The Buddha’s transcendence of the Subject and Object
“…the world is steeped in the notion of duality.It grasps either this end, or the other end. Hard it is for the world to understand the stance of the arahant couched in the cryptic phrase, neither here nor there nor in between the two”.The worldling is accustomed to grasp either this end or the other end.’
Bhikkhu Katukurunde Ñāṇananda
“We experience ourselves and the world as subject and object only through conceptualization and language. This dualism, however, is only mental and not real. Mind produces this subject-object dualism. The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world that is held to be objective by natural science.”
Tom Arnold
As Valentine’s Day draws near, it brings with it a gentle reminder of Love—a deep and intricate emotion that has touched hearts throughout history. Thinkers like Plato and Aristotle pondered love’s many forms, defining it as Eros (romantic love), Philia (friendship), Storge (familial love), and Agape (selfless, universal love). These distinctions show us that love is not just one feeling but a rich tapestry of emotions that connect us uniquely, demonstrating how love appears in countless ways and situations.
Eros, with its fiery passion, often inspires us to seek out romantic connections, while Philia helps us cultivate cherished friendships that bolster our well-being. Storge embodies the tender care found within families, which lays the groundwork for who we become and how we act. Lastly, Agape represents the boundless love that compels us to extend kindness to all living beings without expectation. This universal essence of love serves as a testament to why it holds such fascination for humanity—it is ingrained into our existence, influencing every interaction and emotion we encounter.
As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, let us honor love’s rich diversity and its incredible ability to unite us in meaningful ways, encouraging us to acknowledge and cherish the many forms it takes within our journeys.
Amen||
VEILED REALiTY…..
‘*There must exist, beyond mere appearances (…) a ‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly.’ *B.d’Espagnat
*The objective reality of the universe, if such can be supposed to exist, must forever be unknowable to Man as to Microbe…. We are only aware of that aspect of the universe of which the senses we possess are able to inform us.* Wei Wu Wei ‘
*Somewhat ironically, science, having set out to know the ultimate nature of reality, is discovering that not only is this world beyond any direct experience, it may also be inherently unknowable.’ *P. Russell
*Human thinking can only imagine reality, just as a portrait represents a person. And as a portrait is not “the person” it represents, likewise any theory is not “the reality” it describes. We then must humbly recognize that our minds’ coherence and logic do not necessarily match the consistency of reality. And that also entails that reality does “occur” and that we cannot conclude it is an “illusion of our minds” simply because we cannot make sense of it. *Henri Salles
This is more than a philosophical exploration—it’s a practical roadmap for living with clarity, joy, and interconnectedness. Through cross-cultural insights, reflective practices, and meditative approaches, Dr. Ricketts shows how embracing the ineffable mystery of life can dissolve division, foster ecological and social harmony, and restore our inner paradise.
Whether you are a seeker, a meditator, a student of comparative religion, or someone simply longing for a more meaningful existence, The Garden of Eden in This Life will inspire you to see beyond duality and step into a living experience of unity.
If you are ready to move beyond dogma, transcend the limits of language, and reawaken to the timeless ground of being—this book will guide you there.
Consciousness
Without Consciousness
There would be “nothing” at all,
No things and no thoughts
To think them with.
No Worlds
To be Consciousness of,
And no Words for them.
No Earth, Sun, Sea or Sky,
Matter, Energy, Space or Time.
No Bodies or Beings.
No-thing.
Consciousness
Therefore, can belong to
No one, no being and no body.
Nobody “has” or “possesses” Consciousness
No plant, animal or human being.
Yet every body and every being,
Everything thing and every thought,
Every sensation or emotion
IS Consciousness
The Ultimate Truth:
Consciousness is Everything
And Everything is Consciousness
Every landmass, ocean, river and cloud,
Every particle and atom, cell and organism,
Every rock and plant, fish and animal,
Every body in space and time,
Every planet and star,
Every Universe.
To be Consciousness of any reality at all,
Any thought or thing, being or body, self or world,
There needs first of all to be the reality of Consciousness
Yet if every reality also IS Consciousness, then
Consciousness itself is all there is,
The Ultimate Reality.
Source: Peter Wilberg
Oneness isn’t a mystical achievement or something you arrive at after years of effort; it’s simply what is already happening.
