Acharya Peter Wilberg's Bulletin

Language, Awareness and the importance of Language Awareness

In further response to Rod - forgive me for not emphasising sufficiently my sense and appreciation of what you were seeking to share and express through your words – and the often new and profound experiences of awareness in which this was rooted.

What is said to another ‘through the word’ (dia-logos) is innately valid - it can in no way be judged, by me or anyone, as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’.

I noted your careful use of quotation marks around particular words and phrases. As I also noted them where you wrote in response that what you essentially wanted to share through that sentence I picked up on (“The only awareness I will ever know is ‘my own’...) was a “conjunction of an immediate ‘I’, “my own” with it being immediately the experience of the awareness of Shiva.”

Though I myself would have avoided that tricky word “of” and written instead of “…the awareness that is Shiva”, nevertheless I feel that this new formulation of yours really speaks your meaning far more deeply and effectively than your earlier one - expressing of a most profound experience of ‘being awareness’ - of identity with the Atman or Chaitanyatman – one I can fully resonate with and is of supreme importance to me to.

We can think of language as having a fundamentally fivefold aspect:

(1) what is expressed ‘through’ the word - a wordless awareness and intent.
(2) the exact words through which this wordless awareness is expressed, and
(3) what words themselves actually say to us – how they ‘speak to us’.
(4) the intended effect of words on others – their aware intent.
(5) the experienced world itself as ‘word’ or speech.

The first two aspects of language – wordless awareness and the word – correspond to Shiva and Shakti respectively. These are united through a wordless awareness of language that can in turn give birth to a new and more precise language of awareness. The fourth aspect is the purpose served by awareness of language - the power of the aware intents that words can realise. The fifth aspect is the larger awareness that that the perception too, IS a language, that the world itself addresses us and speaks to us, and that every thing in it IS a word - giving form to the divine speech (vak) of the Mother (Kali).

Awareness is not just Awareness of a Word of Worlds. Awareness Worlds.
Worlding is the wondrous Wording of Awareness that occurs within its very Womb.
 
In principle, we can never fully express ‘in’ words, that which is said or communicated ‘through’ them. We can however aim at an ever-greater and more precise correspondence between the intended meaning and message of our words and their medium – the word itself. Like Heidegger, I find it more appropriate to speak of this ‘correspondence’ (homolegein) of the word to its message than its correctness or incorrectness. For even words or phrases as such are not ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ in themselves – whether in greater or lesser or greater correspondence with the truth of their wordless message.

To me, these issues of language are not ‘side’ issues in relation to the tantras but central ones. Indeed I feel the deep questions around them are precisely those that come to expression in the cryptic message of Shiva Sutras 1.4 – namely that the Mother is precisely that mater, matrix or matrika of language and sound which is both the all-shaping power of universal phenomenal manifestation and thereby also the seat of limited knowing or awareness of phenomena. The Mother as Matrika - as vocabularies and alphabets is she who ‘makes sense’ of awareness in the most literal sense – sounding sensuous phenomena into existence as words and worlds from within Her womb with matrix of manifestation potentials. This is what allows us to be aware of a sensuous world in the manner that Rod describes it, as “… Shiva looking through my eyes at Kali”.
 
In further response to Rod’s last post, me also emphasise the mutually supportive and valuable nature of our recent exchange, which, as an on-going dialogue, serves the most basic aim of The New Yoga – that of achieving an ever-greater co-respondence between the shaping verbal construct (vikalpa) on the one hand, and the truth of that wordless awareness (nirvikalpa) it seeks gives form to on the other.

This is why I was also glad to find you both meditatively questioning my use of the word ‘purer’. And I thank you for the wonderfully worded and significant reflection that you shared when, after writing that “Pure awareness is awareness that is most clear, as a ray of light through the clearest of water or air, without deflection or dispersal by intermediate substance or property” you also added that:

“A clear ray of light through the purest of water will reveal all on the bottom of a body of water, the beautiful fish, the dappled sun, the mud, or the discarded coke can.”

Indeed so!

As for your question “whether once pure, something can become “purer”?” I understand awareness becoming “purer” by becoming ever freer, not just of anything ‘muddying’ or ‘polluting’ but of all manner of experienced ‘qualia’ or tattvas – even the most positive and transcendental. It is in this way that even the tattvas of time and space are indeed transcended, taking us beyond that ‘Event Horizon’ within which all that is comes to be.
By virtue of its pristine purity and translucency the clear stream of pure awareness may indeed also reflect “beautiful fish” and indeed the most wonderful colours of the great sky of awareness (Shivavyoman) and yet its greater purity consists in sustaining an identification with the stream as something as clearly distinct from any such beautiful forms and colours - here taken as an analogy of beautiful ‘spiritual experiences’) as from the mud, discarded coke can or anything polluting or muddying.

I nevertheless wholly agree with you when you write that “…the Vimarsha, and Kali is an expression of that, to me is as equally rich and profound as the Purusha that experiences it. It is all ParamaShiva.”

In fact I see this as the answer to your question as to whether “…to experience Awareness as such, devoid of its “Otherising” is the Ultimate.” For the point is that this very Otherising occurs within Awareness – within Parama Shiva.

The dimensions of Potentiality, Manifestation Potential and Manifestation are all dimensions of the One Awareness internal to that Awareness. Truly there is and can be nothing ‘outside’ pure awareness - including its ‘othering’ in the form of all individualised beings and manifest realities, each and all of which are a unique awareness, also in the sense that you beautifully describe when you write:

“At this place, at this time, awareness is happening, within a Jiva (or any other) locus of awareness, and that Jiva, with all the inner aspects of Awareness, manifesting as sub-selves or inner goddings make that moment in time and space utterly unique within the Great Field of Awareness that is Shiva.”


The different generations and ages of sages such as Vasugupta, Utpaladeva, Jayaratha and Kshemaraja etc that made up the kula of Acharya Abhinavagupta shared an undying mutual reverence and respect for another. For even though their languages differed (and that in not insignificant ways) they shared the same singular purpose – that of seeking to clarify and free from error and confusion the language of the Shaivite Tantras and of Shaiva Advaita - and in doing so distinguishing it clearly from other, less articulate, refined or encompassing yogas and darshanas. From this resulted the Trika Shaivite Path.

Yet this challenge of achieving a new linguistic clarity is far from having been fully realised. For living as we do in an entirely new millennium - and within a very different culture to that of the Kashmiri sages - we find ourselves once more at the very beginning of the path of meditation, thinking and meditative thinking that first led to Trika Shaivism - needing once again to forge a language that clarifies its most central insights and recognitions - and that in even more language-aware ways than were necessary in their time. This is the unbending intent of ‘The New Yoga’, as what can rightly be called ‘New Millennium Yoga’.

To fulfil this intent however, certain new and higher recognitions and modes of awareness are necessary. In particular we need to be aware that both ‘scientific’ and ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ world views are essentially social practices. A ‘religion’ for example, is essentially a ‘linguistic’ or ‘lingual’ community’ or a set or sub-set of communities united by the social practice of agreeing to ‘account for’ or ‘make sense’ of reality in terms of the allegorical languages of its own specific ‘sacred scriptures’ (together with the languages of their scholars, interpreters and teachers). The members of a religious community – as a lingual community – also hold themselves ‘accountable’ to their shared or consensually agreed language. They consider it also as their ‘path’ or ‘duty’ (dharma) to engage in everyday or ritual practices which translate this shared language into living religious experiences – experiences which are nevertheless both shaped by their consensual language and which they also share, describe and account for using words, terms and also names drawn from that language.

In this sense ‘religion’ and ‘religions’ are no different from what ‘science’ and ‘sciences’. For science too, consists of lingual communities and sub-communities of scientists of different types. What does or does not constitute ‘science’ or ‘scientific fact’ is something determined through a social consensus established by and for the ‘scientific community’ as a whole. It is this and its sub-communities of ‘specialisms’ that both define and sustain – through their agreed languages and descriptions of reality – a account of what constitutes ‘science’ in the first place, and what can be considered as ‘scientific’ or not.

“The world we look at every day is only a description.” Carlos Castaneda

The new and higher awareness that I speak of in connection with The New Yoga is one that must embrace an awareness of the immense yet invisible role of language and languages in shaping our perception and understanding of the world. This requires and awareness of the social practice I refer to – the practice of agreeing to describe reality in terms of consensually agreed languages and their inventories of terms – whether drawn from religious scriptures or scientific terminologies. Languages are the ‘inventories’ from which accounts of reality are created, and human beings and their communities are defined by the inventories they employ in sharing accounts of their ideas and experience with one another.

“…human beings are creatures of inventory. Knowing the ins and outs of a particular inventory is what makes a man a scholar or an expert in his field … when an average person's inventory fails, the person either enlarges his inventory or his world of self-reflection collapses. The average person is willing to incorporate new items into his inventory if they don't contradict the inventory's underlying order. But if the items contradict that order, the person's mind collapses.” Carlos Castaneda

This is also the difficulty facing those who wish to challenge the hidden assumptions and consensual inventories underlying ‘orthodox’ social understandings of reality in any given culture – not least through ‘The Awareness Principle’.

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is "not done". Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals".
                                                  George Orwell


Thus again, what is accepted as orthodox ‘scientific knowledge’ in our culture is not establish ‘true’ knowledge. Instead it is the social practice of defining the types of languages and accounts of reality by which true knowledge is to be defined – namely as ‘scientific’ knowledge in the sense agreed through consensus by the ‘scientific community’. Like social, academic or professional communities and sub-communities, scientific communities are no different from religious communites – each defining itself by its own linguistic ‘inventories’ - and yet the language of ‘science’ itself has become Heidegger called “THE new religion” of our age.

This understanding, both of science as a religion and religion in the spiritual sense gives even more importance to the central mantram and maxim of Theosophy:

‘No Religion higher than Truth’.

To truly follow this maxim means seeking truth even it breaks those ‘consensual agreements’ and transcends the inventories of ‘consensual languages’ – traditional or modern, religious or scientific, Christian or Hindu. This can only be done though awareness of the types of hidden social practices by which such purely ‘consensual knowledge’ is established and sustained. For the limits of this consensual knowledge, and therefore also the nature of ‘limited knowledge’, have to do with limits of consensually agreed languages and their inventories. Without awareness of language, knowledge of truth remains bound to and thereby limited by consensual languages. This however, is yet another reason why greater or lesser ‘truth’ is ultimately and always identical with greater or lesser awareness – above all awareness of language - with its immense power to not only to limit but ALSO to clarify, purify, liberate and expand awareness.

