That is, what you take yourself to be determines what you feel the world to be made of. If you think you are a body, then you see the world as made up of other physical objects existing apart from your body. If you think you are a subtle essence such as the mind, then you will see the world as made up of subtle essences and energies existing separately from your mind. If you see yourself as awareness, you will see the world also as being nothing other than awareness.
But then an amazing thing happens. When you no longer really think of yourself as a physical or subtle object, then you won’t carry the belief that you are awareness either. This belief will sweetly evaporate, having become unnecessary. It will no longer be necessary, having done its work. For the very notion of awareness gets it meaning in contradistinction to things other than awareness. Mountains and rivers become mountains and rivers again. When either side of the distinction is seen through, the distinction itself dissolves. And with it, any possibility of attachment. This is your freedom.
Footnotes
1. Serious philosophizing about this kind of thinking began in the seventeenth century with philosophers such as René Descartes and John Locke, as well as with scientists who modeled human knowledge upon the theory of optics from Johannes Kepler. These thinkers became extremely influential in Western culture; they conceived of the person as having an internal point of sentience encased in a body. Humankind’s essence was to accurately represent an outside world in thought, and communicate it to others. Before that era, experience and knowledge were thought to be much more organic and holistic, without imposing metaphysical barriers between internal and external. For two extremely lucid deconstructions of this spectator view of human knowledge, see Colin M. Turbayne’s The Myth of Metaphor (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univ. Press, 1962) and Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979).
2. Together, the gross and subtle worlds, the body and mind are meant to be exhaustive. They are a way to include everything that anyone might think could exist. The gross world would be the world of physical objects, including the cosmological universe, planet earth, rocks, buildings, trees, configurations of the brain and body. The subtle world could be called the world of the subtle energies, auras, entities such as angels, deities and bodhisattvas, heavens and hells, past and future reincarnated lives, dream objects and locations. One could also include abstract things such as logic, mathematics, quantum physics, causality, meaning, language, good, evil, temporality, and all relations. The mind would be all thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, memories, values, and states such as swoons, trances, and meditative states such as samadhis, etc. Of course physicists, shamans and accountants would not agree on the composition of these lists. That’s OK. The important thing for my purposes is that no candidate for an existent object is in principle omitted. Think of the list in that way!
3. Lucknow Disease is a linguistic malady first observed in Lucknow, India in the early 1990s. It is characterized by avoidance of the “I-word” – presumably to demonstrate to one’s self and others that there is no longer any ego or sense of self here. Instead of using the word “I” in sentences, Lucknow Disease sufferers say things like “This form is going to the bathroom.” The irony of Lucknow Disease is that it strikes only when the person’s sense of self is present and poorly integrated. It has never been observed in those whose sense of self is well-integrated – or absent.
Index (List of Searchable Terms)
To locate a specific passage or reference, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
A
Ajati Vada (creation theory)
Appearance and reality
Appearances Arisings
Atma Darshan & Atma Nivriti by Sri Atmananda
Atmananda, Sri
Attachment
B
Balsekar, Ramesh
Buddha
Buddhism
C
Choice
Christianity
Cognition
Collapse (of the witness)
Consciousness, pure
Consciousness Speaks, by Ramesh Balsekar
Creation theories (see also Ajati vada, Drishti Srishti Vada, Srishti Drishti Vada)
D
Derrida, Jacques
Descartes, René
Direct Path, the
Doership, sense of
Drishti Srishti Vada (creation theory)
Duality
E
Enlightenment
Entity, as doer or controller
Experiment
F
Falling in love (with awareness)
Feelings
Fish, Stanley
Form
G
Gadamer, Hans-George
H
Harding, Douglas
Harrison, Steven
Higher reason
I
I-principle
Identity
K
Kabbala
Kepler, Johannes
Kinesthesis
Klein, Jean
L
Language
Locke, John
Love
Lucknow Disease
M
Madhyamika (Middle-Way Buddhism)
Memories
Memory
Menon, Krishna. see Atmananda, Sri
Misunderstanding
Mountains and rivers
Myth of Metaphor, the (by Colin M. Turbayne)
N
Neo-advaita
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nondual teachings
O
Objects, physical
P
Psychology
R
Ramakrishna
Ramana Maharshi
Rorty, Richard
Rosicrucianism
Rosker, Michael
S
Sander, Dr. Tomas
Satsang
Satsang teachers
Scientific investigation
Sensations
Seeing
Separation, sense of
Serial stream (of arisings)
Singer, Daniel
Smith, Huston
Shrishti Drishti Vada (creation theory)
Standing as awareness
Subject/object distinction
Sublation
Suzuki, Shunryu
Sweetness
T
Taking one’s stand. See Standing as awareness
Thoughts
Tibetan Buddhism
Toynbee, Arnold
Turbayne, Colin M
U
Unenlightenment
W
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Witnessing awareness
Z
Zen Buddhism
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki
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