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The thing is, there isn't really an individual self to possess free will. The appearance of a separate self is an illusion created in the mind.

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Originally posted by Phil:
The deeper we go, the closer we come to that Ground of Being where we receive our life and existence from God.

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Allusions to the awareness that just "is" and is "always present," even in sleep (though it is present to "nothing" at such time) need not be understood as a kind of experience of God.

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2. What is awareness?
Who knows!
Perhaps it is . . .
the light of the soul.
God.
the True Self.
Who knows!
What awareness is cannot be defined.
That awareness is cannot be denied.

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Originally posted by Phil:
Derek, we have a thread going on non-reflecting attention. You had some good contributions to it.

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Originally posted by Phil:
My main point, here, is that if we can account for an experience in terms of the potential of our human consciousness, we should not attribute it to any special mystical grace.

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Originally posted by Phil:
When one's center of presence shifts from the Egoic center to the more spacious Self in its non-reflecting (i.e., witnessing) aspect, it can seem as though some whole new mystical experience is being realized.

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Originally posted by Phil: My main point, here, is that if we can account for an experience in terms of the potential of our human consciousness, we should not attribute it to any special mystical grace. When one's center of presence shifts from the Egoic center to the more spacious Self in its non-reflecting (i.e., witnessing) aspect, it can seem as though some whole new mystical experience is being realized. It may well be that contemplative graces are involved, but we need not speak of God when noting that awareness is always "there," even in sleep, that we have a new, direct experience of ourselves and creation, that the self we thought we were in an earlier construct of Ego now seems to be an illusion, and so forth.

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It often seems to me that enlightenment experiences often engender - not only truly holy end-products , like compassion & deep consolations as well as some very practically efficacious by-products, like angst-free existential outlooks, but also - some metaphysical waste-products, like certain philosophy of mind positions. The leap from a phenomenal experience of unitary being to a metaphysical description of consciousness, itself, is nothing short of fantastic (etymology = fantasy). It is as if, alongside space, time, mass and energy, a new primitive is given, consciousness, when all the empirical evidence suggests that consciousness clearly emerged from those realities and not vice versa. It is as if, after finally exorcising the ghost from inside the dualistic Cartesian machine and realizing that there are no homunculi taking up residence in each human mind, some have posited a singular absolute homunculus, Who, as the One, gazes out of its own manifesting plurality of the Many at reality, often curiously forgetting Who s/he is and therefore grounding all things soteriological in anamnesis (not forgetting or remembering or ridding oneself of delusion and illusion).

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Missing from Chopra, too, is an accounting for the existence of evil. Like other Easterners, he speaks often of attachments, mistaken identity, illusions, etc. All fine and well, nevertheless one must ask why ultimate intelligence extending itself into the universe has become so confused about its identity, and why it has attached itself to its own projections? This is always the undoing of monism, imo; I don't think the contradiction here can be overcome with even the most clever of sophistries. And even if one were to succeed, one would still be left wondering why we should have any confidence that such an intelligence -- which so badly confused itself in the first place -- can extricate itself from its confusion using even Dr. Chopra's books for guidance. How liberating would it really be, after all is said and done, to detach from one's delusions, only to realize that the "field" was the confused agent to begin with?

None of this occurs to Chopra, however, or if it does, he's not much bothered by it. No doubt, he would sneer at the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation as (ontological) "dualism" (which it is, and happily so). Yet only such "dualism" adequately establishes creation as "real being" with God as its Creator, the One to Whom we are to give an accounting for our lives, and the One who is all-good and not confused about anything. And only Christianity adequately accounts for how creatures come to share in the divine nature itself without resorting to monism, but through Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection and the gift of the Spirit. Yes, that "dead white male in the sky" Roll Eyes is the One who makes that possible, and who even graces the good that Chopra does.

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We need neither a super/natural distinction nor a nature/grace distinction to affirm the Spirit's activity in all creation, nor do we need the suspension of so-called natural laws for divine interventions, because those laws are probabilistic and not metaphysically necessary, allowing great latitude for all sorts of anomalies and extraordinary phenomena. Such distinctions may be applied, if that's anyone's theological shtick.