Edited by author 13-11-2009 05:20 AM
This set of correspondence between Acharya and myself continues...

***Response to Clarifications***

Your effort and care in assisting my understanding and inner dialogue is deeply appreciated, and as ever instructive. I do slow down with the more complex, but appreciate it is often required in exploring the awareness and its 'relation' to the phenomenon of our living.

You notice I often use quotation marks, as you do, to indicate that a word is used mindful of its limitations or wider reference, or further hidden qualities to the word. This I find is particularly so when addressing this central aspect of awareness and egoity. In your recent articles on the Bulletin Board and in my current reading, the concept of 'I' and its nature and ‘relation’ to awareness has stimulated much thought and exploration, and your email is again most helpful. I do have questions however.

You have said;
-Thus when you write “…that the only awareness that I will ever know is ‘my own’…” the question immediately arises as to who or what is the nature of this ‘I’. Is it an experienced or ‘known’ self or the experiencing self? For the latter ultimately is nothing but awareness as such.

Here my words do fail to express the conjunction of the sense of an immediate 'I', 'my own' with it being also immediately the experience of the awareness of Shiva. I use quotes to try and talk in a limited way about an ineffable feeling that ‘I’ am Awareness Itself, and as that awareness here and now (within an awareness of a present limited ‘self’, but aware also that that is not the possessive source of awareness).

My words have unfortunately perhaps given the impression of possessing awareness, rather than trying to understand it as a here and now phenomenonological locus of Awareness, within the experience of a Jiva, ‘who’, or which phenonmenon is also arising in that same Awareness. My reference was more to time and space, here, now, - rather than any emphasis on the ‘self’ experiencing the succeeding moments of awareness.

At this place, at this time, awareness is happening, within a Jiva (or any other) locus of awareness, and that Jiva, with all the inner aspects of Awareness, manifesting as sub-selves or inner godding make that moment in time and space utterly unique within the Great Field of Awareness that is Shiva.

You wrote most clearly and helpfully:

“The self that is experienced as doing one thing or relating to one person is not the same self that is experienced in doing another thing or relating to another person. That is why true change or transformation of self is not a matter of any ‘I’ or ‘you’ changing but of a changed experience of who this ‘I’ or ‘you’ is. It is not self or other that changes. Instead true change consists of a new experience of self and other. The only unchanging ‘self’ is not any experienced self at all, but the pure awareness of how we are experiencing self – whether as egoically fixed and bounded or as fluid and transformed by its every experience.”

In trying to point to the uniqueness of the moment, I was incorrectly stating it from the viewpoint of the ’self’ that was experiencing the moment. Your words above re-orientate me. As you have said, reference often slips up in human speech in this area. However, I would re-apply your words to the aspect of the uniqueness of the here and now that is arising in awareness, even within, as you correctly say a ‘self’ that is itself ever changing and transforming within Awareness, and in response to such unique moments, which themselves are aspects of That Awareness.

This aspect of the utter uniqueness of each person, each event, each coming together of events and persons, of thoughts and awarenesses within the Great Awareness profoundly moves me at times. For while it appears to me we are all that Awareness at the highest, unbounded and One, we are also each and every moment of awareness in space and time.

At the most transcendent level, at the levels beyond Purusha-Vimarsha, (or perhaps from a bit lower – I have yet to fully digest the Awareness Tattvas) the limitations of time and space do not apply. Indeed I know, from your good teaching, that space and time cannot be prior to awareness, for they themselves are of the very nature of awareness. However the Vimarsha, and Kali is an expression of that, to me is as equally rich and profound as the Purusha that experiences it. It is all ParamaShiva.

I do wonder if to experience Awareness as such, devoid of its “Otherising” is the Ultimate.

I see this ‘pure’ awareness as the Para aspect. Yet the most distinguishing aspect of Trika is its insistence that Shiva is All, and that the highest is to see within the Apara, the Para - in Parapara.
So, if I am correct in this, the practice of awareness is not a purity of being devoid of awareness of the Apara, but rather measured by how really we can experience the Bliss of the Highest even in the utter mundane. I feel I am close to such when I am experiencing the sense of utter jewel uniqueness of the moment in awareness.

I paused as you spoke of moving from a pure awareness to a yet purer awareness.
The question arose as to whether once pure, something can become “purer”?

I was prompted to reflect on the nature of purity. To me purity means unmuddied, clear, without pollution or dispersing material. Pure awareness is awareness that is most clear, as a ray of light through the clearest of water or air, without deflection or dispersal by intermediate substance or property. A clear ray of light through the purest of water will reveal all on the bottom of a body of water, the beautiful fish, the dappled sun, the mud, or the discarded coke can.. It is the pure awareness will reveal that stream as it is and unhidden.

At this unique moment and place the pure awareness then transforms us, the Jiva picks up perhaps the can and further transforms the stream and “himself”, The stream becomes purer, and the Jiva, but the Awareness remains the purest it ever was. I think this is what you meant, but I do have difficulty with the pure becoming “purer”.
 


Your words as the dreaming aspect of Awareness so clearly state the nature of this reference to awareness and I thank you. It is one of the most succinct statements I have encountered on the apprehension of awareness as a “Dreaming”.

I find that when I speak of ‘my’ awareness (which I often put in quotes because of knowing it is not ‘mine’), I think I do so in order to avoid becoming ‘flummoxed, with words at every reference to it. It is a sort of shorthand to what I am seeking to express, without constantly re-oreintating the reference. This is an issue of communication I feel, one that is so open to misconstrueing, as you point out, by the ever human tendency to claim or see awareness as ‘ours’. There is an awareness that it has happened here again, because of my relaxed non-academic state in writing those words. Solipsism was floating in the background as I wrote, and thank you for clarification.
I remain in total agreement with you from the start as Awareness being Divine and not the possessed property of anything or anyone (because they themsleves arose from it) and which was indeed one of the emphases that helped me make a good leap in both understanding and experiencing in a more expanded way the nature of awareness.

Aware of my expressive limitations, I was wanting to refer to both the external and inner phenomenon that this loci of Awareness is experiencing or knowing, and the primary utter uniqueness of the moment of ‘now’ and ‘here’. Again, in merging or expanding with The Full Awareness at such moments the paradox is that the very heightened awareness of the unique ‘now’ and ‘here’, transforms its quality to one of timelessness and unboundedness.
One can only, as so many have said, end up pointing to the ineffable Divine quality of such moments, rather than trying to adequately express it.

When I am in this state of rich, almost merging, with the Manifestation, the sense of awareness that accompanies it is very much a sense of NOT just ‘my’ awareness at all, but that it is Shiva looking through my eyes at Kali.


Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Kali.

Further Clarifications of Language - a response to Rod's meditative statements on 'The Uniqueness of Awareness'.

I very much like what you write about being ‘Shiva-Kali’ – and also the new quantum-physical metaphor you introduced your meditations with. The idea of all electrons as a singularity at the boundary of two fields is a most fitting one.

I also have a felt sense of the deep questions you are validly seeking to express and explore in your further meditations.

On the other hand, the language in which not only you but many others pose those questions has challenged me once again to seek better ways of clarifying - in its own very specific philosophical language – the basic precepts and distinctions of ‘The Awareness Principle’. In doing so however, your essay also provided me with an opportunity to articulate and share with you, towards the end of this piece, a new and most important understanding of the practice of awareness - ‘The New Yoga’ - one that has so far been missing in all my previous writings on it. And though I realise that most of what follows may seem very ‘conceptual’, or even just repetitive of previous formulations of mine - as well as requiring some philosophical effort to follow - I hope you will find this effort worthwhile.

Firstly, two distinctions you will already be familiar with but perhaps need to be restated:

1. The distinction between any experienced or known reality - including any experienced self - and the experiencing self, understood as awareness as such in its universal and field character (Shiva)
 
2. The more general distinction between the entire realm of experiencing per se (Shakti) and the pure awareness of that experiencing (Shiva)

Thus when you write “…that the only awareness that I will ever know is ‘my own’…” the question immediately arises as to who or what is the nature of this ‘I’. Is it an experienced or ‘known’ self or the experiencing self? For the latter ultimately is nothing but awareness as such.

This returns us to that basic question out of which The Awareness Principle arises:

You speak of an ‘I’ that in some way ‘knows’ that the only awareness it will ever ‘know’ is its ‘own’.

Yet from whence comes the ‘knowing’ that this or any ‘I’ exists at all - except through a primordial awareness of it? And is not awareness also the essence of ‘knowing’, and not any ‘I’ that knows?

Such questions return us to most basic precept of The Awareness Principle. The precept rests on a simple argument: namely that since we cannot know of any ‘I’ except through an awareness of it, if follows that that very awareness cannot - in principle – be ‘owned’ by that ‘I’.
The general precept then reads:

Awareness (Shiva) cannot – in principle – be the ‘property of – owned by - any thing that there is an awareness of - anything that belongs to the realm of the experienced reality (Shakti), including any experienced ‘self’ or ‘I’.
 
As the one ultimate experiencer or experiencing self, pure awareness (Shiva) is fundamentally prior to and distinct from the entire realm of experience as such - including not only any experienced self or ‘I’, but also any experienced separation or boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other’, ‘I’ and ‘you’, what is ‘mine’ and what is ‘yours’.

In a sense, even to speak of an experienced ‘I’ or ‘you’, ‘self’ or ‘other’ misses the point – since it is experiencing as such that first shapes a sense of both ‘self’ and ‘other’. In addition, every experience of ‘self’ is always and at the same time an experience of something other-than-self. ‘Ego’ is essentially the illusion of a self or ‘I’ whose identity or ‘self-experience’ is immune from its experiencing of the world and of otherness in general.

It cannot be overemphasized how much this egoic illusion is embedded in everyday language. Thus we say that “I” feel happy/sad/excited etc. thus implying that this ‘I’ itself is unchanged by how it feels. Closer to reality would be wordings such as ‘There is now an awareness of experiencing a happy ‘I’” or “There is now an awareness of experiencing a sad ‘I’.” This is what I mean by ‘self-experience’. The ego refuses to recognise that self or ‘I’ that is basking in warm sunshine or companionship is simply not the same self that is experienced in conditions of cold or isolation.

