/lit/ - Literature

>>16084455
Avidya and Maya are generated in the dream of Brahman, this is just an analogy, don't take the analogy too far in a physical sense for you will miss the truth on the inseparable nature of Brahman and what Brahman does. Like two sides of one silver coin, totality is one but never its distinctions of difference.

>>16084506
Can you explain further?

>>16084455
Who gives a fuck

>>16084518
From the procession of the one via avidya to the return of the one via vidya, both affirms that/Brahman, as inseparable from the True Self/Atman which is not the maya generated through avidya in the 'dream' the objects of desire to become something any other than the one is "paradoxically" superficially contradictory since it is the one that becomes other without losing its divinity, so what the one does is not what the one is although nothing can arise without the one, there's no self perpetuating paradox or cycle allowed at the absolute level but there are lesser cycles perpetuated by the one, the one cannot negate itself into becoming, all of existence is from the overflowing abundance of the one.

Fuck shankarafag, fuck damascius/gersonfag, fuck nagarjunafag, fuck guenonfags

>>16084455
>So, within Advaita, if Atman and Brahman are one, how does individual experience arise?
The individual experience of Jivas never arises from its previous non-existence but is beginningless as it is derived from or contingent on Brahman's power of maya which is itself beginningless because it belongs to Brahman who is beginningless and uncreated. The Brahma Sutras in 2.1.34 affirms that the soul is beginningless and uncreated. The idea of an eternal and beginningless cycle of a series of universes being manifested and then withdrawn by God is alluded to as early as the Ṛigveda-saṃhitā in verse 10.190.3 where it says ‘The creator fashioned the sun and the moon as he did before’. The innermost consciousness and unchanging sentient presence illuminating the Jiva is Itself the beginningless consciousness of Brahman refracted as it were through the power of maya into the hearts of multitudes of contingent beings, the Atman is without a mind or organs while the Jiva has something called a 'subtle body' which includes the mind that is the thing which actually engages actions and which is affected by the world.

The Atman is always liberated, it doesn't enter into bondage or become freed from it. When the Jiva is liberated, in a way it 'awakens' to the fact that it has always been that very liberated Awareness, that in their whole beginningless existence as Jivas the whole time there was an unbound luminescent sorrowless Sentience which was the basis of and which had permeated every aspect of their previous conscious experience but which they had never recognized before until liberation.

>>16085504
>Why isn't everything experienced at once?
Because the power of maya causes there to be the beginningless existence of multiple individual souls, or Jivas, there is also the term Jivatman which refers to the Jiva and the Atman which illuminates and observes it. The Atman observing that Jiva is the same non-dual liberated Conciousness in all Jivas, the sense of individuality and multiplicity inheres in that Jiva and is not true of the Atman. A lot of these sorts of questions have to do with the relationships between the Supreme Self and the mind, subtle body, thoughts etc, these are explained in the Advaita literature like Shankara's works.

"Conceive that the “field” is the round or circus of the world, that the throne of the Spectator, the Universal Man, is central and elevated, and that his aquiline glance at all times embraces the whole of the field (equally before and after the enactment of any particular event) in such a manner that from his point of view all events are always going on. We are to transfer our consciousness of being, from our position in the field where the games are going on, to the pavilion in which the Spectator, on whom the whole performance depends, is seated at ease.

Conceive that the right lines of vision by which the Spectator is linked to each separated performer, and along which each performer might look upward (inward) to the Spectator if only his powers of vision sufficed, are lines of force, or the strings by which the puppet-master moves the puppets for himself (who is the whole audience). Each of the performing puppets is convinced of its own independent existence and of itself as one amongst others, which it sees in its own immediate environment and which it distinguishes by name, appearance, and behavior.

The Spectator does not, and cannot, see the performers as they see themselves, imperfectly, but he knows the being of each one of them as it really is—that is to say, not merely as effective in a given local position, but simultaneously at every point along the line of visual force by which the puppet is connected with himself, and primarily at that point at which all lines converge and where the being of all things coincides with being in itself. There the being of the puppet subsists as an eternal reason in the eternal intellect—otherwise called the Supernal Sun, the Light of lights, Spirit and Truth."

- 'Vedanta and the Western Tradition', Ananda Coomaraswamy

>>16084526
fuck off lowly material slave animal bitch

>>16085554
>I find the Pali Canon to be a chore to read, repetitive, pedantic and uninspiring
holy based...

