As the mind permeates the sleeping dream, the dream feels real. As brahman pervades the waking dream, the dream feels even more real.
The mind infuses the sleeping mind; brahman, the waking one. Attention as if without awareness is like dreaming. Attention with awareness is like viveka.
In mutual superimposition, from the point of view of God’s own Maya, not only is imagination superimposed on reality, but reality is superimposed on imagination. And that’s why things feel so real.
1. reality figures
As brahman is in everything and everything is in brahman, and atman is brahman, one’s real self is in everything and everything is in oneself.
This is the transitive property of consciousness, the paradoxical physics of reality, and the ancient math of nonduality.
Poets sing the reflection is in the water and the water is in the reflection. Sages say the world is maya. There’s only brahman.
2. nondoing my way
Without detachmant, discipline, earnestness, and viveka, there is no way. By the way, brahmavidya, self-inquiry, and intuition is my way.
Consciousness-existence is not only ground, that rope, the substrate of all superimposition, it’s you minus what you think you are.
God minus universal consciousness equals me minus individual consciousness. That pure consciousness is Atman is Brahman.
3. your real god
Intuition is at the crossroads of atman and brahman. Intelligence is the nature of brahman and not an attribute.
Artificial intelligence is like artificial consciousness. It's unreal. As old gods fade away, new gods appear. God is not dead.
Gods may be seen through. People can be deconstructed. Find true north. Real gods lead you to reality.
1.
Intuition is at the crossroads of atman and brahman.
Intelligence is the nature of brahman and not an attribute.
Artificial intelligence is like artificial consciousness. Unreal.
2.
As old gods fade away, new gods appear. God is not dead.
Gods may be seen through. People can be deconstructed.
Find true north. Your real god will lead you to the truth.
Without detachmant, discipline, earnestness, and viveka, there is no way. By the way, brahmavidya, self-inquiry, and intuition is the way.
Consciousness-existence is not only ground, that rope, the substrate of all superimposition, it’s you minus what you think you are.
God minus universal consciousness equals me minus individual consciousness. That pure consciousness is Atman is Brahman.
As brahman is in everything and everything is in brahman, and atman is brahman, one’s real self is in everything and everything's in oneself.
This is the transitive property of consciousness, the paradoxical physics of reality, and the ancient math of nonduality.
Poets sing the reflection is in the water and the water is in the reflection. Sages say the world is maya. There’s only brahman.
Consciousness-existence is the ground upon which the mind constructs its many castles.
Ordinary attention is that consciousness mixed with thought. Often mistaken for foundational consciousness, it's not.
Attention is like this murky solution. When left to sit silently, thoughts settle to the bottom leaving crystal clear awareness where it's always been.
In several passages in Śańkara’s Commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kärikäs and in the Nineteenth Chapter of the verse section of the Upadeśa Sahasrī we find ‘acosmic’ doctrines buttressed by theoretical arguments as well as by upanishadic quotation. They are associated with a world-view in which the external world is reduced to the ‘oscillation’ of the mind (citta-spandana).
In some places the Self is represented as imagining the individual soul, who then proceeds to imagine his own private worlds, a waking-world which recurs, and dream-worlds which differ from the waking-world and from each other.
From the waking standpoint, it is clear that dreams are illusory. But for their part, the dream-worlds exhibit all the characteristics of the waking-world, including a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland time-space-causation framework of their own.
More important still, from Śańkara’s point of view, is the fact that they contain a distinction between physical and mental (external and internal) and between real and unreal. This parallel between the (admittedly) false dreaming-worlds and the waking-world is used to bring home to the mind the falsity of the latter. Both worlds are the mere play of false ideas consequent upon ignorance of the true nature of the Self.
And a critique of the whole conception of causality is developed, aimed partly at refuting the natural and common conviction that dream-experience is an illusory ‘effect’ arising from waking-experience conceived as a real cause. In these passages there is a tendency to emphasize the irrational and spontaneous character of the experiences of both the dream and the waking states.
