Knowledge : Pure, Form And Consequence

Human investigations reveal a knowledge-dense universe.

But knowledge is very non-material, intangible, in nature

No one can see knowledge itself on a platter or table-top.

We can only observe its consequences in material space

or see it expressed on the pages of a book.

To know, our consciousness must configure to a form,

witnessing which form we cry out :

Aha ! Eureka !

Yet, the form of knowledge is still an imagination, a dream,

…  like a statue that is still in its marble block.

That Infinite, in which knowledge forms,

of which subtle and material consequences cascade,

is consciousness pure.

Universe, World And The Self

This essay arose of a conversation that remained incomplete, largely because of the apparent unfamiliarity my interlocutor had with the subject, which factor lent an air of abstraction to the matter despite it being so obvious and close a phenomenon to ourself. The difficulty at the core of its seeming obtruseness was two-fold : one, the meaning we carry of the terms are so very formal that they remain distant from ourself, compared to the carnal and electronic objects that readily engage the youth of our day; and two, any attempt to segregate the entities, and their phenomenal effervescence in our mind, fails to start because we ourself are too caught up in the mix to lay out the categories at play separately, sequentially and seamlessly between the universe yonder, our world at hand, and the heady couldron of vitality playing things up as feelings, emotions and thoughts in our mind.

The Terms

The universe is the endless expanse, the mother set, containing all the astronomical and heavenly bodies, visible and invisible, known and mysterious. It includes our world and our self within it.

The world about us reduces to “our” world for all practical purposes, with objects that actually occupy our memory and mind more or less, in some way or other. The entities come in all shape and form, state of animation and consciousness, nature and character, and value to ourself in the long and short term.

The self — our self — is the being we are, the person who decides the right and wrong for ourself, who is curious and who engages with the objects in our world, who notices the feeling and identifies with the prevailing will and emotion, happy or sad, enthused or indifferent.

The Personal Phenomena

Our individual being involves our world and our self, with all the objects and entities about us, which we live in the midst of and value, positively and negatively, often in the same single thing, person or being. There is a wider world out there, distinct from our world, that we are either not intimately aware of or to which we are indifferent because it does not touch us, that does not engage us in the least for now. But our living being is restricted to all that affects us, physically or by their presence in our memory, in the way it makes our vitality rise and ebb, outward to action or inward to feeling quickened or depressed, draws our emotion to flare with a will of its own, triggers our thought stream hither and thither, making our desire next sprout or dry, and leads our self through an experience memorable or forgettable.

Our experience of life, and indeed our life itself, is an endless train of such streaming consciousness constituted of this mix : feelings and emotions, will and thought, desire and knowledge, memory and more, with the self — the sense we have of ourself — often helpless like a ball ricocheting  from the walls upon a momentum imparted in unknown past or an oarless boat in the middle of  flowing waters. What we gather along the journey in life, through our growing up years, is knowledge and memory of the character or nature of things, person or individual beings, usually in binary terms : happy, or not. Each encounter or recall of this summary sense, as it happens, brings in its trail the emotion and will that our psychological or attitudinal behaviour, caution or enthusiasm and more extreme expressions at the juncture. And thus life continues to happen : happy or sad, or in the pall of any other shade in between.

The Exploring And Analysing Self

There are several reasons why we wake up to need of reviewing the momentum of the personal phenomena upon which we are carried, and to the burning will to intervene. Often it is the consequences, material and mental, that leave us dissatisfied, inadequate, delinquent or destitute. Or, usually in comparison with our peers or with inspiration from other people’s lives past or present, there is a sense of not doing justice to what we have and what more we could do with greater control over our phenomenal being, with empowering our psychological self at making the most of our situation, spotting opportunities and playing up to our strengths. Too, it is extremely deflating to our self-esteem to realise that we are living the animal way, to our lowest nature, or are being merely passive or reactive to our happennings. And lastly, we might discover that the unexamined knowledge we have gathered is mostly untrue, that we need to revisit each as they come and bring our conclusion up to date. Whatever the cause, we then want to put an end to our self-cipher outside-in existence and steel ourself to imposing our will inside-out, to being what and how we want ourself to be and experiencing a life by our own choices than by what fate or our world has thus far deemed it to be.