>>16084705
Yes yes, very good, HOWEVER.
What worth is anything in a vacuum? What purpose is there in having anything that can't be shared? What existence is mere existence? Why did the soul look away? Who established this curiosity to seek something else? Who established change for to soul to establish time? Is Brahman evil? Why else would he produce something bad? If it isn'tm how and why is there a different mode of being with the sole purpose to escape it if you enter it? Why let be a world to be avoided?
Advaita leads to Gnosticism.

Change is Life and God is Life. The Picture in OP is a symbol for the Hermes in all of us, to descend into darkness, into the indefinite, into the cave, and illuminate it, enliven it. Bringing Order, Beauty, with Form. To be a guiding star for the lost younger and redemptive souls. The Good is the sun of Heaven, not Heaven.

>>16087537
I want to be like you Platonicanon. Please let me go into homelessness and become your disciple.

>>16087537
For the sake of clarity, our account has often used the example of many lines drawn from one centre in order to illustrate the concept of a generated plurality. But one should preserve the characteristic of the things said to have come to be many from ‘being all together’, just as in the circle, too, it is not possible to grasp the lines as being separated off. For it is one plane. But where there is no interval in one plane, and instead powers and substances without intervals, then it is appropriate to say that, due to their centres, they are all Unified together in one centre, as though their limits produced lines which, when they are at the centre, are actually then all one.
Again, if you add the lines which touch the centres themselves, which each of them left, then they are nonetheless each a centre, which is not cut off from the one first centre; each is then together with that centre, and there are as many centres as there are lines for which they provide the limits, and the centres appear to be as many as the lines they touch, and yet they are all together one. If, then, we liken all the intelligibles to the many centres, leading back to the one centre where they are Unified, they appear many through the lines, not because the lines have produced them, but because they reveal them. In the present case, the lines serve our need by providing us with an analogue for those things which by contact with the intelligible nature appear to be many and to be present in many places.

§6.5.6. For although intelligibles are many, they are one, and although they are one, they are many through their unlimited nature, and many in one and one over many, and all together. They are active in respect of the whole with the whole, and are active towards the partal so with the whole. The part receives into itself the result of the first act as of a part, and the whole follows. It is as if Human Being, going to a human being, becomes a human being, while still being Human Being. The human being, then, when embodied in matter, and coming from the one ideal Human Being, produces many human beings themselves. The identical thing is one in many in such a way that one thing itself is in a way stamped on many things.

Dionysus, the Divine Child, Nefertem, Ra-Horathky; in the beginning of eternity when all has been remade new, One. Reclined upon the Throne, with nothing ahead and nothing behind him, only formlessness; an instant, one moment, the glimpse of innocence, a child's curiosity, a boredom to dream; so he peers into the Night and beholds himself, another: A Seed, a Child, a Man, Father, a Brother, a Friend.

>>16087578

>>16087686
You seem to know your stuff. Did the Neoplatonist ever take part in rituals? Did they go to the temples? Did they sacrifice to the gods? Or did they all think these things were for the plebs and kept themselves in their academies?

>>16087747
The contemplation of Plotinus is the highest form of Theurgy. While it is the most preferable 'experience' and prayer, it's the most difficult. 'Doing virtue' is itself prayer also, Damascius disparaged monks in their high towers, who think a life of inactivity is virtuous (thus shit-talking a trend so prevalent in the east).
They also thought that writing exegesis on reality/the gods/nature/truth/wisdom, etc, is itself a form of prayer; perhaps the highest form of veneration one can do.
Iamblichus "re-introduced" the importance of 'the mysteries', aka Theurgy, which weren't really emphasized by Plotinus and was de-emphasized by Porphyry.

>Did the Neoplatonist ever take part in rituals? Did they go to the temples? Did they sacrifice to the gods?
the short answer is yes, Marinus wrote this about Proclus:

