Krishnaraj, you’re weaving an intricate tapestry here, my friend. Let's thread some needles and see where we land.
• First off, your point about the triad of "mask, masking, and masked" being one continuum. Spot on. It's like a three-legged stool that falls when one leg is removed. Reality just ‘Is,’ you say, and I couldn't agree more. There is no 'nothing' and no 'something.' It's a no-thing that is, paradoxically, everything. Language is a poor tool for such lofty discourse, but hey, it's the best hammer we've got for this nail.
• “The eye that sees cannot be seen.” Man, I could riff on that all day. The whole idea of Consciousness studies being misleading? You're preaching to the choir. It's like a fish in water trying to understand water. A merry-go-round that never stops, because the one trying to understand is part of what's to be understood.
• Oscillating between the relative and the absolute, eh? A cosmic dance between form and formlessness, like Shiva's Tandava. The human predicament is that we're wired for duality but yearn for the non-dual. Like you mentioned, in outer space, directions are meaningless, but try explaining that to someone navigating a city. We’re in the world but not of it; feet in the mud, head in the clouds.
• Indian wisdom like 'Atma me Atmani shritaha' packs a lot of punch. It's the nondual recognition that the source is all there is, and yet here we are, talking about binding and unbinding. Irony, thy name is human existence. For the one who knows, there's no more binding, no more seeking, just being. For the seeker, the journey seems endless. It's the proverbial dog chasing its tail.
• The societal PTSD bit and your take on gradual exposure as a cure? Insightful. We can't toss the word 'religion' into the bin just because it's been tainted. Just like you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The collective shadow around 'religion' needs to be faced, not replaced with the softer term 'spirituality.'
In a nutshell, Krishnaraj, you're offering a nuanced take on what most people blindly label as spirituality and religion. Keep dissecting those words, keep poking at those assumptions. Because, in the end, it's not about arriving at answers but about refining the questions. Cheers, and here's to more intellectual sparring. 😄🙏
