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

THE QUESTION OF SETH


Question from Rod:

May this "Seth novice" ask what you have felt is the most confirming or revealing aspect of his writings (via or merged with the Jane awareness)?

My response:

Your question about the SETH contribution to The Awareness Principle and what for me, are the most “confirming” or “revealing” aspects of his writing would require a whole book to answer – yet it also offers me an opportunity to share, albeit in brief, some very important understandings. For one thing, I see the vast body of writings - amounting to more than 40 large published volumes - mostly stemming from Seth but also including many written directly by Jane Roberts through their inspiration - as in many ways comparable in stature and significance to the Kashmiri Shaivist Tantras. For me they also offer important keys to understanding the latter – and vice versa. Without reading and re-reading, studying and re-studying the Seth books for decades, and without learning from Seth’s ground-breaking, articulate and iconoclastic revelations, there simply would be no such thing as ‘The New Yoga’ or ‘The Awareness Principle’ – for these are essentially a unique creative synthesis of the Jnana of the Shaiva tantras and the Gnosis of the Seth books.

This synthesis was made possible by my erstwhile mentor, Michael Kosok. For it was his writings that first brought Andrew Gara and I together, Michael who first introduced me to Seth in 1975, and his philosophy - together with my own initiation into the thinking of Martin Heidegger - that decisively contributed to this synthesis, albeit a synthesis that for me was not only philosophical but experiential from the start, and even before.

This is the reason why I cite Seth in my books, most often in my latest book - Event Horizon – which includes extracts from Seth’s account of ‘creation’ (presented in a book called ‘The Seth Material’) and deals at length with its relation to that of the Shaiva tantras. It is also why I cite Michael Kosok in the first pages of The Awareness Principle, and also cite from Jane Robert’s book entitled ‘The Afterlife Journal of an American Philosopher’ – in particular the description of and from that afterlife by William James (see ‘The Light of Awareness in the Afterlife’ in Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World).

The summary of Seth on the site you refer to an in your mail is absolutely correct in all respects - but nowhere near comprehensive. That is the problem. For despite selling her books in millions (in particular ‘Seth Speaks’) Andrew and I have, for decades, been baffled and appalled by just how little even the most avid and convinced of Seth’s many readers could make of so much – and that so superficially (for the most part concentrating entirely on the single mantram ‘You create your own reality’ and turning it into a parody of simplistic New-Age style ‘positive thinking’). As for what I myself see as the most important aspects of Seth’s writings (or rather his speech – which Jane herself was only able to read through her husband’s transcriptions of it as it came through her in trance) that is another matter entirely - one which, as I say, could fill an entire book. Nevertheless I will seek to make a beginning – both for you, for others (perhaps via the bulletin board) and simply ‘for the record’ as regards the nature and history of my work. What follows then, is a short summary of what I have drawn from Seth:

1. My understanding of the essence of health - as “value fulfilment” – stems from Seth, just as my understanding that illness expresses meanings and not ‘causes’ unites insights drawn principally from both Heidegger and Seth.

2. The understanding that seemingly material ‘things’ are just as much symbols (linga) as words are. In terms of The Awareness Principle they are the living experiential ‘vocabulary’ of awareness, given form through a basic alphabet (matrika) and what Seth describes as inner light and sound – which I understand of course as the inner light and sound of awareness.

3. The fundamental understanding that whilst not a person, God is nothing purely impersonal either. How could he be, Seth asks rhetorically - since that vast consciousness that He is IS itself the source of our personhood, immanent within it.

4. In a section of ‘The Seth Material’ entitled ‘The Agony of All That Is’ he introduces the paradoxical idea that “There is non-being”, yet that this is not a Buddhist void of nothingness (empty even of consciousness) but instead a realm of infinite potentialities - at first dimly sensed in the consciousness of ‘All That Is’ (Seth’s term for ‘God’) and then gradually differentiating and multiplying in his dreams as infinite potential individuals and worlds – all yearning for actualisation. From Seth therefore, I also drew the understanding of ‘non-being’ as merely the non-actual, which does not exclude the reality of all that is potential.

5. Seth does indeed emphasise that we have ‘infinite life experiences’ and that our journey of consciousness is unending. Our infinite lives include not only reincarnational existences (which he for the first time presents as simultaneous incarnations of a common ‘entity’ or ‘oversoul’), but also ‘counterpart’ incarnations living in the same time era, as well as countless parallel lives, lived in parallel worlds. A young physicist brought this idea of parallel worlds to Niels Bohr and was dismissed out of hand. Since then, the idea has been popularised in a number of movies and sci-fi series – recognising that for every decision we take between more than one choice, there is a self that chooses differently. For us that self which chose differently is just a road we could have taken, a life we could have lived. For all our ‘parallel’ selves it is the other way round – ours is the ‘imaginary’ life it could have led, the self it could have become, and/or the world it could have ended up living in.

6. Time is not a line leading from earlier to later, past to future. A tree’s roots do not seek out that ‘earlier’ tree from whose seed it grew, but grow down into the soil from which all trees arise – and grow upwards and outwards towards the light which gives them life and that enables the seed or sapling to become a tree. The physicists have it, according to Seth, exactly the wrong way round and so do philosophers (except Heidegger), psychologists, and historians - including scholars of philosophy and of the tantras. For the fact that light from the outermost edges of the universe takes ‘light years’ to reach us does not mean it gives us a picture of the distant past of the cosmos. Instead the further outward we travel in space - physically ‘or’ in awareness –the more we move towards the future. Just as a sapling roots both down into the soil and towards the very light which enables it to grow into a tree - only thus becoming what it can be - and just as a child grows towards what it could or wants to be in the future – so are all ‘origins’ essentially futural and not ‘rooted’ in the past. The New Yoga is itself rooted in the same soul and soil from which Kashmir Shaivism itself grew, which was not from just its own ‘earlier’ sources but from their soil, and towards what could unfold from that soil and in a light streaming ‘backwards’ from the future.

7. According to Seth, time has an ‘inside’ as well as a before and after. In my terms, it has the character of circles within circles (chakra) or spheres within spheres of a time-space which embraces multiple pasts, presents and futures. All ‘time-lines’ from past to future are but multiple possible lines followed on the surface of a time- sphere. Yet every point or period of time on such a surface line is also linked inwardly to every other through the centre of the time sphere – its Bindu. Ultimately all points and periods in time arise from its withinness and not from earlier or even later points and periods. Thus all Mondays and all 4pms - pictured as petals of a lotus or points on a circle or chakra - are more closely connected with one another than they are with all Sundays or Tuesdays, all 3pms and 5pms – arising as they do from a common inner centre of a time-circle, sphere or ‘lotus’. The ultimate ‘future’ therefore is not the end of any line of time followed on the surface of a time-circle or sphere. For a circle has no beginning or end. Instead the essence of futurity as such is an ultimate circumference, circle or sphere of time-space as such, understood as a circumference of awareness - and its manifestation as the luminous starry centres or ‘galactic gods’ closest to that circumference. Not only is the attempt to determine a point in time at which time itself began – with a ‘Big Bang’ – pure logical nonsense. The very attempt to do so by seeking light from ever-further edges of the known universe gets it the wrong way round. For if we understand time as a sphere of time-space (rather than as ‘lines’ of ‘space-time’) then the ultimate cosmic circumference is when it all ‘began’ (the expanding time-womb of Ma Kali) and not the result of a ‘Big Bang’!

8. Thus it is that whilst I have described The Awareness Principle and its Practice - The New Yoga - as a ‘reincarnation’ of the soul of Kashmir Shaivism, from my neo-Sethian perspective it is more accurate to say that they are that TOWARS WHICH which Kashmir Shaivism itself was growing and striving. The Awareness Principle and The New Yoga are themselves evolving and unfolding in and towards the bright light of a still unforeseeable way of thinking and being, one belonging to a civilisation that is already a reality – not in some long-gone past argued over by archaeologists of the Indus Valley, or fantasised as a long-lost continent of the past - but a possible or ‘probable’ future of humanity. Similarly, what Heidegger called ‘The Last God’, is the ‘earliest’ god only in the essential sense of being that god, which - by virtue of being the ‘fore-runner’ or first to set out – is also the latest or last to fully ARRIVE. Shiva, as the ‘earliest’ god, is in essence this ‘Last God’ – not a past god but that bright sun beckoning us in the present to all our possible futures. Understood in this way, Shaivism and the message of Seth converge in the words of Martin Heidegger for whom the last god is:

“the totally other over and against gods who have been, especially over and against the Christian god … The last is that which not only needs the longest fore-runnership but also itself is … the deepest beginning …not the end but the other beginning of immeasurable possibilities for our history…Preparation for the appearing of the last god is the utmost venture … All heretofore ‘cults’ and ‘churches’ and such things cannot at all become the essential preparation…”

9. For us all as individuals, the future we prepare for is of course…death. Heidegger too, spoke of ‘being towards death’ as the most authentic mode of being. Yet nowhere but in ‘Seth Speaks’ have I read what appears to me as the most accurate account of the death experience, and of the choices and FURTHER paths of development of awareness and being that lies beyond it. What I see Seth ADDING most to both the Shaiva tradition in particular and Hindu/Buddhist philosophy in general then, is a glimpse – in some detail - of the eternal life of the soul after its final incarnation and the larger worlds of awareness it can then explore. For in the multi-dimensional universe of awareness within which Seth describes himself as existing, there are countless planes of awareness, and countless types consciousnesses many of which - unlike his - have never taken physical or human form. Our earthly physical plane then, is no starting point for our development as ‘souls’, nor is it the centre of this multi-dimensional universe of awareness – but merely one minor plane within it. According to Seth it is essentially a type of nursery school in which basic truths, ethical and metaphysical, must be learned before those souls who incarnate within the physical plane and in human form can pass on to the Greater Life of Awareness - embarking on yet greater Journeys of Awareness and fulfilling potentials of awareness impossible to realise within the physical plane. Central to this Greater Life and Journey of Awareness is an expansion of awareness, aided by discarnate teachers, that allows the individualised awareness or ‘soul’ who has left the reincarnational cycle to (a) embrace an ever-greater multiplicity of selves or identities within it, (b) freely mix and merge its identities with those of others (c) explore new planes of awareness and (d) playfully weave and create – like an artist - whole new worlds of awareness.

10. Alternatively, according to Seth the soul may decide to train as a teacher or healer for those still bound to the physical plane. This requires a background experience of many lives in which intimate knowledge of the diverse cultural, social, scientific and religious symbol systems of different eras and civilisations has been acquired – so that these ‘native’ symbol-systems can then be awarefully and artfully deployed as a medium for the communication of truths transcending them – not least the recognition of non-physical realms and dimensions of awareness. Such teachers have always existed, and may operate either from those non-physical realms or through deliberately chosen incarnations as teachers. All the great ‘Mahasiddhas’ and ‘Boddhisatvas’, as well as many great artistic or philosophical geniuses, have trained or served as such teachers – and/or teacher trainers – in this specific sense. Seth himself explains how painters such as Michelangelo used accepted religious symbols in a way that subtly challenged and transcended the framework within which they were understood by the Church at the time. Whole teachings have been presented to humanity by such teachers - either explicitly, as philosophical treatises or tantras, and/or else in the form of art works (for example musical works or literary ‘fiction’ - including ‘science fiction’. To me one of the greatest ‘spiritual teachers’ of the 19th century was not a philosopher or yogin but the composer Anton Bruckner (formally and in his outer personage a devout Catholic). For his symphonies were and are teachings of the most profound character, just as were - and are - the operas of Richard Wagner. And it was Seth’s concept of ‘feeling tone’ – understood in The New Yoga as innate sensual tonalities of Awareness - that was most crucial in helping me to understand and articulate my experience of the awareness-nature of many things – not just music itself, but also of mantra, ‘non-being’ as realm of manifestation-potential, and the experience of ‘tantric pair meditation’. For it was through the innate Siddhis I cultivated and applied through it that I recalled what has always been closest to my heart - the nature of the direct wordless communication of awareness that I had already become accustomed to in the ‘life between lives’. That is also why for me personally, the most important “confirmation” of the Seth books lay in recalling the truth that the ‘afterlife’ is not a mere interlude between physical incarnations nor is leaving the reincarnational cycle a matter of attaining some ultimate state of total identification with the Great Awareness - one lacking all further potential-manifestation or Shakti. Instead what we think as a ‘life between lives or the life ‘beyond transmigration’ is but a PORTAL to The Greater Life and Journey of Awareness’ – a journey that can take us into countless new worlds of awareness, allow us to encounter the higher consciousnesses that inhabit them, offer ever-richer and more intense experiences of awareness and open up ever broader horizons of awareness – up to and including that ultimate circumference or ‘Event Horizon’ of awareness, of which there is nothing higher - Anuttara.

I could go on and on…as I say this is just an introduction to what unaware and untrained ‘Seth fans’ have been wholly unable to grasp from their reading of the Seth books. Suffice it to say that I understand myself as a teacher in the sense described above – and understand this life as the final incarnate stage of my training – a life in which I have succeeded in recalling, mastering and interweaving sufficient symbol-systems - past and present - to forge a new one of the sort so much needed for the future of humanity.

Beyond this life, words will once again cease to be my principal medium of learning and teaching, as they have already long ceased to be in the practice of puja – not to mention the gifts I employ in the new forms of tantric pair meditation I have evolved and their use for healing, teaching and initiation. I look forward to death first of all as an opportunity to engage in fully free and playful Lila – to revel in once again revealing the many currently invisible forms and faces of my awareness body, whilst inwardly communicating with others in the way I love most - through quasi-musical tonalities of awareness and their countless sensual qualities and dimensions. I also know in advance - and from experience already attained in this life - that I will be able, if I choose, to let my awareness flow into the soul bodies of those still physically incarnate, and thus in some way also re-body myself through them without the need of further incarnations myself.

I have shared in this letter some very deep and ‘esoteric’ personal and trans-personal understandings with you in answer to your question about Seth. These in may raise yet further significant questions for other readers. I say to all - feel free to ask them.

And for anyone thinking of embarking on reading Seth himself I recommend that I they start with the book entitled ‘Seth Speaks’ – but ignoring all the unnecessary notes and comments interspersed in it by Robert Butts.

"Shiva has many names." (Rod) Put in other terms the Absolute Awareness - God - 'gods' under many names, and in the form of many higher trans-physical awarenesses. Seth is no doubt one of them - even though one of the first messages he spoke through Jane was that names are not important.


Acharya

Edited by author 26-07-2009 12:55 AM
May I share two further awarenesses of this central discussion initiated by Steven, that have arisen following Murti Darshan.
I referred to the Mandelbrot Set and on further reflection, it appears to be an even more likely analogy of the nature of the Awareness Self, than I first appreciated. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, in their "The Collapse of Chaos" state "Like thousands before us, we are trying to come to grips with 'emergent phenomena' - collective behaviour of a system that somewhow transcends its components. Because it transcends them, it can't be "in" the components. So where is it?"
Indeed. And as in all the fields you have applied the Awareness Principle to Acharya,it here too "completes" the conceptual resolution.

Here we see in a most mysterious manifestation of mathematics, the Mandelbrot set [I don't presume mathematic knowledge, of which this layman has only the surface, so point to here as a summary statement about the Mandelbrot http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/] - in its infinite complexity arising from a quite simple ever-expanding reiterative formula. Behind that is also reference to one of the most mysterious and paradoxical conceptions of all mathematics, imaginary numbers, still essentially undefinable, yet used, required and experienced in mathematics constantly. Echoes of quantum science.
Its undefinability and its infinite manifestation have made this as an ever evolving yantra to me. Even its very form is telling, with its ever budding, spiralling creations. As discussion of the nature of the "I" has already been explored extensively here, I will simply raise it for reflection as a suitable analogy.
The other awareness, was from the ground so to speak. Here in Australia as well as elsewhere, there is rising tide of brutal insensitive human attitudes in sections of a new generation, along with a sad rising of youth suicide. The connection I saw was the cold separatism ("I am not you, and you are not me, so if you hurt, what does it mean to me?" ) that has arisen from an equally cold-hearted misconstrued Western science, devoid of soul.
Many have lost a true sense and experience of deep identity, of identity with a Transcendent that contains them and upholds them. Much in religion has this also, that while they use many fine labels and different conceptions, betray a fact by their separatist attitudes to each other. In the Awareness Principle, and Kashmir Shaivism, and indeed in its Mother Hindu philosophy in general, a deep answer to these destructive separist attitudes is to be found.
Only with a true experiencing of Transcendent/Immanent Awareness does the Other become Self. Shiva has many names.

Om Namah Shivaya.

Edited by author 25-07-2009 03:09 PM
Just further, as I took in more of "Aham" article, an equally relevant statement -


"When Śiva wants to create, the first step is said to be the creation of an interior space (the space of his heart) - a matrix of energies that will be the substrate of the new world. This place is called Aham which means "I" in Sanskrit. Thus the absolute first creates the divine person, Aham, and from this divine person will appear the manifestation itself.

Aham is identical to mātṛkā (the wheel of phonematic energies), essential nature of all categories from Pṛithvī tattva (earth) to Sadāśiva tattva,[4]. Aham is the final resting place, dwelling place, abode of all beings, receptacle of the world."

Edited by author 25-07-2009 02:47 PM
Baba Peter,

I didn't know dear Abhinavagupta said that about the Buddhists, about we may also be Everything, if we are No-one-thing. That has always been my thought too, - if we are no one thing, then we are all of them. And seeing that - as a thought - is different to the awareness experiencing of it.

May I express my heart at present. I haven't really met you Steve, but I must say I like you, even though you are a Yank. Jokin.
You're good, you're really good.(This is an Australian compliment - some misconstrue our straightspeaking sometimes, as sarcasm. It is definitely not.) Its great watching you both discussing like this, I really admire really intelligent people, and you are one.

You know, since I met our teacher, I have never met a more remarkable person. You are, Acharya. You are teaching me so very much. Thank you Baba. And in you, Steve, he has a really good, very articulate discusser of these very important matters. Thank you.
  
One tangential thought that came, was that, whatever the exact contact and source or nature of the "I" sense, how remarkably unique it is in it's manifestation. It never ceases to amaze me - the "unique" aspect of each one, and of combinations of ones, into a larger "one", ad infinitum.

Here we are, you, a very articulate, educated and intelligent American (I hope I am presuming correctly) , and it is very nice to meet one. The media and all paint the American psyche in a different and I am sure a wrong way. In education and knowledge,and the skill that arises from the American nation, few could surpass. I was wondering if there is much Hindu philosphy being transmitted there. I hope so, as I would wish for my own country.
Then there is me, an Australian man, and Acharya, whose rich provenance I am sure you are aware of. All so utterly unique in our own way, and yet too, in the Great Awareness we three have our own unique three-way resonance, a sort of monad, with three sub monads, its all a bit like the Mandlebrot really.

Please pardon my digression from the discussion in hand.

This sentence, Acharya,

"Ultimately the body and senses themselves are FORMED from the supreme awareness – the body IS its embodiment, the eyes themselves are FORMED from its Light and the ears from its sound."

Yes that is how you say it, thank you. It is so easy still to slip into habited phraseology. I keep doing it.

I am exploring other upanas that engender an awareness of space. as those in the VijnanaBhairava Tantra. I have found the particular cloth (a personal favourite of mine) I am using behind dear Shiva, to me does indeed transmit a sense of space, as well as a principal upana of the New Yoga, one might call the "Mirror of Awareness'. I will certainly be returning to it. I hope you understand.

A viewpoint in Wiki...

"Aham, a concept of Kashmir Shaivism, is defined as the supreme heart (hṛdayam) [1], transcendent Self, supreme I awareness [2] or infinite consciousness.[3] The space of Aham is where kechari mudra (free movement in the space of the heart) is realised. Kechari mudra is considered the supreme state of spiritual evolution."

Anyway, thank you Steve and Acharya. Aham,Aham.Aham.

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your further comments and associated citations from Abhinavagupta as interpreted by Jaideva Singh.

"In 'this appears to me' the quintessence of the idea of appearing is I-consciousness" to which Jaideva Singh adds this footnote: "Any experience without its relation to an experient would be meaningless."
 
As you say, "Jaideva Singh doesn't seem to acknowledge a philosophical question whether Awareness is fundamental, or the personal property of some entity. On the face of it, he seems to mean that there IS a fundamental experient which HAS awareness (or experience), presumably some transcendental ego."
 
I can understand this 'reading' of Singh and of the tantras themselves. But that basic and still unexplored 'fault line' I referred to in my last letter, is, as I see it, not just a fault line in the interpretation of the tantras but in the tantras themselves.

For whilst I fully accept that "Any experience without its relation to an experient would be meaningless" the question remains as to who or what that experient is.

I understand the experient as awareness as such, and as that self (Chaitanyatman) whose nature is nothing but this pure awareness.

The fact that awareness as such need not be conceived as the property of a transcendental ego however, does not mean there is no place for any form of 'I-consciousness'.

On the contrary, it is precisely by 'I-dentification' with the ultimate awareness (Anuttara or Paramashiva) on the part of the Jiva that the supreme 'I-consciousness' arises, just as Shiva - understood as that supreme ‘I-consciousness’ - arises through the reflection and embodiment of awareness as such in all beings.
  
Yet your further citation from Abhinavagupta really raises the stakes as regards this fundamental question of ‘I-consciousness’.
 
"That thought 'nothing is mine' by which the senseless ones are reduced to wretchedness incessantly, that very thought..........means to me 'I am everything'."
 
This is a clear reference to Buddhism - the "senseless ones" being those Buddhists, usually referred to as ‘the logicians’, who, through the mantram of 'nothing is mine' reject the notion of experience as implying any experient at all. So Abhinavagupta turns their mantram round and declares that one could equally well say 'I am everything'.
 
Yet the question then again becomes - who or what is the nature of this 'I' that is referred to?
 
For no self or 'I' that is "everything" could be reduced to just one self or 'I' among others - the danger of the narcissistic/solipsistic interpretation.

Thus any self or 'I' that is everything and all selves is at the same 'no self' (an-atman) and supreme selfhood or selfhood as such (atman).

That is why, as I understand him, Abhinavagupta also contrasts Ahambhava (a true ‘self-feeling’ or 'I-consciousness' ultimately identical with pure awareness) with the Ahamkara - the ego and ego-consciousness.
 
So back again to the basic question of the nature of the ultimate ‘experient’ (an unfortunate term for what is meant by it is the ultimate experiencer). I see no problem is recognising Awareness as such - as both the ultimate EXPERIENT (experiencer) and as the ultimate ENJOYER.
 
This recognition conforms with the oft-repeated experience that states of heightened IDENTIFICATION with pure awareness (Chit) invariably GO TOGETHER with an intensified ENJOYMENT of the senses and sensual bliss (Ananda) of a sort almost too sublime to describe.

Yet sensual experiencing as such does not belong to any self or body. Instead IT – the supreme awareness – it what sees and hears – not ‘me’, or ‘my’ body’s eyes or ears.

Ultimately the body and senses themselves are FORMED from the supreme awareness – the body IS its embodiment, the eyes themselves are FORMED from its Light and the ears from its sound.

All this does not mean that ‘I-consciousness’ is solely some sort of illusion created from groupings of sensual perceptions, thoughts and emotions etc – from the so-called ‘Skandhas’ referred to in Buddhist philosophy - although it is these that do indeed constitute our ever-changing and individual SENSE of self.

Yet a different level of selfhood - that supreme or ultimate “I-feeling” – is also possible. This arises from the Supreme Awareness enjoying ‘Its-self’ (Shiva) AS the bodies and selves of all individual beings or Jivas, and AS their individual capacities (Shaktis) for sensual experiencing and bodily activity.

So yes, there can be no enjoyment of experience without an enjoyer, and yet The Supreme Awareness IS itself The Supreme Enjoyer. The individual's identification with and experience of ITS enjoyment is both supreme bliss AND a supreme 'I-consciousness'.
 
From this point of view it is correct to speak of Shiva AS this supreme ‘self’ or 'I-consciousness'.

For this 'I-consciousness' can be understood as a non-dual or 'dialectical' relation between(a)the Supreme Awareness enjoying the experience of 'selving’ itself as each and every Jiva, and (b) the Jiva experiencing ‘its’ self AS a ‘selving’ and ‘bodying’ of this Supreme Awareness – as ITS self.
 
The Jiva in other words, can indeed come to know and enjoy Shiva as a type of supreme 'I-feeling' or 'I'-consciousness - yet does so precisely through experiencing the sensual enjoyment of The Supreme Awareness itself – ITS enjoyment in BEING that Jiva, and in being all things.

This recognition opens the way to a new understanding and experience of the NATURE of that 'I' which can say “I am everything”.

This is an understanding and experience immensely aided by the practice of Murti Darshan with a mirror placed behind the murti.

For both mirror and murti enable one to see and feel one's own body and self, one’s own ‘eyes’ and ‘I’, AS that of the supreme awareness (Paramashiva) and therefore also AS its supreme 'I-consciousness’ - as Shiva.

The Murti itself IS a Mirror of this supreme ‘I-consciousness’, just as the mirror image of our own faces and eyes in the state of I-dentification with Shiva IS itself an individual Murti of the supreme ‘I-consciousness’ in its own right.

In tune with the essence of all these recognitions, Rod writes that: “I am left with the impression that, while Awareness is indeed prior, the primary arising from the awareness is this sense of ‘I’, in much the same manner as waking up.”

I would only add “in the much the same manner … as waking up within a dream and coming to experience Awareness itself as that which DREAMS all our selves and all their experiences.”

The “primary arising” Rod refers to can be understood in another way too, as that primordial awareness of BEING which is Shiva.

Yet this in turn is inseparable from a primordial awareness of Non-Being (the Great Mother) as a realm of infinite POTENTIALIES of experiencing - one which only heightened awareness can awaken and actualise.


Thank you both, Steve and Rod, for stimulating me to meditating these deeper reflections and recognitions - themselves no ‘mere’ philosophical conceptions but inseparable from the experience of Murti Darshan as a means to awaken a sensual and embodied experience of their living reality.

For we should not forget either that the language of the tantras was a multi-levelled one, aimed principally at AWAKENING awareness in its heart rather than representing its nature in thought – the latter being necessarily a project both served and constrained by the philosophical language of the times, just as our understanding of the tantras can be both served and constrained by the philosophical languages of our times.

Nevertheless, and for this very reason, the language of the tantras hold precious keys even in its apparent contradictions - on the other hand the identification of the ultimate with a Supreme Self, Shiva, and on the other its identification with a Supreme Awareness - as in the following citation from Abhinavagupta.

“When the Heart is free of stains and light occurs which illuminates the Supreme Plane, by immersion in this shining light, one obtains identity with Shiva – that is, with Awareness.” Abhinavagupta

If we can come to any conclusions from their apparent contradictions, it is that the ultimate message of the Shaiva tantras, both hidden and revealed in the very ‘fault lines’ of their language, is that ultimately there is NO duality or contradicton between (a) understanding The Supreme Awareness as a plane of Absolute Subjectivity - without any prior Subject or Self, and (b)recognising this Absolute Subjectivity as that which ALONE can be said to have the nature of an Absolute or Supreme Subject or Self – Shiva as GOD.

Om Namah Shivaya!

Acharya

Edited by author 24-07-2009 08:16 PM

Begin forwarded message:


Subject: Ambiguity of "I-consciousness"

Dear Acharya:

Immediately on reading your latest letter I opened up Jaideva Singh's last book, and looked for references to I-consciousness. I read this quote from Utpaladeva: "The repose of all manifested phenomena in the Self is what is meant by I-feeling." Then (apparently it's) A.G. who goes on to say: " ie the real I-feeling is that in which in the process of withdrawal all external objects like jar, cloth etc. being withdrawn from their manifoldness come to rest or final repose in their essential uninterrupted anuttara aspect. This anuttara aspect is the real I-feeling (ahambhava)." There seems to be mention of an experience (I-FEELING) which (hypothetically) could be the property of a "person;" which on the other hand could also be interpreted as a "state" antecedent/ transcendent to any person.

Then on the next page there is this statement, again presumably of Abhinavagupta: "In 'this appears to me' the quintessence of the idea of appearing is I-consciousness" to which Jaideva Singh adds this footnote: "Any experience without its relation to an experient would be meaningless." Jaideva Singh doesn't seem to acknowledge a philosophical question whether Awareness is fundamental, or the personal property of some entity. On the face of it, he seems to mean that there IS a fundamental experient which HAS awareness (or experience), presumably some transcendental ego.

Although I think I largely understand your point that Awareness cannot be the property of a bounded entity, I do find myself wondering about another theme that seems to come up a lot in Abhinavagupta's writings, that is, enjoyment. I noticed (with "camatkara") from the first that Kashmir Shaivism unlike Buddhism etc. doesn't seem to suppress avoid or ignore sensual enjoyment but rather to allow it to happen, seeing enjoyment as itself Sakti, and therefore Siva's play. And I wonder, If there can be awareness without it being the property of a person or an entity, can there be enjoyment without an enjoyer? The idea that forms are forms of awareness seems easier to manage than that enjoyment is the enjoyment OF awareness. Maybe because the former notion is more familiar, e.g. from Aristotle's account of the soul "taking on" the form. Enjoyment seems akin to Activity. I think Gentile might have seen it that way. Maybe he would have considered enjoyment as a byproduct of the act of "positing" a self. Enjoyment seems less like a Platonic idea, less like a "vikalpa" than "Awareness." It seems the antithesis of a stasis, which as Gentile pointed out is the inherent flaw. the quality which the Platonic Idea has as object of thought which makes it unproductive, dead.

Recognition as both means and goal, as experience (to be enjoyed?) is a subject that Lawrence relates to the truth of non-duality, to the Kashmiri Shaiva view that, unlike Christianity, takes the non-difference between the "jiva" and God "all the way.".Abhinava makes many provocative statements. Like "That thought 'nothing is mine' by which the senseless ones are reduced to wretchedness incessantly, that very thought..........means to me 'I am everything'." A.G. seems to know what it FEELS like to find repose in the Self-which-is-everything. He also says something like "The attainment of the experience of non-duality is like laying down a burden." The main thing for me is the idea that these experiences are valid; that "anavamala" can be and has been overcome.

I found your comments on Gentile interesting; I have never delved into it but I always wondered how he could have come to value the ego of Il Duce as compatible with his system of philosophy.

I had some trouble understanding what you meant by my capacity to experience the subjectivity of feeling better that I do that of thought (?). I'll ponder it again. I think that progress as I understand it comes with more awareness, and identification with awareness, around both thought and feeling.

I also look forward to Lawrence's discussion of the universal body. The blurb (on, I think, Amazon), says that he revisits the concept of narcissism as it relates to his subjects of Kashmir Saivism and modern psychology. This may relate to my questions about how to situate the notion of "enjoyment." We'll see. They tell me at the bookstore that the book should be out in a week or two.

Steve

p.s. Regarding the sentence "enjoyment seems less like a Platonic Idea, less like a vikalpa than Awareness," It looked on rereading it like there might be a basic misunderstanding there, in fact, the very one Gentile was talking about. I understand Awareness can't be a "vikalpa," can't be objective, since as fundamental reality it's what allows vikalpas to manifest in space inner and outer, in fact I've heard that it is space. Actual Awareness as I understand it, can't be like the Platonic Idea, which as Gentile said is something completed, finished. It's only Awareness conceptualized (as Gentile would say, as thought thought) that I think of as static, motionless.

Edited by author 24-07-2009 01:02 PM
Thank you, Steven and to you, Acharya, for this most interesting and provoking discussion. I am not read in these authors, and I am responding from the awareness that arises from Acharya's response to the statements and thoughts of Gentile and Laurence that are recounted, and on which I must rely as an accurate account of their thinking. I also fear I would well step beyond my level of formal philosophical training to attempt to discuss these matters at a certain level, as clearly and succinctly as is evident in reading and appreciating both of your contributions.
Having made that caveat, I would like to share from my fairly recent experience
of pratyabhijna, as much of what you are saying Acharya, unsurprisingly, resonates with that experience, and the prior unseen thought obstructions to that recognition. These thought obstructions arose from a knot of confusion about the experiential nature of Self, and subjective experience of inner and outer phenomenon. Encountering of this confusion, unrecognised by me then, in much philosophical and religious writings led me a merry dance for a while, until encountering the clearing statements of the New Yoga, again reflected and strongly argued in this discussion by you Acharya, and totally in accord with my recent recognition, which I will now seek to relate to the discussion.
The first clarity appeared as the use of the word “awareness” was used consistently instead of “consciousness”, often encountered elsewhere. Correctly or not, this word consciousness for many, including me, ties one in much western thinking, I believe, to a self that was being conscious, as well as the thought of a consciousness responding to an external or internal objective something, a consciousness (of). Again, whether correct or not, to me the qualities and attachments of the word awareness are different, and most helpfully different, and it is one of the emphases that gives the quality of newness to the New Yoga. I began to expand, and let go of the bindings of the other word, beginning to see more clearly a field, or principle of awareness, as such.
Parodoxically, to previous expressions anyway, it was being described as not anyone’s “self”, that was being aware, it was the very awareness field that “selved”, that was the Self. It did not belong to any being, divine or mundane. Divinity was Awareness. Ultimately, there was no-thing else, including no self-thing. There was no-thing to hold onto, but equally, there was no-thing conceptually or otherwise holding me! Svatantrya! Freedom! Just Awareness. Its personification in Shiva is a reflection and a means of opening to the reality that this Awareness is a living Awareness with a Heart, vibrating in every selving, and ever manifestation arising from that Awareness, and without which no experiencing of selving, again divine or mundane, would ever be.
Again paradoxically, having let go of a too rigid concept of some sort of needed self with which to be aware, my own experience as a self began to expand, to merge with that awareness that was everything. Boundaries began to fade dramatically. There was a Self, - It was my eyes, and also what my eyes were seeing, my ears and what I was hearing, it was my mind and also what my mind was experiencing, it was my love, and also what I was loving. That Self is there and very alive, like never before, I just can’t edge it, I can’t limit it, it is within and without. From our human communicative and perceptual limitations, its personification in ParamaShiva enables a tantric heart connection point, but not with some “self” out there, but with “My Own Body of Awareness”. From one viewpoint, I am Awareness alone, and from another, I encounter and experience selves unending, including my present transitory one.

