advaitin Shri Atmanandas teachings -- 8. Merging back

[Guest guest]

Namaste Gregji and Ranjeetji.

 

Thanks for your clarifying thoughts/quotes.

 

We are trying to capture the ineffable in words that are too

inadequate for the job. Then, there are interpretations required ad

infinitum! And those interpretations galore again are inadequate

because we are using the same helples words.

 

I was pondering this "sleeping consciously" all through yesterday.

Then the question popped up in my mind: Are we *consciously* awake?

If yes, for how long during the state we call *wakefulness*? The

answer is very dismal. We are awake and yet not conscious of our

wakefulness, even if we engage in the sort of witnessing recommended

by Atmanandaji, because when we witness the world, even most

dispassionately so, our consciousness of the witnessing is not

witnessed. Isn't that again unconscious wakefulness? When we are

conscious of witnessing, the world is not there. There is only the

objectified knowledge that I am witnessing.

 

The one who goes through unconscious wakefulness naturally falls into

unconscious sleep. So, the problem needs to be tackled in

wakefulness. How do we do that with the menace of infinite regress

staring on our face?

 

The only way we can do that, to my understanding, is to go back to

Sankara's jAnAmi and be the things witnessed when even the thoughts

of "I am witnessing" (conscious wakefulness) and "infinite regress"

become me, the jAnAmi. Then, sleep becomes another jAnAmi, which is

again me, and it doesn't matter whether it is ignorant sleep or

conscious sleep as long as jAnAmi does the lighting up. Thus, I am in

everything as jAnAmi; I am the unconsciousness called deep sleep, I

am the thought called death and I am my alleged birth of which I have

no memory. Since I am all this, I have no sleep, birth or death and

am always Conscious. That could then be the meaning of "conscious

sleep" advaitically, divested of its implications in yogic practice

whatever.

 

I would be much interested to know what you and Anandaji have to say.

 

PraNAms.

 

Madathil Nair

_________________________________

 

We are trying to captureadvaitin, Gregory

Goode <goode@D...> wrote:

>

> You mention this sentence,

>

> "I know but I know not that I know."

>

> Simply removing that "not" would result in "I know and I know that

I know." But the kind of knowledge and lack of surprise is not a

knowledge "that ..." It's just knowledge.

>

> Given your sentence as a strating point, I'd say it's more like the

falling away of the clause that starts with "but"...