Life after death

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Tomas
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Re: Life after death

Post by Tomas »

guest_of_logic wrote:Donald, even though your message is absolute love, lately you seem to have been doing a fair bit of hateful and self-aggrandising talking here, not just to other posters but of and about the human race in general too; also you say you love a good flame war. This doesn't seem very consistent. I hope I haven't misjudged you.
His sort of rants are all over the Net. Nuthin' cutting-edge.

You could set up an account at Yuku. Let'm have your ear for a few weeks..
Don't run to your death
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

jufa wrote:
Diebert wrote: Before Diebert's heartbeat started his mother's rhythms were there - part of the whole causality
The question is not about your mother's rhythm as a part of causation. It is about the Consciousness of Rhythm's Cause which gave your mother rhythm.
Okay, you're still appearing stuck in the desire of assigning one cause to other causes. Won't you think it's way better to talk of causality than of consciousness in this context? Simply because about causality we can know but regarding some overarching consciousness we can only project, wish and fantasize. About causality we can philosophize but about any super-consciousness and its causes we can only speculate, gossip or engage in blind worship. What it's going to be now? Firm food or Mother's milk?
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

Mother's milk! Mother's milk! To suck eternally upon the teat of Cosmic Consciousness, the Source of our life and strength!
fiat mihi
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote:Mother's milk! Mother's milk! To suck eternally upon the teat of Cosmic Consciousness, the Source of our life and strength!
As long as it's acknowledged it's also the source of our death and weaknesses. But by then one is already grown up, perhaps busy distilling dark-blond strong beer in the monastery?
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

More seriously: I am in a bit of a pickle when it comes to this conflict you and Jufa are exploring. I perform a dualistic maneuvre. I believe we have no good.choice except to confine ourselves to tangible reality, which means to reject God as God is conceived (always rather badly, with many errors). But, on an internal level, or perhaps one would say metaphysical level, I have 'seen' and lived by experience the means by which my consciousness or my 'soul' or 'spirit' descends, in something that as an image one would describe as a spiral, down into this world and into the belief that this world is 'real', absolute, and 'solid' (I mean perhaps ever-existing as a stand-in for solid). I have had this experience in the knowledge that in fact 'I' exist in another way altogether. Everything 'descends' from Consciousness as Consciousness is the source off all things and all possibilities. Existence is part-and-parcel of Consciousness, and really it seems to me there can be no logical alternative to this realization. That existence exists is the 'pla e' where this riddle lives. Focusing on the riddle leads to unusual results.

Yet I regard my view (my feeling, my belief, my understanding) as too outlandish to really express. On an ethical level, though, it inclines me to seek to avoid heavy karmic complications and also to see and feel (as Kunga said recently) that simply being kind is one of the most elevated achievements for a human being in this 'virtual reality'.
fiat mihi
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote: I believe we have no good.choice except to confine ourselves to tangible reality, which means to reject God as God is conceived (always rather badly, with many errors).
Since a while already there are with some regularity random dots appearing in your writing. One could wonder what the meaning is.
Everything 'descends' from Consciousness as Consciousness is the source off all things and all possibilities. Existence is part-and-parcel of Consciousness, and really it seems to me there can be no logical alternative to this realization. That existence exists is the 'pla e' where this riddle lives.
No, you and Jufa are two pickles in a jar alright when it comes to this. Why not just call it "causality" and refrain from drawing any particular quality (a ''self-knowing smile') on its surface?
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

Well, now that you asked: the random dots are much more than random dots. They are in truth omens, divine presages, which appear in the writing of any man or ass who begins to discourse upon the Unspoken Riddle. On another (more mundane) level I must embarrassingly confess that they occur when (*sheepish, embarrassed smile*) I write a post on my Droid Smartphone. I hate the Droid keyboard! Blackberry has the best text-entering keyboard in all the Three Worlds...

As I said, I operate in a kind of dualism. If I were Hindu I'd have access to a philosophical shading technique/ qualified non-duality, qualified dualism, etc. I am not happy with it, not completely. But it is what I have to work with, don't you see? Every man is a 'perceptive organism' and every man, you could say, has a dharma of his perceptive life. Our understandings do not always accord one with another.