Egoity is essentially the denial that how we feel and what we experience affects our very experience of who we are – our experience of self or ‘self-experience’. Egoity is also the illusion of an ‘I’ or identity that is immune from and forever unchanged by its ever changing experience.

In reality however, individual identity - understood as the ‘experienced self’ or ‘self-experience’ - is nothing fixed and unchangeable but essentially fluid in its identity. The self that is experienced as doing one thing or relating to one person is not the same self that is experienced in doing another thing or relating to another person. That is why true change or transformation of self is not a matter of any ‘I’ or ‘you’ changing but of a changed experience of who this ‘I’ or ‘you’ IS.

The only unchanging ‘self’ is not any experienced self at all, but the pure awareness of how we are experiencing self. And again, no experience of self – and thus no experienced self - can ultimately be separated from an experience of something or someone other-than-self.

Experience of things and people other-than-self are inseparable from the very experience of self. This very inseparability is what constitutes the true unity of self and other - not the ‘solipsistic’ concept of all experiencing or awareness being ultimately ‘mine’, one which stems from our narcissistic social culture.

In considering the nature of the ‘I’ or ‘self’, there is an implicit triad or trika to recognise:

• Chaitanyatman - that self which is the ultimate and divine experiencer – being esssentially nothing but the pure awareness of the realm of experiencing – including countless different experiences of ‘self’, ‘otherness’ and their relation.

• Jiva – the experienced self in both its individuality and infinite changeability and mutability, inseparable from the flux of experiencing itself.

• Ahamkara – that particular portion of the humanly experienced self or ‘I’ (the ego) which regards itself as a fixed unchangeable identity or ‘I’ – one whose changing self-experience is seen as something separate and apart from its whole experiential world – a world which therefore leaves it unmoved and unchanged.

Many philosophical confusions arise not just because of egoic language that implies a fixed ‘I’ but also because the double truth of The Awareness Principle itself ie. that not only is awareness everything and everyone, but also that everything and everyone IS an awareness. Thus a Jiva too, is not only an experienced self but a self that experiences. The difference with the Chaitanyatman however, lies in the fact that the Jiva or experienced self is co-constituted by what it experiences – shaped and changed by its experiential world.

For the Chaitanyatman on the other hand, the entire realm of experiencing is ‘other’ than what it essentially is - which is pure awareness. And though absolutely inseparable from the realm of experiencing, indeed its divine source, pure awareness remains absolutely distinct from it - and thus not a possession of any self or ‘I’ experienced within that realm.

That is why any language which talks of ‘my’ awareness or ‘yours’ denies the very essence of awareness as such. It expresses only the limited experiencing or awareness ‘of’ that belongs to the Jiva – itself essentially an experienced self - and not that awareness of the entire realm of experience and experiencing that is Shiva.

This is why there is also a danger of formulations such as the following being linguistically misleading:

“‘I’, my pure awareness, does not need an object for me to know that I am still aware, ix unchanging and all changes before me.”

Again, to speak of “…my pure awareness…” is philosophically questionable - for how can we come to know of any ‘I’ for which pure awareness is ‘mine’ except from a prior awareness of that ‘I’?


Yet you are nevertheless right when you write: “I do not think that my experience of awareness is necessarily the only one”

As Jivas we can indeed speak of ‘your’ or ‘my’ experience of pure awareness – and of the richness of their individual differences. Yet in doing so we need also to keep in mind that the very identity, ‘self-hood’ or ‘I-ness’ of any ‘me’ or ‘you’ is essentially shaped and constituted by its experience. It is only the language of the ego or Ahamkara that leads us to speak of experience as ‘ours’ – thus forgetting that our very identity as selves is in no way separable from that experience. We must never forget that the realm of experiencing includes our very experience of self – it is not just to do with the self’s experience of a world outside itself. It is the ego which reduces ‘experiencing’ to a self’s experience of a world. In this way it places the self apart from its experiential world - rather than recognising the ever-changing nature of self-experience as an integral part of that world.
I think it can also be linguistically misleading to speak of pure awareness as something that ‘…does not need an object to know that I am still aware’. Note again that the word ‘I’ is still ambiguous here, still implying as it does that first of all there is an ‘I’ and then an awareness that it ‘has’ rather than the other way round - namely that first of all there is an awareness of an ‘I’. Yet the phrase “know I am still aware” is also linguistically ambiguous - since is it not awareness itself which is the very essence of ‘knowing’. Finally there is the use of the word ‘object’, which is a misleading Western translation of the Sanksrit for anything ‘known’. This in turn implies a knower, just as awareness, as the essence of knowing, implies something known - and in this sense an ‘object’.

The problem is that though there are countless ‘knowns’ there are, ultimately, no ‘objects’ in the Western sense. For there is nothing knowable or known – even a stone - that is not itself a sentient awareness and thus, in the Western sense, a ‘subject’. Hence my philosophical definition of both Kashmir Shaivism and The Awareness Principle as ‘Absolute Subjectivism’.

The problem with most previous attempts to formulate such a philosophy was that they left themselves open to accusations of solipsism – implying that we cannot know of anything beyond ‘our’ awareness, and that therefore the seemingly independent reality of the world and other beings are just maya – ‘dreamings’ of the solitary self.

So the question you raise is a valid and most important one:

“Is there any sense that I am dreaming you and all that is before me?”

The wrong sense would be the solipsistic one, the one that fails to recognise that awareness is prior to any experience of an ‘I’ or ‘you’. Taking this into account I would rephrase the question as an answer:

There is a sense in which not ‘I’ or ‘you’ but ‘It’ – the divine awareness – is constantly dreaming itself as you and as me. Consequently there is also a sense in which, through dreaming itself as you, it can also dream me in ‘you-like’ way. Equally however, through dreaming Itself as me it can also dream you in a particular ‘me-like’ way. ‘In the beginning’ then, is this ‘It’ - this dreaming. Only out of it come specific dreamers – dreamt selves such as me and you. Yet through us in turn arise dreamings of each other.

In other words there is an important parallel between this ‘Dreaming Principle’ and ‘The Awareness Principle’, namely that just as beings emerge from awareness and not the other way round, so do dreamers emerge from a dreaming - and not the other way round.
The gods themselves, like you and me, and indeed all worlds and all things - are ‘dreamings’ of the divine-universal awareness – emerging from it in the same fashion as dreams do, and bearing an independent and individualised portion of that divine, dreaming awareness within them. In that way they also serve as a creative conduit for that awareness - allowing it to ever more richly individualise and "otherise" itself (a great term of yours) through a process akin to dreaming.

Understood in this way, it is not the case that we are all ‘solipsistically’ confined in our own individually dreamt worlds. For since all these worlds are ultimately dreamings of the Divine Awareness, that awareness is itself a conduit linking the dreamings of all beings, both embracing and uniting the individualised awareness that each of us is.

You are not aware of me, the world, other people and the gods because, in your words, they “come to be before my awareness”. On the contrary - they only “come to be” before ‘your’ awareness because, like you, they are all expressions of the same One Awareness – that Awareness which, as my oft-repeated saying goes, is “neither yours nor mine but the essence of the divine”.

To sum up, and having explored in some detail the many questions that I see your writing on ‘The Uniqueness of Awareness’ as raising, there is essentially a single question which I see as central – for I feel that if you can get behind and beyond it, it could take you over a threshold and into a totally new understanding and experience of awareness.

I end up asking, what is me and what is this other "awareness" I am experiencing? It too is ‘me’, but suggests to me in a seductive manner that I am more than me, a "field" perhaps, but the only way I will ever experience it is as "my awareness".

All I wish to suggest in response is a reformulation of the final words of this question - one that sums up all I have been seeking to say so far. The reformulation reads;

…but the only way I will ever experience it as my experience of awareness.

For as I have tried to explain, whilst there are valid grounds for speaking of “my experience of awareness” I see no grounds for speaking of “my awareness”. Everyone’s experience – even of pure awareness - has an individual character. And just as we can apply the mantram ‘There is an awareness of…” to ordinary experiences, so also can we apply it to the most profound experiences - even to experiences of pure awareness as such. We can say to ourselves ‘There is an awareness of experiencing pure awareness now in this and now in that (for example as fire, light or space, a sacred murti or place).
In this way we can dynamically recycle the most basic principle of The New Yoga and turn it into a type of spiral. The principle reads:

from a pure awareness of experiencing to an experience of pure awareness

Many of us have come, through our practice and meditation, to some wonderful experiences of awareness. And yet the dynamic process does not stop there. For every experience of pure awareness still belongs to the realm of experiencing. This means we can come back to the ‘fundamental distinction’ between awareness and experiencing and, reminding ourselves of it, choose not to identify with a particular experience of pure awareness - however deep or blissful - but with the pure awareness of it.
By dynamically recycling the basic mantram ‘There is an awareness of experiencing this…’ and applying it even to experiences of awareness the basic principle of The New Yoga takes on a whole new dimension and reads instead:

from an experience of pure awareness to a pure awareness of that very experience

Following this principle, any and every experience of awareness becomes a platform to a yet purer one – precisely through the basic practice of identifying first and foremost with the pure awareness of that experience – however profound – rather than identifying with it. Thus we create a dynamic and unending 5-phase cycle or spiral leading us into ever purer experiences of awareness.

1. Experiencing some ‘thing’
2. Identifying with the pure awareness of that experience.
3. Coming to an experience, not of some ‘thing’, but of pure awareness
   itself.
4. Identifying with the pure awareness of that very experience.
5. Coming to a yet purer experience of awareness.

The third and most complete formulation of the basic principle of The New Yoga thus reads:

from a pure awareness of experiencing to an ever purer experiencing of awareness

We can put this principle into practice simply by applying the ‘There is an awareness…’ mantra to experiences of pure awareness too, not least during murti darshan. If we do so we will find the notion of pure awareness as a boundless space or, non-local ‘field’ becomes no mere concept but very real. Awareness is purified of all gunas and takes on its true character as nirguna. We pass from ‘being aware’ to ‘being awareness’. In this movement awareness ceases to be something ‘we’ experience but instead recognise as that which we are – the Chaitanyatman. Yet to reach this point it is vital to cultivate a sense of pure awareness as something that surround and pervades us, like space, light and air, from the outside – and not as some ‘centre’ or ‘ground’ within us. Being awareness we experience every atom and cell of our bodies in their reality – as almost entirely empty space, pervaded by a wholly invisible light. Yet this is not so much an experience of awareness as an experience of our selves, our minds and our bodies in the pure light of awareness. In this way awareness ceases to be an experience, expression or possession of ‘our’ body, mind or self. Nor do we experience the awareness ‘field’ and its light in a ‘self-centred’ way, as radiating from a central self or ‘I’ – but rather the other way round. We experience the ‘I’ as a self-centering of the field itself - as an inward concentration of its light and an embodiment of the nectar of its bliss-substantiality. Thus ‘being awareness’ we can attain a state of ‘being-awareness-bliss’ (satchitananda) understood as being ‘awareness-bliss’. We do not need any more to centre or ground our self or body in pure awareness. Instead it is awareness that centres and grounds itself in us, that bodies and selves itself as us. And it is awareness that recognises itself as doing so – not us.

