TERMS STARTING WITH
awareness: in biological psychology, awareness comprises a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. Awareness does not necessarily imply understanding, just an ability to be conscious of, feel or perceive.
awareness: Sensitivity to supernatural/ paranormal forces, often experienced as unusually acute perceptions and feelings about things most people cannot see.
Awareness ::: A sense of presence. A sense of an observer. This is the root quality that determines a self.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Phenomenological analyses, partly summarized in the Logische Untersuchungen, had led Husserl to the view that material (generic and specific) as well as logically formal universals or essences are themselves observable, though non-individual, objects. Further analyses showed that awareness of an essence as itself presented might be based on either a clear experiencing or a clear phantasying (fictive experiencing) of an example. In either case, the evidence of the essence or eidos involves evidence of some example as ideally possible but not as actual. Consequently, a science like pure logic, whose theme includes nothing but essences and essential possibilities, -- in Husserl's later terminology, an eidetic science -- involves no assertion of actual existence. Husserl used these views to redefine phenomenology itself. The latter was now conceived explicitly as the eidetic science of the material essences exemplified in subjective processes, qua pure possibilities, and was accordingly said to be pure also in the way pure logic is pure. A large proportion of the emendations in the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen serve to clarify this freedom of phenomenology from all presuppositions of actual individual existence -- particularly, psychic existence.
2. Act involving the awareness of the bare presence of an object to consciousness, as opposed to any act which involves judgment about such an object. -- A.C.B.
4) Chayah (&
5. pristine cognition: look with the lamp of primordial awareness (rig pa ye shes sgron me ltos)
"A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
“A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos;—this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
Absorption Concentration ::: In concentration meditation, this refers to the various states found in the samatha jhanas whereby the locus of focus narrows solely on the object of observation. Attainment of absorption concentration is causally preceded by access concentration which is itself preceded by the monkey mind state of awareness associated with mundane consciousness.
Access Concentration ::: In concentration meditation, this refers to the state preceding access to the samatha jhanas whereby the locus of focus has narrowed considerably from the monkey mind state of awareness associated with mundane consciousness and has started to settle rather effortlessly on the object of concentration. Precedes access to absorption concentration.
AdarsajNAna. [alt. mahAdarsajNAna] (T. me long lta bu'i ye shes; C. dayuanjing zhi; J. daienkyochi; K. taewon'gyong chi 大圓鏡智). In Sanskrit, "mirrorlike wisdom" or "great perfect mirror wisdom"; one of the five types of wisdom (PANCAJNANA) exclusive to a buddha according to the YOGACARA and tantric schools, along with the wisdom of equality (SAMATAJNANA), the wisdom of discriminating awareness (PRATYAVEKsAnAJNANA), the wisdom that one has accomplished what was to be done (KṚTYANUstHANAJNANA), and the wisdom of the nature of the DHARMADHATU (DHARMADHATUSVABHAVAJNANA). This specific type of wisdom is a transformation of the eighth consciousness, the ALAYAVIJNANA, in which the perfect interfusion between all things is seen as if reflected in a great mirror.
adj. 1. Rousing (something) or being aroused, as if from sleep. n. awakenings. 2. Recognitions, realizations, or coming into awareness of things.
advayajNAna. (T. gnyis su med pa'i ye shes; C. bu'erzhi; J. funichi; K. puriji 不二智). In Sanskrit, "nondual knowledge"; referring to knowledge that has transcended the subject-object bifurcation that governs all conventional states of sensory consciousness, engendering a distinctive type of awareness that is able to remain conscious without any longer requiring an object of consciousness. See also WU'AIXING.
advaya. (T. gnyis su med pa; C. bu'er; J. funi; K. puri 不二). In Sanskrit, "nonduality"; one of the common synonyms for the highest teachings of Buddhism and one of the foundational principles of the MAHAYANA presentation of doctrine. Nonduality refers to the definitive awareness achieved through enlightenment, which transcends all of the conventional dichotomies into which compounded existence is divided (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.). Most specifically, nondual knowledge (ADVAYAJNANA) transcends the subject-object bifurcation that governs all conventional states of consciousness and engenders a distinctive type of awareness that no longer requires an object of consciousness. See also WU'AIXING.
Ahu (Avestan) [from the verbal root ah consciousness of life; cf Sanskrit asu] Sometimes Ahum, Akhum. The most aware and therefore best prepared to rule in the physical world. Fravashi, on the other hand, is least aware of the material world and yet is the source of awareness and closest to the source of absolute Being. According to later Pahlavi writings Ahu’s task is to establish order in the human physical body; therefore it can be considered the ruler in the physical world.
a) In Epistemology: The subject of knowledge is the individual knower considered either as a pure ego (see Ego, Pure), a transcendental ego (see Ego, Transcendental) or an act of awareness. (See Awareness).
Ain Soph Aur ::: Also transliterated as "Ein Sof Ohr". A further characterization of the Ain Soph – the Limitless Potentiality of the Ain – that attempts to put language around the sense of Light and Presence that ultimately is characterized by the emergence of Kether ("Source Consciousness"): the crystallization of the root of experiential awareness. Refers to one of the Veils of Negative Existence.
AkAsAnantyAyatana. (P. AkAsAnaNcAyatana; T. nam mkha' mtha' yas skye mched; C. kong wubian chu; J. kumuhenjo; K. kong mubyon ch'o 空無邊處). In Sanskrit, "sphere of infinite space"; the first and lowest (in ascending order) of the four levels of the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) and the first of the four immaterial absorptions (DHYANA). It is a realm of rebirth as well as a meditative state that is entirely immaterial (viz., there is no physical [RuPA] component to existence) in which the mind comes to an awareness of unlimited pervasive space (AKAsA) without the existence of material objects. Beings reborn in this realm are thought to live as long as forty thousand eons (KALPAS). However, as a state of being that is still subject to rebirth, even the realm of infinite space remains part of SAMSARA. Like the other levels of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) and the immaterial realm, one is reborn in this state by achieving the specific level of meditative absorption of that state in the previous lifetime. One of the most famous and influential expositions on the subject of these immaterial states comes from the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA, written in the fifth century. Although there are numerous accounts of Buddhist meditators achieving immaterial states of SAMADHI, they are also used polemically in Buddhist literature to describe the attainments of non-Buddhist yogins, who mistakenly identify these exalted states within saMsAra as states of permanent liberation from rebirth. See also DHYANASAMAPATTI; DHYANOPAPATTI.
akopya. (P. akuppa; T. mi 'khrugs pa; C. budong; J. fudo; K. pudong 不動). In Sanskrit, "imperturbable" or "unshakable"; used often in mainstream Buddhist materials in reference to the "imperturbable" liberation of mind (CETOVIMUKTI) that derives from mastering any of the four meditative absorptions (P. JHANA; S. DHYANA). The term is also deployed in treatments of mastery of the "adept path" (AsAIKsAMARGA) of the ARHAT: once the imminent arhat realizes the knowledge of the cessation (KsAYAJNANA) of the afflictions (KLEsA), and becomes imperturbable in that experience, the "knowledge of nonproduction" (ANUTPADAJNANA) arises-viz., the awareness that the klesas, once eradicated, will never arise again.
Alaya ::: Also called "Storehouse Consciousness". In Buddhist philosophy this is a primordial state of awareness and potentiality from which all other seeds of causality and karma flow. It has been described as "the last barrier to complete enlightenment" and hence, if we are speaking Kabbalistically, is associated with the path between Kether and the Veils of Negative Existence.
Al-Khaliq ::: The ONE Absolute Creator! The One who brings individuals into the existence from nothingness, with His Names! Everything al-Khaliq creates has a purpose to fulfill, and according to this unique purpose, possesses a natural predisposition and character. Hence it has been said: “characterize yourselves with the character of Allah” (Tahallaku biakhlakillah) to mean: Live in accordance with the awareness that you are comprised of the structural qualities of the Names of Allah!
"All existence, – as the mind and sense know existence – is manifestation of an Eternal and Infinite which is to the mind and sense unknowable but not unknowable to its own self-awareness.” The Hour of God
Al-Mu’min ::: The One who enables the awareness that He, by respect of His Names, is beyond what is perceived. This awareness reflects upon us as ‘faith’ (iman). All believers, including Rasuls and angels, have their faith rested upon this awareness, which frees the mind from the enslavement of illusion. While illusion can deter the mind, which uses comparison to operate, it becomes powerless and ineffective in the sight of faith.
altered states of awareness: any state of awareness which differs from normal waking awareness; examples include meditation, sleep, drug states and psychosis.
Amal Sufi practice where the bodily awareness is being erased step by step. This is one of the more advanced practices where the sufi tries to remove the awareness of the ego in order to sink into a condition of higher or universal awareness
Amica: The Aquarian Mystical Institute of Color Awareness. (Cf. color awareness.)
Amrita ::: The nectar of immortality. In various traditions, especially Buddhist, there is an alchemical process that the mind and body engage in to clarify awareness and to transform perceptions of reality and encourage realization. This refers to the result of such practices. Amrita is not just a metaphor though: there are shifts in the mind-body complex that occur through practices that unlock and allow certain energies to flow and certain patterning to fall away.
ana ::: intelligence; "the consciousness which holds an image of things before it as an object with which it has to enter into relations and to possess by apprehension and a combined analytic and synthetic cognition"; a subordinate operation of vijñana which "by its power of projecting, confronting, apprehending knowledge" is the "parent of that awareness by distinction which is the process of the Mind". praj ñanamaya anamaya vij ñana
anandabodha ::: awareness of bliss. anandabodha
anandaloka (anandaloka; ananda-loka; ananda loka) ::: the world anandaloka (loka) of the supreme bliss (ananda) of saccidananda, the plane of "the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness", where all "consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite"; there is also "a repetition of the Ananda plane in each lower world of consciousness", but "in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter, held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities".
anandamaya asat (anandamay asat) ::: non-being (asat) conceived as anandamaya "some inexpressible Beatitude [ananda] . . . into which even the notion of self-existence seems to be swallowed up"; "a pure causeless eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone", experienced when the mind, in approaching saccidananda, dwells exclusively "on the aspect of delight, Ananda, and existence [sat] and consciousness [cit] then seem to disappear into a bliss without basis of self-possessing awareness or constituent being".
AnApAnasatisutta. (S. AnApAnasmṛtisutra; T. Dbugs rngub pa dang 'byung ba dran pa'i mdo; C. Annabannanian; J. Annahannanen; K. Annabannanyom 安那般那念). In PAli, "The Mindfulness of Breathing Discourse," the 118th sutta (SuTRA) in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension, as titled above, appears in the Chinese translation of the SAMYUKTAGAMA). In this discourse, the Buddha outlines a type of meditation where the meditator remains mindful of the process of breathing in and breathing out (P. AnApAnasati; S. ANAPANASMṚTI). The meditator begins by developing an awareness of the physical processes involved in breathing, such as whether the breath is long or short; remaining cognizant of either the entire body during breathing or the entire process of breathing (as the commentaries typically interpret it), it culminates in breathing while consciously striving to calm the body. The meditator then follows the in- and out-breaths while developing salutary affective states, such as rapture (P. pīti, S. PRĪTI) and ease (SUKHA). The penultimate step is breathing while actively seeking to focus and liberate the mind. The meditation culminates in mindfulness of the breath while focusing on the awareness of the mental qualities of impermanence, cessation, and relinquishment. Through this progressive development, mindfulness of breathing thus leads from physical and mental calm, to direct insight into the value of nonattachment. The discourse ends with a treatment of the seven aspects of awakening (P. bojjhanga; S. BODHYAnGA) with regard to the four foundations of mindfulness (P. satipaṫṫhAna; S. SMṚTYUPASTHANA) of the physical body, physical sensations, state of mind, and mental qualities. See also ANBAN SHOUYI JING.
AnApAnasmṛti. (P. AnApAnasati; T. dbugs rngub pa dang 'byung ba dran pa; C. shuxi guan/annabannanian; J. susokukan/annahannanen; K. susik kwan/annabannanyom 數息觀/安那般那念). In Sanskrit, lit. "mindfulness (SMṚTI) of inhalation (Ana = prAna) and exhalation (apAna)," or simply, "mindfulness of breathing"; referring to one of the oldest and most basic meditative techniques found in Buddhism. The practice requires focusing on the breath as it moves into and out of the body during inhalation and exhalation, some say through attention to the sensation of the movement of breath at the tip of the nose, others say through attention to the rise and fall of the diaphragm. This passive following of the breath leads to physical and mental calm, which allows the meditator to focus on the generic aspect of breath: viz., the fact that the constant ebb and flow of the breath is emblematic of impermanence (ANITYA). This awareness may then lead to nonattachment and insight. The PAli ANAPANASATISUTTA provides a detailed description of the processes involved in developing this type of meditation. Unlike many of the other forty topics of meditation (KAMMAttHANA) in PAli Buddhism, which are said to suit specific types of personalities or as antidotes to specific negative tendencies, AnApAnasmṛti is claimed to be suitable for all, which may account for its continued popularity. Elsewhere, it is said to be a suitable object of meditation for those given to excessive thought. Some form of this practice is found in nearly every Buddhist tradition. There are various renderings of the term using Chinese Sinographs; although shuxi guan is one of the most common translations, there are others (e.g., chixi guan), as well as different ways of transcribing the Sanskrit into Chinese (e.g., anabona nian).
Anatta ::: "No-Self". One of the Three Characteristics. Refers to the fact that the root of experiential awareness is fundamentally devoid of self-identity entirely. Non-Experience lies at the root of experience.
ana (vijnana; vijnanam; vijnan) ::: "the large embracing consciousness . . . which takes into itself all truth and idea and object of knowledge and sees them at once in their essence, totality and parts or aspects", the "comprehensive consciousness" which is one of the four functions of active consciousness (see ajñanam), a mode of awareness that is "the original, spontaneous, true and complete view" of existence and "of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the comprehensive intellect"; the faculty or plane of consciousness above buddhi or intellect, also called ideality, gnosis or supermind (although these are distinguished in the last period of the Record of Yoga as explained under the individual terms), whose instruments of knowledge and power form the vijñana catus.t.aya; the vijñana catus.t.aya itself; the psychological principle or degree of consciousness that is the basis of maharloka, the "World of the Vastness" that links the worlds of the transcendent existence, consciousness and bliss of saccidananda to the lower triloka of mind, life and matter, being itself usually considered the lowest plane of the parardha or higher hemisphere of existence. Vijñana is "the knowledge of the One and the Many, by which the Many are seen in the terms of the One, in the infinite unifying Truth, Right, Vast [satyam r.taṁ br.hat] of the divine existence". vij ñana ana ananda
And these are in fact always acting upon our subliminal selves unknown to our vvaking mind and with considerable effect on our life and nature. The physical mind is only a little part of us and there is much more considerable range of our being in which the presence, infiuence and powers of the other planes are active upon us and help to shape our external being and its activities. The awakening of the psychical consciousness enables us fb become aware of these powers, presences and influences in and around us ; and while in the impure or yet ignorant and imperfect mind this unveiled contact has its dangers, it enables us too, if lightly used and directed, to be no longer their subject but their master and to coroe into conscious and seJf-confroJled possession of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes, this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications to our inner thought and conscious being and a capacity of reaction upon them there, partly ako through many kinds of symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the different psychical senses. But also
Anthroposophy: An occult and mystic philosophical movement, based on the teachings of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, aiming at man’s progressive liberation from the chains of egoism and at the development of his dormant faculties and higher capacities for knowledge and enlightenment, to enable him to perceive and respond to “subtler manifestations of Nature.” Anthroposophists place great emphasis, among other things, on the occult significance of colors and their relations to human emotions (cf. color awareness).
anupassanA. (S. ANUPAsYANA). In PAli, "contemplation." A term applied to several sets of meditation practices, most notably as enumerated under the category of the four "foundations of mindfulness" (P. satipatthAna; S. SMṚTYUPASTHANA). The first foundation is called "contemplation of the body" (kAyAnupassanA, S. KAYANUPAsYANA) and comprises fourteen practices, which include mindfulness of breathing (P. AnApAnasati, S. ANAPANASMṚTI), mindfulness of postures or deportments (P., iriyApatha, S. ĪRYAPATHA), full awareness of bodily actions, contemplation of bodily impurities, contemplation of the four physical elements (DHATU, MAHABHuTA), and nine cemetery meditations (P. asubhabhAvanA, S. AsUBHABHAVANA). The second foundation is called "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanAnupassanA, S. vedanAnupasyanA) and consists of one practice: mindfulness of physical sensations (VEDANA) as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The third foundation is called "contemplation of mind" (P. cittAnupassanA, S. cittAnupasyanA) and consists of one practice: mindfulness of one's general state of mind (CITTA), e.g. as calm or distracted, elated or depressed, etc. The fourth foundation is "contemplation of mind-objects" (P. dhammAnupassanA, S. dharmAnupasyanA) and includes five meditations on specific categories of factors (P. dhamma, S. DHARMA), namely: the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA), the five aggregates (SKANDHA), the six sense bases and six sense objects (AYATANA), the seven enlightenment factors (BODHYAnGA), and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. In the PAli SATIPAttHANASUTTA, the four anupassanAs are extolled as the one path leading to the realization of nibbAna (NIRVAnA). Another common set of anupassanAs found in the PAli tradition includes three members: (1) contemplation of impermanence (aniccAnupassanA), (2) contemplation of suffering (dukkhAnupassanA), and (3) contemplation of nonself (anattAnupassanA). In the PAtISAMBHIDAMAGGA, this list is expanded to ten with the addition of (4) contemplation of nirvAna (nibbAnAnupassanA), (5) contemplation of dispassion (virAgAnupassanA), (6) contemplation of cessation (nirodhAnupassanA), (7) contemplation of renunciation (patinissaggAnupassanA), (8) contemplation of signlessness (animittAnupassanA), (9) contemplation of desirelessness (appanihitAnupassanA), and (10) contemplation of emptiness (suNNatAnupassanA).
A patient in a coenestopathic state has a localized distortion of body awareness.
Apperception Perception involving self-consciousness; cognition through the relating of new ideas to familiar ideas. Used by Leibniz to denote a stage higher or more subtle than perception. The impressions received through perception are apprehended by the mind and are related to other impressions which the memory holds, so that complex ideas are formed. Apperception may be called perception accompanied by awareness and an interpretative power. In contrast to the theory that the higher faculties of mind are built up synthetically from the lower, Leibniz’s views support the theory that the intuitive or original inner powers are primary. “Nascent apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially developed in the third order of Elementals . . . [is] succeeded by the objective kingdom of minerals, in which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-develop only in the plants”; and “that which is meant by ‘animals,’ in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness or of apperception, that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic monera. . . . Neither plant nor animal, but an existence between the two” (SD 1:454-5&n; cf ET 505 3rd & rev ed ).
Apprehension: (ad + prehendere: to seize) 1. Act involving the bare awareness of the presence of an object to consciousness; the general relation of subject to object as inclusive of the more special forms, such as perceiving or remembering, which the relation may take.
Aquarian Epoch: The era of the world which, according to occult teachings, began in March 1948, when the sun entered the constellation of Aquarius and the previous era, called the Piscean Epoch, ended. The Aquarian Epoch is to last 2,000 years. Many esoteric societies and organizations have therefore names containing the word Aquarian, e.g., the Aquarian Order, the Aquarian Mission, the Aquarian Mystical Institute of Color Awareness, etc.
arayan.abodha (Narayanabodha; Narayana bodha) ::: awareness of the Narayan.a-aspect of Kr.s.n.a.N Narayanadarsana
Ar-Rahim ::: Ar-Rahim is the Name that brings the infinite qualities of ar-Rahman into engendered existence. In this sense, it is the ‘observation’of the potential. Ar-Rahim observes itself through the forms of existence, by guiding the conscious beings to the awareness that their lives and their essential reality are comprised of and governed by the Names.
Artistic movement which maintains that there exists, and seeks access to, a "real" world that lies behind the artificial world of ordinary objects given in normal awareness. Argues that what is found on the conscious level is an arbitrary construct of mind, determined by habit and custom, and that the function of art is to recover and report the world as originally experienced and felt. Seeks to disintegrate the clear logical life of intellect, so as to search for its materials on the subconscious level, and discover there the true and primitive meanings that things have for us prior to the forms that we impose on them. -- I.J.
AryAstAngamArga. (P. ariyAtthangikamagga; T. 'phags lam yan lag brgyad; C. bazhengdao; J. hasshodo; K. p'alchongdo 八正道). In Sanskrit, "noble eightfold path"; the path (MARGA) that brings an end to the causes of suffering (DUḤKHA); the fourth of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvAry AryasatyAni). This formulation of the Buddhist path to enlightenment appears in what is regarded as the Buddha's first sermon after his enlightenment, the "Setting Forth the Wheel of Dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA), in which he sets forth a middle way (MADHYAMAPRATIPAD) between the extremes of asceticism and sensual indulgence. That middle way, he says, is the eightfold path, which, like the four truths, he calls "noble" (ARYA); the term is therefore commonly rendered as "noble eightfold path." However, as in the case of the four noble truths, what is noble is not the path but those who follow it, so the compound might be more accurately translated as "eightfold path of the [spiritually] noble." Later in the same sermon, the Buddha sets forth the four noble truths and identifies the fourth truth, the truth of the path, with the eightfold path. The noble eightfold path is comprised of (1) right views (SAMYAGDṚstI; P. sammAditthi), which involve an accurate understanding of the true nature of things, specifically the four noble truths; (2) right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA; P. sammAsankappa), which means avoiding thoughts of attachment, hatred, and harmful intent and promoting loving-kindness and nonviolence; (3) right speech (SAMYAGVAC; P. sammAvAcA), which means refraining from verbal misdeeds, such as lying, backbiting and slander, harsh speech and abusive language, and frivolous speech and gossip; (4) right action or right conduct (SAMYAKKARMANTA; P. sammAkammanta), which is refraining from physical misdeeds, such as killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct; (5) right livelihood (SAMYAGAJĪVA; P. sammAjīva), which entails avoiding trades that directly or indirectly harm others, such as selling slaves, selling weapons, selling animals for slaughter, dealing in intoxicants or poisons, or engaging in fortune-telling and divination; (6) right effort (SAMYAGVYAYAMA; P. sammAvAyAma), which is defined as abandoning unwholesome states of mind that have already arisen, preventing unwholesome states that have yet to arise, sustaining wholesome states that have already arisen, and developing wholesome states that have yet to arise; (7) right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI; P. sammAsati), which means to maintain awareness of the four foundations of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHANA), viz., body, physical sensations, the mind, and phenomena; and (8) right concentration (SAMYAKSAMADHI; P. sammAsamAdhi), which is one pointedness of mind. ¶ The noble eightfold path receives less discussion in Buddhist literature than do the four noble truths (of which they are, after all, a constituent). Indeed, in later formulations, the eight factors are presented not so much as a prescription for behavior but as eight qualities that are present in the mind of a person who has understood NIRVAnA. The eightfold path may be reduced to a simpler, and more widely used, threefold schema of the path that comprises the "three trainings" (TRIsIKsA) or "higher trainings" (adhisiksA) in morality (sĪLA; P. sīla; see ADHIsĪLAsIKsA), concentration (SAMADHI, see ADHISAMADHIsIKsA), and wisdom (PRAJNA; P. paNNA; see ADHIPRAJNAsIKsA). In this schema, (1) right views and (2) right intention are subsumed under the training in higher wisdom (adhiprajNAsiksA); (3) right speech, (4) right conduct, and (5) right livelihood are subsumed under higher morality (adhisīlasiksA); and (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness, and (8) right concentration are subsumed under higher concentration (adhisamAdhisiksA). According to the MADHYANTAVIBHAGA, a MAHAYANA work attributed to MAITREYANATHA, the eightfold noble path comprises the last set of eight of the thirty-seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA), where enlightenment (BODHI) is the complete, nonconceptual awakening achieved during the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). After that vision, following the same pattern as the Buddha, right view is the perfect understanding of the vision, and right intention is the articulation of the vision that motivates the teaching of it. Right mindfulness, right effort, and right concentration correspond respectively to the four types of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHANA), four efforts (PRAHAnA), and four ṚDDHIPADA ("legs of miraculous attainments," i.e., samAdhi) when they are perfect or right (samyak), after the vision of the four noble truths.
AsrayaparAvṛtti. [alt. Asrayaparivṛtti] (T. gnas yongs su 'gyur pa; C. zhuanyi; J. ten'e; K. chonŭi 轉依). In Sanskrit, "transformation of the basis" or "fundamental transmutation"; the transmutation of the defiled state in which one has not abandoned the afflictions (KLEsA) into a purified state in which the klesas have been abandoned. This transmutation thus transforms an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) into a noble one (ARYA). In the YOGACARA school's interpretation, by understanding (1) the emptiness (suNYATA) of the imagined reality (PARIKALPITA) that ordinary people mistakenly ascribe to the sensory images they experience (viz., "unreal imaginings," or ABHuTAPARIKALPA) and (2) the conditioned origination of things through the interdependent aspect of cognition (PARATANTRA), the basis will be transformed into the perfected (PARNIsPANNA) nature, and enlightenment realized. STHIRAMATI posits three aspects to this transformation: transformation of the basis of the mind (cittAsrayaparAvṛtti), transformation of the basis of the path (mArgAsrayaparAvṛtti), and transformation of the basis of the proclivities (dausthulyAsrayaparAvṛtti). "Transformation of the basis of mind" transmutes the imaginary into the perfected through the awareness of emptiness. Insight into the perfected in turn empties the path of any sense of sequential progression, thus transmuting the mundane path (LAUKIKAMARGA) with its multiple steps into a supramundane path (lokottaramArga, cf. LOKUTTARAMAGGA) that has no fixed locus; this is the "transformation of the basis of the path." Finally, "transformation of the basis of the proclivities" eradicates the seeds (BĪJA) of action (KARMAN) that are stored in the storehouse consciousness (ALAYAVIJNANA), liberating the bodhisattva from the effects of any past unwholesome actions and freeing him to project compassion liberally throughout the world.
As-Sami ::: The One who perceives His manifestations at every instance. The One who enables awareness and comprehension.
AstasAhasrikAprajNApAramitA. (T. Sher phyin brgyad stong pa; C. Xiaopin bore jing; J. Shobon hannyakyo; K. Sop'um panya kyong 小品般若經). In Sanskrit, "Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines." This scripture is now generally accepted to be the earliest of the many PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras and thus probably one of the very earliest of the MAHAYANA scriptures. The Asta, as it is often referred to in the literature, seems to have gradually developed over a period of about two hundred years, from the first century BCE to the first century CE. Some of its earliest recensions translated into Chinese during the Han dynasty do not yet display the full panoply of self-referentially MahAyAna terminology that characterize the more elaborate recensions translated later, suggesting that MahAyAna doctrine was still under development during the early centuries of the Common Era. The provenance of the text is obscure, but the consensus view is that it was probably written in central or southern India. The Asta, together with its verse summary, the RATNAGUnASAMCAYAGATHA, probably represents the earliest stratum of the prajNApAramitA literature; scholars believe that this core scripture was subsequently expanded between the second and fourth centuries CE into other massive PrajNApAramitA scriptures in as many as 100,000 lines (the sATASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA). By about 500 CE, the Asta's basic ideas had been abbreviated into shorter condensed statements, such as the widely read, 300-verse VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA ("Diamond Sutra"). (Some scholars have suggested instead that the "Diamond Sutra" may in fact represent one of the earliest strata of the prajNApAramitA literature.) The MahAyAna tradition's view of its own history, however, is that the longest of the prajNApAramitA scriptures, the 100,000-line satasAhasrikAprajNApAramitA, is the core text from which all the other perfection of wisdom sutras were subsequently excerpted. The main interlocutor of the Asta, as in most of the prajNApAramitA scriptures, is SUBHuTI, an ARHAT foremost among the Buddha's disciples in dwelling at peace in remote places, rather than sARIPUTRA, who much more commonly appears in this role in the mainstream Buddhist scriptures (see AGAMA; NIKAYA). The prominent role accorded to Subhuti suggests that the prajNApAramitA literature may derive from forest-dwelling (Aranyaka) ascetic traditions distinct from the dominant, urban-based monastic elite. The main goal of the Asta and other prajNApAramitA scriptures is rigorously to apply the foundational Buddhist notion of nonself (ANATMAN) to the investigation of all phenomena-from the usual compounded things (SAMSKARA) and conditioned factors (SAMSKṚTADHARMA), but even to such quintessentially Buddhist summa bona as the fruits of sanctity (ARYAMARGAPHALA) and NIRVAnA. The constant refrain of the Asta is that there is nothing that can be grasped or to which one should cling, not PRAJNA, not PARAMITA, not BODHISATTVA, and not BODHI. Even the six perfections (sAdPARAMITA) of the bodhisattva are subjected to this same refutation: for example, only when the bodhisattva realizes that there is no giver, no recipient, and no gift will he have mastered the perfection of giving (DANAPARAMITA). Such radical nonattachment even to the central concepts of Buddhism itself helps to foster a thoroughgoing awareness of the emptiness (suNYATA) of all things and thus the perfection of wisdom (prajNApAramitA). Even if the Asta's area of origin was in the south of India, the prajNApAramitA scriptures seem initially to have found their best reception in the northwest of India during the KUSHAN dynasty (c. first century CE), whence they would have had relatively easy entrée into Central Asia and then East Asia. This geographic proximity perhaps accounts for the early acceptance the Asta and the rest of the prajNApAramitA literature received on the Chinese mainland, helping to make China the first predominantly MahAyAna tradition.
Astral Projection ::: The ability to firmly focus one's awareness within a form (sheath) envisioned in the Astral Plane. Through practice this allows for exploring the realm of individual and collective imagination lucidly and persistently. See also Astral Plane.
asubhabhAvanA. (P. asubhabhAvanA; T. mi sdug pa bsgom pa; C. bujing guan; J. fujokan; K. pujong kwan 不淨觀). In Sanskrit, the "contemplation on the impure" or "foul"; a set of traditional topics of meditation (see KAMMAttHANA) that were intended to counter the affliction of lust (RAGA), develop mindfulness (SMṚTI; P. SATI) regarding the body, and lead to full mental absorption (DHYANA). In this form of meditation, "impure" or "foul" is most often used to refer either to a standardized list of thirty-one or thirty-two foul parts of the body or to the various stages in the decay of a corpse. In the case of the latter, for example, the meditator is to observe nine or ten specific types of putrefaction, described in gruesome detail in the Buddhist commentarial literature: mottled discoloration of the corpse (vinīlakasaMjNA), discharges of pus (vipuyakasaMjNA), decaying of rotten flesh (vipadumakasaMjNA), bloating and tumefaction (vyAdhmAtakasaMjNA), the exuding of blood and the overflow of body fluids (vilohitakasaMjNA), infestation of worms and maggots (vikhAditakasaMjNA), the dissolution of flesh and exposure of bones and sinews (viksiptakasaMjNA), the cremated remains (vidagdhakasaMjNA), and the dispersed skeletal parts (asthisaMjNA). The KAyagatAsatisutta of the MAJJIHIMANIKAYA includes the contemplation of the impure within a larger explanation of the contemplation of one's body with mindfulness (KAYANUPAsYANA; see also SMṚTYUPASTHANA); before the stages in the decay of the corpse, it gives the standardized list of thirty-one (sometimes thirty-two) foul parts of the body: the head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, gorge, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin-oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, and urine. These parts are chosen specifically because they will be easily visualized, and may have been intended to be the foul opposites of the thirty-two salutary marks of the great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA). The Chinese tradition also uses a contemplation of seven kinds of foulness regarding the human body in order to counter lust and to facilitate detachment. (1) "Foulness in their seeds" (C. zhongzi bujing): human bodies derive from seminal ejaculate and, according to ancient medicine, mother's blood. (2) "Foulness in their conception" (C. shousheng bujing): human bodies are conceived through sexual intercourse. (3) "Foulness in their [gestational] residence" (C. zhuchu bujing): human bodies are conceived and nurtured inside the mother's womb. (4) "Foulness in their nutriments" (C. shidan bujing): human bodies in the prenatal stage live off and "feed on" the mother's blood. (5) "Foulness in their delivery" (C. chusheng bujing): it is amid the mess of delivery, with the discharge of placenta and placental water, that human bodies are born. (6) "Foulness in their entirety" (C. jüti bujing): human bodies are innately impure, comprising of innards, excrement, and other foul things underneath a flimsy skin. (7) "Foulness in their destiny" (C. jiujing bujing): human bodies are destined to die, followed by putrid infestation, decomposition, and utter dissolution. There is also a contemplation on the nine bodily orifices (C. QIAO), which are vividly described as constantly oozing pus, blood, secretions, etc. ¶ As contemplation on foulness deepens, first an eidetic image (S. udgrahanimitta, P. UGGAHANIMITTA), a perfect mental reproduction of the visualized corpse, is maintained steadily in mind; this is ultimately followed by the appearance of the representational image (S. pratibhAganimitta, P. PAtIBHAGANIMITTA), which the VISUDDHIMAGGA (VI.66) describes as a perfectly idealized image of, for example, a bloated corpse as "a man with big limbs lying down after eating his fill." Continued concentration on this representational image will enable the meditator to access up to the fourth stage of the subtle-materiality dhyAnas (ARuPYAVACARADHYANA). After perfecting dhyAna, this meditation may also be used to develop wisdom (PRAJNA) through developing increased awareness of the reality of impermanence (ANITYA). Foulness meditation is ritually included as part of the THERAVADA ordination procedure, during which monks are taught the list of the first five of the thirty-two foul parts of the body (viz., head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, and skin) in order to help them ward off lust.
"A supramental Truth-Consciousness is at once the self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness;” *The Life Divine
“A supramental Truth-Consciousness is at once the self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness;” The Life Divine
atma bhava. ::: the nature of the Self; awareness of the Self; the feeling "I am the Self"
atmabodha ::: [awareness of the Self].
ATM Forum ::: (networking, body) An international non-profit arganisation aiming to encourage the user of Asynchronous Transfer Mode through interoperability specifications and to promote cooperation and awareness.The ATM Forum consists of a worldwide Technical Committee, three Marketing Committees for North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific as well as the User Committee, through which ATM end-users participate.Worldwide Headquarters: 2570 West El Camino Real, Suite 304 Mountain View, CA 94040-1313 USA.Telephone: +1 (650) 949 6700.E-mail: ATM Forum . . (1999-06-14)
ATM Forum "networking, body" An international non-profit arganisation aiming to encourage the user of {Asynchronous Transfer Mode} through {interoperability} specifications and to promote cooperation and awareness. The ATM Forum consists of a worldwide Technical Committee, three Marketing Committees for North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific as well as the User Committee, through which ATM end-users participate. Worldwide Headquarters: 2570 West El Camino Real, Suite 304 Mountain View, CA 94040-1313 USA. Telephone: +1 (650) 949 6700. E-mail: ATM Forum "info@atmforum.com". {(http://atmforum.com/)}. (1999-06-14)
Attribute: Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being. In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance; or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure). In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes. In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent. In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words. In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts. In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another. In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
automatic processing: a rapid mental operation that does not involve conscious awareness and often improves with practice, e.g. the Stroop effect.
Automatism: In mediumistic and parapsychological terminology, the collective term for automatic writing, automatic drawing (q.v.), and all other activities performed without the conscious awareness and will of the individual.
Avidya: A Sanskrit term for ignorance. Unawareness of true reality.
awake ::: v. 1. To arouse from sleep or inactivity. 2. Fig. To rise from a state resembling sleep, such as death, indifference, inaction; to become active or vigilant. 3. To come or bring to an awareness, to become cognizant, to be fully conscious, to appreciate fully (often followed by to). awakes, awoke, awaking. *adj.* 4. Not asleep; conscious; vigilant, alert. half-awake.
awareness: in biological psychology, awareness comprises a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. Awareness does not necessarily imply understanding, just an ability to be conscious of, feel or perceive.
awareness: Sensitivity to supernatural/ paranormal forces, often experienced as unusually acute perceptions and feelings about things most people cannot see.
baqa ::: the state of "subsistence"; continuing awareness through Allah.
basic structures of consciousness ::: 1. “Empty” levels of consciousness used as a general measure of vertical development. A measure of the degree or “altitude” of awareness in any particular stream. These altitudes are often described using the colors of the natural rainbow: Infrared, Magenta, Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, Indigo, Violet, Ultraviolet, and Clear Light. 2. Enduring structures that are actually laid down along these markers of altitude and thus are roughly synonymous with basic levels of consciousness. These are the rungs in any developmental ladder. Cognitive development, for instance, is often used since it is necessary but not sufficient for development in other lines.
Baum Gruppe (Herbert Baum Group) ::: Small, clandestine anti-Nazi organization founded in Berlin at the beginning of the Nazi regime by Herbert and Marianne Baum. It was composed of young people, primarily Jewish members of the Communist party, as well as a number of Zionists. Its activities centered around increasing education, political, and cultural awareness, but it also engaged in one act of spectacular sabotage: The bombing of an anti-Soviet exhibit in Berlin. Most of the members were denounced, tried, and executed between July 1942 and June 1943.
Awareness ::: A sense of presence. A sense of an observer. This is the root quality that determines a self.
bhAga. (T. cha; C. fen; J. bun; K. pun 分). In Sanskrit, "part" or "portion"; a term used in the YOGACARA school to describe the functioning of consciousness. As a seed (BĪJA) from the eighth storehouse consciousness (ALAYAVIJNANA) fructifies, it simultaneously produces both a moment of consciousness (VIJNANA) and a corresponding sensory object (ALAMBANA). The object, which is in fact not external to the mind, is called the "image portion" (nimittabhAga) or the "grasped" (grAhya). The perception of that object is called the "perceiving portion" (darsanabhAga) or the "grasper " (grAhaka). The awareness that perception has occurred is called the "self-witnessing portion" (svasaMvittibhAga).
BhAvanAkrama. (T. Sgom rim). In Sanskrit, "Stages of Meditation," the title of three separate but related works by the late-eighth century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. During the reign of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan (MahAyAna) and an Indian faction of the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA, who with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS (Samye). According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student Kamalasīla should be summoned from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of perfecting morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind rather than the goal of a protracted path, such that one need simply to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment by entering a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge (see BSAM YAS DEBATE). According to Tibetan reports (contradicted by the Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that thereafter the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would have pride of place in Tibet. ¶ According to Tibetan accounts, after the conclusion of the debate, the king requested that Kamalasīla compose works that presented his view, and in response, Kamalasīla composed the three BhAvanAkrama. There is considerable overlap among the three works. All three are germane to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty; only the third, and briefest of the three, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikAra, cf. WUNIAN), which is associated with Moheyan. The three texts set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANA and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanA requires the use of both scripture (AGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATA); in the first BhAvanAkrama, Kamalasīla sets forth the three forms of wisdom (prajNA): the wisdom derived from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), the wisdom derived from reflection (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and the wisdom derived from cultivation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), explaining that the last of these gradually destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA). The second BhAvanAkrama considers many of these same topics, stressing that the achievement of the fruition of buddhahood requires the necessary causes, in the form of the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHARA) and the collection of wisdom (JNANASAMBHARA). Both the first and second works espouse the doctrine of mind-only (CITTAMATRA); it is on the basis of these and other statements that Tibetan doxographers classified Kamalasīla as a YOGACARA-SVATANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The third and briefest of the BhAvanAkrama is devoted especially to the topics of samatha and vipasyanA, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalasīla argues that analysis (VICARA) into the lack of self (ATMAN) in both persons (PUDGALA) and phenomena (DHARMA) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing samatha and vipasyanA.
bhayatupatthAnANAna. In PAli, "knowledge arising from the awareness of terror"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the third of nine knowledges (NAna; JNANA) cultivated as part of "purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path" (PAtIPADANAnADASSANAVISUDDHI). This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth and penultimate purity (VISUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. Knowledge arising from the contemplation of terror is developed by noting how all conditioned formations (sankhAra; SAMSKARA) or mental and physical phenomena (NAMARuPA) of the past, present and future have either gone, are going, or are destined to go to destruction. A simile given in the Visuddhimagga is that of a woman whose three sons have offended the king. The woman, who has already witnessed the beheading of her eldest son, witnesses the beheading of her middle son. And having witnessed the beheadings of her two older sons, the woman is filled with terror at the knowledge that her youngest son will likewise be executed. In the same way, the practitioner observes how phenomena of the past have ceased, how phenomena of the present are ceasing, and how those of the future are likewise destined to cease. Seeing conditioned formations as destined to destruction in this way, that is, as impermanent (anicca; ANITYA), the practitioner is filled with terror. Similarly, the practitioner sees conditioned formations as suffering (dukkha; DUḤKHA), and as impersonal and nonself (anattA; ANATMAN) and is filled with terror. In this way, the practitioner comes to realize that all mental and physical phenomena, being characterized by the three universal marks of existence (tilakkhana; TRILAKsAnA), are frightful.
(b) In recent epistemology: Contemplation is knowledge of an object in contrast to enjoyment which is the minds' direct self-awareness. (Cf. S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, Vol I, p. 12.) -- L.W.
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. (1831-1891). A founding member of the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky was born in Ukraine to an aristocratic family, the daughter of a military officer and a well-known novelist. She was largely self-educated, and traveled throughout the world for more than twenty years. Arriving in New York from Paris in 1873, two years later she and HENRY STEEL OLCOTT founded the Theosophical Society, an organization that played a prominent role in the introduction of Asian religions to Europe and America. The society's purpose focused on promoting the understanding and awareness of the nature of reality through various disciplines. Madame Blavatsky claimed to have spent seven years in Tibet studying with masters whom she called "mahatmas," preservers of an ancient wisdom that provided the foundation for all mystical traditions. She also claimed to have remained in telepathic communication with these masters throughout her life and to have translated their teachings from the Senzar language into English. After attempts at alliances with various Asian teachers in India, Madame Blavatsky concluded that the modern manifestations of Hinduism and Buddhism had drifted far from their original essence, so she devoted much of her writing to expounding the true teachings, which she sometimes referred to as "Esoteric Buddhism." Two of her most important works are The Secret Doctrine (1888) and The Voice of the Silence (1889); these provide an account of, and commentary on, the theory of spiritual evolution that she is said to have discovered in the ancient Book of Dzyan, written in the secret language of Senzar. Although this text has not been found, nor the Senzar language identified, The Voice of the Silence has been considered to be a Buddhist text by some prominent figures within the modern Buddhist tradition.
blind ::: adj. 1. Unable to see; lacking the sense of sight; sightless. Also fig. 2. Unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. 3. Lacking all consciousness or awareness. 4. Not having or based on reason or intelligence; absolute and unquestioning. 5. Not characterized or determined by reason or control. 6. Purposeless; fortuitous, random. 7. Undiscriminating; heedless; reckless. 8. Enveloped in darkness; dark, dim, obscure. 9. Dense enough to form a screen. 10. Covered or concealed from sight; hidden from immediate view. 11. Having no openings or passages for light; (a window or door) walled up. blindest, half-blind. v. 12. To deprive of sight permanently or temporarily. 13. To make sightless momentarily; dazzle. blinded.* n. 14. A blind person, esp. as pl., those who are blind. 15. Fig.* Any thing or action intended to conceal one"s real intention; a pretence, a pretext; subterfuge.
blindfold ::: fig. With the awareness or clear thinking impaired, the mind blinded and without perception.
blindness ::: 1. A lack or impairment of vision. 2. *Fig.* Lack of vision or awareness.
blo rigs. [alt. blo rig] (lorik). In Tibetan, "mind and reasoning," "categories of mind" or "mind and awareness" (when spelled blo rig); a genre of Tibetan monastic textbook literature (yig cha) that sets forth the categories of mind so that beginners can learn the basic concepts of Buddhist epistemology and logic. This genre supplements, or is a subset of, the "collected topics" (BSDUS GRWA) genre of textbook that forms the basis of the curriculum during the first years of study in many Tibetan monasteries. The categories of mind are not fixed, but usually include subdivisions into seven, three, and pairs. The seven minds range on a scale from wrong consciousness (log shes), through doubt, assumption, and inference (ANUMANA), to direct perception (PRATYAKsA); among the contrasting pairs of minds are "sense consciousness" (dbang shes) via the sense faculties (INDRIYA) and "mental consciousness" (yid shes) based on MANAS; minds that are tshad ma ("valid") and tshad min ("invalid"); conceptual (rtog bcas) and nonconceptual minds (rtog med); and minds that have a specifically characterized (SVALAKsAnA) appearing object (snang yul) and a generally characterized (SAMANYALAKsAnA) appearing object. The last of the contrasting pairs is primary and secondary minds, or minds (CITTA) and mental factors (CAITTA). Longer discussion of this topic includes a discussion of the fifty-one mental factors in several subcategories. The explanation of mind in blo rigs draws mainly on terminology found in DHARMAKĪRTI's PRAMAnAVARTTIKA and its commentarial tradition, as well as the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA.
bodha ::: awareness, consciousness, perception.
bodha lingam. :::manifest consciousness; manifest Self-awareness
Bodhicitta ::: Refers to the "awakened mind", a stage of awareness that has blossomed through contact with enlightenment. This stage is characterized by a drive to awaken and assist all other beings on the path toward self-realization.
bodhicittotpAda. (T. byang chub kyi sems bskyed pa; C. fa puti xin; J. hotsubodaishin; K. pal pori sim 發菩提心). In Sanskrit, "generating the aspiration for enlightenment," "creating (utpAda) the thought (CITTA) of enlightenment (BODHI)"; a term used to describe both the process of developing BODHICITTA, the aspiration to achieve buddhahood, as well as the state achieved through such development. The MAHAYANA tradition treats this aspiration as having great significance in one's spiritual career, since it marks the entry into the MahAyAna and the beginning of the BODHISATTVA path. The process by which this "thought of enlightenment" (bodhicitta) is developed and sustained is bodhicittotpAda. Various types of techniques or conditional environments conducive to bodhicittotpAda are described in numerous MahAyAna texts and treatises. The BODHISATTVABHuMI says that there are four predominant conditions (ADHIPATIPRATYAYA) for generating bodhicitta: (1) witnessing an inconceivable miracle (ṛddhiprAtihArya) performed by a buddha or a bodhisattva, (2) listening to a teaching regarding enlightenment (BODHI) or to the doctrine directed at bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAPItAKA), (3) recognizing the dharma's potential to be extinguished and seeking therefore to protect the true dharma (SADDHARMA), (4) seeing that sentient beings are troubled by afflictions (KLEsA) and empathizing with them. The Fa putixinjing lun introduces another set of four conditions for generating bodhicitta: (1) reflecting on the buddhas; (2) contemplating the dangers (ADĪNAVA) inherent in the body; (3) developing compassion (KARUnA) toward sentient beings; (4) seeking the supreme result (PHALA). The Chinese apocryphal treatise DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the MahAyAna") refers to three types of bodhicittotpAda: that which derives from the accomplishment of faith, from understanding and practice, and from realization. JINGYING HUIYUAN (523-592) in his DASHENG YIZHANG ("Compendium on the Purport of MahAyAna") classifies bodhicittotpAda into three groups: (1) the generation of the mind based on characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, perceiving the characteristics of SAMSARA and NIRVAnA, abhors saMsAra and aspires to seek nirvAna; (2) the generation of the mind separate from characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the nature of saMsAra is not different from nirvAna, leaves behind any perception of their distinctive characteristics and generates an awareness of their equivalency; (3) the generation of the mind based on truth, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the original nature of bodhi is identical to his own mind, returns to his own original state of mind. The Korean scholiast WoNHYO (617-686), in his Muryangsugyong chongyo ("Doctrinal Essentials of the 'Sutra of Immeasurable Life'"), considers the four great vows of the bodhisattva (see C. SI HONGSHIYUAN) to be bodhicitta and divides its generation into two categories: viz., the aspiration that accords with phenomena (susa palsim) and the aspiration that conforms with principle (suri palsim). The topic of bodhicittotpAda is the subject of extensive discussion and exegesis in Tibetan Buddhism. For example, in his LAM RIM CHEN MO, TSONG KHA PA sets forth two techniques for developing this aspiration. The first, called the "seven cause and effect precepts" (rgyu 'bras man ngag bdun) is said to derive from ATIsA DIPAMKARAsRĪJNANA. The seven are (1) recognition of all sentient beings as having been one's mother in a past life, (2) recognition of their kindness, (3) the wish to repay their kindness, (4) love, (5) compassion, (6) the wish to liberate them from suffering, and (7) bodhicitta. The second, called the equalizing and exchange of self and other (bdag gzhan mnyam brje) is derived from the eighth chapter of sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA. It begins with the recognition that oneself and others equally want happiness and do not want suffering. It goes on to recognize that by cherishing others more than oneself, one ensures the welfare of both oneself (by becoming a buddha) and others (by teaching them the dharma). MahAyAna sutra literature typically assumes that, after generating the bodhicitta, the bodhisattva will require not one, but three "incalculable eons" (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of time in order to complete all the stages (BHuMI) of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) and achieve buddhahood. The Chinese HUAYAN ZONG noted, however, that the bodhisattva had no compunction about practicing for such an infinity of time, because he realized at the very inception of the path that he was already a fully enlightened buddha. They cite in support of this claim the statement in the "BrahmacaryA" chapter of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA that "at the time of the initial generation of the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicittotpAda), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved."
Boodin, John Elof: American philosopher born in Sweden in 1869 who emigrated in 1886 to the United States. Studied at the Universities of Colorado, Minnesota, Brown and especially Harvard under Royce with whom he kept a life-long friendship though he was opposed to his idealism. His works (Time and Reality, 1904 -- Truth and Reality, 1912 -- A Realistic Universe, 1916 -- Cosmic Evolution, 1925 -- Three Interpretations of the Universe, 1934 -- God, 1935 -- The Social Mind, 1940) form practically a complete system. His philosophy takes the form of a cosmic idealism, though he was interested for a time in certain aspects of pragmatism. It grew gradually from his early studies when he developed a new concept of a real and non-serial time. The structure of the cosmos is that of a hierarchy of fields, as exemplified in physics, in organisms, in consciousness and in society. The interpenetration of the mental fields makes possible human knowledge and social intercourse. Reality as such possesses five attributes: being (the dynamic stuff of all complexes, the active energy), time (the ground of change and transformation), space (which accounts for extension), consciousness (active awareness which lights up reality in spots; it becomes the self when conative tendencies cooperate as one active group), and form (the ground of organization and structure which conditions selective direction). God is the spirit of the whole. -- T.G.J Boole, George: (1815-1864) English mathematician. Professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, 1849-1864. While he made contributions to other branches of mathematics, he is now remembered primarily as the founder of the Nineteenth Century algebra of logic and through it of modern symbolic logic. His Mathematical Analysis of Logic appeared in 1847 and the fuller Laws of Thought in 1854. -- A.C.
Bore wuzhi lun. (J. Hannya muchiron; K. Panya muji non 般若無知論). In Chinese, the "Nescience of PrajNA Treatise"; a subtreatise in a larger work entitled the ZHAO LUN, attributed to the Chinese monk SENGZHAO. In this treatise, the author claims that because wisdom (PRAJNA) is quiescent, empty, and lacking any perduring essence, any conscious awareness of it is impossible. Although prajNA is itself formless, it interacts with the realm of perceived objects through a process known as GANYING, or "sympathetic resonance." This treatise is said to have been based on KUMARAJĪVA's translation of the PANCAVIMsATISAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA.
brahmabodha (brahmabodha; brahma bodha) ::: awareness of brahman.
brahmabuddhi ::: awareness of brahman.
brahma chintana. ::: constant meditation on Brahman; constant awareness of Reality
brahman. ::: the impersonal, non-dual, Final Reality; infinite consciousness; the eternal witness; the absolute Self of all beings; oneness; the supreme Reality that is one and indivisible, uncreated, infinite and eternal; witnessing awareness; all-pervading, all-embracing, changeless existence that is entirely complete within Itself; the Supreme state which is attained here in this life by clear Self-enquiry, which arises in the Heart when association with a Satguru is gained
Brahman ::: Whatever reality is in existence, by which all the rest subsists, that is Brahman. An Eternal behind all instabilities, a Truth of things which is implied, if it is hidden in all appearances, a Constant which supports all mutations, but is not increased, diminished, abrogated,—there is such an unknown x which makes existence a problem, our own self a mystery, the universe a riddle. If we were only what we seem to be to our normal self-awareness, there would be no mystery; if the world were only what it can be made out to be by the perceptions of the senses and their strict analysis in the reason, there would be no riddle; and if to take our life as it is now and the world as it has so far developed to our experience were the whole possibility of our knowing and doing, there would be no problem. Or at best there would be but a shallow mystery, an easily solved riddle, the problem only of a child’s puzzle. But there is more, and that more is the hidden head of the Infinite and the secret heart of the Eternal. It is the highest and this highest is the all; there is none beyond and there is none other than it. To know it is to know the highest and by knowing the highest to know all. For as it is the beginning and source of all things, so everything else is its consequence; as it is the support and constituent of all things, so the secret of everything else is explained by its secret; as it is the sum and end of all things, so everything else amounts to it and by throwing itself into it achieves the sense of its own existence. This is the Brahman
Ref: CWSA Vol. 18, Page: 151-152
br.hat (brihat) ::: wide, large, vast; wideness, largeness; vast abundance; brhat "vast self-awareness", one of the three terms expressing the nature of vijñana (see satyam r.taṁ br.hat). brhat br . hat rrtam
br.hat (satyam ritam brihat) ::: "consciousness of essential truth of being (satyam), of ordered truth of active being (r.tam) and the vast self-awareness (br.hat) in which alone this consciousness is possible"; these three terms express the nature of vijñana. [Cf. Atharva Veda 12.1.1, satyaṁ br.had r.tam]
Bsam yas debate. An important event in the early dissemination (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet. During the reign of the king KHRI SRONG LDE BRTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang MOHEYAN (the Chinese transcription of "MahAyAna") and an Indian faction associated with the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA who, with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA, had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS. According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student KAMALAsĪLA be called from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of combining ethical practice (sĪLA), meditation (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind itself rather than the goal of a protracted path of practice. Therefore, to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment, one need only enter a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge. According to Tibetan records (contradicted by Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party were banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would thereafter be followed in Tibet. Kamalasīla died shortly after the debate, supposedly assassinated by members of the Chinese faction. Scholars have suggested that although a controversy between the Indian and Chinese Buddhists (and their Tibetan partisans) occurred, it is unlikely that a face-to-face debate took place or that the outcome of the controversy was so unequivocal. The "debate" may instead have been an exchange of statements; indeed, KAmalasīla's third BHAVANAKRAMA seems to derive from this exchange. It is also important to note that, regardless of the merits of the Indian and Chinese philosophical positions, China was Tibet's chief military rival at the time, whereas India posed no such threat. The debate's principal significance derives from the fact that from this point on, Tibet largely sought its Buddhism from India; no school of Chinese Buddhism subsequently exerted any major influence in Tibet. It is said that when he departed, Moheyan left behind one shoe, indicating that traces of his view would remain in Tibet; some scholars have suggested possible connections between Chan positions and the RDZOGS CHEN teachings that developed in the ninth century. In Tibetan polemics of later centuries, it was considered particularly harsh to link one's opponent's views to the antinomian views of Moheyan. Moheyan himself was transformed into something of a trickster figure, popular in Tibetan art and drama. This event is variously referred to in English as the Council of Samye, the Council of Lha sa, and the Samye Debate. See also DUNWU.
Cambridge School: A term loosely applied to English philosophers who have been influenced by the teachings of Professor G. E. Moore (mainly in unpublished lectures delivered at the Cambridge University, 1911-1939). In earlier years Moore stressed the need to accept the judgments of "common sense" on such matters as the existence of other persons, of an "external world", etc. The business of the analytical philosopher was not to criticise such judgments but to display the structure of the facts to which they referred. (Cf. "A defense of common-sense in philosophy," Contemporary British Philosophy, 2 (1925) -- Moore's only discussion of the method.) Such analysis would be directional, terminating in basic or atomic facts, all of whose constituents might be known by acquaintance. The examples discussed were taken largely from the field of epistemology, turning often about the problem of the relation of material objects to sense-data, and of indirect to direct knowledge. In this earlier period problems were often suggested by Russell's discussion of descriptions and logical constructions. The inconclusiveness of such specific discussions and an increasingly critical awareness of the functions of language in philosophical analysis has in later years tended to favor more flexible interpretations of the nature of analysis. (Cf. M. Black, "Relations Between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis", Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis), 8, 24-35 for a bibliography and list of philosophers who have been most influenced by emphasis on directional analysis.) -- M.B.
Campanella, Tommaso: (1568-1639) A Dominican monk in revolt against Aristotelianism, and influenced by the naturalism of Telesio, he arrived at philosophic conclusions in some ways prophetic of Descartes. Distrusting both the reports of the senses and the results of reasoning as indications of the nature of Reality, he found nothing trustworthy except the fact of his own existence, and the inferences drawn from that fact. As certain as his awareness of his own existence was the awareness of an external world to which experience referred and by which it was caused. Again, since the nature of the part is representative of the nature of the whole to which it belongs, the Universe of which the self is part must, like the part, be possessed of knowledge, will, and power. Hence I may infer from my own existence the existence of a God. Again, I must infer other of the divine nature more or less perfect manifestations than myself descending from the hierarchy of angels above man to the form or structure of the world, the ultimate corporeal elements, and the sensible phenomena produced by these elements of the physical universe, below him in the scale of perfection.
can we hope to be directly aware of the Divine in us and directly in touch with the Divine Light and the Divine Force. Otherwise we can feel the Divine only through external signs and external results and that is a diflicult and uncertain way and very occa- sional and inconstant, and it leads only to belief and not to knowledge, not to the direct consciousness and awareness of the constant presence.
Causality ::: The process through which the diversity of dualistic experiences emerge that characterize a current state of awareness, a particular thread or stream of Mind. The Kabbalah is one system that attempts to model this causal process that emanates stages of awareness from Consciousness amid similar maps that depict this ontological stacking of "selves". The Causal Plane is considered outside of the realm of causality because dualistic experience emanates from the Causal: the actual existence of dualistic experience is predicated on a Non-Duality of experience. This is a complex topic and active area of research; causality heavily determines the current form and subjective nature of Mind. See also Samsara and Karma.
Centering ::: The process of stabilizing the awareness within one's self-identity. This mostly refers to the ability to collect and constrain the locus of focus to one's physical body and identity and is often a precursor to more advanced energetic, meditative, and ritualistic workings. Many centering practices begin with stillness within an asana and involve a coordination of the breath with gesture, subtle movement, visualization, and vibration.
Central Channel ::: In the etheric body, this is the main channel that runs vertically down the physical body. It is related to the spine and central nervous system and establishes a central conduit for the movement of awareness as it snaps to and coheres around the primary chakras.
Chaitanya-samadhi: The state of superconsciousness which is marked by absolute self-awareness and illumination as distinguished from Jada-samadhi in which there is no such awareness.
Channel ::: An etheric body structure through which awareness moves and that is typically connected by chakras.
chidakash ::: &
chiroutuan. (J. shakunikudan; K. chogyuktan 赤肉團). In Chinese, "lump of red (viz., raw) flesh"; a CHAN expression attributed to LINJI YIXUAN (d. 867) to refer to the physical body that is constantly buffeted by the senses. Linji contrasts this lump of flesh with the "true man of no rank" (C. WUWEI ZHENREN), which is equivalent to the sentience, or numinous awareness (LINGZHI), that enables sensory experience.
Chit ::: Chit, the divine Consciousness, is not our mental selfawareness; that we shall find to be only a form, a lower and limited mode or movement. As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many "inanimate" forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical Nature is, compared with Chit, a lower and th
refore a limited form, mode and movement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of inferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our subconscious being an action which is precisely that of the "inanimate" physical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being, another which is that of plantlife, and another which is that of the lower animal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by the thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real awareness of these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these parts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values of the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an animal in us as well as that which is characteristically human,—something which is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not
reflective or rational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its experience, meets it from above with the light and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and modifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being; below it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts by an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn behind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth the subvital. When we advance in that ultra-normal self-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that the body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses, instincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of our being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the struggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of these varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result of an evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the merely physical and subvital conscious being to the mental creature which at the top he is. But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic sages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea, which can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments, impulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of things just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and animal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral perceptions. There is no seeking, but rather natural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct and impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony, concomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin, in their development and in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are others in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed, Chit the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and sensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are not merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truthplane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself. All is Chit because all is Sat; all is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various movement of the original Being. When we find, see or know Chit, we find also that its essence is Ananda or delight of self-existence. To possess self is to possess self-bliss; not to possess self is to be in more or less obscure search of the delight of existence. Chit eternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal conscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of conscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence. The Divine whether it manifests itself in All-Quality or in No-Quality, in Personality or Impersonality, in the One absorbing the Many or in the One manifesting its essential multiplicity, is always in possession of self-bliss and all-bliss because it is always Sachchidananda. For us also to know and possess our true Self in the essential and the universal is to discover the essential and the universal delight of existence, self-bliss and all-bliss. For the universal is only the pouring out of the essential existence, consciousness and delight; and wherever and in whatever form that manifests as existence, there the essential consciousness must be and th
refore there must be an essential delight.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 387 - 88 - 89
chit. ::: pure unitary consciousness, which is the nature of the real Self; absolute consciousness; intelligent awareness
cit (chit) ::: consciousness; the infinite self-awareness that is "the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience", the second term of saccidananda; "an inherent self-consciousness" in brahman,"inseparable from its being [sat] and throwing itself out as a force [tapas] of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds"; the "universal conscious-stuff of existence", the "original Consciousness" which "modifies itself so as to become on the Truthplane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself".
Cit: (Skr.) Awareness. Cf. sat-cit-ananda. -- K.F.L.
cit-tapas (chit-tapas; chittapas; chit tapas) ::: consciousness-force; knowledge-power; the unity of cit and tapas; "the infinite divine selfawareness which is also the infinite all-effective Will", represented by cit in the description of the nature of divine being as sat-cit-ananda or saccidananda; the "divine Conscious-Force" which "is omnipresent ... in the material cosmos, but veiled, operative secretly behind the actual phenomenon of things, and it expresses itself there characteristically through its own subordinate term, Life" (pran.a).
cit tapas (Chit Tapas) ::: consciousness-force, pure energy of Consciousness; the infinite divine selfawareness which is also the infinite all-effective Will.
Color awareness: According to occult teachings, color and color scheme exercise a tremendous influence on the human mind, and by learning the mastery of colors, man can become the master of his thought power and ruler of his destiny.
Color therapy: The practical application, for therapeutic purposes, of the teaching that color affects emotions, health, mental states and conduct in general. (See: color awareness.)
commercial at ::: (character) @. ASCII code 64. Common names: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl, INTERCAL: whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, amphora. ITU-T: commercial at.The @ sign is used in an electronic mail address to separate the local part from the hostname. This dates back to July 1972 when Ray Tomlinson was designing the first[?] e-mail program.It is ironic that @ has become a trendy mark of Internet awareness since it is a very old symbol, derived from the latin preposition ad (at).Giorgio Stabile, a professor of history in Rome, has traced the symbol back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman mercantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on 1536-05-04.In Dutch it is called apestaartje (little ape-tail), in German affenschwanz (ape tail). The French name is arobase. In Spain and Portugal it denotes a weight of about 25 pounds, the weight and the symbol are called arroba. Italians call it chiocciola (snail).See @-party.(2003-04-28)
commercial at "character" "@". {ASCII} code 64. Common names: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl, {INTERCAL}: whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, amphora. {ITU-T}: commercial at. The @ sign is used in an {electronic mail address} to separate the local part from the {hostname}. This dates back to July 1972 when {Ray Tomlinson} was designing the first[?] {e-mail} program. It is ironic that @ has become a trendy mark of Internet awareness since it is a very old symbol, derived from the latin preposition "ad" (at). Giorgio Stabile, a professor of history in Rome, has traced the symbol back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman mercantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on 1536-05-04. In Dutch it is called "apestaartje" (little ape-tail), in German "affenschwanz" (ape tail). The French name is "arobase". In Spain and Portugal it denotes a weight of about 25 pounds, the weight and the symbol are called "arroba". Italians call it "chiocciola" (snail). See {@-party}. (2003-04-28)
Computer Emergency Response Team "security, body" (CERT) An organisation formed by {DARPA} in November 1988 in response to the {Internet worm} incident. The CERT charter is to work with the {Internet} community to help it responf to computer security events involving Internet {hosts}, to raise awareness of computer security issues and to conduct research targeted at improving the security of existing systems. CERT products and services include 24-hour technical assistance for responding to computer security incidents, product {vulnerability} assistance, technical documents and tutorials. {CERT Home (http://cert.org/)}. E-mail: "cert@cert.org" (incident reports). Telephone +1 (412) 268 7090 (24-hour hotline). (2012-05-18)
conscious ::: 1. Having an awareness of one"s environment and one"s own existence, sensations, and thoughts. 2. Conscious implies being awake or awakened to an inner realization of a fact, a truth, a condition. half-conscious, half-consciously.
Consciousness ::: A fundamental property of the universe upon which all other movements of force and arrangements of form are derived. Consciousness is the fundamental unit of awareness and the building block upon which all of experiential reality is erected. Non-Dual Consciousness originates from Non-Experience and causally subsets into the plethora of experiential forms that characterizes our dualistic world.
Consciousness ::: Awareness of yourself and the world around you.
::: "Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
“Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions ; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is cit but also cit sakti.
consciousness: is regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.
consciousness ::: the self-aware force of existence. The essence of consciousness is the power to be aware of itself and its objects; but it is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. Consciousness is not synonymous with mentality, which is only a middle term; below mentality, it sinks into vital and material movements which are for us subconscient; above, it rises into the Supramental which is for us the superconscient.
Consciousness — two elements ::: Consciousness is made up of two elements, awareness of self and things and forces and conscious-power. Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth ; but awareness by itself is not enough.
Contemplation ::: On this site contemplation refers to residing within non-dual awareness. This is the state of consciousness being attuned to the Causal and is a goal of many meditative practices and several Tibetan Buddhist lineages such as Dzogchen.
Cosmic consciousness: That faculty, as yet possessed only by some exceptionally gifted individuals, but regarded by occultists as the eventual goal of future human evolution, consisting of the conscious awareness of the cosmos, of the life and order of the universe.
dAnapAramitA. (P. dAnapAramī; T. sbyin pa'i pha rol tu phyin pa; C. bushi boluomi; J. fuseharamitsu; K. posi paramil 布施波羅蜜). In Sanskrit, the "perfection of giving"; the first of the six [or ten] perfections (PARAMITA) cultivated on the BODHISATTVA path. According to the PAli tradition, dAna is the first of ten perfections (P. PARAMĪ). Three kinds of DANA are often enumerated in this context: the "gift of material goods" (AMIsADANA); the "gift of fearlessness" (ABHAYADANA) and the "gift of the dharma" (DHARMADANA). Giving (DANA) is perfected on the first of the ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the bodhisattva path, PRAMUDITA (joyful), where the bodhisattva's vision into the emptiness (suNYATA) of all things motivates him to perfect the practice of giving, learning to give away those things most precious to him, including his wealth, his wife, and family, and even his very body (see DEHADANA; SHESHEN). Thanks to his understanding of emptiness (suNYATA), the bodhisattva masters the perfection of giving by realizing there is no donor, no recipient, and no gift. It is with this insight that ordinary giving becomes perfected giving. The perfection of giving brings an end to the obstruction of the common illusions of the unenlightened (pṛthagjanatvAvarana; C. yishengxing zhang), leading in turn to the awareness of universal suchness (sarvatragatathatA; C. bianxing zhenru). See DAsABHuMI, VESSANTARA.
dasyabuddhi (dasyabuddhi; dasya-buddhi) ::: awareness of dasya, the dasyabuddhi sense of surrender or submission to the will of the isvara.
Deveikut: (&
dhyāna. (P. jhāna; T. bsam gtan; C. chan/chanding; J. zen/zenjo; K. son/sonjong 禪/禪定). In Sanskrit, "meditative absorption," specific meditative practices during which the mind temporarily withdraws from external sensory awareness and remains completely absorbed in an ideational object of meditation. The term can refer both to the practice that leads to full absorption and to the state of full absorption itself. Dhyāna involves the power to control the mind and does not, in itself, entail any enduring insight into the nature of reality; however, a certain level of absorption is generally said to be necessary in order to prepare the mind for direct realization of truth, the destruction of the afflictions (KLEsA), and the attainment of liberation (VIMUKTI). Dhyāna is classified into two broad types: (1) meditative absorption associated with the realm of subtle materiality (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) and (2) meditative absorption of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these two types is subdivided into four stages or degrees of absorption, giving a total of eight stages of dhyāna. The four absorptions of the realm of subtle materiality are characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as one progresses from one stage to the next. The deepening of concentration leads the meditator temporarily to allay the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) and to put in place the five constituents of absorption (DHYĀNĀnGA). The five hindrances are: (1) sensuous desire (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders the constituent of one-pointedness of mind (EKĀGRATĀ); (2) malice (VYĀPĀDA), hindering physical rapture (PRĪTI); (3) sloth and torpor (STYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering applied thought (VITARKA); (4) restlessness and worry (AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering mental ease (SUKHA); and (5) skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ), hindering sustained thought (VICĀRA). These hindrances thus specifically obstruct one of the specific factors of absorption and, once they are allayed, the first level of the subtle-materiality dhyānas will be achieved. In the first dhyāna, all five constituents of dhyāna are present; as concentration deepens, these gradually fall away, so that in the second dhyāna, both types of thought vanish and only prīti, sukha, and ekāgratā remain; in the third dhyāna, only sukha and ekāgratā remain; and in the fourth dhyāna, concentration is now so rarified that only ekāgratā is left. Detailed correlations appear in meditation manuals describing specifically which of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA) serves as the antidote to which hindrance. Mastery of the fourth absorption of the realm of subtle materiality is required for the cultivation of the supranormal powers (ABHIJNĀ) and for the cultivation of the four ārupyāvacaradhyānas, or meditative absorptions of the immaterial realm. The immaterial absorptions themselves represent refinements of the fourth rupāvacaradhyāna, in which the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated. The four immaterial absorptions instead are named after their respective objects: (1) the sphere of infinite space (ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness (VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), (3) the sphere of nothingness (ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), and (4) the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJYYATANA). Mastery of the subtle-materiality realm absorptions can also result in rebirth as a divinity (DEVA) in the subtle-materiality realm, and mastery of the immaterial absorptions can lead to rebirth as a divinity in the immaterial realm (see ANINJYAKARMAN). Dhyāna occurs in numerous lists of the constituents of the path, appearing, for example, as the fifth of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). The term CHAN (J. zen), the name adopted by an important school of indigenous East Asian Buddhism, is the Chinese phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit term dhyāna. See also JHĀNA; SAMĀDHI; SAMĀPATTI.
dissociative disorder: Is a condition, often caused by trauma, in which a person disconnects from a full awareness of self, time, or external circumstances as a defence against unpleasant realities or memories.
Duality ::: Conscious experiences that characterize the lower three planes of the Four Worlds model are considered dualistic. In these stages of awareness there is a distinction between the subject observing and the object of observation: a quality at the root of all experience outside of the Causal Plane. Contrasted with Non-Duality. See also Phenomenal Reality.
duḥkha. (P. dukkha; T. sdug bsngal; C. ku; J. ku; K. ko 苦). In Sanskrit, "suffering" or "unsatisfactoriness"; the first of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVĀRY ĀRYASATYĀNI) of Buddhism and a concept foundational to Buddhism's worldview and religious practice. The emblematic description of duḥkha, as found in the first noble truth, is, "Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering. To be conjoined with what one dislikes is suffering and to be separated from what one likes is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering. In short, grasping at the five aggregates (SKANDHA) is suffering." Suffering thus not only includes the suffering that will invariably be associated with ordinary life, such as birth, aging, disease, and death, but also subsumes a full range of mental, emotional, and spiritual dissatisfactions, and ultimately is seen to be inherent to life itself. The teaching of suffering therefore seeks to change one's ordinary perspectives on the things of this world as objects worthy of pursuit, so that instead one realizes their nature of impermanence (ANITYA), suffering, and nonself (ANĀTMAN), viz., the three marks of existence (TRILAKsAnA). Through this sort of systematic attention (YONIsOMANASKĀRA), even the pleasures of life are ultimately realized to be "unsatisfactory," because, like all compounded things, they are impermanent and thus inevitably destined to pass away. This awareness of suffering produces a sense of the "dangers" (ĀDĪNAVA) inherent in this world and prompts the practitioner to turn away from this world and toward the radical nonattachment that is NIRVĀnA. ¶ Many types of duḥkha are enumerated in the literature, including forms specific to each of the six realms of rebirth (GATI). Most common are lists of three, four, and eight types of suffering. The three major categories of suffering are: (1) "misery caused by (physical and mental) suffering" (DUḤKHADUḤKHATĀ), viz., the full range of unpleasant or painful sensations (VEDANĀ) that are associated with either the physical body or the mind; (2) "misery caused by change" (VIPARInĀMADUḤKHATĀ), i.e., pleasant sensations may be a cause of suffering because they do not perdure and eventually turn into pain; (3) "misery caused by conditioning" (SAMSKĀRADUḤKHATĀ), i.e., sensations that are neither painful nor pleasant may still be a cause of suffering because they are impermanent and thus undependable; because of past KARMAN, suffering may always occur unexpectedly in the next moment. The four types of suffering are the suffering associated with birth (jātiduḥkha), senescence or aging (jarāduḥkha), sickness (vyādhiduḥkha), and death (maranāduḥkha); various sutras describe the Buddha's quest for enlightenment as motivated by the impulse to overcome these four types of sufferings. The eight types of suffering comprise the above four types plus an additional four: "the suffering of being separated from persons and things one likes" (priyaviprayogaduḥkha), "the suffering of being associated with persons and things one dislikes" (apriyasaMprayogaduḥkha), "the suffering of not getting what one wants" (yad api icchayā paryesamāno na labhate tad api duḥkhaM), and "the suffering inherent in the five aggregates that are objects of clinging" (saMksepena paNcopādānaskandhaduḥkha). In addition to these three typical categories of suffering, there are other lists, from the eighteen types of suffering listed in the sāriputrābhidharmasāstra (Shelifu apitan lun) to the one hundred and ten types enumerated in the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA. NĀGĀRJUNA's SUHṚLLEKHA gives a list of six sufferings: uncertainty, insatiability, casting off bodies repeatedly, repeated rebirth, repeatedly descending from high to low, and having no companions when dying and being reborn. Tibetan sources stress the role that meditation on suffering plays in producing a feeling of disgust (NIRVEDA; T. nges 'byung), that is, the preliminary turning away from the things of this world and turning toward nirvāna.
Dzogchen ::: Sanskrit for "Great Perfection". A tradition within Tibetan Buddhism and within Bon that seeks a return to the primordial state of rigpa (i.e. non-duality) as the natural stage of awareness.
Ecstasy, Ecstasis (Greek) [from ekstasis displacement, standing out from the proper place, hence rising above] A transference of consciousness from the physical plane to another inner and superior plane, accompanied by awareness and memory of the experience. It is necessary to distinguish between an astral-psychic experience and a truly psychospiritual one. The former is delusive and fraught with harm; the latter is the state of illumination spoken of by Plotinus, resulting from the true asceticism of the disciple, and in its highest form is the same as the high stage of meditation of the Hindu yogi.
E. Landau, Grundlagen der Analysis, Leipzig, 1930. Numinous: A word coined from the Latin "numen" by Rudolf Otto to signify the absolutely unique state of mind of the genuinely religious person who feels or is aware of something mysterious, terrible, awe-inspiring, holy and sacred. This feeling or awareness is a mysterium tremendum, beyond reason, beyond the good or the beautiful. This numinous is an a priori category and is the basis of man's cognition of the Divine. See his book The Idea of the Holy (rev. ed., 1925). -- V.F.
Eldorado (Spanish) [from el the + dorado golden, gilded] An imaginary region supposed to abound in gold and other precious elements, often located by early European explorers in the New World somewhere in Central or South America; figuratively, a speculative goal of blissful hopes. Such ideas, like that of the Promised Land, Elysium, or Paradise, are echoes of intuitive and traditional awareness of mankind’s divine origin and destiny — traditions also connected with certain spots on the earth, such as the north pole.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) ::: The awareness of and ability to manage one&
Energy-Raising Rite ::: A type of rite, usually done as part of or after a preliminary rite, designed to move awareness throughout the body and attune to certain archetypes or currents and possibly even load them within the body or sphere of awareness in preparation for more involved ritualistic or meditative undertakings. The Middle Pillar is an example of this kind of rite as is the portion of "The Calling of the Sevenths to Induce Equilibirum" that taps into and loads the body with the seven planetary currents.
essential trinity of Sachchidananda, ::: Existence, Consciousness, Bliss with self-awareness and self-force, Chit and Tapas, for double terms of Consciousness".
Evans-Wentz, Walter Y. (1878-1965). American Theosophist, best known as the editor of THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. Walter Wentz was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of a German immigrant and an American Quaker. As a boy he took an early interest in books on spiritualism he found in his father's library, reading as a teen both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine by Madame HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY of the Theosophical Society. He moved to California at the turn of the century, where in 1901, he joined the American section of the Theosophical Society. After graduating from Stanford University, Wentz went to Jesus College at Oxford in 1907 to study Celtic folklore. He later traveled to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and then on to India. In 1919, he arrived in the British hill station of Darjeeling, where he acquired a Tibetan manuscript. The manuscript was a portion of a cycle of treasure texts (GTER MA) discovered by RATNA GLING PA, entitled "The Profound Doctrine of Self-Liberation of the Mind [through Encountering] the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities" (Zab chos zhi khro dgongs pa rang grol), said to have been discovered in the fourteenth century. Since he could not read Tibetan, Evans-Wentz took the text to KAZI DAWA SAMDUP, the English teacher at a local school. Kazi Dawa Samdup provided Evans-Wentz with a translation of a portion of the text, which Evans-Wentz augmented with his own introduction and notes, publishing it in 1927 as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since its publication, various editions of the book have sold over 500,000 copies in English, making it the most famous Tibetan Buddhist text in the world. The text describes the process of death and rebirth, focusing on the intervening transition period called the BAR DO, or "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA). The text provides instructions on how to recognize reality in the intermediate state and thus gain liberation from rebirth. Through listening to the instructions in the text being read aloud, the departed consciousness is able to gain liberation; the Tibetan title of the text, BAR DO THOS GROL CHEN MO, means "Great Liberation in the Intermediate State through Hearing." Evans-Wentz's approach to the text reflects his lifelong commitment to Theosophy. Other translations that Kazi Dawa Samdup made for Evans-Wentz were included in Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935). In 1924, after Kazi Dawa Samdup's death, Evans-Wentz visited his family in Kalimpong, from whom he received a manuscript translation of the MI LA RAS PA'I RNAM THAR, a biography of MI LA RAS PA, which Evans-Wentz subsequently edited and published as Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa (1928). He returned to Darjeeling in 1935 and employed two Sikkimese monks to translate another work from the same cycle of texts as the Bar do thos grol, entitled "Self-Liberation through Naked Vision Recognizing Awareness" (Rig pa ngo sprod gcer mthong rang grol). During the same visit, he received a summary of a famous biography of PADMASAMBHAVA. These works formed the last work in his series, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, eventually published in 1954.
existentialism ::: The philosophical movement that views human existence as having a set of underlying themes and characteristics, such as anxiety, dread, freedom, awareness of death, and consciousness of existing, that are primary. That is, they cannot be reduced to or explained by a natural-scientific approach or any approach that attempts to detach itself from or rise above these themes.
Experience: (Lat. Experientia, from experiri: to test) The condition or state of subjectivity or awareness. (The term differs from Consciousness by emphasizing the temporal or passing character of affective undergoing. Usage, however, is not uniform, since its definition involves a theoretical standpoint. Thus Bradley identified it with Consciousness, while W. James used it to mean neutral phenomenon, a That or Given, without implications of either subjectivity or objectivity.) -- W.L.
fana ::: annihilation; spiritual cessation of ego-awareness
fanzhao. (J. hensho; K. panjo 返照). In Chinese, "tracing back the radiance," or "counter-illumination," a description used in the CHAN school for the underlying process governing a variety of different types of meditation, referring specifically to the process of introspection or "counter-illumination" that moves the mind away from its attachment to sensory objects and back toward its fundamental source, called variously the "numinous awareness" (LINGZHI), buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU; C. FOXING), TATHĀGATAGARBHA, or the DHARMADHĀTU. "Tracing back the radiance" receives one of its most detailed treatments in the writings of the Korean Son adept POJO CHINUL (1158-1210). Chinul's Korean commentator Yondam Yuil (1720-1799), e.g., defines the term as follows: "To trace back the radiance means to trace the radiance back to the numinous awareness of one's own mind.... It is like seeing the radiance of the sun's rays and following it back until you see the orb of the sun itself." The original enlightenment (BENJUE) of the mind is naturally luminous, shining ever outward and allowing beings to experience their external world. This natural quality of luminosity is what is meant by "sentience," and the very fact that "sentient" beings are conscious is proof that they are inherently enlightened. If this meditator can turn this radiance emanating from his mind back to its source, he would rediscover that luminous core of the mind and be instantly enlightened. This inherent radiance of the mind does not merely shine over the sense realms; in addition, as the mind's natural brightness is restored through meditative introspection, it comes virtually to shine through objects, exposing their inherent emptiness (suNYATĀ). Hence, numinous awareness is the quality that constitutes sentient beings' ultimate capacity to attain enlightenment. It serves as both the inherent faculty that allows meditation to develop and the quality of mind perfected through that meditation. By starting at the sensory level of what is seen, heard, etc., the meditator then trains to trace these sensory experiences back to their perceptual source in the quality of sentience itself, just as if he were following the rays emanating from the sun back to the sun itself; the perception of that sentience then constitutes "seeing the buddha-nature" (JIANXING), or the "understanding awakening" (JIEWU). The term is also known by its expanded form "follow back the light and trace back the radiance" (HUIGUANG FANZHAO), and various other permutations.
Feeling: (Kant. Ger. Gefühl) A conscious, subjective impression which does not involve cognition or representation of an object. Feelings are of two kinds: pleasures and pains. These represent nothing actual in objects, but reveal the state or condition of the subject. Kant saw in pleasure and pain, respectively, life-promoting and life-destroying forces; pleasure results from the harmony of an object with the subjective conditions of life and consciousness, while pain is the awareness of disharmony. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
foreknowledge ::: knowledge or awareness of something before its existence or occurrence; prescience.
Formless Realms ::: Areas of reality, likely corresponding to the upper reaches of the Mental Plane in the Four Worlds model, where consciousness sheds a discrete form and exists simply as formless awareness, awareness of space, awareness of awareness, etc. The Formless Realms proper correspond to the higher states of the samatha jhanas.
gators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of action that overpass the normal human measure. There may also be an awareness of influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds beyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial nature. As contact wth the supraphysical is possible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective — or at_ least objectivised — between our own consciousness and the consciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysicaj status in these other regions of existence. It is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a sahiie-scnse perception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter actually into other worlds and know something of their secrets, ft is the wore objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of expericoce.
Gestalt therapy: a therapy that considers all dimensions of a person's life and experience, to stimulate personal growth and increased self-awareness, in order to develop a sense of the whole person.
Gestalt Therapy ::: Treatment focusing on the awareness and understanding of one&
gnosis ::: "a power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self", a faculty superior to buddhi or intellect, possessing not only the "concentrated consciousness of the infinite Essence", but "also and at the same time an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the Infinite"; (in 1919-20) the supra-intellectual consciousness (also called ideality or vijñana) with its three planes of logistic, hermetic and seer gnosis, each successive level being more "intense and large in light, imperative, instantaneous, the scope of the active knowledge larger, the way nearer to the knowledge by identity, the thought more packed with the luminous substance of self-awareness and all-vision"; (in most of 1927 before 29 October) a plane of consciousness usually referred to as above the supreme ...64 supermind and descending into it to form supreme supermind gnosis, also rising to the "invincible Gnosis of the Divine"; (in April 1927) a term encompassing three degrees of supramental gnosis (corresponding to planes later redefined as parts of the overmind system) and a fourth degree of divine gnosis; (from 29 October 1927 onwards) equivalent to "divine gnosis", a grade of consciousness above overmind (but sometimes distinguished from supermind, which occupies a similar position) and descending into it to form gnostic overmind or gnosis in overmind.
gnosis: Intuitive and/ or initiated knowledge and awareness of the true nature of reality. (Not to be confused with the spiritual awareness Trait in Werewolf: The Apocalypse.)
Gnosticism: One of various related beliefs about an imperfect Creation that can be transcended through enlightened knowledge/ awareness (gnosis) of one’s higher state of being.
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
Godhead ::: “… the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” Essays on the Gita
Gravity ::: A fundamental phenomenon of the Universe. Scientifically there is still much to this that is a mystery and spiritually it is also profoundly intriguing and an active area of research. The idea, in terms of the occult sciences, is that there is a scaling effect as consciousness recursively subsets and that this tethers Spirit to matter. At distinct stages there is cohesion and stability and these are perceived as planes of reality. Divergent forms at the levels of these planes stay within that plane and once the Physical Plane is encountered in order for the complexity nodes that are our brains to emerge, a world was needed that was only formed through a scaling of masses downward through galaxy supercluster to galaxy to solar system to planet to body. The lensing effect of consciousness seems to relate to some of this orbital mathematics, especially in terms of the "shape" and "feel" of the sphere of awareness. Additionally, spacetime is warped by mass and vice-versa, so there are many interesting aspects to gravity, the perception of spacetime, and the evolution of consciousness.
Guilt: In ethics, conduct involving a breach of moral law. The commission of a moral offense considered as the failure of duty. Defection from obligation or responsibility. In the psychology of ethics, the sense of guilt is the awareness of having violated an ethical precept or law. Opposite of innocence, merit. -- J.K.F.
guru kripa. ::: the Grace of the Guru; that Self-awareness that is one's own true nature
Hanyong Chongho. (漢永鼎鎬) (1870-1948). Korean monk renowned for his efforts to revitalize Buddhist education during the Japanese colonial period. Hanyong Chongho studied the Confucian classics when young and entered the SAMGHA at seventeen. He became a disciple of Soryu Ch'omyong (1858-1903), from whom he received the dharma name Hanyong. In 1909, he traveled to Seoul and helped lead the Buddhist revitalization movement, along with fellow Buddhist monks HAN YONGUN and Kŭmp'a Kyongho (1868-1915). In 1910, shortly after Japan's formal annexation of Korea, Hoegwang Sason (1862-1933) and others signed a seven-item treaty with the Japanese SoToSHu, which sought to assimilate Korean Buddhism into the Soto order. In response to this threat to Korean Buddhist autonomy, Hanyong Chongho helped Han Yongun and other Korean Buddhist leaders establish the IMJE CHONG order in Korea. In 1913, he published the journal Haedong Pulgyo ("Korean Buddhism") in order to inform the Buddhist community of the need for revitalization and self-awareness. Beginning with his teaching career at Kodŭng Pulgyo Kangsuk in 1914, he devoted himself to the cause of education and went on to teach at various other Buddhist seminaries (kangwon) throughout the country. His many writings include the Songnim sup'il ("Jottings from Stone Forest"), Chongson Ch'imunjiphwa ("Selections from Stories of Admonitions"), and Chongson Yomsong sorhwa ("Selections from the YoMSONG SoRHWA"), a digest of the most-famous Korean kongan (C. GONG'AN) collection.
Higher Mind ::: a luminous thought-mind whose instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness.
Higher Mind ::: I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mindlevel although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight—not illumined by any of the intenser upper lights but as if in a large strong and clear daylight. It acts as an intermediate state between the Truth-Light above and the human mind; communicating the higher knowledge in a form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it.Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the spirit. Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is th
refore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind,—but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin,—as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness are dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of spirit-born conceptual knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 27, 21-22 Page: 20, 974
holon ::: A term coined by Arthur Koestler. In Integral Theory, a holon refers to a whole that is simultaneously part of another whole, or “whole/part.” Whole atoms are parts of whole molecules, which themselves are parts of whole cells, and so on. There are individual holons and social holons. The main difference between the two is that individual holons have a subjective awareness or dominant monad (an “I”), while social holons have an intersubjective awareness, dominant mode of discourse, or predominant mode of resonance (a “We”/“Its”): social holons emerge when individual holons commune. Individual and social holons follow the twenty tenets. Lastly, “holon,” in the broadest sense, simply means “any whole that is a part of another whole,” and thus artifacts and heaps can loosely be considered “holons.”
However insensible the person is of externals, he is conscious in some part of his composite nature, just as each principle of his being has its own range of awareness after death. Some people have brought back a more or less clear memory of a state of being transcending anything they had ever imagined on earth. Their first feeling is one of a delicious peace and liberation; then comes a mental clearness with majestic visions of perfect truth, and a realization of a self-existent “I” as a part of a universal whole. The spiritually-minded person may attain to an instant and complete buddhi-manasic vision of “things as they are.” Such a one, at the moment of recovery, is often vividly sensible of being aroused from a state of superior existence, but is unable to recall what it was. Again, any gleams of knowledge that do survive the transit may be misinterpreted by the brain-mind from its preconceived philosophical or religious ideas. The average person, however, brings back little if any remembrance of his experience.
Humanistic Therapy ::: Treatment focused on increasing awareness of one&
Hyposchemazia is characterized by the reduced awareness of a patient's body image and Aschemazia by the absence of it. These disorders can have many varied causes such as physical injuries, mental disorders, or mental or physical states. These include transection of the spinal cord, parietal lobe lesions (e.g. right middle cerebral artery thrombosis), anxiety, depersonalization, epileptic auras, migraines, sensory deprivation, and vertigo (i.e. "floating on air").
"I"-awareness, "I"-consciousness; the supreme Heart
Individuation ::: The term used to describe how Source Consciousness (which is non-dual awareness) becomes expressed dualistically. This is the process through which noumenal reality gives way to the phenomenal reality that forms the illusion of separation in which most of society finds itself.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
In Mazdean literature ahu corresponds to the first of the five life-giving forces or fires namely: ahu, daena, baudha, urvan, and fravashi in the order of awareness; James Darmesteter translates them respectively as: spirit, conscience, intelligence, soul, and fravashi (Yasna 26, 4).
"In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the self-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea.” The Life Divine
“In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the self-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea.” The Life Divine
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In the subconscient the intuition manifests itself in the action, in effectivity, and the knowledge or conscious identity is either entirely or more or less concealed in the action. In the superconscient, on the contrary, Light being the law and the principle, the intuition manifests itself in its true nature as knowledge emerging out of conscious identity, and effectivity of action is rather the accompaniment or necessary consequent and no longer masks as the primary fact. Between these two states reason and mind act as intermediaries which enable the being to liberate knowledge out of its imprisonment in the act and prepare it to resume its essential primacy. When the selfawareness in the mind applied both to continent and content, to own-self and other-self, exalts itself into the luminous selfmanifest identity, the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous intuitional3 knowledge. This is the highest possible state of our knowledge when mind fulfils itself in the supramental.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 72
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
“… intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
ishwara pranidhana. :::constantly living with an awareness of the divine presence; surrender to God's will
It is in his biology that the distinctive concepts of Aristotle show to best advantage. The conception of process as the actualization of determinate potentiality is well adapted to the comprehension of biological phenomena, where the immanent teleology of structure and function is almost a part of the observed facts. It is here also that the persistence of the form, or species, through a succession of individuals is most strikingly evident. His psychology is scarcely separable from his biology, since for Aristotle (as for Greek thought generally) the soul is the principle of life; it is "the primary actualization of a natural organic body." But souls differ from one another in the variety and complexity of the functions they exercise, and this difference in turn corresponds to differences in the organic structures involved. Fundamental to all other physical activities are the functions of nutrition, growth and reproduction, which are possessed by all living beings, plants as well as animals. Next come sensation, desire, and locomotion, exhibited in animals in varying degrees. Above all are deliberative choice and theoretical inquiry, the exercise of which makes the rational soul, peculiar to man among the animals. Aristotle devotes special attention to the various activities of the rational soul. Sense perception is the faculty of receiving the sensible form of outward objects without their matter. Besides the five senses Aristotle posits a "common sense," which enables the rational soul to unite the data of the separate senses into a single object, and which also accounts for the soul's awareness of these very activities of perception and of its other states. Reason is the faculty of apprehending the universals and first principles involved in all knowledge, and while helpless without sense perception it is not limited to the concrete and sensuous, but can grasp the universal and the ideal. The reason thus described as apprehending the intelligible world is in one difficult passage characterized as passive reason, requiring for its actualization a higher informing reason as the source of all intelligibility in things and of realized intelligence in man.
It is the insinimentation of the Sachchidananda, — the Infinite consciousness higher than the mental being. It Is a Self- awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of Self- determination Inherent in that Self-awareness. Supermind keeps always and in every status and condition the spiritual realisation of the unity of all. It is the Consciousness creatrix of the world, a W”!!! to light and vision and also a will to power of works. It
“It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind’s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Jada-samadhi: The state of Samadhi induced by Hatha Yogic process in which there is no awareness or illumination as opposed to Chaitanya Samadhi of the Vedantins.
jagrat sushupti. ::: the state of wakeful sleep in which there are no thoughts, but in which there is full awareness of the existence-consciousness,
Jhana ::: A Pali term describing an advanced meditative state of awareness. There are both vipassana jhanas and samatha jhanas. The former describes states of meditative insight that are found through progressing through the stages of mindfulness meditation and the latter describes states of advanced concentration whereupon the object of observation becomes increasingly prounounced in the locus of one's awareness (at least in the early states, in later states that object can drop away entirely). The jhanic states are genuinely preternatural to the mundane mind and are somewhat advanced, so a discussion of them will need to await further research and experience.
jnana ::: knowledge, wisdom; supreme self-knowledge; the essential aspect [cf. vijnana] of the true unifying knowledge, the direct spiritual awareness of the supreme Being. ::: jnanam [nominative]
jNāna. (P. Nāna; T. ye shes; C. zhi; J. chi; K. chi 智). In Sanskrit, "gnosis," "knowledge," "awareness," or "understanding," numerous specific types of which are described in Buddhist literature. JNāna in the process of cognition implies specific understanding of the nature of an object and is necessarily preceded by SAMJNĀ ("perception"). JNāna is also related to PRAJNĀ ("wisdom"); where prajNā implies perfected spiritual understanding, jNāna refers to more general experiences common to a specific class of being, such as the knowledge of a sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, or buddha. The YOGĀCĀRA school discusses four or five specific types of knowledge exclusive to the buddhas. The four knowledges are transformations of the eighth consciousnesses (VIJNĀNA): (1) Mirror-like knowledge, or great perfect mirror wisdom (ĀDARsAJNĀNA; mahādarsajNāna), a transformation of the eighth consciousness, the ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA, in which the perfect interfusion between all things is seen as if reflected in a great mirror. (2) The knowledge of equality, or impartial wisdom (SAMATĀJNĀNA), a transformation of the seventh KLIstAMANOVIJNĀNA, which transcends all dichotomies to see everything impartially without coloring by the ego. (3) The knowledge of specific knowledge or sublime contemplation (PRATYAVEKsANĀJNĀNA), a transformation of the sixth MANOVIJNĀNA, which recognizes the unique and common characteristics of all DHARMAs, thus giving profound intellectual understanding. (4) The knowledge that one has accomplished what was to be done (KṚTYĀNUstHĀNAJNĀNA), a transformation of the five sensory consciousnesses, wherein one perfects actions that benefit both oneself and others. The fifth of the five knowledges is the "knowledge of the nature of the DHARMADHĀTU" (DHARMADHĀTUSVABHĀVAJNĀNA). Each of these knowledges is then personified by one of the PANCATATHĀGATAs, sometimes given the names VAIROCANA, AKsOBHYA, RATNASAMBHAVA, AMITĀBHA, and AMOGHASIDDHI.
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jnana swarupa. ::: the embodiment of spiritual wisdom; pure awareness that is free of conceptual encumbrances
kāya. (T. lus/sku/tshogs; C. shen; J. shin; K. sin 身). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "body"; a term used to refer to the ordinary human body as well as the exalted body, or bodies, of a buddha (for which see TRIKĀYA, or "three bodies"). The body can serve as an object of meditation, as in "mindfulness of the body" (KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ; P. kāyānupassanā; see SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA), which involves practices associated with mindfulness of breathing (S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI; P. ānāpānasati), mindfulness of the physical postures (ĪRYĀPATHA), full awareness of bodily actions, contemplation of bodily impurities, contemplation of elements, and nine cemetery meditations (AsUBHABHĀVANĀ). ¶ The term is also used to refer to a group, collection, or mass, typically as the final member of a compound, for example, a mass or crowd of people (janakāya), or the "collection of names," viz., "letters" (nāmakāya; see CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA). ¶ From this sense of kāya as a group evolves the notion of the DHARMAKĀYA, originally meaning the "whole mass" (viz., "all") of the dharmas, and more specifically the "corpus" of a buddha's auspicious qualities (DHARMA). From this latter sense it would come to mean the foundational "dharma-body" of the buddhas.
Kether ::: Also "Keter". Translated as "Crown" in Hebrew. The first Sephirah described by the Kabbalah. It is representative of Unity (Point) Consciousness which is the state of God prior to dualistic emanation. Exists along the Middle Pillar as a stable level of conscious awareness – the Non-Dual level that is the Causal Plane (i.e the First World). Part of the Supernal Triad that is associated with noumenal ("truth beyond truth") reality as opposed to phenomenal reality which is dualistic and causally emanated from the noumenal.
khregs chod. (trekcho). In Tibetan, lit. "breaking through the hard" or "breakthrough"; one of the two main practices in the SNYING THIG tradition of RDZOGS CHEN, the other being THOD RGAL, "crossing the crest" or "leap over." Khregs chod is paired with the essential purity (ka dag) of awareness; the practice of khregs chod leads to thod rgal; it cuts through the stream of obscurations and reveals awareness (RIG PA) devoid of object-subject bifurcation (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). Sustaining this awareness uninterruptedly while involved in ordinary sense perception is the essence of the practice. It cuts the stream of past and future thought and uses the gap of the unfindable present to contact the primordial pure awareness. It is oriented toward the emptiness (suNYATĀ) aspect free from conceptual proliferation (NIsPRAPANCA). Both thod rgal and khregs chod are concerned with the natural light ('od gsal; PRABHĀSVARA) of pure awareness; but whereas the former leads to the total dissolution of the body into light in a vision of transcendental consciousness (ye shes; JNĀNA), the practice of the former leaves the practitioner as a small particle of dust, as it were.
Kiyozawa Manshi. (清沢満之) (1863-1903). Meiji-era Japanese Buddhist leader in the HIGASHI-HONGANJIHA of JoDO SHINSHu. Kiyozawa was born into a poor warrior class family in a small town east of Nagoya and ordained in 1878 as a Higashi-Honganji priest. After studying Western philosophy at college and graduate school in Tokyo, he served his sect as an educator. In 1888, he was appointed principal of a Higashi-Honganji middle school in Kyoto and taught Western philosophy at a Higashi-Honganji seminary. In 1890, however, Kiyozawa left his position as principal to lead a rigorous ascetic life, wearing Buddhist robes, separating himself from his family, and living on simple food. Around this time, Kiyozawa launched a reform movement within Higashi-Honganji to return the school to the spirit of its founder, SHINRAN (1173-1262), and to make its ecclesiastical structure conform better to modern secular society, such as by having its deacons elected democratically. However, his movement failed and he was excommunicated in 1897. After being reinstated a year later, Kiyozawa again played an important role in the sect's education, serving in 1901 and 1902 as a dean of Higashi-Honganji's newly founded college (present-day otani University). He died at the age of forty from the tuberculosis he had contracted during his practice of asceticism. Kiyozawa is credited with popularizing the TANNISHo, a short collection of Shinran's sayings that previously were not widely known. Kiyozawa emphasized individual religious experience, in which the adherent's self-awareness of his or her incapacity for moral perfection would instead prompt the adept to realize the truth of salvation through absolute reliance on the infinite. Kiyozawa argued that such individual spiritual realization could contribute to the welfare of society at large. Although Kiyozawa's thought was not widely accepted during his own age, it influenced a younger generation of Higashi-Honganji scholars, such as Akegarasu Haya (1877-1967), Soga Ryojin (1875-1971), and Kaneko Dai'ei (1881-1976), who later became leading intellectual figures in the sect.
Knowledge by identity ::: "The supermind knows most completely and securely not by thought but by identity, by a pure awareness of the self-truth of things in the self and by the self, atmani atmanam atmana. [S21:801-02]
kongji lingzhi. (J. kujaku ryochi; K. kongjok yongji 空寂靈知). In Chinese, "void and calm, numinous awareness." See LINGZHI.
Kr.s.n.abodha (Krishnabodha) ::: awareness of Kr.s.n.a in the brahKrsnabodha madarsana.Kr.s.n.adarsana (Krishnadarshana; Krishna-darshana; Krishna darKrsnadarsana
ksayajNāna. (T. zad pa shes pa; C. jinzhi; J. jinchi; K. chinji 盡智). In Sanskrit, "knowledge of cessation"; one of the two types of knowledge that accompanies liberation from rebirth (SAMSĀRA). KsayajNāna is the understanding that one has eradicated the afflictions (KLEsA), viz., greed, hatred, and delusion. KsayajNāna occurs at the point that the adept becomes an AsAIKsA (one who has no more need of religious training) and brings an end to the clinging to existence, thus eradicating the desire for continued rebirth. This type of knowledge is typically paired with the "knowledge of nonproduction" (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), the awareness that the klesas, once eradicated, will never arise again.
Kun byed rgyal po. (Kun che gyalpo). In Tibetan, the "All-Creating King," an important tantra for the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, known for its exposition of RDZOGS CHEN. Within the tripartite division of ATIYOGA, it is placed in the SEMS SDE class. Although presented as an Indian text (in which case, its Sanskrit title would be Kulayarāja), the work is likely of Tibetan origin, dating from the late tenth century. A work in eighty-four chapters, it takes the form of a dialogue between the All-Creating King and Sattvavajra. Among its famous teachings are the "ten absences" (med pa bcu) that point to the special nature of primordial awareness, called BODHICITTA as well as the "all-creating king" in the text. The ten are as follows: no philosophical view on which to meditate, no vows to maintain, no method to seek, no MAndALA to create, no transmission to receive, no path to traverse, no BHuMI to achieve, no conduct to abandon or adopt, an absence of obstacles in the primordial wisdom, and spontaneous perfection beyond all hope and fear.
kundaliniyoga ::: Kundalini Yoga A form of meditation used to awaken the energy of awareness (Kundalini), who is made to rise through the Chakras to the sahasrara (the thousand-petalled spiritual energy centre at the crown of the head) where the individual soul merges into the supreme Self to attain full awareness of the Soul.
Kyoto school. An influential school of modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy that is closely associated with philosophers from Kyoto University; it combines East Asian and especially MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought, such as ZEN and JoDO SHINSHu, with modern Western and especially German philosophy and Christian thought. NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), and NISHITANI KEIJI (1900-1991) are usually considered to be the school's three leading figures. The name "Kyoto school" was coined in 1932 by Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), a student of Nishida and Tanabe, who used it pejoratively to denounce Nishida and Tanabe's "Japanese bourgeois philosophy." Starting in the late 1970s, Western scholars began to research the philosophical insights of the Kyoto school, and especially the cross-cultural influences with Western philosophy. During the 1990s, the political dimensions of the school have also begun to receive scholarly attention. ¶ Although the school's philosophical perspectives have developed through mutual criticism between its leading figures, the foundational philosophical stance of the Kyoto school is considered to be based on a shared notion of "absolute nothingness." "Absolute nothingness" was coined by Nishida Kitaro and derives from a putatively Zen and PURE LAND emphasis on the doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ), which Kyoto school philosophers advocated was indicative of a distinctive Eastern approach to philosophical inquiry. This Eastern emphasis on nothingness stood in contrast to the fundamental focus in Western philosophy on the ontological notion of "being." Nishida Kitaro posits absolute nothingness topologically as the "site" or "locale" (basho) of nonduality, which overcomes the polarities of subject and object, or noetic and noematic. Another major concept in Nishida's philosophy is "self-awareness" (jikaku), a state of mind that transcends the subject-object bifurcation, which was initially adopted from William James' (1842-1910) notion of "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken); this intuition reveals a limitless, absolute reality that has been described in the West as God or in the East as emptiness. Tanabe Hajime subsequently criticized Nishida's "site of absolute nothingness" for two reasons: first, it was a suprarational religious intuition that transgresses against philosophical reasoning; and second, despite its claims to the contrary, it ultimately fell into a metaphysics of being. Despite his criticism of what he considered to be Nishida's pseudoreligious speculations, however, Tanabe's Shin Buddhist inclinations later led him to focus not on Nishida's Zen Buddhist-oriented "intuition," but instead on the religious aspect of "faith" as the operative force behind other-power (TARIKI). Inspired by both Nishida and such Western thinkers as Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) (with whom he studied), Nishitani Keiji developed the existential and phenomenological aspects of Nishida's philosophy of absolute nothingness. Concerned with how to reach the place of absolute nothingness, given the dilemma of, on the one hand, the incessant reification and objectification by a subjective ego and, on the other hand, the nullification of reality, he argued for the necessity of overcoming "nihilism." The Kyoto school thinkers also played a central role in the development of a Japanese political ideology around the time of the Pacific War, which elevated the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above other races and justified Japanese colonial expansion. Their writings helped lay the foundation for what came to be called Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race; at the same time, however, Nishida also resisted tendencies toward fascism and totalitarianism in Japanese politics. Since the 1990s, Kyoto school writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties to Japanese exceptionalism and pre-war Japanese nationalism. These political dimensions of Kyoto school thought are now considered as important for scholarly examination as are its contributions to cross-cultural, comparative philosophy.
Life ::: Not to be confused with consciousness although awareness does permeate all form. When we discuss the quality of being alive we will refer to the ability of organic matter to respond to stimuli, reproduce, maintain homeostasis, and grow. This is a bit of an arbitrary distinction as modern biology sees some forms as alive and others as inanimate especially when some of the qualities of "life" blur. For example, viruses are not usually seen as alive since they require a host cell to reproduce in.
lingzhi bumei. (靈知不昧). In Chinese, "numinous awareness is never dark." See LINGZHI.
lingzhi. (J. ryochi/reichi; K. yongji 靈知). In Chinese, "numinous awareness"; the quality of "sentience" common to all sentient beings, which constitutes their capacity both to experience the sensory realms in all their diversity and to attain enlightenment. Numinous awareness is both the inherent faculty that inspires sentient beings to seek enlightenment and the quality of mind perfected through meditative development. As the foundation of sentience, numinous awareness is what enables all sentient beings to see, hear, know, and experience their world and thus constitutes the capacity of the mind to remain "aware" of all sensory stimuli; hence, this "numinous awareness is never dark" (C. lingzhi bumei). This property of awareness is said to be itself "void and calm" (C. kongji) and is consequently able to adapt without limitation to the various inclinations of sentient beings; hence, the term is often known as the "void and calm, numinous awareness" (C. kongji lingzhi). Regardless of whether that particular sentient being's awareness inclines toward greed and hatred or toward wisdom and compassion, however, that sentience itself remains simply "aware." This numinous awareness is therefore equated in the CHAN school with enlightenment (BODHI), TATHĀGATAGARBHA, buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU; C. FOXING), or one's "original face" (BENLAI MIANMU). The enlightenment inherent in the mind is naturally luminous, shining ever outward and allowing beings to experience their external world. This natural quality of luminosity is what is meant by "sentience," and the very fact that "sentient" beings are conscious is ipso facto proof that they are inherently enlightened. If the meditator can turn this radiance emanating from one's mind back to its source, one would rediscover that luminous core of the mind and be instantly enlightened. In CHAN meditation, the quality of introspection that allows the meditator to experience this numinous awareness directly is called "tracing back the radiance" (FANZHAO) or "seeing the nature" (JIANXING). The term receives particular attention in the works of the Chinese Chan/HUAYAN adept GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) and the Korean Son master POJO CHINUL (1158-1210). See also RIG PA.
Linking ::: The process of focusing the awareness upon a link in order to attune to a target. Once that philotic thread is found it becomes possible to connect to the target, learn about them, influence them, etc.
Loading ::: Using awareness, concentration, and even breath to charge an object of focus with a particular archetype, current, idea, or intent. The object can be tangible (specific materia or a talisman for instance) or intangible (e.g. a sigil). See also Patterning.
Locus of Focus ::: Refers to the field and breadth of one's awareness. Most find in mundane consciousness that the mind is constantly jumping around and very broadly focused, but through practicing meditation (especially concentration meditation in this case) the locus of focus narrows so that some deeper mysteries of reality can be revealed and so that sense of self can be shaken off more easily.
Lucid Dreaming ::: The ability to become aware that one is dreaming within a dream. This meta-awareness can be trained and utilized to either use the dream as a basis for exercises of will or to astral project proper. Lucid dreams can be entered from both a state of wakefulness and from a state of sleep.
Madhav: “The insensible Force is the dumb, unconscious Force that has emerged from the Inconscient, Matter in trance. It is not yet sentient, does not yet have the rudiments of consciousness even. Once this Force breaks out—under the relentless pressure of the nisus within—slowly consciousness develops in the world. The Force is joined to this awareness.
maggāmaggaNānadassanavisuddhi. (S. *margāmargajNānadarsanavisuddhi; C. dao feidao zhijian qingjing; J. dohidochikenshojo; K. to pido chigyon ch'ongjong 道非道智見清淨). In Pāli, "purity of knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path." According to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the fifth of seven "purities" (visuddhi; cf. S. VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. This purity consists of the understanding that distinguishes between what is the right path and what is the wrong path. It requires as a prerequisite the cultivation of methodological insight (nayavipassanā) through contemplating the nature of the five aggregates (P. khandha; S. SKANDHA). Through an understanding of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS and dependent origination (P. paticcasamuppāda; S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), the practitioner realizes that the aggregates come into being and pass away from moment to moment, and that as a consequence they are insubstantial, unreliable, and empty, like a mirage. During this stage of purification, ten experiences arise, which, if the practitioner becomes attached to them, function as defilements of insight (vipassanupakkilesa). These include: (1) radiant light (obhāsa), (2) knowledge (Nāna), (3) rapture (pīti), (4) tranquility (passaddhi), (5) pleasure (sukha), (6) determination (adhimokkha), (7) energy (paggaha), (8) awareness (upatthāna), (9) equanimity (upekkhā), and (10) delight (nikanti). These ten defilements may cause the practitioner to believe that he has attained liberation, when in fact he has not. They are overcome with continued practice, whereby the mind comes to regard them with indifference as mere concomitants of insight.
mahāmudrā. (T. phyag rgya chen po; C. dayin/dashouyin; J. daiin/daishuin; K. taein/taesuin 大印/大手印). In Sanskrit, "great seal"; an important term in tantric Buddhism, especially in the traditions that flourished in Tibet. In Tibet, although it is extolled by all sects, mahāmudrā is particularly associated with the BKA' BRGYUD sect and the lineage coming from TILOPA and NĀROPA to MAR PA and MI LA RAS PA. There, it is regarded as the crowning experience of Buddhist practice. It is a state of enlightened awareness in which phenomenal appearance and emptiness (suNYATĀ) are unified. It is also used to refer to the fundamental reality that places its imprint or "seal" on all phenomena of SAMSĀRA and NIRVĀnA. Mahāmudrā literature exalts the ordinary state of mind as being both the natural and ultimate state, characterized by lucidity and simplicity. In mahāmudrā, the worldly mind is valued for its ultimate identity with the ordinary mind; every deluded thought contains within it the lucidity and simplicity of the ordinary mind. This identity merely needs to be recognized to bring about the dawning of wisdom, the realization that a natural purity pervades all existence, including the deluded mind. It is usually set forth in a threefold rubric of the basis (gzhi), path (lam), and fruition ('bras bu), with the first referring to the pure nature of the ordinary mind, the second referring to becoming aware of that mind through the practice of meditation, and the third referring to the full realization of the innate clarity and purity of the mind. There is some debate in Tibet whether mahāmudrā is exclusively a tantric practice or whether there is also a SuTRA version, connected with TATHĀGATAGARBHA teachings. ¶ In tantric practice, mahāmudrā is also highest of the four seals, the others being the action seal (KARMAMUDRĀ), the pledge seal (SAMAYAMUDRĀ), and the wisdom seal (JNĀNAMUDRĀ).
