The world we live in

The World of Today differs little from that of the dawn of civilization in the context of how we go about perceiving it and our relations with others, ...
 
Our own personal relationship with this perceived solid reality, not only the nature of our physical relationship with the physical world, but our very act of perception of the world itself, arises in a kind of  instinctive viewpoint long ago established by the nature of our physical embodiment, our human nature. 

The purpose of this book is to reveal not only this instinctive viewpoint and processes which drive it, but more importantly to use that understanding to reveal that which ordinarily remains hidden within our instinctive viewpoint, the very essence itself of our true fundamental nature as consciousness-awareness being. 

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Within these limitations and boundary conditions, however, there exists an incredibly rich and complex range of possibilities for entire realms of beings as ourselves and others across a vast timelessness of interactive experience that stretches the imagination to its limits and beyond, and within which we are all either almost helplessly mired in its infinitude of illusions or, hopefully, making our mutual way by means of enlightened awareness of not only our own nature in this consciousness interactive domain, but with complete loving concern and consideration for that of all the countless other beings which share it.


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Appearances and Awareness

Appearances can be thought of as the visual scenes which we are aware of.  Awareness of appearances is a direct experience associated with the vision process. ...

It is important to understand that the appearances arising in consciousness as a result of the subtle vision processes are not the original images detected by the retina of the eye, but rather are   ....    the resultant appearances in consciousness as display for awareness to apprehend.
    
Reflecting on this nature of visual experience as being awareness of  appearances arising in consciousness, one is led to conclude that the nature of any type of sensory experience is similarly one of awareness of the result of the corresponding sensation,    ...    be it sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought. 

Understood in this way it becomes clear that one experiences nothing that is not presented to awareness, and    ...   From this it follows that if one were to select a principle self-attribute on which to focus as being one’s actual self-nature, just this awareness would be a very good place to start. 

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Appearances, all of which arise in consciousness in dependence upon the corresponding sense stimuli clearly have no independent existence of their own, being entirely of the nature of consciousness display, like a picture on a screen, and therefore quite reasonably could be said to have a nature of emptiness as contrasted with the 'objectness' we associate with the nature of the physical world.  Thus appearances have neither concrete nor independent existence, and neither do they arise from nothingness, but rather from an infinite potential, a pure, clear and empty state which is said to have neither origination nor termination, the timeless, unborn we can perhaps come closest to understanding through its designation as Pure Empty Consciousness.    


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Consciousness Manifestations

Consciousness, pure and empty, is the unbounded infinite potential base for the arising of appearances, or more generally that which we may term “Manifestations”. By now it should be clear that in this context we are not referring to any kind of physical world manifestations, but rather to the manifestations arising in Consciousness, those which awareness engages directly.  Here we should have little difficulty in associating this unlimited Consciousness with our own seemingly personal field of consciousness, which, even though we experience in our own limited sense, they are, nevertheless, One and the same.  Thus we can readily add a second principal aspect to our fundamental notion of self, that of Consciousness, pure and empty in its nature as potential for the arising of manifestations (ie appearances) to awareness. 

If we consider that the manifestations arising in consciousness simply arise as selective displays of the already infinite potential for display to arise in Consciousness, then we see that the display, ie, the manifestation, ie, the appearances, are nothing other than consciousness, and furthermore that awareness is nothing more than the awareness aspect  of consciousness taken with respect to the display aspect of consciousness, such that all three are actually endemic to the One.   This one, Consciousness – Manifestation – Awareness thus becomes the only possible basis for the fundamental nature and experience of a self.  

It may require some considerable reflection, but if you think about it you will eventually come to the conclusion that you engage the physical body as a vehicle for your experience and expression exactly as you and your body engage an automobile as a vehicle for your greater experience and expression, such that in your ultimate notion of self, you, as pure Consciousness – Manifestation – Awareness, engage all vehicles, including those of subtle energy and nature which can even continue to provide inputs to Consciousness when they are not engaged in a physical body – brain system, such as during the period between death of one physical body and the birth of another,  not only providing them with the fundamental empowerment of consciousness-manifestation-awareness, but at the same time providing this infinite unmanifest potential with experience gleaned through the association with its vehicles.