More fundamentally, in such highest states of awareness it is not ‘we’ that ‘experience awareness’ at all, but rather pure awareness – Shiva – that experiences itself as us - as the Jiva that we are. Yet being that awareness, we also come to an entirely new experience of self – not just as a Jiva but as the Chaitanyatman or ‘Awareness Self’ – as Shiva. And though I have said it again and again in different ways, it cannot be overemphasized how important it is, in order to attain this state of Shivattva, to cultivate a sense of pure awareness as something that enters and pervades our bodies from the outside - from the expanse of space around and the invisible light and air that pervades it – the Akash.

Acharya


SAT-CHIT-ANANDA

We are what we are.
We feel what we feel.
Things are as they are
In all their limitations.
We are as we are, in
All our limitations.

And yet…

The very awareness of
Limitation is what itself
Transcends limitation.
Not ‘I am what I am’ is
The highest mantra, but
‘There is an Awareness of
Being what I am’.

Being that Awareness is
Being-Awareness-Bliss.

Edited by author 05-11-2009 08:58 AM
The following is a free flowing meditative statement that arose from my recent correspondence with Acharya. I share it with readers.

**On The Uniqueness of Awareness***

*Shiva - Awareness, prior to the arising of the Objective, The Other of Shiva.

*Kali - The living manifestation, from within and without, of all differentiation, of every polarity. The arising of the Objective, the Other. Kali cannot be without Shiva.

*When Kali sleeps, Shiva sleeps. When Shiva awakens, Kali awakens.

*Each Jiva is an utterly full unique 'configuration' of Awareness-Manifestation.


*In quantum physics there are some with deep knowledge of this field, that say it is possible, being ever unable to fully define in time and space the sub atomic particle, as say in an electron, that it is conceivable that all may be one 'electron' vibrating with infinite action between the field of actuality and the field of probability,and that each moment of measurement of an electron is made manifest in its particular way by the particular awareness that is active at that moment.
**********

Does Awareness have particularity? We, as Shaivites, present that all arises in awareness. Within the New Yoga we also refer to the 'Field of Awareness'. It occurs to me that the only awareness that I will ever know is 'my own'. I will never know yours, for you will ever be other to me. Is my awareness, that is the only awareness that 'I' will ever know, in the Field of Awareness or is it the Field of Awareness itself, thus as one, is it indeed a 'field'?

Even if I am full of siddhis and find myself in a 'Field of Awareness' moving in 'your awareness' or the 'awareness' of a tree, or transporting myself across time and space in awareness, outside my localised body, even then I am still knowing only my own awareness, it is my awareness of being in these 'other' awareness, but they remain object to me, still other, crystallised, resonated, manifested before or in my same awareness.

I end up asking, what is me and what is this other 'awareness' I am expereincing. It too is 'me', but suggests to me in a seductive manner that I am more than me, a 'field' perhaps, but the only way I will ever experience it is as 'my awareness'.

From 'my viewpoint' the activity within my mind, and externally before my senses are all Kali. How does this Kali come to be before my awareness, the only awareness I will ever know in whatever dimension or state?

'I', my pure awareness does not need an object for me to know that I am still aware, is unchanging and all changes before me. Concepts of a 'Field of Awareness' remain an ever objective concept before my singular awareness, part of the great and noble schemata of Trika Shaivism, a product it appears of minds of great awareness - but is this also the most wonderful dream of all?.

Thus there appears to be a Supreme Singularity, and my awareness is It!

Is there any sense that I am dreaming you and all that is before me?

Is it perhaps a fact that there is only my awareness, no other awareness, no 'field of awareness', just mine, the only one I will ever know.
Again I ask how then does "my Kali" arise? How did the very concept of Kali come to emerge in my awareness, to be 'birthed' indeed?

How does Kali birth herself? Awareness is prior to that birthing, so it would seem that out of Awareness, Kali arises from a 'Field' of infinite Potentiality, before Time and Space, that we also call Kali, or is it Shiva-Kali, ParamaShiva, in which light-birthing darkness the Great OM resonates, humming, humming?

The only time presently I am not aware of being aware is when I am in undreaming sleep, and in dreaming sleep my awareness can become involuntarily absorbed by its "othering" dream. But it is not an "othering" dream at all, my awareness is the dream, the dream is my awareness and I do not recognise myself. To do so is to step back and become two, Kali and Shiva yielding their most intimate embrace.

When I am able, and I am not able yet, to be aware within undreaming sleep, then I am truly pure Awareness Itself. But it is no 'It'. It is me and 'I' am. And 'I' am not and never will be an 'It', for an 'It' or 'That' is other, an object of living awareness. Is there indeed any 'It' at all, any 'That' other than a phenomenon in my living 'person-ful' awareness?

We may insist to each other that we are, that the whole world is existing outside my awareness. Everything points to this. But this still may be a dialogue of phantoms. What is said and taught, learnt and experienced may be a Kali phenomenon arising with all its story of history and magnificent staging, unto the very beginning, or is 'beginning' itself part of the great tapestry "my" Kali is weaving before "my" Shiva.

If Shiva is me, Kali is me.

I do not think thereby however that my experience of awareness is thus necessarily the only one, even though it, and all that it presents, is the only one 'I' will know in whatever state or level. Here words stumble. Indeed the utter astonishment of Shiva Awareness is that each and every momentary 'unit' of awareness is one full and complete phenomenological experience of Shiva-Kali in itself.

In a sense there is no need to know the "others" awareness for both are experiencing without loss the full same experience of Shiva-Kali, but as a unique 'you', alone, but really never alone, for all before you is your 'partner', alive, full of love, discovery, drama, creativity, destruction, pain, fear, joy, amazement, despair and all the other differentiated polar qualities that make up Being.

When you share with me your unique awareness, that will be a real sharing of two,and the quality of 'sharing' requires a 'form' or boundary of awareness, but it is an Awareness that is really the same One. My Shiva will know your Kali, Your Shiva, mine. And the Kali Other will ever be a supremely uniquely Other and the more Awareness resonates within us as individual Jivas, the more that Kali-born uniqueness presents itself.

Edited by author 24-10-2009 11:00 AM
Hello Steven,

I trust your retreat went well. I have somewhat inundated myself with reading, having purchased quite a number of core books to establish my Shiva library. I have done what is probably not wise, in reading parts of all of them, like jumping from stone to stone in a river of awareness. There is so much in "Triadic Heart of Shiva", so full of the rich teachings of Acharya Abhinavagupta, I cannot honestly say I have even half begun to absorb its treasures.
Currently my inner responses have been somewhat undisciplined and more a stream expression of awarenesses and questionings that have arisen from my reading. Perhaps this is because I realise how much I currently lack in content of the rich tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, and my constricted academic experience. With this goes a certain hesitancy to speak with confidence on detail. However, the sharing of "Awarenessing" bears fruit however it is expressed. Along with this of course are also the equally awareness-provoking and enlightening offerings of Acharya, that flow with abundance.
Thank you for your reference to my other blogs and sharings. I am presently in dialogue with Acharya, particularly about absorbing meditation wherein the "Other", even the most mundane can transform its meaning, its nature, its 'rasa', to Shiva Awareness within.
At present I have been experinecing in awareness moments the deep impression of how utterly unique each, bindu connected point of here-now of Kali manifestation is. Each moment, each Jiva passage, each Jiva-Jiva connection, each configuration in time, space, connection (particularly of meanings) as that which will never be imitated in all the manifestation of Eternity. Even as a copy it would be a 'copy' and not the original.
I am reminded of the Expansion and Contraction inherent in the term 'visarga' discussed by Muller-Ortega, a quality of the Heart.

How does it connect within me?
It appears, and it has been thus far too few and brief in experience, but nevertheless powerful, - that in seeing this utter uniqueness, of this bindu-like 'now', this bindu-like 'here', there is an awareness of utter contraction.
And yet, and this is hard to express, but I will attempt it, this utter contraction brings about an expansion, wherein the uniqueness is so utter, that time and space become in a sense irrelevent, and boundless in quality. Each moment like this is still but moving, is contracted but expanding, and now I have (*No! not 'I have', but rather 'there is') an awareness that this is the very quality of the Visarga, and thus the Heart of Shiva, quietly throbbing in each moment. That is all I can say.

(*I am slowly acquiring from dialogue with Acharya, some skills to more clearly express the inner experience of awareness as a 'Jiva', without incorrectly conveying an unintended meaning of it somehow being 'possessed' by the Jiva. I am finding that without due care, words, even just one preposition can lead to a lack of clarity. Both the writing of Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega (what a fluid beautiful name) and of Acharya, amongst others, are fine examples for me. Attainment of that level will not be achieved in this passage for this Jiva, I think. And that's ok.)

My email is lloyds11@tpg.com.au

BTW, Did you know Fosters has lost its sheen here? Its down the list now in Oz.

Namaste

My Shiva Shrine

To Rod Lloyd: I've been meaning to ask you how your reading of Triadic Heart of Siva went, since you said you were getting into it a couple of months ago. I also brought it along for my most recent trip to northern Minnesota with my lady friend. I couldn't find your email address on your blog, even with my computer-literate son's help. Also tried Facebook (I'm on Facebook) but wasn't able to get a message through.I'm reading with interest how you try to put your understandings and applications of Awareness into practice, both on this Bulletin Board and your other sites.