Our perceiving structure is like unto a novelesque world. We all have to have a novelesque world through which we perceive 'the world'. Even those who say 'I no longer see the superimposed images but rather the underlying Reality' still operate within a novelesque world, though I do believe they are on to something. I.e. we can purify our vision.
fiat mihi
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

PS: You turn it into a matter of choice, Diebert. I don't see it like this. I think it has to do with inner.constitution, with 'subjective hook-up'. In your particular configuration you seem to enjoy having contempt for those who.organize their perception along different lines. It is really the problem of Confusion of Tongues, don't you think? I also think it has to do with something like Jung's 'typologies'. Jufa is very obviously one of those very introverted intellects. His mental and spiritual world open up.backward into himself in an annoying (to his opposite type) way. If he had a different kind of imagination he woumd write Blake-like tracts describing that inner view. Instead he is a sort of introverted theologian, one of those.famous 'German' types that left their mark on theology. That is my take anyway. David, Dan and Kevin are so very obviously of a certain 'type' and it is also a.form of introversion but a non-lyrical one, a mathematical one (largely).

I am The Ass Who Talks® and represent 'the forward movement of eschatological faith, so radical and so new and so goddammed wOnDeRfUl that the world has seen nothing like it'. I am also God's own Voice coming to you...from the Future!
fiat mihi
cousinbasil
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Re: Life after death

Post by cousinbasil »

I am The Ass Who Talks® and represent 'the forward movement of eschatological faith, so radical and so new and so goddammed wOnDeRfUl that the world has seen nothing like it'. I am also God's own Voice coming to you...from the Future!
Almost needless to say, is that most faith is scatological...
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote: Even those who say 'I no longer see the superimposed images but rather the underlying Reality' still operate within a novelesque world, though I do believe they are on to something. I.e. we can purify our vision.
Mindfulness does cause a qualitative difference but is this really what is meant in these cases? It appears to me that it's more about a "breaking through" the surface, when all relating and symbols cease to exist and meaning freezes, "all is empty and meaningless", as a passing through, like a baptism by water and fire. Naturally there's a surfacing again otherwise the mind could not function further as relations and symbols are all it got to work with. That is understood. What "they are on to" is perhaps a fundamental initiation which has become basically extinct in this day and age? At any rate I think more madness is needed by the strongest minds and acceptance of the damage done by the weakest. It's like legalizing drugs really.

As for the keyboard, did you ever try the Swype feature? If it's available.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert: Freedom of attachment cannot change the experiencing of contrasts. The moment you say, think or feel "there is", you're already throwing dark shadows.
Saying, thinking or feeling "there is", which indeed is the throwing of dark shadows, is not freedom of attachment.
So you're going for a state which you claim is not really fully possible for a living being.
I have already acknowledged this. It is true, one cannot eliminate all attachments while living, but one can realize the subtle attachments that know of oneness, of omniscience, those of wisdom and of compassion.
This is obvious the moment one understands that life and existence ("impurity") always longs for death and non-existence ("purity"). And both are already here and now at play. Your death will not change that one bit.
My definition of non-existence (purity) is obviously not the same as yours. My definition of purity is to be freed permanently from one's subjective-objective manipulation/management of form "at play." Does this mean the end of sentience, the end of the intellect, the end of self conscious relativism, the end of the causal appearance? Yes.
Or would it be that they are just losing their comprehension skills? Since killing the mind and the contrast was the game, obviously one ends with people hardly in control over their concepts and reasoning. There are a great many examples of people ending like that. Will you make sure you are not ending like that?
I have enough karmic attachments remaining that ensure that my reasoning faculties remain intact. When these karmic attachments end, perhaps I will get attached to Sudoku or Chess :-). Why do you think I come here, to the Genius Forum? To use my mind to go beyond my mind. Thinking, while in the world, does not stop, for it cannot stop.
But sadly, for you, the contrasts would still be there. Without attachments to trouble the water, the contrasts will become even sharper and better defined: painstakingly clear. Attachments are needed to blur it out of existence. This is why ignorance, like drugs, like violence, like the superficial and emotional are all deadening to perception and reason. And what is more pure than reason? Without it one wouldn't even know what purity was, or if one even existed!
Attachments are needed to blur contrasts out of existence? Isn't that the same thing as saying that fire puts out fire? Have you never experienced a still mind where attachments/contrasts do not arise?