A true awakening is more a phase than a moment : outwardly langorous and dilated but hyperactive inwardly. In that state of concentrated awareness, we refuse to be moved even as we go through the motions and insist on observing and knowing the details of our personal phenomena as it occurs : the feeling caused by an object on our world, the emotion representative of our reaction to it, our will that automatically presents itself … that jucture when we can choose to react or contemplate the pros and cons of alternate courses, the thoughts at reviewing the object, the feeling and the emotion, the will we were ready to commit ourself to, and the state of our own being, the quality of our self … We hold ourself at it, intending to exhaust the fulness of one series : object, feeling, emotion to the object and to the feeling it causes, the will and the choices, the doubts, the light on ourself, and the values we hold to ourself in the shadows of our each thought and glance at the categories and their possibilities thus laid out.

Our Self And Our Values

To fast forward, we may now observe the continuous series of categories laid out before us, connecting seamlessly the universe and the self :

[ Universe ] — [ World ] — [ Our World ] — [ Objects, Entities, Plants, Trees, Animals, People, Food, Sex, Beautiful Form, Panorama, Family, Friends…] — [ Senses : Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch, Hear ; Mind ] — [ Feeling ] — [ Emotion : Will ] — [ Thought : Doubt, Examination, Analysis, Possibility ] — [ Knowledge ] — [ Self : State, Quality, Values ]

Of  the above, we notice, animals are arrested by their emotions and accompanying will; and so are we. The only interactive behaviour that sets them to peace, and is hence both necessary and sufficient, is love. And so it with us, as far as others are involved and our interactive behaviour goes.

However, as human beings with the power to be pro-active, to change ourselves and our world about us, we need to choose our values and therefore need to know what works, which yields what and how. The knowledge and values are already indicated by our history, our myths, our texts ancient and modern, our epics, our traditions and our ways of life. It is upto each one of us to inform ourself, know and choose for ourself, and to embark upon that journey of examining and clarifying from experience that which is absolute and invariable and those that are relative and dependent upon situation and circumstance.

Some truths are universal though :

—   Feelings are nature’s means to reveal itself to us. Men do not cause feelings, our world does. We do not stop feeling except when we are literally or sort of dead.

—  Emotions are our own and arise almost always from the dark and unexamined part of our within. They are mostly wasteful except when prompted of love.

—   Our mind is a means and an instrument to feel, examine and know our world, our emotions and will, our memory and impressions from past, as also to sense the state and quality of our self and the values we associate with.

—   The values we choose and commit ourselves to provides a firm unshakeable ground to ourself; nothing else does. The self committed to values empowers the will to choose the right course of action; nothing else does.

—   There is no truth apart from our self. It is lost in the mind, in thoughts and habitual emotions, in addictive feelings, when we begin our search for our self. The process of extricating our self and living in the light of its truth is the eternal way.

Let’s walk it.

Journal : Awakening … Into The Truth

 

MIND, KARMA AND GUNA – III

What is the most important thing about us, in the way we are ? Admittedly, it would be everything for someone or other, more or less : survival and daily ablutions, basic needs, food, sex, house, travel, car, possessions, girlfriend or wife and family, clothes and sartorial accessoties, home, friends, countryside, fishing or other hobbies, rest and leisure and, of course, money. 

There is nothing the wrong with any of it and there is nothing complete about each of them either. Every time we are fulfilled with these, the fulness lasts for a while, more or less, and recedes. The right or wrong about them lies in ourself, in the limiting manner we are held up by them or in the way we acknowledge it with gratitude and move on in our quest. It is common to begin being defined by what things comes to mean to us, in the way each one of them cyclically fulfills us in some measure, more or less, over and above their truth in the balance. We start with liking them, then are obsessed by them, which we deem as “love,” which but is nothing more than a auto-suggested habit, as it happens in case of addiction.

What would we move on to ? The wit says, self-improvement, which is a wise thing to point but needs more specific pointers to direct ourselves. Improvement along what lines ? It speaks of a more exact and real understanding, a more calm and non-violent values orientation, more moral strength to stand by one’s values, and an evolution towards obtaining a more adequate and complete understanding in truth. But, in a way, I seem to be repeating myself, for all of these are inter-related and inter-dependent. 

The picture then emerges of broadly two kinds of humans, by their spiritual make-up : one that projects and is ready for the conflict and violence and, the other, of one who is involved in examination and understanding than in projecting oneself. So, how do we distinguish them ? By naming the categories and mapping out the essentials of the human animal and the human human. It would be difficult to accept the nomenclature but it is no more than the commonly encountered attitude against admitting that one is imperfect and that one needs to improve !

