Boundless Paradox

By David L. Kahn

The odds of having conscious awareness in this moment are trillions to one, and yet here you are. Centuries of complicated religious dogma and scientific rationalizations cannot explain why your consciousness is functioning in this moment. Perhaps the reason is quite simple, even obvious, with the evidence showing up everywhere in plain sight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329596580

Book preview

Boundless Paradox

Boundless Paradox

Awakening in the Collective Dream

David L. Kahn

www.boundlessparadox.com

Boundless Paradox: Awakening in the Collective Dream

© 2015 by David L. Kahn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Barcode number

ISBN #: 978-1-329-59658-0

Table of Contents

Contents

Boundless Paradox

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Part 1: The Cosmic Lottery

Part 2: Ego: Rest in Peace

Part 3: Boundless Paradox

References

About the Author

Acknowledgments

To everyone.

No exceptions.

Preface

The odds of having conscious awareness in this moment are trillions to one, and yet here you are. Centuries of complicated religious dogma and scientific rationalizations cannot explain why your consciousness is functioning in this moment.  Perhaps the reason is quite simple, even obvious, with the evidence showing up everywhere in plain sight.

This book is a series of short essays on quotes designed to make you rethink the nature of reality. Some of these quotes are from centuries ago, while others were spoken by people who are alive today. What is common among each of the quoted individuals is that they operate on a different level of awareness than most of society, with independence from group-think mentality.

The simplest answers are so often the correct ones.

~ David L. Kahn

Part 1: The Cosmic Lottery

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why am I me?

Each of us occupies different bodies with unique brains and physical features, but have you ever wondered why your awareness occupies the body that it does and not another? Is awareness created in the brain, or is awareness a silent observer behind the thoughts of the mind?

What body do you occupy?

The only body that you occupy is the one that exists in the now. You have occupied many bodies in your lifetime. Your body is very different from when you were an infant. The bodies we occupy as toddlers, teenagers, young and middle aged adults, seniors and elderly look, think and function very differently. The cells that formed your childhood body are not a part of you now. There is not one physical piece of you that existed then that is here now, and yet you can remember the awareness you had in that body. It makes sense that memory can transfer through cells as they are recreated through the food we eat, but where in those cells is awareness? If I eat an apple and part of that apple becomes cells in my brain, exactly how does that equate to any awareness that is created in those cells? The body you occupied one second ago is not the body that you occupy now, nor is the one that you will occupy one second into the future. Your awareness can only exist right now, as does your body.

Could it be that the universe is created by consciousness, rather than consciousness being created as a result of the universe’s evolution, and that there is only one consciousness? Is the awareness that occupies my mind the same one that occupies yours, along with everything else that ever has and ever will exist?

What happens when we die?

The answers to these questions lie in the understanding of the true nature of consciousness, and those answers are shown to us metaphorically in virtually everything around us, as well as in our nightly dreams. These questions have been posed for millennia and the same answers have been given by many of the greatest human minds to ever exist, centuries and cultures apart from each other. The implications for the answers they have given us are life changing.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

~ Albert Einstein

If consciousness is created in the brain, then in order to have awareness you would need to be alive. If the brain is not what produces consciousness then being alive is not a condition of awareness.

What are the odds of you having conscious awareness in this moment?

The known universe is billions of years old and will be here for billions of years more at a minimum. Earth contains countless billions of life forms ranging from microscopic viruses to giant redwood trees, from mosquitoes to blue whales. The number of stars in our known universe is billions of trillions, with most of those stars containing planets. The number of life forms could therefore be as many as trillions of trillions. To estimate the average lifespan of all conscious life forms in the universe is virtually impossible, but let us use a liberal figure of 100 years based on what we know of animal life on this planet. If we then estimated the universe’s lifespan as a conservative 100 billion years that would mean the odds of you being alive and conscious in this moment are one in one billion, and that is with time being the only factor in the equation.  

What if the universe is consciousness, with everything that exists being a projection of that consciousness? It would be like a dream on a larger scale. When you dream do the laws of science within your dream create your dream body and your dream consciousness, or is it your consciousness that creates the dream? Imagine, too, that there is only one single consciousness and that each of us is that same consciousness experiencing itself in different ways. If the universe is consciousness then the odds of you being conscious in this moment are one hundred percent. 