Reasoning is indeed as pure a method of communication that two individuals can enjoy when speaking of their individual subjective-objective appearance of things. The moment one begins to rest in the reality of that which brings the subjective-objective appearance of things into awareness that causes reason to exist, however, reasoning, and by default, the appearance, begins its march unto death.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: Saying, thinking or feeling "there is", which indeed is the throwing of dark shadows, is not freedom of attachment.
So how would you know when you said "where there is only light". If it's not a memory, not an observation and certainly not "knowledge" or conclusion in any rational sense.

Moreover, when "there's only light" there's no way of knowing it's light without any contrast. "There's only darkness" would mean the same. "There's only chocolate" as well. It's pretty meaningless, you know that?

My definition of purity [means] the end of sentience, the end of the intellect, the end of self conscious relativism, the end of the causal appearance
The purity of nothingness. It's like healing someone's heart disease by incinerating his body in a hot oven. It certainly fixes everything. Is this your stated final solution: to burn up all possible causes?
Thinking, while in the world, does not stop, for it cannot stop.
Have you never experienced a still mind where attachments/contrasts do not arise?
Not in this world as you said although with some exercise a quiet bubble can be created. It's still mind, it's still world, its peace is but a construction which circumstances can uproot any minute. It's still part of causality after all.
The moment one begins to rest in the reality of that which brings the subjective-objective appearance of things into awareness that causes reason to exist, however, reasoning, and by default, the appearance, begins its march unto death.
It's only the start, Pam. It's like standing at the door but not entering. This is "door worship" and not without dangers. The liberty of formlessness is a passage but not the last rite.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert, thank you for your concern, I do believe it is genuine, but no worries.

There is world of thinking that belongs only to the mystic that, since it is directed wholly toward purification of one's consciousness of all things human, does not use conventional human terms; I am a mystic and don't expect a sage of reason, of which there are many on this board, to understand, or even acknowledge this language. To him or her, the words of a mystic sound abstract at best and delusional at worst.

What I realize in my recent conversations with you and David and Dennis is that a) a mystic and a sage do not speak the same language, and b) that a mystic may try to mix the two worlds for the purposes of "getting the sage to see" as I have been doing since arriving at Genius, with obvious failure. Not only is it my failure, but as I have realized just recently, to try and blend the two is to halt my own progress of realizing my absolute nature. And yes, that means no shadows, no attachments. :-)

It is time for me to heed the principle of: "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Again, thank you, and God Bless.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Life after death

Post by Dennis Mahar »

So, Pam,
You've seen you are 'absolutely, metaphysically, unutterably alone'.

No amount of argument, cajoling, attachment, shadow play, trying to fix others and situations with inauthentic flattery,
trying to build communication bridges through eruptions of 'love' and connection possibilities,

None of it is worth a dime.

Only the complete acceptance that one is irrevocably alone,
that one owns completely one's aloneness,
can one experience the havingness of sure ground.
One is alone in 'where one is at'.

The Tao can't be spoken.
It is met alone.
One meets it in contemplation,
far away from the idle chattering of monkeys.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

I am onto you, human mind,
snake that you are,
speaking of the Truth
of Absolute Reality
all the while crawling in your
make-believe world
of the relative Absolute.

If Absolute Truth truly is your passion,
your life, your everything,
you would die for it.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Life after death

Post by Dennis Mahar »

And when will you die for it?
When will your hiss desist?

One fine day?

Talk is cheap.

In your Story,
what are you going to be Supplied with one fine day.
what will you get that you haven't got yet?
What's the problem?
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

Those who hear the bell tolling for them
And run to its call
Find Life in their Story of Death.

