Parallel Existences – A Few Questions from Bob

Since the great mystics and philosophers all say this “life” is just another dream state, how many co-exist in an illusion of a now? If the closest mental description of real beingness (true nature) is empty (selfless) awareness (non-dual awareness), what is there to actively create any apparent existence scenario or change a reality?

Since true nature is not the “observer” or what is “observed,” there seems to be no “is” at all. The Tao that can be conceived or grasped or defined is of course more illusion. (An interesting conundrum, wouldn’t you say?)

Ouspensky said we were here to build a vehicle. Gurdjieff said we were here to create a soul – to transfer our “me” into essence or true nature, to become immortal. This has also been expressed “to become a conscious cell or atom in the mind of God.” Yet God is just another concept.

Parallel Existences – A Few Comments from Lily

The direction of your questions, in leading to the God concept, brings nirvana to mind. The word itself has been commonly misunderstood in the West. For clarity when using the term, it helps to refer to The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen (1991, Shambhala Publications, Inc., p. 159):

“The goal of spiritual practice in all branches of Buddhism. In the understanding of early Buddhism, it is departure from the cycle of rebirths (samsara) and entry into an entirely different mode of existence. It requires complete overcoming of the three unwholesome roots – desire, hatred, and delusion (akushala) – and the coming to rest of active volition (samskara). It means freedom from the determining effect of karma. Nirvana is unconditioned (asamskrita); its characteristic marks are absence of arising, subsisting, changing, and passing away….In many texts, to explain what is described as nirvana, the simile of extinguishing a flame is used. The fire that goes out does not pass away, but merely becomes invisible by passing into space (akasha); thus the term nirvana does not indicate annihilation but rather entry into another mode of existence. The fire comes forth from space and returns back to it; thus nirvana is a spiritual event that takes place in time but is also, in an unmanifest and imperishable sphere, always already there. This is the ‘abode of immortality,’ which is not spatially localizable, but is rather transcendent, supramundane (lokottara), and only accessible to mystical experience.” *

Could it be that what humankind has come to call “God” is, then, so esoteric and mystical that Sakyamuni Buddha would not refer to God, just as, according to another paragraph of the above reference, “the Buddha declined to make any statement concerning the nature of nirvana” to avoid having his followers conceptualize either term? Could it be said in response to some Western criticisms of Buddhist dharma being godless that the opposite is true in the highest realms beyond language and concept?

Further, could it be that parallel existences are expressions of numerous phenomenal manifestations of the oversoul or overself, lifetimes simultaneously playing in space-time continuum – that each existence, illusory though it may be, seeks and works and interrelates with the other existences in sometimes subtle and sometimes profound relationships until reunification comes about, when illusion is left behind?

*From The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, (c) 1991 by Shambhala Publications, Inc. By arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com

Parallel Existences – A Few Questions or Comments from You?