Saturday, 16 May 2020

What if fundemental reality is malevolent?

It's the case that many spiritual practices seak union, not-two, being itself, an integration with the eternal now, to find out, as in Zen, "who you were before your parents were born". Modern nondual teachers say things like "come to rest in presence/being".

I am reading Logitti's Conspiracy Against the Human race, where he makes a case for pessimism - i.e. the fundamental thread of all existence is one of destruction and misery - creation, yes, but mainly detoriation and destruction (universe will run itself out, into the ground, all human progress is moving chairs around on the titanic, etc, etc".) Deterioration and destruction are of course human subjective constructs, but that doesn't matter - the sun is still the sun, no matter what we call it. He says death is truly the only liberation. Not a case for a suicide, but a case for knowing through life that it is truly the only real liberation. He draws on many nondual thinkers, Buddhist and western. Fascinating reading.

So the issue arouse for me whilst reading the book was that in spiritual practices there is a presuppostion that "being", "reality", the "now", is fundemntally good or, at the least, neutral. That it is a place of peace and regeneration, of liberation itself. But is it? What if the now, or being, is not actually neutral or a form of glorious monism, but is a force of destruction, ill-will as outlined by the fact that all will eventually die, probably in painful circumstances?

So when we "come to rest in awareness/being/the void" etc, how do we know that what we are resting in is actually something benevolent?



Submitted May 16, 2020 at 03:07PM by millwallmatters https://ift.tt/2LxeUvR

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