Non-dual Awareness and Awakening

[Stranger]

Another relevant material:
The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports

[Cleric K]

Another relevant material:
The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports

Thanks Eugene,

On one hand, it is a symptom of the times, how we can already speak in imaginative ways about our inner experiences. Today it takes very little effort (if one is good-willed) to understand in-vivo something like the described potential fields, the attractors, the possibility to deconstruct (peel) the layers of our psyche, and so on. All of this has become almost an obvious fact for anyone not stuck in the potential wells of sensory fortune-seeking.

On the other hand, it shows us how we're never safe from the blind spot. It is not realized that even when we behold the undifferentiated sea of qualia, we're still in a potential well of sorts.

What are the symptoms of this? The fact that ultimately we deconstruct only our psychic life. It's obvious that we can't deconstruct our physical body, not even guide our life process consciously. So what is really peeled is the layers of our intellectual self, until we're at the borderline of a higher order topology. This is what is fatally missing in expositions like the above. Without this, one remains with the impression that the ground of reality is reached and that anything else belongs to the world-in-itself (Shamil at least made it quite explicit that he assumes a Kantian perspective).

When we awaken to the fact that this state is just as stuck in a local potential minimum as our ordinary Earthly loops, then the question arises "But I already deconstructed everything to a pure field of qualitative experiencing. What more can be done than this?" To answer this question we need to outgrow our personal perspective. It's not only about deconstructing our intellectual self but also discovering how our state metamorphoses within a shared (superimposed) potential space.

Notice how the described model would have to enter a quite uncertain territory if it needs to address something like Karma. We can never gain true insight into Karma by just deconstructing our personal intellect. Karma can only be understood by going beyond ourselves and knowing something of the curvatures of destiny within which our existential movie unfolds. These curvatures are not only personal. Karma is like 'elastic' relations among superimposed curvatures of potential. We can't deconstruct them only in our personal sphere and become free of them. Working on Karma always implies the harmonization of the curvatures of superimposed potential.

So the above model has to be expanded beyond a personal island that integrates a coherent sense of self out of a chaotic ocean of undifferentiated qualia. This sense of self, together with its intellectual grooves, flows within higher-order curvatures of potential. We can call them soul level, or soul world. Generally, we're not conscious of these curvatures. In the same way, curved spacetime seems locally flat at small scales. Thus it is no surprise that we need special effort to detect these curvatures of destiny/Karma.

Then we reach even higher-order curvatures, which are of a more archetypal nature. Here we have the Cosmic ideal activity (idea/spiritual world) that bends the potential space. For example, we can only understand life (as we share it with the plant world) from these ideal heights.

Finally, we reach the highest-order curvatures (accessible to man of today) which bend the potential at universal levels and correspondingly have their projection in the universal nature of time, fields, forces, particles, etc. These are only the shadows. At the highest levels the focus is really about bending the universal potential within the curvature of which the first-person story of evolving Man unfolds.

Our sense of self - even if deconstructed to the sea-of-qualia level - is still embedded in these higher-order curvatures. To know them we need to find our concentric relations with the corresponding ideal activity of these higher orders of mind (which are autonomous and increasingly collective).

[Stranger]

Our sense of self - even if deconstructed to the sea-of-qualia level - is still embedded in these higher-order curvatures. To know them we need to find our concentric relations with the corresponding ideal activity of these higher orders of mind (which are autonomous and increasingly collective).

I have no objections against what you said, Cleric. It is indeed important to expand our reach of knowledge to ideal activity of these higher orders and its curvatures. It is these curvatures that shape the evolution on the Cosmic level, and so each soul (as an individuated instance of Cosmic spiritual activity) can participate in this evolution consciously and creatively only by reaching to know these higher levels and the curvatures.

However, the process needs to be more integral and introspective encompassing the very aspects of Reality that crate these hierarchies and curvatures. This involves realization of the two-way interaction between the ideal structures that have been created and continue being created, and the Reality of Consciousness that creates them. And also, realization of the creative role of each individual instance of Consciousness in this process no matter how "low" or "high" is the place of each individual instance in the hierarchy. And this is only possible if we begin to realize the existential aspects of Reality that create the structures and makes them possible to exists. These are the fundamental and timeless aspects of Reality - Being and Awareness - without which no Thinking, Willing and all their creations and structures would even exist. These are also the innate creative fundamental aspects - Thinking, Willing and Feeling, without which Being-Awareness would not be able to create anything and to know itself. And then there is a continuous creative activity of these aspects creating forms and structures on all levels of the hierarchy, with continuous two-way interaction between that which creates and that which is created. Altogether they all constitute the Completeness, and only in the context of the Completeness we can approach and fully know the Reality in all its aspects and facets. If we disregard any of these aspects, if we only focus on one or few of these aspects and disregards the rest, our knowledge will be inevitably incomplete and fragmented. When the mystics focus only on unmanifest - on the Being-Awareness aspects of Reality, and disregard the Thinking, Willing and the world of their creations as "illusory", they inevitably limit their knowledge of Reality to the aspects of the unmanifest oneness. When other beings who are fully immersed and focused on the world of structures and forms disregard the aspects of Realty that creates these forms and in which these forms exist, they also inevitably limit their perspective on Reality only to the aspects of manifest many-ness, which is inevitably fragmented, and lose the realization of the encompassing oneness and the awareness of the very force and cause that creates these forms and structures.

But these innate existential aspects of Reality can only be approached and known by direct first-person introspection and by spiritual practice, extending our focus of attention from only the world of forms to the process and activity of Thinking and Willing that creates the ideal forms, and to the infinite space of Beingness-Awareness in which this spiritual activity takes place; and further deepening our experiential knowledge of the intricate facets and qualities of these existential aspects. This will open to us an entirely new realm of Reality which is usually unknown to those who focus their attention and activity only on the world of forms and structures.

That is complete and this is complete. From completeness completeness emerges. From completeness completeness taken away, only completeness remains.

Into blinding darkness pass they who are devoted to the unmanifest, and into still greater darkness, as it were, they who delight in the manifest
Whoever understands the manifest and the unmanifest as going together, (he), by overcoming death through the manifest, attains immortality through the unmanifest

From Isha Upanishad

[Stranger]

PS: It is actually one of the core evolutionary curvatures that direct the development of beings' consciousness in the direction of expansion to encompass the existential aspects of Reality. The beings residing on the higher causal planes that are above the astral realms exist in a shared state of consciousness encompassing the knowledge of all aspects of Reality (unmanifested oneness, manifesting creative power, and manifested multiplicity), and so they shape the structures of the manifested world with telic curvature accordingly in order to direct the evolution towards such all-encompassing state of knowledge.