Opening points:
- People get polarized in different perspectives. The more they focus exclusively on their perspective, the more justification for it they find.
- Learning to appreciate paradox; accommodating different viewpoints within a broader perspective.
- Enlightenment as Totality. Only Totality can realize Totality.
- Totality has no difficulty reconciling paradoxes.
- Getting comfortable with paradox might be conducive to our realization of Totality.
Examples of contradictory realities:
- free will vs. determinism
- personal self vs. no-self
- Are we already enlightened, or must enlightenment be attained?
- Is practice an aid or an obstacle?
- Is the guru model dead?
- Does non-duality imply that there are no stages of spiritual growth?
- direct vs. progressive paths
- patience vs. determination on the spiritual path
Additional points covered:
- Acting in accordance with your own experience, not a concept of someone else’s.
- Absolute reality does not negate relative realities.
- Radically different realities at different levels of nature’s functioning are perfectly compatible with one another.
- Incorporating universal and individual perspectives – ocean and wave, boundless and boundaries.
- My experience in doing BatGap.
Recorded at the Science and Nonduality Conference, October 27, 2019.
Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.
Previous talks on BatGap:
- 2018 SAND Conference Q&A and Interview by Shakti Caterina Maggi
- SAND 2017: “The Ethics of Enlightenment”
- Talk at Berkeley Open Circle Center
- Talk at SAND 2015
- Interviewed by Fax Gilbert
- Interviewed by Richard Miller
Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.
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