Subject: Shri Atmananda's teachings -- 5. All objects point to consciousness

[Guest guest]

Michael,

 

I must confess that I feel somewhat at a loss in replying to your 26

Nov message. I sense a difference of attitude or approach that needs to

be discerned and clarified, to prevent our discussion from turning into

a tit-for-tat quibbling. More superficially, there is difference of

terminology, which may have led you to mistake the prakriyas that I

have been trying to describe. Of course the fault may well be mine, for

poor description. Let me try to deal first with this problem of

terminology -- irrespective of who may be at fault, but just trying to

clarify the prakriya, as I've understood it from Shri Atmananda.

 

About the witness prakriya, you say: "I see that the deconstruction of

'external' reality into consciousness is proffered as a step on the way

towards the resolution of that now internal content into something

which the witness holds within itself."

 

There are several problems here, arising from your terminology. First,

no deconstruction of any reality is being attempted. This would assume

that reality is structured. That is indeed a habitual assumption, but

it is very much in question here. Also, it is just as much in question

whether reality can be 'external'. In this situation, the phrase

"'external' reality" is quite suspect, as a potentially deceptive

misnomer. It is to keep away such loaded and suspect terminology that a

simpler term is used. What you call "'external' reality" is more simply

called the 'world'. So the deconstruction attempted is not of reality

(external or internal or whatever), but of the (structured) world.

 

Moreover, in this witness prakriya, the deconstruction of world is only

into mind. What you call "consciousness" (with a small 'c'), Shri

Atmananda calls 'mind'. And I think he would not quite agree with your

suggestion that the witness prakriya proceeds by turning the mind's

"internal content into something which the witness holds within

itself". The mind and its internal contents are outside the witness.

That is whole point of the witness prakriya. It works by a withdrawal

from the mind and its mental contents, back to an inner witness that is

utterly detached from them.

 

In this sense, your description is a little inaccurate (when it is

applied to what Shri Atmananda taught). For it confuses two things. One

is a deliberate progression through withdrawal back to the witness. The

other is the final dissolution that comes about spontaneously, when the

witness stand is reached. There, having reached the goal, no witness

can remain, to hold anything within itself.

 

About Shri Atmananda's consciousness prakriya, you write that it makes

"no distinction between creative Pure Consciousness in which we live

move and have our being, and the individual consciousness/awareness

which passes between introspection and sensation and a host of other

activities which have both an inner and an outer aspect."

 

Thank you here for clarifying how you use the terms "Pure

Consciousness" and "consciousness". That makes it much easier to look

for a common understanding. Shri Atmananda most certainly does make the

distinction to which you refer, and he makes it very strictly, but he

makes it using different terminology. What you call "Pure

Consciousness", he calls 'consciousness'. And what you call "individual

consciousness/awareness", he calls 'mind'. As he uses the terms, the

personal ego's so-called 'consciousness' is not really consciousness at

all. Instead, it only an objective action, proceeding through the mind

towards apparent objects.

 

Still on the consciousness prakriya, you write: "Idealism is being

offered as a way to immediate absorption in Consciousness." And

further, you speak of "Idealism in which consciousness is a bag into

which a multitude of states and activities are thrown and identified

with the Absolute." And again: "... the outside world is reduced to

nothing but perceptions and feelings in your own head."

 

Here again, I must try correct what I think is a misrepresentation of

the prakriya. It proceeds in two stages. First, from objects to mind.

And second, from mind to consciousness. (And here, I am of course using

Shri Atmananda's terminology, which I take it you will understand as

different from yours.) The first stage is only a preliminary. For an

interested sadhaka, it is relatively easy. And it reaches, as you say,

an idealist position.

 

But, from the idealist position, reaching consciousness is not at all

immediate. The idealist position is not like the witness stand -- from

which the ego gets spontaneously dissolved in consciousness, with no

further work required. The idealist position is in mind. From there,

much further work is needed, to accept the full consequence that no

outside means no inside as well. In the idealist position, a sense of

'inside' still lingers on. This lingering sense of 'inside' still

retains the confusion you describe -- that "consciousness is a bag into

which a multitude of states and activities are thrown and identified

with the Absolute", and that "the outside world is reduced to nothing

but perceptions and feelings in your own head".

 

But this is not, of course, the intended goal of the prakriya. The goal

is consciousness itself (what you call "Pure Consciousness"). And that

goal is reached only by the toughest and the most uncompromising

questioning. In the first place, it has to be realized that when the

"world is reduced to nothing but perceptions and feelings", then there

is no "your own head" in which such perceptions, thoughts and feelings

can be contained. Accordingly, consciousness cannot be any sort of

bag -- containing any multitude, or even any passing stream, of states

and activities. When it is thus realized that consciousness has no

inside with mental things brought into it, then it is clear that

consciousness is utterly beyond the mind.

 

But even then, it isn't clear just what it is that we call

'consciousness'. If knowing isn't any mental act, if it is just 'pure

consciousness' quite independent of all acts, then what exactly can it

be? To be fair, this is just the question that many of us have been

puzzling over, at quite some length, with dear Benjamin. And no one --

neither 'modernists', nor traditionalists, nor Benjamin -- is

suggesting that the answer is the least bit facile or trivial.

 

Shri Atmananda's position is quite clear that reality is not attained

until all trace of physical and mental association has been removed, so

that all body and all mind get utterly dissolved in unmixed

consciousness. It's only then that contradictions are resolved and true

knowledge is attained. I do not see this as essentially different from

Shri Shankara.

 

In trying to understand the root of your objections, it occurs to me

that it may be a dissatisfaction with idealism, which you take to be

"an incoherent view as Sankara holds". Actually, I don't think there's

any genuine contradiction there with Shri Atmananda's teachings. As

just described above, Shri Atmananda took any idealist position as

essentially incomplete. When objects are reduced to mind, there remains

a stand in mind which must contradict itself. When the implications of

that contradiction are completely followed through, the mind dissolves

in unmixed consciousness and thus returns to non-dual self.

 

But, in a way, the mind's incompleteness and its self-contradiction can

be taken as a virtue. For this can lead the mind towards a final

dissolution in its underlying source, which is pure consciousness. As I

see it, advaita enquiry works basically by facing up to partialities

and contradictions, so that they may be opened up and clarified and

left behind, thus leading on to truth. Such an enquiry turns seeming

obstacles into helpful means towards the truth.

 

In particular, objects are first put aside as obstacles, thus turning

back into mind, whose incompleteness and self-contradiction are then

used to lead further back into non-dual consciousness. By its

non-duality, that consciousness turns out to be the positive reality of

objects as well as mind. And then the objects too turn out to be

helpful means that can be used to point to truth.

 

In short, idealism can be used as means, and so can objects, on the way

to truth. Do you see an essential contradiction there, with advaitic

truth or with Shri Shankara? If so, that would be a basic disagreement

between us, I think. But then, of course, there are many ways of

interpreting what's true, as also of interpreting a great philosopher

like Shri Shankara.

 

As to your remark that I "queried certain positions" of yours, I hasten

to clarify that the only proper purpose of my questions would be to

better understand your position and your terminology. From your reply,

I now seem to be a bit clearer about your terms concerning

consciousness. But about the witness, I am still unclear, because we

seem to have rather different ways of describing and thinking about the

witness, as you will have seen from the early part of this message.

 

Since I'm a sadhaka, with mistakes of my own to correct, it would be

quite wrong of me to go finding fault with other sadhakas. I feel quite

strongly that the only proper use that a sadhaka can make of advaita

reason or questioning is to turn their attack upon one's own mistakes.

Very sorry where I don't live up to that.

 

Ananda