From any experiential or ‘empirical’
point of view, the most fundamental scientific ‘fact’ is not what science takes
it to be - the objective existence of a universe of ‘things’ in space-time. On
the contrary, the most self-evidential, empirical and therefore scientific fact
is our subjective awareness of ourselves, and of a universe of things. That
very awareness of things however, is not itself a thing – nor can it be
explained by or reduced to any thing or things we are aware of. To even attempt
to do so would be like attempting to explain or reduce our dreaming awareness
to some particular thing we dream of.
The ‘First Principle’ of ‘The
Awareness Principle’ is that Awareness itself – and not any thing or universe
of things we are aware of - is the First Principle of the universe.
Every aspect and application of The
Awareness Principle comes from the recognition that awareness comes first – not
matter, energy or any ‘thing’ or world of ‘things’. The underlying but
unquestioned, untestable, unprovable and fundamentally counter-intuitive principle of current science is that awareness
can somehow emerge from a basically insentient or unaware universe of space and time, matter and energy. How
awareness could arise from this unaware universe is not just something
temporarily inexplicable, and therefore a subject of scientific hypothesis. It
is inexplicable in principle. For
just as the starting point of all inquiries into the nature of the universe is
awareness of that universe, so is the starting point of all scientific
inquiries into awareness nothing but awareness itself. Every ‘scientific’
attempt to explain the origins or basis of ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’
through something outside or beyond awareness is scientifically impossible in
principle - the very attempt and all the experiments that go along with it
being something that occur within the awareness of the scientist.
The primary purpose of The Awareness
Principle, as a new foundation for life and science, is to rescue life itself
from domination by the unquestioned, non-scientific presuppositions of what is,
in reality a purely Western concept of ‘science’. That does not mean returning
to the dead ends of paganism or religious fundamentalism, Eastern or Western,
Oriental or Occidental, Southern or Nordic. Neither does it mean retreating
into the realm of personal lived experience, secular or spiritual (for in
today’s world even this realm is insidiously shaped by popularised
Western-scientific concepts, concepts which shape the world in which each
individual lives through their ruthless application in fields as diverse as
government and economics, medicine and psychiatry, and even counselling and
psychotherapy). Instead, the aim of The Awareness Principle – to rescue both
personal and social life from domination by the abstract presuppositions of
science – is one that can only be achieved by rescuing the whole Western
concept of science from these unquestioned presuppositions. Principal among
these root presuppositions is the identification of truth with ‘objects’ and
‘objectivity’. The Awareness Principle challenges this whole ‘Objectivity
Principle’ of Western Science - instead reasserting the primary truth and
absolute reality of ‘subjectivity’. Precursors of The Awareness Principle can
be found in Indian philosophy, in European ‘phenomenology’, in Gestalt
psychology and psychoanalysis. None of these precursors of The Awareness
Principle however - besides those found in Indian Advaitic and Tantric
philosophy - explicitly articulated its First Principle. Nor did they properly
conceptualise its ‘Second Principle’.
The Second Principle of The Awareness
Principle is that Awareness as such is inseparable but also quite distinct from
each and every thing we are aware of.
Out of this principle comes what I
call The Fundamental Choice – a choice that each of us can make at any moment
of our lives. The choice is whether to identify with things we are aware of or
‘experience’ – whether in the form of desires and impulses, sensations or
perceptions, emotions or events – or, on the other hand, to identify with the
very awareness of them; recognising that awareness as something essentially
distinct from each and every thing we ‘experience’ or are aware of within it,
including ourselves.
The Third Principle of Awareness is
that it embraces, pervades and transcends all that we can experience or be
aware of.
The relation between
awareness as such and all that we are aware of can be compared to the relation
between space and the things we perceive in it. Space embraces each object
within it, yet whilst it is inseparable from each of the objects within it, it
is not itself an object – and transcends all the objects within it. Objects
have location – we can say where they are ‘in’ space. Space itself on the other
hand has an essentially non-local or ‘field’ character – we cannot say ‘where’
space is. Similarly, whereas we can localise each and every object or thing we
are aware of – for example localising an object in space, a sensation in our
bodies or a thought in our heads – we cannot localise the awareness of it – we
cannot say where our awareness of anything is. The most important of Indian
treatises on awareness placed great importance on the yogic practice of
identifying with the space around and within things. That is
because they understood and experienced the reality that space, like time, is
not essentially an objective dimension of the universe at all but a basic
dimension of subjectivity - of awareness.
The Fourth Principle of the Awareness
Principle is that everything we are aware of is itself an awareness, and
a doorway to an entire awareness world.
A sound we hear is not just something
we are aware of, but it is an awareness of something else – a passing car, a
conversation, a bird singing. Yet the bird too is not just something we are
aware of but is itself an awareness of a unique sort. Its song is an expression
of that awareness. The bird’s awareness is very different from ours, and it is
that which is echoed in the sound of its song – in the same way that any
singer’s awareness is. Similarly, when we hear a car horn honking in a busy
street, this is not just a sound we are aware of. Indeed we only hear the sound
as ‘a car honking’ because the sound we are aware of is an awareness -
of a car honking. That awareness of a car horn honking is in turn an awareness
too of the stress or anger of the driver honking the horn, of the driver’s
awareness of the traffic, and/or their awareness of feeling stressed or
impatient.
Simply reading a text or hearing a
person speak we are not just aware of words. Indeed we are only aware of words as
words because we are aware of them as expressions of another awareness - the
awareness of the speaker or writer. In general, any thought, mood, emotion,
perception, action or bodily sensation is not just something we are aware of
but is an awareness of some aspect of ourselves or others, of our world,
our relationships or life situation.
What we label as ‘stress’, ‘tension’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ are not
things in themselves that we happen to feel. They are a felt awareness of
important aspects of our lives, life relationships and life world. And there is
nothing we can ever be aware of in the world that is not itself an
awareness. Just as fright is an awareness of something in the surrounding
world, even a stone is aware of its environment, indeed is an awareness
of its own environmental world. Every ‘thing’ we are aware of in the world is
aware of a world of things as a whole, experiencing its own unique awareness
world - whether that of a stone, bird or another human being. The higher
level awareness that everything we are aware of is an awareness of something
else within our awareness world, and that this ‘something else’ is also an
awareness – indeed an entire awareness world in itself – this awareness
is what expands our awareness to embrace new awareness worlds. The Awareness
Principle recognises that we are part of an ever-expanding multi-dimensional
universe of awareness embracing countless things - each an awareness in itself
and each part of its own unique awareness world. The expanding nature of the
physical universe is an expression of the innately expansive character of
awareness itself, which constantly opens up new worlds of awareness from within
itself.
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