by Greg Goode
And you don’t tell this story more because you think it won’t help?
That’s right. Some people are encouraged and inspired by these stories. It varies from person to person, but I’ve noticed that for many people, the more they hear stories like this, the more they want one for themselves. They see it as a kind of success story, and they focus on the story rather than the inquiry. They begin to feel that something like this must happen to them for their nature as awareness to be the case. Even a few teachers have confided in me that they feel somehow disqualified because of not having a story like this to tell. But events and narratives like this are themselves just arisings in awareness. The mind, body, world, the person – they are all arisings in awareness. No person has a story. A person is a story.
The ironic thing is that these stories seem significant only if one feels like there is a separate entity to begin with! After someone no longer feels this sense of personal separation, then there’s no need for a story about “me.” There’s a sense that all stories are about I as awareness, whether the narrative details are an Aesop’s fable, an Arnold Toynbee’s world history, or a Buddha’s enlightenment story. There will be no place for envy or anxiety. There will be no preference for one story over another, and no feeling of being left out in the cold.
Attached to Awareness?
Many of your answers mention awareness and consciousness. Isn’t that merely another view, and another attachment?
This is a very important question. There are other non-dual teachings that don’t make use of an all-embracing awareness notion. Some of my favorite nondual teachings are Pure Land Buddhism, Madhyamika Buddhism, and the recent Western nonessentialist, antifoundationalist teachings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, Hans-George Gadamer, Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and others. And then there are the monotheistic paths such as mystical Christianity, Kabbala and Rosicrucianism.
In my private counseling work these different viewpoints may come up, depending on the background and inclinations of the person who’s asking the questions.
But it’s true, I do speak more from the awareness teachings such as Sri Atmananda’s direct path – because they contain concepts and vocabulary that most people are already comfortable with.
But then which teachings are true?
That’s just the point. To think one of these teachings is a true or accurate depiction of the world, and to think the other teachings are not true – that’s just what it means to be attached to a teaching. It still depends on a felt dualism between appearance and reality.
When one’s seeking takes one to an inquiry about reality, there is a yearning for a teaching that tells you the accurate truth about the world. But the deeper they get in their inquiry, the more they come to see that it makes no sense to compare the degree of “accuracy” of these various teachings. And why? Comparing theories of the world to the world itself is not like comparing photos of the Eiffel Tower to the Eiffel Tower. You can’t look at the world without being embedded in some kind of theory-bound element. Even the ordinary “I’m in here – the world’s out there” notion is the popular science of 200 years ago serving as our everyday intuitions today. To compare worldviews for accuracy the way you compare photos would require you to step out of your skin, as it were. The very tool you would use to compare views is itself another view. No one has ever done this and it is incoherent to try.
But there’s hope! There is no need to find a separate place or a world beyond views, for that which is free of views is not a place. It is not a separately defined location or vantage point. It is not a state of omniscience. It is that clarity from which views, locations and states arise, and it is available as your experience at this very moment. The very fact that you see is evidence that seeing is known and embraced by this awareness, which is your nature.
You do not need to reconcile these teachings with each other. Leave that to the professors of comparative philosophy. It’s perhaps more helpful to see these teachings as expedient means to the end of suffering. Think of them as tools rather than pictures.
I see how one can be attached to a certain teaching, like the awareness teachings. But within that teaching, can you be attached to awareness itself?
Yes, you can. In fact, the seasoned awareness teachings such as traditional Advaita Vedanta and the direct-path teachings actually anticipate this attachment, and make use of it in the teachings themselves. In fact, if the student doesn’t attach to the concepts, the teaching probably isn’t making a deep enough impression to be transformational. The Dalai Lama once said about the Buddhist emptiness teachings that if they don’t make you feel like your life is being turned upside down, then you’re not taking them to heart closely enough. And as the teachings proceed, the student’s attachment dissolves at that certain level, and shifts “upward” to become attached at a more subtle level. This is actually how the teachings proceed. This movement or dynamic is quite purposeful, and is called “sublation.”
Sublation, can you explain that a bit more?
In these teachings, sublation happens when you have an experiential flash of insight that dissolves a certain understanding you had. You thought things were a certain way. But then see through the presuppositions of this older understanding by coming to understand a more subtle and more thorough teaching. This new understanding not only accounts for what you had thought before, but it also carries you further. The previous understanding was sublated or undercut by the new understanding.
Ah! It sounds very intense and experiential. Can you give me an example?
Sure. Many different paths, especially the older paths, proceed like this. They had lots of time to see what things were able to undercut other things.
For example, in formal Advaita Vedanta, there are three levels of teaching on the creation of the world. Each model is simpler to understand, and yet more dualistic, than the one which follows. Each one is taught to show how Brahman or absolute consciousness is continuous with and non-different from the world, and to reduce the student’s felt distinctions between self and other, self and world, self and Brahman.
The first one taught is Srishti-Drishti Vada (pronounced “shrishtee-DRISHtee vada”), which holds that the creation of the world precedes perception of the world. The student assumes the reality of the world, so they are taught that Brahman created the world. And one effect of this creation is that we perceive this world. Sooner or later the student comes to question the presuppositions of this explanation.
At this point in the formal teachings, the student may be told, “OK, here’s what really happens,” and they’ll be given the next model, drishti-srishti vada (pronounced “drishtee-SHRISHtee vada”), which holds that cognition and creation are simultaneous. Not that cognition causes creation, but that they arise simultaneously. This serves to sublate the notion of a causal relation between the world and experience, while diminishing the force of a feeling of multiple souls experiencing the world. And with continued teachings, sooner or later the student might come to question the very notion that self and world are different.
At this point the student may be given the final model in this series, ajati vada (no creation ever happened). This is of course more difficult to understand, but it helps diminish the feeling of a difference between self and world.
OK, but why not give them the real truth right away?
OK. “You and the world are nothing but awareness.” How’s that?
I hear it, but I don’t really feel it or understand it.
And that’s exactly why some paths use smaller, more comprehensible steps. You can make each step yours by really experiencing its truth, not just in a verbal or intellectual way. And at each level sooner or later, you will come to question certain things in the teaching you were given. This is the point at which this level begins to destabilize and become sublated. And you grasp the teaching whose insights sublated it. And so on...
I see. And does this ever end? Is there a final sublation?
/> Yes. In the direct path teachings, the ones we are speaking about now, the last sublation is the point at which all dualities have dissolved. You could say at this point that awareness shines in its own glory.
And so how do you keep from becoming attached to awareness? Is that concept ever sublated?
Good question! The notion of everything being awareness is an attachment only when it is maintained by force of hope or belief. But after it becomes your experience, then the belief will no longer be needed. Things will no longer need to appear as awareness, and the concept will gently sublate itself, doing so with, you might say, a good sense of humor.
This happens in a sweet and automatic way. Take the example of Atmananda’s direct-path teachings. Awareness is a teaching tool used to capture intuitions you already have. It also serves as a way to deconstruct your notion that things other than awareness truly exist. You tend to think of existing things as being the same kind of object that you take yourself to be.
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
Lucille, Francis
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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Greg Goode, Standing As Awareness