Mahāparinirvānasutra. (T. Yongs su mya ngan las 'das pa chen po'i mdo; C. Da banniepan jing; J. Daihatsunehangyo; K. Tae panyolban kyong 大般涅槃經). In Sanskrit, "Discourse on the Great Decease" or the "Great Discourse on the Final Nirvāna"; also known in all languages simply as the Nirvāna Sutra. As its title suggests, the SuTRA describes the events and the Buddha's final instructions prior to his passage into PARINIRVĀnA and is thus the Sanskrit retelling of the mainstream version of the text (see MAHĀPARINIBBĀNASUTTA). However, although some of the same events are narrated in both versions, the Sanskrit text is very different in content, providing one of the most influential sources for MAHĀYĀNA views of the true nature of the Buddha and his NIRVĀnA, and of the buddha-nature (referred to in the sutra as both BUDDHADHĀTU, or "buddha-element," and TATHĀGATAGARBHA). There appear to have been a number of Sanskrit versions of the sutra, the earliest of which was likely compiled in Kashmir (see KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA) in the third century CE. One piece of internal evidence for the date of composition is the presence of prophecies that the dharma would fall into decline seven hundred years after the Buddha's passage into nirvāna. None of the Sanskrit versions is extant (apart from fragments), but several are preserved in Chinese and Tibetan translations. The earliest and shortest of these translations is in six rolls, translated into Chinese by FAXIAN (who brought the Sanskrit text to China from India) and BUDDHABHADRA, and completed in 418 CE. A second version was translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan at the end of the eighth century. The longest version, in forty rolls, was translated into Chinese by DHARMAKsEMA and completed in 423. It is known as the "Northern Text." This version was later translated into Tibetan from the Chinese as the Yongs su mya ngan las das pa chen po'i mdo. Besides the Tibetan translation of the long Chinese version by Dharmaksema, there is another version of the sutra in Tibetan translation, a Mahāparinirvānasutra in 3,900 slokas, translated by Jinamitra, Dhyānagarbha, and Ban de btsan dra, as well as a few folios of a translation of the sutra by Kamalagupta and RIN CHEN BZANG PO. The Faxian and Dharmaksema Chinese versions were subsequently edited into a single work, in thirty-six rolls. Chinese scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) also refer to two other translations of the sutra, made prior to that of Faxian, but these are no longer extant. There were significant differences between the versions of Faxian and Dharmaksema (and hence apparently in the Sanskrit recensions that they translated), so much so that scholars speculate that the shorter version was composed in a non-Mahāyāna community, with Mahāyāna elements being added to what evolved into the longer version. The most famous of the differences between the versions occurs on the question of whether all beings, including "incorrigibles" (ICCHANTIKA), possess the buddha-nature; the shorter version says that they do not and they are therefore condemned to eternal damnation; the longer version says that they do and thus even they retain the capacity to achieve enlightenment. The shorter version of the sutra describes the SAMGHA as consisting of monks and nuns and preaches about the need to provide donations (DĀNA) to them; the longer version includes the laity among the saMgha and preaches the need for charity to all persons. The longer version also recommends various forms of punishment, including execution, for those who denigrate the Mahāyāna. The sutra also makes reference to other famous sutras, such as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and is mentioned in other sutras, such as the MAHĀMEGHASuTRA. The Mahāparinirvānasutra, like other important sutras extolling tathāgatagarbha thought, such as the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, plays on the classical doctrine of the four "inverted views" (VIPARYĀSA), according to which sentient beings mistakenly view that which is suffering as being pleasurable, that which is impermanent as permanent, that which is impure as pure, and that which is without self as having self. In this sutra, by contrast, the four right views of suffering, impermanence, impurity, and no-self are proclaimed to be erroneous when describing the Buddha, his nirvāna, and the buddhadhātu; these are instead each said to be in fact blissful, permanent, pure, and endowed with self (see GUnAPĀRAMITĀ). Thus, the Buddha did not pass into nirvāna, for his lifespan is incalculable. The Buddha's nirvāna-which is referred to in the sutra as "great nirvāna" (mahānirvāna) or "great final nirvāna" (MAHĀPARINIRVĀnA)-differs from that of the ARHAT. The nirvāna of the arhat is said to be merely the state of the absence of the afflictions (KLEsA) but with no awareness of the buddhadhātu. The nirvāna of the buddha is instead eternal, pure, blissful, and endowed with self, a primordially existent reality that is only temporarily obscured by the klesa; when that nirvāna and buddhadhātu are finally "recognized," buddhahood is then achieved. The Buddha reveals the existence of this nirvāna to bodhisattvas. Because the buddhadhātu is present within all sentient beings, these four qualities are therefore found not simply in the Buddha but in all beings. This implies, therefore, that the Buddha and all beings are endowed with self, in direct contradiction to the normative Buddhist doctrine of no-self (ANĀTMAN). Here, in this sutra, the teaching of no-self is described as a conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA): when the Buddha said that there was no self, what he actually meant was that there is no mundane, conditioned self among the aggregates (SKANDHA). The Buddha's true teaching, as revealed at the time of his nirvāna, is that there is a "great self" or a "true self" (S. mahātman; C. dawo), which is the buddhadhātu, in all beings. To assert that there is no self is to misunderstand the true dharma. The doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ) thus comes to mean the absence of that which is compounded, suffering, and impermanent. These teachings would become influential in Tibet, especially among the proponents of the doctrine of "other emptiness" (GZHAN STONG). See also GUnAPĀRAMITĀ.
mahattva-bodhah ::: [awareness of greatness].
man ngag sde. (me ngak de). In Tibetan, "instruction class"; comprising the third of three main divisions of RDZOGS CHEN doctrine according to the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The other two are SEMS SDE (mental class) and KLONG SDE (spatial class). The man ngag sde teachings, regarded as the highest of the three, have constituted the core of Rnying ma practice since the eleventh century. It is said that sems sde teaches the clarity/awareness side of enlightenment, klong sde teaches the spatial side of enlightenment, and man ngag sde combines the two. A wide range of practices are included in the man ngag sde, concerned above all with the presentation by the teacher of a "pure awareness" (RIG PA) that is free from dualistic conceptions, and the recognition and maintenance of that state by the student; the instructions on the BAR DO emerged from these texts. The most famous practices of man ngag sde are "cutting through" (KHREGS CHOD) and "leaping over" (THOD RGAL). The man ngag sde has a number of subcategories, the most famous of which is the SNYING THIG. The root tantras of the man ngag sde are said to be the seventeen tantras.
Mantradhyana: A Sanskrit term for spiritual awareness produced or reinforced by incantations.
maranānusmṛti. (P. maranānussati; T. 'chi ba rjes su dran pa; C. niansi; J. nenshi; K. yomsa 念死). In Sanskrit, "recollection of death"; one of the most widely described forms of Buddhist meditation. This practice occurs as one of the forty objects of meditation (KAMMAttHĀNA) for the development of concentration. One of the most detailed descriptions of the practice is found in the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA. Among six generic personality types (greedy, hateful, ignorant, faithful, intelligent, and speculative), Buddhaghosa states that mindfulness of death is a suitable object for persons of intelligent temperament. Elsewhere, however, Buddhaghosa says that among the two types of objects of concentration, the generically useful objects and specific objects, only two among the forty are generically useful: the cultivation of loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ) and the recollection of death. In describing the actual practice, Buddhaghosa explains that the meditator who wishes to take death as his object of concentration should go to a remote place and repeatedly think, "Death will take place" or "Death, death." Should that not result in the development of concentration, Buddhaghosa provides eight ways of contemplating death. The first of the eight is contemplation of death as a murderer, where one imagines that death will appear to deprive one of life. Death is certain from the moment of birth; beings move progressively toward their demise without ever turning back, just as the sun never reverses its course through the sky. The second contemplation is to think of death as the ruin of all the accomplishments and fortune acquired in life. The third contemplation is to compare oneself to others who have suffered death, yet who are greater than oneself in fame, merit, strength, supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI), or wisdom. Death will come to oneself just as it has come to these beings. The fourth contemplation is that the body is shared with many other creatures. Here one contemplates that the body is inhabited by the eighty families of worms, who may easily cause one's death, as may a variety of accidents. The fifth contemplation is of the tenuous nature of life, that life requires both inhalation and exhalation of breath, requires a balanced alternation of the four postures (ĪRYĀPATHA) of standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. It requires moderation of hot and cold, a balance of the four physical constituents, and nourishment at the proper time. The sixth contemplation is that there is no certainty about death; that is, there is no certainty as to the length of one's life, the type of illness of which one will die, when one will die, nor where, and there is no certainty as to where one will then be reborn. The seventh contemplation is that life is limited in length. In general, human life is short; beyond that, there is no certainty that one will live as long as it takes "to chew and swallow four or five mouthfuls." The final contemplation is of the shortness of the moment, that is, that life is in fact just a series of moments of consciousness. Buddhaghosa also describes the benefits of cultivating mindfulness of death. A monk devoted to the mindfulness of death is diligent and disenchanted with the things of the world. He is neither acquisitive nor avaricious and is increasingly aware of impermanence (S. ANITYA), the first of the three marks of mundane existence. From this develops an awareness of the other two marks, suffering and nonself. He dies without confusion or fear. If he does not attain the deathless state of NIRVĀnA in this lifetime, he will at least be reborn in an auspicious realm. Similar instructions are found in the literatures of many other Buddhist traditions.
meditation ::: Meditation The practice of inner focus which renders an advanced state of awareness. It includes a variety of techniques for some individuals that may or may not incorporate spirituality which can calm and soothe as well as provide insight.
Mental Projection ::: The ability to firmly focus one's awareness at the level of the Mental Plane and to slip between and amongst the forms that characterize this level. Through practice this allows for exploring the realm of symbolic archetypes and raw information to the extent that the human mind can lucidly and persistently form structures around such ideas. See also Mental Plane.
Microcosmic Orbit ::: A Qi Gong term and technique for circulating the awareness around the Functioning and Governing Channels of the etheric body in order to build up energy or clear out blockages.
Middle Pillar ::: The central pillar (column) on the Kabbalah according to the Three Pillars model. It represents the Sephiroth in the middle. Each of these three Sephiroth reflect a stable stage of conscious awareness (a layer of self) and each is a fulcrum upon which the active/passive dynamics of the Sephiroth on the Pillars of Mercy and Severity above it find balance. So the Sephiroth on the Middle Pillar are emergent Sephiroth resulting from the sum total of the dynamics of the superior (as in "above", not as in "better") Sephiroth on the two adjacent Pillars. Also refers to the preliminary rite of the same name that is used to raise energy before formal works of magic or meditation begin.
Mind reading: The ability to be aware, or the awareness itself, of another person’s thoughts without or even despite of his will. The term is often but improperly used for telepathy (q.v.) which properly used implies a two-way communication between two minds.
Monad ::: Usually refers to either Kether, the Causal Plane, or to the Higher Self closest to non-dual awareness.
Monkey Mind ::: The state of awareness characterized by habitual thought loops, incessant chatter, and an inability to believe one can focus. This is, quite sadly, the default mode for most people and takes time and meditative effort to learn to control.
Morbidity ::: A departure from a state of physical or mental well-being, resulting from disease or injury. Frequently used only if the affected individual is aware of the condition. Awareness itself connotes a degree of measurable impact. Frequently, but not always, there is a further restriction that some action has been taken such as restriction of activity, loss of work, seeking of medical advice, etc.
"Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
“Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
Mudra ::: Sanskrit for "gesture". A hand position. The ways in which the hands are situated in meditative practice can change awareness and movement of the mind and can also be utilized to work magic and sculpt reality.
Mundane Consciousness ::: A generalized term for everyday, ordinary awareness. Used to contrast with states and stages of conscious experience that surpass these ordinary expectations and perceptions.
Mutazilite: (Ar. seceders) Member of a Shiite sect of Islam dating from the 8th century, which stood for free will and against divine predestination. Mysticism: Mysticism in its simplest and most essential meaning is a type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, direct and intimate consciousness of Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage. The word owes its origin to the Mystery Religions. The initiate who had the "secret" was called a mystes. Early Christians used the word "Contemplation" for mystical experience. The word "mystical" first came into use in the Western World in the writings ascribed to "Dionysius the Areopagite", which appeared at the end of the fifth century.
Mysticism: Any philosophy, doctrine, teaching or belief centered more on the worlds of the Spirit than the material universe, and aimed at the spiritual union or mental one-ness with the Universal Spirit, through intuitive and emotional apprehension of spiritual reality, and through various forms of spiritual contemplation, or disciplines. Mysticism in its simplest and most essential meaning is a type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, direct and intimate consciousness of Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage. The basic idea of all mysticism is that the essence of life and of the world is an all-embracing spiritual substance which is the true reality in the core of all beings, regardless of their outer appearances or activities.
mysticism ::: The pursuit of achieving communion, identity with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true human perception of the world goes beyond current logical reasoning or intellectual comprehension.
Nafs (A) The ego or self. The limited awareness of one’s own identity. The aim of the sufi is to forget the nafs so one can merge into a divine awareness
Nā ro chos drug. (Naro chodruk). The Tibetan name for a series of tantric practices, often translated into English as "the six yogas (or dharmas) of Nāropa," which are attributed to the eleventh-century Indian adept NĀROPA. These practices spread widely throughout Tibet, where they were transmitted among various Tibetan Buddhist traditions, including those of the SA SKYA and DGE LUGS. However, the Nā ro chos drug became a fundamental component in the meditation training of BKA' BRGYUD practitioners and continue to be practiced especially in the context of the traditional three-year retreat. Nāropa received several streams of tantric instruction from his GURU, the Indian SIDDHA TILOPA, including the BKA' BABS BZHI (four transmissions). According to tradition, he later codified these instructions and transmitted them to his Tibetan disciple MAR PA CHOS KYI BLO GROS, although Nāropa had died before Mar pa's first journey to India. However, Mar pa received these teachings from Nāropa's disciples and taught them in Tibet as the Nā ro chos drug. There are several slight variations in their presentation, but the most common enumeration of the Nā ro chos drug are (1) GTUM MO (tummo), literally "fierce woman," referring to the inner heat produced as an effect of manipulating the body's subtle energies; (2) sgyu lus (gyulu), "illusory body" (see MĀYĀDEHA), in which the meditator realizes the illusory nature of ordinary experiences; (3) rmi lam (milam), "dreams," referring to the practice of developing conscious awareness during dream states; (4) 'od gsal (osel), "clear light" (see PRABHĀSVARA), referring to the luminous aspect of mind and its recognition; (5) BAR DO, "intermediate state," referring to the practice of mental control during the disorienting period between death in one lifetime and rebirth into another; (6) 'PHO BA (powa), "transference," which is the practice of ejecting the consciousness out of the body at the moment of death to take rebirth in a pure realm. The first four are generally believed to facilitate liberation in the present life, the last two at the time of death.
Nature Philosophers: Name given to pre-Socratic "physiologers" and to Renaissance philosophers who revived the study of physical processes. Early in the 16th century, as a result of the discovery of new lands, the revival of maritime trade, and the Reformation, there appeared in Europe a renewed interest in nature. Rationalism grown around the authorities of the Bible and Aristotle was challenged and the right to investigate phenomena was claimed. Interest in nature was directed at first toward the starry heaven and resulted in important discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. The scientific spirit of observation and research had not yet matured, however, and the philosophers of that time blended their interest in facts with much loose speculation. Among the nature philosophers of that period three deserve to be mentioned specifically, Telesio, Bruno and Carnpanella, all natives of Southern Italy. Despite his assertions that thought should be guided by the observation of the external world, Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588) confined his works to reflections on the nature of things. Particularly significant are two of his doctrines, first, that the universe must be described in terms of matter and force, the latter classified as heat and cold, and second, that mind is akin to matter. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican monk and a victim of the Inquisition, was greatly influenced by the Copernican conception of the universe regarded by him as a harmonious unity of which the earth was but a small and not too important part. The concept of unity was not a condition of human search for truth but a real principle underlying all things and expressing the harmonious order of Divine wisdom. Deity, in his view, was the soul of nature, operating both in the human minds and in the motion of bodies. Consequently, both living beings and material objects must be regarded as animated. Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639), another Dominican monk, was also persecuted for his teachings and spent 27 years in prison. He contended that observations of nature were not dependent on the authority of reason and can be refuted only by other observations. His interests lay largely along the lines previously suggested by Telesio, and much of his thought was devoted to problems of mind, consciousness and knowledge. He believed that all nature was permeated by latent awareness, and may therefore be regarded as an animist or perhaps pantheist. Today, he is best known for his City of the Sun, an account of an imaginary ideal state in which existed neither property nor nobility and in which all affair were administered scientifically. -- R.B.W.
nescience ::: absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance. **
neti-neti. ::: "not this, not this"; "it is neither knowledge nor ignorance"; analytical process of progressively negating all names and forms in order to arrive at the eternal underlying Truth &
Nijabodharupa: State of Self-awareness; Satchidananda Brahman; of the form of real knowledge.
nirvichara samadhi. ::: a stage in samadhi wherein only pure awareness remains without deliberation, reasoning or enquiry
nirvikalpajNāna. (T. rnam par mi rtog pa'i ye shes; C. wu fenbie zhi; J. mufunbetsuchi; K. mu punbyol chi 無分別智). In Sanskrit, "nondiscriminative wisdom," "nonconceptual awareness"; the insight that is marked by freedom from the misconception that there is an inherent bifurcation between a perceiving subject (grāhaka) and its perceived objects (grāhya). In the YOGĀCĀRA school, this misconception is called the discrimination of object and subject (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). Overcoming this bifurcation leads to the nondiscriminative wisdom (nirvikalpajNāna), which, in the five-stage path (PANCAMĀRGA) system of the Yogācāra school, marks the inception of the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), where the adept sees reality directly, without the intercession of concepts, and realizes the inherent unity of objects and cognition (jNeya-jNāna). The MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA explains that nirvikalpajNāna has as its nature the following five types of absences: (1) the absence of inattention (amanasikāra), such as occurs during sleep, (2) the absence of discursive thought (VITARKA) and sustained consideration (VICĀRA), (3) the quiescence of the cessation of perception and feeling (SAMJNĀVEDAYITANIRODHA), (4) the absence of materiality (RuPA), and (5) the absence of analytical investigation regarding truthfulness. These attributes mean that nirvikalpajNāna (1) is not merely a lack of attention; (2) it is not just the second stage of DHYĀNA or higher, where discursive thought (vitarka) and investigation (vicāra) no longer pertain; (3) it is not the "equipoise of cessation" (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI), which no longer includes mind (CITTA) and mental concomitants (CAITTA), because wisdom (JNĀNA) is not possible without mind and its concomitants; (4) it is free from any kind of discrimination; and (5) it cannot be an object of analytical investigation, since it transcends the relationship between the objects in any discursive analysis. This type of wisdom is therefore associated with knowledge (jNāna) that is supramundane (LOKOTTARA) and uncontaminated (ANĀSRAVA). The term nirvikalpajNāna also appears in MADHYAMAKA descriptions of the path (MĀRGA), despite the fact that Madhyamaka does not reject the conventional existence of external objects. Here, the term refers to the nonconceptual realization of emptiness (suNYATĀ) that occurs on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and above, where reality is directly perceived in an experience in which emptiness and the consciousness that realizes emptiness are said to be like "pure water poured into pure water." See also VIKALPA; TRIVIKALPA.
nirvikalpa samadhi ::: complete trance, in which there is no thought or movement of consciousness or awareness of either inner or outer things.
nirvikalpa samadhi. ::: the state of Self-absorption; transcendental awareness; a state in which all differences between the individual self and Reality cease to exist, because the distinction between knower, knowledge and known is lost; beyond all duality; the state free from ideation in which nothing is perceived
niyamas. ::: self-purification and study; religious observances divided into five disciplines that should all be practiced in word, thought and deed &
Non-Duality ::: Also Nonduality, Nondual, and Non-Dual. The most primordial and fundamental level of conscious experience. When Consciousness is used as a proper noun it is referring to this stage of awareness. The level of reality where subject-object distinctions disappear and hence which is beyond the capacity to characterize and label. See Causal Plane.
nondual ::: The ever-present union of subject and object, Form and Emptiness, Heaven and Earth. Nondual can refer to both the suchness or “isness” of Reality right now and also the very highest basic level or structure-stage of awareness, where this suchness is a permanent realization. It is both the ever-present ground of evolution, as well as its ultimate goal.
Numinous ::: The awareness of the presence of God. This meaning of the term was developed by the theologian Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy (1923).
OAP {Outside Awareness Port}
OBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS The ability of consciousness to directly observe its own kind of matter. Instances are the sense perceptions of the organism in the physical world. Objective self-consciousness implies simultaneous awareness of the self as the centre of perception: I am seeing this.
Sense is another word for objective consciousness. (K 1.17.2)
object permanence: an understanding that objects that continue to exist, despite being hidden from sight or awareness. An important cognitive concept that, according to Piaget, does not develop until infants are eight months old or more.
observer bias: the tendency for observers to record data that may be biased as a result of personal expectations (e.g. awareness of the hypothesis) or motives, rather than recording what actually happens.
or at least to open the barrier Wlwecn this outer instrumental consciousness and that inner being which it very partially strives to express, and to make possible in future a conscious awareness of all the endless riches of possibility and experience and new being and new life that lie untapped behind the veil of this small and very blind and limited material personality which men call themselves. It is the begirmiog and constant enlarging of this deeper and fuller and richer awareness that is accomplished between the inward plunge and the return from this inner world to the waking state.
“Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the Spirit. Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind,—but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin,—as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness are dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge. An all-awareness emerging from the original identity, carrying the truths the identity held in itself, conceiving swiftly, victoriously, multitudinously, formulating and by self-power of the Idea effectually realising its conceptions, is the character of this greater mind of knowledge.” The Life Divine
Outside Awareness Port "humour" (OAP) A humorous {IBM} term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the {GUI} kind.
Outside Awareness Port ::: (humour) (OAP) A humorous IBM term for a window (the glass kind) rather than the GUI kind.
Oversoul ::: We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance, luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery. We become aware, in a certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all these three, aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality sustaining and exceeding them all, which humanity speaks of vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from these superconscient ranges we have visitations and in our highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit. There is then in our total range of existence a superconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience, overarching and perhaps enveloping our subliminal and our waking selves, but unknown to us, seemingly unattainable and incommunicable.
patipadāNānadassanavisuddhi. In Pāli, "purity of knowledge and vision regarding progress along the path"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the sixth of seven "purities" (VISUDDHI; cf. S. VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. This purity consists of eight kinds of insight knowledge regarding phenomena, together with a ninth kind of knowledge that adapts itself to the supramundane path (P. ariyamagga; S. ĀRYAMĀRGA) and elements pertaining to enlightenment (P. bodhipakkhiyadhamma; S. BODHIPĀKsIKADHARMA). The nine kinds of knowledge are (1) knowledge arising from the contemplation of arising and passing away (UDAYABBAYĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA), (2) knowledge arising from the contemplation of dissolution (BHAnGĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA), (3) knowledge arising from the awareness of terror (BHAYATUPAttHĀNĀNĀnA), (4) knowledge arising from the contemplation of danger (ĀDĪNAVĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA), (5) knowledge arising from the contemplation of aversion (NIBBIDĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA), (6) knowledge arising from the desire for deliverance (MUCCITUKAMYATĀNĀnA), (7) knowledge arising from contemplation of reflection (PAtISAnKHĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA), (8) knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations of existence (SAnKHĀRUPEKKHĀNĀnA), and (9) conformity knowledge (ANULOMANĀnA).
peak experience ::: A spontaneously occurring, heightened state of awareness.
peak experience: proposed by Maslow, a temporary, profound and intense experience of enhanced awareness, frequently accompanied by feelings of feeling fully alive.
Personation: In psychical research and occultism, the temporary assumption of the physical and mental characteristics of other persons, with or without loss of one’s consciousness and of the awareness of one’s own true personal identity.
Plane ::: A level of reality that uniquely qualifies and constrains Consciousness to a particular lens in subsetted planes. Usually this refers to stable stages of experience in respect to a self or what those stages of stability add to the overall qualia of awareness (i.e. the lens). For example, the Astral Plane adds the capacity to visualize and express certain emotional states to the physical world. There are models that attempt to map the evolution of Consciousness into distinct planes including the Four Worlds Model and the Seven Planes Model. Contrast with Dimension.
Power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense,—although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 358-359
prabhāsvaracitta. [alt. ābhāsvaracitta] (T. 'od gsal gyi sems; C. guangmingxin; J. komyoshin; K. kwangmyongsim 光明心). In Sanskrit, "mind of clear light." According to the systems of ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA, this state of mind is the most subtle form of consciousness, which must be used to perceive reality directly in order to achieve buddhahood. There are various views as to the location and accessibility of this type of consciousness, with some asserting that it resides in an indestructible drop (BINDU) located at the center of the heart CAKRA in the central channel (AVADHuTĪ), entering at the moment of conception and departing at the moment of death. Because the mind of clear light must be made manifest in order to achieve buddhahood, various practices are set forth to simulate the process of its manifestation at the moment of death, including sexual yogas. Other views hold that the mind of clear light is present in all moments of awareness and needs only to be recognized in order to achieve enlightenment. See also ĀGANTUKAKLEsA; PRABHĀSVARA.
Prajna: Consciousness; awareness.
prajNā. (P. paNNā; T. shes rab; C. bore/hui; J. hannya/e; K. panya/hye 般若/慧). In Sanskrit, typically translated "wisdom," but having connotations perhaps closer to "gnosis," "awareness," and in some contexts "cognition"; the term has the general sense of accurate and precise understanding, but is used most often to refer to an understanding of reality that transcends ordinary comprehension. It is one of the most important terms in Buddhist thought, occurring in a variety of contexts. In Buddhist epistemology, prajNā is listed as one of the five mental concomitants (CAITTA) that accompany all virtuous (KUsALA) states of mind. It is associated with correct, analytical discrimination of the various factors (DHARMA) enumerated in the Buddhist teachings (dharmapravicaya). In this context, prajNā refers to the capacity to distinguish between the faults and virtues of objects in such a way as to overcome doubt. PrajNā is listed among the five spiritual "faculties" (PANCENDRIYA) or "powers" (PANCABALA), where it serves to balance faith (sRADDHĀ) and to counteract skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ). PrajNā is also one of the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ), together with morality (sĪLA) and concentration (SAMĀDHI). In this context, it is distinguished from the simple stability of mind developed through the practice of concentration and refers to a specific understanding of the nature of reality, likened to a sword that cuts through the webs of ignorance (see ADHIPRAJNĀsIKsĀ). Three specific types of wisdom are set forth, including the wisdom generated by learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ), an intellectual understanding gained through listening to teachings or reading texts; the wisdom generated by reflection (CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), which includes conceptual insights derived from one's own personal reflection on those teachings and from meditation at a low level of concentration; and the wisdom generated by cultivation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), which is a product of more advanced stages in meditation. This last level of wisdom is related to the concept of insight (VIPAsYANĀ). The term also appears famously in the term PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ or "perfection of wisdom," which refers to the wisdom whereby bodhisattvas achieved buddhahood, as well as a genre of texts in which that wisdom is set forth.
Pranayama ::: Sanskrit, roughly, for "breath control". Refers to practices that utilize control of the breath for spiritual advancement and general wellness. Can also refer to a specific type of samatha (concentration) or insight (mindfulness) meditation where the practitioner follows the breath or uses awareness of the breath to dissect the moment.
prānāyāma. (T. srog rtsol; C. tiaoxi; J. chosoku; K. chosik 調息). In Sanskrit, lit., "restraint of breath," "restraint of wind"; a term used to encompass various practices of breath control. During his six years of practice of asceticism prior to his achievement of enlightenment, some traditions say that the Buddha became adept at the practice of holding his breath for extended periods of time but eventually abandoned it as a form of self-mortification. Nonetheless, elaborate practices of breath control are found throughout Buddhism, especially in Buddhist TANTRA. For example, at the beginning of a tantric meditative session, one is instructed to purify the breath by inhaling through one nostril and exhaling through the other by closing each nostril successively with the index finger. In the practice of ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA, the term is used broadly to refer to all forms of meditation, including the visualization of seed syllables (BĪJA) that are intended to cause the various winds to enter into the central channel (AVADHuTĪ). Such practices are to be distinguished from "mindfulness of breathing" (ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), which involves mindful awareness of the natural process of inhalations and exhalations, rather than any attempt to control or restrain the breath.
Precognition: Awareness of knowledge of events before they happen.
preconscious: thoughts, experiences, and memories not in a persons immediate attention but that can be called into awareness at any moment.
Preliminary Rite ::: A rite that precedes a greater and more elaborate ritual or undertaking. Usually these are rites designed to center awareness, purify thought, and/or attune to a particular current or paradigm. "The Calling of the Sevenths to Induce Equilibrium" and LBRP are examples of preliminary rites with the LBRP also being a zone rite.
rdzogs chen. (dzokchen). A Tibetan philosophical and meditative tradition, usually rendered in English as "great perfection" or "great completion." Developed and maintained chiefly within the RNYING MA sect, rdzogs chen has also been embraced to varying degrees by other Tibetan Buddhist sects. The non-Buddhist Tibetan BON religion also upholds a rdzogs chen tradition. According to legend, the primordial buddha SAMANTABHADRA (T. Kun tu bzang po) taught rdzogs chen to the buddha VAJRASATTVA, who transmitted it to the first human lineage holder, DGA' RAB RDO RJE. From him, rdzogs chen was passed to MANJUsRĪMITRA and thence to sRĪSIMHA, and the Tibetan translator Ba gor VAIROCANA, who had been sent to India by the eighth-century Tibetan King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN. In addition to Vairocana, the semimythical figures of VIMALAMITRA and PADMASAMBHAVA are considered to be foundational teachers of rdzogs chen in Tibet. Historically, rdzogs chen appears to have been a Tibetan innovation, drawing on multiple influences, including both non-Buddhist native Tibetan beliefs and Chinese and Indian Buddhist teachings. The term was likely taken from the GUHYAGARBHATANTRA. In the creation and completion stages of tantric practice, one first generates a visualization of a deity and its MAndALA and next dissolves these into oneself, merging oneself with the deity. In the Guhyagarbha and certain other tantras, this is followed with a stage known as rdzogs chen, in which one rests in the unelaborated natural state of one's own innately luminous and pure mind. In the Rnying ma sect's nine-vehicle (T. THEG PA DGU) doxography of the Buddhist teachings, these three stages constitute the final three vehicles: the MAHĀYOGA, ANUYOGA, and ATIYOGA, or rdzogs chen. The rdzogs chen literature is traditionally divided into three categories, which roughly trace the historical development of the doctrine and practices: the mind class (SEMS SDE), space class (KLONG SDE), and instruction class (MAN NGAG SDE). These are collected in a group of texts called the RNYING MA'I RGYUD 'BUM ("treasury of Rnying ma tantras"). The mind class is comprised largely of texts attributed to Vairocana, including the so-called eighteen tantras and the KUN BYED RGYAL PO. They set forth a doctrine of primordial purity (ka dag) of mind (sems nyid), which is the basis of all things (kun gzhi). In the natural state, the mind, often referred to as BODHICITTA, is spontaneously aware of itself (rang rig), but through mental discursiveness (rtog pa) it creates delusion ('khrul ba) and thus gives rise to SAMSĀRA. Early rdzogs chen ostensibly rejected all forms of practice, asserting that striving for liberation would simply create more delusion. One is admonished to simply recognize the nature of one's own mind, which is naturally empty (stong pa), luminous ('od gsal ba), and pure. As tantra continued to grow in popularity in Tibet, and new techniques and doctrines were imported from India, a competing strand within rdzogs chen increasingly emphasized meditative practice. The texts of the space class (klong sde) reflect some of this, but it is in the instruction class (man ngag sde), dating from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, that rdzogs chen fully assimilated tantra. The main texts of this class are the so-called seventeen tantras and the two "seminal heart" collections, the BI MA SNYING THIG ("Seminal Heart of Vimalamitra") and the MKHA' 'GRO SNYING THIG ("Seminal Heart of the dĀKINĪ"). The seventeen tantras and the "Seminal Heart of Vimalamitra" are said to have been taught by Vimalamitra and concealed as "treasure" (GTER MA), to be discovered at a later time. The "Seminal Heart of the dākinī" is said to have been taught by Padmasambhava and concealed as treasure by his consort, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL. In the fourteenth century, the great scholar KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS PA DRI MED 'OD ZER systematized the multitude of received rdzogs chen literature in his famous MDZOD BDUN ("seven treasuries") and the NGAL GSO SKOR GSUM ("Trilogy on Rest"), largely creating the rdzogs chen teachings as they are known today. With the man ngag sde, the rdzogs chen proponents made full use of the Tibetan innovation of treasure, a means by which later tantric developments were assimilated to the tradition without sacrificing its claim to eighth-century origins. The semilegendary figure of Padmasambhava was increasingly relied upon for this purpose, gradually eclipsing Vairocana and Vimalamitra as the main rdzogs chen founder. In subsequent centuries there have been extensive additions to the rdzogs chen literature, largely by means of the treasure genre, including the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG of 'JIGS MED GLING PA and the Bar chad kun gsal of MCHOG GYUR GLING PA to name only two. Outside of the Rnying ma sect, the authenticity of these texts is frequently disputed, although there continue to be many adherents to rdzogs chen from other Tibetan Buddhist lineages. Rdzogs chen practitioners are commonly initiated into the teachings with "pointing-out instructions" (sems khrid/ngos sprod) in which a lama introduces the student to the nature of his or her mind. Two main practices known as KHREGS CHOD (breakthrough), in which one cultivates the experience of innate awareness (RIG PA), and THOD RGAL (leap over), elaborate visualizations of external light imagery, preserve the tension between the early admonition against practice and the appropriation of complex tantric techniques and doctrines. Extensive practices engaging the subtle body of psychic channels, winds, and drops (rtsa rlung thig le) further reflect the later tantric developments in rdzogs chen. ¶ RDZOGS CHEN is also used as the short name for one of the largest and most active Tibetan monasteries, belonging to the Rnying ma sect of Tibetan Buddhism, located in the eastern Tibetan region of Khams; the monastery's full name is Rus dam bsam gtan o rgyan chos gling (Rudam Samten Orgyan Choling). It is a major center for both academic study and meditation retreat according to Rnying ma doctrine. At its peak, the monastery housed over one thousand monks and sustained more than two hundred branches throughout central and eastern Tibet. The institution was founded in 1684-1685 by the first RDZOGS CHEN INCARNATION Padma rig 'dzin (Pema Rikdzin) with the support of the fifth DALAI LAMA NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO. Important meditation hermitages in the area include those of MDO MKHYEN RTSE YE SHE RDO RJE and MI PHAM 'JAM DBYANGS RNAM RGYAL RGYA MTSHO. DPAL SPRUL RIN PO CHE passed many years in retreat there, during which time he composed his great exposition of the preliminary practices of Tibetan Buddhism entitled the KUN BZANG BLA MA'I ZHAL LUNG ("Words of My Perfect Teacher").
Realization ::: The level of awareness in respect to the causal nature of self and the relationship between self and moment-to-moment reality.
recall ::: n. 1. The act of remembering; recollecting. v. 2. To summon back to awareness of or concern with the subject or situation at hand. 3. To revoke or withdraw. recalled, recalling.
Religious A Priori: A separate, innate category of the human consciousness, religious in that it issues certain insights and indisputable certainties concerning God or a Superhuman Presence. Man's religious nature rests upon the peculiar character of his mind. He possesses a native apprehension of the Divine. God's existence is guaranteed as an axiomatic truth. For Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) this a priori quality of the mind is both a rational intuition and an immediate experience. God is present as a real fact both rationally and empirically. For Rudolf Otto this a priori quality of the mind is a non-rational awareness of the holy, mysterious and awe-inspiring divine Reality. Man posesses a kind of eerie sense of a Presence which is the basis of the genuinely religious feeling. See Numinous. -- V.F.
repression: defence mechanism whereby memories, feelings or ideas associated with pain or guilt are blocked from conscious awareness.
rig pa. The standard Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit term VIDYĀ, or "knowledge." The Tibetan term, however, has a special meaning in the ATIYOGA and RDZOGS CHEN traditions of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, where it refers to the most profound form of consciousness. Some modern translators of Tibetan texts into European languages consider the term too profound to be rendered into a foreign language, while others translate it as "awareness," "pure awareness," or "mind." Unlike the "mind of clear light" (PRABHĀSVARACITTA; 'od gsal gyi sems) as described in other tantric systems, rig pa is not said to be accessible only in extraordinary states, such as death and sexual union; instead, it is fully present, although generally unrecognized, in each moment of sensory experience. Rig pa is described as the primordial basis, characterized with qualities such as presence, spontaneity, luminosity, original purity, unobstructed freedom, expanse, clarity, self-liberation, openness, effortlessness, and intrinsic awareness. It is not accessible through conceptual elaboration or logical analysis. Rather, rig pa is an eternally pure state free from the dualism of subject and object (cf. GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA), infinite and complete from the beginning. It is regarded as the ground or the basis of both SAMSĀRA and NIRVĀnA, with the phenomena of the world being its reflection; all thoughts and all objects of knowledge are said to arise from rig pa and dissolve into rig pa. The ordinary mind believes that its own creations are real, forgetting its true nature of original purity. For the mind willfully to seek to liberate itself is both inappropriate and futile because rig pa is already self-liberated. Rig pa therefore is also the path, and its exponents teach practices that instruct the student how to distinguish rig pa from ordinary mental states. These practices include a variety of techniques designed to eliminate karmic obstacles (KARMĀVARAnA), at which point the presence of rig pa in ordinary experience is introduced, allowing the mind to eliminate all thoughts and experiences itself, thereby recognizing its true nature. Rig pa is thus also the goal of the path, the fundamental state that is free from obscuration. Cf. LINGZHI.
Rings-Pass-Not ::: Areas of the mind – through reinforced habit and karmic traces - that have reinforced certain notions of self and through which it becomes difficult to pass (break-through or move awareness past) in order to expand the possibilities for what self means and to transcend eogistic clinging such as that which characterizes Lunar Consciousness. See also Da'ath.
Rnying ma. (Nyingma). In Tibetan, "Ancient," the name of one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The name derives from the sect's origins during the "early dissemination" (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet and its reliance on translations of TANTRAs made during that period; this is in distinction to the new (GSAR MA) sects of BKA' BRGYUD, SA SKYA, and DGE LUGS, all of which arose during the later dissemination (PHYI DAR) and make use of newer translations. The Rnying ma is thus "ancient" in relation to the new sects and only began to be designated as such after their appearance. The sect traces its origins back to the teachings of the mysterious figure of PADMASAMBHAVA, who visited Tibet during the eighth century and is said to have hidden many texts, called "treasures" (GTER MA), to be discovered in the future. In addition to the Buddhist canon accepted by all sects of Tibetan Buddhism, the Rnying ma adds another collection of tantras (the RNYING MA'I RGYUD 'BUM) as well as the discovered "treasure" (GTER MA) texts to their canonical corpus, works that in many cases the other sects regard as APOCRYPHA, i.e., not of Indian origin. Rnying ma identifies nine vehicles among the corpus of Buddhist teachings, the highest of which is known as ATIYOGA or, more commonly, the "great perfection" (RDZOGS CHEN). These teachings describe the mind as the primordial basis, characterized by qualities such as presence, spontaneity, luminosity, original purity, unobstructed freedom, expanse, clarity, self-liberation, openness, effortlessness, and intrinsic awareness. It is not accessible through conceptual elaboration or logical analysis. Rather, the primordial basis is an eternally pure state free from the dualism of subject and object, infinite and perfect from the beginning, and ever complete. The technique for the discovery of the ubiquitous original purity and self-liberation is to engage in a variety of practices designed to eliminate karmic obstructions, at which point the mind eliminates all thoughts and experiences itself, thereby recognizing its true nature. The rdzogs chen doctrine does not seem to derive directly from any of the Indian philosophical schools; its precise connections to the Indian Buddhist tradition have yet to be established. Some scholars have claimed an historical link and doctrinal affinity between rdzogs chen and the CHAN tradition of Chinese Buddhism, but the precise relationship between the two remains to be fully investigated. It is noteworthy that certain of the earliest extant rdzogs chen texts specifically contrast their own tradition with that of Chan. In comparison to the Dge lugs, Bka' brgyud, and Sa skya, the Rnying ma (with some important exceptions, notably at the time of the fifth DALAI LAMA) remained largely uninvolved in state politics, both within Tibet and in foreign relations. Although they developed great monasteries, such as SMIN GROL GLING, RDZOGS CHEN, and RDO RJE BRAG, the Rnying ma also maintained a strong local presence as lay tantric practitioners (sngags pa) who performed a range of ritual functions for the community. The Rnying ma produced many famous scholars and visionaries, such as KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS, 'JIGS MED GLING PA, and MI PHAM. In the nineteenth century, Rnying ma scholars played a key role in the so-called nonsectarian movement (RIS MED) in eastern Tibet, which produced many important new texts.
saccidananda (sachchidananda; sacchidananda) ::: "the triune princisaccidananda ple of transcendent and infinite Existence [sat], Consciousness [cit] and Bliss [ananda] which is the nature of divine being" and "the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos"; in its supreme manifestation in which the three poises or worlds (lokas) called satyaloka, tapoloka and janaloka are sometimes distinguished, "the consciousness of unity dominates; the soul lives in its awareness of eternity, universality, unity, and whatever diversity there is, is not separative, but only a multitudinous aspect of oneness".Saccidananda is "the highest positive expression of the Reality to our consciousness" and "at once impersonal and personal", though the neuter form saccidanandam is sometimes used for the impersonal aspect, describing the nature of brahman, while the personal aspect of saccidananda is identified with the isvara. saccid saccidanandam
samadhi. ::: transcendental awareness; the quiet state of blissful awareness; oneness; union with Brahman; the goal of all yogic practice, which is attained when the yogi constantly sees the supreme Self in his Heart; a direct but temporary absorption in the Self in which there is only the feeling "I am" and no thoughts; the state of superconsciousness where Reality is experienced attended with all-knowledge and joy &
Samantabhadra. (T. Kun tu bzang po; C. Puxian; J. Fugen; K. Pohyon 普賢). The Sanskrit name of both an important bodhisattva in Indian and East Asian Buddhism and of an important buddha in Tibetan Buddhism. As a bodhisattva, Samantabhadra is a principal bodhisattva of the MAHĀYĀNA pantheon, who is often portrayed as the personification of the perfection of myriad good works and spiritual practices. He is one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, and an attendant of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, standing opposite MANJUsRĪ at the Buddha's side. In the PANCATATHĀGATA configuration, he is associated with the buddha VAIROCANA. Samantabhadra figures prominently in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. In a chapter named after him, he sets forth ten SAMĀDHIs. In the GAndAVYuHA (the final chapter of the AvataMsakasutra), the bodhisattva SUDHANA sets out in search of a teacher, encountering fifty-two beings (twenty of whom are female), including the Buddha's mother Mahāmāyā (MĀYĀ), the future buddha MAITREYA, as well as AVALOKITEsVARA and MANJUsRĪ. His final teacher is the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who sets forth the ten vows in his famous BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHĀNA. In China, the center of Samantabhadra's worship is EMEISHAN in Sichuan province, which began to develop in the early Tang. According to legend, Samantabhadra arrived at the mountain by flying there on his white elephant, his usual mount. As a buddha, Samantabhadra is the primordial buddha (ĀDIBUDDHA) according to the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He is depicted naked, blue, and in sexual union with his consort Samantabhadrī. He is embodiment of the original purity of all phenomena of SAMSĀRA and NIRVĀnA. Called the "primordial basis" (ye gzhi), he is regarded as the eternal union of awareness (RIG PA) and emptiness (suNYATĀ), of emptiness and appearance, and of the nature of the mind and compassion. As such he is the wellspring of the ATIYOGA teachings.
samatha. (P. samatha; T. zhi gnas; C. zhi; J. shi; K. chi 止). In Sanskrit, variously translated as "calmness," "serenity," "quiescence," or "tranquillity" (and sometimes as "stopping," following the Chinese rendering of the term); one of the two major branches of Buddhist meditative cultivation (BHĀVANĀ), along with insight (VIPAsYANĀ). Calmness is the mental peace and stability that is generated through the cultivation of concentration (SAMĀDHI). samatha is defined technically as the specific degree of concentration necessary to generate insight (VIPAsYANĀ) into reality and thus lead to the destruction of the afflictions (KLEsA). samatha is a more advanced degree of concentration than what is ordinarily associated with the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU) but not fully that of the first meditative absorption (DHYĀNA), viz., the first absorption associated with the subtle-materiality realm (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA). According to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, samatha is the fundamental state (maula) of each of the four concentrations (dhyāna) and attainments (SAMĀPATTI), in distinction to a neighboring part that is preparatory to that fundamental state (see SĀMANTAKA), which is vipasyanā. The process of meditative cultivation that culminates in calmness is described in one account as having nine stages. In the account found in the MADHYĀNTAVIBHĀGA, for example, there are eight forces that operate during these stages to eliminate five hindrances: viz., laziness, forgetting the object of concentration, restlessness and worry, insufficient application of antidotes (anabhisaMskāra), and over-application of the antidotes (abhisaMskāra). During the initial stage, when first placing the mind on its object, the first hindrance, laziness, is counteracted by a complex of four motivational mental factors: CHANDA (desire-to-do), vyāyāma (resolve), sRADDHĀ (faith), and PRAsRABDHI (pliancy or readiness for the task). When the cultivation of calmness has reached a slightly more advanced stage, mindfulness (SMṚTI) counteracts the forgetfulness that occurs when concentration wanders away from the meditation object. When a stream of concentration is first achieved, a meta-awareness called introspection or clear comprehension (SAMPRAJANYA) operates to counteract dullness and restlessness. Finally, in the last stages of the process, there is an application (abhisaMskāra) in order to heighten the intensity of the concentration to the requisite level, and to avoid the subtle overexcitement that comes with feelings of great ease; and just prior to the attainment of samatha, there is the setting aside of any application of conscious effort. At that point, calmness continues on its own as a natural stream of tranquillity, bringing great physical rapture (PRĪTI) and mental ease (SUKHA) that settles into the advanced state of serenity called samatha. ¶ In the context of monastic discipline, samatha, in its denotation as calming, is also used technically to refer to the formal settlement of monastic disputes. See ADHIKARAnAsAMATHA; SAPTĀDHIKARAnAsAMATHA.
saMjNāvedayitanirodha. (P. saNNāvedayitanirodha; T. 'du shes dang tshor ba 'gog pa; C. xiangshou mie; J. sojumetsu; K. sangsu myol 想受滅). In Sanskrit, lit. "the suppression (NIRODHA) of perception (SAMJNĀ) and sensation (vedayita)"; an experience specific to states of deep meditative attainment (e.g., SAMĀPATTI). The term refers to the last in a series of nine stratified meditative attainments (samāpatti), which involve the progressive suppression (S. anupurvanirodha, P. anupubbanirodha) of subtle elements that constitute conscious experience. The series begins with the first DHYĀNA, in which the awareness of all sense objects is temporarily allayed, and culminates in a state "beyond" the last of the four immaterial absorptions (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA), where there is the cessation of all sensations and perceptions. SaMjNāvedayitanirodha is understood to be an experience of consciousness in its purest form, without any attributes or objects to distort it. Despite being free of content and/or objects, however, consciousness is still said to persist in some form. In VASUBANDHU's Mahāyānasatadharmavidyādvārasāstra ("Mahāyāna Treatise on Entry into Knowledge of the Hundred Dharmas"), Vasubandhu lists saMjNāvedayitanirodha as one of six unconditioned factors (ASAMSKṚTADHARMA). See also NIRODHASAMĀPATTI.
saMprajanya. (P. sampajaNNa; T. shes bzhin; C. zhengzhi; J. shochi; K. chongji 正知). In Sanskrit, "clear comprehension," "circumspection," "introspection"; a term that is closely related to, and often appears in compound with, mindfulness (S. SMṚTI, P. sati). In descriptions of the practice of developing meditative absorption (DHYĀNA), smṛti refers to the factor of mindfulness that ties the mind to the object, while saMprajanya is the factor that observes the mind to determine whether it has strayed from its object. Specifically, Pāli sources refer to four aspects of clear comprehension, which involve the application of mindfulness in practice. The first is purpose (P. sātthaka), viz., whether the action will be in the best interests of oneself and others; its principal criterion is whether it leads to growth in dharma. Second is suitability (P. sappāya): whether an action is in accord with the appropriate time, place, and personal capacity; its principal criterion is skillfulness in applying right means (P. upāyakosalla; S. UPĀYAKAUsALYA). Third is the domain of meditation (gocara): viz., all experiences should be made a topic of mindful awareness. Fourth is nondelusion (asammoha): viz., recognizing that what seem to be the actions of a person are in fact an impersonal series of mental and physical processes; this aspect of saMprajanya helps to counteract the tendency to view all events from a personal point of view. SaMprajanya thus expands upon the clarity of thought generated by mindfulness by incorporating the additional factors of correct knowledge (JNĀNA) or wisdom (PRAJNĀ).
samvit. ::: knowledge; consciousness; awareness; intelligence
samyama. ::: the three disciplines of one-pointedness of mind, meditation and staying quiet in blissful awareness all practiced simultaneously; an all-complete condition of balance and repose
Sandpiling ::: A technique, the name of which was put forward by the sorceror Jason Miller, for breaking through mundane states of consciousness through a piling of awareness of self upon a single point of focus. This is a technique that can be used to attune to the Mental Plane.
sanguan. (J. sangan; K. samgwan 三觀). In Chinese, "threefold contemplation"; several versions of such a threefold contemplation are elaborated in Chinese exegetical traditions, of which the most influential was the TIANTAI version outlined by TIANTAI ZHIYI in his MOHE ZHIGUAN. Zhiyi's version entails a system of contemplative practice that leads to the attainment of insight into the nature of reality. Zhiyi's "threefold contemplation" consists of the contemplations of the "three truths: (SANDI): emptiness, conventional existence, and their mean (C. kong jia zhong sanguan; J. ku ge chu sangan; K. kong ka chung samgwan). The first, "contemplation on emptiness" (kongguan), is the step of practice that advances beyond naïve realism by penetrating into the conditionally constructed, and therefore insubstantial, nature of all phenomena (see suNYATĀ). The second, the "contemplation on conventionality" (jiaguan), involves the reaffirmation of the conventional existence of all phenomena, whereby a bodhisattva actively engages the world in spite of his awareness of the reality of emptiness. The third, the "contemplation of their mean" (zhongguan), is understood as a dialectical transcendence of the previous two modes of practice. This transcendence has two aspects: it is transcendent because it is neither ("the middle that negates both," C. shuangfei zhi zhong) and because it affirms both ("the middle that illuminates both," C. shuangzhao zhi zhong). It is "neither" because the middle way is not fixed exclusively on either abiding in emptiness or on wallowing in mundane existence. It is "both" because it elucidates that "emptiness" and "conventionality" are not opposing realities but are in fact mutually validating. "The threefold contemplation" is understood variously as a gradual or a simultaneous practice ("two kinds of 'threefold contemplation,'" C. erzhong sanguan; J. nishu no sangan; K. ijong samgwan). The gradual practice of the "threefold contemplation" begins with the contemplation of emptiness, advances to that of conventional existence, and culminates in the contemplation of their mean. Tiantai exegetes variously labeled this approach "the threefold contemplation" by either "graduated stages" (C. cidi sanguan; J. shidai sangan; K. ch'aje samgwan) or "differentiation" (C. biexiang sanguan; J. besso no sangan; K. pyolsang samgwan). As a simultaneous practice, all three aspects of the reality are to be contemplated simultaneously within any given instant of thought: a true understanding of "emptiness" is the same as the correct understanding of "conventional existence," for they are just different emphases of the same truth of conditionality; only an erroneous construction of "emptiness" and "conventional existence" would lead to the conclusion that they are separate, contradictory realities. This approach is variously referred to as "the threefold contemplation that does not involve graduated stages" (C. bucidi sanguan; J. fushidai sangan; K. pulch'aje samgwan), "the perfectly interfused threefold contemplation" (C. yuanrong sanguan; J. ennyu no sangan; K. wonyung samgwan), or "the threefold contemplation [that is to be conducted within] a single moment of thought" (C. yixin sanguan; J. isshin sangan; K. ilsim samgwan). See also SANZHI.
sat-chit-ananda. ::: the natural state of being-knowledge-bliss; Truth being in bliss; Truth being in bliss; the Source of knowledge or consciousness; pure knowledge &
Sat-cit-ananda, saccidananda: (Skr.) "Being-awareness-bliss", a Vedantic (s.v.) definition of the highest, all-inclusive reality, also of the atman (q.v.) insofar as it has attained its full realization. -- K.F.L.
Satipatthānasutta. (S. *Smṛtyupasthānasutra; T. Dran pa nye bar bzhag pa'i mdo; C. Nianchu jing; J. Nenjogyo; K. Yomch'o kyong 念處經). In Pāli, "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness"; the tenth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the ninety-eighth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA; there is another unidentified recension in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA). An expanded version of the same sutta, titled the "Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness" (MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTANTA), which adds extensive discussion on mindfulness of breathing (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), is the twenty-second sutta in the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA. This sutta is one of the most widely commented upon texts in the Pāli canon and continues to hold a central place in the modern VIPASSANĀ (S. VIPAsYANĀ) movement. The sutta was preached by the Buddha to a gathering of disciples in the town of Kammāsadhamma in the country of the Kurus. The discourse enumerates twenty-one meditation practices for the cultivation of mindfulness (P. sati, S. SMṚTI), a term that refers to an undistracted watchfulness and attentiveness, or to recollection and thus memory. In the text, the Buddha explains the practice under a fourfold rubric called the four foundations of mindfulness (P. satipatthāna, S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA). The four foundations are comprised of "contemplation of the body" (P. kāyānupassanā, S. KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ); "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanānupassanā, S. vedanānupasyanā), that is, physical and mental sensations (VEDANĀ) that are pleasurable, painful, or neutral; "contemplation of mind" (P. cittānupassanā, S. cittānupasyanā), in which one observes the broader state of mind (CITTA) as, e.g., shrunken or expanded, while under the influence of various positive and negative emotions; and "contemplation of phenomena" (P. dhammānupassanā, S. dharmānupasyanā), which involves the contemplation of several key doctrinal categories, such as the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA) and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The first of the four, the mindfulness of the body, involves fourteen exercises, beginning with the mindfulness of the inhalation and exhalation of the breath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI). Mindfulness of the breath is followed by mindfulness of the four physical postures (P. iriyāpatha, S. ĪRYĀPATHA) of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. This is then extended to a full general awareness of all physical activities. Thus, mindfulness is something that is also meant to accompany all of one's actions in the course of the day, and is not restricted to formal meditation sessions. This discussion is followed by mindfulness of the various components of the body, an intentionally revolting list that includes fingernails, bile, spittle, and urine. Next is the mindfulness of the body as composed of the four great elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, and air. Next are the "contemplations on the impure" (P. asubhabhāvanā, S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), viz., contemplation of a corpse in nine successive stages of decomposition. The practice of the mindfulness of the body is designed to induce the understanding that the body is a collection of impure elements that arise and cease in rapid succession, utterly lacking any kind of permanent self. This insight into the three marks of existence-impermanence, suffering, and no-self-leads in turn to enlightenment. Mindfulness of the body is presented as the core meditative practice, with the other three types of mindfulness applied as the meditator's attention is drawn to those factors. The sutta calls the foundations of mindfulness the ekayānamagga, which in this context might be rendered as "the only path" or "the one way forward," and states that correct practice of the four foundations of mindfulness will lead to the stage of the worthy one (P. arahant, S. ARHAT), or at least the stage of the nonreturner (P. anāgāmi, S. ANĀGĀMIN), in as little as seven days of practice, according to some interpretations. See also ANUPASSANĀ.
saundaryabodha (saundaryabodha; saundarya bodha) ::: the awareness of beauty in all things.
Sautrāntika-Svātantrika-Madhyamaka. (T. Mdo sde spyod pa'i dbu ma rang rgyud pa). One of the two subschools (along with the YOGĀCĀRA-SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA) of the *SVĀTANTRIKA branch of MADHYAMAKA, as identified by Tibetan exegetes. This is the school of BHĀVAVIVEKA, his commentator AVALOKITAVRATA, and JNĀNAGARBHA. Like other Svātantrikas, these three exegetes assert that phenomena exist conventionally by way of their own qualities (SVALAKsAnA). They thus declare that external objects exist conventionally and deny the existence of a self-cognizing awareness (SVASAMVEDANA). With regard to the path, they contend that sRĀVAKAs and PRATYEKABUDDHAs understand the selflessness of the person (PUDGALANAIRĀTMYA) but not the selflessness of phenomena (DHARMANAIRĀTMYA), whereas BODHISATTVAs understand both kinds of nonself.
Sautrāntika. (T. Mdo sde pa; C. Jingliang bu; J. Kyoryobu; K. Kyongnyang pu 經量部). In Sanskrit, "Followers of the Sutras," one of the "mainstream" (that is, non-MAHĀYĀNA) schools of Indian Buddhism, which may have been a dissenting offshoot of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school. Its name was apparently meant to distinguish this school from those ĀBHIDHARMIKAs who based themselves on ABHIDHARMA treatises, such as the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ. The Sautrāntika were "Followers of the Sutras" because they were said to have rejected the validity of the abhidharma as being the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) and advocated a doctrine of momentariness (KsAnIKAVĀDA), in which (again in distinction to the Sarvāstivāda) only present activity exists. No texts of the school are extant, but its positions are represented in the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, which presents the SARVĀSTIVĀDA-VAIBHĀsIKA positions in detail, and as deficient relative to a putative Sautrāntika position. According to Tibetan accounts, VASUBANDHU, the author of the Abhidharmakosabhāsya, wrote from the perspective of the Sautrāntika position even while he himself was a YOGĀCĀRA adherent. Similarly, some of the chapters of the Yogācāra DHARMAKĪRTI's explanation of Dignāga's logical system are written from the Sautrāntika perspective. According to sĀNTARAKsITA and his student KAMALAsĪLA, one major difference between the Vaibhāsika and Sautrāntika schools is their respective rejection or acceptance of SVASAMVEDANA ("self-cognizing awareness"). Although both schools accept that atoms (PARAMĀnU) build up to form external objects that are perceived by consciousness, the Vaibhāsika say that the mind knows these objects directly, while the Sautrāntika position is that it knows them through images (ākāra). In late Indian and Tibetan classifications, the Sautrāntika and Vaibhāsika are called the two sRĀVAKA schools (T. nyan thos sde pa), to distinguish them from the two Mahāyāna schools of YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA.
Selective Dissemination of Information "library" (SDI) (From Library Science) SDI is a current awareness system which alerts you to the latest publications in your specified field(s) of interest. A user registers at such a system with keywords representing his or her fields of interest, called a search profile. When new publications matching the search profile appear, the system informs the user of them instantly, periodically or upon request. Some systems may also be able to inform the user if changes in already notified publications occur. {Health Science Library SDI (http://www-hsl.mcmaster.ca/sdi.html)}. {FIZ Karlsruhe Scientific Service Institution (http://fiz-karlsruhe.de/mc-sdi.html)}. (1997-03-10)
Selective Dissemination of Information ::: (library) (SDI) (From Library Science) SDI is a current awareness system which alerts you to the latest publications in your specified field(s) of interest.A user registers at such a system with keywords representing his or her fields of interest, called a search profile. When new publications matching the search upon request. Some systems may also be able to inform the user if changes in already notified publications occur. FIZ Karlsruhe Scientific Service Institution . (1997-03-10)
Self-Actualization ::: The process through which one becomes the self they feel called toward becoming. Realizing our path is one matter, but actively moving there and stabilizing awareness there is another altogether. These movements can be subtle or profound: distinct leaps in stages of awareness or simply incremental steps evolving perspective.
self-awareness: is the explicit understanding that one exists. Furthermore, it includes the concept that one exists as an individual, separate from other people, with private thoughts.
Self-awareness: The awareness of one’s existence as an individual.
Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.
Self-Deification ::: The process of becoming more "god"-like in awareness, attachments, and/or abilities. Many paradigms that are LHP-oriented focus on deifying the self and differ from RHP paradigms that seek to shed or shatter the illusion of a self (see Anatta) entirely. Self-deification — or at least the attributes we ascribe to self-deification — can arise in either path and is frequently a result of becoming more aware of the nature of reality and What is doing the observing, regardless of whether one is seeking deification of the self or not. But that attachment to deification and its status as a goal along the path is what primarily distinguishes LHP from RHP philosophies.
Self ::: The moment-to-moment sense of an observer that asserts itself as real and stable. This is an illusion and much of the work of this site is devoted to discussing and dissecting that illusion. The idea of a self is anathema to the Three Characteristics and much of the work of meditivative insight is aimed at cultivating a shedding of these threads of self incessantly asserting control and identity. Yes. Self is a plurality. The moment-to-moment observer feels like they have a distinct personality with drives, whims, habits, and memories, but the actual Observer (the one that imparts the sense of observing entirely; a fundamental awareness) is antecedent to all of that: that is the Kabbalistic sphere of Kether; that is Causal Consciousness. Physicality has only persisted and cemented this illusion into our reality that the physical body and brain is the center of self-awareness when in fact it is an emergent phenomenon of Consciousness. Identity can be thought of as a persistent self but the roots of self are inextricably tied into the causal and recursive nature of Consciousness.
sensations (‘s) ::: 1. Perception or awareness of stimuli through the senses. 2. A physical ‘feeling" considered apart from the resulting ‘perception" of an object. 3. A state of intense or heightened interest or emotion; an exciting experience resulting from the stimulation of one of the sense organs. sensations.
sensibility ::: 1. Capacity for sensation or feeling; responsiveness or susceptibility to sensory stimuli. 2. Mental or emotional responsiveness toward something; such as the feelings of another; discernment; awareness. sensibilities.
Signature ::: A discrete feel to somebody, some place, something, or some experience that awareness attaches around and uses to bring up the physical reality of that which was attached to.
Sixth sense: A vague and variously defined term for that faculty, considered by occultists to be latent in all human beings, which enables certain individuals to have or acquire awareness or knowledge which cannot be explained in terms of the five normal human senses. The psi faculty studied by parapsychology.
Sleepwalker: Someone who possesses awareness but has not yet fully Awakened; a visionary Sleeper who might possess unusual talents but not Sphere-based magick. (See bodhisattva, consor, hedge magician.)
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smasāna. (P. susāna; T. dur khrod; C. shilin/hanlin; J. shirin/kanrin; K. sirim/hallim 屍林/寒林). In Sanskrit, "charnel ground," "cemetery"; funerary sites in ancient India where corpses were left to decompose. The charnel ground was recommended as a site for monks to practice meditation in order to overcome attachment to the body. In the MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTA, the Buddha recommends nine "charnel ground contemplations" (sīvathikā manasikāra). There is a set of "contemplations on the foul" (AsUBHABHĀVANĀ) described in mainstream Buddhist literature that were to take place in the charnel grounds, where the monks would sit next to the dead and contemplate the nine or ten specific stages in the decomposition of a corpse; this meditation was a powerful antidote to the affliction of lust (RĀGA). The traditional list of thirteen authorized ascetic practices (S. dhutaguna; P. DHUTAnGA) also includes dwelling in a charnel ground (no. 11) and wearing only discarded cloth (no. 1), which typically meant to use funerary cloth taken from rotting corpses to make monastic raiments (CĪVARA), thus weaning the monk or nun from attachment to material possessions. The ideal charnel ground is described as a place where corpses are cremated daily, where there is the constant smell of decomposing corpses, and where the weeping of the families of the dead can be heard. The practice of meditation there is said to result in an awareness of the inevitability of death, the abandonment of lust, and the overcoming of attachment to the body. In India, the charnel ground was a frightful place not only because of the presence of corpses but also for the creatures, including wild animals and various demons, that frequented it at night. Thus, in tantric Buddhism, the charnel ground was considered to be inhabited by wrathful deities, dĀKINĪs, and MAHĀSIDDHAs, making it a potent place for the performance of ritual and meditation. Mahāsiddhas are sometimes depicted in charnel grounds, sitting on corpses and drinking from skull cups. ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA texts also refer to a set of "eight great charnel grounds" (S. AstAMAHĀsMAsĀNA), which are also frequently depicted in tantric Buddhist art. While the eight sites are often equated with actual geographic locations in India, they also carry a deeper symbolism, referring to regions of tantric sacred geography, points on a MAndALA or a deity's body, and elements of tantric physiology such as the channels (NĀdĪ) in the subtle body of a meditating YOGIN. Their origin myth describes the defeat of the demon Rudra, after which the charnel grounds arose in the eight cardinal and intermediate directions, each from a piece of his dismembered body. They are described as wild and terrifying places, littered with human corpses and wild animals, each with their own trees, protectors, STuPAs, NĀGAs, jewels, fires, clouds, mountains, and lakes. They are inhabited by a host of spirits and nonhuman beings, as well as meditating yogins and YOGINĪs. In general, charnel grounds and similar frightening locations are said to be efficacious for the practice of tantric meditation. The astamahāsmasāna are also usually depicted as forming part of the outer protection wheel in mandalas of anuttarayogatantra. There are varying lists of the eight great charnel grounds, one of which is: candogrā (most fierce), gahvara (dense thicket), vajrajvala (blazing vajra), endowed with skeletons (karankin), cool grove (sītavana), black darkness (ghorāndhakāra), resonant with "kilikili" (kilikilārava), and cries of "ha ha" (attahāsa); Tibetan sources give the names of the eight great charnel grounds as gtum drag (candogra), tshang tshing 'khrigs pa (gahvara), rdo rje bar ba (vajrajvala), keng rus can (karankin), bsil bu tshal (sītavana), mun pa nag po (ghorāndhakāra) ki li ki lir sgra sgrog pa (kilikilārava), and ha ha rgod pa (attahāsa).
smṛtyupasthāna. (P. satipatthāna; T. dran pa nyer bzhag; C. nianchu; J. nenjo; K. yomch'o 念處). In Sanskrit, "foundations of mindfulness," a meditative training in which one contemplates with mindfulness (SMṚTI): one's (1) body (KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ; P. kāyānupassanā), by mean of mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of postures, full awareness of bodily actions, contemplation of bodily impurities, contemplation of elements, and nine cemetery meditations; (2) sensations (vedanānupasyanā; P. vedanānupassanā), viz., pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations (VEDANĀ); (3) mental states (cittānupasyanā; P. cittānupassanā), such as whether the mind (CITTA) generally is elated or depressed, distracted or concentrated; and (4) factors (dharmānupasyanā; P. dhammānupassanā), such as the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA), the five aggregates (SKANDHA), the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA); the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, etc. The explanation of smṛtyupasthāna, as the first of the thirty-seven dharmas associated with enlightenment (bodhyanga) details the role of mindfulness in the eightfold noble path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). See also SMṚTI; SATIPAttHĀNASUTTA.
spam ::: 1. (messaging) (From Hormel's Spiced Ham, via the Monty Python Spam song) To post irrelevant or inappropriate messages to one or more Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, or other messaging system in deliberate or accidental violation of netiquette.It is possible to spam a newsgroup with one well- (or ill-) planned message, e.g. asking What do you think of abortion? on soc.women. This can be done by alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups. (Compare troll and flame bait).Posting a message to a significant proportion of all newsgroups is a sure way to spam Usenet and become an object of almost universal hatred. Canter and Siegel spammed the net with their Green card post.If you see an article which you think is a deliberate spam, DO NOT post a follow-up - doing so will only contribute to the general annoyance. Send a the apparent sender's account might have been used by someone else without his permission.The word was coined as the winning entry in a 1937 competition to choose a name for Hormel Foods Corporation's spiced meat (now officially known as SPAM Times Herald describing Public Relations as throwing a can of spam into an electric fan just to see if any of it would stick to the unwary passersby.Usenet newsgroup: news.admin.net-abuse.See also netiquette.2. (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To indiscriminately send large amounts of unsolicited e-mail meant to promote a product or service. Spam in this sense is sort of like the electronic equivalent of junk mail sent to Occupant.In the 1990s, with the rise in commercial awareness of the net, there are actually scumbags who offer spamming as a service to companies wishing to addresses, Usenet news, or mailing lists. Such practises have caused outrage and aggressive reaction by many net users against the individuals concerned.3. (Apparently a generalisation of sense 2, above) To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional purposes.AltaVista is an index, not a promotional tool. Attempts to fill it with promotional material lower the value of the index for everyone. [...] We will disallow URL submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will exclude all their pages from the index. -- Altavista.4. (jargon, programming) To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data.See also buffer overflow, overrun screw, smash the stack.5. (chat, games) (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To flood any chat forum or Internet game with purposefully annoying text or macros. Compare Scrolling.(2003-09-21)
spam 1. "messaging" (From Hormel's Spiced Ham, via the Monty Python "Spam" song) To post irrelevant or inappropriate messages to one or more {Usenet} {newsgroups}, {mailing lists}, or other messaging system in deliberate or accidental violation of {netiquette}. It is possible to spam a newsgroup with one well- (or ill-) planned message, e.g. asking "What do you think of abortion?" on soc.women. This can be done by {cross-post}ing, e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups. (Compare {troll} and {flame bait}). Posting a message to a significant proportion of all newsgroups is a sure way to spam Usenet and become an object of almost universal hatred. Canter and Siegel spammed the net with their Green card post. If you see an article which you think is a deliberate spam, DO NOT post a {follow-up} - doing so will only contribute to the general annoyance. Send a polite message to the poster by private e-mail and CC it to "postmaster" at the same address. Bear in mind that the posting's origin might have been forged or the apparent sender's account might have been used by someone else without his permission. The word was coined as the winning entry in a 1937 competition to choose a name for Hormel Foods Corporation's "spiced meat" (now officially known as "SPAM luncheon meat"). Correspondant Bob White claims the modern use of the term predates Monty Python by at least ten years. He cites an editor for the Dallas Times Herald describing Public Relations as "throwing a can of spam into an electric fan just to see if any of it would stick to the unwary passersby." {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:news.admin.net-abuse}. See also {netiquette}. 2. (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To indiscriminately send large amounts of unsolicited {e-mail} meant to promote a product or service. Spam in this sense is sort of like the electronic equivalent of junk mail sent to "Occupant". In the 1990s, with the rise in commercial awareness of the net, there are actually scumbags who offer spamming as a "service" to companies wishing to advertise on the net. They do this by mailing to collections of {e-mail} addresses, Usenet news, or mailing lists. Such practises have caused outrage and aggressive reaction by many net users against the individuals concerned. 3. (Apparently a generalisation of sense 2, above) To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional purposes. "AltaVista is an {index}, not a promotional tool. Attempts to fill it with promotional material lower the value of the index for everyone. [...] We will disallow {URL} submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will exclude all their pages from the index." -- {Altavista}. 4. "jargon, programming" To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size {buffer} with excessively large input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}. 5. "chat, games" (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To flood any {chat} forum or {Internet game} with purposefully annoying text or macros. Compare {Scrolling}. (2003-09-21)
spiritualisation ::: the spiritual change in which there is the established descent of the divine peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole nature to that.
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead"" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Stage of Consciousness ::: A level of awareness that Consciousness stabilizes and persists a self at. Contrast with State of Consciousness.
State of Consciousness ::: A level of awareness that Consciousness peaks or gets stuck at temporarily (well...causally) before it returns to its base and usual level of awareness. Contrast with Stage of Consciousness.
Sthulasamadhi: The state of Samadhi which is of a Jada type in which there is no intuitive awareness.
Strong_Artificial_Intelligence ::: (AI:) is a form of machine intelligence that is equal to human intelligence. Key characteristics of strong AI include the ability to reason, solve puzzles, make judgments, plan, learn and communicate. It should also have consciousness, objective thoughts, self-awareness, sentience, and sapience. Strong AI is also called True Intelligence or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). BREAKING DOWN 'Strong AI' Strong AI does not currently exist. Some experts think it may be developed by 2030 or 2045. Others more conservatively predict that it may be developed within the next century or that the development of Strong AI may not be possible at all. Some theorists argue that a machine with Strong AI should be able to go through the same development process as a human, starting with a childlike mind and developing an adult mind through learning. It should be able to interact with the world and learn from it, acquiring its own common sense and language. Another argument is that we will not know when we have developed strong AI (if it can indeed be developed) because there is no consensus on what constitutes intelligence. While Weak AI merely simulates human cognition, Strong AI would actually have human cognition. With Strong AI, a single system could theoretically handle all the same problems that a single human could. While Weak AI can replace many low- and medium-skilled workers, Strong AI might be necessary to replace certain categories of highly skilled workers.
subconscious: in Freud's theory, portions of the mind which are below the level of conscious awareness.
Suffering ::: A natural quality imparted to conscious experience that results from a lack of insight into the Three Characteristics. This can be thought of as a wisp of dissatisfaction that results from the crystallization and persistence of a self as it abides in awareness.
sūks.mabodha (sukshmabodha) ::: subtle awareness, the perception of suksmabodha supraphysical things by means of the faculties of vis.ayadr.s.t.i.
superconscience ::: “But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense,—although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness.” The Life Divine
superconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, — although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness.” The Life Divine
Superconscient ::: The superconscient is consciousness taken up into an absolute of being.In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, 21-22 Page: 495, 765
svasaMvedana. (T. rang rig; C. zizheng/zijue; J. jisho/jikaku; K. chajŭng/chagak 自證/自覺). In Sanskrit, lit. "self-knowledge" or "self-awareness," also seen written as svasaMveda, svasaMvit, svasaMvitti. In Buddhist epistemology, svasaMvedana is that part of consciousness which, during a conscious act of seeing, hearing, thinking, and so on, apprehends not the external sensory object but the knowing consciousness itself. For example, when a visual consciousness (CAKsURVIJNĀNA) apprehends a blue color, there is a simultaneous svasaMvedana that apprehends the caksurvijNāna; it is directed at the consciousness, and explains not only how a person knows that he knows, but also how a person can later remember what he saw or heard, and so on. There is disagreement as to whether such a form of consciousness exists, with proponents (usually YOGĀCĀRA) arguing that there must be this consciousness of consciousness in order for there to be memory of past cognitions, and opponents (MADHYAMAKA) propounding a radical form of nonessentialism that explains memory as a mere manipulation of objects with no more than a language-based reality. Beside the basic use of the term svasaMvedana to explain the nature of consciousness and the mechanism of memory, the issue of the necessary existence of svasaMvedana was pressed by the Yogācāra school because of how they understood enlightenment (BODHI). They argued that the liberating vision taught by the Buddha consisted of a self-reflexive act that was utterly free of subject-object distortion (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). In ordinary persons, they argued, all conscious acts take place within a bifurcation of subject and object, with a sense of distance between the two, because of the residual impressions or latencies (VĀSANĀ) left by ignorance. Infinite numbers of earlier conscious acts have been informed by that particular deeply ingrained ignorance. These impressions are carried at the foundational level of consciousness (ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA). When they are finally removed by the process of BHĀVANĀ, knowledge (JNĀNA) purified of distortion emerges in a fundamental transformation (ĀsRAYAPARĀVṚTTI), thus knowing itself in a nondual vision. Such a vision presupposes self-knowledge. In tantric literature, svasaMvedana has a less technical sense of a profound and innate knowledge or awareness. See also RIG PA.
Symbolic Resonance ::: The idea that since reality can be reduced to archetypes then awareness simply needs to shift its locus of focus to those specific archetypes in order to bring them into the reality of the magician and to be able to work with them.
Tetravalent ::: A four-sided aspect or property. This is not the "tetravalency" you might see in chemistry. In the occult literature it is usually used in respect to awareness or reality, as in the "tetravalent qualities of experiential reality" which can refer to the four elemental aspects present in each frame of experience up until Causal Consciousness/Root Awareness is unfurled. That is how the term is used on Lux Saturni as well, unless indicated otherwise.
The Fifth Element ::: The raw, unpatterned consciousness inherent in all matter. The primordial awareness that can be divided up into all sorts of permutations including the four elements. See Azoth.
The gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by Tamas, tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is possessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience or enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the principle of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance and action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the lifepower and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, th
refore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; th
refore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not so much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant effort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards equilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction it gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings with it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than the troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 684-685
The human ethical sense is a manifestation of one’s awareness and willing cooperation with the inherent spiritual laws of the universe. No person can misconduct himself without injecting disharmony into the human hierarchy of which he is a part, and for this he must pay, though nature does not revenge or punish but readjusts or restores the disturbed harmony. Though these essential laws are eternal and changeless, the degree of their manifestation at any time or in any group vary; so that we may speak of ethics also in a relative sense. The world saviors and messengers from the Great Lodge, in obedience to cyclic necessity, strike for humanity the ethical keynote for each coming cycle.
The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tamaasit tamasa gudham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it the awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its dark infinite and, when it acts and creates,—but it acts first as Energy and not as Consciousness,—everything is arranged with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all material things reside a mute and involved Real-Idea, a substantial and self-effective intuition, an eyeless exact perception, an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this state and action of the Inconscient corresponds very evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute subconscience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 570
Theosis ::: What occurs when higher states of gnosis are stabilized into stages of awareness. The blossoming of gnosis into the most perfect expression of consciousness.
..the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functioning of the body must be among the ultimate results of a supramental change.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 330 ::: .Supraphysical Worlds ::: This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world’s life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these beings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul’s self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we think of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful: there are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences, instigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of actions that overpass the normal human measure. There may also be an awareness of influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds beyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial nature. As contact with the supraphysical is possible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective—or at least objectivised— between our own consciousness and the consciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysical status in these other regions of existence. It is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a subtle-sense perception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter actually into other worlds and know something of their secrets. It is the more objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22 Page: 806-07
There must be a Will and a Force that mate the consciousness effective. Somebody may have the full consciousness of what has to be changed, what has to go and what has to come in its place, but may be helpless to make the change. Another may have the will-force, but for want of a li^t awareness may be unable to apply it in the right way at the right place. The advantage of being in the true consciousness is that you have the right awareness and its will being in harmony with the
The Singularity ::: A point of phase change of conscious experience. There does seem to be a connection between this and astrophysics but we will refer to the more occult usages of the term. The Singularity between Kether and The Veils of Non-Existence is the main one. However between each "world" (levels of stable conscious awareness) and the next there is a point of density through which consciousness collapses and stabilizes into the next level. See also Da'ath.
"The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that.” Letters on Yoga
“The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that.” Letters on Yoga
The supermind knows most completely and securely not by thought but by identity, by a pure awareness of the self-truth of things in the self and by the self, atmani atmanam atmana.
thod rgal. (togel). In Tibetan, "crossing the crest" or "leap over" (in the sense of skipping over one or more of the stages in a sequence); a special practice of ATIYOGA and one of the two main practices in the SNYING THIG tradition of RDZOGS CHEN, the other being "breakthrough" (KHREGS CHOD). Falling specifically within the "instruction class" (MAN NGAG SDE) of rdzogs chen, thod rgal follows khregs chod, in which the experience of innate awareness or RIG PA is cultivated. With this foundation, in thod rgal, the meditator uses specific physical postures to induce visions that reveal the luminous nature of external phenomena. Whereas thod rgal signifies a type of cultivated spontaneous imagery culminating in visions of MAndALAs of buddhas, and is paired with the spontaneous energy (lhun grub) of pure awareness (rig pa), khregs chod (literally, "breaking through the hard") is paired with the essential purity (ka dag) of awareness. It is said that thod rgal is a method of contemplating light that enables rdzogs chen practitioners to attain the 'JA' LUS (rainbow body) without leaving any bodily traces at death. The term also renders the Sanskrit vyutkrāntaka, described in the ABHIDHARMA as jumping at will from one meditative state (a DHYĀNA or SAMĀPATTI) to any other without having to go through the intermediate stages. Thod rgal ba is also used in Tibetan commentarial literature to describe a type of meditator who does not go sequentially through each of the four fruitions of the religious life, viz., the stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and ARHAT, but rather jumps over the intermediate results to the final goal. Some sources suggest thod rgal may also be a translation of the pluta (sometimes rendered "floater"), a meditator who jumps over the intermediate heavens in the subtle-materiality and immaterial realms and proceeds directly to the AKANIstHA and BHAVĀGRA heavens.
thought-Mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the Spirit. Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind, — but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin, — as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness are dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge. An all-awareness emerging from the original identity, carrying the truths the identity held in itself, conceiving swiftly, victoriously, multitudinously, formulating and by self-power of the Idea effectually realising its conceptions, is the character of this greater mind of knowledge. " *The Life Divine
thought-telepathy ::: awareness of the thoughts of others, consisting of thought-prakamya and thought-vyapti. thought-vy thought-vyapti
Three Worlds Model ::: A model of levels of reality described in some shamanic traditions. The role of the shaman is one of mediation and hence the Physical Plane finds itself in the middle. The Heavens make up the world of archetypes and non-dual awareness and the Underworld refers to the Astral domains as well as to the Hell realms.
Thus nature begins as a four-dimensional matrix in which it is the moving principle. Materiality, secondary qualities, life, mentality are all emergent modifications of proto-space-time. Mind is the nervous system blossoming out into the capacity of awareness. Contemplative knowledge, where the object is set over against the mind, and the actual being, or experiencing, or enjoying of reality, where there is no inner duplicity of subject and object, constitute the two forms of knowledge. Alexander conceives the deity as the next highest level to be emerged out of any given level. Thus for beings on the level of life mind is deity, but for beings possessing minds there is a nisus or urge toward a still higher quality. To such beings that dimly felt quality is deity. The quality next above any given level is deity to the beings on that level. For men deity has not yet emerged, but there is a nisus towards its emergence. S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity (1920). -- H.H.
Thus when Jesus speaks of my Father and your Father, he means the cosmic paramatman or universal spirit presiding over our universe, of which every monad in the present solar manvantara — except those peregrinating through our solar system as visitors — is an offspring or spark; furthermore, every class of adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which knits them together, because of identity of origin in a dhyani-buddha of our universe; and thus it is that every buddha, indeed every great adept, meets at his last initiation all the great adepts who had reached buddhahood during the preceding ages. “Such communion is only possible between persons whose souls derive their life and sustenance from the same divine ray” (Subba Row in SD 1:574). The awareness of such a community of origin pertains to planes of being far above the personal self, and it has nothing to do with so transitory a phase of human evolution as sex.
ti. (J. tai; K. ch'e 體). In Chinese, lit. "body," and by extension "essence," or "substance"; a term widely used in East Asian religious traditions, including Buddhism. "Essence" often constitutes a philosophical pair together with the term "function" (YONG). In early Confucian texts, such as the Lunyu ("Analects") and the Mengzi, ti simply referred to a "body" or the "appearance" of a person or a thing. It was Wang Bi (226-249), the founder of the "Dark Learning" (XUANXUE) school of Chinese philosophy, who imbued the term with philosophical implications, using ti as a synonym for the Daoist concepts of "nonbeing" (WU) or "voidness" (xu). However, ti, along with its companion yong, was not widely used until the Buddhists adopted both terms to provide a basic conceptual frame for reality or truth. For example, the Later Qin (384-417) monk SENGZHAO (384-414?) identified ti as the nature of calmness (ji) and advocated its unity with yong, which he defined as the function of illumination (zhao). The SAN LUN ZONG master JIZANG (549-623), in discussing the two-truth (SATYADVAYA) theory of MADHYAMAKA, argued that "neither ultimate nor conventional" (feizhen feisu) was the ti ("essence") of the two truths, while "both ultimate and conventional" (zhensu) were their yong ("function"). The LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch") associates ti and yong with two modes of meditation: concentration (SAMĀDHI) is the ti or essence of wisdom (PRAJNĀ); wisdom is the yong or function of concentration. GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), the Tang master of both the HUAYAN ZONG scholastic and the Heze Chan traditions, systematized the Chinese discourse of the terms. Based on the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna"), Zongmi interpreted ti as the unchanging essence of true thusness (ZHENRU), calling this absolute aspect of mind the "void and calm, numinous awareness" (KONGJI LINGZHI; see LINGZHI). Yong instead referred to the diverse functional aspects of true thusness, which corresponded to the "production-and-cessation" aspect of mind (shengmie). He also aligned ti and yong with other indigenous Chinese philosophical polarities such as, respectively, "nature" (XING) and "characteristics" (xiang), "principle" (LI) and "phenomena" (SHI), and "root" (ben) and "branches" (mo). Subsequently, Neo-Confucian thinkers, such as Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200), adopted this paradigm into their own philosophical systems. In particular, Zhu Xi connected ti to the "nature bestowed by the heavenly mandate" (tianming zhixing) and yong to the "physical nature" (qizhi zhixing).
To arrive at full possession of the powers of the dream-state, it is necessary first to exclude the attack of the sights, sounds etc. of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body ; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than In the waking condition ; for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a range which may be made practically unlimited. But this awareness of the phj-sical world through the subtle senses is something quite different from our normal awareness of it through the physical organs ; the latter is incompatible with the settled state of trance, for the pressure of the physical senses breaks the Samadhi and calls back the mind to live in their normal field where alone they have power. But the subtle senses have power both upon their own planes and upon the physical world, though this is to them more remote than their own world of being. In Yoga various devices are used to seal up the doors of the physical sense, some of them physical devices ; but the one all-sufficient means is a force of concentration by which the mind is drawn inward to depths where the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it. A second necessity is to get rid of the intervention of physical sleep. The ordinary habit of the mind when it goes in away from contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep or its dreams, and therefore when called in for the purposes of Samadhi, it gives or lends to give, at the first chance, by sheer force of habit, not the response demanded, but its usual response of ph)sical slumber. This habit of the mind has to be got rid of ; the mind has to Icam to be awake in the dream-stale, in possession of itself, not with the outgoing, but with an ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers.
transcendentalism ::: A group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that advocates that there is an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through a knowledgeable intuitive awareness that is conditional upon the individual. The concept emerged in New England in the early-to mid-19th century. It is sometimes called "American Transcendentalism" to distinguish it from other uses of the word transcendental. It began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church that was taught at Harvard Divinity School. The term transcendentalism sometimes serves as shorthand for "transcendental idealism". Another alternative meaning for transcendentalism is the classical philosophy that God transcends the manifest world. As John Scotus Erigena put it to Frankish king Charles the Bald in the year 840 A.D., "We do not know what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being."
trivikalpa. (T. rnam par rtog pa gsum; C. san fenbie; J. sanfunbetsu; K. sam punbyol 三分別). In Sanskrit, "three types of discrimination"; three aspects of the discriminative activities of mind, generally portrayed in the negative sense of fantasy and imagination. Three types are typically described in the literature. (1) Intrinsic discrimination (SVABHĀVAVIKALPA) refers to the initial advertence of thought (VITARKA) and the subsequent sustained thought or reasoning (VICĀRA) regarding a perceived object of the six sensory consciousnesses (VIJNĀNA), i.e., the discrimination of present objects, as when visual consciousness perceives a visual object, etc. (2) Conceptualizing discrimination (ABHINIRuPAnĀVIKALPA) refers to discursive thought on ideas that arise in the sixth mental consciousness when it adverts toward a mental object that is associated with any of the three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of the past, present, or future. (3) Discrimination involving reflection on past events (ANUSMARAnAVIKALPA) refers to discriminative thought involving the memory of past objects. It is said that there is no svabhāvavikalpa from the second stage of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) onward, since vitarka and vicāra, the first two of the five constituents of dhyāna (DHYĀNĀnGA), are then no longer present. There is no abhinirupanāvikalpa from the first stage of dhyāna onward, since the mind is then temporarily isolated from any awareness of the passage of time. Only anusmaranavikalpa is involved in all three realms of existence (TRILOKADHĀTU), including both the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) and the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU).
Truth-Consciousness ::: the Supermind; the consciousness of essential truth of being (satyam), of ordered truth of active being (rtam), and the vast self-awareness (brhat) in which alone this consciousness is possible.
turiya ::: Literally “the fourth,” as in the fourth natural state after waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. Turiya is the Witness or pure observing awareness of all the other states.
turiya &
Tzimtzum (&
udayabbayānupassanāNāna. In Pāli, "knowledge arising from the contemplation of arising and passing away"; the first of nine knowledges (P. Nāna) cultivated as part of the "purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path" (P. PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), according to the account in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth and penultimate purity (P. visuddhi; S. VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. Knowledge arising from the contemplation of arising and passing away refers to the clear comprehension of the arising, presence, and dissolution of material and mental phenomena (NĀMARuPA). Through contemplating this process, the three universal marks of existence (P. tilakkhana; S. TRILAKsAnA) become apparent, viz., (1) impermanence (ANITYA), (2) suffering (DUḤKHA), and (3) no-self (ANĀTMAN). Full comprehension of the three universal marks of existence is not possible so long as the mind is disturbed by attachment to any of the ten "defilements of insight" (P. vipassanupakkilesa), which arise as concomitants of insight meditation (P. vipassanābhāvanā); these are (1) a vision of radiant light (obhāsa), (2) knowledge (Nāna), (3) rapture (pīti), (4) tranquillity (passaddhi), (5) happiness (sukha), (6) determination (adhimokkha), (7) energy (paggaha), (8) heightened awareness (upatthāna), (9) equanimity (upekkhā), and (10) delight (nikanti). The ten defilements are overcome by understanding them for what they are, as mere by-products of meditation. This understanding is developed through perfecting the "purity of knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path" (P. MAGGĀMAGGANĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), which is the fifth of seven "purities" (visuddhi) to be developed along the path to liberation.
unconscious ::: 1. Not conscious; without awareness, sensation or cognition. 2. Not conscious or knowing within oneself; unaware, regardless, heedless. 3. Not attended by, or present to, consciousness; performed, employed, etc., without conscious action. 4. Not characterized by, or endowed with, the faculty or presence of consciousness. 5. Temporarily devoid of consciousness.
unconscious: in Freud's theory, portion of the psyche that cannot be directly accessed by the unconscious, repressing urges, impulses and thoughts, which may filter into conscious awareness directly or in symbolic form.
unconscious motive: a term used to describe that much of (motivated) behaviour is a result of influences outside our conscious awareness, and manifests in defence mechanisms or other symbolic ways.
unconsciousness ::: “What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead’’ or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Vegetable Kingdom In the vegetable stage of the monad’s evolution, the faculty of apperception begins to be clearly manifested, which differs from mere perception in that it is accompanied with a certain amount of awareness of results to be achieved. This is shown in the many ways in which plants can care for themselves, as in sending out rootlets for water or providing for fertilization. In the list of seven creations (cf SD 1:450), the fourth is there called the mukhya or primary because it begins the following system of the four subsequent creations; and the Hindu systems place vegetable bodies in this fourth emanation because they possess individualized lives. All the seven kingdoms or life-waves are manifestations of different groups or life-waves of monads in various degrees of emanational self-manifestation.
Vicegerent ::: Conscious beings who will live with the awareness of the Names.
vijNāna. (P. viNNāna; T. rnam par shes pa; C. shi; J, shiki; K. sik 識). In Sanskrit, "consciousness"; a term that technically refers to the six types of sensory consciousness (VIJNĀNA): eye, or visual, consciousness (CAKsURVIJNĀNA); ear, or auditory, consciousness (sROTRAVIJNĀNA); nose, or olfactory, consciousness (GHRĀnAVIJNĀNA); tongue, or gustatory, consciousness (JIHVĀVIJNĀNA); body, or tactile, consciousness (KĀYAVIJNĀNA); and mental consciousness (MANOVIJNĀNA). These are the six major sources of awareness of the phenomena (DHARMA) of our observable universe. Each of these forms of consciousness is produced in dependence upon three conditions (PRATYAYA): the "objective-support condition" (ĀLAMBANAPRATYAYA), the "predominant condition" (ADHIPATIPRATYAYA), and the "immediately preceding condition" (SAMANANTARAPRATYAYA). When used with reference to the six forms of consciousness, the term vijNāna refers only to CITTA, or general mentality, and not to the mental concomitants (CAITTA) that accompany mentality. It is also in this sense that vijNāna constitutes the fifth of the five SKANDHAs, while the mental concomitants are instead placed in the fourth aggregate of conditioning factors (SAMSKĀRA). The six forms of consciousness figure in two important lists in Buddhist epistemology, the twelve sense fields (ĀYATANA) and the eighteen elements (DHĀTU). With the exception of some strands of the YOGĀCĀRA school, six and only six forms of vijNāna are accepted. The Yogācāra school of ASAnGA posits instead eight forms of vijNāna, adding to the six sensory consciousnesses a seventh afflicted mentality (KLIstAMANAS), which creates the mistaken conception of a self, and an eighth foundational or storehouse consciousness (ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA).
vipassanupakkilesa. In Pāli, "defilement of insight"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, ten experiences that occur to the diligent practitioner of meditation as natural concomitants of insight training (VIPASSANĀ-BHĀVANĀ). If the practitioner should become attached to any of these experiences, they become a hindrance to further progress along the path to liberation and thus would be deemed defilements of insight. The ten experiences are (1) a vision of radiant light (P. obhāsa; S. avabhāsa), (2) knowledge (P. Nāna; S. JNĀNA), (3) physical rapture (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI), (4) tranquillity (P. passaddhi; S. PRAsRABDHI), (5) mental ease or bliss (SUKHA), (6) determination (P. adhimokkha; S. ADHIMOKsA), (7) energy (P. paggaha; S. pragraha), (8) heightened awareness (P. upatthāna; S. upasthāna), (9) equanimity (P. upekkhā; S. UPEKsĀ), and (10) delight (P. nikanti; S. nikānti). As long as the mind is disturbed through attachment to the ten defilements of insight, it will be unable to comprehend the three marks of existence (P. tilakkhana; S. TRILAKsAnA) of impermanence P. (anicca; S. ANITYA), suffering (P. dukkha; S. DUḤKHA), and nonself (P. anatta; S. ANĀTMAN), the knowledge of which is the content of enlightenment (BODHI). These ten defilements may cause the practitioner to believe that he has already attained enlightenment as a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), a once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), a nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), or a worthy one (ARHAT), when in fact he has not. Infatuation with the defilements is overcome by understanding them for what they are, as mere impermanent by-products of meditation. This understanding is developed through perfecting the "purity of knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path" (MAGGĀMAGGANĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI), which is the fifth of seven "purities" (VISUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation.
vistas ::: 1. Distant views or prospects, especially those seen through openings, as between rows of buildings or trees. 2. Fig. Far-reaching mental views. 3. *Fig.* Awareness of ranges of time, events, or subjects; broad mental views.
wake ::: 1. To cease to sleep; become awake. 2. To be brought into a state of awareness or alertness. 3. To become roused from sleep. 4. To become roused from a tranquil or inactive state; awaken; waken. 5. To be or continue to be awake. 6. To become cognizant or aware of something; awaken; waken. wakes, half-waked.
waking ::: n. 1. The state of becoming awake, remaining awake or being conscious. waking"s. adj. 2. Marked by full consciousness, awareness, and alertness.
"We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
“We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
Wilber-Combs Lattice ::: The general idea (arrived at independently by Ken Wilber and Allan Combs) that a person at virtually any stage of awareness can experience any major state, but will interpret those state-experiences according to their respective stage. The result is a grid of developmental stages intersecting with and interpreting various states.
World (Hebrew: olam) :::A &
wushi bajiao. (J. goji hakkyo; K. osi p'algyo 五時八教). In Chinese, "five periods and eight teachings"; a classification of teachings (PANJIAO) attributed to the TIANTAI systematizer TIANTAI ZHIYI. A detailed explanation of the wushi bajiao is found in the text by the Korean exegete CH'EGWAN, the CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI (C. Tiantai sijiao yi). The five periods correspond to what is believed to be the five major chronological periods (WUSHI) of the Buddha's teaching career (represented by the name of a SuTRA or group of sutras preached during each period), namely, (1) Huayan (AVATAMSAKASuTRA), (2) ĀGAMA, (3) VAIPULYA, (4) PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, and (5) Lotus (SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA) and Nirvāna (MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA). According to Zhiyi, the Buddha also employed different techniques of conversion or pedagogical modes (huayi) for audiences of varying capacities, which are broadly divided into four: the sudden, gradual, indeterminate, and secret. The sudden and gradual teachings are distinguished by their variant uses of skillful means (UPĀYA), and indeterminate refers to the differing levels of the understanding of individuals. Zhiyi's contribution to these well-established categories was his further division of the indeterminate teachings into "secret" and "manifest" based on the awareness of the presence of others in the assembly. The content of the Buddha's teachings (huafa) is further described in terms of the four categories of TRIPItAKA, common, distinct, and consummate. This division is based on whether the teachings are that of TRIPItAKA (viz. HĪNAYĀNA), MAHĀYĀNA (distinct), both (joint), or neither (consummate). Zhiyi referred to the central sutra of his own Tiantai school, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, as consummate. Zhiyi's own classification system is based on those of earlier exegetical traditions of the north (wujiao shizong) and south (sanjiao), which he sought to unite and ultimately transcend. See TIANTAI BAJIAO.
wuwei zhenren. (J. mui no shinnin; K. muwi chinin 無位眞人). In Chinese, "true man of no rank"; a CHAN expression attributed to LINJI YIXUAN (d. 867), which is used to refer to the sentience, or "numinous awareness" (LINGZHI), of the mind, that constantly moves through the sense faculties, thus enabling sensory experience; equivalent to the buddha-nature (FOXING). Linji contrasts this true man of no rank with the "lump of red flesh" (CHIROUTUAN), the physical body that is constantly buffeted by sensory experience. The term zhenren is also used within the Daoist tradition to refer to a Daoist "perfected," who has realized perfect freedom both mentally and physically by achieving immortality and transcending all dichotomies. See also GANSHIJUE.
yathābhutajNānadarsana. (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; C. rushi zhijian; J. nyojitsu chiken; K. yosil chigyon 如實知見). In Sanskrit, "knowledge and vision that accord with reality"; a crucial insight leading to deliverance (VIMUKTI), which results in dispassion toward the things of this world because of seeing things as they actually are: i.e., as impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANĀTMAN). "Knowledge and vision (jNānadarsana)" is usually interpreted to suggest the direct insight into things "as they are" (yathābhuta), meaning these three marks of existence (TRILAKsAnA), or sometimes the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. YathābhutajNānadarsana is presumed to be closely related to wisdom (PRAJNĀ), but with one significant difference: yathābhutajNānadarsana is the first true insight, but it is intermittent and weak, while prajNā is continuous and strong. Seeing things as they are, however, is intense enough that the insight so gleaned is sufficient to transform an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) into an ĀRYA. ¶ In the Upanisāsutta of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA, the standard twelvefold chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA) is connected to an alternate chain that is designated the "supramundane dependent origination" (P. lokuttara-paticcasamuppāda; S. lokottara-pratītyasamutpāda), which outlines the process leading to liberation and prominently includes the knowledge and vision that accord with reality. Here, the last factor in the standard chain, that of old age and death (JARĀMARAnA), is substituted with suffering (P. dukkha; S. DUḤKHA), which in turn becomes the first factor in this alternate series. According to the Nettipakarana, a Pāli exegetical treatise, this chain of supramundane dependent origination consists of: (1) suffering (P. dukkha; S. duḥkha), (2) faith (P. saddhā; S. sRADDHĀ), (3) delight or satisfaction (P. pāmojja; S. prāmodya), (4) rapture or joy (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI), (5) tranquility or repose (P. passaddhi; S. PRAsRABDHI), (6) mental ease or bliss (SUKHA), (7) concentration (SAMĀDHI), (8) knowledge and vision that accord with reality (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; S. yathābhutajNānadarsana), (9) disgust (P. nibbidā; S. NIRVEDA), (10) dispassion (P. virāga; S. VAIRĀGYA), (11) liberation (P. vimutti; S. VIMUKTI), and (12) knowledge of the destruction of the contaminants (P. āsavakkhayaNāna; S. āsravaksayajNāna; see ĀSRAVAKsAYA). The Kimatthiyasutta of the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA gives a slightly different version of the first links, replacing suffering and faith with (1) observance of precepts (P. kusalasīla; S. kusalasīla) and (2) freedom from remorse (P. avippatisāra; S. avipratisāra). In both formulations, yathābhutajNānadarsana arises as a result of the preceding factor of meditative concentration (samādhi); it is regarded as the specific awareness (JNĀNA) of the nature of reality, which is seen (DARsANA) vividly and directly. In this context, yathābhutajNānadarsana is essentially synonymous with insight (VIPAsYANĀ). As this chain of transcendental dependent origination is sometimes interpreted, the stage of faith (P. saddhā; S. sraddhā) is made manifest through generosity (DĀNA) and observing precepts (sĪLA), which frees the mind from feelings of remorse and guilt (avipratisāra). The stage of delight or satisfaction (prāmodya) refers to a satisfied or relaxed state of mind, which is freed from any mental disturbances that might prevent concentration. The stages of rapture (prīti), bliss (sukha), and concentration (samādhi) are factors associated with the four levels of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA). The knowledge and vision that accord with reality arise in dependence on the preceding samādhi; it is able to destroy the afflictions (KLEsA), rather than simply suppress them, as occurs in the state of concentration, and thus leads to liberation from SAMSĀRA. The fact that samādhi provides a basis for seeing things "as they are," which generates an insight that can bring about liberation, demonstrates the explicitly soteriological dimensions of concentration in a Buddhist meditative context. ¶ In Pāli sources, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, yathābhutajNānadarsana is the fifteenth of eighteen principal types of superior insight (P. mahāvipassanā), which liberate the mind from delusions regarding the world and the self. The eighteen insights are contemplations of: (1) impermanence (aniccānupassanā); (2) suffering (dukkhānupassanā); (3) nonself (anattānupassanā); (4) aversion (nibbidānupassanā); (5) dispassion (virāgānupassanā); (6) extinction (nirodhānupassanā); (7) abandoning (patinissaggānupassanā); (8) waning (khayānupassanā); (9) disappearing (vayānupassanā); (10) change (viparināmānupassanā); (11) signlessness (animittānupassanā); (12) wishlessness (appanihitānupassanā); (13) emptiness (suNNatānupassanā); (14) advanced understanding into phenomena (adhipaNNādhammavipassanā); (15) knowledge and vision that accord with reality (yathābhutaNānadassana); (16) contemplation of danger (ādīnavānupassanā); (17) contemplation involving reflection (patisankhānupassanā); and (18) contemplation of turning away (vivattanānupassanā). The counterparts which are overcome through these eighteen insights are: (1) the idea of permanence, (2) the idea of pleasure, (3) the idea of self, (4) delighting, (5) greed, (6) origination, (7) grasping, (8) the idea of compactness, (9) the accumulation of action (kamma), (10) the idea of lastingness, (11) signs, (12) desire, (13) misinterpretation, (14) misinterpretation due to grasping, (15) misinterpretation due to confusion, (16) misinterpretation due to reliance, (17) nonreflection or thoughtlessness, (18) misinterpretation due to entanglement.
yathāvadbhāvikajNāna. (T. ji lta ba mkhyen pa'i ye shes; C. ruli zhi; J. nyorichi; K. yori chi 如理智). In Sanskrit, lit. "knowledge of the mode"; a buddha's knowledge of the single mode of being of the universe. This type of knowledge is typically mentioned in conjunction with the "knowledge of the multiplicities" (YĀVADBHĀVIKAJNĀNA), a buddha's knowledge of each of the phenomena of the universe in its specificity. Only a buddha possesses these two knowledges and possesses them simultaneously; thus, only he is able to perceive all of the various phenomena of the universe as well as their ultimate nature. This joint awareness is referred to as the simultaneous knowledge of the two truths (SATYADVAYA).
yāvadbhāvikajNāna. (T. ji snyed pa mkhyen pa'i ye shes; C. ruliang zhi; J. nyoryochi; K. yoryang chi 如量智). In Sanskrit, lit., "knowledge of the multiplicities" or "knowledge of the varieties"; a buddha's knowledge of each of the phenomena of the universe in its specificity. This type of knowledge is typically mentioned in conjunction with a buddha's "knowledge of the mode" (YATHĀVADBHĀVIKAJNĀNA), which understands the single mode of being of the universe. Only a buddha possesses these two knowledges and possesses them simultaneously; thus, only he is able to perceive all of the various phenomena of the universe as well as their ultimate nature. This joint awareness is referred to as the simultaneous knowledge of the two truths (SATYADVAYA).
yoga nidra. ::: a state of half-contemplation and half-sleep; light yogic sleep when the individual retains slight awareness; a state between sleep and wakefulness
Yoganidra: A state of half-contemplation and half-sleep; light Yogic sleep when the individual retains slight awareness; state between sleep and wakefulness, particularly the sleep of Vishnu at the end of a Kalpa.
yoga ::: Yoga A Sanskrit word meaning union (with the divine), Yoga is a philosophy and discipline applied to the development of mind, body, and spirit. There are several different disciplines of Yoga: Hatha; Vinyasa; Iyengar; Kundalini; Bikram/hot yoga, emphasising different aspects or combinations of mind body spirit. Through practices of holding a variety of body positions/postures, and the centering of the mind and breath in a meditative way, the practitioner increases body awareness, posture, flexibility of body and mind and calmness of spirit.
yogipratyaksa. (T. rnal 'byor mngon sum; C. dingguan zhi; J. jokanchi; K. chonggwan chi 定觀知). In Sanskrit, "yogic direct perception"; a specific variety of direct perception (PRATYAKsA) that is typically presumed to derive from meditative practice (BHĀVANĀ; YOGA). A direct intuition of the real obtained through meditative practice, this type of understanding was accepted as a valid means of knowledge by most of the traditional Indian religious schools. In Buddhism, the psychological analysis of the notion of yogipratyaksa and the related yogijNāna (yogic knowledge or cognition) was undertaken by DHARMAKĪRTI (c. 600-670) in his PRAMĀnAVĀRTTIKA and NYĀYABINDU, as well as by his commentators. Dharmakīrti's predecessor DIGNĀGA (c. 480-540) had posited that there were only two reliable sources of knowledge (PRAMĀnA): direct perception (PRATYAKsA) and logical inference (ANUMĀNA). Dharmakīrti, however, subdivided direct perception (pratyaksa) into four subtypes, viz., sensory cognition (indriyajNāna), mental discrimination (MANOVIJNĀNA), self-awareness (SVASAMVEDANA), and yogic cognition (yogijNāna). In Dharmakīrti's analysis, yogic cognition (yogijNāna) is a form of yogic perception (yogipratyaksa), because it fulfills the two conditions of perception (pratyaksa): (1) it is devoid of conceptual construction (KALPANĀ); and (2) it is a cognition that is "nonerroneous" (abhrānta), viz., real. The treatment of yogipratyaksa in the literature thus focuses on how yogipratyaksa fulfills these two conditions of perception. Yogic knowledge is devoid of conceptual construction (kalpanā), Dharmakīrti maintains, because it is nonconceptual (akalpa; NIRVIKALPA) and thus "vivid" or "distinct" (spasta). This type of perception is therefore able to perceive reality directly, without the intercession of mental images or concepts. Since yogic cognition is said to be devoid of conceptual construction, this raises the issue of its second condition, its lack of error. Why is meditatively induced perception true and reliable? How does a meditator's yogic perception differ from the hallucinations of the deranged, since both of them presume they have a vivid cognition of an object? The reason, Dharmakīrti maintains, is that the objects of yogic knowledge are "true" or "real" (bhuta; sadbhuta), whereas hallucinations are "false" or "unreal" objects (abhuta; asadbhuta). The only true objects of yogic knowledge offered by Dharmakīrti are the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: that is, the perception of these truths is true and reliable because they enable one to reach the goal of enlightenment, not because they involve a perception of an ultimate substance. In this sense, Dharmakīrti's understanding of yogijNāna is more focused on the direct realization of the soteriological import of the four noble truths than on extraordinary sensory ability. Therefore, yogic direct perception is qualitatively different from the various forms of clairvoyance that are the byproducts of deep states of concentration that may be achieved by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist practitioners. Yogipratyaksa is a form of insight (VIPAsYANĀ) posssessed only by noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA); and among the five paths it occurs only on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and above. See also DARsANA.
yong. (J. yu; K. yong 用). In Chinese, "function," or "application"; a term often deployed in the East Asian religious traditions, including Buddhism, as a philosophical pair with "essence" (TI). Chinese Daoist and "Dark Learning" (XUANXUE) texts first imbued the term with philosophical implications: the Daode jing refers to yong as the "attributes" of the way, and the Daodejing zhu, Wang Bi's (226-249) commentary to the text, employs the term to indicate the functions or attributes of "nonbeing" (WU) or "voidness" (xu). However, yong, along with its companion ti, was not widely used until the Buddhists adopted both terms to provide a basic conceptual frame for reality or truth. For example, the SAN LUN ZONG master JIZANG (549-623) used ti and yong to explicate his theory of the middle way (MADHYAMAPRATIPAD). He connected the middle (zhong) to ti, which he described as "neither ultimate nor conventional" (feizhen feisu), and the provisional (jia) to yong, which he described as "ultimate and conventional" (zhensu). The ti and yong pair was often used in the HUAYAN, TIANTAI, and CHAN traditions. GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), a Tang-dynasty master of both the HUAYAN ZONG and Heze Chan traditions, provided a systematic explanation for yong and ti, based on the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna"). In particular, he distinguished between two different types of function in his theory of mind: the "inherent function of the self-nature" (zixing benyong), which he called "numinous awareness" (LINGZHI), and the responsive functions that accord with conditions (suiyuan yingyong), which he described as the various mental functions that derive from the inherent function of the mind. Many Chinese and Korean Neo-Confucian thinkers, such as Cheng Yi (1033-1107), Zhu Xi (1130-1200), and Yi Hwang (1501-1570), applied Zongmi's interpretation of this pair to their own philosophical systems.
Zát (Dhat) (A) The unmanifested, essence, Self. The condition where God is still one and unknown. The opposite notion to Zát refers to that which is manifest: ‘Sifat’, the known, the created world, ‘Insán’ the created human being, humanity, and finally the ‘Nafs’: (the awareness of) the Personal limited ego.
Zen ::: A school of Buddhism which emphasizes direct experiential insight into the nature of reality: the non-dual state of awareness, and living one's life in accordance with this realization. On this site we will also refer to Zen techniques as a way of shifting awareness to the non-dual through polar elimination of archetypes and forceful deconstruction of the momentary self.
Zen Buddhism ::: A fusion of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism, practiced chiefly in China and Japan. It places great importance on moment-by-moment awareness and 'seeing deeply into the nature of things' by direct experience. The name derives from the Sanskrit word dhyana referring to a particular meditative state.
Zhao lun. (J. Joron; K. Cho non 肇論). In Chinese, "(Seng)zhao's Treatise"; an influential work by the eminent Chinese monk SENGZHAO (374-414), one of the major disciples of the important Kuchean translator KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413). The Zhao lun was compiled sometime between 384 and 414 and brings together Sengzhao's four major works. The first, Wubuqian lun ("On the Immutability of Things"), explores the irrelevancy of time in explaining dharmas that are not subject to production and cessation. The second, Buzhenkong lun ("Emptiness of the Unreal"), explains how dharmas can simultaneously appear as both real and unreal. The BORE WUZHI LUN ("The Nescience of PrajNā") explains that because wisdom (PRAJNĀ) is quiescent, empty, and lacking a perduring essence, any conscious awareness of it, or emanating from it, is impossible. Finally, "Niepan wuming lun" ("The Anonymity of Nirvāna") demonstrates that NIRVĀnA is fundamentally ineffable and therefore nameless. A chapter entitled "Zong benyi" ("Fundamental Meaning of the Major Tenets") appears at the beginning of the Zhao lun and offers a succinct explanation of some important doctrinal matters, such as original nothingness (benwu), the true mark of reality (shixiang), dharma nature (faxing), and the emptiness of nature (xingkong). Letters exchanged between Sengzhao and the layman Liu Yimin (d. 410) of LUSHAN are appended at the end of the Zhao lun. Numerous commentaries on this text exist across the East Asian traditions.
KEYS (10k)
15 Sri Ramana Maharshi
10 Sri Aurobindo
6 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
4 Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
4 Peter J Carroll
3 Tilopa
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Ken Wilber
3 Essential Integral
3 Jetsun Milarepa
3 Bodhidharma
2 Rupert Spira
2 ken-wilber
2 George Gurdjieff
2 Eckhart Tolle
2 The Mother
2 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Wikipedia
1 Ursula K LeGuin
1 Tsogdruk Rinpoche
1 Traleg Rinpoche
1 Thomas Keating
1 Thaddeus Golas
1 Sunyata
1 Shaykh Abu Bakr Shibli
1 Rupert Spria "Being Aware of Being Aware"
1 Rupert Spira "The Nature of Consciousness
1 Robert Augustus Masters
1 Robert Adams
1 Ram Dass
1 Phillip Yancey
1 Padmasambhava
1 Osho
1 Nisargadatta Maharaj
1 Neville Goddard
1 Nathaniel Branden
1 Marshall McLuhan
1 Mahatma Gandhi
1 Longchenpa
1 Lalla
1 Khandro Rinpoche
1 Karma-glin-pa
1 Jon Kabat-Zinn
1 Jetsun Milarepa
1 Goenka
1 Eugene Thacker
1 Dzogchen Rinpoche III
1 Dudjom Rinpoche
1 Desire only your own awareness.
1 Daniel C Matt
1 Carl Sagan
1 Angelus Silesius
1 Albert Einstein
1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Aleister Crowley
1 Adyashanti
1 Abū Saʿīd Abū'l-Khayr
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
135 Frederick Lenz
53 Deepak Chopra
43 Eckhart Tolle
23 Rajneesh
21 Sri Ramana Maharshi
18 Thich Nhat Hanh
17 Anonymous
17 Amit Ray
15 Jon Kabat Zinn
14 Osho
13 Rupert Spira
11 Ram Dass
11 Nhat Hanh
11 John de Ruiter
8 Travis Bradberry
8 Bren Brown
8 Anthony de Mello
7 Thomas Merton
7 Sharon Salzberg
7 Mehmet Murat ildan
1:Serene and unperturbed. ~ Desire only your own awareness., #KEYS
2:Awareness is the greatest agent for change." ~ Eckhart Tolle, #KEYS
3:Cut the mind at its root and rest in naked awareness. ~ Tilopa, #KEYS
4:The enemy is lack of awareness, lack of presence. ~ Traleg Rinpoche, #KEYS
5:Awareness doesn't mind fear. Nor does love ~ Robert Augustus Masters, #KEYS
6:Those who the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #KEYS
7:The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
~ Nathaniel Branden,#KEYS
8:The essence of the highest teachings lies within a simple moment of awareness. ~ Khandro Rinpoche, #KEYS
9:The only offering you can make to God is your increasing awareness. ~ Lalla, trans. Coleman Barks #KEYS
10:The supreme state of Self-awareness is never absent. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
11:You alone exist, O Heart, the radiance of Awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
12:Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
13:You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
14:The meditator must develop both awareness and equanimity together in order to advance along the path.
