consciousness vs. awareness

[Guest guest]

first off, I guess the author of I AM THAT had to translate into

english and unfortunately chose the words consciousness and awareness

and made them different. In my vocabulary, they are the same. I

don't believe Maharaj intended on changing the english language

definitions.

 

Then, as far as experience, the experience can occur and be

remembered. Let me give an example of something that happened to me

about a week ago. I fell asleep on the couch in the living room, and

when I awoke, I was temporarily unaware of who I was or where I was.

It took a moment for my mind to engage and split the room up and

identify it as my living room and for me to identify myself as this

person. So, this was moving from a state of " pure consciousness or

awareness " to a state of " split up consciousness or awareness " . When

the " non split up " awareness was there, I wasn't. Nevertheless, as

the sense of personal identity returned, the recollection of the non-

split up experience lingered.

 

So, the experience happens to all of us. We can understand " pure

consciousness or pure awareness "

 

If anyone wants to understand terminology of consciousness, there are

many resources on the web that give the definitions of various

aspects of mind and consciousness.

 

I like two words that are used in Kashmir Shaivism. Prakasha and

Vimarsha. Prakasha is the " pure consciousness " and Vimarhsa is the

aspect of consciousness that discriminates or allows one to know a

radio is different from a notebook. There is a loose association of

these two aspects with Shiva (pure awareness) and Shakti( split up or

cloaked awareness).

 

So, when we use " words " to split up the world into pieces, we are

limiting Shiva by the power of Mother Maya. The whole is split up

into forms identified by names. Shiva is " cloaked " by Maya. Self-

Realization is the reception of Grace or the " power of revelation "

or, " decloaking the world into Shiva " . This can be done by naming

all power(shakti) as divine power, and not perceiving the world as

being split up or under the control of different, or more than one

power(s).

 

This reminds me of a story (I heard in a 12 step meeting) of a boy

bothering his father. The father was reading the newspaper and the

boy kept asking questions. The father didn't want to be bothered so

he took a page of the paper which had a picture of a globe on it and

tore it up into tiny pieces and threw it to the boy and said, " here,

put together the picture of the world " In a few minutes, the boy had

it taped together, and was back to bothering his father.

 

The father asked, " How did you get the world together? " . The son

said, on the reverse side of the world there was a picture of a man.

When I put the man together, the world was together.

 

The power to perceive a world is split up or fragmented is a cloaking

that we have to keep ourselves separate. To " decloak " is to

see 'one' or advaita.

 

English just doesn't have the proper words yet to describe these

things (I don't think, but I wish it did). For this reason, we

usually use Sanskrit words. Otherwise, we have to use a bunch of

words to understand the concepts such as " karma, maya, prakasha,

vimarsha, atman etc. " The word Atman confuses the hell out of

newsgroup people when it is translated Self which in english means

both 'Supreme (all encompassing) Being, ground of the universe'

and 'Sense of a Separate Being.'

 

I think half the problem in these newsgroups is language.