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essays & notes
The (New) Four Noble Truths
1) There is dis-ease. |
The First Noble Truth
(symptoms) |
2) The root of psychological dis-ease is division, differentiation, fragmentation. |
The Second Noble Truth |
3) All humans are composed of a body and a psyche, the conscious part of which innately strives toward division, differentiation, and fragmentation. |
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4) Perhaps the cause but certainly an adjuvant of psychological dis-ease is the innate workings of the conscious mind, including thought, memory, volition, and the very awareness of oneself. |
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5) The natural solution to a dis-ease caused by division is union. |
The Third Noble Truth
(prognosis) |
6) There exists a way towards psychological union, union in the consciousness - to a state of an undivided, undifferentiated, unfragmented nature.
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7) This way is known as yoga in the East and its result is known as samadhi. |
The Fourth Noble Truth
(prescription) |
8) Samadhi is union. Its domain is in consciousness, the two agents are the subject and object of awareness, and the nature & result of this union is "ecstastic" (ananda in the East).
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9) The essential method is concentration of one's awareness (subject) upon a certain object of attention (object), until it is so acute that no difference is made between the two agents. |
...and an explanation thereon |
10) The result is firstly "ecstacy" or ananda, just as the union of two molecules releases heat/energy. Secondly, the production of a "third" thing results just as a child results from the union of a male/father & female/mother. |
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11) This "third" thing is that is produced from the union of the subject and the object is a new point-of-view. |
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12) This point-of-view perceives one's original point of "self" as inaccurate. |
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13) The foremost result is the release of attachment towards identifying the self with the conscious facets of one's psyche, especially the ego. In this sense, the ego is "put into perspective" and seen not to be the entirety of the self. |
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14) A natural conclusion of this is that the differentiations that the conscious ego makes are realized to be contained within a larger undifferentiated whole of the self. |
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15) A further conslusion is that the death of the ego does not in fact mean death of the self because it is understood to be merely a part of a great whole of the self. And this is the source of all the myths of death & rebirth, the second birth, etc. |