UNITY

More excerpts from
​BEYOND BIOCENTRISM
by Robert Lanza, M.D.
​and Bob Berman

"Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends with it." — Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954)

'Meanwhile, let's be clear: That the cosmos is suffused with energy... means that this essence of Being — this Nature of All Things, this true Self behind awareness and life itself, this seeming void that appears to be the [natural] matrix, the easel, the backdrop for all our human misadventures — is an unimaginably powerful entity.' [G - natural matrix not to be confused with the artificial matrix of human society] - page 85

'Whatever you think, however your logic works, Eastern sages have always insisted that there exists a direct experience of reality that is nonverbal...' - page 109

'...a first-hand experience recounted by [co-author] Berman in 2008:
'We trust our instincts. We need no textbook to teach us to love, or to recognize danger, or to be swept into joy by a beautiful garden. Yet when it comes to grasping the nature of existence, we fumble and stumble through insensate theories, our eyes glazed over as we hear about string theory's extra dimensions.

'Life customarily offers disparate sources for knowledge. But what about the big-ticket issues of cosmology and existence? What's the correct tool here? Logic? Math? Science? Religious texts? Instinct?

'I found out soon after I turned twenty, and will share it now for the first time.

'I was in my junior year of college, cramming for a test. I had breezed through my astronomy courses but, philosophically, the universe was still essentially a vast, mysterious entity.

'I had tried meditating during the past month, but couldn't really say I'd experienced anything revelatory.

'Now I was studying for a physiology test when something in the textbook suddenly gave me a split second insight that the distinction between 'external' and 'internal' is unreal. Then that intellectual insight abruptly changed into something else.' - page 110

​'An enormous weight I'd never realized I had borne was suddenly lifted. An experience began that no words could convey. It was ineffable and life altering.

'The best that I can say is that 'I' was suddenly gone, replaced by the certainty of being the entire cosmos. There was absolute peace.

'I knew with total confidence, not logically — because, as I said, Bob was no longer present — that birth and death do not exist. That all is present eternally, that time is unreal, and that all is one. The joy was beyond anything I could have imagined. The to-the-marrow certainty could perhaps be better described as a *recognition*, an ancient familiarity of being Home.

'When the intense initial experience faded, the room returned, and my textbooks lay before me. Except, all was now profoundly altered.

'Let's call this "the second level of the experience." There still was no sense of a separate "me," an observer looking out into the world. Rather, everything was a oneness, and I was whatever my eyes gazed upon.

'It was as if my consciousness had previously been confined, like a canary in a little cage, and that a false sense of being a separate, isolated, thinking individual had now vanished.

'Objects were no longer separate items existing in space; instead, everything was the same continuum.

'When a person came into view, I *was* this person. The universe was one entity for all time. There were not billions of humans and animals. There was *one* living, deathless entity. (And no, in case you're wondering, this experience was *not* chemically induced.) If this sounds fabulous, well, no words could begin to describe the clarity.

'This experience lasted three weeks, during which time no thought flitted across my consciousness. But eventually the ongoing stream of mental chatter, of being an individual, an observer, returned — accompanied by loss of the peace and oneness. It felt terrible.

'Afterwards, I went overseas, mostly to the East, traveled in thirty-five countries. I tried everything, read spiritual books.' - page 111

​'There were times of recapturing that lower 'second level' of perception, but never again the full experience. The spiritual books said that people in all cultures through the ages have had the same experience, and that it has variously been called enlightenment, awakening, [cosmic consciousness] and so on.

'...On January 26, 1976, the New York Times magazine published an entire article on this phenomenon, along with a survey showing that at least 25 percent of the population has had at least one experience that they described as 'a sense of the unity of everything.' It's apparently not that rare.' - page 112

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Advaita Vedanta (/ʌðˈvaɪtə vɛˈðɑːntə/; Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त, IAST: Advaita Vedānta, literally, "non-duality") is a school of Hindu philosophy, and is a classic system of spiritual realization in Indian tradition. The term Advaita refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, the phenomenal transient world is an illusory appearance (maya) of Brahman, and the true self, atman, is not different from Brahman.

​WHOLE HUMAN POST - YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE
(with prose I wrote in high school, 'The Universe is You.')

​WHOLE HUMAN POSTS (SEARCH) - ONE BEING

Questions:

• What changes would naturally occur in human society were the Oneness experience (We are One Being) to be the cultural norm?
• Would those changes likely bring about a more desirable society?
• Is it worthwhile to make dedicated effort to find a way to induce (without chemicals) the 'I am Everything' experience?​​

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Hi Ed,
All answers are correct, each according to the individual perspective of the moment. Souls who believe they go to some afterlife, do. Probably whatever belief is strongest at the moment of 'death' is what the soul will experience.

Recent rumination has clarified my answer for me delightfully.

Like Rumi, where I came from is where I am going. And, it is where I am right now, as the True Self (which at this writing is known intellectually but not yet fully experientially).

Rather than being from a concept like Sirius or the Central sun or the Dolphin Planet,
I (the brain projected I) like to skip all the intermediate stages and return to the One Being, the cosmos of consciousness.

More accurately, the brain-projected I (and its reality) never had actual existence, and when the body expires, either the consciousness it housed merges with the One Being, or there is a development which enables continuation in some individuated form that is One Being aware. I am good with either.
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