Any sense of “I” as a subjective centre would appear to require a prior awareness to sense such.
I am left with the impression, that while Awareness is indeed prior, the primary arising from that awareness is this sense of “I”, in much the same manner as waking up. And this, if Divine and mundane are one, as they are, is in Divine “experiencing” also. The fact that it is so primary in its arising may be the central tripping cord of human confusion. Many of the upayas appear to be intended to not necessarily directly try to let go this sense of “I” locally, (which would paradoxically intensify it), but to rather expand it until it merges into the great Awareness, without which, nothing is and with which, all is. Om Namah Shivaya.

Dear Steve,

 
Yes Steve, it was exactly as you pictured in, in the Hotel Continental (a table in the corner furthest from the door of the large eating area) in which my extended experience of awareness-bliss began.

 
You write that "...these moments require a freedom that I don't always have; that of not having my attention captured by rather circumscribed inner mental gestures around a nucleus of ego."


I only cite these words of yours because they relate to the whole question of 'ego' as addressed in the philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (which I also encountered in the mid- to late 70's) and in David Peter Lawrence's book - 'Rediscovering God Through Transcendental Argument'.

 
I too anticipate reading Lawrence's new book with interest. That is because I see his work as reflecting a fundamental 'fault line' (in all senses) in interpretations of Pratyabhijna and 'Kashmir Shaivism' as such.
 

In my letters to both Lawrence and Dyzckowski I have pointed them to a fundamental question hidden in the term 'I'-consciousness, as used in translations of the tantras. The question is, does this term refer to consciousness 'of' an ego or 'I' - in the genitive sense of belonging to that ego or 'I', or does it refer to a pure awareness of that ego or 'I' (noting that here the little word 'of' is not genitive in implication)?
 

As I see it - and I am meditating a new piece in which I will say it with even more force - The Awareness Principle breaks the bounds and bonds of all current and previous interpretations of Pratyabhijna and Kashmir Shaivism. It does so by recognising that awareness of a self or 'subject', ego or 'I' cannot - in principle - be reduced to a property of that self or 'subject', ego or 'I' ('empirical' or 'transcendental'). Nor can it be reduced, as Gentile does, to an act of a transcendental ego or 'I'.


I see Gentile wrestling with questions for which The Awareness Principle alone offers a clear and simple answer - questions which apply also to the interpretation of Kashmiri Shaivism. What I found surprising re-reading him was how close he came to The Awareness Principle - only to retreat from it.


For example he writes:


"....when an action is completed and we survey it theoretically, the action is no longer an act of the subject but simply an object on which the mind now looks, and which is therefore resolved into the present act of awareness of the action. This AWARENESSS is now its real action."
(my stress)

 
For like me but unlike MD and DPL he recognises that there really is a philosophical issue in interpreting terms such as 'self-consciousness' or 'I-consciousness'.

 
Thus he also writes:


"The self-concept, in which alone mind and all that is real, is an acquiring consciousness of self. This Self is inconceivable as something ANTERIOR to and separate from the consciousness ... in which in the self-concept it is the object." (my stress)

 
"The ‘I’ is not a consciousness which PRESUPPOSES the self ... but a consciousness which posits a self." (my stress)


"...the ‘I’ is not self-consciousness except as a consciousness of the self, determined as some thing. The reality of the self-consciousness is in the consciousness, and the reality of the consciousness in the self-consciousness."


Here too, the first use of the word 'of' in "consciousness of the self" is not genitive - it does not imply consciousness belonging to that self. Yet Gentile does not go on to deduce that consciousness as such ('awareness') is not - in principle - reducible to any self or 'I' there is an awareness of.

 
Instead he implies - justifiably - that 'self-consciousness' understood as consciousness 'of' a self in a non-genitive sense, and self-awareness as awareness of and belonging to a self (the genitive sense of 'of') are dialectically inseparable - 'non-dual'.

 
Overall however, his 'Actual Idealism' argues that ultimate reality lies in the thought activity of a transcendental subject or ego rather than in Awareness.

 
Thus he falls into the traditional error of assuming that action, thought as action, and awareness necessarily assume an egoic agent of action or thought or an egoic 'subject' of awareness or consciousness.


"Were there no subject what would think?"


Here he spells out this old assumption directly - assuming that thinking requires or assumes a thinking subject.

 
Gentile's mantram is that "...the true judgment in its concreteness is not ‘Caesar conquered Gaul’ but ‘I THINK that Caesar conquered." (my stress).

 
In contrast to this, the mantram of the The Awareness Principle is precisely NOT to say "I think...(for example "I think Caesar conquered Gaul" but to say instead "There is an awareness that..."(for example "There is an awareness that Caesar conquered Gaul" or alternatively "There is an awareness of the thought occurring that 'Caesar conquered Gaul'."


I say this because I personally can make absolutely no subjective, experiential sense of the phrase 'I think'.

People may think of me as 'a thinker', but that is not because I constantly engage in thinking as if it were some form of ACTIVITY.

I am 'a thinker' only in so far as thoughts OCCUR to me - out of awareness - that might not have occurred to others.

For me 'thinking' is not an act or activity at all but a process of letting thoughts occur or ARISE from awareness - an awareness which is itself essentially thought-free.

 
That is why, in a recent note to Andrew about The New Thinking at the core of 'The New Yoga' I wrote the following:


"The ‘new' thinking is nothing more than true thinking. This is nothing that can be experienced as anything that we ‘do’ – and therefore nothing too, which we can stop or ‘quit’ doing. This true thinking is simply letting thoughts arise, emerge, come to mind or ‘occur’ in awareness - one by one. This means resting, in the intervals between each thought, in the pure, thought-free awareness from which they arise. This letting arise or occur is quite different from the type of thinking in which, no sooner has a single thought arisen, than the ‘thinker’ gets lost in or seeks to pursue a train of thoughts in which one thought leads directly to another – rather than letting each new thought emerge from the same thought-free awareness, and coming to rest, after each thought, in that awareness. The delusion that thinking is some sort of mental operation or activity by which successive thoughts derive from or follow previous thoughts - rather than being a successive occurrence, emergence or arising of thoughts from their source in awareness – this delusion is what prevents true and new thinking, indeed thinking as such, from occurring. It is when we lose our awareness in a thought by identifying with it that we are forced to think in a false and effortful, unaware and therefore also essentially unthinking way – being capable of retaining awareness only through a movement from one thought to another. In contrast, to freely let each thought arise in turn from and within awareness allows us to truly think - to reflect and give form to the awareness that is their source. Heidegger again: “Thinking is Thanking”. Thoughts reflect and recognise – and in that way give thanks to - the thought-free awareness from which they arise. Each thought arising also give thanks to the very mystery and miracle of each thought’s emergence from that source."


In summary then, I see Gentile as genuinely seeking but by no means arriving at a true philosophy of 'absolute subjectivism' of the sort articulated solely through The Awareness Principle - a philosophy that recognises a universal subjectivity or awareness transcending any egoic subject or subjects, transcendental or empirical, human or divine.


In his search to "resolve the object into the subject" he does not recognise, as does The Awareness Principle, that there is ultimately no need to even speak of 'objects' or of a 'subject-object' relation in the first place. For what are these so-called 'objects' except formed elements or phenomena emergent or present within a spacious field of experiencing - and is not all experiencing by nature subjective.

Gentile himself acknowledges as much when he writes that:

 
"...space how vast soever it be is always WITHIN the mind..." (my stress)

 
In the end however, his 'Actual Idealism' turns out to be the same type of old-fashioned idealism that elevates thought itself above all elements of our experience. In the end, he identifies subjectivity itself, not with awareness but with the act of thought - not recognising that thoughts themselves are just as much 'things' present or arising in awareness as so-called 'objects' - that thought itself is one element among others of our subjective experiencing, and not its essence.


Gentile seeks to overcome the objectivistic or 'naturalistic' notion of a multiplicity of things 'out there' through the notion of a singular subject defined by a singular activity of thinking.


This is not the same thing as recognising what my mentor Michael Kosok called 'The Singularity of Awareness', and nor is it the same thing as a 'Monism of Awareness' - my interpretation of Kashmir Shaivism through the framework of The Awareness Principle.


That Monism of Awareness is a philosophy wide enoughto embrace both theism and a-theism, monotheism and polytheism, pantheism and 'panentheism' - and yet in the end it transcends all such '-theisms'.

 
The fault line in interpreting Kashmir Shaivism lies in the danger of confusing this Monism of Awareness with a type of Monotheistic Pantheism which replaces Jahweh with Shiva.

 
The Awareness Principle alone is able to unite together distinct but equally significant recognitions.

 
1.The ultimate or non-higher reality is not a person, and not a god-being, energy or entity of any sort but consciousness as such - Awareness.

 
2. 'Shiva' is the most supreme and godly personification of that ultimate, non-higher, universal and divine awareness (Anuttara/Paramashiva).


Since all things are composed of awareness, and are portions and expressions of the universal awareness, Shiva is also the ultimate symbol or 'lingam' of the subjective nature of all things - their awareness nature. In that sense truly - and alone -'There is Nothing That Is not Shiva' (Muktananda).

 
Without this new, non-dual interpretation of the essential philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism its tantras will continue to conceal a fault line - precisely that fault line which leads on the one hand to a type of neo-theism - and on the other hand leads to its rejection in favour of an a-theistic Buddhism (the religious flavour of the day).


To return, as Lawrence seems to me to do, to an old-fashioned type of Vedic and Vedantic philosophy which divinises the 'Self' - as opposed to its 'awareness nature' (Chaitanyatman) is to completely miss the point (not only philosophically and theologically but also culturally - in relation to today's world and its problems with 'religion').


So I look forward to what Lawrence has to say on the experience of reality as the universal body. My question will be: whose experience and whose body? If he presents it as that of a being or entity, self or subject, ego or 'I', human or divine - our ways part. My way is to experience the universe not as 'my' body or as 'my' self, but the other way round - to experience 'my' body as one body among others of the Universal Awareness - within which all bodies are ITS bodyings, and all selves are ITS selvings.


All bodies arise, take form and dwell together within that spacious and singular Awareness whose body is indeed the entire universe - and every body in it.

 
This said, Gentile can be said to have had a historically acute and precocious sense of the OBJECTIFYING nature of intentional 'thought acts' -the way they objectify both subject and object, self and other, spirit and matter, man and nature - even thought and philosophy itself. Unfortunately, he also ends up using this to justify man's 'rule' over nature in the name of 'spirit', not to mention indirectly justifying both anti-intellectualism and 'The Supreme Ego' of the DUCE.
  

That "nucleus of ego" around which thought objectifies both inner and outer reality (despite their essentially subjective nature) does indeed leave little room for freedom besides "circumscribed inner mental gestures".


It leaves little space, in other words, for experiencing that free and spacious field of subjective awareness (not just within but around one's body) within which thoughts ABOUT reality can be allowed to freely arise - yet without mistaking them for or identifying them WITH reality.

 
For thoughts about reality, past or present, are just that - thoughts. One can rest in the pure subjective awareness of them, rather than letting the long cold arm of the ego use them to distance oneself from and objectify that very awareness - bodily, emotional or intellectual.

 
So allow me to emphasise again the importance of the central mantram of The Awareness Principle: not 'I think..', 'I felt...' or 'I still feel...' but THERE IS AN AWARENESS of thinking, recalling, feeling, having felt...whatever it is...

 
Acharya

Dear Acharya:

Which restaurant were you at in Whitstable? I had a mental picture of The Continental Hotel. I sometimes practice awareness in restaurants, when free to do so. I fact I did so tonight a little bit; a cross-section of suburban America family life, a pizza joint in Inver Grove Heights. These moments require a freedom that I don't always have; that of not having my attention captured by rather circumscribed inner mental gestures around a nucleus of ego.

Some time in the mid to late 70's I encountered Gentile's Theory of Mind As Pure Act, in the library at the U. of Washington. Without much experience in the history of philosophy I knew that there was something in it for me, so copied the whole thing, not having a library card. It's interesting to look at Gentile again after getting into Saivism starting around 1990 when more and more was out there.

Just finished reading, kind of concurrently, Rediscovering God Through Transcendental Argument by David Laurence, which bears rereading (I'm now doing that). He mentions Gentile as one of the last of the neo-Hegelian "idealists." It occurs to me to wonder what it would have been like, had Gentile had access to the Pratyabijna language and concepts such as prakasa and vimarsa . He would have been able to present a clearer description of what he called the reality of concrete thought (as opposed to the abstractions that he said philosophy had been stuck in since Plato). I already got what he meant by saying that the Platonic Ideas as "thought thought" were abstractions from the concrete life of thought (thought thinking), and therefore powerless to bring forth the individual particulars they were the "reality of." Same for the notion of fundamental multiplicity,or atomism; divorced from the living act, postulated as devoid of any relaledness (relatedness means some kind of identity or unity), it was impossible to show philosophically how the relatedness of phenomena could develop from this "abstract multiplicity". Gentile, using the language of Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Kant, and others who did not have the notion of the pure act, showed in turn how they got lost in abstractions and controversies (nominalism vs. realism etc.)

Part of Laurence's point is to validate some of the fundamental truth of the logos-concept, ie Christianity. In doing so he uses as a foil the arguments of the Buddhist logicians of Abhinava's rime, and the "deconstructionists" of today like Derrida. And he comes out on the side of the philosophy of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. He says that they maintain that all knowledge is recognition, not of something "else", and is all Siva's self-recognition. "The condition of the subject that should be abandoned is that in which the objects delineated by Maya are regarded as separate; from this mistake result all the afflictions such as egoism and bondage to karma. The type of cognizer that one should try to become is the one who has attained the state of recognition and views objects as his own body."

I'm waiting on another book by Laurence, coming out in July, called teachings of The Odd Eyed One, which supposedly emphasizes the experience of reality as the universal body.

Steve

7sHxfj

Awareness Bliss ('Chitananda')

Recently I found myself entering and enjoying a long and rather special state of heightened ‘awareness bliss’ uniting a trance- or dream-like state of field awareness with the most intense and ‘awake’ experience of sensory and sensual bliss. This lasted for about one and a half hours.

The first hour was experienced sitting at a table by the window with Karinji in a restaurant by the sea front here in Whitstable. The last half hour was spent walking, whilst at the same time sustaining this state of awareness bliss.

Throughout this time, my sensory awareness of the different things and persons I perceived around me was sharpened to the point of almost orgasmic bodily and waking intensity by their erotic points and surfaces of contact with the surrounding space - that Shiva-Field of pure awareness within which different sights and sounds each clearly manifested and touched me from within with their own most sensually blissful tones, textures, shapes and qualities of awareness - their Shaktis.
 
I have rarely described in writing such intense experiences of awareness as have come to me over the years and decades. Yet here, as in my experiences of inter-personal soul-body intercourse or 'Maithuna' described by Karinji, it was the sensual intensity of the experience that was paramount. For this also was an experience of the erotic union or Maithuna of Shiva and Shakti, yet sensed as occurring all around me - at the triangular cornices of roofs, through the “inner vibrational touch” of young children's voices, even just watching particular people eat and talk.
 
The episode began with an experience I have had many times - that of falling into a type of blissful trance or 'swoon' merely by watching a particular person eat. The experience happens rarely because it doesn't come about watching anyone eat - and yet there is nothing special about the particular people who evoke this experience and they can differ hugely in age, gender, class and manner of eating. Rod Lloyd has suggested that the timeless quality of the swoon, which always feels as if it could go on for ever, together with the anonymity of the persons connected with this experience, makes it into an experienced metaphor of Mother Kali herself ‘eating time’.

The felt experience of sound as a type of inner vibrational ‘touch’ became something most important in initiating what then became an extended experience of awareness bliss. Thus the sound of a feisty little girl's voice felt was within me as vibrating with unique intensity of tonal textures and qualities which seemed to touch me with the entire power of The Mother (whilst in contrast, her biological mother, also present, felt totally dead and lacking in vitality of Shakti).

Then there was the calm demeanour of a middle-aged man sitting at the table next to ours, who, though not in any way fat, felt as if he embodied a most mellow, full and rounded soul-body, pervaded with awareness qualities of mellow calmness - yet with a core of vitality of Shakti, one revealed only by a spark in his occasionally darting eyes and shifts of expression, and totally absent in his wife.

The animated expressions of a woman talking at a table outside the window next to which we were sitting, evoked - each time I looked at her face - a lightning flash opening of a vast space of pure awareness space around her seemingly compact and charged body, a space which I knew as her larger awareness body. I began to be reminded by it of a saying from the tantras: “Shiva am I, of compact mass of consciousness and bliss, and the entire universe is my body.”

The rather plain electric ceiling lights of the restaurant - though it was still evening light outside - were sensed as streaming the most intense rays of light-bliss-vitality into my eyes and through them into my soul body.

Walking home, the topmost roof-edge and triangular roof cornices of a rather long, plain and boring warehouse-type building were sensed as exquisite ecstasies, like lightning conductors of Shakti which I sensed as electrical ‘charges’ - each touching and exciting different points at the top and back of my shaved scalp.

The seemingly countless shale tiles of another building with a large angled roof surface - all the tiles slightly separated from one another - I heard as a chorus of goddesses or Shaktis. The topmost part of a fur tree – seen leaning inward slightly toward a row of similar trees - was sensed as its laughter. The rough textures of brick, stone and tarmac were felt as the gritty textures of awareness that were their physical soul.

And then the sky with its swifts - swirling and swooping in the evening light. No, not birds flying though space, but space flying through birds! And Shiva as the sky itself and the emptiness of space - an awareness-space embracing the most diverse ‘sensorium’ of manifesting forms or Shaktis – yet also in an 'electrically' charged, divine-erotic contact with each and every one of them.

No ugliness whatsoever in this entire sensorium of sights and sounds. No ugliness even in the rectangular grey-metal aggregate silo that is the 'eyesore' in our harbour, along with its complex of tubes and conveyor belts that convey gravel from the barges that dock beside it. Instead feeling the inner texture of its METAL in my body as the inner ‘mettle’ of its soul.
 
And so on, and so on...

Yet having already spoken of sensed ‘electrical’ charge, I will add only that as we finally approached the forecourt of our home I beheld again the large and strangely-structured metal structure that is a fenced in electrical 'sub-station' right by one side of our house. Except that this time it appeared quite literally as a manifest deity or Murti - indeed as the divine powerhouse of the house itself. Leading into to a particular box type structure that formed part of its structure, my awareness became focussed on a row of thick electrical connectors inserted into sockets. These I sensed as a series of connecting Shiva-Linga and Shakti-Yoni – feeling in them an extraordinary flow of power between Shiva and Shakti occurring in front of my very eyes.
 
‘The New Yoga’ is that path which leads from a heightened awareness of sensory experiencing to a new and sensual experience of awareness as such. Like other most sensual experiences of awareness, this one confirmed once again that God - AS awareness (Shiva) is truly everything, and that everything in turn IS a manifest or embodied portion and expression of that awareness - a Shakti.

In particular however, it also taught me that each thing and person too is a ‘Murti’, a solid idol or personification of divinity, innately charged with that divine contact and intercourse of Shiva and Shakti that is their erotic union or Maithuna – the singular and divine reality that is Shiva-Shakti.

“The twinned form of Shiva and Shakti is known as the union. It is termed the power of bliss because the entire universe is emitted by it.”

Sri Abhinavagupta

Acharya, awareness in your hands is as a severing sword. I am now cut adrift from my former unwitting use of the terms "spirit", and "spirituality". You are right to point out its terrible vagueness of meaning and application, in support of whatever ill-thought stuff some preach others to confusion with. I continue to appreciate your ability to clearly articulate the unformed hesitancies I have felt on numerous themes. This one on spirituality, in the context of Sri Chinmoi, is one. It initially presented itself in my previous thinking, as the conundrum of how the decidedly unspiritual, in the sense of outwardly "closer" to that big being "God", should ever get near "Him", seeing as many proponents of faiths often require a level of "spirituality" prior to engaging one. It translates itself as an unspoken requirement to be "nice", to belong, which unfortunately disbars many a not-so-nice human being from the start of any quest for light they may undertake. All of us have parts,or times when we are not so "nice", surely.
But the equation of 'spirituality" with awareness, cuts the cord of confusion cleanly. The Awareness Principle, or the Great Awareness we might call "God", or Shiva is inherent in every individualised aspect of it, namely each and every one of us, as you continue to so rightly teach. It is not far away, nor is it the result of our good or poor behaviours, or our level of "spirituality" or purity, or the result of many decades of study or religious discipline, as helpful and instructive as they may be. Simply increased individual awareness of this Great Awareness, encouraged by good and careful teaching, appears to me to be what it means to advance in any "spiritual" quest. Too many have had dependence fostered in them, and years long confusion by portraying the "spiritual quest" in a misdirected and poorly or non-thought out manner, as you describe.

The "spiritual quest" would appear to demand nothing but openness to receive more Awareness, Itself giving freely of Itself leading to more awareness of Itself in everything and everybody. This why we chant Shiva, the Auspicious One, or The One of Grace and Givingness. Such Awareness heals, leads to light and ultimately rescues in any and every circumstance, as Somananda reminds us. It would seem, whether we are at toilet, or on a crowded train, in the midst of a domestic argument,or at an opera, or in ecstatic puja, the very moment we return our focus to that Awareness that we are experiencing it all with, at that moment, we are as "spiritual" as we will ever get. Thank you Acharya. Om Namah Shivaya

Some Initial Reflections on the ‘Philosophy’ of Sri Chinmoy

If only out of profound respect and reverence for all the great, learned, cultured and deep-thinking teachers I have learned from (whether modern European and German teachers such as Marx, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, Adi Shankara, Somananda and Sri Abhinavagupta) I have to say in all true honesty that I have never come across such a sanctimonious stream of empty phraseology as I have in the ‘philosophical’ lectures of Sri Chinmoy – which literally speak volumes about everything from ‘God’, ‘Spirituality’, ‘Oneness’ and ‘Peace’, to ‘Meditation’ and ‘Yoga’ – and yet say nothing. That his lectures are even described as ‘philosophy’ is an abuse of the word, for they make not the slightest attempt whatsoever to question what is actually meant by any of these seductive words that he throws about – not least the words ‘Spirituality’ and … ‘God’. So let me begin with this one word.

To ask whether ‘God’ does or does not ‘exist’ already assumes that just because the word God exists, it necessarily denotes some sort of existing or non-existing ‘entity’ or ‘being’. To assume - without any deeper questioning – that we already all ‘know’ what ‘God’ essentially is – namely some sort of ‘supreme being’ - is either philosophical ignorance or supreme arrogance. For it is to ignorantly or arrogantly ignore thousands of years of profound philosophical questioning, both in the East and in the West, as to what constitutes the essential nature of God - indeed what constitutes the nature of ‘Being’ as such – the very ‘being-ness’ or ‘is-ness’ of any being - including a supreme ‘God-being’. To simply speak of the ‘existence’ of any thing or things, being or beings, implies a prior or ‘a priori’ awareness of that thing or those things, that being or of those beings. Therefore awareness as such must – in principle – be recognised as a more primordial or fundamental reality than beings (human or divine) that we are aware of.

What has this to do with Sri Chinmoy? The answer is that his lectures about “God” and “God-Consciousness” are presented as “philosophy” – yet do not ask even such basic philosophical questions as “What is ‘God?” and “What is ‘Consciousness’?”. This is one reason why they are an abuse of the word ‘philosophy’. The other is that Sri Chinmoy neither refers to, gives respect to, or shows any deep knowledge whatsoever of the richly diverse and millennia-long history of different philosophical conceptions and experiences of ‘God’ and ‘Consciousness’ - both in India and the West. Sri Chinmoy is an Indian ‘guru’. Yet his pseudo-philosophising is also either a sadly ignorant or a supremely arrogant dismissal of the history of Indian philosophical and religious thought (The Eastern Mind) in particular - as well as its complex relation to the history of Western thought - the Graeco-German philosophical tradition in particular. The philosophy of The New Yoga, on the other hand is rooted in profound knowledge of the long history and evolution of both the Graeco-German and Indian philosophical traditions respectively – and an affirmation of the culminating recognitions they attained:

1. The culminating recognition of the Graeco-German philosophical tradition that came to expression in the 20th century through the meditations of Martin Heidegger, namely that “Being is not a being” – that Being as such cannot be reduced to an individual being (including a supreme ‘God-being’ to or a set of such beings.

2. The culminating recognition of the Indian philosophical tradition that came to expression in the treatises or ‘tantras’ of the 10th century Indian sages of Kashmir, namely that ‘Consciousness is not ‘a’ consciousness’ – that it is not reducible to a set of individual ‘consciousnesses’ or ‘minds’, to the property of an individual self or subject, ego or ‘I’, or to a ‘product’ of the body or brain.

The philosophy of The New Yoga is also the Supreme Synthesis of these traditions, uniting them through the recognition that: (a) God is Consciousness– a consciousness that is not yours or mine, but a universal consciousness that is the very essence of the Divine, and (b) that ‘beings’ as such are nothing but individualised portions and expressions of that singular, universal and divine consciousness – a consciousness whose essential nature is pure awareness (Paramshiva) and its innate potentialities and power of manifestation (Paramshakti).

Let us return then to the seductive and glamorous term ‘God-Consciousness’ and ask some simple basic philosophical questions. Does the term refer to ‘our’ consciousness ‘of’ a God – of some being – or to a consciousness belonging ‘to’ that being? Both answers assume that consciousness is the property of a being or beings. In this way they ignore the most fundamental question of all – how do we know that anything ‘is’ or ‘exists’ in the first place – that there are any beings in the first place. Indeed how do we know that we exist? Only out of an awareness of being. Since it is only out of an awareness of being that we know that we or any other beings ‘are’ or ‘exist’ in the first place, it follows that awareness itself cannot - in principle – be seen as belonging to us any being. This understanding is what I call ‘The Awareness Principle’.

The only way in which the term ‘God-Consciousness’ can be said to make any sense is to understand its two sides (‘God’ and ‘Consciousness’) as identical. However that means we must drop the deep-seated assumption that consciousness ‘belongs to’ or is the property of beings - either individual beings or a supreme ‘God-being’. Instead we need to understand individual beings as individualised portions or expression of consciousness as such - that divine-universal consciousness which is ‘God’ - and that I call ‘awareness’ to distinguish it from ordinary notions of ‘consciousness’. To experience consciousness in its divine-universal dimension – as that supreme awareness which its not a being and yet is the divine source of all beings - and to realise that God is Consciousness and not any being ‘with’ consciousness - is to cast a wholly new light on the very nature of ‘God’, ‘Consciousness’, ‘God-consciousness’. Yet this is something that, in all his voluminous ‘philosophical’ talks on them, Sri Chinmoy does not even begin to do.

Yet I feel bound to refer also to another group of words – the words ‘Spirit’, ‘Spiritual’ and ‘Spirituality’. I say right from the start that these words form no part of my vocabulary – except in so far as to expose their hollowness and misuse. For none of these three words have any equivalent in Sanskrit, in any of the sacred texts of Hinduism or in any yogic manual or ‘tantra’. No-one who uses them can actually say what they mean by them. Though they might state and enforce strong beliefs about what is and is not ‘spiritual’, none of them actually say – or even ask - what ‘spirituality’ itself is. I can and I do. It is Awareness. That is why, instead of ‘Spirit’ and ‘Spirituality’ I speak of ‘Awareness’. And instead of ‘Spiritual’ I say – Aware. Understood as Awareness there is nothing and no one that is not ‘Spirit’, and in that sense not ‘Spiritual’, for there is nothing and no one that is not a portion and expression of Shiva - the universal awareness behind and within all things. True, some people are more aware than others – and in that sense more ‘spiritual’. Yet since there is nothing we can possibly be aware of – including unhappiness, sadness, anger, anxiety, insecurity, hate or fear – that is not itself a form of awareness, it is impossible to say that anything we are aware of is unspiritual. The body is nothing ‘unspiritual’ – is the very embodiment of spirit. Spirit – awareness - is what bodies. Sex is nothing ‘unspiritual’ – it is a human embodiment of the essential dynamic of awareness - the union of the divine masculine - pure awareness - and the divine feminine, the living and embodied expression of that awareness. The only thing that can possibly diminish ‘spirituality’ or be seen as ‘unspiritual’ is a lacking awareness of something – not the thing itself. Yet even a lack of awareness is something we can become aware of. So even this lacking awareness - understood as part of an eternal process of becoming more aware – cannot ultimately be said to be ‘unspiritual’. Therefore who has the right to say what or who is ‘spiritual’ and what or who is not? The answer is - no one.


‘Shiva is resplendent in sorrow too.’ Somananda



See also: 'Beyond Guru Lineages and Migratory Genealogies' in the NEW essays section of the site archive.

2 Gifts I received and would like to share:

Murti Meditation, June 4, 2009

In the mirror, which holds the image of the murti of Shiv meditating,
Looms the image of Karin meditating the small murti of Shiv in front of her.
And behind Karin’s back she feels
The towering presence of Shiv.
Om namah Shivaya.

I wish I had an image of the murti meditation or could in other ways convey the powerful sense of protectiveness,
watching over and being watched over, by Shiv.
When meditating Shiv, do we guard him as he guards us?



Puja, June 5, 2009

There is neither emptiness nor fullness.
There is neither heat nor is there cold.
There is no darkness and there is no light.
There is neither rest nor is there unrest.
There is neither war nor is there peace.

Neither is there poverty nor wealth.
No feast is there nor is there famine.
There is neither strength nor weakness.
There is no youth and no old age.

There is neither stimulation nor boredom.
There is no crowd nor is there loneliness.
Neither is there noise nor is there silence.

There is neither joy nor is there sorrow.
There is neither illness nor is there health.
There is no life nor is there death.
There is no me nor you.

There is only Shiva,
My Lord of the Living Light.

‘Waiting Upon Awareness’ – a response to Rod

Truly, there need be no effort or ‘trying’ demanded in order to be, abide or dwell in awareness - just as no effort or trying is required for us to be, abide or dwell in space. Similarly it usually requires no ‘trying’ to see whatever there is to be seen before us – unless we are blindfolded. Then all we need do is not to try to see despite the blindfold but to remove it. In the case of awareness it is not a question of removing an obstruction to seeing or hearing things. Instead the challenge to venture removing an obstruction to sensing, not a sensing of any ‘thing’ but a bodily SENSING of awareness itself - as the very space and time within which we see hear, feel and think things. Then the empty space around us and around things is itself experienced AS pure awareness, just as every period or interval of ‘empty time’ - before, between and around all of our everyday activities and experiencing – is experienced as a pregnant time-space of awareness.

“The body as a whole is a sense organ of the soul.” Whilst for most people it is second nature to see and hear, for most of mankind it has long since ceased to be second nature to be so aware of their bodies as a whole that they once again become an awareness - a ‘sense organ of the soul’ – thus allowing them to sense space and time themselves as a time-space OF awareness.

The great yogis recognised that the first step on the road to recovering and cultivating this whole body sensing and awareness was to cultivate awareness of breathing, and in that way come to experience it as a breathing OF awareness - with and through our whole body, and though all our senses.

For the tantrika, our capacity and desire to see and hear, feel and touch is not a blindfold to ultimate reality. Desire and sensory experiencing need no ‘blowing out’ or ‘exitinguishing’ (the root meaning of ‘nirvana’). From the perspective of The New Yoga what is needed is not to remove but to add something to our sensory and bodily experiencing – that pure awareness of experiencing that finds expression in the mantram: ‘There is an awareness of…’, for example ‘There is an awareness of seeing or hearing this or that, sensing or feeling this or that, thinking this or that. Just as there is also an awareness of that ‘I’ which claims these dimensions of experiencing as ‘mine’ and as its ‘own’ - rather than recognising them as present or arising expressions of awareness as such. This is the egoic ‘I” whose mantram is the very word ‘I’ – with which it says to itself ‘I see and hear this or that’, ‘I think and feel this or that’ etc. And though that ‘I’ can urge itself to ‘stop trying’ or to ‘let go’ etc. we know from the limitations of Zen ‘disciplines’ that this itself is too much trying.