Every month he sanctified himself according to the rites devoted to the Mother of the Gods [Cybele] by the Romans, and before them by the Phrygians; he observed the holy days observed among the Egyptians even more strictly than did they themselves; and especially he fasted on certain days, quite openly. During the first day of the lunar month he remained without food, without even having eaten the night before; and he likewise celebrated the New Moon in great solemnity, and with much sanctity. He regularly observed the great festivals of all peoples, so to speak, and the religious ceremonies peculiar to each people or country.
Nor did he, like so many others, make this the pretext of a distraction, or of a debauch of food, but on the contrary they were occasions of prayer meetings that lasted all night, without sleep, with songs, hymns and similar devotions. Of this we see the proof in the composition of his hymns, which contain homage and praises not only of the gods adored among the Greeks, but where you also see worship of the god Marnas of Gaza, Asklepius Leontuchus of Ascalon, Thyandrites who is much worshipped among the Arabs, the Isis who has a temple at Philae, and indeed all other divinities. It was a phrase he much used, and that was very familiar to him, that a philosopher should watch over the salvation of not only a city, nor over the national customs of a few people, but that he should be the hierophant of the whole world in common.

Plato did after all pray to Pan in Phaedrus, and Socrates last words was to remind his friend
>As his belly was getting cold Socrates uncovered his head—he had covered it—and said—these were his last words—“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.”—“It shall be done,” said Crito, “tell us if there is anything else.” But there was no answer.

>>16087870
Thanks friend. Exactly what I was looking for.

>>16087537
The sun is invisible but it is not a shadow nor is it what it illuminates. Everything is light, even matter is light given form, but matter is a mere modality of magnitude. You cannot see the invisible sun but you can see it through wisdom knows thyself united and whole in one and all in one regardless of the state, but wisdom must be actualized first which is only done while alive in this corporeal world, for the potential for enlightenment is not the fulfilment of enlightenment. Understanding comes first, expressing finite explanations of that which cannot be spoken comes secondarily but the salvation of the soul is not dependent upon how many other people they have saved, rather, it is done in generosity, not in charity, in abundance in doing what is good, not merely doing without knowing what is good. The self sacrifice to know thyself is to unknow all that is not the self to come to know all that is the true self is a task done by the fragmented soul to know thine higher/truer hypostases and so master both the noetic and aisthetic in understanding the eidetic logos actualizes harmony even in the mortal excess that is merely the nature of the One and its hollow image as rhea, but go ahead and pretend to claim you know that I don't know when I know that you have deluded yourself in the opinion that you cannot know thyself, I shall ignore those who ignore their ignorance for some fools cannot grasp that this knowledge of wisdom cannot be directly shared when one must know for themselves. Any mimetic illusion of knowledge can be directly shared like a literal transliteration but relying on such leads to eisegetical heresy that lacks the metaphysical translation behind the medium of communication which will always fall short although it is a tool for a means to help others build their own toolkit to the same ultimate purpose while alive before agnosis perpetuates suffering after death again and again which the end to the suffering is to realize you are in the dream before you wake up from the aisthetic realm into the noetic, guided by the absolute wisdom to not seek becoming of corporeal being gains true immortality from the limitless cycle of agnosis which has no end in and of itself yet is limited through gnosis attains absolute selfhood without distinctions of that which is equally one in unity as the eidetic, hylic, mimetic trinity without grasping at the shadows.

>>16088001
you and so many forget the ages
We are meant to bring all the seria/spheres into unity, to herald the next golden age, from the disunity that we as narcissistic souls have brought into the world. Ignorance in body isn't inherent to matter but our misuse of body which corrupts it, even in heaven will we have bodies (chariots of the gods). Transcendence is not to burn away the strata of the soul but to restore the proper hierarchy of it, to rule the passions not erase them.
>to unknow all that is not the self
These do not exist, everything that is has its proper place in Being, "everything" is only in its wrong place now not forever.
Odin self-sacrifice begat the forms and correct plurality not their end, before sounds/phonems had no meaning, were random, the self-sacrifice literally brings "grammar" into being.
They tell is to shut our inner eye in order to not see difference not to deny difference and plurality and erase it, to deny them is to affirm them.
The Egg holds multiplicity within (as Power). White is not the dissolution of color but their unity. This is the difference between Matter and the One, "no color" and NO color, non-being and beyond being.
The One is not just the undivided singular light but also the Prism that divides and he is the multifarious millions. "Who makes himself into millions." These three 'Moments' as Damascius says, are not each-other yet each is the One completely.
This ignorance of all things is how you reach the One, but this is not enough, you have to deny even the One, and the denial of the denial of the All and the One. For the Ineffable is One and All and Nothing.

The Dream is reality, every mode is a dream. Child's play. The soul's essence is Change, the in-betweener of Rest and Change, to hold both in each hand.

>>16088144
>>16088001