The effort usually comes from trying to feel connected, when in fact nothing was ever disconnected to begin with.
We are not in the universe like an object placed inside a container; we are something the universe is doing here and now just as a wave is something the ocean does.
Our thoughts, our breath, our body, and our relationships are not private events occurring in isolation, but expressions of the same ongoing process that moves clouds, grows trees, and turns seasons.
When this is seen, and not believed as an idea, but noticed as an experience, the sense of isolation softens.
Life stops feeling like a personal struggle to justify your place in the world and begins to feel more like participation in a larger movement, a dance you were never outside of, only momentarily imagining you were.
When we reflect on the idea of oneness, that we aren’t separate objects in a world of other objects but part of a single unfolding process, it can help us understand why events in one place ripple outward and affect people elsewhere.
The suffering and struggle communities face in any place around the world are not isolated ‘situations happening over there.’ They are part of a larger human system, shaped by shared histories, politics, economics, and our collective choices about how we govern, how we care for one another, and how we respond.
Seeing through the lens of interconnectedness, we notice that these aren’t isolated headlines: they are expressions of how we still grapple with systems that separate people into categories of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’
Oneness doesn’t mean ignoring real differences or injustices; it means recognizing that every human being’s pain and joy matters, and that the well-being of one community inevitably affects the well-being of others.
When one group is harmed or denied dignity, the reverberations are felt far beyond that community, shaping how all of us see justice, compassion, and our shared humanity.
We are not separate, what happens to one place touches the whole and indifference is not neutral.
To see our interconnectedness is to be quietly, insistently called into responsibility.
Connection is not a feeling we wait for; for it is something we practice through attention, through refusal, to care.
To resist, in this sense, is not only to oppose violence and injustice where we see it, but to interrupt the habits that allow harm to be normalized, distant, or forgotten. It is to listen, to speak, to show up, to protect one’s other dignity in ways small and structural,
Resistance rooted in oneness does not harden the heart, it sharpens it. It says: your suffering is not outside my concern; your freedom is bound up with mine. And so we act. Not because we are heroes or saviors but because separation was never real to begin with.
To connect us is to refuse the lie that some lies are disposable. To resist is to insist, again and again, on a world organized around love and care rather than domination, relationship rather than erasure.
This is not abstract philosophy it is lived practice. And it begins wherever we are.
If we take interconnectedness seriously, then awareness alone is not enough,
Seeing what is happening calls us into action. This means refusing silence when harm is justified or ignored. It means learning, naming what we see, and standing publicly against policies and systems that dehumanize, whether through state violence, displacement, occupation, or enforced poverty.
Action looks like showing up for communities under attack, amplifying voices that are being erased, demanding accountability from those in power, and materially supporting people on the front lines through mutual aid, organizing and sustained pressure.
To connect is to commit. To resist is to act in ways that make separation harder to maintain.
We choose where to spend our money, how we use our platforms, which stories we repeat, and which injustices we refuse to normalize.
We build networks of care, protect one another, and insist again and again that no one is disposable.
This is how oneness becomes practice, not theory: through collective action that interrupts harm and moves us toward a world organized around dignity, justice, and shared responsibility.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, all of us stand eye to eye, stand in love and solidarity with you.
Liberation to all,
Aya Gozawi Faour, Co-Founder, Olive Odyssey
Omniscient Love is unconditional love in its most self-less, objective mode: “A love that is open to and nonjudgmental about all perceptions, cognitions, and intuitions.” It is the ‘enlightened’ state of consciousness sought in the meditative practices entailed in all human disciplines—viz, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, therapeutic, corporal, social, and so forth. As the highest state of love, Omniscient Love is present as an inherent potential in all humans. It embodies our ever-present psychoenergetic interconnection with everyone and everything around us— including the Universe itself, and hence, is the access channel to our highest psychic and spiritual proficiencies.
Bradley RT. Love, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: The Heart’s Vital Role in Coherence and Creation. Cardiol Vasc Res. 2024; 8(1): 1-25.
We gaze outwardly to the stars and inwardly to the atom, still seeking to measure it all in three-dimensions, which is in direct contrast to what we know the nature of the multi-dimensional Universe to be. This desire to measure and see everything in terms of our three-dimensional world allows a sleight of hand that reduces or collapses, or squashes, what is unified vibration or waves into what it is not – i.e., a particle that behaves as an individual solid, separate from the vast interconnectedness of vibration. And these particles are the building blocks of what we call matter, which we have observed to be separate from each other.