This Consciousness-Manifestation-Awareness is not something unique to each person, but rather is shared by, or better, empowers, not only ourselves, but every sentient being everywhere throughout all of beginningless, endless timelessness.  Every manifestation that arises to awareness in consciousness readily takes on an apparently objective nature.  The appearance of a chair takes on the apparent nature of the chair itself, and is automatically assumed to exist independently in its own essential nature.   We reflexively associate the mere appearance with the actual object, as if we were observing the object directly without any intervening mental process, and certainly not as if our observation, the manifest appearance, is actually existing in consciousness. 

This taking of the vision of an object to be the object itself is akin to an overpowering hypnosis, a hypnosis which replaces the subjective aspect of our interaction with the object (its evident presentation in consciousness) with the (incorrect) sense that we are experiencing the object directly in its own intrinsic nature.   This condition well supports the DNA requirement for rapid response in the face of dangerous circumstances which might otherwise mean the termination of the DNA coded body-vehicle without its intended reproduction, and hence the hypnosis becomes an inherited element of the survival oriented code.

 While this situation may be good for the vehicle, this “objective” hypnosis leads directly to the loss of awareness of one’s true fundamental consciousness-awareness self-nature, replacing it with an incorrect yet overwhelming personal identification and association with the body-brain vehicle as one’s primary self-nature.  This misidentification with the body-brain then leads to mistaken personal self-identification with the sense of impermanence and suffering which rightly belong to the body-brain vehicle alone. 

The strength of this “objective” hypnosis is so great that there is no recognition of the fact that one is actually living as a mistaken identity, and the impermanence and suffering are simply taken to be one’s fundamentally true condition.  Amazingly, this hypnosis is so persistent that even when one manages to discover its existence, the intellectual realization of the situation alone does not suffice to break the hypnosis permanently, although with time, and a sufficient array of methods, the hypnosis may be interrupted and the consciousness it hides thereby revealed to a more or less ever increasing interval and extent.   First and foremost, however, this hypnosis must be discovered and shown to be the deceiver it truly is.


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Discovering the Hypnosis

Once you turn your attention to discovering the “objective” hypnosis it is not all that difficult to uncover it, the greater problem probably having been to realize there is something to look for in the first place.  In fact we have all seen it in one way or another, but passed it off as mere illusion or a problem with vision, such as momentarily seeing double images, seeing something looking fuzzy and out of focus for one reason or another, or not being able to see something we are looking for, even though it is right in front of us.  Each of these situations should reveal to us that we are working with images, some better, some worse, but images nevertheless, taken from the object world, processed appropriately by “mind” and finally displayed in consciousness whereby and wherein we, awareness, become aware of them, and not via some kind of direct vision of the object world itself, such as we routinely and hypnotically assume without any further thought whatsoever in our interaction with them. 
There are several different things at work conspiring to bring about the illusion of “direct” vision.  One of these is the sharpness quality of the vision experience.  Well corrected vision produces an image in consciousness with all the detail necessary to present the appearance of an actual object. 

The most powerful component of the hypnosis, however, is the three-dimensional view deriving from the stereoscopic vision our two eyes provide us with.  The solid appearing three-dimensional view overlays the object with sufficient fidelity that we automatically assume that the solid dimensionally shaped view is the actual object and not a mere appearance arising in consciousness.  This automatic assumption is the hypnosis that traps us in the mistaken notion that we are of the nature of the objective solid rather than of the subjective consciousness-awareness.  

Once we determine that our experience is with a subjective overlay rather than with an objective object, then it becomes easier to understand that the same holds true with respect to ourselves, experential consciousness-awareness presenting an ego-overlay together with a physical body overlay, rather than simply the physical thinking bodies that we ordinarily think of as being ourselves.   Here one should not misunderstand this to mean that there is no physical body or no ego any more than one should think that there is no external physical world.  The physical world, the body and the ego all exist in their own nature, usually referred to as “relative” nature, be it physical or mental. 

The problem with the hypnosis is that it directs the self identification onto the relative world vehicles of the real self, rather than onto consciousness-awareness, the actual real self.  These vehicles we hypnotically identify with may come and go, live and die, over and over again, but they are not at all of the same nature as we are of  timeless consciousness-awareness.           

