THE AWARENESS PRINCIPLE

The Awareness Principle - New Answers to Big Questions

2008-10-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

Q. What is ‘The Awareness Principle’?
A. A new and healing life philosophy of consciousness, science and the divine

If people get lost in thoughts, emotions or everyday activities, then they may be ‘conscious’ but they are not necessarily ‘aware’. Drawing on traditions of Indian thought ‘The Awareness Principle’ re-introduces a fundamental distinction between ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’. Consciousness’ is understood as awareness ‘of’ something. ‘Awareness’ on the other hand, is understood as consciousness as such – a consciousness distinct from all its contents. By learning to distinguish awareness from all contents of consciousness – whether mental, emotional, perceptual or somatic - we are freed from identification with these contents. ‘The Awareness Principle’ is therefore a liberatory life principle of a sort long recognised in yogic philosophy - one that offers a new foundation for healing both mental and bodily dis-ease. The Awareness Principle is also a new foundational principle for both the science and theology – a true 'Theory of Everything'. For the most fundamental scientific ‘fact’ of all is not the 'objective' existence of a universe of bodies in space and time but an awareness of that universe. That awareness however – consciousness as such - can no more be explained by or reduced to anything we are conscious or aware of – whether matter, energy or the grey matter of our brains – than can dreaming as such be explained by something we happen to dream of. Instead awareness is - in principle – the ‘first principle’ of all that is or exists. Yet since awareness is not a ‘consciousness’ that is ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ – the private property of persons or a product of their brains - awareness can also be understood as the very essence of the Divine. Instead of arguing about the existence of God as some sort of ‘Supreme Being’ that merely ‘has’ consciousness, The Awareness Principle allows us to recognise that God IS consciousness - consciousness as such or 'awareness' – and that all things, all beings and all worlds are but individualised portions and expressions of that Singular and Supreme Awareness which IS ‘God’.

‘The Awareness Principle’ refines and clarifies understandings of the ultimate nature of reality stemming from traditional Indian religious philosophies and yogic practices - in particular the tradition of Indian philosophy known as ‘Kashmir Shaivism’. It arose by re-addressing the ‘big questions’ from and out of which this and other spiritual traditions and teachings of the past arose. In this way The Awareness Principle constitutes an original spiritual teaching in its own right - offering ‘new answers to big questions’, and yet doing in a way free or attachment or confinement to the specific cultures, religions, languages and symbols of all past spiritual traditions and teachings.

The ‘big questions’:

Q. How do you know that you exist?
A. From an awareness of existing.

Q. How do you know your body exists?
A. From an awareness of that body.

Q. How do you know that anything is or exists at all?
A. From an awareness of things.

Note: this question is one of the oldest philosophical questions of all. This is the question of what comes ‘first’ - the ‘objective’ existence of things or a subjective awareness of them. Since we only have direct evidence of the existence of things though subjective awareness, it follows that awareness or subjectivity is more primordial than ‘being’ or ‘existence’. The first principle of ‘The Awareness Principle’ is therefore that awareness as such is the 1st principle of the universe - the basis of all that is or exists.

Q. If we only know things through an awareness of them do they continue to exist when we are not aware of them?
A. No. This question carries with it the traditional Western assumption that awareness is something that ‘we’ possess as our private property. In reality each individual’s awareness is an individualised portion and expression of a universal awareness. This universal awareness cannot cease to be aware of anything – for even the most seemingly insentient or inanimate ‘things’ are also individualised portions and expressions of it.

Q. Does that mean there is no such thing as an unaware or ‘insentient’ thing?
A. Yes. There is no such thing that is merely an insentient ‘object’ of consciousness. Instead every ‘thing’ is a distinct awareness in itself, though the awareness that constitutes that being may be more or less differentiated, and refined. Thus the portion of the universal awareness that manifests as a molecule or mineral form is both more primordial and less differentiated than that of a vegetable, animal, human or trans-human being.

Q. Are you saying that the things we perceive as objects are sentient beings which are just as much aware of us as we are of them?
A. Yes, though they do not perceive us and other things in the same way that we do.
Thus what we perceive as a ‘stone’, ‘tree’, ‘spider’, ‘cat’, ‘jellyfish’, ‘shark’ etc. may not correspond in any way to the way in which they perceive each other - or human beings. What the human being perceives as ‘a cat’ – or any nameable ‘object’ - is a product of our specifically human mode of perceptual awareness. In reality there is no such thing as a ‘tree’ or ‘cat’ - only our specifically human way of perceiving the type or ‘species’ of awareness that constitutes any other being.