This is not true of course, but simply an illusion, as we know atoms are 99.99…% space, and space is filled with vibration. Even if it has become densified it is still just vibration and still very much connected to all other vibration, whether we like it or not.
We have this perception or need to unify, to come together, however in truth we are already all unified as one, and in this oneness we cannot help but be connected to everything else – such are the mechanics of vibration in space, our universe. Connecting to our oneness comes from a surrender to our multi-dimensional state, as it has been there all along. Whenever we try to unify ourselves, or anything in life, we are actually coming from a point of separateness, and we only ever achieve separateness from this.
In our desire to make sense of the world we seek to create and recreate everything to fit into the image of the material world that we uphold to be. We create the illusion that the world is made up of particles, and we use this to reinforce the notion of the individual. Therefore, it can be said quite clearly that there is no such thing as the individual, and therefore there is no such thing as the ‘I think’. By identifying purely as physical beings, have we disconnected from that which we truly are?
If we are only open to the physical reality with our separate identities, our gaze comes from that individuality and seeks separateness.
Quantum Mechanics simply describes the truth of our Universe.
If we say that it is only describing the atomic-world, are we denying the fact that all our chemistry is bound by the laws of quantum mechanics? This includes all biology, our bodies, the planet and all the stars. QM is not merely a theory, it is the basis of every aspect of life right down to the most practical, it is in fact a very practical science. Without these laws of quantum-physics we would not have mobile phones, GPS, laser, LED screens, MRI scanners, all our computer technology and communication media.
How did our modern-day science become separated into a myriad of very separate parts, often ignoring each other and the truths presented by one another? Quantum Mechanics naturally is central to all of science for it offers absolute truth to how all matter and energy in all sciences relate and interact. Yet the vast majority within the so-called ‘science’ field know very little of Quantum Mechanics. The very foundation of modern ‘evidence-based-science’ is flawed when a basic understanding of Quantum Mechanics is applied, for the ‘evidence’ is always affected by the observer.
We are actually living as a reduced or collapsed version of what we are, gazing with eyes that are blinkered from the truth: we are not individuals as such but rather inextricably connected to everyone and everything – just as every particle in the universe is connected to every other particle.
If we choose to see and recognise individuality we are creating and recreating that illusion, a corruption of the truth, simply a lie. The truth is that our Universe, as the name implies, is one song, or one unified vibration where nothing happens by itself. There is no such thing as individualisation – we cannot be separate from anything, everything is everything, the one is the all, a great oneness.
Our responsibility as scientists, as we all are, is to open our being to our world of space, a space filled with vibration constantly communicating with itself. And to know: I am that I am.
COMPUTERS AND HUMAN NATURE
On Human Nature vs. Machines: “Man is not a machine; he is a spiritual being, expressing a depth of consciousness and emotion that transcends mere mechanical function.”
On the Danger of Misconception: “The idea that classical computers can become smarter than human beings is a dangerous fantasy. It is dangerous because if we accept this notion, we will inherently limit ourselves to expressing only a very small fraction of who we are, reducing the rich tapestry of human experience to mere computations.”
On Consciousness and Quantum Systems: “We are not even close to computers in terms of understanding the complexities of consciousness. While comparisons are often drawn, the reality is that the brain functions on an entirely different level. We are quantum systems, embodying a depth and intricacy that far surpasses that of artificial constructs.“
On Free Will: “Humanity stands at a significant crossroads. Either it chooses to return to the belief that it holds a fundamentally different nature than machines, or it risks being reduced to a mere machine among machines, losing the essence of what it means to be human.”
On Meaning and Understanding: “A computer ‘knows without knowing that it knows,’ highlighting a crucial distinction. It processes symbols without genuine understanding; there is no witness, no pause for reflection, and no self that engages in true comprehension of its actions or outputs.”
On the Limitations of AI: “AI cannot truly be empathic. The notion of ’empathic robots’ being developed to care for the elderly is overly simplistic and naive. Such claims fail to recognize the profound human capacity for empathy, which cannot be replicated through programmed responses or algorithms.”
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 