| If there is no karma, is there a destiny?
Stephen Wolinsky: In DVD1 we explained clearly why there can be no karma. Just to review very quickly: if there is only one substance and everything is the same substance, there is no separate individual "I" that can cause a certain thing to happen and have a separate individual effect.
As far as the word destiny, I want to take it in two ways, first thing is, let's imagine again that everything is water, everything is made of the same substance. You are a droplet of water. Now, you imagine that you have separate individual boundaries which separates you from the rest of the ocean.
That droplet of water has got a journey. That droplet of water must have started in the pacific, flow here, flow there, and wind up on a beach in Santa Cruz.
That journey that traverses is (in quotes) "your destiny". You can't change it because the ocean is carrying you. The ocean of Consciousness, the one substance, is rising and subsiding, and moving and taking you wherever it takes you. You cannot change your destiny.
I once said to Prakashananda Baba about destiny and God and liberation and he said to me: "Consciousness has already decided where and how it's going to take you. Why worry????". back to top
In Post-Deconstruction is there a God?
Stephen Wolinsky: The question about God is a real button pusher for people because people have this idea that there is a separate individual God floating in the sky up there who is kind of running this entire show and somehow, if I do this good things I will be closer then if I do these bad things. If I do these bad things obviously I will be further away.
Now, if there is only one substance, not two, then there cannot be a separate individual God and a separate individual you. Everything is made of the same substance.
Now Jnaneshwar Maharaj, in the 13th Century called it the Divine Substance. If you want to call it the divine substance, if you want to call it Brahma, if you want to call it consciousness, if you want to call it the substance, but there is only one substance, Advaita, one substance, not two. Once you get into breaking down into having God, a separately individual God and an "I" then you have a Spiritual path. If I do these things I get closer, if I don't I'll fall away. The problem is that this is an archetypal representation and every artchetypal representation only perpetuate, it will continue the archetypal representation. No matter what spiritual path you are on, no matter what yantra, mantra or tantra that you are doing you will even do it more and more and more and more because you'll stay in the archetipal representation of I am and there is a God here.
Both of them are abstracted representation of nothing, they are both made of the same substance and hence are not. In Buddhism, when they say: form is emptiness and emptiness is form. If everything is the same substance, Form is emptiness and emptiness is form, then there is neither form nor emptiness. Buddhists never wants to discuss that there is no God in Buddhism. There is just the emptiness and form which is not. And so, to answer your question: is there a God? There is no separate individual God like there is no separate individual self or soul that incarnates from lifetime to lifetime to lifetime. That is the essence of Buddhism, as I mentioned earlier. The person that came to Maharaj and said: God create the universe, and I worship God... Maharaj said: who came first, you or God? Maharaj said: clearly first you have to be there. the I am has to be there. Once the I am is there anything can be fantasized, any notion can be manufactured.
The only major problem that makes a big difference is that the God concept is hard wired into the nervous system back to top
This sounds very Nihilistic. Is this Nihilism?
Stephen Wolinsky: I take Nihilism to mean meaninglessness, empty, void of meaning. Like nothing matters.
The problem, why the button gets pushed on people on this is that meaningless is bad, void is bad, empty is bad. The reason why it occurs is because meaningless get fused with a bad feeling. Void or empty gets fused with depression, the worthlessness of life.
When you deconstruct all of this and you un-fuse it, and you separate the one substance from empty, void, depression, and you separate meaningfulness and meaningful, it’s just two concepts, which have nothing to do with anything. Then you see that the word nihilism carries “connotations” that are unpleasant.
The truth is that once you deconstruct nihilism and meaninglessness, empty and void as just abstracted representations, you begin to understand that even the concept of emptiness even the knower of emptiness has the same substance as the emptiness and therefore they are not. The best way to understand this and basically all of this is this.
When they asked Maharaj: “Who are you?”
His response was: “Nothing perceivable or conceivable”.
Now, how can post Deconstruction deconstruct itself?
If I can perceive or only conceive that there is only one substance, it’s not it.
It’s not perceivable or conceivable.
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Why are we here?
Stephen Wolinsky: Again, if we go back to Nagarjuna’s: “Nothing comes, nothing goes.”
The metaphor I like to use best, and again a metaphor is a descriptive representation of something that does not exist, the analogy, is that if everything was water, everything were in one substance, where is the question of coming and where is the question of going. It requires, a separate individual I or self to say this is coming or this is going otherwise there is no such a thing as coming or going. Once you have the separate substance that says: “I come here, why am I here?” You can come with endless stories, past lives, future lives, and karma. Lessons, incarnations, balancing, you can go on forever. Once you realize there is only one substance not two and even the one substance in not, it all disappears, as Nirvana as Extinction.
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Are there spiritual experiences?
Stephen Wolinsky: There are innumerable number of experiences, we can call them spiritual if we see a blue light, God and Goddesses. We can call them somehow worldly if we see money or houses or sex or something like that. But the truth is that all experiences are perceiver dependent. All experiences are perceiver dependent and all experiences, be they “spiritual” experiences or “worldly” experiences are just that, simply experiences. Maharaj continuously emphasized to reject all experiences.
When I was in India, everybody I knew there at the time had this thing: I want love, I want bliss, I want joy, I want happiness, and they will be like: take my hate, take my anger, take my jealousy, take my fear. They wanted to get rid of that.
And one day, in about 1978 I was walking along and I realized that both of them, the love and the hate, the joy and the grief, all of them were made of the same substance and it all disappeared.
Spiritual experiences have two problems: one, that they are I dependent and two, that they make you feel as though you are having them. So all spiritual experiences are just that, experiences. And as experiences they need to be discarded as “not this, not that” because they are an abstract representation of nothing.
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What is enlightenment?
Stephen Wolinsky: answer coming soon back to top
Who am I?
Stephen Wolinsky: answer coming soon
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