~ Goenka,#KEYS
15:Awareness isn't hidden. But you can only find it right now. It's only now. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
16:There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
17:Self-awareness never decays. It is unrelated to anything. It is Self-luminous. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
18:All awareness is power and all power conceals awareness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, RV I.1.1, #KEYS
19:Awareness is jnana. Jnana is eternal and natural, ajnana is unnatural and unreal. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
20:Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either." ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
21:Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.
~ Bodhidharma,#KEYS
22:It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the 'I Am,' our real presence, can awaken. ~ George Gurdjieff, #KEYS
23:That which then remains separate and alone by itself, that pure Awareness is what I am. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
24:Only one's own awareness is direct knowledge. No aids are needed to know one's own Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
25:with awareness the
appearance of conflict
disappears into unity
~ Tilopa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
26:The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
~ Phillip Yancey,#KEYS
27:For knowing That which Is, there is no other knower. Hence Being is Awareness and we are all Awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
28:A monk asks: Is there anything more miraculous than the wonders of nature?
The master answers: Yes, your awareness of the wonders of nature. ~ Angelus Silesius,#KEYS
29:Lo! This is self-awareness! It surpasses all avenues of speech and thought.
I, Tilopa, have nothing to reveal. You should know it yourself through inward examination. ~ Tilopa,#KEYS
30:Awareness is the greatest agent for change." ~ Eckhart Tolle, (b. 1948) a spiritual teacher, a German-born resident of Canada best known as the author of "The Power of Now," Wikipedia., #KEYS
31:All you can say about yourself is: 'I am.' You are pure being - awareness - bliss. To realise that is the end of all seeking. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
32:And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
33:If you hold this feeling of 'I' long enough and strongly, the false 'I' will vanish, leaving only the unbroken awareness of the real, immanent 'I', Consciousness itself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
34:In things lacking awareness, this desire is called "natural desire". Thus, it is said that a stone desires to be downwards ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 2.47)., #KEYS
35:Just as a screen is never agitated by the drama in a movie, so being aware or awareness itself is never disturbed by the content of experience." ~ Rupert Spria "Being Aware of Being Aware", (2017), #KEYS
36:Keep always this awareness of my constant loving presence and all will be all right.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, The Mother, Relations with Others, 'I am with You', [T1],#KEYS
37:The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant. In other words how to combine the search for an experience of inner awareness with effective social action. ~ Ursula K LeGuin, #KEYS
38:We do not 'have' awareness, we are awareness. Awareness is not an attribute of the body, just as the screen is not a property of a character in a movie." ~ Rupert Spira "The Nature of Consciousness,", (2017)., #KEYS
39:Knowledge is as infinite as the stars in the sky. There is no end to all of the subjects that one could study. It is better to immediately get their essence - The unchanging fortress of pure awareness. ~ Longchenpa, #KEYS
40:Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
~ Albert Einstein,#KEYS
41:The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
42:Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally." ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, (b. 1944), "Mindfulness for Beginners,", (2012, 2016), #KEYS
43:Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
44:The present is always invisible because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone but the artist, the man of integral awareness, is alive in an earlier day. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #KEYS
45:Know me as the true essence of jnana that shines uninterruptedly in your Heart.
Destroy the objectifying awareness of the ego-mind that arrogantly cavorts as 'I'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Padamalai,#KEYS
46:Repeat the old practice, "To whom do thoughts arise?"
Keep up the practice until there are no breaks.
Practice alone will bring about continuity of awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 628,#KEYS
47:Samādhi is our natural state of clear self-awareness, because it is a state that the mind enters only by the practice of self-attentiveness: that is, by attending only to 'I'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
48:Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates you. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness." ~ Osho, #KEYS
49:By interiorizing its awareness, it is no longer merely buffeted by the immediate fluctuations in the environment: its relative autonomy-its capacity to remain stable in the midst of shifting circumstances-increases. ~ Ken Wilber, SES, #KEYS
50:Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950), Hindu sage, recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, Wikipedia., #KEYS
51:Do not cling to conventional thoughts, religion, concepts and so on. Let go! Drop all artificial conceptions of Life, for it is only then that it can be taken into you, or you into it, in consciousness Self-awareness." ~ Sunyata, Danish mystic. , #KEYS
52:When your mind is quiet, you enter into the flow of love, and you just flow from one moment to the next as naturally as breathing. Whatever arises, I embrace it with love in the moment. In this moment there is just awareness and love. ~ Ram Dass, #KEYS
53:Awareness is colored by experience but is never tarnished or sullied by anything that takes place within it. Pure knowing, being aware of awareness itself is always in the same pristine condition." ~ Rupert Spira,"Being Aware of Being Aware,", (2017), #KEYS
54:It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the 'I Am,' our real presence, can awaken." ~ George Gurdjieff, (c. 1870 - 1949) mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer, of Armenian and Greek descent, Wikipedia., #KEYS
55:There is the awareness of the waking state and the stillness of sleep. It lies between sleep and waking; it is also the interval between two successive thoughts. It is not dullness but it is bliss. It is not transitory but it is eternal. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
56:Unity is the basis of the gnostic consciousness, mutuality the natural result of its direct awareness of oneness in diversity, harmony the inevitable power of the working of its force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
57:As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive control, contractions and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute un-manifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing. ~ Adyashanti, #KEYS
58:Never allow yourself to believe that something's wrong in your life. Catch it before it starts. And say to yourself: "I am effortless, choiceless, Pure Awareness." Know the truth about yourself. God has no problems. Neither do you. For you are That. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
59:The body and the mind, are only symptoms of ignorance - of misapprehension. Behave as if you were Pure Awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless; beyond 'where', and 'when', and 'how'. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
60:It's a beautiful paradox: the more you open your consciousness, the fewer unpleasant events intrude themselves into your awareness." ~ Thaddeus Golas, (1924 - 1997) American, author of "The Lazy Mans Guide to Enlightenment," a blending of physics & spirituality, Wikipedia, #KEYS
61:Unconditioned consciousness is God, the one and only reality. By unconditioned consciousness is meant a sense of awareness; a sense of knowing that I AM apart from knowing who I AM;…" ~ Neville Goddard, (1905-1972), American mystic teacher. "The Complete Reader,", (2013)., #KEYS
62:Infinite awareness and the finite mind are not two different entities. The finite mind is simply an imaginary limitation, self-assumed by infinite awareness for the sake of manifesting objective experience." ~ Rupert Spira, (b.1960) "Being Aware of Being Aware,", (2017), Wiki., #KEYS
63:Ignorance can be compared to a dark room in which you sleep. No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit the entire room becomes luminous. You are that luminosity. You are that clear light. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #KEYS
64:Once you realize that the body depends on the mind, and the mind on consciousness, and consciousness on awareness, and not the other way round, your question about waiting for self-realization till you die is answered. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
65:If you make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you are going deeper & deeper into your own inner Self where there is no need for your effort to reject the thoughts. The effort is sublimated in just awareness of the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
66:The 'I' casts off the illusion of 'I' and yet remains as 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-Realization." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-950), Hindu sage, recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, Wikipedia., #KEYS
67:You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me "Who are you?", my answer would be: "Nothing in particular. Yet, I am". ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
68:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
69:The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
70:A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
71:You are being - awareness - bliss. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. It is not difficult, but detachment is needed. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
72:But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so-it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the luxury of distraction. The awareness is one-pointedly concentrated.
~ Karma-glin-pa, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,#KEYS
73:the spiritual transformation :::
The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
74:A hundred things may be explained to you, a thousand things told, but one thing only should you grasp. Know one thing and everything is freed- remain within your inner nature, your Awareness. May I recognize all the manifestations that appear to me in the bardo (intermediate state) as being my own projections; emanations of my own mind. ~ Padmasambhava, #KEYS
75:For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in this matter. All the subsidiary work—awareness, one-pointedness, mindfulness and the rest—is intended to train you to this. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, #KEYS
76:At all times, do not lose courage in your inner awareness; uplift yourself, while assuming a humble position in your outer demeanor. Follow the example of the life and complete liberation of previous accomplished masters. Do not blame your past karma; instead, be someone who purely and flawlessly practices the dharma. Do not blame temporary negative circumstances; instead, be someone who remains steadfast in the face of whatever circumstances may arise. ~ Dudjom Rinpoche, #KEYS
77:Whatever you have in your mind—forget it; whatever you have in your hand—give it; whatever is to be your fate—face it." ~ Abū Saʿīd Abū'l-Khayr, (967 -1049), famous Sufi poet who contributed extensively to the evolution of Sufi tradition, Wikipedia. "One day man will realize that his own I AM-ness is the God he has been seeking throughout the ages, and that his own sense of awareness - his consciousness of being - is the one and only reality." ~ Neville Goddard, "The Complete Reader,", (2013), #KEYS
78:This awareness, free from an inside or an outside, is open like the sky.
It is penetrating Wakefulness free from limitations and partiality.
Within the vast and open space of this all-embracing mind,
All phenomena of samsara and nirvana manifest like rainbows in the sky.
Within this state of unwavering awareness,
All that appears and exists, like a reflection,
Appears but is empty, resounds but is empty.
Its nature is Emptiness from the very beginning.
~ Tsogdruk Rinpoche, The Flight of Garuda,#KEYS
79:We have to entertain the possibility that there is no reason for something existing; or that the split between subject and object is only our name for something equally accidental we call knowledge; or, an even more difficult thought, that while there may be some order to the self and the cosmos, to the microcosm and macrocosm, it is an order that is absolutely indifferent to our existence, and of which we can have only a negative awareness.
~ Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet: Horror Of Philosophy vol. 1,#KEYS
80:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
81:Someone told me that Ramana Maharshi lives on the overmental plane or that his realisation is on the same level as Shankara's. How is it then that he is not aware of the arrival of the Divine, while others, for instance X's Guru, had this awareness?
I can't say on what plane the Maharshi is, but his method is that of Adwaita Knowledge and Moksha - so there is no necessity for him to recognise the arrival of the Divine. X's Guru was a bhakta of the Divine Mother and believed in the dynamic side of existence, so it was quite natural for him to have the revelation of the coming of the Mother. 23 January 1936 ~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
82:A man will cherish the illusion that he is the doer as long as he has not seen God, as long as he has not touched the Philosopher's Stone. So long will he know the distinction between his good and bad actions. This awareness of distinction is due to God's maya; and it is necessary for the purpose of running His illusory world. But a man can realize God if he takes shelter under His vidyamaya and follows the path of righteousness. He who knows God and realizes Him is able to go beyond maya. He who firmly believes that God alone is the Doer and he himself a mere instrument is a jivanmukta, a free soul though living in a body. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
83:To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness. Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
84:Visitor. I am taught that Mantra Japam is very potent in practice.
Bhagavan. The Self is the greatest of all mantras and goes on automatically and eternally. If you are not aware of this internal mantra, you should take to do it consciously as japam, which is attended with effort, to ward off all other thoughts.
By constant attention to it, you will eventually become aware of the internal mantra, which is the state of Realisation and is effortless. Firmness in this awareness will keep you continually and effortlessly in the current, however much you may be engaged on other activities.
Listening to Veda chanting and mantras has the same result as conscious repetitions of japam - its rhythm is the japam. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,#KEYS
85:I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight-not illumined by any of the intenser upper lights but as if in a large strong and clear daylight. It acts as an intermediate state between the Truth-Light above and the human mind; communicating the higher knowledge in a form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth beyond it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Poetry And Art, [9:342],#KEYS
86:A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows 'to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally'
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, Liber LUX, Augoeides [49-50],#KEYS
87:Worldly affairs are all deceptive;
So I seek the truth Divine.
Excitements and distractions are illusions;
So I meditate on the non-dual Truth.
Companions and servants are deceptive;
So I remain in solitude.
Money and possessions are also deceptive;
So if I have them, I give them away.
Things in the outer world are all illusion;
The Inner Mind is that which I observe.
Wandering thoughts are all deceptive;
So I only tread the path of wisdom.
Deceptive are the teachings of expedient truth;
The final truth is that on which I meditate.
Books written in black ink are all misleading;
I only meditate on the pith-instructions of the whispered lineage.
Words and sayings, too, are but illusion;
At ease, I rest my mind in the effortless state.
Birth and death are both illusions;
I observe but the truth of no-arising.
The common mind is in every way misleading;
And so I practice how to animate awareness.
The Mind-holding Practice
is misleading and deceptive;
And so I rest in the realm of reality. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
88:Non-attachment/Non-disinterest best describes the magical condition of acting without lust of result. It is very difficult for humans to decide on something and then to do it purely for its own sake. Yet it is precisely this ability which is required to execute magical acts. Only single-pointed awareness will do. Attachment is to be understood both in the positive and negative sense, for aversion is its other face. Attachment to any attribute of oneself, ones personality, ones ambitions, ones relationships or sensory experiences - or equally, aversion to any of these - will prove limiting. On the other hand, it is fatal to lose interest in these things for they are ones symbolic system or magical reality. Rather, one is attempting to touch the sensitive parts of ones reality more lightly in order to deny the spoiling hand of grasping desire and boredom. Thereby one may gain enough freedom to act magically. In addition to these two meditations there is a third, more active, form of metamorphosis, and this involves ones everyday habits. However innocuous they might seem, habits in thought, word, and deed are the anchor of the personality. The magician aims to pull up that anchor and cast himself free on the seas of chaos.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
89:I accept, will not give up, and will practice each of the Three Jewels,
And will not let go of my guru or my yidam deity.
As the samaya of the Buddha, first among the Three Jewels,
I will apply myself to the true, essential reality.
As the samaya of sacred Dharma, second among the Three Jewels,
I will distill the very essence of all the vehicles' teachings.
As the samaya of the Sangha, the third and final Jewel,
I will look upon reality; I will behold pure awareness.
And as the samaya of the guru and the yidam deity,
I will take my very own mind, my pure mind, as a witness.
Generally speaking, the Three Jewels should be regarded as the ultimate place to take refuge. As was taught in the section on taking refuge, your mind should be focused one-pointedly, with all your hopes and trust placed in their care. The gurus are a lamp that dispels the darkness of ignorance.
As the guides who lead you along the path to liberation, they are your sole source of refuge and protection, from now until you attain enlightenment.
For these reasons, you should act with unwavering faith, pure view and devotion, and engage in the approach and accomplishment of the divine yidam deity. ~ Dzogchen Rinpoche III, Great Perfection Outer and Inner Preliminaries,#KEYS
90:all is the method of God's workings; all life is Yoga :::
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognize in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of the might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and there for right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Conditions of the Synthesis [47] [T1],#KEYS
91:From above to below, the sefirot depict the drama of emanation, the transition from Ein Sof to creation. In the words of Azriel of Gerona, "They constitute the process by which all things come into being and pass away." From below to above, the sefirot constitute a ladder of ascent back to the One. The union of Tif'eret and Shekhinah gives birth to the human soul, and the mystical journey begins with the awareness of this spiritual fact of life. Shekhinah is the opening to the divine: "One who enters must enter through this gate." Once inside, the sefirot are no longer an abstract theological system; they become a map of consciousness. The mystic climbs and probes, discovering dimensions of being. Spiritual and psychological wholeness is achieved by meditating on the qualities of each sefirah, by imitating and integrating the attributes of God. "When you cleave to the sefirot, the divine holy spirit enters into you, into every sensation and every movement." But the path is not easy. Divine will can be harsh: Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac in order to balance love with rigor. From the Other Side, demonic forces threaten and seduce. [The demonic is rooted in the divine]. Contemplatively and psychologically, evil must be encountered, not evaded. By knowing and withstanding the dark underside of wisdom, the spiritual seeker is refined.~ Daniel C Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, 10, #KEYS
92:So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer, mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from that height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we are is either temporarily put away or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend or recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with one enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible. All this which looks strange and abnormal or may seem fantastic to the surface reason acquainted only with our normal status of limited ignorance and its movements divided from our inner higher and total reality, becomes easily intelligible and admissible in the light of the larger reason and logic of the Infinite or by the admission of the greater illimitable powers of the Self, the Spirit in us which is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.2.02 #KEYS
93:The Song Of View, Practice, And Action :::
Oh, my Guru! The Exemplar of the View, Practice, and Action,
Pray vouchsafe me your grace, and enable me
To be absorbed in the realm of Self-nature!
For the View, Practice, Action, and Accomplishment
There are three Key-points you should know:
All the manifestation, the Universe itself, is contained in the mind;
The nature of Mind is the realm of illumination
Which can neither be conceived nor touched.
These are the Key-points of the View.
Errant thoughts are liberated in the Dharmakaya;
The awareness, the illumination, is always blissful;
Meditate in a manner of non-doing and non-effort.
These are the Key-points of Practice.
In the action of naturalness
The Ten Virtues spontaneously grow;
All the Ten Vices are thus purified.
By corrections or remedies
The Illuminating Void is ne'er disturbed.
These are the Key-points of Action.
There is no Nivana to attain beyond;
There is no Samsara here to renounce;
Truly to know the Self-mind
It is to be the Buddha Himself.
These are the Key-points of Accomplishment.
Reduce inwardly the Three Key-points to One.
This One is the Void Nature of Being,
Which only a wondrous Guru
Can clearly illustrate.
Much activity is of no avail;
If one sees the Simultaneously Born Wisdom,
He reaches the goal.
For all practioners of Dharma
The preaching is a precious gem;
It is my direct experience from yogic meditation.
Think carefully and bear it in your minds,
Oh, my children and disciples. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
94:THE FOUR FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES
Changing the Karmic Traces
Throughout the day, continuously remain in the awareness that all experience is a dream. Encounter all things as objects in a dream, all events as events in a dream, all people as people in a dream.
Envision your own body as a transparent illusory body. Imagine you are in a lucid dream during the entire day. Do not allow these reminders to be merely empty repetition. Each time you tell yourself, "This is a dream," actually become more lucid. Involve your body and your senses in becoming more present.
Removing Grasping and Aversion
Encounter all things that create desire and attachment as the illusory empty, luminous phenomena of a dream. Recognize your reactions to phenomena as a dream; all emotions, judgments, and preferences are being dreamt up. You can be certain that you are doing this correctly if immediately upon remembering that your reaction is a dream, desire and attachment lessen.
Strengthening Intention
Before going to sleep, review the day and reflect on how the practice has been. Let memories of the day arise and recognize them as memories of dream. Develop a strong intention to be aware in the coming night's dreams. Put your whole heart into this intention and pray strongly for success.
Cultivating Memory and joyful Effort
Begin the day with the strong intention to maintain the practice. Review the night, developing happiness if you remembered or were lucid in your dreams. Recommit yourself to the practice, with the intention to become lucid if you were not, and to further develop lucidity if you were. At any time during the day or evening it is good to pray for success in practice. Generate as strong an intention as possible. This is the key to the practice, ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep,#KEYS
95:Hence, it's obvious to see why in AA the community is so important; we are powerless over ourselves. Since we don't have immediate awareness of the Higher Power and how it works, we need to be constantly reminded of our commitment to freedom and liberation. The old patterns are so seductive that as they go off, they set off the association of ideas and the desire to give in to our addiction with an enormous force that we can't handle. The renewal of defeat often leads to despair. At the same time, it's a source of hope for those who have a spiritual view of the process. Because it reminds us that we have to renew once again our total dependence on the Higher Power. This is not just a notional acknowledgment of our need. We feel it from the very depths of our being. Something in us causes our whole being to cry out, "Help!" That's when the steps begin to work. And that, I might add, is when the spiritual journey begins to work. A lot of activities that people in that category regard as spiritual are not communicating to them experientially their profound dependence on the grace of God to go anywhere with their spiritual practices or observances. That's why religious practice can be so ineffective. The real spiritual journey depends on our acknowledging the unmanageability of our lives. The love of God or the Higher Power is what heals us. Nobody becomes a full human being without love. It brings to life people who are most damaged. The steps are really an engagement in an ever-deepening relationship with God. Divine love picks us up when we sincerely believe nobody else will. We then begin to experience freedom, peace, calm, equanimity, and liberation from cravings for what we have come to know are damaging-cravings that cannot bring happiness, but at best only momentary relief that makes the real problem worse. ~ Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction, #KEYS
96:There is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition. For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest. Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind. For Intuition is as strong as Nature herself from whose very soul it has sprung and cares nothing for the contradictions of reason or the denials of experience. It knows what is because it is, because itself it is of that and has come from that, and will not yield it to the judgment of what merely becomes and appears. What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent, for it proceeds from that one point of light in us which gives it its advantage, that sometimes opened door in our own self-awareness. Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition and formulated it in the three great declarations of the Upanishads, I am He, Thou art That, O Swetaketu, All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge,#KEYS
97:Response To A Logician :::
I bow at the feet of my teacher Marpa.
And sing this song in response to you.
Listen, pay heed to what I say,
forget your critique for a while.
The best seeing is the way of "nonseeing"
the radiance of the mind itself.
The best prize is what cannot be looked for
the priceless treasure of the mind itself.
The most nourishing food is "noneating"
the transcendent food of samadhi.
The most thirst-quenching drink is "nondrinking"
the nectar of heartfelt compassion.
Oh, this self-realizing awareness
is beyond words and description!
The mind is not the world of children,
nor is it that of logicians.
Attaining the truth of "nonattainment,"
you receive the highest initiation.
Perceiving the void of high and low,
you reach the sublime stage.
Approaching the truth of "nonmovement,"
you follow the supreme path.
Knowing the end of birth and death,
the ultimate purpose is fulfilled.
Seeing the emptiness of reason,
supreme logic is perfected.
When you know that great and small are groundless,
you have entered the highest gateway.
Comprehending beyond good and evil
opens the way to perfect skill.
Experiencing the dissolution of duality,
you embrace the highest view.
Observing the truth of "nonobservation"
opens the way to meditating.
Comprehending beyond "ought" and "oughtn't"
opens the way to perfect action.
When you realize the truth of "noneffort,"
you are approaching the highest fruition.
Ignorant are those who lack this truth:
arrogant teachers inflated by learning,
scholars bewitched by mere words,
and yogis seduced by prejudice.
For though they yearn for freedom,
they find only enslavement. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
98:Song To The Rock Demoness :::
River, ripples, and waves, these three,
When emerging, arise from the ocean itself.
When disappearing, they disappear into the ocean itself.
Habitual thinking, love, and possessiveness, these three,
When arising, arise from the alaya consciousness itself.
When disappearing, they disappear into the alaya consciousness itself.
Self-awareness, self-illumination, self-liberation, these three,
When arising, arise from the mind itself.
When disappearing, they disappear into the mind itself.
The unborn, unceasing, and unexpressed, these three,
When emerging, arise from the nature of being itself.
When disappearing, they disappear into the nature of being itself.
The visions of demons, clinging to demons, and thoughts of demons,
When arising, arise from the Yogin himself.
When disappearing, they disappear into the Yogin himself.
Since demons are the phantoms of the mind,
If it is not understood by the Yogin that they are empty appearances,
And even if he thinks they are real, meditation is confused.
But the root of the delusion is in his own mind.
By observation of the nature of manifestations,
He realizes the identity of manifestation and void,
And by understanding, he knows that the two are not different.
Meditation and not meditation are not two but one,
The cause of all errors is to look upon the two things as different.
From the ultimate point of view, there is no view.
If you make comparison between the nature of the mind
And the nature of the heavens,
Then the true nature of being itself is penetrated.
See, now, that you look into the true meaning which is beyond thought.
Arrange to enter into undisturbed meditation.
And be mindful of the Unceasing Intuitive Sensation! ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
99:I have already told you this several times. When you are in a particular set of circumstances and certain events take place, these events often oppose your desire or what seems best to you, and often you happen to regret this and say to yourself, "Ah! how good it would have been if it were otherwise, if it had been like this or like that", for little things and big things.... Then years pass by, events are unfolded; you progress, become more conscious, understand better, and when you look back, you notice―first with astonishment, then later with a smile―that those very circumstances which seemed to you quite disastrous or unfavourable, were exactly the best thing that could have happened to you to make you progress as you should have. And if you are the least bit wise you tell yourself, "Truly, the divine Grace is infinite."
So, when this sort of thing has happened to you a number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of the blindness of man and deceptive appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere, so that at every moment it is the best possible thing that happens in the state the world is in at that moment. It is because our vision is limited or even because we are blinded by our own preferences that we cannot discern that things are like this.
But when one begins to see it, one enters upon a state of wonder which nothing can describe. For behind the appearances one perceives this Grace―infinite, wonderful, all-powerful―which knows all, organises all, arranges all, and leads us, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, that is, union with the Divine, the awareness of the Godhead and union with Him.
Then one lives in the Action and Presence of the Grace a life full of joy, of wonder, with the feeling of a marvellous strength, and at the same time with a trust so calm, so complete, that nothing can shake it any longer. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, 8 August 1956,#KEYS
100:As Korzybski and the general semanticists have pointed out, our words, symbols, signs, thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality, not reality itself, because "the map is not the territory." The word "water" won't satisfy your thirst.
But we live in the world of maps and words as if it were the real world. Following in the footsteps of Adam, we have become totally lost in a world of purely fantasy maps and boundaries. And these illusory boundaries, with the opposites they create, have become our impassioned battles.
Most of our "problems of living," then, are based on the illusion that the opposites can and should be separated and isolated from one another. But since all opposites are actually aspects of one underlying reality, this is like trying to totally separate the two ends of a single rubber band. All you can do is pull harder and harder-until something violently snaps. Thus we might be able to understand that, in all the mystical traditions the world over, one who sees through the illusion of the opposites is called "liberated." Because he is "freed from the pairs" of opposites, he is freed in this life from the fundamentally nonsensical problems and conflicts involved in the war of opposites. He no longer manipulates the opposites one against the other in his search for peace, but instead transcends them both. Not good vs. evil but beyond good and evil. Not life against death but a center of awareness that transcends both. The point is not to separate the opposites and make "positive progress," but rather to unify and harmonize the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground which transcends and encompasses them both. And that ground, as we will soon see, is unity consciousness itself. In the meantime, let us note, as does the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, that liberation is not freedom from the negative, but freedom from the pairs altogether:
Content with getting what arrives of itself
Passed beyond the pairs, free from envy,
Not attached to success nor failure,
Even acting, he is not bound.
He is to be recognized as eternally free
Who neither loathes nor craves;
For he that is freed from the pairs,
Is easily freed from conflict.
~ Ken Wilber, No Boundary,#KEYS
101:formal-operational ::: The orange altitude emerged a few hundred years ago with the European Rennisance. Its modern, rational view grew in prominance through the Age of Enlightenment and came to its fullest expression during the Industrial Revolution.
Fueling this age of reason and science was the emergence of formal operational cognition, or the ability to operate on thoughts themselves. No longer limited to reflection on concrete objects, cognition moves from representations to abstractions and can now operate on a range of non-tangiable propositions that may not reflect the concrete world. This is the basis of scientific reasoning through hypothesis. Orange also brings multiplistic thinking, or the realization that there are several possible ways of approaching a situation, even though one is still considered most right. Self-sense at orange features two shifts, first to expert and then to achiever, these moves feature an increase in self-awareness and appreciation for multiple possibilities in a given situation. Recognition that one doesnt always live up to idealized social expectations is fueled by an awareness that begins to penetrate the inner world of subjectivity. This is the beginning of introspection. An objectifiable self-sense and the capacity to take a third person perspective. Needs shift from belonging to self-esteem. And values land on pragmatic utiliarian approaches to life that rely on ... and thinking to earn progress, prosperity and self-reliance. Morality at orange sees right defined by universal ethical principles. The emergence of formal operational thinking at orange enables a world-centric care for universal human rights and the right of each individual for autonomy and the pursuit of happiness. A desire for individual dignity and self-respect are also driving forces behind orange morality. A significant number of the founding fathers of the United States harbored orange values. ...
Faith at orange is called Individual Reflective and so far as identity and world-view are differentiated from others, and faith takes on an essence of critical thought. Demythologizing symbols into conceptual meanings. At orange we see the emergence of rational deism and secularism. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-51, Formal Operational,#KEYS
102:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#KEYS
103:meta-systemic operations ::: As the 1950's and 60s begin to roll around the last stage of first tier emerged as a cultural force. With the Green Altitude we see the emergence of Pluralistic, Multicultural, Post-Modern world-views.
Cognition is starting to move beyond formal-operations into the realm of co-ordinating systems of abstractions, in what is called Meta-systemic Cognition. While formal-operations acted upon the classes and relations between members of classes. Meta-systemic operations start at the level of relating systems to systems. The focus of these investigations is placed upon comparing, contrasting, transforming and synthesizing entire systems, rather than components of one system. This emergent faculty allows self-sense to focus around a heightened sense of individuality and an increased ability for emotional resonance. The recognition of individual differences, the ability to tolerate paradox and contradiction, and greater conceptual complexity all provide for an understanding of conflict as being both internally and externally caused. Context plays a major role in the creation of truth and individual perspective. With each being context dependent and open to subjective interpretation, meaning each perspective and truth are rendered relative and are not able to be judged as better or more true than any other. This fuels a value set that centers on softness over cold rationality. Sensitivity and preference over objectivity.
Along with a focus on community harmony and equality which drives the valuing of sensitivity to others, reconcilation, consensus, dialogue, relationship, human development, bonding, and a seeking of a peace with the inner-self. Moral decisions are based on rights, values, or principles that are agreeable to all individuals composing a society based on fair and beneficial practices. All of this leads to the Equality movements and multiculturalism. And to the extreme form of relativitism which we saw earlier as context dependant nature of all truth including objective facts.
Faith at the green altitude is called Conjunctive, and allows the self to integrate what was unrecognized by the previous stages self-certainty and cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. New features at this level of faith include the unification of symbolic power with conceptual meaning, an awareness of ones social unconscious, a reworking of ones past, and an opening to ones deeper self. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-52, Meta-systemic Operations,#KEYS
104:PROTECTION
Going to sleep is a little like dying, a journey taken alone into the unknown. Ordinarily we are not troubled about sleep because we are familiar with it, but think about what it entails. We completely lose ourselves in a void for some period of time, until we arise again in a dream. When we do so, we may have a different identity and a different body. We may be in a strange place, with people we do not know, involved in baffling activities that may seem quite risky.
Just trying to sleep in an unfamiliar place may occasion anxiety. The place may be perfectly secure and comfortable, but we do not sleep as well as we do at home in familiar surroundings. Maybe the energy of the place feels wrong. Or maybe it is only our own insecurity that disturbs us,and even in familiar places we may feel anxious while waiting for sleep to come, or be frightenedby what we dream. When we fall asleep with anxiety, our dreams are mingled with fear and tension, sleep is less restful, and the practice harder to do. So it is a good idea to create a sense of protection before we sleep and to turn our sleeping area into a sacred space.
This is done by imagining protective dakinis all around the sleeping area. Visualize the dakinis as beautiful goddesses, enlightened female beings who are loving, green in color, and powerfully protective. They remain near as you fall asleep and throughout the night, like mothers watching over their child, or guardians surrounding a king or queen. Imagine them everywhere, guarding the doors and the windows, sitting next to you on the bed, walking in the garden or the yard, and so on, until you feel completely protected.
Again, this practice is more than just trying to visualize something: see the dakinis with your mind but also use your imagination to feel their presence. Creating a protective, sacred environment in this way is calming and relaxing and promotes restful sleep. This is how the mystic lives: seeing the magic, changing the environment with the mind, and allowing actions, even actions of the imagination, to have significance.
You can enhance the sense of peace in your sleeping environment by keeping objects of a sacred nature in the bedroom: peaceful, loving images, sacred and religious symbols, and other objects that direct your mind toward the path.
The Mother Tantra tells us that as we prepare for sleep we should maintain awareness of the causes of dream, the object to focus upon, the protectors, and of ourselves. Hold these together inawareness, not as many things, but as a single environment, and this will have a great effect in dream and sleep.
~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep,#KEYS
105:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#KEYS
106:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#KEYS
107:GURU YOGA
Guru yoga is an essential practice in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon. This is true in sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen. It develops the heart connection with the masteR By continually strengthening our devotion, we come to the place of pure devotion in ourselves, which is the unshakeable, powerful base of the practice. The essence of guru yoga is to merge the practitioner's mind with the mind of the master.
What is the true master? It is the formless, fundamental nature of mind, the primordial awareness of the base of everything, but because we exist in dualism, it is helpful for us to visualize this in a form. Doing so makes skillful use of the dualisms of the conceptual mind, to further strengthen devotion and help us stay directed toward practice and the generation of positive qualities.
In the Bon tradition, we often visualize either Tapihritsa* as the master, or the Buddha ShenlaOdker*, who represents the union of all the masters. If you are already a practitioner, you may have another deity to visualize, like Guru Rinpoche or a yidam or dakini. While it is important to work with a lineage with which you have a connection, you should understand that the master you visualize is the embodiment of all the masters with whom you are connected, all the teachers with whom you have studied, all the deities to whom you have commitments. The master in guru yoga is not just one individual, but the essence of enlightenment, the primordial awareness that is your true nature.
The master is also the teacher from whom you receive the teachings. In the Tibetan tradition, we say the master is more important than the Buddha. Why? Because the master is the immediate messenger of the teachings, the one who brings the Buddha's wisdom to the student. Without the master we could not find our way to the Buddha. So we should feel as much devotion to the master as we would to the Buddha if the Buddha suddenly appeared in front of us.
Guru yoga is not just about generating some feeling toward a visualized image. It is done to find the fundamental mind in yourself that is the same as the fundamental mind of all your teachers, and of all the Buddhas and realized beings that have ever lived. When you merge with the guru, you merge with your pristine true nature, which is the real guide and masteR But this should not be an abstract practice. When you do guru yoga, try to feel such intense devotion that the hair stands upon your neck, tears start down your face, and your heart opens and fills with great love. Let yourself merge in union with the guru's mind, which is your enlightened Buddha-nature. This is the way to practice guru yoga.
The Practice
After the nine breaths, still seated in meditation posture, visualize the master above and in front of you. This should not be a flat, two dimensional picture-let a real being exist there, in three dimensions, made of light, pure, and with a strong presence that affects the feeling in your body,your energy, and your mind. Generate strong devotion and reflect on the great gift of the teachings and the tremendous good fortune you enjoy in having made a connection to them. Offer a sincere prayer, asking that your negativities and obscurations be removed, that your positive qualities develop, and that you accomplish dream yoga.
Then imagine receiving blessings from the master in the form of three colored lights that stream from his or her three wisdom doors- of body, speech, and mind-into yours. The lights should be transmitted in the following sequence: White light streams from the master's brow chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your entire body and physical dimension. Then red light streams from the master's throat chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your energetic dimension. Finally, blue light streams from the master's heart chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your mind.
When the lights enter your body, feel them. Let your body, energy, and mind relax, suffused inwisdom light. Use your imagination to make the blessing real in your full experience, in your body and energy as well as in the images in your mind.
After receiving the blessing, imagine the master dissolving into light that enters your heart and resides there as your innermost essence. Imagine that you dissolve into that light, and remain inpure awareness, rigpa.
There are more elaborate instructions for guru yoga that can involve prostrations, offerings, gestures, mantras, and more complicated visualizations, but the essence of the practice is mingling your mind with the mind of the master, which is pure, non-dual awareness. Guru yoga can be done any time during the day; the more often the better. Many masters say that of all the practices it is guru yoga that is the most important. It confers the blessings of the lineage and can open and soften the heart and quiet the unruly mind. To completely accomplish guru yoga is to accomplish the path.
~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep, [T3],#KEYS
108:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
109:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.
To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)
When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.
It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.
This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."
This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.
Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.
This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Shift your awareness. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 2:Awareness functions almost like magic. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 3:Observe what is with undivided awareness. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 4:Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 5:Awareness is a blissful state, not a painful one. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 6:Awareness is an emptiness that contains the world. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 7:The world is arising within awareness like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 8:It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness! ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 9:Coming into the place of Soul-awareness is coming home. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 10:Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 11:Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 12:Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 13:The light of our loving awareness transmutes darkness. ~ aimee-davies, @wisdomtrove 14:True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 15:Yoga aims for complete awareness in everything you do. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 16:You are not the character in the dream. You are awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 17:Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 18:The absolute is awareness unaware of itself. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 19:I am the primal oneness of awareness, conscious through Tim. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 20:Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradles. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 21:An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 22:Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 23:Awareness is a spacious presence that is nowhere and everywhere. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 24:Training of the mind and body leads to awareness of the soul ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 25:Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 26:The teacher is transmitting pure awareness and consciousness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 27:Resting in Awareness, we transform all the & 28:Awareness is is the common matrix of every experience. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 29:Faith, consciousness, and awareness all exist beyond the thinking mind. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 30:Tantra involves radical change, a change in states of awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 31:I am spacious awareness within which my experience of life is arising. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 32:Mindfulness is awareness and it's cultivated by paying attention. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 33:If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 34:Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of body, mind, and soul. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 35:At the depths of my identity I am awareness witnessing Tim’s adventures. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 36:Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 37:I am spacious awareness within which my experience of life is arising. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 38:Yoga is a movement in consciousness, awareness in action. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 39:Everything I see, hear and touch is a sensation arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 40:The awareness of the absence of something prevents the presence of it. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 41:Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of mind,body and the soul. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 42:Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 43:Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 44:Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 45:Awareness is bigger than thinking because it can hold thought as well. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 46:I am the unconscious field of awareness individualized as a particular ‘I’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 47:The Ego ages... the Soul evolves... and to the Awareness, nothing happened! ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 48:Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 49:Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 50:Awareness is the primal ground from which everything is arising like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 51:If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead? ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 52:Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 53:Awareness isn't within my experience, since my experience is within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 54:I am the oneness of awareness ‘dreaming’ itself to be a particular individual. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 55:The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness not to stop your progress. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 56:Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 57:Awareness isn't within my experience. My experience is arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 58:What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove 59:Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 60:Awareness isn't within my experience. My experience is arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 61:Humility is the conscious awareness and acceptance of eternity as your body. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 62:Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 63:The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 64:Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 65:I am awareness witnessing an ever-changing flow of experiences that I call ‘life’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 66:I remain as I am - pure awareness, alert to all that happens. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 67:You attract the predominant thoughts that you're holding in your awareness. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 68:Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 69:A being whose awareness is totally free, who does not cling to anything, is liberated. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 70:Light your way by burning up obstacles in the intensity of awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 71:Can you get that? As awareness we are one, but what we are experiencing is different. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 72:Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or pure consciousness. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 73:Awareness must be like the rays of the sun: extending everywhere, illuminating all. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 74:Reality being timeless, changeless, bodyless, mindless awareness is bliss. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 75:The content of your awareness is less important than the quality of the awareness. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 76:Observe and gradually you will come to see that all existence is occurring in empty awareness. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 77:You are the light of consciousness and also the witness of this light. You are pure awareness. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 78:Everything you are aware of exists within awareness, otherwise you wouldn’t be aware of it! ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 79:just because something is outside of awareness doesn't mean it's outside of control. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 80:Realize that the body appears in you, in awareness, and that you are not lost in the body. ~ jean-klein, @wisdomtrove 81:The person flickers, awareness contains all space and time, the absolute is. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 82:Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 83:The awareness of liberation is not liberation. The awareness of time is not liberation. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 84:The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 85:You are awareness witnessing a stream of experiences within which you appear to be a person. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 86:How can your essential nature as awareness be separate from my essential nature as awareness? ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 87:The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 88:Yoga is bringing suppleness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 89:Emotions reflect intentions. Therefore, awareness of emotions leads to awareness of intentions. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 90:I am beyond the mind, whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 91:You think, you become that thought. And consciousness, or the state of pure awareness, is lost. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 92:As a person, you exist within the life-dream. As awareness, the life-dream is arising within you. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 93:Awareness is one with the flow of appearances, just as space is one with the objects it contains. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 94:Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 95:I am the field of awareness presencing a particular flow of experience that is arising right now. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 96:Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 97:Knowing my essential self is knowing the knower. It is recognizing my deeper identity as awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 98:This is because the ‘I’ is not the body or mind. The ‘I’ is awareness witnessing the body and mind. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 99:Awareness, even at a subconscious level, beats fancy checklists without it, track or you will fail. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 100:The moment I am aware that I am aware, I am not aware. Awareness means the observer is not. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 101:This is because the ‘I’ is not the body or mind. The ‘I’ is awareness witnessing the body and mind. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 102:I use the term ‘awareness’ to describe the primal ground from which everything is arising like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 103:Intelligence cannot be present without understanding. No computer has any awareness of what it does. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 104:The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 105:There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 106:When your mind becomes vacant, endeavour to fill it with the awareness of God and His contemplation. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 107:You appear to be a body in the world. Now flip it around. You are awareness and the world exists in you. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 108:Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 109:Awareness yields to itself, to its inherent creativity, to its expression in form, to experience itself. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 110:Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 111:There is no such thing as spiritual achievement; it is simply an awareness intrinsic to all of life. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 112:Anything you are exclusively attached to & identify with ends up distorting & limiting awareness. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 113:Q: Sometimes I feel myself to be a mere centre of awareness. M: Or, an ocean of awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 114:Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 115:All your power is in your awareness of that power, and through holding that power in your consciousness. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 116:Awareness is dreaming itself to be Tim so that it can see itself . . . experience itself . . . know itself. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 117:Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 118:Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 119:Right now, you are awareness witnessing a stream of experiences. This is your permanent essential identity. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 120:When I stretch, I stretch in such a way that my awareness moves, and a gate of awareness finally opens. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 121:When you turn toward this supposed entity called I, you will find only silent awareness. Take refuge in that. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove 122:As a body I appear to exist within the world, but essentially I am awareness and the world exists within me. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 123:Awareness isn’t something within your experience. It is an emptiness that contains all you are experiencing. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 124:Right now I'm awareness witnessing a flow of thoughts and sensations. The appearances are in permanent flux. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 125:The dream of separateness is the primal awareness progressing from unconscious oneness to conscious oneness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 126:The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 127:The primal ground is unconscious awareness that becomes conscious through the forms it ‘dreams’ itself to be. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 128:As a body, I appear to exist within the world, but essentially, I am awareness and the world exists within me. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 129:Awareness can’t be found within the world because it’s the other way around. The world exists within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 130:Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 131:Be conscious of being conscious. Be the presence of spacious awareness within which your experience is arising. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 132:There are ten thousand planes of awareness within the infinite mind of the diamond mind, your deeper mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 133:Consciousness equals energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It's all the same trip. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 134:If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 135:My heart needs only one thing. It needs to be guided Along the age-old path Of life-blossoming self-awareness. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 136:On a deep level the oneness of awareness is doing everything, just as the dreamer is doing everything in a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 137:Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 138:The Self cannot leave You. Awareness cannot leave You. Everything else will leave You. But Awareness is what You Are. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 139:Consciousness isn’t ‘inside’ the brain. Rather the brain allows the primal field of awareness to become conscious. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 140:Finally all that is trustworthy is this immeasurable silent awareness that is the truth of who you are, that is love. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove 141:The necessary condition for the existence of peace and joy is the awareness that peace and joy are available. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 142:Finally, all that is trustworthy is this immeasurable silent awareness that is the truth of who you are, that is love. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove 143:God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all - being as well as not-being. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 144:Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 145:There is no time. There is no space. There is no condition. There is only awareness, awareness of these ideas. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 146:To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 147:At the top of the ladder is awareness, or pure experience - the edge of yourself, and possibly the beginning of God. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 148:Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 149:Greater awareness. Abiding peace. Inner fulfilment. These are the rewards of living in alignment with the moment. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 150:In the dreaming state and the waking state I appear to be a physical body, but essentially I am intangible awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 151:All exists in awareness and awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 152:Awareness is a continual stillness witnessing all the changes. Awareness is not in time. Awareness is witnessing time. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 153:If you are afraid of someone, you immediately give them an advantage and give them entry to your awareness field. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 154:Mindfulness meditation is the embrace of any and all mind states in awareness, without preferring one to another. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 155:To be psychic is to see without the senses and to keep the thoughts and emotions of others out of your awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 156:When the robot mind is mastered, undisciplined thinking ceases and is replaced by awareness. Awareness can know love. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 157:In the dreaming state and the waking state, I appear to be a physical body, but essentially, I am intangible awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 158:It is the awareness that is of primary importance, no matter what the objects are that we are paying attention to. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 159:As awareness, time exists in you, because ‘time’ is the ever-changing appearances arising within awareness like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 160:Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 161:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 162:In reality, all was one, because everything was an expression of the primal awareness that was dreaming up the universe. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 163:Kindness and awareness work together. Through awareness we understand the underlying beauty of everything and every being. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 164:True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 165:All that arises are appearances in consciousness. Don't bother with all that. Rest only as the awareness. This is the secret." ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 166:Psychic awareness leads to a true perception not only of events, but just of life itself. It is its own raison d'etre. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 167:I know that it is in the nature of awareness to set things right. Let consciousness look after its creations! ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 168:Music is part of the tantra, the dance of life. Before your eyes, before your awareness, is the procession of eternity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 169:Subjectively I am the presence of awareness, which is the constant background to all my experiences. This is my naked being. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 170:When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 171:Blessed is the mind that jumps over and beyond its own conditioning and lands again into its natural state of unmoving awareness. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 172:The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other... . The whole purpose of life is to live by love. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 173:What you do affects your awareness field. When you do something selfless your attention feild is more clear, more lucid. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 174:As awareness, time exists in you, because & 175:Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 176:I become conscious of my essential nature as the & 177:Let our information and social technologies raise awareness and not propaganda, build connections and not passive-aggression. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 178:There is one awareness imagining itself to be everything and everyone, and meeting itself in all its many different disguises. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 179:“To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 180:No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 181:Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement ‚Äî meaning atoneness, the state of being at one with the object. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 182:Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 183:I'm challenging everybody on every side of every divide to be more who they are, to cultivate their capacity for awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 184:Doing brings ego. Ego is the shadow of action. And there is only one thing that is not-doing, and that is awareness, watchfulness. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 185:Many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 186:Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 187:Refine your senses a little more each day; stretch them... your awareness will pierce deeply into your body and into the world. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 188:We experimented and we experienced many altered states of awareness. We used the power plants. I did that for a year or two. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 189:Your mindfulness must include the mind also. Witnessing is primarily awareness of consciousness and its movements. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 190:Awareness contains every experience. But he who is aware is beyond every experience. He is beyond awareness itself. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 191:Meditation will bring back the powers and awareness from the past; more importantly, it will expand your consciousness today. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 192:Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 193:Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of & 194:It’s taken billions of years of evolution to get us to the place where the field of awareness can make conscious choices through us. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 195:Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 196:Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 197:We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 198:Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 199:In a dream you appear to be a dream-persona in a dream-world, but essentially you are awareness and the dream-world exists within you. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 200:You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 201:The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 202:All you see and hear and touch and imagine exists within awareness. Your body exists within awareness. The world exists within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 203:Compassion is all inclusive. Compassion knows no boundaries. Compassion comes with awareness, and awareness breaks all narrow territories. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 204:The reason why we're not happy is because we believe consciously and subconsciously that we're separate from god, eternal awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 205:Discover the extraordinary in the ordinary by bringing awareness to the moment. Bring consciousness into even the most simple actions. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 206:Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. & 207:We all have auras. But it's much easier to see the aura of someone who is in a state of samadhi or other profound state of awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 208:You may appear to be a body in the world, but essentially you are awareness and the world exists in you – just like when you are dreaming. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 209:In the dreaming state and the waking state I appear to be a character in a story, but my deeper identity is awareness witnessing the story. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 210:You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 211:In this world we see the pairs of opposites. Ultimately there are no oppositions. In the superconscious awareness there is no division. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 212:It is very important that your career raises your awareness. If your career is lowering your personal power, then it has got to change. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 213:The presence of awareness becomes increasingly our natural condition, until there is no longer a distinction between meditation and life. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 214:You are the all- pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness - consciousness. All else is local and temporary. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 215:Keep a constant awareness and a conscious effort to say good words, perform good actions, and to practice patience and compassion. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 216:Awareness is not limited to consciousness. It is of all that is. Consciousness is of duality. There is no duality in awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 217:Compassionate awareness heals and redeems. There is nothing we can do, we can only let things happen according to their nature. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 218:If we knock on the door until it opens, not taking no for an answer, our lives will be transformed as we step up into a higher awareness. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 219:Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 220:You need to step out of your mind into the mystery of the moment. Your thoughts won't stop, but they will fade into your peripheral awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 221:Try and stop your thoughts. Be patient and then the kundalini will flow through you and bring about substantial changes in your awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 222:Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 223:Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. . Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 224:We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 225:Classics postures, when practiced with discrimination and awareness, bring the body, mind, and consciousness into a single, harmonious whole. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 226:If you pay close attention to your identity, you will discover your subjective nature as the mysterious ‘I’ of awareness. This is your deep self. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 227:At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 228:Find a teacher of Tantric Zen and study with them because it is transference of awareness, a sharing of the perception of the beauty of life. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 229:How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 230:What is meditation? Meditation is our conscious awareness of something vast and infinite within us. Meditation grants us Peace, Light and Bliss. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 231:What you pay attention to grows. If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 232:The only authentic responsibility is towards your own potential. Values have not to be imposed on you. They should grow with your awareness, in you. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 233:The primary energy that is active in all things is kundalini. Kundalini energy is the energy of awareness. It can be used to modify awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 234:Awareness is not a form of consciousness. Consciousness can only become more subtle and refined and that is what happens after death. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 235:Our separate identity as individuals in the world is the foundation from which we can wake up to our essential identity as the oneness of awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 236:Total openness, pure sensitivity, unconditional allowing: this is not something you, as a person, can do; it is what you, as pure Awareness, are. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 237:Living in spontaneous awareness, consciousness of effortless living, being fully interested in one's life - all this is implied. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 238:Nirvana isn't a physical place. It is not like going to heaven. It just means no more individualized awareness, no aggregate body of experience. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 239:Self-discovery is a process of dissolution and creation. Dissolution means envelopment in eternity. Creation is bringing into focus new awareness ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 240:If you take yourself to be the body and mind only, you will die! When you discover yourself as awareness, the fear of death will not trouble you any longer. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 241:Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 242:We regularly pass from the ground of unconscious awareness, up through the dreaming state, to the waking state . . . and beyond to the deep awake state. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 243:And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 244:If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 245:Selfless giving changes our concept of our identity. When we give to others our unselfishness removes the spot of "self" that stained our awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 246:Your mantrum is the awareness of the dream - to enjoy and appreciate and have gratitude for all; neither to condemn nor to liberate, but to observe. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 247:Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 248:Things that are impossible - are everyday experiences when you live in advanced states of mind. You live in a world of constant miraculous awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 249:When I dream lucidly it is clear that awareness isn’t inside the head of the character I appear to be in the dream. The dream is arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 250:At the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now. Know it to be your real being and act accordingly. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 251:The oneness of unconscious awareness dreamed the story of life and progressively became more conscious through the evolving forms it imagined itself to be. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 252:The primal field of unconscious awareness is ‘dreaming’ itself to be many conscious individuals, through which it is coming to know itself and love itself. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 253:There is no future and there is no past, there never has been, there never will be. You just think there is. It's not life that moves; it's awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 254:What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 255:Your apparent identity is distinct from my apparent identity, but is your essential identity as awareness distinct from my essential identity as awareness? ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 256:It's not about the breath, it's about the awareness and the breath is simply a skillful means for befriending this deep capacity of the heart and mind. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 257:Kundalini is seen as a serpent that can shoot up the shushumna, past the chakras, opening them all and bringing you into different states of awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 258:Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it, How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 259:Mindfulness: a simple and direct practice of moment-to-moment observation of the mind-body process through calm and focused awareness without judgment. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 260:We must create a marriage between the awareness of the body and that of the mind. When two parties do not cooperate, there is unhappiness on both sides. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 261:The Hindu philosophers teach that the oneness of being, which they call Brahman, is a primal, formless awareness dreaming itself to be all the forms of life. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 262:To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one's own consciousness, and then there is complete attention. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 263:Without an awareness of our feelings we cannot experience compassion. How can we share the sufferings and the joys of others if we cannot experience our own? ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 264:You need to search your awareness and consider the limitless possibilities of existence in all things and not be so narrow-minded in your self-discovery. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 265:If we learn how to inhabit now more - with awareness - then it’s almost as if the universe becomes your teacher. Because there’s no boundary to awareness. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 266:It is important to have intensive blocks of time together. During our nights together there is a tremendous interchange of knowledge, power and awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 267:The school of awareness is the school of mysticism. Mysticism is the experience of eternity, of that which lies beyond the physical phenomenal experience. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 268:Being can be felt, but can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling- realization” is enlightenment. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 269:If you are driven by fear, anger or pride nature will force you to compete. If you are guided by courage, awareness, tranquility and peace nature will serve you. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 270:There are ten thousand aspects of your mind. Your awareness has ten thousand forms. There is something else. You have to step outside of perception itself. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 271:There is the physical mind which is mechanical but the awareness which is the essential character (dharma) of the mind is also to some extent present there. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 272:We see and understand more about our behaviors. We come aware. And aware. And aware. . . Often, we feel uncertain about what to do with all this awareness. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 273:Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 274:Awareness cannot be at the end of a process because the very striving, and the process itself, is arising and appearing in the Awareness which is timelessly present. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 275:Awareness is always with you. The same attention that you give to the outer, you turn to the inner. No new, or special kind of awareness is needed. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 276:Powerful people affect many others and if I can in some way contribute to their awareness, they will put out better energy to millions and millions of people. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 277:Each time we bring to routine activities an awareness of & 278:We are formless awareness dreaming itself to be many individuals with different experiences in the life-dream. We appear to be separate, but essentially we are one. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 279:Awareness is experiencing from moment to moment. Reason acts quickly in awareness, a thousand times faster than thought, and you do not even notice it is operating. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 280:In the deep awake state, I realize that I'm the presence of awareness, and I see my waking persona as an expression of the primal imagination, which is one with all. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 281:Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 282:When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 283:Only the ego can fear, experience hate, lust and jealousy. Humility experiences none of these things - it merges into the transcendental awareness of perfection. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 284:As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the stainless mirror of pure awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 285:The mind may accept or deny that you are awareness, but either way it can’t really understand. It cannot comprehend. Thought cannot comprehend what is beyond thought. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 286:The sense perception is the foreground and the awareness of the perceiver is the background. The background is an underlying stillness, an awareness of the "I am." ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 287:There's a resonance inside us, a sense of who we are. We're a multi-bodied traveler. We're an essence. We're a feeling, an awareness that has an ancient existence. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 288:As you meditate, you will find that consciousness itself will move you beyond time and space and condition into a larger, vaster, more beautiful state of awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 289:Between stimulus and response, you have the freedom to choose your response based on self awareness, your imagination, your conscience and your independent will. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 290:Q: I see so much evil in myself. Must I not change it? M: Evil is the shadow of inattention. In the light of self-awareness, it will wither and fall off. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 291:The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are – the awareness, the self, the Atman, the Soul. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 292:& 293:If you bring five percent more awareness to your work tomorrow, or to your most important relationship, what might you do differently? Are you willing to find out? ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 294:True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 295:In awareness there is no becoming, there is no end to be gained. There is silent observation without choice and condemnation, from which there comes understanding. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 296:Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 297:Reason is a mighty faculty but it is still below the state of awareness, of pure experiencing, which is the state you are in when you know & 298:Make it a habit to feel the inner body as often as you can. Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 299:That's lucid living. Our identity is characterized by polarity. Right now we are the oneness of the primal awareness dreaming itself to be all of these separate individuals. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 300:The only event in the history of our species that compares with this one is Genesis. And this is a new kind of Genesis, the Genesis of our species into conscious awareness. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 301:Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 302:What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 303:All the universe of experience is born with the body and dies with the body; it has its beginning and end in awareness, but awareness knows no beginning, nor end. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 304:Everything that shows up in your life is supposed to; this includes the falls in your life, which provide you with the energy to propel yourself to a higher state of awareness. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 305:One aspect of power is to bring our past-life awareness into this lifetime. The second aspect of power is to go into new fields of awareness that we have never experienced. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 306:Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them—open up to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet: don’t just look at it—dig in! ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 307:When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 308:You can live in the world and have all the myriad experiences that life has to offer and yoke your awareness field to the planes of light, and eventually to nirvana itself. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 309:And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 310:Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 311:Focus your awareness on the heart chakra. As you do, you will feel your consciousness shifting. You may feel different perceptions of energy in different parts of your body. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 312:When I live lucidly, it profoundly changes my understanding of who I am, since I see that essentially there is one primal awareness dreaming itself to be everyone and everything. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 313:According to this story, the primal field of unconscious awareness is ‘dreaming’ itself to be many conscious individuals, through which it is coming to know itself and love itself. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 314:From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 315:Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 316:Past life knowledge is not the wedding album of existence. Past life remembrance in Buddhism is the ability to bring a greater awareness we had in another life into this life. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 317:The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 318:Prayer power is real. By putting it into action, we will be able to stay more constantly in higher awareness than ever before. If we can do that, the world will quickly change. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 319:There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 320:Awareness is not the same as thinking. It is a complementary form of intelligence, a way of knowing that is at least as wonderful and as powerful, if not more so, than thinking. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 321:Awareness without love is too cold. Love without awareness is too hot. The middle way is slowly showing itself as we wear out all our extremes from having had the nerve to experiment. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 322:Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 323:Consciously be the presence of awareness, witnessing and appreciating your thoughts. Consciously be the & 324:Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word "art". If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 325:Most people want to make maximum money for minimum work, and that does not result in a happy life. Work does not become an active force to advance your awareness into higher states. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 326:Once we see that the goal of awakening is to be conscious of both our separate identity as a person and our essential identity as awareness, it becomes much easier to wake up to oneness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 327:If you are fortunate enough to meet such a being then you will really learn selfless giving. You'll see that every second, every moment of their awareness is directed towards others. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 328:Seeking love is how you lose the awareness of love. But you can only lose the awareness of it, not the state. That is not an option, because love is what we all are. That's immovable. ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove 329:Conscious awareness is the source of our healing... Only when you say the truth can the truth set you free. This is not a negative process, but at times it is a difficult process. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 330:For all healing, mental or material, is attuning each atom of the body, each reflex of the brain forces, to the awareness of the divine that lies within each atom, each cell of the body. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 331:Of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 332:Spirituality takes the I-perspective. It looks at things subjectively and sees the primal oneness as unconscious awareness, which becomes conscious through the forms it dreams itself to be. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 333:The power that enables us to transform our awareness is the release of kundalini. All yoga, either directly or indirectly, all Buddhism, relates to the release of the kundalini energy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 334:The totality of conscious experiences is nature. As a conscious self you are a part of nature. As awareness, you are beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousness is awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 335:If you practice witnessing, you'll become conscious of being the & 336:The formless presence of awareness you experience as the deep I is not separate from the formless presence of awareness that I experience as the deep I. At the depths of our being we are one. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 337:Awareness can’t be found within the world because it’s the other way around. The world exists within awareness. Awareness isn’t within my experience. My experience is arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 338:Awareness is the greatest alchemy there is. Just go on becoming more and more aware. You will find your life changing for the better in every possible dimension. It will bring great fulfilment. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 339:I use the term ‘awareness’ to describe the primal ground from which everything is arising like a dream. I use the term ‘consciousness’ to describe awareness when it is conscious of experience. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 340:We must intend to live [the new spiritual awareness], to integrate each increased degree of awareness into our daily routine. It only takes one negative interpretation to stop everything. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 341:As a person, you are a body . . . an object . . . a thing in the world. As awareness, you are a spacious presence . . . a subject . . . a nothing within which the world is arising like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 342:Sexuality, I think, is a little bit different, for me, than it is for most people, in that there's almost no body awareness whatsoever. It's just light, but that's how everything is for me. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 343:The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem. ~ don-miguel-ruiz, @wisdomtrove 344:The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 345:I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for the future, can all be tested by how well we support our libraries. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 346:The witness usually knows only consciousness. Sadhana consists in the witness turning back first on his conscious, then upon himself in his own awareness. Self-awareness is Yoga. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 347:This is the final declaration of the Vedanta: Brahman is all; [It is] this universe and every creature. To be liberated is to live in the continual awareness of Brahman, the undivided Reality. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 348:In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition. Perhaps it will encourage a clearer understanding of the individuals and families who are affected by it. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 349:An awareness of the Law of Attraction and an understanding of how it works is essential to living life on purpose. In fact, it is essential to living the life of joy that you came forth to live. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 350:It has been my exprience that repetitive nights of exposure to the kundalini energy followed by longer periods of reflection and pyschic networking create the fastest transitions in awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 351:The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 352:Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on as it is with how much room you are making for it to take place within the field of your awareness from one moment to the next. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 353:Now I have a tiny bit of knowledge, but more interestingly, a bit of an awareness of my vast ignorance. This is humbling, and at the same time exciting, because it shows how amazing this world is. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 354:The Guru is there forgiving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 355:The picture must all come out of the artist's inside, awareness of forms and figures... It is more than memory. It is the image as it lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision, but unknown. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 356:There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 357:Awareness can’t be found in the world because it’s the other way round. The world exists in awareness. Awareness can’t be found within my experience, because my experience is arising within awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 358:I am the primal awareness imagining itself to be & 359:Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness, there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 360:Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 361:The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they're attached to appearances, they're unaware that their minds are empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things they lose the Way. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 362:The way we measure awareness is by how long you can stop thought. If you can't stop thought at all, then you are not powerful. You might be quite evolved, but you have no access to that evolution. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 363:As your awareness of the riches available to you in your everyday life grows, you are on the way to becoming the laughing Buddha. Life is joyous. Life is Light. Life is happy. You are awake at last. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 364:I don't tell you what you should do or not do; I only show you who you are-the timeless and unchanging awareness. When this is firmly established inside you, your life will unfold spontaneously and joyously. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 365:Some people are like psychic sponges, they drain power form others constantly. They lower your awareness because they are at a lower level. If you spend too much time with them, you get pulled down. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 366:The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 367:As your awareness of the riches available to you in your everyday life grows, you are on the way to becoming the laughing Buddha. Life is joyous. Life is Light. Life is happy. You are awake at last. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 368:Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 369:Integral wisdom involves a direct participation in every moment: the observer and the observed are dissolved in the light of pure awareness, and no mental concepts or attitudes are present to dim that light. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 370:Meditation is a practice of detaching and then stopping ourselves from thinking; our thoughts are interruptions in the flow of awareness. Consciousness, in its highest aspect, is perfect and formless. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 371:The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (... ) these three skills ‚ self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most‚ are the foundation for self-control. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove 372:If you just keep giving constantly, if you don't really take thought of your own welfare and your own awareness, but just give, beyond exhaustion - then your life will always be a constant progression. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 373:Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 374:You are primal awareness. Life is only primal awareness. Between two thoughts or two perceptions you are. You know moments in your life when a thought completely disappears into silence, but still you are. ~ jean-klein, @wisdomtrove 375:If, at the office or in different exchanges in daily living, you have to spend time with people who are at lower power levels, then you have to be aware of that and keep your awareness very much within. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 376:We (Christians) are always in the presence of God. There is never a non-sacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of His presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 377:Time is the perpetual flow of ever-changing appearances that awareness witnesses. Time exists within awareness. Awareness is outside of time. You are timeless awareness dreaming itself to be a person in time. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 378:M: There is nothing wrong with memory as such. What is false is its content. Remember facts, forget opinions. Q: What is a fact? M: What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 379:Q: Why do you insist on awareness as the only real? Is not the object of awareness as real, while it lasts? M: But it does not last! Momentary reality is secondary; it depends on the timeless. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 380:When I meditate my thoughts come and go, but I don’t fight them. I simply become conscious that I’m listening to myself talking to myself. I pay attention to the silent presence of awareness that is listening. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 381:When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 382:Awareness is an emptiness that contains the world. And this is why the Buddhists say that to know our true Buddha-nature is to experience the void of nirvana within which the appearances of samsara are arising. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 383:God is not the conscious creator of the universe. God is unconsciously dreaming the world into existence. God is the unconscious primal awareness that becomes conscious through the forms it dreams itself to be. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 384:Today, I choose awareness. I choose to be aware of the beauty of life and living. I choose to be aware of the simple pleasures in life. I choose awareness of joy, awareness of peace, and awareness of love. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 385:The amplification of thought as science and technology, although intrinsically neither good nor bad, has also become destructive because so often the thinking out of which it comes has no roots in awareness. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 386:We are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 387:When we lack etiquette, we trash things. We trash each other. We trash the environment. We lose sight of the value of things. We suffer alienation when our spirit is disconnected from our physical awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 388:Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 389:There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time - that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 390:These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 391:At the deepest level of ecological awareness you are talking about spiritual awareness. Spiritual awareness is an understanding of being imbedded in a larger whole, a cosmic whole, of belonging to the universe. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 392:Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 393:Timeless awareness occurs to very few in this world, to step beyond the circle of fear. The body has created a magnificent arena of fear. We have developed ways of seeing life that exclude us from seeing life. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 394:Awareness can’t be touched, because it has no shape. Awareness can’t be seen, because it has no colour. Awareness can’t be heard, because it makes no noise. Awareness is a formless presence, which has no boundaries. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 395:The number of teachers and guides that a soul has depends upon what it seeks to accomplish and its level of awareness. Souls that take upon themselves projects of more magnitude bring to themselves more assistance. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 396:First, we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realise that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and matter and beyond both. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 397:I am creating my reality . . . but who am I? I am the unconscious primal awareness that is conscious through Tim. My essential nature is unconsciously dreaming the life-dream . . . but Tim can consciously shape it. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 398:Life is like a dream and, although we appear to be separate individuals in the life-dream, in reality there is one awareness dreaming itself to be everyone and everything, and meeting itself in all its various forms. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 399:Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 400:Awareness is our essential being. The Hindus call it the atman, which means & 401:Two of the most powerful of these power places are located in the Boston and Los Angeles areas. Highly evolved souls tend to be drawn to these areas because it's easier for them to increase their awareness there. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 402:When I consciously intend something to happen in my life, it's as if I'm planting a seed in the depths of the unconscious primal awareness, where I hope it will gestate and grow so that it manifests in the life-dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 403:As each individual is electrically alive and dynamic, so yoga is a living, dynamic force in life. In order to savor its essence, one needs a religiously attentive dynamic practice done with awareness and absorption. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 404:Awareness experiences seeing, but has no colour or shape. Awareness experiences hearing, but makes no sound. Awareness experiences touching, but has no tangible form. Awareness experiences thinking, but isn’t a thought. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 405:Awareness isn’t inside my head. You can search about in my brain with a microscope, but you’ll never find awareness. This is because awareness is not a thing in the world. It’s not something we can see or hear or touch. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 406:Everything is becoming incredibly simple, and I can see that this moment is characterized by the polarity of awareness and appearances . . . emptiness and form . . . nirvana and samsara . . . life-dreamer and life-dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 407:I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean? ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 408:But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won't be focused. You're likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn't doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 409:Selectively pick a teacher, one that you respect, not just someone who can talk with wonderful poetic figures about enlightenment, but someone who has the personal power to bring you into altered states of awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 410:We need to become conscious of our essential nature as the spacious presence of awareness, so we deep know that all is one, and find ourselves in love with all. Then we need to express that love by living compassionately. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 411:When you are able to shift your inner awareness to how you can serve others, and when you make this the central focus of your life, you will then be in a position to know true miracles in your progress toward prosperity. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 412:As you you deeply into your own awareness, and relax the self-contraction, and dissolve into the empty ground of your own primordial experience, the simply feeling of Being-right now, right here-is it not obvious at once? ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 413:From one perspective, I appear to be a person within my life story. From another perspective, I am spacious awareness witnessing all I am experiencing. I am not an object within my experience. I am the formless experiencer. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 414:How can there be two selves in one body? The & 415:Real communication between people is not verbal. For establishing and maintaining relationship affectionate awareness expressed in direct action is required. Not what you say, but what you do is that matters. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 416:When the concept of human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the Cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest sense. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 417:The digital asset that matters is trust. Awareness first, then interaction, and maybe a habit, but all three mean nothing if they don't lead to permission and trust. The privilege of connection. Everything else is slippery. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 418:Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 419:When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting, is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 420:To develop a more or less accurate self-image... is simply to gain a comprehensive awareness of those facets of yourself which you didn't know existed. And these facets are easily spotted because they show up as your symptoms. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 421:Everybody is aware of himself. The deepening and broadening of self-awareness is the royal way. Call it mindfulness, or witnessing, or just attention - it is for all. None is unripe for it and none can fail. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 422:In the enlightenment cycle, attention is paid to bringing back the awareness field from other lives. This does not simply mean memory, but rather the internal power and intelligence that you have amassed in other lifetimes. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 423:To meditate, you need to feel, and feeling is a lost art. You need to feel the stillness of existence and also the sound of existence. You need to feel that which lies beyond your awareness field, and that which is within it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 424:Focus on the heart center and feel love. There is a flower there, but it's like a rose folded up. As you meditate, feel that the flower is opening. Each time you open a set of petals you're going deeper into eternal awareness. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 425:People sometimes ask me if I do not feel lonely on holidays. How can I feel lonely when I live in the constant awareness of God's presence? I love and I enjoy being with people, but when I am alone I enjoy being alone with God. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 426:Q: Does awareness evolve? M: What is seen may undergo many changes when the light of awareness is focussed on it, but itis the object that changes, not the light. Plants grow in sunlight, but the sun does not grow. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 427:There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 428:These days I see myself as an individual expression of the primal awareness who is choosing to live lucidly, by both being conscious of my essential nature as the primal awareness and engaging passionately with the adventures of Tim. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 429:America does to me what I knew it would do: it just bumps me. The people charge at you like trucks coming down on you - no awareness. But one tries to dodge aside in time. Bump! bump! go the trucks. And that is human contact. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 430:But this mind isn't somewhere outside the material body of the four elements. Without this mind we can't move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or a stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It's the mind that moves. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 431:The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 432:Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 433:The Hindu philosophers teach that the oneness of being, which they call Brahman, is a primal, formless awareness dreaming itself to be all the forms of life. The Zen masters say that everything is a thought arising within one ‘big mind’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 434:The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one's true identity in both. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 435:When I practice & 436:As all waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and mental in awareness. Hence awareness itself is all important, not the content of it. Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 437:To become mindful ‚¶ present ‚¶ is really the invitation to work with the joys and the sorrows of the world, and to do so with this gift, this capacity of loving awareness, of attention that actually can be present for the whole dance. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 438:Just like there are different roads that lead to different places, so there are different levels of awareness that lead to different places and we shift in and out of them. These are the ten thousand states of mind that we study in Zen. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 439:Mindfulness is paying attention to what is going on. Just look at beauty. Not just the beauty of things you see with your eyes, but beautiful feelings, beautiful awareness. There is no such thing as reality. Reality is what you make it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 440:We are the open, empty, allowing presence of Awareness, in which the objects of the body, mind and world appear and disappear, with which they are known and, ultimately, out of which they are made. Just notice that and be that, knowingly. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 441:Every feeling is a field of energy. A pleasant feeling is an energy which can nourish. Irritation is a feeling which can destroy. Under the light of awareness, the energy of irritation can be transformed into and energy which nourishes. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 442:Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 443:Today my awareness will remain established in Defencelessness. I will relinquish the need to defend my point of view. I will feel no need to convince or persuade others to accept my point of view. I will remain open to all points of view. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 444:Tim is experiencing the dream of life, but this isn’t Tim’s dream. He is a character in the dream. The unconscious primal awareness is dreaming itself to be you and me as individual human beings … and experiencing the dream of life through us. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 445:I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say: "What are hands? ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 446:If my thoughts are agitated I simply become conscious that I’m listening to myself talking to myself. I pay attention to the silent presence which is listening. I become conscious of being spacious awareness within which the thoughts are arising. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 447:Love is the very foundation, beauty and fulfillment of life. If we dive deep enough into ourselves, we will find that the one thread of universal love ties all beings together. As this awareness dawns within us, peace alone will reign. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 448:Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I'm concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying & 449:Stop thinking of God as an entity. An entity is an object in consciousness. This is why the word God can be limiting because it has so much past association with being an object. God is awareness itself. Awareness perceives but cannot be perceived. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 450:As far as miracles are concerned, I'm not aware that I perform miracles. After many years and lifetimes of meditation, I am able to use the kundalini energy to alter other people's awareness and aid them in their search for light and certainty. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 451:I think cosmopolitan spirituality is the best, where we go beyond "My teacher is better than yours" or "My meditation form is better than yours." It's not Ford versus Chevy. But it's rather the transition of our limited awareness into eternity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 452:When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing. When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being. To say: & 453:With growing awareness, you can see where you're caught or where you suffer or where you create suffering. You can then turn toward the difficulties that arise in your life with compassion, bow, and say, these too are part of human incarnation. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 454:Getting Things Done is not some new technology or invention—it simply makes explicit the principles at work within what we all do implicitly. But with that awareness, you can then leverage those principles consciously to create more elegant results. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 455:As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 456:As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive control, contractions, and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 457:I am thankful when I am hungry because then I know that when I eat, the food will taste better. Life has taught me that my true contentment rests in hope, and the pleasure itself is secondary. It is self-awareness, not happiness, that maintains peace. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 458:Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 459:When you are dreaming you appear to be a character within the dream. But this is only your ‘apparent identity’. It is who you appear to be, but not who you really are. Essentially you are awareness dreaming the dream. This is your ‘essential identity’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 460:When you concentrate on the middle of your chest - this is where loving awareness lives. This is the spiritual heart. Not the beating heart, not the emotional heart. This spiri¬≠tual heart goes way back - goes back many incarnations. We call it the soul. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 461:I am in the state of detached but affectionate awareness. When this awareness turns upon itself, you may call it the Supreme State. But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 462:When the fan, the hand or indeed anything else are experienced, their apparent existence is not separate from awareness. All experiences are equally close, equally ‘one with’, awareness. When the apparent object disappears, awareness remains as it is. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 463:So our story starts with unconscious awareness in a state of deep sleep, and it climaxes with some ultra-conscious individuals who are deep awake. The dream of separateness is the primal awareness progressing from unconscious oneness to conscious oneness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 464:This is my experience of Oprah Winfrey - she makes decisions as frequently as she can to contribute with consciousness, with awareness, with love. I know - this is the source of her joy, her vitality, her unending creativity and her connection to people. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 465:Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without the body and the mind? M: Yes, it can. It is a matter of actual experience that the self has being independent of mind and body. It is being - awareness - bliss. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 466:At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 467:Every new movement or group of people who seek to explore awareness is considered a cult. The United States was founded by several cults. They felt that Protestantism had become much too lax, so they came to America and set up a hard line religious cult. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 468:You and I are experiencing the life-dream right now. But this isn’t my dream or your dream, because we are characters in the dream. The life-dream is God’s dream. The primal awareness is dreaming itself to be you and me, and experiencing the dream through us. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 469:Scientists talk about fields such as the ‘gravitational field’ and the ‘electromagnetic field’ which reach throughout the whole of space. I want to suggest that the mystery of being is a field of unconscious awareness within which life is arising like a dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 470:Sometimes even feeling bad feels good. Negative emotions can feel so familiar (especially if they mimic our past) as to actually be comforting. Awareness is realizing that our life could always be better. Growth is doing what it takes to make it better. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 471:When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 472:Far from being the problem, the personal self is our foundation in the world, from which we can spiritually awaken. It is a gloriously particular expression of the infinite potentiality of being, through which the primal oneness of awareness can experience life. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 473:It will take about a month for that awareness to be fully absorbed and modify someone's attention field. During that period of time, a person who studies with me will meditate on their own, and apply those things that they have learned to their daily lives. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 474:From the viewpoint of the earth, the sun comes and goes, whereas it is, in fact, always present. Likewise, from the viewpoint of the body and mind, our essential nature of pure Awareness comes and goes, but, in its own experience of itself, it is ever-present. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 475:One must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course, it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 476:Our smile will bring happiness to us and to those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 477:Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove 478:The five senses and the four functions of the mind - memory, thought, understanding and selfhood; the five elements - earth, water, fire, air and ether; the two aspects of creation - matter and spirit, all are contained in awareness. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 479:You can only get next to God through the effort of preparation. To experience the uncreated, the state of awareness will have to be held for several minutes. You are then between time and the time-less - waiting for the unknown, which will come but cannot be willed. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 480:The God within is your Spiritual Heart. Your Soul. And in that individual Soul, rests God- rests the One. Go into your soul and your heart-space which can be Awareness, Love, Compassion, etc…and just BE your heart-space. BE your Soul so that you can LOVE unconditionally. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 481:Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it. Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 482:No matter where you are in life, no matter what you’ve contributed to creating, no matter what’s happening, you are always doing the best you can with the understanding and awareness and knowledge that you have. And when you know more, you will do differently, as I did ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 483:Suddenly, quietly, you realize that - from this moment forth - you will no longer walk through this life alone. Like a new sun this awareness arises within you, freeing you from fear, opening your life. It is the beginning of love, and the end of all that came before. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 484:Although it is difficult to pinpoint the physical base or location of awareness, it is perhaps the most precious thing concealed within our brains. And it is something that the individual alone can feel and experience. Each of us cherishes it highly, yet it is private. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 485:Rejoice in the abundance of being able to awaken each morning and experience a new day. Be glad to be alive, to be healthy, to have friends, to be creative, to be a living example of the joy of living. Live to your highest awareness. Enjoy your transformationa l process. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 486:Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 487:I find the dream analogy very powerful, because it’s an experiential analogy. I know what it’s like to dream, so I can look at this moment and actually experience its dreamlike nature. I can see that I’m a character in the dream and also essentially the dreaming awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 488:It is not quite right to describe One Taste as a "consciousness" or an "awareness," because that's a little too heady, too cognitive. It's more like the simple Feeling of Being. You already feel this simple Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 489:Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 490:Meditation means conscious self-expansion. Meditation means one's conscious awareness of the transcendental Reality. Meditation means the recognition or the discovery of one's own true self. It is through meditation that we transcend limitation, bondage and imperfection. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 491:Over your lifetime your body has aged and your mind has matured, but don’t you feel as if something has remained the same? Isn’t the essential ‘you’ no different now from when you were much younger? What is this essential ‘you’ that is constant and enduring? It is awareness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 492:The ocean of Spirit has become the little bubble of my soul. Whether floating in birth, or disappearing in death, in the ocean of cosmic awareness the bubble of my life cannot die. I am indestructible consciousness, protected in the bosom of Spirit’s immortality. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 493:The primal awareness is unconsciously dreaming up the universe, and it becomes conscious through the individual beings it imagines itself to be. I am the primal awareness conscious through Tim. And so, through Tim, the primal awareness has the experience of conscious choice. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 494:The primal oneness of unconscious awareness is arising as separate centres of consciousness, because through these centres of consciousness it can come to know that all is one. Life is on a journey from unconscious oneness through conscious separateness to conscious oneness. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 495:Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 496:However, when we shift our awareness or "frequency" from self-consciousness - where fear, impossibility or feelings of separation reside - to cosmic consciousness, which is in total harmony with the universe and where none of those feelings exist, then anything is possible. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 497:Those whose spiritual awareness has been awakened never make a false move. They don't have to avoid evil. They are so replete with love that whatever they do is a good action. They are fully conscious that they are not the doer of their actions, but only servants of God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 498:The offering up or cleaning up ego stuff is called purification. Purification is the act of letting go. This is done out of discriminative awareness. That is, you understand that you are an entity passing through a life in which the entire drama is an offering for your awakening. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 499:This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out; that you will never become a different man. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 500:When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don't react to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one's mind. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Truth is pure awareness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
2:Shift your awareness. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
3:I want to change awareness. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
4:Awareness Increases Success ~ Michael Anthony, #NFDB
5:Fear is intense self-awareness. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
6:Explanation is not awareness. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
7:Love springs from awareness. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
8:With rebellion, awareness is born ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
9:Awareness and ego cannot coexist. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
10:Awareness makes all the difference. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
11:Paranoia is a form of awareness. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
12:Distance is the Enemy of Awareness. ~ J B MacKinnon, #NFDB
13:Even with my limited self-awareness, ~ Rob Spillman, #NFDB
14:Ignorance is constricted awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
15:Only a spiritual being has awareness. ~ Chick Corea, #NFDB
16:simple awareness of being aware. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
17:Awareness cannot be at the end of a process ~ Mooji, #NFDB
18:Awareness without action is worthless. ~ Phil McGraw, #NFDB
19:I really love having an awareness. ~ Charlize Theron, #NFDB
20:Observe what is with undivided awareness. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
21:Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
22:Awareness, one with knowing, is love. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
23:Awareness is always the first step. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
24:Awareness is the greatest alchemy there is. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
25:Our pure awareness is not male or female. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
26:Self awareness allows you to self-correct. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
27:Total paranoia is just total awareness. ~ Charles Manson, #NFDB
28:Awareness in itself is healing. ~ Frederick Salomon Perls, #NFDB
29:Dissolving the name is awareness. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
30:Enlightenment is awakened awareness. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
31:Existence is the awareness of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
32:Without awareness, there is no free choice. ~ Melanie Joy, #NFDB
33:You are awareness, disguised as a person. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
34:Awareness is the greatest agent for change. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
35:Without awareness, we are not truly alive. ~ James Bugental, #NFDB
36:Awareness is learning to keep yourself company ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
37:Awareness is seventy percent of the solution. ~ Irvine Welsh, #NFDB
38:Awareness transcends what it is aware of. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
39:True influence drives action, not just awareness. ~ Jay Baer, #NFDB
40:Truth does not change, only our awareness of it. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
41:"Awareness is the greatest agent for change." ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
42:Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
43:Cut the mind at its root and rest in naked awareness ~ Tilopa, #NFDB
44:Raise you awareness and cultivate your uniqueness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
45:We're a feeling, an awareness encased here ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
46:You are awareness disguised as a human being. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
47:Awareness is a blissful state, not a painful one. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
48:Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
49:India has an enormous amount of AIDS awareness. ~ Sharon Stone, #NFDB
50:I want more awareness of humanity in this world. ~ Brie Larson, #NFDB
51:One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
52:paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
53:You are that awareness, disguised as a person. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
54:Awareness has infinite gradations, like light. ~ Ignazio Silone, #NFDB
55:Self-awareness includes awareness of your body. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
56:The fear of death comes from limited awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
57:Awareness is always the first step toward change. We ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
58:Loneliness is equal to the radius of one's awareness. ~ Yoko Ono, #NFDB
59:It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness! ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
60:Self awareness gives us ultimate human freedom. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
61:The awareness of our own strength makes us modest. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
62:Coming into the place of Soul-awareness is coming home. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
63:Being is not passive; it takes focused awareness. ~ Maureen Murdock, #NFDB
64:In short, redness and self-awareness are both qualia. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
65:Mature spirituality requires sobriety of awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
66:My favorite: Spirituality is a domain of awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
67:There is no such thing as talent, only awareness. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
68:Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
69:We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness. ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
70:When time and emotions gel, a new awareness forms. ~ Joel T McGrath, #NFDB
71:as every good marketer knows, awareness precedes trial. ~ A G Lafley, #NFDB
72:Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
73:It's all real and it's all illusory:
that's Awareness! ~ Ram Dass,#NFDB
74:"We don't mature through age; we mature in awareness." ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
75:What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
76:Awareness doesn't mind fear. Nor does love ~ Robert Augustus Masters, #NFDB
77:Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
78:before anything happens, awareness is already there, a priori. ~ Osho, #NFDB
79:Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
80:Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
81:The Self that is Awareness, that alone is true. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
82:Thinking and present moment awareness seldom cohabit. ~ Michael Brown, #NFDB
83:Raise you awareness and share your uniqueness to the world. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
84:The goal of meditation is awareness, not relaxation. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
85:True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
86:Unbounded awareness is the reservoir of possibilities. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
87:When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
88:Where there is faith there is an awareness of holiness. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
89:Yoga aims for complete awareness in everything you do. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
90:Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
91:Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness. ~ Osho, #NFDB
92:Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
93:Even among humans, self-awareness has gradations. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
94:Heightened awareness is a mystery only for a reason. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
95:Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
96:Rest as the awareness that is aware without using thought. ~ Loch Kelly, #NFDB
97:This is the potential start of something...awareness ~ Vanessa Friedman, #NFDB
98:Your results are an expression of your level of awareness ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
99:An Awareness of Death Encourages Us to Live More Intensely") ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
100:Many leadership problems are driven by low self-awareness. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
101:Samadhi is the actual awareness of what you really are. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
102:Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradles. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
103:A person is a pattern of behavior, of a larger awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
104:Awareness is a powerful catalyst for positive change. ~ Cheryl Richardson, #NFDB
105:Love, wonder, joy & awareness are the gifts of innocence. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
106:After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering? ~ Nancy Farmer, #NFDB
107:An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
108:Complete surrender, but not total abandonment of awareness. ~ Tan Twan Eng, #NFDB
109:Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
110:I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
111:The supreme state of Self-awareness is never absent. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
112:You alone exist, O Heart, the radiance of Awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
113:You are pure awareness at center, human in appearance. ~ Robin Craig Clark, #NFDB
114:Consciousness and awareness never began, and will never end. ~ Robert Lanza, #NFDB
115:Our awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
116:Public awareness is an important component of innovation. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
117:Resting in Awareness, we transform all the 'stuff' of our lives. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
118:You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
119:Humans: such a brilliant model of emotional self-awareness. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
120:"In the sunlight of awareness, everything becomes sacred." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
121:"Pure awareness of nowness is the real Buddha." ~ Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, #NFDB
122:Self awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
123:Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
124:The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. ~ Jerry Mander, #NFDB
125:Training of the mind and body leads to awareness of the soul ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
126:Body awareness puts us in touch with our inner world, ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
127:If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
128:Meditation is a way to take us to a deeper level of awareness. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
129:Since pure awareness of nowness is real Enlightenment, ~ Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, #NFDB
130:The subtler one's awareness, the more powerfully it can heal. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
131:Through awareness of the body, we remember who we truly are. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
132:Awareness is the seed of more aligned being and doing, which ~ Jonathan Fields, #NFDB
133:Donald Griffin’s The Question of Animal Awareness. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, #NFDB
134:Fear. Help you get some heightened awareness.
- Braden Chaney ~ Larry Brown,#NFDB
135:Heaven is a state of awareness. Hell is a state of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
136:I think we’ve lost our awareness of what “wonder” really means: ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
137:Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
138:The easiest way to create awareness is through fashion. ~ Mohammed Saeed Harib, #NFDB
139:The teacher is transmitting pure awareness and consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
140:True mindfulness is the awareness that everything you encounter ~ Brad Warner, #NFDB
141:Walk, with awareness. Eat, with awareness. Breathe, with awareness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
142:When you open up to awareness, it frees up your whole life. ~ James Van Praagh, #NFDB
143:An awareness of mortality is a heavy price to pay for sentience ~ Jonathan Maas, #NFDB
144:Life is when awareness hides in the idea of personal experience. ~ Matthew Kahn, #NFDB
145:That’s what awareness is: a sense that something more is possible. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
146:You have so much power to bring awareness, prevention and change. ~ Ashley Judd, #NFDB
147:And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. ~ Stanley Milgram, #NFDB
148:Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
149:Most men's awareness doesn't extend past their dinner plates. ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
150:Raising awareness. It’s a good thing. Makes people think twice. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
151:Those who the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
152:Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
153:To open in a loving way is to let awareness notice that tightening. ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
154:All we need is the awareness of how blessed we really are. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, #NFDB
155:Higher dimensions of Awareness means Higher dimensions of energy. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
156:I can’t seem to shake this perpetual awareness of being Molly. ~ Becky Albertalli, #NFDB
157:Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
158:Tantra involves radical change, a change in states of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
159:Awareness of the world begins with your feet, he believes. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
160:Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
161:Faith, consciousness, and awareness all exist beyond the thinking mind. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
162:Key 7: The focus of our awareness becomes the reality of our world. ~ Gregg Braden, #NFDB
163:Only in unawareness you are mortal. In awareness you are immortal. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
164:There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity. ~ Nina LaCour, #NFDB
165:Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
166:"True generosity happens without any awareness of being generous." ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
167:Awareness isn't passive. It directly leads to action (or inaction). ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
168:Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
169:If boredom is, as Heidegger argued, the awareness of time passing, ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
170:If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
171:Mastery of awareness requires that you never take personal offense. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
172:O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion! ~ Gary Snyder, #NFDB
173:One moment of total awareness is one moment of perfect enlightenment. ~ David Deida, #NFDB
174:We need common language to help us create awareness and understanding. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
175:When you listen with perfect awareness, then listening becomes possible. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
176:Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of body, mind, and soul. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
177:Your level of mental awareness attracts the habitual life you lead. ~ Vernon Howard, #NFDB
178:A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
179:Beyond mind, beyond time, beyond space there is immortal awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
180:could indicate the cocky self-awareness of a male in prime condition. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
181:Life is change and what we need is muscle, flexibility, and awareness. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
182:things in life can be solved with more responsibility and awareness. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
183:This is not a breathing exercise; it is an exercise in awareness. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
184:When it comes to our minds, awareness is very often the solution itself. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
185:Compassion stands on the pillars of trust, love, awareness and detachment. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
186:Our very awareness is the window upon which reality presents itself. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
187:The biggest challenge to developing self-awareness is objectivity. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
188:To me, voluntary simplicity means integration and awareness in my life. ~ Duane Elgin, #NFDB
189:Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of mind,body and the soul. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
190:Amongst all the virtues, high awareness is the most precious one! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
191:Art that serves an artist best is an experiment in expanding awareness. ~ Peter London, #NFDB
192:Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
193:Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
194:Building awareness and responsibility is the essence of good coaching. ~ John Whitmore, #NFDB
195:Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
196:Courage, enthusiasm, awareness -- if only one can keep these to the end. ~ Ruth Draper, #NFDB
197:Everyone can experience loving himself and opening up to awareness. ~ James Van Praagh, #NFDB
198:I take refuge in awareness; I take refuge in truth; I take refuge in love ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
199:Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
200:Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other, ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
201:Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
202:...she felt a quiet joy, an awareness that she could be happy again. ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
203:Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
204:The Ego ages... the Soul evolves... and to the Awareness, nothing happened! ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
205:The surprise was worse that the pain. It showed a lack of awareness. ~ Robert Ferrigno, #NFDB
206:Actual freedom has not increased in proportion to man's awareness of it. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
207:Awareness in our society has flipped all types of injustice on its head. ~ Serj Tankian, #NFDB
208:Awareness returning home is awareness being enfolded by what it knows. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
209:BECOMING A RESONANT LEADER Taking Your Desires from Awareness into Action ~ Annie McKee, #NFDB
210:Harmony is a wonderful thing, but not nearly as powerful as awareness. ~ Arnold Mindell, #NFDB
211:Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
212:Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
213:Thought doesn't wrap around awareness. Awareness wraps around thought. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
214:Yoga is living as awareness itself - with nothing pulling or pushing you. ~ Angel Grant, #NFDB
215:an awareness of your own worth is the most attractive quality in the world. ~ Lisa Unger, #NFDB
216:Awareness seeped in and brought its friends Pain and Agony for a visit. ~ Hailey Edwards, #NFDB
217:Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
218:One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
219:Space and time are not objects of perception, but qualities of awareness ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
220:using an object as support allows awareness to realize itself. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
221:Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
222:Fix your awareness gently on the center of your chest. Try to feel love. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
223:If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead? ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
224:My attraction to drugs is based on an immense desire to annihilate awareness. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
225:One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
226:Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
227:The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
228:We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
229:Awareness and apologies were fine and good, but they could come too late. ~ Tammara Webber, #NFDB
230:Awareness of motivation plays a central role in the path of liberation. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
231:Awareness of My marvelous Companionship can infuse Joy into the grayest day. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
232:I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories. ~ A E van Vogt, #NFDB
233:If you don't have the background awareness of oneness, duality becomes real. ~ Alan Finger, #NFDB
234:Mindfulness - moment to moment non-judgemental attention and awareness. ~ Richard Davidson, #NFDB
235:Sickness and disease are a change in awareness from comfort to discomfort. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
236:The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness not to stop your progress. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
237:We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. ~ John Green, #NFDB
238:Conceit is a sure sign of insecurity; humility denotes awareness. ~ Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, #NFDB
239:I am trying to create awareness of the true concept of democracy. ~ Muhammad Tahir ul Qadri, #NFDB
240:Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
241:The only thing lacking in any situation is our own awareness of love. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
242:The world is right because I feel good. p. 83, Awareness, copyright 1990 ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
243:To successfully open the door to heightened awareness, we must open it inward. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
244:Your chances of creating deeply hinge on the quality of your awareness state. ~ Eric Maisel, #NFDB
245:Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
246:Awareness of multiplicity of interpretation is the key to reading Shakespeare. ~ Laura Bates, #NFDB
247:I operate better with education and awareness, like I think all of us do. ~ Christian Slater, #NFDB
248:Mindfulness of the body is awareness of... the taste and smell of this moment. ~ Steve Hagen, #NFDB
249:Time slows down. Self vanishes. Action and Awareness merge. Welcome to Flow. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
250:What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. ~ Abraham Maslow, #NFDB
251:When there is little awareness of real need, there is little real prayer. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
252:Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
253:... and out of the awareness of sameness grew the desire for differentiation. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
254:Her awareness of her body was inseparable from her memory of his embrace. ~ Yasunari Kawabata, #NFDB
255:Humility is the conscious awareness and acceptance of eternity as your body. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
256:Our awareness creates life. Life does not exist independently of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
257:"Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them." ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
258:The awareness of our own mortality can keep us focused. Eyes on the prize! ~ Chris Guillebeau, #NFDB
259:The final result of all life is your awareness. Your awareness is existence. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
260:The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
261:The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
262:We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change. ~ Simon Van Booy, #NFDB
263:"Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
264:Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
265:Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
266:Discipline Makes the Glowing Coat of Awareness Unpalatable to the Predator. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
267:Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without mental modifications. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
268:Grace is at the nexus of love and awareness. There it’s all open and it’s all love. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
269:Service broadens your vision widens your awareness. Deepens your compassion. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
270:The first step towards change is awareness, the second step is acceptance. ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
271:The world is right because I feel good.
p. 83, Awareness, copyright 1990 ~ Anthony de Mello,#NFDB
272:They thought of frustration as a threshold, a factor to heighten awareness. It ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
273:What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. ~ Abraham H Maslow, #NFDB
274:You attract the predominant thoughts that you're holding in your awareness. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
275:As awareness grows, appreciation grows too. As appreciation grows, so does empathy. ~ Jon Young, #NFDB
276:Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of less worth? ~ Bernd Heinrich, #NFDB
277:Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness. ~ James Thurber, #NFDB
278:Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
279:There is no neutrality. There is only greater or lesser awareness of one's bias. ~ Phyllis Rose, #NFDB
280:There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
281:To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
282:Awareness is all that changes in the journey from separation to the one reality. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
283:Each moment of gratitude awareness reveals the total beauty which surrounds you. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
284:In Christ and through Christ man has acquired full awareness of his dignity. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
285:Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness. ~ Scott Adams, #NFDB
286:Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, #NFDB
287:Talk less, but with more awareness. Every word you use, use purposefully. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
288:The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
~ Nathaniel Branden,#NFDB
289:A being whose awareness is totally free, who does not cling to anything, is liberated. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
290:Among the earliest forms of human self-awareness was the awareness of being meat. ~ David Quammen, #NFDB
291:Isn’t an awareness of their transience what gives these moments their exquisite edge? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
292:Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or pure consciousness. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
293:Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it. ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
294:The awareness that seeks to know is the very object of its own seeking. ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal, #NFDB
295:We have within us the power to uplift ourselves. This power is our own awareness. ~ Shankarananda, #NFDB
296:Yoga is vital because it keeps me in full awareness and connection with my breath. ~ Grace Gealey, #NFDB
297:Awareness is the enemy of sanity, for once you hear the screaming, it never stops. ~ Emilie Autumn, #NFDB
298:Concentrate on being aware of what is; seek no explanations; seek but awareness. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
299:Everything is dependent upon energy. Energy is attention. Attention is awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
300:If I can entertain and expand awareness then I feel like I've fulfilled a purpose. ~ Jade Hassoune, #NFDB
301:It's important that we see clearly with wisdom and awareness, but also take action. ~ Mark Coleman, #NFDB
302:The essence of the highest teachings lies within a simple moment of awareness. ~ Khandro Rinpoche, #NFDB
303:Awareness must be like the rays of the sun: extending everywhere, illuminating all. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
304:Courage isn't absenct of fear, it is the awareness that something else is important ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
305:Enlightenment is getting off the wheel. Enlightenment is to become pure awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
306:Mindfulness removes the emotional fogs of negative thoughts with the light of awareness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
307:Self-awareness and self-esteem. Those aren't female issues, those are human issues. ~ Curtis Hanson, #NFDB
308:Suffering is always an invitation
to awareness
and compassion
and action. ~ Ivan M Granger,#NFDB
309:We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
310:Awareness that one shall soon be eternally unaware is not a state favored by mankind. ~ Jodi Daynard, #NFDB
311:Hadn’t somebody said that perfect paranoia and perfect awareness were the same thing? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
312:Self-awareness never decays. It is unrelated to anything. It is Self-luminous. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
313:The content of your awareness is less important than the quality of the awareness ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
314:You have a nicety of awareness of the difference between a blade's edge and its tip. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
315:Awareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
316:Courage isn't absenct of fear, it is the awareness that something else is important ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
317:Does awareness play some kind of role as a 'bridge' to a world of Platonic absolutes. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
318:Embrace your death. . . . Cherish your awareness of death as a gift from the universe. ~ Brian Swimme, #NFDB
319:Even discomfort or pain delivers awareness of life, and an opportunity for gratitude. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
320:Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom. ~ Stanislaw Lem, #NFDB
321:Isn’t an awareness of their transience what gives these moments their exquisite edge? ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
322:Karma means who you are and where your awareness field is on the band of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
323:Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness. ~ John Cage, #NFDB
324:Awareness is becoming acquainted with environment, no matter where one happens to be. ~ Sigurd F Olson, #NFDB
325:Awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
326:Connecting to the feelings in your body brings you back into present-moment awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
327:Observe and gradually you will come to see that all existence is occurring in empty awareness. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
328:Pick your fights like you pick your nose: with complete awareness of where you are. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
329:Robots may gradually attain a degree of 'self-awareness' and consciousness of their own. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
330:Self-interest guides opposition to change, but lack of self-awareness fuels it even more. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
331:Some slight awareness in the back of her mind, beneath the pain, told her she was free. ~ Kayla Krantz, #NFDB
332:The essence of nostalgia is an awareness that what has been will never be again. ~ Milton S Eisenhower, #NFDB
333:The Universe contains three things that cannot be destroyed; Being, Awareness and LOVE ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
334:You are the light of consciousness and also the witness of this light. You are pure awareness. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
335:Awareness is jnana. Jnana is eternal and natural, ajnana is unnatural and unreal. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
336:But there sometimes comes a moment, a small, silent white explosion of awareness. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons, #NFDB
337:His awareness of her swung as she moved around the room like the needle on a compass. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
338:One thing each of us knows for certain is that reality vastly exceeds our awareness of it. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
339:Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
340:The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
341:Yoga is bringing fitness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
342:Eating a meal with full awareness can be a powerful, enlightening, and healing experience. ~ David Simon, #NFDB
343:Fear was the knowledge of pain, the awareness that you could be hurt, that you could die. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
344:I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion. ~ Billie Jean King, #NFDB
345:Knowledge comes from personal experience of truth and awareness, not from conversation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
346:Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
347:The awareness of liberation is not liberation. The awareness of time is not liberation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
348:The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
349:The messages that do grab your attention are connected to memory, interest, and awareness. ~ John Medina, #NFDB
350:Trust means you anchor your heart in the reality of God's awareness of your situation. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
351:6. Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning. As ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
352:Awareness is an inner quality of consciousness; it has nothing to do with closed or open eyes. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
353:Awareness of your inadequacy is a rich blessing, training you to rely wholeheartedly on Me. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
354:Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
355:Once you’re facing the direction of the deep within, awareness enters without a thought. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
356:Pain and suffering are inevitable for persons of broad awareness and depth of heart. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
357:Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
358:This Self-awareness never decays. It is unrelated to anything. It is Self-luminous. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
359:Those who love and who have a sense of purity live in a very luminous band of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
360:We can't control what's going to happen but we can grow in awareness of what is happening. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
361:As we gain more understanding, awareness and knowledge, then we will do things differently. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
362:aware Presence loses its apparent witness-ness and stands revealed as pure Awareness alone, ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
363:Consciousness is nothing but awareness the composite of all the thing we pay attention to. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
364:Let’s not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” —James Thurber ~ Maria Shriver, #NFDB
365:PROBLEMS CANNOT BE SOLVED AT THE SAME LEVEL OF AWARENESS THAT CREATED THEM. –ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
366:The more you expand your awareness, the more naturally you will be present without effort. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
367:The shortest interval between two points is the awareness that they are not two. ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal, #NFDB
368:Yoga is bringing suppleness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
369:As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian. ~ Shelley Berman, #NFDB
370:can feel my pussy tighten with awareness, like even that bitch knows how close he is to her. ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
371:Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear. ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
372:Ironically, we are all too often educated out of rather than in to an awareness of the body. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
373:I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness but I can't speak on their behalf. ~ Annie Lennox, #NFDB
374:Power itself is simply a word to describe attention, awareness, which embodies all things. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
375:The awareness of happiness comes after, in memory, with the belated appreciation of the moment. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
376:There are three things you need to live abundantly: awareness, imagination and gratitude. ~ Sonia Choquette, #NFDB
377:this idea of the witness is also seen to be a limitation superimposed on Awareness by a mind ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
378:wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
379:Coming and going’ is imagined by the mind and superimposed on the ever-presence of Awareness. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
380:Condition White, one of the four Cooper Color Codes describing levels of situational awareness ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
381:Emotions reflect intentions. Therefore, awareness of emotions leads to awareness of intentions. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
382:Italian cameramen grow up immersed in an awareness of light. It is part of their mythology. ~ Barbara Steele, #NFDB
383:It was a child's awareness, never spoken or even fully acknowledged, but deeply felt. ~ Donna Woolfolk Cross, #NFDB
384:Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness. ~ Theodosius Dobzhansky, #NFDB
385:She could feel herself hurtling toward self-awareness, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
386:You know that it’s hard work to consistently apply self-awareness, empathy, and self-control, ~ Jen Shirkani, #NFDB
387:You think, you become that thought. And consciousness, or the state of pure awareness, is lost. ~ Barry Long, #NFDB
388:All awareness is power and all power conceals awareness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, RV I.1.1, #NFDB
389:Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. ~ Eric Berne, #NFDB
390:Every single one of us has the unique opportunity to create awareness and influence change ~ Gretchen Bleiler, #NFDB
391:Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
392:It’s like the cartoon physics of awareness: we can’t hurt until we see that we’re supposed to. ~ Roan Parrish, #NFDB
393:Only one who has achieved immortality of awareness can laugh with life and laugh with death. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
394:Self-awareness - the commendable ability to be oneself without being a nuisance to someone else. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
395:That which then remains separate and alone by itself, that pure Awareness is what I am. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
396:The first element of change is awareness. You can’t change something unless you know it exists. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
397:Therefore caution is the proper attitude, an awareness of the limits the foundation of wisdom. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
398:To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
399:Wise and careful action, from a foundation of sober awareness, is the way of the revolutionary. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
400:Anything you are exclusively attached to & identify with ends up distorting & limiting awareness. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
401:Awareness is wakefulness. Wakefulness is consciousness. Consciousness is limitless awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
402:Awareness means grasping life just the way it is, without contamination by mental projections. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
403:But with this mental clarity comes an even sharper awareness of what has been done to Peeta. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
404:Ever since I've had any political awareness, I've felt either alone or part of a tiny minority. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
405:If you can grow in love, you will grow in awareness. If you grow in awareness, you will grow in love... ~ Osho, #NFDB
406:I would suggest your awareness is your karma. How you feel generates your level of attention. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
407:Only one’s own awareness is direct knowledge. No aids are needed to know one’s own Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
408:Self-awareness: it is one of the chief bonuses of advancing age. It is our consolation prize. ~ Louise Doughty, #NFDB
409:An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
410:Awareness Is Not The Same As ThoughtMore Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
411:Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
412:else. Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
413:Few things in life hurt as much as the awareness that one has betrayed the ideas of one's youth. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
414:Just being around the awareness field of the male or female imprinter, the child is imprinted. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
415:The person who follows Dpath of awareness finds love as a consequence of his awareness, as a by-product. ~ Osho, #NFDB
416:What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
417:You are a little band of awareness and your awareness moves from one state of mind to another. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
418:Awareness of the inner body is consciousness remembering its origin and returning to the Source. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
419:finding your vocation is less about grand moments of discovery and more about a habit of awareness. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
420:If you can grow in love, you will grow in awareness. If you grow in awareness, you will grow in love. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
421:Sexual awareness is part of growing up. When you're growing up, you can't get away from sex. ~ Jennifer Coolidge, #NFDB
422:The first part of looking at our fear is just inviting it into our awareness without judgment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
423:The moment I am aware that I am aware, I am not aware. Awareness means the observer is not. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
424:What is the nature of Awareness? The nature of Awareness is existence-consciousness-bliss. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
425:Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
426:Awareness, even at a subconscious level, beats fancy checklists without it, track or you will fail. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
427:Being able to perceive visceral sensations is the very foundation of emotional awareness. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
428:"Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either." ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
429:Getting where you want to be has everything to do with awareness, and nothing to do with willpower. ~ Cheri Huber, #NFDB
430:I will be guided by the Christian ethic and an awareness that human action is by nature transient. ~ Horst Kohler, #NFDB
431:out. Bring your awareness to the different parts of your body in turn, and allow them to relax. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
432:Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
433:Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
434:The meditator must develop both awareness and equanimity together in order to advance along the path.
~ Goenka,#NFDB
435:The real horror is that when you're busy ruining your life, self-awareness doesn't stop you. ~ Christopher Ransom, #NFDB
436:Within minutes, or hours at most, sentience and self-awareness shut down permanently and irrevocably. ~ M R Carey, #NFDB
437:Awareness is good, but without skills and ability tied to that awareness, all you have is anxiety. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
438:Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.
~ Bodhidharma,#NFDB
439:Each of us, A CEll Of Awareness... imperfect, and incomplete.