Q. So there are such things as existing ‘beings’ – independent of our awareness?
A. Yes, so long as we understand that (1) a ‘being’ is essentially nothing but a specific shape or pattern of awareness, and (2) that whilst beings exist independent of our awareness they are each shapes taken by a universal awareness.

Q. What is ‘body awareness’?
A. Not an awareness produced by or belonging to the body but an awareness of the body.

Q. What is ‘self-awareness’?
A. Not an awareness belonging to the self but an awareness of self. Any and every self is ultimately but the self-expression and self-recognition of the universal awareness we call ‘God’.

Note: since our very knowledge that our self and our body ‘are’ or exist depends on an awareness of being and an awareness of body and self, it follows that that awareness cannot itself be the property of any selfor the product of any body or body part, such as the brain. The 2nd principle of ‘The Awareness Principle’ is that awareness cannot – in principle – be reduced to the property or product of any being, body or self there is an awareness of.

Q. What is ‘God’ and in what way does ‘God’ exist?
A. ‘God’ is not some existing and supreme being that has or possesses ‘awareness’. God is awareness – a universal awareness that individualises itself, and is the therefore the source of all beings - understood as individualised portions and expressions of it.

Note: Since the existence of any things or being, including a supreme ‘God-being’, assumes an awareness of its existence, follows that awareness itself must be considered as having a more primordial reality than any being – including a supreme ‘God-being’ - that we are aware of. Thus it is that awareness alone – a universal awareness and not an a awareness that is merely ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ – can be considered as the very essence of the divine - of ‘God’.

Q. What is ‘awareness’ itself?
A. A broader and more spacious consciousness field or ‘field consciousness’ – ultimately a universal consciousness field of which every thing and being is an individualised portion and expression.

Q. What is the difference between ‘awareness’ and what we call ‘consciousness’ ?
Ordinary consciousness is not field consciousness but a purely focal consciousness – attached to whatever it is we happen to be currently experiencing or aware ‘of’. As a field consciousness however, awareness on the other hand, embraces every possible element or focus of our conscious experience - whilst at the same time remaining absolutely distinct from them.

Q. What is the value of awareness?
A. Awareness is freedom - for being distinct from all that we do, say and experience it frees us from identification with any element of our experience – mental, physical or emotional, and therefore at the same time allows us to freely choose the focus

Note: The pure awareness of a thing or thought, sensation or emotion, impulse or action is not itself a thing or thought, sensation or emotion, impulse or action. Hence by simply recognising that the awareness of a troubling thought or emotion, for example, is not itself a thought or emotion, it ceases to be troublesome. For just as empty space is distinct from every possible object in it, so its pure awareness distinct from all its possible contents – from everything we are or could be aware of. Awareness, like space, both embraces and transcends everything experienced within it. Indeed it is by sensing and identifying with the emptiness of the space around things and around our bodies that we can come to experience space itself as a space or field of pure awareness. Doing so enables us to fully feel, affirm all that we experience within that field – whilst at the same time remaining absolutely free from attachment to each and every element of that experience.

Q. What can explain the existence of awareness itself?
A. Nothing (‘no-thing’) can explain the existence of awareness, since any ‘thing’ or ‘being’ we might think of as a cause or explanation ‘for’ it already assumes an awareness of that thing or being.

Q. How does everything we experience come to be or exist in the first place?
A. As creative expressions or manifestations of potentialities latent within the universal awareness – in the same way that a work of art is not something ‘caused’ but an expression or manifestation of potentialities latent in the artist’s ‘soul’. What defines the artist as a ‘being’ is that soul – which consists of nothing but a set of unique qualities and potentialities of awareness.

Note 1 This viewpoint differs from the idea that the universe was ‘created’ by a supreme being. This view doesn’t explain how that very ‘God-being’ itself came to be. And if we believe that ‘God’ is a being separate and apart from the universe it created, we effectively turn God into just one being or entity among others in the universe.

Note 2 The Awareness Principle also differs from the scientific view that the universe – and with it time and space themslves – ‘began’ with a ‘Big Bang’. Since the very idea of time and space ‘beginning’ at some point in time or space is illogical in principle, it is certainly not provable by experiment.

Note 3 There are three basic models of how things came to be:

1. The standard ‘Creationist’ model, which assumes the existence of the Creator Being - but does not explain how this Being itself came to be.

2. The Big Bang model, which illogically talks about time as if it could be something that itself ‘began’ in time - and offers no explanation of how the Big Bang itself came to be.

3. The Creative Expressionist model. This understands all actual things as creative expressions of potential shapes and qualities of awareness. This model does not assume the existence of a Creator Being - or of any being – for it understands beings themselves as expressions of potential shapes and qualities of awareness.

