Absolute awareness is inherently, naturally, spontaneously self-aware. Only Maya makes you think I’m not.
There’s nothing wrong with self-awareness unless you take a side. Absolute awareness is nothing if not self-aware.
Self-awareness is the crossroads of modern evolution and sudden enlightenment. Both roads are disappearing here.
Spontaneous self-awareness is this space-time of the same. Maya meets Jacob. The road is ever dust and dew. By its wayside, a horse is pissing on a mirror.
Mandukya / Karika/ Sankara translation update. Nikhilananda has copious end notes, most of which are insightful. But too often a note ends with an untranslated devanagari script. Gambhirananda has much fewer notes. That is not a bad thing. In reading the Mandukya with the Karika, and especially the commentaries of Sankara, one of either Nikhilananda or Gambhiranda is necessary.
But I’ve determined the Chinmayananda translation is also necessary. Not only is it the only one to include the romanization of the sanskrit, allowing for textual analysis, but the commentary has grown on me. Sometimes too long-winded but often insightful in a down-to-earth way. Chinmayananda translates the Mandukya and Karika but not the Sankara commentaries, although he often refers to key segments in his own commentary.
I always like including a third translation for triangulation purposes. Swartz is not a necessary translation, but a good third one. Especially for a westerner. Mandukya and Karika; no Sankara.
I say all this after reading the first Karika which includes the Mandukya and the second Karika which is a logical presentation of illusory duality. But I’ve gone back to the first because the Mandukya is worth reading three times quickly.
First, they say the Mandukya is the distillation of all Upanishads. Second, Gaudapada is the fountainhead of all advaita. Third, the Mandukya first appears in Gaudapada’s Karika, not necessarily meaning he wrote it as much as he rediscovered it.
psst, on the Mandukya and Gaudapada front, The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta: A Study of Gaudapada, Sankara, Suresvara and Padmapada, by Michael Comans, is really good.
If an object is its name,
and aum is the name
for the manifest,
past, present, & future,
& the unmanifest,
and universe is brahman,
then aum is brahman,
and atman is brahman,
and this self-shining consciousness
divided into three states
& the stateless state,
aum.
If a rose is a rose is a rose, and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then aum is the name for that sweetness.
Spoiler alert! There are three states of consciousness: no thought, thought, and thought-form.
The fourth state of consciousness is the stateless state of pure awareness.
In street lingo, deep sleep is no thought, dreams are thought, and the waking world is thought-form.
Between the unmanifest and manifest is thought. That's basically the secret.
Beyond the manifest and unmanifest is reality. That's the truth.
In self-awareness, the self-shining consciousness of atman is the self, the absolute brahman is awareness, and maya is the hyphen.
And the universe is the reflexive space surrounding this said hyphen. Consciousness falls into a deep sleep and dreams a way out.
Awareness witnesses self-awareness whereas the mind sees only one side at a time. As Zhuangzi says, for every this there is a that.
footnotes
1. kalpayaty-ātmanātmānam-ātmā devaḥ sva-māyayā
~Gaudapada K2-12a (tr-chinmayananda)
2. there are seven states of consciousness: light, nuclear, atomic, deep sleep, thought, form, enlightenment.
3. see Julian of Norwich. again.
afterword
Self-awareness is where the science meets the metaphysics. Self-awareness is where maya works.
I’ve been trying to put the paradox of self-awareness into words and maya was there all the time.
The snake is a rope but a rope is a rope is a rope. All metaphors must end. The true physicist works in nonduality. Atma deva sva maya.
So-called personal consciousness is filtered consciousness but most people been down so long they think it’s natural consciousness.
Let’s define our terms. Personal consciousness receives everything. Natural consciousness projects through everything.
One is natural consciousness, but ordinary people think they’re just this personal consciousness produced by the body somewhere in the brain.
In this vein, natural consciousness is not ordinary to such people, but natural consciousness appears to be almost supernatural to them.
Communicating this paradox is why there’s gods, friends, and devils. You know the devil of every detail but one. God is consciousness.
Footnotes.
1. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña.
2. Personal consciousness is the universal cause. Natural consciousness is beyond all cause and effect. I am that I am.
3. Scientific materialism is just a religion whose personal god is named scientific materialism. Dear eight pound, six ounce, newborn baby big bang. So cuddly but still omnipotent.
4. Beyond natural, maybe.
5. If jiva is atman, and atman is brahman, then brahman is jiva. Let the circle be nondual.
end notes
I am of the opinion.
Reality is consciousness minus mind.
Energy minus resistance is aum’s law.
Do the math.
Old math, new math. Real math is experiential.