When their Story of Death
Is done
It is done.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: There is world of thinking that belongs only to the mystic that, since it is directed wholly toward purification of one's consciousness of all things human, does not use conventional human terms; I am a mystic and don't expect a sage of reason, of which there are many on this board, to understand, or even acknowledge this language. To him or her, the words of a mystic sound abstract at best and delusional at worst.
To be honest, even as far as any mystical realm goes you don't sound like having scratched the surface either. Do you really think you've understood anything so far at this forum? That we were having a discussion on any discernible level? You've shown nothing so far, not even the start of understanding were this was about. Reason was meant as lifeline here, a starting platform, an introduction to actual mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant traditions. Not the dehumanizing postmodern mistakes you have wrapped yourself around as to never become hurt again.

Your language is not that of a mystic. It's not using conventional human terms simply because they're not human in the first place. They are nothing but ghostly whispers from the grave. Death incarnated to teach life about dying. Ah well, life will always have willing ears for such siren songs I guess. In such way it's also completely innocently part of nature. But spare me the mystic labeling as if we're at some cheap séance. Jesus!
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

Diebert preaches now for the human and for Life! I'd honestly like to hear more. She's got some.part of a point in isolating 'Sages of Reason', but are you able to isolate the potential flaws in strict rational-reasoned terms? Frustration is valid but are.you so.very certain YOU decide?
fiat mihi
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

Reason was meant as lifeline here, a starting platform, an introduction to actual mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant traditions. Not the dehumanizing postmodern mistakes you have wrapped yourself around as to never become hurt again.
Tell me then about 'actual' mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant positions. Also, you never did tell me, as far as I can see, the greater things you can promise me in this new world of 'actual' mysticism. Also, you have not addressed the truth I placed forward that the Buddha came to end suffering. You also never did tell me about this door I am supposedly worshipping and what will happen if I cease worshipping "it" and step over the threshold.

Your assumption that I am referring to 'being hurt' in the human sense shows me how far off you are from even catching a glimpse of what I mean by suffering.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

movingalways wrote:
Reason was meant as lifeline here, a starting platform, an introduction to actual mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant traditions. Not the dehumanizing postmodern mistakes you have wrapped yourself around as to never become hurt again.
Tell me then about 'actual' mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant positions. Also, you never did tell me, as far as I can see, the greater things you can promise me in this new world of 'actual' mysticism. Also, you have not addressed the truth I placed forward that the Buddha came to end suffering. You also never did tell me about this door I am supposedly worshipping and what will happen if I cease worshipping "it" and step over the threshold.

Your assumption that I am referring to 'being hurt' in the human sense shows me how far off you are from even catching a glimpse of what I mean by suffering.
Allow me to lead this dance of definitions so that we have, what I hope is a nuts and bolts foundation of understanding:

Suffering to me is having to live in the causal web of appearance of time, distance, space and matter and not believing there is a way out of of this suffering. This causal web includes everything of the sentient-intellectual world. It includes death, birth, love, hate, fear, laughter, joy, reason, emotions, murder, compassion, rape, tenderness, torture, forgiveness, etc. Nothing of the feeling sense is excluded from this suffering of being an appearance to one's own pure awareness of this appearance.

Mysticism, to me, is to stand in this suffering without flinching with one's attention and obedience always on the pure awareness of the suffering. This attention and obedience to the Real while reconciling the suffering of the appearance to Its Spirit Heart is the way one ends suffering, the way "mortality is swallowed up of Life." The story of the crucifixion to me, is this story of bearing all things of the sentient-intellectual world, not denying them, but bearing them while one holds fast to one's awareness of the Father, the Unborn of these things that were born. This is to be in the world, but not of the world. This is to be "God, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." Jesus said, which is what I also say: "I come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it."

Your move...:-)
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Talking Ass
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Re: Life after death

Post by Talking Ass »

I am wondering if you think that what you are expressing [which is what you choose to live] is at all similar to what is expressed in the quote below?
  • "Can we reach an eschatological understanding of the resurrected Christ by inverting or reversing the ancient church's apprehension of the movement of resurrection and ascension? All too significantly the ancient church identified the movement of resurrection with the movement of ascension, thereby reaching its faith in Christ as the ascended and exalted Lord, the Christ of glory who is the celestial and monarchic Cosmocrator. From a consistently eschatological point of view, the Christ of glory can be seen to be a consequence of ancient Christianity's transforming the forward and downward movement of the Kingdom into the upward and backward movement of the ascension. But what if a radical faith were to transform the backward and upward movement of the ascension into the downward and forward movement of the Word's becoming flesh? Then faith could affirm that the resurrected Christ is not the Christ of glory---not the exalted and celestial Christ, not the monarchical Cosmocrator, not 'the man of heaven' [Paul], and not the primordial Logos or Word. Quite the contrary: the resurrected Christ remains and is yet more deeply the Christ of passion, the lowly and suffering Christ, the servant and the slave, 'the man of dust', the eschatological or final word."