REVOLUTION AS 'KALI YOGA' - THE NEW YOGA OF TIME

Time is not an ‘objective’ function or property of anything that is – of ‘being’ – but a mode of subjective awareness of what is. Yet if our lives consist of nothing but constant movement from ‘one thing to another’ – one activity or focus of awareness to another - then we remain fettered to the narrowest and most constricting experience of time as mere one-dimensional line in ‘space-time’. This linear experience of time quite literally offers no time for a type of free and unfocussed awareness – one that could allow us to experience time itself as an expansive space of awareness – as ‘time-space’. That is why ‘going from one thing to another’ - from one focus of awareness or action to another, is the very opposite of living a meditative life – a life of freedom and awareness. For it deprives us of what is most essential to life and time quality – namely taking time for a free and unfocussed awareness of all there is to be aware of – all there is to reflect on, look back on, look forward to and enjoy. Yet today’s global business culture is one of incessant busyness – a constant ‘going from one thing to another’. This culture of busyness expresses the very essence of the capitalist business and economic system – which demands that people sell their time to an employer - to be used at the behest of their bosses, and paid only according to its quantity and market value. In this way work becomes what Marx called ‘wage slavery’ – taking what is most precious to each individual - namely their time and awareness - and turning it into a mere commodity to be bought, sold, focussed and directed by the will of another. The capitalist employer seeks to extract ever more quantities of time out of their employees in order to exploit it as the source of ‘surplus value’ – profit – whilst at the same time demanding an ever-greater focussing or concentration of awareness on multiple tasks and objectives. The result is not just a quantitative loss of time for those things of most value to the individual, but a general diminution of time quality – and with it both quality of life and work. Along with this goes a narrowing of awareness accompanied by ‘anxiety’ or ‘angst’ (both words whose Germanic roots (angu / angxt ) refer to ‘narrowness’ or Enge – as in the name Eng-land or ‘narrow land’).

The culture of capitalism is also one in which time is seen as something to be ever more productively used or filled. Yet the very identification of ‘productivity’ with speed and measurable quantities of times is ultimately counter-productive, diminishing quality of time, quality of work - and quality of decision-making and action in all spheres of life - personal, economic and political. Actions become purely reactive or mere expressions of wilful or egotistic ‘single-mindedness’ rather than arising out of an awareness of alternate possible actions and decisions – the foundation of free choice and of patient and considered decisions and actions. ‘Meditation’ on the other hand, means giving ourselves time rather than using or filling time - above all giving ourselves time to come to rest in a state of free and unfocussed awareness – a ‘pure awareness’ (chit) unbound to any particular focus of awareness, perception or activity.

In this sense, meditation is the very opposite of an ultra-focussed or ‘single-pointed’ concentration of awareness. Nor is meditation merely one more thing to ‘make’ time for in our culture of busyness. Instead, what ‘meditation’ means in everyday life is a strict discipline or yoga – the discipline of granting ourselves intervals of time between each and every everyday task or activity we engage in – not just as ‘pauses’ or ‘breaks’ for relaxation, entertainment or ‘rest’ but intervals in which we allow ourselves to come to rest in a expanded ‘space’ of free and unfocussed awareness. This expanded time-space restores our relation to time in its wholeness – transcending the demands and pressures dominating the present moment and encompassing both past and future as well as the immediate present - thus allowing us to reflect on and feel more deeply into all that has been, is and is yet to come.

Within the spacious expanse of a free and unfocussed awareness field we cease to be lost in any particular focus of awareness and activity, or else overburdened by a multiplicity of foci in the form of different life aims, daily tasks or work demands. At the same time, since this expanded time-space also encompasses and embraces every possible focus of our life and awareness – past, present and future – it is a source of fresh creative insights and impulses to action of a sort that do not arise from a narrow, single-pointed focus or concentration of awareness, however intense. Yet this time-space of pure, unfocussed awareness cannot be opened up in everyday life without practicing daily ‘meditation’ in a specific way - not just at the beginning or end of the day – but between each period of focussed awareness and activity that we engage in during the day. This meditative discipline or ‘yoga of time’ is by nature subversive and revolutionary. It is a Kâlî Yoga (from the Sanskrit kâla –‘time’) for the Kali Yuga - that ‘dark age’ which is above all characterised by a patriarchal and global capitalist culture designed precisely to keep people bound in a constant state of busyness – one in which they busily go ‘from one thing to another’ without ever giving themselves time to come to rest within that unbounded cosmic time-space or circumference of awareness that is the womb of the Great Mother goddess - Ma Kâlî. Her counterpart in Hindu mythology is the male demon Kali, hence the so-called Kali Yuga or ‘Age of Kali’ - associated with unbridled avarice, violence, monetary gambling and godlessness. Kâlî on the other hand is the divine power of manifestation latent in pure awareness (Shiva) and realised through the unfoldment of its creative potentials in time.

Listening to the chanting of the Mahamantra we can find in it ever new depths and feel its meaning in ever new ways….

The Ocean Om Namah Shivaya:

OM – the solid, rock-bottom of our soul’s ocean, where we can come to rest, not despite but even through those 'rock-bottom' states of deepest weakness, weariness, sickness or depression - which take us ever further down into the abyss until we reach that ultimate soul ground of our being.

NAMAH – all the strange and wondrous life-forms that appear to grow and swim at in the ocean of our inner soul life. All that occurs in our outer life of soul, and all that simply flows as inner currents of feeling through and within our soul’s body, colouring - now more darkly and heavily, now more lightly and brightly - its felt tone and texture.

SHIVAYA – that COMMON all-surrounding soul ocean in which we know both ourselves and each other to dwell, and which nourishes and forms all souls. The secret Fire of Life that is also hidden within every particle of that great Soul Ocean, causing its waters to rise up as aethers to the shining sources of that Fire in the heavens - to 'Shivaloka'.

A Simplification of the Logic and Dialectics of Shaiva Advaita Philosophy


“In this world there are some devoted people, who are undeveloped in reflection and have not taken pains to study difficult works like Logic and Dialectics, but who nevertheless aspire after Samavesha with [immersion in] the Supreme Lord."

From Kshemaraja’s introduction to the Pratyabhijnahrdayam


If ‘bounded’, ‘limited’ or ‘contracted’ consciousness is conceived as awareness contained within a limiting boundary perimeter such as a circle, sphere or body surface of any type, and ‘uncontracted’ consciousness is conceived as the unbounded space or field of awareness around that circle, sphere or surface perimeter, the question arises as to the true nature of any boundary or perimeter as such. I argue that any such bounding perimeter both distinguishes the awareness it bounds from the unbounded field around it, and at the same time unites them. For being inseparable from both the awareness it bounds and the unbounded awareness around it, it renders the bounded and unbounded, ‘contracted’ and ‘uncontracted’ dimensions of awareness both distinct and inseparable. The understanding of Advaita or ‘non-duality’ (a-dvaita) itself as a state of inseparable distinction ie. neither a state of oceanic boundlessness lacking all internal distinction or ‘differentiation’ nor a multiplicity of separable consciousnesses contained within ‘their’ own boundaries - this is the key to simplifying the logic and dialectics of Shaiva Advaita.

The principle of ‘inseparable distinction’, gifted by the new dialectical logic of Michael Kosok, explains exactly why, in Shaiva Advaita, the ‘contracted’ awareness of the ‘bounded’ self or jiva is understood as ultimately ‘identical’ with the unbounded awareness that is Shiva. This is not because the awareness of the jiva has no bounding surface perimeter or ‘sheath’, but because that very perimeter – though it bounds a field of awareness, is not itself anything bounded. For by its very nature, any bounding surface or perimeter is not itself anything bounded! A circle drawn on a piece of paper for example, does indeed seem to bound an area of space on the page – but it does not bound itself, as a circle, in doing so! This is why it is that if we understand every self, body and being as the very surface perimeter bounding a field of awareness, there is no longer any question of how this boundary can be transcended, or how the awareness it bounds can be said to be ‘identical’ with the unbounded awareness around it - for they are both distinct and inseparable.

In the language of Shaiva Advaita, the terms ‘Self’ and ‘Consciousness’ are often used interchangeably to refer to both the bounded and unbounded, contracted and uncontracted dimensions of the universal awareness (chit). Thus there is talk of a bounded or contracted dimension of both Self and Consciousness in the form of individualised consciousness (chitta) of the jiva or of separable beings (bhava) in general, and there is talk of the unbounded dimension of Self and Consciousness (chetana) identical with Parama Shiva. Here it is helpful and simplifying to understand the distinction between ‘Self’ and ‘Consciousness’ in terms of the ‘perimeter model’ explained above. From this point of view ‘Consciousness’ may be defined as any field of awareness contained within or surrounding a bounding perimeter or surface boundary. A ‘Self’ on the other hand, may be understood as any bounding perimeter or surface boundary of awareness as such. Since any such perimeter is not itself anything bounded, this explains why any ‘Self’ is ultimately a singular unity of both bounded and unbounded dimensions of awareness – affirming both Vedantic notions of Advaita as the unity of the Atman and Para Atman or Brahman, and Shaivist understandings of Advaita as the unity of the jiva with Shiva.

Any field of awareness contained within a surface boundary or perimeter may itself contain within it a multiplicity of surface boundaries or perimeters or selves – like a circle whose inner field contains many smaller circles, but is also itself one circle amongst other circles contained within a yet larger circle. For any surface boundary or perimeter of awareness – any Self – may itself be contained with a field of awareness itself circumscribed by a larger bounding perimeter or Self. If we picture the ‘Self’ then, as a shaped bounding perimeter of some sort – for example a circle - and ‘Consciousness’ as the fields of awareness both contained by and containing that circle or Self, then we get a clear picture of Awareness as such (Chit) as that ultimately unbounded field of awareness within which emerge multiple circles within circles and selves within selves. Thus there is a type of hierarchy of ever broader and more expansive and inclusive Selves, as well as ever broader and more expansive Consciousnesses – the fields of awareness contained by and containing those Selves. Selves can thus be pictured as ever larger circles embracing ever broader fields of awareness. The larger the field of awareness circumscribed by any Self, the more circles or ‘sub-selves’ it can embrace within that field, along with the elements of consciousness they contain – each of which is less an ‘object’ than a ‘subject’ – being a formed boundary of awareness or sub-self in its own right. Yet since the space or field of awareness either containing or contained within any circle or ‘self’ is essentially one singular space or field, one cannot ultimately talk of ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ selves - since it is ultimately the very same singular space or field of awareness that both contains and is contained by all the circles, selves or surface boundaries of awareness - of whatever dimension or breadth – that form within it.

