I entered onto the non secular path in earnest at a time when the profound esoteric knowledge of the East was being pursued earnestly in lots of circles.
A few of us determined to pursue awakening and enlightenment with single pointed dedication. We lived in communities, did excessive quantities of practices, traveled to India, hung out with lecturers and skim sacred texts.
Revisiting the Roots of Awakening
These days I really feel myself known as again to those roots and the novel spirit of discovery that have been embodied there. I wrote this essay as a result of I really feel known as to precise my understanding and expertise of the esoteric traditions of the East as clearly as I can.
My non secular coaching occurred throughout the Hindu custom of Advaita Vedanta and particularly within the lineage of the nice Indian sage Ramana Maharshi.
In that custom enlightenment is spoken of by way of non secular liberation and non-duality and so this will likely be an essay concerning the discovery of non secular liberation and non-duality.
What Is Freedom?
Most easily let’s imagine that non secular liberation means freedom from the restrictions of the small self into the direct recognition of the self absolute or huge self.
It’s as one other nice Indian sage Nisargadatta described it, the popularity of ”I’m That.”
This implies that it’s the recognition that behind all of our concepts of self there may be nothing however pure consciousness – a supply of consciousness that isn’t sure to any perceiving entity.
We discover that consciousness shouldn’t be a attribute of a fabric being, however fairly the other, our materials being is an phantasm, a perceived entity that’s product of pure consciousness.
The Limits of a Materialistic Worldview
We reside in a deeply materialistic age and our perception in our personal materials existence is so unquestionable that it’s all however inconceivable to interrupt the spell of solidity and are available right into a direct recognition of our personal true nature as a free-floating locus of consciousness that’s the supply of the whole lot.
As a result of our language is constructed on the belief of separation it doesn’t lend itself nicely to speaking non-dual actuality.
Even utilizing the descriptor “free-floating” is problematic as a result of it implies the existence of some medium that consciousness floats in. That will suggest the existence of two – consciousness and the medium it floats in.
What Is A Consciousness-Based mostly Worldview?
The non-dual view is the popularity of oneness, of being one and not using a second, it’s the direct realization that acutely aware consciousness is all there may be.
Not a acutely aware consciousness that exists within the universe as a result of the universe itself is an phantasm generated by consciousness.
All the pieces that we expertise, together with ourselves, is a part of a digital expertise of actuality that’s generated by pure consciousness.
The assertion above could not appear stunning to you. Maybe you’ve heard related issues earlier than and discover it straightforward to grasp and settle for.
Expertise Versus Understanding
Nonetheless, it is going to assist us to maneuver slowly right here, remembering that understanding and acceptance of a non secular reality shouldn’t be the identical as experiencing it.
Understanding and acceptance are a distant second place from the last word prize of being swept up within the direct recognition of our personal non-existence as a separate self and the inconceivable notion of pure consciousness.
The language of digital actuality is useful as a result of it factors to the truth that the whole lot we see and expertise as actual is solely a perceptual assemble – an expertise of issues that don’t exist.
The language of digital actuality can also be problematic as a result of most of us will assume that the phantasm of actuality is being generated in our personal thoughts, or in our mind.
However our expertise of thoughts and mind can also be a part of the digital actuality. They don’t exist to have an expertise.
In non-dual teachings we be taught that the entire of actuality is a dream and not using a dreamer.
There isn’t a time and house as a result of these are a part of the dream. There isn’t a self and different. There isn’t a inside and outer expertise.
Go searching you. I’m right here in my favourite espresso store. I’m seeing baristas and clients. I odor espresso and I see the bricks on the wall in entrance of me.
All the pieces seems to exist in house and about an hour of time has handed since I first sat down right here.
None of that is actual in the best way I’ve been skilled to consider it. None of it has an existence impartial of my expertise of it. I’m not seeing baristas and clients.
I’m having an expertise of baristas and clients. If I have been to the touch the particular person subsequent to me. I wouldn’t be touching an individual, I might be having an expertise of touching an individual.
The world and the whole lot in it’s a assortment of experiences that we assume are experiences of actual issues being had by an actual experiencer, however they aren’t. They’re pure experiences.
Actuality is timeless, spaceless and empty. It has no thickness or depth. It has no future and no previous. It merely is.
It’s an elaborate and meticulously constructed sense of being a separate acutely aware entity current in an enormous universe of time and house.
If we’re lucky sufficient to vanish into this expertise of absolute being we’ll by no means be the identical once more.
We could reside in related methods, however we’re not fooled by the looks of the world of separation. As helpful as it might be to narrate to the world of time and house and separate beings as actual, deep down we all know it isn’t.
We Are One
After we meet somebody we could discuss to them as if they’re over there in that physique and we’re over right here on this one, however we all know we’re one.
We all know that the supply of consciousness that’s us via their eyes is identical consciousness that’s trying again at them.
There aren’t two beings interacting. There’s one consciousness that has created the expertise of separation by producing the phantasm of two entities in order that it might have the fantastic expertise of assembly and relating with one other.
There isn’t a entity having the expertise you’re having proper now. There’s simply an expertise that’s inherently awake and conscious, however there isn’t any entity separate from that woke up consciousness that’s having the expertise.
Our perception that we’re an entity that has experiences is the primary supply of duality. It’s the first supply of the perceived separation of the indivisible non-dual wholeness of being.
Are you able to let go of your sense of self so deeply that you just develop into the one consciousness there may be?