Q. How exactly does awareness give expression to all that exists?
A. The problem with this question therefore, is that the scientific world-view is so ingrained in people that they can only conceive of this 'how' except in terms of some sort of causal explanation. On the other hand, they do not think of asking themselves, for example, exactly 'how' their awareness of something expresses itself in words, thought and speech. The Awareness Principle offers an expressionist model of creation of a sort quite different, in principle, to causal models. For expression - as in speech – is something we experience directly. The need to 'explain' the ‘how’ of expression through some hidden causal mechanism that we don't experience is a product of scientific brainwashing.

Q. What, ultimately, is ‘reality’?
A. Most people identify ‘reality’ solely with an awareness of actuality - with things that are actually present or existent. Yet the dimension of potentiality is no less real than the realm of the actual – indeed it is out of an awareness of the countless ever-changing potentials latent in each moment that all ‘real life’ actions and actualities emerge. Reality then does not consist ultimately of one ‘realm’ only, but of three realms of awareness – awareness of things actual and present, awareness of potential shapes and forms of awareness (‘beings’, and a third realm which belongs to the essence of life itself. This is the realm of ‘becoming’ - the very process of actualisation or ‘presencing’ by which potentialities and possibilities latent in awareness become actual or present – by which they come-to-be or ‘become’. Awareness alone and as such is ultimate reality – the three primary realms or dimensions of actuality or ‘being’, potentiality or ‘non-being’, and actualisation or ‘becoming’ being all dimensions of that ultimate reality - of awareness as such.

Q. What is ‘life’?
A. Life is an innate drive towards ‘actuality’ or ‘being’ latent within all potentialities, and propelling them towards ever greater and fuller ‘self-actualisation’ – not in the sense of actualising some actual and already existing self or being, but in the sense of allowing potentialities of awareness to manifest and take shape as countless different ‘beings’ or ‘selves’. In a nutshell then, life is an innate drive, will and power to be that expresses itself in all that is.

Q. What is ‘the meaning of life’?
A. Life is expression. As such, it has the essential character of being a type of ‘speech’. That means it is innately meaningful. The ‘meaning’ of life lies in the fact that every thing in our lives has an expressive meaning that addresses us in the same way that speech addressed to us does - calling for awareness and calling upon us also to respond.

Note: We can discover the meaning ‘of’ life only by being aware of how not just every word, but also every thing, person, situation, event and interaction in our lives – even the most seemingly insignificant or minor - already addresses and touches us in a meaningful way. This in turn allows us to come to an awareness of that meaning – not just the meaning it holds for us personally but its meaning for others, and also as an expression of universal truths. Yet we cannot find the meaning of life without also living life. That means accepting the unconditional demand that life places on us all – a demand not just to be aware of meaning in our lives but to respond to it – to respond to everything and everyone that addresses us in our lives, whether directly or indirectly. To do so requires the cultivation of a higher type of ‘response-ability’ – one that can only come from recognising both ourselves and every other being as a unique and therefore uniquely meaningful expression of the divine-universal awareness we call ‘God’, with all its infinite creative potentialities of expression. We are unconditionally called upon to be aware of all that addresses us and to creatively and expressively respond to it precisely in order to give expression to those potentialities – and thus to ‘live’ and ‘be’. Yet since we can, at any time and in any situation, choose whether and to what degree we allow events and people and questions themselves to address and touch us, and since we can also choose whether and with what degree of awareness and commitment we resolve to respond to them, the ultimate question that life and all that is poses to us is, ultimately, a single ethical question rather than a philosophical question alone. This single ethical question is whether or not we choose to recognise and respond to all the many questions that life and other beings constantly raise in us or leave us with. For it is through this choice that we decide whether ‘to be or not to be’, ‘to live or not to live’ – and determine also the degree of meaning in our lives.

Q. What is ‘death’?
A. We have more than one life in which to face and answer this ultimate question of life, and there are more worlds than one in which we face it. Just as birth is a form of expression, so is death – our rebirth into the multi-dimensional universe or ‘multiverse’ of awareness, one not restricted to the dimensions and expressions of awareness we perceive as ‘matter’, ‘energy’, ‘space’ and ‘time’.

Q. What is the universe ultimately ‘made of’?

A. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” (Shakespeare) As our dream images and sensations give expression to felt shapes, patterns, colours, tones and textures of awareness, so do all things. The universe is made up of elemental qualities of awareness – what we perceive as light, for example, being a manifestation of the light of awareness.