Genetic blends, with uncertain ends. ~ Neil Peart,#NFDB
440:Every act of genuine creativity means achieving a higher level of self-awareness and personal freedom. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
441:The best way to develop an abiding awareness of God’s presence is to speak to Him often in prayer. ~ Robert Morgan, #NFDB
442:The causal structure determines the rate and method of evolution, your awareness of the universe. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
443:There is a tremendous rise now in feminine awareness and wishing for equality, equal opportunities. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
444:To foster inner awareness, introspection, and reasoning is more efficient than meditation and prayer. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
445:When you expand your awareness, seemingly random events will be seen to fit into a larger purpose. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
446:A great awareness of one’s sinfulness often stands side by side with great joy and confidence in God. ~ Dave Harvey, #NFDB
447:I am a very lucky guy. I can testify before Congress. I can raise funds. I can raise awareness. ~ Christopher Reeve, #NFDB
448:Life is like an eternal dance. The movements of the dance are choreographed through your awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
449:When we show up fully, with awareness and acceptance, even the worst demons usually back down. Simply ~ Susan David, #NFDB
450:Withdraw your awareness from everywhere and just let it rest within yourself, and you have arrived home. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
451:Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity? ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
452:Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
453:Intelligence cannot be present without understanding. No computer has any awareness of what it does. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
454:"It is in the present and only in the present that you live." ~ Alan Watts #awareness #AlanWatts #lotus #photograghy, #NFDB
455:Let us not look back in anger nor forward in fear but around us in awareness. Leland Val Van De Wall ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
456:My teaching is not for self-control, self-discipline. My teaching is for self-awareness, self-transformation. ~ Osho, #NFDB
457:Our intellect, our awareness, and our consciousness is the most powerful form of life on this planet. ~ James McAvoy, #NFDB
458:Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self. ~ Richard Leakey, #NFDB
459:Self-awareness is the process of getting to know yourself from the inside out and the outside in. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
460:The awareness of our environment came progressively in all countries with different outlets. ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau, #NFDB
461:The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America. ~ Johan Huizinga, #NFDB
462:The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
463:There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
464:To live without awareness is to live as the deaf, blind, and dumb in a world of vibrant light and sound. ~ Belsebuub, #NFDB
465:Work should be in order to live. We don't live in order to work. That shift in awareness is necessary. ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
466:Awareness has no experience of its own appearance, beginning, birth, duration, disappearance or death. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
467:Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
468:Awareness yields to itself, to its inherent creativity, to its expression in form, to experience itself. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
469:Being attached is what prevents us from seeing, it is what clouds this miraculous awareness. ~ Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, #NFDB
470:For anything to be known, its apparent ‘thingness’ must dissolve in Awareness and become pure knowing. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
471:Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
472:He is interested not so much in imparting information as implanting in us the tools of awareness. ~ Michael D O Brien, #NFDB
473:I always try to be a champion of social change and anything that brings awareness to a really dire situation. ~ Kenna, #NFDB
474:Naturally, the Zen Master Rama philosophy is to have a high state of awareness and material success. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
475:Self-realization is not the awareness that this world is a dream, that's a part of self-realization. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
476:There is no such thing as spiritual achievement; it is simply an awareness intrinsic to all of life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
477:You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
478:And he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
479:Aspiring to a depth of awareness of the sacred whole has always been the path to wisdom and grace. ~ Charlene Spretnak, #NFDB
480:Awareness does not require emotion, because emotion and awareness are mediated by different brain regions. ~ Alex Korb, #NFDB
481:First is the Mastery of Awareness. This is to be aware of who we really are, with all the possibilities. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
482:In your present-moment awareness, awaken to your innocence, your trust, your love, your eternal being. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
483:Meditation calms the mind, and when the mind is in a state of restful awareness, the body relaxes too. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
484:Tell them that they can trust their hearts and awareness to awaken in the midst of all circumstances. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
485:There's no classes in elementary school, high school or college that teach people situational awareness. ~ Joe Navarro, #NFDB
486:We are all dying
of something, always,
but our degrees of
awareness differ
- from "Tubes ~ Donald Hall,#NFDB
487:What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
488:Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
489:You are an endless conglomeration of awareness. You're not one singular self. You're a corporation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
490:Action without wisdom, without clear awareness of the world as it really is, can never improve anything. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
491:All your power is in your awareness of that power, and through holding that power in your consciousness. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
492:Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
493:I lived with the constant awareness that if I cared about you and you figured it out, you’d leave. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
494:Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
495:Paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness. I didn't say it, but I repeat it often enough. ~ Gerald Everett Jones, #NFDB
496:The two best predictors of early reading success are alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness. ~ Marilyn Jager Adams, #NFDB
497:When I stretch, I stretch in such a way that my awareness moves, and a gate of awareness finally opens. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
498:Without full awareness of breathing, there can be no development of meditative stability and understanding. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
499:all day long, one storm then another—and I take your hands like gentle flowers that blossom into awareness ~ John Geddes, #NFDB
500:A man is a man, no more, no less. The awareness of this fact marks the supreme moment of human dignity. ~ Howard Thurman, #NFDB
501:Character consists of the moral awareness and strength to know the good, love the good and do the good. ~ Thomas Lickona, #NFDB
502:Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
503:I just ask that everyone continue to raise awareness and fight for pediatric cancer. The fight's not over. ~ Devon Still, #NFDB
504:Just the sensation of having one man touching her and the other watching made her shiver in awareness. ~ Savannah Stuart, #NFDB
505:Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. ~ Claude Steiner, #NFDB
506:Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
507:So awareness and enjoying this life can grow together simultaneously. And this is my vision of the whole man. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
508:Spend some of your quiet meditation time visualizing a tiny spark of awareness glowing within your being. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
509:That state of simplest form of awareness alone, is worthy of seeing, hearing, contemplating and realizing. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB
510:The verses are meant to help us to bring our awareness back to what’s happening in the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
511:Trapped in a continuum of your own making. Awareness is the key that unlocks your opportunity for change. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
512:We encompass all of existence, yet a particle of our awareness is focused in this world, in the moment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
513:When the body is in pain, a distorted area of awareness is crying out to the rest of awareness for help. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
514:When your mind becomes vacant,
endeavour to fill it with the awareness of God and His contemplation. ~ Anandamayi Ma,#NFDB
515:You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
516:Awareness hurts. Relationships hurts. Life hurts. But to float, to drift, to live in the dream does not hurt. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
517:Concentration is the act of building focus and meditation is the art of retaining it without losing awareness. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
518:Cultivating this self-awareness is a lifelong process, but it starts by simply checking in with yourself. ~ Ryder Carroll, #NFDB
519:It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns. ~ Joshua Ferris, #NFDB
520:Open Awareness The Angle of Vision Leadership Openness Getting Out of The Way Possibilities MEDITATION: ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
521:Pain & suffering requires time, awareness, and an intentional practice of self-love to disentangle. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
522:The necessary condition for the existence of peace and joy is the awareness that peace and joy are available. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
523:The need for raising the awareness of this shameful chapter in U.S. history is more apparent than ever. ~ Michael M Honda, #NFDB
524:The self-awareness of independence is seen by many as the fundamental reality of the human condition: ~ Stephen E Flowers, #NFDB
525:I'd love to write about my growing sexual awareness, but the press would turn it into something squalid. ~ Ken Livingstone, #NFDB
526:Subliminal perception – perception that occurs without conscious awareness – is not an anomaly but the norm. ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
527:The habit of quietly absorbing the shocks will be quite a great help to stabilize pure awareness. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
528:Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
529:Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
530:If I were a bad black comic I would name my special, Yo mama, and other stories of a lack of self awareness. ~ Dov Davidoff, #NFDB
531:If you observe awareness steadily, this awareness itself becomes the Guru that will reveal the Truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
532:Literature is the supreme means by which you renew your sensuous and emotional life and learn a new awareness. ~ F R Leavis, #NFDB
533:self-awareness: the ability to realize what we are doing as we do it, and understand why we are doing it. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
534:Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
535:The one who obeys God’s instruction for today will develop a keen awareness of His direction for tomorrow. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
536:There are ten thousand planes of awareness within the infinite mind of the diamond mind, your deeper mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
537:There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things. ~ Mike Leigh, #NFDB
538:The solution to nearly every problem in the world comes down to greater awareness, compassion, and empathy. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
539:An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans. ~ Haile Selassie, #NFDB
540:Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
541:If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
542:Kill the cow of your ego as quickly as you can, so that your inner spirit can come to life and attain true awareness. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
543:My heart needs only one thing. It needs to be guided Along the age-old path Of life-blossoming self-awareness. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
544:nonjudgmental awareness—the process of being aware of the present, without attaching emotional reactivity to it. ~ Alex Korb, #NFDB
545:The one who obey's God's instruction for today will develop a keen awareness of His direction for tomorrow. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
546:The ship’s knowledge extended to navigation, to the handling of weather and awareness of necessary maintenance. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
547:The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
548:All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
549:and finally his current self-awareness, tinged with compulsions whose origins he couldn’t access or control. ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
550:Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
551:Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment. It is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
552:Consciousness equals energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It's all the same trip. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
553:Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
554:emptiness is a good sign; that it presages openness to a new level of awareness, new insights, new experiences. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
555:For knowing That which Is, there is no other knower. Hence Being is Awareness and we are all Awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
556:Generosity toward the lower classes historically has never been an important part of upper-class awareness. ~ Michael Parenti, #NFDB
557:Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
558:His cock filled my awareness, until all I smelled or felt or could think of was the thick flesh in my mouth. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
559:If I had even a slight awareness, and practiced the Great Way, what I would fear would be deviating from it. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
560:Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
561:Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
562:The dawning of the light of awareness is the new birth, where the sun rises and the day breaks within you. ~ Alberto Villoldo, #NFDB
563:The purpose of art is to raise people to a higher level of awareness than they would otherwise attain on their own. ~ Brassai, #NFDB
564:The solution to nearly every problem in the world comes down to greater awareness, compassion, and empathy. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
565:The way to attain the virtue of mercy lies in our constant awareness of being encompassed by mercy. ~ Dietrich von Hildebrand, #NFDB
566:Who am I? After negating all as 'not this', 'not this', that Awareness which alone remains - that I am. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
567:Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
568:Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
569:Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you will always find despair.” “I ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
570:If our awareness of indwelling sin humbles us and makes our sovereign Christ more precious to us, we are safe.39 ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
571:In a while he would make the necessary notes, describing the only known cure for Vitriol: an awareness of life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
572:It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
573:Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness. ~ James Thurber, #NFDB
574:never live as though God does not exist.” Or, stated positively, “Always live in awareness of God’s existence. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
575:No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
576:Only with awareness of carnism can we reclaim our freedom of choice; without awareness, there is no free choice. ~ Melanie Joy, #NFDB
577:Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
578:The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
579:The person who has some awareness of the past knows how to fashion a rudder and which direction land is. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar, #NFDB
580:What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
581:Awareness is all about restoring your freedom to choose what you want instead of what your past imposes on you. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
582:Cultivate an awareness that each minute you tick off sitting is doing damage to your body and to your running. ~ Kelly Starrett, #NFDB
583:Finally all that is trustworthy is this immeasurable silent awareness that is the truth of who you are, that is love. ~ Gangaji, #NFDB
584:Flashes of awareness that we live an illusion – that, and no more, is what distinguishes the greatest of men. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
585:I'm part of a team that raises millions of dollars and raises awareness of HIV and AIDS all over the world. ~ Linda Evangelista, #NFDB
586:Inviting our thoughts and feelings into awareness allows us to learn from them rather than be driven by them. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
587:Knowledge of any kind ... brings about a change in awareness from where it is possible to create new realities. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
588:See clearly that the breath takes place in this vast open space of Awareness, not in an imagined, confined body. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
589:Self-awareness is value-free. It isn't scary. It doesn't imply that you will subject yourself to needless pain. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
590:Self-awareness moves us beyond the old, well-worn pathways in the brain that support fixed, unconscious habits. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
591:Set goals that are achievable. Bring about meaningful change one step at a time. Raising awareness is not enough. ~ Henry Spira, #NFDB
592:Taking time to reflect opens the door to conscious awareness, which brings with it the possibility of change. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
593:To really evolve as awareness, be just like your own being in a self like yours and on a planet like this one. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
594:Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
595:I don't blame younger generations for their lack of awareness. Americans in general are not interested in history. ~ Cleve Jones, #NFDB
596:If your awareness was strong enough, you could change the fate of a whole world without ever leaving your room. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
597:In one level, Om is the self-organizing power of the universe and self-awareness is the process to access that power. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
598:I think that growth and spiritual awareness come in slow increments. Sometimes you don't know it's happening. ~ Mariel Hemingway, #NFDB
599:Lao Tzu
"The key to growth is the introduction
of higher dimensions of consciousness
into our awareness. ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
600:Most people have a time-bound awareness. And the reason is they have sacrificed their self for their self-image. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
601:My collapse also resulted in a heightened awareness referred to in psychological texts as a “watcher” or “witness. ~ Ken Dickson, #NFDB
602:Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights. ~ Hafez Ibrahim, #NFDB
603:Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
604:The more flexible we become in our thinking and being, the more we open ourselves to self-awareness & growth. ~ James Van Praagh, #NFDB
605:These four gifts—self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, and independent will—reside in the space we ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
606:To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
607:awareness may require only minimal attention, but it does require some attention. Nothing happens quite automatically ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
608:Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
609:God is limitless awareness. There, now I have told you everything I know about God ... a lot of good it did you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
610:I got very interested in attention and awareness and how to achieve certain states through understanding this. ~ Pauline Oliveros, #NFDB
611:Oneness means that as awareness, your relationship with knowing is clean. Then for you to know is for you to be. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
612:Stairs elevate you; ethics elevates you; goodness elevates you; awareness elevates you; wisdom elevates you. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
613:There is no time. There is no space. There is no condition. There is only awareness, awareness of these ideas. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
614:with better awareness you can make better choices and when you make better choices, you will see better results. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
615:Yoga is a tool for realigning our awareness with the divine, creating a state of oneness that is our true nature. ~ Mark Stephens, #NFDB
616:All of us must come to an honest, open self-examination, an awareness within as to who and what we want to be. ~ M Russell Ballard, #NFDB
617:Being aware of awareness itself only consciousness can get you there to the truth of yourself the immortal inner being. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
618:Expand your awareness and come out of all self imposed limitations. It requires continuous learning and growth mindset. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
619:How much modern civilization has lost, I think, when they lost the awareness of the billions of stars overhead. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
620:I am able to control only that which I am aware of. That which I am unaware of controls me. Awareness empowers me. ~ John Whitmore, #NFDB
621:If you are afraid of someone, you immediately give them an advantage and give them entry to your awareness field. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
622:I would hope that the publicity around the Higgs boson would increase the public awareness of physics and cosmology. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
623:Mindfulness meditation is the embrace of any and all mind states in awareness, without preferring one to another. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
624:Pride counterbalances all these miseries; man either hides or displays them, and glories in his awareness of them. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
625:Tantric Zen is the awareness of the infinitude of all things. To gain that awareness, to be it, is enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
626:That is, it knows itself as the totality of experience. This could be formulated as, ‘I, Awareness, am everything’, ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
627:The most powerful way to manifest is through subtle intention and choiceless awareness-inten d to let go and flow. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
628:The sound circulated like an autonomous being whose tentacles needed to experience a sensitive awareness of the terrain. ~ Ondjaki, #NFDB
629:Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs. ~ Kiera Van Gelder, #NFDB
630:To be psychic is to see without the senses and to keep the thoughts and emotions of others out of your awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
631:To feel beauty, to feel truth, that is self-remembering. Self-remembering is the awareness of the presence of God. ~ Rodney Collin, #NFDB
632:When remaining in awareness itself, every thought movement, no matter what kind, is like a drawing in air. ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, #NFDB
633:When the robot mind is mastered, undisciplined thinking ceases and is replaced by awareness. Awareness can know love. ~ Barry Long, #NFDB
634:When you are living in the present moment, you will experience a deep sense of inner joy, peace and awareness. ~ Christopher Dines, #NFDB
635:Age brings with it a certain self-awareness, and with it a tolerance for faults, both our own and those of others. ~ Andrea Penrose, #NFDB
636:Fear of corporal punishment obscures children's awareness of the compassion underlying the parent's demands. ~ Marshall B Rosenberg, #NFDB
637:I'm heartened by the growing awareness of global warming among important communities and organizations in our nation. ~ Jim Clyburn, #NFDB
638:It is possible to modify your awareness to perceive what plants perceive, birds, beings in the astral, the causal. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
639:it is the awareness that is of primary importance, no matter what the objects are that we are paying attention to. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
640:I wanted his soul inside me, a melding of skin where we touched, an unbroken circle of pulsing attention and awareness. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
641:Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness. ~ John Searle, #NFDB
642:Our awareness is the key. It is our awareness more than our work effort that gets the right result right now. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
643:Shadow Work is about facing our inner darkness and immersing it in the light of conscious awareness and compassion. ~ Aletheia Luna, #NFDB
644:Someone has said, "Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one's ignorance." I agree. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
645:The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
646:We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
647:Whether we're in retreat or out in the world, we should try to develop the quality of awareness as much as possible. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
648:Awareness takes the shape of thinking and appears as the mind; it takes the shape of sensing and appears as the body; ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
649:Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
650:being more open and letting go of judgment and anticipation expands our awareness of all the vicissitudes of life. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
651:Be like a Bird in Flight. Be able to see Before You, Around You, and Behind You At All Times. - Kailin Gow on Awareness ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
652:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
653:Often it is better to hide an illness from the patient, because just the mere awareness of a disease can bring about death. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
654:We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
655:What worse awareness is there than to know there would have been a better outcome if you'd never done anything at all? ~ John Irving, #NFDB
656:When awareness believes what it knows is true, the truth of what awareness really is, moves. That movement is love. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
657:As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown. ~ Norman Foster, #NFDB
658:Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way and not the way one was taught. ~ Eric Berne, #NFDB
659:Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self & things, it is or has also a dynamic & creative energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
660:I don't have all that great an awareness of how people see me in life. I don't find myself thinking about it a lot. ~ Anjelica Huston, #NFDB
661:Kindness and awareness work together. Through awareness we understand the underlying beauty of everything and every being. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
662:Most of the reggae awareness is still among music industry people and people who are already into all types of music. ~ Billy Gibbons, #NFDB
663:One of the keys to harnessing this potentially unlimited power of the mind is to expand your level of self-awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
664:Self-awareness: there is the black worm in the apple. Our curse is to know there's something terribly wrong with us. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
665:The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation. ~ Clarence Day, #NFDB
666:Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process. ~ Yusef Komunyakaa, #NFDB
667:We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one's own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
668:We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
669:When emotions are long held and extremely complex, it sometimes takes years for them to enter fully into awareness. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
670:Wth subtly developed body awareness, it is possible for the individual to become the conscious orchestrator of health. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
671:You are awareness. You are mind. You are not from this world. I mean, think about it, could you really be from here? ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
672:Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source to realize who you are. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
673:Your mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe. When you push off with your foot, a thousand new roads become clear. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
674:Awareness requires only that we pay attention and see things as they are. It doesn't require that we change anything. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
675:Don't go in and out of meditative spaces - stay there with that awareness, always. Everything in life is meditative. ~ Nicholas Payton, #NFDB
676:Ignorance is the beginning of knowledge; knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; wisdom is the awareness of ignorance. ~ William Rotsler, #NFDB
677:Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
678:The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. ~ Michael Crichton, #NFDB
679:The path to equanimity lies in observing the present and allowing it to float undisturbed down the river of our awareness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
680:There are only two kinds of certain knowledge: Awareness of our own existence and the truths of mathematics. ~ Jean le Rond d Alembert, #NFDB
681:True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
682:Walk with Joy and Peace into this night—
and on into tomorrow. These companions
will enhance your awareness of Me. ~ Sarah Young,#NFDB
683:We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world. ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
684:You cannot teach a person something he does not already know, you can only bring what he does know to his awareness. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
685:Awareness, not deprivation, informs what you eat. Presence, not shame, changes how you see yourself and what you rely on. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
686:Awareness takes over from thinking. Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
687:But beneath the surface of success – outside our view, often outside our awareness – is a mountain of necessary failure. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
688:consider merely that all types of awareness are trance states... consciousness is the direction in which the self looks. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
689:Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
690:Mindfulness is not a mechanical process. It is developing a very gentle, kind, and creative awareness to the present moment. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
691:Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. ~ Henry Beston, #NFDB
692:Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
693:Psychic awareness leads to a true perception not only of events, but just of life itself. It is its own raison d'etre. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
694:Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important. You need to once in a while go ‘Uh, I’m kind of an asshole. ~ Louis C K, #NFDB
695:She had never felt such excitement, such awareness of life around her, as if the very air was charged with his presence. ~ Karen Ranney, #NFDB
696:that aspect of the patient’s behaviour that betrays his awareness of the presence of an object that is not himself. No ~ Wilfred R Bion, #NFDB
697:What makes life 'worth living'? - The awareness that there is something for which one is ready to risk one's life ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
698:By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
699:If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then the bridge ought not to be built. ~ Frantz Fanon, #NFDB
700:If we go deeply into the experience of whatever is known or loved we find no substance there other than Awareness itself. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
701:Knowledge is cosmic. It does not evolve or unfold in man. Man unfolds to an awareness of it. He gradually discovers it. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
702:Let hunger sharpen your awareness. Abstain liquor and frivolous recreation, which dull the mind and weaken the body. ~ Laura Joh Rowland, #NFDB
703:Music is part of the tantra, the dance of life. Before your eyes, before your awareness, is the procession of eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
704:Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
705:Only through the personal awareness and “inward conviction” that we each have of our own freedom, Kissinger concluded. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
706:Self-awareness includes awareness of your mental realm, which encompasses your thoughts, feelings, energy, and emotions. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
707:Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important. You need to once in a while go ‘Uh, I’m kind of an asshole.’ ~ Louis C K, #NFDB
708:The road to happiness starts with a deep breath and an awareness of the many blessings tied to that single breath. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
709:The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
710:To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being. ~ William James, #NFDB
711:With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, #NFDB
712:Your reason is your friend. It defends the island of your awareness. But you don't want your reason to rule everything. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
713:A man with awareness lives in a world much prettier and much richer than the world a man without awareness lives in! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
714:Blessed is the mind that jumps over and beyond its own conditioning and lands again into its natural state of unmoving awareness. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
715:Every advance, every achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self awareness. ~ Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, #NFDB
716:"I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment." That's the beginning of the transformation of consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
717:Just as the subtle physical body holds together the physical body, the causal body holds together the body of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
718:Major League Baseball has prostate awareness for two weeks leading up to Father's Day, and I want to get involved in that. ~ Steve Garvey, #NFDB
719:Mind is basically indecisive, and awareness is basically decisive. So any act out of awareness is total, full, without repentance. ~ Osho, #NFDB
720:My newfound awareness was both gauntlet and gift. The choice wasn't to see it as one or the other. It was to embrace both. ~ Dani Shapiro, #NFDB
721:My search for wisdom, peace of mind, and an awareness of realities visible and invisible has become routine and pointless. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
722:Nature is favourable to our effort when human awareness is being established more and more in pure consciousness. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
723:Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
724:Our propensity to impose meaning and concepts blocks our awareness of the details making up the concept. However, ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
725:That's something that I've always gotten: a sense of humanity, a sense of awareness of yourself and the world around you. ~ Vince Staples, #NFDB
726:The basic for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
727:To exist without awareness, that was what you aimed at. Memories worn to irrelevance, the future equally insubstantial. ~ Daniel Polansky, #NFDB
728:What you do affects your awareness field. When you do something selfless your attention feild is more clear, more lucid. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
729:When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
730:Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement — meaning atoneness, the state of being at one with the object. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
731:Art is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
732:As we exercise self- awareness and examine our paradigms we discover that they are deeply ingrained. Change is not easy. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
733:Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
734:Culture and politics were inseparable [in the Sixties], which gave a soundtrack to political awareness and activism. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar, #NFDB
735:It is the understanding of others and the awareness of their needs, that the ambassador of CHRIST should strive to cultivate ~ Larry Crabb, #NFDB
736:Let our information and social technologies raise awareness and not propaganda, build connections and not passive-aggression. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
737:Once the mind has seen through all fear and all hope, it finds peace within itself, in a state of awareness beyond thought. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
738:The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together! ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
739:The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
740:To be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness. ~ Peter Joseph, #NFDB
741:Who we are varies according to our awareness. When you are more aware, you are someone else than when you are less aware. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
742:Act,speak with full awareness and then you will find a tremendous change in you. The very fact that you are aware changes your acts. ~ Osho, #NFDB
743:"All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible." ~ Eckhart Tolle #awareness, #NFDB
744:Although I was raised in a profoundly secular home, I had a belief, an awareness of God, from as far back as I can remember. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
745:an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. ~ Beryl Markham, #NFDB
746:Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
747:Animals do not possess this ability. We call it “self-awareness” or the ability to think about your very thought process. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
748:Humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
749:I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
750:It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our bodies that the 'I Am,' our real presence, can awaken. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
751:Most people, almost everyone knows of a teen mom. Teen pregnancy rates are growing, and we need to bring awareness to that. ~ Madisen Beaty, #NFDB
752:No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
753:Persist in your practice always in order to strengthen the awareness, which then shines forth with great effulgence and clarity. ~ Maharshi, #NFDB
754:The healing of trauma is a natural process that can be accessed through an inner awareness of the body. ~ Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger, #NFDB
755:The higher purpose of # astrology is not to try to change one's destiny, but to fulfill it through growing in awareness ~ Stephen Arroyo, #NFDB
756:The temptations that use the raw material of good for evil can continue unrecognized for a long time without awareness. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
757:We have greater awareness of where we're falling short than we used to. Just take the example of community police relations. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
758:1. Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
759:Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
760:Focus comes not from working without distractions, but with a devotion so intense that distractions fall from our awareness. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
761:For me style has something to do with your inner attitude towards clothes and the awareness what sits well on yourself. ~ Matthew Williamson, #NFDB
762:I therefore think that I was right in trying from the outset of the Olympic revival to rekindle a religious awareness. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
763:It's important to talk about it. You raise awareness. But you can also prevent it (child abuse) by not letting it be a secret. ~ Chris Witty, #NFDB
764:My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
765:My sense of identity broke down and was replaced by something that is very hard to put into words. Awareness, Consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
766:Number is therefore the most primitive instrument of bringing an unconscious awareness of order into consciousness. ~ Marie Louise von Franz, #NFDB
767:Relative knowledge requires a subject and object whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
768:The less awareness you have, the more you become like others! Increase you awareness, then you will become more unique! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
769:What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
770:Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
771:Cultivating hope Practicing critical awareness Letting go of numbing and taking the edge off vulnerability, discomfort, and pain ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
772:Do not follow after the past; do not go forward to meet the future. Instead, just rest the mind naturally in the present awareness. ~ Gampopa, #NFDB
773:The awareness of place, space, or condition is not liberation. You can't say what it is, but you can sure say what it isn't. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
774:We experimented and we experienced many altered states of awareness. We used the power plants. I did that for a year or two. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
775:What makes defeat so painful is just the awareness that the other has won. It hurts to lose because it feels so good to win. ~ David Roochnik, #NFDB
776:Without awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body. ~ Alexander Lowen, #NFDB
777:You are not copying nature, but responding to nature in full awareness, to the way nature expresses itself in that object. ~ Frederick Franck, #NFDB
778:You must constantly strive to enlarge your awareness. Naturally, if you do, you will have an uncommonly fine and happy life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
779:Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
780:Buddhism leads you to the awareness that all things are holy. Everything is holy. The dark has its own light, in other words. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
781:Each of us A cell of awareness Imperfect and incomplete Genetic blends With uncertain ends On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
782:Education, awareness and prevention are the key, but stigmatisation and exclusion from family is what makes people suffer most ~ Ralph Fiennes, #NFDB
783:Enlightenment is the ability to freely transact within the ten thousand states of mind without a continuous self or awareness ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
784:Increasing public awareness of risks of nuclear conflict is the core element of any successful nuclear-weapons-free world strategy. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
785:Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed? ~ Peter Behrens, #NFDB
786:Medieval and ancient sensibility now dominates our time as acoustic and multisensory awareness displaces the merely visual. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
787:Meditation will bring back the powers and awareness from the past; more importantly, it will expand your consciousness today. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
788:Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
789:once an experience is fully in awareness, fully accepted, then it can be coped with effectively, like any other clear reality. ~ Carl R Rogers, #NFDB
790:Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
791:The radiance of consciousness, in the form of awareness shining within & without, is the supreme and blissful primal reality. ~ Sri Ramana, #NFDB
792:There is a wonderful continuity of being, the continuous awareness of self, a sense of yourself continuing in time and space. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
793:We are creators, just like the one who created us. And we are always expressing our creativity, with or without awareness. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
794:You're a little short on self-awareness. People who are always exacting right behaviour from other people tend to be that way. ~ Joseph Hansen, #NFDB
795:Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
796:It is only thinking which seemingly reduces pure Awareness to these apparently successive stages of limitation and localisation, ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
797:Learning from your mistakes means you practice, look honestly at the results, and keep practicing. This increases your awareness. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
798:My mom was an environmental activist in Australia in the late ’60s and ’70s and I guess I’ve inherited that awareness from her. ~ Robin McLeavy, #NFDB
799:Nationalism and extremism ... are spreading today like a cancerous growth in the fabric of people's national self-awareness. ~ Raisa Gorbacheva, #NFDB
800:Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing. ~ Lawrence Bossidy, #NFDB
801:Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad. ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
802:Self-management is your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behavior positively. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
803:The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
804:The sweet spot for smart decisions, then, comes not just from being a domain expert, but also from having high self-awareness. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
805:You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
806:contradiction and messiness, the awareness that our intentions tend to go fuck themselves and our vices are right there waiting. ~ Dot Hutchison, #NFDB
807:I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. ~ Patricia Reilly Giff, #NFDB
808:Nen is mindfulness, attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as if this present moment were one’s last. ~ Peter Matthiessen, #NFDB
809:Nothing has more power to transform than awareness. When you become complete inside yourself, the worst conditions don't matter. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
810:Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. 'Know thyself' is not a narcissistic pursuit. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
811:Sense-perceptions can only be indirect knowledge, and not direct knowledge. Only one's own awareness is direct knowledge. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
812:The body breathes by itself. The mind thinks by itself. Awareness simply observes the process without getting lost in the content. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
813:triangle offense, that aligned perfectly with the values of selflessness and mindful awareness I’d been studying in Zen Buddhism. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
814:Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
815:A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
816:By steadily disciplining the animal nature, until it becomes one pointed, it is possible to establish conscious awareness of The Eternal. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
817:Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
818:If the tonal predominates, which we see now more in the world, there's no mystery - understanding of consciousness or awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
819:I've been working with the National Lung Health Education Program to raise awareness about Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. ~ Loni Anderson, #NFDB
820:My eyes were heavy, and my awareness hung on by the thinnest of threads, but I thought I heard him mutter. “I think I will keep you. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
821:One of the goals of a spiritual practice is self-awareness, and one of the best tools of self-awareness is simple emotional vulnerability. ~ Moby, #NFDB
822:The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements, as well as one's deepest failures is a definite symptom of maturity. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
823:the key to self-awareness isn’t found inside our heads; it’s in discovering and accepting how others see us—even when it hurts. ~ Robert I Sutton, #NFDB
824:We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
825:We can shift from time-bound awareness into timeless awareness . . . to the ecstasy that can only be found in the present moment. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
826:Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
827:You are walking on a street; a bird is singing, do you hear it? No? Then you are missing the life because life is awareness! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
828:Your energy and your awareness are directly connected. If your energies are intense, your awareness naturally grows and sharpens. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
829:As we enter into exquisite awareness of the life that want to live as us, we learn to love deeply. - We claim our passion. ~ Gunilla Brodde Norris, #NFDB
830:Awareness means to be in the moment so totally that there is no movement toward the past, no movement toward the future—all movement stops. ~ Osho, #NFDB
831:emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
832:Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
833:Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka, #NFDB
834:I'm a huge breast cancer awareness advocate because my mom went through breast cancer recently. It really brought our family closer. ~ Brenda Song, #NFDB
835:Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
836:Meditation is the art of life. Meditation is not simply a practice. It is an experience, awareness, and a way of perceiving life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
837:Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
838:Raising awareness, changing the marketplace, effecting spiritual change - whatever it is that you decide is your thing, go for it. ~ Stone Gossard, #NFDB
839:Repentance brings an intense desire for God, deep gratitude, and a growth in self-awareness that increases our freedom to love. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
840:The five principles of aloha, when practiced together, awaken our awareness of our human potential and the sacredness of our life. ~ Paul Pearsall, #NFDB
841:The real alchemy is transforming the base self into gold or into spiritual awareness. That's really what new alchemy's all about. ~ Fred Alan Wolf, #NFDB
842:There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
843:The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?" "I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
844:To the extent that we can cultivate an awareness of the transpersonal dimension (seen in myth) our life is enlarged and broadened. ~ Eward Edinger, #NFDB
845:We might never rid ourselves of a lingering anxiety regarding our death; this is a kind of tax we pay in return for self-awareness. ~ Derren Brown, #NFDB
846:You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
847:A deeper intimacy with God sharpens our awareness of sin, which causes a stronger need for grace and a freer offering of mercy. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner, #NFDB
848:A duration is a concrete slab of nature limited by simultaneity which is an essential factor disclosed in sense-awareness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
849:Emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
850:If you are aware, you speak with awareness. But the awareness comes from the inward being. It flows from the inner being towards others. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
851:Mental alertness is not awareness. Mental alertness only enhances your survival instincts. It does not take you towards liberation. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
852:Once you start believing that something is possible, you start to let it in to your awareness and it starts to become true to you. ~ Anita Moorjani, #NFDB
853:Spiritual awareness is not only one of the keys to the healing process. Spiritual awareness is the only way that healing can occur. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
854:The climate of this prayer is, then, one of awareness, gratitude and a totally obedient love which seeks nothing but to please God. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
855:The Zen master can see precisely what it will take to cause your awareness to become free. But the Zen master can't do it for you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
856:We need to get a broader awareness. People say climate change is really bad, but painting that picture of what you're putting at risk. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
857:We're going to raise a lot of money for cancer awareness, give some to the American Cancer Society and hopefully make a big difference. ~ LL Cool J, #NFDB
858:And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
859:A remarkable memoir that's packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
860:Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the entire path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
861:Buddhism is filled with many wonderful ideas, but it is the recognition of awareness that takes us from samara to nirvana. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
862:Commit yourself to deeper awareness. Be generous of spirit. Embrace every day as a new world. Let the timeless be in charge of time. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
863:I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
864:In higher samadhi, in absence of any support, the consciousness is absorbed within itself in perfect awareness, clarity and peacefulness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
865:In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
866:Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
867:scientific naturalism has proven incapable of accounting for a whole range of human experiences, from simple self-awareness to love. ~ James Carroll, #NFDB
868:Self-remembrance, awareness of 'I am' ripens him powerfully and speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
869:The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements - as well as one's deepest failures - is a definite symptom of maturity. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
870:There is still nothing like equality for women in jobs, in family. There's just an awareness that inequality is not acceptable. ~ Alix Kates Shulman, #NFDB
871:a person’s awareness and perspective on his or her own lifestyle are far more important than any skill at sorting, storing, or whatever. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
872:At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
873:awareness of a problem does not mean much—particularly when you have special interests and self-serving institutions in play. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
874:Compassion is all inclusive. Compassion knows no boundaries. Compassion comes with awareness, and awareness breaks all narrow territories. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
875:Damasio argues that the core of our self-awareness rests on the physical sensations that convey the inner states of the body: ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
876:Enlightenment is an ocean of awareness that slides through the human part of us and dissolves it, and leaves us forever in eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
877:I'm not the worlds biggest remake guy, meaning finding titles and saying, "Hey it's got some brand awareness, let's just make a movie." ~ Thomas Tull, #NFDB
878:I started to feel that nagging sense of shame again, an acute awareness of my own inability to share in his [my grandfather's] optimism. ~ T a Obreht, #NFDB
879:I think it is important that we all try and be green where it is possible; an awareness of the world around us can never be a bad thing. ~ Judd Gregg, #NFDB
880:That in you which recognizes madness as madness (even if it is your own) is sanity, is the arising awareness, is the end of insanity. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
881:The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you? ~ Vernor Vinge, #NFDB
882:The reason why we're not happy is because we believe consciously and subconsciously that we're separate from god, eternal awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
883:We need to understand that they were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge they had at that time. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
884:What I love about Monk’s list is his basic message about the importance of awareness, collaboration, and having clearly defined roles, ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
885:When you heed the call of your heart, you are fulfilling your life plan, even if your mind has no conscious awareness of that plan. ~ Robert Schwartz, #NFDB
886:You are living in a time when opportunities for self-empowerment, expanded awareness and spiritual growth appear to be unlimited. ~ Barbara Marciniak, #NFDB
887:You can’t gain spiritual awareness by just reading books. You have to call upon Him. The Kundalini wakes up when you yearn for God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
888:But when we observe, we are forced to pay attention. We have to move from passive absorption to active awareness. We have to engage. ~ Maria Konnikova, #NFDB
889:Great spiritual warriors look deep into the psychic chasm and, confronting their worst fears, find renewed awareness and ultimate peace. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
890:The reason why life is a sleep & dream for most people is because their awareness is caught up with past or future & not with what is. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
891:There’s no mystery to integrity. There’s no mystery to oneness. When there is a core-splitting honesty, right there, awareness knows. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
892:The wise man strives for awareness. What will happen will happen, and worry will not serve, but anticipation might provide survival. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
893:The working definition of mindfulness that my colleagues and I find most helpful is awareness of present experience with acceptance. ~ Ronald D Siegel, #NFDB
894:We all have auras. But it's much easier to see the aura of someone who is in a state of samadhi or other profound state of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
895:We do not cease to be a separate self and become the witness, and likewise we do not cease to be the witness and become pure Awareness. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
896:Acts don't mean anything. Acts do not matter--you,your awareness, your being conscious,mindful, is what matters. What you do is not the concern. ~ Osho, #NFDB
897:I have more awareness of other people and, I hope, more sensitivity to their needs. I also find that I'm more direct and outspoken. ~ Christopher Reeve, #NFDB
898:In meditation practice, we build the energy of awareness until it grows powerful enough to see entirely different levels of reality. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
899:Mindful eating is about awareness. When you eat mindfully, you slow down, pay attention to the food you’re eating, and savor every bite. ~ Susan Albers, #NFDB
900:Our job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
901:Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
902:The bones and tendons of the mind are mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness is the mind’s strength, and awareness is its flexibility. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
903:Americans deify democracy in a way that allows for a dim awareness that they have, from time to time, stood in defiance of their God. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
904:His self-awareness is frightening and exhilarating. His voice has a British lilt that’s masculine, confident, educated without being snotty. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
905:In this world we see the pairs of opposites. Ultimately there are no oppositions. In the superconscious awareness there is no division. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
906:It is very important that your career raises your awareness. If your career is lowering your personal power, then it has got to change. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
907:Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
908:The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
909:The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
~ Phillip Yancey,#NFDB
910:You're not a person. We take that form. We're an essence. We're an awareness of God's. We're made up of countless, countless realities. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
911:Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
912:"Awareness is inherently pure like the empty sky. Stress, annoyance, and anger can temporarily occupy its space but can never pollute it." ~ Haemin Sunim, #NFDB
913:Everything depends on your state of awareness. If your state of awareness is low, then all the material success in the world won't help. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
914:I turn to contemporary fiction seeking a shared awareness with the writer of the cultural moment we both occupy, its peculiar challenges. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
915:Keep a constant awareness and a conscious effort to say good words, perform good actions, and to practice patience and compassion. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
916:Responsibility means consciousness, and the shadow often tries to limit our conscious awareness, pulling us into its murky world. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, #NFDB
917:Self-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It’s the ability to question our own instincts, patterns, and assumptions. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
918:There's no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You're either present with what is--right here, right now--or you're someplace else. ~ Gay Hendricks, #NFDB
919:They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us that being imperfect means being inadequate. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
920:Time does not exist as some external, objective container, but actually time is exactly our current dynamic activity and awareness. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton, #NFDB
921:We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
922:Awareness of the sacred in life is what holds our world together, and the lack of awareness of the sacred is what is tearing it apart. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
923:Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted; then old categories of experience are called into question and revised. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
924:"Be there as the witnessing presence of your inner state. You don't have to do anything. With awareness comes transformation and freedom." ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
925:How do you know you were in samadhi? You know when your awareness returns to the plane of self and ideation that you have been beyond it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
926:If we knock on the door until it opens, not taking no for an answer, our lives will be transformed as we step up into a higher awareness. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
927:Know that people are doing the best they can from their level of awareness. Accept people for who they are and always be ready to forgive. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
928:Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
929:Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
930:The blues are just a heightened sense of awareness of life's ups and downs, and things that a guy sees after a couple hits of Jack Daniels. ~ Steven Tyler, #NFDB
931:The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning. ~ Mircea Eliade, #NFDB
932:the First Insight is an awareness of the mysterious occurrences that change one’s life, the feeling that some other process is operating. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
933:What we get from each moment depends on the attention we give it, and the quality of our experience reflects the quality of our awareness. ~ Roger N Walsh, #NFDB
934:A self-awareness moment. All of a sudden everything he has done comes flashing into his mind, a self-criticism that is unbearable. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
935:Conditioned Awareness is where we live our lives in guilt over the past and anxiety over the future and never get to experience the present. ~ Russell Targ, #NFDB
936:Everything you needed to know in the years leading up to the crash could be discerned through awareness of what was going on in the present. ~ Howard Marks, #NFDB
937:God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
938:Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness. ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
939:I suffer from a chronic nausea—after I’m with people. The awareness (after-awareness) of how programmed I am, how insincere, how frightened. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
940:Reincarnation is simply changing awareness. What you are reincarnating into are different states of mind. The whole show is on the inside. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
941:Self-awareness, then, represents an essential focus, one that attunes us to the subtle murmurs within that can help guide our way through life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
942:The awakening is when you have the awareness that you are Life. When you are aware that you are the force that is Life, anything is possible. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
943:The cancer in me became an awareness of the cancer that is everywhere. The cancer of cruelty, the cancer of carelessness, the cancer of greed. ~ Eve Ensler, #NFDB
944:Try and stop your thoughts. Be patient and then the kundalini will flow through you and bring about substantial changes in your awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
945:Watchfulness, or alertness, or awareness, or consciousness, are all different names of the same phenomenon of witnessing. That is the key word. Miss ~ Osho, #NFDB
946:What you pay attention to grows. If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
947:A monk asks:Is there anything more miraculous than the wonders of nature?The master answers:Yes, your awareness of the wonders of nature. ~ Angelus Silesius, #NFDB
948:Blindness to knowledge was his mother and despair of death his father. Darkness and fear gave birth to God. Awareness of truth will kill him. ~ C J Anderson, #NFDB
949:Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
950:Even the best computer in the world has no idea that it exists. You do. No one knows what creates that ineffable awareness that we're here. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
951:Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. . Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
952:In sanskrit they say: "Tat twam asi" - thou art that. You are God. The bubble of your awareness bursts and you're flooded with immortality. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
953:My job as a comedian is to heighten awareness about locally grown produce, fight factory farming, and promote euthanasia, but in a funny way. ~ Dov Davidoff, #NFDB
954:Our senses perceive the way they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so...because we learn what to perceive. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
955:The awareness of imagery is part of living... a life which derives its power from within itself will focus on the perception... of images. ~ Oskar Kokoschka, #NFDB
956:The radiance of that which wants to be born illuminates the shadows, bringing them into the light of awareness that they may be healed. ~ Charles Eisenstein, #NFDB
957:To be free of the discriminating is to manifest miraculous awareness-awareness that is miraculously simple, miraculously unadorned. ~ Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, #NFDB
958:You must never lose the awareness that in yourself you are nothing, you are only an instrument. An instrument is nothing until it is lifted. ~ Kathryn Hulme, #NFDB
959:Being in the moment means not being distracted by the melodrama and hysteria around you. Present-moment awareness allows solutions to emerge. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
960:Classics postures, when practiced with discrimination and awareness, bring the body, mind, and consciousness into a single, harmonious whole. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
961:Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet ~ Neil Peart,#NFDB
962:Education, or enrichment, is a dynamic, evolving, lifelong process. Every time you look, sensitively with awareness, your vision grows. ~ John Paul Caponigro, #NFDB
963:history, like nature, has its own economy, its own balancing of forces in the final accounting. Nothing can be lost, except to awareness. ~ Helen Foster Snow, #NFDB
964:If you know that most processing is below the level of awareness, you learn the value of sleep. You're brain is working on the problem anyway. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
965:I think Americans suffer for their lack of travel, awareness of the world. It has horribly warped our sense of place in the scheme of things. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
966:I think that sometimes quitting is exactly the right thing to do. Quitting something that's not working requires self-awareness and courage. ~ Glennon Melton, #NFDB
967:Miracles can only inhabit the reality of our awareness when we surrender our need for the familiar to our desire for the limitless. ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal, #NFDB
968:One keeps oneself neat out of mere decency mere sanity, awareness of other people. And finally even that goes, and one dribbles unashamed. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
969:So having a little more of an awareness of what's going on in the rest of the world I think is what many Canadians would hope for Americans. ~ Justin Trudeau, #NFDB
970:The business that leaders are in today, is the business of transforming awareness... There is deep longing for more meaning, for connections. ~ Otto Scharmer, #NFDB
971:They are denied access to the more advanced techniques of releasing the kundalini energy, which bring about quantum leaps in self-awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
972:To state this more succinctly, awareness of the body’s state influences how we organize our lives. Knowing your body strengthens your mind. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
973:Unless thinkers carry their respect for cause and effect into the field of human relations, they may not have much awareness of people. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers, #NFDB
974:When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
975:An awareness had come over him that he wasn’t going to die. Loneliness in itself could not destroy him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
976:EACH THOUGHT, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
977:Find a teacher of Tantric Zen and study with them because it is transference of awareness, a sharing of the perception of the beauty of life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
978:How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
979:I am attracted to intelligence, a witty sense of humor, an adventurous outlook on life and spiritual awareness about one's self and the world. ~ Tanit Phoenix, #NFDB
980:I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
981:I'm not big on awareness about what's going on online but usually if you do too much online stuff then you usually bump into something that hurts. ~ Alice Eve, #NFDB
982:It is possible to move to an enlightened state of mind from a lower bardo or level of awareness. It can happen, but it is extremely unlikely. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
983:Only as a child's awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
984:Raising parent awareness on how to support their students to be safe, responsible and discerning users of technology continues to be a challenge. ~ Susan Mann, #NFDB
985:Relationship management is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
986:Remember, whenever you have two things, two alternatives, choose the new one, choose the harder, choose the one in which more awareness will be needed. ~ Osho, #NFDB
987:Richard Rohr reminds us that “we cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
988:There are religions and social and moral awareness in any society that gets passed immediately. Those human truths. All cultures address them. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
989:Values-oriented foreign policy of the free world would be much better, supported by the self-awareness of being on the right side of history. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
990:What is meditation? Meditation is our conscious awareness of something vast and infinite within us. Meditation grants us Peace, Light and Bliss. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
991:Without death there would be no awareness of life, and the recurring selection and renewal that has caused life's progress would be ended. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
992:Even if you can be aware of your awareness for only a moment, in that moment you will touch the primal awareness/bliss at the core of yourself. ~ Sally Kempton, #NFDB
993:From infinite awareness, something comes forward, a sense of infinite awareness and finite awareness. That perception is the birth of a being. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
994:He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
995:Her voice was husky, sexy enough to raise his awareness of her as a female rather than a target. He’d always had a thing for voices. And nerds. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
996:Obviously the dharma is every breath we take, every thought we think, every word we speak, if we do it with awareness and an open, caring heart. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
997:The few really great-the major novelists ... are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life. ~ F R Leavis, #NFDB
998:The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind. ~ Marina Abramovic, #NFDB
999:The only authentic responsibility is towards your own potential. Values have not to be imposed on you. They should grow with your awareness, in you. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1000:The primary energy that is active in all things is kundalini. Kundalini energy is the energy of awareness. It can be used to modify awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1001:You can accept it that it may be true what somebody else says, but until you have experienced it, it is not dynamic to your own awareness. ~ Goswami Kriyananda, #NFDB
1002:Awareness of approach to death can be a beautiful thing, a frame into which we can put the work of art that is our life, our personal masterpiece. ~ June Singer, #NFDB
1003:Deep listening is experiencing heightened awareness or expanded awareness of sound and of silence, of quiet, and of sounding - making sounds. ~ Pauline Oliveros, #NFDB
1004:"Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1005:I have a very real political awareness that at least on a transient basis the more drastic action taken by the president, the more popular it is. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1006:In a very real sense, we have lost an awareness of the One whom we approach in our worship and prayer. All too often we view God as merely a friend. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1007:Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
1008:Mindfulness is a form of mental activity that trains the mind to become aware of awareness itself and to pay attention to one’s own intention. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
1009:Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1010:Owning your own feelings, rather than blaming them on someone else, is the mark of a person who has moved from contracted to expanded awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1011:The jealousy that arises from another's achievement is overcome by developing an awareness of and admiration for one's own and other's achievement. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1012:To achieve purity of mind, one should cultivate constant awareness by being mindful all the time. One should remain always aware of one's thoughts. ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
1013:When you meditate, you take charge of your life. You bring your conscious awareness to a new high point, where the vista is beyond any horizon. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1014:I'm hopeful that increased awareness of the issues in Africa will bring about a new wave of progress and activism among young people everywhere. ~ Angelina Jolie, #NFDB
1015:I really do appreciate the awareness and the hype that the fans are creating. I, myself, have become totally addicted to checking out the fan art. ~ Harald Zwart, #NFDB
1016:It was just the same as spotting the scaffolding in other writers’ books. Awareness of construction didn’t diminish her pleasure, only added to it. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1017:Mindfulness is the capacity to shine the light of awareness onto what’s going on here and now. Mindfulness is the heart of meditation practice. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1018:Nirvana isn't a physical place. It is not like going to heaven. It just means no more individualized awareness, no aggregate body of experience. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1019:Through awareness, you get a certain attitude. That's the way, you see, to achieve more peaceful, more compassion, more friendship through that way. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1020:Video can seem like just another challenge to overcome, but I see a major increase in my business and brand awareness, all from the power of video. ~ Lewis Howes, #NFDB
1021:When awareness is completely balanced, communicating with the outside world is instantaneous and automatic. It happens with the touch of thought. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1022:In stand up, you get an awareness of how you come across, but in acting there is almost a hyper-awareness on how you might be physically perceived. ~ Jim Gaffigan, #NFDB
1023:Mindful emotional regulation increases emotional awareness by reducing midline prefrontal reactivity and more sustained limbic network activation. ~ Shahida Arabi, #NFDB
1024:One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1025:Self-discovery is a process of dissolution and creation. Dissolution means envelopment in eternity. Creation is bringing into focus new awareness ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1026:The first step is to develop self-awareness by identifying when you blame external circumstances and other people for how you think, feel, and behave. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1027:A mind blocked by fear, anxiety, anger, resentment, or suffering of any kind isn't able to experience expanded awareness, much less pure awareness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1028:An awareness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground, one in which all members of the world community would take part. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, #NFDB
1029:China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it. ~ Ma Jian, #NFDB
1030:I have personally been affected by women's reproductive health issues, and I will continue to support that cause and spread awareness about it. ~ Bethany Cosentino, #NFDB
1031:I'm incredibly grateful for the time I spent with STOMP and even more so for the skills and awareness I developed as a performer during that time. ~ Nicholas Young, #NFDB
1032:Learn to overcome the imprinting that you now have and gain a new and higher imprinting that will lead you into the luminous spheres of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1033:Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think theyre fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things. ~ Benjamin Millepied, #NFDB
1034:Natural play strengthens children's self-confidence and arouses their senses-their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen. ~ Richard Louv, #NFDB
1035:The point of reading is not reading but living. Reading helps you live with greater appreciation, keener insight and heightened emotional awareness. ~ Steve Leveen, #NFDB
1036:The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
1037:There has, I fear, developed the worst of needs, the need to know, coupled reluctantly with an awareness that I probably will, in fact, never know. ~ Brian Evenson, #NFDB
1038:The second thing that always hit was the ominous quiet. The muffled, deadened version of sound that amplified awareness of body, breath, heartbeat. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
1039:To develop a more or less accurate self-image...is simply to gain a comprehensive awareness of those facets of yourself which you didn't know existed. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
1040:Usually for a movie, if you want a 13-year-old, you get a 16-year-old who looks 13, because 13-year-olds dont have that level of self-awareness. ~ Robbie Coltraine, #NFDB
1041:When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love — even the most simple action. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1042:If you take yourself to be the body and mind only, you will die! When you discover yourself as awareness, the fear of death will not trouble you any longer. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
1043:Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1044:Mindfulness is defined as nonjudgmental, investigative, kind, and responsive awareness. This sort of awareness takes intentional training of the mind. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
1045:No amount of money can buy you style. Having good style takes thought, creativity, confidence, self-awareness, even sometimes a little bit of work. ~ Sophia Amoruso, #NFDB
1046:Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
1047:People have a need to feel their pain. Very often pain is the beginning of a great deal of awareness. As an energy center it awakens consciousness. ~ Arnold Mindell, #NFDB
1048:The author says that theologian operates with windows open to the interest of the world, but also with a skylight that allows full awareness of prayer. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
1049:The biggest obstacle to increasing your self-awareness is the tendency to avoid the discomfort that comes from seeing yourself as you really are. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
1050:The heart of a person's mind can be corrupted, exploited and manipulated in order to gain power for those who don't possess the heightened awareness. ~ Laurel Dewey, #NFDB
1051:You are solidified silence, awareness. A thousand hours of speech cannot equal one glance: a hundred glances cannot equal a minute of silence ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
1052:And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
1053:He awoke. Not the instant awareness of being jolted by an alarm or the gentle rising from dozing in and out, but a gradual recognition of existence. ~ Olan Thorensen, #NFDB
1054:If I am seeing something that is blocking my awareness of love, it is an image of a false idea that I created and only forgiveness will dissolve it. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1055:If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1056:I'm just attracted to human behavior and how people sometimes never would interact with one another or be in each other's sphere of awareness. ~ Da Vine Joy Randolph, #NFDB
1057:Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still it is, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1058:Selfless giving changes our concept of our identity. When we give to others our unselfishness removes the spot of "self" that stained our awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1059:The White Ribbon Foundation is organization I support. They're bringing awareness of violence against women and I think it's important in our society. ~ Dustin Clare, #NFDB
1060:We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition, spirituality, and of physical and sensory awareness. (p.9) ~ Ken Robinson, #NFDB
1061:What worked for me won’t work for you, however, and vice versa. That’s why self-awareness is so vital—you have to be true to yourself at all times. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
1062:Your mantrum is the awareness of the dream - to enjoy and appreciate and have gratitude for all; neither to condemn nor to liberate, but to observe. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1063:But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing? ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
1064:executives must cultivate a higher level of awareness about what truly matters, drawing on recent neuroscience research to demonstrate how they can do so. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1065:If a bird is used to flying and you put in a a cage, it won't be a happy bird; It wants to fly; that's its nature. Your nature is infinite awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1066:If you're not saying 'earth is an incredible place, life is an extraordinary thing' when you look at the earth, then your awareness is very weak! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1067:Increasingly, campaigns have become narcotics that blur our awareness of problems long enough to elect the lawmakers who must deal with them. ~ Kathleen Hall Jamieson, #NFDB
1068:In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how 'pure' you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1069:Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1070:Not only is yoga excellent for flexibility, but it is also a great tool for longevity and injury prevention, as it allows for internal body awareness. ~ Kyle Shewfelt, #NFDB
1071:Researchers here in New York created a robot that actually passed a self-awareness test. So if you're keeping score, that's robots: 1, Donald Trump, 0. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
1072:The innermost core is witnessing, awareness, watchfulness. You can call it anything, but it will be another meaning of witnessing. Truth is pure awareness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1073:Whatever you choose you will repent because the other will remain and haunt you. If one needs absolute freedom then choiceless awareness is the only thing. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1074:You attract to you the predominant thoughts that you’re holding in your awareness, whether those thoughts are conscious or unconscious. That’s the rub. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1075:A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness. ~ Josh Waitzkin, #NFDB
1076:An awareness of alternatives at the early stages of learning a skill gives a conditional quality to the learning, which, again, increases mindfulness. ~ Ellen J Langer, #NFDB
1077:As a teacher you just look at someone and you transmit to them what they need to know. Not simply a thought form, but you transmit an awareness level. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1078:At the highest level of awareness, the greatest gift given and received when you give someone flowers, is the joy of living a life based on love. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1079:Birth is not the beginning of life - only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death - only the ending of this awareness. ~ Hermes Trismegistus, #NFDB
1080:Conformity is not an admirable trait. Conformity is a copout. It threatens self-awareness. It can lead groups to enforce rigid and arbitrary rules. ~ Alexandra Robbins, #NFDB
1081:Devotion is a way of being, it's not something you do. It's dedication to finding awareness and Love. Chanting is like asanas for the mind and the heart. ~ Krishna Das, #NFDB
1082:Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery. ~ Sonya Hartnett, #NFDB
1083:God is the process. The process is what I Am... You cannot not use Me... If you use Me with awareness and with intention, all things will change. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1084:Hand writing causes thinking - the repetition of writing your goal everyday will increase your awareness. The true purpose of a goal is to help you grow. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
1085:He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
1086:If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1087:It has been said that sleeping, dreaming, and meditating, or developing awareness, are the only states in which we do not sow further seeds of karma. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
1088:It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1089:It is just a wonderful, wonderful time to be alive and to be able to be part of the ever-growing spiritual awareness that is happening around the world. ~ Jon Anderson, #NFDB
1090:Psychological flexibility is the ability to adapt to a situation with awareness, openness, and focus and to take effective action, guided by your values. ~ Russ Harris, #NFDB
1091:Since extra-sensory perception (ESP) is awareness of the world beyond the senses, it would be inappropriate to term this Sixth Sense ‘extrasensory’. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1092:The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant. ~ Taisen Deshimaru, #NFDB
1093:The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness. ~ Daniel Gilbert, #NFDB
1094:There is no future and there is no past, there never has been, there never will be. You just think there is. It's not life that moves; it's awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1095:The root cause of loneliness is not the absence of another, but the absence of the awareness of our connection to our true divine selves.” —Swati Nigam ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1096:Things that are impossible - are everyday experiences when you live in advanced states of mind. You live in a world of constant miraculous awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1097:Transcendental Meditation opens the awareness to the infinite reservoir of energy, creativity, and intelligence that lies deep within everyone. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
1098:What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1099:Awareness of our problems thus does not necessarily mean that they get solved. It may just mean that we are able to perfectly anticipate where we will fail. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1100:In charity, every little bit works. You can't change the world. You can't do everything. But you sure try to bring awareness and do as much as you can. ~ Naomi Campbell, #NFDB
1101:I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things. ~ Don Cheadle, #NFDB
1102:Kundalini is seen as a serpent that can shoot up the shushumna, past the chakras, opening them all and bringing you into different states of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1103:Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1104:One way to deepen this awareness is to watch other people. Pay attention to those who love their lives and see what they do. What do they have that you don ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
1105:The appeal of the wild for me is its unpredictability. You have to develop an awareness, react fast, be resourceful and come up with a plan and act on it. ~ Bear Grylls, #NFDB
1106:The dismissal of any of these people would send a useful signal to U.S. allies that the president has the nerve - and self-awareness - to make a change. ~ Bret Stephens, #NFDB
1107:The root cause of loneliness is not the absence of another, but the absence of the awareness of our connection to our true divine selves.” — Swati Nigam ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1108:Tracking is a simple exercise. It works because it brings moment-to-moment awareness to the actions you take in the area of your life you want to improve ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1109:We must create a marriage between the awareness of the body and that of the mind. When two parties do not cooperate, there is unhappiness on both sides. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
1110:you’re a member of the human race, not a sub-group. Here, you’re a nation of the world with a global awareness, rather than a patriot of any one country. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1111:A song isn't a commercial for an album. It isn't a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains. ~ Grady Hendrix, #NFDB
1112:But to discover one’s own worldview is much more valuable. In fact, it is a significant step toward self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-understanding. ~ James W Sire, #NFDB
1113:Life is not a static phenomenon. It is a flux, a riverlike flux; it needs constant change. It needs moment-to-moment awareness; otherwise you will be left behind. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1114:Sometimes I think death is a greater awareness than life. Life gives us the illusion of immortality, whereas death gives us the certainty of immortality ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1115:There are seven primary chakras located in the subtle physical body, the body of light and energy that is our awareness and that surrounds the physical. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1116:To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one's own consciousness, and then there is complete attention. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1117:When you cause something to happen it causes a shift in your awareness. Shifts in your awareness ultimately will result in a pattern shift in your life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1118:A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
1119:Each time we bring to routine activities an awareness of 'now,' we raise our vibratory frequency and cause the freshness of the moment to fall upon us. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
1120:If we want to go further, then instead of being silently aware of whatever comes into the mind, we choose silent present-moment awareness of just one thing. ~ Ajahn Brahm, #NFDB
1121:If you can capture the humanity of a family struggling in an economic crisis you can make a difference. You can raise awareness just of the simple humanity. ~ Emily Blunt, #NFDB
1122:Progress changes consciousness, and when people's consciousness changes, then their awareness of what is possible changes as well - a virtuous circle. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1123:Self-awareness is the rarest power of all, precious and vulnerable to the highest degree, the supreme and generally fleeting achievement of a person. ~ Ernst F Schumacher, #NFDB
1124:The proof of spiritual maturity, Tolstoy contended, is not how “pure” you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1125:When you chant "Aum" or any mantra, do so softly and gently. Extend the sound. Focus your awareness on the sound of the mantra and become absorbed in it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1126:When you speak about these miracles, I laugh within Myself out of pity, that you allow yourself so easily to loose the precious awareness of My Reality. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1127:Without an awareness of our feelings we cannot experience compassion. How can we share the sufferings and the joys of others if we cannot experience our own? ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
1128:You need to search your awareness and consider the limitless possibilities of existence in all things and not be so narrow-minded in your self-discovery. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1129:You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1130:"Freedom from suffering begins with self-awareness." ~ Brian ThompsonFreedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem... J Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1131:He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, and ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
1132:It is important to have intensive blocks of time together. During our nights together there is a tremendous interchange of knowledge, power and awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1133:LIVING IN DEPENDENCE ON ME is the way to enjoy abundant life. You are learning to appreciate tough times, because they amplify your awareness of My Presence. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
1134:Meditation simply means a state of no-thought, awareness without the process of thought, just pure, mirror-like awareness, with no thoughts passing in the mind. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1135:The karma of immediate availability is the condition of your awareness field. The karma of potentiality is what is stored inside you from your past lives. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1136:The school of awareness is the school of mysticism. Mysticism is the experience of eternity, of that which lies beyond the physical phenomenal experience. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1137:When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection. ~ Agnes Martin, #NFDB
1138:Awareness creates another world - an already existing world where you were not aware of its existence! It is an operation of ‘mature cataract’ surgery! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1139:Awareness of our problems thus does not necessarily mean that they get solved. I t may just mean that we are able to perfectly anticipate where we will fall. ~ Esther Duflo, #NFDB
1140:each of us is doing the very best we can at this very moment. If we knew better, if we had more understanding and awareness, then we would do it differently. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
1141:How would he write without her? [The buried awareness of how completely her hands reached into his work; don’t look, Lotto. It’d be like looking at the sun.] ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
1142:If you are driven by fear, anger or pride nature will force you to compete. If you are guided by courage, awareness, tranquility and peace nature will serve you. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
1143:I grew up in a big movie house, we watched movies all the time, so I had an awareness at a very young age that that was a job that you could have. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead, #NFDB
1144:The awareness in an animal’s eyes is alien beyond knowledge, whereas the gaze from within the dark-glass haunted him because he nearly comprehended it. ~ William T Vollmann, #NFDB
1145:There are ten thousand aspects of your mind. Your awareness has ten thousand forms. There is something else. You have to step outside of perception itself. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1146:There is the physical mind which is mechanical but the awareness which is the essential character (dharma) of the mind is also to some extent present there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1147:The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
1148:The spiritual work builds upon awareness, increases consciousness, transforms it, merges it with the divine, and this is how to reach true spirituality in life. ~ Belsebuub, #NFDB
1149:Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you're flexible, when you're spontaneous, when you're detached, when you're easy on yourself and easy on others. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1150:Ample self-awareness is necessary for effective self-management because you can only choose how to respond to an emotion actively when you’re aware of it. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
1151:Any good person who is motivated to attain awareness of the whole truth should follow the Universal Way to calm his mind and harmonize it with all aspects of life. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1152:Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1153:Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
1154:I am hoping to be able to lend my support to a Sickle Cell charity in the near future, as I want to try and help raise money and awareness about this disease. ~ Jourdan Dunn, #NFDB
1155:If you walk with true awareness of every step, without having a goal to get anywhere, happiness will arise naturally. You don’t need to look for happiness. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1156:It had only recently been discovered that dolphins could recognize themselves in a mirror, the only other animal besides a chimp to have such self-awareness. ~ Colleen Coble, #NFDB
1157:Leaders create awareness in their followers about the great potentials they carry and how to release them for the benefit of all. Leaders are motivators, ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1158:Once you start to question your life you get to a higher level of awareness. It's like turning a light on-voila you see you have choices and choices are sacred. ~ Naomi Judd, #NFDB
1159:The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1160:The healing principle is within man himself. Man's power to heal himself, or extend his healing power to others, is measured by his awareness of God in him. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
1161:Without making any moral judgements whatsoever, one can say that self-indulgence and excessive self-preoccupation are the antithesis of genuine awareness. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
1162:As humourless a lump of dough as ever held a torchlight vigil outside the South African Embassy or stuck an AIDS awareness ribbon on an unwilling first-nighter. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1163:But consciousness (alternately referred to as “awareness”) seems to be one of those things that although we know it when we see it, it’s impossible to define. ~ Robert Kroese, #NFDB
1164:For the more words I had for things, the better I could frame my thoughts, the more vivid my thoughts became. Awareness deepened, consciousness sharpened. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
1165:Generally, when a leader struggles, the root cause behind the problem is that the leader has leaned too far in one direction and steered off course. Awareness ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
1166:I suppose that anyone with even a little bit of self-awareness will eventually feel like a complete hypocrite in the company of children, and this was my time. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1167:What you seek, you already are. Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source and realize who you are. Seeking ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1168:When the music created by the sounds and ordering of the words matches the thrust of the meanings of the words, then a radiant state of awareness can occur. ~ Pattiann Rogers, #NFDB
1169:Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1170:Your state of mind dominates your awareness to such an extent that you can't conceive of any other state of mind other than the state of mind that you're in. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1171:Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1172:Harnessing the unique sex energy that can only arise through sexual expression can awaken multidimensional awareness and provide you with your desired goal. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1173:Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment. —Thomas Mann, The Beloved Returns ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1174:I think Destiny's purpose is merely to shock us at moments into a state of awareness; those moments are milestones in between which we have to find our own way. ~ Attia Hosain, #NFDB
1175:I think we need that self-awareness. That we don’t have time because it’s convenient not to have the time, because maybe we don’t want to challenge ourselves. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1176:Mercy begins with a deep awareness of one’s own need for it. Whereas Alinsky first sees injustice in others, the man of mercy first sees sin within himself. ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
1177:Powerful people affect many others and if I can in some way contribute to their awareness, they will put out better energy to millions and millions of people. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1178:So if it appears that my argument supports the necessity of lawyers, please accept that I say it with reluctant awareness that things would be worse without them. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
1179:understand what Ernest Becker meant when he said something like ‘To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything, ~ Calvin Trillin, #NFDB
1180:We see and understand more about our behaviors. We come aware. And aware. And aware. . . Often, we feel uncertain about what to do with all this awareness. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
1181:You don’t trust anyone. Except yourself, and that’s not trust, that’s ego.”
“Not ego. Awareness of my abilities. And the limitless nature of them. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
1182:Denial is pushing something out of your awareness. Anything you hide in the basement has a way of burrowing under the house and showing up on the front lawn. ~ Howard Sasportas, #NFDB
1183:Every time you find your attention captured by a poster, your awareness, and perhaps something more, has, if only for a moment, been appropriated without your consent. ~ Tim Wu, #NFDB
1184:For me, honestly, I'm an actor. There's one thing I know how to do - act. And that's all I know how to do. Through our work, [actors] can trigger awareness. ~ Wilmer Valderrama, #NFDB
1185:I don't have any talent as an artist but I do have an awareness for business and what you need to bring to that world. It helps to know what you're good at. ~ Bernie Ecclestone, #NFDB
1186:I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
1187:It is possible to refine awareness itself so much that the emptiness of things, and the role mental construction plays, becomes a directly apprehended reality. ~ Jay Michaelson, #NFDB
1188:Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness as long as he has not found his feet in the universe. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1189:Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1190:our divine origin is spiritual love. Love is the source of all of our power, of everything we need and desire. To block love's awareness is to block everything. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
1191:The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members' awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
1192:Why is it that no neurons other than those in a brain are capable of giving the owner of that brain a qualitative, subjective sensation—an inner awareness? ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
1193:Your karma is the sum total of your awareness field. Your awareness field is comprised of all the experiences that you've had in this life and all other lives. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1194:Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That's secondary. Your true evolution is to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1195:You should be drawing awareness from a deeper part of your being. Your deeper mind has everything already. It knows everything already. It has all the answers. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1196:Conscious and unconscious experiences do not belong to different compartments of the mind; they form a continuous scale of gradations, of degrees of awareness. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1197:Environmental issues are on everyone's mind. It's part of our culture now and I can only applaud and laud anyone who is doing what they can and raising awareness. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
1198:Freedom is the awareness of alternatives and of the ability to choose. It is contingent upon consciousness, and so may be gained or lost, extended or diminished. ~ Allen Wheelis, #NFDB
1199:Happiness should be something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness - awareness, responsiveness, to everything in life - to man, to nature. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1200:Let the inner god that is in each one of us speak. The temple is your body, and the priest is your heart: it is from here that every awareness must begin. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, #NFDB
1201:Meditation erases conditioning. It allows a person to channel the kundalini energy through their subtle physical body and reach enlightened states of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1202:Perhaps one day you'll look in the mirror and realize, the person you see appearing in awareness is actually awareness itself - momentarily appearing as a person. ~ Matthew Kahn, #NFDB
1203:We are not really separate beings of light. That's a dream we are having, the dream of multiplicity. Meditation takes us beyond the moment to eternal awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1204:Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal. ~ Steve Carell, #NFDB
1205:Bring awareness to the many subtle sounds of nature - The rustling of leaves in the wind, Raindrops falling, The humming of an insect, The first birdsong at dawn. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1206:Enlightenment means having no human mind, no limitations. Your awareness is eternity, timeless, infinite, beyond boundaries, and yet it exists within all things. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1207:For experiences and information to be integrated into our lives as true awareness, they have to be received with open hands, inquisitive minds, and wondering hearts. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1208:Lerner outlines the various ways in which constant pretense and lying alienate women from their true feelings, how it leads to depression and loss of self-awareness. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1209:Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1210:Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1211:Only the ego can fear, experience hate, lust and jealousy. Humility experiences none of these things - it merges into the transcendental awareness of perfection. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1212:So, those who hate, those who are violent in nature, live in a world of hate and fear and violence inside themselves, inside their minds, inside their awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1213:The second stage of meditation begins when you can successfully stop thought for long periods of time. At this point you move beyond the awareness of this world. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1214:According to Vedic scriptures, God does not ‘create’ this world. He simply made all creatures aware of it. Awareness leads to discovery. Discovery is creation. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1215:Awareness, I take to be one aspect-the passive aspect-of the phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness has an active aspect also, namely the feeling of free will. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
1216:I believe that the camera has aided animal welfare by giving a platform and a vision [for bringing] awareness to the most important animal-welfare issues worldwide. ~ Katie Cleary, #NFDB
1217:Lo! This is self-awareness! It surpasses all avenues of speech and thought.
I, Tilopa, have nothing to reveal. You should know it yourself through inward examination. ~ Tilopa,#NFDB
1218:Our fear of failing at various tasks would likely be much less were it not for our awareness of how harshly failure tends to be viewed and interpreted by others. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1219:Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists—it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1220:The author I wish I was reading right now and always is Nora Ephron. I love the humor, the awareness, the sense of self-deprecation. She is such a role model to me. ~ Garance Dore, #NFDB
1221:The awareness of a spiritual tradition that reaches through the centuries gives one a certain feeling of security in the face of all transitory difficulties. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1222:The good news is that . . . humans are gifted by the potential for self-awareness and intelligent choice, and knowing our circumstance is an invitation to change. ~ William E Rees, #NFDB
1223:The mind may accept or deny that you are awareness, but either way it can’t really understand. It cannot comprehend. Thought cannot comprehend what is beyond thought. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
1224:There is a huge shift taking place in the global awareness in the last 5 years with strong views about globalization and the power structures of major corporations. ~ David Korten, #NFDB
1225:This awareness instills a fierce desire to protect that heritage and - in doing so - to educate Americans in the meaning and importance of our pivotal documents. ~ Allen Weinstein, #NFDB
1226:What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1227:[Buddhism] takes us beyond a kind of self-centered narcissism because instead of identifying with the content of our experience, we identify with awareness itself. ~ Charlotte Kasl, #NFDB
1228:Greater self-awareness...doesn't make a species happier, pal. If it did, we'd have fewer psychiatrists and barrooms than you dogs have - and it's not that way, is it? ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1229:I love riding, even if it's just my Vespa. You just zip and do your thing. I find there's a different awareness when I ride; it connects me to my senses and to God. ~ Queen Latifah, #NFDB
1230:Incorporating an awareness of style in the paintings gives them a kind of electricity and holds them together. It can plug you into the moment at which they were made. ~ Rob Pruitt, #NFDB
1231:Infinity lies beyond human vision and it is possible to communicate with these other realities which have a far more advanced awareness than humans are allowed to have ~ David Icke, #NFDB
1232:It's so important to raise awareness of this problem that continues to affect 1 in 4 women at some point in their lifetime, regardless of career, wealth or background. ~ Anna Friel, #NFDB
1233:It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included. ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
1234:No rest for me anywhere. No rest from writing, awareness, insights, memories, fantasies, analogies, free associations. Writing becomes imperative for a surcharged head. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1235:Raising awareness about the Deaf culture is a huge cause that I advocate. Because both of my parents are deaf, I am passionate about it in an entirely different way. ~ Grace Gealey, #NFDB
1236:Salvation, therefore, is not a transaction that takes place outside us, but rather an empowering awareness that explodes within and then pervades our entire being. ~ Paul F Knitter, #NFDB
1237:Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you're going to start crying at inappropriate time. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1238:Simply bringing awareness to the process of breathing initiates the release of peptide molecules from the hindbrain to regulate breathing while unifying all systems. ~ Candace Pert, #NFDB
1239:Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results. ~ Hakim Bey, #NFDB
1240:The key to living a productive Christian life is not waking up every day trying to be loved by God, but waking up in the awareness that you are already his beloved ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
1241:There is no greater defence against the grim, uncompromising wasteland of the late capitalist world than the unshakeable awareness that it will end and you will not. ~ Gordon White, #NFDB
1242:There's a resonance inside us, a sense of who we are. We're a multi-bodied traveler. We're an essence. We're a feeling, an awareness that has an ancient existence. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1243:This shows up as symptoms of alexithymia (the inability to describe or elaborate feelings due to a deficiency in emotional awareness), depression and somatization. ~ Peter A Levine, #NFDB
1244:We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future. ~ Thomas Traherne, #NFDB
1245:You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1246:As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1247:As you meditate, you will find that consciousness itself will move you beyond time and space and condition into a larger, vaster, more beautiful state of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1248:Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person--it only adds the burden of panic ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
1249:Don't hurry anything. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about what progress you're making. Just be entirely content to be aware of what is. ~ Alan Watts#alanwatts #awareness, #NFDB
1250:he carried with him, obscured by only the lightest of veils, the awareness that a door was open and that one quick step could carry him to freedom whenever he chose. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1251:Imagine for a moment that you were God. Not God as a man or woman, but God as the awareness of all life. To be that in physical form is to be an enlightened person. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1252:It seems to me that the students are now half-awake enough to try and wake up their brother workers. If you don't pass on your own awareness then it closes down again. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
1253:Keep always this awareness of my constant loving presence and all will be all right.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, The Mother, Relations with Others, 'I am with You', [T1],#NFDB
1254:Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
1255:Mindfulness means to be present, in the moment, undistracted. It implies resting the mind in its natural state of awareness, which is free of any bias or judgment. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
1256:No one can bring you into higher states of attention permanently. I can take an individual and i can change their awareness. That's easy. But how long will it last? ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1257:Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1258:The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness are without end. There is nothing independent. All beings and things are residents in your awareness. ~ Alex Grey, #NFDB
1259:The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are—the awareness, the Self, the Atman, the Soul. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1260:With your reorientation as awareness, difficulty calls upon your resources - not first the resources that you're familiar with, but the resources of your own being. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
1261:Yoga should not be just an exercise, but a means to connect with the world and with nature. It should bring a change in our lifestyle and create awareness within us. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1262:You are not anyone or anything in particular. You are awareness itself. You don't have a particular form. You contain everything or you are contained by all things. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1263:A]s self-awareness and the sense of individual self-determination increase, human consciousness becomes progressively more distant from its instinctual foundations. ~ Keiron le Grice, #NFDB
1264:Everyone lives bound by their own knowledge and awareness. They define that as reality; but knowledge and awareness are vage, and perhaps better called illusions. ~ Masashi Kishimoto, #NFDB
1265:For me this book was a very practical explanation of one man's experience of Enlightened awareness in in the face of or in light of dogma-oriented wisdom. ~ Janwillem van de Wetering, #NFDB
1266:Intelligence once meant more than what any artificial intelligence does. It used to include sensibility, sensitivity, awareness, discernment, reason, acumen, and wit. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
1267:I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings. ~ Daniel Libeskind, #NFDB
1268:Making every desire come true is not difficult once you realize that the same thing is always at work - you are transforming pure awareness from one state to another. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1269:One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1270:Quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times, a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own. ~ Margaret Wise Brown, #NFDB
1271:The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1272:The real honesty is a responsibility to the present moment. It needs tremendous awareness. You have to be honest to the present moment, not to the past, not to the future. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1273:You are new at every moment. You are an extension of the previous moment of your awareness. You can radically change, if you unhook yourself from what you have been. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1274:As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1275:“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” ~ Eckhart Tolle (b. 1948) a spiritual teacher, a German-born resident of Canada best known as the author of “The Power of Now,” Wikipedia, #NFDB
1276:Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just…awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don ~ Julia Heaberlin, #NFDB
1277:If you bring five percent more awareness to your work tomorrow, or to your most important relationship, what might you do differently? Are you willing to find out? ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
1278:In this there are no options, just response, awareness responding to knowing. All the way in and all the way out. This isn’t of the earth - this is of the everything. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
1279:Once you arrive {at a spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness}, remember: it isn't necessary to struggle to maintain unity with it. All you have to do is participate in it. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1280:The one thing that remains the same throughout the day is that your thinking dictates the way you feel. In the absence of awareness, the realm of thought takes over. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
1281:We need courageous women who are rising with full awareness of who came before us, who is alongside of us, who is missing from among us, and who is coming up behind us. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
1282:Enlightenment does not put an end to awareness. It puts an end to limited awareness. It doesn't necessarily put an end to incarnation. It puts an end to reincarnation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1283:I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness. ~ Edna O Brien, #NFDB
1284:In awareness there is no becoming, there is no end to be gained. There is silent observation without choice and condemnation, from which there comes understanding. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1285:It's interesting that in those countries like Taiwan or Korea, where nuns are given equal opportunities for study and practice, they also develop great social awareness. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
1286:No matter what your spiritual condition is, no matter where you find yourself in the universe, your choice is always the same: to expand your awareness or contract it. ~ Thaddeus Golas, #NFDB
1287:Revival begins here: with a profound awareness of God's absolute holiness, our absolute sinfulness, and our complete inability to bridge the divide that separates us. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
1288:Step by step, let whatever happens happen. Real change will come when it is brought about, not by your ego, but by reality. Awareness releases reality to change you. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
1289:The history of government has been defined by two arcs: the development of our capacity to tolerate theft, and our awareness that we deserve to live without being robbed. ~ Adam Kokesh, #NFDB
1290:The Presence of the demon keeps the chakra from doing its job, but that challenge also forces us to bring more awareness to that job, so eventually we can do it better. ~ Anodea Judith, #NFDB
1291:This is a society, a world, a planet dying because there is not enough consciousness, because there is not enough awareness, enough coordination of intent-to-problem. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1292:When you, awareness, are mastered by the deepest that you know the truth of, then you are no longer awareness. You are oneness aware mastering your self and your life. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
1293:When you have trouble sleeping, follow your breathing in and breathing out. Bring your awareness to the different parts of your body in turn, and allow them to relax. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1294:Happiness has to do with how quickly you vibrate, how intelligent you are, how subtle your awareness field is, how deep you are, how aware of your eternal part you are. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1295:In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
1296:I recently formed a foundation to raise awareness for prostate cancer. I feel it's very necessary that men be more aware about prostate cancer and their health in general. ~ Herbie Mann, #NFDB
1297:Maybe that is the purest and most radical kind of religion – simple attention. Present-moment awareness. Instead of a belief system, awareness sees through all beliefs. ~ Joan Tollifson, #NFDB
1298:Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you-in your body, heart and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgment. ~ Jan Chozen Bays, #NFDB
1299:Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1300:Spiritual awareness must be brought into our daily life if we are to become receptive to the radiance of that Consciousness that is pulsing with divine vibrations. ~ Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, #NFDB
1301:The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are—the awareness, the Self, the Atman, the Soul. You ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1302:The only event in the history of our species that compares with this one is Genesis. And this is a new kind of Genesis, the Genesis of our species into conscious awareness. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
1303:To me, it is a process, a process that starts with raising awareness, engaging international partners on this issue, and being committed to a different course of action. ~ Alexis Herman, #NFDB
1304:To see a spiderweb was a matter of awareness. You noticed that you shared a space with the creature. You had a choice to leave it alone, destroy it, or engage with it. ~ Ronlyn Domingue, #NFDB
1305:When you focus on just one thing at a time, without rushing or procrastinating, you cultivate a sense of timeless awareness that creates feelings of calm and well-being. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1306:Yoga is a removal of the conscious awareness from the world as you know it - the world that you've constructed - through your focus within your mind, to something else. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1307:A scientist is someone who lives immersed in the awareness of our deep ignorance, in direct contact with our own innumerable limits, with the limits of our understanding. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
1308:Briefly, the same powers of awareness that allow us to construct mental models of reality also allow us to see that they are mental models, and not reality itself. ~ Christopher D Wallis, #NFDB
1309:Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just…awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don’t. ~ Julia Heaberlin, #NFDB
1310:I knew exactly why I shouldn’t be her friend. This was no mere attraction. What I suffered from was total, debilitating awareness. Every freaking inch of me tuned in to her. ~ Linda Kage, #NFDB
1311:In some of the countries, women are not allowed to even leave the house. And that's something that needs to change. So, raising awareness among both sexes is key to that. ~ Juliet Aubrey, #NFDB
1312:Mysticism is concerned primarily with moving our awareness field from the beginning of the band of perception, the human band, up to the enlightened bands of perception. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1313:Nature is a big influence on my work. That's where the cosmic element comes in, an awareness of the relevance of what we do as a species, why we do it, and its implications. ~ Tim Lebbon, #NFDB
1314:Resistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically connected to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of our dehumanized industrial civilization. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1315:Serving the emerging whole means paying attention to what's right here within my awareness, what's completely local, and surrendering to what's being asked of me now. ~ Betty Sue Flowers, #NFDB
1316:the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (Kabat-Zinn, ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
1317:The core power of tai chi begins with awareness. Our stance is the posture of infinity: not tense but relaxed and upright, expectant. From this nothingness, all things begin. ~ Jean Kwok, #NFDB
1318:The drug ketamine, used as a 'dissociative' anesthetic, can produce subjective reports of conscious awareness outside the body, as can various other psychoactive drugs. ~ Stuart Hameroff, #NFDB
1319:The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1320:The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing it against a time of need, then suddenly it bursts into awareness, which men call inspiration or second sight or a gift. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
1321:Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1322:Your choices are really very limited. They are limited by your level of awareness. If you can change your level of awareness radically, then you can change your destiny. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1323:Aren't you scared?
Of course I am...But whatever happens...It can't be worse than what's happening now...but awareness and action, she also knew, were very different things. ~ Etaf Rum,#NFDB
1324:But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
1325:Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
1326:From a Tantric perspective, the inner masculine—Shiva—is the source of consciousness, awareness. But in order to act, to stir, he must take energy from the inner feminine. ~ Sally Kempton, #NFDB
1327:Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times. Let’s ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1328:the more technological the world becomes, the more essential will be the demand for individual freedom and the self-awareness of the human being as a counterpoise to technology. ~ Various, #NFDB
1329:You are not the feelings or the thoughts or the contents of your awareness. None of these are who you are. You are the fullness of your Being, the substance of your presence. ~ A H Almaas, #NFDB
1330:A short time after tidying, their space is a disorganized mess. The cause is not lack of skills but rather lack of awareness and the inability to make tidying a regular habit. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1331:Ask any expert what is your single best self-defense strategy and they tell you: situational awareness (Davis, 2015). Situational awareness should be practiced all the time. ~ Massad Ayoob, #NFDB
1332:Given the brief - and generally misleading - exposure most people have to mathematics at school, raising the public awareness of mathematics will always be an uphill battle. ~ Keith Devlin, #NFDB
1333:I love raising awareness and encouraging people to take action for World Environment Day, because it demonstrates how individual voices can become a global chorus for change. ~ Li Bingbing, #NFDB
1334:I'm a pretty private person. I'm not "out there" out there. From living in New York City, I developed a certain awareness that you have to have when you live by yourself. ~ Brooklyn Sudano, #NFDB
1335:It was a process of giving up control, of stepping back, learning how to focus the attention in a passive way, while simply resting the mind in its own natural awareness. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
1336:Look at a tree, a flower. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.” —Eckhart Tolle ~ Bathroom Readers Institute, #NFDB
1337:the relentless touring and endless repetition of the same songs over and over again promoted a creeping awareness that my music had begun to sound like my washing machine. ~ Linda Ronstadt, #NFDB
1338:The Warrior traditions all affirm that, in addition to training, what enables a Warrior to reach clarity of thought is living with the awareness of his own imminent death. ~ Robert L Moore, #NFDB
1339:We live inside our mind. That's all there is. Everything that you experience is not external, it's internal. All your experiences are predicated upon your awareness field. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1340:What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
1341:When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking.
It is a different dimension of consciousness. It is that awareness that says "I AM ~ Eckhart Tolle,#NFDB
1342:When you eneter into samadhi and seek to make that magical walk between salvikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi, it's necessary to focus your awareness not on being or nonbeing. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1343:When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of nonduality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of nonduality, all separation ceases. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
1344:You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
1345:Awareness means you come with an inner light, you move fully alert. Each step is taken in awareness - the walking, the coming, the sitting - everything is done in full awareness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1346:Believing that Sibel was saying these things to me to make me angry, I got angry. But this is not to say that the fury owed nothing to my partial awareness that she was right. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
1347:Beneath his cheerful and friendly manner there peeked every now and then a condescension, an awareness that he had a lot and others had less. And somehow that made them less. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1348:Hence the sacred attitude is one which does not recoil from our own inner emptiness, but rather penetrates into it with awe and reverence, and with the awareness of mystery. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1349:In Tantric Zen, career, relationships, the type of insurance you have - all things are part of your evolution, your awareness, your experience of the suchness of existence. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1350:Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
1351:My own overall judgment is that NT authors display varying degrees of awareness of literary contexts, as well as perhaps historical contexts, although the former is predominant. ~ G K Beale, #NFDB
1352:One aspect of power is to bring our past-life awareness into this lifetime. The second aspect of power is to go into new fields of awareness that we have never experienced. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1353:Only when a man makes use of his power of self-awareness does he attain to the level of a person, to the level of freedom. At that moment he is living, not being lived. ~ Ernst F Schumacher, #NFDB
1354:There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
1355:To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
1356:To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1357:To hell with everything" — if these words have been uttered, even only once, coldly, with complete awareness of what they mean, history is justified and, with it, all of us. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1358:We raise awareness and drop information about access and laws into pop culture spaces through making videos and through live events. That's like fifty percent of what we do. ~ Lizz Winstead, #NFDB
1359:Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them—open up to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet: don’t just look at it—dig in! ~ Rick Hanson, #NFDB
1360:When I let go of the identification with the body, then I open myself to the unbounded awareness of pure Self. This is the domain of bliss, of real fulfillment in life. ~ Janet Bray Attwood, #NFDB
1361:When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
1362:When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1363:You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
1364:You can live in the world and have all the myriad experiences that life has to offer and yoke your awareness field to the planes of light, and eventually to nirvana itself. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1365:And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
1366:As you take steps to expand your awareness, you will naturally find yourself harnessing your mind's infinite power to create greater health, happiness, and love in your life. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1367:don't just describe an emotion, arouse it, make them experience it, by manipulating the symbol of the emotion, and sometimes we have to come into awareness through the back door. ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
1368:Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
1369:Focus your awareness on the heart chakra. As you do, you will feel your consciousness shifting. You may feel different perceptions of energy in different parts of your body. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1370:Greater self-awareness,” he’d told Rocky on a night when sleep wouldn’t come, “doesn’t make a species any happier, pal. If it did, we’d have fewer psychiatrists and barrooms... ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1371:have the conversations that lead to intimacy, to awareness, and to a deep and meaningful understanding of one another—the ways you’re the same and the ways you’re different. ~ John M Gottman, #NFDB
1372:I think there is a place where self-awareness becomes self-preoccupation if you don't take what you have discovered and bring it to bear on the conditions of the world. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1373:It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. ~ Paulo Freire, #NFDB
1374:One of the most important accomplishments of the Caucus is raising awareness with law enforcement and communities nationwide on the issues of child safety and Internet safety. ~ Nick Lampson, #NFDB
1375:Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word "art". If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1376:The shorter we think our lives will be, the more likely we are to do things that are meaningful and give us pleasure. Awareness of death catapults us toward joy and reflection. ~ Mary Pipher, #NFDB
1377:We know for certain that it is the soul which has sensory awareness, and not the body… It is the soul which sees, not the eye. —FROM RENÉ DESCARTES, LA DIOPTRIQUE (1637) When ~ Ian Tregillis, #NFDB
1378:When all of the selves have been dissolved, you will enter into the super-conscious awareness. Then, you are free. Then, there is no suffering. Then, there is no attachment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1379:At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
1380:Captain, Cardassians come into this life with an awareness of their protected perimeters—what the doctor calls our ‘reptilian brain dominance’—and die defending them.” The ~ Andrew J Robinson, #NFDB
1381:Education is not acquisition of burdensome information regarding objects and men. It is the awareness of the immortal spirit within,, which is the spring of joy, peace and courage. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
1382:Every society by its own practice of living and by the mode of relatedness, of feelings, and perceiving, develops a system of categories which determines the forms of awareness. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1383:Fear and guilt are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Do not confuse one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1384:If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48) ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
1385:The fish only knows that it lives in the water, after it is already on the river bank. Without our awareness of another world out there, it would never occur to us to change. ~ Prince William, #NFDB
1386:The mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe that when you push off with your foot, a thousand new roads become clear, as you yourself do at dawn, sailing through the light. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1387:The most decisive event in your life is when you discover you are not your thoughts or emotions. Instead, you can be present as the awareness behind the thoughts and emotions. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1388:The rewards had to come from the joy of puzzling out the work itself, and from the private awareness I held that I had chosen a devotional path and I was being true to it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1389:We explained how we use S/M to explore our darkness, illuminate it with our clear awareness, and reclaim forbidden territory as psychological healing, a way of becoming whole. ~ Dossie Easton, #NFDB
1390:When you prepare a meal with artful awareness, it’s delicious and healthy. You have put your mindfulness, love, and care into the meal, then people will be eating your love. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1391:Feminism is just like HIV awareness: It's not something we don't need anymore, it's something that is just as important as it was a few decades ago. It is a very important fight. ~ Carla Bruni, #NFDB
1392:I am not bemoaning a diminishing awareness of references, but it's easier than ever to be divorced from both provenance an predecessors, to essentially be a cultural tease. ~ Carrie Brownstein, #NFDB
1393:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. Even I, your teacher, have made it. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1394:In 1948, television was introduced, and millions and millions of people lead larval, low-awareness, warehoused lives mainlining an electronic drug straight into their brains. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1395:In an ideal world, entertainment would be regarded as what it is - entertainment - and wouldn't be valued more heavily than education, than science, than environmental awareness. ~ Chris Kluwe, #NFDB
1396:Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1397:Mindfulness, as defined by the Buddha, means awareness of incessant change, of arising and vanishing, inside of your own body, which is the ultimate reality of your own life. ~ Paul Fleischman, #NFDB
1398:Past life knowledge is not the wedding album of existence. Past life remembrance in Buddhism is the ability to bring a greater awareness we had in another life into this life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1399:the left hemisphere is responsible for sequence, logic, speech, analysis and numeracy; while the right is involved with imagination, colour, rhythm, dimension and spatial awareness ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1400:The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1401:When we return continually to the present moment and our centered awareness within it, we remember we are eternally connected to the Supreme Source that lives within us. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon, #NFDB
1402:When you feel tired or irritated, you can lie down with your arms at your sides, allowing all your muscles to relax, maintaining awareness of just your breath and your smile. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1403:A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed. ~ Stanley Kunitz, #NFDB
1404:Do not give up when touching the Door of Awareness, you meet its Mindfulness Magic, but let it open wide giving your family a possibility to Create Reality of Your Dreams. ~ Nata a Nuit Pantovi, #NFDB
1405:It is not special to be enlightened, just different. An enlightened person is someone who has dedicated not just this lifetime but thousands of lifetimes to becoming awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1406:Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1407:Poetry exists partly to undermine the certainties of an accepted intellectual system, by opening a fissure of awareness at which the reality of the unconquered world may enter. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB
1408:Prayer power is real. By putting it into action, we will be able to stay more constantly in higher awareness than ever before. If we can do that, the world will quickly change. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
1409:Resistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically connected to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of our dehumanized industrial civilization. Freud, ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1410:Self-awareness is one of the rarest of human commodities. I don't mean self-consciousn ess where you're limiting and evaluating yourself. I mean being aware of your own patterns. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1411:The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1412:The difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1413:the left hemisphere is responsible for sequence, logic, speech, analysis and numeracy; while the right is involved with imagination, colour, rhythm, dimension and spatial awareness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1414:There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1415:There is the experience of enlightenment, to be very aware of what lies beyond the boundaries of cognitive perception, reflection and self-awareness as seen by the personality. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1416:What I'm interested in is happiness with a full awareness of the tragedy of life, the potential tragedy that lurks around every corner and the tragedy that actually is life. ~ Wolfgang Tillmans, #NFDB
1417:A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal. ~ Andrew Cohen, #NFDB
1418:As we've focused more on our food and where it comes from, people now have greater awareness of what's being put onto our food, pesticides, labeling issues, and consumer health. ~ Dolores Huerta, #NFDB
1419:Awareness is not the same as thinking. It is a complementary form of intelligence, a way of knowing that is at least as wonderful and as powerful, if not more so, than thinking. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1420:Dissolving the name is awareness. Dissolving the form is meditation. The world is name and form. Bliss transcends name and form. Bangalore Ashram, India September 24, 1997 ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
1421:I do this work for the common people and part of that work is creating a general awareness of such problems as they exist because my work is beyond class, religion and creed. ~ Abdul Sattar Edhi, #NFDB
1422:meditation is not supposed to be the fabrication or the reinforcement of some particular state, but simply the cultivation of the awareness of whatever is arising in the mind. ~ Thrangu Rinpoche, #NFDB
1423:The naïve girl in me had been bitch-slapped into womanhood. I’d been razed by pain, grief, loss and suffering, and honed by lust, rage and an acute awareness of my need to survive. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
1424:There are very few joys in life greater than spontaneity. Spontaneity means to be in the moment; it means acting out of your awareness, not acting according to your old conditionings. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1425:To sum up once more: Awareness, will, practice, tolerance of fear and of new experience, they are all necessary if transformation of the individual is to succeed. ~ Erich Fromm, The Art of Being, #NFDB
1426:When this uneasy feeling forms, in a context of awareness, the person is thereby already living beyond the problem, already living in and toward what would be right for her. ~ Ann Weiser Cornell, #NFDB
1427:Whether we are in the city, the countryside, or the wilderness, we need to sustain ourselves by choosing our surroundings carefully and nourishing our awareness in each moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1428:Yoga teaches us both to let go and to have exquisite awareness in every moment. We remember our essential spiritual nature and life becomes more joyful, meaningful, and carefree. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1429:If you pay attention to when you are hungry, what your body wants, what you are eating, when you've had enough, you end the obsession because obsession and awareness cannot coexist. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
1430:No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, #NFDB
1431:Often we tell ourselves, "Don't just sit there, do something!" But when we practice awareness, we discover that the opposite may be more helpful: "Don't just do something, sit there!" ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1432:The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
1433:Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
1434:With young people you have to try to impart a sense of responsibility. If they can add greater awareness to their energy and their talents they can be rewarded with great careers. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
1435:Awareness is becoming acquainted with environment, no matter where one happens to be. Man does not suddenly become aware or infused with wonder; it is something we are born with. ~ Sigurd F Olson, #NFDB
1436:I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself. ~ Joe, #NFDB
1437:If you hold this feeling of ‘I’ long enough and strongly enough, the false ‘I’ will vanish leaving only the unbroken awareness of the real, immanent ‘I’, consciousness itself ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1438:My favorite, and the author I wish I was reading right now and always is Nora Ephron. I love the humor, the awareness, the sense of self-deprecation. She is such a role model to me. ~ Garance Dore, #NFDB
1439:People who grow up in a region doubtless have a better cultural awareness of their own cuisine, but it's also true that a lot of locals go to McDonald's, Applebee's and the like. ~ Nathan Myhrvold, #NFDB
1440:Power is the active force in life. It is the force that makes awareness. The general term for spiritual power is kundalini. Kundalini is the energy of life that creates awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1441:Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word "art". If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1442:Such a person, the Upanishads stress, can actually shed the body voluntarily when the hour of death arrives, by withdrawing consciousness step by step in full awareness. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
1443:Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised - when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1444:When you see that you are not the body, that the body comprises only a small fraction of the aggregate of your awareness, then death is no fear, life is no fear, there is no fear. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1445:Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1446:Enlightenment is the culmination of self-knowledge, pure unadulterated knowledge. Not knowledge you can get from reading a book, it comes from perfecting your awareness, your mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1447:I saw a mouth that was at once intelligent, animal, and soft . . . strange mixture—a human man, sensitively aware of everything—I love awareness—a man, I told you, whom life made drunk. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1448:Meditation cannot be purchased and no one can give it to you. You have to achieve it. It is not something outer, it is something inner, a growth, and that growth comes through awareness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1449:start developing self-awareness by setting boundaries for how and when we use our technology, and then checking in with our intentions when we feel compelled to use it differently. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1450:The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
1451:This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
1452:1.If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1453:Most people want to make maximum money for minimum work, and that does not result in a happy life. Work does not become an active force to advance your awareness into higher states. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1454:Our firm conviction that ours is a just cause and that we must find a peaceful way to attain our goals gave us the strength and the awareness of the limits beyond which we must not go. ~ Lech Walesa, #NFDB
1455:The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
1456:This moment of dawning is called taqwa - God-consciousness, and ihsan - awareness. Suddenly you know that God can see you and knows you, even if you do not know or see Him. ~ Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, #NFDB
1457:Those who are highly evolved, maintain an undiscriminating perception. Seeing everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of the Great Oneness. Thus they are supported by it. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1458:AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
1459:An evolved Goddess is someone who has a conscious comprehension and awareness to life, a beauty in their mindful nature, and is a role model who seeks to drive forward conscious change. ~ Emma Mildon, #NFDB
1460:Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness–we feel as if we're missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but now painfully gone. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1461:If you are fortunate enough to meet such a being then you will really learn selfless giving. You'll see that every second, every moment of their awareness is directed towards others. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1462:In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances to shape our lives by default. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1463:Know me as the true essence of jnana that shines uninterruptedly in your Heart.
Destroy the objectifying awareness of the ego-mind that arrogantly cavorts as 'I'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Padamalai,#NFDB
1464:Once you see what you are doing or have been doing, you also see its futility, and that unconscious pattern then comes to an end by itself. Awareness is the greatest agent for change. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1465:Our failure to see and access the pure joy and radiance of life is owning to a lack of awareness. In any situation there is beauty. Even at the moment of one's death there is beauty. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1466:Our society must move from ego-system to eco-system economics. This requires that we shift from ego-system silos to eco-system awareness that considers others and includes the whole. ~ Otto Scharmer, #NFDB
1467:Repeat the old practice, "To whom do thoughts arise?"
Keep up the practice until there are no breaks.
Practice alone will bring about continuity of awareness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 628,#NFDB
1468:[T]he salient question is whether the increasing awareness of [heart] disease beginning in the 1920s coincided with the budding of an epidemic or simply better technology for diagnosis. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1469:The Yoga Sutras offers a clear roadmap for the evolution of consciousness from ordinary states of awareness such as waking, dreaming, and sleeping - to higher states of consciousness. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1470:With young people you have to try to impart a sense of responsibility. If they can add greater awareness to their energy and their talents they can be rewarded with great careers. One ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
1471:Below the threshold of conscious awareness, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, and from there spreads to our thoughts and views, resulting in distorted modes of understanding ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1472:Compassion begins with the acknowledgment of the single inescapable truth that is the foundation for the possibility of love between human beings - an awareness of the tragic sense of life. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
1473:Conscious awareness is the source of our healing...Only when you say the truth can the truth set you free. This is not a negative process, but at times it is a difficult process. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1474:Either the curse picks up on what you subconsciously know is dangerous or it's got enough awareness to be able to recognize indirect threats and neutralize them on its own initiative. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB
1475:Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
1476:For you to access your own innermost as awareness is for you to surrender form after form after form, enabling you as awareness to recede to what you first are, for you to be meaning. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
1477:I can live with the awareness that someone might harm me. I am not so sure that I am brave enough to live with the awareness that I was too afraid to do what I knew to be right. Though ~ Willie Parker, #NFDB
1478:I'm guessing that musicals didn't make sense anymore because of the changes in the political environment that began in the late Sixties, an era of self-awareness and social revolutions. ~ Carmen Ejogo, #NFDB
1479:In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me. ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
1480:Just having an awareness of God's mercy and compassion for us is a great motivation for us to be merciful and compassionate to other people and to take steps toward encountering God. ~ Jonathan Morris, #NFDB
1481:Meditation is not for everybody. When you meditate you become conscious. Most people don't want to be too conscious because they are afraid of awareness, of death, and of being happy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1482:Once you have come with the human form, life has given you a certain sense of intelligence, a certain sense of awareness and freedom to choose what you want to be right now, in this moment. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1483:(P)oets know all about this spiritual nourishment because they are all mythologists. They make the mythical images visible. They live in a constant awareness of the archetypal powers. ~ Edward Edinger, #NFDB
1484:Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1485:There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy... the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul... the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
1486:There's so much information on the internet. But people don't need more information, they need 'aha moments,' they need awareness, they need things that actually shift and change them. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
1487:When people live lives of spiritual awareness and mindfulness, everything they do and say can change the lives of others. Those random acts of kindness can alter someone’s attitude. ~ James Van Praagh, #NFDB
1488:You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1489:Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable. ~ John Robbins, #NFDB
1490:Contemplation is the awareness and realization, even in some sense experience, of what each Christian obscurely believes: “It is now no longer I that live but Christ lives in me.” Hence ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1491:Freedom of the will is a metaphysical question outside the scope of this book; but considered as a subjective datum of experience, 'free will' is the awareness of alternative choices. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1492:However, by mindfulness, I specifically mean the optimal interaction between attention and peripheral awareness, which requires increasing the overall conscious power of the mind. ~ Culadasa John Yates, #NFDB
1493:If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1494:Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world. ~ Paula Fox, #NFDB
1495:I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities. ~ Angela Davis, #NFDB
1496:Of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1497:People high in self-awareness are remarkably clear in their understanding of what they do well, what motivates and satisfies them, and which people and situations push their buttons. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
1498:Prayer brings you into God’s presence, where our shortcomings are exposed. Then the new awareness of insufficiency drives us to seek God even more intensely for forgiveness and help. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1499:The biggest challenge to developing self-awareness is objectivity. It’s hard to develop perspective on your emotions and tendencies when every day feels like a new mountain to climb. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
1500:The power that enables us to transform our awareness is the release of kundalini. All yoga, either directly or indirectly, all Buddhism, relates to the release of the kundalini energy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
120 Integral Yoga
24 Poetry
19 Yoga
18 Philosophy
11 Christianity
8 Occultism
7 Science
6 Psychology
6 Buddhism
3 Integral Theory
2 Education
1 Theosophy
1 Sufism
1 Mysticism
1 Fiction
1 Alchemy
106 Sri Aurobindo
85 The Mother
68 Satprem
18 Nolini Kanta Gupta
15 Aldous Huxley
11 Sri Ramakrishna
11 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
10 Swami Krishnananda
5 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Jordan Peterson
4 Ramprasad
4 Jetsun Milarepa
4 George Van Vrekhem
4 Aleister Crowley
3 Ken Wilber
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Shankara
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Jean Gebser
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Carl Jung
2 Bokar Rinpoche
34 The Life Divine
33 The Synthesis Of Yoga
15 The Perennial Philosophy
12 Agenda Vol 03
10 The Study and Practice of Yoga
10 Agenda Vol 10
9 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
9 Talks
9 Agenda Vol 09
9 Agenda Vol 02
7 Agenda Vol 04
6 The Future of Man
5 Maps of Meaning
5 Letters On Yoga I
5 Essays Divine And Human
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
5 Agenda Vol 05
4 Preparing for the Miraculous
4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
4 Milarepa - Poems
4 Magick Without Tears
4 Agenda Vol 08
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Record of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Prayers And Meditations
3 Letters On Yoga IV
3 Letters On Yoga III
3 Letters On Yoga II
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
3 Agenda Vol 11
3 Agenda Vol 01
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Problems of Philosophy
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Liber Null
2 Kena and Other Upanishads
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 God Exists
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
2 Agenda Vol 07
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Art at its highest tends to become also the simplest and the most unconventional; and it is then the highest art, precisely because it does not aim at being artistic. The aesthetic motive is totally absent in the Upanishads; the sense of beauty is there, but it is attendant upon and involved in a deeper strand of consciousness. That consciousness seeks consciousness itself, the fullness of consciousness, the Awareness and possession of the Truth and Reality,the one thing which, if known, gives the knowledge of all else. And this consciousness of the Truth is also Delight, the perfect Bliss, the Immortality where the whole universe resolves itself into its original state of rasa, that is to say, of essential and inalienable harmony and beauty.
***
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
What Jung calls archetypal images constantly rise to the surface of man's Awareness from the vast unconscious that is the common heritage of all mankind.
The tragedy of civilized man is that he is cut off from Awareness of his own instincts. The Qabalah can help him achieve the necessary understanding to effect a reunion with them, so that rather than being driven by forces he does not understand, he can harness for his conscious use the same power that guides the homing pigeon, teaches the beaver to build a dam and keeps the planets revolving in their appointed orbits about the sun.
I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the format of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
--
May everyone who reads this new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates be encouraged and inspired to light his own candle of inner vision and begin his journey into the boundless space that lies within himself. Then, through realization of his true identity, each student can become a lamp unto his own path. And more. Awareness of the Truth of his being will rip asunder the veil of unknowing that has heretofore enshrouded the star he already is, permitting the brilliance of his light to illumine the darkness of that part of the Universe in which he abides.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
of which the world power structures do not yet have dawning Awareness. We can
state that as a consequence of the myriad of more-with-less, invisible, technological
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of thoroughness, since this Awareness allows you to make further progress. Indeed, making progress, overcoming a difficulty,
learning something, seeing clearly into an element of unconsciousness - these are the things that make one truly happy.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Awareness of the Divine Presence in all things and always.
You have said in your Conversations that to prepare
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full Awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
--
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only Awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
come spontaneously, by the sudden and unexpected Awareness
of what one is in comparison with what one was some time
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an Awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed force. But a tiny victory can dissolve it.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling of anything exceptional, but rather simply the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with Thatin my consciousness its always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. Its like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even sometimes change it by giving it a personal appearance. Thus, when I see someone and speak to him, for example, when my eyes concentrate on the person, I have almost the sensation of this flood flowing from me towards the person or of it passing through me to go onto the person. There is an Awareness of the eyes, the body. And it is this which limits or even changes a little the immensity of the thing But already this feeling has almost disappeared; this immensity seems to be acting almost constantly. There are moments when I am less interiorized, when I am more on the surface, and it feels like its passing through a bodymoments when the body consciousness comes back a little. And this is what diminishes the thing.
This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into himand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them I had an almost detailed Awareness of these myriads of cells opening to this vibration; the vibration of the first sound is an absolutely special vibration (you see, above, there is the light and all that, but beyond this light there is the original vibration), and this vibration was entering into all the cells and was reproduced in them. It went on for months in this way.
Even now, when something or other is not all right, I have only to reproduce the thing with the same type of concentration as at the beginning for, when I say the japa, the sound and the words together the way the words are understood, the feel of the wordscreate a certain totality. I have to reproduce that. And the way its repeated is evolving all the time. The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but its all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it cant really be called an illness, but when somethings out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my mantra, which acts directly on the bodys cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproducedexactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this Awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind.
Here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was perfectly conscious (now when I say I, it refers to my body, I am not speaking of the whole higher consciousness), the body was perfectly conscious of its suffering, the reason for its suffering, the cause of its suffering, everything and it did not suffer. You understand, the two perceptions were there together: the body saw the disorder, saw the suffering just as it would have felt it a few weeks earlier, it saw all that (saw, knew I dont know how to express itit was conscious, it was aware) and it did not suffer. The two Awarenesses were absolutely simultaneous.
There is now a kind of VERY PRECISE knowledge of the whole inner mechanism for all thingsand what has to be done materially. This is developing, as a flower blossoms: you see one petal open and then another and then another; it is proceeding like that, slowly, taking its time. Its the same process for the Power.
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yet the cells sense so perfectly that. All the experiences in the subconscient at night are quite clear proofs that a a WORLD of things and vibrations is being cleaned outall the vibrations opposed to the cellular transformation. But how can one poor little body do all that work! The body is quite aware of being a sort of accumulation and concentration of things (yet there is inevitably a selectionMo ther laughsbecause if everything had to be worked out in one center like this [her body] it would be it would be impossible!). Oh, if you knew how deeply and perfectly convinced these cells are, in all their groups and sub-groups, each one individually and within the whole, that everything is not only decreed but executed by the Divine, everything! They have a kind of constant Awareness so filled with a conscious faith in His infinite wisdom, even when there is what the ordinary consciousness calls suffering or pain. Thats not what it is for the cellsits something else! And the result is a state of yes, a state of peaceful combat. There is a sense of Peace, the vibration of Peace, and simultaneously an impression of being (how to put it?) on the alert, in constant combat. Taken all together it creates a rather odd situation.
And within oh! Its like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call equilibrium that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mother shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of lifeyes, physical life the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that its here; it is here, it mustnt be forgotten, its here but its kept down by this tension.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually it is because, without knowing it, you are becoming aware of the true Self, and that Awareness always produces a sense of betrayal. But its neither you nor I nor he nor anything other than THAT which is being betrayed. All that we are is a betrayal of That. This is what it is. And we are constantly pushing, pushing, pushing to go beyond.
Its all right. Dont worry. When you are a little upset, you only have to think: Oh, Mother is here, and she will do the work.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
While walking in my room, a series of invocations or prayers have come to me2 (I didnt choose themthey were dictated to me) in which I implore the Lord to manifest his Perfection (and I am quite aware of how foolish this expression is, but it does correspond to an aspiration).3 When I say manifest, I mean to manifest in our physical, material world Im asking for the transformation of this world. And the moment I utter one of these invocations, the sense of the particular approach it represents is there; thats why I am now able to give such a lecture on PerfectionPerfection is one of these approaches. Manifest this, I tell Him, Manifest that, manifest Your Perfection. (The series is very long and it takes me quite a while to go through it all.) Well, each time I say Manifest Your Perfection, I have an Awareness of what constitutes Perfectionit is something global.
Its like the word purityone could lecture endlessly on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. Divine purity (at the lowest level) is to admit but one influence the divine Influence (but this is at the lowest level, and already terribly distorted). Divine purity means that only the Divine existsnothing else. It is perfectly pureonly the Divine exists, nothing other than He.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its measured out with such wisdom! I mean the Awarenessnot exactly consciousness, but a state between consciousness and perception the Awareness of the stupendous difficulty of the thing is given to me drop by drop so that it wont be crushing.
But there has evidently been some rather considerable progress, because lately the enormity of the thing has been shown to me far more concretely, oh! I tell you, it has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, who have made so many efforts to realize somethingit all seems like nothing, like childs play. Its nothing: you smile and then you are joyous. Its nothing at all, nothing at all!
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mind you, I didnt think of it in advance! The Awareness came later I looked and said, Ah!
***
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And within all this, I no longer existed. I seemed to vanish into a kind of trance, yet I was consciousnot I: the consciousness was conscious of what Sri Aurobindo was conscious of. And he was following the reading. But I couldnt remember anything; at the time, it was impossible to observe. I can only describe it all to you now because the experience remained for at least an hour and a half afterwards; when I left here, I began to objectify it, to see what it wasaside from that, it was merely a STATE I found myself in. But in this state there was an Awareness of what he was hearing, and at two or three places in your reading he seemed to be saying (I cant be exact, I can only give the impression), Not necessary. In fact, thats what made me call this passage too philosophical (although when you first asked my opinion I was in a peculiar condition, nothing was active in me). With him, it was very clear, it was almost as if there were a certain number of words about which he said, That, not necessary. That, not necessary. Not many, not often, but once in a while. Especially at the end (he was still there inside my head while you were talking), when you were saying that its necessary to explain to people; there he very clearly said, No, not necessary.
But I was incapable of remembering or of registering anything the only head present there was his.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but I dont have that! I have a kind of Awareness, but not the true experience. But Ill try, Mother, if you believe I can do it.
I do believe it!
--
But between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing Awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didnt speak of there (that is, I didnt describe it, I put only the conclusion)the experience where I say Since the man refused I was offering participation in the universal work and the new creation and the man didnt want it, he refused, and so I now offer it to God.6
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Another thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because there was an Awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when theres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: there is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is where the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.
And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, if theres also an Awareness of the idea behind it, if one does japa as a very active CONSCIOUS invocation, then its effects are greatly multiplied. But the basis is the magic of sound. This is a fact of experience, and its absolutely true. The sound OM, for instance, awakens very special vibrations (there are other such sounds as well, but of course that one is the most powerful of all).
It is an attempt to divinize material substance.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At my fullest and most intense momentsmoments when truly what exists is the universe (by universe I mean the Becoming of the Supreme) with the utmost active Awareness of the Supremeat such moments I am suddenly caught by that [the static, nirvanic aspect]. Its not a matter of choosing between the two, but rather a question of priorities from the standpoint of action on the lowest level. Instinctively (the instinct of this body, this material base), the choice is aspiration, because this being was built for action; but this cannot be taken as an absolute rule, its almost like a casual preference.
One feels that life Is this aspiration, this anguish, while bliss leads most naturally to the nirvanic side I dont know.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Manifestation is always said to begin with Sachchidananda: first Sat, pure Existence; then Chit, the Awareness of this Existence; and then Ananda, the Delight of Existence which makes it go on. But between Chit and Ananda there is Tapas that is, Chit realizing itself. And when you become this tapas, this tapas of things, you have the knowledge that gives the power to change.9 The tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.
You see, I am expressing this for the first time, but I began to live it a while back. When you are THERE, you have a feeling of (what shall I say?) of such formidable power! The universal power, really. You have the sense of total mastery over the universe.
0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Between 12:15 and two I was with the true Sri Aurobindo in the fullest and sweetest relationship there also in perfect consciousness, Awareness, calm, and equanimity. At two I woke up and noted that just before, Sri Aurobindo himself showed me that still he was not completely master of the physical realm.
I woke up at two and noticed that the heart had been affected by the attack of this group that is wanting to take my life away from this body, because they know that as long as I am in a body upon earth their purpose cannot succeed. Their first attack was many years ago in vision and action. It happened during the night and I spoke of it to no one. I noted the date, and if I can come out of this crisis, I will find it and give it out. They would have liked me dead years ago. It is they who are responsible for these attacks on my life. Until now I am alive because the Lord wants me to be alive, otherwise I would have gone long ago.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full Awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation.
And the certitude that what is to be done is done and the Supramental Manifestation is realized.
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has gradually come back, in the sense that actively. No, I cant even say thatits not true. What has come back is the increasingly precise memory of how I had organized the life of this body, the whole formation I had made, down to the smallest details for the things I was using, how I was making use of them, how I had organized all the objects around the body, all that. What has come back is the memoryis it memory? The Awareness of all that has returned, as if I were putting the two back into contact. And so, instead of the body being left totally in the hands of those around me, the formation I had made is coming back, with certain changes, certain improvements and simplifications (but mind you, I had neither the intention nor the will to change anythingthose things are simply coming back into the consciousness like that, with certain changes made). In short, its a kind of conscious formation recrystallizing around this body.
And I have the perception a sensation, really, the sensation of something not at all me, but entrusted to me. More and more now, there is the feeling of something being entrusted to me in the universal organization for a definite purpose. Thats really the sensation I have now (the mind is very calm, so its difficult to express I dont think all these things, they are more like perceptions). And its not the usual kind of sensation: the ONLY (I insist on this), the ONLY sensation that remains in the old way is physical pain. And really, those points of pain they seem like the SYMBOLIC POINTS of what remains of the old consciousness.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I cant give you more than an approximation of that Awareness.
(silence)
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has never faded, its always there (gesture behind the head), and at any moment I can immerse myself in it all over again. But what a difference when, after THAT, you come back to an Awareness of what is speaking, at least as tremendous a difference as with that to die unto death. Similarly, that to die unto death contained the full Power of THAT.1 It was clear and stunningly powerful. And the same impression: easy, easy. Theres really no question of hard or easyits spontaneous, NATURAL, and so smiling. And that to die unto death was filled with such JOY! Such joy. I could almost have said, Its plain as day! Dont you see how plain it is! But thats it: we have only to die unto death, and that will be that!
(silence)
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is a fairly common experience. When it occurs, and for some time afterwards (not very long), everything seems to organize itself quite naturally around that Light. Then, little by little, it blends with all the rest. The intellectual Awareness of it remains, formulated in one way or another that much is left but its like an empty husk. It no longer has the driving force that transforms all movements of the being in the image of that Light. And this is what Sri Aurobindo means: the world moves fast, the Lord moves ever forward, and all that remains is but a trail He leaves in His wake: it no longer has the same instantaneous and almighty force it had at the MOMENT He projected it into the world.
Its like a rain of truth falling, and anyone who can catch even a drop of it receives a revelation. But unless they themselves advance at a fantastic pace, the Lord and His rain of truth will already be far, far away, and theyll have to run very fast to catch up!
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite a total knowledge, which includes a vision, an Awareness of the combination of sounds and how they should be expressed.
Beyond the musical zone lies thought: thoughts, organized thoughts for plays and books, abstractions for philosophies. But what used to interest me particularly were the combinations that give birth to novels or plays.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was the Manifestation at that PARTICULAR momentperhaps a very long moment, I dont knowit was one moment of the Manifestation. THAT was the Manifestation; all we see, all we think and understand was nothing, unsubstantial. But THAT. And with a kind of. You see, the bliss you experience isnt something you feel as such (you dont feel you are in bliss, its not like that; you dont feel yourself, there is no Awareness of any you involved in it): the thing is self-existent, thats all there is to it.