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PATHWAYS: Why does Spirit bother to manifest at all, especially when that manifestation is necessarily painful and requires that It become amnesiac to Its true identity It become amnesiac to Its true identity? Why does God incarnate?

Ken Wilber: Oh, I see you’re starting with the easy questions. Well, I’ll give you a few theoretical answers that have been offered over the years, and then I’ll give you my personal experience, such as it is.

I have actually asked this same question of several spiritual teachers, and one of them gave a quick, classic answer: “It’s no fun having dinner alone.”

That’s sort of flip or flippant, I suppose, but the more you think about it, the more it starts to make sense. What if, just for the fun of it, we pretend—you and I blasphemously pretend, just for a moment—that we are Spirit, that Tat Tvam Asi? Why would you, if you were God Almighty, why would you manifest a world? A world that, as you say, is necessarily one of separation and turmoil and pain? Why would you, as the One, ever give rise to the Many?

PATHWAYS: It’s no fun having dinner alone?

KW: Doesn’t that start to make sense? Here you are, the One and Only, the Alone and the Infinite. What are you going to do next? You bathe in your own glory for all eternity, you bask in your own delight for ages upon ages, and then what? Sooner or later, you might decide that it would be fun—just fun— to pretend that you were not you . I mean, what else are you going to do? What else can you do?

PATHWAYS: Manifest a world.

KW: Don’t you think? But then it starts to get interesting. When I was a child, I used to try to play checkers with myself. You ever tried that?

PATHWAYS: Yes, I remember doing something like that.

KW: Does it work?

PATHWAYS: Not exactly, because I always knew what my “opponent’s” move was going to be. I was playing both sides, so I couldn’t “surprise” myself. I always knew what I was going to do on both sides, so it wasn’t much of a game. You need somebody “else” to play the game.

KW: Yes, exactly, that’s the problem. You need an “other”. So if you are the only Being in all existence, and you want to play—you want to play any sort of game— you have to take the role of the other, and then forget that you are playing both sides . Otherwise the game is no fun, as you say. You have to pretend you are the other player with such conviction that you forget that you are playing all the roles. If you don’t forget, then you got no game, it’s just no fun.

PATHWAYS: So if you want to play—I think the Eastern term is lila—then you have to forget who you are. Amnesis.

KW: Yes, I think so. And that is exactly the core of the answer given by the mystics the world over. If you are the One, and—out of sheer exuberance, plenitude, superabundance—you want to play, to rejoice, to have fun, then you must first, manifest the Many, and then second, forget it is you who are the Many. Otherwise, no game. Manifestation, incarnation, is the great Game of the One playing at being the Many, for the sheer sport and fun of it.

PATHWAYS: But it’s not always fun.

KW: Well, yes and no. The manifest world is a world of opposites—of pleasure versus pain, up versus down, good versus evil, subject versus object, light versus shadow. But if you are going to play the great cosmic Game, that is what you yourself set into motion. How else can you do it? If there are no parts and no players and no suffering and no Many, then you simply remain as the One and Only, Alone and Aloof. But it’s no fun having dinner alone.

PATHWAYS: So to start the game of manifestation is to start the world of suffering.

KW: It starts to look like that, doesn’t it? And the mystics seem to agree. But there is a way out of that suffering, a way to be free of the opposites, and that involves the overwhelming and direct realization that Spirit is not good versus evil, or pleasure versus pain, or light versus dark, or life versus death, or whole versus part, or holistic versus analytic. Spirit is the great Player that gives rise to all those opposites equally—“I the Lord make the Light to fall on the good and the bad alike; I the Lord do all these things” [MM note: I think Wilber is conflating Isaiah 45:7 with Matthew 5:43-48 - but his point still stands.] —and the mystics the world over agree. Spirit is not the good half of the opposites, but the ground of all the opposites, and our “salvation,” as it were, is not to find the good half of the dualism but to find the Source of both halves of the dualism, for that is what we are in truth. We are both sides in the great Game of Life, because we—you and I, in the deepest recesses of our very Self—have created both of these opposites in order to have a grand game of cosmic checkers.

