Acharya Peter Wilberg's Bulletin

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