The mapped essentials are sketched out here below :

 

On the whole, spiritual evolution, moral strength and values orientation are more a matter of understanding and truth, ability and skills, than God, faith and religion. It takes immense effort to understand anything material or mental, and the difficulty only increases when it comes to knowing oneself. There are so many material distractions and preoccupations to overcome, so many trapping psychological hold-ups to encounter, so much failure to persist and retain the quest in focus … When, in fact, the only obstacles are our own naturalised habits !

But the super-human arises out of this battle against oneself. The Vedas and Krishna, in Bhagwad-Gita, acknowledge : ” It’s a wonder. It’s a wonder. It’s a wonder.”

Journal : Awakening… Into The Truth

LOVE AND HAPPINESS

Everybody loves and is happy, more or less. None of which abides though : loves meet the gutter and happiness is flushed in the sink. If we are into possessions, there is always more to have; if sensory experience, more to consume. Feelings and emotions ? There is nothing more mutable than them, by the minute. Thoughts and actions follow … for the same : love and happiness.

There is a love though that is not people- or thing-specific, not even beholden to returns in cash, behaviour or kind. It is not abstract but palpable, like the love we have of ourself … but only to one that is de-identified with lineage, station or familly, with the body, sex or vitality, or with knowledge and ability. 

Such love abides : without the necessity of give and take. It is unworldly, so to say. It not an idea but is ideal, resting on the reality of the truth of an idea realised. It is of the heart, in love with that reverberating in its beat. It needs no other and is more than adequate for all – in nature, people, animals, things, good, bad and ugly – despite conflicts and contradictions in our world of action and thought. One could be opposing to restrain, fight to disable or kill to eliminate, be it one who praises or humiliates, even watch horrible conduct flow out of one’s own self … but that realised idea shines unblemished and with it, the love : perfect in the midst of imperfections, calm through the trail of agitation.

The love we each already have is not dependent on preferred happenings, though we would give ourselves with our whole heart to make things happen. It seeks no change, even while we would be working hard to bring it about. It is placid, in its own thanks of being, in its own freedom from identity and preference, in its own knowledge of truth in one’s own regard, in its own unity with the manifest, felt and unmanifest universe, and in its own bliss, eternal and infinite.

The concomitant happiness is of the nature of peace to which its variants converge with diverse hues : pleasure, joy, satisfaction, contentment, enthusiasm, discovery, welcome, fulness, exhilaration, ecstasy … There is no abiding happiness without eternal love, nor that without true knowledge. 

Though we pick up the words floating in material space, our quest for love and happiness completes itself in the transcendent space of knowledge infinite, where the terms morph into forms unrecognisable from our references in the gross and subtle spaces !

Awakening … Into Truth

THE CORE ASPECT

Hypothetically, to a stone, the truth is manifest in its existence but is not perceived; to a tree, it is sensed and even responded to but not thought of; with animals, it is sensed and thought of but not questioned and understood; and, in humans, truth is pondered over, inquired about and progressively understood.

There has never been and will never be when men, some of us, will stop enquiring and examining for this elusive certainty in respect of uncertain existence. Nothing else offers to us a sure ground that stays even when calamity falls, when all is lost or death is at hand, as all else falls short, deserts, changes, moves past or alienates.

Men are happy when their desire is met : whether upon material affluence, when relationship blossoms, our creation comes to shape, a drink is before us, a panorama engulfs us in its beauty, or when unpleasantness departs. Just then, when our “self” is free from prevailing want, without the craving in thought for us to coil about, without the emotion whirling with need to which we get anchored … just then, our self finds itself “released,” detached and un-anchored; our being expands. That freedom, accompanied with expansion of being, with nothing to hold us down, spells happiness. Un-tethered to the pegs of want, unburdened by the weight of need and unagitated by our own dissatisfaction, our being expands of its own, in itself, as we are by ourself.

But our happiness deserts us of the same causes in the reverse : the want resurfaces, a need arises, a desire pre-occupies … the pegs again come to tether us, we again contract to coil about the iterating thought and are again attached to the urge in our emotion. We then become unhappy, over a far more stretched period of time because desires are not met everyday, needs are not fulfilled pronto and our wants remain for long, perhaps forever. 

This is a, nay, the core aspect of our life between long stretches of dissatisfaction and fleeting spikes of happiness, over a stagnant bed of frustration from ever. 

Truth is our home, so to say, knowing which we find ourselves connected with our being, with all being and space itself, to our own situation, all situation and time itself. The object may be without – physical or material – but the want, disatisfaction and joyous phenomenon is our own, within our being, in our vitality, mind and ego-self. No, it does not occur in absolute isolation, without a peer … there is a witness-consciousness peering through the intellect which, if and when we are ready to methodically recall, enlightens us with moment-by-moment facts, the knowledge if which empowers us with the overriding mandate to breaking through the process as it occurs and halt the cyclic phenomenon at our will…  to be continued

Journal : Awakening … Into The Truth

VEDANTA : I

“Every drop of water would find its way to the ocean.”