The experience lasted half an hour, unwavering.
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The balcony is quite interesting. Because it suddenly made me notice a change I was unaware of. Like a rapid rise I had been completely unaware of. My only Awareness is that at EVERY moment, if I stop talking or listening or working, at every moment, its like great beatific wings, as vast as the world, beating slowly, like that.
A feeling of immense wingsnot two: all around and stretching out everywhere.
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a feeling that I was given the Awareness of something thats taking place right now. Because at night, generally, I disconnect myself from everything and universalize myselfno, universalize isnt the word: I identify myself with the Lord. Thats my way of resting. I do it every night, it is the time when I have my deep rest. But now Ive been made aware of this Force at work. Often experiences come (there have been a number of them lately), but its the first time this one has come, because It was certainly something happening FOR the earth; but it didnt come from the center of forces that generally acts on the earth. It wasnt the usual working of forces on the earth. It was something happening. And it gave the sense that the earth was very small the movement was towards the earth, it was for the earth, but the earth was very small.
Very small.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period when you go from that unconsciousness (unconsciousness of the habit of living in that state) to a conscious vision of the state you live in. When you become totally conscious of things as they areof what you are, of your condition and when you do not yet have the power to get out, like last night, its almost intolerable. And there was a very clear Awareness, very precise, that it isnt a question of life or death: it doesnt depend on that sort of thing, which ultimately changes nothing but a wholly superficial appearance thats not it! You know, people who are unhappy think, Ah, a day will come when Ill die, and all my difficulties will be overtheyre simpletons! It wont be over at all, it will go on. It will go on until the time when they get out for good, that is, when they emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. Its the only way out: to emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. And you can die a thousand times, it wont get you out, its perfectly uselessit just goes on. Sometimes, on the contrary, it drags you even further down.
Thats the thing.
--
But those who do not have that experience (its not a question of words, its a question of experience), those who do not have that experience, were they to have that half-knowledge, the knowledge that we live in Ignorance, that we live in Ignorance with a sort of incapacity to get outThere is no way out, no way to get outand that human wisdom is like that little old man who comes and tells you, But why should you want to get out? Why should you thats the way things are, just the way things are. Its appalling. I felt, you know, like when you concentrate forces to the bursting point, as they do with their bombs; it was exactly like that: so concentrated, so overwhelming that I felt as if everything were about to burst. So much so that it would be utterly impossible for humanity to live with the Awareness of the state it is in, if, at the same time, there werent the key to get out (the key hasnt been found yet), or the assurance that we will get out.
Im not speaking of things of the higher mind, because there the key to the way out was found long ago, a long time ago: I mean down below, in the material world the material world. Thats why all those people, like the old man last night, go somewhere elseits all the same to them, why should they bother! Why do you want to change that? And dont try to give light here, its no use and in addition its a nuisance. Leave this Ignorance in peace.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old "Playground Talk," of January 4, 1951, in which Mother said that one of the essential conditions for transformation is an Awareness of the inner dimensions: "It's a total reversal of consciousness, which can be compared to what happens to light when it goes through a prism. Or else it's as if you turned a ball inside out, which can be done only in the fourth dimension. You emerge from the ordinary consciousness of the third dimension to enter the higher consciousness of the fourth dimension, and then an infinite number of dimensions. This is the indispensable starting point.")
Thats what I had told you already: the whole basis of the yogic effort is changed now. Formerly, the work was based precisely on that knowledge of inner dimensions I cant recapture that any more, I see it as completely outside me.1
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have reached this conclusion: in principle, what gives rapture is the Awareness of and union with the Divine (thats the principle), therefore the Awareness of and union with the Divine, whether in the world as it is or in the building of a future world, must be the samein principle. Thats what I keep saying to myself all the time: How is it that you dont have that rapture? I do have it: at the time when the whole consciousness is centered in the union, whenever that is, in the midst of any activity, along with that movement of concentration of the consciousness on the union comes rapture. But I must admit it disappears when I am in that its a world of work, but a very chaotic world, in which I act on everything around meand necessarily I have to receive whats around me in order to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things considered the most painful, leave me absolutely still and indifferentindifferent, not an inactive indifference: no painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral (gesture turned to the Eternal), a perfect equanimity. But within that equanimity, there is a precise knowledge of the thing to be done, the words to be said or written, the decision to be made, anyway all that action involves. All that takes place in a state of perfect neutrality, with a sense of the Power at the same time: the Power goes through me, the Power acts, and neutrality stays but theres no rapture. I dont have the enthusiasm, the joy and plenitude of action, not at all.
And I must say that the state of consciousness that rapture gives would be dangerous in the present state of the world. Because it has almost absolute reactions I can see that that state of rapture has an OVERWHELMING power. But I insist on the word overwhelming, in the sense that its intolerant of, or intolerable to (yes, intolerable to) all thats unlike it! Its the same thing, or almost (not quite the same but almost), as supreme divine Love: the vibration of that ecstasy or rapture is a first hint of the vibration of divine Love, and thats absolutely yes, there is no other word, intolerant, in the sense that it doesnt brook the presence of anything contrary to it.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a constant aspiration in the body for everything that can perfect itperfect the instrument, I mean and there is very, very little asking for Power. When Sri Aurobindo was here, there was a clear Awareness of the necessity of Power, and several times I said, It is the supramental Power that will manifest first. Because, without Power, it will be impossible: the mass of opposition in the world is sufficient to swallow up everything, just as the Light was swallowed up in 60the supramental Light and Consciousness were swallowed up; it will be the same thing. But afterwards, when I had to do the whole task, I no longer insisted on this point [Power], there wasnt the sense of this necessity any more but rather the feeling of a WHOLE that has to progress together and manifest together. A kind of perfection of the Whole.
But its coming.
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tried to find out why your physical life began (well, not quite began, but you were very, very young, just the same) with such a painful experience [the concentration camps]. And I saw why: it was like a separationnot separation, but disentanglement, you understand? There are two things in every human being: what comes from the past and has persisted because it is formed and conscious, and then all that dark, unconscious mass, really muddy, that is added in every new life. Then the other thing gets into that and finds itself imprisoned, you knowadulterated and imprisoned and generally it takes more than half ones life to emerge from that entanglement. Well, for you, care was taken to more than double the dose at the beginning, and it caused a kind of tearing apart: one part went up above, another part fell down below. And the part (it acted almost like a filter), the part that rose up was very cleansed, very cleansed of all that swarming: its becoming very, very conscious of the mixture. Just see, today, the whole morning until I was swamped with work by people, till then there was a sharp Awareness of the part of the being that still belongs, as I said, to Unconsciousness, to Ignorance, to Darkness, to Stupidity, and is not even as harmonious as a tree or a flower; something thats not even as tranquil as a stone, not even as harmonious and not even as strong as the animal something that is really a downfall. That is really human inferiority. And maybe (no, I shouldnt say maybe: I know) it was necessary for things to settle downsettle, you know, as when you let a liquid settle? Thats exactly it: its the Light that settles, the Consciousness that settles. And indeed its true, there is in you a part that has entirely settled. Every time I see it (it comes in the course of the work, you understand), its lovely in its quality of light, its quality of vibration, and it has settled considerably. But its true that there is also a kind of sediment, a deposit (deposit, you know?) which is a bit heavy thats what youre conscious of.
But you shouldnt say me! Its not you, that residue isnt you! But you are indeed conscious of the Light, arent you?
--
Because it has settled! So you should get the Awareness or knowledge that this [the body] isnt you the trouble is that when you say me you think of this (Mother strikes her body), but thats not it! It isnt you! And you have to feel that it isnt you before you can come down again into it to take possession of it and change it. As long as you say, This is me, you are tied, bound hand and foot.
Whats you is this (gesture above the head), its there: what sparkles in the light thats you. This [the body] isnt you, its the sediment. You still have your bodys self-esteem! You should feel: this isnt me, it isnt me. It is yes, what was put together more or less clumsily and ignorantly by father, mother, maybe with the influence of grandparents. That discovery I made at the age of about fifteen or sixteen, or seventeen. I began to see clearly all the gifts (if we can call them that) that came from father, mother, parents, grandparents, education, people who looked after me, that whole mudhole, as it were, into which you fall headfirst. And then, the quality of the vibration, the quality of the sensation, of the so-called thoughts (which arent thoughts, but are almost automatic mental reflexes of sorts) and of the feelings (if you can call them feelings: they are kinds of reactions to the milieu and to all that comes from outside)it all swarms, swarms like worms in the mud.
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even from that point of view, I have seen You know, the ordinary idea that the phenomenon [of transformation] must necessarily occur first in the body in which the Consciousness is expressed the most constantly seems to me quite unnecessary and secondary. On the contrary, it occurs at the same time wherever it can occur the most easily and totally, and this aggregate of cells (Mother points to her own body) isnt necessarily the most ready for this operation. It may therefore remain a very long time as it apparently is, even if its understanding and receptivity are special. I mean that this bodys Awareness, its conscious perception is infinitely superior to the one all the bodies it comes into contact with can have, except for a few minutesa few minuteswhen other bodies, as if through a grace, have the Perception. While for it, its a natural and constant state; its the effective result of this Truth-Consciousness being more constantly concentrated on this collection of cells than on othersmore directly. But the substitution of one vibration for another in facts, in actions, in objects, occurs wherever the result is the most striking and effective.
I dont know if I can make myself understood, but it is something I have felt very, very clearly, and which one cannot feel as long as the physical ego is there, because the physical ego has the sense of its own importance, and that disappears entirely with the physical ego. When it disappears, one has a clear perception that the intervention or manifestation of the true Vibration doesnt depend on egos or individualities (human or national individualities, or even individualities of Nature: animals, plants and so on), it depends on a certain play of the cells and Matter in which there are aggregates particularly favorable for the transformation to occurnot transformation: the substitution, to be precise, the substitution of the Vibration of Truth for the vibration of Falsehood. And the phenomenon may be very independent of groupings and individualities (it may happen in one part here, another part there, one thing here, another thing there); and it always corresponds to a certain quality of vibration that causes a sort of swellinga receptive swelling and then, the thing can occur.
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, in those activities, I dont have recourse to divine Love to find the solution of the problem I am not allowed to do so. So I understand that this is what was translated in peoples thought by the idea that divine Love cannot manifest entirely, otherwise there would be catastrophes3its not that at all, thats not at all the way it is. But its clear that in my consciousness the [supreme] contact has been made (with some degree of limitation, but still it has been made), and nothing takes placenothing, absolutely nothing, not even the most totally in-sig-nif-i-cant thingswithout, I cant even say the thought or the sensation (in English they say Awareness, but its much fuller than that), the feeling (another impossible word), without the feeling of the Lords Presence, the supreme Presence, being there twenty-four hours a day. Throughout that activity of the night Ive just told you about, He was there, the Lords Presence was there all the time, every second, directing everything, organizing everythingBUT THAT WASNT THERE. And That, which I call Love, that Manifestation, is so formidably powerful that, as I once said, it is intolerant of anything elseThat alone exists. That exists, That isand its finished. Whereas the Lord (the Lord, what I call the Lord) is something else altogether; the Lord is all that has manifested, all that hasnt manifested, all that is, all that will be, and all, all is the Lordits the Lord. But the Lord (laughing) is necessarily tolerant of Himself! All is the Lord, but all is perceived by the Lord through the limitations of human perception!4 But everything, everything is thereeverything is there; everything, as it is every second; and with the perception of time, every second is different, in a perpetual becoming. This is supreme Tolerance: there is no more struggle, no more battle, no more destruction there is only He.
Those who have had this experience have generally stopped there. And if they wanted to get out of the world, they chose the Lords aspect of annihilation; they took refuge there and stayed thereall the rest no longer existed. But the other aspect the other aspect is the world of tomorrow, or of the day after tomorrow. The other aspect is an inexpressible glory. So all-powerful a glory that it alone exists.
0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think you have in a corner of your being what I could call a grumbler. I became aware of thatnot particularly for you, but as one of the manifestations of that onion skin I mentioned just a moment ago (!) Some people in that way are grumblers, for them everything is an occasion to grumble and complain. Its very interesting, you know, because owing to the work I am doing, all those ways of being or reacting are taking place WITHIN me, and I catch myself being like this, being like that, doing this, doing that, being thereall the things one shouldnt be! Everything comes to me in that form: as if it took place within me. Ill catch myself being like that and Ill say, What! Some time ago, I was haunted by this for a long while: something which always sees the bad side of things, the difficulty, which even foresees the difficulty, which is in contact with all that protests, complains and grumbles I saw that very strongly. Then I started to work and work on it; and when I set to work, there is a sort of Awareness that comes to me of the different places or elements where the same thing is: it shows itself very clearly, so then I can do something. But you know, its an incalculable work of every minute, and for a considerable number of people! Quite a lot. The larger part of the work is impersonal, in the sense that I dont know to whom its going or what, but it is often as an illustration (you know, like when you tell a story to make an idea better understood; they are illustrations to make me understand the work better), then I see in everyone the different ways of being and reacting. But its so incalculable in the perception, so constant, that its very hard to express I would have to say lots of things at the same time, which is impossible.
No, but theres obviously a link missing between something I sense in the background and something I am here.
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are ups and downs, moments when its more present and moments where its less so; to be exact: moments when its active and moments when it isnt. And whenever there is a period during which it isnt active, when it starts again it does so on a higher rung, that is, more intensely and clearly. The whole thing is obviously following a process of development. Its a sort of the word Awareness might be the nearest; it isnt a perception, which still belongs to the mind, its a sort of phenomenon of vision. And it has an absolute character. For instance, from time to time, when I hear people speak of something or other and say, It will be like this and like that, instantly there comes a sort of tactile vision how can I explain this? It resembles touch and sight (yet its neither touch nor sight, but both together): its the thing as it is, thats IT; and they may say what they like, thats IT and it is irrefutable. And so far, there has never been any contradiction.
Its a consciousness in which the mental element is absent. It comes just on its own, and its so clear! Its like an immediate contact with the thing as it is.
0 1964-09-23, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nights, for instance, are a long Awareness, a great action, a discovery of all kinds of things, a taking stock of the situation as it is but there arent any problems! But the minute the body (I cant say wakes up because it isnt asleep: its only in a state of rest sufficiently complete for its personal difficulties not to interfere), but from time to time, what well call waking up takes place, that is to say, the purely physical consciousness comes back and the whole problem comes back instantly. Instantly the problem is there. And without your remembering it: the problem doesnt come back because you remember it, its that the problem is there, in the very cells.
And in the morning, oh! All mornings are difficult. Its odd: life as a whole goes by with almost dizzying speedweeks and months go by like thatand mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken. Its at that time that I have tested the power of the mantra. For those three hours, I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter. And thats how I know: without the mantra, that work couldnt be done. But thats why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (gesture to the heart), from your inner guide. Thats what holds out. When you dont know, when you dont understand, when you dont want to let the mind intervene and you are THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, its a considerable support, considerable.
0 1965-09-11, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But while I was having the experience, there was absolutely no Awareness of the goal, the motive, the purpose, nothing: it was like this (same massive gesture taking hold of everything), a sort of absolute, without explanation.
Ive had this two or three times in my life, in the most serious terrestrial circumstances.
0 1966-01-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No! This morning I lived for two hours in a sort of blissful state in which there was, oh, such a clear Awareness that all forms of life, in all the worlds and at all times, are the expression of a choice: you choose to be that way.
Its very hard to put it into words. The sort of compulsion in which we think we have to live and to which we think we are subjected had com-plete-ly vanished, and there was a perfectly spontaneous and natural perception that life on earth, life in the other worlds, and all the types of life on earth, and all the types of life in the other worlds, are simply a question of choice: you chose to be that way, and you constantly choose to be this way or that, or choose that this or that is going to happen; and you also choose to think you are subjected to a Fate or a Necessity or a Law that compels youeverything is a question of choice. And there was a sense of lightness, of freedom (same dancing gesture), and then one of those smiles at everything. And at the same time, it gives you a tremendous power. All sense of compulsion, of necessity (and even more of fate) had com-plete-ly vanished. All the illnesses, all the events, all the dramas, all of itvanished. And this concrete and so stark a reality of physical lifecompletely gone.
0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you: The book MUST be written, but its not necessarily the one that has been written: its the one that must be written! (Mother laughs). To me, you understand, there is a difference. Somewhere there is something that MUST be said, and that something is very useful: I see that the people, for example, who have come to place trust in you because of the book on Sri Aurobindo, will read you with an opening of mind, and if at that time you give them a sort of sensation of the experience, it will help them a lot. Its in that sense I say this book is useful. But for you personally, if youd rather rewrite it completely than correct it, it doesnt matter. Only, for you to be capable of rewriting it without falling back into the old state, you must have a decisive Awareness of the difference in condition. Suppose you said, Ill rewrite the book, and once you started writing the same conflict recurred, that would be useless. Something must take place there, in the mind, thats where you must become totally conscious of the vibrations.
I see fairly clearly all that must be cut out. But theres a lot to cut out!
0 1967-01-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, I was asked the question; I was asked whether abuse, the feeling of being abused, and what in English is called self-respect (which is somewhat akin to self-esteem), have a place in the sadhana. Naturally, they dont, that goes without saying! But I saw the movement, it was extremely clear: I saw that without ego, when the ego isnt there, there CANNOT be that sort of ruffling in the being. I went back far into the past, to the time when I could still feel it (years ago), but now its not even something unfamiliarits something which is impossible. The whole being, and strangely even the physical constitution, doesnt understand what it means. Its the same thing when materially there is a knock (Mother shows a scratch on her elbow), like this for instance: its no longer felt the way an injury is felt. Its no longer felt that way. More often than not, theres nothing at all, it goes absolutely unnoticed on the whole; but when there is something, its only an impressiona very sweet, very intimate impressionof a help trying to make itself felt, of a lesson to be learned. But not the way its done mentally where there is always a stiffening; its not that: its immediately a kind of offering in the being, which gives itself in order to learn. I am speaking of all the cells. Its very interesting. Of course, if we mentalize it, we have to say its the sense or Awareness of the divine Presence in all things, and that the mode the mode of contactcomes from the state in which we are.
This is the bodys experience.
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what, the Awareness that I dont have the memory of sounds. Some people have the memory of sounds, but I dont. So Id be interested to know how it was. Otherwise I was always able (when I found something from the past doubtful or interesting or incomplete), I always found a way to recall it into the consciousness. But the sounds dont come. They come as a state of consciousness thats translated mentally, and its translated mentally into words I know. So thats quite uninteresting.
Even now, even when I used to play music, the memory of sounds was vague and incomplete. I had the memory of the sounds I heard at the origins of music (gesture above), and when the material music reproduced something of those sounds, I would recognize them; but there isnt the precision, the accuracy that would enable me to reproduce exactly the sound with the voice or an instrument. Its not there, its lacking. Whereas the memory of the eyes was it was astounding. When I had seen a thing ONCE, that was enough, I would never forget it.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here is the person's description: "External Awareness had slipped away I heard, saw nothing. I sagged forward as my wife held my head to keep me from pitching from the chair. To the Doctor I had reached clinical death. But for me there was a surge of inner Awarenessmagnified, finely focused, brilliant. It is a progressive thing, this death. You feel the toes going first, then the feet, cell by cell, death churning them like waves washing the sands. Now the legs, the cells winking out. Closer now, and the visibility is better. Hands, arms, abdomen and chest, each cell flaring into a supernova, then gone. There is order and system in death, as in all that is life. I must try to control the progression, to save the brain for last so that it may know. Now the neck. The lower jaw. The teeth. How strange to feel one's teeth die, one by one, cell igniting cell, galaxies of cells dying in brilliance. Now, in retrospect, I grope for this other thing. There was something else, something that I felt or experienced or beheld at the very last instant. What was it? I knew it so well when it was there, opening before me, something more beautiful, more gentle, more loving than the mind or imagination of living creature could ever conceive. But it is gone." David Snell, Life Senior Editor (extract from Life, May 29, 1967).
According to Sri Aurobindo, the green light is a dynamic force of the vital which has the power to purify, harmonize or heal.
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When you realize those two attitudes simultaneously, the contagion is abolished: the mental contagion (the one Sri Aurobindo refers to here, the one you get when you admire something), the mental contagion, the vital contagion, and EVEN THE PHYSICAL CONTAGIONwhen the cells realize that, you stop catching illnesses. Because formerly (for a long time), whenever something occurred in the sphere of influence of the action, there used to be a repercussion (in Mother). For a very long time, it was dangerous. Then it became reduced to a sense of unease which would become conscious, and conscious of the why the why and the how. It was reduced to a state of unease, but it was still tiresome. And now its a kind of I cant say knowledge, because its not mental, but an Awareness (theres no word for it in French), a perception and nothing more, it doesnt have any action (that is, any repercussion in Mothers body). So then, the whole problem lies there:
There are those who found this, the vertical ascent to the heights, and who isolated themselves from the world (they werent able to do that completely because they didnt have the knowledge, but they tried). Thats not the solution. Then there are those who want to help, the generous ones who are like this (gesture of horizontal expansion), and who catch everything, even the mental illnesses of all the people around them. The truth is the two together: this, the passive, receptive state (vertical gesture), and that, the active state of action and radiating influence (horizontal gesture). And the body has become wholly conscious of the dual movement and is working to realize it in detail.
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be (maybe, because as soon as you try to formulate, you mentalize, and as soon as you mentalize, it gets shrunk, diminished, limited, it loses the power of truth but anyway), it may be that in this universe as it is constituted, perfection is (Mother remains absorbed for a long time). It eludes words. We might put it this way (but its dry and lifeless): its the perception (is it only perception? Its not just perception; its neither perception nor knowledge nor Awareness), its the Awareness of the oneness of the wholea oneness perceived, lived, realized in the individual. But thats nothing, mere words. The universe seems to have been created to realize this paradox of the Awareness of the whole, an Awareness lived (not just perceived but lived) in every part, every element making up the whole.
So in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call good and evil; but from the point of view of sensationsensation in the most material partwe may say its suffering and Ananda. And the movement is to put a stop to all separation and to realize the total consciousness in every part (which mentally speaking is absurd, but its like that).
--
Its the Awareness of the two states that must be simultaneous?
Not divided. Its the union of the two states that constitutes the true consciousness; the union of the two (union still implies division), the identification of the two states is what constitutes the true consciousness. Then you get the sensation that its this consciousness which is the supreme Power. You understand, Power is limited by oppositions and negations: the most powerful power is the one that dominates the most but thats a complete imperfection! There is an all-powerful Power made up of the fusion of the two thats the absolute Power. And if That were realized physically probably it would be the end of the problem.
0 1968-05-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Consciousness was there, and the Awareness that it was an attack; and there was no battle, no attempt to convince or anything, simply like that (Mother opens her arms upward), a TOTAL surrender.
And that I told you, it cant be touched.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This idea of Personal or Impersonal has no meaning. It doesnt correspond to anything. The body has completely lost the sense of its personality, completely, and strangelyits strange. For instance (for the moment, everything, but everything expresses itself as phenomena of consciousness), for instance, I dont know how many times a day, there will suddenly come the Awareness of a disorder, a pain or suffering somewheresomewhere in some part, but not a part shut in here (Mother points to her own body): like a spot in an immense body; and after a while, or a few hours later, Ill be told that someone or other has had such and such a pain, which was felt as being part of that immense body. It has become very odd. It has considerably increased with this cold. You see, Ive been seeing fewer people, doing less work, resting more I am putting it that way out of habit, but it doesnt quite correspond to the state When I say I, its as if I were putting myself in peoples thought and speaking of what corresponds in it to all that; but its not felt that way at all.
Ah, Im going to tire you.
0 1968-08-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it sure that what we call a year has always represented the same thing? During this recent period, I have had the Awareness of the nonreality of our usual notion of time. At times, one minute seemed interminable; at other times, hours and even a day went by apparently without having lasted.
Do they say there was a beginning? (Here A. explains to Mother the theory according to which the universe goes through successive phases of expansion and contraction, and Mother seems to like that theory.)
0 1968-10-30, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this work of growing Awareness (self- Awareness) in the body is really very interesting. Very interesting.
What would you like to ask me for your birthday?
0 1968-11-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And a very clear Awareness of all the obstacles, of all thats against, of the general attitude. With the very clear perception that one must remain veiled. Exactly. This is the time when one must remain veiled. Thats all.
But saying it makes it far more precise than it really is.
0 1968-11-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only, the other consciousness is still there. Just now, this morning, I saw a considerable number of people: everyone of them came, and I looked (there was no I looked: for the PERSON there, it was like that, I was looking at him), the eyes were fixed [on the person] like that, and then there was the perception and vision (but not vision as its understood: its all a phenomenon of consciousness), the Awareness of the Presence; the Presence permeating that sort of bark, of hardened thing, permeating, permeating everywhere. And when I look, when the eyes are fixed, it makes a sort of concentration [of this Presence]. But its certainly quite a transitory and intermediate state, because the other consciousness (the consciousness that sees things and deals with them as usual, with the perception of what goes on in the individual, what he thinksnot so much what he thinks as what he feels, the way he is), thats there. Its obviously necessary, too, to maintain contact, but Its clearly still an experience, not an established fact. What I mean by established fact is the consciousness established in such a way that nothing else exists, it alone is presentits not yet like that.
(long silence)
0 1968-11-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its beginning to know the exact spot or function that isnt I cant say transformed, because thats quite a high-sounding word, but not in harmony with the others, and causing a disorder. Thats becoming a perception of every moment. When something apparently abnormal takes place, there is the understanding, the Awareness of why it occurs and what it must be leading to: how an apparent disorder can lead to a greater perfection. Thats it. Its a tiny little beginning. But it has begun. The body is beginning to be a little conscious. And not only for itself alone, but for all others too, it has begun: seeing, perceiving how the Consciousness (with a capital C) acts in others. And in fact, at times (words lag WAY BEHIND the experience), there no longer is the perception of division: there is the perception of diversity (thats becoming very interesting) the diversity (if it werent for what we might call the latching on of separateness), the diversity that, in the true consciousness, would be perfectly harmonious and would make a whole that would be perfection itself (Mother makes a round gesture).
Its the latching onwhat happened? What happened?
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body has a very, very strong impression (a sort of Awareness) that its sufferings stem from its incapacity. Theres a sort of perception that it has a HABIT of turning into suffering something it cant bear.
(silence)
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not a feeling, its an experience! You know, I wouldnt like anything better than In fact, this is my constant impression! Do as best you can, and the best thing needed will happen, thats all. But there is such an Awareness of the uncertainty of the effect of things, and of this complexity It all becomes so mixed and so confused that
All of life is like that. CIRCUMSTANCES are like that, I am beginning to see that, its beginning to emerge like that, to show itself: honest people look like scoundrels, and scoundrels look like I dont know what.
0 1969-02-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some even (as I have said) spontaneously repeat the mantra. Spontaneously, the mantra goes on and on being repeated, sometimes with a very great intensity; sometimes there is a sort of (do you know the English word shyness?), a shyness to invoke the Divine, so strongly That is felt. But it meltsit melts in an Awareness, a conscious perception of such a Clemency! Unbelievableunbelievable, unthinkable, its so wonderful. (In its very small human manifestation, thats what has become goodness, but thats a distortion.) A marvel! The cells are in ecstasy before this vibration. But then, you see and hear this CLAMOR of protest, misery, sufferingits a clamor all over the earth, and that makes the cells feel a little ashamed.
(silence)
0 1969-05-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, it comes along with an Awareness (not a mental perception: an Awareness) of all that people think, all that people feel, all that its all oh, so pitiful! Its so pitiful. As I said, one minute, suddenly theres something absolutely marvelous; and the next minute, its So the body, one cant say it finds that very amusing, no, but it It doesnt rebel in the least, not in the least, it says, Since its like that, it has to be like that. Sometimes, now and then, it aspires to get somewhere.
You see the condition.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This, the Awareness the body now has that all this is unreal.
If you asked the body, it would say, I dont know if I am alive, I dont know if I am dead. Because thats really how it is. For a few minutes it absolutely has the feeling of being dead; at other times, it has the feeling of being alive. The body is like that. And it feels that exclusively depends on whether the Truth is perceived or not.
0 1969-06-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Working at a hastened pace. The body doesnt complain. It doesnt complain because There are two things at the same time. It has increasingly and in an increasingly precise way the full perception of its to use the exact word, its nothingness (that goes without saying, and without even a shadow of regret, because theres the full Awareness that it cant be otherwise; in the present state of matter, it cant be otherwise). Theres an interesting process of development through which the body sees IN DETAILin detail, in every detailhow the Force of Consciousness acts, and what to put things simply, what we turn it into. Its very interesting. For everything, you know, the details of every minute: how the Force of Consciousness acts, and what we turn it into. With, from time to time, a marvelous key for certain problems, and a chance given to apply the key to see how it worksit works admirably!
But all that you understand, its like a few drops in an ocean of work. Thats how it is. The work is terrestrial, of coursemore and more terrestrial, even the body has a connection with the whole and therefore rather tremendous. But the sense of limitlessness in regard to the Force (not only the Consciousness, but the Force), the sense of limitlessness is becoming more and more permanent. The scale of the work in proportion with the form [Mothers body] is very perceptible, and perceptible in a very keen way, but there is the sense of the inanity of this formnot even its relative character: almost its inexistence, something like the sense of a continuing illusion. And then, quite concretely, the wonderful allpowerfulness of the Consciousness-Force; that comes with the impression that so-called miracles are nothing at all, a natural working. But you understand, the work has the proportion of the Consciousness, and it has to be done on (laughing) on the scale of the body. So that gives a sort of perception of an immensity that has to worked out on one point. I cant express it, its something inexpressible with words. But I need to have some peace.
0 1969-10-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its odd. For instance, when the body received the thing (there was a shock), not for a minute did it have (fear, theres no question of it), but not for a minute did it say, Ah, what a disgusting thing to do!nothing, nothing, the SAME smile, everywhere. Thats the point it has reached, you understand: a sort of Awareness that whatever happens happens by the divine Will, that its ALWAYS for the best, and its only human stupidity, lack of understanding, shortsightedness that make us say, Oh, what a misfortune! Oh Its all MARVELOUSLY arranged.
When the body is aware of that, then its fine. Its far from having reached perfectionto begin with, its I dont know if its being transformed, thats not visible, but at any rate its functioning depends on the higher Consciousness, it no longer depends on the ordinary mechanism (thats taking place gradually). Well, even in the middle of that, theres a sort of smiling trust as a result of which, even when theres some pain, some discomfort, it doesnt matterit doesnt matter. There is the sense of this Divine Presence, always, everywhere, every moment. That doesnt go away.
0 1969-10-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She said that once when we were preparing a play to be staged here7 (I dont know if you were there). There was the chief of the mountains and the chief of the valley, and then an incarnation of the Divine. The two chiefs were quarreling; the incarnation of the Divine came, and when he tried to stop the fight, they killed him. When they killed him, all of a sudden they woke up to the Awareness of the horror of what they had done, owing to the fact of the killing. You see, night fell when they began fighting, and the Incarnation came between them to stop them, but they didnt see him and killed him. The story was like that, we staged it. We gave out the roles and so onwe had got the play through Bharatidi. So she was there, and she told me, But the Divine is the greatest culprit! Its quite natural that he should suffer, since Hes the one who allowed humans to be like that! (Mother laughs)
Ah!
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If the time has come for that, its very good thats why I dont want to intervene. But I dont know, I dont know if the time has come for that. There are moments when the body is thoroughly convincedmoments when it seems impossible that the time might not have come but at other moments, it gets completely veiled. And that comes from the fact that despite everything, the Awareness of the mixture is becoming very clear. Which means that the realization is partial; its partial, fragmentary. And for a very simple reason (theres no arguing): its because somehow or other, the appearance will have to change. This body has capacities thats visibleit has capacities which many other bodies dont have, but its still uncertain, not established, not complete. So in this transitional period, there will certainly be one who will get through to the other side, that is, who will reach realization there has to be a realization at some point, you see. Well, it must be In any case, with A.R., the attitude is good, so theres nothing to say. But as he isnt developed mentally, thats where a mixture of influences remains3thats where. Its not in the body, its in the mind. And I dont want to replace that mixture with a (Mother gestures to show an authority imposing itself). All that I can do is to give the necessary atmosphere, and thats that.
I got a letter from N.S.4 in which she said she was almost desperate to have missed the appointment I had given her with A.R. But I am not sure [that it wasnt just as well]. She says that instead of the time she had been told, she arrived an hour later because she had been somewhere (I forget where), had got completely drenched, and had to change her clothes; she sent word to A.R. requesting him to wait, but when she arrived, he had left. So she doesnt know whether L. didnt get her message, or didnt convey it. And she writes me that at the first opportunity she would like to come and see him. I had her told that for the moment he had withdrawn, but that as soon as he resumed his activity, I would let her know. But I didnt tell A.R., because
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The state now is such that when the body FEELS ITSELF (feels itself, that is to say, is aware of being a body), INSTANTLY theres a discomfort, whatever the condition. Even when it feels in a state of adoration or aspiration or its accompanied by discomfort. And only when theres no more Awareness at all of its separate existence does it feel comfortable. So then, the normal state is silence, stillness, but (the image isnt correcthow can I explain?), you see, the Presence, its not that it flows through, but when it radiates like this (gesture), radiates through an activity, then everything is fine and theres no more at all the sensation of this [the body] through which: this through which the Divine flowsthere isnt. Its like this (immutable gesture), still and nonexistent, without any self- Awareness, aware only of the Divine Action, like that. Then everything is fine. And the minute theres even a slight impression of the Thing flowing through, discomfort comes. You understand, it has become a very acute state.
See, I might say (it sounds like literature) that in a certain state, in that state in which it no longer feels itself and only the Awareness of the Divine remains, theres the sense of an Immortality, of Eternity; and if theres the least sensation of something in which the Divine manifests, it absolutely becomes the sense of deathyou instantly become mortal again. And acute, you know, acute like that. But then, its very subtle, because the sensation (sensation or perception or feeling) of I has completely disappeared, all the time, all the timereally so, completely; its the something, the something which is still a little different, and that becomes terribly painful the body is perfectly at case only when it no longer feels itself.
Its hard to explain, but thats how it is.
0 1969-12-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, very small things that the mind regards as complete-ly insignificant have a more intense light than big problems, things the mind regards as problems of importance: problems of government, for example, of relations with other countries; sometimes its more insubstantial than very small things that appear to be nothing. All that is linked to the total movement of the creation towards towards the true Awareness.
That has become the constant, constant way of being.
0 1970-03-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The consciousness isnt an idea, its a sort of yes, a state of consciousness, an Awareness of the Divines sole existence, of the sole Reality, and when its there, everything becomes wonderful (physically, materially). There are moments full of an intensity of harmony quite exceptional. But then, when things grate, mon petit, they grate horribly!
And I get letters by the dozen: entreaties from people in all possible difficulties, physical difficulties (the most incredible physical difficulties), and then moral, material, external difficulties, inner difficultieseverything seems raging.
0 1970-03-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the experiences others had had of making contact with the higher worlds, used to leave the physical here as it is. (How should I put it?) From the very beginning of existence up to Sri Aurobindos departure, I lived in the Awareness that one may rise, one may know, one may have all experiences (and one did have them), but when one came back into this body it was those for-mid-able old laws of the mind that ruled everything. So then, all these years have been years spent preparing and preparingfreeing oneself and preparing and these last few days, it was ah! the body PHYSICALLY noting that things had changed.
It has to be worked out, as they say, realized in every detail, but the change IS DONEthe change is done.
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And thats becoming constant. So there is the Awareness that theres only one solution for the body, its total surrendertotal. And in that total surrender it realizes that that vibration (how can I explain?), that vibration is not one of dissolution, but something what? The unknown, completely unknownnew, unknown.
Sometimes its struck with panic. And it cant say its in pain much, I cant call that suffering; its something quite extraordinary. So, for it, the only solution is to disappear in the divine Consciousness. Then everything is fine.
0 1971-10-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution towards a supreme consciousness and an integral Awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other expedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a complete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true solution.
The Life Divine, XVIII.627
0 1972-08-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When this formation [of death] makes itself felt, an Awareness comes that theres hardly any difference between life and physical death, in that anything, at any time, can send you over to the other side. Then, with the other formation, theres a feeling that (how can I put it?) the bodys frailty is due to a need for the consciousness to change so it can manifest the Supramental.
And I am like this (gesture between the two).
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness is not only power of Awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.
Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not quite so, certainly. The consciousness (rather, the self-consciousness) that man has gained in place of the unconsciousness or semi-consciousness, characteristic of the general mass in the past, and the growing sense of individuality and personal worth, which is an expression of that consciousness, are his assets, the hall-mark of his present-day nature and outlook and activity. The consciousness may not have always been used wisely, but still it is a light that has illumined him, brought him an Awareness of himself and of things, that is new and in a special way close and intimate and revealing. The light is perhaps not of the kind that comes direct from high altitudesit is, as it were, a transverse ray cutting aslant; nonetheless, through its grace a self-revelation and a self-valuation have been possible in spheres hitherto unsurveyed and lost in darkness, and on a scale equally unprecedented. Life has found a self-light. It is indeed as yet a glare, lurid and uncertain, but it has the capacity to develop into, and call in, the white and tranquil effulgence of the Soul-light and the Supreme Light of which it is the image and precursor.
Another similar cycle can be traced farther back in the past. The classicism of Grco-Latin culture dominated by mind and reasonalthough it was a kind of higher mind and intuitive reasonwas supplanted by the heart movement that Christ and the Christian cult initiated.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The unrolling or Involution is the path traced by consciousness in its changing modes of concentration. The principle of concentration is inherent in consciousness. Sri Aurobindo speaks of four modes or degrees of this concentration: (I) the essential, (2) the integral, (3) the total or global and (4) the separative. The first is a sole in-dwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being it is the superconscient Silence, at one end, and the Inconscience, at the other. The second is the total Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration; the third, multiple or totalising overmental Awareness; the fourth is the concentration of Ignorance. All the four, however, form the integral play of one indivisible consciousness.
Here we come to the very heart of the mystery. As we have put it thus far, the process of Involution would appear as a series of stages in a descending order, a movement along a vertical line, as it were, one stage following another, more or less separate from each other, the lower being ever more ignorant, more separative, more exclusive. But this is not the whole picture. At each lower stage the higher is not merely high above, but also comes down and stands behind or becomes immanent in the lower. Along with the vertical movement there is also a horizontal movement. In other words, even when we are sunk in the lowest stratum of Ignorancein the domain of Matterwe have also there all the other strands behind, even the very highest, not merely as passive or neutral entities, but as dynamic agents exerting their living pressure to the full. Indeed the Ignorance is not mere Ignorance, but Knowledge itself, the very highest Knowledge, but in a particular mode of activity. What appears ignorant is full of a secret Knowledgeit is just the outer surface, the facet that appears as its opposite because of a particular manner of concentration, a total self-abandonment in the object of Knowledge. That Knowledge stands revealed if the mask is put away, that is to say, if we get behind, If we release the exclusiveness of the concentration. This release or getting behind does not mean necessarily the dissolution of the status itself for it is the pressure from behind, the concentration of the hidden consciousness that creates the status and its truth-forms; with the exclusiveness goes away only the twist, the aberration produced by it. When the consciousness withdraws from its mode and field of exclusive concentration, it need not concentrate again on the withdrawal only, it can be an inclusive concentration also embracing both the status the frontal and the behind. Both can be held together in one single movement of consciousness possessing the double function of projection and comprehensionprajna and vijna.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So far so good. But two things are to be taken note of. First of all, the resolution of the normal conflict in man's consciousness, the integration of his personality, is not wholly practicable within the scope of the present nature and the field of the actual forces at play. That can give only a shadow of the true resolution and integration. A conscious envisaging of the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked libidos in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance, of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion precisely of the superconsciousness. And here comes the second point to note. For it is this superconsciousness towards which all the strife and struggle of the under-consciousness are turned and directed. The yearning and urge in the subconsciousness to move forward, to escape outside into the light does not refer merely to the march towards normal Awareness and consciousness: it has a deeper direction and a higher aimit seeks that of which it is an aberration and a deformation, the very origin and source, the height from which it fell.
This superconsciousness has a special mode of its quintessential energy which is omnipotent in action, immediate in effectivity. It is pure as the purest incandescent solar light and embodies the concentrated force of consciousness. It is the original creative vibration of the absolute or supreme Being. Sri Aurobindo calls this supreme form of superconscient consciousness-energy, the Supermind. There are of course other layers and strata of superconsciousness leading up to the super-mind which are of various potentials and embody different degrees of spiritual power and consciousness.
05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Awareness is not a mere passive phenomenon; it is supremely active and dynamic. To be aware means a constant radiation of the light of consciousness and by the touch of that light a continuous purification and new-creation.
Consciousness: the movement by which existence goes out of itself and turns back upon itself in order to experience itself.
05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us explain. Man is not as ignorant and helpless as he seems to be, as he would himself consider to be. There is in him always a spark, under the ashes, as it were, a perfect freedom behind the faade of a network of bondages, not dead or dormant but biding the time, to come out and be active on the surface. The spark is the light that directs to the right and warns against the wrong; the freedom is the choice to do the right and avoid the wrong. It is just a point of perception, just a flash of Awareness, but net and clear: it is there, you have only to notice it. It does not give the why or the whither of the rightness: it is a simple declaration presented to you, for you to do what you like with it: to ignore or to profit by. Usually we do not pay attention to it: our attention is diverted towards another direction and other things. Our environment, our education, our domestic and social influences, even a good part of our own nature demand of us other ways of living and inhibit the spontaneous inherent light of the consciousness. Even so, if we care to look at it, if we sincerely turn round and ask for it, we will find it still there the flame behind the smoke, the queen in the harem, the deity in the sanctum. What is required is just a straight look and not the crooked wink we are accustomed to. The first attempts will necessarily mean a little fumbling, but if you mean what you do, you will find your vision getting clearer. It is our own disinclination that weaves the cobweb of ignorance around the truth. Otherwise, an unsophisticated consciousness, a consciousness which is not vitiatedmore often by nurture than by naturecan always feel the presence of the truth and is directly aware of it.
A blinded misdirected mind, if it wakes up at any time and looks about for the truth sincerelywe insist upon the conditioncan recognise it, learn to trace it by certain indications it always leaves behind in the consciousness. A touch of the truth, a step towards it will be always accompanied by a sense of relief, of peace, of a serene happiness and unconditional freedom. These things are felt not as something gross and superficial affecting your outer life and situation, but pertaining to the depth of your being, concerning your inmost fibreit is nothing else but just the sense of light, as if you are at last out of the dark. A right movement brings you that feeling; and whenever you have that feeling you know that there has been the right movement. On the contrary, with a wrong movement you are ill at ease. You may say that a hardened criminal is never ill at ease; perhaps, but only after a great deal of hardening. The criminal was not always a criminal I am speaking of a human being, not a born hostilehe must have started some-where the downward incline. The distinction of the right and the wrong must have been presented to his consciousness and the choice was freely his. Afterwards one gets bound to one's Karma and its chain.
06.26 - The Wonder of It All, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ordinary consciousness takes for granted the things that exist as they are. It does not question; it finds everything very natural and as a matter of course. It sees and expects to see the same old familiar things repeated and is not struck by any extraordinary note in them. That is the unconsciousness of the ordinary consciousness. But when you begin to be conscious, when you look about and gaze at things, you awake, as it were, from sleep, and begin to question, to wonder: why is it like this, how is it so, what is it, to what purpose etc. etc. Normally you see the sun rise, rain fall, earth rotate but you do not spend a thought over any of these objects or happenings, except so far as they are useful or simply nuisance. But when there is a light in you and you become conscious, conscious of yourself and of things around you, everything acquires an importance, a sense and you are full of wonder, wondering at a wonderful creation. The more you advance, the more the light grows in you, all the more your wonder increases. As your Awareness increases, your interest too increases. A new beauty surrounds, flows out of every object and event. You do not take things for granted and let them pass mechanically, but greet everyone of them as a guest, with whom you wish to make acquaintance and be familiar, each one having a message for you and yourself something to deliver. That is a source of inexhaustible delight and of ever increasing knowledge.
***
09.04 - The Divine Grace, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is because our vision is limited or because we are blinded by our preferences that we are unable to discover why things are as they are. But when one begins to see one enters into that state of wonder which nothing can describe. Behind the appearances one finds this infinite, marvellous, all-powerful Grace that knows everything, organises everything, arranges everything, and leads us, whether we want it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, the union with the Divine, the Awareness of the Divine Consciousness and becoming one with it.
Thus living in the action and the presence of the Grace one lives a life full of delight and wonder, the sense of a marvellous power and at the same time, full of a quiet and complete trust which nothing can shake.
100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
100.010 Awareness of the Child
100.020 Human Sense Awareness
100.030 Resolvability Limits
--
100.010 Awareness of the Child: The simplest descriptions are those expressed by only one word. The one word alone that describes the experience "life" is " Awareness." Awareness requires an otherness of which the observer can be aware. The communication of Awareness is both subjective and objective, from passive to active, from otherness to self, from self to otherness.
Awareness = self + otherness
--
100.011 Awareness is the otherness saying to the observer, "See Me."
Awareness is the observer saying to self, "I see the otherness." Otherness induces Awareness of self. Awareness is always otherness inductive. The total complex of otherness is the environment.
100.012
--
100.013 Life begins only with otherness. Life begins with Awareness of environment. In Percival W. Bridgman's identification of Einstein's science as operational science, the comprehensive inventory of environmental conditions is as essential to "experimental evidence" as is the inventory of locally-focused-upon experimental items and interoperational events.
100.014 The child's Awareness of otherness phenomena can be apprehended only through its nerve-circuited sense systems and through instrumentally augmented, macro- micro, sense-system extensions __ such as eyeglasses. Sight requires light, however, and light derives only from radiation of celestial entropy, where Sunlight is starlight and fossil fuels and fire-producing wood logs are celestial radiation accumulators; ergo, all the sensings are imposed by cosmic environment eventings.
100.015 The child apprehends only sensorially. The combined complex of different sensorial apprehendings (touch, smell, hear, see) of each special case experience are altogether coordinated in the child's brain to constitute " Awareness" conceptions. The senses can apprehend only other-than-self "somethings" __ for example, the child's left hand discovering its right hand, its toe, or its mother's finger. Brains differentially correlate the succession of special case informations communicated to the brain by the plurality of senses. The brain distinguishes the new, first-time-event, special case experiences only by comparing them with the set of all its recalled prior cognitions.
--
100.020 Human Sense Awareness
INFRARED THRESHOLD
--
are essential to Awareness, Awareness being the minimum statement of the
experience life. In the accommodation of asymmetric aberration the tetrahedron
--
experience of life, for it occasions life's initial Awareness. (See Fig. 411.05.)
100.330 "Me" Ball
10.08 - Consciousness as Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness, however, is not mere consciousness, that is to say, Awareness; it is also power, power for organisation and execution. It is unconsciousness that is or invariably leads to disorderliness, disorganisation and confusion. It is the light of consciousness that brings order out of chaos, gives an organised direction to forces moving at random and with no purpose. Man has started organising his life since he acquired the light of consciousness. He has been doing the yoga of the intelligent will (Gita's buddhi-yoga) since his advent upon earth. But even in man this force of light, the energy of consciousness is not fully operative because man is not fully conscious, he is only partially so. His mind is conscious and has developed into intelligence (a little strayed into intellectuality); but there are large domains in him that are wholly unconscious, that is to say, move in mechanical rounds, a passive slave of external impacts. I am referring to his vital being and his physical being. Even like the mind these too must admit into themselves the light of the consciousness in order to free themselves from the influence of other external forces and attain the sense of their own truth and self-fulfilment.
Indeed each part, even each constituent element of our being has an individuality of its own, a personal being and consciousness. And it is because it is not aware of that inner reality, because it has fallen unconscious, therefore it has entered into this life of bondage and slavery and mechanical existence. When life becomes conscious, the life-energy becomes luminous, the vital being gradually gains self-control and self-direction. Instead of being moved about by irresponsible and irrepressible desires and impulses it attains a clarity as to what it should desire and what it should effectuate; and along with that light secures the strength also to act up to the directions of that light.
--
In fact, education means precisely this instilling of the consciousness into the part that is sought to be educated. Usually the thing is done in a different way which is wrong, at least an inefficient way. By education we usually mean exercising, that is teaching some exercises mostly of memory on some subject in which one seeks education. It is more or less an exercise of mechanical repetition. Whether it is of the mind or of the body the procedure is the same. As the muscles of the body are sought to be streng thened and developed through repetitive exercises, the mental faculties too are put under a training that consists of similar repetitive exercises. To store the mind with as many kinds of information as possible, hammer all ingredients of knowledge into the brain cellslearning by rote as it is termed, this is what education normally means; but as I said, it is consciousness that is to be evoked in the mind and it is not done by mere mechanical exercises. Even the body does not reach its true perfection unless the exercises are attended with consciousness, Awareness, a play of light into the movements of the body, into the limbs that participate in the play of the exercises. Naturally the vital does not need any exercise for its development, it is naturally exercised, much exercised. It has to be not exercised but exorcised, that is to say, purified and controlled. And that means the introduction of the pure light of consciousness into it.
I have laid stress on consciousness, but consciousness has three facets or steps. The first is simple consciousness, the next is self-consciousness and the last supra-consciousness. First you become conscious of a thing, next you become conscious that you are conscious of the thing, last something else is conscious in and through your consciousness.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
specious probabilities. The self-validating certainty of direct Awareness cannot in the
very nature of things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
As regards taste and smell, we might call them minor senses, for they are closely allied to the important sense of touch. They are practically subsidiary to that sense. This second sense, and its connection with this second solar system, should be carefully pondered over. It is predominantly the sense most closely connected with the second Logos. This conveys a hint of much value if duly considered. It is of value to study the extensions of physical plane touch on other planes and to see whither we are led. It is the faculty which enables us to arrive [197] at the essence by due recognition of the veiling sheath. It enables the Thinker who fully utilises it to put himself en rapport with the essence of all selves at all stages, and thereby to aid in the due evolution of the sheath and actively to serve. A Lord of Compassion is one who (by means of touch) feels with, fully comprehends, and realises the manner in which to heal and correct the inadequacies of the not-self and thus actively to serve the plan of evolution. We should study likewise in this connection the value of touch as demonstrated by the healers of the race (those on the Bodhisattva line) [lxxxv]83 and the effect of the Law of Attraction and Repulsion as thus manipulated by them. Students of etymology will have noted that the origin of the word touch is somewhat obscure, but probably means to 'draw with quick motion.' Herein lies the whole secret of this objective solar system, and herein will be demonstrated the quickening of vibration by means of touch. Inertia, mobility, rhythm, are the qualities manifested by the not-self. Rhythm, balance, and stable vibration are achieved by means of this very faculty of touch or feeling. Let me illustrate briefly so as to make the problem somewhat clearer. What results in meditation? By dint of strenuous effort and due attention to rules laid down, the aspirant succeeds in touching matter of a quality rarer than is his usual custom. He contacts his causal body, in time he contacts the matter of the buddhic plane. By means of this touch his own vibration is temporarily and briefly quickened. Fundamentally we are brought back to the subject that we deal with in this treatise. The latent fire of matter attracts to itself that fire, latent in other forms. They touch, and recognition and Awareness ensues. The fire of manas burns continuously and is fed by that which is attracted and repulsed. When the two [198] blend, the stimulation is greatly increased and the ability to touch intensified. The Law of Attraction persists in its work until another fire is attracted and touched, and the threefold merging is completed. Forget not in this connection the mystery of the Rod of Initiation. [lxxxvi]84 Later when we consider the subject of the centres and Initiation it must be remembered that we are definitely studying one aspect of this mysterious faculty of touch, the faculty of the second Logos, wielding the law of Attraction.
Let us now finish what may be imparted on the remaining three sensessight, taste, smell and then briefly sum up their relationship to the centres, and their mutual action and interaction. That will then leave two more points to be dealt with in this first division of the Treatise on Cosmic Fire, and a summing up. We shall then be in a position to take up that portion of the treatise that deals with the fire of manas and with the development of the manasaputras, [lxxxvii]85 both in their totality and likewise individually. This topic is of the most imperative importance as it deals entirely with man, the Ego, the thinker, and shows the cosmic blending of the fires of matter and of mind, and their utilisation by the indwelling Flame.
--
In all these perfections is seen the Awareness of the Self, and the graded process of identification, utilisation, manipulation and final rejection of the not-self by that Self who is now consciously aware. He hears the note of nature and that of his monad; he recognises their identity, utilises their vibration, and passes rapidly through the three stages of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.
[201]
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
showing like the snorkel of a diver above the surface of the water. I found my Awareness of things
unbearable.
1.010 - Self-Control - The Alpha and Omega of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It has been discovered now, therefore, that perceptions are due to a segmentation of consciousness. This is the secret behind our life in this world. And inasmuch as our perceptional experiences are involved in a condition of consciousness which is inseparable from our own being, we cannot know the reason why we see things. Consequently, we cannot know why we like things or dislike things. Our knowledge becomes half-baked, inadequate, and erroneous when the conditions of all knowledge lie behind our capacities. Thus it is that often it looks as if we are completely under the control of pressures that are exerted from above and behind, from the right and the left, from every direction a fact of which we cannot have any Awareness. It is, therefore, useless to apply scientific methods of knowing or investigation in regard to matters which are the very conditions of knowing.
This is something which goes deeper than even psychology, because all knowledge even of the mind, which is what we know as psychology is gained by an observational technique employed by the mind in an objective manner, as if it is observing somebody else, and the only thing that the mind cannot do is to know itself or to know the conditions of its own functioning. The relationships of the mind and the conditions of knowledge determine the very existence and the character of the mind, and therefore it is that we find ourselves in a helpless condition. The practice of yoga becomes all the more difficult when it deals with conditions prior to our present state of existence, when it deals with causes rather than effects, and especially causes that lie 'behind' us which are precedent to our present physical and social condition.
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms of which the meaning is definite and clear. Let us give the name of 'sense-data' to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on. We shall give the name 'sensation' to the experience of being immediately aware of these things. Thus, whenever we see a colour, we have a sensation _of_ the colour, but the colour itself is a sense-datum, not a sensation. The colour is that _of_ which we are immediately aware, and the Awareness itself is the sensation. It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data--brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc.--which we associate with the table; but, for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sense-data, or even that the sense-data are directly properties of the table. Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.
The real table, if it exists, we will call a 'physical object'. Thus we have to consider the relation of sense-data to physical objects.
1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
It is our belief that the essential traits of a new age and a new reality are discernible in nearly all forms of contemporary expression, whether in the creations of modern art, or in the recent findings of the natural sciences, or in the results of the humanities and sciences of the mind. Moreover we are in a position to define this new reality in such a way as to emphasize one of its most significant elements. Our definition is a natural corollary of the recognition that mans coming to Awareness is inseparably bound to his consciousness of space and time.
Scarcely five hundred years ago, during the Renaissance, an unmistakable reorganization of our consciousness occurred: the discovery of perspective which opened up the three-dimensionality of space. This discovery is so closely linked with the entire intellectual attitude of the modern epoch that we have felt obliged to call this age the age of perspectivity and characterize the age immediately preceding it as the unperspectival age. These definitions, by recognizing a fundamental characteristic of these eras, lead to the further appropriate definition of the age of the dawning new consciousness as the aperspectival age, a definition supported not only by the results of modern physics, but also by developments in the visual arts and literature, where the incorporation of time as a fourth dimension into previously spatial conceptions has formed the initial basis for manifesting the new.Aperspectival is not to be thought of as merely the opposite or negation of perspectival; the antithesis of perspectival is unperspectival. The distinction in meaning suggested by the three terms unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival is analogous to that of the terms illogical, logical, and alogical or immoral, moral, and amoral. We have employed here the designation aperspectival to clearly emphasize the need of overcoming the mere antithesis of affirmation and negation. The so-called primal words (Urworte), for example, evidence two antithetic connotations: Latin altus meant high as well as low; sacer meant sacred as well as cursed. Such primal words as these formed an undifferentiated psychically-stressed unity whose bivalent nature was definitely familiar to the early Egyptians and Greeks. This is no longer the case with our present sense of language; consequently, we have required a term that transcends equally the ambivalence of the primal connotations and the dualism of antonyms or conceptual opposites.
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When we have grasped this it is at once apparent that we can extricate ourselves from our dangerous situation only by ordering ou relationships to ourselves, to our I or Ego, and not just our relationships with others, to the Thou, that is to God, the world, our fellow man and neighbor. That seems possible only if we are willing to assimilate the entirety of our human existence into our Awareness. This means that all of our structures of Awareness that form and support our present consciousness structure will have to be integrated into a new and more intensive form, which would in fact unlock a new reality. To that end we must constantly relive and re-experience in a decisive sense the full depth of our past. The adage that anyone who denies and condemns his past also abnegates his future is valid for the individual as well as for mankind. Our plea for an appropriate ordering and conscious realization of our relationships to the I as well as the Thou chiefly concerns the ordering and conscious recognition of our origin, and of all factors leading to the present. It is only in terms of man in his entirety that we shall achieve the necessary detachment from the present situation, Le., from both our unperspectival ties to the group or collective, and our perspectival attachment to the separated, individual Ego. When we become aware of the exhausted residua of past or passing forms of our understanding of reality we will recognize more clearly the signs of the inevitable new. We will also sense that there are new sources which can be tapped: the sources of the aperspectival world that can liberate us from the two exhausted and deficient forms which have become almost completely invalid and are certainly no longer all-inclusive or decisive.
It is our task in this book to work out this aperspectival basis. Our discussion will rely more an the evidence presented in the history of thought than on the findings of the natural sciences as is the case with the authors Transformation of the Occident. Among the disciplines of historical thought the investigation of language will form the predominant source of our insight since it is the preeminent means of reciprocal communication between man and the world.
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We shall therefore beginwith the evidence and not with idealistic constructions; in the face of present-day weapons of annihilation, such constructions have less chance of survival than ever before. But as we shall see, weapons and nuclear fission are not the only realities to be dealt with; spiritual reality in its intensified form is also becoming effectual and real. This new spiritual reality is without question our only security that the threat of material destruction can be averted. Its realization alone seems able to guarantee mans continuing existence in the face of the powers of technology, rationality, and chaotic emotion. If our consciousness, that is, the individual persons Awareness, vigilance, and clarity of vision, cannot master the new reality and make possible its realization, then the prophets of doom will have been correct. Other alternatives are an illusion; consequently, great demands are placed on us, and each one of us have been given a grave responsibility, not merely to survey but to actually traverse the path opening before us.
There are surely enough historical instances of the catastrophic downfall of entire peoples and cultures. Such declines were triggered by the collision of deficient and exhausted attitudes that were insufficient for continuance with those more recent, more intense and, in some respects, superior. One such occurrence vividly exemplifies the decisive nature of such crises: the collision of the magical, mythical, and unperspectival culture of the Central American Aztecs with the rational-technological, perspectival attitude of the sixteenthcentury Spanish conquistadors. A description of this event can be found in the Aztec chronicle of Frey Bernardino de Sahagun, written eight years after Cortez conquest of Mexico on the basis of Aztec accounts. The following excerpt forms the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of the chronicle which describes the conquest of Mexico City:
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What is of interest to us within the present context is not the historical predicament occasioned by the collision of peoples of differing might, but rather the supersession of the magic group-consciousness and its most potent weapon, spell-casting, by rational, ego-consciousness. Today this rational consciousness, with nuclear fission its strongest weapon, is confronted by a similar catastrophic situation of failure; consequently, it too can be vanquished by a new consciousness structure. We are convinced that there are powers arising from within ourselves that are already at work overcoming the deficiency and dubious nature of our rational ego-consciousness via the new aperspectival Awareness whose manifestations are surging forth everywhere. The aperspective consciousness structure is a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both mans distant past and his approaching future as a living present. The new spiritual attitude can take root only through an insightful process of intensive Awareness. This attitude must emerge from its present concealment and latency and become effective, and thereby prepare the transparency of the world and man in which spirituality can manifest itself.
The first part of the present work, which is devoted to the foundations of the aperspectival world, is intended to furnish convincing evidence for this new spiritual attitude. This evidence rests an two guiding principles whose validity will gradually become clear:
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
He neither kills, nor steals (or, if he does, he hides his actions, even from his own Awareness), and he tends,
in theory, to treat his neighbour as himself. The principles that govern his society (and, increasingly, all
1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
nature of mind is the domain of Awareness itself, of
the experience itself of pure Awareness. No intellect,
no reasoning, no word can grasp it or express it.
--
This Awareness, inherent in everyone beyond any
mental elaborations, also is Tara in the ultimate
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
All this sheds some lightdim, it is true, and merely inferentialon the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy. In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of history, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally roads around or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of His divinity has always been recognized. In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines? My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded history. There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before history was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are foundan exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few. There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies. True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever. Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences. We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity. In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct Awareness of the one Ground of things; for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the psychic or the spiritual level. Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking. But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experiencejust as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true. It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists. Orthodox ethnology, writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as Philosopher, has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. And he adds that no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being. Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radins view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.
The nineteenth centurys mania for history and prophetic Utopianism tended to blind the eyes of even its acutest thinkers to the timeless facts of eternity. Thus we find T. H. Green writing of mystical union as though it were an evolutionary process and not, as all the evidence seems to show, a state which man, as man, has always had it in his power to realize. An animal organism, which has its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness, which in itself can have no history, but a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. But in actual fact it is only in regard to peripheral knowledge that there has been a genuine historical development. Without much lapse of time and much accumulation of skills and information, there can be but an imperfect knowledge of the material world. But direct Awareness of the eternally complete consciousness, which is the ground of the material world, is a possibility occasionally actualized by some human beings at almost any stage of their own personal development, from childhood to old age, and at any period of the races history.
1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Likewise, we should not wrest the object from its connectedness with things in our perception, which is another way of judging it. A similar mistake has been committed by us we have wrested ourselves away from things. We have stood outside the scheme of things in our judgement of values, while we are already a part of the scheme of things. All perceptions, judgements and evaluations become inscrutable mysteries on account of this initial difficulty that has been created, namely, a separation of the percipient from the object with which it is organically connected, basically. For instance, a finger of the hand becomes aware of another finger of the same hand. If we were to take for granted that a particular finger of a hand has a consciousness of its own, and we conclude that it can perceive the existence of another finger of the same hand what would be its attitude? What would be the real relationship between one finger and another finger, given that one finger can see another finger outside it? We know that one finger is different from another finger. But the consciousness of one finger in respect of another finger would be charged with its basic Awareness of its connectedness with the whole body, which it cannot look upon as an external object, so that even the other finger which it perceives cannot be called as a real external object, though it is an object for all practical purposes because it can be seen.
This is perhaps the significance of perception from an organic point of view, while what happens in our case, at present, is that this organic connection between the seer and the seen is lost sight of, and we have only a mechanised form of perception where there is a false evaluation projected on the object by the mind which is perceiving it, on account of its losing contact with the vital issue which is involved in perception, namely its connectedness to the object. Whether in attachment or in aversion, the mind is not properly related to the object. It has an improper relationship with things, both in love and hatred. The impropriety of this relationship arises on account of its false disconnectedness from the object, and we cannot properly understand the way of controlling the mind if we cannot understand the relationship that the mind has with the object. It has a twofold relationship. On the one side, it stands as a perceiver of the object and is obliged to regard the object as an outside something, which is the very meaning of perception, of course. But, on the other side, there is a basic similarity of nature between the seer and the seen, which is the reason why there is the very possibility of perception at all. A consciousness of the object would be impossible if the seer of the object is basically disconnected from the object. Basic disconnection would not be permissible. An utter isolation of the subject from the object would defeat the very purpose of all perception.
10.27 - Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It must now be apparent that consciousness is not merely consciousness, simple Awareness, it is also power or energy. The Vedic word is cit-tapas, consciousness-energy. It is one indivisible, entity: consciousness is energy. It is not however in the sense as when we say knowledge is power: It does not mean consciousness has power or gives power, but consciousness is power. The nearer analogy would be with light-energy. Light, we know today, thanks to modern science, does not merely illumine, it energises, activises, moves things, that is to say, matter and material objects. The ray of light, we know now, acts even more effectively than the surgeon's knife. The inherent quality of light is energy. This energy has been discovered to be electro-magnetic energy, a photon (unit-light or light-unit) is, as we have said, an electro-magnetic quantum.
In the same way consciousness is also a vibration of energy. It is the self-impulsion of consciousness. This impulsion need not always go out, cast or spread itself abroad in outward expressions and activities, it may be a stilled self-contained impulsion. It is Awareness pregnant with power. Consciousness is luminosity, consciousness is energy, consciousness is also delight. It may be said the very soul of consciousness is a happiness, a gladness absolute and inviolate, the delight which is love in its supreme mode.
Indeed, in the final account, we come back to the supreme mantra formulating the mystery of ultimate reality given by the ancients that we all know and repeat so oftensachchidnanda.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
initiates a sequence of controlled processing, which is difficult, slow, accompanied by Awareness,
sequential and generative (and which is referred to as exploratory behavior in this document), contrasted
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and reached his or her Awareness.104 Consciousness (affiliated tightly with orienting, for the purposes of
the present argument) therefore appears as a phenomenon critically involved in and vital to the evaluation
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least in potential). This can be made immediately evident to subjective Awareness merely by contrasting the
capacity for control and monitoring of the hand, for example, with the much-less-represented expanse of
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otherwise interesting sensory information, associated with the orienting complex, heightened Awareness
and focused concentration, activates large areas of neocortex. Similarly, increased cortical mobilization
takes place during the practice phase of skill acquisition, when Awareness appears required for development
of control. The area of such engagement or mobilization shrinks in size as movement becomes habitual and
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
The first stage of life ends with the change of teeth. Now I know that theres a certain amount of Awareness these days concerning the changes that occur in the body and soul of children at this stage of life. Nevertheless, its not sufficient to bring to light all that happens within the human constitution at this tender age; we must come to understand this in order to become educators. The appearance of teethnot the inherited, baby teethis merely the most obvious sign of a complete transformation of the whole human being. Much more is happening within the organism, though not as perceptible outwardly; its most radical expression is the appearance of the second teeth.
If we consider this we can see that contemporary physiology and psychology simply cannot penetrate the human being with any real depth, since their particular methods (excellent though they may be) were developed to observe only outer physical nature and the soul as it manifests in the body. As I said yesterday, the task of anthroposophical spiritual science is to penetrate in every way the whole human development of body, soul, and spirit.
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People no longer could feel or perceive in a way that was possible before the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In those days, people viewed matters of the spirit in an imbalanced way, just as people now have a one-sided view of nature. But the human race had to pass through a stage in which it could add the observation of purely natural elements to an earlier human devotion to the world of spirit and soul that excluded nature. This materializing process, this change in course, was necessary; but we have to realize that, in order that civilized humanity not be turned into a wastel and in our time, there has to be a new turn, a turning toward spirit and soul. The Awareness of this fact is the essence of all endeavors such as that of Waldorf education, which is rooted in what a deeper observation of human evolution reveals as necessary for our time. We need to find our way back to the spirit and soul; in order for that to happen, we need to understand how we became divorced26 from spirit and soul in the first place. There are many today who have no such understanding and, therefore, view anything that attempts to lead us back to the spirit as, well, not very clever, shall we say.
We can find remarkable illustrations of this attitude. Id like to mention one, but only parenthetically. Theres a chapter (incidentally, a very interesting chapter in some ways) in Mau- rice Maeterlincks new book The Great Riddle. 4 Its subject is the anthroposophical method of viewing the world. He discusses anthroposophy, and he also discusses me (if youll forgive a per- sonal reference). He has read many of my books and makes a very interesting comment. He says that, at the beginning of my books, I seem to have a levelheaded, logical, and shrewd mind. In the later chapters, however, it seems as if I had lost my mind. It may very well appear this way to Maeterlinck; subjectively he has every right to his opinion. Why shouldnt I seem levelheaded, logical and scientific to him in the first chapters, and insane in later ones?
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
countless others, like so many stages of our effort. We won't discuss here the great value of these methods, or the remarkable intermediate results they can lead to; we will examine only their goal, their final destination. The truth is, this "poise above" seems to have no relation with real life whatsoever; first, because all these disciplines are extremely demanding, requiring hours and hours of work every day, if not complete solitude; secondly, because their ultimate result is a state of trance or yogic ecstasy, samadhi, perfect equilibrium, ineffable bliss, in which one's Awareness of the world is dissolved, annihilated.
Brahman, the Spirit, appears therefore to have absolutely nothing to do with our regular waking consciousness; He is outside all that we know; He is not of this world. Others who were not Indians have said the same.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The ground in which the multifarious and time-bound psyche is rooted is a simple, timeless Awareness. By making ourselves pure in heart and poor in spirit we can discover and be identified with this Awareness. In the spirit we not only have, but are, the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground.
Analogously, God in time is grounded in the eternal now of the modeless Godhead. It is in the Godhead that things, lives and minds have their being; it is through God that they have their becominga becoming whose goal and purpose is to return to the eternity of the Ground.
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
As we shall see, these designations are valid not only with respect to art history, but also to aesthetics, cultural history, and the history of the psyche and the mind. The achievement of perspective indicates man's discovery and consequent coming to Awareness of space, whereas the unrealized perspective indicates that space is dormant in man and that he is not yet awakened to it. Moreover, the unperspectival world suggests a state in which man lacks self-identity: he belongs to a unit, such as a tribe or communal group, where the emphasis is not yet on the person but on the impersonal, not an the "I" but on the communal group, the qualitative mode of the collective. The illuminated manuscripts and gilt ground of early Romanesque painting depict theunperspectival world that retained the prevailing constitutive elements of Mediterranean antiquity. Not until the Gothic, the forerunner of the Renaissance was there a shift in emphasis. Before that space is not yet our depth-space, rather a cavern (and vault), or simply an in-between space; in both instances it is undifferentiated space. This situation bespeaks for us a hardly conceivable enclosure in the world, an intimate bond between outer and inner suggestive of a correspondence only faintly discernible between soul and nature. This condition was gradually destroyed by the expansion and growing strength of Christianity whose teaching of detachment from nature transforms this destruction into an act of liberation.
Man's lack of spatial Awareness is attended by a lack of ego-consciousness, since in order to objectify and qualify space, a self-conscious "I" is required that is able to stand opposite or confront space, as well as to depict or represent it by projecting it out of his soul or psyche. In this light, Worringer's statements regarding the lack of all space consciousness in Egyptian art are perfectly valid: "Only in the rudimentary form of prehistorical space and cave magic does space have a role in Egyptian architecture . . . . The Egyptians were neutral and indifferent toward space . . . . They were not even potentially aware of spatiality. Their experience was not trans-spatial but pre-spatial; . . . their culture of oasis cultivation was spaceless . . . . Their culture knew only spatial limitations and enclosures in architecture but no inwardness or interiority as such. Just as their engraved reliefs lacked shadow depth, so too was their architecture devoid of special depth. The third dimension, that is the actual dimension of life's tension and polarity, was experience not as a quality but as a mere quantity. How then was space, the moment of depth-seeking extent, to enter their Awareness as an independent quality apart from all corporality? . . . The Egyptians lacked utterly any spatial consciousness."
Despite, or indeed because of, Euclidean geometry, there is no evidence of an Awareness of qualitative and objectified space in early antiquity or in the epoch preceding the Renaissance.
This has been indirectly confirmed by von Kaschnitz-Weinberg, who has documented two opposing yet complementary structural elements of ancient art as it emerged from the Megalithic (stone) age. The first, Dolmen architecture, entered the Mediterranean region primarily from Northern and Western Europe and was especially influential on Greek architecture. It is phallic in nature and survives in the column architecture in Greece, as in the Par thenon. Space is visible here simply as diastyle or the intercolumnar space, whose structure is determined by the vertical posts and the horizontal lintels and corresponds to Euclidean cubic space.
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We are then perhaps justified in speaking of the "space" of antiquity as undifferentiated space, as a simple inherence within the security of the maternal womb;. expressing an absence of any confrontation with actual, exterior space. The predominance of the two constitutive polar elements, the paternal phallic column and the maternal uterine cave the forces to which unperspectival man was subject reflects his inextricable relationship to his parental world and, consequently, his complete dependence on it which excluded any Awareness of an ego in our modern sense. He remains sheltered and enclosed in the world of the "we" where outer objective space is still non-existent.
The two polar elements which made up the spaceless foundation of the ancient world were first united and creatively amalgamated in Christian ecclesiastical architecture. (The symbolic content of these elements does not, as we will see later emphasize the sexual, but rather the psychical and mythical aspects.) Their amalgamation subsequently gives rise to the Son of Man; the duality of the column and tower, the vault and dome of Christian church architecture made feasible for the first time the trinity represented by the son-as-man, the man who will create his own space.
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Although already shaped in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity, the perspectival world began to find expression about 1250 A.D. in Christian Europe. In contrast to the impersonal, pre-human, hieratic, and standardized sense of the human Body in our sense virtually nonexistent held by the Egyptians, the Greek sensitivity to the body had already evidenced a certain individuation of man. But only toward the close of the Middle Ages did man gradually become aware of his body as a support for his ego. And, having gained this Awareness, he is henceforth not just a human being reflected in an idealized bust or miniature of an emperor, a philosopher, or a poet, but a specific individual such as those who gaze at us from a portrait by Jan van Eyck.
The conception of man as subject is based an a conception of the world and the environment as an object. It is in the paintings of Giotto that we See first expressed, however tentatively, the objectified, external world. Early Sienese art, particularly miniature painting, reveals a yet spaceless, self-contained, and depthless world significant for its symbolic content and not for what we would today call its realism. These "pictures" of an unperspectival era are, as it were, painted at night when objects are without shadow and depth. Here darkness has swallowed space to the extent that only the immaterial, psychic component could be expressed. But in the work of Giotto, the latent space hitherto dormant in the night of collective man's unconscious is visualized; the first renderings of space begin to appear in painting signalling an incipient perspectivity. A new psychic Awareness of space, objectified or externalized from the psyche out into the world, begins a consciousness of space whose element of depth becomes visible in perspective.
This psychic inner-space breaks forth at the very moment that the Troubadours are writing the first lyric "I"-Poems, the first personal poetry that suddenly opens an abyss between man, as poet, and the world or nature (1250 A.D.). Concurrently at the University of Paris, Thomas Aquinas, following the thought of his teacher Albertus Magnus, asserts the validity of Aristotle, thereby initiating the rational displacement of the predominantly psychic-bound Platonic world.
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There is a document extant that unforgettably mirrors this gain and loss, this surrender and beginning; in a few sentences it depicts the struggle of a man caught between two worlds. We refer to the remarkable letter of the thirty-two year old Petrarch to Francesco Dionigidi Borgo San Sepolcro in 1336 (the first letter of his Familiari, vol. 4), in which he describes his ascent of Mount Ventoux. For his time, his description is an epochal event and signifies no less than the discovery of landscape: the first dawning of an Awareness of space that resulted in a fundamental alteration of European man's attitude in and toward the world.
Mount Ventoux is located to the northeast of Avignon, where the Rhne separates the French Alps from the Cevennes and the principal mountain range of Central France. The mountain is distinguished by clear and serene contours; viewed from Avignon to the south, its ridge slowly and seamlessly ascends against the clear Provenal sky, its south western slope sweeping broadly with soft restraint toward the valley. After a downhill sweep of nearly two kilometers, it comes to rest against the sycamore slopes of the Carpentras, which shelter the almond trees from the northern winds.
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About the same time, the brothers van Eyck began to bring increasing clarity and force to the perspectival technique of their painting, while a plethora of attempts at perspective by various other masters points up the need for spatializationon the one hand, and the difficulty of rendering it on the other. Numerous works by these frequently overlooked minor masters bear witness to the unprecedented inner struggle that occurred in artists of that generation of the fifteenth century during their attempts to master space. Their struggle is apparent from the perplexed and chaotic ventures into a perspectival technique which are replete with reversed, truncated, or partial perspective and other unsuccessful experiments. Such examples by the minor masters offer a trenchant example of the decisive process manifest by an increased spatial Awareness: the artist's inner compulsion to render space which is only incompletely grasped and only gradually emerges out of his soul toward Awareness and clear objectivation and his tenacity in the face of this problem because, however dimly, he has already perceived space.
This overwhelming new discovery and encounter, this elemental irruption of the third dimension and transformation of Euclidean plane surfaces, is so disorienting that it at first brought about an inflation and inundation by space. This is clearly evident in the numerous experimental representations of perspective. We will have occasion to note a parallel confusion and disorder in the painting of the period alter1800when we consider the new dimension of emergent consciousness in our own day. But whereas the preoccupation of the Early Renaissance was with the concretion of space, our epoch is concerned with the concretion of time. And our fundamental point of departure, the attempt to concretize time and thus realize and become conscious of the fourth dimension, furnishes a means whereby we may gain an all-encompassing perception and knowledge of our epoch.
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While plumbing the hidden depths of the word roots, we will have to be constantly mindful of connections forgotten by contemporary man. Any attempt to probe this region is likely to unleash a negative reaction in present-day man, since such insights into the shadowy depth are unsettling; they remind him too much of the dark depths which he does not yet dare to acknowledge in himself. Yet it is perfectly permissible today, and to some degree indispensible, to think symbolical while describing symbolic processes. If we insist an such symbolic thinking, however, one precept must be observed: as far as possible we must possess an insight into the particular symbol; that is, we must be certain and aware of the symbolism involved. If we are not, we lose our self-assurance and become victims of the symbol, captive to an unknown power that controls us according to its will. We would expressly warn here of such psychic violation by the symbol, as well as of the psychic bondage that results from an inadequate Awareness and knowledge of symbolic thinking.
Let us, however, return to the question of perspectivity. We have noted that perspective is the pre-eminent expression of the emergent consciousness of fifteenth-century European man, the palpable expression of his objectivation of spatial Awareness. Besides illuminating space, perspective brings it to man's Awareness and lends man his own visibility of himself. We have also noted that in the paintings of Giotto and Masaccio this evident perception of man comes to light for the first time. Yet this very same perspective whose study and gradual acquisition were a major preoccupation for Renaissance man not only extends his image of the world achieving spatialization but also narrows his vision - a consequence that still afflicts us today.
Perspectival vision and thought confine us within spatial limitations. Elsewhere we have alluded to the antithesis inherent in perspective: it locates and determines the observer as well as the observed. The positive result is a concretion of man and space; the negative result is the restriction of man to a limited segment where he perceives only one sector of reality.
Like Petrarch, who separated landscape from land, man separates from the whole only that part which his view or thinking can encompass, and forgets those sectors that lie adjacent, beyond, or even behind. One result is the anthropocentrism that has displaced what we might call the the ocentrism previously held. Man, himself a part of the world, endows his sector of Awareness with primacy; but he is, of course, only able to perceive a partial view. The sector is given prominence over the circle; the part outweighs the whole. As the whole cannot be approached from a perspectival attitude to the world, we merely superimpose the character of wholeness onto the sector, the result being the familiar "totality."
It is no accident that the ambivalence inherent in the (Latin) primal word totusis evident in the word "totality." Although in more recent times the word totushasmeant "all" or "whole," it would earlier have meant "nothing." In any event, theaudial similarity between totus and [German] tot, "dead," is readily apparent. But let us forget the totality with its nefarious character; it is not the whole. Andal though the whole can no longer even be approached from the perspectival position, the whole, as we shall see further on, is again being approached in novel ways from the aperspectival attitude.
Perspectivation, let us remember, also includes a reduction; and this reductive nature is evident, for instance, in perspectival man's predominantly visual or sight orientation in contrast to unperspectival man's audial or hearing orientation. The basis of the perspectival world view is the visual pyramid; the two lines extend from the eyes and meet at the object viewed. The image formed by the isolated sector includes the subject, the object, and the space in between. Pierodella Francesca clearly expresses this in his remark: "The first is the eye that sees; the second, the object seen; the third, the distance between the one and the other." On this Panofsky comments: "It [perspective] furnished a place for the human form to unfold in a life-like manner and move mimically [which is equivalent to the discovery of space]; but it also enabled light to spread and diffuse in space [the illumination of space is the emergence of spatial Awareness] and permitted considerable freedom in the treatment of the human body. Perspective provides a distance between man and objects." Such detachment is always a sign of an emergent objectifying consciousness and of the liberation of previously innate potentialities that are subsequently rediscovered and realized in the outer world.
This example again suggests to what extent perspective is the most tangible expression of an entire epoch. The basic concern of perspective, which it achieves, is to "look through" space and thereby to perceive and grasp space rationally. The very word "perspective" conveys this intent, as Drer suggests: "Besides, perspectiva is a Latin term meaning `seeing through." It is a "seeing through" of space and thus a coming to Awareness of space. It is irrelevant here whether we accept Drers interpretation and translate perspicere (from which perspectiva derives) in his sense as "seeing through," or render it, with Panofsky, as "seeing clearly." Both interpretations point to the same thing. The emergent Awareness of distantiating space presupposes a clear vision; and this heightening of Awareness is accompanied by an increase of personal or ego-consciousness.
This brings us back to our thesis about the antithetical nature of perspective; it locates the observer as well as the observed. Panofsky too underscores this dualistic, antithetical character: "The history of perspective [may be] considered equally as a triumph of the Sense of reality with its detachment and objectivation, and as a triumph of human striving for power with its negation of distances, just as it can be Seen as a process of establishing and systematization of the external world and an expansion of the ego sphere." Let us for now postpone a discussion of his critical term "power expansion," although he has here noted an essential aspect of perspectival man, and turn back to Leonardo da Vinci on whom Drer (as Heinrich Wlfflin points out) indirectly based his understanding.
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Above and beyond this Leonardos establishment of the laws of perspective is significant in that it made technical drafting feasible and thereby initiated the technological age. This concluded a process which had required centuries before it entered human consciousness and effected a fundamental transformation of man's world. It is only after Leonardo that the unperspectival world finally passes out of its dream-like state, and the perspectival world definitely enters Awareness. Having attempted to show the initial thrust toward Awareness of space documented in Petrarch's letter, and to account for the process of painful withdrawal from traditional perceptions, we would here like to indicate the nature of Leonardos decisive development, for it was he who fully realized Petrarch's discovery.
Among the thousands of Leonardo's notes and diary entries, there are several which, if we compare those of presumably earlier with those of presumably later origin, can document the course of his emergent spatial Awareness and thus his extrication from the world he inherited.
Of these, we shall select two, one earlier and one later. The first (from Manuscript A of the Institut de France) contains one of Leonardos earliest general definitions of perspective:
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Aretino's reproach, as well as Agrippa's more pointed remark, both of which characterize the unperspectival world and its mode of expression as "deformity" and "false vision", demonstrate clearly that space had already entered consciousness and become accepted at the outset of the sixteenth century. Having achieved and secured the Awareness of space, man in the sixteenth century is overcome by a kind of intoxication with it. This perspectival intoxication with space is clearly evident, for example, in Altdorfer's interiors and in the many depictions of church interiors by the Netherlandic masters that have an almost jubilant expression. It is this jubilation that silences the voice of those who still attempted to preserve the old attitude toward the world. The silencing of objections was facilitated to a considerable degree by the fact that Petrarch's experience of landscape and space, as well as Leonardo's application and theory of perspective, had become common property and were evident in the increasing prevalence of landscape painting throughout Europe. We shall only mention a few of the great European masters who repeatedly took up the question of the perception and depiction of space in landscape: Altdorfer, van Goyen; Poussin, Claude Lorrain; Ruysdael, Magnasco; Watteau, Constable, Corot, Caspar David Friedrich; Millet, Courbert;Manet,Monet, Renoir, and finally, van Gogh and Rousseau.
Space is the insistent concern of this era. In underscoring this assertion, we have relied only on the testimony of its most vivid manifestation, the discovery of perspective. We did, however, mention in passing that at the very moment when Leonardo discovers space and solves the problem of perspective, thereby creating the possibility for spatial objectification in painting, other events occur which parallel his discovery. Copernicus, for example, shatters the limits of the geocentric sky and discovers heliocentric space; Columbus goes beyond the encompassing Oceanos and discovers earth's space: Vesalius, the first major anatomist, bursts the confines of Galen's ancient doctrines of the human Body and discovers the body's space; Harvey destroys the precepts of Hippocrates' humoral medicine and reveals the circulatory system. And there is Kepler, who by demonstrating the elliptical orbit of the planets, overthrows antiquity's unperspectival world-image of circular and flat surfaces (a view still held by Copernicus) that dated back to Ptolemy's conception of the circular movement of the planets.
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This process was unique and original with Picasso. By drawing on his primitive, magic inheritance (his Negroid period), his mythical heritage (his Hellenistic-archaistic period), and his classicistic, rationally-accentuated formalist phase (his Ingres period), Picasso was able to achieve the concretion of time (or as we would like to designate this new style which he and his contemporaries introduced in painting, "temporic concretion"). Such temporic concretion is not just a basic characteristic of this particular drawing, but is in fact generally valid: Only where time emerges as pure present and is no longer divided into its three phases of past, present and future, is it concrete. To the extent that Picasso from the outset reached out beyond the present, incorporating the future into the present of his work, he was able to "presentiate" or make present the past. Picasso brought to the Awareness of the present everything once relegated to the dormancy of forgetfulness, as well as everything still latent as something yet to come; and this temporal wholeness realized in spatiality and rendered visible and transparent in a depiction of a human form, is the unique achievement of this temporic artist.
We shall in consequence designate as "temporic" artists those painters of the two major artistic generations since 1880 (i.e., following the classicistic, romantic and naturalistic movements) who were engaged - doubtless unintentionally in concretizing time. From this point of view, all of the attempts by the various "movements" - expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and even tachism - show as their common trait this struggle to concretize and realize time. Understandably, such experimentation resulted in numerous faulty solutions; but as we noted earlier, such faults were equally unavoidable during the search for perspective and spatial realization.
1.035 - The Recitation of Mantra, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Simultaneously with this feeling of a subtle thrill in the system when the chanting of pranava is done properly, there is a feeling that a loss of body-consciousness is gradually taking place. We will not feel that we exist at all. We will be aware of a non-objective something, and it is this non-objective Awareness, which is the effect of the chanting of pranava, which also creates the feeling of levitation. We are not actually getting lifted up physically, but we will feel as if we are lifted up from the earth and moving in the air, as it were. Though we are on the ground and not moving in the air physically, the mind will feel as if it is lifted up, and this is the astral body getting stirred because of the harmonious vibration that is being produced. Though the physical body is not moving in the air, the subtle body is trying to get up, and that is why we feel as if we are moving in the air. The feeling of levitation is generated by the effect produced upon the subtle body, by the chanting of the mantra. The subtle body is ordinarily so intimately connected with the physical body that we cannot isolate one from the other. When we are intensely conscious of the physical body, the subtle body gets impregnated with the notion of the physical body, and we cannot forget that we are anything but the body.
This difficulty one has in getting tethered to the notion of the physical body alone arises on account of a distracted, inharmonious movement of the mind and the pranas. If we want to draw the mind or the subtle body away from its contact with or attachment to the physical body, the first thing we should do is to create a system of harmonious feeling in the mind, as well as to very, very carefully isolate every component of the subtle body from its contact with the physical body by a new type of vibration altogether. Sometimes sticking plasters cannot be removed from the finger immediately. If we pull them off, the skin is removed and we feel much pain. So doctors and nurses try to remove a sticking plaster from a wound very, very slowly by pouring some solution over the sticking plaster, and this detaches the plaster automatically by the smoothness and softness produced by the application of the solution.
1.036 - The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This experience is uncommon, and humanly it is not possible, and we cannot call it human understanding, human Awareness, or human relationship it is super-human, super-physical, super-psychical, super-intellectual, super- logical and super-relational. Such knowledge will rise as an emanation of being rather than as a faculty of understanding. This knowledge is a light that is shed by our essential being, and it is not merely a function of the psychological organ. This subject is explained in more detail in another sutra of Patanjali, which we shall study when we come to it later on. When this knowledge arises, there is a cessation of obstacles. Enmity ceases when the causes of enmity cease. The obstacles on the path to the realisation of Truth appear only as long as there is a hidden tendency of the individual to maintain itself in contradistinction with other individuals.
The tendency of individuality can be conscious, deliberately felt and affirmed, or it can be an unconscious presence which is potential though not manifest. As long as there is even a potentiality of this tendency to individuality, the obstacles will persist. Though consciously we may be doing nothing wrong, and everything may look all right, many of us may start feeling, "What wrong have I committed from my birth onwards? I have been living a very good life, but why these obstacles?" These obstacles do not necessarily follow as a result of our present life or our conscious experience. They are the consequences of the hidden potentialities in the deeper layers of our personality all of which have to come to the surface before there is a complete riddance of individuality altogether. The experiences that we pass through are not necessarily the results of what we have done yesterday. Mostly, they are the results of what we have done many, many years back sometimes some births back.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Those of supercial Awareness who hear it
Will become confused and will not comprehend it.
--
Of supercial Awareness,
Who are deeply attached
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
Such a person has a natural Awareness superior to anything taught.
But unless you're so blessed, study hard, and by means of instruction
--
the mind's Awareness. But the mind has no form and its Awareness
no limit. Hence it's said, "A tathagata's forms are endless. And so
is his Awareness."
A material body of the four elements31 is trouble. A material
--
gods remain unaware. The Awareness of mortals falls short. As long
as they're attached to appearances, they're unaware that their
--
But when you first embark on the Path, your Awareness won't
be focused. You're likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike
--
also cloud your Awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the
mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines?
--
karma, nurture your Awareness, and accept what life brings. If
you're always getting angry, you'll tum your nature against the
--
Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness
isn't hidden. But you can only find it right now. It's only now. If
--
you put an end to karma and nurture your Awareness, any attach
ments that remain will come to an end. Understanding comes
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Every human being can thus become an Avatar by adoption, but not by his unaided efforts. He must be shown the way, and he must be aided by divine grace. That men and women may be thus instructed and helped, the Godhead assumes the form of an ordinary human being, who has to earn deliverance and enlightenment in the way that is prescribed by the divine Nature of Thingsnamely, by charity, by a total dying to self and a total, one-pointed Awareness. Thus enlightened, the Avatar can reveal the way of enlightenment to others and help them actually to become what they already potentially are. Tel quen Lui-mme enfin lternit le change. And of course the eternity which transforms us into Ourselves is not the experience of mere persistence after bodily death. There will be no experience of timeless Reality then, unless there is the same or a similar knowledge within the world of time and matter. By precept and by example, the Avatar teaches that this transforming knowledge is possible, that all sentient beings are called to it and that, sooner or later, in one way or another, all must finally come to it.
next chapter: 1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
ciple: Suddenly in the night I woke with the full Awareness
of what we could call the Yoga of the World. The Supreme
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
fear, on the other hand, is an Awareness of danger that is helpful to have. It
propels us to think creatively about how to deal with a possibly adverse situation. For example, parents educate their children to have a wise fear of
--
and relax. Instead, we make these requests with an Awareness that we (the
one making the request), Tara (the one we are requesting), and the action of
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper self Awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
All these tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are manifest now in the world and are growing from day to day with a significant rapidity. And their emergence and greater dominance means the transition from the ratio-nalistic and utilitarian period of human development which individualism has created to a greater subjective age of society. The change began by a rapid turning of the current of thought into large and profound movements contradictory of the old intellectual standards, a swift breaking of the old tables. The materialism of the nineteenth century gave place first to a novel and profound vitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsches theory of the Will to be and Will to Power as the root and law of life to the new pluralistic and pragmatic philosophy which is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the soul and pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms of force and action rather than of light and knowledge. These tendencies of thought, which had until yesterday a profound influence on the life and thought of Europe prior to the outbreak of the great War, especially in France and Germany, were not a mere superficial recoil from intellectualism to life and action,although in their application by lesser minds they often assumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read profoundly and live by the Life-Soul of the universe and tended to be deeply psychological and subjective in their method. From behind them, arising in the void created by the discrediting of the old rationalistic intellectualism, there had begun to arise a new Intuitionalism, not yet clearly aware of its own drive and nature, which seeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of the Spirit.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
day if we are to confront in full Awareness our destiny as living
beings, that is to say, our responsibilities toward "evolution." A
--
change. Spatially our Awareness of the world was extended to em-
brace the Infinitesimal and the Immense. Later, in temporal terms,
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:Entering into that Consciousness, we may continue to dwell, like It, upon universal existence. Then we become aware, - for all our terms of consciousness and even our sensational experience begin to change, - of Matter as one existence and of bodies as its formations in which the one existence separates itself physically in the single body from itself in all others and again by physical means establishes communication between these multitudinous points of its being. Mind we experience similarly, and Life also, as the same existence one in its multiplicity, separating and reuniting itself in each domain by means appropriate to that movement. And, if we choose, we can proceed farther and, after passing through many linking stages, become aware of a supermind whose universal operation is the key to all lesser activities. Nor do we become merely conscious of this cosmic existence, but likewise conscious in it, receiving it in sensation, but also entering into it in Awareness. In it we live as we lived before in the ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity.
14:Real then to the man who has had contact with it or lives in it, is this cosmic consciousness, with a greater than the physical reality; real in itself, real in its effects and works. And as it is thus real to the world which is its own total expression, so is the world real to it; but not as an independent existence. For in that higher and less hampered experience we perceive that consciousness and being are not different from each other, but all being is a supreme consciousness, all consciousness is selfexistence, eternal in itself, real in its works and neither a dream nor an evolution. The world is real precisely because it exists only in consciousness; for it is a Conscious Energy one with Being that creates it. It is the existence of material form in its own right apart from the self-illumined energy which assumes the form, that would be a contradiction of the truth of things, a phantasmagoria, a nightmare, an impossible falsehood.
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The externalisation of the consciousness of the purusha takes place by degrees, as it was mentioned in this cosmological process. In the beginning there is only a potentiality of such manifestation, which is the condition of mulaprakriti. Then there is an actual manifestation, though not a binding form of it, which is called the mahat. Then again there is a further concretisation of it, which is a lower condition still, yet not a binding condition because of the universality of consciousness still present there, which is the state of the cosmic ahamkara. Then there is a fall, a sudden cut of consciousness into the subjective side and the objective side, which is the problem of the jiva, the difficulty of man every form of tension and unknowing. So, in the beginning, the grossest form becomes the object of meditation. From the gross, we go to the subtle. From the subtle, we rise to that state of Awareness which is prior to the manifestation of even the subtle and the gross. And finally, we go to the ultimate cause of all things.
These stages of meditation are referred to in a sutra of Patanjali from his first chapter, and these stages are designated by him as savitarka, savichara, sananda and sasmita. These are all peculiar technical words of the yoga philosophy, which simply mean the conditions of gross consciousness, subtle consciousness, cause consciousness and reality consciousness. Though he has mentioned only four stages for the purpose of a broad division of the process of ascent, we can subdivide these into many more. As a matter of fact, when we actually come to it and begin to practise, we will find that we have to pass through various stages, just as we do in a course of education. Though we may designate a particular year of study as being the first grade, second grade, third grade, etc., even in each grade we will find there are various stages of study through the divisions of the syllabus or the curriculum of study.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Every individual being, from the atom up to the most highly organized of living bodies and the most exalted of finite minds may be thought of, in Ren Gunons phrase, as a point where a ray of the primordial Godhead meets one of the differentiated, creaturely emanations of that same Godheads creative energy. The creature, as creature, may be very far from God, in the sense that it lacks the intelligence to discover the nature of the divine Ground of its being. But the creature in its eternal essenceas the meeting place of creatureliness and primordial Godheadis one of the infinite number of points where divine Reality is wholly and eternally present. Because of this, rational beings can come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, non-rational and inanimate beings may reveal to rational beings the fulness of Gods presence within their material forms. The poets or the painters vision of the divine in nature, the worshippers Awareness of a holy presence in the sacrament, symbol or imagethese are not entirely subjective. True, such perceptions cannot be had by all perceivers, for knowledge is a function of being; but the thing known is independent of the mode and nature of the knower. What the poet and painter see, and try to record for us, is actually there, waiting to be apprehended by anyone who has the right kind of faculties. Similarly, in the image or the sacramental object the divine Ground is wholly present. Faith and devotion prepare the worshippers mind for perceiving the ray of Godhead at its point of intersection with the particular fragment of matter before him. Incidentally, by being worshipped, such symbols become the centres of a field of force. The longings, emotions and imaginations of those who kneel and, for generations, have knelt before the shrine create, as it were, an enduring vortex in the psychic medium, so that the image lives with a secondary, inferior divine life projected on to it by its worshippers, as well as with the primary divine life which, in common with all other animate and inanimate beings, it possesses in virtue of its relation to the divine Ground. The religious experience of sacramentalists and image worshippers may be perfectly genuine and objective; but it is not always or necessarily an experience of God or the Godhead. It may be, and perhaps in most cases it actually is, an experience of the field of force generated by the minds of past and present worshippers and projected on to the sacramental object where it sticks, so to speak, in a condition of what may be called second-hand objectivity, waiting to be perceived by minds suitably attuned to it. How desirable this kind of experience really is will have to be discussed in another section. All that need be said here is that the iconoclasts contempt for sacraments and symbols, as being nothing but mummery with stocks and stones is quite unjustified.
The workmen still in doubt what course to take,
--
To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fulness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer world of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fulness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realize the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental. Mortification becomes more searching and more subtle; there is need of unsleeping Awareness and, on the levels of thought, feeling and conduct, the constant exercise of something like an artists tact and taste.
It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom Samsara and Nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of nature worship were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals.
1.04 - Reality Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence. We give the name of Non-Being to a contrary affirmation of Its freedom from all cosmic existence, - freedom, that is to say, from all positive terms of actual existence which consciousness in the universe can formulate to itself, even from the most abstract, even from the most transcendent. It does not deny them as a real expression of Itself, but It denies Its limitation by all expression or any expression whatsoever. The Non-Being permits the Being, even as the Silence permits the Activity. By this simultaneous negation and affirmation, not mutually destructive, but complementary to each other like all contraries, the simultaneous Awareness of conscious Self-being as a reality and the Unknowable beyond as the same Reality becomes realisable to the awakened human soul. Thus was it possible for the Buddha to attain the state of Nirvana and yet act puissantly in the world, impersonal in his inner consciousness, in his action the most powerful personality that we know of as having lived and produced results upon earth.
10:When we ponder on these things, we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive violence and how confusing in their misleading distinctness are the words that we use. We begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind which concentrates itself on one aspect of the Unknowable and proceeds forthwith to deny or disparage all the rest. We tend always to translate too rigidly what we can conceive or know of the Absolute into the terms of our own particular relativity. We affirm the One and Identical by passionately discriminating and asserting the egoism of our own opinions and partial experiences against the opinions and partial experiences of others. It is wiser to wait, to learn, to grow, and, since we are obliged for the sake of our self-perfection to speak of these things which no human speech can express, to search for the widest, the most flexible, the most catholic affirmation possible and found on it the largest and most comprehensive harmony.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Without any Awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared
by prior experience. One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from
--
hesitate and to display Awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some
would say: Thats the six of spades, but theres something wrong with it the black has a red border.
--
conscious experience from unconscious non- Awareness. Awareness and daytime experience are
inextricably united, like oblivion and the night. Darkness places severe uncontrollable external
transpersonal limitations upon waking human Awareness, by eliminating or dramatically restricting visually
dependent temporal and spatial sensory extension. The blackness of the night brings with it the reemergence of the unknown, and the eternal human sense of subjugation to those terrors still
--
prevailing prior (?) to the dawn of Awareness as such, where there was no subject, no object, and no
experience at all but where the possibility of such things somehow lay dormant.
--
The world of experience appears generated by the actions of consciousness by dawning Awareness in
more than one stage. The purely conscious Awareness which hypothetically exists prior to the
generation of active representations of the self that is, the mere division of object and subject still
--
anxious care or toil. It is the emergence of second-order self-reference Awareness of the self, selfconsciousness that finally disrupts this static state of perfection, and irreversibly alters the nature of
experience. (The development of consciousness the apprehension of the system by itself adds one
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desperate knowledge and tragic Awareness, built for him an enclosed pavilion, a walled garden of earthly
delights. Only the healthy, the young, and the happy were allowed access to this earthly paradise. All signs
--
role of voluntarism (and pride) in the reach for heightened human Awareness:
I wish I had never been born!
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(3) Corresponding to Mahas is Maharloka or Mahi Dyaus, the great heavens (pure Buddhi or Vijnana, the ideal world). The Pranava in its three essentialities rules over the three supreme worlds, the Satyaloka (divine being), Tapoloka (divine Awareness & Force), Anandaloka (divine Bliss) of the Puranas, which constitute Amritam, immortality or the true kingdom of heaven of the Vedic religion. These are the Vedic sapta dhamani & the seven different movements of consciousness to which they correspond are the sapta sindhu of the hymns.
(4) According to the Vedanta, man has five koshas or sheaths of existence, the material (Annamaya), vital (Pranamaya), mental (Manomaya) which together make up the aparardha or lower half of our conscious-being; the ideal (vijnanamaya) which links the lower to the parardha or higher half; the divine or Anandamaya in which the divine existence (Amrita) is concentrated for communion with our lower human being. These are the pancha kshitis, five earths or rather dwelling places of the Veda. But in Yoga we speak usually of the five koshas but the sapta bhumis, seven not five. The Veda also speaks of sapta dhamani.
--
But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
THE VERY FRIGHTENING: primordial Awareness, union
of bliss and emptiness, frightening for unfortunate
--
primordial Awareness that is great felicity.
THE THREE PRINCIPLES:
1.04 - Wake-Up Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
Buddhahood means Awareness. Mortals whose minds are aware
reach the Way of Enlightenment and are therefore called buddhas.
--
mind to look for reality is Awareness. Freeing oneself from words
is liberation. Remaining unblemished by the dust of sensation is
--
Delusion means mortality. And Awareness means buddha
hood. They're not the same. And they're not different. It's just that
people distinguish delusion from Awareness. W hen we're deluded
there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to
--
doesn't exist. This is because Awareness is buddhahood.
If you're looking for the Way, the Way won't appear until
--
affliction creates Awareness. And buddhas liberate mortals because
Awareness negates affliction. There can't help but be affliction. And
there can't help but be Awareness. If it weren't for affliction, there
would be nothing to create Awareness. And if it weren't for aware
ness, there would be nothing to negate affliction. When you're
--
Awareness. And once you're beyond delusion and Awareness, the
other shore doesn't exist. The tathagata isn't on this shore or the
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
what is to our human Awareness an enormous cost. Here
we may remember what Arjuna saw on the battlefield of
1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The Self, or the atman as we call it, is a principle of identity, indivisibility and non-externality or objectivity. It is that state of consciousness or Awareness which is incapable of becoming other than what it is, and incapable of being lost under any circumstance. It cannot be loved and it cannot be hated, because it is what we are. This is what is called the Self. There is no such thing as loving the Self or hating the Self. No one loves ones Self or hates ones Self, because love and hatred are psychological functions, and every psychological function is a movement of the mind in space and time. Such a thing is impossible in respect of the Self, which is Self-identity. Thus the definition of the Self as Self-identity will not apply to this false self which is the circumstantial self, the family self, the nation self, the world self, etc., as we are accustomed to.
Also, there is another self which is known as the mithyatman the false self which is the body. The body is not the Self. Everyone knows it very well, for various reasons, because the character of Self-identity indestructibility, indivisibility, etc. does not apply to the body. And yet, these characters are superimposed upon the body and we shift or transfer the qualities of the perishable body to what we really are in our consciousness, and vice versa. On the other hand, conversely, we transfer the indivisible character of consciousness to the body and regard the body itself as indivisible Selfhood.
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The second distinguishing mark of charity is that, unlike the lower forms of love, it is not an emotion. It begins as an act of the will and is consummated as a purely spiritual Awareness, a unitive love-knowledge of the essence of its object.
Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which usually we long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility.
--
The distinguishing marks of charity are disinterestedness, tranquillity and humility. But where there is disinterestedness there is neither greed for personal advantage nor fear for personal loss or punishment; where there is tranquillity, there is neither craving nor aversion, but a steady will to conform to the divine Tao or Logos on every level of existence and a steady Awareness of the divine Suchness and what should be ones own relations to it; and where there is humility there is no censoriousness and no glorification of the ego or any projected alter-ego at the expense of others, who are recognized as having the same weaknesses and faults, but also the same capacity for transcending them in the unitive knowledge of God, as one has oneself. From all this it follows that charity is the root and substance of morality, and that where there is little charity there will be much avoidable evil. All this has been summed up in Augustines formula: Love, and do what you like. Among the later elaborations of the Augustinian theme we may cite the following from the writings of John Everard, one of those spiritually minded seventeenth-century divines whose teachings fell on the deaf ears of warring factions and, when the revolution and the military dictatorship were at an end, on the even deafer ears of Restoration clergymen and their successors in the Augustan age. (Just how deaf those ears could be we may judge by what Swift wrote of his beloved and morally perfect Houyhnhnms. The subject matter of their conversations, as of their poetry, consisted of such things as friendship and benevolence, the visible operations of nature or ancient traditions; the bounds and limits of virtue, the unerring rules of reason. Never once do the ideas of God, or charity, or deliverance engage their minds. Which shows sufficiently clearly what the Dean of St. Patricks thought of the religion by which he made his money.)
Turn the man loose who has found the living Guide within him, and then let him neglect the outward if he can! Just as you would say to a man who loves his wife with all tenderness, You are at liberty to beat her, hurt her or kill her, if you want to.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
menacing Awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less
than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between
1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with what we shall call _universals_, that is to say, general ideas, such as _whiteness_, _diversity_, _brotherhood_, and so on. Every complete sentence must contain at least one word which stands for a universal, since all verbs have a meaning which is universal. We shall return to universals later on, in Chapter IX; for the present, it is only necessary to guard against the supposition that whatever we can be acquainted with must be something particular and existent. Awareness of universals is called _conceiving_, and a universal of which we are aware is called a _concept_.
It will be seen that among the objects with which we are acquainted are not included physical objects (as opposed to sense-data), nor other people's minds. These things are known to us by what I call 'knowledge by description', which we must now consider.
1.05 - On painstaking and true repentance which constitute the life of the holy convicts; and about the prison., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life. A penitent is a buyer2 of humility. Repentance is constant distrust of bodily comfort. Repentance is self-condemning reflection, and carefree self-care. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair. A penitent is an undisgraced convict. Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance is purification of conscience. Repentance is the voluntary endurance of all afflictions. A penitent is the inflicter of his own punishments. Repentance is a mighty persecution of the stomach, and a striking of the soul into vigorous Awareness.
Gather together and come near, all you who have angered God; come and listen to what I expound to you; assemble and see what He has revealed to my soul for your edification. Let us give first place and first honour to the story of the dishonoured yet honoured workers. Let all of us who have suffered an unexpected and inglorious fall listen, watch and act. Rise and be seated, you who through your falls are lying prostrate. Attend, my brothers, attend to my word. Incline your ears, you who wish to be reconciled afresh with God by a true conversion.
1.05 - Prayer, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
above all through an ever-increasing Awareness
of your omnipresence, a blessed desire to go on
1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
16:The Transcendent, the Supracosmic is absolute and free in Itself beyond Time and Space and beyond the conceptual opposites of finite and infinite. But in cosmos It uses Its liberty of self-formation, Its Maya, to make a scheme of Itself in the complementary terms of unity and multiplicity, and this multiple unity It establishes in the three conditions of the subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient. For actually we see that the Many objectivised in form in our material universe start with a subconscious unity which expresses itself openly enough in cosmic action and cosmic substance, but of which they are not themselves superficially aware. In the conscient the ego becomes the superficial point at which the Awareness of unity can emerge; but it applies its perception of unity to the form and surface action and, failing to take account of all that operates behind, fails also to realise that it is not only one in itself but one with others. This limitation of the universal "I" in the divided egosense constitutes our imperfect individualised personality. But when the ego transcends the personal consciousness, it begins to include and be overpowered by that which is to us superconscious; it becomes aware of the cosmic unity and enters into the Transcendent Self which here cosmos expresses by a multiple oneness.
17:The liberation of the individual soul is therefore the keynote of the definitive divine action; it is the primary divine necessity and the pivot on which all else turns. It is the point of Light at which the intended complete self-manifestation in the Many begins to emerge. But the liberated soul extends its perception of unity horizontally as well as vertically. Its unity with the transcendent One is incomplete without its unity with the cosmic Many. And that lateral unity translates itself by a multiplication, a reproduction of its own liberated state at other points in the Multiplicity. The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity and, - who knows? - perhaps even beyond the terrestrial consciousness. Where shall we fix the limit of that extension? Is it altogether a legend which says of the Buddha that as he stood on the threshold of Nirvana, of the Non-Being, his soul turned back and took the vow never to make the irrevocable crossing so long as there was a single being upon earth undelivered from the knot of the suffering, from the bondage of the ego?
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
It has taken mankind thousands of years of work to develop dawning Awareness of the nature of evil to
produce a detailed dramatic representation of the process that makes up the core of human maladaptation
--
continued expansion of conscious Awareness. Even socialized identification with the cultural canon cannot
provide final protection. Unshielded personal contact with tragedy is inextricably linked with emergence
--
Awareness of human limitation. This Awareness is manifested in shame, and has been expressed
mythologically as shame of nakedness, which is knowledge of essential vulnerability and weakness before
--
to continue up the staircase up the axis mundi. Thus Awareness of death, the grim reaper the terrible
face of God compels us inexorably upwards, towards a consciousness sufficiently heightened to bear
--
expressed only through performance, and the contents of this knowledge are not accessible to Awareness. Procedural
knowledge is considered to be phylogenetically primitive and ontogenetically early.... We agree with Tulving and
--
needs and everything takes place without conscious Awareness or the equilibrations going on until there is a frustration
[Piagets terminology, likely equivalent to emergence of the unexpected (and punishing (?)] .... Each of these
1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
within THE limits I have outlined, our new Awareness of
Time may now be regarded as an accomplished fact. Excepting a
--
a growing Awareness of the convergent nature of Space-Time,
then nothing can be more ill-founded than this pessimism. Trans-
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
B. We cannot doubt the existence (whether "real" or "illusory" makes no difference) of something, because doubt itself is a form of Awareness.
C. We lump together all that of which we are aware under the convenient name of "Existence", or "The Universe". Cosmos is not so good for this purpose; that word implies "order", which in the present stage of our argument, is a mere assumption.
--
Personally, I feel convinced of the existence of an Universe outside my own immediate Awareness; but it is true, even so, that it does not exist for me unless and until it takes its place as part of my consciousness.
E. All this paragrpah D is in the nature of a digression, for what you may think of it does not at all touch the argument of this letter. But it had to be put in, just to prevent your mind from raising irrelevant objections. Let me continue, then, from C.
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
modern world. Yet the increasing Awareness that we need
much more comprehensive [i.e. holistic] and much less re
--
new to be expected, the growing Awareness of the relative126
e l e v e n tal k s
1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
plexity, to a higher Awareness of our own personality?
The increasing degree, intangible, and too little noted, in which
--
tion, the Awareness of Omega becomes so widespread as to warm
the earth psychically while physically it is growing cold. Is it not
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With the growing Awareness, the child should be taught to concentrate on the inner psychic presence and make it more and more a living reality.
The child should be taught that whenever there is an inner uneasiness, he should not pass it off and try to forget it, but should attend to it and try to find out by an inner observation the cause of the uneasiness so that it may be removed by some methods, inner or outer.
1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The understanding in respect of the true nature of things, which we are trying to entertain in ourselves as the faculty of correct perception, is to be the only way of looking at things. That is the only method we can adopt in seeing, and this is the only way we can think. There is no other way of thinking. Our life should be a continuous process, aviplava, of the manifestation of this understanding, so that even in our day-to-day life, in our working hours also, our mind should think only in this manner and there should be no other way of thinking just as even when we are intensely busy we cannot forget our identity of personality, and even the heaviest business cannot obliterate the consciousness of the world that is in front of us or that we are awake to at this time. A thing that is in front of us is visible to us, even if we are intensely busy with any amount of enterprise, because that kind of Awareness has become part of our very existence; so should become this aviplava viveka khyati. The moment we open our eyes, the moment we think, the moment we feel, the moment we act or react, this should be the attitude. This is the continuous operation of viveka khyati, which is the only way to salvation. No other way is there.
This viveka khyati,or understanding, arises by stages; it does not suddenly burst like a bomb. In the beginning it very gradually reveals itself by effort, and later on it becomes a spontaneous feature. In one of the sutras we are told that there are at least seven stages of the manifestation of this understanding. The number seven is very holy, and it has been held holy in all religions and in all mystical fields, whether of the East or the West. Something very strange it is. In all the scriptures we see this number seven mentioned as a holy number. These are supposed to be the stages of the ascent of the soul to its perfection.
--
Tasya saptadh prntabhmi praj (II.27): Consciousness is sevenfold. The Awareness of this type arises by gradual degrees, in seven stages, according to the meaning of this sutra as agreed upon by interpreters, because the meaning is not given here as to what these stages are. It simply says there are seven stages. We are told that the seven stages are the stages of the discovery of reality, by degrees, in the phenomena of experience.