Some counter-questions and answers:

Q. How can there be such a thing as ‘awareness’ without things to be aware of? Doesn’t this question allow us to argue with the same force that the existence of those things comes first – or at least is as fundamental as awareness of them? Furthermore, by implying that awareness itself ‘is’ or ‘exists’ does it not follow that the principle of ‘Being’ or ‘Existence’ is more fundamental than ‘The Awareness Principle’?
A. Whilst awareness is indeed inseparable from things we are aware of it is also absolutely distinct from them (in the same way that space is both inseparable and yet also distinct from everything in it). In addition however, awareness embraces not just things that actually are or exist – the realm of Being or Existence - but also everything that is not but could be, the entire realm of potential being or reality as well as actual being or ‘existence’. Since the very ‘being’ of awareness is of a sort that embraces and partakes of the entire realm or reality of potentiality or ‘non-being’ it is a more encompassing principle than The Being Principle.

Q. How did awareness itself begin or come to be?
A. Time, like space is a dimension of awareness. To think of awareness as having a beginning or end makes no more sense than to think of space as having a location ‘in’ space, or time as such having a beginning or end ‘in’ time. Awareness, like time, is not itself anything ‘temporal’ – having a beginning or end – but instead is essentially timeless or time-transcendent – the true meaning of ‘eternal’.

Q. Isn’t there a simpler answer to how we know that anything exists - because our brains give us a picture of things through information picked up from our senses?
A. If everything we perceive consists of pictures produced by the brain, how can the senses pick up information from them in the first place? The idea that our brain produces pictures of things from our sense organs is as illogical as saying that a camera produces photographs through the light reflected off things - and then saying that those things are actually nothing but photographs produced by the camera! Then again, since both our sense organs and the brain itself are something we only know about through our perception of them, how can they be used to explain perception as such? Sense-perception is itself a specific mode of awareness – a patterned awareness of sensory qualities such as colour, sound, shape, warmth, texture etc. That does not mean that perception is a property or product of our brains and sense organs - or that sense organs prove to us that things exist ‘out there’. For our brains and sense organs are themselves things we know about only because we can perceive them. Perception is no more something ‘caused’ or ‘explained’ by things we perceive (including our brains and sense organs themselves) than can dreaming be caused or explained by some particular thing we dream of. Seeing, for example, cannot be explained by anything we see – including the eye.

Note: Brain science tries to replaces an older philosophical view that everything we perceive is ‘all in the mind’ with a new belief that ‘it’s all in the brain’. It can only do so however, by ruling the brain itself out of the very picture of reality that it is supposed to create. For since the brain itself is something we can only know about through studying our perceptual picture of it – or graphic pictures of brain activity - brain science ends up explaining how we perceive everything through one particular thing that we perceive – the brain itself as we perceive it, directly or through instruments. Far from offering any credible ‘scientific’ explanation of perception then, brain science effectively implies that reality is ‘all in the mind’ – consisting solely of perceptual pictures of the world created by the brain – which necessarily includes our picture of the brain itself. In contrast, The Awareness Principle recognises that sense-perception is itself a mode of awareness, and that our perceptual world cannot - in principle – be caused or explained by anything that we perceive or are aware of in that world – including the brain. On the contrary, everything we perceive – including our sense organs - is a shape taken by awareness – one that in turn gives a specific form and character to the univeral awareness. In the most general terms, The Awareness Principle states that awareness is everything – and that in turn everything is an awareness – a specific shape or pattern of awareness.

Q. Doesn’t physics tell us that behind all that we perceive with our senses are electro-magnetic energies, and that it is from these our brain creates images of ‘things’?
A. Yes, but remember that our sensory awareness gives us no evidence whatsoever of the existence of these ‘energies’, which are not ‘things in themselves’ but abstract concepts used by physics to explain things. And since all the concepts of physics refer to mathematical quantities they cannot – in principle – explain our subjective awareness of any sensory qualities at all – for example our awareness of qualities of colour or sound, taste or texture, or even such basic sensory qualities such as light and darkness or warmth and coolness. Sensory qualities that we take for granted as real through ‘the evidence of our senses’ – colour for example - actually have no place in what physics conceives as ‘objective’ reality. That is because no evidence for their existence can ever be found except as qualities of subjective experiencing. The quantities that physics deal with are like sums of money on a bank balance. We can use them to buy tangible things or order their production, but as mere numbers they cannot directly cause or create their sensory reality.

