Acharya Peter Wilberg's Bulletin

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!