Parama Shiva, as the ultimate or ‘Supreme Self’ of every individual being or entity (bhava) can be compared to an infinite circle, sphere surface circumference or perimeter of awareness - circumscribing all that is. ‘Anuttara’ on the other hand, defined in the Shaiva tantras as the absolute, ultimate or ‘non-higher’ reality, is that ‘Supreme Consciousness’ whose nature is an awareness unbounded by any bounding ‘circle’ or ‘sphere’ of awareness - and thus also unbounded by any Self - up to an including the Supreme Self that is Parama Shiva. This does not make Anuttara ‘higher’ than Parama Shiva, or the ‘Supreme Consciousness’ higher than a ‘Supreme Self’. For as emphasised, the whole point is to understand that any Self - understood as a bounding surface, sphere or perimeter of awareness, is not itself anything bounded. This again is the real and essential reason why - as recognised in both Vedanta and Shaiva Advaita – there are ultimately no boundaries of awareness to be ‘overcome’ or ‘transcended’. For to fully identify with and be any bounding surface perimeter of awareness, to fully be any ‘Self’ - is already to cease to have boundaries - except for those constituted by yet larger bounding circles or perimeters of awareness, yet larger Selves - up to and including the ‘Supreme Self’ - Parama Shiva. On the other hand, by identifying with the very space or field of awareness contained by or containing any circle or perimeter of awareness - any surface boundary or Self at any ‘level’ - we at once and automatically become identical with the ‘Supreme Awareness’ in its absolutely unbounded or ‘non-higher’ character - as Anuttara.

Any ‘body’ is defined by a bounding surface or perimeter – whether a cell membrane or our own skin. Yet biology itself acknowledges that the skin not simply as an encapsulating boundary but as a breathing membrane uniting us with the air and light around it. That is why, in terms of practices or sadhanas, it is by identifying with our bodily surface - by feeling and being our own ‘skin’ – that we cease to experience either our Self or Consciousness as something bounded or encapsulated by that skin, and instead can feel at one with the infinite space, air and light of awareness surrounding and embracing both our own body and all bodies.

The new and simple picture I offer then, is that of multiple circles within ever larger circles. The circles as such constitute the Self-nature of awareness and of all things and all beings - not only human ‘selves’ (jiva) but also beings or entities (bhava) of any sort, including both internal and external ‘contents’ of consciousness - such as thoughts or seemingly insentient ‘things’. For even rocks and mountains ‘breathe’ – emanating vital pranic units or ‘animations’ of awareness and absorbing them from the environment around them. The spaces within and around the circles of Selves constitute the singular and Supreme Awareness within which all things and beings emerge. Of course circles and other bounding shapes of awareness can not only contain or be contained within other circles but can also overlap with them - like overlapping shapes and colours. This is why Self-identity is nothing fixed – for through their defined areas of overlap new selves - new and combined shapes and colourations of awareness - are forever and constantly being created.

Yet we can go even further in explicating this new, clear and simplified model of ‘Self’ and ‘Consciousness’ in both their bounded and unbounded dimensions. For it remains a fixed prejudice of our ordinary ‘physical’ perception of space time that the space around or surrounding a containing surface or perimeter such as a bottle or cell membrane is larger and less bounded than the space it bounds or contains within it. In reality this is not the case - for space not only extends outwardly in an infinite and unbounded way but also inwardly. There is also an unbounded interiority to all things and beings. It is this unbounded inner space of awareness that connects them all inwardly, just as the space outside and surrounding them is what embraces and unites them outwardly. And just as there is an ultimate and singular circumference of awareness – Parama Shiva – a ‘circumference at infinity’ – so also do all things and beings lead inwards towards is also an ultimate, infinitely inward centre of awareness or ‘centre at infinity’. That singular centre is the dot or bindu of Parama Shakti, the ‘zero-point’ source of all powers of manifestation of awareness, all Shaktis. Circumference and Centre, Parama Shiva and Parama Shakti are united by that singular awareness (Anuttara) which is both outwardly and inwardly unbounded.

This new and clearer picture of the logic and dialectics of Shaiva Advaita is not only clearer and more simple but also more radical in its recognition of both the outwardly and inwardly unbounded nature of awareness, and with it, the unbounded nature of every seemingly bounding shape or form of awareness - such shapes and forms being the Self-nature of all beings and all things – from the very highest Consciousnesses to those belonging to even the most seemingly microscopic or insentient of things. For the space within even the tiniest molecule and atom of every body is ultimately as infinite and unbounded as the entirety of cosmic space surrounding it. Indeed ultimately it is this ‘in-tending’ or ‘intensional’ space of infinite interiority that lies behind and in this sense ‘surrounds’ the ultimate outward horizon or circumference of ‘outer’ space. How it does so is represented by the yantra of The New Yoga. For this represents any body as a ‘yoni-lingam’, as an ‘invagination’ (‘yoni’) within cosmic space of an all surrounding ‘intensional’ or ‘non-extensional’ space of awareness – the great black womb of Parama Shakti that is Ma Kali. This invagination of the ‘inner’ into the ‘outer’ also has the nature of a ‘linga’ that penetrates or protrudes like a phallus into ‘outer’ space from that realm of all surrounding inwardness. Hence all things and beings are Shiva-Shakti, having the character of both lingam and yoni - and uniting both unbounded and bounded awareness.

Edited by author 23-08-2009 01:37 AM
Thank you Acharya for your further expanding and clarifying. It does appear still, that ultimately, with Awareness expanding our choices of reponse, it remains a free choice of response, not always aware, constructive and helpful in nature, as we would hope.
If we are "under the sway" of positive or negative aspects of the Gunas within,(including the Sattvic as you correctly remind), correct choosing as I understand it, returns to the practice of abiding in a heightened state of awareness to discriminate more fruitfully the "forces" of the Gunas at the present moment. This appears in other references to point to our "buddhi" discriminating aspect, or "sheath" or, perhaps seen in the New Yoga as a specific potential quality of our greater Awareness, but one that is "realized" by expanding our individual awarenss.
The understanding of the Gunas, which is my current focus of learning at present, appears to show their eternally contributing aspect of the very nature of Be-ing/Non-Being within Awareness. By becoming more aware of the postive and negative aspects of each of the Gunas actions in our Be-ing, we learn to work fruitfully with them, rather than allowing them, (because of avidya), to work us. It appears they are centrally required aspects of the "Great Drama", arising within ParamaShiva.
The concept of our continuous "avatar-ing", our learning, growing, "godding" is indeed rich.
PS. It is pleasing that you and Karinji have had what appears to have been a lovely time of retreat in Slovenia.

Further Clarifications of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Choice’

To me the most essential key to clarifying the questions raised by Rod in response to my piece on ‘The Enlightened Ego’ - and its relation to free and aware choice - is that Fundamental Distinction, so central to The Awareness Principle. This is the distinction between all that there is an awareness OF, and the light of that pure awareness within which alone all things first stand out or come to light.

This fundamental ‘Epistemological Difference’ (between awareness as such and all that there is an awareness of) parallels Heidegger’s so-called ‘Ontological Difference’ (between Being as such and all manner of beings).

It needs restating to clarify the essence of freedom and choice. For the ordinary ego, claiming awareness as ‘its’ individual property, does not act out of pure awareness so much as act in a way that is always a reaction to particular phenomena, inner or outer, which it is currently aware OF.

Thus arises the “distrusting of the inherent ‘freedom’ for the individual awareness” which may indeed “get it wrong” - and is therefore seen as in need of “lots of rules of behaviour”. For it is true that many “errant followings of supposed inner awareness have occurred…” Yet is this through following awareness as such or through following limited modes of both inner and outer awareness?

The key phrases are “individual awareness” and “supposed inner awareness”, both of which suggest things of which a specific individual is (inwardly) aware rather than the Greater Awareness - that which is the all-surrounding field within and through which all individuals themselves first come to be - and to be aware OF things.

In line with the Fundamental Distinction between “individual awareness” and awareness as such – ‘Awareness’ with a capital ‘A’ - the principle of freely letting the latter guide our individual choices must not be CONFUSED with the false freedom that comes of letting those choices be determined by particular moods, emotions, situations, events or impulses that the individual is aware OF – and that their supposedly ‘free’ and ‘spontaneous’ actions are nothing but an unfree REACTION to.

I emphasised in my earlier piece that Awareness always embraces a greater range of alternate possible actions – thus allowing greater freedom of choice - than those arising purely from an “individual awareness” limited to an awareness ‘of’ this or that. It is that same Awareness that can then also guide the individual in his or her choices – rather than letting these be ruled or dictated – either ruled inwardly by particular moods, emotions or situations or outwardly by “rules of behaviour”.

That is not to say that all things we are aware OF, whether in the form of events or situations, thoughts or feelings, moods or emotions – even urges and impulses – are not each themselves AN awareness in their own right. The question is then whether the ego first allows time for the particular awareness that is expressed by and held within any given mood, impulse or sensation to come to light in a larger Awareness – thus making it possible to be guided both by that particular awareness and by that larger Awareness as such, rather than by the particular mood, impulse or sensation itself. Here it may be clarifying to discriminate more explicitly a triad of three distinct dimensions of ‘awareness’, and with it, three ways in which the word ‘awareness’ can itself can be understood and used. These three dimensions of awareness can be named as:

1. Individual awareness – as ordinary awareness or ‘consciousness’ OF things.
2. Particular awareness – THE awareness that each and every thing essentially IS.
3. Universal Awareness or awareness ‘as such’ – that through which alone there can be an awareness OF anything and that which finds particular expression in ALL things.

If we wish speak of “freedom of response to awareness” or of letting ourselves be spontaneously or intuitively guided by awareness therefore, the question of WHICH of these three distinct dimensions of ‘awareness’ we are referring to becomes central.

For there cannot be either “core discrimination” “freedom” or “errant choice” in “response to awareness” without that third, Universal dimension of awareness which first brings to light more than one possible choice to discriminate between and follow. It is Awareness in this third, Universal aspect that both discriminates choices and guides us in selecting the right ones to follow. It does this both directly and intuitively – out of pure awareness – and through the Particular awareness that may be held within some thing we are currently aware of Individually - such as the particular bodily mood or state of consciousness experienced as an ‘illness’, or indeed any mood colouring Individual awareness.

