JB/What is awareness ?

[Guest guest]

Hey JB-ji,

 

These are great ponderings, they seem deep and sincere!

 

I agree with you on the stop-asking-questions advice. Basically it can't

truly serve as follow-able advice or a prescription. Rather, more like a

description of what happens in some instances. Let's say a person has deep

spiritual questions. And then they hear a teaching like "Stop asking; just

let the questions drop." Hearing this teaching just might pierce into the

heart of the person with questions, and might dissolve the questioning

impulse. If so, then it has become a self-fulfilling teaching. But not

because the questioner *did* anything about the teaching, and not because

it functioned as advice. Maybe something like this is what Wim had in mind

(not sure). A pointer that shows once and for all the direction the sun is

coming from.

 

If that doesn't happen, then maybe the advice will be set aside or not

understood, or lost on an e-mail server!

 

And if that doesn't happen, then perhaps the questioner, out of respect for

the advice or the teacher, will attempt to *follow* the advice. If this ,

it's like they are taking up a new practice. They are taking on, even at a

very subtle level, the *doing* of non-questioning. The energy that had

been used by the questioning impulse has now been co-opted in the effort to

not question. This is a suppressive method, sort of like mind-control,

holding those pesky questions down. It can keep them the questions being

articulated or verbalized or even indulged in mentally. This suppressive

method might be good for mental discipline, but it can never dissolve the

questioning impulse once and for all. It's like covering once's ears every

time an unpleasant sound occurs.

 

Awareness as ultimate subject -- this is close to what I was talking about.

I call that the "serial stream model" (stripped down from a much fuller

advaita vedanta teaching). In this model, all phenomena are arisings in a

stream. Phenomena come and go. They all appear to awareness. There's no

evidence that they can ever appear or exist outside of awareness.

Awareness is the seeingness, and it's not JB's awareness, not Harsha's, not

Greg's. There can't be two! And since there is seeing, and it's not

something or someone *other* than I seeing, then -- I am That. What might

remain to be investigated then, is whether anything that arises can be the

subject, whether it can be totality of what *I* am (and by "I", I don't

mean "Greg"). I see a patch of blue. I am not limited to that patch of

blue, and nor is it separate from me. In a manner of speaking, I am the

subject and it is the object. In the serial stream model, objects come and

go, but there is never the experience of *me* coming and going. Even deep

sleep or a coma - the impression, the experience is that I was there

throughout.

 

Now, why would one want to know or see or observe awareness? To gain

confidence about the teaching? Because one wants to be closer to it, to

merge and become one with it? To behold something beautiful? These

reasons are why there are beautiful deity figures who are said to be the

nature of divine awareness. Everyone has a favorite! But is awareness

*exhausted* with the form of the deity, no matter how subtle, vast and

profound?

 

You ask how one can be conscious of this. Can one *know* awareness? Three

kinds of answers come to mind:

 

1. Everything *is* nothing other than awareness. Even the cockroach in the

gutter. So anything that is known is awareness only.

 

2. If (1) seems too slippery and abstract, then you can think about it like

this. You can't know awareness like you can know the dream state or a

football score - because anything known in this way is an object, not the

subject. If it seems like you've got a handle on something and it seems

like this phenomenon is awareness, then (i) it must be an object. And (ii)

just what does this awareness-object appear to?? The answer to (ii) is

what the serial stream model calls awareness. You can never look at it

because it is the looking - it IS you.

 

3. If (2) above doesn't seem to make sense, and there's still the desire to

get closer and hold and grasp awareness, then there are things one can do.

One can study and deeply ponder the teachings *about* awareness, try to get

a handle on the models, the teachings, the implications, the texts, etc.

And/or one can take up a path that posits a divinity that is held to be the

nature of consciousness (Shaivite Hinduism does this; Krishna worship does

too; and Pure Land Buddhism does too).

 

Gotta go now!

 

Love,

 

--Greg

 

 

At 11:14 AM 12/7/00 -0000, J B wrote:

>>>>

Greg and all the others, thanks for your replies.

 

Greg's pointer, is something I can suddenly somehow relate to.

 

Are you saying Greg, that Anything experienceable/perceived are the

Objects (including the senses) while Awareness is not an object but

an ultimate Subject ?

If that is so, and that according to the saying 'I am That'..that

means one can only Be that.. correct ? Well, since awareness is not

an object, how can one be conscious of this .. that I am awareness,..

and if one canNot then what is the point of all this 'you are that'

etc. and Who sees and is able to say it ?

 

I know that 'stop asking questions' might be a wise advice,.. I do

not know,.. but I cannot live either on 'thou art That.. it is closer

than the closest.. your true nature etc'.. otherwise I merely settle

for far-out slogans and feel 'great'...

 

jb.