Truly speaking, all that is required is not that this ‘I’ stops trying and instead lets go but that there simply be an awareness of this very ‘I’, and an awareness also of its trying or not letting go. It is no urging or act of the egoic ‘I’ but a simple awareness of that ‘I’ that releases us – effortlessly - from the grip of its grasping and effortful trying.

Anupaya, the ‘path of no means’, is in essence the simple recognition that the egoic ‘I’ cannot by any means of its own, however skilful, free itself of Anavamala (belief in the ‘I-ness’, ‘my-nesss’ or mineness’ of experiencing) thus attaining an awakened awareness. What The New Yoga adds however, is that the simple awareness of that ‘I’, of its I-ings, myings and tryings and of its mantra – the word ‘I’ itself - is enough to do so. ‘Letting go’ then, is no activity of the ego or ‘I’. It is nothing more or less than an awareness of ego. For the awareness of ego, being distinct from ego, is what in and of itself frees us from the grip of the ego and of its grabbing and grasping.

Once again then, we are returned to the basic mantra ‘There is an awareness of…” in this case in the form: ‘There is an awareness of an ‘I’ that is trying, mying, ‘I’-ing or ‘I-dentifying’ with its experiencing’.

Yet even recognising the significance of this mantra, we cannot escape a basic paradox. This is the paradox that abiding in the pure awareness of experiencing, what we attain is itself a mode of experiencing, albeit a higher mode of experiencing - a sensual-transcendental experiencing of awareness as such (for example as space and time, light and bliss, the god or the goddess). Similarly, even abiding in the pure awareness of thoughts arising, what we attain are themselves thoughts – albeit higher thoughts of the sort that do not merely reflect our experiencing but arise from and grant recognition to pure awareness. That is why the mantram ‘There is an awareness of….’ needs constant ‘reflexive’ iteration or ‘re-iteration’ - a repeated ‘stepping back’ into awareness - not just from ordinary dimensions of experiencing but also from higher experiences of pure awareness itself. We need not only to be able to say ‘There is an awareness of experiencing this or that’ but also ‘There is now an awareness of experiencing pure awareness itself – for example as space and time, as air and light, as the form and gaze of Shiva - or as one’s own form and gaze reflected in a mirror.

This principle of ‘reflexive’ iteration or ‘re-iteration’ of the mantram ‘There is an awareness of…’ allows us also to overcome all difficulties experienced in identifying with pure awareness, and that without any trying. For as soon as we are aware of such a difficulty, what forces us to identity with it or even to ‘try’ to overcome it – rather than just recognising that ‘There is an awareness of difficulty’ – thus identifying with the pure awareness of the difficulty, rather than with the difficulty itself. Awareness can easily becomes second nature to us, simply by repeatedly stepping back into it from each and every dimension of our thinking and experiencing, even the most transcendental or problematic.

I have defined the essence of The New Yoga as a path that takes us “from a new awareness of experiencing to a new experience of awareness”. This path leads also to the experiencing of pure awareness as one’s very Self - yet not just in its transcendental dimension - as Shiv - but also in its most intimate and immanent dimensions of individuality, themselves a unique expression or Shakti of Shiv.

Truly, “when attending upon Shiva in murti form, we are looking at our Self”. Conversely, yet no less truly, when attending upon ourselves or another in murti form – as a bodily form or image – we are looking at an individualised expression or Shakti of Shiva. Hence also the significance of our innermost, most individual names as well as that of Shiv himself.
Truly, “ON NAMAH SHIVAYA is one of the major tantric approaches to the experience of one’s own nature.” That nature has two distinct but inseparable aspects however - firstly that Self whose nature is nothing but pure awareness (the Chaitanya or Para-atman) and secondly, one’s “own nature” in its individuality. This aspect of “own nature” or “individuality” is not of course a nature owned by the ego. Instead it is one of countless individual natures, forms and faces borne from, belonging to and ‘owned’ by the Divine Awareness ‘itself’. The most dangerous and potentially damaging confusion transcended by The New Yoga is the confusion between release from the grip of the ego on the one hand, and any sort of sacrifice of individuality on the other. Since we are each individualised portions of the divine awareness, to sacrifice our individuality is a sacrifice of our very divinity, no less a sacrifice than the sacrifice of awareness to its objects and to objectification.

Truly, awareness cannot be reduced to an ‘It’ in the sense of some object, for its essence its pure and absolute subjectivity. Yet the German expression for ‘There is…’ is ‘Es gibt…”, meaning is ‘IT gives…”. The English language says ‘There is…’. The German language says ‘It gives…’. This ‘giving’ is echoed in the other major mantram of The New Yoga: meditation understood as “Giving time to be aware…”. Who or what however, is the giver, if not ‘It’ – that which freely gives or grants itself to us as the open field of awareness that we experience as time and space.

Recognising this ‘It’ gives the phrase ‘Giving time to be aware…’ a different and far deeper sense. This deeper sense was first explored and indicated by Martin Heidegger in his ‘Conversations on a Country Path’, and is at the same time intuitively suggested by your words: “…attending unto awareness in precisely the same way we simply attend upon, wait before our Shiva murti in puja”. Here the two phrases ‘attending upon’ and ‘waiting before’ unite to hint at this deeper sense of ‘giving time to be aware’, namely as a patient ‘WAITING UPON’ awareness. The 'Waiting upon’ is no mere waiting ‘for’ something - something of which we are ALREADY aware - but rather an openness to a NEW experience of awareness and to new ‘awarenesses’.

‘IT’ is that open field of awareness, sensed by us as the time-space within and upon which we await. ‘It’ is also that which first holds opens that time-space and that whhich is in constant ATTENDANCE to every being and possibility it holds within it.

The verbs ‘attend to’ or ‘tend to’ have also a specific sense of to ‘wait upon’ - in the sense of serving and giving service to. ‘Waiting upon It’ –‘WAITING UPON AWARENESS’ - we open ourselves to receive the gift of all that can newly arise and come to awareness within it, together with all the ways in which that Awareness can itself (‘its-self’) be seen and heard, thought and thanked, sensed and served.

Truly therefore, “the potentialities of awareness are watered and seeded by Awareness attending” – waiting upon us in the same way that we in turn are called upon to wait upon It. Murti darshan is that waiting ‘before’ and in the face of Shiv which offers us the most sacred time-space to wait upon awareness Itself, thus letting ourselves be waited upon and gifted by It. The ‘It’ itself is that of which there is ‘non-higher’ - thus named in the tantras by the term ‘Anuttara’.

Om Namah Shivaya
    
Acharya

Edited by author 30-05-2009 12:38 PM
Dear Acharya

I have seen that there is the challenge of seeing ourselves, of being aware of that which we are, made a challenge simply by being that same Awareness, similar to trying to discover that which we are, by examining ourselves, through the same eyes with which we are looking. This is known to the Ages.
This sort of attempt is coloured and amplified by the Western analytical approach. The harder we try, seeking to grab hold of, cling to Awareness to examine it, the quicker it disappears. It becomes an "It", separate from us, and we flounder in duality. What are we to do?
Two things have occurred to me, in explaining my understanding and experiencing of this.

Stop trying. Let go. Sink into that Ocean of Awareness that we are, become aware of simply being aware, as you have taught. "There is an Awareness...", is a mantra. By expanding our localised awareness, we come to know its greater dimensions. And thus the Recognition of a totally different order arises, and presents itSelf.
One becomes the Seer, the Seen, and the process of Seeing at once, not linearly. Now. Always now, the eternal present of the Great Awareness, that we know as Shiva. We stop trying. We let go. This leads to Nirvana, its very meaning.
With this also arises another thought about this challenge of becoming aware of one's own nature. Murti Darshan, as you have taught, OM NAMAH SHIVAYA, is one of the major Tantric approaches to the experience of one's own nature. Awareness, resonating and embodied, becomes mirrored as it were, in the beloved Murti. By attendance upon the sacred representation of Awareness, Shiva, that has emerged from within the awareness field of the accumulated myriads of devotees, their dream of Lord Shiva, as it were, resonates at another level with us. This enables a door through which the Great Awareness ever discovers Itself anew, and thus the repeated analogy of the mirror, that many different paths have expressed.
When attending upon Shiva in murti form , we are looking at Our Self.

Shakti manifestation of potentiality, bringing to birth, ever creating anew from within this same Awareness is also this very process being described. By the power of his shakti, Shiva becomes aware of himself. Thus you have taught anew, and thus the sages have taught, and seeing it, Recognising it, Re-cognising one's true Self is attainable by numerous means, as the Vijnanabhairava Tantra explains. These means are not about "trying" or "clinging" to some teaching or method, but rather about the opposite, about NOT trying, NOT clinging, and talks of space between the breaths, and simply remaining quiescent, attending unto Awareness in precisely the same way we simply attend upon, wait before our Shiva murti in puja. The potentialities of Shiva-Shakti are watered and seeded by Awareness attending. Am I in order here, Acharya?

Through correctly interpreting my essay on 'depression', doing so in the context of The Awareness Principle, and then coming to a wholly appropriate re-framing of 'the depressive process' as 'The Awareness Process' (which made me think immediately also of a correspondig term -'The Awareness Position') Andrew has made a fundamentally new and powerful contribution to THE most basic vocabulary of 'The Awareness Principle' and its Practice.

Indeed I can already see a way in which the explicit use of the term 'The Awareness Process' can be used to reframe the very articulation of both The Awareness Principle and The Practice of Awareness as such.

The task and opportunity that presents itself now is to set about defining 'The Awareness Process' (and 'The Awareness Position') independently of the issue of 'depression', and yet in a way that encompasses and integrates - as Andrew has already indicated it could - all the most basic elements of The Practice of Awareness as set out so far.

In this context, I see the term 'The Awareness Position' as potentially offering a new way of introducing what I have previously called the 'The Fundamental Distinction'and 'Fundamental Choice', being precisely that 'place' or 'position' from which we can abide in - be - the pure awareness of all that we are experiencing. This is what I have called 'being in awareness' or 'being awareness' (Sat-Chit).

Abiding in The Awareness Position corresponds to the central mantram of The Awareness Principle: "THERE IS an awareness of...", the value and significance of which Rod has just eloquently re-emphasised in his post.

Yet this Position is (as Rod affirms) no mere place of detachment, but rather one from which we can engage in that meditative PROCESS - most appropriately called by Andrew 'The Awareness Process' - of freely letting arise, affirming and even amplifying each and every element of our experiencing -"whatever bodily feeling IS THERE".

Attaining and abiding in the 'The Awareness Position', whilst at the same time following 'The Awareness Process', then together constitute a summation what I have described as 'The Foundation Meditation' of The New Yoga - its basic Practice of Awareness.

The terms 'Awareness Position' and 'Awareness Process' also correspond to Shiva and Shakti - these being the quiescent and dynamic, source and manifesting dimensions of Awareness as such.

Awareness as such of course, is not itself a 'Position', but rather non-local, having no specific location 'in' space and yet at the same time being that spacious field within which the process of arising is constantly occurring and felt from a variety of different places or 'positions' within and around us.

The 'There is' (Awareness Position) is an egoless awareness which facilitates a deeeper feeling relation to all that 'is There' (Awareness Process). What 'is There' in this Position INCLUDES the awareness of an individual self or 'I'. Thus 'The Awareness Position' cannot be a position taken BY the individual 'I’, but is rather a pure awareness OF that 'I'.

At any time and in any place "There is.." a specific bodily awareness of an individual identity, self, ego or 'I' - an awareness which is not itself the property or activity of that identity, self, ego or 'I'.

'The Awareness Position' therefore indeed needs to be felt and understood as an inner bearing, posture or 'mudra' - one which allows a continuing recognitive relation to and identity with pure awareness and the 'There is.."

Only that 'self' or 'I' which IS nothing but a pure and transcendental AWARENESS of selfhood (embracing all its unfolding and changing aspects, states and modes of being) can be said, in the language of the tantras, to be the ‘chaitanyatman'.

In terms of The New Yoga and 'The Awareness Principle', this is 'The Awareness SELF' (Shiva) from whose all-pervasive, non-local place or 'Position' the 'Awareness Process'(Shakti) constantly and eternally unfolds.

Dear Acharya,
This is my first proper post, after initial difficulties with using the Bulletin Board, arising from my own misapplication. My warm greetings to other subscribers/followers also. I am now giving time (somewhat belatedly) to the fine posts being placed and the replies to them. The 'flow of awareness", starts to rush as I read. Thank you. On Karin's suggestion I mention for your interest my own blog arising from my transformative encounter with Acharya and the New Yoga. http://contextplus.blogspot.com/ I am hoping this link is correctly formatted in the post.

Acharya, it is remarkable to me that it can be but a phrase that grabs one's awareness, that can help so much. I refer to your recent post on The Awareness Principle. Your suggestion to inwardly change the thought from "I am aware of ..." to "There is an awareness of ..." I have found most helpful in re-orientating one's awareness "posture", particularly in my case, the moment I recognise I am conducting an inner dialogue with someone arising from an encounter, usually upsetting in some way.
This inner statement of expression, "There is an awareness of..." almost immediately leads to a calming distancing and separation from the inner dialogue that has become dominant in awareness, and the evoked awareness-lessening emotion. The inner sentence repeated, "moves around" attaching itself to the various emotions also, "There is an awareness of anger..etc", and moves onto other aspects, the person,and the encounter itself in memory. It does not become a psychological analytical thought process. This is no doubt helpful in itself, but can lead back into being "trapped" by "I-ness". "There is an awareness of..."
Some see the inner detachment inherent in the above process as a divorcing from the practical, living problems of life, but rather "I" become aware of being more effective by becoming more aware of the emotions arising, of the other and the meanings arising from the event. It is very stabilising.

The phrasing also leads one naturally to recall the Awareness Principle, the Awareness Field that is Shiva in which it is all arising.

Om Namah Shivaya.

Peter,

It has taken me some time to respond to the piece: ‘On the Meaning of ‘Depression’’
‘- from the word to a widened awareness’ (http://www.thenewyoga.org/meaning_depresssion.htm) because I think(?) it marks some sort of watershed and thus I had to read it many times etc. Of course it could be that it is simply a watershed for me and not necessarily you but it seems to me that this small paper draws together the New Yoga and all of your previous work since Listening, Madness of the Market, Little Black Book. Probably a better way of putting it is that it puts all your previous work within the New Yoga. I’ll explain what I mean:

If I follow you correctly, babies, children and people develop abstract thinking (meditative thought?) through trying to express and communicate ‘absence’. I take this to mean that absence is in a sense, felt sense. That is, we have a felt sense of something which isn’t present, and if we can tolerate this absence then we can stay with felt sense until it expresses itself in thought through and within us. If we cannot tolerate absence then we go through the whole object relations stuff, the paranoid-schizoid position, the magical conversion of a ‘feeling bad’ (verb) into a ‘bad feeling’ (noun), projection, introjection etc, which doesn’t work in the long run anyway. Along with this we learn to become precocious scientists, having to try and read the ‘weather’ from the signals on faces, rather than a direct sense of inner reality, with the result that we develop calculative thinking.

But if we learn to tolerate absence, then we can allow ourselves to ‘sink’ into the pain of absence or whatever bodily feeling is there, LISTEN and allow it to change us, with the result that felt sense becomes embodied in and as us, in our thoughts, emotions and behaviour. In short the depressive process. And then we are able to enter the blessed state of meditative thinking.

Now starting off from TNY, the Awareness Principle itself makes clear that being in Awareness allows all the freedom we need to be able to ‘sink’ into anything, inner or outer, thus being changed by it, developing meditative thinking, and explaining why simply being conscious and not necessarily aware leads to all the problems of life. Thus the Awareness Process rather than the Depressive Process?

Having written that it seems so short, yet it took me a good few days of meditation to produce it!

Dear Steve:

Thank you for reminding me again and emphasing the significance you sensed in Aristotle's account of perception.
 
Taking your hint and meditating again on the idea that the soul "takes on the form" of the object made me aware of the way in which I myself do in fact directly experience this 'idea' almost all the time. As a result, your letter has led me to ponder ways of describing my subtle experience of "taking on the form of objects" - and to reconsider also how this can be best conceptualised in ways that do indeed transcend "the usual subject-object dualism".
 
I certainly see and feel a definite and important connection between this sense - of taking on the form of objects - and what you refer to, quite rightly, as the "enhanced aesthetic enjoyment" that can arise from awareness. I also see a potentially useful connection, one indeed relevant to my piece on helping others to understand and experience 'The Awareness Principle' - with what you described as the desire of the newcomer "to connect to something bounded, pleasing as in the sense of touch."
 
That last phrase is in some ways key to a type of experiencing I have come to take for granted and enjoy. This I could describe and conceptualise in a number of (seemingly different) ways.
 
I will use the term 'object' for convenience, with the proviso that what I am referring to is the experience - itself and by nature subjective - of any 'body' in space, whether that of a thing or person.
 
1. There is a direct sense of not only seeing a particular object in space but of feeling it. This sense is expressed in an observation I have often that when we look at an object we also 'see' its 'actual' visible features (colour, shape etc.) but also sense how it would potentially feel to our touch. Rather than experiencing this as a mere sensual potential however, there is a way in which, simply looking at an object I already and actually feel its form, including not only its shape or configuration but also the qualities of its surface texture(s) and densities. Thus looking at an object with a smooth surface I sense that smoothness - albeit in a way that includes a qualitatively differentiated sense of the surface smoothness of paper, plastic, wood or metal etc.
 
2. I also experience a most tangible bodily sense of taking on the 'form' of the object in the more basic sense of its 'geometry' i.e. its spatial form and size - and that in every dimension and in every detail.
This 'bodily sense' is one I do relate to 'sensing' or 'feeling' the object with my whole body - not just looking out at it through the peepholes of my eyes. In particular there is a sense of sensing the object in an area corresponding to the surface region of my chest.
 
3. Exploring this bodily sensing and sense of the object further I have also noticed and noted in the past that there seemed to be a direct correlation between sensing my own body surface - in particular the front surface of my chest, and sensing the visible surface form of the object. Again however, it is not just the surface form but the surface qualities of the object that I sense. Thus seeing but also sensing in a bodily way the flat brick surface of the houses I see from my window on the other side of the road, is a quite different sensation from sensing the fabric of the wallpaper in my room, the rug on its floor, the leather surfaces of my armchair and sofa, the polished wooden surfaces of their oak armrests etc, not to mention the glass surfaces of the framed pictures I have on my wall, or the plastic and pseudo-metallic surfaces of my retro-style radio-CD player or plastic-housed television. The same subtle but most tangible differential sense of surface textures applies to small objects too, from the variety of glass, plastic or metal objects such as phones, bowls, mugs, penholders and ashtrays that I see around me, to books, notebooks or mere sheets of paper lying around.
 
4. I also experience a directly felt, bodily sense of weight and density as well as surface texture. Thus looking at a cushion I sense directly its relative lightness as well as its soft surface and the feel of its fabric.
Again, this sense has the character of most tangible tactile sensation in the region of my chest - it is certainly not an imaginative process or sensation of touching or feeling the object with my hand. And yet it is in this context that your reference to something not only "bounded" but also "pleasing" - "as in the sense of touch" [is pertinent]. For what I am effectively describing is a type of synaesthetic visuo-tactile sense, albeit one independent of the hands.
 
To conceptualise my so far purely descriptive 'phenomenology' of this visuo-tactile sense is another matter. For my phenomenological awareness of it has at least three aspect.
 
1. Firstly, there is a sense of non-separation despite apparent distance in space, a sense of the awareness of the object not being something that is 'here', 'in' my mind or even 'in' my body but is right there where the object itself is - and therefore also a sense that the awareness of the object is itself actually touching and feeling the object. That is why I have in some writing deliberately used the term feeling awareness rather than just 'awareness' or 'pure awareness' - or even defined the central power or Shakti of 'pure awareness' as its feeling character - not in an emotional way only but also in a directly tactile way.
 
2. Secondly, there is a tangible sense of the space 'between' my body and the object, as well as the space surrounding the object, actually being that very tactile feeling awareness. To get over this sense to others I often ask them to imagine how a particular tree (with all its differently shaped branches, together with the texture of its bark and leaves) might feel to the space surrounding that tree and/or to the air in direct contact with it. That gives them at least a mental clue to how it might feel to not only sense and identify with the space surrounding objects but to be touching and feeling a particular object from all sides as space (and thereby also as and from an all round field of pure awareness).
 
3. Thirdly however, and points 1 & 2 notwithstanding, there is also an awareness of 'my' body itself "taking on the form" of the object in shape and texture - though it is vital that, no matter how tangible the sensation of shape-shifting is, the 'body' in question be understood not as my physical body but as my inwardly felt body. One way of conceptualising this third dimension of my experience is through the Rupert Sheldrake's notion of 'morphic resonance' - albeit in the specific I understand and have written about it in my book 'Inner Universe' and also in 'Tantric Wisdom for Today's World'. What I am getting at through this notion is the idea that sensing any 'body' out there, not from 'in here' but within and as the seemingly empty space around (and touching) that body, turns this felt sensing into a type of resonance with the outward form (morphe) of that other body. This resonance in turn, brings about a transformation or meta-morphosis of my own inwardly sensed bodily form in the likeness of that other body. Referring back to my writings again, this is why I have declared in some of them that our bodies retain the resonant mnemonic trace of every other body (whether that of a thing or person) that we have ever experienced, in this life or any other.
 
The three angles or vertices from which I have described this most sensually pleasing and therefore 'aesthetic' experience of 'other bodies' can perhaps also be integrated through my particular understanding of 'morphic resonance' as a relation of outward form on the one hand, and inner 'sound' on the other. The term 'resonance' (re-sounding) is no mere metaphor, because, as I am also acutely aware, the very form of any particular 'object' or body (its shape and texture etc ), also has a specific inner sound or 'silent sound', one that can be silently sensed at a distance in an aural as well as tactile way. Thus a soft cushion also has a softer and duller inner 'sound' - in marked contrast say, to the sharper, more high-pitched inner sound I sense as the silver-metallic ashtray and drinking mugs I have. That is why it has always made perfect sense to me to understand - as the tantras do - all bodies, not simply as 'having' sounds if you strike them, but as expressions of sounds.
 
The equation I am making here is that Form = Sound and Sound = Form. Thus any "bounded" form of the sort that can be "pleasing to the touch" is also a sound. And every sound in turn, like the sound or 'tone' of someone's voice has very specific qualities such as sharpness or flatness, loudness or softness, lightness or heaviness, dullness or clarity, warmth or coldness - not to mention spatial or geometric qualities of roundedness or angularity, and textural qualities such as roughness and smoothness.
 
It is such sonic or tonal qualities of awareness that I believe are what actually lie behind and manifest as the form of bounded objects and as the sensory qualities of these forms - including their basic spatial shape and texture. The recognition that vibration (spanda) and sounds (matrika) are the source, mother or 'matrix' of all bounded things - all bodies - is of course central to the tantras.
 
All these senses, understandings and tantric recognitions come to expression in the act of puja as murti darshan. For the murti is a human bodily form given to (and inseparable) from the formless awareness that is its source. Not just seeing but sensing the body of the murti with one's whole body allows one to enter a state of resonance with the divine qualities of awareness or 'higher state of consciousness' it embodies.
 
This resonance - or rather the aware activity of 'resonation' or 'resonating' in turn allows one to:
 
(1) experience both one's own body and that of the murti as embodiments or expressions of the same immanent-transcendental qualities of the divine awareness (spaciousness, bliss etc.)
 
(2) to experience one's own body as inwardly taking on the shape and form of the murti, and thus (3) experience not just one's 'own' body and that of the murti but every body in the entire universe as "one's own" body - that is to say, as 'owned' only by 'one' - not the limited self or ego but that ONE Awareness of which all bodies are an embodiment.
 
In this sense the Self (capital S) being identical with the One Awareness does indeed engage in a pure activity (Gentile) of "becoming other" - of bodying itself in countless forms. 'We' do not become other, Rather It becomes and bodies us in ever new or other ways and forms.
 
In this response to your letter lies the key to all I have written also about the nature of 'tantric pair meditation' in The New Yoga - which involves the far more daring act of inwardly sensing and identifying with the bodily form of another human being - thus coming to actively sense and resonate with their soul, and to actively embody and incorporate their soul in all its qualities - not within one's 'own' soul so much as within the One awareness that is the Self. Better this than abiding in a state of dualistic separation of 'self' (small 's') and 'other' - or feeling one's body possessed by the soul of another.
 
As for Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva etc. let us then not speak of them or 'their' experiences of objects - as if they were bounded selves. Rather let us recognise them as they recognised themselves -as
identical with that One Awareness embodied in all 'objects' - all bounded things and beings.
 
 
Acharya

Dear Peter:

One of the barriers the average person faces when first told about the fundamental ideas and practices of TAP is his assumption space is something physical, if intangible. Not in experience but "outside" it. As an encapsulated "I" the newcomer craves to connect to something bounded, pleasing as in the sense of touch.This is how he's always gotten his temporary gratification. Having read about Shaivism, the idea of objects in space as objects in awareness becomes plausible, and a notion of a payoff from the practices, in the form of something like an enhanced esthetic enjoyment begins to seem possible, and so does the goal of freedom from identifications and addictions. Then it would be nice to find mentors and peers who have experienced awareness as something more than what you thought it was; as alive, and a fundamental reality. Usually you're surrounded by people who you can't discuss these things with, and caught up in anavamala; including personal memories, complexes or whatever. The challenge becomes getting to a place where there begins to be positive reinforcement from experiences of transcendance,or transcendance/immanence.

I've been thinking, after reading many accounts of Abhinavgupta, Utpaladeva etc., about HOW these people experienced objects appearing in their awareness. In connection to this, I mentioned Aristotle's account of perception, in point 7 of the list I made and sent on Jan. 22. When the soul perceives an object, according to J. Lear, Aristotle's explanation is that it "takes on the form" actually becomes the form, of the object. The thought and the object of thought are one. And he says this is how God thinks. The jiva, the average man or whatever, does not experience that this is what is happening. Either he just thinks the object is "there" in space, separate from and unrelated to his soul, or that there is the process described by science of a transmission of vibrations between separate bodies resulting in a brain process which causes him to see an object in his head. Wonder if Lear's -Aristotle's idea of perception if experienced as such, could be likened to the experience of Shiva-Shakti: the usual subject-object dualism is not the fundamental reality, actually it's Shiva's play. It also reminds me of Gentiles "pure act" in that the "play" is that of the Self becoming other (causa sui).

Anyway, the point is that there are barriers, of anavamala, personal history, cultural beliefs, which come up in practicing the New Yoga, and it seems important that there be some initial experiences of positive reinforcement, however these can be triggered. I find reading and contemplating to be effective at times in opening up the imagination.

Steve

Helping others to ‘TAP’ – to understand and apply ‘The Awareness Principle’

What follows are some simple ways of explaining ‘The Awareness Principle’ to people with no prior knowledge of yogic philosophy, Shaivism or The New Yoga - and helping them to experience the benefits of Practicing Awareness in everyday life. The principal outcome of the carefully worded explanations and suggestions below is to come to an understanding and experience of pure awareness as empty space – and thus as fundamentally distinct from anything we are aware of in space – whether thoughts or things. This is the ‘Fundamental Distinction’ that allows us ‘The Fundamental Choice’ – the choice to identify with the pure awareness of something, rather than with any particular thing (or thought, or emotion) that we are aware of.

Explanations 1:

Have you heard of The Awareness Principle (TAP)? This is a new philosophical and therapeutic principle which comes from Indian yogic philosophy and is part of something called ‘The New Yoga of Awareness’ – a way of practicing meditative awareness in everyday life. A central principle of The New Yoga is that awareness is not something inside us or contained in our heads and bodies. Instead it’s the other way round. We are inside awareness, which is the space in which we all exist and in which we experience all things. Understanding and applying The Awareness Principle can be very helpful in freeing us from getting lost in, worked up by or bound up with our thoughts and feelings. Would you like me to introduce you to it and show you how to apply it?

Questions 1:

To begin with, if you can answer the questions I’m going to put to you with a ‘yes’ or follow any of the suggestions I am going to give you, raise your right hand. Do you understand?

Is there a difference between the empty space of this room and the things in it?
Is there a difference between your body and the empty space around it?

Suggestions 1:

Be aware of an object in this room (…such as that chair/table over there).
Now be aware of the empty space around it.
Can you be aware of the object (chair, table) and of the empty space of this room at the same time?


Explanations 2:

The Awareness Principle is about what is called ‘pure awareness’. Pure awareness simply means awareness as such, rather than any particular thing we are aware of. The Awareness Principle teaches that awareness as such is like empty space, different in principle from everything we are aware of within it.

In fact, The Awareness Principle teaches that pure awareness is the space in which we experience or become aware of things - not just things around us like tables and chairs but also things going on within us like thoughts and feelings.

Just as the space around some thing or some body is not the same as that thing or body we experience in it, neither is awareness the same as any thought or emotion we experience in it.


Suggestions 2:

Be still for a while and raise your hand when you are aware of a thought coming up in your mind.

Now be still again, but this time, when a thought comes up attend to the simple awareness of the thought being there, rather than the thought itself.

Did you feel the difference when you attended to the awareness of the thought rather than the thought itself?

Explanations 3:

Just as there is a difference between any thing we are aware of and the space in which we are aware of it, so there is also a difference between any thought or feelings we are aware of and the pure awareness of it.

Like the empty space around it, the awareness of a table is not itself a table.
Similarly – and these are words to learn by heart:

The awareness of a thought is not itself a thought.
The awareness of a sensation is not itself a sensation.
The awareness of an emotion is not itself an emotion.
The awareness of a feeling is not itself a feeling.

This recognition – that just as there is a fundamental difference or distinction between space and things in it, so there is also a fundamental distinction between awareness as such and anything we are aware of – is called ‘The Fundamental Distinction’. The Fundamental Distinction offers us what is called ‘The Fundamental Choice’.

The choice is between identifying with anything we are aware of – whether an object, thought, emotion or sensation or alternatively, identifying with the pure awareness of that thing, which is like the space in which we are aware of it – in fact it is that space.

Questions 2:

How much space do you feel you take up in this room?
How far beyond the boundaries of your skin can you feel your awareness extending into space?

Suggestions 4:

Be aware of a feeling or sensation in your body. Now attend to the pure awareness of it - which is the same as the empty space around your body and filling this room.

Feel your awareness as something filling the space of this room and not encapsulated within your skin or confined within your head.

Explanations 4:

The understanding that awareness is different from anything within it is healing and therapeutic. That is because it frees us from identifying with anything that is going on within or around us. In particular it frees us from identifying with our thoughts, emotions and impulses.
Daily Practices of Awareness 1:

In any situation where you find yourself worked up by and bound up with any particular thought or emotion – identified with it – remind yourself that:

• The awareness of the thought is not the thought!
• The awareness of the emotion is not the emotion!
• Feel that awareness pervading your body like clear empty space -
        and extending into the entire space around your body.

Explanations 5:

One way of helping us identify with pure awareness is by changing the mental words with which we think our everyday experiences. Instead of thinking or saying to ourselves: ‘I feel really angry/upset’ we can simply say: “there is an awareness of an angry/upset feeling within me”.

The trick is to drop the word ‘I’ and instead say ‘there is an awareness of…’

Suggestions 5:

Think of a typical situation in which you tend to get really worked up by or bound up with your thoughts and emotions – identified with them.

Recollect or imagine you are in such a situation right now.

Instead of identifying with the thoughts or emotions it brings up identify simply with the awareness of the situation, and with the awareness of those thoughts and emotions.

Daily Practices of Awareness 2:

When you are out in the street and are just aware of any ordinary thing such as a particular shop, car, bus, cyclist, person, tree, dog etc. say to yourself ‘there is an awareness of this shop’, ‘there is an awareness of this car’, ‘there is an awareness of this tree’ etc.

When you enjoy a piece of cake or a sunset, say ‘there is an awareness of pleasure’ or ‘there is an awareness of delight’ or ‘there is an awareness of sweetness’.

When you hurt yourself or see something you don’t like, say to yourself ‘there is an awareness of pain’ or ‘there is an awareness of annoyance’ or ‘there is an awareness of feeling upset’.

By removing the word ‘I’ from your awareness of things, and replacing it with ‘there is’ you can remind yourself of The Fundamental Distinction and practice The Fundamental Choice – identifying with the pure awareness of something and not with the thing, thought or feeling itself.

Daily Practice of Awareness 3:

Whether you are walking outdoors or sitting indoors, be aware of the space all around your body and all around all the things you are aware of.