I could have done without introducing Vedanta but not without acknowledging the source of the line of progression I embarked upon one day decades ago. There is nothing in life that would have prompted me to take to the reality without and within this inclusive, cosmic fulness. It peeps into man, into each manifest being inert and alive, right since it all was yet unformed and unexpressed. Religions present this simple immanence as the “other” to us and renders it fictional, as yet another something in the humdrum of diversity we are situated in, or someone above the crowded multiplicity we end up dealing with. It was Vedanta that showed to me the way to that enveloping infinetely transcendent immanence that itself projects and permeates this living, breathing, pulsating reality we are priviledged to embody, view and experience.

Vedanta called aloud to me, “It is there, here and everywhere.” And that, it was attainable through this being expressed as us, the I – handle in our psyche at its source, the self I was never without. I remember that resonance when its meaning reverberated within me, filling me with an assurance my spirit was starved of and a trust to authenticity and harmony that was then singularly absent. The call itself was the culmination of humanity’s progressive rise into the truth millennia ago. And as effectively did I, over a period of about 12 years, when I allowed myself to be drawn by its rarefied reach.

The truth perspective of Vedanta is outlined and detailed in the Aranyakas, which include the more familiar Upanishads, the body of thought meant for reclusive and retired forest dwellers given over entirely to spiritual pursuit. It is what the Vedas ultimately lead us up to, after the Samhitas and the Brahmanas exhaust the revelations and purifying rituals to go along with them. The Bhagwad Gita and Brahma Sutras are different treatment and presentation of the same body of truth exposed in the Upanishads, and are hence considered authoritative Vedanta texts : the Gita being more pleibian and the Sutras more scholarly in their respective structure, context and content. These works have spawned a series of commentaries and clarificatory texts over time, right upto modern times, either to refresh that pinnacle of profundity where there is no more subtlety to unravel or to offer perspectival interpretations to suit different natural orientations in human subjectivity – devotion and reverential oneness, friendly and empathetic unity, or the formless undifferentiated being-witness infinite.

Vedanta concerns itself with truths that are superceded, not negated, by ones of higher or more subtle order. In contrast, a whole body of scientific facts have validity only until they are displaced by discovery of more ‘factual’ ones of the same material order. Truths are more subjectively intimate perceptions occasioned by a holistic integration of our multi-layered experience. That dimensional direction towards our within is important in the context of truth. Science, on the other hand, must point outward and insist on objectivity involving rational reductions, physical instruments and measures, and peer group validation of its repeatability and falsifiability. String theory speculations are less “scientific” in comparision.

Too, Vedanta is not a philosophy, which is largely a body of thought, speculative in nature and scope. We have, in any case, not had a philosopher proper in our midst since a couple of centuries now, while humanity has chosen to lay more and more of its lot with science that, in turn, is increasingly focused on areas having application in commerce and technology, with a promise of return on investment. Historically, it does seem that the natural philosophies and principia of yore morphed into the starker, more hard core, scientific treatises of modern times. Today, the only notable ‘ philosophers ‘ we still find occasionally on the horizon are all men of science !

The degree of truth is measured in terms of unmanifest cosmic drives it signifies and the manifest effects it engenders. Its hierarchy orients in the inverse, from the expressed to the subtle, and corresponds to the extent of its real equivalence and conceptual validity. A truth valid over the longer scale is superior to one that holds true for mere minutes, a particular environment or just one species. In simplistic terms, the one which holds good over the entire time scale, the whole of space and all of being, is termed the Supreme Truth.

Whilst Vedanta mentions truths of various kinds in passing, it lays at the very outset its primary focus : the Supreme Truth, its nature and facts, its meaning to man, especially the means and ways for an individual to realise and attain it. It would be clarifying to remember that the truth spoken of in the context of Vedanta is not the opposite of ‘ lie.’ A lie is a dream-like human construct, a creative representation of truth, a fact of the moment that gets contradicted in time. Conversely all truths, other than the Supreme, are illusory in comparison. Higher the truth, the more inclusive it is; and everything it includes are its expression, even if they are in apparent conflict with each other.