That, anyway, is the “theoretical” answer that the mystics almost always give. “Nonduality” means, as the Upanishads put it, “to be freed of the pairs.” That is, the great liberation consists in being freed of the pairs of opposites, freed of duality—and finding instead the nondual One Taste that gives rise to both. This is liberation because we cease the impossible, painful dream of spending our entire lives trying to find an up without a down, an inside without an outside, a good without an evil, a pleasure without its inevitable pain.

PATHWAYS: You said that you had a more personal response as well.

KW: Yes, such as it is. When I first experienced, however haltingly, nirvikalpa samadhi—which means meditative absorption in the formless One—I remember having the vague feeling—very subtle, very faint—that I didn’t want to be alone in this wonderful expanse. I remember feeling, very diffusely but very insistently, that I wanted to share this with somebody. So what would one do in that state of loneliness?

PATHWAYS: Manifest a world.

KW: That’s how it seems to me. And I knew, however amateurishly, that if I came out of that formless Oneness and recognized the world of the Many, that I would then suffer, because the Many always hurt each other, as well as help each other. And you know what? I was glad to surrender the peace of the One even though it meant the pain of the Many. Now this is just a little tongue taste of what the great mystics have seen, but my limited experience seems to conform to their great pronouncement: You are the One freely giving rise to the Many—to pain and pleasure and all the opposites—because you choose not to abide as the exquisite loneliness of Infinity, and because you don’t want to have dinner alone.

PATHWAYS: And the pain that is involved?

KW: Is freely chosen as part of the necessary Game of Life. You cannot have a manifest world without all the opposites of pleasure and pain. And to get rid of the pain—the sin, the suffering, the dukkha—you must remember who and what you really are. This remembrance, this recollection, this anamnesis—”Do this in Remembrance of Me”—means, “Do this in Remembrance of the Self that You Are”—Tat Tvam Asi. The great mystical religions the world over consist of a series of profound practices to quiet the small self that we pretend we are—which causes the pain and suffering that you feel—and awaken as the Great Self that is our own true ground and goal and destiny—”Let this consciousness be in you which was in Christ Jesus.”

PATHWAYS: Is this realization an all-or-nothing affair?

KW: Not usually. It’s often a series of glimpses of One Taste—glimpses of the fact that you are one with absolutely all manifestation, in its good and bad aspects, in all its frost and fever, its wonder and its pain. You are the Kosmos, literally. But you tend to understand this ultimate fact in increasing glimpses of the infinity that you are, and you realize exactly why you started this wonderful, horrible Game of Life. But it is absolutely not a cruel Game, not ultimately, because you, and you alone, instigated this Drama, this Lila, this Kenosis.

PATHWAYS: But what about the notion that these experiences of “One Taste” or “Kosmic Consciousness” are just a by-product of meditation, and therefore aren’t “really real”?

KW: Well, that can be said of any type of knowledge that depends on an instrument. “Kosmic Consciousness” often depends on the instrument of meditation. So what? Seeing the nucleus of a cell depends on a microscope. Do we then say that the cell nucleus isn’t real because it’s only a by-product of the microscope? Do we say that the moons of Jupiter aren’t real because they depend on a telescope? The people who raise this objection are almost always people who don’t want to look through the instrument of meditation, just as the Churchmen refused to look through Galileo’s telescope and thus acknowledge the moons of Jupiter. Let them live with their refusal. But let us—to the best of our ability, and hopefully driven by the best of charity or compassion—try to convince them to look, just once, and see for themselves. Not coerce them, just invite them. I suspect a different world might open for them, a world that has been abundantly verified by all who look through the telescope, and microscope, of meditation.

PATHWAYS: Could you tell us….

KW: If I could interrupt, do you mind if I give you one of my favorite quotes from Aldous Huxley?

PATHWAYS: Please.

KW: This is from After Many a Summer Dies the Swan:

“I like the words I use to bear some relation to facts. That’s why I’m interested in eternity—psychological eternity. Because it’s a fact.”

“For you, perhaps,” said Jeremy.

“For anyone who chooses to fulfill the conditions under which it can be experienced.”

“And why should anyone wish to fulfill them?”

“Why should anyone choose to go to Athens to see the Parthenon? Because it’s worth the bother. And the same is true of eternity. The experience of timeless good is worth all the trouble it involved.”