• If you are outdoors regularly glance up at the sky and remind yourself of the vastness of space.
• If you are on the street attend as much to its empty space as to the houses, cars and people in it.
• If you are indoors, keep returning your attention to the empty space filling the room and surrounding the things in it.

Through these simple daily Practices of Awareness it will become second nature to you to be as much aware of empty space as of things in it. As a result you will learn to feel space as a field of awareness, and be able to distinguish that awareness from anything you are aware of within it. You’ll be able to identify with pure awareness, which is the space in which exist we experience all things.

Explanations 6:

To the extent to which you are able to feel and identify with the space of pure awareness around your body, you can begin to give more and more intense awareness to whatever it is you experience as going on within that space and within your body – sensations, moods and emotions for example - yet without identifying with them.

Sugggestions 6:

If you feel a mood or emotion inside yourself allow yourself to be aware of where and how you feel that emotion in your body - rather than thinking or talking about it, and without having to either express or repress it.

Seek to feel your bodily sense of any particular mood or emotion more intensely rather than less, and to stay with it as long as it is there in awareness – affirming and even amplifying it, whilst at the same time using the mantram ‘There is an awareness of ….’ to avoid identifying with it.

By giving a particular mood or emotion more time and a more intense awareness, it will in time reveal itself to you as an awareness in its own right - something that brings new things to light in the larger space of awareness that surrounds it.

Be prepared for new and unexpected insights – a new and unexpected awareness - to ‘come to mind’ as you stay with the mood or emotion - not by thinking ‘about’ it but by simply staying with your direct bodily awareness of it.

Daily Practice of Awareness 4:

Do not ignore or dismiss anything you are aware of within or around you, no matter how disturbing or discomforting, but instead focus on and even deliberately intensify your bodily awareness of it – the way you sense it outwardly with your body or the way you feel it inside your body. At the same time stay in touch with and remain identified with the larger space of pure awareness around it and around your body.

This daily practice will ensure that identification with pure awareness does not dissociate or detach you from yourself, other people or the world, but instead intensifies and enriches your sensual, feeling awareness of all that you experience within and around you.


If you want to know more about The Awareness Principle and how to apply it check out: www.theawarenessprinciple.blogspot.com

Good news from Karin

Sales of Acharya’s books, though small – have significantly risen and are still rising.
Recently Acharya received visits from Ravi Ladva, organiser of the Eastern Traditions Society at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent, and Bhavin Dravda, President of the UK National Hindu Students Forum. Both were inspired by Acharya’s vision of creating a ‘New Hindu Math’ – a multidisciplinary college of applied yogic studies, and well as desiring to learn more from all that he has to share and teach.
On March 17 Acharya delivered a one and a half hour discourse to the Eastern Traditions Society entitled ‘God is Consciousness – from the Monotheism of Money to a New Monism of Awareness’ – the full text of which has now been uploaded to the Archive page of the site. Though attendance at the seminar was not large, ALL those who attended signed up for further seminars - thus laying a basis for establishing regular weekend seminars or Satsanga within the intimate and sacred setting of our shrine rooms.
Bhavin Dravda, as President of the NHSF, spends much of the time visiting and offering guidance to Hindu university societies all over the UK. From now on he will ALSO be spreading word of Acharyaji, The Awareness Principle - and The New Yoga of Awareness.
A new domain name for our site: www.newmillenniumyoga.org has also now been registered, following the inspired suggestion of Rod Lloyd, whose own blogspot – ‘Recognising Shiva’ – is becoming ever fuller and more beautiful.

Om Namah Shivaya.

Shivratri 2009 - worshipper in Jammu, Kashmir

BEYOND THE MONOTHEISM OF MONEY
Shivratri in the Context of Global Economic Crisis...

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.”

“…the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade, and the bankrupt trader deals in the Gospel just as the Gospel preacher who has become rich goes in for business deals.”
Karl Marx

In what way does owning a beautiful tree, plot of land, building or work of art add to the awareness of its intrinsic beauty? From whence came the idea that owning something – anything – somehow adds to its intrinsic value? The idea came from a quite different notion of ‘value’ – not as the sensuous, ethical or practical value of something but as its exchange value.

Human history began with aboriginal tribal communities who had no notion of land, water, food or any other necessity of life as private property – whose social organisation therefore, constituted what Marx called ‘primitive communism’. It was only when such tribes began to barter that a notion of the ‘exchange value’ of things came into being. And as Marx perceived, exchange value is a mysterious thing. For though it is no ‘thing’ in itself, it is what makes a specific quantity of one type of sensuously tangible thing (fish for example) equivalent to some other thing completely different in its sensuous nature or practical use (for example beads or necklaces).

It was and is the wholly abstract, non-sensuous, invisible and immaterial nature of exchange value made it akin to a type of mysterious, immaterial and invisible Spirit – one that eventually then took the tangible and visible form of one specific material thing – money. Through exchange value things, and ultimately even human beings and human labour - became ‘commodities’. Thus began a millennia-long karmic history of social and economic development – a history with a significant religious dimension. From the turning point marked by the transformation of things into commodities with a specific exchange value represented by money, there began a process by which both the commodity and then money itself took on the nature of a religious fetish. Marx himself spoke of ‘the fetishism of the commodity’ – though he himself could barely have dreamt the lengths to which the advertising industry would take this fetishism.

Marx’s genius lay in seeing how the history of commodity exchange could be summed up in four simple formulae:

1. C-C one commodity (C) is exchanged for another through barter.
2. C-M-C one commodity is sold for money (M) in order to buy another.
3. M-C-M one commodity is bought in order make money by selling it.
4. M-M-M money itself becomes the principal commodity that is traded.

The fourth stage (‘Money-Money-Money’!) is the one leads to the ultimate apotheosis and nemesis of the one ‘true’ religion, by which I mean that hidden but all-too obvious religion, which (despite or with the help of self-proclaimed religions) truly dominates and rules the reality of human social life. This is the religion that dare not speak its name - the religion that Marx called ‘The Monotheism of Money’.

The defining delusion of this religion is the belief in a particular type of creation ex nihilo – the belief that money or ‘capital’ itself is the principal source of value, that out of something that in itself is essentially ‘no-thing’ – and money is not essentially any ‘thing’ but a mere numerical symbol of the exchange value of things - that out of this no-thing, actual sensuous things can be created. The delusion is as absurd as believing that when you pay for a commodity, the money you hand over the counter is actually transformed into that commodity – as if the dollar bill you pass over at a McDonald’s counter were actually the raw material from which the hamburger you receive and place in your mouth is created. Even McDonald’s burgers aren’t that bad!

In reality, money does not produce things from nothing - ex-nihilo. On the contrary, money creates nothing. All it serves is the exchange of commodities - the transfer of ownership of things. Factories are not built with money but by human labour - with the power of action or ‘Shakti’ exercised by living human bodies. In capitalism, that labour power is itself a commodity – which an owner of capital can purchase with money in order to build a factory and generate profit from its products. Similarly monetary profit or ‘surplus value’ does not come from just adding a ‘margin’ to the cost of production. It comes from paying less for the labour power that goes into making a product than the exchange value of that product. The source of profit is the exploitation of labour.

Industrial labour involves the ever-increasing use of machines as well as human labour in order to increase ‘productivity’ and profit. Paradoxically however this results in a general fall in the rate of profit - because machines themselves are only a source of surplus value because of the direct human labour that went into their production, which is used up as they wear out and depreciate.

So it began to dawn on the owners of capital that boom and bust was the iron law – with so many companies producing the same commodity for the same market, whilst at the same time minimising the purchasing power of consumers by minimising their wages - there would not only be intense competition but regular crises of over-production leading to the collapse of whole companies, sectors or economies.

What better remedy then than to go the whole hog in the worship of money. Forget manufacturing and trade in manufactured commodities, just trade money itself as a commodity – in the form of real and imaginary stock values, currencies etc. The Monotheism of Money reaches its apotheosis with the dominance of ‘finance capital’ and ‘finance capitalism’ over manufacturing capital and capitalism. Yet as we are now seeing, the triumphal apotheosis of the God (theos) of Money through its globalisation is bringing about its own nemesis. For that apotheosis was achieved at a price - one that cannot be paid back at any price - save the final demise of capitalism itself and of its bedrock religion – ‘The Monotheism of Money’.

To cite my own earlier bulletin on this theme entitled ‘Full Marx to the Archbishop’: (posted 28.09.08) “Marx saw how the unlimited extension of credit, though needed to keep capitalism going, necessarily creates ‘the most colossal form of gambling and swindling’.” And rephrasing what I wrote then in terms of what has since come to pass (and what is yet to come…) it matters not how many billions or trillions are spent on welfare ‘bailouts’ of banks and corporations in an attempt to undo the global economic crisis brought on by the unregulated extension of financial credits – since these very billions or trillions are themselves an even greater extension of credit. This extension may reach the point of governments simply printing money in the hope that this will in some magical way ‘prime’ the economy. Again the same delusion – that money itself can ‘create’ things ex nihilo - and create also the purchasing power to buy them amidst ever-greater debt, unemployment and poverty.

Today’s ‘great power’ politicians and economists are like the deluded kings and high-priests of ancient empires who believed that by just making ever-greater blood-sacrifices of human beings they could gain ‘credit’ and ‘bail’ themselves out from the wrath of the gods - making the gods bring rain at times of drought or stop the rains from flooding their lands and cities. Now however, there is just One God being appeased – Money – by endless sacrifice of what most like unto that God – Money. The ‘God’ itself is a distorted mirror image of the Divine in its true and ultimate reality, as that singular Awareness (Shiva) of which all things are an expression – and whose creative powers of action or Shaktis include all human creative powers and activities. Money is not essentially any ‘thing’ but a symbol of a relation between things – their exchange value. Awareness too, is no ‘thing’ and yet - unlike money – it is indeed the creative source of all things.

The delusory and distorted mirror image of awareness and its powers that money and its powers represents is now karmically self-destructing - just as all over the world people are losing faith in its religion and the power of its priests. What is there to replace the Monotheism of Money - and its ideological reflections in religious monotheisms? Only a new Monism of Awareness – one based on the understanding that though things may be owned and thereby become commodities, consciousness cannot. For consciousness as such – ‘awareness’ - is neither the product of any thing nor the private property of any being or beings. Nor can consciousness – even in the form of ‘higher’ consciousness, ‘pure awareness’ or ‘liberation’ (Moksha/Mukti) through that awareness be seen as the exclusive private property or psychic power (Siddhi) of elevated or perfected ‘gurus’ or ‘masters’. The only ‘perfection’ of a Satguru guru lies in a heightened awareness of their individual human limitations and imperfections - for it is this awareness that prevents these imperfections ruling their thoughts, speech and actions, and instead becomes a source of divine awareness bliss.

Those gurus who deny all human imperfections or limitations seek to replace worship of Shiva with worship of themselves, and even seek to turn the sacred truths of Kashmir Shaivism into the private property of spiritual corporations and cults. Such spiritual gurus - however valid and praiseworthy their attainments and inspirations may be - are no different in essence from those ‘financial gurus’ who assumed themselves to be omnipotent, and to ‘know it all’.

Mahashivratri is the night in which we celebrate the Tandava – Shiva’s dance of creation, preservation - and destruction. With such false financial and spiritual ‘gurus’ in mind - and the fetters, financial and spiritual, with which they have bound so many people - I can think of no more relevant words by which to celebrate Shivratri in the spirit of The New Yoga than those provided by Abhinavagupta:

“There are dull-witted people who are confused themselves and throw the senseless multitude of creatures into confusion. Having bound them fast with fetters, they bring them under subjection with tall talk of their qualities. Having thus seen creatures who are simply carriers of the burden of Gurus and their (blind) followers, I have prepared a trident of wisdom in order to cut asunder their bondage.”

I therefore call upon all those who recognise in The Awareness Principle a gleaming new ‘Trident of Wisdom’ to fearlessly wield that trident with its three arrowheads of knowledge, intent and action - not only to cut asunder their own bonds but also to release others from the fetters of ignorance or false gurus.
 
Socialism shares with the Tantric tradition a rejection of all false bonds and divisions based purely on of caste, class, culture, race and gender. Similarly, Marx understood ‘communism’ not as a collectivistic or communalistic society but one in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” (The Communist Manifesto) This affirms the central tantric goal of individual liberation or freedom (Moksha). And in contrast to the rigidly held beliefs of dogmatic ‘Marxists’, Marx was in no sense a ‘materialist’ in the conventional sense of the term, declaring from the outset of his work that the chief defect of such materialism “… is that the object, actuality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of perception, but not as sensuous human activity … not subjectively.” In other words, Marx understood sensuous reality tantrically - as having both a subjective or Shaiva character and an active or Shakta character.

Just as ‘Trika Shaivism’ both transcended, encompassed and incorporated countless earlier religious traditions, practices and philosophical schools of thought, so can and must its contemporary counterpart – ‘The New Yoga’ – continue to transcendentally encompass and incorporate all those revolutionary practices and schools of thought (including Marxism and Phenomenology) that evolved only at the end of the millennium that has passed since the birth of Trika Shaivism. This ‘transcending encompassing’ is made possible through the new Trident of Wisdom that is ‘The Awareness Principle’. For it is this Principle and its manifold practices and applications that bears the seeds of a true ‘Meditation Revolution’. And today is the time for renewal of the revolutionary rud- or ‘red’ character of Shiva as Rudra. For the ‘Love’ principle alone cannot ‘save’ the world. If it could the world would already be saved. Those who simply repeat the mantram of ‘love’ fail to recognise that there is not a single person or action - however seemingly ‘evil’ - that is not in essence motivated by love.

Raising ‘Rudra’s Red Banner’ (see the site essay with this title) means raising the banner of spiritual socialism through new theo-political awareness, one that not only offers a path to identity of self with the divine, but also shares the light of a sharply-pointed intellectual awareness of all that is now taking place in the world. The cultivation of this awareness requires us not only to engage in deep study and meditation ourselves, but also to engage with others in joint reading, study, meditative dialogue. This is a way to re-link each person’s worldly and spiritual questions – thus helping to open both ourselves and others to the world-encompassing awareness that is Shiva. Our guru and spiritual guide here is no one individual but Shiva, experienced through meditation as both self and other, inner and outer, pure awareness and the entire world.

Tradition says that Shiva, like his symbol the new moon, appeared in order to save the world from darkness and ignorance, before the world entered complete darkness.

Here I have just finished meditating the further reflections on the nature of individuality, freedom and the 'ego' on your bulletin board. Again I see the new formulation of portion with inseparability, and expression with distinctness. By juxtaposing ego as a portion of the awareness that we are, while being distinct in its own right, it is ‘easy’ to make the point that it is a small step to the ego regarding itself as separate from awareness, and then ultimately owning it. I also liked the no essential duality between egoity and ego-lessness. That is, it is not a case of either ego or non-ego behaviour. By thinking of it that way, people are forced into the crude interpretation of impulses that you refer to. If we are not to be bound up in ego, well we will just respond, ‘spontaneously’, to whatever impulse we feel. The over arching solution though, AWARENESS, provides one with a pool of potential actions, impulses etc from which to choose. Thus, for me, real freedom comes when we ‘have our cake and eat it too’ combining the best of egoity - we choose - and the best of egolessness - a vast ocean of awareness that we and our actions, choices, impulses emerge from.

I have been conducting some interesting experiments with myself. I have been listening to audiobooks with my iPod and found an interesting paradox. I was listening to Tagore’s Sadhana and was well aware of just how hard it is to listen to an audiobook. To concentrate, to focus on the words and actually take them in. So many times I find myself having to ‘rewind’ the ‘tape’ and play back what I just completely missed. It reminded me of batting when I was a cricketer which wasn’t easy for me. The more I told myself to focus and concentrate and ‘don’t get out, don’t take a wild swipe, watch the ball etc’ the less it worked. The more I tried to focus on the words in my head listening to the audiobook, the more I got distracted etc. The more I closed my eyes to ‘concentrate’, the worse it got. Then I finally discovered the secret. The way to concentrate and listen was to open myself up completely to the whole environment I was in, to be aware of the whole room, especially the space in the room, and be that space taking in the audiobook in the context of everything else in the room. I had to intend to listen to the words but take in everything else at the same time. And I found in doing so that I was in the blessed space that I should have been in all those years ago when batting, that is, relaxed but alert, not focused solely on the ball but aware of everything. Listening to this audiobook in this way I was then able to slip into that state where I was taking in the book but was especially waiting for those felt senses of significance that crop up in me hearing a certain phrase. So I would switch off the ‘tape’ and explore the unthought stuff in the words of Tagore. Now I have been saying to myself, what if I approached everything I was doing as if I was listening to an audiobook? That is, taking in all that there was to take in, while intending something in the forefront of attention? Quite illuminating to discover that the very meaning of focus and concentration that sports people go on about isn’t actually what they are implying.

Further Reflections on the Nature of Individuality, Freedom and the 'Ego'


Each of us is a portion of the ultimate or universal awareness (Anuttara/Paramshiva) and consequently inseparable from that divine ‘source’ awareness as a whole.

Each of also IS an awareness in its own right – an inseparable but also individually distinct portion of the source awareness.

We are each 'gods' - distinct parts or portions or parts of the Divine Awareness that is 'God'. Yet being inseparable from the Divine Awareness as a whole, we ARE also that whole - we are each 'God'.

This relation of INSEPARABLE DISTINCTION between the individual ‘soul’ or awareness (jiva) and the divine awareness (Shiva) is the new and true way to understand the essence of ‘a-dvaita’ or ‘non-duality’ – which is NEITHER a relation of dualistic separation NOR a state of merger into indistinct ‘one-ness’ or ‘union’ lacking any individuality and distintiveneness.

The ‘ego’ is a specific portion of the distinct awareness that we each ARE - yet one that does not experience and understands itself as an inseparable part of the divine awareness as a whole but rather as separate and apart from it, and thus separate and apart also from other portions of that awareness - from other people and the world.

As a result of feeling itself apart from it, the ego also experiences itself as owning thE awareness which we are - indeed owning or possessing awareness as such as its private property. This is the delusion of egoity known as 'ananavamala' – the false belief that awareness or subjectivity is the private property of separate subjects, beings or ‘egos’.

The ego also regards itself as an independent agent of action, separate and apart from action as such. As self-assumed ‘agent’, the ego understands all actions as its own ‘intentional acts’ – rather than understanding all actions as emerging from awareness.

Yet just as the awareness of a thought or thing, impulse or action, is not itself a thought or thing, impulse or action – so also is the awareness of ego nothing ‘egoic’ but something essentially egoless.

Thus there is no essential duality between egoity and egolessness. There is however a fundamental distinction between identification with the ego and intentional acts and simple awareness of the ego and of those acts.

Indeed on one level, ‘the ego’ as such is neither more nor less than an identification with ‘ego’ i.e, with that portion of both awareness and action that regards itself as separate and apart from both awareness and action – and sees both as its private property.

The awareness of sensations, thoughts and emotions, mind and body, the awareness of ego and intentional acts, being essentially distinct from such contents of consciousness, is therefore also essentially free of them - free of sensation, emotion and thought, free of mind and body and free too of ‘ego’ and ‘intentional acts’.

This is one essential sense in which awareness is Freedom.

All powers of action (Shaktis) are latent in and arise out of awareness (Shiva). At the same time awareness is an inexhaustible field or ‘womb’ of different potential actions and modes of expression.

Without awareness of more than one possible or potential action, more than one possible thing to do or say - and more than one possible way of doing or saying it - there can be no freedom or action or expression through action.

This is the second fundamental sense in which awareness alone is Freedom. For any action undertaken without awareness of alternate possible actions, or of alternate possible ways of acting is essentially unfree.

So called ‘spontaneous’ acts which do not arise from expanded awareness – an awareness embracing a larger field of alternate possible actions - are no more ‘free’ than actions which come from obeying orders, or blindly following impulses.

Blindly obeying orders or following ‘spontaneous’ impulses – without awareness of alternatives – are the poor man’s way of freeing himself from ego and the poorest form of ‘egolessness’, requiring as they do surrender of the ego either to impulse or to the commands of others.

That is why the basic life-practice of awareness in ‘The New Yoga’ is called taking time to be aware.

In particular this ‘taking time’ means establishing pauses and interval between one action or series of actions and another, in which to return from a highly ‘focussed’ awareness to a more expanded or ‘field’ awareness which embraces a range of alternative possible ‘next’ actions.

The alternative is to live life under the rule of ‘busy-ness’ - ‘going from one thing to another’ and ‘doing one thing after another’ – without pausing and taking time to do nothing but be aware – and in this way come to an awareness of alternate possible ‘next’ actions and choose freely between them.

Only out of awareness of a larger field of possible actions and ways of acting can choices and decisions arise from awareness that are themselves truly aware and free choices and decision.

Not just speech but all modes of action are expressive languages. The smaller the vocabulary of sounds and letters in a language the smaller the number of words and sentences that can be formed from it – the smaller its creative potentials and degree of freedom - the freedom with which awareness can express or ‘articulate’ itself in and though the language of action.

The ego thinks action in terms of black and white, either/or alternatives. Its mantra are ‘Do X or Y’. ‘Do X. Don’t do Y’. Aware action is the recognition not only that there are countless ways of doing both X and Y, but that doing either X or Y in one way is not the same action as doing it another way.

Edited by author 16-01-2009 05:53 PM
ANGER AWARENESS VERSUS ANGER DEFICIENCY
Towards an Affirmative Psychology of Anger


"The great Islamic activist Hamza Yusuf Hanson distinguishes between two forms of political action. He defines the Arabic word "hamas" as enthusiastic but intelligent anger and "hamoq" as uncontrolled, stupid anger. The Malays could not pronounce the Arabic 'h', and the British acquired the word [amok] from them." George Monbiot

Preface

This essay on personal and political psychology emerged from an awareness of the intense anger that I feel towards the outrages committed by the Israeli Zionist regime through their attack on Gaza - an anger fuelled by a parallel awareness of what appeared to be a fundamental ‘anger deficiency’ in response to these outrages within Western media and political circles. Together with this went a more general awareness of the way in which political leaders in international conflict situations seem to be too scared or avoidant of their own internal anger to even countenance the thought of face-to-face encounter and communication with their ‘enemies’ – thus resorting to indirect emotional communication through missiles, bombs and bullets. I see this as but one example of the way in which personal and political violence, far from ‘expressing’ highly-charged feelings of anger, serve principally to explosively discharge or ‘let out’ those feelings – in order to avoid having to bear that anger inside, and evade the challenge of feeling and communicating it in a fully aware and embodied way, face-to-face but without violence.
 
Introduction

An all-pervasive but almost unquestioned belief has pervaded Western culture since the birth of Christianity, though it is also reflected in Buddhism and other ‘spiritual’ creeds. This is the belief that anger – at least if not ‘controlled’ or ‘managed’ - leads to violence and is therefore a ‘bad thing’. The belief is reflected in the currently fashionable phrase ‘anger management’ - which suggests that unless it is kept at some ‘moderate’ level on a scale of emotional intensity, anger automatically transforms into violence. In this essay, I will argue that a whole host of personal, social and international conflicts - above all those that do erupt into violence - do not result from a surfeit or excess of anger but rather from its opposite – from cultures characterised by a type of ‘anger poverty’ or ‘anger deficiency’. This anger deficiency is sustained by deep-rooted beliefs about anger – in particular the belief that if unchecked, anger leads to violence, for this a belief which in effect functions as a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. The purpose of this essay is to dispute this belief and argue instead for a fundamentally new understanding of anger, together with a new form of ‘anger awareness’ – one that alone can overcome the fear of anger that I will claim is the true cause of violence. I will present my arguments rhetorically, as a series of ‘no’ answers to a set of yes/no questions to which most people would answer ‘yes’ to.

Questions concerning anger

To begin with, let us begin with a seemingly innocent if not banal question to which one would undoubtedly expect such an automatic ‘yes’ answer:

Q. Do people get angry because they feel angry?
A. No they do not. Feeling anger is one thing. ‘Getting angry’, acting on that anger, is something quite distinct. People ‘get’ angry, act on their anger, not because they feel anger but because they are afraid of feeling anger. The most violent of individuals are those who are least capable of bearing feelings of anger – who find the slightest feeling of anger so unbearable that they must immediately seek a way to discharge that feeling through action. In particular such individuals are not strong enough to feel emotions of anger with and within their bodies. So instead they make use of their bodies and bodily strength as an instrument with which to discharge emotions of anger from their bodies. Finding it unbearable to abide or ‘stay with’ feelings of anger inside their bodies they have to ‘let out’ their anger on others or else find some way of discharging it or ‘channelling’ it, if not bodily violence then through obsessional physical exercise or competitive sports. Alternatively, they may simply make sure that there is always something aside from anger that keeps them so permanently preoccupied and busy that this very busy-ness leaves them no time to feel their anger – or else serves as a convenient ‘outlet’ for it.

Q. Do uncontrolled feelings of anger lead to violence?
A. No they do not. To repeat: it is fear of feeling the emotional charge of anger inside one’s body that leads to discharge through violent bodily action.

Q. Is the exercise of force and violence an exercise of strength, power and dominance?
A. No it is not. It is a surrender to a sense of weakness and powerlessness in the face of feelings of anger, aimed at making the victim feel the same weakness, powerlessness and fear of anger that lies behind the acts of the perpetrator - a fear that often stems from their having been a victim of violence and fearing the retribution that anger might bring).

Q. Is the overcoming of anger either a pre-condition, purpose or benefit of religiosity or ‘spirituality’?
A. No it is not. More often than not, it is those that suffer from what I call ‘anger’ deficiency’ that use religion or spirituality to fill the ‘hole’ it leaves them with. Yet unless their particular religion or form of spirituality is one that affirms anger as a natural and valuable emotion (which most do not) no amount of contemplation, meditation or prayer will fill the spiritual emptiness they feel in themselves. Anyone with anger deficiency will be haunted by a spiritual vacuum, felt as an underlying sense of boredom, depression, restlessness or lack of meaning in their lives. Yet unless they first of all allow anger to fill this spiritual hole, anger as such cannot be spiritually ‘transcended’ or transmuted into empathy and compassion. For how can someone with anger deficiency – someone basically uncomfortable with even moderate anger - possibly ‘empathise’ with the intense anger and outrage felt by those who are economically exploited or starved, subject to cruel political and military oppression or victims of criminal violence and abuse?

Q. Isn’t the ideally ‘developed’ or ‘civilised’ society one in which both the general populace and political leaders in particular are happy and not angry?
A. On the contrary. For we see in the ‘developed’ world - and the West in particular - how anger deficiency leads to a state of almost total emotional apathy and indifference towards outrages being committed in other parts of the world – an apathy and indifference shared by both politicians and the general populace, who would rather entertain themselves by watching fantasy TV violence or war-glorifying films than empathise with those suffering from real violence and wars. The Western media in particular, play a central role in preventing hosts of real-world outrages being fully revealed on screen or in print – for fear of the intense anger or outrage this might in turn evoke in their viewers or readers. Thus the British tabloid press would far prefer to frontpage a famous football player such as ‘Gazza’ – one of many to have experienced so-called ‘anger’ problems – than to reveal and express anger at the outrages committed by Israeli military forces in Gaza.

Q. Aren’t Western or Western-allied powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel right in tackling violent rhetoric and terrorist violence in the Middle East and elsewhere?
A. Not if they deny the suffering that gives rise to them - and their own historic, economic, political and military responsibility for that suffering – and, last but not least – not if they fail to see also that it is precisely their own indifference and lack of anger towards that suffering that fuels the very violence they decry. The essence of Western military technology lies in the fact that it does not require any human feeling or an iota of anger to obey an order to release missiles that will kill or maim children, decimate families, destroy innocent lives and create whole generations of people filled with an intensity of anger towards the West. A principal reason why this anger does find expression in violence is because the suffering behind it neither understood nor responded to - except through hi-tech military operations of a sort that require no human feeling whatsoever to conduct. Thus it is that those who surrender – who see no option but to discharge their real human feelings of anger and outrage through acts of violence such as suicidal martyrdom - are called ‘terrorists’, whilst professional killers hired to deploy high-tech weaponry are called ‘professional soldiers’.

Q. Isn’t it still true that the only way to control violence is to control feelings of anger?
A. On the contrary, it is only if people are taught to affirm rather than avoid feelings of anger - and to feel their anger to the fullest degree possible - that the danger of their discharging anger through violence is diminished. Anger repression is not a solution to violence but its principal cause. The true solution is a new type of ‘Anger Awareness’. This is a way of overcoming fear of anger and the resulting ‘fight-flight’ response to it – the tendency to either flee from anger (or any people or situations that might evoke it), fight to control it - or seek to evacuate it through an actual fight. To cultivate Anger Awareness means first of all ceasing to judge or label anger as a ‘negative’ or ‘unspiritual’ emotion. Instead we must allow ourselves to affirm and fully feel any anger within ourselves. Yet to overcome the fundamental fear of anger that stops us from doing this requires more than just rejecting the belief that anger is a ‘bad thing’. It means also recognising that the awareness of an emotion such as anger is not itself an emotion. Only by reminding ourselves that the awareness of anger within ourselves is something quite distinct from - and therefore also free of anger – can we feel free to affirm that anger, without any fear of it controlling us, and without any need to control or ‘manage’ it. The practice of Anger Awareness then, involves (1) identifying with the awareness of feelings of anger rather than with the anger as such (2) thereby feeling free to fearlessly feel and affirm that anger - not as some negative emotion that we need to either ‘control’ or ‘let out’, but simply as a particular inner-bodily sensation that we can choose, with awareness, to stay with, embody and let be. Only such a new type of Anger Awareness offers the basis for a new, non-violent politics of justified anger. Without this Awareness however, the symptoms of Anger Deficiency will continue to plague society. These include not only violence but spiritual emptiness or meaning-loss, together with boredom, anxiety, depression and their counterparts - the restlessly manic ‘busy-ness’ and technological and spiritual consumerism that defines the culture of late capitalism. We know all too well that many young people become violent not through an innate surfeit of anger but because they are bored or excluded through poverty from the promised compensations of this culture. If we do not wish them, or anyone to become violent, it is all the more important that we feel and respect their anger. This is something that those with an emotional fear and poverty of anger cannot do.

Q. Aren’t all emotions, including anger, basically ‘irrational’?
A. Certainly not. Just as in our sick and psychotic world there are all sorts of good reasons for people to feel ‘depressed’ – reasons which make the treatment of depression as a medical ‘disorder’ both irrational and irresponsible - so also are there always good reasons why people come to feel angry. The great virtue of anger however, is its capacity to act as an emotional yeast or vitamin - one which can very quickly restore a person’s sense of bodily vitality and mental clarity and by doing so renew their sense of meaning and purpose – something which makes it particularly valuable in transforming states of apathy, lethargy or ‘depression’, individual and social. ‘Anger deficiency’ then, can be compared to a type of unrecognised vitamin deficiency; not a biological deficiency but a culturally-conditioned one, shaped by almost universally accepted beliefs about anger.

Summary

It is high time to finally dispel the mythical belief that anger possesses an innate malignity or negativity linking it to violence. On the contrary, it is only by affirming anger with awareness that we create the conditions for clear-headed, empathic and ethical actions – replacing actions that are only ‘knee-jerk’ reactions to or ‘outlets’ for anger with those that stem from a capacity to be aware of inwardly felt anger and to stay with that awareness. Since awareness of anger - however affirmative of that anger - is itself nothing ‘angry’, it is only through greater and not lesser ‘anger awareness’ that anger can be ‘transcended’ in a truly authentic and non-avoidant way – freeing us from the impulse to blindly react to or act out of anger, and offering us instead a vital third option in place of either repressing or ‘managing’ anger or ‘letting it out’. That is why giving ourselves time to be fully aware of any inwardly felt anger, as well as time to stay with, affirm and fully feel that anger, is far from being something ‘unspiritual’. Instead it is one of the important forms of meditation needed in today’s conflict-ridden world. Hence these written meditations on anger - themselves borne out of a meditative and affirmative awareness of anger. Or rather borne of out a state of outrage towards outrageous acts. Indeed perhaps in the very word ‘outrage’ we can hear the hint of a state of ‘anger awareness’ that, whilst arising from the highest intensity of anger (‘rage’) nevertheless – or for that very reason – transcends or ‘out-strips’ that anger and rage - thereby undermining the need to ‘act it out’ in angry, raging or violent ways. Anger and rage are emotions. Outrage is a state. Heard in this way, the word ‘outrage’ itself could be taken as a pointer or even as a type of synonym for a new type of Anger Awareness – a state of awareness that propels us in the direction of aware, non-violent and forward-looking actions in response to the outrageous.

DIVINE AND HUMAN DILEMMAS AND DIS-EASE
 
I want to point out a correlation between 'The Primary Dilemma' (God's need to find a way to release all potentialities of awareness into actuality referred to in Peter's earlier post on 'Awareness, Paramshiva and 'The Dreaming') and the nature of illness (see also Peter's article on 'Awareness and Illness'). I believe that understanding an aware relation to illness in terms of what Seth called this Primary Dilemma can cast light on both, in fact on all human dilemmas.