Truth is existence and the Supreme Truth is existence infinite. Humans sense the consciousness in their own very existence, and universally in all living and semi-living beings. The same consciousness is sensed or observed to configure itself to different forms of knowledge, identities, ideas, thoughts, emotions and feelings, organs and bodies. The difference among these forms lies in their capacity to reflect upon itself and animate the body with their will. In other words, the ‘formed’ knowledge could be fixed or programmed, instinctual but aware, or reflective and with a measure of control over its adjuncts, depending upon the intellectual and mental-vital endowment of the being. Besides, it is sensed that every form of being, animate and inanimate, comes to be on account of convergence of several pre-existing inputs and much energised cooperation at very specific actuated processes respective to manifestation of each form of being. The science we glean of it is the knowledge that pre-exists its discovery.

Vedic ancients hence appended their understanding of the Supreme Truth and described it as ” existence – consciousness – infinite ” or ” existence – knowledge – infinite.” They address the more universal and particular forms of beings anthropologically, but never without the sense of the infinite behind them. Further, in the phenomenal realm, a universal desire and pursuit for happiness, that is, for freedom from need, pain and want is seen to characterise all animals, including man. The same desire was projected and is now proven in plants All human motives, drives and actions are aimed at having happiness in some form or another – satisfaction, pleasure, joy, delight, fulfillment, contentment or peace. The descriptor for the Supreme Truth was thus modified to include this manifest aspect innate in existence; hence : Existence – Consciousness – Bliss – Infinite.

Vedanta suggests that whilst phenomenal truths, finite in their extention, having qualities but limited validity or lifetime, can be observed, studied and contemplated upon objectively and known, obtained or attained, the Supreme Truth is not an object accessible to our senses and mind. If it helps, we may go back to the facts at the origin : one, all truths are superceded in time; and, two, the Supreme Truth alone remains beyond the limits of form and space, and is transcendent of the of time and its effects. In other words, if we were to negate all forms in our vision, all emotions in our experience, all thoughts in our mind, all finite knowledge in our intellect including that of our own self… our own very consciousness would be subsumed in the Supreme Truth, since that alone is not superceded.

Traditions since antiquity admit of all manner of ways of ” uniting ” with the Supreme Truth. Very broadly, it spells the perspective to human needs, goals and endeavour within which such an exercise could be pursued : ethics and moral strength, livelihood and material abundance, sexual and sensory fulfillment, and liberation from all past impressions, present desires and future wants… which “liberation” subsumes in union with the Supreme Truth, the summum bonum. It allows for exceptions from the order or hierarchy of the nature of purposeful exertion, depending upon one’s moral excellence, freedom from sensory desire and focused drive to wipe the inner universe clean in order to maximise conditions for ultimate subsumption.

Journal : Awakening … Into The Truth

IV             Whom The Way Calls

In common with every other perception, experience and knowledge, the way to truth surfaces within ourself. The witness in object–subject relatedness is forever between the fact in our eye, the meaning in our perception and the knowledge with ourself, including of our own self at the foundation of our subjectivity. 

In setting ourselves up on the way to truth, we shall have to exclude much, nearly everything, and all ultimately. This work therefore does away with jargons common in religious texts, and most certainly their fervour and calls on faith, though not the values or knowledge they signify in a philosophical or spiritual discourse. This work is about us, our being as we are and as it resonates with us. If we are a creation, and only the vain or absolutely knowledgeable amongst us will aver that we are not, there is an urgent need to discover its universal matters of fact.

Each one of us is in a material environment, with a body that is wondrously formed – a marvelously organised physiological system. It works excellently without our intervention, very predictably if watered and fuelled timely, adequately and appropriately. It signals for its needs from time to time, for particular cares necessary on account of environmental factors, and warns us of its misuse, activating alarms when stretched too far and even scaring us into mending our abusive ways. And if we let it be, not deny it of rest and sleep, it diagnoses its problems to correct, undo, regrow and recover by itself.

But however dire, immediate and wholly intimate it feels, our body is only as it serves us to mutually survive and a mere means for adults to use it as they choose. Sure, we deliberately dress it up to impress or time its presence to surprise others, who look upon it as we are in their perception, what we mean and how they deem. All men and, as I hear, some women too, know how beautiful the fairer gender can seem. We all have a story or two to tell about the powerful impact of their inviting curves, mesmerising countenance or awesome proportion. But mostly it soon clarifies and we begin to look beyond the body before us, at the person behind or within it… at the one who is thinking and opining, emoting or touching, setting the deal or laying the trap for us ! 