The first stage is supposed to be the detection of the defect in the objects or things: there is something wrong with things, and they are not as they appear to be. This is the first Awareness that arises in a person. Things are not what they seem, as the poet said. Even the best things are not really what they are. They appear to be best under certain conditions. The valuable things, the worthy things, the virtuous things, the beautiful things all these are conditionally valid, and they are not valid in their essence. That the objects of sense, the things of the world, are constituted of a nature essentially different from what they appear to the senses and the mind is an Awareness that arises in the discriminating, and not in all people. Crass perception takes the world for granted, and people run after things as moths run to fire, not knowing that it is their destruction. The Awareness arises, pointing out that there is some mystery behind things which is quite different from the colour and the shape of things visible to the senses that there is pain in this world, and it is not pleasure. Pain is rooted behind the so-called pleasure of the world. Sorrow is to follow all the joys of the world, one day or the other. The first step is the Awareness or discovery that pain is present and it cannot be avoided under any circumstance as long as things continue to be in the present set-up.
The second stage is the discovery that there is a cause of this pain, that it has not come suddenly from the blue. How has this pain come this suffering, this sorrow? What is the reason for this defect behind everything? There is a reason. Without a cause, there is no effect. The discovery of the cause of this troublesome situation is the second stage of knowledge. That is a greater control that we gain over our situation. When we know that there is some trouble, and we do not know how the trouble has arisen, we are in a difficulty. But the difficulty is a little bit ameliorated when the cause of it is known, because we feel a confidence that, after all, this is the cause, and we shall try to tackle it. So, in the second stage of Awareness there is a recognition of the causal background of the troubles of life, the pains of experience.
The third stage is the recognition of a way out of these causative factors. Even if we know the causes of the trouble, is there a way out of it, or is it impossible to do anything? That must be seen first. We will find out that there is a way. We can get over these causes of pain and trouble. This gives greater confidence and a satisfaction that, after all, we are not going to suffer like this for all time; there is going to be an end to it. That is the discovery that there is a possibility of getting over the causes of pain. But this stage comes very late, because while everyone can feel the pain and can sometimes attribute the pain to certain causes, they cannot find the way out. Not finding the way out is samsara, the essence of suffering. When the way is discovered, there is an effort that automatically arises in oneself to work out this way which is the redemption of the sorrows of life. The Awareness that there is a state which is beyond the sufferings of life is itself a great solace.
These stages directly correspond to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, what the Buddha taught originally as his gospel. The stages of yoga are nothing but these, mentioned here in a new language altogether.
There is an Awareness of the presence of a state beyond all suffering; and when the existence of this state beyond suffering becomes an object of ones Awareness, coupled with a feeling that there is a way to it that is the beginning of the actual freedom of the soul. Then, there is a complete shaking up from the very roots of ones being. The internal organ, the mind, whose purpose is to bring about bhoga and aparvarga to consciousness, begins to withdraw its sway over consciousness. The power that the mind has over us gets lessened, and instead of our being mastered by it, we seem to have a chance of gaining mastery over it. This Awareness arises only when experiences in the world which are to be undergone in this span of life are about to be exhausted. Until that time, the Awareness itself will not be there.
When we are fast asleep, snoring, we are not even aware that the sun is about to rise. The Awareness felt subtly within that perhaps the day is dawning is an indication that we are not fully asleep. We are half-aware of the coming dawn. Likewise, when the mind becomes aware of these stages it puts forth effort, as it has slowly risen from the slumber of life and is now dreaming of the possibility of a higher experience.
The efforts that are mentioned here are nothing but the efforts of the practice of yoga. When the mind loses control over the consciousness, which is the fifth stage, there is a dismantling of the house of the gunas. As I mentioned, all the material of the house of this individuality is pulled out. The materials are the gunas sattva, rajas and tamas. The prison of this individuality is pulled out, broken down, because the material of this individuality, which is nothing but the complex of sattva, rajas and tamas, is withdrawn within its cause, and this complex of body-mind ceases to operate. That is the sixth stage.
--
Hence, the harmony that we are speaking of is nothing but the development of the consciousness of a selfhood in the object, in consonance with the selfhood of ones own self. The object ceases to be an object as the consciousness rises in its Awareness of itself, because what is called an object is nothing but an aspect of the self itself, which has got separated by peculiar factors. That is called ignorance. It is this separatist tendency that has become responsible for one aspect of the self recognising another aspect of it as the object, so that there is a fight of oneself with oneself, as it were. So, the world is nothing but a war of oneself with oneself.
This is to be obviated by the development of viveka khyati. The purpose of yoga is the enhancement of enlightenment in regard to things by the adjustment of oneself with the object atmosphere in greater and greater harmony which is another way of saying that we have to become more and more sympathetic with the selfhood of things, rather than recognising their object nature. The equilibrium that is the essence of these stages of practice is the essence of the enlightenment that one has to attain, because the rise of enlightenment within is simultaneous with the establishment of harmony outside. Hence, there is a simultaneous change taking place internally, as well as externally.
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is a caution that is given as a timely warning. A warning of this kind has to be given at every step because one cannot say at what moment of time, at what stage, and under what conditions these subliminal impressions will sprout into a wild tree and then cast their shadow upon us so that the light of our aspirations may be blurred. Thus comes the necessity to maintain an unremitting Awareness of the presence of God and a perpetual effort to keep oneself, or place oneself, in such ideal conditions which will not, to the extent possible, tempt one to the sensory activities and the mental functions or egoistic operations which are characteristic of the lower human nature.
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or Awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
4:Recall that two of our tenets (8 and 12d) stated that increasing evolution means increasing depth and increasing relative autonomy. In the realm of human development, this particularly shows up in the fact that, according to developmental psychology (as we will see), increasing growth and development always involve increasing internalization (or increasing interiorization). And as paradoxical as it initially sounds, the more interiorized a person is, the less narcissistic his or her Awareness becomes. So we need to understand why, for all schools of developmental psychology, this equation is true: increasing development = increasing interiorization = decreasing narcissism (or decreasing egocentrism).
5:In short, we need to understand why the more interior a person is, the less egocentric he or she becomes.
6:Begin with interiorization. "Evolution, to Hartmann [founder of psychoanalytic developmental psychology], is a process of progressive internalization, for, in the development of the species, the organism achieves increased independence from its environment, the result of which is that 'reactions which originally occurred in relation to the external world are increasingly displaced into the interior of the organism.' The more independent the organism becomes, the greater its independence from the stimulation of the immediate environment."1 This applies to the infant, for example, when it no longer dissolves in tears if food is not immediately forthcoming. By interiorizing its Awareness, it is no longer merely buffeted by the immediate fluctuations in the environment: its relative autonomy-its capacity to remain stable in the midst of shifting circumstances-increases. This progressive internalization is a cornerstone of psychoanalytic developmental psychology (from Hartmann to Blanck and Blanck to Kernberg to Kohut). It is implicit in Jung's notion of individuation. Likewise, Piaget described thought as "internalized action," the capacity to internally plan an action and anticipate its course without being merely a reactive automaton-and so forth.
7:In other words, for developmental psychology, increasing development = increasing interiorization = increasing relative autonomy. This, of course, is simply tenet 12d as it shows up in humans.
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14:Meditation, then, as we will see in detail, involves yet a further going within, and thus a further going beyond, the discovery of a new and higher Awareness with a new and wider identity-and thus meditation is one of the single strongest antidotes to egocentrism and narcissism (and geocentrism and anthropocentrism and sociocentrism).
15:And let us remember Piaget's central point about egocentrism, namely, that "egocentrism obscures the truth." It follows that meditation, as an antidote to egocentrism, would involve a substantial increase in capacity for truth disclosure, a clearing of the cobwebs of selfcentric perception and an opening in which the Kosmos could more clearly manifest, and be seen, and be appreciated-for what it is and not for what it can do for me.
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The capacity to go within and look at rationality results in a going beyond rationality, and the first stage of that going-beyond is vision-logic. If you are aware of being rational, what is the nature of that Awareness, since it is now bigger than rationality? To be aware of rationality is no longer to have only rationality, yes?
Numerous psychologists (Bruner, Flavell, Arieti, Cowan, Kramer, Commons, Basseches, Arlin, etc.) have pointed out that there is much evidence for a stage beyond Piaget's formal operational. It has been called "dialectical," "integrative," "creative synthetic," "integral-aperspectival," "postformal," and so forth. I, of course, am using the terms vision-logic or network-logic. But the conclusions are all essentially the same: "Piaget's formal operational is considered to be a problem-solving stage. But beyond this stage are the truly creative scientists and thinkers who define important problems and ask important questions. While Piaget's formal model is adequate to describe the cognitive structures of adolescents and competent adults, it is not adequate to describe the towering intellect of Nobel laureates, great statesmen and stateswomen, poets, and so on."5 True enough. But I would like to give a different emphasis to this structure, for while very few people might actually gain the "towering status of a Nobel laureate," the space of vision-logic (its worldspace or worldview) is available for any who wish to continue their growth and development. In other words, to progress through the various stages of growth does not mean that one has to extraordinarily master each and every stage, and demonstrate a genius comprehension at that stage before one can progress beyond it. This would be like saying that no individuals can move beyond the oral stage until they become gourmet cooks.
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Likewise, in order to develop formal rationality, it is not necessary to learn calculus and propositional logic. Every time you imagine different outcomes, every time you see a possible future different from today's, every time you dream the dream of what might be, you are using formal operational Awareness. And from that platform you can enter vision-logic, which means not that you have to become a Hegel or a Whitehead in order to advance, but only that you have to think globally, which is not so hard at all. Those who will master this stage, or any stage for that matter, will always be relatively few; but all are invited to pass through.
Because vision-logic transcends but includes formal operational, it completes and brings to fruition many of the trends begun with universal rationality itself (which is why many writers refer to vision-logic as "mature reason" or "dialectical reason" or "synthetic reason," and so on). And some theorists simply subdivide formal operational Awareness into several substages, with the highest of those stages being what we are calling vision-logic. James Fowler, for example, divides formop into early formop, dichotomizing formop, dialectical formop, and synthetic formop (the first two being what I am calling rationality, and the last two being vision-logic, although all four are "reason" in the very broadest sense). Incidentally, Fowler's extremely important work on the "stages of faith" (whose details I will reserve for a note)6 is yet another clear account of the evolution from magic to mythic-literal to the universal "commonwealth of being."
In other words, rationality is global, vision-logic is more global. Take Habermas, for example (in Communication and the Evolution of Society). Formal operational rationality establishes the postconventional stages of, first, "civil liberties" or "legal freedom" for "all those bound by law," and then, in a more developed stage, it demands not just legal freedom but also "moral freedom" for "all humans as private persons." But even further, mature or communicative reason (our vision-logic) demands both "moral and political freedom" for "all human beings as members of a world society." Thus, where rationality began the worldcentric orientation of universal pluralism, vision-logic brings it to a mature fruition by demanding not just legal and moral freedom, but legal and moral and political freedom (includes the previous stage and adds something crucial: transcends and includes).
In just the same way, ecological and relational Awareness, which started to emerge with formal operational, comes to a major fruition with vision-logic and the centauric worldview. For, in beginning to differentiate from rationality (look at it, operate upon it), vision-logic can, for the first time, integrate reason with its predecessors, including life and matter, all as junior holons in its own compound individuality.
In other words, and I intend to emphasize this heavily, centauric vision-logic can integrate physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere in its own compound individuality (and this is, as I suggested in chapter 5, the next major stage of leading-edge global transformation, even though most of the "work yet to be done" is still getting the globe up to decentered universal-rational pluralism in the first place).
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At level four, or late formop, the person becomes capable of hypothetico-deductive Awareness (what if, as if), and reality is conceived in terms of relativity and interrelationships (ecology and relativity, in the broadest sense, as we have seen). The self is viewed as a postulate "lending unity and integrity to personality, experience, and behavior" (this is the "mature ego").
But, and this is very telling, development can take a cynical turn at this stage. Instead of being the principle lending unity and integrity to experience and behavior, the self is simply identified with experience and behavior. In the cynical behavioristic turn of this stage, "the person is a cybernetic system guided to fulfillment of its material wants.
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This integrative stage comes to fruition at Broughton's last major level (late centauric), where "mind and body are both experiences of an integrated self," which is the phrase I have most often used to define the centauric or bodymind-integrated self. Precisely because Awareness has differentiated from (or disidentified from, or transcended) an exclusive identification with body, persona, ego, and mind, it can now integrate them in a unified fashion, in a new and higher holon with each of them as junior partners. Physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere-exclusively identified with none of them, therefore capable of integrating all of them.
But everything is not sweetness and light with the centaur. As always, new and higher capacities bring with them the potential for new and higher pathologies. As vision-logic adds up all the possibilities given to the mind's eye, it eventually reaches a dismal conclusion: personal life is a brief spark in the cosmic void. No matter how wonderful it all might be now, we are still going to die: dread, as Heidegger said, is the au thentic response of the existential (centauric) being, a dread that calls us back from self-forgetting to self-presence, a dread that seizes not this or that part of me (body or persona or ego or mind), but rather the totality of my being-in-the-world. When I au thentically see my life, I see its ending, I see its death; and I see that my "other selves," my ego, my personas, were all sustained by inau thenticity, by an avoidance of the Awareness of lonely death.
A profound existential malaise can set in-the characteristic pathology of this stage (fulcrum six). No longer protected by anthropocentric gods and goddesses, reason gone flat in its happy capacity to explain away the Mystery, not yet delivered into the hands of the superconscious-we stare out blankly into that dark and gloomy night, which will very shortly swallow us up as surely as it once spat us forth. Tolstoy:
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We have repeatedly seen that the problems of one stage are only "de-fused" at the next stage, and thus the only cure for existential angst is the transcendence of the existential condition, that is, the transcendence of the centaur, negating and preserving it in a yet higher and wider Awareness. For we are here beginning to pass out of the noosphere and into the theosphere, into the transpersonal domains, the domains not just of the self-conscious but of the superconscious.
A great number of issues need to be clarified as we follow evolution (and the twenty tenets) into the higher or deeper forms of transpersonal unfolding.
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Thus, each of these spiritual or transpersonal endeavors (which we will carefully examine) claims that there exist higher domains of Awareness, embrace, love, identity, reality, self, and truth. But these claims are not dogmatic; they are not believed in merely because an authority proclaimed them, or because sociocentric tradition hands them down, or because salvation depends upon being a "true believer." Rather, the claims about these higher domains are a conclusion based on hundreds of years of experimental introspection and communal verification. False claims are rejected on the basis of consensual evidence, and further evidence is used to adjust and fine-tune the experimental conclusions.
These spiritual endeavors, in other words, are scientific in any meaningful sense of the word, and the systematic presentations of these endeavors follow precisely those of any reconstructive science.
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This is simply not true; or rather, if it is true, then it applies to any and all nonempirical endeavors, from mathematics to literature to linguistics to psychoanalysis to historical interpretation. Nobody has ever seen, "out there" in the "sensory world," the square root of a negative one. That is a mathematical symbol seen only inwardly, "privately," with the mind's eye. Yet a community of trained mathematicians know exactly what that symbol means, and they can share that symbol easily in intersubjective Awareness, and they can confirm or reject the proper and consistent uses of that symbol. Just so, the "private" experiences of contemplative scientists can be shared with a community of trained contemplatives, grounded in a common and shared experience, and open to confirmation or re buttal based on public evidence.
Recall that the Right-Hand path is open to empirical verification, which means that the Right-Hand dimension of holons, their form or exteriors, can indeed be "seen" with the senses or their extensions. But the Left-Hand dimension-the interior side-cannot be seen empirically "out there," although it can be internally experienced (and although it has empirical correlates: my interior thoughts register on an EEG but cannot be determined or interpreted or known from that evidence). Everything on the Left Hand, from sensations to impulses to images and concepts and so on, is an interior experience known to me directly by acquaintance (which can indeed be "objectively described," but only through an intersubjective community at the same depth, where it relies on interpretation from the same depth). Direct spiritual experience is simply the higher reaches of the Upper-Left quadrant, and those experiences are as real as any other direct experiences, and they can be as easily shared (or distorted) as any other experiential knowledge.11 (The only way to deny the validity of direct interior experiential knowledge-whether it be mathematical knowledge, introspective knowledge, or spiritual knowledge-is to take the behaviorist stance and identify interior experience with exterior behavior. Should somebody mention that this is the cynical twist or pathological agency of Broughton's level four?)
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But one must be adequate to the experience, or it remains an invisible other world. When the yogis and sages and contemplatives make a statement like, "The entire world is a manifestation of one Self," that is not a merely rational statement that we are to think about and see if it makes logical sense. It is rather a description, often poetic, of a direct apprehension or a direct experience, and we are to test this direct experience, not by mulling it over philosophically, but by taking up the experimental method of contemplative Awareness, developing the requisite cognitive tools, and then directly looking for ourselves.
As Emerson put it, "What we are, that only can we see."
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Thus, I physically write the word dog on this page-that is the signifier. You read the word, and you understand that I mean something like a furry animal with four legs that goes wuff-wuff-that is the signified, that is what comes to your mind. A sign is a combination of these two components, and these two components are, of course, the Right-Hand dimension of the sign (the physical exterior) and the Left-Hand dimension of the sign (the interior Awareness or meaning).
And both of those are distinguished from the actual referent, or whatever it is that the sign is "pointing" to, whether interior or exterior. Thus, the signifier is the word dog, the referent is the real dog, and the signified is what comes to your mind when you read or hear the signifier dog. Saussure's genius was to point out that the signified is not merely or simply the same as the referent, because "what comes to mind" depends on a whole host of factors other than the real dog, and this is what makes linguistic reality so fascinating.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In later Buddhist philosophy words are regarded as one of the prime determining factors in the creative evolution of human beings. In this philosophy five categories of being are recognizedName, Appearance, Discrimination, Right Knowledge. Suchness. The first three are related for evil, the last two for good. Appearances are discriminated by the sense organs, then reified by naming, so that words are taken for things and symbols are used as the measure of reality. According to this view, language is a main source of the sense of separateness and the blasphemous idea of individual self-sufficiency, with their inevitable corollaries of greed, envy, lust for power, anger and cruelty. And from these evil passions there springs the necessity of an indefinitely protracted and repeated separate existence under the same, self-perpetuated conditions of craving and infatuation. The only escape is through a creative act of the will, assisted by Buddha-grace, leading through selflessness to Right Knowledge, which consists, among other things, in a proper appraisal of Names, Appearances and Discrimination. In and through Right Knowledge, one emerges from the infatuating delusion of I, me, mine, and, resisting the temptation to deny the world in a state of premature and one-sided ecstasy, or to affirm it by living like the average sensual man, one comes at last to the transfiguring Awareness that samsara and nirvana are one, to the unitive apprehension of pure Suchness the ultimate Ground, which can only be indicated, never adequately described in verbal symbols.
In connection with the Mahayanist view that words play an important and even creative part in the evolution of unregenerate human nature, we may mention Humes arguments against the reality of causation. These arguments start from the postulate that all events are loose and separate from one another and proceed with faultless logic to a conclusion that makes complete nonsense of all organized thought or purposive action. The fallacy, as Professor Stout has pointed out, lies in the preliminary postulate. And when we ask ourselves what it was that induced Hume to make this odd and quite unrealistic assumption that events are loose and separate, we see that his only reason for flying in the face of immediate experience was the fact that things and happenings are symbolically represented in our thought by nouns, verbs and adjectives, and that these words are, in effect, loose and separate from one another in a way which the events and things they stand for quite obviously are not. Taking words as the measure of things, instead of using things as the measure of words, Hume imposed the discrete and, so to say, pointilliste pattern of language upon the continuum of actual experiencewith the impossibly paradoxical results with which we are all familiar. Most human beings are not philosophers and care not at all for consistency in thought or action. Thus, in some circumstances they take it for granted that events are not loose and separate, but co-exist or follow one another within the organized and organizing field of a cosmic whole. But on other occasions, where the opposite view is more nearly in accord with their passions or interests, they adopt, all unconsciously, the Humian position and treat events as though they were as independent of one another and the rest of the world as the words by which they are symbolized. This is generally true of all occurrences involving I, me, mine. Reifying the loose and separate names, we regard the things as also loose and separatenot subject to law, not involved in the network of relationships, by which in fact they are so obviously bound up with their physical, social and spiritual environment. We regard as absurd the idea that there is no causal process in nature and no organic connection between events and things in the lives of other people; but at the same time we accept as axiomatic the notion that our own sacred ego is loose and separate from the universe, a law unto itself above the moral dharma and even, in many respects, above the natural law of causality. Both in Buddhism and Catholicism, monks and nuns were encouraged to avoid the personal pronoun and to speak of themselves in terms of circumlocutions that clearly indicated their real relationship with the cosmic reality and their fellow creatures. The precaution was a wise one. Our responses to familiar words are conditioned reflexes. By changing the stimulus, we can do something to change the response. No Pavlov bell, no salivation; no harping on words like me and mine, no purely automatic and unreflecting egotism. When a monk speaks of himself, not as I, but as this sinner or this unprofitable servant, he tends to stop taking his loose and separate selfhood for granted, and makes himself aware of his real, organic relationship with God and his neighbours.
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Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things; finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a higher level of Awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning spirituality. But this wearisome condition of humanity is the indispensable prerequisite of enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate selfhood; he must do battle with the lower self in order that he may become identified with that higher Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works are not and cannot be a proximate means of union with God. The proximate means is intellect, in the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favour able to its own transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself. We see, then, that as a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride and madness, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End (as so many religious people have done and still do), or if, denying the existence of an eternal End, we regard it as at once the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, moral evil and social disaster. At no period in history has cleverness been so highly valued or, in certain directions, so widely and efficiently trained as at the present time. And at no time have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End to which they are proximate means less widely and less earnestly sought for. Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.
In Wu Chng-ns extraordinary masterpiece (so admirably translated by Mr. Arthur Waley) there is an episode, at once comical and profound, in which Monkey (who, in the allegory, is the incarnation of human cleverness) gets to heaven and there causes so much trouble that at last Buddha has to be called in to deal with him. It ends in the following passage.
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
where does one ever find a sign of the slightest Awareness
that in 1947 the Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, on
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
The observer in you, the Witness in you, transcends the isolated person in you and opens instead-from within or from behind, as Emerson said-onto a vast expanse of Awareness no longer obsessed with the individual bodymind, no longer a respecter or abuser of persons, no longer fascinated by the passing joys and set-apart sorrows of the lonely self, but standing still in silence as an opening or clearing through which light shines, not from the world but into it-"a light shines through us upon things." That which observes or witnesses the self, the person, is precisely to that degree free of the self, the person, and through that opening comes pouring the light and power of a Self, a Soul, that, as Emerson puts it, "would make our knees bend."
:::A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man [as an "individual person" or ego], the eating, drinking, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, if he would let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be something of itself [be its "own person"]. The weakness of the will begins when the individual would be something of himself. All reform aims in some one particular to let the soul have its way through us. . . .3
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And so once again we see that a new and deeper within has brought us to a new and wider beyond, a beyond that "is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed." This new within-and-beyond is not just beyond a sociocentric identity to a worldcentric identity with all human beings (which the rational-ego/centaur assumes in its global or universal postconventional Awareness), but to an identity, a conscious union, with all of manifestation itself: not just with all humans, but with all nature, and with the physical cosmos, with all beings "great and small"-a union or identity that Bucke famously called "cosmic consciousness."
We could say: from the worldcentric centaur to direct cosmic consciousness. (When you consider the remarkable achievement that decentered worldcentric Awareness is, it's not that far of a jump).7
Thus, the centaur could integrate the physiosphere and the biosphere and the noosphere, but the Over-Soul becomes, or is directly one with, the physiosphere and biosphere and noosphere. It is simple continuation of the deepening and widening of identity, grounded in an Awareness very much within, and very much beyond, me.
And Emerson means this literally! According to Emerson, this cosmic consciousness is not poetry (though he often expresses it with unmatched poetic beauty)-rather, it is a direct realization, a direct apprehension, and "in that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all."
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Here, then, is a summary of the widely accepted interpretation of Emerson's view: (1) nature is not Spirit but a symbol of Spirit (or a manifestation of Spirit); (2) sensory Awareness in itself does not reveal Spirit but obscures it; (3) an ascending or transcendental current is required to disclose Spirit; (4) Spirit is understood only as nature is transcended (i.e., Spirit is immanent in nature, but fully discloses itself only in a transcendence of nature-in short,
Spirit transcends but includes nature). Those points are largely uncontested by Emerson scholars [see the Eye of Spirit, chapter 11, note 2].
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Teresa is positively brilliant in distinguishing the agonies of the soul in its higher mansions or stages from those emotional problems that characterize the lower faculties. She clearly distinguishes, for example, three types of "inner voices"-those of "the fancy" or "imagination," which can be hallucinatory and "diseased," she says; those that are verbal, and may or may not represent true wisdom (for they may also be deceptive and "diseased"); and those that are transverbal altogether, representing direct interior apprehension. She has an exquisite and precise discriminating Awareness between "fancies" and "hallucinations" and direct intuitive apprehensions, and she explains the differences at length. She gives clear and classic phenomenological descriptions of so many of the subtle-level apprehensions: interior illumination, sound, bliss, and understanding beyond ordinary time and place; genuine archetypal Form as creative pattern (not mythic motif); and psychic vision giving way to pure nonverbal, transverbal, subtle intuition; all summating in the "union of the whole soul with uncreated Spirit."
As for the use of the term "supernatural" by certain contemplatives (both East and West), care should be taken to differentiate what they mean by that term and what, for example, the mythic or religious literalist means by it.
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In the subtle level, the Soul and God unite; in the causal level, the Soul and God are both transcended in the prior identity of Godhead, or pure formless Awareness, pure consciousness as such, the pure Self as pure Spirit (Atman = Brahman). No longer the "Supreme Union" of God and Soul, but the "Supreme Identity" of Godhead. As Meister Eckhart put it, "I find in this breakthrough that God and I are one and the same."
As we will see, this pure formless Spirit is said to be the Goal and Summit and Source of all manifestation. And that is the causal.
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The first two lines represent pure causal-level Awareness, or unmanifest absorption in pure or formless Spirit; line three represents the ultimate or nondual completion (the union of the Formless with the entire world of Form). The
Godhead completely transcends all worlds and thus completely includes all worlds. It is the final within, leading to a final beyond-a beyond that, confined to absolutely nothing, embraces absolutely everything.
Eckhart begins by pointing to the need, first and foremost, for a transcendence or a "breakthrough" (a word he coined in German) from the finite and created realm to the infinite and uncreated source or origin (the causal), a direct and formless Awareness that is without self, without other, and without God.
In the breakthrough, where I stand free of my own will and of the will of God and of all his works and of God himself, there I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature. Rather, I am what I was and what I shall remain now and forever. Then I receive an impulse [ Awareness] which shall bring me above all the angels.
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In this state of formless and silent Awareness, one does not see the Godhead, for one is the Godhead, and knows it from within, self-felt, and not from without, as an object. The pure Witness (which Eckhart calls "the essence of the Subject") cannot be seen, for the simple reason that it is the Seer (and the Seer itself is pure
Emptiness, the pure opening or clearing in which all objects, experiences, things and events arise, but which itself merely abides). Anything seen is just more objects, more finite things, more creatures, more images or concepts or visions, which is exactly what it is not.
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Following Saint Dionysius, Eckhart refers to this "mindless" or "unknowing presence," or pure formless Awareness without mental intermediaries, as "Divine Ignorance."
Whoever does not leave all external aspects of creatures can neither be received into this divine birth nor be born. The more you are able to bring all your powers to a unity and a forgetfulness of all the objects and images you have absorbed, and the more you depart from creatures and their images, the nearer and more receptive you are. If you were able to become completely unaware of all things, attain a forgetfulness of things and of self, the more [there is] the silent darkness where you will come to a recognition of the unknown, transbegotten God. For this ignorance draws you away from all knowledge about things, and beyond this it draws you away from yourself.49
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The same Self is in both states. The difference is only in the Awareness and the non- Awareness of the world.
The world rises with the mind and sets with the mind. That which rises and sets is not the Self.
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The "mind vanished" is, of course, Eckhart's "mindless Awareness" (and Zen's "no-mind," etc.). Ramana therefore counsels us to seek the source of the mind, to look for that which is aware of the mental or personal "I," for that is the transpersonal "I-I," unchanged by the fluctuations of any particular states, particular objects, particular circumstances, particular births, particular deaths.
Tracing the source of "I," the primal I-I alone remains over, and it is inexpressible. The seat of Realization is within and the seeker cannot find it as an object outside him. That seat is bliss and is the core [the ultimate depth] of all beings. Hence it is called the Heart. The mind now sees itself diversified as the universe. If the diversity is not manifest it remains in its own essence, its original state, and that is the Heart. Entering the
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As one pursues this "self-inquiry" into the source of thoughts, into the source of "I" and the "world," one enters a state of pure empty Awareness, free of all objects whatsoever-precisely Eckhart's "completely unaware of all things"-which in Vedanta is known as nirvikalpa samadhi (nirvikalpa means "without any qualities or objects"). In Awareness, there is perfect clarity, perfect consciousness, but the entire manifest world (up to and including the subtle) simply ceases to arise, and one is directly introduced to what Eckhart called "the naked existence of Godhead." Sri Ramana:
If you hold to the Self [remain as Witness in all circumstances], there is no second. When you see the world you have lost hold of the Self. On the contrary, hold the Self and the world will not appear.
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No objects, no subjects, only this. No entering this state, no leaving it; it is absolutely and eternally and always already the case: the simple feeling of being, the basic and simple immediacy of any and all states, prior to the four quadrants, prior to the split between inside and outside, prior to seer and seen, prior to the rise of worlds, everpresent as pure Presence, the simple feeling of being: empty Awareness as the opening or clearing in which all worlds arise, ceaselessly: I-I is the box the universe comes in.
Abiding as I-I, the world arises as before, but now there is no one to witness it. I-I is not "in here" looking "out there": there is no in here, no out there, only this. It is the radical end to all egocentrism, all geocentrism, all biocentrism, all sociocentrism, all theocentrism, because it is the radical end of all centrisms, period. It is the final decentering of all manifest realms, in all domains, at all times, in all places. As Dzogchen Buddhism would put it, because all phenomena are primordially empty, all phenomena, just as they are, are self-liberated as they arise.
In that pure empty Awareness, I-I am the rise and fall of all worlds, ceaselessly, endlessly. I-I swallow the Kosmos and span the centuries, untouched by time or turmoil, embracing each with primordial purity, fierce compassion. It has never started, this nightmare of evolution, and therefore it will never end.
It is as it is, self-liberated at the moment of its very arising. And it is only this.
1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:None of them, however, leads to the aim we have in view, the psychological experience of those truths that are "beyond perception by the sense but seizable by the perceptions of the reason", buddhigrahyam atndriyam.2 They give us only a larger field of phenomena and more effective means for the observation of phenomena. The truth of things always escapes beyond the sense. Yet is it a sound rule inherent in the very constitution of universal existence that where there are truths attainable by the reason, there must be somewhere in the organism possessed of that reason a means of arriving at or verifying them by experience. The one means we have left in our mentality is an extension of that form of knowledge by identity which gives us the Awareness of our own existence. It is really upon a self Awareness more or less conscient, more or less present to our conception that the knowledge of the contents of our self is based. Or to put it in a more general formula, the knowledge of the contents is contained in the knowledge of the continent. If then we can extend our faculty of mental self- Awareness to Awareness of the Self beyond and outside us, Atman or Brahman of the Upanishads, we may become possessors in experience of the truths which form the contents of the Atman or Brahman in the universe. It is on this possibility that Indian Vedanta has based itself. It has sought through knowledge of the Self the knowledge of the universe.
9:But always mental experience and the concepts of the reason have been held by it to be even at their highest a reflection in mental identifications and not the supreme self-existent identity. We have to go beyond the mind and the reason. The reason active in our waking consciousness is only a mediator between the subconscient All that we come from in our evolution upwards and the superconscient All towards which we are impelled by that evolution. The subconscient and the superconscient are two different formulations of the same All. The master-word of the subconscient is Life, the master-word of the superconscient is Light. In the subconscient knowledge or consciousness is involved in action, for action is the essence of Life. In the superconscient action re-enters into Light and no longer contains involved knowledge but is itself contained in a supreme consciousness. Intuitional knowledge is that which is common between them and the foundation of intuitional knowledge is conscious or effective identity between that which knows and that which is known; it is that state of common self-existence in which the knower and the known are one through knowledge. But in the subconscient the intuition manifests itself in the action, in effectivity, and the knowledge or conscious identity is either entirely or more or less concealed in the action. In the superconscient, on the contrary, Light being the law and the principle, the intuition manifests itself in its true nature as knowledge emerging out of conscious identity, and effectivity of action is rather the accompaniment or necessary consequent and no longer masks as the primary fact. Between these two states reason and mind act as intermediaries which enable the being to liberate knowledge out of its imprisonment in the act and prepare it to resume its essential primacy. When the self Awareness in the mind applied both to continent and content, to own-self and other-self, exalts itself into the luminous selfmanifest identity, the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous intuitional3 knowledge. This is the highest possible state of our knowledge when mind fulfils itself in the supramental.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
These perfections come in various ways: sometimes without ones knowing that they have come, or sometimes they become objects of ones mental Awareness. All people are not of the same kind. Every yogi is a specific character by himself or herself, so we cannot compare one with the other. Though many people may practise a similar technique of meditation, the experiences will not be uniform; they will vary because of the peculiarity or novelty of the physical and the mental strain of the individual concerned. These powers and experiences are the reactions set up in the personality of the yogi by the powers of nature as a whole, and inasmuch as the individualities of the yogis vary in the structure and the makeup of their organism, the reactions also vary in nature. Hence, experiences vary. Sometimes we may see light, sometimes we may not see light, and so on.
It is not the intention of the Yoga Shastra to describe what powers come to a yogi when he concentrates or practises samyama, as these are temptations and sidetracking issues. But anyhow, for the purpose of giving an idea of the greatness of the practice, and also to give some sort of an enthusiasm to the practitioners, the Yoga Sutra has gone into some detail as to the nature of these powers.
1.097 - Sublimation of Object-Consciousness, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
There is a total disparity of character between the pure state of the purusha and the conditions of ordinary perception through the mind. In other words, there is a great difference between the status of consciousness in the state of the pure purusha and the condition of consciousness in ordinary world Awareness. The present state of our mind is quite different and utterly opposed to the state of consciousness expected in the state of the purusha, or the Ultimate Subject. It is difficult to conceive the nature of the two types of Awareness and, therefore, we cannot understand what the difference is. Even the best of minds can fumble here on account of a subtle desire to transpose the characters of world perception to spiritual consciousness.
Spiritual consciousness is different from world perception, but many people do not understand this. They are, again and again, brought to the wrong conviction by the habits of the mind that, somehow or other, the conditions of world experience will persist even in God-consciousness. This is exactly what is denied in this sutra. World experience is different in character from spiritual experience, and those conditions which are necessary to rouse a spiritual experience in oneself are to be acquired before a meditation in this direction can be attempted.
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The sutra which I stated just now is a precise statement of the conditions of spiritual meditation. What the sutra literally means is: sattva and the purusha namely, the mind and the ultimate consciousness, purusha are opposed to each other in their characters. In what way are they opposed? That is not mentioned here. We have to understand what this difference is by studying the meaning of the implications provided in other sutras. The purusha is infinite, whereas the mind is externalised. This is the primary distinction. The mind cannot have infinite Awareness. It is always projected outwardly through the senses, whereas the purusha is eternally aware of an infinitude of being. This is a great difference indeed.
Further, in certain other sutras we will be told as to what the differences are between purusha-consciousness and mind-consciousness, or object-consciousness, or world-consciousness, as we may call them. Externality and eternity cannot go together; they are different intrinsically. Eternity is not externality. Though linguistically we are able to understand what this difference is, the mind cannot comprehend the meaning of this. The externality that is the character of mind perception, or any kind of world perception, is involved in a time process, which is what is called duration a passage or a movement of time whereas there is no such passage or duration in eternity. It is an eternal now, a word with which we are familiar but which meaning is not clear to us.
There is no such thing as past, present and future for the purusha, but there is such a thing as past, present and future for the mind. Something happened yesterday; something is happening today; something will happen tomorrow. This is how we think, isnt it? But the purusha is not aware of this kind of distinction of past, present and future. There is a sudden Awareness of a totality of existence and, therefore, there is an abolition of all duration and time-consciousness. There is an extinction of the difference created by the time process, as well as the difference created by the interference of space between objects. The mind cannot comprehend everything at one stroke.
For the mind there is successive perception but not simultaneous perception, whereas in the purusha there is simultaneous perception an Awareness which is the grasping of everything at one stroke. Therefore, the purusha and the mind are different. Sattva puruayo atyantsamkrayo pratyaya aviea bhoga (III.36). The inability to grasp the difference between these two is called bhoga enjoyment, experience. All the processes which the mind undergoes are called bhoga. And we are all fond of bhoga only. That is why we cling to the world so much. There is a fear that when the mind is freed from conditions which bring about bhoga, there will be no joy. We identify contactual experience with pleasure; this is a habit of the mind. Therefore, it is not easy to wean the mind from this habit. It is difficult for the mind to believe that there can be pleasure in the purusha, because what pleasure can be there in a condition in which we are severed from all contacts?
This is what the mind will think, and what it does think. With great effort of intellectual understanding, sometimes we are convinced of the possibility of bliss even in the purusha. But the feelings revolt against such a kind of intellectual conviction, and when we actually come to the forefront of the task of this practice, the mind resents the practice because the very first thing that is required in this meditation is not to think of an object. And if we dont think of an object, what remains? There remains a blank, and a night of darkness. This is what the mind feels, and it does not get the purusha. The purusha is not an object of Awareness to the mind when it is free from contact with objects. It is in a complete oblivion, a wiping out of all Awareness.
Well, this may be one of the conditions through which the mind passes, or has to pass. As mystical language tells us, it is the dark night of the soul. When we cut off all connections with everything in the world, we have to pass through darkness; we will not enter into light immediately. There will be an interim period of darkness, oblivion and un Awareness of everything, which is the frightened condition, a state of affairs where the mind is in fear as to what is happening. There, higher guidance is necessary from a Guru, a spiritual master because we will be cast into the winds of un Awareness. The mind is afraid of this condition. The moment we withdraw the mind from objects, there is unhappiness because happiness is nothing but contemplation of objects, and the requisition of this meditation is the opposite of it. So it will mean, impliedly, that we are trying to cut at the roots of all the pleasures of the mind by attempting this meditation. Therefore, the mind will not agree.
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Svrthasayamt puruajnam (III.36). Here is the secret of yoga, or true meditation, from the spiritual point of view. Purusha jnana, or knowledge of the purusha, arises by svartha samyama samyama on svartha, meditation on ones own essential nature, or the purpose of the spirit. This is the meditation prescribed. The purpose of the spirit, the character of the spirit, is the object of meditation. We cannot once again go into all the details of this subject, inasmuch as we have covered it in the Samadhi Pada. But suffice it to say that the contemplation of the nature of the spirit, or its purpose, is equivalent to a precondition of a grasp of the nature of the spirit by viveka shakti, or analytic understanding. It is enough for the mind to understand and appreciate that the purusha is consciousness in nature. And consciousness has to be indivisible, by the very nature of it, which means that it is infinite, unconditioned by objects, space and time. Therefore, any experience in terms of space and time or objects is contrary to the nature of the purusha. Hence, there should be an effort exercised upon the mind to sublimate object Awareness into spiritual Awareness.
Spiritual contemplation is a process of sublimation of objectivity into universality. This kind of meditation is what is introduced in this sutra, and when this is practised, purusha jnana arises knowledge of the purusha comes. But this is a hard task because the conception of the purusha is not provided to the mind usually, in ordinary world experience. The nature of the purusha does not mean the nature of the individual self. It is the nature of the Universal Self. Purusha is a name that we give to the Absolute itself that which comprehends all things. Therefore, there is the need for the practice of those conditions mentioned in the Samadhi Pada, meaning the conditions which are designated as vairagya and abhyasa.
Da nuravika viaya vitasya vakrasaj vairgyam (I.15). A complete absence of taste for things which are seen as well as unseen has been described as vairagya. This meditation cannot come to a person who has a taste for things which are outside. It is not merely an absence of sense-contact; it is an absence of taste itself. Vitrishnasya is the term used. A dislike arisen on account of the non-cognition of value in things which are external this is called vairagya. And a persistent practice of this condition, the maintenance of this Awareness, called vashikara samjna that is called abhyasa. All these we have studied in the Samadhi Pada. This is the technique.
Patanjali mentions this to us once again, in the Vibhuti Pada, for the purpose of acquisition of the knowledge of the purusha. Sattva purua anyat khytimtrasya sarvabhva adhihttva sarvajttva ca (III.50). When there is an acquisition of this understanding and an establishment of oneself in this status of meditation, some extraordinary results follow, and they are mentioned as sarva bhava adhis thatritva and sarva jnatritva. One becomes the substratum of everything as a result of this meditation that is sarva bhava adhis thatritva. As the substratum of all things, there is no need for this consciousness to move towards objects, because it is the substratum of even the object. As the result of this, again, there is sarva jnatritva knowledge of everything. The substance of everything is also endowed with the knowledge of everything. It follows, because everything is a modification of the substance. One who has become the substance itself, as the substratum of all things, naturally gets endowed with this knowledge. This knowledge is called taraka that which takes one across the ocean of sorrow.
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But here, there is knowledge of all conditions of the objects even those conditions which the object has not undergone and are yet to come. They also will be known at one stroke that is sarvatha visaya. Sarvaviaya sarvathviaya all knowledge, and knowledge of every condition of everything, every state through which one passed, through which one passes and through which one has to pass all these will become contents of this Awareness. How, in what manner, does it become a content of Awareness? One after another, successively? No. Akramam. Akramam means not successive, but simultaneous. Instantaneous Awareness of all conditions that are possible, at any period of time this is called viveka jnana.Traka sarvaviaya sarvathviaya akrama ca iti vivekajam jnam (III.55).
These are only stories to the mind which is sunk in the mire of world-consciousness. One cannot even dream of what this state of affairs is. What can be meant by simultaneous Awareness of all things and simultaneous Awareness of every condition of all things? This is called sarva jnatritva; this is omniscience. And this is designated by the term vivekajam jnanam, knowledge born of discriminative understanding, which is a peculiar term used in the yoga psychology. It is also called taraka, the saving knowledge. This information is given to us in these sutras to give us a comfort spiritually, that we are not merely entering into a lions den where we find nothing but death, but that we are entering into a new type of life altogether, where eternity embraces us with a new life which is durationless and, therefore, deathless. This contemplation is the only technique, the only method, the only means of the salvation of the soul.
Sattva puruayo uddhi smye kaivalyam iti (III.56). Kaivalya, or ultimate independence of the spirit, arises when there is equanimity of the structural character of sattva and the purusha. Sattva means the mind, or we may call it prakriti; purusha is the consciousness. When there is similarity established between the two, then the one does not remain as an object of the other, nor is one a subject in relation to the other. When the two become one on account of the intense purity of the experiencing consciousness, infinity enters into experience. This is kaivalya, this is moksha sattva puruayo uddhi smye kaivalyam iti (III.56). These sutras have given us, in a concise manner, the principles of spiritual contemplation.
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These stages are the gradual sublimations of world-consciousness, or object-consciousness, by diminishing the distance between the subject and the object of meditation, which takes place automatically and for which there is no need for any special effort. The distance that separates the experiencing consciousness from its object becomes less and less as one advances more and more, so that what is called samyama in the Vibhuti Pada is the abolition of this distance itself. There is a complete transcendence of spatial Awareness in samyama.
Thus, there is a very scientific methodology provided to us in these sutras, which have to be studied gradually, stage by stage, in their successive intensity and applicability. Many authors think that the sutras of Patanjali in respect of yoga are concluded with the Vibhuti Pada because in it he mentions that kaivalya is attained. What else is there to say, afterwards? Some people are of the opinion that there are only three sections of Patanjali, not four sections, but there are others who think that there should be four sections, not three, because each section is called a pada Samadhi Pada, Sadhana Pada, Vibhuti Pada and Kaivalya Pada. A pada is a quarter, and we cannot have three quarters; quarters are always four. So, inasmuch as the word pada is used in respect of each section, it is the opinion of many that four sections must be there, not three. And the fourth section has a meaning of its own. Though it is not directly connected with practice, it furnishes certain details. Just as there are people who think that the Bhagavadgita ends with the eleventh chapter and the successive chapters are additions, as a kind of commentary, there are others who think that they are not simply additions; they have an organic connection with what has preceded.
1.09 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
This metaphor of waking from dreams recurs again and again in the various expositions of the Perennial Philosophy. In this context liberation might be defined as the process of waking up out of the nonsense, nightmares and illusory pleasures of what is ordinarily called real life into the Awareness of eternity. The sober certainty of waking bliss that wonderful phrase in which Milton described the experience of the noblest kind of musiccomes, I suppose, about as near as words can get to enlightenment and deliverance.
Thou (the human being) art that which is not. I am that I am. If thou perceivest this truth in thy soul, never shall the enemy deceive thee; thou shalt escape all his snares.
1.09 - Taras Ultimate Nature, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
at the same time. Just as water extinguishes re, wisdom extinguishes ignorance. Because ignorance is a misapprehension, an erroneous Awareness, it
can be counteracted. Thus, when wisdom understands how things actually
1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness is not only power of Awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.
Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
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were no impact of forces and no reactions, the consciousness would still be there, but static and inactive. But again this activity of consciousness might not be limited to an interpretation or a passive reaction to forces; it might also, if it chose, be the creator or determinant of its reactions - as for instance to a blow on the body or the vital it might refuse the natural reactions of pain or anger and remain still and immobile or it might return an unusual reaction of love or pleasure. Also this consciousness might not be only a recipient and seer of forces, but a creator or putter out of forces - it might be not only a knower, but an energy, a dynamis. In this view, your definition becomes totally inadequate. Farther, the word personality is misleading; for what we usually know as personality is itself only a formation of consciousness. Behind it we are aware of a Person or Purusha who puts forward the mutable surface formation we call personality and who may even have many personalities at a time or different personalities at different times. This Purusha would be then a being and consciousness, would be not a result or an activity, but a constant reality, an intrinsic power of Awareness and action inherent in the being, - as the being is self-existent, so the consciousness self-existent in the being, the Purusha. This is the realisation we have of it in Yogic experience, eternal reality of consciousness inherent in the eternal reality of existence, as in the concept and experience of Sachchidananda.
This is the crucial point in the question, what is consciousness, whether it is a temporary phenomenon of Nature or a reality in itself fundamental to existence. The first is the conclusion that is drawn, and must be drawn, from normal experience on the surface. The other is at best a metaphysical speculation or an instinctive feeling in humanity unless we go beyond the normal experience, deepen and widen the range of our present consciousness and test its inner depths and inferior abysses and supernormal heights, until we can touch its fundamental or its ultimate or its total reality as is done in Yoga. To judge from only normal and superficial experience as the ordinary mind does with phenomena is to miss the truth of things - we have to go behind the surface phenomenon to find the reality of what a
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Consciousness is made up of two elements, Awareness of self and things and forces and conscious power. Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth; but Awareness by itself is not enough. There must be a Will and a Force that make the consciousness effective. Somebody may have the full consciousness of what has to be changed, what has to go and what has to come in its place, but may be helpless to make the change. Another may have the will-force, but for want of a right Awareness may be unable to apply it in the right way at the right place. The advantage of being in the psychic consciousness is that you have the right Awareness and its will being in harmony with the Mother s will, you can call in the
Mother s Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal effort and as the Awareness and will and force of the mind and vital are divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not definitive. It is only
Sachchidananda
in the supermind that Awareness, Will, Force are always one movement and automatically effective.
If consciousness and energy are the same thing, there would be no use in having two different words for them. In that case instead of saying, "I am conscious of my defects", one can say,
11.08 - Body-Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The body-content thus is essentially consciousness consolidated, crystallised. The problem then is how to release it. The first thing is that you must be conscious, you, that is to say, your body must be conscious, must be aware always of what it is doing: living, moving, acting; the body must be doing all that consciously, almost voluntarily: there shall be no in voluntary movements. Each physical gesture must know itself by feeling itself in the act. It is not that the mind should know, the mind can have only a memory, but that the limb itself has to pursue its function knowingly, in full Awareness. At the beginning there is inevitably a mixture of mental knowing but that is to be cleaned out and over passed
One is conscious, can be conscious only through consciousness; consciousness is born through consciousness. It manifests, it grows through incubation, through self-centration. Energy energises itself, as the Upanishad says, tapas taptv. Energy is consciousness in movement and in moving it expresses itself, embodies itself. A muscle, for example, when moving, awakes to its own activity, the awakening is not confined to itself, but it extends gradually, extends to all its constituent cells and even to contiguous cells. The process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with consciousness and with its radiant energy.
There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a preparatory condition: the first essential condition under which the body can be conscious of itself is its freedom, its absolute freedom. The body must be liberated wholly and entirely, it must feel its perfect freedom. As at present it is a slave: it never knows its own will, it is always under the orders of either the vital or the mind or both. Under the control of this dual mastersa cruel diarchy the body has lost all its independent movements. The activities, almost all, of the present body are not really its own, they are expressions of an imposed will. In order to have and to be aware of its own will the body must be freed from its alien imposition and as soon as it gains its freedom, it will know itself, learn itself, learn its own movements. It will gradually shred off all the wrong and distorted movements which form its present habits. We shall find that in itself the body is a sane entity and it is not in need of many things that have been suggested to it and instilled into it by forces that are outside it, almost foreign to it, the mental and the vital forces. The liberation will bring to it automatically the Awareness of its own self, it will become, that is to say, conscious of itself and this consciousness will bring with it a pure and fresh energy which is that of its true self. As in the case of a subject nation the very fact of liberation brings to it the energy of self-consciousness and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the individual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-consciousness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom and rejoices in its power and energy to express its own truth. The first effect of freedom after a long subjugation is likely to be a spell of erraticism, but that is sure to die away if there is a corrective central will.
The body-movements in the animal are more au thentic and truthful for they are not subsidised and suborned by the vital and mental injunctions, and they are more ordered and controlled, not subject to idiosyncrasies that sway the human character. They are more free and more natural: the same essential freedom and au thenticity and purity shall belong to the body natural of the highest mode of being and consciousness.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Defined in psychological terms, grace is something other than our self-conscious personal self, by which we are helped. We have experience of three kinds of such helpsanimal grace, human grace and spiritual grace. Animal grace comes when we are living in full accord with our own nature on the biological levelnot abusing our bodies by excess, not interfering with the workings of our indwelling animal intelligence by conscious cravings and aversions, but living wholesomely and laying ourselves open to the virtue of the sun and the spirit of the air. The reward of being thus in harmony with Tao or the Logos in its physical and physiological aspects is a sense of well-being, an Awareness of life as good, not for any reason, but just because it is life. There is no question, when we are in a condition of animal grace, of propter vitam vivendi perdere causas; for in this state there is no distinction between the reasons for living and life itself. Life, like virtue, is then its own reward. But, of course, the fulness of animal grace is reserved for animals. Mans nature is such that he must live a self-conscious life in time, not in a blissful sub-rational eternity on the hither side of good and evil. Consequently animal grace is something that he knows only spasmodically in an occasional holiday from self-consciousness, or as an accompaniment to other states, in which life is not its own reward but has to be lived for a reason outside itself.
Human grace comes to us either from persons, or from social groups, or from our own wishes, hopes and imaginings projected outside ourselves and persisting somehow in the psychic medium in a state of what may be called second-hand objectivity. We have all had experience of the different types of human grace. There is, for example, the grace which, during childhood, comes from mother, father, nurse or beloved teacher. At a later stage we experience the grace of friends; the grace of men and women morally better and wiser than ourselves; the grace of the guru, or spiritual director. Then there is the grace which comes to us because of our attachment to country, party, church or other social organizationa grace which has helped even the feeblest and most timid individuals to achieve what, without it, would have been the impossible. And finally there is the grace which we derive from our ideals, whether low or high, whether conceived of in abstract terms or bodied forth in imaginary personifications. To this last type, it would seem, belong many of the graces experienced by the pious adherents of the various religions. The help received by those who devotedly adore or pray to some personal saint, deity or Avatar is often, we may guess, not a genuinely spiritual grace, but a human grace, coming back to the worshipper from the vortex of psychic power set up by repeated acts (his own and other peoples) of faith, yearning and imagination.
1.11 - FAITH IN MAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
as old as the first reflective awakening of Life to the Awareness of
its powers. But it is a temptation which is only now entering its crit-
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"As long as God keeps the Awareness of 'I' in us, so long do sense-objects exist; and we cannot very well speak of the world as a dream. There is fire in the hearth; therefore the rice and pulse and potatoes and the other vegetables jump about in the pot. They jump about as if to say: 'We are here! We are jumping!' This body is the pot. The mind and intelligence are the water. The objects of the senses are the rice, potatoes, and other vegetables. The 'I-consciousness' identified with the senses says, 'I am jumping about.' And Satchidananda is the fire.
"Hence the Bhakti scriptures describe this very world as a 'mansion of mirth'.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
miss the fundamental Awareness of the absolute which is beyond
all possible description and behind all formulated experience.
1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THIS conception of an inalienable underlying delight of existence of which all outward or surface sensations are a positive, negative or neutral play, waves and foamings of that infinite deep, we arrive at the true solution of the problem we are examining. The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence; of that existence the essential nature or power is an infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being; and of that self-consciousness the essential nature or knowledge of itself is, again, an infinite inalienable delight of being. In formlessness and in all forms, in the eternal Awareness of infinite and indivisible being and in the multiform appearances of finite division this self-existence preserves perpetually its self-delight. As in the apparent inconscience of Matter our soul, growing out of its bondage to its own superficial habit and particular mode of self-conscious existence, discovers that infinite Conscious-Force constant, immobile, brooding, so in the apparent non-sensation of Matter it comes to discover and attune itself to an infinite conscious Delight imperturbable, ecstatic, all-embracing. This delight is its own delight, this self is its own self in all; but to our ordinary view of self and things which awakes and moves only upon surfaces, it remains hidden, profound, subconscious. And as it is within all forms, so it is within all experiences whether pleasant, painful or neutral. There too hidden, profound, subconscious, it is that which enables and compels things to remain in existence. It is the reason of that clinging to existence, that overmastering will-to-be, translated vitally as the instinct of self-preservation, physically as the imperishability of matter, mentally as the sense of immortality which attends the formed existence through all its phases of self-development and of which even the occasional impulse of self-destruction is only a reverse form, an attraction to other state of being and a consequent recoil from present state of being. Delight is existence, Delight is the secret of creation, Delight is the root of birth, Delight is the cause of remaining in existence, Delight is the end of birth and that into which creation ceases. "From Ananda" says the Upanishad "all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart."
2:As we look at these three aspects of essential Being, one in reality, triune to our mental view, separable only in appearance, in the phenomena of the divided consciousness, we are able to put in their right place the divergent formulae of the old philosophies so that they unite and become one, ceasing from their agelong controversy. For if we regard world-existence only in its appearances and only in its relation to pure, infinite, indivisible, immutable Existence, we are entitled to regard it, describe it and realise it as Maya. Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
But the God who comes so terribly as Time also exists timelessly as the Godhead, as Brahman, whose essence is Sat, Chit, Ananda, Being, Awareness, Bliss; and within and beyond mans time-tortured psyche is his spirit, uncreated and uncreatable, as Eckhart says, the Atman which is akin to or even identical with Brahman. The Gita, like all other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, justifies Gods ways to man by affirming and the affirmation is based upon observation and immediate experience that man can, if he so desires, die to his separate temporal selfness and so come to union with timeless Spirit. It affirms, too, that the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to assist human beings to achieve this union. This he does in three waysby teaching the true doctrine in a world blinded by voluntary ignorance; by inviting souls to a carnal love of his humanity, not indeed as an end in itself, but as the means to spiritual love-knowledge of Spirit; and finally by serving as a channel of grace.
God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated sacrifice of the God-Man.
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What is vijnna? It is knowing God in a special way. The Awareness and conviction that fire exists in wood is jnna, knowledge. But to cook rice on that fire, eat the rice, and get nourishment from it is vijnna. To know by one's inner experience that God exists is jnna. But to talk to Him, to enjoy Him as Child, as Friend, as Master, as Beloved, is vijnna. The realization that God alone has become the universe and all living beings is vijnna.
"According to one school of thought, God cannot be seen. Who sees whom? Is God outside you, that you can see Him? One sees only oneself. Having once entered the 'black waters' of the ocean, the ship does not come back and so cannot describe what it experiences."
1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:We see at once that such a consciousness, described by such characteristics, must be an intermediate formulation which refers back to a term above it and forward to another below it; we see at the same time that it is evidently the link and means by which the inferior develops out of the superior and should equally be the link and means by which it may develop back again towards its source. The term above is the unitarian or indivisible consciousness of pure Sachchidananda in which there are no separating distinctions; the term below is the analytic or dividing consciousness of Mind which can only know by separation and distinction and has at the most a vague and secondary apprehension of unity and infinity, - for, though it can synthetise its divisions, it cannot arrive at a true totality. Between them is this comprehensive and creative consciousness, by its power of pervading and intimately comprehending knowledge the child of that self- Awareness by identity which is the poise of the Brahman and by its power of projecting, confronting, apprehending knowledge parent of that Awareness by distinction which is the process of the Mind.
8:Above, the formula of the One eternally stable and immutable; below, the formula of the Many which, eternally mutable, seeks but hardly finds in the flux of things a firm and immutable standing-point; between, the seat of all trinities, of all that is biune, of all that becomes Many-in-One and yet remains One-in-Many because it was originally One that is always potentially Many. This intermediary term is therefore the beginning and end of all creation and arrangement, the Alpha and the Omega, the starting-point of all differentiation, the instrument of all unification, originative, executive and consummative of all realised or realisable harmonies. It has the knowledge of the One, but is able to draw out of the One its hidden multitudes; it manifests the Many, but does not lose itself in their differentiations. And shall we not say that its very existence points back to Something beyond our supreme perception of the ineffable Unity, - Something ineffable and mentally inconceivable not because of its unity and indivisibility, but because of its freedom from even these formulations of our mind, - Something beyond both unity and multiplicity? That would be the utter Absolute and Real which yet justifies to us both our knowledge of God and our knowledge of the world.
1.15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:The Truth-Consciousness is everywhere present in the universe as an ordering self-knowledge by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity. Without this ordering self-knowledge the manifestation would be merely a shifting chaos, precisely because the potentiality is infinite, - which by itself might lead only to a play of uncontrolled unbounded Chance. If there were only infinite potentiality without any law of guiding truth and harmonious self-vision, without any predetermining Idea in the very seed of things cast out for evolution, the world could be nothing but a teeming, amorphous, confused uncertainty. But the knowledge that creates, because what it creates or releases are forms and powers of itself and not things other than itself, possesses in its own being the vision of the truth and law that governs each potentiality, and along with that an intrinsic Awareness of its relation to other potentialities and the harmonies that are possible between them; it holds all this prefigured in the general determining harmony which the whole rhythmic Idea of a universe must contain in its very birth and self-conception and which must therefore inevitably work out by the interplay of its constituents. It is the source and keeper of Law in the world; for that law is nothing arbitrary - it is the expression of a self-nature which is determined by the compelling truth of the real idea that each thing is in its inception. Therefore from the beginning the whole development is predetermined in its self-knowledge and at every moment in its self-working: it is what it must be at each moment by its own original inherent Truth; it moves to what it must be at the next, still by its own original inherent Truth; it will be at the end that which was contained and intended in its seed.
3:This development and progress of the world according to an original truth of its own being implies a succession of Time, a relation in Space and a regulated interaction of related things in Space to which the succession of Time gives the aspect of Causality. Time and Space, according to the metaphysician, have only a conceptual and not a real existence; but since all things and not these only are forms assumed by Conscious-Being in its own consciousness, the distinction is of no great importance. Time and Space are that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time, objectively as Space. Our mental view of these two categories is determined by the idea of measure which is inherent in the action of the analytical, dividing movement of Mind. Time is for the Mind a mobile extension measured out by the succession of the past, present and future in which Mind places itself at a certain standpoint whence it looks before and after. Space is a stable extension measured out by divisibility of substance; at a certain point in that divisible extension Mind places itself and regards the disposition of substance around it.
1.16 - On Concentration, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in this matter. All the subsidiary work Awareness, one-pointedness, mind- fullness and the rest is intended to train you to this.
All the greetings, salutations, "Saying Will," periodical adorations, even saying "apo pantos kakodaimonos" with a downward and outward sweep of the arm, the eyes averted, when one sees a person dressed in a religious (Christian) uniform: all these come under "Don't stroke the cat the wrong way!" or, in the modern pseudo-scientific journalese jargon "streamlining life."
1.17 - The Divine Soul, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
11:And the same rule will apply to the relations of its being, knowledge, will with the being, knowledge and will of others. For all its experience and delight will be the play of a self-blissful conscious force of being in which, by obedience to this truth of unity, will cannot be at strife with knowledge nor either of them with delight. Nor will the knowledge, will and delight of one soul clash with the knowledge, will and delight of another, because by their Awareness of their unity what is clash and strife and discord in our divided being will be there the meeting, entwining and mutual interplay of the different notes of one infinite harmony.
12:In its relations with its supreme Self, with God, the divine soul will have this sense of the oneness of the transcendent and universal Divine with its own being. It will enjoy that oneness of God with itself in its own individuality and with its other selves in the universality. Its relations of knowledge will be the play of the divine omniscience, for God is Knowledge, and what is ignorance with us will be there only the holding back of knowledge in the repose of conscious self- Awareness so that certain forms of that self- Awareness may be brought forward into activity of Light. Its relations of will will be there the play of the divine omnipotence, for God is Force, Will and Power, and what with us is weakness and incapacity will be the holding back of will in tranquil concentrated force so that certain forms of divine conscious-force may realise themselves brought forward into form of Power. Its relations of love and delight will be the play of the divine ecstasy, for God is Love and Delight, and what with us would be denial of love and delight will be the holding back of joy in the still sea of Bliss so that certain forms of divine union and enjoyment may be brought in front in an active upwelling of waves of the Bliss. So also all its becoming will be formation of the divine being in response to these activities and what is with us cessation, death, annihilation will be only rest, transition or holding back of the joyous creative Maya in the eternal being of Sachchidananda. At the same time this oneness will not preclude relations of the divine soul with God, with its supreme Self, founded on the joy of difference separating itself from unity to enjoy that unity otherwise; it will not annul the possibility of any of those exquisite forms of God-enjoyment which are the highest rapture of the God-lover in his clasp of the Divine.
1.18 - Mind and Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:Thus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with willof-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with knowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only "as if"; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the reality of being; it does not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its Awareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its Awareness of essential totality - not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses its defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.
11:A new factor, a new action of conscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a helplessly limited as opposed to a freely limiting mind, - that is to say, of mind subject to its own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind master of its own play and viewing it in its truth, the creature mind as opposed to the divine. That new factor is Avidya, the self-ignoring faculty which separates the action of mind from the action of the supermind that originated and still governs it from behind the veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the particular and not the universal, or conceives only the particular in an unpossessed universal and no longer both particular and universal as phenomena of the Infinite. Thus we have the limited mind which views every phenomenon as a thing-in-itself, separate part of a whole which again exists separately in a greater whole and so on, enlarging always its aggregates without getting back to the sense of a true infinity.
1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
conscience by our increasing Awareness of the tide of anthropogen-
esis on which we are borne. It is, I am convinced, the vital ques-
--
Christiana, and one so compelling as the Awareness of a terrestrial
"ultra-human," ecclesiastical authority ignores, disdains and even
1.19 - GOD IS NOT MOCKED, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IF THERE is freedom (and even Determinists consistently act as if they were certain of it) and if (as everyone who has qualified himself to talk about the subject has always been convinced) there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of Awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked. For, in Bagehots words, we could not be what we ought to be, if we lived in the sort of universe we should expect. A latent Providence, a confused life, an odd material world, an existence broken short in the midst and on a sudden, are not real difficulties, but real helps; for they, or something like them, are essential conditions of a moral life in a subordinate being. Because we are free, it is possible for us to answer lifes questions either well or badly. If we answer them badly, we shall bring down upon ourselves self-stultification. Most often this self-stultification will take subtle and not immediately detectable forms, as when our failure to answer properly makes it impossible for us to realize the higher potentialities of our being. Sometimes, on the contrary, the self-stultification is manifest on the physical level, and may involve not only individuals as individuals, but entire societies, which go down in catastrophe or sink more slowly into decay. The giving of correct answers is rewarded primarily by spiritual growth and progressive realization of latent potentialities, and secondarily (when circumstances make it possible) by the adding of all the rest to the realized kingdom of God. Karma exists; but its equivalence of act and award is not always obvious and material, as the earlier Buddhist and Hebrew writers ingenuously imagined that it should be. The bad man in prosperity may, all unknown to himself, be darkened and corroded with inward rust, while the good man under afflictions may be in the rewarding process of spiritual growth. No, God is not mocked; but also, let us always remember, He is not understood.
Per nella giustizia sempiterna
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness waves of ecstatic love arise:
Rapture divine! Play of God's Bliss!
1.200-1.224 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: As an unbroken Awareness of I. It is simply consciousness.
D.: Can we know it when it dawns?
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi you to be without these senses. In such a state you are either asleep or aware of the Self only. Awareness of Self is ever there. Remain what you truly are and this question will not arise.
D.: Is the body consciousness an impediment to realization?
1.2.03 - The Interpretation of Scripture, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The spirit who lies concealed behind the material world, has given us, through the inspiration of great seers, the Scriptures as helpers and guides to unapparent truth, lamps of great power that send their rays into the darkness of the unknown beyond which He dwells, tamasah parastat. They are guides to knowledge, brief indications to enlighten us on our path, not substitutes for thought and experience. They are shabdam Brahma, the Word, the oral expression of God, not the thing to be known itself nor the knowledge of Him. Shabdam has three elements, the word, the meaning and the spirit. The word is a symbol, vak or nama; we have to find the artha, the meaning or form of thought which the symbol indicates. But the meaning itself is only the indication of something deeper which the thought seeks to convey to the intellectual conception. For not only words, but ideas also are eventually no more than symbols of a knowledge which is beyond ideas and words. Therefore it comes that no idea by itself is wholly true. There is indeed a rupa, some concrete or abstract form of knowledge, answering to every name, and it is that which the meaning must present to the intellect. We say a form of knowledge, because according to our philosophy, all things are forms of an essentially unknowable existence which reveals them as forms of knowledge to the essential Awareness in its Self, its Atman or Spirit, the Chit in the Sat. But beyond nama and rupa is swarupa, the essential figure of Truth, which we cannot know with the intellect, but only with a higher faculty.
And every swarupa is itself only a symbol of the one essential existence which can only be known by its symbols because in its ultimate reality it defies logic and exceeds perception, - God.
12.05 - The World Tragedy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is to be noted that death does not mean literally or exclusively the physical event, disintegration and disappearance of the body: it is rather the symbol of the corrosive consciousness of the ordinary ignorant life. There is the ignorant consciousness making up the lower half circle of the integral life and there is the luminous consciousness making up the higher half circle. In between there is, as I have said, a border range which partakes of the nature of both. In psychological terms, the lower is the predominantly vital and physical ranges with a modicum of the mental shading into the higher mental. Up till here it is more or less the region of ignorance. Then comes the higher mind with its aspiring will: this is the purificatory agent the purgatory the crucible where forces are generated to stir and change and renovate the inferior sphere of our life. Indeed it is the region of the j-cakra in Tantric terminology: in modern terms you may call it the control-room, or in most modern lunar vocabulary, the command-module. It is from here that the first changes towards a higher and purer functioning are initiated in our lower limbs, the body, the vital and even the lower mental. Beyond is the overhead and overmental and still higher ranges. The luminous consciousness, the touch of immortality begins with the overhead and the overmental. As we enter the overhead, we shake off the shadow of death upon us and our mortal nature. The Upanishad speaks of two kinds of knowledge that have to be known, two forms of consciousness that have to be acquired in order to become the full integral Divine being. First you have to know, to become aware of the existence of ignorance, the primal or primitive nature and through that Awareness or knowledge probe into its character and movement and destiny. Ignorance, pure ignorance leads towards disintegration and death, but to be aware of the ignorance is already a step towards enlightening the ignorance and redeeming it into knowledge. By this knowledge of the ignorance you release it from the grip of death; when you have the full consciousness of the ignorance you transcend the region of death, and free from death, free from ignorance you have the knowledge of knowledge and with the knowledge of knowledge, that is to say, with the full revelation of it you are one with Truth that is Immortality. The delight of immortality is love; love's own status and home is Paradise.
The Paradise, the svargyam lokam of the Upanishads is not necessarily utterly afar and aloof, sundered from this world. The kingdom of heaven instead of being wholly within and absolutely beyond can be and has to be brought out and down upon and into earth, established here below in the fullness of its own glory. That is the material epiphany, the transformation of the physical nature, the ultimate and inevitable destiny of earth and mankind.
1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The phrase, religion of experience, has two distinct and mutually incompatible meanings. There is the experience of which the Perennial Philosophy treats the direct apprehension of the divine Ground in an act of intuition possible, in its fulness, only to the selflessly pure in heart. And there is the experience induced by revivalist sermons, impressive ceremonials, or the deliberate efforts of ones own imagination. This experience is a state of emotional excitementan excitement which may be mild and enduring or brief and epileptically violent, which is sometimes exultant in tone and sometimes despairing, which expresses itself here in song and dance, there in uncontrollable weeping. But emotional excitement, whatever its cause and whatever its nature, is always excitement of that individualized self, which must be thed to by anyone who aspires to live to divine Reality. Experience as emotion about God (the highest form of this kind of excitement) is incompatible with experience as imme thate Awareness of God by a pure heart which has mortified even its most exalted emotions. That is why Fnelon, in the foregoing extract, insists upon the need for calm and simplicity, why St. Franois de Sales is never tired of preaching the serenity which he himself so consistently practised, why all the Buddhist scriptures harp on tranquillity of mind as a necessary condition of deliverance. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the fruits of the spirit. But there is also the peace that does not pass understanding, the humbler peace of emotional self-control and self-denial; this is not a fruit of the spirit, but rather one of its indispensable roots.
The imperfect destroy true devotion, because they seek sensible sweetness in prayer.
1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
tion of a common force and the Awareness of a
common distress the men of the future will form,
1.23 - THE MIRACULOUS, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
THE abnormal bodily states, by which the imme thate Awareness of the divine Ground is often accompanied, are not, of course, essential parts of that experience. Many mystics, indeed, deplored such things as being signs, not of divine grace, but of the bodys weakness. To levitate, to go into trance, to lose the use of ones sensesin De Condrens words, this is to receive the effects of God and his holy communications in a very animal and carnal way.
One ounce of sanctifying grace, he (St Franois de Sales) used to say, is worth more than a hundredweight of those graces which theologians call gratuitous, among which is the gift of miracles. It is possible to receive such gifts and yet to be in mortal sin; nor are they necessary to salvation.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and only relating. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object. Whereas the Awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
--
Reality lies beyond these. Memory or oblivion must be dependent on something. That something must be foreign too; otherwise there cannot be oblivion. It is called 'I' by everyone. When one looks for it, it is not found because it is not real. Hence 'I' is synonymous with illusion or ignorance (maya, avidya or ajnana). To know that there never was ignorance is the goal of all the spiritual teachings. Ignorance must be of one who is aware. Awareness is jnana. Jnana is eternal and natural.
Ajnana is unnatural and unreal.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and only relating. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object. Whereas the Awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
--
Reality lies beyond these. Memory or oblivion must be dependent on something. That something must be foreign too; otherwise there cannot be oblivion. It is called I by everyone. When one looks for it, it is not found because it is not real. Hence I is synonymous with illusion or ignorance (maya, avidya or ajnana). To know that there never was ignorance is the goal of all the spiritual teachings. Ignorance must be of one who is aware. Awareness is jnana. Jnana is eternal and natural.
Ajnana is unnatural and unreal.
--
Kingdom of Heaven and all are included in your true Self. They are concepts arising after the ego has arisen. Drishtim jnanamayeem krtva pasyet Brahmamayam jagat (Direct your look within and make it absolute). With that absolute Awareness realised, look without and you will realise the universe to be not apart from the realised Absolute.
Because your outlook is externally directed you speak of a without. In that state you are advised to look within. This within is relative to the without you are seeking. In fact, the Self is neither without nor within.
--
Again, there is no time and space in your sleep. They are concepts which arise after the I-thought has arisen. Before the rise of the Ithought the concepts are absent. Therefore you are beyond time and space. The I-thought is only limited I. The real I is unlimited, universal, beyond time and space. They are absent in sleep. Just on rising up from sleep, and before seeing the objective world, there is a state of Awareness which is your pure Self. That must be known.
D.: But I do not realise it.
--
M.: Sleep is not ignorance; it is your pure state. Wakefulness is not knowledge; it is ignorance. There is full Awareness in sleep; there is total ignorance in waking. Your real nature covers both, and extends beyond. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance.
Sleep, dream and waking are only modes passing before the Self.
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M.: Awareness is your nature. In deep sleep or in waking, it is the same. How can it be gained afresh?
D.: But I do not remember what and how I did in my sleep.
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M.: Concentration and all other practices are meant for recognising the absence, i.e., non-existence of ignorance. No one can deny his own being. Being is knowledge, i.e., Awareness. That Awareness implies absence of ignorance. Therefore everyone naturally admits nonexistence of ignorance. And yet why should he suffer? Because he thinks he is this or that. That is wrong. I am alone is; and not I am so and so, or I am such and such. When existence is absolute it is right; when it is particularised it is wrong. That is the whole truth.
See how each one admits that he is. Does he look into a mirror to know his being? His Awareness makes him admit his existence or being. But he confuses it with the body, etc. Why should he do so?
Is he aware of his body in his sleep? No; yet he himself does not cease to be in sleep. He exists there though without the body. How does he know that he exists in sleep? Does he require a mirror to reveal his own being now? Only be aware, and your being is clear in your Awareness.
D.: How is one to know the Self?
1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
call sense, but here it has to be an obscure externalised sense which must be assured of the reality of what it contacts. The descent of pure substance into material substance follows, then, inevitably on the descent of Sachchidananda through supermind into mind and life. It is a necessary result of the will to make multiplicity of being and an Awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness the first method of this lower experience of existence. If we go back to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity resolves itself into pure conscious being, self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity, but not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind preserves this self- Awareness by identity as its substance of selfknowledge and its light of self-creation, but for that creation presents Being to itself as the subject-object one and multiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is held there in a supreme knowledge which can, by comprehension, see it both as an object of cognition within itself and subjectively as itself, but can also and simultaneously, by apprehension, project it as an object (or objects) of cognition within the circumference of its consciousness, not other than itself, part of its being, but a part (or parts) put away from itself, - that is to say, from the centre of vision in which Being concentrates itself as the Knower,
Witness or Purusha. We have seen that from this apprehending consciousness arises the movement of Mind, the movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own universal being as if other than he; but in the divine Mind there is immediately or rather simultaneously another movement or reverse side of the same movement, an act of union in being which heals this phenomenal division and prevents it from becoming even for a moment solely real to the knower. This act of conscious union is that which is represented otherwise in dividing Mind obtusely, ignorantly, quite externally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and separate objects, and with us this contact in divided consciousness is primarily represented by the principle of sense. On this basis of sense, on this contact of union subject to division, the action of the thought-mind founds itself and prepares for the return to a higher principle of union in which
1.25 - Fascinations, Invisibility, Levitation, Transmutations, Kinks in Time, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Roughly, this is how to do it. If one is concentrated to the point when what you are thinking of is the only reality in the Universe, when you lose all Awareness of who and where you are and what you are doing, it seems as though that unconsciousness were in some way contagious. The people around you just can't see anybody.
At one time, in Sicily, this happened nearly every day. Our party, strolling down to our bathing bay the loveliest spot of its kind that I have ever seen over a hillside where there wasn't cover for a rabbit, would lose sight of me, look, and fail to find me, though I was walking in their midst. At first, astonishment, bewilderment; at last, so normal had it become: "He's invisible again."
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In India the repetition of the divine name or the mantram (a short devotional or doctrinal affirmation) is called japam and is a favourite spiritual exercise among all the sects of Hinduism and Buddhism. The shortest mantram is OMa spoken sym bol that concentrates within itself the whole Vedanta philosophy. To this and other mantrams Hindus attribute a kind of magical power. The repetition of them is a sacramental act, conferring grace ex opere operato. A similar efficacity was and indeed still is attri buted to sacred words and formulas by Buddhists, Moslems, Jews and Christians. And, of course, just as traditional religious rites seem to possess the power to evoke the real presence of existents projected into psychic objectivity by the faith and devotion of generations of worshippers, so too long-hallowed words and phrases may become channels for conveying powers other and greater than those belonging to the individual who happens at the moment to be pronouncing them. And meanwhile the constant repetition of this word GOD or this word LOVE may, in favourable circumstances, have a profound effect upon the subconscious mind, inducing that selfless one-pointedness of will and thought and feeling, without which the unitive knowledge of God is impossible. Furthermore, it may happen that, if the word is simply repeated all whole, and not broken up or undone by discursive analysis, the Fact for which the word stands will end by presenting itself to the soul in the form of an integral intuition. When this happens, the doors of the letters of this word are opened (to use the language of the Sufis) and the soul passes through into Reality. But though all this may happen, it need not necessarily happen. For there is no spiritual patent medicine, no pleasant and infallible panacea for souls suffering from separateness and the deprivation of God. No, there is no guaranteed cure; and, if used improperly, the medicine of spiritual exercises may start a new disease or aggravate the old. For example, a mere mechanical repetition of the divine name can result in a kind of numbed stupefaction that is as much below analytical thought as intellectual vision is above it. And because the sacred word constitutes a kind of prejudgment of the experience induced by its repetition, this stupefaction, or some other abnormal state, is taken to be the imme thate Awareness of Reality and is idolatrously cultivated and hunted after, with a turning of the will towards what is supposed to be God before there has been a turning of it away from the self.
The dangers which beset the practicer of japam, who is insufficiently mortified and insufficiently recollected and aware, are encountered in the same or different forms by those who make use of more elaborate spiritual exercises. Intense concentration on an image or idea, such as is recommended by many teachers, both Eastern and Western, may be very helpful for certain persons in certain circumstances, very harmful in other cases. It is helpful when the concentration results in such mental stillness, such a silence of intellect, will and feeling, that the divine Word can be uttered within the soul. It is harmful when the image concentrated upon becomes so hallucinatingly real that it is taken for objective Reality and idolatrously worshipped; harmful, too, when the exercise of concentration produces unusual psycho-physical results, in which the person experiencing them takes a personal pride, as being special graces and divine communications. Of these unusual psycho-physical occurrences the most ordinary are visions and auditions, foreknowledge, telepathy and other psychic powers, and the curious bodily phenomenon of intense neat. Many persons who practise concentration exercises experience this heat occasionally. A number of Christian saints, of whom the best known are St. Philip Neri and St. Catherine of Siena, have experienced it continuously. In the East techniques have been developed whereby the accession of heat resulting from intense concentration can be regulated, controlled and put to do useful work, such as keeping the contemplative warm in freezing weather. In Europe, where the phenomenon is not well understood, many would-be contemplatives have experienced this heat, and have imagined it to be some special divine favour, or even the experience of union, and being insufficiently mortified and humble, have fallen into idolatry and a God-eclipsing spiritual pride.
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But first, by way of preface to the description of these exercises, it should be remarked that all teachers of the art of mental prayer concur in advising their pupils never to use violent efforts of the surface will against the distractions which arise in the mind during periods of recollection. The reason for this has been succinctly stated by Benet of Canfield in his Rule of Perfection. The more a man operates, the more he is and exists. And the more he is and exists, the less of God is and exists within him. Every enhancement of the separate personal self produces a corresponding diminution of that selfs Awareness of divine Reality. But any violent reaction of the surface will against distractions automatically enhances the separate, personal self and therefore reduces the individuals chances of coming to the knowledge and love of God. In the process of trying forcibly to abolish our God-eclipsing day-dreams, we merely deepen the darkness of our native ignorance. This being so, we must give up the attempt to fight distractions and find ways either of circumventing them, or of somehow making use of them. For example, if we have already achieved a certain degree of alert passivity in relation to Reality and distractions intervene, we can simply look over the shoulder of the malicious and concupiscent imbecile who stands between us and the object of our simple regard. The distractions now appear in the foreground of consciousness; we take notice of their presence, then, lightly and gently, without any straining of the will, we shift the focus of attention to Reality which we glimpse, or divine, or (by past experience or an act of faith) merely know about, in the background. In many cases, this effortless shift of attention will cause the distractions to lose their obsessive thereness and, for a time at least, to disappear.
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Masters presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lords presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
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The Way of Wisdom. The purpose of this discipline is to bring a man into the habit of applying the insight that has come to him as the result of the preceding disciplines. When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate ones mind on the act and the doing of it, not on ones relation to the act, or its character or value. One should think: there is walking, there is stopping, there is realizing; not, I am walking, I am doing this, it is a good thing, it is disagreeable, I am gaining merit, it is I who am realizing how wonderful it is. Thence come vagrant thoughts, feelings of elation or of failure and unhappiness. Instead of all this, one should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquillity of mind, realization, insight and Wisdom; and one should follow the practice in faith, willingness and gladness. After long practice the bondage of old habits becomes weakened and disappears, and in its place appear confidence, satisfaction, Awareness and tranquillity.
What is this Way of Wisdom designed to accomplish? There are three classes of conditions that hinder one from advancing along the path to Enlightenment. First, there are the allurements arising from the senses, from external conditions and from the discriminating mind. Second, there are the internal conditions of the mind, its thoughts, desires and mood. All these the earlier practices (ethical and mortificatory) are designed to eliminate. In the third class of impediments are placed the individuals instinctive and fundamental (and therefore most insidious and persistent) urges the will to live and to enjoy, the will to cherish ones personality, the will to propagate, which give rise to greed and lust, fear and anger, infatuation, pride and egotism. The practice of the Wisdom Paramita is designed to control and eliminate these fundamental and instinctive hindrances. By means of it the mind gradually grows clearer, more luminous, more peaceful. Insight becomes more penetrating, faith deepens and broadens, until they merge into the inconceivable Samadhi of the Minds Pure Essence. As one continues the practice of the Way of Wisdom, one yields less and less to thoughts of comfort or desolation; faith becomes surer, more pervasive, beneficent and joyous; and fear of retrogression vanishes. But do not think that the consummation is to be attained easily or quickly; many rebirths may be necessary, many aeons may have to elapse. So long as doubt, unbelief, slanders, evil conduct, hindrances of karma, weakness of faith, pride, sloth and mental agitation persist, so long as even their shadows linger, there can be no attainment of the Samadhi of the Buddhas. But he who has attained to the radiance of highest Samadhi, or unitive Knowledge, will be able to realize, with all the Buddhas, the perfect unity of all sentient beings with Buddhahoods Dharmakaya. In the pure Dharmakaya there is no dualism, neither shadow of differentiation. All sentient beings, if only they were able to realize it, are already in Nirvana. The Minds pure Essence is Highest Samadhi, is Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, is Prajna Paramita, is Highest Perfect Wisdom.
1.25 - The Knot of Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:Especially and most fatally, the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter impose on the vital and mental existence emerging in it the law of pain and suffering and the unrest of dissatisfaction with its status of division, inertia and ignorance. Ignorance would indeed bring no pain of dissatisfaction if the mental consciousness were entirely ignorant, if it could halt satisfied in some shell of custom, unaware of its own ignorance or of the infinite ocean of consciousness and knowledge by which it lives surrounded; but precisely it is to this that the emerging consciousness in Matter awakes, first, to its ignorance of the world in which it lives and which it has to know and master in order to be happy, secondly, to the ultimate barrenness and limitation of this knowledge, to the meagreness and insecurity of the power and happiness it brings and to the Awareness of an infinite consciousness, knowledge, true being in which alone is to be found a victorious and infinite happiness. Nor would the obstruction of inertia bring with it unrest and dissatisfaction if the vital sentience emerging in Matter were entirely inert, if it were kept satisfied with its own half-conscient limited existence, unaware of the infinite power and immortal existence in which it lives as part of and yet separated from it, or if it had nothing within driving it towards the effort really to participate in that infinity and immortality. But this is precisely what all life is driven to feel and seek from the first, its insecurity and the need and struggle for persistence, for self-preservation; it awakes in the end to the limitation of its existence and begins to feel the impulsion towards largeness and persistence, towards the infinite and the eternal.
10:And when in man life becomes wholly self-conscious, this unavoidable struggle and effort and aspiration reach their acme and the pain and discord of the world become finally too keenly sensible to be borne with contentment. Man may for a long time quiet himself by seeking to be satisfied with his limitations or by confining his struggle to such mastery as he can gain over this material world he inhabits, some mental and physical triumph of his progressive knowledge over its inconscient fixities, of his small, concentrated conscious will and power over its inertlydriven monstrous forces. But here, too, he finds the limitation, the poor inconclusiveness of the greatest results he can achieve and is obliged to look beyond. The finite cannot remain permanently satisfied so long as it is conscious either of a finite greater than itself or of an infinite beyond itself to which it can yet aspire. And if the finite could be so satisfied, yet the apparently finite being who feels himself to be really an infinite or feels merely the presence or the impulse and stirring of an infinite within, can never be satisfied till these two are reconciled, till That is possessed by him and he is possessed by it in whatever degree or manner. Man is such a finite-seeming infinity and cannot fail to arrive at a seeking after the Infinite. He is the first son of earth who becomes vaguely aware of God within him, of his immortality or of his need of immortality, and the knowledge is a whip that drives and a cross of crucifixion until he is able to turn it into a source of infinite light and joy and power.
1.26 - FESTIVAL AT ADHARS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "And that one 'Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness'."
Narendra sang:
Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness waves of ecstatic love arise:
Rapture divine! Play of God's Bliss!
1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IN ALL the historic formulations of the Perennial Philosophy it is axiomatic that the end of human life is contemplation, or the direct and intuitive Awareness of God; that action is the means to that end; that a society is good to the extent that it renders contemplation possible for its members; and that the existence of at least a minority of contemplatives is necessary for the well-being of any society. In the popular philosophy of our own time it goes without saying that the end of human life is action; that contemplation (above all in its lower forms of discursive thought) is the means to that end; that a society is good to the extent that the actions of its members make for progress in technology and organization (a progress which is assumed to be causally related to ethical and cultural advance); and that a minority of contemplatives is perfectly useless and perhaps even harmful to the community which tolerates it. To expatiate further on the modern Weltanschauung is unnecessary; explicitly or by implication it is set forth on every page of the advertising sections of every newspaper and magazine. The extracts that follow have been chosen in order to illustrate the older, truer, less familiar theses of the Perennial Philosophy.
Work is for the purification of the mind, not for the perception of Reality. The realization of Truth is brought about by discrimination, and not in the least by ten millions of acts.
1.27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:But before we can turn to the psychological and practical conditions under which such a transfiguration may be changed from an essential possibility into a dynamic potentiality, we have much to consider; for we must discern not only the essential principles of the descent of Sachchidananda into cosmic existence, which we have already done, but the large plan of its order here and the nature and action of the manifested power of ConsciousForce which reigns over the conditions under which we now exist. At present, what we have first to see is that the seven or the eight principles we have examined are essential to all cosmic creation and are there, manifested or as yet unmanifested, in ourselves, in this "Infant of a year" which we still are, - for we are far yet from being the adults of evolutionary Nature. The higher Trinity is the source and basis of all existence and play of existence, and all cosmos must be an expression and action of its essential reality. No universe can be merely a form of being which has sprung up and outlined itself in an absolute nullity and void and remains standing out against a non-existent emptiness. It must be either a figure of existence within the infinite Existence who is beyond all figure or it must be itself the All-Existence. In fact, when we unify our self with cosmic being, we see that it is really both of these things at once; that is to say, it is the All-Existent figuring Himself out in an infinite series of rhythms in His own conceptive extension of Himself as Time and Space. Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of Awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic Awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.
8:Finally, Consciousness being thus omniscient and omnipotent, in entire luminous possession of itself, and such entire luminous possession being necessarily and in its very nature Bliss, for it cannot be anything else, a vast universal self-delight must be the cause, essence and object of cosmic existence. "If there were not" says the ancient seer "this all-encompassing ether of Delight of existence in which we dwell, if that delight were not our ether, then none could breathe, none could live." This self-bliss may become subconscient, seemingly lost on the surface, but not only must it be there at our roots, all existence must be essentially a seeking and reaching out to discover and possess it, and in proportion as the creature in the cosmos finds himself, whether in will and power or in light and knowledge or in being and wideness or in love and joy itself, he must awaken to something of the secret ecstasy. Joy of being, delight of realisation by knowledge, rapture of possession by will and power or creative force, ecstasy of union in love and joy are the highest terms of expanding life because they are the essence of existence itself in its hidden roots as on its yet unseen heights. Wherever, then, cosmic existence manifests itself, these three must be behind and within it.
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:But if such intervening gradations exist, it is clear that they must be superconscient to human mind which does not seem to have in its normal state any entry into these higher grades of being. Man is limited in his consciousness by mind and even by a given range or scale of mind: what is below his mind, submental or mental but nether to his scale, readily seems to him subconscious or not distinguishable from complete inconscience; what is above it is to him superconscious and he is almost inclined to regard it as void of Awareness, a sort of luminous Inconscience. Just as he is limited to a certain scale of sounds or of colours and what is above or below that scale is to him inaudible and invisible or at least indistinguishable, so is it with his scale of mental consciousness, confined at either extremity by an incapacity which marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no sufficient means of communication even with the animal who is his mental congener, though not his equal, and he is even capable of denying mind or real consciousness to it because its modes are other and narrower than those with which in himself and his kind he is familiar; he can observe submental being from outside but cannot at all communicate with it or enter intimately into its nature. Equally the superconscious is to him a closed book which may well be filled only with empty pages. At first sight, then, it would appear as if he had no means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness: if so, they cannot act as links or bridges and his evolution must cease with his accomplished mental range and cannot exceed it; Nature in drawing these limits has written finis to his upward endeavour.
4:But when we look more closely, we perceive that this normality is deceptive and that in fact there are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself, tends towards selfexceeding; these are precisely the necessary lines of contact or veiled or half-veiled passages which connect it with higher grades of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. First, we have noted the place Intuition occupies in the human means of knowledge, and Intuition is in its very nature a projection of the characteristic action of these higher grades into the mind of Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is largely hidden by the interventions of our normal intelligence; a pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity: for what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge which is immediately caught and coated over with mental stuff, so that it serves only as an invisible or a very tiny nucleus of a crystallisation which is in its mass intellectual or otherwise mental in character; or else the flash of intuition is quickly replaced or intercepted, before it has a chance of manifesting itself, by a rapid imitative mental movement, insight or quick perception or some swift-leaping process of thought which owes its appearance to the stimulus of the coming intuition but obstructs its entry or covers it with a substituted mental suggestion true or erroneous but in either case not the au thentic intuitive movement. Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or au thentic perception of things there is a veiled, a halfveiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spiritranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, - towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The phenomena of genius are really the result of such a penetration, - veiled no doubt, because the light of the superior consciousness not only acts within narrow limits, usually in a special field, without any regulated separate organisation of its characteristic energies, often indeed quite fitfully, erratically and with a supernormal or abnormal irresponsible governance, but also in entering the mind it subdues and adapts itself to mind substance so that it is only a modified or diminished dynamis that reaches us, not all the original divine luminosity of what might be called the overhead consciousness beyond us.
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8:In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an Awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
9:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and manysided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence.
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Kingdom of Heaven and all are included in your true Self. They are concepts arising after the ego has arisen. Drishtim jnanamayeem krtva pasyet Brahmamayam jagat (Direct your look within and make it absolute). With that absolute Awareness realised, look without and you will realise the universe to be not apart from the realised Absolute.
Because your outlook is externally directed you speak of a without. In that state you are advised to look within. This within is relative to the without you are seeking. In fact, the Self is neither without nor within.
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Again, there is no time and space in your sleep. They are concepts which arise after the 'I-thought' has arisen. Before the rise of the 'Ithought' the concepts are absent. Therefore you are beyond time and space. The 'I-thought' is only limited 'I'. The real 'I' is unlimited, universal, beyond time and space. They are absent in sleep. Just on rising up from sleep, and before seeing the objective world, there is a state of Awareness which is your pure Self. That must be known.
D.: But I do not realise it.
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M.: Sleep is not ignorance; it is your pure state. Wakefulness is not knowledge; it is ignorance. There is full Awareness in sleep; there is total ignorance in waking. Your real nature covers both, and extends beyond. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance.
Sleep, dream and waking are only modes passing before the Self.
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M.: Awareness is your nature. In deep sleep or in waking, it is the same. How can it be gained afresh?
D.: But I do not remember what and how I did in my sleep.
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M.: Concentration and all other practices are meant for recognising the absence, i.e., non-existence of ignorance. No one can deny his own being. Being is knowledge, i.e., Awareness. That Awareness implies absence of ignorance. Therefore everyone naturally admits nonexistence of ignorance. And yet why should he suffer? Because he thinks he is this or that. That is wrong. "I am" alone is; and not "I am so and so", or "I am such and such". When existence is absolute it is right; when it is particularised it is wrong. That is the whole truth.
See how each one admits that he is. Does he look into a mirror to know his being? His Awareness makes him admit his existence or being. But he confuses it with the body, etc. Why should he do so?
Is he aware of his body in his sleep? No; yet he himself does not cease to be in sleep. He exists there though without the body. How does he know that he exists in sleep? Does he require a mirror to reveal his own being now? Only be aware, and your being is clear in your Awareness.
D.: How is one to know the Self?
13.01 - A Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the scheme and pattern of human existence in the hierarchy that is collective life, Sri Aurobindo sought to express the play of the supreme Truth, express materially that which works always in secret and behind the veil. The Supreme Reality is not merely the supreme Awareness and consciousness, but it is a power and a force; and it holds still a secret source that has not yet been touched,touched consciously by the human consciousness and utilised for world existence. Man's genius has contacted today in the material world material forces which are almost immaterial the extra-galactic radiation, the laser beams and other energies of that category which are powerful in an unbelievable unheard of 'degree. Even so in the consciousness, there is a mode of force which is not only a force that knows but creates, not only creates but transforms. That force at its intrinsic optimum can enter into dull matter and transforming it, transform into radiant matter, radiant not only with the physical, the solar light but the light of the supreme Spirit.
This is the force which Sri Aurobindo has disclosed and put at the disposal of mankind. This is the force he has set free that is creating a new world,reorganising and remoulding, through a great travail indeed, our ancient sphere that will cradle the earth of the golden age.
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
An advocate visitor: The mind becomes aware of the world through the senses. When the senses are active, one cannot help feeling the existence of the world. How can karma yoga be of any use for pure Awareness?
M.: The world is perceived by the mind through the senses. It is of the mind. The seer sees the mind and the senses as within the Self and not apart from it. The agent, remaining unaffected by the actions, gets more purified until he realises the Self.
1.4.02 - The Divine Force, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
How is the mere physical mind to know that it is there and working? By its results? but how can it know that the results were that of the Yoga-force and not of something else? One of two things it must do. Either it must allow the consciousness to go inside, to become aware of inner things, to believe in and experience the invisible and the supraphysical, and then by experience, by the opening of new capacities it becomes conscious of these forces and can see, follow and use their workings just as the scientist uses the unseen forces of Nature. Or one must have faith and watch and open oneself and then it will begin to see how things happen; it will notice that when the Force was called in, there began after a time to be a result, - then repetitions, more repetitions, more clear and tangible results, increasing frequency, increasing consistency of results, a feeling and Awareness of the Force at work - until the experience
The Divine Force
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
An advocate visitor: The mind becomes aware of the world through the senses. When the senses are active, one cannot help feeling the existence of the world. How can karma yoga be of any use for pure Awareness?
M.: The world is perceived by the mind through the senses. It is of the mind. The seer sees the mind and the senses as within the Self and not apart from it. The agent, remaining unaffected by the actions, gets more purified until he realises the Self.
--
M.: So you see that it is wrong to suppose that Awareness has passing phases. The Self is always aware. When the Self identifies itself as the seer it sees objects. The creation of the subject and the object is the creation of the world. Subjects and objects are creations in Pure
Consciousness. You see pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show. When you are intent on the pictures you are not aware of the screen. But the pictures cannot be seen without the screen behind.
--
The Truth is that Self is constant and unintermittent Awareness. The object of enquiry is to find the true nature of the Self as Awareness.
Let one practise enquiry so long as separateness is perceived.
If once realisation arises there is no further need for enquiry. The question will also not arise. Can Awareness ever think of questioning who is aware? Awareness remains pure and simple.
The enquirer is aware of his own individuality. Enquiry does not stand in the way of his individual Awareness; nor does external work interfere with such Awareness. If work, seemingly external, does not obstruct the individual Awareness, will the work, realised to be not separate from the Self, obstruct the uninterrupted Awareness of the Self, which is One without a second and which is not an individual separate from work?
Talk 455.
--
M.: The Awareness is at present through antahkaranas. Prajnana is always shining even in sleep. If one is continuously aware in jagrat the Awareness will continue in sleep also.
Moreover, it is illustrated thus: A king comes into the hall, sits there and then leaves the place.
He did not go into the kitchen. Can one in the kitchen for that reason say, The king did not come here? When Awareness is found in jagrat it must also be in sleep.
29th April, 1938
--
D.: The other day you were saying that there is no Awareness in deep sleep. But I have on rare occasions become aware of sleep even in that state.
M.: Now, of these three factors, the Awareness, sleep and knowledge of it, the first one is changeless. That Awareness, which cognised sleep as a state, now sees the world also in the waking state. The negation of the world is the state of sleep. The world may appear or disappear - that is to say, one may be awake or asleep - the Awareness is unaffected. It is one continuous whole over which the three states of waking, dream and sleep pass. Be that Awareness even now. That is the Self - that is Realisation - there is Peace - there is Happiness.
The lady thanked Maharshi and retired.
--
When a person wakes up from sleep the head is raised and there is the light of Awareness. This light was already there in the heart which is later reflected on the brain and appears as consciousness. But this is not particularised until ahankar steps in. In the undifferentiated state it is cosmic (cosmic mind or cosmic consciousness). This state lasts usually for a minute interval and passes off unnoticed. It becomes particularised or differentiated by the intrusion of the ego and the person says I. This is always associated with an entity (here, the body). So the body is identified as I and all else follows.
Because ullam is only the reflected light, it is said to be the moon.
--
M.: Everyone is aware, I am. Leaving aside that Awareness one goes about in search of God. What is the use of fixing ones attention between the eyebrows? It is mere folly to say that God is between the eyebrows.
The aim of such advice is to help the mind to concentrate. It is one of the forcible methods to check the mind and prevent its dissipation. It is forcibly directed into one channel. It is a help to concentration.
--
At times, yet rare, with no apparent cause, spontaneous Awareness
of the I springs up and bliss fills the heart with glowing warmth.
--
simple Awareness. Can anyone remain away from the Self at any
moment? This question can arise only if that were possible.
--
M.: True, there is no Awareness of the body or of the world. But you
must exist in your sleep in order to say now I was not aware in my
--
with the body says that such Awareness did not exist in sleep.
Because you identify yourself with the body, you see the world
--
the sleep state is not recognised to be one of Awareness by people,
but the sage is always aware. Thus the sleep state differs from the
--
but intermediate between the two. There is the Awareness of the
waking state and the stillness of sleep. It is called jagrat-sushupti.
--
is the state of perfect Awareness and of perfect stillness combined.
It lies between sleep and waking; it is also the interval between two
--
reach it in the full vigour of search, that is, with perfect Awareness.
That is again jagrat-sushupti spoken of before. It is not dullness; but
--
(intellect) is called a kosa or sheath. When pure Awareness is left
over it is itself the Chit (Self) or the Supreme. To be in ones natural
--
Thus though in sleep the Awareness of the Self is not lost, the ignorance
of the jiva is not affected by it. For this ignorance to be destroyed this
--
too, though the Awareness of the Self is present at all times, it is not
inimical to ignorance. If by meditation the subtle state of thought is
--
of distinction (triputi) it will finally end in pure Awareness (jnanam)
Meditation needs effort: jnanam is effortless. Meditation can be
--
Mrs. D. said there were breaks in her Awareness and desired to know
how the Awareness might be made continuous.
M.: Breaks are due to thoughts. You cannot be aware of breaks unless
--
Practice alone will bring about continuity of Awareness.
17th February, 1939
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: So you see that it is wrong to suppose that Awareness has passing phases. The Self is always aware. When the Self identifies itself as the seer it sees objects. The creation of the subject and the object is the creation of the world. Subjects and objects are creations in Pure
Consciousness. You see pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show. When you are intent on the pictures you are not aware of the screen. But the pictures cannot be seen without the screen behind.
--
The Truth is that Self is constant and unintermittent Awareness. The object of enquiry is to find the true nature of the Self as Awareness.
Let one practise enquiry so long as separateness is perceived.
If once realisation arises there is no further need for enquiry. The question will also not arise. Can Awareness ever think of questioning who is aware? Awareness remains pure and simple.
The enquirer is aware of his own individuality. Enquiry does not stand in the way of his individual Awareness; nor does external work interfere with such Awareness. If work, seemingly external, does not obstruct the individual Awareness, will the work, realised to be not separate from the Self, obstruct the uninterrupted Awareness of the Self, which is One without a second and which is not an individual separate from work?
Talk 455.
--
M.: The Awareness is at present through antahkaranas. Prajnana is always shining even in sleep. If one is continuously aware in jagrat the Awareness will continue in sleep also.
475
--
He did not go into the kitchen. Can one in the kitchen for that reason say, "The king did not come here"? When Awareness is found in jagrat it must also be in sleep.
29th April, 1938
--
D.: The other day you were saying that there is no Awareness in deep sleep. But I have on rare occasions become aware of sleep even in that state.
M.: Now, of these three factors, the Awareness, sleep and knowledge of it, the first one is changeless. That Awareness, which cognised sleep as a state, now sees the world also in the waking state. The negation of the world is the state of sleep. The world may appear or disappear - that is to say, one may be awake or asleep - the Awareness is unaffected. It is one continuous whole over which the three states of waking, dream and sleep pass. Be that Awareness even now. That is the Self - that is Realisation - there is Peace - there is Happiness.
The lady thanked Maharshi and retired.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: Everyone is aware, 'I am'. Leaving aside that Awareness one goes about in search of God. What is the use of fixing one's attention between the eyebrows? It is mere folly to say that God is between the eyebrows.
The aim of such advice is to help the mind to concentrate. It is one of the forcible methods to check the mind and prevent its dissipation. It is forcibly directed into one channel. It is a help to concentration.
1.67 - Faith, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
At least, if there should ever be an element of Awareness, it is of the nature of a sudden leap into daylight of the quintessence of a mass of subconsciously selected and ordered experience.
Then what, if you please, did Paul mean when he wrote "Faith is the substance of things hoped-for, the evidence of things unseen." Oh, spot the Lady!
17.11 - A Prayer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Supreme Shiva is an intense and concentrated Delight, luminously aware of his integral, infinite and supreme consciousness, with all the gathered rays of the supernal Awareness. He has no other form than that of light. He is whole and undivided. But when he emits the rays of his light he assumes the form of the Eternal Benign, replete with the manifoldness of his own Ananda. The Supreme God, the adorable Shiva, thus took a manifest form to create the universe. He then brought forth the eighteen Sciences and all the systems of philosophies; he assumed the forms of various personalities by his own Lila.
Thereupon questioned by his Divine Consort who is All- Awareness, who is one and identical with him, he uttered five sacred scriptures with his five mouths, the scriptures which are the essence of the true spiritual knowledge. He introduced, established and spread them through the great preceptors, divine or human, through those who are perfect or realised Beings, for the supreme good of the world. This is what is called Tantric Process.
1914 02 15p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O thou, sole Reality, Light of our light and Life of our life, Love supreme, Saviour of the world, grant that more and more I may be perfectly awakened into the Awareness of Thy constant presence. Let all my acts conform to Thy law; let there be no difference between my will and Thine. Extricate me from the illusory consciousness of my mind, from its world of fantasies; let me identify my consciousness with the Absolute Consciousness, for that art Thou.
Give me constancy in the will to attain the end, give me firmness and energy and the courage which shakes off all torpor and lassitude.
1914 05 27p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In each one of the domains of the being, the consciousness must be awakened to the perfect existence, knowledge and bliss. These three worlds or modes of the Divine are found in the physical reality as well as in the states of force and light and those of impersonality and infinitude, of eternity. When one enters with full consciousness into the higher states, to live this existence, light and bliss is easy, almost inevitable. But what is very important, as well as very difficult, is to awaken the being to this triple divine consciousness in the most material worlds. This is the first point. Then one must succeed in finding the centre of all the divine worlds (probably in the intermediate world), whence one can unite the consciousness of these divine worlds, synthetise them, and act simultaneously and with full Awareness in all domains.
I know that it is a very long way from these incomplete and imperfect explanations to the sublime reality which manifests Thee, O Lord. Thy splendour, Thy power and Thy magnificence, Thy incommensurable love are above all explanation and comment. But my intellect needs to represent things to itself at least a little schematically, in order to allow the most material states of the being to enter as completely as possible into harmony with Thy Will.
1914 05 29p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O my sweet Lord, those who are in Thy head, that is, to speak more intellectually, those who have identified their consciousness with the absolute Consciousness, those who have become Thy supreme Knowledge, can no longer have any love for Thee, since they are Thyself. They enjoy that infinite bliss characteristic of all Awareness of Thy supreme Essence, but the devotion of the adorer who turns with ecstasy to that which is higher and above him can no longer exist. So, to him whose mission upon earth is to manifest Thy love, Thou teachest to have this pure and infinite love for all the manifested universe; the love which at first was made of adoration and admiration is transformed into a love all made of compassion and devotedness.
Oh, the divine splendour of Thy eternal Unity!
1951-03-03 - Hostile forces - difficulties - Individuality and form - creation, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that is the great mystery of creation, for it is the same consciousness, the Consciousness is one. But the very moment this Consciousness manifests itself, exteriorises itself, deploys itself, it divides itself into innumerable fragments for the need of expansion, and each one of these fragmentations has been the beginning, the origin of an individual being. The origin of every individual form is the law of this form or the truth of this form. If there were no law, no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would be something extending indefinitely; there would be perhaps points of concentration, assemblages, but no individual consciousness. Each form then represents one element in the changing of the One into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousness, truths which spread out into the universe and finally become separate individualities. So the individual being seems constantly to go farther and farther away from its origin by the very necessity of individualisation. But once this individualisation, that is, this Awareness of the inner truth is complete, it becomes possible, by an inner identification, to re-establish in the multiplicity the original unity; that is the raison dtre of the universe as we perceive it. The universe has been made so that this phenomenon may take place. The Supreme has manifested Himself to Himself so as to become aware of Himself.
In any case, that is the rationale of this creation. Let us be satisfied with our universe, let us make the best use possible of our life upon earth and the rest will come in its time.
1953-10-07, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It takes interest in the transformation of the worldin the descent of forces in the material world and its transformation, in its preparation so that it may be able to receive the supramental forces. And it is conscious of the difference between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Every moment it sees the gulf between what is and what should be, between the truth and the falsehood that is expressed. And constantly it keeps this vision of the Truth which broods over the world, so that as soon as there is a little opening, it may descend and manifest itself. And what to the ordinary Awareness seems quite natural is for it usually a play of obscure, ignorant, altogether unconscious forces. And it does not find that at all natural. It finds that a detestable accident and tries with all its strength to remedy it. It seeks, looks, and if there is any receptivity anywhere, it intensifies its action. It does not see men in their outward appearance but as vibrations more or less receptive and more or less dark or luminous, and wherever it sees a light it projects its force so that it may have its full effect. And instead of treating each being like a pawn on a chess-board, a small, well-defined person, it sees how forces enter, go out, stir, move and make all things move, how vibrations act. And it sees those vibrations which ascend and lead to progress and it sees those vibrations which cast you further and further into the darkness, which make you go down. And at times someone comes to you with ready-made words which he has learnt generally from books, but nevertheless, full of aspiration and goodwill, and he is answered by a strong rebuff and told that he should try to be sincerehe does not understand. This is because the Force sees that there is no sincerity the Force does not see the words, does not hear the words, doesnt even see the ideas in the head but only the state of consciousness, whether the state of consciousness is sincere or not. There are other instances of people who seem to be quite frivolous and stupid and busy with useless things, and suddenly one helps them, encourages them, treats them like friends and comrades, for one sees shining in the depth of all that a sincerity, an aspiration which may have a childish form outwardly but which is there and very pure at times. And so one does many things for them which people dont understand, for they cannot see the reality behind the appearance. That is why I say that it is in an entirely different way that the supermind is interested, an entirely different way that it sees, an entirely different way that it knows.
Isnt it more important to know oneself than to try to know others?
1954-06-30 - Occultism - Religion and vital beings - Mothers knowledge of what happens in the Ashram - Asking questions to Mother - Drawing on Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, most of the questions are badly worded, because you really do not know what you want to know. I mean, you are not quite clearly aware of the thing you want to know. Theres a grouping of words in your head, not the consciousness of an idea trying to become clear; there are only words knocking about in your brain which you cannot manage to fit in, so as to be able to understand what they mean. So you cannot speak easily, because you do not think. It does not proceed from thought. It is a kind of automatic thing coming from the brain; if you have a clear Awareness of an experience you want to state accurately or some knowledge you want to arrange in your head, then you can state it very clearly and at the same time your brain is ready to receive the answer; but if, merely with the clash of wordswords come like that, dont they? You connect three or four words and then launch an idea.. I answer, because I think there will always be someone that it could drop into a brain somewhere; but otherwise, most of the time, the head is not ready to understand even what I say. You must think well and be well concentrated and see very clearly what you want to ask before asking. Otherwise, it is not the part of the mind which can understand that asks. It is just a surface which is in a perpetual movement of words linking up more or less aptly, coming and going and passing on, and it is this which speaks, its this which asks and this, indeed, cannot understand.
How many times have I told you things the same thing, and if I ask you about it, sometimes just a week later, you do not remember it! How many times you ask me the same questions, because you asked the questions but were not at all in a condition to understand the answer. Nothing remain inside, these are only passing words, just that. Its as when you learn a lesson by heart: they are only passing words. There is nothing, theres nothing which enters within, gets settled somewhere in the real thought, and so it has no effect and does not help you to understand anything at all. The proof: how many times I have asked you, said to you, But indeed I have told you this; you dont even remember it!
1954-11-10 - Inner experience, the basis of action - Keeping open to the Force - Faith through aspiration - The Mothers symbol - The mind and vital seize experience - Degrees of sincerity -Becoming conscious of the Divine Force, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. First you must attain the true consciousness, be in contact with the Divine and let Him govern your action; and then you can act upon outer circumstances, even actions, and overcome outer difficulties. You must have the inner experience first before hoping to be able to []1 something external. In fact everything is founded upon an Awareness of the divine Consciousness, and unless this is done all the rest is uncertain. Nothing can be permanently established. It is only after one has become conscious; then one can follow ones path rapidly, without fear. Otherwise there are always one always risks making mistakes, going on a false track.
Sweet Mother, what does psychic poise mean?
1954-12-08 - Cosmic consciousness - Clutching - The central will of the being - Knowledge by identity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards one can very easily call up this state each time a decision is to be taken, and then one takes it in full Awareness of the implications and foreseeing everything thats going to happen. I dont think theres one individual in the world who hasnt experienced itin any case one cultured individualat least once in his life, something that breaks and opens and one understands. This seems to astonish you very much! (To a child) You have never felt this, you? Yes?
I dont know.
1956-01-04 - Integral idea of the Divine - All things attracted by the Divine - Bad things not in place - Integral yoga - Moving idea-force, ideas - Consequences of manifestation - Work of Spirit via Nature - Change consciousness, change world, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And there comes a time when all one can do is observe, but to judge is impossible. One can see things, see them as they are, in their relations and in their place, with an Awareness of the difference between the place they now are in and the one they ought to occupy for this the great disorder in the world but one does not judge. One simply observes.
And there is a moment when one would be unable to say, This is divine and that is not divine, for a time comes when one sees the whole universe in so total and comprehensive a way that, to tell the truth, it is impossible to take away anything from it without disturbing everything.
1956-08-08 - How to light the psychic fire, will for progress - Helping from a distance, mental formations - Prayer and the divine - Grace Grace at work everywhere, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But when one begins to see it, one enters upon a state of wonder which nothing can describe. For behind the appearances one perceives this Graceinfinite, wonderful, all-powerfulwhich knows all, organises all, arranges all, and leads us, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, that is, union with the Divine, the Awareness of the Godhead and union with Him.
Then one lives in the Action and Presence of the Grace a life full of joy, of wonder, with the feeling of a marvellous strength, and at the same time with a trust so calm, so complete, that nothing can shake it any longer.
1960 01 20, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So we shall reserve the word vision for experiences that occur in Awareness and sincerity. Nevertheless, in both cases, in hallucination as well as in vision, what is seen does correspond to something quite real, although it is sometimes much deformed in the transcription.