Example: I find myself with a pain in the neck or shoulder. I don’t feel myself. I find myself in a state of discomfort or 'dis-ease'. From this feeling a sense of self develops and I start to experience and say, “I have a pain in the neck or my neck is stiff”. Of course I wish to free myself of that pain, but in owning or possessing it as something 'I have' I am trapped. "Everything is an Awareness" is of course one of the two basic axioms, maxims or mantra of The New Yoga of Awareness.
 
It means that everything we are aware of is also an awareness of something beyond itself.
 
The pain too, IS an awareness in itself of something beyond itself, for example an awareness of feeling something or someone as a 'pain in the neck' or an awareness of feeling I am 'shouldering' too much in my job.

Not yet RECOGNISING the pain as an awareness of this sort - it remains just a plain old pain in the neck.
 
It is only POTENTIALLY an awareness.
 
Peter has compared illness with pregnancy in his writings.
 
The state of 'not feeling ourselves' because we experience symptoms of dis-ease is a prelude to 'feeling another self' and giving birth to that new self - one that we are pregnant with in the way All That Is was pregnant with countless potential selves.
 
The pain in the neck or shoulder is therefore also the awareness of a pregnant or potential SELF.

I prevent this new self from being actualised through my sense of ‘mineness’ or ‘ownership’. The pain increases, I feel worse, my desire to free myself of the pain grows as the agony does. By virtue of feeling ill at ease, I gain a sense of being a self. I identify with what has emerged from a field of awareness and I identify myself as the being who ‘has’ the pain, and I theorise how I caused the pain by doing this or that, for example, sitting in the wrong position.

To free 'myself' of the pain, I must overcome 'anavamala' - the sense of it being 'mine'. By reminding myself that the AWARENESS of a pain is not itself a pain and not itself anything painful, I apply the 'Fundamental Distinction’ central to The Awareness Principle - between anything we experience and the pure awareness of experiencing it. In other terms I start to become 'lucidly awake', aware of the pain as a sort of waking life "bodydream" (PW). Applying The Awareness Principle to the pain means recognising that:

1. I am the larger awareness FIELD out of which the pain emerges and not the intense FOCUS of awareness that constitutes the pain.
2.The pain is an awareness of something that I can awaken to.
3.The pain is also a potential self that I can give birth to from the awareness of it.
 
The notion of God 'withdrawing-into-presence' introduced in “Awareness, Paramshiva and 'The Dreaming’” can also be correlated with an aware relation to illness:

The "withdrawal" is into the transcendental awareness of the pain (for example by identifying with the space around it). In doing so I open up a space OF awareness within which I can experience its 'immanent' aspect - taking time to inwardly experience the pain as a particular way of feeling myself - as a felt self. By thus "taking time to be aware" (the most basic Practice of Awareness) the feeling and self embodied in the pain will, in time, transform into another feeling and another sense of self. Reminding myself that the awareness of pain is not itself a pain, I am able to grant more awareness to the pain - feel it more. This in turn allows the awareness it IS to come to mind. It also allows a feeling of the potential self it is pregnant with to be felt in a bodily way and embodied - for example a self that feels able to no longer shoulder more than it wants to at work, or that can and does disattach itself from whatever or whoever was felt as a 'pain in the neck'.

Becoming lucid in the waking ‘dream’ of an illness, I can then fully become the new self through recognising what was merely a feeling that there was ‘more to it’ when I just wondered why 'I had' the stiff neck. The potential self too, is recognised in my thoughts and emotions, felt as a new bodily sense of self - one that is embodied through a new demeanour and behaviours.

Returning to the parallel with the Primary Dilemma - God's need to find a way to release the potential into actuality and the pain or "agony" that, according to Seth, he went through to do it - what I am suggesting is that not just 'my' pain in the neck but all human dilemmas and dis-ease are an ongoing expression and embodiment of that Primary Dilemma - since they TOO are a means whereby a potential awareness - and "potential selves" are actualised.

It 'was' through the Primary Dilemma that everything 'came' to be actualised, but it seems to be also an on-going template for anything that we can transcend and release ourselves from by releasing or 'giving birth' to the AWARENESS POTENTIALS and potential 'selves' or 'awarenesses' it bears within it.

CAUSALITY AND KALI

The important connection you make between the ticking of the clock and the cause-effect paradigm has a direct bearing on the delusion known in tantra as 'anavamala' - the reduction of subjective experiences such as hearing to the property of an individual ego or 'I'.

The belief in an 'I' that is passively hearing the ticking corresponds to the belief that the clock is 'causing' that 'I' to hear it. This reflects a general belief that subjective experience is 'caused' by a world of objects such as clocks - a belief which reduces subjectivity to a mere 'effect'. In reality however, our very perception of 'objects' such as clocks and of sounds such as ticking is itself nothing but a mode of SUBJECTIVE experiencing - arising from a field of pure awareness or subjectivity.

It was important too, that you recalled Michael Kosok's profound notion of the "endlessly once" - for this phrase is indeed key to understanding why it is that 'creation' is not something that begins in or belongs to a primordial 'past' but is something occurring constantly and continuously.

ALL events of manifestation or creation occur not just "once" in the past (the 'Once upon a time...' type story) or once in the future - but eternally or "endlessly" - in a "spacious present" or expansive "time-space" that spans and embraces both past and future. 'Kali' is another name for the ultimate horizon of this time-space of awareness ('kala' = time), out of which all actual events are constantly being born from the dark ('kal') womb or 'black hole' of potentiality that is the Great Goddess (Mahadevi/Mahakali).

This is one of the themes explored in more depth in my forthcoming book entitled 'EVENT HORIZON - Terror, Tantra and the Ultimate Metaphysics of Awareness'.

THE PRIMARY DILEMMA AND TICKING CLOCKS

Woke up at 3 in the morning and ‘couldn’t go back to sleep’. I put it like that because I’m almost glad for these situations to play forth with awareness. Lying there and feeling the space around things and the silence around sounds. Heard the sound of the clock ticking and aware of the thoughts "Now I’ll fixate on the sound of the clock ticking and never go back to sleep". Then what came to me was a strange almost ‘double vision', an awareness uniting two seemingly distinct events. One was the clock ticking. The other was you writing in 'Absolute Awareness or Absolute Egoity' that:
 
"...ten thousand times each day the ego or ‘I’ works its way unawares into the life of every human being. It does so by appropriating for itself everything that emerges into experience from awareness, whether a perception, feeling or thought, and transforming the awareness from which it emerges into something quite different - the idea and experience of an "I" that is doing this perceiving, feeling or thinking, that 'owns' these perceptions, feelings and thoughts - and experiences awareness itself as its private property - the delusion called anavamala."

What came to me was that saying that I can hear the clock ticking is an example of the cause-effect thinking that afflicts the West in the light of the belief that things are simply present, there, waiting to be perceived. If we believe that, then of course a simple thing like hearing a ‘ticking’ sound must be CAUSED by something else - the clock. Ten thousand times a day we repeat this in ten thousand situations. I found myself in bed suddenly intellectually aware that there was no clock or ticking, there was a "playing forth" of the clock through its ticking, indeed a playing forth of the clock as such - a 'clocking' etc. In other words Paramshiva playing forth or releasing itself in the form of a clock and its ticking NOW, revelling in the joy of resolving Seth's account of the 'Primary Dilemma' (referred to in your essay on Awareness, Paramshiva and 'The Dreaming') by releasing from its ownership all potential things such as 'clocks', and all potential individuals that might look at or hear them.

In this way, I felt a different take on why we refer to ‘I’ ten thousand times a day. Because of the way we think about reality, that things are simply present, we feel that we are here, simply present, almost ‘waiting to be perceived by ourselves or others’, there must be a cause of that and that cause is the ‘I’. Just as the clock ticks so is the ‘I’ thinking, feeling, acting etc. And yet it isn’t like that. Intellectually I worked my way through the idea of Awareness ‘I’-ing, thinking feeling, acting etc. to a point where I've never felt it like that in that way before. And as I was lying there feeling the silence surrounding the ticking, I could sense Michael Kosok's wonderful phrase ‘endlessly once’. That is, that ticking is Shiva releasing that sound NOW and being released of that sound NOW - "endlessly once" and not back then. I got a real sense of just how present the Primary Dilemma still is and always will be the driving force.

Then I was playing with the question of why we must sustain the reality of God. It is obvious that if we are to save the earth and ourselves, we have to discover AWARENESS, take time to be Aware. If we don’t the earth will be destroyed as Seth says and another earth appear in its place and we have another go at it. So presumably, in order to not destroy earth, we must discover Awareness. That whole process is actually, like everything else, a process of dreaming it, feeling it, worshipping it (in the sense of me worshipping the search for truth) and finally giving birth to it. But it is obvious that if we destroy the earth, we have ‘fucked up’. Therefore to not fuck up - or undo the mess we have made, we must discover Awareness - which means re-discovering and, in the long run, sustaining and re-creating God as pure Awareness.

Edited by author 02-01-2009 03:23 PM
AWARENESS,PARAMSHIVA AND 'THE DREAMING'

A Tantric Interpretation of Seth’s Creation Account


“At first, in your terms, all of probable reality existed as nebulous dreams within the consciousness of All That Is. Later, the unspecific nature of those ‘dreams’ grew more particular and vivid.”

“Potential individuals, in your terms, had consciousness before the beginning or any beginning as you know it. They clamoured to be released into actuality, and All That Is, in unspeakable sympathy, sought within itself for the means.”

Seth, in The Seth Material by Jane Roberts

Seth goes on to acknowledge that in a certain sense the initial dreams were so “nebulous” that there was as yet no clear distinction within them between dreamer and dreamt, between God or ‘All That Is’ and all the potential selves he dreamt.

‘In the beginning' then, there was a primordial awareness that could be described as a dreaming without a dreamer – an ultimate or primordial 'Dreaming' lacking any dreamer or dreaming self clearly distinct from the selves it was dreaming. This corresponds to both the “pre-dream state” referred to by Seth, and also to the tantric concept of turya - a ‘fourth’ state of awareness transcending and embracing both waking and dream states of awareness, as well as the state of sleeping state from which dreams themselves arise - and corresponding to the ultimate or highest awareness known as Anuttara or Paramshiva.

Only as the selves that were being dreamt became more diverse and differentiated did this ultimate awareness first attain to an awareness of Being, and to an awareness of itself as a distinct ‘God-being’ (corresponding to Shiva) distinct from the selves it was dreaming (corresponding to ‘his’ Shaktis).

Having come to an awareness of its own actuality of being, in distinction and in contrast to the merely potential being or ‘non-being’ of the individuals it dreamt, what Seth calls the ‘Primary Dilemma’ and 'Agony' of that God-being arose. Its source lay on the one hand in the innate yearning or desire of the potential selves it was dreaming for their own free self-actualisation and fulfilment, and, on the other hand, an intense desire on the part of God to release them into actuality. Seth adds that these very feelings of agony and desire were themselves the foundation of that God’s awareness of being, for:

“The agony and the desire to create represented Its proof of its own reality. The feelings in other words, were adequate proof to All That Is that It was.” Seth

From out of a nebulous dreaming then, came intense feeling – agony and desire – and it was from dreaming and feeling that a sense of being was born – rather than the other way round. This alone did not solve the Primary Dilemma of a God who “in unspeakable sympathy” for the potential individuals who “clamoured to be released into actuality” sought “within itself for the means to do so”. (Seth)

In tantric terms, the means it found were identical with the means necessary to overcome anavamala - the sense of ‘own-ness’ or ‘mineness’ – for we are speaking of a God that was aware of being only by virtue of feeling itself as owning the countless potential selves and realities it dreamt. Shiva (‘All That Is’ in Seth’s terms) has himself had to let go of this sense of ‘own-ness’ and in doing so release all beings into their own autonomous actuality from the dark womb of non-being or potentiality that corresponding to the Great Goddess (Mahadevi/Mahakali ).

“All That Is had to let go. While it thought of these individuals as its creations, It held them as part of itself and refused them actuality.”

‘Letting go’ meant letting all potential beings be by acknowledging their distinctness from the awareness out of which they emerged and took shape. In a sense then, God or ‘All That Is’ (Shiva) had to distinguish its own being as an ultimate awareness (Anuttara/Paramshiva) from the individualised portions and expressions of it that constituted its dreams (Shaktis). This is rather like a human dreamer becoming aware within a dream, that they are dreaming – in other words identifying with a pure awareness of dreaming distinct from each and all of the beings, selves, worlds and events being dreamt.

In the context of tantric metaphysics, there is a distinction between the ultimate awareness as Anuttara (the ‘non-higher’) and as Paramshiva. For the very term Parama Shiva or Paramshiva is paradoxical, capable of being taken as a sign for the supreme or ‘highest’ Shiva and that which is higher than or ‘beyond’ (para-) Shiva. These senses of Paramshiva are two sides of the same coin - for Paramshiva is only Parama Shiva – the ‘highest’ Shiva - by virtue of knowing himself both as an expression of and as that ultimate reality (Anuttara) higher than or beyond himself. The emergence of Shiva as a supreme God-being was understood in the Shaiva tantras as the internal ‘negation’ (Nigraha) or ‘withdrawal’ (Tiridhana) of his ‘transcendent’ aspect as Anuttara itself. This withdrawal however, can be understood precisely as that which makes space (Akasha) for the actualisation or coming into presence of his ‘immanent’ aspect – all those potential beings hitherto concealed in the darkness of Non-Being. The process of creative emergence of beings is essentially a withdrawal-into-presence of the Divine Awareness.

"Desire, wish and expectation rule all actions and are the basis of all realities."

This statement of Seth echoes and affirms the tantric metaphysical understanding of a triad or trika of primordial powers or Shaktis. These were called icchashakti (‘will’ in a sense corresponding to ‘desire and wish’), jnanashakti (knowledge and knowing intent in a sense corresponding to ‘expectation’) and kriyashakti (action and the process of actualising ‘all realities’). The first power or Shakti that Seth refers to is ‘desire’ and ‘wish’. It is this that brings us from ‘ultimate metaphysics’ to Freud. For the uniqueness of his work lay in his deep and determined desire to find the ultimate truth of the human condition – a desire that, paradoxically, was fulfilled by the discovery that this ultimate 'truth' was nothing but desire as such. Freud’s genius lay in succeeding to pursue his desire for and rationally lay out an understanding of the truth of the human condition in a way which recognised desire itself as that truth. This was what marked his work out from both 'scientific' and purely 'philosophical' understandings of 'truth' or 'reality' – both of which ultimately identify truth with reasons for things being, rather than with a primordial desire to be.

In this way Freud made 'ultimate truth' something human and personal as well as trans-human and impersonal. His ambivalent relation to both science and philosophy can be understood as arising from an awareness that their supposedly 'pure' and 'rational' search for ultimate 'truth' could simply be a defence against discovering what their most intimate personal desire was – the object of psychoanalysis. That does not mean we need see ‘desire’ in purely Freudian or psychoanalytic terms – as desire 'for' some object or satisfaction. Instead we can understand desire on a much deeper metaphysical level - as an innate "yearning" for fulfilment of potentialities within us all. If we do so then Freud was essentially right in identifying desire itself with ultimate truth - rather than reducing truth to any form of purely cognitive or reflective, scientific or philosophical cognition expressed in the form of ‘true or false’ propositions. Seen in this way, Freud was not only right, but right in tune with the affirmation of desire that distinguishes Hindu tantrism from the transcendence of desire sought through Buddhism and adopted by Schopenhauer under its influence.

Both Buddhism and Hinduism recognise not just the realm or plane of the physical but higher realms of awareness (Loka) and higher beings within them (Buddhas or Devas). Different levels or orders of beings can be compared to the circles within circles characteristic of Australian aboriginal paintings, just as the aboriginal notion of ‘The Dreaming’ corresponds to the notion of a primordial dreaming awareness – a Dreaming without a dreamer.

In the sections of his Tantraloka cited by Deba Brata SenSharma, Abhinavagupta describes many orders and sub-orders of beings. The highest are called Shuddha Pramatas – translated as ‘pure experiencers’ but essentially what could be described as ‘Awareness Beings’ (Chaitanyas) or ‘Awareness Powers’ (Shaktis). The highest of these Pramatas are called both Shiva and Shivas, being plural and yet essentially singular - a plurality of Shivas knowing themselves as singular – as Shiva – in the realm known as Shivaloka. According to Deba Brata Sen Sharma:

“All of the Shuddha Pramatas are said to possess bodies made of the Bindu - divine Shakti in potentialised form.” The Philosophy of Sadhana

In other words they are the very unity or non-duality of Shiva and Shakti, each being an awareness (Shiva) with an immense and ever-active power of actualisation at its core. SenSharma describes them as “…incapable of participating in worldly activity in the absence of a physical body made from material elements.” This accords with the nature of what Seth calls higher trans-physical “entities” – not least that particular one above and beyond him which Jane Roberts called ‘Seth 2’. For in its own words:

“We gave you the patterns, intricate, involved and blessed, from which you form the reality of each physical thing you know … The entire webwork was initiated by us.” The Seth Material Jane Roberts

“Webwork” of course is another word for tantra as such - with its root meaning of ‘weave’ or ‘web’ on the one hand, and its relation to the Sanskrit term for spider (tatra) on the other. In my understanding, it’s the very highest and least physical of such higher Entities or Awareness Beings (Shivas) which constitute at the same time those Awareness Powers or Shaktis which create and sustain the seemingly ‘lowest’, most basic building blocks and elementary forms of physical reality.

Thus it is that the physical form taken by these Powers is that of the most powerful of all cosmic phenomena – supernovae, stars and the black holes at the centre of whole galaxies or galactic clusters.

Thus it is that in the pre-history of mankind human beings not only worshipped but directly perceived cosmic bodies such as the Sun or Moon as higher beings, and also worshipped the most elementary or ‘elemental’ physical phenomena such as fire, wind and water.

Thus it is also that those higher Awareness Beings or ‘gods’ that are constantly bringing all physical things into actuality can also communicate through religious statues or ‘idols’ (Murti) made of the most seemingly ‘insentient’ and elementary physical materials such as stone, wood and metal. For if such idols are themselves crafted from the artisan’s direct experiences of the Divine Awareness, then they are not merely artefacts of matter but artefacts of awareness - capable of embodying and transmitting the awesome intent (Iccha), knowledge (Jnana) and action (Kriya) that are the powers or Shaktis of the highest order of Shuddha Pramatas - the Shiva(s). That is why Murti Darshan – sitting in the presence of a powerful Murti - can become an almost instantaneous source of initiation, allowing one to receive an active impartation of higher awareness and inner knowing from the idol or Murti, to experience it as a medium of communion and communication with higher Awareness Beings, and to know it as it knows both itself and us - as an expression of the infinite field, space or ‘clearing’ that is the Ultimate and Divine Awareness itself – Anuttara.

"… all individuals remember their source, and now dream of All That Is as All That Is once dreamed of them." Seth

In Seth's account, having freed ourselves from the reincarnational cycle, each of us will evolve, on higher planes of awareness, into an “entity” such as Seth himself, then into a higher entity (such as the one who speaks in the Seth Material as 'Seth 2') and into yet 'higher' and 'higher' entities – until a state is reached when, individually and collectively, we become 'All That Is' in its original state 'before' Creation. In tantric terms, our destiny is to become Shuddha Pramatas – to become ‘Shivas’ - and in this way both return to and recreate that Ultimate Awareness that is Anuttara or Paramshiva.

A profound reason why individuals “remember their source and now dream of All That Is as All That Is once dreamt of them” is, ultimately, to sustain and indeed recreate the very reality of ‘All That Is’ - the Divine - now that it has released them as beings from ‘The Dreaming’ that once bore all individuals in a state of potentiality or ‘non-being’.

There is a type of eternal and Divine Cycle then, within which religious God-concepts, God-names and God-images, together with the qualities of devotional feeling (Bhakti) associated with them and amplified by religious worship play an integral part. The Cycle ‘begins’ with God 'godding' – the Divine Awareness (Shiva) creating multiple distinct god-beings or ‘entities’ within Itself, each endowed with specific qualities and powers (Shaktis) of this Awareness. These gods in turn ‘world’ – creating a boundless multiplicity of worlds and of aware beings such as human beings. Yet that is just one half of the cycle. For since they are themselves innately endowed with divine awareness and its creative potentials, human beings themselves begin to 'god' - differentiating their at first 'nebulous' sense or 'dream' of the Divine within themselves, and letting diverse god-images, symbols, names and concepts arise from it. In doing so they re-link themselves (re-ligio) to the divine awareness that is the inner source of this religious creativity. Yet by granting, through different forms of religious meditation and worship, ever more awareness to their own dreamt or imagined gods, human beings also endow the gods or higher ‘awareness beings’ they dream and give form to with their own independent awareness and reality.

A well-known tantric saying is that ‘To worship a god is to become that god’. The Divine Cycle can be summarised as follows: God 'gods', those gods 'world' or 'create', then their creatures in turn feel, dream, give form to, worship and eventually become the gods they worshipped - leading to a stage at which these gods or higher beings in turn become that singular God or Awareness out of which all beings 'first' arose. This explains the continuous power and importance of religious myths, symbols and dramas arising from the realm of the ‘imaginal’ - and why the visualisation of diverse gods and the cultural practice of different forms of religious worship is indeed innate in our make up - in our dreams and in our genes. It is innate not just for some Darwinian purpose of furthering the biological 'evolution' and 'survival' of human beings as a species. Instead the true evolutionary process it serves is the evolution of gods and of God as such - a continuous cycle of divine evolution that ensures God’s survival. Human beings then, neither simply imagine, invent, create or ‘make up’ gods and God – and nor are they simply made or created by them. Instead ‘creation’ is a continuous co-creation of God and human beings, one mediated by higher beings - by ‘the gods’.

Just as granting awareness to plants, animals or other people actually grants them more life and vigour - and helps sustain their life - so does granting awareness to gods grant them life, serving to sustain their living reality, and that of God as such - the awareness (Shiva) that is the source of all creative power (Shakti). The essence of religious 'worship' then is 'thanking' God in the very specific sense of returning or GIVING AWARENESS BACK to its source in that ultimate or divine awareness which is God - in this way both opening ourselves further to that awareness and sustaining Its ultimate or divine reality. Different gods are the medium through which we do so - by which we worship or grant awareness back to God. The imaginal forms of these gods do not spring from nowhere however, any more than do the images of our dreams, or our sensory perceptions of the world around us. For the world of sensory forms cannot be divided into a realm of ‘imaginary’ perceptions on the one hand, and ‘real’ perceptions on the other. Instead the sensory qualities of all things are but our way of perceiving the soul qualities behind - those innate qualities of awareness that we experience when, in Rudolf Steiner’s terms, we pass from the realm of Imagination to that of Intuition, feeling from within what we previously only perceived from without.

Just as the tantric maxim is that ‘To worship a god is to become that god”, so Steiner’s maxim was that “In the spiritual world we become what we perceive.” Yet what we become always has the nature of both God as such and the unique ‘god’ that we each are. For since we are each inseparable portions of the ultimate and universal awareness as a whole, we each are that whole– we are each ‘God’ or Paramshiva. And yet being individually distinct portions of that inseparable and singular whole we are also each ‘a god’. And not just us. For ultimately there is not a single thing or phenomenon that is not a manifest sounding or playing forth (the root meaning of ‘Deva’ and ‘Devi’) of a unique and singular soul tone in the great symphony of creation that is Shiva-Shakti.

Edited by author 22-11-2008 09:15 AM
'THE AWARENESS PRINCIPLE' - New Answers to the Big Questions

Q. What is ‘The Awareness Principle’?
A. The recognition that awareness is the ultimate and sole reality – that awareness is everything, and that everything in turn is a portion and expression of a universal awareness that is ‘God’.

Note: ‘The Awareness Principle’ refines and clarifies understandings of the ultimate nature of reality stemming from traditional Indian religious philosophies and yogic practices - in particular the tradition of tantric philosophy known as ‘Kashmir Shaivism’. It arose by re-addressing the ‘big questions’ from and out of which this and other spiritual traditions and teachings of the past arose. In this way The Awareness Principle constitutes an original spiritual teaching in its own right - offering ‘new answers to big questions’, and yet doing in a way free or attachment or confinement to the specific cultures, religions, languages and symbols of all past spiritual traditions and teachings.

The ‘big questions’:

Q. How do you know that you exist?
A. From an awareness of existing.

Q. How do you know your body exists?
A. From an awareness of that body.

Q. How do you know that anything is or exists at all?
A. From an awareness of things.

Note: this question is one of the oldest philosophical questions of all. This is the question of what comes ‘first’ - the ‘objective’ existence of things or a subjective awareness of them. Since we only have direct evidence of the existence of things though subjective awareness, it follows that awareness or subjectivity is more primordial than ‘being’ or ‘existence’. The first principle of ‘The Awareness Principle’ is therefore that awareness as such is the 1st principle of the universe - the basis of all that is or exists.

Q. If we only know things through an awareness of them do they continue to exist when we are not aware of them?
A. No. This question carries with it the traditional Western assumption that awareness is something that ‘we’ possess as our private property. In reality each individual’s awareness is an individualised portion and expression of a universal awareness. This universal awareness cannot cease to be aware of anything – for even the most seemingly insentient or inanimate ‘things’ are also individualised portions and expressions of it.

Q. Does that mean there is no such thing as an unaware or ‘insentient’ thing?
A. Yes. There is no such thing that is merely an insentient ‘object’ of consciousness. Instead every ‘thing’ is a distinct awareness in itself, though the awareness that constitutes that being may be more or less differentiated, and refined. Thus the portion of the universal awareness that manifests as a molecule or mineral form is both more primordial and less differentiated than that of a vegetable, animal, human or trans-human being.

Q. Are you saying that the things we perceive as objects are sentient beings which are just as much aware of us as we are of them?
A. Yes, though they do not perceive us and other things in the same way that we do.
Thus what we perceive as a ‘stone’, ‘tree’, ‘spider’, ‘cat’, ‘jellyfish’, ‘shark’ etc. may not correspond in any way to the way in which they perceive each other - or human beings. What the human being perceives as ‘a cat’ – or any nameable ‘object’ - is a product of our specifically human mode of perceptual awareness. In reality there is no such thing as a ‘tree’ or ‘cat’ - only our specifically human way of perceiving the type or ‘species’ of awareness that constitutes any other being.

Q. So there are such things as existing ‘beings’ – independent of our awareness?
A. Yes, so long as we understand that (1) a ‘being’ is essentially nothing but a specific shape or pattern of awareness, and (2) that whilst beings exist independent of our awareness they are each shapes taken by a universal awareness.

Q. What is ‘body awareness’?
A. Not an awareness produced by or belonging to the body but an awareness of the body.

Q. What is ‘self-awareness’?
A. Not an awareness belonging to the self but an awareness of self. Any and every self is ultimately but the self-expression and self-recognition of the universal awareness we call ‘God’.

Note: since our very knowledge that our self and our body ‘are’ or exist depends on an awareness of being and an awareness of body and self, it follows that that awareness cannot itself be the property of any selfor the product of any body or body part, such as the brain. The 2nd principle of ‘The Awareness Principle’ is that awareness cannot – in principle – be reduced to the property or product of any being, body or self there is an awareness of.

Q. What is ‘God’ and in what way does ‘God’ exist?
A. ‘God’ is not some existing and supreme being that has or possesses ‘awareness’. God is awareness – a universal awareness that individualises itself, and is the therefore the source of all beings - understood as individualised portions and expressions of it.

Note: Since the existence of any things or being, including a supreme ‘God-being’, assumes an awareness of its existence, follows that awareness itself must be considered as having a more primordial reality than any being – including a supreme ‘God-being’ - that we are aware of. Thus it is that awareness alone – a universal awareness and not an a awareness that is merely ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ – can be considered as the very essence of the divine - of ‘God’.

Q. What is ‘awareness’ itself?
A. A broader and more spacious consciousness field or ‘field consciousness’ – ultimately a universal consciousness field of which every thing and being is an individualised portion and expression.

Q. What is the difference between ‘awareness’ and what we call ‘consciousness’ ?
Ordinary consciousness is not field consciousness but a purely focal consciousness – attached to whatever it is we happen to be currently experiencing or aware ‘of’. As a field consciousness however, awareness on the other hand, embraces every possible element or focus of our conscious experience - whilst at the same time remaining absolutely distinct from them.

Q. What is the value of awareness?
A. Awareness is freedom - for being distinct from all that we do, say and experience it frees us from identification with any element of our experience – mental, physical or emotional, and therefore at the same time allows us to freely choose the focus

Note: The pure awareness of a thing or thought, sensation or emotion, impulse or action is not itself a thing or thought, sensation or emotion, impulse or action. Hence by simply recognising that the awareness of a troubling thought or emotion, for example, is not itself a thought or emotion, it ceases to be troublesome. For just as empty space is distinct from every possible object in it, so its pure awareness distinct from all its possible contents – from everything we are or could be aware of. Awareness, like space, both embraces and transcends everything experienced within it. Indeed it is by sensing and identifying with the emptiness of the space around things and around our bodies that we can come to experience space itself as a space or field of pure awareness. Doing so enables us to fully feel, affirm all that we experience within that field – whilst at the same time remaining absolutely free from attachment to each and every element of that experience.

Q. What can explain the existence of awareness itself?
A. Nothing (‘no-thing’) can explain the existence of awareness, since any ‘thing’ or ‘being’ we might think of as a cause or explanation ‘for’ it already assumes an awareness of that thing or being.

Q. How does everything we experience come to be or exist in the first place?
A. As creative expressions or manifestations of potentialities latent within the universal awareness – in the same way that a work of art is not something ‘caused’ but an expression or manifestation of potentialities latent in the artist’s ‘soul’. What defines the artist as a ‘being’ is that soul – which consists of nothing but a set of unique qualities and potentialities of awareness.

Note 1 This viewpoint differs from the idea that the universe was ‘created’ by a supreme being. This view doesn’t explain how that very ‘God-being’ itself came to be. And if we believe that ‘God’ is a being separate and apart from the universe it created, we effectively turn God into just one being or entity among others in the universe.

Note 2 The Awareness Principle also differs from the scientific view that the universe – and with it time and space themslves – ‘began’ with a ‘Big Bang’. Since the very idea of time and space ‘beginning’ at some point in time or space is illogical in principle, it is certainly not provable by experiment.

Note 3 There are three basic models of how things came to be:

1. The standard ‘Creationist’ model, which assumes the existence of the Creator Being - but does not explain how this Being itself came to be.

2. The Big Bang model, which illogically talks about time as if it could be something that itself ‘began’ in time - and offers no explanation of how the Big Bang itself came to be.

3. The Creative Expressionist model. This understands all actual things as creative expressions of potential shapes and qualities of awareness. This model does not assume the existence of a Creator Being - or of any being – for it understands beings themselves as expressions of potential shapes and qualities of awareness.

Q. How exactly does awareness give expression to all that exists?
A. The problem with this question therefore, is that the scientific world-view is so ingrained in people that they can only conceive of this 'how' except in terms of some sort of causal explanation. On the other hand, they do not think of asking themselves, for example, exactly 'how' their awareness of something expresses itself in words, thought and speech. The Awareness Principle offers an expressionist model of creation of a sort quite different, in principle, to causal models. For expression - as in speech – is something we experience directly. The need to 'explain' the ‘how’ of expression through some hidden causal mechanism that we don't experience is a product of scientific brainwashing.

Q. What, ultimately, is ‘reality’?
A. Most people identify ‘reality’ solely with an awareness of actuality - with things that are actually present or existent. Yet the dimension of potentiality is no less real than the realm of the actual – indeed it is out of an awareness of the countless ever-changing potentials latent in each moment that all ‘real life’ actions and actualities emerge. Reality then does not consist ultimately of one ‘realm’ only, but of three realms of awareness – awareness of things actual and present, awareness of potential shapes and forms of awareness (‘beings’, and a third realm which belongs to the essence of life itself. This is the realm of ‘becoming’ - the very process of actualisation or ‘presencing’ by which potentialities and possibilities latent in awareness become actual or present – by which they come-to-be or ‘become’. Awareness alone and as such is ultimate reality – the three primary realms or dimensions of actuality or ‘being’, potentiality or ‘non-being’, and actualisation or ‘becoming’ being all dimensions of that ultimate reality - of awareness as such.

Q. What is ‘life’?
A. Life is an innate drive towards ‘actuality’ or ‘being’ latent within all potentialities, and propelling them towards ever greater and fuller ‘self-actualisation’ – not in the sense of actualising some actual and already existing self or being, but in the sense of allowing potentialities of awareness to manifest and take shape as countless different ‘beings’ or ‘selves’. In a nutshell then, life is an innate drive, will and power to be that expresses itself in all that is.

Q. What is ‘the meaning of life’?
A. Life is expression. As such, it has the essential character of being a type of ‘speech’. That means it is innately meaningful. The ‘meaning’ of life lies in the fact that every thing in our lives has an expressive meaning that addresses us in the same way that speech addressed to us does - calling for awareness and calling upon us also to respond.
 