Not everyone is a human soul; not yet, though every person has a line to one. Most of us are animals without their nakedness, which is both an advance and the first lie we tell ourselves, and project to others. The religion we subscribe to is for afterwards – to confess and feel awashed for a new day of lust and greed, apathy and lies. In Islam, the communal faith confers celestial merit and heavenly rewards for what, in the eyes of you and I, is inhuman behaviour and subhuman conduct. We are informed that it is growing the fastest ! Clearly, being with a normal human body, most of us are not wanting in intelligence; but it is through developing the intellect, equipping it with universal human values, that we characterise ourselves with humanity. Fostered in an environment of entrenched feudal power structures, equally common in rigorously instituted religious societies and in those with extreme Gini index, it is our intellectual blindness that arrests our spiritual evolution to universal values, individual liberty and creative freedom.

I really am not sure how far the truths laid out in these pages would resonate with the beast within us. But there are many who are prone to be content and happy, even if disadvantaged or less fortunate than those around. They might be hounded into moral fatigue or failure on occasions but, by nature, are courageous enough to follow their calls of conscience in utter honesty and truth. Their ethics is their life and covetousness has no place in it, though they might not be entirely free of envy. It is these individuals, I trust, who would have the patience, love and the pure drive for the quest of truth. Likely, I believe, they would have the richness of experience that living against our animal propensities invariably fetch us, and the internal instrument to intuit the facts of spirit, as opposed to those of matter. They would sense the sinister in propaganda, however socially acceptable, and self – promotion would be beyond the pale of their own instinctual priority. Though not ashamed, they would be aware of unhappy consequences of unchecked lustful impulses, and of those easy inner processes which lead us to greed. They would value facts, liberty and truth, and constantly initiate to add, examine, change or modify their own views and perspective. They would be happiest leading clean, honest lives, being monogamous in their affection, nurturing moral and ethical values in their progeny, extending their love to beings and having a ready regard for life everywhere.

It is for them that I have the pleasure of writing these essays. But that is only to give me a start. There is no one who cannot arise, raise himself here and now, and step up to gain from these truths I have availed from my glimpses of Vedanta.

Journal : Awakening … Into The Truth

III             The Fact In The Way

There is no way to any absolute truth for those of us who are not taken up exclusively by the drive to know; untill then, facts would be the truth of our moments and action our refuge for what is in our desire and want or in our hatred and revulsion.

The desire to know the ” other ” drives us into subjective relationships and to objective studies along diverse disciplines : science, commerce, economics, politics, medicine, sociology, management, and the arts. Sure, we sharpen our intelligence during the course of our study in these fields. But that does not necessarily develop our intellect, our perspective and values system. The depths we illuminate in our intellect with our effort have a calming effect upon us. The process equips us with several skills to focus, study, observe and remember, analyse, concentrate, clarify and integrate… all of which come handy when we embark on an a-religious, matter-of-fact study of our self.

As the subjective being, our self is never without an object, whether in ourself or about the other. Our being is complicatedly diffused among others-in-self and self-in-others projections in the mind, revealed in dream state, but the differentiated subject – object paradigm obviously persists. In deep sleep, the being is apparently in a state of undifferentiated “absence,” and there is no subject-object divide in awareness. There is a consciousness though that arises when we wake up with the memory of being “blissfully asleep”. 

The entire cyclic sway from differentiated to undifferentiated consciousness, and back, from all to nothing and back, is moot. It isn’t just diurnal but very exactly sums up our lifetime as well, through birth to death and back, at all kinds of entry to exit and back, and every psycho-vital experience with their respective extremities : love and hate, thirst and quench, want and meet, desire and fulfill, eat and expel, breathe and asphyxate, etc. And, I am told, the same circumscribed motion qualifies the cosmos and universal being through manifesting big bang to extinguishing big crunch and back, creation to destruction and back, magnetic pole shifts through great terrestrial flood to ice age and back, shift of solar phenomenon from our present sun to the nest one that is getting prepared, and galactic shift from Milky Way to another in its place. 

Every cyclic sway that we become aware of reveals the same flooding … growth, abundance, extinction and freeze, whereafter the cycle repeats. The sages oft declare : as within, so without; know thyself and the cosmos will be revealed. The journey however is full of unknown details, the process punctuated with inscrutable operating and decision nodes. We start with being the ” I ” in this differentiated awareness, in an indescribably extensive game of alternating between the “other” and the self, outwaiting the crowded focus till it simplifies to one object, which stays and begins to reveal itself. It shows up the attachments and anchors upon ourself as the object is brought back again and again and retained in the metal frame, untill all psycho-vital bonds of relatedness disssolve and the finitude in our knowledge of the object extends to include its being entire over all space and time. 