Outside the above-mentioned two works, Śańkara rarely if ever attacks the notion of causality, or establishes the irreality of waking-experience from the parallel with dream. He inherited this line of teaching from Gaudapāda, who was himself largely indebted for it to Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching. If Sankara made little use of it outside his commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kārikās, it may be that he considered it suitable only for a particular kind of pupil.
It has been argued that he was initiated into Advaita as a pupil of a Teacher of Gaudapāda’s line and that he later gradually emancipated himself from the acosmic and subjectivist views of Gaudapāda under the influence of other traditional Vedanta teaching.
Whatever be the truth here, he and his great pupil Sureśvara express a reverence for Gaudapāda which they nowhere retract, so that the texts in which he expresses the kind of views we more specifically associate with Gaudapāda deserve to be represented.
~Alston, Creation, p.244
In this reflexive universe, there are stages and substages. Both number seven.
The seventh substage of any given stage in this reflexive universe of evolutionary self-awareness requires the first substage of the next stage to be pre-existent.
This evolutionary universe is not propelled forward by its past but is being beckoned back by the future.
Not only is truth beyond words, words have never existed in truth. With great imagination comes a world of words.
Like a dream, it’s not real. That it feels real is an attribute of dreaming. Reality, like deep sleep, doesn’t feel a thing.
It's like the classic trope of snake and rope. Just because the snake appears to be real doesn’t mean it is. Perception is the very stuff of dreams.
Even these observations are things perceived and aren’t to be believed. Nonduality is not a belief system but a method for the practice of disbelieving.
Creation myths are made to be destroyed. Theories explaining all phenomena are constructed to be deconstructed. Worshiping the gods is prologue to seeing through them.
The texts of the Upanishads that are most obviously of benefit to man are those which teach him that he is identical with the Absolute, for the knowledge accruing from them is said to result in the 'fruit' of 'immediate intuition of truth' and 'immortality' and 'eternal freedom from fear'.
Such knowledge is not only 'fruitful' but final and uncontradictable. Once it is gained, it is inconceivable that there either should or could be any further knowledge to add to it, further it, modify it or correct it.
This cannot be said of the knowledge accruing from the creation-texts, which consequently carry less authority when they conflict with the great metaphysical teachings about the true nature of man as one with homogeneous Consciousness, the sole existent reality.
Further, if the creation-texts had been relating anything true, they would not have disagreed amongst themselves as to the details of creation. The texts that teach that the creation of the world took place on the analogy of some worldly kind of creation, such as the production of pots of showing that effects are non-different from their material cause.
And there is the further principle of exegesis that all the texts can be reconciled and combined into a single view.
According to this principle, the supreme texts of the Upanishads like 'That thou art', which affirm the identity of the individual soul with the Absolute, may be taken as fundamental, while all the rest of the texts of the Veda can be taken as auxiliaries to understanding these.
Some parts of the accounts of creation are plainly mythological, as when 'speech' is spoken of as 'desiring food' or 'food' is spoken of as 'running away'. These again should not be taken as statements of fact but as indirect aids to certain phases of the process of coming to understand the great truth that the individual soul is none other than the supreme Self
In the same way, the doctrine that, having created the world, the Absolute 'entered' it as the principle of life and consciousness is not to be taken as a statement of historical fact, but as a pictorial representation of the truth that the Absolute is already manifest in the world-appearance, in the sense that it is the only reality in it.
Both the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the ‘entry’ of the Absolute into its own creation have to be viewed in a wider context and seen as part of the process of gradually conveying to the pupil a notion of his own true nature by the method of false attribution and subsequent denial.
Alston, Creation, p.231
For some the summer solstice is midsummer. The summer solstice is beginning of the summer for some others. Maybe our highest daily average temperature floats your boat. I know it’s summer when this tidal Merrimack turns on its air conditioning originating from that Gulf of Maine.
Self-awareness is the nature of awareness. The bliss of self-awareness is the nature of brahman. Awareness to self-awareness is this dreamlike appearance of space-time in changeless satcitananda. Because reality is indescribable, paradox is one way to describe it.
