Ode to Twosday

i.

After the rock of deep sleep and the ripe vegetation of the sleeping dream, the dreamlike awareness of the dream awaking is like a great hallucination to universal consciousness.

In such living color, consciousness, of course, identifies with the amazing body-mind. Wouldn’t you? Now, it is seeing through its error of its being it, just because it hurts.

Not to mention, in America, there’s still a thing called public education, with its disciplines of reading, writing, history, geography, and rhythm & blues.

ii.

After modern education is postmodern deconstruction. In India, they call this learning neti neti. It’s one of the two designed usages for the tool of mind.

The second honest usage of the mind is called indication, or pointing. It’s basically consciousness talking to consciousness in simple metaphor, or maybe charades!

The third and double-secret usage of the mind is called paradox, koan, maya. You read it here first. That the permanent appears to be impermanent is one trick pony.

footnotes

lately it's like if advaita vedanta is the sea in which the ten-thousand foot wave of nisargadatta maharaj appears, then sign me up.

the genius of gaudapada is in seeing that the waking dream is just another state of consciousness, as is deep sleep and the sleeping dream, and not consciousness, the fourth, the force, only.

before self-awareness is self-consciousness. before self-consciousness is the inorganic molecular rock of ignorance and it's evolving organization.

all poetry is just three chords and the truth. all truth is deconstruction and its revelation.

that deconstruction is one of the two legitimate uses of the mind indicates a certain kind of clairvoyance, or what arthur m. bell calls "the dependence of seventh substages on the next highest stage." paradox, koan, and maya, oh my!

it is said when consciousness points at consciousness, the fool looks at consciousness. who says that?

Jnana's Inferno

Just as there’s never not that

absolute awareness,

there’s never not this

self-awareness.

Like sparks of a silent inferno,

this forms, evolves, and realizes,

in countless iterations of that.

An American Mahavakya

Before one knows I am That (or consciousness is the absolute, atman is brahman, tat asi tvam), one must first know one is consciousness.

In America, where materialism rules like the new boss, it’s believed the brain produces consciousness, like money produces happiness, lol. Else sing about Jesus and drink wine all day.

Meanwhile, all across the land, the consciousness prophets are selling their product as best as they can. For when in Rome, one either does what the Romans do, or go ignored (or worse co-opted) into that good green night.

This turning, this new metaparadigm, this abandoning of one’s conditioning to identify as mind or body or body-mind, requires this kind of elementary education. Mama, don’t let the doctors of divinity teach your children.

Everything appears in consciousness. Think about it. If everything appears in consciousness, and I am witnessing everything, then I am consciousness. This is an American Mahavakya.

Good Words

A good word is an axe

tearing down my houses of belief.

A good word is an arrow

shooting straight through the mist

finding the heart of my beloved.

And like all good words

they’re left behind

on an abandoned field

in empty space

and unadulterated timelessness.

.

Comans on Shankara on Gaudapada on Samadhi

"There is also the problem that the word samadhi has been reified to the extent that it embodies a “mystical” state of consciousness which is seen to be the goal of all spiritual practice, as it forms the necessary condition for the realisation of Brahman. In the literature extolling the importance samadhi the word is frequently translated as “super consciousness”, a meaning that has nothing to do with the etymology of the word samadhi. Such translations succeed only in further conditioning the seeker by fostering an imagination as to what Self-knowledge is like, and what is its precondition. The problem with this whole enterprise is that the seeker then assiduously tries to cultivate a particular type of experience, the nature of which is in the imagination, and this is done at the cost of neglecting the Self that, according to the Advaita of Sankara, is simply Awareness itself. In short, the whole search for a “mystical” samadhi experience can be a mistaken adventure, in that it can amount to an ignorant denial of the Self, for in searching for an experience of the Self the searcher overlooks the fact – and the teaching of this fact is made explicit in such Upanişads as Brhadaranyaka and Kena- that Brahman, the ultimate subject, pure Awareness, cannot be experienced objectively like a sense object, because it is Experience itself.