It is for this reason and out of this triadic understanding that I believe we can come to a better understanding of and relation to ‘moods’ as such – recognising them as pervasive qualities of awareness colouring our awareness of all things. I see this insight as central also to understanding and relating to those ‘fundamental moods’ described in the Gita as the three ‘gunas’. That is why, in my essay on the Gunas, I saw it as important to:

(1) Recognise the gunas in their differing combinations as constitutive aspects of Individual awareness.

(2) Affirm the value of the gunas in bearing within them, like moods, a Particular awareness of potential significance - pregnant insights can in turn guide action.

(3) Emphasise that the Universal Awareness from which the three gunas emerge (as Particular qualities of awareness colouring Individual Awareness) is not itself a guna but has the character of a fourth (‘Turya’) which is essentially a ‘non-guna’ (‘Nirguna’).

Nirguna is the very translucency of Awareness in its Universal aspect – neither ‘light’ nor ‘dark’ and transcending the representative colours of the gunas (Sattvic white, Rajasic red and Tamasic black). Hence the words of Abhinavagupta:


Where all splendours are in the light
And all darkness in the dark
Brilliant light and gloomy darkness
I praise that transcendent light
Always new, hidden
Yet old and apparent to all
Shining alone with the brilliance of the Supreme


Resting with and within the Universal or Supreme Awareness (Shiva) we can allow ourselves to fully affirm ALL the gunas – whether Sattvic light and lightness, Rajasic passion or fire or Tamasic darkness and heaviness. Indeed we achieve the aim of ‘transcending’ the gunas all the more effectively by fully feeling and affirming the specific qualities and potentials of awareness (Shaktis) they each constitute. This is not the same as being ruled by them.

The question of the Gunas, as expressions of the Universal Awareness, brings us to what Rod calls “dark” or “demonic” aspects of Shakti - which he relates to Rajasic and/or Tamasic “extremes”. And of course there are extremes of experience and action which can stem from all of the three gunas (Sattva included). Yet these extremes ONLY arise from (a) unaware identification with the gunas, (b) egoic judgement and discrimination between them (eg. Sattva as ‘good’ and Tamas as ‘bad’) and (c) resulting egoic reactions to them. The types of action that arise from identification with the gunas quite different from those arising from an Awareness that both freely embraces and transcends them - rather than judging one or the other as innately better for all people in all situations. There are times, individual and historical, when light and calm is called for – other when fire and passion are called for, and times also when the light and fire of truth can only be safeguarded in relative darkness and invisibility.

• The “light’ of Sattva can not only illuminate but also blind.
• The “fire” of Rajas not only destroys but releases new creative
        potentials.
• The “darkness” of Tamas not only obscures but conserves and
        safeguards.

From a Hindu point of view, all that finds expression in the world as ‘evil’ is indeed the expression of Avidya (‘non-seeing’) or ‘ignorance’ - and yet it is from this very ignorance that, as Rod writes “future learning for individuals and humanity can emerge”. If this learning is NOT only to occur as it is doing now - slowly, painfully and painfully slowly - through awful and tragic world events and individual experiences, then the sheer extent of the ignorance, both emotional and intellectual, economic and political, ‘scientific’ and ‘spiritual’, that pervades today’s world needs to be clearly and courageously acknowledged IN awareness and countered with awareness. For essentially ignorance is simply an UNawareness of a sort that both breeds and is born out of fear of ‘seeing’ (Vidya) and of seeing through this ignorance - a fear that in turn serves to create and reinforce, through projections of ‘evil’ forces, the very realities it fail to understand.
There is no such thing as innate evil, for even the worst acts ultimately stem from good intents distorted by ignorance and fear. Yet there IS such a thing as ‘right and wrong’. And out of Awareness, understood as ‘pure con-sciousness’, comes also an entirely unforced and natural ‘con-science’ – a knowing of what is Right which requires no rules to enforce. Part of this natural con-science is a deep knowing or consciousness that when we harm, violate or kill another we harm violate and kill a part of ourselves. Awareness itself – as ‘pure conscience’ as well as ‘pure consciousness’ – makes us aware that violence or violations of any form are simply and purely WRONG, period.

One reason I emphasise the importance of ‘The Enlightened Intellect’ as well as ‘The Enlightened Ego’ is that what is taken today as the ‘rational’ intellect is but a façade – an instrument for the artificial RATIONALISATION of unaware emotional impulses, defences, fears and reactions. The Enlightened Intellect on the other hand is a rational Reflection and Recognition of a innate and natural awareness of what is Right and True - whether logically, ethically or metaphysically. It is the task of The Enlightened Intellect to turn ‘reason’ itself into a rational reflection and recognition of the deepest and broadest Awareness of all that is, rather than using it as a tool to objectify the world for the still unaware subjective purposes of the limited ego - something which only results in the most crude (or deceptively sophisticated) forms of intellectual ignorance OF the world.

That is why the ‘Jagadguru’ or ‘Karmayogi’ does not only seek an ever greater Awareness of the world, but is guided by Awareness to freely Act for the world and other individuals - using every aware word and deed to free that world from ignorance in each and every way it is encountered - whether intellectually or emotionally, individually or socially, economically or politically, personally or relationally. It is in this way that gurus and yogis themselves embark on a path of ‘further’ or ‘higher’ education – an ‘Education in Awareness’. They do this through following a path of ever freer and more FREEING thought, speech and action of a sort for which the cultivation of The Enlightened Intellect is a vital if not core necessity. On this Path we are not alone but encouraged by the studies and learning of others, supported by their love and gifts - and both guided and empowered by that Universal Awareness of which each is a living ‘Avatar’.

I wrote before of the connection between true freedom of choice and awareness of alternative possible actions – including alternate ways of understanding reality rationally and intellectually. For the ordinary ego the ‘I’ is a fixed identity or set of identities. For The Enlightened Ego, the ‘I’ that chooses to say, do or think one thing is not the SAME ‘I’ as that which chooses to say, do or think another. Our every thought, word, and action is, in this sense, the birth of an ‘Avatar’ – the worldly incarnation of a particular ASPECT of our self as a whole – of our ‘Awareness Self’, ‘Great Soul’, ‘Atman’ or ‘Mahatma’.

In this context, I remember only too well how an individual I have never met and who is still entirely unknown to me - but who happens to live opposite to my sister - revealed to her on hearing her mentioned my name as her brother, that he had himself been studying my many websites for many years, observing the evolution of my thought. Most intriguingly - and yet also most wisely - he referred to the websites as my ‘Avatars’. And so they are - just as are my books and letters, just as is this very essay and all others.

And simply giving full awareness to another, at no matter what distance, we send out an Avatar or awareness-shape of ourselves to them.

The gods themselves do not simply gift us with ‘Avatars’. They themselves ARE Avatars of the Supreme Awareness - gifted by IT - and offering us both images of, and a path of access to ITS diverse Aspects and potentials. From these we in turn can become Aware Avatars of the Supreme – but only by choosing WITH awareness which of ITS many godly aspects, capacities, comprehensions and potentials (Shaktis) to express and incarnate - at any given time or in any given place – as the very activity of ‘Be-ing’.

And perhaps it is through ‘Be-ing’ understood in this way, as well as through the mystery of ‘Spanda’ – understood as the eternal vibration or ‘quivering’ of the Potential within the Actual - that we can feel the depths lurking beneath the words of Martin Heidegger, words kept safe and in the dark till after his death, with the awareness that they would, at the time they were written, receive nothing but academic ridicule.

The words read:

“Be-ing is the quivering of God godding.”

Acharya

Edited by author 07-08-2009 11:01 PM
Acharya, this new statement on the nature and role of 'The Enlightened Ego', as seen within the New Yoga links within me to issues about freedom, choice and 'allowing' in regard to the full spectrum of the Awareness.

Awareness is portayed as Light, and from this article I receive, there appears to me to be a firm assent to the experience of "allowing", that Light to show us both the choices before us, and the grace of utter freedom to allow us the choice of what we, "ourselves" will allow to emerge.
Response-ability has usually implied for me, the ability to respond appropriately to the situation.
The word arises from its original root meaning of, "to make one's own". And thus we "appropriate" something.
In responding "appropriately", in following your understanding, our "I", enlightened by time given to Awareness, "allows" the choice of awareness to emerge with a sense of, own-ing that choice, but also, in a sense, allowing the situation (also an awareness) to own it and all the ensuant consequences for ourselves and others. It also embraces the thought that we allow the awareness emerging, to own us.
I taste also the rasa in "appropriately", of it being a 'fitting' own-ing. It is fitting and appears right, with all that has come to us in awareness, to allow this to emerge, and merge into our lives.

Paths that have a lot of rules of behaviour, and expected responses I expect would be discomfited by this approach, distrusting the inherent “freedom” for an individual awareness to “get it wrong”. Conversely, the New Yoga commits to its experiential understanding that out of awaiting upon Awareness, correct individual choices will ensue. If Awareness, Shiva, is as we say, then this is exactly what should be expected to happen.

I am seeking to relate all this to the dark aspect of shakti manifestation from awareness, and how this is embraced , or contained or seen.
At its utmost manifestation this is about the “demonic” that arises, the destructive, or the chaotic, that can be seen in tamasic, or rajasic extremes, or both together. My reflections on this in the past have brought me to the understanding that these aspects are “allowed for”
as the necessary background of the emerging Light of Awareness, which is that which we both allow and follow as it leads us.

I see a problem arising from the incorrect interpretation of the freedom of response to awareness, leading to the difficulties of relative moralism. “One man’s food is another’s poison, so, hey, everything is ok, ultimately.” This is not so.
But errant followings of supposed inner awareness have occurred, in history and ourselves. Often murderous tyrannical systems have been built on lofty philosphies, even today. This is correctly seen as avidya, “not seeing”, or ignorance, from which future learning for individuals and humanity can emerge.
I think I am grappling with the core of discrimination within the free response to awareness. In Tantric practice, I see it as the connection constantly being formed with the Whole, the mark of Shiva in All, that brings discrimination. What is wholistic is wholesome, fruitful, constructive. The dark tends to obscure, separate, and anything separative, ultimately is destructive, dissolving - but this is all also part of the all-embracing Triadic Nature.

In your words, or others of the kula, more clarity I expect will ensue.

AWARENESS, AWARE ACTION AND ‘FREE WILL’

On the nature and role of ‘The Enlightened Ego’ in The New Yoga:

To me one of the most new and life-relevant dimensions of The New Yoga lies in the way it allows us to reconsider – on the basis of The Awareness Principle – the relation of awareness to action, and with this, the question of 'free will', human and divine.