As pure consciousness is the ground of reality, god is the floor of the people. All players in this world need a stage to act their part upon. Everyone has a god whether they believe in it or not. The hardest part of deconstructing the personal is unraveling its gods.
Your god may be political, scientific, materialistic, all three or more. Your god may be the one true god and no other god is true for you. Self-awareness has always been my greatest god. I might not have known it but self-awareness has been telling me I am the livelong June.
Śańkara was a good deal less exuberant than his later followers came to be in his references to the Absolute or the Self as bliss.
This may be illustrated from the case of the famous work called 'The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom', attributed to him but now known to have been composed centuries after his death by some member of his school.
Of the 580 verses of the 'Crest-Jewel' almost a tenth refer in one way or another to the topic of bliss, whereas in Śańkara's one independent work of guaranteed authenticity, the Upadeśa Sahasrī, there is only one appearance of the term bliss (ānanda), and the Absolute is regularly described as 'Being-and-Consciousness-only (sac-cin-mātra)' and not according to the later formula 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sac-cid-ānanda)'.
Nevertheless, the Upanishads do speak of the Absolute as bliss, and this note is not absent from Śańkara's genuine texts:
-the bliss of the Absolute available in dreamless sleep when nescience is absent
-under the influence of nescience, the bliss of the Absolute manifests in fragmentary and temporary form as worldly joy
-the bliss in the 'ether of the heart' enjoyed by those who realize the true nature of the Self
-the bliss of the Self is permanent, and, unlike that derived from objects, not dependent on activity
-the bliss of the Self is not anything experienced like an object
~Alston, Absolute, p.260
Gaudapada says both the dreamless state and both dream states are appearing in the fourth.
Even the midnight of a moonless night is appearing in that alpine crystal lake.
It goes without saying if the mind is appearing in consciousness only, I cannot be the mind.
Every person has a god and every god has a godhead.
I Am is god singing to its godhead. Sing along with me.
In a self-reflexive universe, I Know I Am is the holy trinity.
Belief is knowing a lot of things and loving only some of them. Viveka is seeing through everything while loving all of it.
Two is old-time religion. One is into the mystic. Zero is postmodern deconstruction.
Nonduality is the reality of satcitananda.
What Śaṅkara means here is that of the string of four words in the nominative case in the Upanishad text ‘satyam jñānam anantam brahma’, Brahman (brahma) is the subject and the other three words constitute three separate predicates applied to it.
...
In other words the phrase represents in contracted form three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute, ‘The Absolute is Reality’, ‘The Absolute is Knowledge’ and ‘The Absolute is Infinity’. We are not being confronted with the statement that the Absolute has three separate characteristics, but with three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute.
...
Śaṅkara regarded the definition of the Absolute at present under consideration as concerned with the nature (svarūpa) of the Absolute, no words have power to characterize it positively. To do this is beyond the power of words.
...
Śaṅkara was only concerned with words in so far as they can be used to promote immediate experience (anubhava) of the Absolute.
...
All the various modifications of Being have a beginning and an end, but Being itself undergoes neither birth nor destruction. Hence the purpose of the present Taittirīya Upanishad text in ‘characterizing’ the Absolute as ‘Reality’ is the negative one of excluding all its apparent modifications.
...
However, if the matter were suffered to remain there, we would be left with the Absolute constituting the material cause of the world of effects or modifications.
...
If the Absolute is ‘Knowledge’, then it cannot be a material cause in the same sense as the material causes we observe in the world, which are invariably objects of our knowledge and therefore not themselves knowledge.
...
Similarly, if the Absolute is ‘Reality’ and ‘Infinity’ it cannot be ‘knowledge’ in the sense of a particular act of cognition or any factor of such an act, such as the knowing subject conceived as agent in the act of knowing.
...
Each of them, however, when taken as modified by contiguity with the others, still refers to the Absolute and indicates its nature negatively by marking it off from what it is not. It is that which is not unreal, not non-conscious and not finite, and that is the most we can say about it.
