Reference: The Quest for Certainty
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Buddha declared.
“The Absolute Truth is that there is nothing absolute in the world, that everything is relative, conditioned and impermanent, and that there is no unchanging, everlasting, absolute substance like Self, Soul, or Ātman within or without.”
DEFINITION: Absolute means, “Viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic.”
This postulate may appear self-contradictory to some, but it essentially says, “There are no absolute certainties.” This is reflected in one of the most ancient hymns, The Creation Hymn of Rig Veda.
All certainties are relative. This statement does not degrade any certainty we have. It simply means that one can always come up with a better certainty.
That is how science makes progress. Einstein declared the speed of light to be a universal constant. This is a certainty for now, but there may possibly be a wider context in which the speed of light is a special case.
Similarly, in the field of spirituality, we cannot be absolutely certain that self or soul is permanent. The phenomenon that is described as self or soul must be open to further investigation.
There is little progress possible for a person who believes his certainties are absolute.
One can always improve upon a certainty one has.
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Comments
Hey VINAY
I agree that everything in the world is relative. That is why when I feel old I visit a nursing home !!!!!!!!
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So your visit to nursing home is relative to how you feel. I get it.
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The true spiritual element is the unpredictability of the appearance and disappearance of things and associations. The rest is mechanical.
The mechanical element is the predictability of things and associations that are in existence.
But, like any other dichotomy, “spiritual.and mechanical” form the two ends of the same graduated scale. In other words, these concepts are relative to each other.
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Some definitions:
BRAHMA (Vedas) – A postulated ground state that has no definition.
SELF (KHTK) – Self refers to anything with a definition. The first self to arise is awareness.
GOD (Christianity) – A Supreme Self postulated to explain the appearance of existence
STATIC (Scientology) – A concept that describes the state of Godhood.
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GROUND STATE (KHTK) – The ground state has no awareness and no definition. The definition comes from awareness.
AWARENESS (KHTK) – Awareness arises (from ground state) as a disturbance, that provides definition.
CONSCIOUSNESS (KHTK) – This is self-awareness, or the awareness of one’s definition or properties.
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AWARENESS (KHTK) – Awareness oscillates between perceiving and recognizing.
CONSCIOUSNESS (KHTK) – The spiritual essence of consciousness is awareness, and its physical form is light. Consciousness has a frequency, wave-length and period.
DESIRE TO KNOW (KHTK) – The desire to know pushes the frequency of consciousness higher.
RELATIVITY OF EXISTENCE (KHTK) – Spiritual and physical are relative aspects of existence. They are not separate and absolute in themselves. In other words, there are no separate spiritual and physical universes.
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we can have no evidence of an objective reality other than through subjective inference.
we each desire validation. we ask questions and want certainty in the answers we receive. we assume certainty only through symbols of appearance.
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Objective reality = The reality which is continuous, harmonious and consistent in the largest available context. Obviously it is not absolute.
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Good definition
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