On the Seventh Day of a Seventh Month

Maya veils and projects. And maya reveals. Ego usurps.

Ego is the name of ignorance in the form of maya.

Feed your intellect. Listen to intuition. Aham Brahmasmi.

Advaita Talk

By playing your part, you worship its one. Saguna Braman is the one true god. Nirguna Brahman is the nondual one.

Advaita is beyond belief. Nonduality transcends all thought. Faith and its confirmation is the real thing.

The deepest you can go is consciousness-existence. Any thought is more shallow.

Mind-off is deep sleep. Mind-on is dreaming. Body-on is the waking dream.

Some say Gaudapada is Advaita cooked in Nargajuna. Some say they’re Shankara but they’re not.

Buddha and Buddhi

You can’t lose consciousness. You are consciousness.

When the mind is turned off in deep sleep, consciousness is witnessing the absence of duality.

Some sages say nirvikalpa samadhi is consciousness witnessing the presence of nonduality.

Atman is the witness consciousness and absolute self but not the doer.

The mind, intellect, memory, and ego act in concert as the doer. They call it the inner instrument.

Intuition trains the intellect but that’s as far as maya goes.

Sonnet in Satcitananda

Consciousness is not manufactured by the mind.

Dreams are manufactured by the mind.

Consciousness-existence is that in which both dreams and deep sleep are appearing.

Consciousness-existence is my nature but I do not have a name.

Self-awareness is the bliss of consciousness-existence to the power of three.

The mind waking from a dream is being mindful.

Pure consciousness seeing through all daydreaming is realization itself.

Don’t take yourself personally.

God isn’t dead but your particular concept of a god has outlived its usefulness.

The principle of existence is like fire. The mind is like on fire.

Seeing through one’s superimposition is the way.

The mind divides naturally. Use the mind carefully in these matters of the self.

All things must be deconstructed.

Effortless nondoing and intuitive nonknowing is the way of consciousness-existence.

The Ten Beginnings

The big is brahman. The big bang is maya.

Satcitananda is the foundation upon which this city of samsara has been imagined.

Maya is neither real nor unreal. Maya is both beginningless and finite.

Maya is the power of saguna brahman, Isvara, name your god.

Nirguna brahman is saguna brahman without the mindstuff.

Consciousness-existence is what I am when I’m not thinking about it.

Self-awareness is the nature of awareness. Another name for that is bliss.

From the point of view of avidya, self-awareness takes a universe of space-time.

As self awareness is the nature of awareness, enlightenment is sudden.

Realization is spontaneous. Like a dream, this never happened.

In a Nondual Point of View

Like an ocean isle, the mind only knows what the mind can know. What the mind can’t know is like the boundless seven seas.

The mind knows what’s within the boundaries of the mind. The mind cannot know the boundless consciousness in which it is appearing.

In the binary way of the mind, the mind considers itself divided from that which it cannot know.

In religion, that unknowable is called god. In scientific materialism, where that unknowable is now a theory to be proven in time, the future is god.

Separating the knowable from the unknowable is a form of ignorance in the shape of maya from the point of view of that nondual consciousness which is all-knowing and myself.

Voila I Am That

A subtle body appears in consciousness-existence, and its brilliant reflection is so profound, it appears to come alive.

In time this artificial being identifies with the body-mind so much, it believes consciousness is produced by it, and pays top dollar for anyone to prove it.

But consciousness is foundational. Existence is that supreme principle. The absolute is beyond the ken of the mind. Parabrahman is all there is. Voila! I am that.

footnotes to voila

What happens in Maya stays in Maya. Maya may be brilliant but consciousness is self-luminous. Consciousness is fire. The mind is on fire. It’s called superimposition.

Science sees through lies but it cannot see the truth. The western empire of scientific materialism is founded on the big lie—the material world produces everything including pure consciousness.

Thoughts appear in consciousness. Without existence, where would you be? The sea is beyond the point of any shoreline. Atman is Brahman. Brahman is all there be.

3. voila haiku

consciousness is self-luminous

the mind is on fire

maya is brilliant

4. 

consciousness-existence is not a name.

consciousness-existence is nameless.

consciousness-existence is atman 

In Mutual Superimposition

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.

Atman Reals Brahman

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.

Unreal Intelligence

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.

Nondoing My Way

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.

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'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. 

A Murky Solution

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.

Shankara on Gaudapada's Acosmic Doctrines

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

Dewpoint North

Jesus Christ and the Ides of July are now playing. I got the Steely Dan T-shirt and we’re outrageous. So let’s get funky. The future is prologue to the past.

Today is the hottest day in New England June. Hotter than Emily Dickinson with a dewpoint north of Robert Frost. Somewhere on a beach, someone has been changing a flat tire.

Look, I'm not younger than that now. Now is timeless. I Am That. Into the Mystic is Mandukya and Karika. California dreaming is becoming a reality.

Being Back to the Future

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 a Belief System

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.

Shankara on Creation Texts

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

On Summer 2025

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 in the Livelong June

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.