That about outlines the classic Raja-Yoga method to union with pure being. What remains in our perception is knowledge of the object as it is, without any taint or flaw contributed by the mind – the perceiving organ – and without any subjectivity on part of the perceiver himself. The method suggests we next take up progressively subtle objects such as a thought, concept or idea, followed by concentrating on the subject being itself. The object specific knowledge are important only for the challenges they offer : of scale over space and time and of penetration into layers of being. The capacities we broadly acquire along the way are towards attaining knowledge that is immutable and without doubt, breaking through our own limitations, our immensely arresting happiness born of the sense of fulfillment, and the singularity of doing away with the individuated sense of being we have of ourself.

The method rips us away from our dream-like everyday existence in family – work – food – sex – ablutions – relationships – thought – action routine. Withdrawn from all but a frame in the mind, it gets killingly intense at times, when however we end up learning the most. The journey we cover within us is real, with a presence that throws us off at first, perhaps for long, but intensifies and deepens with time, raising a whole gamut of rich impressions latent in our mental being, filling the psychological universe with images and drives that inexorably draws us in. No matter what the scientists say and the dialectical materialists inform, this question of how we have come to this start is shrouded in mystery and does not resolve untill the will and wilfulness gives way to thought and contemplation, to meditation, and to the vigorous urge to join in the drama in our lives ! 

Life begins to cumulatively clarify in the layered impressions of our memory of world, body, relationships, our own being qualified by its ignorance, our knowledge, want and will. The forever situation becomes here and now; the self in the experience is closely watched in the measure of its want; the hidden link of experienced quality with subconscious infiltrations is mapped in vitality; the action is truly anchored in awareness and performed with our whole heart…

But all that only enables us to expand and intensify the awareness … the results may continue to be as unsatisfactory as they’ve always been. However, the difference hereon is that nothing escapes our attention. We fail at every outlined step; but now we know : a very big deal, for we now would get up and on to doing and improve every time ! Every twig, leaf and motion is in our watch : the others and ourself are known real time and included in our thought and behaviour. There is a constant feedback loop, at times surprisingly in advance, with the body we own and owe to, the breath flowing in out, through ablutionary exercise, the things we have now also have us … We are happy with our feelings, comfortable with our relationships, watchful of subconcious interpretations, mindful of our emotions, desires, will, thought, values, actions and their consequences … These are our facts of the way. Our sight is clear on our self, afloat on a sea of subconscious impressions with an unceasing stream of desire, want, will and thought passing through it, claiming it. We compulsively make happy choices, preferring one or other, and are at ease between life and our witnessing reference. And we know every trace of that which we are bringing over from the previous moment and are not bothered : because we are happy with it.

The constant cycle of want and pleasure, joy and misery, ordeal and achievement, hope and anguish … engenders a whole range of attitude. Most people battle through life to fulfill their need and meet their want. Many forever strive to profit, deeming it all as an euphemism of life itself. Some who succeed also grow dissatisfied, tired of the status quo. They search for a way out of it. Of the last, some buy time for their leisure and self-actualisation; some despair and live in depression; others summon the will to work for the welfare of others or for causes that would herald a change. Only a scant few have the clear sight, vigour and the mental preparedness to take a turn away from it all for a time and direct their search into hitherto uncharted terrain, to the self abiding with transcending paradigms.

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I loved these accounts from a whacky lady … http://clotildajamcracker.wordpress.com/

Journal : Awakening … Into The Truth

II          What is the truth ?

It is that which supports the entire tangible and intangible domain, that exists by its own potency and cannot be contradicted. It is everything material, physical, mental, psychological and spiritual … all that are perceived to exist of their own accord and power. It is existence that comes to be, whose being cannot be denied in its moment or eternity, through which it continues to be. It is the substratum with which the unmanifest subsists, of which forms are manifest, into which all being de-manifest and subside.

We could have an idea of the truth as an all-inclusive sum of facts and the history of each over time, if we knew. Whether in respect of objects, the subject, or both in their relatedness, truth is a realisation that is over and above what we know, that circumscribes and permeates all we experience and perceive, and is hence transcendental. It is inseparable from its knower, forever preceding it, constituting and illuminating it, casting its light upon the mind and all things in our sense and perception. In the absence of the knowledge of this truth, our sense of the self is without the eternity at its support and the truncated awareness remains in its individuated in-itself emptiness that we abhor or its transient for-itself preoccupations that take us through respective existential cycles of will and want, emotion and thought, idea and vitality.