Q. If we don’t perceive through our sense organs why do we have them at all?
A. We do not see or hear because we have eyes and ears and other sense organs. We have eyes, ears and other sense organs because we are seeing, hearing and perceiving beings. Our brain and bodily sense organs are but the outward perceived form or embodiment of the different modes and patterns of perceptual awareness that define us as human beings. The universal awareness is an artist. Just as a great portrait can show us the unique qualities of awareness or ‘soul’ revealed through a person’s face and eyes, so is the human body as such and all its organs a fleshly portrait of the human soul – giving expression to the complex and sophisticated pattern of awareness that define us as a species of consciousness. We do not sense, think, feel, speak or perceive like human beings because we have brains. Instead the human brain and nervous system is a marvellous embodiment of the sophistication of human awareness, whether in the form of thought, feeling, speech or perception.

Q. Since what we see around us are things we can not only see or hear but touch, pick up and use in different ways, doesn’t this tell us they are real material objects and not images in the mind or brain – let alone mere sensory shapes and forms of awareness?
A. All we know is that there are certain things which (unlike mental images or hallucinations) we can not only actually perceive (for example by seeing them) but also potentially perceive in other ways – for example by touching or tasting them. It is such things we regard as ‘material’ things. Yet that does not mean that ‘matter’ as such is any actual substance or ‘thing’. Instead what we think or conceive of as ‘material’ and not merely ‘mental’ is anything there is an awareness of being able to perceive in more ways than one. A ‘material’ thing is any actually perceived thing that can also potentially be perceived through other sensory modes. ‘Matter’ is that awareness of potential modes of perception referred to in the question itself: for example the awareness that something we see or hear can also – potentially - be touched and felt.

From the Principal to the Practice of Awareness:

What follows are some simple ways in which people with no prior knowledge of yogic philosophy and practices are helped to understand and apply The Awareness Principle. The principal aim of the carefully worded sequence of explanations, questions and suggestions outlined below is to come to an understanding and experience of pure awareness as empty space, and thus as fundamentally distinct from anything we are aware of in space – whether thoughts or things, feelings or physical objects.

This is the ‘Fundamental Distinction’ that in turn offers us a ‘Fundamental Choice’ – the choice to identify with the pure awareness of anything we are currently experiencing, rather than identifying with or losing ourselves in it.

Explanations 1:

The Awareness Principle is a new philosophical and therapeutic principle which comes from Indian yogic philosophy and is part of something called ‘The New Yoga of Awareness’ – a way of practicing meditative awareness in everyday life. A central principle of The New Yoga is that awareness is not something inside us or contained in our heads and bodies. Instead it’s the other way round. We are inside awareness, which is the space in which we all exist and in which we experience all things. Understanding and applying The Awareness Principle can be very helpful in freeing us from getting lost in, worked up by or bound up with our thoughts and feelings. Would you like me to introduce you to it and show you how to apply it?

Questions 1:

To begin with, if you can answer the questions I’m going to put to you with a ‘yes’ or follow any of the suggestions I am going to give you, raise your right hand. Do you understand?

Is there a difference between the empty space of this room and the things in it?
Is there a difference between your body and the empty space around it?

Suggestions 1:

Be aware of an object in this room (…such as that chair/table over there).
Now be aware of the empty space around it.

Can you be aware of the object (chair, table) and of the empty space of this room at the same time?

Explanations 2:

The Awareness Principle is about what is called ‘pure awareness’. Pure awareness simply means awareness as such, rather than any particular thing we are aware of. The Awareness Principle teaches that awareness as such is like empty space, different in principle from everything we are aware of within it.

In fact, The Awareness Principle teaches that pure awareness is the space in which we experience or become aware of things - not just things around us like tables and chairs but also things going on within us like thoughts and feelings.

Just as the space around some thing or some body is not the same as that thing or body we experience in it, neither is awareness the same as any thought or emotion we experience in it.

Suggestions 2:

Be still for a while and raise your hand when you are aware of a thought coming up in your mind.

Now be still again, but this time, when a thought comes up attend to the simple awareness of the thought being there, rather than the thought itself.

Did you feel the difference when you attended to the awareness of the thought rather than the thought itself?

Explanations 3:

Just as there is a difference between any thing we are aware of and the space in which we are aware of it, so there is also a difference between any thought or feelings we are aware of and the pure awareness of it.

Like the empty space around it, the awareness of a table is not itself a table.
Similarly – and these are words to learn by heart:

The awareness of a thought is not itself a thought.
The awareness of a sensation is not itself a sensation.
The awareness of an emotion is not itself an emotion.
The awareness of a feeling is not itself a feeling.

This recognition – that just as there is a fundamental difference or distinction between space and things in it, so there is also a fundamental distinction between awareness as such and anything we are aware of – is called ‘The Fundamental Distinction’. The Fundamental Distinction offers us what is called ‘The Fundamental Choice’.

