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5 Comments

  1. Fabrice
    October 20, 2017 @ 4:58 pm

    Thank you Greg! On recommendation from your site I read the Three Dialogues several years ago. I think it led to some kind of realization about truth, although not complete. But something clicked.

    I am still fascinated by this text. I still wonder if I “got it”. It’s very hard to shake the scientific knowledge. The idea of light, particles and whatnot. Yet I didn’t reject the text because I knew it’s helping to see something more fundamental, ie. “seeing” as opposed to “vision”.

    I think something clicked just because I was testing the ideas in the dialogue, lifting my eyes from the page every few sentcnes, and verifying in my own experience. So whatever clicks is only in silence I think and no amount of logical explanations will do it.

    Hmmm I still feel unsatisfied, perhaps because of the feeling of still being the center / subject of experience… and the resulting implication of the world “out there”. I guess for me the Dialogues relaxed the notion of physical substance / essence.

    It’s funny in a way the notion of physical “matter”… if the whole of reality was actually “physical” and there is truly nothing else then what does “physical” even mean anymore?

    Looking forward to the follow up posts.

    Reply

    • Greg Goode
      October 20, 2017 @ 6:57 pm

      Even after you realize that the “physical” is nothing other than awareness, you don’t need to discard physicalist vocabulary. You just don’t need to take it literally anymore. You are free to use it. If you are a scientist, you don’t have to quit and go join an ashram!

      Reply

  2. Fabrice
    October 20, 2017 @ 5:31 pm

    Hi Greg (again),

    So in your other article you say:

    “The concepts of material substance and the attendant inside/outside distinction vanished. ”

    For me some years ago, the first relaxed very much. The second didn’t clear up. But now I understand better what happened , and there is a key element which you say here which I didn’t contemplate enough:

    ” It will actually ripple through our later inquiries. When we inquire into subtle objects such as feelings, standards, concepts and selves that choose, we won’t visualize them existing apart from out “out there” somewhere.”

    I guess when I read Berkeley’s Dialogues I was so focused on seeing, hearing, and so on.. I looked out into the room.. somehow I forgot to include “me”.

    There was a glimpse where for a moment, my vision seemed to be crystal clear like some kind of mental fog cleared up, and a sensation, hard to describe that “this is it” like everything is complete… But then a thought popped up as I seemed to immediately describe the experience to myself or comment on it. And then almost immediately also a doubt came up. I think the doubt was , that the thought seemed to appear from “outside” of the crystal clear vision at that moment. As if the thought came from “in here”, and so it created a division and the experience faded quickly. So this important inside/outside distinction didn’t vanish. But it was very distinct experience and and there was also a joy that came along with it and this joy lasted quite a bit, it faded in the next half an hour or so.

    So now I understand I need to apply the same rigorous examination to the more subtle realm of thoughts, feelings… I know you talk about these in your book The Direct Path and yet I seemed to have skimmed over. I guess this part is difficult to convey in written form (unlike describing sounds, or images), and likewise difficult to follow for the reader. AND… perhaps it’s not completely unintentional, as we seem wired to do anything *but* observe ourself. Maybe it’s just a habit.. the brain says “hey, I know this part, not interesting.. let’s look over there” 🙂

    Cheers

    Reply

  3. Jonathan Townsend
    February 27, 2018 @ 1:32 am

    Hello Greg,
    Will there be guides/notes to the next two dialogues?
    From my inquiry it panned out that I am everything since the perceiver isnt the perceived, then however the perceiver can’t be anything but perceived since perceptions are all that is.
    But that was a train of thought. How may it be life?
    Yours
    Jonathan.

    Reply

    • Greg Goode
      April 17, 2018 @ 2:25 pm

      If I get the time, sure!! It’s life, when you don’t think that it’s just thought 🙂 !

      Reply

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