Because numbers are the new names, tao is also numberless.
Tvam am tat.
Prajnanam brahma, ayam atma brahma, tat tvam asi, aham brahma asmi.
The self of self-awareness is brahman.
Another name for self-awareness is maya.
The world is just a cross-section of self-awareness.
I went to the crossroad and fell down on my knees.
If atman is the self,
and brahman is awareness,
maya is the self-awareness.
Consciousness knows everything except reality. For reality is consciousness and self-awareness is its dream state.
So living in the world is like suspending disbelief in a movie called self-awareness. Actors never die. Movies do. Myth is the script.
So religions sell myth. It’s not easy writing your own. For example, in advaita vedanta, vedanta is religion and nonduality is disbelief.
My myth is self-awareness, my disbelief is nonduality, and my religion is the loving personality. My poetry is my bible. Happy birthday number one daughter!
end notes
1.1. not only does consciousness know everything, it causes everything.
1.2. for the sea surrounds the island. the island does not surround the sea, says hafiz.
2.1. in the first place, you can't get there from here.
2.2. li po plays all along the watchtower!
3.1. if story is super brahman, myth is parabrahman.
3.2. i'm advaita america.
4.1. see the reflexive universe, spot. see the mandukya, jack kerouac.
4.2. love is all.
Aum is I-am as form, subsiding to concept, and resting as knowledge.
But this deep knowledge, universal consciousness, doesn't know the absolute; the nondual absolute knows it.
Such noumenal knowing, pure awareness, the witnessing I, is that without cause, and, without effect.
After all the neti neti of Mandukya 7, this all-important positive line appears. Here are various translations:
whose valid proof consists in the single belief in the Self
~Gambhirananda
The essence of the Consciousness manifesting as the self [in the three states]
~Nikhilananda
As one whose essence is the perception of itself alone
~Olivelle
essentially of the Self alone
~Chinmayananda
Always experienced as the unbroken “I-sense,”
~Swartz
The only proof of His existence is union with Him
~Yeats & Purohit
The essence of the assurance of which is the state of being one with the Self
~Hume
Essence of self knowledge
~Raphael
The essence of its certainty is the one Self.
~Jones
Essentially one-pointed self-awareness,
~aumdada
According to Gaudapada,
deep sleep is the non-apprehension of reality,
and the states of the waking dream
and dreaming dream are both
non-apprehension, and further,
misapprehension of reality.
The former is cause and the latter, effect.
Thus deep sleep,
or the absence of duality (nihilism, nothing),
is not reality.
Reality is not just nothing; reality is nondual.
Whereas people see all manner of things unwell,
reality eternally is witnessing
only self-awareness.
afterword
so, if deep sleep is nihilism according to gaudapada, then what is the waking and dream state?
i'm guessing the waking state is full bore materialism and the dream state is some religious halfway house.
in other words, those three states of consciousness are represented in the world by three schools of thought: materialism, religionism, nihilism. but they are not the truth. the stateless fourth state is the truth.
footnotes
1. my autocorrect says godapada and so far i'm okay with that.
2. deep sleep is like the big bang, like a cosmic worm hole, like the necessary self-forgetting (maya) before self-awareness.
3. religion is the greatest dream state.
4. scientific materialism is the greatest religion.
5. it's one thing not to see the rope but it's another thing to see the snake.
6. the primal cause is ignorance. the first effect is fear.
7. deep sleep is nothing. nihilism is not reality. reality is nondual.
8. awareness is witnessing self-awareness. cool, cool, cool.
bibliography
updating the mandukya and karika translation observations—gambhirananda is still in first. although i feel there are significant mistakes in a few places, these actually help in understanding sankara's commentary, which is surprisingly deferential in faithfulness to the paraguru.
swartz is in second place despite the sometimes poor editing and questionable design decisions, and an obvious, if transcendentally fine, agenda. still, i feel there is some true insight in places, none more insightful as the one in seeing the i-sense as the proof of Mandukya 7.
third is chinmayananda. as far as i'm concerned, c. is nearly a prerequisite for its complete translation services. it is almost necessary for triangulation purposes. but it's commentary, although truly profound in places, is mundane overall, which actually might be its intent.
fourth, but not last, is raphael. it's been nicely esoteric in a western way, but is, so far, a fourth wheel in triangulation. yet it's still early, although if its approach to mandukya 7, possibly the world's greatest statement on nonduality, is any guide, don't hold your breath.
i feel it's necessary to say i have not read nikhilananda's translation as well as many others. i still may, of course. and as for jones, no comment.
haiku
october crickets
awareness is as love sounds
aum self-awareness