20 January 1960
1961 03 11 - 58, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the symbol of the tree of knowledge represents the kind of knowledge which is no longer divine, the material knowledge that comes from the sense of division and which started spoiling everything. How long did this period last? Because in my memory too it was like an almost immortal life, and it seems that it was an accident of evolution that made it necessary for forms to disintegrate for progress. So I cannot say how long it lasted. And where? According to certain impressions but they are only impressionsit would seem that it was in the vicinity of I do not know exactly whether it was on this side of Ceylon and India or on the other (Mother points to the Indian Ocean, first to the west of Ceylon and India and then to the east, between Ceylon and Java), but it was certainly a place which no longer exists, which has probably been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of this place and a very clear Awareness of this life and its forms, but I cannot give any material details. To tell the truth, when I relived these moments I was not curious about details. One is in a different state of mind and one has no curiosity about these material details; everything changes into psychological factors. And it was it was something so simple, so luminous, so harmonious, beyond all our preoccupationsprecisely beyond all these preoccupations with time and place. It was a spontaneous, extremely beautiful life, and so close to Nature, like a natural flowering of the animal life. And there were no oppositions, no contradictions, or anything like thateverything happened in the best way possible.
(Silence)
1964 03 25, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And from this point of view, I have even seen The ordinary idea that this phenomenon must necessarily occur first in the body where the Consciousness is expressed more constantly, seems absolutely useless and subordinate; on the contrary, it occurs everywhere at the same time, wherever it can do so most easily and completely, and it is not necessarily this agglomerate of cells (Mother points to her own body) that is most prepared for this operation. Therefore it may remain as it is in its appearance for a very long time, even if its understanding and receptivity are exceptional. I mean that the Awareness, the conscious perception of this body is infinitely superior to the Awareness of all the others with which it is in contact, except at those moments the momentswhen other bodies, as if by Grace, have this perception; whereas for this body, it is a natural and constant state. It is the effective result of the fact that this Truth-Consciousness is more constantly concentrated on this group of cells than on any othermore directly. But the substitution of one vibration for the otherin circumstances, in action, in objectsoccurs at the point where it can have the most striking and effectual results.
It is something I have felt very, very clearly and which one cannot feel so long as the physical ego is there, because the physical ego has the sense of its own importance and that disappears entirely with the physical ego. And when it disappears one has the precise perception that the intervention or the manifestation of the true vibration does not depend on egos or individualitieshuman or national individualities or even those of Nature: animals, plants, etc. It depends on a certain play of the cells and Matter in which some agglomerates are particularly favourable to the transformationnot transformation, but substitution, to be precise: the substitution of the vibration of Truth for the vibration of Falsehood. And this phenomenon can be quite independent of any groupings or individualitiesit may be one piece here, one piece there, one thing here, one thing there and it always corresponds to a certain quality of vibration that brings about an expansiona receptive expansion. Then the phenomenon can take place.
1964 09 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All those who have tried to be wise have always said it the Chinese preached it, the Indians preached itto live in the Awareness of Eternity. In Europe also they said that one should contemplate the sky and the stars and identify oneself with their infinitudeall things that widen you and give you peace.
These are means, but they are indispensable.
1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
(c) But when all that occupies the waking consciousness, the world outside it and its relationship to that world, is under a veil, and the soul is thus sunk in sleep (in magnetic sleep, in catalepsy, and other diseases, for example, those connected with female development, or at the approach of death, etc.), then that immanent actuality of the individual remains the same substantial total as before, but now as a purely sensitive life with an inward vision and an inward consciousness. And because it is the adult, formed, and developed consciousness which is degraded into this state of sensitivity, it retains along with its content a certain nominal self-hood, a formal vision and Awareness, which, however, does not go so far as the conscious judgement or discernment by which its contents, when it is healthy and awake, exist for it as an outward objectivity. The individual is thus a monad which is inwardly aware of its actuality - a genius which beholds itself. The characteristic point in such knowledge is that the very same facts (which for the healthy consciousness are an objective practical reality, and to know which, in its sober moods, it needs the intelligent chain of means and conditions in all their real expansion) are now immediately known and perceived in this immanence. This perception is a sort of clairvoyance; for it is a consciousness living in the undivided substantiality of the genius, and finding itself in the very heart of the interconnection, and so can dispense with the series of conditions, external one to another, which lead up to the result - conditions which cool reflection has in succession to traverse and in so doing feels the limits of its own external individuality. But such clairvoyance - just because its dim and turbid vision does not present the facts in a rational interconnection - is for that very reason at the mercy of every private contingency of feeling and fancy, etc. - not to mention that foreign suggestions (see later) intrude into its vision. It is thus impossible to make out whether what the clairvoyants really see preponderates over what they deceive themselves in. - But it is absurd to treat this visionary state as a sublime mental phase and as a truer state, capable of conveying general truths.[5]
[5] Plato had a better idea of the relation of prophecy generally to the state of sober consciousness than many moderns, who supposed that the Platonic language on the subject of enthusiasm authorized their belief in the sublimity of the revelations of somnambulistic vision. Plato says in the Timaeus (p. 71),
1.ami - The secret divine my ecstasy has taught (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu The secret divine my ecstasy has taught I may convey if I have Gabriel's breath. What can these stars tell me of my fate? They are lost themselves in the boundless firmament. The total absorption of thought and vision is life, Scattered thought is selfhood's total death. Pleasures of selfhood are a blessing of God, Who makes me lose my Awareness of myself. With a pure heart, a noble aim, a poignant soul. I care not for Solomon's wealth or Plato's thought. The Prophet's 'Mairaj' has taught me that heaven Lies within the bounds of human reach. This universe, perhaps, is yet incomplete, For I hear repeated sounds of "Be, And It Was." Thy mind is ruled by the magic of the West, Thy cure lies in the Fire of Rumi's faith. It is he who has given my eyes a blissful vision, It is he who has blessed my soul with light. <
1f.lovecraft - H.P. Lovecrafts, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I was aware that I only dreamed, but the very Awareness was not
pleasant.
1.hccc - Silently and serenely one forgets all words, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language Chinese Silently and serenely one forgets all words; Clearly and vividly That appears. When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges; In its Essence, one is clearly aware. Singularly reflecting is this bright Awareness, Full of wonder is this pure reflection. Dew and moon, Stars and streams, Snow on pine trees, And clouds hovering on the mountain peaks. In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish. Serenity is the final word of all the teachings; Reflection is the response to all manifestations.
1.hcyc - 9 - People do not recognize the Mani-jewel (from The Shodoka), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Robert Aitken Original Language Chinese People do not recognize the Mani-jewel. Living intimately within the Tathagata-garbha, It operates our sight, hearing, smell, taste, sensation, Awareness; And all of these are empty, yet not empty. <
1.jm - Response to a Logician, #Milarepa - Poems, #Jetsun Milarepa, #Buddhism
Oh, this self-realizing Awareness
is beyond words and description!
1.jm - The Song of the Twelve Deceptions, #Milarepa - Poems, #Jetsun Milarepa, #Buddhism
And so I practice how to animate Awareness.
The Mind-holding Practice is misleading and deceptive;
1.jm - The Song of View, Practice, and Action, #Milarepa - Poems, #Jetsun Milarepa, #Buddhism
The Awareness, the illumination, is always blissful;
Meditate in a manner of non-doing and non-effort.
1.jm - Upon this earth, the land of the Victorious Ones, #Milarepa - Poems, #Jetsun Milarepa, #Buddhism
My former Awareness, clouded and unstable
Like reflections of the moon in rippling water,
1.jr - Now comes the final merging, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Jonathan Star Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish Now comes the final merging, Now comes everlasting beauty. Now comes abundant grace, Now comes boundless purity. The infinite treasure is shining, The mighty ocean is roaring, The morning of grace has come -- Morning? -- No! This is the eternal Light of God! Who occupies this beautiful form? Who is the ruler and the prince? Who is the wise man? -- Nothing but a veil. The wine of love removes these veils. Drink with your head and your eyes -- Both your eyes, and both your heads! Your head of clay is from the earth, Your pure Awareness is from heaven. O how vast is that treasure which lies beneath the clay! Every head you see depends on it! Behind every atom of this world hides an infinite universe. O Saaqi, free us from the facade of this world. Bring wine -- barrels full! Our eyes see too straight -- straight past the truth! The Light of Truth shines from Tabriz. It is beyond the beyond yet it is here, shining through every particle of this world. [2511.jpg] -- from Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, by Jonathan Star <
1.jr - The Guest House, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
some momentary Awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
1.kbr - Illusion and Reality, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
Says Kabir, Awareness alone will overcome illusion
This verse of Kabir deals with the concept of Illusion and Reality. An average person is trapped in the conflict of illusion and reality. The only Truth - the One Inexpressible God - is obviously beyond expression. Kabir in this verse affirms that only when one becomes aware and regulates one's affairs with Awareness, only then one can be free from the pitfalls of illusion.
1.lla - Intense cold makes water ice, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Coleman Barks Original Language Kashmiri Intense cold makes water ice. Then the hard ice turns to slush and back to water, so there are three forms of consciousness: the individual, the world, and God, which in the sun of True Awareness melt to one flowing: Lalla is that. In meditation, I entered the love furnace, burned impurities away, and as the sun of a new knowing rose, I realized that the words "Lalla" and "God" point to this peacefulness. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Naked Song, by Lalla / Translated by Coleman Barks <
1.rmpsd - Conquer Death with the drumbeat Ma! Ma! Ma!, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Her smooth and fragrant body of intense Awareness
is like the petal of a dark blue lotus.
1.rmpsd - Its value beyond assessment by the mind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
indivisible Awareness and bliss.
I am her direct tenant,
1.rmpsd - Who in this world, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
She is the inmost Awareness
of the sage who realizes
1.rmpsd - Why disappear into formless trance?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
awaken your upward-flowing Awareness.
Become the sublime warrior Goddess Kali,
1.rmr - Exposed on the cliffs of the heart, #Rilke - Poems, #Rainer Maria Rilke, #Poetry
While, with their full Awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
1.sb - Gathering the Mind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Thomas Cleary Original Language Chinese Before our body existed, One energy was already there. Like jade, more lustrous as it's polished, Like gold, brighter as it's refined. Sweep clear the ocean of birth and death, Stay firm by the door of total mastery. A particle at the point of open Awareness, The gentle firing is warm. [1786.jpg] -- from Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women, Edited by Thomas Cleary <
1.sfa - The Prayer Before the Crucifix, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger Original Language Italian Most high, glorious God, let your light fill the shadows of my heart and grant me, Lord, true faith, certain hope, perfect love, Awareness and knowing, that I may fulfill Your holy will. [2597.jpg] -- from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger <
1.sjc - I Entered the Unknown, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger Original Language Spanish I entered the unknown, and there I remained unknowing, all knowledge transcended. Where I entered I knew not, but seeing myself there, not knowing where, great things then made themselves known. What I sensed I cannot say, for I remained unknowing, all knowledge transcended. In this peace and purity was perfect knowledge. In profoundest solitude I understood with absolute clarity something so secret that I was left stammering, all knowledge transcended. So deep was I within, so absorbed, transported, that all senses fled, and outer Awareness fell away. My spirit received the gift of unknowing knowing, all knowledge transcended. He who reaches this realm loses himself, for all he once knew now is beneath his notice, and his mind so expands that he remains unknowing, all knowledge transcended. And the higher he rises the less he knows: That is the dark cloud that shines in the night. The one who knows this always remains unknowing, all knowledge transcended. This knowing by unknowing is of such exalted power, that the disputations of the learned fail to grasp it, for their knowledge does not reach to knowing by unknowing, all knowledge transcended. Of such supreme perfection is this knowledge that no faculty or method of mind can comprehend it; but he who conquers himself with this unknowing knowing, will always transcend. And if you are ready to receive it, this sum of all knowledge is discovered in the deepest ecstasy of the Divine Essence. Goodness and grace grant us this unknowing, all knowledge transcended. [2720.jpg] -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.sk - Is there anyone in the universe, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lex Hixon Original Language Bengali Is there anyone in the universe, among heavenly or earthly beings, who can understand what Kali is? The systems of all traditions are powerless to describe Her. Is Mother a feminine being or greater than Being itself? Chanting Her transforming Name -- OM KALI OM KALI OM KALI, empowers Lord Shiva, Who is transcendent Knowledge, to drink the negativity of all beings, turning His Throat dark blue. Without Her protection such poison would be deadly, even to the highest Divinity. More than Creator and creation, Mother is sheer Creativity beyond the notion of duality. Universe and Father-God are thrilling glances from Her seductive Eyes. Always pregnant with ecstasy, She gives birth to manifest Being from Her Womb of primal Awareness, nursing it tenderly at Her Breast, then playfully consumes Her Child. The world dissolves instantly upon touching Her white Teeth, attaining the realization of Her brilliant Voidness. The various Divine Forms that manifest throughout history take refuge at Her Lotus Feet. The Essence of Divinity, the Great Ground of Being, lies in ecstatic absorption beneath Her red-soled Feet. Is Mother simply a Goddess? Does She need a male consort to protect or complete Her? The cycle of birth and death bows reverently before Her. Is She simply naked or is She naked Truth? No veil can conceal Her. Her naked radiance slays demons not with weapons but with splendor. If Mother is a conventional wife, why is She dancing fiercely on the breast of Shiva? Her timeless play destroys conventions and conceptions. She is primal purity, Her ecstatic lovers are purity. Purity merges into purity, with no remainder. I am totally inebriated by Her wine of timeless bliss. The wine cup is Her Name -- OM KALI OM KALI OM KALI. Those drunk on ordinary wine assume I am one of them. Not everyone will encounter the dazzling darkness called Goddess Kali. Not everyone can consciously receive the infinite treasure of Her Nature. The foolish mind refuses to perceive and accept that She alone exists. Even the noble Lord Shiva, most enlightened of beings, can barely catch a glimpse of Her flashing crimson Feet. The wealth of world-emperors and the richness of Paradise are but abject poverty to those who meditate on Her. To swim in a single Glance from Her three Cosmic Eyes is to be immersed in an ocean of ecstasy. Not even Shiva, prince of yogis, can focus upon Her dancing Feet without falling into trance. Yet the worthless lover who sings this mad song aspires to conscious union with Her during waking, dream, and deep sleep. [1146.jpg] -- from Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, by Lex Hixon
1.snk - Nirvana Shatakam, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger I am not mind, not intellect, not ego, not thought. I am not the ears, the tongue, the nose or the eyes, or what they witness, I am neither earth nor sky, not air nor light. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I am not the breath of prana, nor its five currents. I am not the seven elements, nor the five organs, Nor am I the voice or hands or anything that acts. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I have no hatred or preference, neither greed nor desire nor delusion. Pride, conflict, jealousy -- these have no part of me. Nothing do I own, nothing do I seek, not even liberation itself. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I know neither virtue nor vice, neither pleasure nor pain. I know no sacred chants, no holy places, no scriptures, no rituals. I know neither the taste nor the taster. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I fear not death. I doubt neither my being nor my place. I have no father or mother; I am unborn. I have no relatives, no friends. I have no guru and no devotees. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! Free from doubt, I am formless. With knowledge, in knowledge, I am everywhere, beyond perception. I am always the same. Not free, not trapped -- I am. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! Truly, I am Shiva, pure Awareness. Shivo Ham! Shivo Ham! [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.snk - You are my true self, O Lord, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger You are my true self, O Lord. My pure Awareness is your consort. My breath, my body are your handmaids. I am your holy ground. My every action is an offering to you. My rest is my melting into you. Every step I take circles you. Every word I speak is a song for you. Whatever work I do, that work is worship of you, O Fountain of Bliss! [2720.jpg] -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.srh - The Royal Song of Saraha (Dohakosa), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Kunzang Tenzin HOMAGE TO ARYAMANJUSRI! Homage to the destroyer of demonic power! The wind lashes calm waters into rollers and breakers; The king makes multifarious forms out of unity, Seeing many faces of this one Archer, Saraha. The cross-eyed fool sees one lamp as two; The vision and the viewer are one, You broken, brittle mind! Many lamps are lit in the house, But the blind are still in darkness; Sahaja is all-pervasive But the fool cannot see what is under his nose. Just as many rivers are one in the ocean All half-truths are swallowed by the one truth; The effulgence of the sun illuminates all dark corners. Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the earth And there is neither increase nor decrease; Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky. Replete with the Buddha's perfections Sahaja is the one essential nature; Beings are born into it and pass into it, Yet there is neither existence nor non-existence in it. Forsaking bliss the fool roams abroad, Hoping for mundane pleasure; Your mouth is full of honey now, Swallow it while you may! Fools attempt to avoid their suffering, The wise enact their pain. Drink the cup of sky-nectar While others hunger for outward appearances. Flies eat filth, spurning the fragrance of sandalwood; Man lost to nirvana furthers his own confusion, Thirsting for the coarse and vulgar. The rain water filling an ox's hoof-print Evaporates when the sun shines; The imperfections of a perfect mind, All are dissolved in perfection. Salt sea water absorbed by clouds turns sweet; The venom of passionate reaction In a strong and selfless mind becomes elixir. The unutterable is free of pain; Non-meditation gives true pleasure. Though we fear the dragon's roar Rain falls from the clouds to ripen the harvest. The nature of beginning and end is here and now, And the first does not exist without the last; The rational fool conceptualising the inconceivable Separates emptiness from compassion. The bee knows from birth That flowers are the source of honey; How can the fool know That samsara and nirvana are one? Facing himself in a mirror The fool sees an alien form; The mind with truth forgotten Serves untruth's outward sham. Flowers' fragrance is intangible Yet its reality pervades the air, Just as mandala circles are informed By a formless presence. Still water stung by an icy wind Freezes hard in starched and jagged shapes; In an emotional mind agitated by critical concepts The unformed becomes hard and intractable. Mind immaculate by nature is untouched By samsara and nirvana's mud; But just like a jewel lost in a swamp Though it retains its lustre it does not shine. As mental sloth increases pure Awareness diminishes; As mental sloth increases suffering also grows. Shoots sprout from the seed and leaves from the branches. Separating unity from multiplicity in the mind The light grows dim and we wander in the lower realms; Who is more deserving of pity than he Who walks into fire with his eyes wide open? Obsessed with the joys of sexual embrace The fool believes he knows ultimate truth; He is like someone who stands at his door And, flirting, talks about sex. The wind stirs in the House of Emptiness Exciting delusions of emotional pleasure; Fallen from celestial space, stung, The tormented yogin faints away. Like a brahmin taking rice and butter Offering sacrifice to the flame, He who visualises material things as celestial ambrosia Deludes himself that a dream is ultimate reality. Enlightening the House of Brahma in the fontanelle Stroking the uvala in wanton delight, Confused, believing binding pleasure to be spiritual release, The vain fools calls himself a yogin. Teaching that virtue is irrelevant to intrinsic Awareness, He mistakes the lock for the key; Ignorant of the true nature of the gem The fool calls green glass emerald. His mind takes brass for gold, Momentary peak experience for reality accomplished; Clinging to the joy of ephemeral dreams He calls his short-thrift life Eternal Bliss. With a discursive understanding of the symbol EVAM, Creating four seals through an analysis of the moment, He labels his peak experience sahaja: He is clinging to a reflection mistaken for the mirror. Like befuddled deer leaping into a mirage of water Deluded fools in their ignorance cling to outer forms And with their thirst unslaked, bound and confined, They idealise their prison, pretending happiness. The relatively real is free of intellectual constructs, And ultimately real mind, active or quiescent, is no-mind, And this is the supreme,the highest of the high, immaculate; Friends, know this sacred high! In mind absorbed in samadhi that is concept-free, Passion is immaculately pure; Like a lotus rooted in the slime of a lake bottom, This sublime reality is untouched by the pollution of existence. Make solid your vision of all things as visionary dream And you attain transcendence, Instantaneous realisation and equanimity; A strong mind binding the demons of darkness Beyond thought your own spontaneous nature is accomplished. Appearances have never ceased to be their original radiance, And unformed, form never had a substantial nature to be grasped; It is a continuum of unique meditation, In an inactive, stainless, meditative mind that is no-mind. Thus the I is intellect, mind and mind-forms, I the world, all seemingly alien show, I the infinite variety of vision-viewer, I the desire, the anger, the mental sloth - And bodhicitta. Now there is a lamp lit in spiritual darkness Healing the splits riven by the intellect So that all mental defilements are erased. Who can define the nature of detachment? It cannot be denied nor yet affirmed, And ungraspable it is inconceivable. Through conceptualisation fools are bound, While concept-free there is immaculate sahaja. The concepts of unity and multiplicity do not bring integration; Only through Awareness do sentient beings reach freedom. Cognition of radiance is strong meditation; Abide in a calm, quiescent mind. Reaching the joy swollen land Powers of seeing expand, And there is joy and laughter; Even chasing objects there is no separation. From joy, buds of pure pleasure emerge, Bursting into blooms of supreme pleasure, And so long as outflow is contained Unutterable bliss will surely mature. What, where and by whom are nothing, Yet the entire event is imperative. Whether love and attachment or desirelessness The form of the event is emptiness. Like pigs we wallow in this sensual mire But what can stain our pearly mind? Nothing can ever contaminate it, And by nothing can we ever be bound.
1.yt - The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness!, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.yt - The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness!
author class:Yeshe Tsogyal
--
English version by Keith Dowman The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness! I have vanished into fields of lotus-light, the plenum of dynamic space, To be born in the inner sanctum of an immaculate lotus; Do not despair, have faith! When you have withdrawn attachment to this rocky defile, This barbaric Tibet, full of war and strife, Abandon unnecessary activity and rely on solitude. Practice energy control, purify your psychic nerves and seed-essence, And cultivate mahamudra and Dsokchen. The Supreme Being is the Dakini Queen of the Lake of Awareness! Attaining humility, through Guru Pema Jungne's compassion I followed him, And now I have finally gone into his presence; Do not despair, but pray! When you see your karmic body as vulnerable as a bubble, Realising the truth of impermanence, and that in death you are helpless, Disabuse yourself of fantasies of eternity, Make your life a practice of sadhana, And cultivate the experience that takes you to the place where Ati ends. [1484.jpg] -- from The Shambhala Anthology of Women's Spiritual Poetry, Edited by Aliki Barnstone <
20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The very Awareness of which tears up the net of senses,
And your mind, of its own accord, brings forth
--
There is no Awareness, no sensation;
He is gone into the depth of sleep.
2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
We have conscience -- a deep inner Awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And we have independent will -- the ability to act based on our self- Awareness, free of all other influences.
Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer metaphor, they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be responsible, but they can't take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can't direct it. They can't change the programming. They're not even aware of it.
--
We have all known individuals in very difficult circumstances, perhaps with a terminal illness or a severe physical handicap, who maintain magnificent emotional strength. How inspired we are by their integrity! Nothing has a greater, longer lasting impression upon another person than the Awareness that someone has transcended suffering, has transcended circumstance, and is embodying and expressing a value that inspires and ennobles and lifts life.
One of the most inspiring times Sandra and I have ever had took place over a four-year period with a dear friend of ours named Carol, who had a wasting cancer disease. She had been one of Sandra's bridesmaids, and they had been best friends for over 25 years.
--
So on the third day, we decided to focus on the proactive question, "What is our response? What are we going to do? How can we exercise initiative in this situation?" In the morning we talked about managing and reducing costs. In the afternoon we discussed increasing market share. We brainstormed both areas, then concentrated on several very practical, very doable things. A new spirit of excitement, hope, and proactive Awareness concluded the meetings.
At the every end of the third day, we summarized the results of the conference in a three-part answer to the question, "How's business?"
--
It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self- Awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize and use our imagination and independent will to act on that Awareness -- making promises, setting goals, and being true to them -- we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.
It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise -- and keep it. Or we can set a goal -- and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the Awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control. We can work on any one to improve the balance of the three. As the area of intersection becomes larger, we more deeply internalize the principles upon which the habits are based and create the strength of character to move us in a balanced way toward increasing effectiveness in our lives.
2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is important to observe here the sense that is acquired in such a total cognition of cosmic being by the phenomenon of the Ignorance, its assigned place in the spiritual economy of the universe. If all that we experience were an imposition, an unreal creation in the Absolute, both cosmic and individual existence would be in their very nature an Ignorance; the sole real knowledge would be the indeterminable self- Awareness of the Absolute. If all were the erection of a temporal and phenomenal creation over against the reality of the witnessing timeless Eternal and if the creation were not a manifestation of the Reality but an arbitrary self-effective cosmic construction, that too would be a sort of imposition. Our knowledge of the creation would be the knowledge of a temporary structure of evanescent consciousness and being, a dubious Becoming that passes across the vision of the Eternal, not a knowledge of Reality; that too would be an Ignorance. But if all is a manifestation of the Reality and itself real by the constituting immanence, the substantiating essence and presence of the Reality, then the Awareness of individual being and world-being would be in its spiritual origin and nature a play of the infinite self-knowledge and all-knowledge: ignorance could be only a subordinate movement, a suppressed or restricted cognition or a partial and imperfect evolving knowledge with the true and total self- Awareness and all- Awareness concealed both in it and behind it. It would be a temporary phenomenon, not the cause and essence of cosmic existence; its inevitable consummation would be a return of the spirit, not out of the cosmos to a sole supracosmic self- Awareness, but even in the cosmos itself to an integral self-knowledge and all-knowledge.
It might be objected that the supramental cognition is, after all, not the final truth of things. Beyond the supramental plane of consciousness which is an intermediate step from overmind and mind to the complete experience of Sachchidananda, are the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit: here surely existence would not at all be based on the determination of the One in multiplicity, it would manifest solely and simply a pure identity in oneness. But the supramental truth-consciousness would not be absent from these planes, for it is an inherent power of Sachchidananda: the difference would be that the determinations would not be demarcations, they would be plastic, interfused, each a boundless finite. For there all is in each and each is in all radically and integrally, - there would be to the utmost a fundamental Awareness of identity, a mutual inclusion and interpenetration of consciousness: knowledge as we envisage it would not exist, because it would not be needed, since all would be direct action of consciousness in being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware. But still relations of consciousness, relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence.
It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self- Awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind's highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.
2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature. There is then nothing else here left to be known, because all is that Divine Existence. It is only because our view here is not thus integral, because it rests on the dividing mind and reason and the separative idea of the ego, that our mental perception of things is an ignorance. We have to get away from this mental and egoistic view to the true unifying knowledge, and that has two aspects, the essential, jnana, and the comprehensive, vijnana, the direct spiritual Awareness of the supreme Being and the right intimate knowledge of the principles of his existence, Prakriti,
Purusha and the rest, by which all that is can be known in its divine origin and in the supreme truth of its nature. That integral knowledge, says the Gita, is a rare and difficult thing; "among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows me in all the principles of my existence, tattvatah.."
2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not only in things animate but in things inanimate also that we must see Narayana, experience Shiva, throw our arms around Shakti. When our eyes, that are now blinded by the idea of Matter, open to the supreme Light, we shall find that nothing is inanimate, but all contains, expressed or unexpressed, involved or evolved, secret or manifest or in course of manifestation, not only that state of involved consciousness which we call annam or Matter, but also life, mind, knowledge, bliss, divine force and being, - pran.a, manas, vijnana, ananda, cit, sat. In all things the self-conscious personality of God broods and takes the delight of his gun.as. Flowers, fruits, earth, trees, metals, all things have a joy in them of which you will become aware, because in all Sri Krishna dwells, pravisya, having entered into them, not materially or physically, - because there is no such thing, Space and Time being only conventions and arrangements of perception, the perspective in God's creative Art, - but by cit, the divine Awareness in his transcendent being.
IfA vA-yEmd\ sv yt^ Ek jg(yA\ jgt^.
2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All this our reason cannot grasp because it is the instrument of an ignorance with a very limited vision and a small stock of accumulated and not always very certain or reliable knowledge and because too it has no means of direct Awareness; for this is the difference between intuition and intellect, that intuition is born of a direct Awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. But what is not evident to our reason and senses, is self-evident to the Infinite Consciousness, and, if there is a Will of the Infinite, it must be a Will that acts in this full knowledge and is the perfect spontaneous result of a total self-evidence. It is neither a hampered evolutionary Force bound by what it has evolved nor an imaginative Will acting in the void upon a free caprice; it is the truth of the Infinite affirming itself in the determinations of the finite.
It is evident that such a Consciousness and Will need not act in harmony with the conclusions of our limited reason or according to a procedure familiar to it and approved of by our constructed notions or in subjection to an ethical reason working for a limited and fragmentary good; it might and does admit things deemed by our reason irrational and unethical because that was necessary for the final and total Good and for the working out of a cosmic purpose. What seems to us irrational or reprehensible in relation to a partial set of facts, motives, desiderata might be perfectly rational and approvable in relation to a much vaster motive and totality of data and desiderata.
Reason with its partial vision sets up constructed conclusions which it strives to turn into general rules of knowledge and action and it compels into its rule by some mental device or gets rid of what does not suit with it: an infinite Consciousness would have no such rules, it would have instead large intrinsic truths governing automatically conclusion and result, but adapting them differently and spontaneously to a different total of circumstances, so that by this pliability and free adaptation it might seem to the narrower faculty to have no standards whatever. In the same way, we cannot judge of the principle and dynamic operation of infinite being by the standards of finite existence, - what might be impossible for the one would be normal and self-evidently natural states and motives for the greater freer Reality. It is this that makes the difference between our fragmentary mind consciousness constructing integers out of its fractions and an essential and total consciousness, vision and knowledge. It is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main support, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised intuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its being and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an Awareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving to consider. It will not do to apply our limited and limiting conclusions to That which is illimitable. If we concentrate only on one aspect and treat it as the whole, we illustrate the story of the blind men and the elephant; each of the blind inquirers touched a different part and concluded that the whole animal was some object resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience of some one aspect of the Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise from it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest of the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other view-points of spiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless totality and a multitude; all these have to be known in order to know truly the Infinite. To see the parts alone and the totality not at all or only as a sum of the parts is a knowledge, but also at the same time an ignorance; to see the totality alone and ignore the parts is also a knowledge and at the same time an ignorance, for a part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the transcendence; to see the essence alone because it takes us back straight towards the transcendence and negate the totality and the parts is a penultimate knowledge, but here too there is a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge must be there and the reason must become plastic enough to look at all sides, all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one.
Thus too, if we see only the aspect of self, we may concentrate on its static silence and miss the dynamic truth of the Infinite; if we see only the Ishwara, we may seize the dynamic truth but miss the eternal status and the infinite silence, become aware of only dynamic being, dynamic consciousness, dynamic delight of being, but miss the pure existence, pure consciousness, pure bliss of being. If we concentrate on Purusha-Prakriti alone, we may see only the dichotomy of Soul and Nature, Spirit and Matter, and miss their unity. In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the elephant-driver to budge from the narrow path and was taken up by the elephant's trunk and removed out of the way; "You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, "but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant Brahman?" We must not commit the mistake of emphasising one side of the Truth and concluding from it or acting upon it to the exclusion of all other sides and aspects of the Infinite. The realisation "I am That" is true, but we cannot safely proceed on it unless we realise also that all is That; our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of other selves, of the same Self in other beings and of That which exceeds both own-self and other-self. The Infinite is one in a multiplicity and its action is only seizable by a supreme Reason which regards all and acts as a one- Awareness that observes itself in difference and respects its own differences, so that each thing and each being has its form of essential being and its form of dynamic nature, svarupa, svadharma, and all are respected in the total working. The knowledge and action of the Infinite is one in an unbound variability: it would be from the point of view of the infinite Truth equally an error to insist either on a sameness of action in all circumstances or on a diversity of action without any unifying truth and harmony behind the diversity. In our own principle of conduct, if we sought to act in this greater Truth, it would be equally an error to insist on our self alone or to insist on other selves alone; it is the Self of all on which we have to found a unity of action and a total, infinitely plastic yet harmonious diversity of action; for that is the nature of the working of the Infinite.
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Each self-determination of the self-being must have its own Awareness of its self-truth and its self-nature; or, if we prefer so to put it, the Being in that determination must be so selfaware. Spiritual individuality means that each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and all-vision; the circumference - the boundless circumference, as we may say, - of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be different, - not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but a psychological centre related with others through a coexistence of the diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic determinations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt be fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own differentiation, - as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of the same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis and not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of ignorance. But apart from this individualising self-limitation, there must also be in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation; it must be able to limit its action so as to base a given world or universe and to keep it in its own order, harmony, self-building: for the creation of a universe necessitates a special determination of the Infinite Consciousness to preside over that world and a holding back of all that is not needed for that movement. In the same way the putting forth of an independent action of some power like Mind, Life or Matter must have as its support a similar principle of self-limitation. It cannot be said that such a movement must be impossible for the Infinite, because it is illimitable; on the contrary, this must be one of its many powers; for its powers too are illimitable: but this also, like other self-determinations, other finite buildings, would not be a separation or a real division, for all the Infinite Consciousness would be around and behind it and supporting it and the special movement itself would be intrinsically aware not only of itself, but, in essence, of all that was behind it. This would be so, inevitably, in the integral consciousness of the Infinite: but we can suppose also that an intrinsic though not an active Awareness of this kind, demarcating itself, yet indivisible, might be there too in the total self-consciousness of the movement of the Finite. This much cosmic or individual conscious selflimitation would evidently be possible to the Infinite and can be accepted by a larger reason as one of its spiritual possibilities; but so far, on this basis, any division or ignorant separation or binding and blinding limitation such as is apparent in our own consciousness would be unaccountable.
But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self- Awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self- Awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, - although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of Awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite. If we take a step further and admit that a special or a restricted and partial action of selfabsorption is possible to the Infinite, an action not always of its infinity concentrated limitlessly in itself, but confined to a special status or to an individual or cosmic self-determination, we have then the explanation of the concentrated condition or status by which it becomes aware separately of one aspect of its being.
There can then be a fundamental double status such as that of the Nirguna standing back from the Saguna and absorbed in its own purity and immobility, while the rest is held back behind a veil and not admitted within that special status. In the same way we could account for the status of consciousness aware of one field of being or one movement of it, while the Awareness of all the rest would be held behind and veiled or, as it were, cut off by a waking trance of dynamic concentration from the specialised or limited Awareness occupied only with its own field or movement. The totality of the infinite consciousness would be there, not abolished, recoverable, but not evidently active, active only by implication, by inherence or by the instrumentality of the limited Awareness, not in its own manifest power and presence.
It will be evident that all these three powers can be accepted as possible to the dynamics of the Infinite Consciousness, and it is by considering the many ways in which they can work that we may get a clue to the operations of Maya.
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Yet it is now evident that to the Infinite Consciousness both the static and the dynamic are possible; these are two of its statuses and both can be present simultaneously in the universal Awareness, the one witnessing the other and supporting it or not looking at it and yet automatically supporting it; or the silence and status may be there penetrating the activity or throwing it up like an ocean immobile below throwing up a mobility of waves on its surface. This is also the reason why it is possible for us in certain conditions of our being to be aware of several different states of consciousness at the same time. There is a state of being experienced in Yoga in which we become a double consciousness, one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting upon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it. So too we can rise to a consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer, mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from that height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we are is either temporarily put away or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend or recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner Awareness and lose ourselves in some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with one enveloping glance or omnipresent Awareness one and indivisible. All this which looks strange and abnormal or may seem fantastic to the surface reason acquainted only with our normal status of limited ignorance and its movements divided from our inner higher and total reality, becomes easily intelligible and admissible in the light of the larger reason and logic of the Infinite or by the admission of the greater illimitable powers of the Self, the Spirit in us which is of one essence with the Infinite.
Brahman the Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the Consciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when we first become aware of this Aspect, it is usually in a silence of the whole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or stands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status in silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the whole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof from the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being standing back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive concentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away from it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the self-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and manifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total realisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that acts and creates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power of the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by its own Nature: the duality then of Soul and WorldEnergy, silent Self and the creative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is biune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we cannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti. This first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its power, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its impersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force that acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and originator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment. As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaks.a; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a
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Matter or act upon something distant in space of Matter. In a still deeper condition of consciousness we are aware of a pure spiritual Space; in this Awareness Time may no longer seem to exist, because all movement ceases, or, if there is a movement or happening, it can take place independent of any observable Time sequence.
If we go behind Time by a similar inward motion, drawing back from the physical and seeing it without being involved in it, we discover that Time observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal. Time observation depends not only on the measures used, but on the consciousness and the position of the observer: moreover, each state of consciousness has a different Time relation; Time in Mind consciousness and Mind Space has not the same sense and measure of its movements as in physical Space; it moves there quickly or slowly according to the state of the consciousness.
Each state of consciousness has its own Time and yet there can be relations of Time between them; and when we go behind the physical surface, we find several different Time statuses and Time movements coexistent in the same consciousness. This is evident in dream Time where a long sequence of happenings can occur in a period which corresponds to a second or a few seconds of physical Time. There is then a certain relation between different Time statuses but no ascertainable correspondence of measure. It would seem as if Time had no objective reality, but depends on whatever conditions may be established by action of consciousness in its relation to status and motion of being: Time would seem to be purely subjective. But, in fact, Space also would appear by the mutual relation of Mind-Space and MatterSpace to be subjective; in other words, both are the original spiritual extension, but it is rendered by mind in its purity into a subjective mind-field and by sense-mind into an objective field of sense-perception. Subjectivity and objectivity are only two sides of one consciousness, and the cardinal fact is that any given Time or Space or any given Time-Space as a whole is a status of being in which there is a movement of the consciousness and force of the being, a movement that creates or manifests events and happenings; it is the relation of the consciousness that sees and the force that formulates the happenings, a relation inherent in the status, which determines the sense of Time and creates our Awareness of Time-movement, Time-relation, Time-measure. In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite.
The Being can have three different states of its consciousness with regard to its own eternity. The first is that in which there is the immobile status of the Self in its essential existence, self-absorbed or self-conscious, but in either case without development of consciousness in movement or happening; this is what we distinguish as its timeless eternity. The second is its whole-consciousness of the successive relations of all things belonging to a destined or an actually proceeding manifestation, in which what we call past, present and future stand together as if in a map or settled design or very much as an artist or painter or architect might hold all the detail of his work viewed as a whole, intended or reviewed in his mind or arranged in a plan for execution; this is the stable status or simultaneous integrality of Time. This seeing of Time is not at all part of our normal Awareness of events as they happen, though our view of the past, because it is already known and can be regarded in the whole, may put on something of this character; but we know that this consciousness exists because it is possible in an exceptional state to enter into it and see things from the view-point of this simultaneity of Time-vision. The third status is that of a processive movement of Consciousness-Force and its successive working out of what has been seen by it in the static vision of the Eternal; this is the Time movement. But it is in one and the same Eternity that this triple status exists and the movement takes place; there are not really two eternities, one an eternity of status, another an eternity of movement, but there are different statuses or positions taken by Consciousness with regard to the one Eternity. For it can see the whole Time development from outside or from above the movement; it can take a stable position within the movement and see the before and the after in a fixed, determined or destined succession; or it can take instead a mobile position in the movement, itself move with it from moment to moment and see all that has happened receding back into the past and all that has to happen coming towards it from the future; or else it may concentrate on the moment it occupies and see nothing but what is in that moment and immediately around or behind it. All these positions can be taken by the being of the Infinite in a simultaneous vision or experience. It can see Time from above and inside Time, exceeding it and not within it; it can see the Timeless develop the Time-movement without ceasing to be timeless, it can embrace the whole movement in a static and a dynamic vision and put out at the same time something of itself into the moment-vision. This simultaneity may seem to the finite consciousness tied to the moment-vision a magic of the Infinite, a magic of Maya; to its own way of perception which needs to limit, to envisage one status only at a time in order to harmonise, it would give a sense of confused and inconsistent unreality. But to an infinite consciousness such an integral simultaneity of vision and experience would be perfectly logical and consistent; all could be elements of a whole-vision capable of being closely related together in a harmonious arrangement, a multiplicity of view bringing out the unity of the thing seen, a diverse presentation of concomitant aspects of the One Reality.
If there can be this simultaneous multiplicity of selfpresentation of one Reality, we see that there is no impossibility in the coexistence of a Timeless Eternal and a Time Eternity.
2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Admittedly, we're not omniscient. Our knowledge and understanding of correct principles is limited by our own lack of Awareness of our true nature and the world around us and by the flood of trendy philosophies and theories that are not in harmony with correct principles. These ideas will have their season of acceptance, but, like many before them, they won't endure because they're built on false foundations.
We are limited, but we can push back the borders of our limitations. An understanding of the principle of our own growth enables us to search out correct principles with the confidence that the more we learn, the more clearly we can focus the lens through which we see the world. The principles don't change; our understanding of them does.
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Frankl says we detect rather than invent our missions in life. I like that choice of words. I think each of us has an internal monitor or sense, a conscience, that gives us an Awareness of our own uniqueness and the singular contri butions that we can make. In Frankl's words, "Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.
Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
reason and intuition, its superstructure, and culminates spiritually in self-knowledge and the Awareness of one's own eternal
and unabridged reality. The third characteristic of consciousness
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constitute the conception of Spirit, which by throwing its willto-be, its power of Awareness and its delight in existence into the
medium of Matter sets evolution going. This is what Sankhya
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Self, we still envisage Consciousness as pure existence, Awareness
and bliss. But our pure unconditioned Self is, we have seen, the
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as existence, Awareness, bliss, - in terms of Spirit and not of
Matter. Lastly, when we analyse the evolution of Purusha in its
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self of existence, Awareness and bliss and which supports all
phenomenal objects and forces as their omnipresent substratum
2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Evidently, all these words, man, apparent, real, individual, true, have to be taken in a very relative sense and with a full Awareness of their imperfection and inability to express the things that we mean. By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy.
It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Presence, we can achieve individually a deep and blissful sense of this silent Divinity, can enter into the sanctuary, can live in the light and the rapture. An exclusive inner concentration on the Real, the Eternal is possible, even a self-immersion by which we can lose or put away the dissonances of the universe. But there is too somewhere deep down in us the need of a total consciousness, there is in Nature a secret universal seeking for the whole Divine, an impulsion towards some entire Awareness and delight and power of existence; this need of a whole being, a total knowledge, this integral will in us is not fully satisfied by these solutions. So long as the world is not divinely explained to us, the Divine remains imperfectly known; for the world too is
That and, so long as it is not present to our consciousness and possessed by our powers of consciousness in the sense of the divine being, we are not in possession of the whole Divinity.
2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
correlation between what's on the list and our ultimate values and purposes in life. respond to whatever penetrates our Awareness and apparently needs to be done.
We simply
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The first-generation note pads and "to do" lists give us no more than a place to capture those things that penetrate our Awareness so we won't forget them. The second-generation appointment books and calendars merely provide a place to record our future commitments so that we can be where we have agreed to be at the appropriate time.
Even the third generation, with its vast array of planners and materials, focuses primarily on helping people prioritize and plan their Quadrant I and III activities. Though many trainers and consultants recognize the value of Quadrant II activities, the actual planning tools of the third generation do not facilitate organizing and executing around them.
2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Illusion? Any other percipient is not in existence; the individual who is in us the apparent witness is himself phenomenal and unreal, a creation of Maya. But if Brahman is the percipient, how is it possible that the illusion can persist for a moment, since the true consciousness of the Percipient is consciousness of self, an Awareness solely of its own pure self-existence? If Brahman perceives the world and things with a true consciousness, then they must all be itself and real; but since they are not the pure self-existence, but at best are forms of it and are seen through a phenomenal Ignorance, this realistic solution is not possible.
Yet we have to accept, provisionally at least, the universe as a fact, an impossibility as a thing that is, since Maya is there and her works persist and obsess the spirit with the sense, however false, of their reality. It is on this basis that we have, then, to face and solve the dilemma.
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This idea, then, of a subjective action of consciousness creating a world of fictions other than or distorting the sole true object looks like an imposition on the Brahman by our mind; it imposes on the pure and perfect Reality a feature of its own imperfection, not truly attri butable to the perception of a Supreme Being. On the other hand, the distinction between the consciousness and the being of Brahman could not be valid, unless Brahman being and Brahman consciousness are two distinct entities, - the consciousness imposing its experiences on the pure existence of the being but unable to touch or affect or penetrate it. Brahman, then, whether as the supreme sole Self-Existence or the Self of the real-unreal individual in Maya, would be aware by his true consciousness of the illusions imposed on him and would know them as illusions; only some energy of Maya-nature or something in it would be deluded by its own inventions, - or else, not being really deluded, still persist in behaving and feeling as if it were deluded. This duality is what happens to our consciousness in the Ignorance when it separates itself from the works of Nature and is aware within of the Self as the sole truth and the rest as not-self and not-real, but has on the surface to act as if the rest too were real. But this solution negates the sole and indivisible pure existence and pure Awareness of the Brahman; it creates a dualism within its featureless unity which is not other in its purport than the dualism of the double Principle in the
Sankhya view of things, Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature.
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A phenomenal truth of multiplicity of the One is annulled by setting up a conceptual falsehood in the One creating an unreal multiplicity. The One for ever self-aware of its pure existence entertains a perpetual imagination or illusory construction of itself as an infinite multiplicity of ignorant and suffering beings unaware of self who have to wake one by one to Awareness of self and cease individually to be.
In face of this solution of a perplexity by a new perplexity we begin to suspect that our original premiss must have been somewhere incomplete, - not an error, but only a first statement and indispensable foundation. We begin to envisage the Reality as an eternal oneness, status, immutable essence of pure existence supporting an eternal dynamis, motion, infinite multiplicity and diversity of itself. The immutable status of oneness brings out of itself the dynamis, motion and multiplicity, - the dynamis, motion and multiplicity not abrogating but bringing into relief the eternal and infinite oneness. If the consciousness of Brahman can be dual in status or action or even manifold, there seems to be no reason why Brahman should be incapable of a dual status or a manifold real self-experience of its being. The cosmic consciousness would then be, not a creative Illusion, but an experience of some truth of the Absolute. This explanation, if
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beyond the scope of the reason's discovery. Shankara, standing between the world and the eternal Reality, saw that the mystery of the world must be ultimately suprarational, not conceivable or expressible by our reason, anirvacanya; but he maintained the world as seen by the reason and sense as valid and had therefore to posit an unreal reality, because he did not take one step still farther. For to know the real truth of the world, its reality, it must be seen from the suprarational Awareness, from the view of the Superconscience that maintains and surpasses and by surpassing knows it in its truth, and no longer from the view of the consciousness that is maintained by it and surpassed by it and therefore does not know it or knows it only by its appearance. It cannot be that to that self-creative supreme consciousness the world is an incomprehensible mystery or that it is to it an illusion that is yet not altogether an illusion, a reality that is yet unreal. The mystery of the universe must have a divine sense to the Divine; it must have a significance or a truth of cosmic being that is luminous to the Reality that upholds it with its transcending and yet immanent superconscience.
If the Reality alone exists and all is the Reality, the world also cannot be excluded from that Reality; the universe is real. If it does not reveal to us in its forms and powers the Reality that it is, if it seems only a persistent and yet changing movement in
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upon a more general affliction of our consciousness and the world-consciousness here; it is the problem of the cosmic Ignorance. For our whole view and experience of existence labours under a limitation of consciousness which is not ours alone but seems to be at the basis of the material creation. Instead of the original and ultimate Consciousness which sees reality as a whole, we see active here a limited consciousness and either a partial and unfinished creation or a cosmic kinesis that moves in a perpetual circle of meaningless change. Our consciousness sees a part and parts only of the Manifestation, - if manifestation it be, - and treats it or them as if they were separate entities; all our illusions and errors arise from a limited separative Awareness which creates unrealities or misconceives the Real. But the problem becomes still more enigmatic when we perceive that our material world seems to arise directly, not out of any original
Being and Consciousness, but out of a status of Inconscience and apparent Non-Existence; our ignorance itself is something that has appeared as if with difficulty and struggle out of the
2.06 - Two Tales of Seeking and Losing, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Son of a guilty cohabitation, matricide unawares, soon involved in an equally forbidden love, Parsifal runs lightly through the world, in perfect innocence. Ignorant of everything that must be learned if one is going to get ahead in this world, he behaves according to the rules of chivalry because that is how he is made. And radiant with bright ignorance he travels through localities weighed down by a dark Awareness.
Wastelands stretch out in the tarot of The Moon. On the shore of a lake of dead water there is a castle on whose Tower a curse has fallen. Amfortas, the Fisher King, lives there, and we see him here, old and infirm, pressing a wound that refuses to heal. Until that wound is cured, the wheel of transformations will be still, the wheel that passes from the light of the sun to the green of the leaves and to the gaiety of the equinox festivities in spring.
2.06 - Union with the Divine Consciousness and Will, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The force which, when absorbed in the Ignorance, takes the form of vital desires is the same which, in its pure form, constitutes the push, the dynamis towards transformation. Consequently, you must beware at the same time of indulging freely in desires, thinking them to be needs which must be satisfied, and of rejecting the vital force as positively evil. What you should do is to throw the doors of your being wide open to the Divine. The moment you conceal something, you step straight into Falsehood. The least suppression on your part pulls you immediately down into unconsciousness. If you want to be fully conscious, be always in front of the Truth-completely open yourself and try your utmost to let it see deep inside you, into every corner of your being. That alone will bring into you light and consciousness and all that is most true. Be absolutely modest-that is to say, know the distance between what you are and what is to be, not allowing the crude physical mentality to think that it knows when it does not, that it can judge when it cannot. Modesty implies the giving up of yourself to the Divine whole-heartedly, asking for help and, by submission, winning the freedom and absence of responsibility which imparts to the mind utter quietness. Not otherwise can you hope to attain the union with the Divine Consciousness and the Divine Will. Of course it depends on the path by which you approach the Divine whether the union with the Consciousness comes first or with the Will. If you go deep within, the former will naturally precede, whereas if you take a standpoint in the universal movement the latter is likely to be realised first; but it is not quite possible to make a cut and dried generalisation because the sadhana is a flexible and fluid thing and also because the Divine Consciousness and Will are very closely connected with each other, being two aspects of one single Being. Take note, however, that the merely external similarity of your thought or action does not prove that this union has been achieved. All such proofs are superficial, for the real union means a thorough change, a total reversal of your normal consciousness. You cannot have it in your mind or in your ordinary state of Awareness. You must get clean out of that-then and not till then can you be united with the Divine Consciousness. Once the union is really experienced the very idea of proving it by the similarity of your thought and action with mine will make you laugh. People living together in the same house for years or coming in daily intimate contact with one another develop a sort of common mind-they think and act alike. But you cannot claim to be like the Divine by such merely mental contact; you must consent to have your consciousness entirely reversed! The genuine sign of the union is that your consciousness has the same quality, the same way of working as the Divine's and proceeds from the same supramental source of Knowledge. That you sometimes happen to act in the external field as the Divine appears to act may be nothing save coincidence, and to demonstrate the union by such comparisons is to try to prove a very great thing by a very small one! The true test is the direct experience of the Divine Consciousness in whatever you do. It is an unmistakable test, because it changes your being completely. Evidently, you cannot at once be fixed in the Divine Consciousness; but even before it settles in you, you can have now and then the experience of it. The Divine Consciousness will come and go, but while the union lasts you will be as if somebody else! The whole universe will wear a new face and you yourself as well as your perception and vision of things will be metamorphosed. So long as you lack the experience you are inclined to look for proofs: proofs and results are secondary-what the union fundamentally means is that in your consciousness you know more than a human being. It is all to the good if, owing to your acquiring a pure, calm and receptive mind, you manage to think and act in accordance with my intentions. But you must not mistake a step on the way for the final goal. For the chief difference between the positive union and mental receptivity is that I have to formulate what I want you to carry out and put the formula into your pure and calm mind, whereas in the case of the actual union I need not formulate at all. I just put the necessary truth-consciousness in you and the rest automatically works out, because it is I myself who am then in you.... I dare say it is all rather difficult for you to imagine, the experience being well-nigh indescribable. It is, however, less difficult to imagine the union of the will with the Divine Will, for you can imagine a Will which is effective without struggle and victoriously manifest everywhere. And if all your will tends to unite with it, then there is something approaching a union. That is to say, you begin to lose your separate egoistic will and your being thirsts naturally to fulfil the Divine's behest and, without knowing even what the supreme Will is, wills exactly what the Divine wishes. But this means an unquestioning acceptance of the Higher Guidance. The energy in you which is deformed into vital desire but which is originally the urge towards realisation must unite with the Divine Will, so that all your power of volition mingles with it as a drop of water with the sea. No more then its own weaknesses and failings, but evermore the supreme quality of the Divine Will-Omnipotence!
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2.07 - The Mother Relations with Others, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Keep always this Awareness of my constant loving presence and all will be all right.
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2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
What do you mean by merely saying consciousness, Awareness, understanding, thinking, feeling?
They cannot have any significance unless they are connected to a thing which is already there. This is the gross realistic doctrine of empirical philosophers which was highlighted by British thinkers like Locke, Berkeley and Hume, but already anticipated by people like Plato and Aristotle in a different fashion.
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In a crude form, Berkeley said this. But, in a more philosophical fashion, Plato affirmed it. We can never stomach this idea that consciousness is precedent to matter, though we have attempted to convince ourselves, in our previous discussions, that consciousness is our essential reality by an analysis conducted of the three stateswaking, dream and deep sleep. We have already understood this to some extent. We have gone to the depths of our condition in deep sleep where we appear to exist only as pure consciousness minus body and mind in the state of deep sleep, that must have been what our stuff is. This so-called body of ours, this hard substance of contactual experience, and the mind which thinks of it, are subsequent evolutes; and if they were the ultimate realities that we are, they would not have perished in deep sleep also. But we had no experience of body or mind there. We were bare, featureless, unobjectified being, consciousness only. This is what we learnt in our earlier analysis of the condition of sleep. What were you in deep sleep? Not man, not woman, not human being, not body, not mind, not anything, not object. What were you then? A bare impersonal, indefinite, undivided Awareness you were. So, this consciousness that you were is the same as consciousness of beingbeing inseparable from consciousness, consciousness inseparable from being.
This is the great conclusion of Vedanta philosophyBeing-Consciousness. Sat-Chit was your essential naturenot body, not mind, not anything that the senses perceive or conceive, not the world. Then, wherefrom this body came? What is this body? What is the world? What are these buildings and stony mountains and the flowing rivers and the burning sun? What is all this? From where have they come?
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Now we are facing the third principle of the ultimate reality of the cosmos, call it the Absolute, call it Satchidananda, God, Isvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, whatever it is. Here, true religion begins. Real religion is an Awareness of the presence of the Supreme Being. Therefore, it is well said that religion begins where intellect ends, where reasons fails. When religion begins controlling your life, you cease to be a mere intellectual or a scientist or a philosopher. You are no more a thinker, but a person who lives reality.
Religion is living reality and not merely thinking reality or academic analysing. All this is over already in our earlier lessons. We have thought enough philosophically, academically and hope we shall not touch this subject again. We shall enter into true religion which is God-consciousness itself in some proportion, in some measure, in a modicum.
2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What is the meaning of jnanayoga? It is the path by which a man can realize the true nature of his own Self; it is the Awareness that Brahman alone is his true nature.
Prahlada sometimes was aware of his identity with Brahman. And sometimes he would see that God was one and he another; at such times he would remain in the mood of bhakti.
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MASTER: "Why shouldn't a man be able to realize God in the world? But he must have discrimination and dispassion; he must have the unshakable Awareness that God alone is real and all else is unreal and has but a two days' existence. It will not do to float on the surface. You must dive deep."
With these words, the Master sang:
2.08 - Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
N ANY survey of the dual character of our consciousness we have first to look at the Ignorance, - for Ignorance trying to turn into Knowledge is our normal status. To begin with, it is necessary to consider some of the essential movements of this partial Awareness of self and things which works in us as a mediator between the complete self-knowledge and all-knowledge and the complete Inconscience, and, from that starting-point, find its relation to the greater Consciousness below our surface.
There is a line of thought in which great stress is laid upon the action of memory: it has even been said that Memory is the
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cannot know or prove to be true, the eternity of the conscious being. By memory Mind can only know of itself in the past, by direct self- Awareness only in the moment of the present, and it is only by extension of and inference from this self- Awareness and from the memory which tells us that for some time Awareness has been continuously existent that mind can conceive of itself in the future. The extent of the past and the future it cannot fix; it can only carry back the past to the limit of its memory and infer from the evidence of others and the facts of life it observes around it that the conscious being already was in times which it can no longer remember. It knows that it existed in an infant unreasoning state of the mind to which memory has lost its link; whether it existed before physical birth, the mortal mind owing to the gap of memory cannot determine. Of the future it knows nothing at all; of its existing in the next moment it can only have a moral certainty which some happening of that moment can prove to be an error because what it saw was no more than a dominant probability; much less can it know whether or no physical dissolution is the end of the conscious being. Yet it has this sense of a persistent continuity which easily extends itself into a conviction of eternity.
This conviction may be either the reflection in the mind of an endless past which it has forgotten but of which something in it retains the formless impression, or it may be the shadow of a selfknowledge which comes to the mind from a higher or a deeper plane of our being where we are really aware of our eternal selfexistence. Or, conceivably, it might be a hallucination; just as we cannot sense or realise in our foreseeing consciousness the fact of death and can only live in the feeling of continued existence, cessation being to us an intellectual conception we can hold with certainty, even imagine with vividness, but never actually realise because we live only in the present, yet death, cessation or interruption at least of our actual mode of being is a fact and the sense or prevision of continued existence in the future in the physical body becomes beyond a point we cannot now fix a hallucination, a false extension or a misapplication of our present mental impression of conscious being, - so conceivably
2.09 - SEVEN REASONS WHY A SCIENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
WE ARE STILL IN THE DAWN of the scientific age, and every increase of light reveals more brightly the handiwork of an intelligent Creator. We have made stupendous discoveries; with a spirit of scientific humility and of faith grounded in knowledge we are approaching ever nearer to an Awareness of God.
For myself, I count seven reasons for my faith:
2.09 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness waves of ecstatic love arise:
Rapture divine! Play of God's Bliss!
2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The evolution of forms and powers by which Matter will become more and more conscious until passing beyond form and life and mind it becomes aware with the supernal Awareness of the eternal and infinite Spirit in his own highest ranges, this is the meaning of earth existence. The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila.
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Our senses give us the forms of things as they seem to our senses, not as they are; for they would appear quite different to other senses than ours; our mind builds the great mass of its idea of the world and things on this insecure basis, or if it corrects the evidence of the senses, it is in the light of a reason whose conceptions of Time, Space and Substance are equally imperfect, equally relative, empirically valid up to a certain point, but fundamentally dubious and insecure. Is not this the only consciousness possible, or at least the highest of which we are capable and have we any evidence of a higher power of Awareness and knowledge or any ground to suppose that there are beings greater than man who possess it? Is not this world and must it not be always a world of Ignorance, knowledge partial at the best, all knowledge here relative, pragmatic, indirect and no knowledge either here or anywhere that can be called supreme, direct or absolute? If absolute knowledge there is it must be the sheer consciousness of the Featureless Infinite, the One Self, the void or formless Spirit, and there can be no other.
I mean by the supermind a power, a level, an organisation of consciousness which is not only above the human mind, but above all that can be called mind, - another higher and wider essence and energy of consciousness altogether. Mind is that which seeks after truth of any kind or of all kinds within its range, labours to know it, attempts to direct and utilise it. But by supermind I mean a divine Awareness which inherently possesses truth, knows it by its own intrinsic identity with it and puts it into action or effect spontaneously by its own sovereign power
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Supermanhood is for us a self-exceeding because man, pragmatically and to his own surface Awareness, is a small, confused, limited, still ignorant formation of evolutionary Nature, - if supermanhood is intended, then either he has himself to become superman or, if he cannot or will not achieve it, he must make way for some creature greater than he who will have both the will and the power.
But again supermanhood is at bottom a self-becoming because what we now call ourselves is only the surface man, a thinking and living body; but this [is] only the top of a wave, not the whole sea that secretly we are. All that makes supermanhood is there at least in material in our secret depths and on our still more occult height; what in outward fact, in appearance, in present self- Awareness man is not but must become, is already there within him; he has only to find himself in order to become that greater self and nature.
2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
is a knowledge by direct contact associated at its roots with a secret knowledge by identity or starting from it, but actually separated from its source and therefore powerful but incomplete in its cognition; the third is a knowledge by separation from the object of observation, but still with a direct contact as its support or even a partial identity; the fourth is a completely separative knowledge which relies on a machinery of indirect contact, a knowledge by acquisition which is yet, without being conscious of it, a rendering or bringing up of the contents of a pre-existent inner Awareness and knowledge. A knowledge by identity, a knowledge by intimate direct contact, a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact are the four cognitive methods of Nature.
The first way of knowing in its purest form is illustrated in the surface mind only by our direct Awareness of our own essential existence: it is a knowledge empty of any other content than the pure fact of self and being; of nothing else in the world has our surface mind the same kind of Awareness. But in the knowledge of the structure and movements of our subjective consciousness some element of Awareness by identity does enter; for we can project ourselves with a certain identification into these movements. It has already been noted how this can happen in the case of an uprush of wrath which swallows us up so that for the moment our whole consciousness seems to be a wave of anger: other passions, love, grief, joy have the same power to seize and occupy us; thought also absorbs and occupies, we lose sight of the thinker and become the thought and the thinking. But very ordinarily there is a double movement; a part of ourselves becomes the thought or the passion, another part of us either accompanies it with a certain adherence or follows it closely and knows it by an intimate direct contact which falls short of identification or entire self-oblivion in the movement.
This identification is possible, and also this simultaneous separation and partial identification, because these things are becomings of our being, determinations of our mind stuff and mind energy, of our life stuff and life energy; but, since they are only a small part of us, we are not bound to be identified
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In thought separation of the thinker and the thinking is more difficult. The thinker is plunged and lost in the thought or carried in the thought current, identified with it; it is not usually at the time of or in the very act of thinking that he can observe or review his thoughts, - he has to do that in retrospect and with the aid of memory or by a critical pause of corrective judgment before he proceeds further: but still a simultaneity of thinking and conscious direction of the mind's action can be achieved partially when the thought does not engross, entirely when the thinker acquires the faculty of stepping back into the mental self and standing apart there from the mental energy. Instead of being absorbed in the thought with at most a vague feeling of the process of thinking, we can see the process by a mental vision, watch our thoughts in their origination and movement and, partly by a silent insight, partly by a process of thought upon thought, judge and evaluate them. But whatever the kind of identification, it is to be noted that the knowledge of our internal movements is of a double nature, separation and direct contact: for even when we detach ourselves, this close contact is maintained; our knowledge is always based on a direct touch, on a cognition by direct Awareness carrying in it a certain element of identity. The more separative attitude is ordinarily the method of our reason in observing and knowing our inner movements; the more intimate is the method of our dynamic part of mind associating itself with our sensations, feelings and desires: but in this association too the thinking mind can intervene and exercise a separative dissociated observation and control over both the dynamic self-associating part of mind and the vital or physical movement. All the observable movements of our physical being also are known and controlled by us in both these ways, the separative and the intimate; we feel the body and what it is doing intimately as part of us, but the mind is separate from it and can exercise a detached control over its movements.
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
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It is evident that our state on the surface is indeed a state of knowledge, so far as it goes, but a limited knowledge enveloped and invaded by ignorance and, to a very large extent, by reason of its limitation, itself a kind of ignorance, at best a mixed knowledge-ignorance. It could not be otherwise since our Awareness of the world is born of a separative and surface observation with only an indirect means of cognition at its disposal; our knowledge of ourselves, though more direct, is stultified by its restriction to the surface of our being, by an ignorance of our true self, the true sources of our nature, the true motive-forces of our action. It is quite evident that we know ourselves with only a superficial knowledge, - the sources of our consciousness and thought are a mystery; the true nature of our mind, emotions, sensations is a mystery; our cause of being and our end of being, the significance of our life and its activities are a mystery: this could not be if we had a real self-knowledge and a real world-knowledge.
If we look for the reason of this limitation and imperfection, we shall find first that it is because we are concentrated on our surface; the depths of self, the secrets of our total nature are shut away from us behind a wall created by our externalising consciousness - or created for it so that it can pursue its activity of ego-centric individualisation of the mind, life and body uninvaded by the deeper and wider truth of our larger existence: through this wall we can look into our inner self and reality only through crevices and portholes and we see little there but a mysterious dimness. At the same time our consciousness has to defend its ego-centric individualisation, not only against its own deeper self of oneness and infinity, but against the cosmic
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In its essence the inner being's knowledge has the same elements as the outer mind's surface knowledge, but there is between them the difference between a half blindness and a greater clarity of consciousness and vision due to a more direct and powerful instrumentation and a better arrangement of the elements of knowledge. Knowledge by identity, on the surface a vague inherent sense of our self-existence and a partial identification with our inner movements, can here deepen and enlarge itself from that indistinct essential perception and limited sensation to a clear and direct intrinsic Awareness of the whole entity within: we can enter into possession of our whole conscious mental being and life being and arrive at a close intimacy of direct penetrating and enveloping contact with the total movements of our mental and vital energy; we meet clearly and closely and are - but more freely and understandingly - all the becomings of ourself, the whole self-expression of the Purusha on the present levels of our nature. But also there is or can be along with this intimacy of knowledge a detached observation of the actions of the nature by the Purusha and a great possibility, through this double status of knowledge, of a complete control and understanding. All the movements of the surface being can be seen with a complete detachment, but also with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision, a clearer and more accurate mental feeling of our subjective becoming, a vision which at once knows, commands and controls the whole nature. If the psychic and mental parts in us are strong, the vital comes under mastery and direction to an extent hardly possible to the surface mentality; even the body and the physical energies can be taken up by the inner mind and will and turned into a more plastic instrumentation of the soul, the psychic being. On the other hand, if the mental and
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
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psychic parts are weak and the vital strong and unruly, power is increased by entry into the inner vital, but discrimination and detached vision are deficient; the knowledge, even if increased in force and range, remains turbid and misleading; intelligent self-control may give place to a vast undisciplined impetus or a rigidly disciplined but misguided egoistic action. For the subliminal is still a movement of the Knowledge-Ignorance; it has in it a greater knowledge, but the possibility also of a greater because more self-affirming ignorance. This is because, though an increased self-knowledge is normal here, it is not at once an integral knowledge: an Awareness by direct contact, which is the principal power of the subliminal, is not sufficient for that; for it may be contact with greater becomings and powers of
Knowledge, but also with greater becomings and powers of the
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Equally important would be the change in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. These we know only by their results, by the little that we can seize of their visible action and consequence. Among them it is mostly the physical world-forces of which we have some knowledge, but we live constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mindforces and life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even aware of their existence. To all this unseen movement and action the subliminal inner consciousness can open our Awareness, for it has a knowledge of it by direct contact, by inner vision, by a psychic sensitiveness; but at present it can only enlighten our obtuse superficiality and outwardness by unexplained warnings, premonitions, attractions and repulsions, ideas, suggestions, obscure intuitions, the little it can get through imperfectly to the surface. The inner being not only contacts directly and concretely the immediate motive and movement of these universal
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
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true knowledge. Its main character is a knowledge by the direct contact of consciousness with its object or of consciousness with other consciousness; but in the end we discover that this power is an outcome of a secret knowledge by identity, a translation of it into a separative Awareness of things. For as in the indirect contact proper to our normal consciousness and surface cognition it is the meeting or friction of the living being with the existence outside it that awakens the spark of conscious knowledge, so here it is some contact that sets in action a pre-existent secret knowledge and brings it to the surface. For consciousness is one in the subject and the object, and in the contact of existence with existence this identity brings to light or awakens in the self the dormant knowledge of this other self outside it. But while this pre-existent knowledge comes up in the surface mind as a knowledge acquired, it arises in the subliminal as a thing seen, caught from within, remembered as it were, or, when it is fully intuitive, self-evident to the inner Awareness; or it is taken in from the object contacted but with an immediate response as to something intimately recognisable. In the surface consciousness knowledge represents itself as a truth seen from outside, thrown on us from the object, or as a response to its touch on the sense, a perceptive reproduction of its objective actuality. Our surface mind is obliged to give to itself this account of its knowledge, because the wall between itself and the outside world is pierced by the gates of sense and it can catch through these gates the surface of outward objects though not what is within them, but there is no such ready-made opening between itself and its own inner being: since it is unable to see what is within its deeper self or observe the process of the knowledge coming from within, it has no choice but to accept what it does see, the external object, as the cause of its knowledge. Thus all our mental knowing of things represents itself to us as objective, a truth imposed on us from outside; our knowledge is a reflection or responsive construction reproducing in us a figure or picture or a mental scheme of something that is not in our own being. In fact, it is a hidden deeper response to the contact, a response coming from within that throws up from there an inner knowledge of the
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
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This affiliation, this concealed method of our knowledge, obscure and non-evident to our present mentality, becomes clear and evident when the subliminal inner being breaks its boundaries of individuality and, carrying our surface mind with it, enters into the cosmic consciousness. The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, subtle-physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond all these sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world and can become aware of them and deal with them before they enter. The subliminal is able to widen indefinitely this circumconscient envelope and more and more enlarge its selfprojection into the cosmic existence around it. A point comes where it can break through the separation altogether, unite, identify itself with cosmic being, feel itself universal, one with all existence. In this freedom of entry into cosmic self and cosmic nature there is a great liberation of the individual being; it puts on a cosmic consciousness, becomes the universal individual. Its first result, when it is complete, is the realisation of the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, and this union may even bring about a disappearance of the sense of individuality, a merger of the ego into the world-being. Another common result is an entire openness to the universal Energy so that it is felt acting through the mind and life and body and the sense of individual action ceases. But more usually there are results of less amplitude; there is a direct Awareness of universal being and nature, there is a greater openness of the mind to the cosmic
Mind and its energies, to the cosmic Life and its energies, to
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seems to be dreamless sleep or a blind trance or an annulment of Awareness or an absence. In the supreme timeless status where consciousness is one with being and immobile, it is not a separate reality, but simply and purely the self- Awareness inherent in existence. There is no need of knowledge nor is there any operation of knowledge. Being is self-evident to itself: it does not need to look at itself in order to know itself or learn that it is. But if this is evidently true of pure existence, it is also true of the primal
All-Existence; for just as spiritual Self-existence is intrinsically aware of its self, so it is intrinsically aware of all that is in its being: this is not by an act of knowledge formulated in a selfregard, a self-observation, but by the same inherent Awareness; it is intrinsically all-conscious of all that is by the very fact that all is itself. Thus conscious of its timeless self-existence, the Spirit, the Being is aware in the same way - intrinsically, absolutely, totally, without any need of a look or act of knowledge, because it is all, - of Time-Existence and of all that is in Time. This is the essential Awareness by identity; if applied to cosmic existence, it would mean an essential self-evident automatic consciousness of universe by the Spirit because it is everything and everything is its being.
But there is another status of spiritual Awareness which seems to us to be a development from this state and power of pure self-consciousness, perhaps even a first departure, but is in fact normal and intimate to it; for the Awareness by identity is always the very stuff of all the Spirit's self-knowledge, but it admits within itself, without changing or modifying its own eternal nature, a subordinate and simultaneous Awareness by inclusion and by indwelling. The Being, the Self-existent sees all existences in its one existence; it contains them all and knows them as being of its being, consciousness of its consciousness, power of its power, bliss of its bliss; it is at the same time, necessarily, the Self in them and knows all in them by its pervadingly indwelling selfness: but still all this Awareness exists intrinsically, self-evidently, automatically, without the need of any act, regard or operation of knowledge; for knowledge here is not an act, but a state pure, perpetual and inherent. At the
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A separative knowledge arises when the sense of differentiation overpowers the sense of identity; the self still cognises its identity with the object but pushes to its extreme the play of intimate separateness. At first there is not a sense of self and not-self, but only of self and other-self. A certain knowledge of identity and by identity is still there, but it tends to be first overstructured, then submerged, then so replaced by knowledge through interchange and contact that it figures as a secondary Awareness, as if it were a result and no longer the cause of the mutual contact, the still pervasive and enveloping touch, the interpenetrating intimacy of the separate selves. Finally, identity disappears behind the veil and there is the play of being with other beings, consciousness with other consciousness: an underlying identity is still there, but it is not experienced; its place is taken by a direct seizing and penetrating contact, intermingling, interchange. It is by this interaction that a more or less intimate knowledge, mutual Awareness or Awareness of the object remains possible. There is no feeling of self meeting self, but there is a mutuality; there is not yet an entire separateness, a complete
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The power of inclusion of the object in the consciousness, of an enveloping Awareness and knowledge is there; but it is the inclusion of a now externalised existence which has to be made an element of our self by an attained or recovered knowledge, by a dwelling of consciousness upon the object, a concentration, a taking possession of it as part of the existence. The power of penetration is there, but it has no natural pervasiveness and does not lead to identity; it gathers what it can, takes what is thus acquired and carries the contents of the object of knowledge to the subject. There can still be a direct and penetrating contact of consciousness with consciousness creating a vivid and intimate knowledge, but it is confined to the points or to the extent of the contact. There is still a direct sense, consciousness-sight, consciousness-feeling which can see and feel what is within the object as well as its outside and surface. There is still a mutual penetration and interchange between being and being, between consciousness and consciousness, waves of thought, of feeling, of energy of all kinds which may be a movement of sympathy and union or of opposition and struggle. There can be an attempt at unification by possession of others or through one's own acceptance of possession by other consciousness or other being; or there can be a push towards union by reciprocal inclusion, pervasion, mutual possession. Of all this action and interaction the knower by direct contact is aware and it is on this basis that he arranges his relations with the world around him. This is the origin of knowledge by direct contact of consciousness with its object, which is normal to our inner being but foreign or only imperfectly known to our surface nature.
This first separative ignorance is evidently still a play of knowledge but of a limited separative knowledge, a play of divided being working upon a reality of underlying unity and arriving only at an imperfect result or outcome of the concealed oneness. The complete intrinsic Awareness of identity and the
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
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act of knowledge by identity belong to the higher hemisphere of existence: this knowledge by direct contact is the main character of the highest supraphysical mental planes of consciousness, those to which our surface being is closed in by a wall of ignorance; in a diminished and more separative form it is a property of the lesser supraphysical planes of mind; it is or can be an element in all that is supraphysical. It is the main instrumentation of our subliminal self, its central means of Awareness; for the subliminal self or inner being is a projection from these higher planes to meet the subconscience and it inherits the character of consciousness of its planes of origin with which it is intimately associated and in touch by kinship. In our outer being we are children of the Inconscience; our inner being makes us inheritors of the higher heights of mind and life and spirit: the more we open inwards, go inwards, live inwards, receive from within, the more we draw away from subjection to our inconscient origin and move towards all which is now superconscient to our ignorance.
Ignorance becomes complete with the entire separation of being from being: the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness is then entirely veiled or heavily overlaid, even though it still goes on within our subliminal parts, just as there is also, though wholly concealed and not directly operative, the underlying secret identity and oneness. There is on the surface a complete separateness, a division into self and not-self; there is the necessity of dealing with the not-self, but no direct means of knowing it or mastering it. Nature then creates indirect means, a contact by physical organs of sense, a penetration of outside impacts through the nerve currents, a reaction of mind and its co-ordinations acting as an aid and supplement to the activity of the physical organs, - all of them methods of an indirect knowledge; for the consciousness is forced to rely on these instruments and cannot act directly on the object. To these means is added a reason, intelligence and intuition which seize on the communications thus indirectly brought to them, put all in order and utilise their data to get as much knowledge and mastery and possession of the not-self or as much partial unity
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The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama ast tamasa gud.ham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self- Awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it the Awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its dark infinite and, when it acts and creates, - but it acts first as Energy and not as Consciousness, - everything is arranged with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all material things reside a mute and involved Real-Idea, a substantial and selfeffective intuition, an eyeless exact perception, an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this state and action of the
Inconscient corresponds very evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute subconscience.
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Presence in it, the one Conscious in unconscious things, that determines the operation of its indwelling energies. If, as has been affirmed, a material object receives and retains the impression of the contacts of things around it and energies emanate from it, so that an occult knowledge can become aware of its past, can make us conscious of these emanating influences, the intrinsic unorganised Awareness pervading the form but not yet enlightening it must be the cause of this receptivity and these capacities. What we see from outside is that material objects like plants and minerals have their powers, properties and inherent influences, but as there is no faculty or means of communication, it is only by being brought into contact with person or object or by a conscious utilisation by living beings that their influences can become active, - such a utilisation is the practical side of more than one human science. But still these powers and influences are attributes of Being, not of mere indeterminate substance, they are forces of the Spirit emerging by Energy from its self-absorbed Inconscience. This first crude mechanical action of an inherent absorbed conscious energy opens in the primary forms of life into submental life-vibrations that imply an involved sensation; there is a seeking for growth, light, air, life-room, a blind feeling out, which is still internal and confined within the immobile being, unable to formulate its instincts, to communicate, to externalise itself. An immobility not organised to establish living relations, it endures and absorbs contacts, involuntarily inflicts but cannot voluntarily impose them; the inconscience is still dominant, still works out everything by the secret involved knowledge by identity, it has not yet developed the surface contactual means of a conscious knowledge. This further development begins with overtly conscious life; what we see in it is the imprisoned consciousness struggling out to the surface: it is under the compulsion of this struggle that the separated living being strives, however blindly at first and within narrow limits, to enter into conscious relations with the rest of the world-being outside it. It is by the growing amount of contacts that it can receive and respond to and by the growing amount of contacts that it can put out from itself or impose in
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We see then all the powers inherent in the original selfexistent spiritual Awareness slowly brought out and manifested in this growing separative consciousness; they are activities suppressed but native to the secret and involved knowledge by identity and they now emerge by degrees in a form strangely diminished and tentative. First, there emerges a crude or veiled sense which develops into precise sensations aided by a vital instinct or concealed intuition; then a life-mind perception manifests and at its back an obscure consciousness-sight and feeling of things; emotion vibrates out and seeks an interchange with others; last arises to the surface conception, thought, reason comprehending and apprehending the object, combining its data of knowledge. But all are incomplete, still maimed by the separative ignorance and the first obscuring inconscience; all are dependent on the outward means, not empowered to act in their own right: consciousness cannot act directly on consciousness; there is a constructive envelopment and penetration of things by the mind consciousness, but not a real possession; there is no knowledge by identity. Only when the subliminal is able to force upon the frontal mind and sense some of its secret activities pure and untranslated into the ordinary forms of mental intelligence, does a rudimentary action of the deeper methods lift itself to the surface; but such emergences are still an exception, they strike across the normality of our acquired and learned knowledge with a savour of the abnormal and the supernormal. It is only by an opening to our inner being or an entry into it that a direct intimate Awareness can be added to the outer indirect Awareness.
It is only by our awakening to our inmost soul or superconscient self that there can be a beginning of the spiritual knowledge with identity as its basis, its constituent power, its intrinsic substance.
2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Space as an objective field of contents for the experience of this imperfect and developing Awareness. By immediate Awareness the mental being mobile in Time lives perpetually in the present; by memory he saves a certain part of his experience of self and things from streaming away from him entirely into the past; by thought and will and action, by mind energy, life energy, body energy he utilises it for what he becomes in the present and is yet to become hereafter; the force of being in him that has made him what he is works to prolong, develop and amplify his becoming in the future. All this insecurely held material of self-expression and experience of things, this partial knowledge accumulated in the succession of Time, is co-ordinated for him by perception, memory, intelligence and will to be utilised for an ever-new or ever-repeated becoming and for the mental, vital, physical action which helps him to grow into what he is to be and to express what he already is. The present totality of all this experience of consciousness and output of energy is co-ordinated for relation to his being, gathered into consistency around an ego-sense which formulates the habit of response of self-experience to the contacts of Nature in a persistent limited field of conscious being.
It is this ego-sense that gives a first basis of coherence to what otherwise might be a string or mass of floating impressions: all that is so sensed is referred to a corresponding artificial centre of mental consciousness in the understanding, the ego-idea. This ego-sense in the life stuff and this ego-idea in the mind maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being. The surface mental individuality is, in consequence, always ego-centric; even its altruism is an enlargement of its ego: the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there
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of an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness or else a submerged consciousness below and in a way inferior to and less than our organised waking Awareness or, at least, less in possession of itself. But we find, when we go within, that somewhere in our subliminal part, - though not co-extensive with it since it has also obscure and ignorant regions, - there is a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours; that is our inner being, and it is this which we must regard as our subliminal self and set apart the subconscient as an inferior, a lowest occult province of our nature. In the same way there is a superconscient part of our total existence in which there is what we discover to be our highest self, and this too we can set apart as a higher occult province of our nature.
But what then is the subconscient and where does it begin and how is it related to our surface being or to the subliminal of which it would seem more properly to be a province? We are aware of our body and know that we have a physical existence, even very largely identify ourselves with it, and yet most of its operations are really subconscious to our mental being; not only does the mind take no part in them but, as we suppose, our most physical being has no Awareness of its own hidden operations or, by itself, of its own existence; it knows or rather feels only so much of itself as is enlightened by mind-sense and observable by intelligence. We are aware of a vitality working in this bodily form and structure as in the plant or lower animal, a vital existence which is also for the most part subconscious to us, for we only observe some of its movements and reactions. We are partly aware of its operations, but not by any means of all or most of them, and rather of those which are abnormal than those which are normal; its wants impress themselves more forcibly upon us than its satisfactions, its diseases and disorders than its health and its regular rhythm, its death is more poignant to us than its life is vivid: we know as much of it as we can consciously observe and use or as much as forces itself upon us by pain and pleasure and other sensations or as a cause of nervous or
The Boundaries of the Ignorance
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This is an exaggeration and a confusion due to our identification of consciousness with mentality and mental Awareness.
Mind identifies itself to a certain extent with the movements proper to physical life and body and annexes them to its mentality, so that all consciousness seems to us to be mental. But if we draw back, if we separate the mind as witness from these parts of us, we can discover that life and body - even the most physical parts of life - have a consciousness of their own, a consciousness proper to an obscurer vital and to a bodily being, even such an elemental Awareness as primitive animal forms may have, but in us partly taken up by the mind and to that extent mentalised. Yet it has not, in its independent motion, the mental Awareness which we enjoy; if there is mind in it, it is mind involved and implicit in the body and in the physical life: there is no organised self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse and desire, need, necessary activities imposed by Nature, hunger, instinct, pain, insensibility and pleasure. Although thus inferior, it has this Awareness obscure, limited and automatic; but since it is less in possession of itself, void of what to us is the stamp of mentality, we may justly call it the submental, but not so justly the subconscious part of our being. For when we stand back from it, when we can separate our mind from its sensations, we perceive that this is a nervous and sensational and automatically dynamic mode of consciousness, a gradation of Awareness different from the mind: it has its own separate reactions to contacts and is sensitive to them in its own power of feeling; it does not depend for that on the mind's perception and response. The true subconscious is other than this vital or physical substratum; it is the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths
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But the subliminal self has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; but even though the same in kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign. And it has other capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a power of direct Awareness of the being, whether acting in itself or turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge, more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at understanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it is aware of them and their works and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a secret intraconscient and circumconscient than a subconscient; for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature.
This description is no doubt truest of the deeper parts of the subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a more ignorant action and those who, penetrating within, pause in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man's-land between the subliminal and the surface, may fall into much delusion and confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of the subconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has no kinship to the Inconscience.
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Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the definition of the consciousness of man the mental being, - or, looking at it from another side, we may say equally that it is a limited separative Awareness of things striving to become an integral consciousness and an integral Knowledge.
2.12 - The Origin of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of Consciousness, not an essential fact but a creation, a consequence of that action, it is this Force aspect of Consciousness that it will be fruitful to consider. Absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti: Force or Shakti concentrated and energised for cognition or for action in a realising power effective or creative, the power of conscious being dwelling upon itself and bringing out, as it were, by the heat of its incubation6 the seed and development of all that is within it or, to use a language convenient to our minds, of all its truths and potentialities, has created the universe. If we examine our own consciousness, we shall see that this power of its energy applying itself to its object is really the most positive dynamic force it has; by that it arrives at all its knowledge and its action and its creation. But for us there are two objects on which the dynamism within can act, ourselves, the internal world, and others, whether creatures or things, the external world around us. To Sachchidananda this distinction with its effective and operative consequences does not apply in the same way as for us, because all is himself and within himself and there is no such division as we make by the limitations of our mind. Secondly, in us only a part of the force of our being is identified with our voluntary action, with our will engaged in mental or other activity, the rest is to our surface mental Awareness involuntary in its action or subconscient or superconscient, and from this division also a great number of important practical consequences emerge: but in Sachchidananda this division too and its consequences do not apply, since all is his one indivisible self and all action and result
6 Tapas means literally heat, afterwards any kind of energism, askesis, austerity of conscious force acting upon itself or its object. The world was created by Tapas in the form, says the ancient image, of an egg, which being broken, again by Tapas, heat of incubation of conscious force, the Purusha emerged, Soul in Nature, like a bird from the egg. It may be observed that the usual translation of the word tapasya in English books, "penance", is quite misleading - the idea of penance entered rarely into the austerities practised by Indian ascetics. Nor was mortification of the body the essence even of the most severe and self-afflicting austerities; the aim was rather an overpassing of the hold of the bodily nature on the consciousness or else a supernormal energising of the consciousness and will to gain some spiritual or other object.
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have seen, a concentration of Tapas in movement of force upon its object. The origin of the Ignorance must then be sought for in some self-absorbed concentration of Tapas, of ConsciousForce in action on a separate movement of the Force; to us this takes the appearance of mind identifying itself with the separate movement and identifying itself also in the movement separately with each of the forms resulting from it. So it builds a wall of separation which shuts out the consciousness in each form from Awareness of its own total self, of other embodied consciousnesses and of universal being. It is here that we must look for the secret of the apparent ignorance of the embodied mental being as well as of the great apparent inconscience of physical Nature. We have to ask ourselves what is the nature of this absorbing, this separating, this self-forgetful concentration which is the obscure miracle of the universe.
2.12 - The Realisation of Sachchidananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In fact all these opposite terms are merely general conditions for the manifestation of conscious being in that Transcendent who is always one not only behind, but within all conditions however apparently opposite. And the original unifying spirit-stuff of them all and the one substantial mode of them all is that which has been described for the convenience of our thought as the trinity of Sachchidananda. Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, these are everywhere the three inseparable divine terms. None of them is really separate, though our mind and our mental experience can make not only the distinction, but the separation. Mind can say and think "I was, but unconscious", -- for no being can say "I am, but unconscious", -and it can think and feel "I am, but miserable and without any pleasure in existence." In reality this is impossible. The existence we really are, the eternal "I am", of which it can never be true to say "It was", is nowhere and at no time unconscious. What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental Awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self- Awareness and into our Awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or "dead" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience. It is more difficult to realise that existence and undelight of existence cannot go together. What we call misery, grief, pain, absence of delight is again merely a surface wave of the delight of existence which takes on to our mental experience these apparently opposite tints because of a certain trick of false reception in our divided being -- which is not our existence at all but only a fragmentary formulation or discoloured spray of conscious-force tossed up by the infinite sea of our self-existence. In order to realise this we have to get away from our absorption in these surface habits, these petty tricks of our mental being, -- and when we do get behind and away from them it is surprising how superficial they are, what ridiculously weak and little-penetrating pin-pricks they prove to be, -- and we have to realise true existence, and true consciousness, and true experience of existence and consciousness, Sat, Chit and Ananda.
Chit, the divine Consciousness, is not our mental self- Awareness; that we shall find to be only a form, a lower and limited mode or movement. As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many "inanimate" forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical Nature is, compared with Chit, a lower and therefore a limited form, mode and movement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of inferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our subconscious being an action which is precisely that of the "inanimate" physical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being, another which is that of plant-life, and another which is that of the lower animal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by the thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real Awareness of these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these parts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values of the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an animal in us as well as that which is characteristically human, -something which is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not reflective or rational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its experience, meets it from above with the light and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and modifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being; below it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts by an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn behind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth the subvital. When we advance in that ultra-normal self-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that the body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses, instincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of our being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the struggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of these varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result of all evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the merely physical and subvital conscious being to the mental creature which at the top he is.
But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic sages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea, which can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments, impulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of things just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and animal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral perceptions. There is no seeking, but rather natural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct and impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony, concomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin; in their development and in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are others in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed. Chit the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and sensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are not merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truth-plane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself. All is Chit because all is Sat; all is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various movement of the original Being.
2.13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One and the Many, containing both, aware of both, Ignorance can only come about as a subordinate phenomenon by some concentration of consciousness absorbed in a part knowledge or a part action of the being and excluding the rest from its Awareness. There may be either a concentration of the One in itself to the exclusion of the Many or of the Many in their own action to the exclusion of the all- Awareness of the One, or of the individual being in himself to the exclusion both of the One and the rest of the Many who are then to him separated units not included in his direct Awareness. Or again there may be or there may intervene at a certain point some general rule of exclusive concentration, operative in all these three directions, a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in the true self, but in the force of active being, in Prakriti.
This hypothesis we adopt in preference to the others, because none of the others taken by itself will hold or will square
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In the infinity of being and its infinite Awareness concentration of consciousness, Tapas, is always present as an inherent power of Consciousness-Force: it is a self-held or self-gathered dwelling of the eternal Awareness in itself and on itself or on its object; but the object is always in some way itself, its own being or a manifestation and movement of its being. The concentration may be essential; it may be even a sole indwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being, a luminous or else a self-oblivious self-immersion. Or it may be an integral or else a total-multiple or a part-multiple concentration. Or it may be a single separative regard on one field of its being or movement,
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Inconscience; the second, the integral, is the total consciousness of Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration; the third, the multiple, is the method of the totalising or global overmental Awareness; the fourth, the separative, is the characteristic nature of the Ignorance. The supreme integrality of the Absolute holds all these states or powers of its consciousness together as a single indivisible being looking at all itself in manifestation with a simultaneous self-vision.
Concentration in this sense of self-held dwelling in itself or on itself as object may be said then to belong to the very nature of conscious being. For, although there is an infinite extension of consciousness and a diffusion of consciousness, it is a self-held self-contained extension or a self-held self-contained diffusion.
Although there may seem to be a dispersion of its energies, that is in reality a form of distribution, and is only possible in a superficial field because it is supported by an underlying self-held concentration. An exclusive concentration on or in a single subject or object or domain of being or movement is not a denial or departure from the Spirit's Awareness, it is one form of the self-gathering of the power of Tapas. But when the concentration is exclusive, it brings about a holding back behind it of the rest of self-knowledge. It may be aware of the rest all the time, yet act as if it were not aware of it; that would not be a state or act of Ignorance: but if the consciousness erects by the concentration a wall of exclusion limiting itself to a single field, domain or habitation in the movement so that it is aware only of that or aware of all the rest as outside itself, then we have a principle of self-limiting knowledge which can result in a separative knowledge and culminate in a positive and effective ignorance.
We can get some glimpse of what this means, to what it amounts in action, when we look at the nature of exclusive concentration in mental man, in our own consciousness. First of all, we must note that what we mean ordinarily by the man
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The inconscience is superficial like the ignorance of the waking human mind or the inconscience or subconscience of his sleeping mind, and within it is the All-conscient; it is entirely phenomenal, but it is the complete phenomenon. So complete is it that it is only by an impulsion of evolutionary consciousness emerging into other forms less imprisoned by this inconscient method of working that it can come back to itself, recover in the animal a partial Awareness, then in man at his highest some possibility of approach to a first more complete though still superficial initiation of a truly conscious working. But still, as in the case of the superficial and the real man where there is also a similar though lesser inability, the difference is phenomenal only.
Essentially, in the universal order of things, the inconscience of material Nature is the same exclusive concentration, the same absorption in the work and the energy as in the self-limitation
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of the waking human mind, or the concentration of the selfforgetting mind in its working; it is only that self-limitation carried to a farthest point of self-forgetfulness which becomes, not a temporary action, but the law of its action. Nescience in Nature is the complete self-ignorance; the partial knowledge and general ignorance of man is a partial self-ignorance marking in her evolutionary order a return towards self-knowledge: but both are and all ignorance is, when examined, a superficially exclusive self-forgetful concentration of Tapas, of the conscious energy of being in a particular line or section of its movement of which alone it is aware or which alone it seems to be on the surface. The ignorance is effective within the bounds of that movement and valid for its purposes, but phenomenal, partial, superficial, not essentially real, not integral. We have to use the word "real" necessarily in a quite limited and not in its absolute sense; for the ignorance is real enough, but it is not the whole truth of our being and by regarding it by itself even its truth is misrepresented to our outer Awareness. In that true truth of itself it is an involved Consciousness and Knowledge evolving back to itself, but it is dynamically effective as an Inconscience and an Ignorance.
This being the root-nature of the Ignorance, a practical truth of a phenomenally but not really dividing, of a limiting and separative conscious energy absorbed in its works to the apparent forgetfulness of its integral and real self, we may answer the questions that arise of the why, the where and the how of this movement. The reason for the Ignorance, its necessity, becomes clear enough once we have seen that without it the object of the manifestation of our world would be impossible, could not be done at all, or not completely, or not in the way in which it should be and is done. Each side of the manifold Ignorance has its justification, which is only a part of the one general necessity.
2.13 - The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in arriving to these planes or deriving from them the limitations of our mentality pursue us. In the first place the mind is an inveterate divider of the indivisible and its whole nature is to dwell on one thing at a time to the exclusion of others or to stress it to the subordination of others. Thus in approaching Sachchidananda it will dwell on its aspect of the pure existence, Sat, and consciousness and bliss are compelled then to lose themselves or remain quiescent in the experience of pure, infinite being which leads to the realisation of the quietistic Monist. Or it will dwell on the aspect of consciousness, Chit, and existence and bliss become then dependent on the experience of an infinite transcendent Power and Conscious-Force, which leads to the realisation of the Tantric worshipper of Energy. Or it will dwell on the aspect of delight, Ananda, and existence and consciousness then seem to disappear into a bliss without basis of self-possessing Awareness or constituent being, which leads to. the realisation of the Buddhistic seeker of Nirvana. Or it will dwell on some aspect of Sachchidananda which comes to the mind from the supramental Knowledge, Will or Love, and then the infinite impersonal aspect of Sachchidananda is almost or quite lost in the experience of the Deity which leads to the realisations of the various religions and to the possession of some supernal world or divine status of the human soul in relation to God. And for those whose object is to depart anywhi ther from cosmic existence, this is enough, since they are able by the mind's immergence into or seizure upon any one of these principles or aspects to effect through status in the divine planes of their mentality or the possession by them of their waking state this desired transit.
But the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga has to harmonise all so that they may become a plenary and equal unity of the full realisation of Sachchidananda. Here the last difficulty of mind meets him, its inability to hold at once the unity and the multiplicity. It is not altogether difficult to arrive at and dwell in a pure infinite or even, at the same time, a perfect global experience of the Existence which is Consciousness which is Delight. The mind may even extend its experience of this Unity to the multiplicity so as to perceive it immanent in the universe and in each object, force, movement in the universe or at the same time to be aware of this Existence-Consciousness-Bliss containing the universe and enveloping all its objects and originating all its movements. It is difficult indeed for it to unite and harmonise rightly all these experiences; but still it can possess Sachchidananda at once in himself and immanent in all and the continent of all. But with this to unite the final experience of all this as Sachchidananda and possess objects, movements, forces, forms as no other than He, is the great difficulty for mind. Separately any of these things may be done; the mind may go from one to the other, rejecting one as it arrives at another and calling this the lower or that the higher existence. But to unify without losing, to integralise without rejecting is its supreme difficulty.
2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
perception or reaction; it is because the contact stimulates into a feeling and a surface response the subliminal of a being already vitalised by the subconscious life-principle and its first needs and seekings that a surface Awareness begins to form and develop.
Intrinsically the emergence of a surface consciousness by force of life contacts is due to the fact that in both subject and object of the contact consciousness-force is already existent in a subliminal latency: when the life-principle is ready, sufficiently sensitive in the subject, the recipient of the contact, this subliminal consciousness emerges in a response to the stimulus which begins to constitute a vital or life mind, the mind of the animal, and then, in the course of the evolution, a thinking intelligence.
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Inconscience and, secondly, because the evolutionary intention is to develop slowly through an imperfect but growing surface Awareness. The secret consciousness-force has therefore to limit itself to imperfect renderings in a surface vital and mental vibration and operation and is forced by the absence, holding back or insufficiency of the direct Awareness to develop organs and instincts for an indirect knowledge. This creation of an external knowledge and intelligence takes place in an already prepared indeterminate conscious structure which is the earliest formation on the surface. At first this structure is only a minimum formation of consciousness with a vague sensational perception and a response-impulse; but, as more organised forms of life appear, this grows into a life-mind and vital intelligence largely mechanical and automatic in the beginning and concerned only with practical needs, desires and impulses. All this activity is in its initiation intuitive and instinctive; the underlying consciousness is translated in the surface substratum into automatic movements of the conscious stuff of life and body: the mind movements,
The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
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in it; if it were intrinsically an entire absence of consciousness, the change would be impossible: but still it works as an inconscience trying to be conscious; it is at first a nescience compelled by need and outer impact to feeling and response and then an ignorance labouring to know. The means used is a contact with the world and its forces and objects which, like the rubbing of tinders, creates a spark of Awareness; the response from within is that spark leaping out into manifestation. But the surface nescience in receiving the response from an underlying source of knowledge subdues and changes it into something obscure and incomplete; there is an imperfect seizure or a misprision of the intuition that answers to the contact: still by this process an initiation of responsive consciousness, a first accumulation of ingrained or habitual instinctive knowledge begins, and there follows upon it first a primitive and then a developed capacity of receptive Awareness, understanding, reply of action, previsional initiation of action, - an evolving consciousness which is halfknowledge, half-ignorance. All that is unknown is met on the basis of what is known; but as this knowledge is imperfect, as it receives imperfectly and responds imperfectly to the contacts of things, there can be a misprision of the new contact as well as a misprision or deformation of the intuitive response, a double source of error.
It is evident, in these conditions, that Error is a necessary accompaniment, almost a necessary condition and instrumentation, an indispensable step or stage in the slow evolution towards knowledge in a consciousness that begins from nescience and works in the stuff of a general nescience. The evolving consciousness has to acquire knowledge by an indirect means which does not give even a fragmentary certitude; for there is at first only a figure or a sign, an image or a vibration physical in character created by contact with the object and a resulting vital sensation which have to be interpreted by mind and sense and turned into a corresponding mental idea or figure. Things thus experienced and mentally known have to be related together; things unknown have to be observed, discovered, fitted into the already acquired sum of experience and knowledge. At each
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There can be no artificial escape from this problem which has always troubled humanity and from which it has found no satisfying issue. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution towards a supreme consciousness and an integral Awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other expedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a complete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true solution. It is because the Inconscience imposes its original obscurity on our Awareness of self and things and because the Ignorance bases it on an imperfect and divided consciousness and because we live in that obscurity and division that wrong knowledge and wrong will are possible: without wrong knowledge there could be no error or falsehood, without error or falsehood in our dynamic parts there could be no wrong will in our members; without wrong will there could be no wrong-doing or evil: while these causes endure, the effects also will persist in our action and in our nature. A mental control can only be a control, not a cure; a mental teaching, rule, standard can only impose an artificial groove in which our action revolves mechanically or with difficulty and
The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
2.14 - The Passive and the Active Brahman, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The basis of this status of consciousness is the mind's exclusive realisation of pure self-existence in which consciousness is at rest, inactive, widely concentrated ill pure self- Awareness of being, not active and originative of any kind of becoming. Its aspect of knowledge is at rest in the Awareness of undifferentiated identity; its aspect of force and will is at rest in the Awareness of unmodifiable immutability. And yet it is aware of names and forms, it is aware of movement; but this movement does not seem to proceed from the Self, but to go on by some inherent power of its own and only to be reflected in the Self. In other words, the mental being has put away from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall of non-communication between the two; between the passive and the active Brahman a gulf has been created and they stand on either side of it, the one visible to the other but with no contact, no touch of sympathy, no sense of unity between them. Therefore to the passive Self all conscious being seems to be passive in its nature, all activity seems to be non-conscious in itself and mechanical (jada) in its movement. The realisation of this status is the basis of the ancient Sankhya philosophy which taught that the Purusha or Conscious-Soul is a passive, inactive, immutable entity, prakriti or the Nature-Soul including even the mind and the understanding active, mutable, mechanical, but reflected in the Purusha which identifies itself with what is reflected in it and lends to it its own light of consciousness. When the Purusha learns not to identify himself, then prakriti begins to fall away from its impulse of movement and returns towards equilibrium and rest. The Vedantic view of the same status led to the philosophy of the inactive Self or Brahman as the one reality and of all the rest as name and form imposed on it by a false activity of mental illusion which has to be removed by right knowledge of the immutable Self and refusal of the imposition387a. The two views really differ only in their language and their viewpoint; substantially, they are the same intellectual generalisation from the same spiritual experience.
If we rest here, there are only two possible attitudes toward the world. Either we must remain as mere inactive witnesses of the world-play or act in it mechanically without any participation of the conscious self and by mere play of the organs of sense and motor-action387b. In the former choice what we do is to approach as completely as possible to the inactivity of the passive and silent Brahman. We have stilled our mind and silenced the activity of the thought and the disturbances of the heart, we have arrived at an entire inner peace and indifference; we attempt now to still the mechanical action of the life and body, to reduce it to the most meagre minimum possible so that It may eventually cease entirely and for ever. This, the final aim of the ascetic Yoga which refuses life, is evidently not our aim. By the alternative choice we can have an activity perfect enough in outward appearance along with an entire inner passivity, peace, mental silence, indifference and cessation of the emotions, absence of choice in the will.
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Still there is the likelihood of a partial, superficial and temporary relapse into the old mental movement when he attempts again to ally himself to the activity of the world. To prevent this relapse or to cure it when it arrives, he has to hold fast to the truth of Sachchidananda and extend his realisation of the infinite One into the movement of the infinite multiplicity. He has to concentrate on and realise the one Brahman in all things as conscious force of being as well as pure Awareness of conscious being. The Self as the All, not only in the unique essence of things, but in the manifold form of things, not only as containing all in a transcendent consciousness, but as becoming all by a constituting consciousness, this is the next step towards his true possession of existence. In proportion as this realisation is accomplished, the status of consciousness as well as the mental view proper to it will change. Instead of an immutable Self containing name and form, containing without sharing in them the mutations of Nature, there will be the consciousness of the Self immutable in essence, unalterable in its fundamental poise but constituting and becoming in its experience all these existences which the mind distinguishes as name and form. All formations of mind and body will be not merely figures reflected in the Purusha, but real forms of which Brahman, Self, conscious Being is the substance and, as it were, the material of their formation. The name attaching to the form will be not a mere conception of the mind answering to no real existence bearing the name, but there will be behind it a true power of conscious being, a true self-experience of the Brahman answering to something that it contained potential but unmanifest in its silence. And yet in all its mutations it will be realised as one, free and above them. The realisation of a sole Reality suffering the imposition of names and forms will give place to that of eternal Being throwing itself out into infinite becoming. All existences will be to the consciousness of the Yogin soul-forms and not merely idea-forms of the Self, of himself, one with him, contained in his universal existence. All the soul-life, mental, vital, bodily existence of all that exists will be to him one indivisible movement and activity of the Being who is the same forever. The Self will be realised as the all in its double aspect of immutable status and mutable activity and it is this that will be seen as the comprehensive truth of our existence.
author class:Sri Aurobindo
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
This Awareness, free from an inside or an outside, is open like the sky.
It is penetrating Wakefulness free from limitations and partiality.
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Within this state of unwavering Awareness,
All that appears and exists, like a reflection,
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Many individuals intuit the Over-Soul (or higher) and yet unpack that intuition, interpret that intuition, in terms merely or solely of the Higher Self, the Inner Voice, the care of the Soul, interior Witnessing, the Universal Mind, pure Awareness, transcendental Consciousness, or similar such Upper-Left quadrant terms. And however true that aspect of the intuition is, this unpacking leaves out, or seriously diminishes, the "we" and the "it" dimensions. It leaves out the social and cultural and objective manifestations: it fails to give a seamless account of the types of community and social service and cultural activity that are inherently demanded by a higher Self; it ignores or neglects the changes in the techno-economic infrastructures that support each and every type of embodied self (whether higher or lower or anything in between); it ignores the overall objective state of affairs or objective reality that does not detract from the Self but is an unavoidable aspect of that Self's very manifestation.
The idea seems to be that if I can just contact my higher Self, then everything else will take care of itself. But this fails miserably to see that Spirit manifests always and simultaneously as the four quadrants of the Kosmos. Spirit (at any level) manifests as a self in a community with social and cultural foundations and objective correlates, and thus any higher Self will inextricably involve a wider community existing in a deeper objective state of affairs.
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This less-than-adequate interpretation makes it appear that the most urgent problem in the modern world is to teach everybody systems theory (or some version of Gaia's web-of-life notions, or some version of the "new physics"), instead of seeing that what is required is an understanding of the interior stages of consciousness development. Gaia's main problem is not toxic waste dumps, ozone depletion, or biospheric pollution. These global problems can only be recognized and responded to from a global, worldcentric Awareness, and thus Gaia's main problem is that not enough human beings have developed and evolved from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric, there to realize-and act on-the ecological crisis. Gaia's main problem is not exterior pollution but interior development, which alone can end exterior pollution.
Preconventional/egocentric and conventional/ethnocentric could care less about the global commons; only postconventional/worldcentric can fully see, and effectively respond to, the universal dimensions of the problem (only formop and vision-logic can grasp universal perspectives). Thus, the more we emphasize teaching a merely
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Global problems demand global Awareness, and only interior and Left-Hand stages of development-precisely the domain ignored by flatl and Eco approaches-can even begin to handle the problem.
The pure Eco approach, like its cousin the pure Ego (or pure Self) approach, simply reduces all of Spirit's dimensions to one privileged domain, crippling the full emergence and descent of Spirit itself. Just as the idea in the pure Self camp is that if we simply contact the Higher Self, all our problems will be solved, so the idea in the pure Eco approach is that if we can just demonstrate, once and for all, the unified and holistic nature of the pure Eco, then that will solve all our problems. That forceful demonstration (that Spinozist proof in objective terms) will itself compel all individuals to transform to ultimate unity, or so it is maintained.
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We have an enormous amount of information about how and why those interior psychological transformations occur (egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric), but the Eco camps by and large display no Awareness of, and no interest in, those inner dynamics, fixated as they are on describing exterior mononature in "holistic" terms.
This is most naive, and belies the inadequacy of attempting to change people by altering the object instead of growing the subject. Focusing merely on monological and objective and exterior and scientific terms-no matter how utterly true-beyond a certain point simply detracts away from the fundamental problem, hides the fundamental problem, which is not exterior pollution but interior development.10
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As Plotinus knew: Let the world be quiet. Let the heavens and the earth and the seas be still. Let the world be waiting. Let the self-contraction relax into the empty ground of its own Awareness, and let it there quietly die. See how Spirit pours through each and every opening in the turmoil, and bestows new splendor on the setting Sun and its glorious Earth and all its radiant inhabitants. See the Kosmos dance in Emptiness; see the play of light in all creatures great and small; see finite worlds sing and rejoice in the play of the very Divine, floating on a Glory that renders each transparent, flooded by a Joy that refuses time or terror, that undoes the madness of the loveless self and buries it in splendor.
Indeed, indeed: let the self-contraction relax into the empty ground of its own Awareness, and let it there quietly die. See the Kosmos arise in its place, dancing madly and divine, self-luminous and self-liberating, intoxicated by a
Light that never dawns nor ceases. See the worlds arise and fall, never caught in time or turmoil, transparent images shimmering in the radiant Abyss. Watch the mountain walk on water, drink the Pacific in a single gulp, blink and a billion universes rise and fall, brea the out and create a Kosmos, brea the in and watch it dissolve.
2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our conception of the Knowledge and the Ignorance rejects this negation and the oppositions on which it is founded: it points to a larger if more difficult issue of reconciliation. For we see that these apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form and the Formless, Finite and Infinite, are not so much opposites as complements of each other; not alternating values of the Brahman which in its creation perpetually loses oneness to find itself in multiplicity and, unable to discover itself in multiplicity, loses it again to recover oneness, but double and concurrent values which explain each other; not hopelessly incompatible alternatives, but two faces of the one Reality which can lead us to it by our realisation of both together and not only by testing each separately, - even though such separate testing may be a legitimate or even an inevitable step or part of the process of knowledge. Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: but this is cured by the soul in the Becoming growing into knowledge, into Awareness of the Being which becomes in the multiplicity all these existences and can so become because their truth is already there in its timeless existence. The integral knowledge of Brahman is a consciousness in possession of both together, and the exclusive pursuit of either closes the vision to one side of the truth of the omnipresent Reality. The possession of the Being who is beyond all becomings, brings to us freedom from the bonds of attachment and ignorance in the cosmic existence and brings by that freedom a free possession of the Becoming and of the cosmic existence. The knowledge of the Becoming is a part of knowledge; it acts as an Ignorance only because we dwell imprisoned in it, avidyayam antare, without possessing the Oneness of the Being, which is its base, its stuff, its spirit, its cause of manifestation and without which it could not be possible.
In fact, the Brahman is one not only in a featureless oneness beyond all relation, but in the very multiplicity of the cosmic existence. Aware of the works of the dividing mind but not itself limited by it, It finds its oneness as easily in the many, in relations, in becoming as in any withdrawal from the many, from relations, from becoming. Ourselves also, to possess even its oneness fully, must possess it - since it is there, since all is that - in the infinite self-variation of the cosmos. The infinity of the multiplicity finds itself explained and justified only when it is contained and possessed in the infinity of the One; but also the infinity of the One pours itself out and possesses itself in the infinity of the Many. To be capable of that outpouring of its energies as well as not to lose itself in it, not to recoil defeated from its boundlessness and endlessness of vicissitudes and differences as well as not to be self-divided by its variations, is the divine strength of the free Purusha, the conscious Soul in its possession of its own immortal self-knowledge. The finite selfvariations of the Self in which the mind losing self-knowledge is caught and dispersed among the variations, are yet not the denials but the endless expression of the Infinite and have no other meaning or reason for existence: the Infinite too, while it possesses its delight of limitless being, finds also the joy of that very limitlessness in its infinite self-definition in the universe.
2.16 - Oneness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But at the same time the integral knowledge gives us the Awareness of that infinite existence as the conscious-force which creates and governs the worlds and manifests itself in their works; it reveals the Self-existent in his universal conscious-will as the Lord, the Ishwara. It enables us to unite our will with His, to realise His will in the energies of all existences and to perceive the fulfilment of these energies of others as part of our own universal self-fulfilment. Thus it removes the reality of strife and division and opposition and leaves only their appearances. By that knowledge therefore we arrive at the possibility of a divine action, a working which is personal to our nature, but impersonal to our being, since it proceeds from That which is beyond our ego and acts only by its universal sanction. We proceed in our works with equality, without bondage to works and their results, in unison with the Highest, in unison with the universal, free from separate responsibility for our acts and therefore unaffected by their reactions. This which we have seen to be the fulfilment of the path of Works becomes thus an annexe and result of the path of Knowledge.
The integral knowledge again reveals to us the Self-existent as the All-blissful who, as Sachchidananda manifesting the world, manifesting all beings, accepts their adoration, even as He accepts their works of aspiration and their seekings of knowledge, leans down to them and drawing them to Himself takes all into the joy of His divine being. Knowing Him as our divine Self, we become one with Him, as the lover and beloved become one, in the ecstasy of that embrace. Knowing Him too in all beings, perceiving the glory and beauty and joy of the Beloved everywhere, we transform our souls into a passion of universal delight and a wideness and joy of universal love. All this which, as we shall find, is the summit of the path of Devotion, becomes also an annexe and result of the path of Knowledge.
2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness, Delight of Existence, not at first in its essence or totality but in evolutionary forms that express or disguise it. Out of the Inconscient, Existence appears in a first evolutionary form as substance of Matter created by an inconscient Energy. Consciousness, involved and non-apparent in Matter, first emerges in the disguise of vital vibrations, animate but subconscient; then, in imperfect formulations of a conscient life, it strives towards self-finding through successive forms of that material substance, forms more and more adapted to its own completer expression. Consciousness in life, throwing off the primal insensibility of a material inanimation and nescience, labours to find itself more and more entirely in the Ignorance which is its first inevitable formulation; but it achieves at first only a primary mental perception and a vital Awareness of self and things, a life perception which in its first forms depends on an internal sensation responsive to the contacts of other life and of Matter. Consciousness labours to manifest as best it can through the inadequacy of sensation its own inherent delight of being; but it can only formulate a partial pain and pleasure. In man the energising Consciousness appears as Mind more clearly aware of itself and things; this is still a partial and limited, not an integral power of itself, but a first conceptive potentiality and promise of integral emergence is visible. That integral emergence is the goal of evolving Nature.
Man is there to affirm himself in the universe, that is his first business, but also to evolve and finally to exceed himself: he has to enlarge his partial being into a complete being, his partial consciousness into an integral consciousness; he has to achieve mastery of his environment but also world-union and world-harmony; he has to realise his individuality but also to enlarge it into a cosmic self and a universal and spiritual delight of existence. A transformation, a chastening and correction of all that is obscure, erroneous and ignorant in his mentality, an ultimate arrival at a free and wide harmony and luminousness of knowledge and will and feeling and action and character, is the evident intention of his nature; it is the ideal which the creative Energy has imposed on his intelligence, a need implanted by her in his mental and vital substance. But this can only be accomplished by his growing into a larger being and a larger consciousness: self-enlargement, self-fulfilment, self-evolution from what he partially and temporarily is in his actual and apparent nature to what he completely is in his secret self and spirit and therefore can become even in his manifest existence, is the object of his creation. This hope is the justification of his life upon earth amidst the phenomena of the cosmos. The outer apparent man, an ephemeral being subject to the constraints of his material embodiment and imprisoned in a limited mentality, has to become the inner real Man, master of himself and his environment and universal in his being. In a more vivid and less metaphysical language, the natural man has to evolve himself into the divine Man; the sons of Death have to know themselves as the children of Immortality. It is on this account that the human birth can be described as the turning-point in the evolution, the critical stage in earth-nature.