    ---Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Descent Into Hell
Myself, I find this pretty cool and interesting stuff. I recognize that in modern theology it is not in fact really new, but it does open up a way to give credence to that rather compelling idea: The only way out is through. In my own case, I have come to recognize that this idea has been [was] installed in me at a certain very critical point. That was years ago. I have only now begun to go back over so much of what happened and to deal with it [consciously] [which is likely why 'my processes' seem so convoluted and rather slow and laborious---they are! But in a sense, in one's incarnation, one might have to deal with one central and compelling 'idea', though of course 'divine ideas' are jam-packed with content and as they expand in the life a person lives they seem at times to dominate that life].
fiat mihi
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Life after death

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:Tell me then about 'actual' mysticism in the truest sense of all words and relevant positions.
And yet it's what I've been doing all along although you cannot recognize it and doesn't need to be recognizable. The idea is that these things do not need to be "told" by others at all.
Also, you never did tell me, as far as I can see, the greater things you can promise me in this new world of 'actual' mysticism.
I don't promise new worlds. At most the one you own currently might become lost.
Also, you have not addressed the truth I placed forward that the Buddha came to end suffering.
Which is ending all delusions regarding good and evil, bliss and pain, and so on. Suffering here is not the 'pain' or 'bliss' itself as type of experience or any reaction one might have to it.

Perhaps it's better to study the word dukkha which is not easy to translate but gets closest to "problems with impermanence". Or perhaps even "any delusional effort to assign a permanent state where it's not the case". This problem is conceptual because permanency is a concept to begin with. To end it we need to let go of the ingrained habit to cling, to stretch out, to repeat that what already disappeared.

Again, to understand this one has to develop first a sense of what's at stake: not the experience but the meanings we're assigning without realizing, our frustration and knee-jerk reactions to events coming and going. To develop this sense a subtle mind is needed which can grasp this particular concept. Without grasping, it will be missed easily. And for that one has to develop the mind in a certain way first. Once it's on its way, the fruit grows and ripens by itself. This is why the fundamentals are explained over and over again. There's not much else to say really.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

Thanks Diebert. Regardless of our individual understandings and misunderstandings, it is good to speak of them.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Life after death

Post by Pam Seeback »

The only way out is through. In my own case, I have come to recognize that this idea has been [was] installed in me at a certain very critical point. That was years ago. I have only now begun to go back over so much of what happened and to deal with it [consciously] [which is likely why 'my processes' seem so convoluted and rather slow and laborious---they are! But in a sense, in one's incarnation, one might have to deal with one central and compelling 'idea', though of course 'divine ideas' are jam-packed with content and as they expand in the life a person lives they seem at times to dominate that life].

Alex, I'm watching a TV series on Netflix called "Numbers." I don't know if you know of its premise, it's about two brothers, both genius' in their own right [the worldly definition of genius], one an FBI supervisor, the other, a mathematician with an off-the-charts IQ. The mathematician brother can see numeric patterns everywhere, multi-dimensional causal connections where most see only a few or none at all. Both brothers work together, both brothers help unravel the mysteries of what is not known and make them known so the "bad guy gets caught", both brothers can see and understand parts of the other brother's world, but ultimately, both brothers live in individual, subjective-objective gestalts, to use Dennis' word. To me, this recycling, rebirthed prison of gestalt relativity is the very definition of suffering.

In relation to what you said above about one having to deal with one central and compelling idea, is it not until you realize that you can never share that idea with anyone so that they can know its meaning as you believe you know its meaning that you gradually begin to let go of that compulsion? At the heart of it, do you yourself KNOW why [the original cause] you are compelled by a certain idea?
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