~Alston, Absolute, p.213
In the case of a unique entity like the Absolute, definition is achieved not by marking it off from others of its class but by marking it off from everything else whatever. And from this other points arise.
When we mark a particular individual off from others of its class by mentioning the particular characteristics which it has but they do not have, we 'characterize' it. We treat it as a substance having such and such attributes which we can enumerate.
But the phrase 'Reality, Knowledge, Infinity' is not a 'characterization' (viśeṣana) of the Absolute but merely a 'definition' (lakşaņa) of it.
Where there is characterization, the empirical characteristics attributed to the individual characterized must belong to it as attributes. But where there is only definition, it is enough if the characteristics merely serve to debar the mind from thinking of anything other than the unique entity being defined.
They may indicate the whole nature (svarūpa) of the unique entity negatively, by debarring the mind from all else, without characterizing it positively as a substance possessed of such and such attributes. They may thus 'define' it, in the Indian sense of the term, while leaving it transcendent.
Śańkara admits that the words 'Reality, Knowledge Infinity' do, formally speaking, attribute characteristics to the Absolute. But he claims that the purpose of the phrase is not to attribute empirically knowable attributes to the Absolute, but only to mark if off from anything that has empirically knowable characteristics.
~Alston, Absolute, p208
as the principle of existence meeting
the ground of pure awareness is
the spacetime of self-awareness
occupying spacetime is the
definition of a person
Words are for the world. Dancing is for me.
The principle of existence and the ground of consciousness are silent and still.
Self-awareness is the bell of tattvamasi.
The rishis say the mind knows nothing but existence and itself. Self-awareness is the bliss of knowing that is one.
Without that deep pacific godhead, where would my island be? This universe is the manifestation of that satcitananda.
I started off with transcendentalism but soon I hit the harder stuff: Shankara equals Shankaracharya minus acharya.
It takes an infinity of dreamworlds for that nondual self-awareness. I am happy to play my part. Who am I?
Reality isn’t objective. Facts are mostly objective. Truth is absolutely subjective.
Intuition is the only known link between this objective world and that subjective self.
This intuitive nonknowing is the other side of effortless nondoing. Nondoing and nonknowing is the way.
Wise minds stopping on the way avoiding decompression sickness building something finer for a deeper neti neti.
If it walks, talks, touches, tastes, or smells like the truth, it isn’t. You can’t feel intuition but you know how it feels.
The most profound knowledge of God is that which recognizes the utter inadequacy of all finite conceptions, and this can only be reached by the ‘Via Negationis’, the path of the negation of all the finite.
But only a few courageous souls can face the aridity of this path from the outset, and for minds of a devotional cast the ‘Via Eminentiae’ may be more appropriate, the path in which laudable characteristics that fall within human comprehension are ascribed positively to the deity, but with the clear recognition that they are but imperfect indications of His nature, since He transcends finite comprehension.
According to a third path, the ‘Via Causalitatis’, the mind fingers, as it were, the various causal principles that it can conceive as operating in the world, and attempts to mount through speculation of this kind to some conception of the deity as the first cause, and yet as that which lies beyond any causal principle that can be determinately conceived and from which all such principles proceed as effects.
According to a fourth path, the deity is sought to be perceived as the light present within the human intellect, illuminating its knowledge of truth.
According to a fifth path, the mind tries to mount up from things that are good and desirable for some particular end to that which is itself the supreme end, lying beyond all particular ends, and which is desirable for its own sake, the highest value and supreme good
Something parallel to, though not identical with, these various paths can be found in Śaṅkara’s texts. As we have already seen, he gives preference to the path of negation and regards it as indispensible for the final knowledge which confers liberation from ignorance and death. ...How tentative, for Śaṅkara, all positive conceptions of the Absolute are.
Śaṅkara conceived the upanishadic wisdom as consisting essentially in negation. The Absolute cannot be denoted through speech, and negation is the fundamental process which leads to ‘viveka’ or discrimination of the true nature of the Self from that with which it is falsely overlaid, the highest goal of the Advaita discipline.