Q. What is ‘death’?
A. We have more than one life in which to face and answer this ultimate question of life, and there are more worlds than one in which we face it. Just as birth is a form of expression, so is death – our rebirth into the multi-dimensional universe or ‘multiverse’ of awareness, one not restricted to the dimensions and expressions of awareness we perceive as ‘matter’, ‘energy’, ‘space’ and ‘time’.

Q. What is the universe ultimately ‘made of’?
A. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” (Shakespeare) As our dream images and sensations give expression to felt shapes, patterns, colours, tones and textures of awareness, so do all things. The universe is made up of elemental qualities of awareness – what we perceive as light, for example, being a manifestation of the light of awareness.

Some counter-questions and answers:

Q. How can there be such a thing as ‘awareness’ without things to be aware of? Doesn’t this question allow us to argue with the same force that the existence of those things comes first – or at least is as fundamental as awareness of them? Furthermore, by implying that awareness itself ‘is’ or ‘exists’ does it not follow that the principle of ‘Being’ or ‘Existence’ is more fundamental than ‘The Awareness Principle’?
A. Whilst awareness is indeed inseparable from things we are aware of it is also absolutely distinct from them (in the same way that space is both inseparable and yet also distinct from everything in it). In addition however, awareness embraces not just things that actually are or exist – the realm of Being or Existence - but also everything that is not but could be, the entire realm of potential being or reality as well as actual being or ‘existence’. Since the very ‘being’ of awareness is of a sort that embraces and partakes of the entire realm or reality of potentiality or ‘non-being’ it is a more encompassing principle than The Being Principle.

Q. How did awareness itself begin or come to be?
A. Time, like space is a dimension of awareness. To think of awareness as having a beginning or end makes no more sense than to think of space as having a location ‘in’ space, or time as such having a beginning or end ‘in’ time. Awareness, like time, is not itself anything ‘temporal’ – having a beginning or end – but instead is essentially timeless or time-transcendent – the true meaning of ‘eternal’.

Q. Isn’t there a simpler answer to how we know that anything exists - because our brains give us a picture of things through information picked up from our senses?
A. If everything we perceive consists of pictures produced by the brain, how can the senses pick up information from them in the first place? The idea that our brain produces pictures of things from our sense organs is as illogical as saying that a camera produces photographs through the light reflected off things - and then saying that those things are actually nothing but photographs produced by the camera! Then again, since both our sense organs and the brain itself are something we only know about through our perception of them, how can they be used to explain perception as such? Sense-perception is itself a specific mode of awareness – a patterned awareness of sensory qualities such as colour, sound, shape, warmth, texture etc. That does not mean that perception is a property or product of our brains and sense organs - or that sense organs prove to us that things exist ‘out there’. For our brains and sense organs are themselves things we know about only because we can perceive them. Perception is no more something ‘caused’ or ‘explained’ by things we perceive (including our brains and sense organs themselves) than can dreaming be caused or explained by some particular thing we dream of. Seeing, for example, cannot be explained by anything we see – including the eye.

Edited by author 12-10-2008 05:58 PM
Addressed to the organising committee of the 'Tantra Union':

SOME NOTES ON THE MEANING OF ‘TANTRA’
Reflections and Practical Suggestions for the ‘Tantra Union’

1. From ‘Tantra; Sex, Secrecy and Politics in the Study of Religion’ by Hugh B. Urban:

   “Most scholars seem to agree that … the term [tantra] probably derives from the root tan, which means basically to stretch, spread or to weave, and, metaphorically, to lay out to explain or espouse.”
   “Derived from this seminal root tan, the noun tantra is first used in the Vedic hymns to denote a kind of … loom. Even here, however it has the extended meaning of the weaving of speech: the visionary poets who wrote the tantras wove them with the threads of words, as if upon a loom.”
   “… by the period of the great Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata (ca. 500 B.C.E. – 500 C.E.) the range of tantra has been extended to refer simply to any rule, theory or scientific work.”
   “According to one common definition, a tantra is simply ‘a scripture by which knowledge is spread’…” “In sum, as Padoux observes, the substantive noun ‘Tantrism’ appears nowhere in Indian literature prior to the modern period.”
   “There is of course a vast body of texts called tantras, as well as related texts called yamalas, agamas, nigamas and samhitas, which spread throughout the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist communities over the past 1200 years.”
   “ … We cannot find any concrete references to Hindu tantras until the ninth century.”
   “Perhaps the most logical place to look for some kind of coherent internal definition of tantra would be … in the [tenth century] works of the monumental Kashmiri philosopher and aesthetician Abhinavagupta. In his classic work Tantraloka (Light on the Tantras) and Tantrasara (Essence of the Tantras) Abhinava sought to create a grand synthesis and ordering of all the known schools of Saivism, ultimately placing his own school of the Trika (Triad) at the summit, as their culminating goal.”
   “This is perhaps the closest we come to an idea of ‘Tantra’ as a singular, comprehensive category that embraces most of the traditions that we now identify with the term.”

2. Now contrast these historical truths - not least the fact that both the oldest and most common meaning of tantra is a ‘weave of words’ – ultimately a divinely inspired and refined religious-philosophical treatise - with the disrespect or plain historical ignorance of the tantras revealed in the words of the famous ‘Tantric’ Guru - Osho Rajneesh:
“The tantric attitude ... is not a philosophy. It is not even a religion, it has no theology. It does not believe in words, theories, doctrines …”

3. The situation today can perhaps best be described in the fashion of a Christian parable. Imagine that there were countless workshops being offered, not on ‘Tantra’ but on ‘Christianity’. Imagine further than none of the spiritual teachers offering these workshops had ever read or even heard of The New Testament - of the Gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. Instead, just as Tantra workshops focus on sex, their ‘Christian’ workshops focussed entirely on some sacramental practice such as baptism. On the model of commercialised New Age ‘Tantra’ workshops you can just imagine the ads: ‘Discover the sensual bliss of Baptism’, ‘Learn to Baptise your Partner’, ‘Baptismal Immersion and Underwater Massage’ etc. Imagine further however, that our ‘Christians’ sought public and professional ‘respectability’ by establishing a quasi-institutionalised ‘Union’ of ‘Christian Practitioners’ - with its own structure, membership, ‘code of ethics’ etc. What on earth would you expect any Christian with a deep awareness of the message of the Gospels to make of them? They would be left speechless – critical thinking and debate not being any part of New Age culture in the way it was in the tantras themselves.

On this analogy then, for ‘Gospels’, read ‘Tantras’ – plural. What is anyone with a deep awareness of the sublime concepts and refined religious-philosophical message of the tantras supposed to make of teachers of ‘tantra’ or ‘tantric sex’ who have not read or even heard of the most important yogic treatises or tantras of all – for example the Vijnanbhairavatantra - let alone studied or heard of Acharya Abhinavagupta? For it was Abhinava who was not only the greatest synthesist of the tantras (plural), but the first to stretch, spread, weave, lay out, explain and espouse a framework of religious-philosophical principles and practices that could give meaning to the single and singular noun tantra. To understand the importance of the Kashmir Shaivist tradition and Abhinavagupta (the Hindu equivalent of a Thomas Aquinas) in understanding the term ‘tantra’, let me return again to the analogy with Christianity. For what if the very term ‘Christianity’ had only been coined or given a unified meaning by Thomas Aquinas – before whom there were only a multitude of gospels referring to Christ? For that was more or less the real role of Abhinavagupta in transforming the tantras into tantra.

4. What can possibly ‘qualify’ people as tantric practitioners if their ‘Union’ is not itself founded on a newly unified experiential and philosophical understanding of what ‘tantra’ is? Such a newly unified understanding, like Abhinava’s Tantraloka, can only shed new light on the meaning of tantra through deep, meditative study and practice of the tantras.

5. Osho Rajneesh, who did not forego the word but spoke and wrote a great deall, often using words to express deep and wordless insights, was nevertheless right in one respect: namely that language – diction – can lay many traps. If he had applied this insight to his own words however, he might have been aware nthat in declaring that the “tantric attitude … does not believe in words, theories and doctrines” he was himself using words to propound a doctrine or theory of tantra. This brings us to the chief danger of today’s ‘New Age’ and ‘Neo-Tantric’ words and diction. The danger is one of pandering to the Western cultural addiction (‘ad-diction’) to all sort of supposedly ‘direct’ modes of bodily and sensual experiencing (for example through drugs, alchohol, extreme sports - or the media fetishism of sex). In contra-diction to this addiction, the essential meaning of the tantras and of tantra as I lay it out, expound and practice it in my own many treatises or tantras (see www.thenewyoga.org ) lies in a fundamental distinction between all dimensions of experiencing on the one hand - whether mundane or spiritual, sensual, bodily or emotional – and the pure, non-active awareness of all we experience on the other. This is the distinction pictured in the tantras by a supine Shiva lying motionless beneath the mobile, dancing feet of Kali - in this way symbolising pure, non-active awareness in contrast to the entire dimension of action and experiencing (Shakti).

 6. What I term ‘The New Yoga’ is ‘Tantra’ of a sort firmly rooted in the tantras. For it teaches that awareness as such – pure awareness - is both distinct and inseparable from all that we experience or are aware ‘of’. This relation of inseparable distinction - comparable to the relation between two sides of the same coin - is a relation neither of dualistic separation nor of merger into indistinct oneness. And yet it is the essence of ‘non-duality’ - indeed of sexual ‘union’ itself. It is the very hyphen in ‘Shiva-Shakti’. In contrast, the drive for the spiritual or sensual enhancement of human action and experiencing in one of its most intense dimensions - sex – privileges the ‘Shakti’ pole of this relation (action, movement and experiencing) over Shiva (pure, non-active awareness). Hence Osho’s ‘Dynamic Meditation’, ‘Trance Dance’ and all the other forms of New Age ‘Neo-Tantrism’. Hence also the talk of ‘consciousness’ instead of ‘pure awareness’, and the incessant and wholly unquestioned use of the term ‘energy’ in New Age and Neo-Tantric diction today. For ‘energy’ is a modernised word of Greek origin, and one whose root meaning (activity) is a very poor translation of the Sanskrit Shakti – which does not refer solely to action (energein) and the actuality of experiencing, but first and foremost to the pure potentiality or power of actualisation (Sanskrit shak) that is the Great Goddess.

7. Questioning the meaning and use of the term ‘energy’ is no mere quibble about fine points of translation of religious terms belonging to religious-spiritual traditions not rooted in Greek language and thinking. Instead it points to something far more significant. This is the way in which, bowing to the unquestioned authority of science, the term ‘energy’ has not only replaced the term ‘God’ in New Age spiritual diction but has been effectively elevated to the status of its One True God. If today, “Science is the new religion” (Martin Heidegger) then ‘Energy’ is its God, just as it has also become the sacred ‘mantra’ of New Age spiritual discourse - as if its mere use (or rather constant repetition) was enough to grant credence and an aura of scientific respectability to New Age philosophies and practices, not least of the ‘tantric’ variety. It is in this way that the Divine – and with it all depth of authentic religious feeling - is insidiously brought down to something scientifically ‘sexy’ and marketable. And if direct connection with God is reduceable to an experience of ‘tantric sex’, what need is there of any deeper understanding of exactly what constitutes the Divine as such? Similarly, if relating to and experiencing a sexual partner as a god or goddess will do, what need is there to understand the nature of divinities as such? New Age Tantrism has it the wrong way round. One does not come to understand the innately sexual dimension of the Divine as Shiva-Shakti by seeking to divinise the experience of sexual union. It is the other way round. Sexual experiencing can be divinised only through a capacity to recognise all experiencing as an expression of the divine interplay (Leela) and union (Maithuna) between pure awareness (Shiva) and its power of manifestation (Shakti).

8. All experiencing is valid, period. There are no invalid or ‘false’ experiences. Therefore it is not the purpose of these notes to in any way diminish, denigrate or deny the ‘truth’ of the often wonderful, powerful and very meaningful experiences offered to and enjoyed by people in the name of ‘Tantra’. Yet whilst experiences are not ‘true’ or ‘false’, their interpretation - not to mention the frameworks of knowledge and language which shape them - do indeed possess varying degrees of truth, or reveal varying degrees of ignorance. I therefore appeal to the founders of the Tantra Union - as a ‘Union of Tantric Teachers and Practitioners’ - to consider deeply what they think could, would or should constitute the minimum ‘qualification’ for anyone to be considered a teacher or practitioner of ‘Tantra’ – for example by considering what literature even a hypothetical course of studies or teacher training in ‘Tantra’ would take as its foundation. At the very least, I would suggest that the Tantra Union take as a part of its own remit the establishment of a basic reading list of literature on ‘Tantra’ – one that embraces both the tantras themselves and serious historical and philosophical, political and theological studies and interpretations of them. It was with such a reading list in mind that I began these notes with quotes from Hugh B. Urban’s original and important study of the meaning of ‘Tantra’. Last, but not least, I would also urge participants in the Tantra Union to bear in mind that the tantras of Abhinavagupta distinguished not only between different degrees of qualification among teachers – and different grades and types of teacher - but also distinguished between those qualified or unqualified to be students of tantra. I should add this distinction is central to my own ‘code of ethics’ as a teacher and practitioner.

9. I referred earlier to a (critical) lack of critical thinking and dialogue in the culture of ‘New Age’ spiritual teachers, so many of whom do not begin to question the most basic terminology of their work - which is so often described using an uncritically accepted but wildly eclectic language of ‘buzzwords’ deriving from wholly distinct spiritual teachings, traditions and forms of training. The marked absence of critical thinking, questioning and debate among and between spiritual teachers and practitioners of different schools and traditions (as if it were of no value, or even inter-personally and 'politically’ incorrect) allows for a type of free-for-all, 'anything goes' culture – including any way of thinking the meaning of ‘tantra’. Such an uncritical culture contrasts with both the educational and ethical aims of the Tantra Union – as well as being in direct contrast with the rich culture of intense critical debate among and between different Hindu and Buddhist schools and teachers from within which the Hindu tantras first arose and flourished in Kashmir.

10. With all these considerations in mind, I would therefore also suggest that the Tantra Union establish some new medium of critical on-line dialogue on the meaning of This could take the form of a new on-line journal on Tantra – one that is not purely academic or scholarly, but could instead begin to build a bridge between (a) practitioners whose principal focus is on sexual relating and experiencing on the one hand, and (b) those wishing to explore new philosophical, linguistic and religious understandings of ‘Tantra’. For I find it sad, if not absurd, to see the word ‘Tantra’ abused as a mere ‘brand name’ for the promotion of a whole variety of spiritual wares from Celtic rites and Reiki to cashmere garments - none of which bear any relation to the Kashmir tantras. What the word ‘Tantra’ should serve is not commercial branding and spiritual self-promotion but self-less devotion and freely offered service to the Divine; not the marketing of an eclectic multiplicity of practices, but a search for newly unified understandings. In short, not Advertising but Truth. Yet without the unpaid piety of deep, meditative questioning worship and reflection, no amount of spiritual name-dropping and no rag-bag assortment of teachings and practices will help authenticate and refine the inner truth of ‘Tantra’.

 
Appendix: A Short Bibliography of Literature on Tantra

Bhattacharyya, N.N. History of the Tantric Religion Manohar 1999
Bhattacharyya, N.N. Tantrabidhana - A Tantric Lexicon Manjula Battacharrya 2002
Dupoche, John R. Abhinavagupta - The Kula Ritual Motilal 2003
Dyczkowski, Mark The Doctrine of Vibration - an Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices of Kashmir Shaivism State University of New York Press 1987
Evola, Julius The Yoga of Power Tantra,- Shakti and the Secret Way Inner Traditions 1992
Feuerstein, Georg Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy Shambhala 1998
Isaveya, Natalia From Early Vedanta to Kashmir Shaivism SUNY 1995
Lawrence, David Peter Rediscovering God with Transcendental Argument SUNY 1999
Marjanovic, B. Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita Indica 2002
Mehta, J.L. Philosophy and Religion Indian Council of Philosophical Research 2004
Muller-Ortega, P.E. The Triadic Heart of Siva SUNY Press 1989
Pandit, B.N. Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism Mushiram Manoharlal 1997
Perera, Jose Hindu Theology – A Reader, Image Books 1976
Shankarananda The Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism Motilal 2003
SenSharma, Deba Brata The Philosophy of Sadhana SUNY Press 1990
Sinha, Debabratsa Metaphysics of Experience in Advaita Vedanta Motilal 1995
Singh, Jaideva Abhinavagupta - Paratrisika-Vivarana Motilal 2002
Singh, Jaideva Siva Sutras – The Yoga of Supreme Identity Motilal 2000
Singh, Jaideva Spanda-Karikas, The Divine Creative Pulsation Motilal 2001
Singh, Jaideva Vijnanabhairava or Divine Consciousness Motilal 2001
Singh, Jaideva Pratyabehijnanahrdayam, The Secret of Self-Recognition Motilal 2003
Shankarananda The Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism Motilal 2006
Urban, Hugh B. Tantra – Sex, Secrecy and Politics in the study of Religion
University of California Press 2003
Wilberg, Peter The Awareness Principle New Yoga Publications 2007
Wilberg, Peter Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought New Gnosis Publications 2008
Wilberg, Peter Tantra Reborn – On the Sensuality and Sexuality of the Soul Body
New Yoga Publications 2007
Wilberg, Peter The New Yoga - Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World
New Yoga Publications 2007
Zimmer, Heinrich Philosophies of India, ed. by Joseph Campbell Motilal 1990

Edited by author 29-09-2008 02:44 AM
A 'Thought for the Week' - Full Marx for the Archbishop

Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury made some pertinent comments about the current financial crisis which acknowledged certain insights of Karl Marx. So allow me to start this post with some basis of Marxism:

We all know what a loaf of bread or bunch of bananas is because these are tangible or ‘material’ things. That’s not because they are made up of mysterious invisible particles but because we can not only see them (as in a vision or hallucination) but also touch, feel, taste and use them – for example to make ourselves a piece of toast or a banana sandwich.

Bread and bananas have a clear ‘use value’. On the other hand what makes any two quite different things equal or comparable in value – what Marx called their ‘exchange value’ - is something completely different from their use value.

You can pick up a loaf of bread or banana but you can’t pick up, feel, touch, eat or taste its exchange value or market value. As something totally immaterial, Marx saw exchange value as something similar to religious notions of an immaterial Spirit or God. Yet society found a way to ‘materialise’ the invisible exchange value of things - by inventing money. Money itself would not be worth the paper it’s printed on were it not for the symbols printed on it. These are just like (or even contain) mythical religious symbols – since they represent something completely immaterial – market value or exchange value.

In the past, markets and the exchange of commodities were much simpler. People would make or grow things, take them to market, sell them to others and use the money to buy things they needed for themselves. Marx had nothing against ‘markets’ as such. But the odd thing he noted about the capitalist market is that it works the other way round. Instead of people selling what they make or grow in order to buy what they need, capitalists do just the opposite – buying in order to sell at a profit and accumulate more exchange value, money or ‘capital’ – all for its own sake. What they end up buying has no tangible reality at all, but takes the form of equities, credits, loans, currencies, and countless other virtual or even wholly mythical forms of capital.

So full marks (excuse the pun) to the Archbishop for reminding us that Marx himself “long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves”. He doesn’t quite get full marks however, because Marx also saw the quasi-religious nature of this mythology, and how its gods of Money, Wealth and ‘The Market’ do take on a life of their own - one which, as we can all see and feel, affects our lives too.

Just as the media would like us to think that the current Credit Crunch and Crisis on Wall Street are just brought on by the iniquitous greed of a few, so the Archbishop too would like to see them as a purely moral problem - caused by “unbridled” capitalism rather than capitalism as such.

Marx saw things otherwise - recognising that though the endless extension of credit helps keep capitalism going, it also creates “the most colossal form of gambling and swindling” (and for all the talk of tighter ‘regulation’ of financial markets, the fact remains that both bouts of ‘short-trading’ and even ‘insider trading’ are not exceptions to a rule but are the rule – the most general ways in which this gambling and swindling is carried out).

As for Washington’s $700bn ‘bailout’ of the Wall Street banking houses, this is in no way ‘socialism coming to the rescue of capitalism’. It is capitalism once again ‘socialising’ its losses – demanding emergency welfare ‘benefits’ from the state and from the poor to make up for its losses, whilst continuing to privatise its profits and ‘bonuses’. When will our national press ever headline the scandal of corporate welfare ‘scrounging’? This makes ordinary ‘benefit fraud’ seem like peanuts in comparison - according to one estimate costing the US treasury around $140 bn every year.

So why is a religious Hindu writing about the Archbishop of Canterbury and talking up Marxism in relation to his well-timed comments? After all, wasn’t Marx an atheist who famously declared that “religion is the opium of the masses”? Personally, I believe the type of religion he was referring to was precisely the sort that mythologised, moralised about or tried to make more palatable the real religion of capitalism – what Marx called ‘the monotheism of money’.

Yet Marx also emphasised from very early on in his life something of central religious significance to Hindus. This is the fact that, like the things of nature, we can enjoy all things with our senses – yet without having to ‘have’ them – to buy and own them. So the next time you gaze at some beautiful but unaffordable item in a shop or marvel at some Porsche or Ferrari prancing your streets, take this as your ‘thought for the week’. You do not need to buy things from others to sensually appreciate, admire and enjoy them for yourself.

In a globalised capitalist economy in which half the world lives on less than a dollar a day, what is clearly needed is not a continuing rise but a general lowering of wasteful consumption in the developed world - and a brake on its spread in the developing world – where what the majority need is shelter, food and water, not Coca Cola and fashion icons.

Capitalism of course, makes an icon or idol of everything that its marketers seek to sell us. In Hinduism on the other hand, a religious ‘idol’ is a work of sacred art - worshipped not for its celebrity status or investment value, but because it gives sensory form and expression to the infinitely creative soul of the Divine.

BEYOND ZEN - Meditation, Movement and ‘Just Sitting’


‘Meditation’, as understood through The Awareness Principle, means simply giving time-space to a type of wholly non-active or ‘quiescent’ awareness - one not reliant on bodily movement or action. Most Westerners however, can only feel a sense of meditative inner stillness through movement in space.

Sitting still, they can no longer feel their body as a whole, let alone sense the space of awareness, around it – but instead begin to get lost in thought and their heads. Put in other terms, they cannot sustain a ‘proprioceptive’ awareness of their own body without sensations of physical movement - without ‘kinaesthetic’ awareness.

That is why they need to be constantly ‘on the move’ - whether through any type of physical activity involving movement of the body, or by literally moving from place to place - for example by travelling or engaging in pursuits such as walking, jogging, swimming etc.

That is also why a notable guru of the nineteen sixties and seventies felt forced to come up with the idea of so-called ‘dynamic meditation’ – effectively no form of meditation at all but a mere means of emotional catharsis through spontaneous movement.

Kinaesthetic awareness – dependent on movement – does indeed awaken proprioceptive awareness. Yet in Western culture it is, for most people, the only way they know of awakening or sustaining proprioceptive awareness of their bodies.

In Eastern and aboriginal cultures the reverse has been traditionally the case – movement and kinaesthetic awareness are grounded in motionless stillness and proprioceptive awareness of one’s body.

As in the practice of Tai Chi and of different forms of Asian dance and martial art, Eastern cultures value forms of bodily movement which arise out of a sense of motionless stillness - and believe in letting this very motionless stillness guide and time their physical movement or ‘kinesis'. Thus the most truly advanced martial artist is precisely one who does not actively move their body at all, but rather lets it be moved – moved by a ‘proprioceptive’ awareness that embraces not only their body but their sense of the entire space around their body.

It is because the ‘kinaesthetic’ awareness of the martial artist is already so highly trained that all they require to guide their physical movements is a meditative, motionless proprioceptive awareness.

Sitting meditation on the other hand, teaches people how to ‘move’ in a different way – to move from one location or ‘place’ to another in themselves - not with their physical body but within their inwardly felt body.

Strictly speaking this is not movement at all but awareness – awareness of the many different sensations and feelings and thoughts that are presencing or occurring in different regions or locations of their body. It is awareness too, of the relation of these sensations or feelings, whether subtle or intense, to the thoughts they are having and to the things or people they are connected with in their world.

The principle aim of sitting meditation is to learn how to be physically still whilst still sustaining awareness of our body as a whole and the space around it - sustaining both proprioceptive and spatial awareness.

This proprioceptive awareness is what sitting meditation and the Zen practice of ‘just sitting’ was implicitly designed to cultivate. Yet the problems faced by students of Zen-style sitting meditation – physical restlessness, mental boredom or drifting off, were not understood and responded to with this understanding or aim in mind – the aim of cultivating awareness of our bodies and the space around them.

Instead they were left to struggle with sensations of restlessness, strain, boredom or fatigue leading them to mentally dissociate from their bodies rather than become more aware of them, to get lost in thought or even fall asleep during meditation – hence the Master’s ‘awakening’ stick. There was no instruction to students to fully affirm all bodily sensations in awareness – thus coming to recognise that the very awareness of a bodily sensation is not itself anything bodily but is essentially bodiless and sensation-free.

Similarly the awareness of a distracting thought or mental state is not itself anything mental or any activity of mind - ‘mindfulness’ - but is instead something essentially thought- and mind-free.

Lacking this understanding and experience of pure awareness, Zen students were left to rely on their minds to distract or dissociate themselves from their bodies - or to simply stay awake. This however only compounded the challenge of attaining a state of pure, mind- and thought-free awareness.

What they required was ‘The Awareness Principle’ – the recognition that just as the awareness of our bodies and of bodily sensations is not itself anything bodily, so is the pure awareness of our minds and thoughts not itself anything mental but a thought and mind-free awareness.

The Zen practice of sitting meditation aimed at transcending both mind and body and attaining a state called emptiness or mu - ‘no mind. No body.’ Yet this practice did not recognise that the pure awareness of mind and body is – in principle - something innately transcendent or free of body and mind.

Without this recognition, ‘success’ in meditation came to be identified more and more with ‘one-pointedness’ – the concentration of awareness on a single inner or outer focal point (for example the centre of a mandala.). It is precisely this practice of ‘one-pointedness’ however, that misses the point - which is that a state of pure mind- and body-free awareness is, in contrast to ordinary consciousness, precisely an awareness not focussed or concentrated on a single, localised point. Instead it is an all-round ‘field’ awareness embracing the entirety of space – not least the space around our bodies, around our physical sensations and around our thoughts themselves.

It is from the formless all-round space of pure awareness that all formed elements of our bodily and mental experiencing, inner and outer, arise. To concentrate ‘single-pointedly’ on any one of these is to miss the central aim of meditation, which is to cultivate a proprioceptive awareness of our bodies – and even our thoughts themselves - from the space surrounding them.

The term ‘sacred space’ is both true and misleading. For a sacred space or a holy place such as a temple or cathedral, is in essence any place which helps us – either through its vast inner or outer dimensions and/or through its association with God or the divine – to experience space as such as sacred and holy - as the divine and as the God inside which we dwell.

What happens when people enter a sacred space such as a large cathedral for example is - first of all - that they gain a sense of its vaulting spaciousness, and at the same time, by virtue of knowing the cathedral as a holy place or ‘house of God’ - associate this spaciousness with that holiness and with God.

When people come together in temples, churches or mosques they are first of all aware of being together in a common space which is recognised as sacred or holy in some way. In that way, they knowingly or unknowingly come to an experience of space itself as divine – that which embraces all things and beings. Going to a holy place involves movement in space. Yet being there means motionlessly abiding in that place, thus coming to experiencing its space – and thereby space itself – as holy.

Again, movement or kinesis – activity or change of place – can be a way of awakening or sustaining proprioceptive awareness, or it can be a way of avoiding it. Yet the question whether, at any given moment, awareness is better sustained through movement or non-movement, can itself only be decided by first of all not-moving – by abiding in a motionless stillness.

Mountains and trees do not move from place to place, go to church, go for walks or go on pilgrimages. Mountains will not come to Mohammed. Trees do not have eyes to see. Yet they are the true ‘Zen masters’ and yogis of nature. For not having eyes to perceive space or limbs by which to move from place to place, they are masters at motionlessly sensing the space, light and air around them. Indeed their proprioceptive sense of their own bodies comes from sensing their spatiality.

The tree’s trunk rises towards the heights of the sky. Its roots plumb the depths of the earth. Its branches spread and its leaves and flowers open themselves to the vaulting curvature of the heavens above – absorbing the light and air of space not through any eyes or noses, but through their entire surface.

To be ‘conscious’ is to be aware of things occurring – abiding or moving - ‘in’ the space around them. To be AWARE of things however, is not the same as to BE that very awareness. To BE awareness means to be the space, inner and outer, in which things occur, and not just be aware of things occurring in that space. For pure awareness, in our space-time reality, is space. BEING space, we do not need to engage in activity or movement to experience time. For space IS time-space. The vaulting expanse of space is the spacious expanse of time itself – a time-space that embraces all actions and places - past, present and future - without any need for movement from one place to another ‘in’ space or one moment to another ‘in’ time.

Practicing Sitting as Meditation:

Sitting meditation is essentially the experience of sitting – anywhere and anytime - AS meditation. This involves 4 simple steps:

1. Sitting with your eyes open, but not focussing on anything.

2. Sustaining awareness of your sensed body surface as a whole.

3. Feeling your body surface as ‘all eye’ – enabling you to sense the entire space within and around your body.

4. Letting all that you are aware of in your body in the form of sensations or feelings, and all that comes to mind in the form of thoughts and images, dissipate into the space of pure awareness surrounding your body.

Edited by author 07-08-2008 08:18 AM
Awareness as a Universal Consciousness - and the 'unconscious'


I hail that Universal Consciousness [Vijanana-Bhairava/Shivachaitanya] of which everything and everyone is a unique portion and expression, individual yet indivisible from the whole!

The Universal Consciousness is not awareness 'of' things but awareness as such. It is not ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ but the essence of the Divine, a consciousness universal and unbounded.

‘God’ is not a supreme being ‘with’ consciousness, nor does any being ‘have’ or ‘possess’ consciousness as its private property. Instead God IS consciousness.

God is not a person, but all persons are personifications or face (personae)of the Universal Consciousness,

All individual beings and persons are bounded portions, expressions and personifications of the Universal Consciousness that is God.

The bodily boundaries of individual consciousness no more separate it from the Universal Consciousness than does the skin of a fish separate it from the ocean, or the wings of a bird separate it from the air.

Our own skin is a permeable boundary, one that does not separate us from the air around us but unites us with it - breathing that air. Were our skin a sealed boundary we would die from lack of air.

In essence, what is called the ‘unconscious’ (ucs) IS the Universal Consciousness (UCS).

The ‘ego’ or ‘conscious’ mind, on the other hand, is not more but LESS conscious than THIS ‘unconscious’ – it is a contraction of the Universal Consciousness within the Universal Consciousness.

Many people speak of consciously ‘creating’ their reality. In truth it is their ‘unconscious’ in the Freudian sense that ‘creates’ their reality – constantly seeking ways to express all that escapes the CONTRACTED awareness of their ‘conscious’ mind, and doing so in ways the conscious ego remains unaware of.

If your sole motto is 'I create my reality', you have not yet asked who or what this 'I' is. It is not the conscious mind or ego, but all that remains unconscious to it through its limited and contracted awareness.

In reality there is only ONE creative source of all realities and of the ego or 'I' itself – the Universal Consciousness.

The Universal Consciousness has the innate power or capacity (Shakti) to give form to itself - manifest, individualise and personify itself in infinite potential forms. Thus it not only transcends and surrounds but pervades all its manifestations – all beings.

The Universal Consciousness is truly transcendent and immanent – surrounding and pervading all things.

Everything actual is a form taken by the Universal Consciousness within the Universal Consciousness. There can be nothing outside the Universal Consciousness as there can be nothing ‘outside’ space or ‘before’ time.

“We are inside God.” Jane Roberts. Everything exists within the Universal Consciousness – within God.

Being inseparable from the Universal Consciousness as a whole every being is that Consciousness as a whole, is ‘God’.

Being a distinct portion of the Universal Consciousness as a whole everything is at the same time a unique expression of it - ‘a god’.

The Universal Consciousness is no mere ‘state’ of ‘cosmic consciousness’ to be evolved by or attained by individual human beings. It is the divine source and innermost nature of all beings, all individualised consciousness.

As individualised consciousnesses we experience ourselves as bodies ‘in’ space. In contrast, the Universal Consciousness experiences itself in the same way that space might experience both itself and the bodies in it – as that which both surrounds and pervades them.

The Universal Consciousness is no ‘thing’ we can locate ‘in’ space. Nor it is anything enclosed within our bodies or brains. Instead it is space, inner and outer – being that within which we experience all things.

Space and time are the primary expression of the Universal Consciousness in our ‘physical’ space-time reality.

The Universal Consciousness is an infinite ‘time-space’ or ‘time-sphere’ of awareness embracing all realities – past, present and future, actual and potential.