An objective fact is a local truth of the moment that excludes us. Clearly, it is impossible for us to be objective about a being, person or thing, with which we already relate. If it isn’t the thing, then our subjectivity would be found in the act, the need of being objective or drive behind it. The most unrelated of facts or object is perceived with its form and nature, its causes and effects, while our attention is led to the dark domains of ignorance within us. It makes us dream of horror, romance, profit or sheer disinterest, while our perception of the image in our awareness changes in tune with frame in our dream. It might take years for the mind to clarify, and ages if the intent is to purify.

Truth arises when we are aware of being as it is, without our least interpretation of it. It may start with anything phenomenal – physical or mental, but soon extends to include our self and the universe. It takes a while, a long while from the start, before the mutating interpretations of being die down and give way to the unchanging perception. We then know the truth.

However wide its scale, the knowledge of the fact remains formal, leaving the knowledge we have of ourself untouched and instead prompts us with emotions and drives that lead us to action, with a profit in view. It doesn’t become intimate and informal until our enquiry expands to discover how the fact, its sources and effects, subserve our environment near or far, or directly impact our body, senses, mind and being. Inclusive extension and interpretive absence – nothingness, if we will – transports awareness past the veils of ignorance upon it … when there is no distance or separation, and cognitive mediate, between ourself and the truth : we then know ourself as the truth and the truth as our self, and find in ourself the capacity for perspective that includes both the fact of being and the being in truth. As a corollary, we then assign to the object being the same importance we reserve for ourself, and every fact is owned subjectively with the same regard as the body-mind bing assumes in our sense.

All existence, beings and things, including our body and thought, are matters of fact. The material ones are gross; the mental forms we sense are subtle. We may have a degree of intimacy with our material possessions and with bodies that please us, that we use frequently or sensually interact with, but the sense of that intimacy is subtle, within us, as a form of mind-stuff = feeling or emotion, thought or knowledge. The sense we have for each object is a historical reduction of experience subtly impressed upon our mental being, as a drive of one kind or other – desire or revulsion, hatred or want, or any other in between.

Infrequently, in evolved minds, the urge would transcend the desire – hate spectrum of vitality and will, and lead to curiosity, awareness of a gap in our knowledge that bothers, causing an irrepressible need to know. It is the hallmark of a refined human being.

Journal : An Approach To Truth

There is only one self – evident Truth :  our Self.

Every other truth follows, to us, in its evidence.

It then appears, seems, modifies, mutates… and is only in the moment.

That’s what and how things mean to us, in that moment.

It may be, if your memory is deep, sharp and focused enough… that you discover one such truth that modifies no more, mutates no further. It appears again and again, seems the same, unaffected by Time, Ourself or the Environment. You then become aware of something with longer scale validity.

Such an unchanging truth, in respect of one object, being or attribute, is of value. It becomes a core around which other truths of the moment, pertaining to the same or like things, may be link – cluster – arranged, a foundation on which the others may be laid on.

The link – cluster meaning of one thing is arranged and laid on till it connects with another such meaning cluster, of another thing. And with one more… and so on, in time, to an aggregate that presents a more accurate and complete perspective of life and living, beings and things, world and our experiences.

Life perspectives, arising from longer validity truths, yield valuable guides to effective living, decisive morals one does not have to belabour at when the need is already too hot upon us nor does there remain the need to commit the knowledge to memory from what may have been gained in hindsight.

This is the way to living meaningfully, truthfully, and more completely.

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While we at it, there is a need for exactness in our speech :

Truth is not “many” things… It is EVERYTHING. 

Even a lie is a truth for a time, for someone… it might get superceded by another truth, but until then… Some lies remain as truth for decades, even centuries !

Fact vs Truth

A fact is a truth for the moment, usually for a limited constituency.
It would change, with more info…

A truth is a fact for life… more universal, even universe wide…

And it remains valid for generations, even all time.

Nature Of Truth

Truth is of the nature of knowledge of oneself – – –

Facts are truths about other things of being.

Knowledge of Gravity remains a fact about material bodies until we conclusively know what it means to ourself… to our body, its processes, its routine, our thoughts, our sights and views, our walk, etc.

Use of Truth

Indeed, one “could”… not would… profit by knowledge of any kind.

But that is absolutely secondary and peripheral to the knowledge itself.

There is knowledge in itself, for its own sake. It is not essential that one profits by it.

Profit has nothing to do with the knowledge itself;

it has something to do with our ignorance, the very opposite of knowledge !

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Dharma : Part VIII [ concluded ]