The choice is between identifying with anything we are aware of – whether an object, thought, emotion or sensation or alternatively, identifying with the pure awareness of that thing, which is like the space in which we are aware of it – in fact it is that space.

Questions 2:

How much space do you feel you take up in this room?
How far beyond the boundaries of your skin can you feel your awareness extending into space?

Suggestions 4:

Be aware of a feeling or sensation in your body. Now attend to the pure awareness of it - which is the same as the empty space around your body and filling this room.

Feel your awareness as something filling the space of this room and not encapsulated within your skin or confined within your head.

Explanations 4:

The understanding that awareness is different from anything within it is healing and therapeutic. That is because it frees us from identifying with anything that is going on within or around us. In particular it frees us from identifying with our thoughts, emotions and impulses.
Daily Practices of Awareness 1:

In any situation where you find yourself worked up by and bound up with any particular thought or emotion – identified with it – remind yourself that:

• The awareness of the thought is not the thought!
• The awareness of the emotion is not the emotion!
• Feel that awareness pervading your body like clear empty space - and
extending into the entire space around your body.

Explanations 5:

One way of helping us identify with pure awareness is by changing the mental words with which we think our everyday experiences. Instead of thinking or saying to ourselves: ‘I feel really angry/upset’ we can simply say: “there is an awareness of an angry/upset feeling within me”.

The trick is to drop the word ‘I’ and instead say ‘there is an awareness of…’

Suggestions 5:

Think of a typical situation in which you tend to get really worked up by or bound up with your thoughts and emotions – identified with them.

Recollect or imagine you are in such a situation right now.

Instead of identifying with the thoughts or emotions it brings up identify simply with the awareness of the situation, and with the awareness of those thoughts and emotions.

Daily Practices of Awareness 2:

When you are out in the street and are just aware of any ordinary thing such as a particular shop, car, bus, cyclist, person, tree, dog etc. say to yourself ‘there is an awareness of this shop’, ‘there is an awareness of this car’, ‘there is an awareness of this tree’ etc.

When you enjoy a piece of cake or a sunset, say ‘there is an awareness of pleasure’ or ‘there is an awareness of delight’ or ‘there is an awareness of sweetness’.

When you hurt yourself or see something you don’t like, say to yourself ‘there is an awareness of pain’ or ‘there is an awareness of annoyance’ or ‘there is an awareness of feeling upset’.

By removing the word ‘I’ from your awareness of things, and replacing it with ‘there is’ you can remind yourself of The Fundamental Distinction and practice The Fundamental Choice – identifying with the pure awareness of something and not with the thing, thought or feeling itself.

Daily Practice of Awareness 3:

Whether you are walking outdoors or sitting indoors, be aware of the space all around your body and all around all the things you are aware of.

• If you are outdoors regularly glance up at the sky and remind yourself of the vastness of space.
• If you are on the street attend as much to its empty space as to the houses, cars and people in it.
• If you are indoors, keep returning your attention to the empty space filling the room and surrounding the things in it.

Through these simple daily Practices of Awareness it will become second nature to you to be as much aware of empty space as of things in it. As a result you will learn to feel space as a field of awareness, and be able to distinguish that awareness from anything you are aware of within it. You’ll be able to identify with pure awareness, which is the space in which exist we experience all things.

Explanations 6:

To the extent to which you are able to feel and identify with the space of pure awareness around your body, you can begin to give more and more intense awareness to whatever it is you experience as going on within that space and within your body – sensations, moods and emotions for example - yet without identifying with them.

Sugggestions 6:

If you feel a mood or emotion inside yourself allow yourself to be aware of where and how you feel that emotion in your body - rather than thinking or talking about it, and without having to either express or repress it.

Seek to feel your bodily sense of any particular mood or emotion more intensely rather than less, and to stay with it as long as it is there in awareness – affirming and even amplifying it, whilst at the same time using the mantram ‘There is an awareness of ….’ to avoid identifying with it.

By giving a particular mood or emotion more time and a more intense awareness, it will in time reveal itself to you as an awareness in its own right - something that brings new things to light in the larger space of awareness that surrounds it.

Be prepared for new and unexpected insights – a new and unexpected awareness - to ‘come to mind’ as you stay with the mood or emotion - not by thinking ‘about’ it but by simply staying with your direct bodily awareness of it.

Daily Practice of Awareness 4:

Do not ignore or dismiss anything you are aware of within or around you, no matter how disturbing or discomforting, but instead focus on and even deliberately intensify your bodily awareness of it – the way you sense it outwardly with your body or the way you feel it inside your body. At the same time stay in touch with and remain identified with the larger space of pure awareness around it and around your body.