The process Śaṅkara has in mind is not one of brute reiterated negation but of a gradually ascending series of successive affirmations.
The texts of the Upanishads are not exclusively negative. They give many and varied positive accounts of the Absolute and of its relation to the world and the individual, which alternate with passages in which all empirically knowable qualities are denied.
The various positive accounts of the Absolute are only approximations which have the function of bringing it down, so to speak, into the universe of discourse, so that the student can acquire some idea of it which can be corrected in the light of subsequent negations.
If the opening passage of Chapter III of the second Book of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad teaches that the five great elements that emanate from the Absolute are a reality, then the Absolute can initially be conceived as the cause from which they proceed.
But the purpose of the passage as a whole is not to teach that the Absolute is the cause of the world. The aim, rather, is to present the Absolute first in the guise of the cause of the world so as to give the student some idea of it.
When some conception of the Absolute is once in his mind, then it can be purified by the later text ‘Not thus, not thus’, which negates all empirically knowable characteristics of the Absolute, including that of being the cause of the world.
As we have already seen, Śaṅkara did not invent this method of interpreting the texts, but inherited it from earlier Teachers such as Gauḍapāda and Draviḍa. It is known as the method of false attribution and subsequent denial (adhyāropa and apavāda).
~Alston, Absolute, 165
Satcitananda is the principle of existence, the ground of consciousness, and the bliss of self-awareness. These are not attributes of Brahman. That satcitananda is the nondual nature of Nirguna Brahman.
In Saguna Brahman, I Am is the god of existence, I Know is the demigod of consciousness, and I Know I Am is the love song of self-awareness.
This manifestation of self-awareness may feel like samsara and look like space-time to an unwise mind but is actually the nondual nature of that transcendental light.
The Paradox of Self-awareness
Beyond life is the principle of existence. Beneath mindfulness is the ground of consciousness. Transcending love is the bliss of self-awareness.
Scientific materialism doesn’t have the ground of consciousness to stand on. It’s like this house of cards in the middle of an old-fashioned hurricane.
Religions give birth to billions of babies while scientific materialism throws out the baby with the bathwater. Advaita liberates that which is unborn, I'm just saying.
Call Me Moby
From existence to awareness happens in the blink of an eye.
In the name of effortless nondoing and intuitive nonknowing.
Call me Satcitananda.
The fundamental principle of Shankara’s teaching is that the pure, innermost ‘Self’ is the ultimate reality. This Self (which must not be confused with the ‘ego’) is a spiritual kernel of the same kind as Brahman or Godhead, the ultimate reality.
When a man overcomes ignorance or ‘avidya’ (the word has a very wide connotation which will be explained later) and grasps intuitively that the Universe is merely an external phenomenon, and realises the identity between the Self and Brahman he becomes a ‘liberated’ soul waiting only for his final liberation from the body by death.
The Self or Brahman cannot be described because it has no ‘qualities’ in the ordinary sense though it is sometimes said to be of the nature of pure being pure consciousness and pure bliss.
The material universe of forms and things is grounded in Brahman, but its formation therefrom cannot be described or formulated.
It functions on the basis of the law of ‘karma’ that is of cause and effect; but its ultimate cause is Brahman which has created the material world and started the process of change that we see occurring in that world, all creation is, however, ‘Maya’ or the power of illusion.
Within the realm of maya the universe exists and can be conceived as a creation of Brahman, who can also be conceived as a personal God; though from the standpoint of ultimate reality even a personal deity is a product of maya.
The causal law itself is ultimately unintelligible, because it is an illusory concept of name and form. There is no more essential difference between effect and cause than between a moulded pot and the clay from which it is made.
The world as caused by Brahman is an illusory superimposition (adhyasa) of phenomenon on the basic reality—like a rope which is mistaken for a snake or the mirage-lake seen on the desert sand.
It follows logically therefore that Shankara should urge the renunciation of transitory things and the acquisition of ‘right knowledge’ as the only means of attaining ‘liberation’.