“Timeless good,” Jeremy repeated with distaste. “I don’t know what the words mean.”

“Why should you?” said Mr. Propter. “You’ve never bought your ticket for Athens.”

PATHWAYS: So contemplation is the ticket to Athens?

KW: Don’t you think?

PATHWAYS: Definitely. I wonder, could you tell us a little bit about your own ticket to Athens? Could you tell us a little about the history of your own experiences with meditation? And what is “integral practice” and what does it offer the modern spiritual seeker?

KW: Well, as for my own history, I’m not sure I can say anything meaningful in a short space. I’ve been meditating for twenty-five years, and I suspect my experiences are not terribly different from many who have tread a similar path. But I will try to say a few things about “integral practice,” because I suspect it might be the wave of the future. The idea is fairly simple, and Tony Schwartz, author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, summarized it as the attempt to “marry Freud and Buddha.” But that really just means, the attempt to integrate the contributions of Western “depth psychology” with the great wisdom traditions of “height psychology”—the attempt to integrate id and Spirit, shadow and God, libido and Brahman, instinct and Goddess, lower and higher—whatever terms you wish, the idea is clear enough, I suspect.

PATHWAYS: As an actual practice?

KW: Yes, the actual practice is based on something like this: Given the Great Nest of Being—ranging from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit—how can we acknowledge, honor, and exercise all of those levels in our own being? And if we do so—if we engage all of the levels of our own potential—won’t that better help us to remember the Source of the Great Game of Life, which is not other than our own deepest Self? If Spirit is the Ground and Goal of all these levels, and if we are Spirit in truth, won’t the whole-hearted engagement of all these levels help us remember who and what we really are?

Well, that is the theory, which I realize I have put in rather dry terms. The idea, concretely, is this: Take a practice (or practices) from each of those levels, and engage whole-heartedly in all of those practices. For the physical level, you might include physical yoga, weightlifting, vitamins, nutrition, jogging, etc. For the emotional/body level, you might try tantric sexuality, therapy that helps you contact the feeling side of your being, bioenergetics, t’ai chi, etc. For the mental level, cognitive therapy, narrative therapy, talking therapy, psychodynamic therapy, etc. For the soul level, contemplative meditation, deity yoga, subtle contemplation, centering prayer, and so on. And for the spirit level, the more nondual practices, such as Zen, Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, formless Christian mysticism, and so forth.

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Originally posted by johnboy.philothea:
It often seems to me that enlightenment experiences often engender - not only truly holy end-products , like compassion & deep consolations as well as some very practically efficacious by-products, like angst-free existential outlooks, but also - some metaphysical waste-products , like certain philosophy of mind positions.

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Originally posted by Derek: But just to clarify, awakening is not in its essence an experience, though it may be accompanied by unusual experiences. It is a change of perspective that follows on from the release of the fiction of a personal self.

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Besides, I'm hungry and sometimes a man just needs to eat.

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Originally posted by Derek:
Phil, in the interests of disambiguation , it's not that anything disappears. It's more that the internal self-representation is seen to be what it has always been -- a figment of the imagination.

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And now, a central claim. We would argue, as have many others, that our sense of “self,” what we will call human self-awareness, is made possible by symbolic language. That is, when we say that we are aware of our thoughts and ideas and plans and memories, we do this using symbolic constructions. It may be possible to have a thought without linguistic representation, but we only know that we have had one when it is self represented in symbolic form. This claim is made in full awareness of its attendant ambiguities, such as “how do we know that a dog is not also self-aware?” or “what about the pre-linguistic human infant?” While we find these questions intriguing, they fail to vitiate our sense that once language is in place, there emerges not only symbolic reference but also symbolic self-reference in the sense that we humans experience that experience.

How symbolic self-reference “works” is as elusive as how language itself “works.” But if neuroscientists were tomorrow to publish a definitive description of the biophysical/neural basis for human self-awareness, the account would be unlikely to have much impact on our understanding of our mental theaters because we are already expert at what they are like. Moreover, our self-awareness seems to be independent of mechanism. As much as we are able to acknowledge the embodiment of our ideas and feelings, we experience them as operating in a disembodied virtual realm.

From Biology To Consciousness To Morality by Ursula Goodenough and Terrence W. Deacon