This daily practice will ensure that identification with pure awareness does not dissociate or detach you from yourself, other people or the world, but instead intensifies and enriches your sensual, feeling awareness of all that you experience within and around you.

The Awareness Principle as a NEW Spiritual Teaching

2008-10-24T02:26:00.000-07:00

Many people look on past spiritual teachings and traditions with great and justified reverence - yet never for a moment even conceiving the possibility of giving birth to a new, much-needed and no-less significant teaching from, in and for today’s world – a teaching that can in turn initiate an entirely new tradition for the future. Instead it seems well-nigh impossible for genuinely new ways of thinking and practicing past traditions to even begin to penetrate the different ‘in-groups’ that identify with or seek to transmit these traditions – leaving only their scholarship and neo-traditional practice on the one hand, or their New Age dumbing-down and commercialisation on the other.

The Awareness Principle is such a new and original spiritual teaching - rooted in the past but born from and for today’s world. Such a genuinely new teaching however, can only arise by re-exploring basic questions. By this I mean those fundamental questions from and out of which the most important spiritual teachings and traditions of the past, Eastern and Western, first arose and evolved. More usually however, people simply turn to those past teachings for answers or else attach themselves to contemporary representatives of the traditions and ‘lineages’ that these teachings gave rise to. Alternatively they might create complex and eclectic frameworks of thought which, whilst seeking to seeking to incorporate the terms of past teachings still lack integration of the sort that can only be achieved through the articulation of a new unifying principle. At the same time such frameworks of thought often lose sight of the way in which even the most basic terms and concepts of past teachings (for example the notion of the Atman) have, as the traditions that arose from them evolved historically and spread geographically, not just become taken for granted as ‘given’, but also been ‘lost in translation’ - altered or distorted not just through the translation and retranslation as well as through superficial interpretation.

We see this in the almost complete lack of awareness of the way in which relatively recently coined Western terms rooted in the Greek and Latin languages - terms such as ‘energy’ and ‘consciousness’, ‘meditation’ and ‘mindfulness’ have been superimposed on the meaning of original Sanskrit or Chinese terms. Another result can be seen in the way many important philosophical notions stemming from Eastern traditions – terms such as ‘non-duality’, or ‘enlightenment’ are taken as ‘givens’ that conceal no deeper questions. In contrast, by returning to and rethinking the fundamental questions out of which these terms first arose (as well as through awareness of the long history of differing interpretations and translations of them) our understanding of the teachings and traditions associated with them can be so much deepened and transformed as to effectively give birth to a wholly new teaching and initiate a wholly new tradition – one which is not constrained by unquestioned or mistranslated terms stemming from the past but instead enriches them through couching them in wholly new terms. This is the aim and achievement of The Awareness Principle and its Practice.

One prime example of a still largely unquestioned term derived from Eastern thought is ‘non-duality’ (Advaita). The Awareness Principle understands this concept through a wholly new concept – the dialectical concept of ‘inseparable distinction’. This concept transcends earlier concepts of both ‘duality’ and ‘non-duality’, whilst at the same time shedding a much clearer light on otherwise vague or inadequate expressions such as the ‘non-duality of duality and non-duality’. For like the relation of two sides of a coin, inseparable distinction is a relation which is neither one of undifferentiated unity or oneness lacking any distinction or differentiation between the two sides, nor one in which ‘duality’ itself implies any separation, opposition or lack of unity between the two sides. Another example of an unquestioned term is ‘mindfulness’, which The Awareness Principle replaces simply with the term awareness as such. That is because it does not see awareness as a property of something that in the West has come to be called ‘mind’. Rather the contrary - ‘mind’, ‘mental’ activity and the ‘mental’ ego are all understood as things that there is an awareness of. This is important, for a most basic precept of The Awareness Principle is precisely that awareness cannot – in principle – be reduced to a property of any ‘thing’ there is an awareness of – and is certainly not reducible to a property or activity of matter or ‘mind’. The Awareness Principle thus also rejects the assumption that awareness or ‘subjectivity’ is necessarily the property of an individual being or ‘subject’ - of an encapsulated ‘psyche’ or ‘self’. Instead it understands the individual psyche and selfhood itself as the individualisation or self-encapsulation of a universal ‘soul’ or awareness. Every thing and every being is understood as a unique portion and unique expression of this universal awareness – both distinct and inseparable from it. In contrast, thinking of awareness as the property of individual beings makes no more sense than thinking of space as a property of the individual bodies within it. Indeed, awareness itself has the character of being the very space – outer as well as ‘inner’ – in which we experience things. Conversely, what we perceive as empty space is not mere ‘emptiness’ but the purest expression of ‘pure’ awareness – of awareness as such rather than any of its contents. And just as space is both inseparable and yet also distinct from each of its contents, so is awareness. That is what makes it necessary to distinguish subjectivity or awareness as such from what is usually named ‘consciousness’, for the latter is an awareness focussed on or attached to specific elements or ‘intentional objects’ that stand out or ‘ex-ist’ within a larger and more spacious field of awareness. Yet it is this larger field of awareness alone – ultimately a universal and all-pervading awareness field – which first allows any localised objects to stand out or ‘ex-ist’ for a localised subject or self, being the source of both individualised subjects and their ‘objects’ of consciousness.

