. To one who is trapped in the prison of the intellect, all indeed is suffering. But the cause of the suffering can and should be averted. Ignorance of our real nature causes the inner self to be obscured. But when ignorance is destroyed, the powerful, unbounded, free nature of the self is revealed.

At first this may sound strange and abstract, but as you bear with this notion and understand it, you realize the most dramatic discovery: The real you is nonmaterial and therefore not subject to the limitations of space, time, matter, and causation. The soul, the spirit, the essential you, is beyond all that. In this very moment, you are surrounded by a pure consciousness. Pure consciousness illuminates and animates your mind and body, and it is powerful, nourishing, invincible, unbounded, and free. Pure consciousness, the eternal spirit, animates everything in existence, which means it is omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (present in all locations simultaneously), and omnipotent (all powerful).

Now, if you don’t fully comprehend that, don’t worry about it. In the following articles, we will take a closer look at the different expressions of the spirit, the inner self, the source of all that is. As you read these pages, you will get a better understanding of who you really are.

Once you have fully grasped this understanding, your life will be established in joy. Not only will you have the power to accomplish all that you want, but you will have true freedom and grace. This means you will never experience fear, not even the fear of death.

Key points:

• • You are a field of awareness; your essence is pure consciousness, or spirit, which becomes both the mind and the body.

• • The intellect mistakes the image of reality for reality itself, and this image overshadows the real you.

• • When you identify with your real essence, you escape the prison of the intellect, and enter the world of the infinite, unbounded and free