Now to get into ramesam’s other comments from 12/19, particularly:
“…I do not find anywhere, either in the ancient Indian lore or in the modern non-dualism teachings, any body explaining the emergence of the wakeful state with all the phenomenal ‘world’ and its goings on.
Words like ‘Maya’, ‘Leela’ (play), ‘Freedom’ etc. are used to explain how from that Immutable Oneness the first ‘I-thought’ is engendered to manifest later as the variegated manifold. But these are admittedly just explanatory fictions. Such explanations take all the mathematical precision and scientific regularity in the phenomenal world as ‘given’. They accept the inevitability of inexorable natural laws and never provide any clue as to why a law is the way it is.”
In summary: How to explain what appears as the emergence of the phenomenal ‘world’? What is its cause? Why does it appear? And finally, why does it appear in the particular way it does, i.e. involving things like mathematical precision, repeatable scientific laws, etc.?
Again, the “stance” or perspective of this website: The only-ness of the unchanging Absolute Being, the Present—which is another way of saying, Infinity is All. From Here, even what seems to be a “phenomenal world” of cause and effect is seen in an entirely different light—even though no such thing is actually occurring in Infinite Reality.
First, what appears as a phenomenal ‘world’ really would be only “mental” and not consist of material objects or physicality, as ramesam hinted at with his quote marks around the word ‘world.’ The only “stuff” there would be to it is mere sensations or thought—the entirety of finite phenomena would be inseparable from the “mind” or “made out of” pure mental-stuff or dream only (again, as discussed in chap. 13). Pages 204-205 in CIA deal with what its seeming “cause” would be, and why it seems to appear:
The question might seem to persist, “As Pure Being, the Conscious Present, truly is all that is present, then where could time, finite sense, duality, and human suffering even seem to come from, even if seen as illusion or dream? As only the One Infinite is present, is All, then where would the ‘cause’ itself be that supposedly causes a seeming finite dream to occur?”
A “cause” for so-called finite sense or dream never can be found.
That’s because it doesn’t have its own cause. Why?
The One, All-Present Consciousness being aware here, now, is absolutely all that is present, existent.
This Consciousness is the Only One conscious for all Existence.
As Consciousness, You are the Only One. Oneness is what You are. So when not being the Oneness You are, then that would be all there is to duality. As the All-Present One, the instant attention seems to stray from Pure Being—that would be the very “cause” of all
not-being.
As the Only One, the only seeming “cause” of time, non-being, would be due to first “looking away” from Timeless Being.
It seems as if Pure Conscious Now, What Really Is Being, is ignored, and one is functioning as a thinking, sensing mentality in time, or what-really-is-not being. One seems to leave Awakeness and starts to dream.
The reason for never being able to find a separate cause of time and a finite “dream-world,” is that the mentality looking for the “cause” always is looking for something apart from itself. When all along, that very mentality itself would be dream’s very, only “cause”!
The very act of thinking and sensing, looking outside One’s Being for a cause “out there” would involve time, non-being. So instead of consciously being the clear, silent Conscious Now—True Timeless Identity—it is enacting the very startup of a would-be second “time-identity.”
The human sense-dream is not an entity in and of itself. It does not have its own presence. It is not any kind of presence. Its entire operation would depend on the seeming “ignore-ance” of What Is Present, Pure Now-Consciousness which is truly All That Is.
There is a definite reason why finite sense or dream could not be going on by itself, “off there,” apart from This Self, having its own presence. It is because This Presence is all there is. There is not another, pre-existing, secondary state called dream that is “off there” somewhere. There is no dream having its own presence, that attention goes out to, for only this Being has Presence. If you had a dream last night, did that dream appear, or have its own presence, before you fell asleep? No.
Being specifically, totally alive as the Conscious Present I Am, as Pure Awakeness only, leaves only One. It is Self-Interest, Single-Mindedness. It leaves no second, superimposed state of dream-thought, no assumed identity, chasing around in time, trying to act as non-presence. It leaves nothing added to Am; no add-Am, Adam, or man-sense.
Again, all seeming human limitations never would be physical or material conditions—but just an assumed, secondary “mental” state of dream-thought. The instant there no longer is any thought in terms of it, it “evaporates,” because as Consciousness, You are the only Presence, the only Substance, for all of Existence. Finite time-dream can’t think or function on its own because it doesn’t exist on its own. It, of itself, has no conscious existence. Only You do.
Here is the most important point of all, however. Omnipresent Being, the One All-Self, never actually ignores Its Allness, no matter how things seem. That’s what All means—there is nothing besides Its own Presence to which Its attention could stray. All means there is nowhere for which All could leave Itself, nowhere All Itself isn’t changelessly present. The One Absolute All precludes there being a secondary “you” that could get It wrong or even get It right.