The radical notion of awareness as essentially a universal ‘consciousness’ or ‘absolute’ subjectivity - ‘subjectivity without a subject’ – is not in conflict with the existence of individualised selves or subjects, for it is their very source. Yet it does challenge our understanding of terms such as self-awareness, self-actualisation, self-realisation etc. For a related precept of The Awareness Principle is that awareness cannot – in principle – be the property of any self we are aware of. It is not ‘we’, as selves or subjects, who have or possess an awareness of self, or who realise or actualise ‘ourselves’. On the contrary, we only know ourselves as selves from out of an awareness of self that, by its nature, transcends that self and all selves. Selfhood is not something ‘we’ actualise. Instead it is an on-going actualisation of a universal awareness. The true meaning of ‘self-realisation’ then, is the realisation that what we normally experience as ‘our’ selves are not, in reality, ‘ours’ at all – not ‘your’ self or ‘mine’ – but an expression of that universal awareness that is the very essence of the divine. Thus it is that in the Shiva Sutras and Shaiva Advaita (as opposed to Advaita Vedanta) the self, soul or ‘Atman’ came to be understood as that ‘self’ which does not ‘have’ but is awareness – identical with an absolute, trans-personal and divine-universal awareness that is both immanent within it and also its transcendent source. The ‘divine’ itself, is not understood as a supreme ‘being’ that ‘has’ or ‘possesses’ awareness, but is also understood as identical with that supreme awareness, i.e., with awareness as such in its universal and all-encompassing character.

Since this is a discourse, that like others, employs verbal thought-constructs or Vikalpa, let us finally return to the type of traditional spiritual discourse which dualistically separates and opposes such a type of awareness bound to words and thought constructs with an awareness free of and transcending them (Nirvikalpa), albeit a discourse that then finds itself having to meekly and weakly apologise for its paradoxical use of words and concepts to describe or point to this mode of wordless, aconceptual awareness! What is missing in this type of discourse and the questions that go with it – for example Dogen’s famous question of ‘how to think not-thinking’ is an even more basic paradox – not one that mystifies through koans but clarifies through the principle of inseparable distinction. There is no need to think ‘not thinking’, just as there is no need to empty or free our minds of words and thoughts to attain a state of pure word- and thought-free awareness. For by its very nature the awareness of a word, concept or verbal ‘thought construct’ is - in principle, something wholly distinct from it - therefore intrinsically free of words, concepts or thought-constructs. In other words, just as the awareness of a thing is not itself a thing of any sort, so is the awareness of a thought not itself a thought but innately thought free. At the same time, the thought itself - like any and every thing that emerges from and within the universal awareness field - also is an awareness of a specific kind.

The new teaching and tradition constituted by the Principle and Practice of Awareness, which together make up ‘The New Yoga of Awareness’, are built on two foundational mantra. In themselves these mantra constitute a new and explicit answer to the basic questions lurking behind and within the tradition in which this Yoga is rooted – notably the schools of Kashmir Shaivism and the teachings of Abhinavagupta in particular. The two mantra read, quite simply: ‘awareness is everything’ and ‘everything is an awareness’. Together they challenge the dominance of the concept of Being in the history of Western thinking, echoing, in Martin Heidegger’s own words, the understanding that “Being is no longer the essential matter to be thought.” These two mantra also clarify the relation between the central concept and experience of Indian thought – Sat-Chit-Ananda – or ‘Being-Awareness-Bliss’ - emphasising, as did Abhinavagupta himself, that ‘The being of all things that are present in awareness in turn depends on awareness.” Ananda (‘bliss’) is the experience of ‘non-duality’ (Advaita) as a relation of inseparable distinction between ‘Awareness’ and ‘Being’ - the former experienced as a divine-universal field (Kshetra) or space (Akasha) of pure awareness (Shiva) and the latter as its pure power of manifestation (Shakti), that which finds expression as every existent thing or ‘being’.