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That object is to become, to be conscious, to increase continually in our realised being and Awareness of self and things, in our actualised force and joy of being, and to express that becoming dynamically in such an action on the world and ourselves that we and it shall grow more and always yet more towards the highest possible reach, largest possible breadth of universality and infinity. All man's age-long effort, his action, society, art, ethics, science, religion, all the manifold activities by which he expresses and increases his mental, vital, physical, spiritual existence, are episodes in the vast drama of this endeavour of Nature and have behind their limited apparent aims no other true sense or foundation. For the individual to arrive at the divine universality and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express that alone in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient seers of the Veda meant by the Knowledge; that was the Immortality which they set before man as his divine culmination.
But by the nature of his mentality, by his inlook into himself and his outlook on the world, by his original limitation in both through sense and body to the relative, the obvious and the apparent, man is obliged to move step by step and at first obscurely and ignorantly in this immense evolutionary movement. It is not possible for him to envisage being at first in the completeness of its unity: it presents itself to him through diversity, and his search for knowledge is preoccupied with three principal categories which sum up for him all its diversity; himself, - man or individual soul, - God, and Nature. The first is that of which alone he is directly aware in his normal ignorant being; he sees himself, the individual, separate apparently in its existence, yet always inseparable from the rest of being, striving to be sufficient, yet always insufficient to itself, since never has it been known to come into existence or to exist or to culminate in its existence apart from the rest, without their aid and independently of universal being and universal nature.
2.18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The first foundation is Matter; the ascent is that of Nature; the integration is an at first unconscious or half-conscious automatic change of Nature by Nature. But as soon as a more completely conscious participation of the being has begun in these workings of Nature, a change in the functioning of the process is inevitable. The physical foundation of Matter remains, but Matter can no longer be the foundation of the consciousness; consciousness itself will be no longer in its origin a welling up from the Inconscient or a concealed flow from an occult inner subliminal force under the pressure of contacts from the universe. The foundation of the developing existence will be the new spiritual status above or the unveiled soul status within us; it is a flow of light and knowledge and will from above and a reception from within that will determine the reactions of the being to cosmic experience. The whole concentration of the being will be shifted from below upwards and from without inwards; our higher and inner being now unknown to us will become ourselves, and the outer or surface being which we now take for ourselves will be only an open front or an annexe through which the true being meets the universe. The outer world itself will become inward to the spiritual Awareness, a part of itself, intimately embraced in a knowledge and feeling of unity and identity, penetrated by an intuitive regard of the mind, responded to by the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness, taken into an achieved integrality. The old inconscient foundation itself will be made conscious in us by the inflow of light and Awareness from above and its depths annexed to the heights of the spirit. An integral consciousness will become the basis of an entire harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification, integration of the being and the nature.
2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This Awareness, this control are of the utmost importance. For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us, - the infernal also, - has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.
The part of us that we have characterised as intraconscient and circumconscient is a still more potent and much more valuable element in the constitution of our being. It includes the large action of an inner intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, even of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness, which is not brought to the front, which is subliminal, in the modern phrase. But when we can enter and explore this hidden self, we find that our waking sense and intelligence are for the most part a selection from what we secretly are or can be, an exteriorised and much mutilated and vulgarised edition of our real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between the Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind which have been created by the involutionary descent and whose pressure has helped to bring about the evolution of mind and life in Matter.
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In the superconscience beyond our present level of Awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts of Mind from which we already receive, but without knowing the source, much of our larger mental movements, those, especially, that come with a greater power and light, the revelatory, the inspirational, the intuitive. On these mental heights, in these largenesses, if the consciousness could succeed in reaching them or maintain and centre itself there, something of the direct presence and power of the spirit, something even - however secondary or indirect - of the supermind could receive a first expression, could make itself initially manifest, could intervene in the government of our lower being and help to remould it. Afterwards, by the force of that remoulded consciousness, the course of our evolution could rise by a sublimer ascent and get beyond the mental into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature. It is possible without an actual ascent into these at present superconscient mental planes or without a constant or permanent living in them, by openness to them, by reception of their knowledge and influences, to get rid to a certain extent of our constitutional and psychological ignorance; it is possible to be aware of ourselves as spiritual beings and to spiritualise, though imperfectly, our normal human life and consciousness. There could be a conscious communication and guidance from this greater more luminous mentality and a reception of its enlightening and transforming forces. That is within the reach of the highly developed or the spiritually awakened human being; but it would not be more than a preliminary stage. To reach an integral self-knowledge, an entire consciousness and power of being, there is necessary an ascent beyond the plane of our normal mind. Such an ascent is at present possible in an absorbed superconscience; but that could lead only to an entry into the higher levels in a state of immobile or ecstatic trance. If the control of that highest spiritual being is to be brought into our waking life, there must be a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action, a taking up - as integral as possible - of our present being, consciousness, activities and a transmutation of them into divine values which would effect a transfiguration of our human existence. For wherever a radical transition has to be made, there is always this triple movement - ascent, widening of field and base, integration - in Nature's method of self-transcendence.
Any such evolutionary change must necessarily be associated with a rejection of our present narrowing temporal ignorance. For not only do we now live from moment to moment of time, but our whole view is limited to our life in the present body between a single birth and death. As our regard does not go farther back in the past, so it does not extend farther out into the future; thus we are limited by our physical memory and Awareness of the present life in a transient corporeal formation.
But this limitation of our temporal consciousness is intimately dependent upon the preoccupation of our mentality with the material plane and life in which it is at present acting; the limitation is not a law of the spirit but a temporary provision for an intended first working of our manifested nature. If the preoccupation is relaxed or put aside, an extension of the mind effected, an opening into the subliminal and superconscient, into the inner and higher being created, it is possible to realise our persistent existence in time as well as our eternal existence beyond it. This is essential if we are to get our self-knowledge into the right focus; for at present our whole consciousness and action are vitiated by an error of spiritual perspective which prevents us from seeing in right proportion and relation the nature, purpose and conditions of our being. A belief in immortality is made so vital a point in most religions because it is a self-evident necessity if we are to rise above the identity with the body and its preoccupation with the material level.
2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness waves of ecstatic love arise:
Rapture divine! Play of God's Bliss!
2.2.01 - The Problem of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Existence would be a fact without significance, the universe an inanimate machine turning for ever - or for a time, - without any reason or issue in its turning. For it to have any significance there must be either a Mind or some other kind of Awareness that observes it, originates it perhaps, has joy in its turning, works out something by the turning of the machine for its own satisfaction or dissatisfaction; or there must be a consciousness that emerges by the turning and reveals being and energy to themselves and leads them to some kind of fulfilment. Even if it is only a temporary consciousness that emerges, yet that must be the one significant fact of being, the one thing that lights up its movements, makes it aware of itself, raises it to something that is more than a mere dead or blank self-existence, a One or a Many that is yet worth no more than a zero.
Even if what fundamentally is in being, is not consciousness but a superconscience, yet that must be one supreme kind of self Awareness, if not also all- Awareness; for otherwise there would be no difference between superconscience and inconscience; the two would be only top-side and bottom-side of the same blank, yet mysteriously but vainly fruitful reality.
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Well, be it so; but still this mentality creates an Awareness of self and things and the movements of self and things, even if both be only a body and so many other bodies, and it is difficult to describe Awareness as an inconscient movement or condition or as the inconscient seeming to be conscious. Evidently we are in face of a general sophism invented by specialists of a limited field of data, the data of inconscient Matter, who are determined to force everything into its characteristic formulas and refuse to admit everything else. We must at least recover the right to see this Awareness and its movements as they are or as they present themselves to us and see how far it leads us and whether indeed, even if it occurs in matter and the body, it does not lead us to something other than the body and other than Matter.
The materialist contention that consciousness is not a separate power or force or manifestation of energy like electricity or magnetism or steam, but only a name for a particular bundle of brain phenomena, cannot hide the startling fact that inconscient and insentient Matter has become sentient and conscient even if it be only at points, in jets, in small masses.
This Awareness has created at least the appearance of a
The Problem of Consciousness
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All exists in an infinite conscious existence and is a part or a form of it. In proportion as one can share directly or indirectly, completely or incompletely in the eternal Awareness of this Infinite, or momentarily contact or enter into it, or formulate some
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superior or inferior power of its consciousness or knowledge, one can know what it knows, in part or whole, by a direct knowing or an indirect coming to knowledge. A conscious, half conscious or subconscious participation in the Awareness of the
Infinite is the basis of all knowledge.
2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But whence then comes consciousness? How can things in their very nature inconscient and unaware become conscious or develop some kind of Awareness? There is here a contradiction which is inexplicable and the more we look at it, becomes more and more inexplicable.
This is possible because inconscience is a phenomenon not a fundamental reality. A phenomenon is something that appears to us, but does not show to us the whole reality of existence or of its own existence; it is a front, a face, a circumstance of something more than itself that does not appear but is - the
2.2.03 - The Science of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Taking this separative basis of waking consciousness for itself and for a reality, the house of imprisoned Awareness from which it looks at the world, it is bound to see objects as external to this Awareness and this conscious vision. Embodied mind is as if a walled house were to have a thinking soul and spirit
(air and ether) and look at things not in itself as things outside through windows (the senses), receive the touches of the outside air (nervous life-impacts) as if other than the air in itself; even its own ether as other than the rest of ether (my soul and other souls). This is the self and not-self of our mentality.
2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This may be done, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the physical self and its preoccupation with physical nature and through concentration of thought and will raising oneself into the vital and then into the mental self. By doing so we can become the vital being and draw up the physical self into that new consciousness, so that we are only aware of the body, its nature and its actions as secondary circumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for its relations with the material world. A certain remoteness from physical being and then a superiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument or shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our desires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of which we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; all Awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact with the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new powers, -- what are usually called occult-powers or Siddhis; a close sense of and sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a knowledge or sensation of the emotions, desires, vital impulses of others, these are some of the signs of this new consciousness gained by Yoga.
But all this belongs to the inferior grades of spiritual experience and indeed is hardly more spiritual than the physical existence. We have in the same way to go yet higher and raise ourselves into the mental self. By doing so we call become the mental self and draw up the physical and vital being into it, so that life and body and their operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used by tile Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower purposes that belong to the material existence. Here too we acquire at first a certain remoteness from the life and the body and our real life seems to be on quite another plane than material man's, in contact with a subtler existence, a greater light of knowledge than the terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign energy; we are ill touch in fact with the mental plane, aware of the mental worlds, can be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane we behold the desire-world and the material existence as if below us, things that we can cast away from us if we will and in fact easily reject when we relinquish the body, so as to dwell in the mental or psychical heavens. But we can also, instead of being thus remote and detached, become rather superior to the life and body and the vital and material planes and act upon them with mastery from our new height of being. Another sort of dynamis than physical or vital energy, something that we may call pure mind-power and soul-force, which the developed human being uses indeed but derivatively and imperfectly, but which we can now use freely and with knowledge, becomes the ordinary process of our action, while desire-force and physical action fall into a secondary place and are only used with this new energy behind them and as its occasional channels. We are in touch and sympathy also with the Mind in cosmos, conscious of it, aware of the intentions, directions, thought-forces, struggle of subtle powers behind all happenings, which the ordinary marl is ignorant of or can only obscurely infer from the physical happening, but which we can now see and feel directly before there is any physical sign or even vital intimation of their working. We acquire too the knowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether on the physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities of the mental being, -- occult powers or Siddhis, but of a much rarer or subtler kind than those proper to the vital plane, -- naturally awake in our consciousness.
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"A man will cherish the illusion that he is the doer as long as he has not seen God, as long as he has not touched the Philosopher's Stone. So long will he know the distinction between his good and bad actions. This Awareness of distinction is due to God's my; and it is necessary for the purpose of running His illusory world. But a man can realize God if he takes shelter under His Vidy-my and follows the path of righteousness. He who knows God and realizes Him is able to go beyond my. He who firmly believes that God alone is the Doer and he himself a mere instrument is a jivanmukta, a free soul though living in a body. I said this to Keshab Chandra Sen."
GIRISH (to the doctor): "How do you know that free will exists?"
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "And that one-'Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness'."
Narendra sang:
Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness waves of ecstatic love arise:
Rapture divine! Play of God's Bliss!
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Dr. Sarkar listened to the songs attentively. When the singing was over, he said, 'That's a nice one- 'Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness'."
At the sight of the doctor's joy, Sri Ramakrishna said: "The son said to the father, 'Father, you taste a little wine, and after that, if you ask me to give up drinking, I shall do so.' After drinking the wine, the father said: 'Son, you may give it up. I have no objection. But I am certainly not going to give it up myself!' (The doctor and the others laugh.)
2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we scrutinise the intimations of supraphysical worldrealities which we receive in our inner experience and compare with it the account of such intimations that has continued to come down to us from the beginnings of human knowledge, and if we attempt an interpretation and a summarised order, we shall find that what this inner experience most intimately conveys to us is the existence and action upon us of larger planes of being and consciousness than the purely material plane, with its restricted existence and action, of which we are aware in our narrow terrestrial formula. These domains of larger being are not altogether remote and separate from our own being and consciousness; for, though they subsist in themselves and have their own play and process and formulations of existence and experience, yet at the same time they penetrate and envelop the physical plane with their invisible presence and influences, and their powers seem to be here in the material world itself behind its action and objects. There are two main orders of experience in our contact with them; one is purely subjective, though in its subjectivity sufficiently vivid and palpable, the other is more objective. In the subjective order, we find that what shapes itself to us as a life-intention, life-impulse, life-formulation here, already exists in a larger, more subtle, more plastic range of possibilities, and these pre-existent forces and formations are pressing upon us to realise themselves in the physical world also; but only a part succeeds in getting through and even that emerges partially in a form and circumstance more proper to the system of terrestrial law and sequence. This precipitation takes place, normally, without our knowledge; we are not aware of the action of these Powers, Forces and Influences upon us, but take them as formations of our own life and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them and strives not to be mastered: but when we go inwards away from the restricted surface consciousness and develop a subtler sense and deeper Awareness, we begin to get an intimation of the origin of these movements and are able to watch their action and process, to accept or reject or modify, to allow them passage and use of our mind and will and our life and members or refuse it. In the same way we become aware of larger domains of mind, a play, experience, formation of a greater plasticity, a teeming profusion of all possible mental formulations, and we feel their contacts with us and their powers and influences acting upon our parts of mind in the same occult manner as those others that act upon our parts of life. This kind of experience is, primarily, of a purely subjective character, a pressure of ideas, suggestions, emotional formations, impulsions to sensation, action, dynamic experience. However large a part of this pressure may be traced to our own subliminal self or to the siege of universal Mindforces or Life-forces belonging to our own world, there is an element which bears the stamp of another origin, an insistent supraterrestrial character.
But the contacts do not stop here: for there is also an opening of our mind and life parts to a great range of subjectiveobjective experiences in which these planes present themselves no longer as extensions of subjective being and consciousness, but as worlds; for the experiences there are organised as they are in our own world, but on a different plan, with a different process and law of action and in a substance which belongs to a supraphysical Nature. This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world's life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these beings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul's self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings,
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There may also be an Awareness of influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds beyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial nature.
As contact with the supraphysical is possible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective - or at least objectivised - between our own consciousness and the consciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysical status in these other regions of existence. It is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a subtle-sense perception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter actually into other worlds and know something of their secrets. It is the more objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of experience.
2.2.2 - The Mandoukya Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
is unseen and incommunicable, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, and unnameable, Whose essentiality is Awareness
of the Self in its single existence, in Whom all phenomena
2.22 - Vijnana or Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we would describe the gnosis as it is in its own Awareness, not thus imperfectly as it is to us in contrast with our own reason and intelligence, it is hardly possible to speak of it except in figures and symbols. And first we must remember that the gnostic level, Mahat, Vijnana, is not the supreme plane of our consciousness but a middle or link plane. Interposed between the triune glory of the utter Spirit, the infinite existence, consciousness and bliss of the Eternal and our lower triple being and nature, it is as if it stood there as the mediating, formulated, organising and creative wisdom, power and joy of the Eternal. In the gnosis Sachchidananda gathers up the light of his unseizable existence and pours it out on the soul in the shape and power of a divine knowledge, a divine will and a divine bliss of existence. It is as if infinite light were gathered up into the compact orb of the sun and lavished on all that depends upon the sun in radiances that continue for ever. But the gnosis is not only light, it is force; it is creative knowledge, it is the self-effective truth of the divine Idea. This idea is not creative imagination, not something that constructs in void, but light and power of eternal substance, truth-light full of truth-force; and it brings out what is latent in being, it does not create a fiction that never was in being. The ideation of the gnosis is radiating light-stuff of the consciousness of the eternal Existence; each ray is a truth. The will in the gnosis is a conscious force of eternal knowledge; it throws the consciousness and substance of being into infallible forms of truth-power, forms that embody the idea and make it faultlessly effective, and it works out each truth-power and each truth-form spontaneously and rightly according to its nature. Because it carries this creative force of the divine Idea, the Sun, the lord arid symbol of the gnosis, is described in the Veda as the Light which is the father of all things, Surya Savitri, the Wisdom-Luminous who is the bringer-out into manifest existence. This creation is inspired by the divine delight, the eternal Ananda; it is full of the joy of its own truth and power, it creates in bliss, creates out of bliss, creates that which is blissful. Therefore the world of the gnosis, the supramental world is the true and the happy creation, rtam, bhadram, since all in it shares in the perfect joy that made it. A divine radiance of undeviating knowledge, a divine power of unfaltering will and a divine ease of unstumbling bliss are the nature or prakriti of the soul in supermind, in vijnana. The stuff of the gnostic or supramental plane is made of the perfect absolutes of all that is here imperfect and relative and its movement of the reconciled interlockings and happy fusions of all that here are opposites. For behind the appearance of these opposites are their truths and the truths of the eternal are not in conflict with each other; our mind's and life's opposites transformed in the supermind into their own true spirit link together and are seen as tones and colourings of an eternal Reality and everlasting Ananda. supermind or gnosis is the supreme Truth, the supreme Thought, the supreme Word, the supreme Light, the supreme Will-Idea; it is the inner and outer extension of the Infinite who is beyond Space, the unfettered Time of the Eternal who is timeless, the supernal harmony of all absolutes of the Absolute.
To the envisaging mind there are three powers of the Vijnana. Its supreme power knows and receives into it from above all the infinite existence, consciousness and bliss of the ' Ishwara; it is in its highest height the absolute knowledge and force of eternal Sachchidananda. Its second power concentrates the Infinite into a dense luminous consciousness, caitanyaghana or cidghana, the seed-state of the divine consciousness in which are contained living and concrete all the immutable principles of the divine being and all the inviolable truths of the divine conscious-idea and nature. Its third power brings or looses out these things by the effective ideation, vision, au thentic identities of the divine knowledge, movement of the divine will-force, vibration of the divine delight-intensities into a universal harmony, an illimitable diversity, a manifold rhythm of their powers, forms and interplay of living consequences. The mental Purusha rising into the vijnanamaya must ascend into these three powers. It must turn by conversion of its movements into the movements of the gnosis, its mental perception, ideation, will, pleasure into radiances of the divine knowledge, pulsations of the divine will-force, waves and floods of the divine delight-seas. It must convert its conscious stuff of mental nature into the cidghara or dense self-luminous consciousness. It must transform its conscious substance into a gnostic self or Truth-self of infinite Sachchidananda. These three movements are described in the lsha Upanishad, the first as vyuha, the marshalling of the rays of the Sun of gnosis in the order of the Truth-consciousness, the second as samuha, the gathering together of the rays into the body of the Sun of gnosis, the third as the vision of that Sun's fairest form of all in which the soul most intimately possesses its oneness with the infinite Purusha.467 The Supreme above, in him, around, everywhere and the soul dwelling in the Supreme and one with it, -- the infinite power and truth of the Divine concentrated in his own concentrated luminous soul nature, -- a radiant activity of the divine knowledge, will and joy perfect in the natural action of the prakriti, -- this is the fundamental experience of the mental being transformed and fulfilled and sublimated in the perfection of the gnosis.
2.23 - The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But this centre and this action are free, not bound, not dependent on the physical machine, not clamped to a narrow ego-sense. It is not involved in body; it is not shut up in a separated individuality feeling out for clumsy contacts with the world out or groping inward for its own deeper spirit. For in this great transformation we begin to have a consciousness not shut up in a generating box but diffused freely and extending self-existently everywhere; there is or may be a centre, but it is a convenience for individual action, not rigid, not constitutive or separative. The very nature of our conscious activities is henceforth universal; one with those of the universal being, it proceeds from universality to a supple and variable individualisation. It has become the Awareness of an infinite being who acts always universally though with emphasis on an individual formation of its energies. But this emphasis is differential rather than separative, and this formation is no longer what we now understand by individuality; there is no longer a petty limited constructed person shut up in the formula of his own mechanism. This state of consciousness is so abnormal to our present mode of being that to the rational man who does not possess it, it may seem impossible or even a state of alienation; but once possessed it vindicates itself even to the mental intelligence by its greater calm, freedom, light, power, effectivity of will, verifiable truth of ideation and feeling. For this condition begins already on the higher levels of liberated mind and can therefore be partly sensed and understood by mind-intelligence, only when it leaves behind the mental levels, but it rises to perfect self-possession only in the supramental gnosis.
In this state of consciousness the infinite becomes to us the .primal, the actual reality, the one thing immediately and sensibly true. It becomes impossible for us to think of or realise the finite apart from our fundamental sense of the infinite, in which alone the finite can live, can form itself, can have any reality or duration. So long as this finite mind and body are to our consciousness the first fact of our existence and the foundation of all our thinking, feeling and willing and so long as things finite are the normal reality from which we can rise occasionally, or even frequently, to all idea and sense of the infinite, we are still very far away from the gnosis. In the plane of the gnosis the infinite is-at once our normal consciousness of being, its first fact, our sensible substance. It is very concretely to us there the foundation from which everything finite forms itself and its boundless incalculable forces are the origination of all our thought, will and delight. But this infinite is not only an infinite of pervasion or of extension in which everything forms and happens. Behind that immeasurable extension the gnostic consciousness is always aware of a spaceless inner infinite. It is through this double infinite that we shall arrive at the essential being of Sachchidananda, the highest self of our own being and the totality of our cosmic existence. There is opened to us an illimitable existence which we feel as if it were an infinity above us to which we attempt to rise and an infinity around us into which we strive to dissolve our separate existence. Afterwards we widen into it and rise into it; we break out of the ego into its largeness and are that for ever. If this liberation is achieved, its power can take, if so we will, increasing possession of our lower being also until even our lowest and perversest activities are refashioned into the truth of the Vijnana.
This is the basis, this sense of the infinite and possession by the infinite, and only when it is achieved, can we progress towards some normality of the supramental ideation, perception, sense, identity, Awareness. For even this sense of the infinite is only a first foundation and much more has to be done before the consciousness can become dynamically gnostic. For the supramental knowledge is the play of a supreme light; there are many other lights, other levels of knowledge higher than human mind which can open in us and receive or reflect something of that effulgence even before we rise into the gnosis. But to comm and or wholly possess it we must first enter into and become the being of the supreme light, our consciousness must be transformed into that consciousness, its principle and power of self- Awareness and all- Awareness by identity must be the very stuff of our existence. For our means and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily be according to the nature of our consciousness and it is the consciousness that must radically change if we are to comm and and not only be occasionally visited by that higher power of knowledge. But it is not confined to a higher thought or the action of a sort of divine reason. It takes up all our present means of knowledge immensely extended, active and effective where they are now debarred, blind, infructuous, and turns them into a high and intense perceptive activity of the Vijnana. Thus it takes up our sense action and illumines it even in its ordinary field so that we get a true sense of things. But also it enables the mind-sense to have a direct perception of the inner as well as the outer phenomenon, to feel and receive or perceive, for instance, the thoughts, feelings, sensations, the nervous reactions of the object on which it is turned.473 It uses the subtle senses as well as the physical and saves them from their errors. It gives us the knowledge, the experience of planes of existence other than the material to which our ordinary mentality is ignorantly attached and it enlarges the world for us. It transforms similarly the sensations and gives them their full intensity as well as their full holding-power; for in our normal mentality the full intensity is impossible because the power to hold and sustain vibrations beyond a certain point is denied to it, mind and body would both break under the shock or the prolonged strain. It takes up too the element of knowledge in our feelings and emotions, -- for our feelings too contain a power of knowledge and a power of effectuation which we do not recognise and do not properly develop, -- and delivers them at the same time from their limitations and from their errors and perversions. For in all things the gnosis is the Truth, the Right, the highest Law, devanam adabdhani vratani.
Knowledge and Force or Will -for all conscious force is will -- are the twin sides of the action of consciousness. In our mentality they are divided. The idea comes first, the will comes stumbling after it or rebels against it or is used as its imperfect tool with imperfect results; or else the will starts up first with a blind or half-seeing idea in it and works out something in confusion of which we get the right understanding afterwards. There is no oneness, no full understanding between these powers in us; or else there is no perfect correspondence of initiation with effectuation. Nor is the individual will in harmony with the universal; it tries to reach beyond it or falls short of it or deviates from and strives against it. It knows not the times and seasons of the Truth, nor its degrees and measures. The Vijnana takes up the will and puts it first into harmony and then into oneness with the truth of the supramental knowledge. In this knowledge the idea in the individual is one with the idea in the universal, because both are brought back to the truth of the supreme Knowledge and the transcendent Will. The gnosis takes up not only our intelligent will, but our wishes, desires, even what we call the lower desires, the instincts, the impulses, the reachings out of sense and sensation and it transforms them. They cease to be wishes and desires, because they cease first to be personal and then cease to be that struggling after the ungrasped which we mean by craving and desire. No longer blind or half-blind reachings out of the instinctive or intelligent mentality, they are transformed into a various action of the Truth-will; and that will acts with an inherent knowledge of the right measures of its decreed action and therefore with an effectivity unknown to our mental willing. Therefore too in the action of the vijnanamaya will there is no place for sin; for all sin is an error of the will, a desire and act of the Ignorance.
2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And what then is the necessity of a still higher step and what difference is there between the soul in gnosis and the soul in the Bliss? There is no essential difference, but yet a difference, because there is a transfer to another consciousness and a certain reversal in position, -- for each step of the ascent from Matter to the highest Existence there is a reversal of consciousness. The soul no longer looks up to something beyond it, but is in it and from it looks down on all that it was before. On all planes indeed the Ananda can be discovered because everywhere it exists and is the same. Even there is a repetition of the Ananda plane on each lower world of consciousness. But in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical Awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities. The gnosis has on the contrary a dense light of essential consciousness483a in which the intense fullness of the Ananda can be. And when the form of gnosis is dissolved into the Ananda, it is not annulled altogether, but undergoes a natural change by which the soul is carried up into its last and absolute freedom; for it casts itself into the absolute existence of the spirit and is enlarged into its own entirely self-existent bliss infinitudes. The gnosis has the infinite and absolute as the conscious source, accompaniment, condition, standard, field and atmosphere of all its activities, it possesses it as its base, fount, constituent material, indwelling and inspiring Presence; but in its action it seems to stand out from it as its operation, as the rhythmical working of its activities, as a divine Maya483b or Wisdom-Formation of the Eternal. Gnosis is the divine Knowledge-Will of the divine Consciousness-Force; it is harmonic consciousness and action of prakriti-Purusha -- full of the delight of the divine existence. In the Ananda the knowledge goes back from these willed harmonies into pure self-consciousness, the will dissolves into pure transcendent force and both are taken up into the pure delight of the Infinite. The basis of the gnostic existence is the self-stuff and self-form of the Ananda.
This in the ascension takes place because there is here completed the transition to the absolute unity of which the gnosis is the decisive step, but not the final resting-place. In the gnosis the soul is aware of its infinity and lives in it, yet it lives also in a working centre for the individual play of the Infinite. It realises its identity with all existences, but it keeps a distinction without difference by which it can have also the contact with them in a certain diverseness. This is that distinction for the joy of contact which in the mind becomes not only difference, but in its self-experience division from our other selves, in its spiritual being a sense of loss of self one with us in others and a reaching after the felicity it has forfeited, in life a compromise between egoistic self-absorption and a blind seeking out for the lost oneness. In its infinite consciousness, the gnostic soul creates a sort of voluntary limitation for its own wisdom-purposes; it has even its particular luminous aura of being in which it moves, although beyond that it enters into all things and identifies itself with all being and all existences. In the Ananda all is reversed, the centre disappears. In the bliss nature there is no centre, nor any voluntary or imposed circumference, but all is, all are one equal being, one identical spirit. The bliss soul finds and feels itself everywhere; it has no mansion, is ahiketa, or has the all for its mansion, or, if it likes, it has all things for its many mansions open to each other for ever. All other selves are entirely its own selves, in action as well as in essence. The joy of contact in diverse oneness becomes altogether the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness. Existence is no longer formulated in the terms of the Knowledge, because the known and knowledge and the knower are wholly one self here and, since all possesses all All in the gnostic existence is real, spiritually concrete, eternally verifiable. in an intimate identity beyond the closest closeness, there is no need of what we call knowledge. All the consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite. In this absolute truth of its being the eternal soul of Ananda lives, here deformed by contrary phenomena, there brought back and transfigured into their reality.
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When spirituality disengages itself in the consciousness and puts on its distinctive character, it is only at first a small kernel, a growing tendency, an exceptional light of experience amidst the great mass of normal unenlightened human mind, vitality, physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses our natural preoccupation. There are tentative beginnings and a slow evolution and hesitating emergence. An earlier first preliminary form of it creates a certain kind of religiosity which is not the pure spiritual temperament, but is of the nature of mind or life seeking or finding in itself a spiritual support or factor; in this stage man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation of such contacts as he can get or construct with what is beyond him to help or serve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests; the true turn to some spiritual change has not come. The first true formations take the shape of a spiritualisation of our natural activities, a permeating influence on them or a direction: there is a preparatory influence or influx in some part or tendency of the mind or life, - a spiritualised turn of thought with uplifting illuminations, or a spiritualised turn of the emotional or the aesthetic being, a spiritualised ethical formation in the character, a spiritualised urge in some life-action or other dynamic vital movement of the nature. An Awareness comes perhaps of an inner light, of a guidance or a communion, of a greater Control than the mind and will to which something in us obeys; but all is not yet recast in the mould of that experience. But when these intuitions and illuminations grow in insistence and canalise themselves, make a strong inner formation and claim to govern the whole life and take over the nature, then there begins the spiritual formation of the being; there emerges the saint, the devotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of God, the soldier of the spirit. All these take their stand on one part of the natural being lifted up by a spiritual light, power or ecstasy. The sage and seer live in the spiritual mind, their thought or their vision is governed and moulded by an inner or a greater divine light of knowledge; the devotee lives in the spiritual aspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its seeking; the saint is moved by the awakened psychic being in the inner heart grown powerful to govern the emotional and vital being; the others stand in the vital kinetic nature driven by a higher spiritual energy and turned by it towards an inspired action, a God-given work or mission, the service of some divine Power, idea or ideal. The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realised the Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness, passed into union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts life and action, acts by the light and energy of the Power within him working through his human instruments of Nature. The largest formulation of this spiritual change and achievement is a total liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality.10 The spiritual evolution of the individual has then found its way and thrown up its range of Himalayan eminences and its peaks of highest nature. Beyond this height and largeness there opens only the supramental ascent or the incommunicable Transcendence.
This then has been up till now the course of Nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being, and it may be questioned what is the exact sum of this achievement and its actual significance. In the recent reaction towards the life of the mind in Matter, this great direction and this rare change have been stigmatised as no true evolution of consciousness but rather a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution, which should be solely an evolution of life-power, the practical physical mind, the reason governing thought and conduct and the discovering and organising intelligence. In this epoch religion was pushed aside as an out-of-date superstition and spiritual realisation and experience discredited as a shadowy mysticism; the mystic in this view is the man who turns aside into the unreal, into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras and loses his way there. This judgment proceeds from a view of things which is itself bound to pass into discredit, because it depends ultimately on the false perception of the material as alone real and the outward life as alone of importance.
2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A second approach made by the soul to the direct contact is through the heart: this is its own more close and rapid way because its occult seat is there, just behind in the heart-centre, in close contact with the emotional being in us; it is consequently through the emotions that it can act best at the beginning with its native power, with its living force of concrete experience. It is through a love and adoration of the All-beautiful and Allblissful, the All-Good, the True, the spiritual Reality of love, that the approach is made; the aesthetic and emotional parts join together to offer the soul, the life, the whole nature to that which they worship. This approach through adoration can get its full power and impetus only when the mind goes beyond impersonality to the Awareness of a supreme Personal Being: then all becomes intense, vivid, concrete; the heart's emotion, feeling, spiritualised sense reach their absolute; an entire selfgiving becomes possible, imperative. The nascent spiritual man makes his appearance in the emotional nature as the devotee, the bhakta; if, in addition, he becomes directly aware of his soul and its dictates, unites his emotional with his psychic personality and changes his life and vital parts by purity, God-ecstasy, the love of God and men and all creatures into a thing of spiritual beauty, full of divine light and good, he develops into the saint and reaches the highest inner experience and most considerable change of nature proper to this way of approach to the Divine Being. But for the purpose of an integral transformation this too is not enough; there must be a transmutation of the thinking mind and all the vital and physical parts of consciousness in their own character.
This larger change can be partly attained by adding to the experiences of the heart a consecration of the pragmatic will which must succeed in carrying with it - for otherwise it cannot be effective - the adhesion of the dynamic vital part which supports the mental dynamis and is our first instrument of outer action. This consecration of the will in works proceeds by a gradual elimination of the ego-will and its motive-power of desire; the ego subjects itself to some higher law and finally effaces itself, seems not to exist or exists only to serve a higher Power or a higher Truth or to offer its will and acts to the Divine Being as an instrument. The law of being and action or the light of Truth which then guides the seeker, may be a clarity or power or principle which he perceives on the highest height of which his mind is capable; or it may be a truth of the divine Will which he feels present and working within him or guiding him by a Light or a Voice or a Force or a divine Person or Presence. In the end by this way one arrives at a consciousness in which one feels the Force or Presence acting within and moving or governing all the actions and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will, Truth-Power or Truth-Presence. A combination of all these three approaches, the approach of the mind, the approach of the will, the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating us.
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Even before the tranquillising purification of the outer nature has been effected or before it is sufficient, one can still break down the wall screening our inner being from our outer Awareness by a strong force of call and aspiration, a vehement will or violent effort or an effective discipline or process; but this may be a premature movement and is not without its serious dangers. In entering within one may find oneself amidst a chaos of unfamiliar and supernormal experiences to which one has not the key or a press of subliminal or cosmic forces, subconscient, mental, vital, subtle-physical, which may unduly sway or chaotically drive the being, encircle it in a cave of darkness, or keep it wandering in a wilderness of glamour, allurement, deception, or push it into an obscure battlefield full of secret and treacherous and misleading or open and violent oppositions; beings and voices and influences may appear to the inner sense and vision and hearing claiming to be the Divine Being or His messengers or Powers and Godheads of the Light or guides of the path to realisation, while in truth they are of a very different character. If there is too much egoism in the nature of the seeker or a strong passion or an excessive ambition, vanity or other dominating weakness, or an obscurity of the mind or a vacillating will or a weakness of the life-force or an unsteadiness in it or want of balance, he is likely to be seized on through these deficiencies and to be frustrated or to deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past spiritual experience and have been met by imposing the necessity of initiation, of discipline, of methods of purification and testing by ordeal, of an entire submission to the directions of the path-finder or path-leader, one who has realised the Truth and himself possesses and is able to communicate the light, the experience, a guide who is strong to take by the hand and carry over difficult passages as well as to instruct and point out the way. But even so the dangers will be there and can only be surmounted if there is or there grows up a complete sincerity, a will for purity, a readiness for obedience to the Truth, for surrender to the Highest, a readiness to lose or to subject to a divine yoke the limiting and self-affirming ego. These things are the sign that the true will for realisation, for conversion of the consciousness, for transformation is there, the necessary stage of the evolution has been reached: in that condition the defects of nature which belong to the human being cannot be a permanent obstacle to the change from the mental to the spiritual status; the process may never be entirely easy, but the way will have been made open and practicable.
One effective way often used to facilitate this entry into the inner self is the separation of the Purusha, the conscious being, from the Prakriti, the formulated nature. If one stands back from the mind and its activities so that they fall silent at will or go on as a surface movement of which one is the detached and disinterested witness, it becomes possible eventually to realise oneself as the inner Self of mind, the true and pure mental being, the Purusha; by similarly standing back from the life activities, it is possible to realise oneself as the inner Self of life, the true and pure vital being, the Purusha; there is even a Self of body of which, by standing back from the body and its demands and activities and entering into a silence of the physical consciousness watching the action of its energy, it is possible to become aware, a true and pure physical being, the Purusha. So too, by standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together, it becomes possible to realise one's inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. This will lead to a spiritual realisation and liberation, but will not necessarily bring about a transformation; for the Purusha, satisfied to be free and himself, may leave the Nature, the Prakriti, to exhaust its accumulated impetus by an unsupported action, a mechanical continuance not renewed and reinforced or vivified and prolonged by his consent, and use this rejection as a means of withdrawing from all nature. The Purusha has to become not only the witness but the knower and source, the master of all the thought and action, and this can only be partially done so long as one remains on the mental level or has still to use the ordinary instrumentation of mind, life and body. A certain mastery can indeed be achieved, but mastery is not transformation; the change made by it cannot be sufficient to be integral: for that it is essential to get back, beyond mind-being, life-being, body-being, still more deeply inward to the psychic entity inmost and profoundest within us - or else to open to the superconscient highest domains. For this penetration into the luminous crypt of the soul one has to get through all the intervening vital stuff to the psychic centre within us, however long, tedious or difficult may be the process. The method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulsions, a concentration in the heart, austerity, self-purification and rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, rejection of the ego of desire, rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage: but the strongest, most central way is to found all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara. A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all but a few specially gifted seekers.
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If the rift in the lid of mind is made, what happens is an opening of vision to something above us or a rising up towards it or a descent of its powers into our being. What we see by the opening of vision is an Infinity above us, an eternal Presence or an infinite Existence, an infinity of consciousness, an infinity of bliss, - a boundless Self, a boundless Light, a boundless Power, a boundless Ecstasy. It may be that for a long time all that is obtained is the occasional or frequent or constant vision of it and a longing and aspiration, but without anything further, because, although something in the mind, heart or other part of the being has opened to this experience, the lower nature as a whole is too heavy and obscure as yet for more. But there may be, instead of this first wide Awareness from below or subsequently to it, an ascension of the mind to heights above: the nature of these heights we may not know or clearly discern, but some consequence of the ascent is felt; there is often too an Awareness of infinite ascension and return but no record or translation of that higher state. This is because it has been superconscient to mind and therefore mind, when it rises into it, is unable at first to retain there its power of conscious discernment and defining experience. But when this power begins to awake and act, when mind becomes by degrees conscious in what was to it superconscient, then there begins a knowledge and experience of superior planes of existence. The experience is in accord with that which is brought to us by the first opening of vision: the mind rises into a higher plane of pure self, silent, tranquil, illimitable; or it rises into regions of light or of felicity, or into planes where it feels an infinite Power or a divine Presence or experiences the contact of a divine Love or Beauty or the atmosphere of a wider and greater and luminous Knowledge. In the return the spiritual impression abides; but the mental record is often blurred and remains as a vague or a fragmentary memory; the lower consciousness from which the ascent took place falls back to what it was, with only the addition of an unkept or a remembered but no longer dynamic experience. In time the ascent comes to be made at will and the consciousness brings back and retains some effect or some gain of its temporary sojourn in these higher countries of the spirit. These ascents take place for many in trance, but are perfectly possible in a concentration of the waking consciousness or, where that consciousness has become sufficiently psychic, at any unconcentrated moment by an upward attraction or affinity.
But these two types of contact with the superconscient, though they can be powerfully illuminating, ecstatic or liberating, are by themselves insufficiently effective: for the full spiritual transformation more is needed, a permanent ascension from the lower into the higher consciousness and an effectual permanent descent of the higher into the lower nature.
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This, effected little by little or in a succession of great and swift definitive experiences, is the process of the spiritual transformation. It achieves itself and culminates in an upward ascent often repeated by which in the end the consciousness fixes itself on a higher plane and from there sees and governs the mind, life and body; it achieves itself also in an increasing descent of the powers of the higher consciousness and knowledge which become more and more the whole normal consciousness and knowledge. A light and power, a knowledge and force are felt which first take possession of the mind and remould it, afterwards of the life part and remould that, finally of the little physical consciousness and leave it no longer little but wide and plastic and even infinite. For this new consciousness has itself the nature of infinity: it brings to us the abiding spiritual sense and Awareness of the infinite and eternal with a great largeness of the nature and a breaking down of its limitations; immortality becomes no longer a belief or an experience but a normal self Awareness; the close presence of the Divine Being, his rule of the world and of our self and natural members, his force working in us and everywhere, the peace of the infinite, the joy of the infinite are now concrete and constant in the being; in all sights and forms one sees the Eternal, the Reality, in all sounds one hears it, in all touches feels it; there is nothing else but its forms and personalities and manifestations; the joy or adoration of the heart, the embrace of all existence, the unity of the spirit are abiding realities. The consciousness of the mental creature is turning or has been already turned wholly into the consciousness of the spiritual being. This is the second of the three transformations; uniting the manifested existence with what is above it, it is the middle step of the three, the decisive transition of the spiritually evolving nature.
If the spirit could from the first dwell securely on the superior heights and deal with a blank and virgin stuff of mind and matter, a complete spiritual transformation might be rapid, even facile: but the actual process of Nature is more difficult, the logic of her movement more manifold, contorted, winding, comprehensive; she recognises all the data of the task she has set to herself and is not satisfied with a summary triumph over her own complexities. Every part of our being has to be taken in its own nature and character, with all the moulds and writings of the past still there in it: each minutest portion and movement must either be destroyed and replaced if it is unfit, or, if it is capable, transmuted into the truth of the higher being. If the psychic change is complete, this can be done by a painless process, though still the programme must be long and scrupulous and the progress deliberate; but otherwise one has to be satisfied with a partial result or, if one's own scrupulousness of perfection or hunger of the spirit is insatiable, consent to a difficult, often painful and seemingly interminable action. For ordinarily the consciousness does not rise to the summits except in the highest moments; it remains on the mental level and receives descents from above, sometimes a single descent of some spiritual power that stays and moulds the being into something predominatingly spiritual, or a succession of descents bringing into it more and more of the spiritual status and dynamis: but unless one can live on the highest height reached, there cannot be the complete or more integral change. If the psychic mutation has not taken place, if there has been a premature pulling down of the higher Forces, their contact may be too strong for the flawed and impure material of Nature and its immediate fate may be that of the unbaked jar of the Veda which could not hold the divine Soma Wine; or the descending influence may withdraw or be spilt because the nature cannot contain or keep it. Again, if it is Power that descends, the egoistic mind or vital may try to seize on it for its own use and a magnified ego or a hunting after powers and self-aggrandising masteries may be the untoward result. The Ananda descending cannot be held if there is too much sexual impurity creating an intoxicant or degrading mixture; the Power recedes, if there is ambition, vanity or other aggressive form of lower self, the Light if there is an attachment to obscurity or to any form of the Ignorance, the Presence if the chamber of the heart has not been made pure. Or some undivine Force may try to seize hold, not of the Power itself, for that withdraws, but of the result of force it leaves behind in the instrument and use it for the purposes of the Adversary. Even if none of these more disastrous faults or errors should take place, still the numerous mistakes of reception or the imperfections of the vessel may impede the transformation. The Power has to come at intervals and work meanwhile behind the veil or hold itself back through long periods of obscure assimilation or preparation of the recalcitrant parts of Nature; the Light has to work in darkness or semi-darkness on the regions in us that are still in the Night. At any moment the work may be stayed, personally for this life, because the nature is able to receive or assimilate no more, - for it has reached the present limits of its capacity, - or because the mind may be ready but the vital, when faced with a choice between the old life and the new, refuses, or if the vital accepts, the body may prove too weak, unfit or flawed for the necessary change of its consciousness and its dynamic transformation.
2.26 - Samadhi, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Intimately connected with the aim of the Yoga of Knowledge which must always be the growth, the ascent or the withdrawal into a higher or a divine consciousness not now normal to us, is the importance attached to the phenomenon of Yogic trance, to Samadhi. It is supposed that there are states of being which can only be gained in trance; that especially is to be desired in which all action of Awareness is abolished and there is no consciousness at all except the pure supramental immersion in immobile, timeless and infinite being. By passing away in this trance the soul departs into the silence of the highest Nirvana without possibility of return into any illusory or inferior state of existence. Samadhi is not so all-important in the Yoga of devotion, but it still has its place there as the swoon of being into which the ecstasy of divine love casts the soul. To enter into it is the supreme step of the ladder of Yogic practice in Rajayoga and Hathayoga. What then is the nature of Samadhi or the utility of its trance in an integral Yoga? It is evident that where our objective includes the possession of the Divine in life, a state of cessation of life cannot be the last consummating step or the highest desirable condition: Yogic trance cannot be an aim, as in so many Yogic systems, but only a means, and a means not of escape from the waking existence, but to enlarge and raise the whole seeing, living and active consciousness.
The importance of Samadhi rests upon the truth which modern knowledge is rediscovering, but which has never been lost in Indian psychology, that only a small part whether of world-being or of our own being comes into our ken or into our action. The rest is hidden behind in subliminal reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications. The old Indian psychology expressed this fact by dividing consciousness into three provinces, waking state, dream-state, sleep-state, jagrat, svarna, susupti; and it supposed in the human being a waking self, a dream-self, a sleep-self, with the supreme or absolute self of being, the fourth or Turiya, beyond, of which all these are derivations for the enjoyment of relative experience in the world.
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To arrive at full possession of the powers of the dream-state, it is necessary first to exclude the attack of the sights, sounds, etc, of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than in the waking condition: for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a range which may be made practically unlimited. But this Awareness of the physical world through the subtle senses is something quite different from our normal Awareness of it through the physical organs; the latter is incompatible with the settled state of trance, for the pressure of the physical senses breaks the Samadhi and calls back the mind to live in their normal field where alone they have power. But the subtle senses have power both upon their own planes and upon the physical world, though this is to them more remote than their own world of being. In Yoga various devices are used to seal up the doors of the physical sense, some of them physical devices; but the one all-sufficient means is a force of concentration by which the mind is drawn inward to depths where the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it. A second necessity is to get rid of the intervention of physical sleep. The ordinary habit of the mind when it goes in away from contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep or its dreams, and therefore when called in for the purposes of Samadhi, it gives or tends to give, at the first chance, by sheer force of habit, not the response demanded, but its usual response of physical slumber. This habit of the mind has to be got rid of; the mind has to learn to be awake in the dream-state, in possession of itself, not with the outgoing, but with an ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers.
The experiences of the dream-state are infinitely various. For not only has it sovereign possession of the usual mental powers, reasoning, discrimination, will, imagination, and can use them in whatever way, on whatever subject, for whatever purpose it pleases, but it is able to establish connection with all the worlds to which it has natural access or to which it chooses to acquire access, from the physical to the higher mental worlds. This it does by various means open to the subtlety, flexibility and comprehensive movement of this internalised mind liberated from the narrow limitations of the physical outward-going senses. It is able first to take cognizance of all things whether in the material world or upon other planes by aid of perceptible images, not only images of things visible, but of sounds, touch smell, taste, movement, action, of all that makes itself sensible to the mind and its organs. For the mind in Samadhi has access to the inner space called sometimes the cidakasa, to depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe, and all things sensible, whether in the material world or any other, create reconstituting vibrations, sensible echoes, reproductions, recurrent images of themselves which that subtler ether receives and retains.
2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
THE PSYCHIC transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness. The highest of these peaks or elevated plateaus of consciousness, the supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description. It would be difficult for the normal unillumined or untransformed mental conception to express or enter into something that is based on so different a consciousness with a radically different Awareness of things; even if they were seen or conceived by some enlightenment or opening of vision, another language than the poor abstract counters used by our mind would be needed to translate them into terms by which their reality could become at all seizable by us. As the summits of human mind are beyond animal perception, so the movements of supermind are beyond the ordinary human mental conception: it is only when we have already had experience of a higher intermediate consciousness that any terms attempting to describe supramental being could convey a true meaning to our intelligence; for then, having experienced something akin to what is described, we could translate an inadequate language into a figure of what we knew. If the mind cannot enter into the nature of supermind, it can look towards it through these high and luminous approaches and catch some reflected impression of the Truth, the Right, the Vast which is the native kingdom of the free Spirit.
But even what can be said about the intermediate consciousness must perforce be inadequate; only certain abstract generalisations can be hazarded which may serve for an initial light of guidance. The one enabling circumstance here is that, however different in constitution and principle, the higher consciousness is still, in its evolutionary form, in what we can first achieve of it here, a supreme development of elements which are already present in ours in however rudimentary and diminished a figure and power of themselves. It is also a helpful fact that the logic of the process of evolutionary Nature continues, greatly modified in some of the rules of its working but essentially the same, in the ascension of the highest heights as in the lower beginnings; thus we can discover and follow to a certain extent the lines of her supreme procedure. For we have seen something of the nature and law of the transition from intellectual to spiritual mind; from that achieved starting-point we can begin to trace the passage to a higher dynamic degree of the new consciousness and the farther transition from spiritual mind towards supermind. The indications must necessarily be very imperfect, for it is only some initial representations of an abstract and general character that can be arrived at by the method of metaphysical inquiry: the true knowledge and description must be left to the language of the mystic and the figures, at once more vivid and more recondite, of a direct and concrete experience.
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There is a possibility too that what would be achieved might only be an imperfect superior mentalisation; the new higher elements might strongly dominate the consciousness, but they would be still subjected to a modification of their action by the principle of an inferior mentality: there would be a greater expanded and illuminating knowledge, a cognition of a higher order; but it would still undergo a mixture subjecting it to the law of the Ignorance, as Mind undergoes limitation by the law of Life and Matter. For a real transformation there must be a direct and unveiled intervention from above; there would be necessary too a total submission and surrender of the lower consciousness, a cessation of its insistence, a will in it for its separate law of action to be completely annulled by transformation and lose all rights over our being. If these two conditions can be achieved even now by a conscious call and will in the spirit and a participation of our whole manifested and inner being in its change and elevation, the evolution, the transformation can take place by a comparatively swift conscious change; the supramental Consciousness-Force from above and the evolving Consciousness-Force from behind the veil acting on the awakened Awareness and will of the mental human being would accomplish by their united power the momentous transition. There would be no farther need of a slow evolution counting many millenniums for each step, the halting and difficult evolution operated by Nature in the past in the unconscious creatures of the Ignorance.
It is a first condition of this change that the mental Man we now are should become inwardly aware and in possession of his own deeper law of being and its processes; he must become the psychic and inner mental being master of his energies, no longer a slave of the movements of the lower Prakriti, in control of it, seated securely in a free harmony with a higher law of Nature.
An increasing control of the individual over his own action of nature, a more and more conscious participation in the action of universal Nature, is a marked character, it is indeed a logical consequence, of the evolutionary principle and process. All action, all mental, vital, physical activities in the world are the operation of a universal Energy, a Consciousness-Force which is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things. But since this creative Consciousness assumes in Matter a mask of inconscience and puts on the surface appearance of a blind universal Force executing a plan or organisation of things without seeming to know what it is doing, the first result is kin to this appearance; it is the phenomenon of an inconscient physical individualisation, a creation not of beings but of objects. These are formed existences with their own qualities, properties, power of being, character of being; but Nature's plan in them and organisation of them have to be worked out mechanically without any beginning of participation, initiation or conscious Awareness in the individual object which emerges as the first dumb result and inanimate field of her action and creation. In animal life the Force begins to become slowly conscious on the surface and puts forth the form, no longer of an object, but of an individual being; but this imperfectly conscious individual, although it participates, senses, feels, yet only works out what the Force does in it without any clear intelligence or observation of what is being done; it seems to have no other choice or will than that which is imposed on it by its formed nature. In human mind there is the first appearance of an observing intelligence that regards what is being done and of a will and choice that have become conscious; but the consciousness is still limited and superficial: the knowledge also is limited and imperfect, it is a partial intelligence, a half understanding, groping and empirical in great part or, if rational, then rational by constructions, theories, formulas. There is not as yet a luminous seeing which knows things by a direct grasp and arranges them with a spontaneous precision according to the seeing, according to the scheme of their inherent truth; although there is a certain element of instinct and intuition and insight which has some beginning of this power, the normal character of human intelligence is an inquiring reason or reflective thought which observes, supposes, infers, concludes, arrives by labour at a constructed truth, a constructed scheme of knowledge, a deliberately arranged action of its own making. Or rather this is what it strives to be and partly is; for its knowledge and will are constantly invaded, darkened or frustrated by forces of the being which are half-blind instruments of the mechanism of Nature.
This is evidently not the utmost of which consciousness is capable, not its last evolution and highest summit. A greater and more intimate intuition must be possible which would enter into the heart of things, be in luminous identity with the movements of Nature, assure to the being a clear control of his life or at least a harmony with his universe. It is only a free and entire intuitive consciousness which would be able to see and to grasp things by direct contact and penetrating vision or a spontaneous truthsense born of an underlying unity or identity and arrange an action of Nature according to the truth of Nature. This would be a real participation by the individual in the working of the universal Consciousness-Force; the individual Purusha would become the master of his own executive energy and at the same time a conscious partner, agent, instrument of the Cosmic Spirit in the working of the universal Energy: the universal Energy would work through him, but he also would work through her and the harmony of the intuitive truth would make this double working a single action. A growing conscious participation of this higher and more intimate kind must be one accompaniment of the transition from our present state of being to a state of supernature.
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An indispensable step towards overcoming this difficulty is the opening up of the inner being and its centres of action; for there the task that the surface mind could not achieve begins to be more possible. The inner mind, the inner life-consciousness and life-mind, the subtle-physical consciousness and its subtlephysical mentality, once liberated into action, create a larger, finer, greater mediating Awareness able to communicate with the universal and with what is above them, able also to bring to bear their power on the whole range of the being, on the submental, on the subconscient mind, on the subconscient life, even on the subconscience of the body: they can, though not wholly enlighten, yet to some extent open, penetrate, work upon the fundamental Inconscience. The spiritual Light, Power,
Knowledge, Delight from above can then descend beyond the mind and heart, which are always the easiest to reach and illumine; occupying the whole nature from top to bottom, they can pervade more fully the life and the body and by a still profounder impact shake the foundations of the Inconscience.
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But here in this greater Thought there is no need of a seeking and self-critical ratiocination, no logical motion step by step towards a conclusion, no mechanism of express or implied deductions and inferences, no building or deliberate concatenation of idea with idea in order to arrive at an ordered sum or outcome of knowledge; for this limping action of our reason is a movement of Ignorance searching for knowledge, obliged to safeguard its steps against error, to erect a selective mental structure for its temporary shelter and to base it on foundations already laid and carefully laid but never firm, because it is not supported on a soil of native Awareness but imposed on an original soil of nescience. There is not here, either, that other way of our mind at its keenest and swiftest, a rapid hazardous divination and insight, a play of the searchlight of intelligence probing into the little known or the unknown. This higher consciousness is a Knowledge formulating itself on a basis of self-existent all- Awareness and manifesting some part of its integrality, a harmony of its significances put into thought-form. It can freely express itself in single ideas, but its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view; the relations of idea with idea, of truth with truth are not established by logic but pre-exist and emerge already self-seen in the integral whole. There is an initiation into forms of an ever-present but till now inactive knowledge, not a system of conclusions from premisses or data; this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired knowledge.
Large aspects of truth come into view in which the ascending Mind, if it chooses, can dwell with satisfaction and, after its former manner, live in them as in a structure; but if progress is to be made, these structures can constantly expand into a larger structure or several of them combine themselves into a provisional greater whole on the way to a yet unachieved integrality. In the end there is a great totality of truth known and experienced but still a totality capable of infinite enlargement because there is no end to the aspects of knowledge, nastyanto vistarasya me.
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The next step of the ascent brings us to the Overmind; the intuitional change can only be an introduction to this higher spiritual overture. But we have seen that the Overmind, even when it is selective and not total in its action, is still a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge which carries in it a delegated light from the supramental gnosis. It is, therefore, only by an opening into the cosmic consciousness that the overmind ascent and descent can be made wholly possible: a high and intense individual opening upwards is not sufficient, - to that vertical ascent towards summit Light there must be added a vast horizontal expansion of the consciousness into some totality of the Spirit. At the least, the inner being must already have replaced by its deeper and wider Awareness the surface mind and its limited outlook and learned to live in a large universality; for otherwise the overmind view of things and the overmind dynamism will have no room to move in and effectuate its dynamic operations. When the overmind descends, the predominance of the centralising ego-sense is entirely subordinated, lost in largeness of being and finally abolished; a wide cosmic perception and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it: many motions that were formerly ego-centric may still continue, but they occur as currents or ripples in the cosmic wideness. Thought, for the most part, no longer seems to originate individually in the body or the person but manifests from above or comes in upon the cosmic mindwaves: all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action of a vast cosmic instrumentation. In this boundless largeness, not only the separate ego but all sense of individuality, even of a subordinated or instrumental individuality, may entirely disappear; the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, the cosmic delight, the play of cosmic forces are alone left: if the delight or the centre of Force is felt in what was the personal mind, life or body, it is not with a sense of personality but as a field of manifestation, and this sense of the delight or of the action of Force is not confined to the person or the body but can be felt at all points in an unlimited consciousness of unity which pervades everywhere.
But there can be many formulations of overmind consciousness and experience; for the overmind has a great plasticity and is a field of multiple possibilities. In place of an uncentred and unplaced diffusion there may be the sense of the universe in oneself or as oneself: but there too this self is not the ego; it is an extension of a free and pure essential self-consciousness or it is an identification with the All, - the extension or the identification constituting a cosmic being, a universal individual.
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But there are certain reasons arising from its own characteristic status and power that prevent it from being the final possibility of the spiritual evolution. It is a power, though the highest power, of the lower hemisphere; although its basis is a cosmic unity, its action is an action of division and interaction, an action taking its stand on the play of the multiplicity. Its play is, like that of all Mind, a play of possibilities; although it acts not in the Ignorance but with the knowledge of the truth of these possibilities, yet it works them out through their own independent evolution of their powers. It acts in each cosmic formula according to the fundamental meaning of that formula and is not a power for a dynamic transcendence. Here in earth-life it has to work upon a cosmic formula whose basis is the entire nescience which results from the separation of Mind, Life and Matter from their own source and supreme origin. Overmind can bridge that division up to the point at which separative Mind enters into Overmind and becomes a part of its action; it can unite individual mind with cosmic mind on its highest plane, equate individual self with cosmic self and give to the nature an action of universality; but it cannot lead Mind beyond itself, and in this world of original Inconscience it cannot dynamise the Transcendence: for it is the supermind alone that is the supreme self-determining truth-action and the direct power of manifestation of that Transcendence. If then the action of evolutionary Nature ended here, the Overmind, having carried the consciousness to the point of a vast illumined universality and an organised play of this wide and potent spiritual Awareness of utter existence, forceconsciousness and delight, could only go farther by an opening of the gates of the Spirit into the upper hemisphere and a will to enable the soul to depart out of its cosmic formation into the Transcendence.
In the terrestrial evolution itself the overmind descent would not be able to transform wholly the Inconscience; all that it could do would be to transform in each man it touched the whole conscious being, inner and outer, personal and universally impersonal, into its own stuff and impose that upon the Ignorance illumining it into cosmic truth and knowledge. But a basis of Nescience would remain; it would be as if a sun and its system were to shine out in an original darkness of Space and illumine everything as far as its rays could reach so that all that dwelt in the light would feel as if no darkness were there at all in their experience of existence. But outside that sphere or expanse of experience the original darkness would still be there and, since all things are possible in an overmind structure, could reinvade the island of light created within its empire. Moreover, since Overmind deals with different possibilities, its natural action would be to develop the separate possibility of one or more or numerous dynamic spiritual formulations to their utmost or combine or harmonise several possibilities together; but this would be a creation or a number of creations in the original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities into itself and controlling them as parts of the unity, which must be the law of the new evolutionary consciousness, would not as yet be there. Also by this much evolution there could be no security against the downward pull or gravitation of the Inconscience which dissolves all the formations that life and mind build in it, swallows all things that arise out of it or are imposed upon it and disintegrates them into their original matter. The liberation from this pull of the Inconscience and a secured basis for a continuous divine or gnostic evolution would only be achieved by a descent of the Supermind into the terrestrial formula, bringing into it the supreme law and light and dynamis of the spirit and penetrating with it and transforming the inconscience of the material basis.
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A subjective spirituality can be established which refuses or minimises commerce with the world or is content to witness its action and throw back or throw out its invading influences without allowing any reaction to them or admitting their intrusion: but if the inner spirituality is to be objectivised in a free worldaction, if the individual has to project himself into the world and in a sense take the world into himself, this cannot be dynamically done without receiving the world influences through one's own circumconscient or environmental being. The spiritual inner consciousness has then to deal with these influences in such a way that, as soon as they approach or enter, they become either obliterated and without result or transformed by their very entry into its own mode and substance. Or it may force them to receive the spiritual influence and return with a transforming power on the world they come from, for such a compulsion on the lower universal Nature is part of a perfect spiritual action. But for that the circumconscient or environmental being must be so steeped in the spiritual light and spiritual substance that nothing can enter into it without undergoing this transformation: the invading external influences have not to bring in at all their lower Awareness, their lower sight, their lower dynamism. But this is a difficult perfection, because ordinarily the circumconscient is not wholly our own formed and realised self but ourself plus the external world-nature. It is, for this reason, always easier to spiritualise the inner self-sufficient parts than to transform the outer action; a perfection of introspective, indwelling or subjective spirituality aloof from the world or self-protected against it is easier than a perfection of the whole nature in a dynamic, kinetic spirituality objectivised in the life, embracing the world, master of its environment, sovereign in its commerce with world-nature. But since the integral transformation must embrace fully the dynamic being and take up into it the life of action and the world-self outside us, this completer change is demanded of the evolving nature.
The essential difficulty comes from the fact that the substance of our normal being is moulded out of the Inconscience.
Our ignorance is a growth of knowledge in a substance of being which is nescient; the consciousness it develops, the knowledge it establishes are always dogged, penetrated, enveloped by this nescience. It is this substance of nescience that has to be transformed into a substance of superconscience, a substance in which consciousness and a spiritual Awareness are always there even when they are not active, not expressed, not put into form of knowledge. Till that is done, the nescience invades or encompasses or even swallows up and absorbs into its oblivious darkness all that enters into it; it compels the descending light to compromise with the lesser light it enters: there is a mixture, a diminution and dilution of itself, a diminution, a modification, an incomplete au thenticity of its truth and power. Or, at the least, the nescience limits its truth and circumscribes its force, segments its applicability and its range; its truth of principle is barred from a full truth of individual realisation or from an achieved truth of cosmic practice. Thus love as a law of life can affirm itself practically as an inner active principle; but unless it occupies the whole substance of being, the entire individual feeling and action cannot be moulded by the law of love: even if perfected in the individual, it can be rendered unilateral and ineffective by the general nescience which is blind to it and hostile, or it is forced to circumscribe its range of cosmic application. A full action in harmony with a new law of the being is always difficult in human nature; for in the substance of the Inconscience there is a self-protective law of blind imperative Necessity which limits the play of the possibilities that emerge from it or enter into it and prevents them from establishing their free action and result or realising the intensity of their own absolute. A mixed, relative, curbed and diminished play is all that is conceded to them: otherwise they would cancel the frame of Inconscience and violently perturb without effectively changing the basis of the world-order; for none of them have in their mental or vital play the divine power to replace this dark original principle and organise a totally new world-order.
A transformation of human nature can only be achieved when the substance of the being is so steeped in the spiritual principle that all its movements are a spontaneous dynamism and a harmonised process of the spirit. But even when the higher powers and their intensities enter into the substance of the Inconscience, they are met by this blind opposing Necessity and are subjected to this circumscribing and diminishing law of the nescient substance. It opposes them with its strong titles of an established and inexorable Law, meets always the claim of life with the law of death, the demand of Light with the need of a relief of shadow and a background of darkness, the sovereignty and freedom and dynamism of the spirit with its own force of adjustment by limitation, demarcation by incapacity, foundation of energy on the repose of an original Inertia. There is an occult truth behind its negations which only the Supermind with its reconciliation of contraries in the original Reality can take up and so discover the pragmatic solution of the enigma. Only the supramental Force can entirely overcome this difficulty of the fundamental Nescience; for with it enters an opposite and luminous imperative Necessity which underlies all things and is the original and final self-determining truth-force of the selfexistent Infinite. This greater luminous spiritual Necessity and its sovereign imperative alone can displace or entirely penetrate, transform into itself and so replace the blind Ananke of the Inconscience.
2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The supramental being in his cosmic consciousness seeing and feeling all as himself would act in that sense; he would act in a universal Awareness and a harmony of his individual self with the total self, of his individual will with the total will, of his individual action with the total action. For what we most suffer from in our outer life and its reactions upon our inner life is the imperfection of our relations with the world, our ignorance of others, our disharmony with the whole of things, our inability to equate our demand on the world with the world's demand on us. There is a conflict - a conflict from which there seems to be no ultimate issue except an escape from both world and self - between our self-affirmation and a world on which we have to impose that affirmation, a world which seems to be too large for us and to pass indifferently over our soul, mind, life, body in the sweep of its course to its goal. The relation of our course and goal to the world's is unapparent to us, and to harmonise ourselves with it we have either to enforce ourselves upon it and make it subservient to us or suppress ourselves and become subservient to it or else to compass a difficult balance between these two necessities of the relation between the individual personal destiny and the cosmic whole and its hidden purpose. But for the supramental being living in a cosmic consciousness the difficulty would not exist, since he has no ego; his cosmic individuality would know the cosmic forces and their movement and their significance as part of himself, and the truth-consciousness in him would see the right relation at each step and find the dynamic right expression of that relation.
For in fact both individual and universe are simultaneous and interrelated expressions of the same transcendent Being; even though in the Ignorance and under its law there is maladjustment and conflict, yet there must be a right relation, an equation to which all arrives but which is missed by our blindness of ego, our attempt to affirm the ego and not the Self one in all. The supramental consciousness has that truth of relation in itself as its natural right and privilege, since it is the supermind that determines the cosmic relations and the relations of the individual with the universe, determines them freely and sovereignly as a power of the Transcendence. In the mental being even the pressure of the cosmic consciousness overpowering the ego and an Awareness of the transcendent Reality might not of themselves bring about a dynamic solution; for there might still be an incompatibility between its liberated spiritual mentality and the obscure life of the cosmic Ignorance which the mind would not have the power to solve or overcome. But in the supramental being, not only statically conscious but fully dynamic and acting in the creative light and power of the Transcendence, the supramental light, the truth light, r.tam jyotih., would have that power. For there would be a unity with the cosmic self, but not a bondage to the Ignorance of cosmic Nature in its lower formulation; there would on the contrary be a power to act in the light of the Truth on that Ignorance. A large universality of self-expression, a large harmonic universality of world-being would be the very sign of the supramental Person in his gnostic nature.
The existence of the supramental being would be the play of a manifoldly and multiply manifesting truth-power of oneexistence and one-consciousness for the delight of one-existence.
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An evolution of gnostic consciousness brings with it a transformation of our world-consciousness and world-action: for it takes up into the new power of Awareness not only the inner existence but our outer being and our world-being; there is a remaking of both, an integration of them in the sense and power of the spiritual existence. There must come upon us in the change at once a reversal and rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its inner trend and tendency. For we stand The Gnostic Being now between these two terms, an outer world of Life and Matter that has made us and a remaking of the world by ourselves in the sense of the evolving Spirit. Our present way of living is at once a subjection to Life-Force and Matter and a struggle with Life and Matter. In its first appearance an outer existence creates by our reactions to it an inner or mental existence; if we shape ourselves at all, it is in most men less by the conscious pressure of a free soul or intelligence from within than by a response to our environment and the world-Nature acting upon us: but what we move towards in the development of our conscious being is an inner existence creating by its knowledge and power its own outer form of living and self-expressive environment of living. In the gnostic nature this movement will have consummated itself; the nature of living will be an accomplished inner existence whose light and power will take perfect body in the outer life.
The gnostic being will take up the world of Life and Matter, but he will turn and adapt it to his own truth and purpose of existence; he will mould life itself into his own spiritual image, and this he will be able to do because he has the secret of a spiritual creation and is in communion and oneness with the Creator within him. This will be first effective in the shaping of his own inner and outer individual existence, but the same power and principle will operate in any common gnostic life; the relations of gnostic being with gnostic being will be the expression of their one gnostic self and supernature shaping into a significant power and form of itself the whole common existence.
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The finding of the one truth underlying all things will be the Identical discovering identity and identical truth everywhere and discovering too the power and workings and relations of that identity. The revelation of the detail, the circumstance, the abundant ways and forms of the manifestation will be the unveiling of the endless opulence of the truths of that identity, its forms and powers of self, its curious manifoldness and multiplicity of form bringing out infinitely its oneness. This knowledge will proceed by identification with all, by entering into all, by a contact bringing with it a leap of self-discovery and a flame of recognition, a greater and surer intuition of truth than the mind can reach; there will be an intuition too of the means of embodying and utilising the truth seen, an operative intuition of its dynamic processes, a direct intimate Awareness guiding the life and the physical senses in every step of their action and service to the Spirit when they have to be called in as instruments for the effectuation of process in life and matter.
A replacement of intellectual seeking by supramental identity and gnostic intuition of the contents of the identity, an omnipresence of spirit with its light penetrating the whole process of knowledge and all its use, so that there is an integration between the knower, knowledge and the thing known, between the operating consciousness, the instrumentation and the thing done, while the single self watches over the whole integrated movement and fulfils itself intimately in it, making it a flawless unit of self-effectuation, will be the character of The Gnostic Being each gnostic movement of knowledge and action of knowledge.
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There will be in him a certain respect for physical things, an The Gnostic Being Awareness of the occult consciousness in them, of its dumb will of utility and service, a worship of the Divine, the Brahman in what he uses, a care for a perfect and faultless use of his divine material, for a true rhythm, ordered harmony, beauty in the life of Matter, in the utilisation of Matter.
As a result of this new relation between the Spirit and the body, the gnostic evolution will effectuate the spiritualisation, perfection and fulfilment of the physical being; it will do for the body as for the mind and life. Apart from the obscurity, frailties and limitations, which this change will overcome, the body-consciousness is a patient servant and can be in its large reserve of possibilities a potent instrument of the individual life, and it asks for little on its own account: what it craves for is duration, health, strength, physical perfection, bodily happiness, liberation from suffering, ease. These demands are not in themselves unacceptable, mean or illegitimate, for they render into the terms of Matter the perfection of form and substance, the power and delight which should be the natural outflowing, the expressive manifestation of the Spirit. When the gnostic Force can act in the body, these things can be established; for their opposites come from a pressure of external forces on the physical mind, on the nervous and material life, on the bodyorganism, from an ignorance that does not know how to meet these forces or is not able to meet them rightly or with power, and from some obscurity, pervading the stuff of the physical consciousness and distorting its responses, that reacts to them in a wrong way. A supramental self-acting self-effectuating Awareness and knowledge, replacing this ignorance, will liberate and restore the obscured and spoiled intuitive instincts in the body and enlighten and supplement them with a greater conscious action. This change would institute and maintain a right physical perception of things, a right relation and right reaction to objects and energies, a right rhythm of mind, nerve and organism.
It would bring into the body a higher spiritual power and a greater life-force unified with the universal life-force and able to draw on it, a luminous harmony with material Nature and the vast and calm touch of the eternal repose which can give to it its diviner strength and ease. Above all, - for this is the most needed and fundamental change, - it will flood the whole being with a supreme energy of Consciousness-Force which would meet, assimilate or harmonise with itself all the forces of existence that surround and press upon the body.
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An aspiration, a demand for the supreme and total delight of existence is there secretly in the whole make of our being, but it is disguised by the separation of our parts of nature and their differing urge and obscured by their inability to conceive or seize anything more than a superficial pleasure. In the body consciousness this demand takes shape as a need of bodily happiness, in our life parts as a yearning for life happiness, a keen vibrant response to joy and rapture of many kinds and to all surprise of satisfaction; in the mind it shapes into a ready reception of all forms of mental delight; on a higher level it becomes apparent in the spiritual mind's call for peace and divine ecstasy. This trend is founded in the truth of the being; for Ananda is the very essence of the Brahman, it is the supreme nature of the omnipresent Reality. The supermind itself in the descending degrees of the manifestation emerges from the Ananda and in the evolutionary ascent merges into the Ananda. It is not, indeed, merged in the sense of being extinguished or abolished but is there inherent in it, indistinguishable from the self of Awareness and the selfeffectuating force of the Bliss of Being. In the involutionary descent as in the evolutionary return supermind is supported by the original Delight of Existence and carries that in it in all its activities as their sustaining essence; for Consciousness, we may say, is its parent power in the Spirit, but Ananda is the spiritual matrix from which it manifests and the maintaining source into which it carries back the soul in its return to the status of the Spirit. A supramental manifestation in its ascent would have as a next sequence and culmination of self-result a manifestation of the Bliss of the Brahman: the evolution of the being of gnosis would be followed by an evolution of the being of bliss; an embodiment of gnostic existence would have as its consequence an embodiment of the beatific existence. Always in the being of gnosis, in the life of the gnosis some power of the Ananda would be there as an inseparable and pervading significance of supramental self-experience. In the liberation of the soul from the Ignorance the first foundation is peace, calm, the silence and quietude of the Eternal and Infinite; but a consummate power and greater formation of the spiritual ascension takes up this peace of liberation into the bliss of a perfect experience and realisation of the eternal beatitude, the bliss of the Eternal and Infinite. This Ananda would be inherent in the gnostic consciousness as a universal delight and would grow with the evolution of the gnostic nature.
It has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure inner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is not the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the spiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is instead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is founded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of eternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The supermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions, brings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among its first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise The Gnostic Being together, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the eternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite. In the gnostic consciousness at any stage there would be always in some degree this fundamental and spiritual conscious delight of existence in the whole depth of the being; but also all the movements of Nature would be pervaded by it, and all the actions and reactions of the life and the body: none could escape the law of the Ananda.
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A supramental consciousness must be fundamentally a Truth-consciousness, a direct and inherent Awareness of the truth of being and the truth of things; it is a power of the Infinite knowing and working out its finites, a power of the Universal knowing and working out its oneness and detail, its cosmicity and its individualities; self-possessed of Truth, it would not have to seek for the Truth or suffer from the liability to miss it as does the mind of the Ignorance. The evolved gnostic being would have entered into this truth-consciousness of the Infinite and Universal, and it would be that which would determine for him and in him all his individual seeing and action. His would be a consciousness of universal identity and a consequent or rather inherent Truth-knowledge, Truth-sight, Truth-feeling,
Truth-will, Truth-sense and Truth-dynamis of action implicit in his identity with the One or spontaneously arising from his identity with the All. His life would be a movement in the steps of a spiritual liberty and largeness replacing the law of the mental idea and the law of vital and physical need and desire and the compulsion of a surrounding life; his life and action would be bound by nothing else than the Divine Wisdom and Will acting on him and in him according to its Truth-consciousness. An absence of an imposed construction of law might be expected to lead in the life of the human ignorance, because of the separativeness of the human ego and its smallness, the necessity it feels to impinge on and possess and utilise other life, to a chaos of conflict, licence and egoistic disorder; but this could not exist in the life of the gnostic being.
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Higher-Mental being would act through the truth of thought, the truth of the idea and accomplish that in the life-action: but in the supramental gnosis thought is a derivative movement, it is a formulation of truth-vision and not the determining or the main driving force; it would be an instrument for expression of knowledge more than for arrival at knowledge or for action, - or it would intervene in action only as a penetrating point of the body of identity-will and identity-knowledge. So too in the illumined gnostic being truth-vision and in the intuitive gnostic being a direct truth-contact and perceptive truth-sense would be the mainspring of action. In the overmind a comprehensive immediate grasp of the truth of things and the principle of being of each thing and all its dynamic consequences would originate and gather up a great wideness of gnostic vision and thought and create a foundation of knowledge and action; this largeness of being and seeing and doing would be the varied result of an underlying identity-consciousness, but the identity itself would not be in the front as the very stuff of the consciousness or the very force of the action. But in the supramental gnosis all this luminous immediate grasp of the truth of things, truth-sense, truth-vision, truth-thought would get back into its source of identity-consciousness and subsist as a single body of its knowledge. The identity-consciousness would lead and contain everything; it would manifest as an Awareness in the very grain of the being's substance putting forth its inherent self-fulfilling force and determining itself dynamically in form of consciousness and form of action. This inherent Awareness is the origin and principle of the working of supramental gnosis; it could be sufficient in itself with no need of anything to formulate or embody it: but the play of illumined vision, the play of a radiant thought, the play of all other movements of the spiritual consciousness would not be absent; there would be a free instrumentation of them for their own brilliant functioning, for a divine richness and diversity, for a manifold delight of selfmanifestation, for the joy of the powers of the Infinite. In the intermediate stages or degrees of the gnosis there might be the manifestation of various and separate expressions of the aspects of the divine Being and Nature, a soul and life of love, a soul and life of divine light and knowledge, a soul and life of divine power and sovereign action and creation, and innumerable other forms of divine life; on the supramental height all would be taken up into a manifold unity, a supreme integration of being and life. A fulfilment of the being in a luminous and blissful integration of its states and powers and their satisfied dynamic action would be the sense of the gnostic existence.
All supramental gnosis is a twofold Truth-consciousness, a consciousness of inherent self-knowledge and, by identity of self and world, of intimate world-knowledge; this knowledge is the criterion, the characteristic power of the gnosis. But this is not a purely ideative knowledge, it is not consciousness observing, forming ideas, trying to carry them out; it is an essential light of consciousness, the self-light of all the realities of being and becoming, the self-truth of being determining, formulating and effectuating itself. To be, not to know, is the object of The Gnostic Being the manifestation; knowledge is only the instrumentation of an operative consciousness of being. This would be the gnostic life on earth, a manifestation or play of truth-conscious being, being grown aware of itself in all things, no longer lost to consciousness of itself, no longer plunged into a self-oblivion or a half-oblivion of its real existence brought about by absorption in form and action, but using form and action with a delivered spiritual power for its free and perfect self-expression, no longer seeking for its own lost or forgotten or veiled and hidden significance or significances, no longer bound, but delivered from inconscience and ignorance, aware of its own truths and powers, determining freely in a movement always concurrent and in tune in every detail with its supreme and universal Reality its manifestation, the play of its substance, the play of its consciousness, the play of its force of existence, the play of its delight of existence.
2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3: It is consciousness and life that must be the keywords to what is being thus worked out in Time; for without them Matter and the world of Matter would be a meaningless phenomenon, a thing that has just happened by Chance or by an unconscious Necessity. But consciousness as it is, life as it is cannot be the whole secret; for both are very clearly something unfinished and still in process. In us consciousness is Mind, and our mind is ignorant and imperfect, an intermediate power that has grown and is still growing towards something beyond itself: there were lower levels of consciousness that came before it and out of which it arose, there must very evidently be higher levels to which it is itself arising. Before our thinking, reasoning, reflecting mind there was a consciousness unthinking but living and sentient, and before that there was the subconscious and the unconscious; after us or in our yet unevolved selves there is likely to be waiting a greater consciousness, self-luminous, not dependent on constructive thought: our imperfect and ignorant thought-mind is certainly not the last word of consciousness, its ultimate possibility. For the essence of consciousness is the power to be aware of itself and its objects, and in its true nature this power must be direct, self-fulfilled and complete: if it is in us indirect, incomplete, unfulfilled in its workings, dependent on constructed instruments, it is because consciousness here is emerging from an original veiling Inconscience and is yet burdened and enveloped with the first Nescience proper to the Inconscient; but it must have the power to emerge completely, its destiny must be to evolve into its own perfection which is its true nature. Its true nature is to be wholly aware of its objects, and of these objects the first is self, the being which is evolving its consciousness here, and the rest is what we see as not-self, - but if existence is indivisible, that too must in reality be self: the destiny of evolving consciousness must be, then, to become perfect in its Awareness, entirely aware of self and all-aware. This perfect and natural condition of consciousness is to us a superconscience, a state which is beyond us and in which our mind, if suddenly transferred to it, could not at first function; but it is towards that superconscience that our conscious being must be evolving.
4: But this evolution of our consciousness to a superconscience or supreme of itself is possible only if the Inconscience which is our basis here is really itself an involved Superconscience; for what is to be in the becoming of the Reality in us must be already there involved or secret in its beginning. Such an involved Being or Power we can well conceive the Inconscient to be when we closely regard this material creation of an unconscious Energy and see it labouring out with curious construction and infinite device the work of a vast involved Intelligence and see, too, that we ourselves are something of that Intelligence evolving out of its involution, an emerging consciousness whose emergence cannot stop short on the way until the Involved has evolved and revealed itself as a supreme totally self-aware and all-aware Intelligence. It is this to which we have given the name of Supermind or Gnosis. For that evidently must be the consciousness of the Reality, the Being, the Spirit that is secret in us and slowly manifesting here; of that Being we are the becomings and must grow into its nature.
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20: To be aware wholly and integrally of oneself and of all the truth of one's being is the necessary condition of true possession of existence. This self- Awareness is what is meant by spiritual knowledge: the essence of spiritual knowledge is an intrinsic selfexistent consciousness; all its action of knowledge, indeed all its action of any kind, must be that consciousness formulating itself. All other knowledge is consciousness oblivious of itself and striving to return to its own Awareness of itself and its contents; it is self-ignorance labouring to transform itself back into self-knowledge.
21: But also, since consciousness carries in itself the force of existence, to be fully is to have the intrinsic and integral force of one's being; it is to come into possession of all one's force of self and of all its use. To be merely, without possessing the force of one's being or with a half-force or deficient force of it, is a mutilated or diminished existence; it is to exist, but it is not fullness of being. It is possible, indeed, to exist only in status, with the force of being self-gathered and immobile in the self; but, even so, to be in dynamis as well as in status is the integrality of existence: power of self is the sign of the divinity of self, - a powerless spirit is no spirit. But, as the spiritual consciousness is intrinsic and self-existent, so too this force of our spiritual being must be intrinsic, automatic in action, selfexistent and self-fulfilling. What instrumentality it uses, must be part of itself; even any external instrumentality it uses must be made part of itself and expressive of its being. Force of being in conscious action is will; and whatever is the conscious will of the spirit, its will of being and becoming, that all the existence must be able harmonically to fulfil. Whatever action or energy of action has not this sovereignty or is not master of the machinery of action, carries in it by that defect the sign of an imperfection of the force of being, of a division or disabling segmentation of the consciousness, of an incompleteness in the manifestation of the being.
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39: According to his place in it he would know how to lead or to rule, but also how to subordinate himself; both would be to him an equal delight: for the spirit's freedom, because it is eternal, self-existent and inalienable, can be felt as much in service and willing subordination and adjustment with other selves as in power and rule. An inner spiritual freedom can accept its place in the truth of an inner spiritual hierarchy as well as in the truth, not incompatible with it, of a fundamental spiritual equality. It is this self-arrangement of Truth, a natural order of the spirit, that would exist in a common life of different degrees and stages of the evolving gnostic being. Unity is the basis of the gnostic consciousness, mutuality the natural result of its direct Awareness of oneness in diversity, harmony the inevitable power of the working of its force. Unity, mutuality and harmony must therefore be the inescapable law of a common or collective gnostic life. What forms it might take would depend upon the will of evolutionary manifestation of the Supernature, but this would be its general character and principle.
40: This is the whole sense and the inherent law and necessity of the passage from the purely mental and material being and life to the spiritual and supramental being and life, that the liberation, perfection, self-fulfilment for which the being in the Ignorance is seeking can only be reached by passing out of his present nature of Ignorance into a nature of spiritual self-knowledge and worldknowledge. This greater nature we speak of as Supernature because it is beyond his actual level of consciousness and capacity; but in fact it is his own true nature, the height and completeness of it, to which he must arrive if he is to find his real self and whole possibility of being. Whatever happens in Nature must be the result of Nature, the effectuation of what is implied or inherent in it, its inevitable fruit and consequence. If our nature is a fundamental Inconscience and Ignorance arriving with difficulty at an imperfect knowledge, an imperfect formulation of consciousness and being, the results in our being, life and action and creation must be, as they now are, a constant imperfection and insecure half result, an imperfect mentality, an imperfect life, an imperfect physical existence. We seek to construct systems of knowledge and systems of life by which we can arrive at some perfection of our existence, some order of right relations, right use of mind, right use and happiness and beauty of life, right use of the body. But what we achieve is a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy; our successive constructions, because of the vice in them and because mind and life cannot rest permanently anywhere in their seeking, are exposed to destruction, decadence, disruption of their order, and we pass from them to others which are not more finally successful or enduring, even if on one side or another they may be richer and fuller or more rationally plausible. It cannot be otherwise, because we can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature; imperfect, we cannot construct perfection, however wonderful may seem to us the machinery our mental ingenuity invents, however externally effective. Ignorant, we cannot construct a system of entirely true and fruitful self-knowledge or world-knowledge: our science itself is a construction, a mass, of formulas and devices; masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, it cannot perfect our nature and therefore cannot perfect our life.
2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The advantage of being in the psychic consciousness is that you have the right Awareness and its will being in harmony with the
Mother's will, you can call in the Mother's Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal effort and as the Awareness and will and force of the mind and vital are divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not definitive. It is only in the Supermind that Awareness, Will,
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2.3.03 - The Mother's Presence, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Mother's Awareness of Thoughts and Actions
The Mother can know our thoughts, but can she also know the exact words in the thoughts?
2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Force working in one. Finally there is a state of Awareness of close contact with the Mother (inward) which brings a similar
12 May 1934 result.
2.3.06 - The Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is a little difficult to equate this old nomenclature with that of this Yoga, for the former takes the mixed action of the surface and tries to analyse it - while in this Yoga what is mixed together on the surface gets separated and seen in the light of the deeper working behind which is hidden from the surface Awareness. So we have to adopt a different classification.
The physical mind has first to open to the higher consciousness - its limitations are then removed and it admits what is supraphysical and begins to see things in harmony with the higher knowledge. It becomes an instrument for externalising that knowledge in the pragmatic perceptions and actions of the physical life. It sees things as they are and deals with them according to the larger Truth with an automatic rightness of perception and will and reaction to impacts.
2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As to the gross material part it is not necessary to specify its place, for that is obvious, but it must be remembered that this too has a consciousness of its own, the obscure consciousness proper to the limbs, cells, tissues, glands, organs. To make this obscurity luminous and directly instrumental to the higher planes and to the divine movement is what we mean in our Yoga by making the body conscious, - that is to say, full of a true, awake and responsive Awareness instead of its own obscure, limited half-subconscience.
There is an inner as well as an outer consciousness all through our being, upon all its levels. The ordinary man is aware only of his surface self and quite unaware of all that is concealed by the surface. And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being and far the larger part of us is below the surface, the frontal consciousness.
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Force. Otherwise we can feel the Divine only through external signs and external results and that is a difficult and uncertain way and very occasional and inconstant, and it leads only to belief and not to knowledge, not to the direct consciousness and Awareness of the constant presence.
As for instances of the difference, I may give you two from the opposite poles of experience, one from the most external phenomena showing how the inward opens to the Awareness of universal forces, one of spiritual experience indicating how the inward opens to the Divine. Take illness. If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, we do not usually know that we are going to be ill until the symptoms of the malady declare themselves in the body. But if we develop the inward physical consciousness, we become aware of a subtle environmental physical atmosphere and can feel the forces of illness coming towards us through it, feel them even at a distance and, if we have learned how to do it, we can stop them by the will or otherwise. We sense too around us a vital physical or nervous envelope which radiates from the body and protects it, and we can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. Take now the call for the Divine Power, Light, Ananda.
If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, it may descend and work behind the veil but we shall feel nothing and only see certain results after a long time. Or at most we feel a certain clarity and peace in the mind, a joy in the vital, a happy state in the physical and infer the touch of the Divine. But if we are awake in the inward physical, we shall feel the light, power or Ananda flowing through the body, the limbs, nerves, blood, breath and, through the subtle body, affecting the most material cells and making them conscious and blissful and we shall sense directly the Divine Power and Presence. These are
2.3.10 - The Subconscient and the Inconscient, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The subconscient is below the waking physical consciousness - it is an automatic, obscure, incoherent, half-unconscious realm into which light and Awareness can with difficulty come. The inner vital and physical are quite different - they have a larger, plastic, subtler, freer and richer consciousness than the surface vital and physical, much more open to the Truth and in direct touch with the universal.
The subconscient is not the whole foundation of our nature; it is only the lower basis of the Ignorance and governs mostly the lower vital and physical exterior consciousness and these again affect the higher parts of the nature. While it is necessary to see what it is and how it acts, one must not be too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being.
2.4.01 - Divine Love, Psychic Love and Human Love, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The oneness with all in its basis is something self-existent and self-content which does not need expression. When it does express itself as love, it is something wide and universal, untroubled and firm even when it is intense. This is in the basic cosmic oneness. There is also the surface cosmic consciousness which is an Awareness of the play of cosmic forceshere anything may rise, sex also. It is this part that needs the perfect psychisation, otherwise one cannot even hold, contain and deal with it in the proper way.
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2.4.02 - Bhakti, Devotion, Worship, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As for not having it [contact] always, it is because there are parts of the being that are still unconscious or perhaps states of unconsciousness come. For instance, people write letters to each other, but they are quite unconscious that they are exchanging forces in doing so. You have become conscious of it, because of the development of your inner consciousness by Yogaand yet there are likely to be times when you still write from the external Awareness only, and then you will see the words only without being aware of what is behind. So owing to the development of the inner consciousness, you are able to understand what contacts are and get the true contact, but at times the external consciousness may be stronger than the inner one, then you are no longer (for the time being) able to get the contact.
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3.03 - The Four Foundational Practices, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
In doing these practices, it is not enough to simply repeat again and again that you are in a dream. The truth of the statement must be felt and experienced beyond the words. Use the imagination, senses, and Awareness in fully integrating the practice with felt experience. When you do the practice properly, each time you think that you are in a dream, presence becomes stronger and experience more vivid. If there is not this kind of immediate qualitative change, make certain that the practice has not become only the mechanical repetition of a phrase, which is of little benefit. There is no magic in just thinking a formula; the words should be used to remind yourself to bring greater Awareness and calm to the moment. When practicing the recognition, "wake" yourself-by increasing clarity and presence-again and again until just remembering the thought, "This is a dream," brings a simultaneous streng thening and brightening of Awareness.
This is the first preparation, to see all life as a dream. It is to be applied in the moment of perception and before a reaction arises. It is a potent practice in itself and greatly affects the practitioner. Remain in this Awareness and you will experience lucidity both while awake and during dream.
There is one warning regarding this practice: it is important to take care of responsibilities and to respect the logic and limitations of conventional life. When you tell yourself that your waking life is a dream, this is true, but if you leap from a building you will still fall, not fly.
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The first practice directs lucid Awareness and the recognition of phenomena as a dream toward everything that is encountered: sense objects, internal events, one's own body, and so forth. The second preparation specifically directs the same lucid Awareness to emotionally shaded reactions that occur in response to the elements of experience.
Ideally the practice should be applied as soon as any grasping or aversion arises in response to an object or situation. The grasping mind may manifest its reaction as desire, anger, jealousy, pride, envy, grief, despair, joy, anxiety, depression, fear, boredom, or any other emotional reaction.
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Make the strongest intention possible to know directly and vividly, while dreaming, that you are dreaming. The intention is like an arrow that Awareness can follow during the night, an arrow directed at lucidity in dream. The Tibetan phrase we use for generating intention translates as "sending a wish." We should have that sense here, that we are making prayers and intentions and sending them to our teachers and to the buddhas and deities, promising to try to remain in Awareness and asking for their help. There are other practices that can be done before falling asleep, but this one is available to all.
FOUR: CULTIVATING MEMORY AND JOYFUL EFFORT
3.07.2 - Finding the Real Source, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
And this is the difference between negative and positive emotions: if you become aware of a certain emotion, and by your becoming aware the emotion dissolves, it is negative. If by your becoming aware of a certain emotion you then become the emotion, if the emotion then spreads and becomes your being, it is positive. Awareness works differently in both cases. If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through Awareness. If it is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it.
32.05 - The Culture of the Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another point to be noted. This state of being "conscious" is not a mere outer remembrance, is not an activity of the discriminating mind, nor the kind of memory we use in repeating a lesson; it is rather a deep self- Awareness and knowledge. To try to keep this Awareness with the help of the logical mind cannot help, it can only hinder the action.
We usually speak of getting "engrossed" or "immersed" in what we do; we forget ourselves in our work, and it is such work as is done with this kind of concentration, that alone can be flawless and perfect. But concentration does not imply a state of unconsciousness. A clock continues to give correct time unconsciously, plants and even the lower orders of the animal world work without knowledge, unconsciously, and in most perfect order. In man however the infusion of consciousness has brought about a distinction between the "I" and the work which the "I" performs; I want to do my work consciously, hence I look upon my work and consider it as something apart from me. But it is precisely this that makes for imperfection in work, hedges it with doubt. When this consciousness in work is changed to right consciousness, then I can get back the unity or identity between the worker and the work; in the true consciousness there thus comes a conscious identity between subject and object. To repeat what I have already said: When I run, my running, the goal of my running, and myself - these three become unified in a conscious integral whole; I am aware not only that I am running, but also that I myself am that running and myself the goal; these three elements become one in a mutual embrace. There is an experience and realisation of Brahmanwhich describes the trio of Brahman, brahmanda and jiva,the Supreme Reality, the manifested universe and the individual being, as forming a single unity, one undivided Consciousness strung together in a triple thread. To be one-pointed like an arrow, sara-vat tanmayo bhavet,does not mean that the arrow ceases to be and only the target exists - not that, but the arrow and its target become one, gathered together and unified as in an indivisible consciousness.
32.07 - The God of the Scientist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the standpoint of norms and. ultimate values that science brings forward, reasoning does not occupy the most important place. Science presumes to arrive at a logical conclusion from observation of facts of Nature. The advantages and benefits that we get from science are its material side. But there is another aspect of the scientific intellect which is incorporated into it as its fragrance and beauty, like that of a fruit or flower. What is that thing? Different scientists have expressed it in different ways. But all expressions centre round the same truth. Science avowedly seeks to arrive at the truth within the framework of reasoning by weighing and measuring the material limbs of Nature, confining itself strictly within the four corners of material Nature. But the one thing which, if not manifest even at the outset, has gradually blossomed and taken hold of the scientist, that has from the beginning existed as a hidden inspiration behind the veil, is the sense of a profound mystery, the touch of an infinite eternity, something inexpressible, something to be wondered at, an unmanifest that cannot be defined yet can be felt, a glimpse of a conscious existence: that has been called the supreme unity by some; others have called it the Pure Reason, yet others have called it the highest law or dispensation while there are people who prefer to call it consciousness or Awareness. Such a sense and perception and. experience does not fall under the strict field of scientific research, but the scientist is surrounded, as it were, by a subtle atmosphere, a halo wherefrom proceeds his inspiration for research, for clues, for the vision of truth. Do we not see that all great scientists possess this turn of temperament, an opening, as it were, into other subtle realms? Perhaps many are merely compilers, cataloguers, but those who have discovered something genuine and have been able to unveil some secrets of Nature emanate the fragrance and radiance I speak of, beyond the reasoning faculty. When Kepler looked at the sky through his telescope to observe the course of the stars and the planets, he was deeply absorbed in the experience of something vast, infinite, strange and mysterious. Was it not then at this golden moment that it flashed like lightning through his mind that the orbits of the planets were elliptical and the Sun is at one focus of these apparent ellipses? Is not this incident as strikingly wonderful as the discovery of the law of gravitation made by Newton when he noticed an apple fall to the ground?
In fact, it is merely a notion or a mental complex that the scientific knowledge is solely or chiefly the outcome of the reasoning process. Many of the scientists are perhaps of the opinion that it must be so, but the fact is otherwise. Discovery means the removal of a veil and that too all on a sudden. Reasoning steps in later to establish the discovery on a firm footing, at the most it makes slight alterations here and there, adds or subtracts a few necessaries, clarifies the discovery and gives precision to it. In the matter of all true knowledge and ultimate certitude the inner perception and intuition come first and what provides the major premiss to the logical syllogism is beyond reasoning.
3.2.2 - Sleep, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The sleep you describe in which there is a luminous silence or else the sleep in which there is Ananda in the cells, these are obviously the best states. The other hours, those of which you are unconscious, may be spells of a deep slumber in which you have gone out of the physical into the mental, vital or other planes. You say you were unconscious, but it may simply be that you do not remember what happened; for in coming back there is a sort of turning over of the consciousness, a transition or reversal, in which everything experienced in sleep except perhaps the last happening of all or else one that was very impressive, recedes from the physical Awareness and all becomes as if a blank. There is another blank state, a state of inertia, not truly blank, but heavy and unremembering; but that is when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence.
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3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the sleep is more awake, so to say, then one has dreams of all kinds; when there is no such Awareness of dreams, it is because the sleep of the body is more deep,the dreams are there but the body consciousness does not note them or remember that it had them.
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3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The subconscient is below the waking physical consciousness it is an automatic, obscure, incoherent, half-unconscious realm into which light and Awareness can with difficulty come. The inner vital and physical are quite different they have a larger, plastic, subtler, freer and richer consciousness than the surface vital and physical, much more open to the Truth and in direct touch with the universal.
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2) Things rising from there come to the Awareness of the mind before they can touch or affect the consciousness.
3) The subconscient becomes less the refuge of the ignorant and obscure movements and more an automatic response of the material to the higher consciousness.
3.4.2 - Guru Yoga, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
What is the true master? It is the formless, fundamental nature of mind, the primordial Awareness of the base of everything, but because we exist in dualism, it is helpful for us to visualize this in a form. Doing so makes skillful use of the dualisms of the conceptual mind, to further streng then devotion and help us stay directed toward practice and the generation of positive qualities.
In the Bon tradition, we often visualize either Tapihritsa* as the master, or the Buddha Shenla Odker*, who represents the union of all the masters. If you are already a practitioner, you may have another deity to visualize, like Guru Rinpoche or a yidam or dakini. While it is important to work with a lineage with which you have a connection, you should understand that the master you visualize is the embodiment of all the masters with whom you are connected, all the teachers with whom you have studied, all the deities to whom you have commitments. The master in guru yoga is not just one individual, but the essence of enlightenment, the primordial Awareness that is your true nature.
The master is also the teacher from whom you receive the teachings. In the Tibetan tradition, we say the master is more important than the Buddha. Why? Because the master is the immediate messenger of the teachings, the one who brings the Buddha's wisdom to the student. Without the master we could not find our way to the Buddha. So we should feel as much devotion to the master as we would to the Buddha if the Buddha suddenly appeared in front of us.
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After receiving the blessing, imagine the master dissolving into light that enters your heart and resides there as your innermost essence. Imagine that you dissolve into that light, and remain in pure Awareness, rigpa.
There are more elaborate instructions for guru yoga that can involve prostrations, offerings, gestures, mantras, and more complicated visualizations, but the essence of the practice is mingling your mind with the mind of the master, which is pure, non-dual Awareness. Guru yoga can be done any time during the day; the more often the better. Many masters say that of all the practices it is guru yoga that is the most important. It confers the blessings of the lineage and can open and soften the heart and quiet the unruly mind. To completely accomplish guru yoga is to accomplish the path.
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There is another stream which Lippmann discusses later on, but which precedes and underlies the ones he describes here: the stream of specializations which has eroded the West's Awareness of the cybernetic nature and operation of their psycho-political systems, making its statesmen and political scientists helpless to understand the catastrophe, and prone to increase it by their very efforts at correction.
"One [great stream]," Lippmann continues, "is the enormous expansion of public expenditure, chiefly for war and reconstruction; this has augmented the power of the assemblies [representing the work component] which vote the appropriations on which the executive depends. The other development which has acted to enfeeble the executive power [controller] is the growing incapacity of the large majority of the democratic peoples to believe in intangible realities. This has stripped the government of that imponderable authority which is derived from traditional, immemorial usage, consecration, veneration, prescription, prestige, heredity, hierarchy."19 pp. 54-56.
3.7.1.07 - Involution and Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
against Nature, the spirit against his creative energy. But Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, are two eternal lovers who possess their perpetual unity and enjoy their constant difference, and in the unity abound in the passion of the multitudinous play of their difference, and in every step of the difference abound in the secret sense or the overt consciousness of unity. Nature takes the Soul into herself so that he falls asleep in a trance of union with her absorbed passion of creation and she too seems then to be asleep in the whirl of her own creative energy; and that is the involution in Matter. Above, it may be, the Soul takes Nature into himself so that she falls asleep in a trance of oneness with the absorbed self-possession of the spirit and he too seems to be asleep in the deep of his own self-locked immobile being. But still above and below and around and within all this beat and rhythm is the eternity of the spirit who has thus figured himself in soul and nature and enjoys with a perfect Awareness all that he creates in himself by this involution and evolution. The soul fulfils itself in Nature when it possesses in her the consciousness of that eternity and its power and joy and transfigures the natural becoming with the fullness of the spiritual being. The constant self-creation which we call birth finds there the perfect evolution of all that it held in its own nature and reveals its own utmost significance. The complete soul possesses all its self and all Nature.
Therefore all this evolution is a growing of the Self in material nature to the conscious possession of its own spiritual being. It begins with form - apparently a form of Force - in which a spirit is housed and hidden; it ends in a spirit which consciously directs its own force and creates or assumes its own forms for the free joy of its being in Nature. Nature holding her own self and spirit involved and suppressed within herself, an imprisoned master of existence subjected to her ways of birth and action, - yet are these ways his and this spirit the condition of her being and the law of her workings, - commences the evolution: the spirit holding Nature conscious in himself, complete by his completeness, liberated by his liberation, perfected in his perfection, crowns the evolution. All our births are the
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
bliss; chit, pure or essential Awareness; sat, pure or essential
being. In the present stage of our evolution ordinary humanity
--
consciousness or intelligent Awareness which we call knowledge,
so that we remember with the chitta everything noticed or unnoticed, but that knowledge is useless for our life owing to its lying
--
of all concentration of chit, Awareness (the sanyama of Patanjali) and it is by sanyama or concentration of Awareness either
on the object of Awareness (rajayoga) or on itself (jnanayoga
and adhyatmayoga) that satyam and Veda become directly selfmanifest and luminous to the Yogin. Without this sanyama no
--
Yajna is Being, Awareness and Bliss; He is Sat, with Chit and
Ananda, because Chit & Ananda are inevitable in Sat. When in
His Being, Awareness and Bliss He conceals guna or quality, He
is nirguna Sat, impersonal being with Awareness and Bliss either
gathered up in Himself & passive, they nivritta, He also nivritta
--
nivritta, not related to His active Awareness and bliss except as a
Watcher of their detached activity; but He may also by His Shakti
--
power of Chit, - by His Awareness. It is because He becomes
aware of things in Himself by some process of Chit that things
--
& Awareness, Chit and Shakti are one, and though we speak
for convenience' sake of the Power of Chit, & call it Chichchhakti, yet the expression should really be understood not as
the Power of Chit, but as Chit that is Power. All Awareness is
power and all power conceals Awareness. When Chit that is
Power begins to work, then She manifests Herself as kinetic
--
as Force that is Awareness dwells on all of them & knows them
minutely & perfectly. He is not only Force of Action but also
4.02 - BEYOND THE COLLECTIVE - THE HYPER-PERSONAL, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
and Awareness of a Great Presence. The ' mystics ' and their
commentators apart, how has psychology been able so con-
4.02 - Humanity in Progress, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ganized Awareness of the universe is passed on
from hand to hand and increases with each succes-
--
anguish, into which a renewed Awareness of our
human species has plunged us.
4.03 - Prayer to the Ever-greater Christ, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
vivid Awareness of God in all things, and of Christ as the
focus of the world.
--- Overview of noun awareness
The noun awareness has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (10) awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness ::: (having knowledge of; "he had no awareness of his mistakes"; "his sudden consciousness of the problem he faced"; "their intelligence and general knowingness was impressive")
2. (2) awareness, sentience ::: (state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "the crash intruded on his awareness")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun awareness
2 senses of awareness
Sense 1
awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
=> knowing
=> higher cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
awareness, sentience
=> consciousness
=> cognitive state, state of mind
=> psychological state, psychological condition, mental state, mental condition
=> condition, status
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun awareness
1 of 2 senses of awareness
Sense 1
awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
=> self-awareness
=> feel
=> sense
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun awareness
2 senses of awareness
Sense 1
awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
=> knowing
Sense 2
awareness, sentience
=> consciousness
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun awareness
2 senses of awareness
Sense 1
awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
-> knowing
=> awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness
=> incognizance
=> know
=> cognizance, ken
=> prevision, foresight, farsightedness, prospicience
=> understanding, apprehension, discernment, savvy
Sense 2
awareness, sentience
-> consciousness
=> stream of consciousness
=> self, ego
=> awareness, sentience
=> sensibility, esthesia, aesthesia
=> waking
--- Grep of noun awareness
awareness
self-awareness
unawareness
Wikipedia - Alertness -- State of active attention by high sensory awareness such as being watchful
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Wikipedia - Situation awareness -- Adequate perception of environmental elements and external events
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Kheper - awareness -- 80
auromere - mental-awareness-in-comatose-patients-and-sleeping-newborn-infants
auromere - mental-awareness-in-comatose-patients-and-sleeping-newborn-infants
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Integral World - The Qualia Question, What is the Evolutionary Advantage of Subjective Awareness?, A Two-Minded Discussion, David Lane and Brandon Gillett
Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness
Themes of Emergence: Awareness, Responsibility, and Mutuality
dedroidify.blogspot - awareness-is-defense-against-reality
dedroidify.blogspot - daily-dedroidify-awareness
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dedroidify.blogspot - awareness-test
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wiki.auroville - Awareness_Through_the_Body_(ATB)
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Psychology Wiki - Awareness
Psychology Wiki - Body_awareness
Psychology Wiki - Psychology_Wiki:Community_Portal#Awareness_and_Attracting_Contributors
Psychology Wiki - Self-awareness
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - bodily-awareness
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Short Circuit(1986) - Number 5, one of a group of experimental military robots, undergoes a sudden transformation after being struck by lightning. He develops self-awareness, consciousness, and a fear of the reprogramming that awaits him back at the factory. With the help of a young woman, Number 5 tries to evade capture...
For Our Children: The Concert(1993) - This 1993 concert raised money for AIDS awareness. Seen on The Disney Channel before being released on VHS, It featured popular artists of the day performing their own renditions of favorite childrens' songs. Several noted early 90s actors and actresses made appearances as well.
Million Calorie March: The Movie(2008) - Million Calorie March: The Movie is a 2008 American documentary film directed by, co-produced by and starring Gary Michael Marino, an author, speaker and anti-obesity activist. The film follows Marino as he embarks on a 1,200-mile (1,900 km) fundraiser and awareness walk, the Million Calorie March,...
Somersault(2004) - A young girl runs away from home when she is caught out kissing her mother's boyfriend by her mother. She goes to a ski town, where she experiences sexual awareness after falling in love with a local farmer's son.
Powder (1995) ::: 6.6/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 51min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery | 27 October 1995 (USA) -- An off the charts genius who is home schooled and shunned after his last relative dies shows the unconscious residents of his town about connection awareness and the generosity of the spirit. Director: Victor Salva Writer:
The Normal Heart (2014) ::: 7.9/10 -- TV-MA | 2h 12min | Biography, Drama, History | TV Movie 25 May 2014 -- A gay activist attempts to raise H.I.V. and A.I.D.S. awareness during the early 1980s. Director: Ryan Murphy Writers: Larry Kramer (screenplay), Larry Kramer (play)
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Ergo Proxy -- -- Manglobe -- 23 eps -- Original -- Psychological Mystery Sci-Fi -- Ergo Proxy Ergo Proxy -- Within the domed city of Romdo lies one of the last human civilizations on Earth. Thousands of years ago, a global ecological catastrophe doomed the planet; now, life outside these domes is virtually impossible. To expedite mankind's recovery, "AutoReivs," humanoid-like robots, have been created to assist people in their day-to-day lives. However, AutoReivs have begun contracting an enigmatic disease called the "Cogito Virus" which grants them self-awareness. Re-l Mayer, granddaughter of Romdo's ruler, is assigned to investigate this phenomenon alongside her AutoReiv partner Iggy. But what begins as a routine investigation quickly spirals into a conspiracy as Re-l is confronted by humanity's darkest sins. -- -- Elsewhere in Romdo, an AutoReiv specialist by the name of Vincent Law must also face his demons when surreal events begin occurring around him. Re-l, Iggy, Vincent, and the child AutoReiv named Pino, will form an unlikely faction as they struggle to uncover Romdo's mysteries and ultimately, discover the true purpose of the mythical beings called "Proxies." -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- 494,821 7.92
Love Live! School Idol Project -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Other -- Music Slice of Life School -- Love Live! School Idol Project Love Live! School Idol Project -- Otonokizaka High School is in a crisis! With the number of enrolling students dropping lower and lower every year, the school is set to shut down after its current first years graduate. However, second year Honoka Kousaka refuses to let it go without a fight. Searching for a solution, she comes across popular school idol group A-RISE and sets out to create a school idol group of her own. With the help of her childhood friends Umi Sonoda and Kotori Minami, Honoka forms μ's (pronounced "muse") to boost awareness and popularity of her school. -- -- Unfortunately, it's all easier said than done. Student council president Eri Ayase vehemently opposes the establishment of a school idol group and will do anything in her power to prevent its creation. Moreover, Honoka and her friends have trouble attracting any additional members. But the Love Live, a competition to determine the best and most beloved school idol groups in Japan, can help them gain the attention they desperately need. With the contest fast approaching, Honoka must act quickly and diligently to try and bring together a school idol group and win the Love Live in order to save Otonokizaka High School. -- -- -- Licensor: -- NIS America, Inc. -- 367,131 7.43
Oira no Hijouji -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Demons Historical Military -- Oira no Hijouji Oira no Hijouji -- A country of peaceful frogs is attacked by a country of devils. -- -- The film is meant for crisis awareness as Japan was on the brink of war with China at the time. Unfortunately, both countries did end up going to war the following year; it was the Second Sino-Japanese War. -- Movie - ??? ??, 1936 -- 316 5.14
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_perception_of_perspective_to_awareness_2014-05-04_02-04.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_revelation_of_awareness_through_a_shared_perspective_2014-05-04_02-07.gif
AIDS Awareness Week
Ambient awareness
Anesthesia awareness
Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization
Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science
Autism Awareness Campaign UK
Awareness
Awareness avatar
Awareness Muscle
Awareness of Dying
Awareness ribbon
Awareness Technologies
Basic body-awareness methodology
Bisexual Awareness Week
Black Awareness Day
Brand awareness
Breast cancer awareness
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Brunei People's Awareness Party
Bullying Awareness Week
Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia
Choiceless awareness
Comics Literacy Awareness
Context awareness
COPD Awareness Month
Critical language awareness
Cult Awareness Network
Cyber security awareness
Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project
Domain Awareness System
Draft:Muslim Disability Awareness
European Flood Awareness System
Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training
Fertility awareness
Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs
Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Global Maritime Situational Awareness
HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer awareness and prevention
Information Awareness Office
Information security awareness
Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center
International Albinism Awareness Day
International May 12th Awareness Day
International Stuttering Awareness Day
Intersex Awareness Day
Jewish Awareness America
Large-group awareness training
Legal awareness
Link awareness
List of awareness ribbons
List of large-group awareness training organizations
List of LGBT awareness periods
Location awareness
Lyme Disease Awareness Month
Maritime Awareness Global Network
Maritime domain awareness
Metalinguistic awareness
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness
National Colon Cancer Awareness Month
National Dairy Goat Awareness Week
National Disability Employment Awareness Month
National Latino AIDS Awareness Day
New Cult Awareness Network
Phonological awareness
Platinum Party of Employers Who Think and Act to Increase Awareness
Print awareness
Public awareness of science
Self-arising Primordial Awareness
Self-awareness
Self-injury Awareness Day
Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Shared Awareness and Deconfliction
Singles Awareness Day
Situation awareness
Space domain awareness
Space Situational Awareness Programme
Spatial contextual awareness
Suicide awareness
Taxi positional awareness
Terrain awareness and warning system
The Awareness Center
The Institute for Research of social awareness and scientific atheism of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
The Traveling Awareness Bears
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