In this context, I see it as essential to distinguish what I call ‘aware action’ from what finds expression as ordinary egoic agency or ‘doer-ship’.

My central message is that truly aware action always and only arises from an awareness of MORE THAN ONE possible thing we can do or say, and/or MORE THAN ONE possible way of doing or saying it.

Hence its connection with free action or ‘free will’ - since only where there is free CHOICE between alternative words and deeds is there freedom –‘free will’.

Yet choice itself is not an act of will or ‘doership’ but rather a LETTING be or LETTING enact of one possible action or way of acting.

In this letting enact the ego itself can allow itself to be intuitively guided by awareness as such - thus uniting individual ‘will’ with the divine ‘will’.

Essentially however, the divine does not ‘will’ at all in the ordinary egoic sense of being a wilful agent of action or ‘doer’. It just does not 'do' doing at all - initiating action in the way that the ordinary ego BELIEVES itself to do.

Instead it is as Awareness – as Shiva – that the divine lets innate powers and possibilities of Action – Shaktis – unfold and enact themselves freely, from and within awareness.

(This explains also why Iccha, Jnana and Kriya (will or intent, knowledge and action) are not Shiva as such but Shaktis of Shiva, and why the enlightened Ego is itself a Shakti of the Awareness Self.)

As unbounded awareness, the divine is also a field of unlimited and ever-multiplying POSSIBILITIES of action and actualisation.

Within this field itself all potentialities and possibilities are constantly being actualised.

Within the linear time-space of physically incarnate human awareness however, these limitless possibilities present themselves as ALTERNATE possibilities and ALTERNATIVE choices – thus offering both freedom of choice and opportunities for learning.

Freedom, as a choosing or deciding between alternative actions, is not so much ‘free will’ as Responsibility in the essential sense of this word: ‘response-ability’.

This response-ability rests in an awareness of different POSSIBLE responses (some more fruitful and fulfilling, others less so) both to other people and to all the challenges and opportunities of life.

‘Aware Action’ means choosing freely from out of this capacity for response-ability, out of a responsible and responsive awareness of alternatives.

Action in this sense is not essentially an act of doership on the part of an agent - whether a human ego or ‘I’, or a divine ego or ‘I’.

And yet the ego DOES have a vital role to play in ALL human action, not as an initiator or agent of action but as its freedom giver or allower – freely LETTING or ALLOWING one action rather than another to enact and body itself.

The true function of ‘the ego’ therefore is not to ‘do’ but to responsibly recognise alternative choices, not in order to just wilfully, impulsively or intellectually decide between them, but rather to let itself be intuitively guided in its choices BY awareness - by the divine - which is that which alone knows what the best possible action or response is in any particular circumstance.

God knows best and God’s will is all-mighty and supreme. Yet this is not because there is always and only ONE right or wrong thing to do for ALL people.

God’s ‘will’ is supreme only because that very 'will' is essentially an AWARENESS. This awareness embraces and understands - more intimately than the intellect, the full and entire life and world context within which the individual is called upon to choose. Thus it can also GUIDE the ego in allowing or letting do what is right for THEM in THEIR life world and circumstances - and right also for others within that world.

The ultimate choice then, is not between surrendering our ego to the will of a God or Guru on the one hand, or else ignorantly and ‘egotistically’ willing our own actions on the other.

The New Yoga alone recognises that the liberation and freedom that Awareness bestows demands neither the sacrifice of our individuality nor the annihilation or surrender of the ego or intellect.

The New Yoga alone recognises that the pure AWARENESS of ego is itself innately egoless – just as the ego itself can become a pure mirror of the self that IS that pure awareness.

Hence the motto ‘Love thine ego as thy Self’ - that is to say, as and from the Awareness Self - is by no means ‘egotistic’ in the ordinary sense.

For it is the true and future role of both ego and intellect to recognise and reflect that Awareness which both allows us to BE aware of more than one possible action and also guides us in CHOOSING between alternative actions.

Our innermost Self, being nothing but a pure awareness of individuality in all its many sides, is in no need of ‘realisation’ - for it is already our most essential, ultimate and divine Reality.

The aim of The New Yoga therefore, is not ‘self-realisation’ but the creation of something wholly different and indeed new – a newly enlightened ego and intellect.

The enlightened ego does not see itself as a wilful doer, agent or initiator of action. Instead it recognises its own source in Awareness, and understands its true role within it – to let or allow Action to unfold - freely from and within Awareness itself.

It does this through the enlightened INTELLECT -which is there to reflect the INTUITIVE guidance granted by awareness in choosing between alternate possible deeds and words.

The ego and intellect are therefore nothing to be sneered at. For they are that very portion of the divine awareness in each of us which alone can grant or ALLOW more time and space for awareness (this being the most basic practice of The New Yoga).

It is the enlightened ego that grants more time to awareness than the ordinary ‘wilful’ ego - thus expanding that field or space of awareness within which ALL potentialities and possibilities of thought and action lie latent.

It is the enlightened ego that can say the word ‘I’ in a way that resounds with and reflects the Awareness that is its source – that ‘Self’ whose nature is Awareness and nothing else.

The enlightened ego is nevertheless quite distinct from that immature ego which thinks of itself as 'possessing' or 'owning' Awareness, and as initiating or willing Action – and that solely in order to do or to own MORE.

The enlightened ego itself can be no wilful creation of or by the ordinary, immature ego – whether in the form of a human ego, a divine ego or the still immature ego of some self-proclaimed spiritual master or guru.

The enlightened ego is not an ego ‘with’ awareness but essentially a pure awareness of the ego – itself recognised as that portion of our Awareness Self entrusted with the role of letting or allowing an expansion of Awareness - and the unfoldment of specific Actions from it.

The enlightened ego does not place demands, give commands or impose commandments. It is not a demander or commander but rather a granter and allower.

Its role is not to Rule over the body or nature, the social world or other people but instead to (1) Recognise them all as manifestations of awareness (2) Receive or let them into awareness, and (3) Respond to them with awareness – not least the awareness of alternate ways of responding.

The Enlightened Ego is the human eye and mirror of Self and Other - not their ruler or master.

Oddly and alone, The New Yoga recognises The Enlightened Ego as the ‘Third Eye’ and Third ‘I’ of Shiva Himself in human form.

For it can shine, radiate and burn with the reflected light and heat of that Supreme Awareness whose power of action or Shakti it LET BE - whether reflecting it like a broad mirror, differentiating it like a prism, directing it like a laser - or focussing it like a powerful burning lens.

Yet its mundane significance too is immense, being that part of us which grants more time – even if only a matter of minutes - to be more aware of WHAT else, HOW else or what MORE there is we can let into or let arise from Awareness - or let unfold as Action from it.

The Enlightened Ego dwells within the larger time-space of the Awareness Self. Indeed it is through the spacious expanse of this time-space - the Sky of Shiva and womb of Mahakali - that the ordinary ego is itself en-lightened and en-lighten-ed.

To be or abide in this time-space means to not feel confined in some cramped ‘now’ – the sole focus of the ordinary ego.

Instead it is to feel this and every ‘now’ as the centre of a vast, clear time-sphere of awareness, and to feel the very vastness of cosmic space around us AS this vast TIME-space.

This Spacious Cosmic Time-Sphere can then be felt to span, encompass and embrace an entire surrounding day, month or year - and more – with all its joys and tears.

For it holds within it all actual and possible ‘nows and heres’ - past, present and future - together with all their corresponding ‘thens and theres’ - and all that is Let-Enacted within them.

Acharya

Edited by author 29-07-2009 07:33 AM
Enjoy your retreat, nice place for one, Steve. Talking of snakes, it would be good to have the opportunity to share some interesting experiences I have had with these fascinating creatures, over a Foster's.
The myths and symbolism of Naga remains for fuller exploration,like much else for me, but is already becoming rich. I have read Acharya's statement on Om Namah Shivaya. Reading for me needs to be followed by deeper experiential absorption, something I find more of a delightful challenge. But it is certainly opening up with Murti Darshan.
Thanks for the numerous leads you are dropping. I will follow up as much as I can. I am definitely getting Muller-Otega's Triadic Heart of Shiva soon. I can't wait any longer.
If the Awareness leads you to want to correspond otherwise, apart from via the bulletin board, Acharya has my email, and I think it is on my blog.

Thank you Acharya for this fuller statement too on the implications of Seth. This is another book I want soon to get. I have been reading some of his communications via the net and some readings on YouTube, as well as from you in the interim.
I find, as with the New Yoga and with the sages of the path, what we see as boundaries are but our own subtly built ones, and any boundary becomes rather a functional tool of perception, a door rather than a wall. There is much to explore and to question about but not now. I need to get a wider basis of knowledge on him and his writings. I am inundated with rich fields of exploration and knowledge.

Rod.

To Rod Lloyd: Thanks for appreciating what I wrote. It's great to find people out there who are interested in this stuff. You mentioned the U.S.'s image in other countries, so here's a few of my images of Australia: Lew Hoad, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, Evonne Goolagong; Gulpilil and Nanjiwarra; the extinct Tasmanian Tiger (last living specimen photographed in 1933) and the Tasmanian Devil; the Death Adder and the Tiger Snake (world's most poisonous snake), the Amethystine Python, one of the world's top 4 constrictors; and of course, Foster's lager. Sllght preference for Steinlager (of New Zealand) at least on tap, but Foster's is pretty good too.

About that Aham: Muller-Ortega talks about it a lot in Triadic Heart of Shiva; its composition, meaning of a, ha, and m, anuttara, visarga etc. but he writes from the "outside." It's A.G.'s quotes that suggest an "inside" and therefore for me trigger amazement. The subject /discussion of "Aham" seems to rachet up in intensity even more in light of Dyczkowski's announcement of Utpaladeva's inauguration of the "Supreme Egoity" and then Acharya's zeroing in on the precise meaning of "I-consciousness." Have you read his paper on om namah shivaya? Best breakdown of a mantra I've seen, and fascinating discussion of mantra in general.

I'm now heading up for a one-day meditation retreat in a cheap motel in Duluth, Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior, affectionately known as The Big Lake They Call Gitchigumee. I'll have 2 pictures with me, one of Kali and one of Bhairava, which were given to me by Acharya on a visit to England in February of this year. I hope to have something more to say whenever David Lawrence's new book Teachings of The Odd-Eyed One arrives.

Steve