Ordinary consciousness is a narrow, focussed awareness, like a torchlight in a dark room. The Universal Consciousness is like light pervading space in a lightened room or sunny day.


Light [Prakasha] is the light of the Universal Consciousness.
Space [Akasha] is the spaciousness of the Universal Consciousness.
Air [Prana] is the immanent vitality of the Universal Consciousness.
Water is the oceanic fluidity of the Universal Consciousness.
Fire is the transformative power of the Universal Consciousness.
Matter is the formative matrix of the Universal Consciousness.
Planets are materialised planes of the Universal Consciousness.
Bodies are embodiments of the Universal Consciousness.
Suns are radiant centres of the Universal Consciousness.

Shiva/Bhairava are names for the Universal Consciousness in its aspect as pure awareness.

Shakti/Bhairavi are names for the Universal Consciousness as pure power of manifestation.

I hail that Universal Consciousness which is Shiva-Shakti!

Shrine with the murti of the Lord Shiva

Murti Darshan, 08/07/08

In our house we have three shrines to the Lord Shiva, two ‘personal’ ones in our private rooms, and one in the conservatory for group darshan, puja and meditations.
There Peter and I sat for a joint meditation in front of the murti of the meditating Lord Shiva.

The following poem describes some aspects of my experiences during this sitting.
Karin Heinitz


Shining Beauty

There you are
Contemplating the Mother, the source,
Your blissful face radiating Beauty.
Potentials occur and blossom into Being
Through your grace.
These two occurred,
Through you they grow
Towards what it is they are meant to be.
You pervade her and him and them,
Oh Lord of the Shining Beauty.

Your golden hair
Sits on a throne of bronze
Above your silver brows,
Your silver eyes
Shine.
Your bronze cheeks show off
Your silver mouth, jaws, chin.
You shine
And you smile with delight.
You are awesome and terrible,
Oh Lord of the Shining Beauty.

When this body gave thanks to you
It was blessed with sensual bliss,
Your all embracing, all pervading grace is infinite,
Lord of the Shining Beauty

THE PARABLE OF THE SPIRITUAL BILLIONAIRE

“Seek and you shall find. Find, and you shall be disturbed.” (Gospel of Judas) For our world is in essence and not just outwardly a ‘negative’ one - borne of UNawareness and UNknowing (agnosis / ajnana ) which only spiritual knowledge (gnosis / jnana ) can heal.

The parable:

Imagine that a person unknowingly meets a secret billionaire - albeit one who does not in any way look or feel like a billionaire. Imagine further that the greatest joy of this billionaire lies in sharing their wealth freely, not just with those who are in dire need of it, but also - or above all - with those who they think might be able to make the best use of it for the benefit of those in need.

Imagine now, how such a billionaire might feel, when, in offering such an individual a few million pounds in cash - with no conditions or strings attached - he or she is met with nothing but suspicion and mistrust, and the gift is refused.

Imagine further that after repeated experiences of this sort, our billionaire realises it is wiser to offer to share their wealth to others in less generous quantities so as not to arouse distrust - say only 10,000 pounds, or to use a different analogy, just a few gold trinkets or precious gems from their treasure chest – yet only to find that they are still met with distrust, their gift still refused, and the smallest of their gold trinkets and precious gems examined with deep suspicion. Imagine that finally our billionaire learns to offer gifts of only 100 or even just 10 pounds or 10 pence to any given individual, or maybe just one or two trinkets or gems from their huge treasure chest - and yet the mistrust is still there and the gift still refused - to the detriment not just of the potential recipient but also to all those they in turn might have given to from what they had received.

The point of this parable is that there exist even now, in this world, on this plane and this planet, individuals so rich in accumulated spiritual wealth that they might be described as spiritual ‘billionaires’ or even ‘banks’ - for they are indeed living human repositories of an unimaginable wealth of spiritual knowledge, guardians of vast historic treasure houses of such knowledge - in both entirely new and long forgotten forms.

They too seek to disburse their riches freely, first in large and then in ever smaller quantities – wary of the possible mistrust or incredulity that offering too much might arouse, and aware too of the spiritual immaturity of those they might offer it to. By this I mean their incapacity to grasp either the immensity of the spiritual knowledge being offered to them freely – and its inestimable value for a world in dire need of such knowledge.

Confronted with this immature incredulity or mistrust, our spiritual billionaire respects the truth of the words 'Ask and you shall be given', resolving to give of their wealth only to those, however few in number, who dare knock at their door and ask for a portion of it - however small.

He or she no longer offers their knowledge freely except to those who knock and ask for it. It happens then, that a rare few that do indeed take advantage of this opportunity, do indeed knock, ask and are given.

Of these, some are overwhelmed at what they are shown and immensely grateful at the spiritual gifts they receive. They are like seekers who have been let through a door into vast hall of glistening treasures from which is chosen and granted them as much as they are willing to receive - and can carry out into the world.

Others however, no sooner leave the hall of treasure than they begin to trade in their gifts of gold, precious metals and shining gems of wisdom for the spiritual equivalent for the cheap plastic kitsch they previously took for ‘knowledge’.

Then again there are those who leave the treasure hall spiritually enriched to a degree they could not previously have imagined, and yet keep all that was given them to themselves alone – not giving in the way they were given to. As a result, they find their new gained spiritual riches gradually decaying and diminishing, and their very memory of the treasure hall itself dimming to the point where they decide it must have been a mere dream.

As for those who outrightly rejected the gifts freely offered to them (which include actual spiritual gifts and powers of an extraordinary and wonderful nature), or those who never dared knock at the door of the treasure hall, this has karmic implications for their lives. For it amounts to a type of spiritual ingratitude that is in direct proportion to the VALUE of the spiritual riches and gifts they could have received and shared with others.

The karmic consequence of this is that when they depart this life, they will be led by their spiritual guides to look back and realise just how much they and others would have been spiritually enriched – IF ONLY they had gratefully accepted the gifts offered them, if only they had knocked on the door of the treasure hall - or if only they had dared open and peer inside the treasure boxes placed right in front of their eyes.

Such ‘karma’ is not a form of punishment for wrongdoing but a form of learning. For the ‘law’ of karma is simply this: that what we fail to learn in one life we are led, unavoidably and inexorably, whether from within ourselves, with the aid of others - or through life itself - to learn in the afterlife or in another life.

In this parable of the ‘spiritual billionaire’ we are speaking of sages with an unseen wealth of spiritual awareness, gifts and knowledge accumulated over lifetimes.

We are also speaking of a 'once in a lifetime' chance on the part of those who encounter them to freely receive a portion of their spiritual wealth.

Such encounters are truly 'karmic encounters'. For if it should happen that one encounters such a spiritual billionaire - a true spiritual 'initiate' or 'teacher', 'guru' or 'sage' – then the decision to trust or mistrust, close or open one’s eyes to, see or turn away from, accept or reject the gifts of knowledge that he or she offers is a spiritual decision with huge karmic weight and consequences - for it will determine the entire course of one’s life.

There are those who know much, and there are those who know little. Then again, there are those who want to learn and know more – who courageously seek and gratefully accept gifts of spiritual knowledge - and there are those who think they more or less 'know it all' and have little or nothing to learn that is new.

Finally, there are those who just "don’t want to know" – for they fear how the newness of the spiritual knowledge given them will also change them – and shrink also at the responsibility to the world that new spiritual gifts necessarily bring with them.

All this, in a nutshell, is the rule of spiritual knowledge or ‘gnosis’, and at the same time the ‘law’ of karmic learning - one learned and recognised by sages throughout the ages.

Once more on the symbolic meaning of ‘Shiva-Shakti’ in The New Yoga:

The SOLE PURPOSE of ‘Shiva’, as that ‘God’ which is nothing but pure, non-active awareness, is to create space for and release the wholly AUTONOMOUS and SOVEREIGN ‘power of action’ (‘Shakti’ / ‘Svatantrya’) that is the essence of the ‘Great Goddess’.

The sole purpose of the Great Goddess is to express and embody the sovereign powers and potentialities that She is - doing so WITH awareness.

Thus is the inseparable unity of Shiva and Shakti both realised and sustained.

Shiva 'does' nothing but meditate the Goddess as a womb of infinite potentialities of awareness.

The Goddess 'is' nothing but the birthing and embodiment of these potentialities, with and within awareness.

In simple terms - from the stillest most quiescent stillness that lies at the heart of pure awareness all powers of right thought and action arise spontaneously and autonomously.

Edited by author 15-06-2008 12:11 PM
WHAT IS ‘GOD’? WHAT ARE ‘GODS’?


God does not have but IS awareness.
Not your awareness or mine, but an
Awareness universal, absolute and divine.
Awareness in turn – God – is everything.
Everything in turn IS an awareness,
A portion of that unbounded awareness
That is God, that is the Divine Awareness.
Since each and every thing is a distinct part,
Portion and expression of God, inseparable
From the Divine Awareness as a whole,
Each thing is not only a portion of that whole, but
IS that whole – God - manifest in a unique way.
In this sense each thing is both ‘God’ and ‘a God’.

Thus thunder is a unique expression of God,
God’s thundering - and yet, by the same token
Thunder is a unique God, the ‘God of thunder’ that
Is God’s expression as thundering.
The major Gods of the different religions
Are not simply different but exchangeable
Names or symbols of the same God, but distinct
Expressions of it - each imbued with specific psychic
Qualities and imbuing their worshippers with them.
Behind every God is a quite different God Concept.
Allah is not Brahman by another name.
The God of Jesus was not that of Moses.
Nor is Zeus Osiris, or Christ Kali or Krishna.

‘Awareness is Everything’ means that
‘God is Everything’ - God being that
Awareness of which all things are a portion.
‘Everything is an Awareness’ means both that
‘Everything is God’ and that at the same time
‘Everything is a God’ - being both a portion
And a unique expression of God as a whole.

‘God’ and ‘the Gods’ are thus distinct but inseparable,
Each God being both part and whole, a distinct
part of the whole that is God - thus ‘a God’ - and
An expression of God as a whole, and thus ‘God’.
Understanding God in this way unites ‘monistic theism’,
The recognition of God as a singular all-pervading
Awareness, with a monistic pluralism or ‘polytheism’,
That recognises all things as Gods.

Behind all things and phenomena are the unique psychic
Portions, patterns, powers and qualities of awareness, of
‘God’, that give each and every thing its character as ‘a God’.
The outward forms of things are but symbols of those
Unique portions of the Divine Awareness that make them
Both a part of God and yet also Gods in their own right.
All things or phenomena, of whatever shape or form
Are manifestations both of God, and of the particular
Patterns and powers of awareness that constitute
Their nature as distinct Gods in their own right.
All things then are the outward forms of Gods.

In recognising and revering them as Gods we amplify those
Unique patterns, powers and qualities of awareness
That constitute their God-nature in a dual sense,
Their nature as expressions of God and therefore
Also their nature as unique Gods in their own right.
A bicycle or brick is as much the outward form of a God
As a cat or tree, a religious text, or a sacred idol or icon.
Every particular cat or tree is ‘a God’, and yet so also are
‘Cat-ness’ and ‘tree-ness’ as such - these being particular
‘Idea-shapes’ or patterns of awareness, present as
Potentials within the Divine Awareness that is ‘God’.
If you could really see a rose, you would behold the
‘Spirit’ behind it as a God – as a vast living idea-shape
Eternally present and resplendent in the Divine Awareness.

Only through our capacity to recognise, sense and feel
 Any ‘thing’ or ‘being’ at all as a God – to worship it with
Our senses, do we truly recognise and worship ‘God’.
Those who oppose the worship of Sky and Earth Gods,
Wind and Rain Gods, Rock and Tree Gods, Animal Gods
Or human-like, ‘anthropomorphic’ Gods to the worship of
A single and invisible ‘One God’ do not know the true nature of
The One God, for this is a God that finds expression as
Multiple Gods, in and as all things and all beings.
All dualisms of opposing ‘-theisms’, such as
‘Monotheism’ and ‘polytheism’ are false dualisms.
For there is nothing that is not God – singular – and there are
No things or beings which are not Gods – plural.

Those who refuse to worship a natural phenomenon such as
A tree, being ignorant of its God-nature, are just as deluded as
Those who worship only trees, ignorant of the God-nature of
All things - whether natural or artificial, ancient or modern.
Only those who can worship all things as Gods know God.
Only those who can use their senses to sense the soul of any
Thing as ‘a God’ can also know it as an expression of ‘God’.

Not all things are equally worthy of worship,
For some things are better than others and thus
Make better objects of worship and identification.
Many are those who worship the Gods of Money and
The Market, of Capital and Consumerism, The Media and
The Mobile Phone, the Motorway and The Automobile,
The Gods they make of celebrity icons and idols,
Of commodities, brand logos or stock values.
Such Gods as Profit and Fashion are not ‘evil’, but
Their worship, justified in the name of the ‘One God’,
Brings suffering to the worshippers and to all humanity.

There are named Gods and unnamed Gods,
Gods that human beings idolise and worship unawares.
And those they worship – as Gods – with awareness.
There are ancient Gods, personified or not personified
In human form, and there are modern Gods, personified
Or not personified in human form.
Many prefer the Gods of Old to the New Gods of
Global capitalism and technology, and to the
Monotheisms of Money and of The Market.

The Old Gods never die, thus they were called ‘immortals’.
Insteady they live on, whether or not their names
Are recalled or forgotten, their rituals and places
Of worship destroyed or surviving as ruins.
Battles rage between the Old Gods and The New.
Odin fights the i-Pods, the Madonna fights Madonna.
Battles still rage between the Old Gods themselves.
The Judaeo-Christian God fights the God of Islam.
Pagan, Wiccan and Norse Gods still fight the Gods of
Judaeo-Christianity, and the Gods of Nature
Wreak destruction on the destructive Gods of Man.
So has it always been – the ‘One’ God fighting the
Other ‘One’, the many Gods fighting each other
Each counting on their worshippers as warriors.

There are The Old religions and The New.
Television is the new shrine to which people offer
Sacrifice of what is most precious of all, their time
Having forgotten how the old shrines worked.
The screen is an electronic substitute for
Long lost powers of inner clairvoyance.
The shopping mall is a grand temple
To the God of Consumption, yet work -
Production - is wage-slavery to the God of the Market,
Determining by its iron ‘Law’ the value of all things
And doing so only in terms of their profitability.
The computer workstation is a technical altar,
The ‘virtual’ simulacrum of a portal
To other worlds, once reached from within.
The world of telecommunications is a substitute for
Deep and wordless telepathic contact with others.
The USB stick replaces ancient memories,
Once evoked by the flicker of a fire.

Mankind remains a kindergarten of infantile souls,
In thrall now to New Gods who bestow ignorance
Rather than knowledge, and who disensoul
Human beings rather than ensouling them.
For the priests of the New Gods it is ‘brands’
That have ‘souls’, whereas ‘souls’ are seen as
Mere manipulable brains stuck on a body.

To know yourself is to know your Gods.
Whether this God be a pop idol, sport or drug,
Tree or TV, church or business corporation.

To know God is to know all things
AS Gods, and to worship only those things -
Those Gods – most auspicious and beneficial
In coming to know that ‘One God’ of which
All things and beings - all Gods - are an expression.
Hence the importance of each individual
Finding their Ishta Devata – that God
They feel most personally attuned to, and that
In turn attunes them most to God as such.
To know God is to know yourself, both as God
And as a God in your own right - and to know other
People likewise, as both God and Gods.
Behind all people’s inner ‘psychology’
Lies their ‘inner theology’ - the Gods
They truly worship in deed, even if not in words
Or through religious prayer and meditation;
The things they idolise in mind and body -
Or with their wallets - even if ignorant of
That one God which is nothing but
Awareness itself in the manifold shapes of
All things and thoughts, all bodies and beings.

Your big toe feels itself as part of a
Larger whole - your foot – which is its God.
Your foot feels itself as part of a
Yet larger whole - your leg – its God.
So does any part of your body feel
Your body as a whole as ‘God’,
A whole from which it is inseparable
And yet at the same time a unique part.
Unlike their own toes and feet, fingers
And arms, stomachs and chests however,
Human beings tend no longer to feel
That larger whole of which they themselves
And their whole bodies are a part.
Yet unlike their bodily parts they
Can come to see and conceive that
Larger whole – God – in any way
They choose, in this way giving rise
To countless images and ideas of
God - to countless Gods.

Yet God is more than just an idea or image.
For any thing or being, idea or image to which
We sacrifice time and awareness,
Anything we put ourselves ‘into’
We also endow with a portion of ourselves
In this way it attains and retains its own
Independent reality, identity and consciousness.
It is turned into a God.

Every artist knows how in putting their time, awareness
And a portion of themselves into their creations
Those creations, like characters created in a novel,
Take on a life of their own, evolving in their own way and
Re-shaping not only the novel itself but its creator.
We are all creators – ‘god-makers’ whose every creation,
Whether a mere thought, mental image or material artefact,
Is no sooner created through a sacrifice of time and
Awareness, than it returns that sacrifice to us
Multiplied - whether as bountiful boons or burdens.

There is no thing and no thought, no being and
And no body which you have ever ‘worshipped’
In any life, ever sacrificed time and awareness to,
That does not retain reality as an independent
Consciousness, one which is forever a part of you
And at the same time distinct from you – a God.
Every cell of our body retains memory traces of
The Gods we have dreamt up and created within our soul.

We are not composed of ‘eternal genes’ but of eternal Gods.
Our genes are but the biological imprint of those elements of
Our souls that are part of or have become autonomous Gods,
Created or sustained by sacrificing portion of ourselves to them.

Not all the Gods which we thus create are
Comfortable or in harmony with one another.
Battles also rage between our personal Gods, past and present,
Old and New – battles felt and fought out in our dreams, as in
The very flesh of our genes, as symptoms and sensations of dis-ease.

There are minor Gods, which are a part of our souls.
And there are greater Gods, great souls or Mahatma
Of which we ourselves are a part, as they are a part of God.

‘Know thyself’ means ‘Know your Gods’.
It also means ‘Know God’, for God is
No supreme creator being, but the creativity
Constantly arising from Awareness as such,
A creativity by which God constantly
Gives birth to Gods, not just as us but also
 Through us, through the divine Creativity of
The Divine Awareness of which we are a part.

There is ‘No Religion Higher than Truth’
And the inner truth of religion is that
There is nothing outside God, that
Reality consists of nothing BUT ‘God’ and
‘Gods’ - nothing but GOD GODDING.
Thus there is no denying the Gods.
For our world and everything in it
Is a living pantheon of Gods,
Old and New - all emerged
From and dwelling in the
Awareness that is God.

You yourself ARE a God
Just you ARE God, even
Though God is more than
You are and can be.

Why then do people seek immortality,
God-like beauty, power, wealth,
Splendour and sensuous luxury?
Why do they wish to become ‘like’ Gods?
Because they are unable anymore
To see the beauty, feel the power, or
Sense the luxuriant wealth of the
Immortal Gods they already ARE,
The Gods that are a part of them,
The Gods of which they are a part,
And that God which is the source of all Gods.
Forever Godding Itself in countless forms.
The Gods, all of them, are alive,
As alive as you and me, and
As alive as all things and beings,
Which as portions of God, are
Themselves also Gods.

Odin lives, as do Thor and Loki.
Jesus lives, as do Peter, Paul and Mary.
Zeus lives, as do Athena and Aphrodite.
Krishna lives, as do Vishnu and Kali.
Their names speak of Gods, but
In doing so they also bespeak that
One Awareness that alone – ‘All-One’ -
Is God, transcendent of all Gods, yet
Immanent in them all, The All that
Is One and the One that is them All.
For what could embrace and create such
Infinite space for the fullness of all the countless
Gods that make up all things, except the
One God that Gods them all?

See NEW essay on Archive page of www.thenewyoga.org
'COUNSELLING, MEDITATION AND YOGA - The New Yoga as Non-Dual Therapy' (www.thenewyoga.org/CMY.pdf)

Om Namah Shivaya.

Dear Baba Peter,

I have been reading your work here, at Marianne Broug's site, and at thenewtherapy.org for a couple of months now. I have also ordered several of your books.

I wanted to thank you for your work, but decided to read through the bulletin board postings before submitting my own message.

I have been a spiritual seeker for a number of years, and spent some time in a couple of different Sufi orders before meeting Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi) about 5 years ago. That opened up my awareness dramatically, much of it at the emotional level, and also brought the issues of relatedness and relationships into greater prominence than had been the case previously.

I received a mantra from Amma about 4 years ago, and since then I have been exploring how to integrate the experiences I have on her retreats into my daily life. I have connected with a local satsang, and that has helped to develop my experience within a cross-cultural (Indian and Western) context. I have also had a couple of close friendships with other devotees. They have had some beautiful moments--such as you describe in your work on spiritual intimacy--but there have also been difficult experiences too, such as you describe in the article "Abuse, Awareness, and the 'Bad Subject'".

Even when these group or friendship situations have been at their best, I have not been able to find genuinely satisfying companionship in terms of philosophical or psychological awareness. I am a university professor and a classical musician, and there is a limited extent to which I can get by on ritualized devotionalism and on people not being very articulate, or even very open, about what's going on with them as they try to work the spiritual path into their daily lives. Your piece on the occasion of Shivaratri was very pertinent to this kind of experience.

While this change in my spiritual path has been going on, my mother underwent treatment for malignant brain cancer. She passed away in late December 2007. As I learned about my grief process from the inside, some of the dissatisfactions in my relationships began to be magnified and I found that I needed to spend more time alone in order to focus on the work I needed to do for the university, and also to listen to the inner reorganization that was going on since my mother's death.

I have a partner, and he has been working on developing his awareness in ways that appeal to him. Being supportive of one another has been good, but there is something special that I feel when I am relating closely with an Amma devotee, and I miss that when that's not available. It has also been necessary to find other forms of support as issues have come up, since a high-profile guru such as Amma is not available for direct dialog. I have done quite a bit of reading by Western psychologists and spiritual teacher, and did 3.5 years of talk therapy (which I recently terminated).

Your work has been really good in helping me to sort through the variety of experiences I have had in the last few years. I find that, since I have been reading your work, there is greater awareness in the experience of the spiritual practices I am doing. I also find that I am becoming quieter inside, and more patient with the unfolding of thoughts and feelings as they come. There is less of a compulsive need to "get things out" or to "hold things in" as there was before.

So, thank you for the contribution that your work has been making to the understanding and acceptance of my various life situations.

Peace,

Ron

Edited by author 10-03-2008 05:13 AM
Though it is every ‘WHEN’ and every ‘WHERE’, at that dark night of the year when we are drawn to meditate most intensely our living relation to the Divine Awareness personified by Mahadeva Shiva - or rather to meditate Shiva AS that singular, non-dual RELATION which unites us with the Divine Awareness – it seems timely to draw attention also to our relations with other human beings.

With this in mind I share below an extract from a new Tantra I am writing on ‘Marxism and Moksha’, one which will be entitled ‘THE RED BANNER OF RUDRA – TOWARDS A YOGA OF REVOLUTION’. Its principle is that relationality as such is the very essence of what is called ‘non-duality’ or ‘Advaita’. Its message is that only through new and more aware ways of RELATING to others can individuals WITH awareness cultivate awareness IN those others, thus allowing them too to experience themselves as unique expressions of the Divine - as one pole of a singular, non-dual RELATION to it.

The Divine Awareness pervades not only every ‘when’ and ‘where’, but every thing and every being - ‘every body’.

The practical significance of what follows can thus be summed up very simply: it is only though granting awareness - every where and at all times - not only to our divine Self but to EACH AND EVERY RELATIONSHIP with the Others in our life that we most fully live the ‘Divine Life’ – our RELATIONAL LIFE.

 
 
INDIVIDUALITY, COMMUNITY AND ‘THE THIRD REALM’

It was the profound insight of Martin Buber that the true locus of radical change or ‘revolution’ – the attainment of WORLDWIDE human liberation or ‘Moksha’ - lies NEITHER in the realm of society or community nor that of the individual, that it can be achieved NEITHER through social revolutionary movements - least of all nationalistic ones - NOR through the security of self-centred religious or spiritual communities. Instead the decisive locus of revolutionary change is a THIRD realm - one beyond the realm of the social or communal on the one hand, and the realm of individual consciousness on the other. The ‘third realm’ is the realm of relationality AS SUCH - of immediate human relations BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS.

“The individual is a fact of existence in so far as he steps into a living relation with other individuals. The aggregate is a fact of existence in so far as it is built up of living units of relation.”

Martin Buber

The starting point for a WORLDWIDE REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF HUMAN RELATIONS can only lie IN immediate human relations themselves – in those very “units of relation” that shape the reality of BOTH individuals AND the social, economic or communal groups and institutions they belong to. ‘Human relations’ on a group, institutional, social, economic, communal, national, international and worldwide global scale can only be changed by changing the way in which individuals relate to one another as individuals within families and communities, groups and institutions.

No spiritual or political initiatives and activities can bring about any fundamental or ‘revolutionary’ changes IN human relations unless those activities and initiatives are the expression of a revolutionary spiritual transformation OF human relations between the very people who initiate them.

Raising each individual’s awareness of the REAL economic, political and cultural contradictions that stand in the way of liberation or Moksha is the vital task of Marxism. Raising each individual’s awareness to a higher plane beyond these contradictions – in a way that can FREE individual consciousness from their yoke is the task of traditional or classical ‘yoga’. Learning to guard and embody this free and liberated state of awareness (Svatantrya/Moksha) in our relations with all other individuals in our life world is the task of a revolutionary ‘New Yoga’ – understood as a yoga of AWARE RELATING aimed at bringing about a RELATIONAL REVOLUTION through awareness, and with it RELATIONAL FULFILMENT.

The old, sad and yet still persisting dilemma besetting those on a traditional spiritual or political path is that the deeper or broader their spiritual or political awareness becomes, the more isolated they may feel - for example by finding relationships with those with different world-views or with a shallower or narrower awareness uncomfortably confining. As a result of this dilemma they may either retreat into deliberate isolation or else seek the superficial comfort of a group or community that merely shares the ideological or religious SYMBOLS of a ‘higher’ awareness. Deep or authentic community on the other hand can only arise out of living “units of relation” – multiple deep one-to-one relationships between its members. Such a community is quite different in nature from one that SUBSTITUTES for such relationships – let alone one that suppresses them in the service of an overriding allegiance to a group ideology. That is why, in the absence of deep relationships and communion between specific individuals within a community, even such things as sharing in communal events - whether political gatherings or demonstrations or religious festivals and celebrations – may even end up leaving the individual with an intensified sense of isolation. Hence neither hermetic retreat, ‘being alone together’ in a symbolic community, nor resignation to what is felt as the compromise of ‘ordinary relationships’ may suffice to overcome the aware individual’s sense of social isolation.

For the more politically-oriented individual, this isolation may actually lead them away from aware relating to others and be replaced instead by a militant hostility towards others – for example in the form of individuals, groups or communities with other values or convictions, ethnic origins, class or colour.

For the more spiritually oriented individual the same intensified isolation may lead to ever greater identification with their own divine Self – yet at the exclusion of aware relations to the living human Others in their lives. And whilst this can lead to the experience of evermore exalted and higher states of DIVINE SELF-awareness, the individual’s capacity to EMBODY this awareness in deepened relations with a HUMAN OTHER diminishes. The result is a vicious circle in which an ever-greater spiritual ‘REALISATION’ of SELF through relationship with God leads to an ever-diminished spiritual RELATIONSHIP to human OTHERS.

One basic reason for such dilemmas and vicious circles of isolation is a failure to fully accept and finds ways of responding to unavoidable ASYMMETRIES in adult-to-adult or peer relationships - differences in maturational levels of awareness.

In peer relationships these differences may be felt by the more aware as isolating in themselves - or lead to them to act or be perceived as distant or haughty by the less aware.

Parents or teachers, on the other hand, accept awareness asymmetries in relationships from the very start. They do not EXPECT their children or their students to be cognizant or aware of all that they are aware. They not only make AWARE ALLOWANCES for their childrens’ or students’ lack of awareness, but relate to them with the AWARE INTENT to gently educate’ and ‘draw out’ a greater awareness (e-ducare).

This acceptance of asymmetry in the parent-child and teacher-student relationship comes to a different type of expression in the guru-disciple relation. For this is a relation in which the guru unites the role of teacher with that of spiritual parent to another - albeit often younger - adult.

The AIM of the guru in fulfilling this role however, is precisely to offer a MODEL to the disciple of how they themselves can relate to other adults on a basis of TOTAL EQUALITY AND RESPECT - whilst at the same time not only making allowances for asymmetries of awareness (still less accommodating to them) but intentionally and actively using ‘skilful means’ to overcome them and heighten the awareness of the other. This requires a deep capacity on the part of the guru to MEDITATE THE OTHER – that is to say to meditate and identify with a specific HUMAN OTHER as well as with the DIVINE SELF within them. Only in this way can the disciple be led to an experience of their own divine self - whilst at the same time learning from their guru by what PROFOUND MEANS AND MODES of meditative and aware relating they too can find RELATIONAL FULFILLMENT through spiritually teaching and parenting other adults.

Just as a child has only an inkling of the adult world of the parent, so the disciple has only an inkling of the larger world of awareness of the guru. Yet just as child learns about the ADULT WORLD of their parents in a way that is primarily relational - from the ways in which their parents relate to them FROM that world - so too can the disciple learn much about the AWARENESS WORLD of the guru through the guru’s way of relating to them.

The Awareness Principle and the Practice of Awareness – including the practices of AWARE ACTION – that constitute the grounding principle and practices of The New Yoga, show how the false dualism of hermetic isolation and communal belonging can be overcome - through practices of AWARE ASYMMETRIC RELATING.

The Practice of Awareness in asymmetric human relations is based on The Awareness Principle itself – with its fundamental distinction between identifying with anything we experience or are aware OF on the one hand, and identifying with the pure AWARENESS of it on the other. For one application of this Principle is the recognition that awareness of asymmetry – of the limitations, superficiality, lower level or narrower focus of another person’s awareness - is nothing that need be felt or feared as isolating. Why? Because the very AWARENESS of asymmetry is not itself anything limited, lowered, or rendered narrow or superficial BY that asymmetry. The fear or discomfort of feeling one’s own awareness confined within the narrower horizons of another comes from

(a) fear or failure to be aware of asymmetry - to fully recognise, accept and make allowances for the limits or confines of another’s awareness

(b) failure to identify with the pure AWARENESS of those limits or confines - an awareness that is not itself limited or confined by them,

and

(c) lack of the awareness and skills necessary to successfully relate to the other from a place of higher awareness – rather than feeling or being confined by the lower awareness of the other.

If asymmetries of awareness are not responded to through aware relating, those with higher awareness may end up just avoiding social contacts, situations and relationships altogether out of fear of feeling confined and isolated by them. Without the meditative means to engage in aware relating in asymmetric situations, self-isolation is chosen as the safer alternative to feelings of social isolation.

It must be emphasised that awareness and acceptance of asymmetry in adult relationships, and the practice of aware relating in response to it, is not just a way of accommodating to the limits or lesser awareness of others. On the contrary, it is what allows the highly INDIVIDUAL NATURE of the limitations evident in another person’s awareness to become a source of DEEP INTEREST, MEDITATION, LEARNING AND INSIGHT rather than a cause for boredom or accommodation, restlessness - or a sense of innate superiority. For the aware acceptance of asymmetries in relationships also turns all social situations into opportunities to recognise what I term ‘reverse asymmetry’. By this I mean the opportunity to appreciate and learn from the unique individual QUALITIES of awareness embodied or expressed even by persons with a ‘quantitatively’ lower level of awareness.

The principle of reverse asymmetry gives expression to a notable autobiographical remark made by Martin Buber. Here he describes the enduring life inclination he felt impelled to embody, one which recognises both the TRANSFORMATIVE power of aware relating and the ‘reverse asymmetry’ or RECIPROCITY of relational transformation. Thus, speaking of his central life inclination Buber wrote:

“It was just a certain inclination to meet people. And as far as possible, just to change something if possible in the other, but also to let myself be changed by him. At any event, I had no resistance…put up no resistance to it. I began as a young man. I felt I had not the right to want to change another if I am not open to being changed by him…”

These wise words echo the old Talmudic saying that a truly wise human being is one who finds something to VALUE AND LEARN FROM in each and every other human being.

Aware relating is innately and intentionally educative and transformative, allowing the relation to teach and transform others - but only on the condition that one is open also to BEING TRANSFORMED by it, above all by being open to and learning from the uniqueness of the other – what makes them different or ‘special’, however ‘aware’ or ‘unaware’ they are.
          
People have their own individual feelings and world-views, values and principles, fears and desires, dilemmas and problems, hopes and potentials. ‘And’ they have relationships, more or less fulfilling.

The aim of a New Yoga of active and aware relating is to bring an end to this mere ‘and’ - with its implication that relationships and relating are merely an appendage or optional add-on to our lives.

