Epistle to Natural Consciousness

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.

Welcome to My Paraverse

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 Beatitudes

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.

On Eka-ātma-pratyaya-sāram

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 

On Natural Apprehension. Commentary in Paraverse on Gaudapada K1.15.

Deconstruct misapprehension. Forget non-apprehension. Just know natural apprehension.

There’s no curing the common cause. You always know yourself. You’ve identified with something else.

Knowing natural apprehension is the direct path. Ekātma-pratyaya-sāraṁ. That’s not just awareness, that's oneself, bliss.

footnotes.

1.1. and do not forget i too took this road and still swear by the four agreements.

1.2. non-apprehension was never born. like social conditioning, or maya.

1.3. the guru, written or unwritten, only leads you to the wine. hafiz, drink it for god's sake!

2.1. if not-knowing is the first disease, knowing is original ease and non-doing.

2.2. leaves fall, a tree abides. trees die, the earth abides. the earth disintegrates, the sun abides. the sun implodes, black brahman abides.

2.3. the self is always witnessing self-awareness. people, all manner of things shall be well.

3.1. from superego to immaculate conception to universal consciousness. aum.

3.2. akāra ukāro makāra. waking dream, dreaming dream, dreamless sleep.

3.3.1. awareness is often mistaken as attention. the mind attends the senses and its memories.

3.3.1.1. awareness affectionately witnesses. this is why we speak in threes.

3.3.1.2. see satcitananda.

3.3.1.3. islands of happiness appear and disappear in spacetime. bliss is that in which the sea of spacetime is appearing.

Deep Sleep Is Nihilism's Name: A Commentary on Gaudapada.

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

The Game Show

The snake sees through the snake.

All awareness witnesses is self-awareness.

Atman, brahman, and parabrahman walk into a fine establishment and words are spoken.

Who are Tao Chien, Hafez, and Juan de la Cruz?

Affirming, denying, and reconciliation, like immaculate conception, deconstruction, self-awareness. What is the power of three?

First there is a jeopardy, then there is no jeopardy, then there is.

Is it self-consciousness is, or are, the foothills of self-awareness?

The duality behind nonduality is self-awareness and that's no duality at all.

If atman is this self in self-awareness, and brahman is that awareness in self-awareness, parabrahman is awareness.

The poetry of paraverse is my devotion to this inquiry behind all self-enquiry.

To trinity, trimurti, triangle, and all my pyramid scemes—

may Turiya be with you.