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attachments arising from distinctions such as "here and not here, now and not now" are the cause of all the world's suffering. This concept is beautifully and clearly delineated in Ken Wilber's book on the Buddhist worldview, appropriately called No Boundary.
8 He describes the many levels of awareness associated with the Perennial Philosophy, which is a term Aldous Huxley used for the highest common factor present in all the major wisdom traditions and religions of the world.9 The Perennial Philosophy has as its first principle that consciousness is the fundamental building block of the universe the world is more like a great thought than a great machine. We human beings can access all of the universe through our own consciousness and our nonlocal mind. This philosophy also maintains that we have a dual nature, both local and nonlocal, both material and nonmaterial. Finally, the Perennial Philosophy teaches that the purpose of life is to become one with this universal, nonlocal consciousness that is available to us. That is, to become one with God, and to help others to do likewise. |
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In this worldview, one experiences increasing unity consciousness through meditation, as one passes "upward" through physical, biological, emotional, mental, spiritual, and aetheric levels of awareness. Through meditation one experiences the insight that one is not a body one has a body. The idea that separation is an illusion has been spelled out by mystics for at least twenty-five hundred years. Hinduism teaches that individual consciousness (Atman) and universal consciousness (Brahman) are one. Patanjali taught that the realized being achieved a state of awareness in which "the Seer is established in his own essential and fundamental nature."10 Plato called such people who had transcended the boundaries of their separate selves "the spectator[s] of all time and all existence."11 The view of life in which we are all connected with God, and in which the kingdom of God is within us all, awaiting to be realized and experienced, is part of both the Jewish and Christian traditions as well. |
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In Judaism, the local community of spirit is often referred to as HaShem (the Name), while in Christianity it is called the Holy Spirit, or Emmanuel, the immanent or indwelling God of all. This view of a community of spirit arose, very likely, from mystics of every sacred tradition |
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