~Y. Keshava Menon, "The Mind of Shakaracharya"
Awareness is pure consciousness. The mind is reflected consciousness like a red hot iron ball.
Any appearance in this lake appears to be real not because of its reflection but for the water in which it is appearing.
Lucid dreaming is like receiving. In manifesting is the giving. The mind is like a needle in a turn, turn, turntable.
Beginningless ignorance and spontaneous revelation are two sides of Maya. Self-awareness is the coin of reality.
Some say what most know as consciousness is actually reflected consciousness. Some call pure consciousness awareness. All states of consciousness are appearances in awareness. Pure consciousness is nondual.
Attention equals consciousness plus thought. Thoughts comprise the subtle substances of every name appearing in this universal magic show. Which came first: Chicken Little or the Golden Egg?
The shadow is nothing but a cloud. Avidya is like a dirty rotten snake. Accumulation is against the laws of giving and receiving. Insincerity is not impeccable. These dogs of war are in your head.
Dream sleep is mind on. Deep sleep is mind off. Mindfulness is seeing through the mind when on. Enlightenment transcends the mind, off or on.
Senses are the instruments of the mind. Dreams are like sonatas, concertos, or symphonies. Intuition is that corona of the Self.
There are no states of consciousness. Like the Sun, awareness always shines.
The Self is self-luminous. There will be clouds.
States of consciousness are states of ignorance. Like cumulus, cirrus, and thunderheads.
The waking state is a dream state too. The mind is turned on asleep or awake.
Perception is 99% of all illusion. The rest is aura.
The explanation follows the line not of the ancient texts that proclaimed that the objects of the world came forth from the texts of the Veda, but the sceptical line of the teachings of Uddālaka. Objects are illusions, entirely dependent on their names.
They are the mere illusory appearance of a plurality of isolated units in the Absolute that results from the arbitrary activity of naming. In this sense, the object is entirely dependent for its existence on, and therefore identical with, its name.
And the name, too, is an illusion. For all modifications of sound are reducible to the one basic sound, OM. And... the syllable OM itself is ultimately reduced to the Absolute, which has no empirical features and certainly does not consist of a plurality of four component elements like the vocalized syllable OM.
So what we have here is not a theory of the creative power of sound in which words are regarded as the subtle vibrations from which gross objects come forth, but a resolute reduction of all plurality to illusion on the lines of Uddālaka.
A similar view is also found at Extract 17, where Śaṅkara reduces all words to the principle speech (Vāc), and reduces Vāc to the Absolute. In this case, what was originally a doctrine describing creation is reduced to a doctrine of illusion.
~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Creation', p.154
Veni, vidi, vici. I am, I know, I know I am.
Being is the principle of existence. Awareness is the ground of consciousness.
Self-awareness is the essence of bliss.
Awake or asleep, the mind is always dreaming—except in deep sleep when the mind defaults. Trees sleep deep while people are dreaming.
Being, consciousness, bliss, name, and form are maximizing Maya. Satcitananda is the proverbial rope as name and form are making up the snake.
People come with gods and vice versa like a matching set. Any atheist believing in the personal subconsciously believes in some kind of god.
Liberation is a loaded word for clarity. Transmigration is universal dreaming. That is the revelation of divine imagination in this manifestation of self-awareness.
The mind is like an island. Folks are always doing or not doing raves on John Donne.
The sea is like a god to us. Depths of effortless intuition fill our prayers.
The absolute being of transcendental consciousness transcends
this universe of space and time. In other words, I am That minus Maya.
Can any means of knowledge reveal the Self, since to do so is to make the Self an object for a knowing subject. You cannot know anything as an object until you are separate from it and it is standing over against you as an object ready to be known.
Vedic revelation and critical reflection, therefore, as applied to the Self, are primarily negative in character. They do not yield determinate knowledge of the Self as if it were an object:
their function, rather, is to negate that which impedes the self-manifestation of the Self in its true form as infinite consciousness.