According to the second explanation in the commentary, i.c.. “samadhi is that in which one is resolved”, Gauḍapada is using the word samadhi as a description of the nature of Brahman, rather than the idea that Brahman is to be gained through a samadhi experience. In this interpretation, which seems to be the one the commentator prefers judging from his introduction to the following verse (“Since it was said that Brahman itself is samadhi, motionless, without fear…”), Brahman is said to be samadhi itself, just as the turiya -Self was described earlier as “free from all division” (nirvikalpa) (2.35). According to this understanding, the turiya -Self is inherently nirvikalpa and as such it is “samadhi” by nature. What this means is that the turiya -Self, as pure Awareness, is Experience per se (anubhūtisvarüpa), or in the words of the Brhadaraṇyaka Upanişad: “This Self, the experiencer of everything (sarvänubhūh), is Brahman” (2.5.19). In this statement of the Upanisad the Self is presented as Experience itself. Thus there are two views in Advaita, and at a certain level they are quite divergent: the first, more “yogic” view, advocates realisation through the cultivation of a samadhi experience: the second takes its stand on the Self as self-revealing Awareness, as Experience per se, and while it does not deny the value of meditation it looks somewhat critically upon the samadhi-oriented search for a special experience of the Self. I believe that the latter view accords more closely with the teachings of Sankara and his disciples."

from The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta: A Study of Gaudapada, Sankara, Suresvara and Padmapada by Michael Comans

Being Nonduality

Materialism is a great disease. Truly changing one’s metaparadigm from materialism to nondualism takes a whole lot of medicine.

Turning from the belief that consciousness rises from the material to the experiential fact that consciousness is foundational doesn’t ordinarily happen overnight.

Many people fall into the trap of just believing consciousness is foundational. Nonduality is not belief, but being only.

But believing in nonduality is not a bad thing. It’s just still a thing. It may even be a good thing, if you believe there’s still further to go.

footnotes

the language of duality is right and left, up and down, past and present, this and that. the language of nonduality is right and left, up and down, past and present, this and that. when you see nonduality on the road, drop it, kill it. throw away both thorns.

belief is like the water we swim in. the first stroke in unbelieving is understanding what belief is, and that it isn't.

in america, the trap of believing in nonduality is often accompanied by the trappings of some foreign culture where nonduality is not a foreign concept, like it is in most america.

concurrently while reading foreign works of nonduality, it helps to keep in mind that its intended audience was swimming in the sea of a certain belief system of its own. exhibit a: the great hymns of shankara.

one knows the water one swims in by attending to what one is figuratively breathing. another name for lucid dreaming is lucid believing.

the tool of nonduality is used to deconstruct duality and indicate reality, and not to idolize in any way. thus i am writing to my intended audience, myself.

god and ego are our co-dependent idols, my fellow sentient being.

1. nonduality is not big science.

2. little science is earnestly experimental.

3. inquisitive science is faithfully theoretical.

4. approving theory without inquiry is the definition of belief.

5. religion is big belief.

6. big belief is the latest synthesis of the most popular conspiracy theories.

7. meet the new empire.

Devotion to Reality

i.

Thoughts may deconstruct the unreal or point to the real, but thought is not itself real.

In the world, only love comes close to the real. In reality, only this self-shining consciousness is real.

At best, science deconstructs and myth indicates, but only one’s attention minus thought is real.

ii.

Some people find themselves, thru the evolution of life, at a place in which devotion to a single teacher is essential.

There’s the inner teacher and the outer teacher, of which there’s an embodied teacher and a teacher’s written revelations.

Choose one and give that your devotion.

footnotes

thought is the stuff of dreams but reality is not a dream, neither the dream called dream nor the dream called reality.

romantic love is affection for a thought-form. unconditional love is affection for a being. reality is being.

western science was at its best deconstructing the roman christian empire, but at its worst theorizing its own materialistic one.

on the other hand, myth is at its best pointing to the unbelievable truth, but at its worst becoming religious belief.

cause and effect, god, reality, revelation, renunciation, resting, self-awareness.