Its aim is also to clearly distinguish RELATIONSHIPS from RELATING. Relationships are something we ‘have’ or don’t ‘have’. Relating is something we DO. So the fact that people may ‘have’ or ‘be in’ relationships, whether short- or long-term, is no guarantee that they actively RELATE to one another - let alone relate with AWARENESS.

Similarly, though people engage in all sort of relational activities with others – whether educational or economic, recreational or therapeutic, social or even spiritual – this is no guarantee that they actively relate to one another in doing so. RELATIONAL ACTIVITIES are no guarantee of ACTIVE RELATING.

Then again, people are aware of having all sorts of everyday PRACTICAL RELATIONSHIPS with others – whether within the workplace, family, privately or as public citizens of state and society. Yet this too is no guarantee they that engage in aware RELATIONAL PRACTICES – practices that are not means to an end – even spiritual ends – but instead transform relating itself into a spiritual END IN ITSELF.

For in the end, individuals can only sustain a deepened spiritual relationship to God through a transformation of the RELATIONAL PRACTICES through which they engage with others - practices aimed at drawing out both the DIVINE ESSENCE of the other and fulfilling the DIVINE QUALITIES and potentials at the core of their unique HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY.

The New Yoga as a ‘Yoga of Revolution' then, is a yoga of aware and active, meditative and embodied RELATIONAL PRACTICES.

It is also a wholly new understanding of ‘Advaita’ or ‘non-duality’ - not as some more spiritual TYPE of relation but as RELATIONALITY ITSELF.

In Buber’s terms, ‘spirit’ itself is no ‘thing’ but IS our relation with a divine Other or ‘Thou’ – with ‘God’. The principle of Advaitic philosophy is that we can come to experience this divine Other as a divine Self or ‘I’ within us, and within all beings – in every ‘Thou’.

The seeming dualities of ‘I and Thou’ or ‘Self and Other’ dissolve as soon as we recognise that BOTH the divine Self or ‘I’ AND its divine Other or Thou are but DUAL POLES of a SINGULAR, NON-DUAL RELATION.

Buber himself distinguished ‘spirit’ - which he understood as an inner relation to a Divine Other or Thou - from ‘soul’, which he saw as an inner relation to the world and other human beings. The ‘self’ that is ordinarily constituted by our everyday social relations is most often the ordinary ‘worldly’ or ‘social’ self consisting of what Jung called ‘ego’ and ‘persona’.

Yet what if our relation to the world and other people came itself to be centred in another self – that SELF constituted by a spiritual relation to the Divine? In this way the seeming duality of ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’, of the human being’s inner relation to the DIVINE on the one hand, and to the WORLD of individual human beings on the other, would dissolve. The two relations would THEMSELVES be experienced as DUAL aspects of a SINGULAR NON-DUAL relation – that relation whereby the divine itself MANIFESTS as every ‘thing’ and ‘being’ in this the world.

This singular relation between GOD and WORLD is one that can come to be experienced in and through the relation between ANY TWO HUMAN BEINGS. And any such relation is also a BI-PERSONAL FIELD which, by opening a portal BETWEEN two BEINGS, can open a portal TO other WORLDS. Hence the famous saying of Christ – “where TWO OR MORE are gathered…”

In the specific Advaitic tradition known as Kashmir Shaivism or ‘Tantrism’, the Divine as such is understood as a dynamic RELATION - between pure awareness on the one hand (SHIVA) and its pure power of manifestation and embodiment in lived experience (SHAKTI).

And in contrast to the simple linear succession of life stages or ‘Ashrama’ of orthodox Vedic Hinduism - from student to householder or ‘family man’, and thence to community elder and renunciant hermit – the TRIKA or ‘triadic’ school of Kashmir Tantrism embraces the ‘KAULA’ principle of the soul family or ‘KULA’.

The KULA is itself triadic in principle – for it unites a THREEFOLD SET OF RELATIONS - the INDIVIDUAL in his or her singular relation to the Divine, the Divine itself as a singular RELATION expressed in the ‘relational unit’ or couple (Yamala), and the wheel (Chakra) of couples that make up the soul GROUP or ‘Kula’ as such. This understanding gives new meaning to the words of Acharya Abhinavagupta:

“The essence of the TANTRAS, present in the right and left traditions, which has been unified in KAULA, lies in TRIKA.”

Edited by author 18-02-2008 12:37 PM
Sharing my thoughts on: MEDITATION AND CELEBRATION

Meditation and celebration must be the highest human expression of Divine Awareness.

Why?

Because wherever Divine Awareness finds expression in meditation, its overflowing feeling of bliss seems to find its expression in celebration.
 


     I, Lalla, entered the jasmine garden,
     where Shiva and Shakti were making love.

     I dissolved into them,
     and what is this
     to me, now?

     I seem to be here,
     but really I’m walking
     in the jasmine garden.



          With repeated meditation practice
          the expance of the visible universe
          with all its qualities dissolves
          to nothing, to where there is
          only health and a great joy.

          All teachings comes to this.



     Everything is new now for me.
     My mind is new, the moon, the sun.
     The whole world looks rinsed with water,
     washed in the rain of I AM THAT.

     Lalla leaps and dances inside the energy
     that creates and sustains the universe.

- Three poems by the ecstatic naked kashmiri saint Lalla



          You alone, O Lord, are the self of all.
          And everyone naturally loves his own self.
          Thus victorious becomes the one who knows
          That devotion is inherent in all.

- From Utpaladeva’s SHIVASTOTRAVALI


Celebration is an expression of insight and devotion.

Celebration is an expression of reverence and gratitude.

Celebration is an expression of joy and creativity.

Awareness-bliss (CHIDANANDA) is found in meditation and expressed through celebration.

Swami Lakshmanjoo compares Shiva’s motivation for creating this universe with that of a little child.

When you look at a little baby lying in the cradle you will see sudden outbursts of joy, resulting in wild movements of arms and legs and sounds of “gah” and “ah”. The inborn joy of the child is too much to hold in and it has to express itself through movement and sound.

Just like this it is for Shiva. The state of awareness-bliss is too much to keep inside and in a sudden outburst of joyful expression he creates this whole universe.

What a wonderful description of creation that Swami Lakshmanjoo makes :-)

It seems that our great misery is that we have lost touch with the feeling of this inherent awareness-bliss and that we believe that it can be found outside, in some temporary expression.

It seems that we have forgot the play (LILA) of Divine Creative Expression and lost ourselves in the unaware activities of give and get, and by doing this have entered a state of being which is being filled with pain and suffering.

It seems we have become like children that forget that they are playing together and have started to fight over their toys instead.

I want to be part of Shiva’s family (SHIVA KULA) and take part in the Divine Play of Creative Expression of Awareness.

I want to live a life of meditation and celebration. To live a life of awareness and creativity. And maybe - one day - I will also be able to re-enter the jasmine garden (the garden of Eden?) as Lalla did.


When you experience Divine Awareness
as being different from your self, celebrate it!

When you experience Divine Awareness
as being no different than your Self, celebrate it!

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA!

Love from Visarganath

A RESPONSE TO VISARGANATH’S ‘CALL FOR A NEW SHAIVISM’

Your Call is a wonderful one, expressing a heartfelt longing for community we all share – not one far away in Kashmir or California, but here in Europe.

Your Call was a timely one, coming at just that time when the foundation stones for its gradual realisation have begun to be publicly laid.

Your Call was also a voice from a place of spiritual isolation in the social wilderness of this world in which so many find themselves. Yet at the same time it affirmed in my work the seminal fruit of a lifetime’s solitary study and meditation in that same social wilderness. This is a work around which has revolved only a very small circle or KULA, powerfully enriched by the most private and profound forms of teaching and initiation possible - and yet so far lacking any form of public or communal teaching and sharing.

Your Call appreciates and affirms a basic truth behind my work – namely that a great tradition of knowledge can only be truly and lastingly CONSERVED through its own radical RENEWAL – not merely a new scholarly or didactic presentation of it, but a ‘reinterpretation’ that is RADICAL in the most literal sense – unveiling the ROOT insights and truths of that tradition in terms designed to do it the greatest service. Such conservation through renewal was the aim, mission, principle and accomplishment of Acharya Abhinavagupta. That is why to embody his spirit –to become ABHIVNAVACHARYA - is to DO what he did, and not only cherish and teach what he taught.

Your Call pointed out in addition some important historic parallels which I have hinted at myself, but that need to be understood at a deeper level than hitherto. For indeed, it is not any ‘person’ but the spirit – awareness - that they PERSONIFY which ‘reincarnates’. This was understood by Abinavagupta. You also suggested a parallel between Swami Lakshmanjoo and the spirit of Abhinavagupta’s own teacher on the one hand, and the spirit of my own work and that of Abhinavagupta himself on the other.

Your Call therefore, was precisely ONE I HAVE LONG BEEN WAITING FOR – constituting in and of itself a BRIDGE between the passing of the revered teacher you refer to - Lakshmanjoo - and the recognition of my work as the rebirth of the tradition he taught, and its essential spirit. Your Call beautifully summed up the essence of that spirit – its “extraordinary ordinariness” and the immense value it places on Freedom and on respect for Individuality (the nature and importance of which I seek to give fresh emphasis and importance to in The NEW Yoga). That said, you might be surprised, if not shocked, to know I have read very little of Lakshmanjoo’s work - for it sufficed for me to read his face and eyes. Instead my concentration has been on experiencing and articulating the wordless awareness revealed through the words of Abhinavagupta, and those who immediately preceded and followed him.

Your Call calls to awareness a key question however – why the spirit of Abhinava should find its reincarnation in a EUROPEAN personality rather than an Indian or Kashmiri one? I believe this is no accident. For were it not for the seeds of Indian thought that were planted and bore fruit in European soil, not least in German philosophy, The NEW Yoga would not exist. My task has been to gather and harvest this fruit so that its seeds can be returned, in turn, as a gift to the Indo-European motherland and to the whole world - not as a neo-colonial imposition but as a new THINKING which is also an explicit THANKING of its own source.

Your Call calls for a NEW Shaivism, but therefore implicitly of course also for a new SHAIVISM – in contrast to something of the nature of Rudolf Steiner’s profound and worthy but still unashamedly Eurocentric and neo-Christian interpretation of Indian and European theosophy. In contrast, The New Yoga is recognitive of the ‘Death of God’ - the Judaeo-Christian god-concept - heralded in European thought by Friedrich Nietzsche and deepened by Martin Heidegger’s meditations on a God “totally other” than the Judaeo-Christian one.

Your Call gave poignant expression too, to the painful absence you feel in Europe of the sort of Shaiva community and fellowship that can be enjoyed in places such as Kalifornia and Kashmir. Yet in doing so it not only gave expression to the yearning for ‘A New Shaiva Community’ or its futural potential in Europe itself. Instead, IN AND OF ITSELF, your call ANNOUNCES to the world the unalterable spiritual REALITY of that community – making us warmly and lovingly aware of its PRESENCE IN ABSENCE. For what is a ‘Shaiva Community’ old or new, actual or potential, if not a community founded on delight in the spiritual reality of a shared unity with The One Awareness that we call ‘Shiv(a)’? Thus the very hope and LONGING for a potential, as-yet unrealised Shaiva community expressed in your call already affirms its reality – the reality of our mutual BELONGING to and communion with Shiv. In this sense, your “hopes” are not only already shared but already realised.

Your Call has to do with ‘Shaivism’ and thus with Shiv. By ‘Shiv’ of course we mean ‘God’ – a word whose root meaning is one who ‘is called to’ and/or ‘calls’ to one. Understood as Shiv, ‘God’ is THE ONE AWARENESS that recalls us to itself and to its infinite potentialities; an awareness which also constantly calls upon us to respond to its Call - not just by calling ‘for’ the ‘realisation’ of those potentials but by CALLING FORTH THEIR REALITY.

Your Call - you can already be assured - does not express a mere lonely desire of your own. Indeed is not YOUR call alone, but essentially a call from SHIV – one that calls upon us ALL to freely fulfil and further a new and exciting CALLING. This Calling is the principled and many-sided Practice of Awareness that is ‘The New Yoga’ - a practice which alone can respond to the stifled calls of all who suffer in and from today’s callous and superficial world of commerce and global conflict.

Your Call is truly a NEW Call, for it is the very FIRST such Call of its nature to have been formulated - calling upon people to take heed of The NEW Yoga as a new Calling from Shiv. As such IT IS THE INITIATION OF WHAT IT SEEKS AND CALLS FOR. Yet it also calls upon you yourself to first of all fulfil a very specific ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’, that of transmitting or ‘emitting’ (VISARGA) the seminal Call itself, not just to the few around me but to the many – to all those you know of who might be opened - through reading it - to a discovery of The NEW Yoga of the sort you are enjoying and wish to share with others.

Your Call is one I see as a powerful WAKE-UP CALL for anyone with any association with Shaiva and Trika traditions, who, unlike you, has not yet discovered The NEW Yoga. Therefore I request your permission to place a version of it on the website under your name - one that you yourself can forward to others - and that, with your permission, we might even use portions of as a foreword to my books. Indeed, your Call along with this Response that it has called forth, could together constitute a wonderful new AGAMA for the website.

Your Call is one whose wording you may or may not feel called upon to meditate further for the purposes of a FAR WIDER DISSEMINATION OF IT. I will mail you soon a shortened and slightly amended ‘abstract’ of it - one which I would most appreciate your posting up as a REVIEW (with or without further elaboration or reformulation on your part) for the three first New Yoga books currently listed on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. (Note: I can be mailed directly by anyone through the ‘ASK AND LEARN MORE’ button on the site homepage. And anyone who wishes to make their e-mail address available to me can do so by activating the SUBSCRIBE button on the site's bulletin board itself.)

Your Call concludes with the following words: “I would like to be part of something where The Awareness Principle’ is the guiding thought, The NEW Yoga of Awareness its beating heart, and A NEW SHAIVISM THE BODY OF EXPRESSION.” It will be clear that you ARE already part of this ‘something’. So let me express my deeps thanks to you for your Call as a whole, one whose wording so beautifully embodies the third element of the TRIKA you outline in the quotation above, this being the very one you use to name your Call as a whole – the call for ‘A NEW SHAIVISM’.

As for 'A New Shaiva Community', this cannot, as you so rightly say, be reduced to a commercial transaction of Blessing and Pay. DIKSHA in The NEW Yoga certainly transcends all forms of symbolic blessing or even the simple transmission and absorption of grace through Guru - being simply too RICH to be valued in monetary terms.

Your Call aptly describes the necessary nature of any New Shaiva Community, so I leave the last words on this to you - for they are so true: “A community that will stay away from sectarian and dogmatic tradition, that dares to let the individual be free and responsible, where the Guru can be a friend and not a dictator, that will show the highest human expression of the Divine Awareness.”

THIS ‘Acharya’ or ‘Guru’ offers not only seminal wisdom for the world, but the simple word and hand and potentials of friendship to YOU, both as an individual and as ‘Emissionary Lord’.

Namaste 'VISARGANATH'!

with love,

ABHINAVACHARYA – ‘new preceptor of ABHINAVAGUPTA, renewer (Abhinava), and revealer of the hidden (Gupta)’

Namaste, dear Karinji, and thank you for your post :-)

 There seems to be some difficulties with The New Yoga e-mail adresses. (I have tried to write Acharyaji but my e-mails have been returned to me.) Would you care to send an e-mail to my adress so I can "re:" it? My e-mail is: 'visarganath@shaivisme.no' I think we will have some interesting things to share :-)

Love from Visarganath

Dear Visarganath,
 
Your 'Call' was a gift for which I thank you with all my heart.
 
It is inspiring in the way of refreshing my spirit at a time when I needed it.
 
I have been working with Peter Wilberg for many years. During that time quite a few people passed through who enjoyed picking at bits from the fruits of Peter's work but very few stayed. As Peter noted, many were glad to be given and receive a great deal from The New Yoga for themselves, but their interest in The New Yoga as such - its larger relevance beyond their personal world - was limited by inability to see its significance in and for that world.
 
This has been a pain in my heart - that after many years of painstaking work on publishing books and creating websites almost nobody seemed to be interested in The NEW Yoga, that nobody seemed to have the background experience, knowledge or capacity to feel any resonance with its larger truth and relevance.
 
Your 'Call' arrived at the time when I had just completely given up on a dream, which I have tried to make reality in the last two years - the dream of a Shaivist Ashram where Peter would teach and where people would meet to learn, meditate and celebrate, a temple to Shiva.
 
Your call reached me while the house that was supposed to be the material expression of the ashram, and still houses our shrine, needs, unfortunately to be sold, leaving us considering a move to Europe from the UK.
 
Your call for a New Shaivist Community touched me deeply because you describe "my" dream. Only, it is not at all "my" dream but a reality, an existence beyond the dreamer.
 
I will not let go of that reality, that existence because you truly and sincerely share it. That was the special gift you gave me.
 
You shared something of your spiritual situation and history, and your connection with the Universal Shaiva Fellowship.
 
I would be very interested to know more about you, your background and current life in Norway.
 
With Love from Karin

A call for a NEW Shaivism

The essence of the term ’shaivism’ is ’science of awareness’. This science is as old as humanity itself but has taken many forms and many names. In the 14th century it took the form of the holistic threefold science of awareness (Trika Shaivism) through the grace of Acharya Abhinavagupta. This tradition has lived relatively secluded in the valley of Kashmir for many centuries and its teachings was very much considered secret. It was not until modern times (in the 1970’s) that this teaching was given to the world through the grace of Swami Lakshmanjoo.

Swami Lakshmanjoo saw the limited future for this tradition in Kashmir because of the conflict between the hindu and muslim communities. So when an american came (John Hughes) and asked if Swamiji would teach him the Trika teachings, Swamiji answered ‘yes’ with the condition that John would tape record the lectures and try to publish them for the benefit of the world. This came to be and through the work of John and Denise Hughes and The Universal Shaiva Fellowship the Trika has now been made available to everyone.

I have been studying Trika Shaivism for some years now and have benefited from it greatly. Through the teachings of Swami Lakshmanjoo my heart has been filled with more peace, more freedom and more bliss. But there has also been a pain in my heart. Swami Lakshmanjoo is gone. The Universal Shaiva Fellowship is in Kashmir and California and here I am alone with no living master to guide me.

This does not mean that there does not exist people that offer themselves to do it. But I have found no one that walk the talk. What I find attractive in Trika Shaivism is its extraordinary ordinariness and its freedom and respect for the individual (that I suspect comes natural when you see and respect every particle in the universe as a manifestation of the Divine Awareness).

The so-called Trika teachers I have managed to find seems to be more in the field of ‘Pay Me-Bless You’-business.

But then I discovered Acharya Peter Wilbergs website and upon reading more and more of his articles and books my heart is filled with inspiration, joy, and hope. Acharya Wilberg has really updated this age old tradition of tantrism in a way that makes it totally applicable for a modern mind and a modern humanity. He speaks from a place where he not only express understanding if the Trika but also seems have such in-depth knowledge of it that he have made it his own and is able to express it in a creative way.

It seems that the seeds Swami Lakshmanjoo gave to the world have found fertile ground in Acharyaji’s heart. (I find it amusing that Swami Lakshmanjoo was considered by many of his devotees as the incarnation of Acharya Abhinavagupta’s master. How suiting then that the guiding light of the revived trika haivism expressed in ‘the Awareness Principle’ identifies so strongly with Abhinavagupta :-)

A NEW SHAIVA COMMUNITY?

I hope that there in time will develop a New Shaiva Community around Acharyaji that makes use of the teachings of The Awareness Principle and the practice of the The NEW Yoga. A community that will stay away from secterism and dogmatic tradition, that dares to let the individual be free and responsible, where the Guru can be a friend and not a dictator, that will show the highest human expression of Divine Awareness.

I would like to find a NEW path for this suffering humanity (which includes myself) which is filled with meditation and celebration, not anger and anxiety.

I would like SHAIVAS to be people living with a strong awareness, not with a dried up tradition.

I would like to be in communion with a COMMUNITY where people live with love andawareness, not with morals and dogma.

I would like to be part of something where The Awareness Principle is the guiding thought, The NEW Yoga of Awareness its beating heart, and a NEW Shaivism the body of expression.

Does anyone share my hopes?

Love from Visarganath

Namaste Visarganath! My thanks to you for writing, and for you kind salutations and words of appreciation.

Your post regarding the site was most timely, since it arrived just as we were in the last stages of redesigning it – allowing me to post this message to you as the very first on the new site.

As you will see, this has a number of new elements, including a bookshop, quotations page, further essays, some more galleries, a page on Puja which will be developed much further and also the first video talk of very many – but being the first please excuse its technical limitations and the background noise!

Last but not least there is ‘ASK AND LEARN’– a new and important service I offer, dedicated to providing answers to questions of any sort from all serious correspondents and students, thereby aiding their learning. It is my wish that this service will also serve to lay the basis for direct encounter, teaching and initiation – which I have always so far conducted on an intimate, long-term and one-to-one basis.

“Questioning is the piety of thinking.” Martin Heidegger

Given the devout and studious nature of your own interest in Trika Tantrism and The New Yoga, together with your familiarity with other Shaiva teachings, any questions you yourself might submit would be welcomed – both as a valuable initiation of this service and thus also as a service in itself.

In the service of what? You will have gathered from your reading that I see it of the utmost importance to re-initiate the Trika Tantric tradition through an incisive re-interpretation of it – one which serves to decisively broaden, deepen, clarify and sharpen its relevance to all aspects of life and society in today’s world.

All thanks to that One Awareness that is both God and Guru Supreme, ceaselessly seeding new possibilities and bringing them to fruition through us.

with love,

Peter

Namaste, Acharyaji, and greetings from Norway :-)

I was very pleased to discover your website just before christmas and have been studying your web-material since then. I have been studying trika shaivisme through the Universal Shaiva Fellowships webpages for some years now and did not expect to find a living acharya teaching the Trika so close to home.

I hope we will meet some time in the future and that I will benefit from your deep insights and practical wisdom.

Love from Visarganath

Edited by author 24-01-2008 06:02 AM
                           WHAT IS ‘YOGA’?

              Global Capitalism and the Politics of Awareness
 
‘Yoga’ today is most generally taken to be – and practiced as - a system of physical stretching and bending exercises for ‘health’ and ‘well-being’ (‘Hatha Yoga’) based on a set of bodily postures or ‘Asanas’. This “phoney yoga” of stretching and bending is a 20th century invention that could be called ‘American yoga’. As documented by Linda Sparrowe, it was introduced to America In 1947 by Theos Bernard, author of one of the first guidebooks to Yoga Asanas and popularised in the 1950’s. As a result:

“By 1961, thanks to the power of television, Americans everywhere were learning a non-religious, decidedly unspiritual form of yoga exercise.”

This is the reason why ‘yoga’ today (American yoga) is not so much the noble continuation of an ancient tradition of religious and spiritual wisdom but a global New Age industry – a commercial medium for the marketing of yoga mats and straps, belts and bolsters, cushions and clothing, pillows and props, books and CDs, instructional videos and personal fitness regimes. Though American yoga drew from ‘Hatha Yoga’ (meaning ‘violent’ or ‘forced’ yoga), the latter was a relatively late and minor form of yoga. Though it had much deeper historical roots, it did not regard itself as ‘yoga for beginners’ but rather as suitable only for the most advanced practitioners of non-physical forms of spiritual yoga practice and meditation. Though yoga teachers pay lip service to the ‘Bible’ of classical yoga – ‘The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ – this makes no reference to Hatha Yoga as one of the branches of yoga, nor does it describe systems of yoga postures or Asanas. Indeed the only basic posture it refers to is simply ‘sitting comfortably’, preferably with ‘the spine erect’.

What passes as ‘Yoga’ today then, has become little more than a global commercial industry – a respectable bourgeois ‘opium’ for the middle classes of East and West. The NEW Yoga, the Yoga of Awareness is no part of this global industry. Its purpose is not to spiritually compensate for or ameliorate the stresses of life under global capitalism but instead to subvert and overturn the ignorant and narrow ‘consciousness’ underlying it – to bring about a global revolution in awareness and the dawning of a deepened and expanded awareness, not through war or violence but through awareness itself.

The NEW Yoga recognises awareness as such as the biggest single threat to global capitalism. For this is a system which relies for its survival on ensuring that individuals are kept so busy doing – selling their time to employers to survive - that they have no time to become more aware of what they are doing, who for and why. The result is a world in which economic wealth is paid for through time poverty, attained by economically exploiting the labour time of others, and used to pursue ever-new ways of squandering time or making more money. Consequently, people feel that they either have ‘no time’ or - whether super-rich or poor and unemployed - do not know what to ‘do’ with the time they have except squander it, reinforcing the capitalist work ethic that ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’. Even those in so-called ‘employment’ suffer from the hidden unemployment of their individual creative potentials, which find expression at best, only as hobbies or part-time activities.

Karl Marx is often quoted as declaring that individuals’ awareness is constricted by their “social being” - their economic status in class society. For Marx this was not an eternal truth but a temporary condition associated with class societies, and the ruthless exploitation of labour time. Therefore the converse truth also holds – individuals can save the world from the stranglehold of class society in its final stage – global capitalism – only by expanding their awareness. This means resisting all pressures which prevent them taking time to be aware - thus expanding their awareness and freeing it from bondage to the narrow worlds of wage slavery on the one hand, and consumerism on the other.

The New Yoga of Awareness is therefore a fundamentally subversive and revolutionary yoga. Its aim is nothing less than a global revolution in awareness, one that fulfils John Buchan’s dream of a “4-dimensional Communism” - one that recognises that the capitalist degradation of human life begins with the exploitation and degradation of time. The notion of 4-dimensional Communism is one that, like Marx himself, recognises the 4th dimension – time - as the frontline in the struggle for a new world. This is a world that can come about only by educating and empowering individuals - in whatever personal, relational, institutional, corporate or political contexts they live and work in – to expand, deepen and enrich the awareness they bring to themselves and others, to their work and to the world.

Yet time itself is not just an extra ‘4th’ dimension pinned onto the three dimensions of space that we know. Time is the very space of awareness, more or less expanded or contracted, that we feel in the moment. That is why, when we speak of having ‘no space’ or ‘no time’ for something or someone, or of wanting more ‘space’ or ‘time’ for ourselves or others, we mean the same thing. That is also why The New Yoga of Awareness is not about stretching our bodies in space or holding them in particular positions for long times. Instead is about stretching the time-space of our awareness.

This is all the more important today because the ever more plain and obvious fact is that humanity is fast running out of time - and that if it is to survive much longer, we can no longer afford to maintain a society in which ‘yoga’ and ‘meditation’ are a middle class ‘spiritual’ luxury misused to compensate for the ‘stresses’ of global capitalism - rather than to overcome its entire culture of busy-ness, time exploitation and time poverty. Awareness is not a luxury that we can only afford to give ourselves at special times through commercial, profit-driven classes in ‘yoga’ or ‘meditation’. For the true purpose of practicing yogic meditation is to teach us to be more aware at all times - and to identify at all times with awareness as such – with ‘pure’ or ‘transcendental’ awareness. Pure or transcendental awareness is a spacious awareness - for just as space both embraces and transcends every thing we perceive within it, so does pure awareness embrace and transcend all ‘contents’ of consciousness, all that we are merely aware of within it. Indeed space as such is nothing merely physical but is an infinite spatial field of awareness, an awareness that, like space, is not private property, yours or mine, but the very essence of the divine.

What we ordinarily call ‘consciousness’ is a purely focal awareness, always focused on one thing or another. Through it, our ‘being in time’ is reduced to ‘going from one thing to another’ and ‘doing one thing after another’ – in other words passing from one focus of awareness to another without any meditative intervals or ‘intermezzos’ in which to regather ourselves, recollect events in the context of our lives as a whole and allow new reflections and insights to arise from our awareness – thus allowing us to decide, with awareness, what we do next and how. Without giving ourselves these time intervals in which to simple abide in awareness, the space of our awareness is contracted to a single focus and we lose a sense of the expansive field of awareness in which we dwell. We become like dwellers in a spacious ocean of awareness - dwellers so used to just focussing their awareness on one thing or another within that ocean that they have ceased to be aware of the ocean as such – no longer seeing it, sensing it or even surmising its existence.

A basic principle of The New Yoga as that we all dwell in pure awareness as we dwell in space itself. We can identify with pure awareness by identifying with the space around and within our bodies, around and within things and around and within our thoughts and feelings. Learning to identify with space opens up for us a larger, spacious field of awareness. This “free awareness field” (Jane Roberts) is what alone can prevent us falling into bondage to any particular focus of awareness –stopping it from preoccupying or filling up our minds, weighing down our feelings, wearing down our bodies, and unwillingly dominating our lives.

We are as much aware of our self as a whole – our soul – as we are aware of our body as a whole, both from within and as a part of the entire space around it. The moment a person’s AWARENESS of the inner and outer spaces of their body and mind is replaced by identification with their current bodily and mental states, they become unfree – attached to those states rather than freed by the larger field of those spaces. The moment a person loses awareness of the body as a whole – including both the spaces within and around it - their awareness of their self as a whole is contracted too. Because of this contraction, they can only relate to themselves, other people and the world from a small part of themselves and in a purely reactive and unaware way.

The NEW Yoga is designed to cultivate not only a new type of aware experiencing, but through it, aware action – action of the sort that alone can save us from the wholly unaware and reactive actions of world politicians. In the political movements of the 1960’s the word ‘awareness’ was associated with action designed to raise people’s ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’ of uncomfortable political, economic and ecological facts and events - thereby confronting them with the need for worldwide revolution. In The New Yoga, the political importance of the term ‘awareness’ does not simply lie only in worldly action designed to ‘raise’ awareness of something, however important. Instead it has to do with attaining the freedom and power of truly aware action in the world - action that comes from an awareness free of identification with the turmoil of the world.
 
“In robbing us of time, today’s culture also robs us of dignity. But dignity has no great value in a culture devoted to progress, power and productivity. Since time is money in modern culture, few of us can afford dignity.”

Alexander Lowen, in 'Bioenergetics'

Today’s world faces a grave economic, ecological, cultural crisis – indeed a global civilisational crisis. The word ‘crisis’ means a ‘turning point’ in time. The basic need expressed in this crisis however, is to find a way of ‘being-in-time’ and ‘being-in-the-world’ that is no longer dominated by ‘busy-ness’ – by doing – and aimed only at having what we need to survive, or more. The new relation to time that human beings so desperately need at this time is one in which they freely allow themselves more time, not just to produce or consume, work or play – but be aware. For to truly ‘be’ is to be aware. Just as to truly ‘meditate’ is simply to take time to be aware, and to abide in the inner stillness and silence of pure awareness as such. Only out of this ability to be aware and to abide in awareness can come better decisions and deeper more aware solutions to world problems. Only by taking time to be aware and to abide in meditative awareness can people learn to be and relate to others in a more meditative and aware way – thus transforming human relations. And only through meditative awareness can important decisions, whether in personal life, business, management or government be properly pre-meditated, taken with full awareness of all there is to be aware of. All mismanagement, mistreatment and misgovernment of others stem from the self-defeating rush of busy-ness, from denying oneself and others time to fully meditate decisions in full awareness of all the facts. Paradoxically however, it is our very culture of speed and busy-ness - and the value it places on ‘quick thinking’ that prevents deep thinking and ends up endlessly delaying aware and effective decisions and actions.

Global capitalism demands that people be kept busy and active in a wholly unaware way - forcing them to sell their labour time as a commodity to the highest corporate bidder in order to produce and purchase ever-more profitable but mind-numbing technological products and services. The global economic culture of ‘work’ is effectively still a system of enforced economic conscription or ‘wage slavery’ - serving nothing but the ruthless exploitation of both human beings and nature. Only a revolution in awareness can prevent capitalism from destroying the earth. Yet this is revolution that cannot be achieved through political means alone - let alone through war or violence - but only through raising humankind to a higher level of awareness. That is why the military, economic and ecological crisis and devastation wrought by global capitalism tells us one thing alone – IT IS HIGH TIME FOR HUMANITY TO BE AWARE. Yet how is this awareness to be attained?

 “Only a god can save us now.” Martin Heidegger

The god that Heidegger refers to here is one he describes as “totally other” than the Christian God, and transcending all types of “theism”. The birth of The NEW Yoga marks the dawning of that ‘god’ – a ‘god’ which is not a supreme being ‘with’ awareness but IS awareness. For The NEW Yoga is the Yoga of Awareness in another sense too - recognising awareness as the ultimate reality behind all things and thoughts, all things and all worlds - for it is the very condition for our experience of any thing or thought, self or being, world or universe whatsoever. Awareness is not the private property of things or bodies, persons or beings. This is the basic myth born of property- and class-based societies, a myth unquestioned by the fundamentalist dogmas of both secular science and all those religions which see ‘God’ as an ultimate or supreme being - rather than as an ultimate, supreme or divine awareness. Only in particular Hindu yogic traditions do we find a recognition of that ‘God’ which is not a supreme being ‘with’ awareness but IS awareness, infinite and unbounded. ‘Yoga’ means to yoke, conjoin or unite.

The NEW Yoga is not a secular, commerc