The estimate of one in one billion does not take into account factors such as how small the odds are that the laws of the universe would be exactly as they are. If gravity alone were any different than it is the universe could not exist. With even slightly more gravity the universe would have collapsed in on itself before it got going. With slightly less gravity the atoms that make up stars, galaxies, and planets would have flown apart and never condensed into the objects that they did. The same is true for the laws of electromagnetism, chemistry and so forth. The estimate of one in one billion does not factor in that the overwhelming bulk of atoms in this universe are inside of stars and dust clouds with most of the rest residing in planets, moons, comets, meteors, etc. The odds of an atom ending up in the body of a sentient being are astronomically small. The true odds of you being alive and conscious right now are something in the range of one in trillions of trillions. Compare one in trillions of trillions to one hundred percent odds. Is it more likely that you won the cosmic lottery or that there is a much simpler explanation as to why you are here in this moment?

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

~ Buddha

When I dream I experience my dream universe being created as I go. If I open a door I will see something behind it, but did anything exist there before I opened the door? Perhaps the waking world is much the same. Nothing exists without consciousness in which to be aware of it, so if I am the only person who sees something did it exist before I saw it? This is the same idea as the proverbial question about whether or not a tree makes a sound when it falls in a forest in which no one is there to hear it. If everyone was color blind would blue exist?

If the universe is creating itself simultaneous to me experiencing it, what doors might I open? What paths might I choose? With the entire universe as my playground, as a lucid dream is to the dreamer, I could view the world as an infant seeing everything for the first time.

Reality does not create consciousness, nor do we discover reality. It is consciousness that creates reality as it goes. When you are dreaming the world that exists is only the one that you experience. What exists behind a dream door before you open it? Whatever it is doesn’t exist in space because the dream world is made up entirely of consciousness and therefore there is no actual space. For that matter you can be in more than one place simultaneously within a dream. Your consciousness in the dream state is not bound to your dream body.

When the size of a circle grows everything outside of the circle grows too. Consciousness is infinite possibilities. The more that we smash apart subatomic particles, the more subatomic particles we will find. If ever we should have the technology to see what is outside of our universe I suspect we will find a greater multi-verse outside of it, and again outside of that. Do they exist now? It is interesting that pi is an infinite number. The math of a circle encompasses every possibility of every reality that could ever be. Is that a coincidence?

To keep with the simplicity theory, what exists is what we become aware of. More accurately, what exists is what is created through consciousness. In a matter of speaking none of it exists except for consciousness itself. As consciousness awakens it creates, but at the most awakened there is nothing to create. It simply is.

What exists behind the dream door before you open it is unlimited possibility. It is the vacuum, the nothingness from which everything comes and to which it will all return. What exists behind the door is what the universe, as you, creates as it becomes aware of itself.

We are here to awaken to the illusion of our separateness.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The concept of singular consciousness can be difficult to comprehend, but consider that even inside one’s own mind consciousness is divided. Currently part of my awareness is listening to music while another part of me is writing this sentence. Part of me is handling breathing, while another aspect of me is aware of my physical comfort. Some of my thoughts are surface-level, others a little beneath the surface, and still more deep beneath the surface.

We have all experienced something along the lines of driving somewhere and arriving without having been much conscious of the drive itself. This is an example of different layers of awareness. While driving you may have been lost in thoughts of your work or family, and yet some aspect of you was aware enough to handle the steering wheel, gas pedal, turn signals, navigation, etc.

We see life develop by means of cell division. One cell divides into two. Those two cells divide into four, four to eight, and so forth until there are trillions of cells that form into a living being. Thoughts are much like this. Everything is a series of multiplying dichotomies – right or wrong, good or evil, night or day. An organization forms and people join it. Eventually different ideas are presented and the organization divides into two organizations. At this point they remain similar, but with subtle differences. Again those organizations further divide out until a time comes when it is difficult to trace back to the original seed. It is the equivalent of two humans having two children, who each have two more, and then trying to track down to the original two after millennia of new generations. This concept applies to physical reality, thoughts, ideas, religions, countries and politics, etc.

Consciousness divides much like everything else. A single consciousness exists, but it is divided over and over. The more division there is, the harder it is to see the original seed from which everything sprouted. Solutions become more complex. More red tape, rules and policies come into play. Life becomes complicated.

Where is singular consciousness easiest to find? As we have learned from all of the most true