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Breaking the Hypnosis

Traditionally this hypnosis is dealt with indirectly by resorting to the reduction and essential elimination of the sensory stimuli and mental processes which ordinarily  produce it, by introducing a meditative state of quiescence in which the consciousness-awareness may be recognized unencumbered by any appearances or manifestations which otherwise would be arising in it.  In some traditions the seeking of direct communion with God can bring about the direct realization of the Consciousness-Awareness, which ultimately is vastly more powerful and mysterious than the limited human conceptualizations characterizing an anthropomorphic God-figure.  Also shock and exceptional mental trauma or suffering may lead to a failure of the hypnosis to hide the basic consciousness-awareness. 

The simple fact of the matter is, however, that this hypnosis can be undone simply by undoing the chief contributors to its illusory nature.  Thus, if sharply defined high-fidelity stereoscopic images are conducive to hypnotic misinterpretation as the underlying object, then degrading the images through non-corrective glasses, so the scene appears fuzzy, inducing double vision or interfering with the stereoscopic effect should provide means for breaking the hypnosis, so the images may be perceived as arising directly in consciousness, and, being of the nature of consciousness, be experienced by awareness as being of this single nature of consciousness only.    

The challenge to breaking the objective hypnosis is compounded by the fact that there are multiple contributing factors leading to keeping it in place.  These include the misplaced sense of identification with the vehicles rather than with consciousness awareness, and the tendency towards association and involvement with the concepts we further layer over the hypnosis model of objectivity.  Therefore, before engaging in practices to break the underlying hypnosis, it is important to recognize and understand the role played by conceptual thinking, and also to shift our concept of self more into actual awareness of Awareness, comprehending both the appearances and the conceptual overlays and contexts we otherwise automatically apply to them.   


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Appearances and Concepts

Appearances arise naturally as modulations in otherwise pure undisturbed consciousness.  These modulations are driven by the subtle energies of the very subtlest of our bodies or vehicles, mental and spiritual, which are always with us structuring and energizing consciousness such that the modulations or manifestations arising to awareness as appearances can occur in response to sensory or thought stimuli occurring at any level.
 
Always arising in the first moment are the pure appearances.  Lacking even dimensionality, they are of the “One Taste”, ie Consciousness. 

In the next moment these pure appearances are imbued with the first level of objectification, dimensionality, with its corresponding sense of objective solidity, structure, or physical or mental reality.  This arising of the sense of dimensionality is the onset of the hypnosis.  This might be referred to as the “Hypnosis Layer” and still offers a sense of the one-taste, but with a fluctuating sense of duality between awareness and consciousness, which is becoming lost in the dimensionality of the hypnosis. 

In the next moment these simple “hypnotically” objectified shapes, sensory impressions or mental thoughts are imbued with general conceptual characteristics.  This might be termed the “Conceptual Layer”.  By this point association with Consciousness has become entirely replaced with association with the Conceptual layer. 

Then, in the next moment these conceptual characteristics become more specific such as a type-class, and in the final moment they are assigned uniqueness properties such as being labeled with their particular name or identifying characteristics around which the web of relationship with the rest of the world is spun, and the corresponding karmic energies play out their dance of cause and effect.

 From the above it follows that one may establish a condition of non-conceptual perception even as one remains caught up in the most subtle hypnosis, dimensionality, that is the final barrier to the experience of pure consciousness-manifestation.  Furthermore, if one does not overcome the process of conceptualization then even that subtle hypnotic level can not be recognized as such, and the direct realization that the experience is arising in consciousness remains only an intellectual idea, a concept in itself.   

 Thus, even though the appearances which arise in every moment are pure expressions of pure consciousness, this fact is not directly perceived as long as appearances are mis-taken to be conceptualized objects, seemingly existing as physical objects and having special and particular importance evidently in their own right.  Imbuing the pure appearances with the illusion of some kind of reality separate from and other than consciousness itself, concepts become the building blocks with which we create our own self-induced confinement, be it one of worldly existence, heaven or hell, samsara or nirvana.

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The Problem with Concepts

The problem with concepts can be subdivided into at least four types:
 
1.  (Incorrect) Auto-assignment of reality to concepts

This is the root or core problem which gives rise to innumerable unnecessary worries, concerns, fears, and even hopes that these worries, concerns and fears won’t materialize into some “actual” negative situation, but may instead be supplanted by something positive or beneficial.   Rather, wisdom arising from the pure consciousness acting upon the basis of pure appearances, including those of automatically self-liberating concepts, can give rise to the least encumbered solutions to the real problems and circumstances encountered in everyday life.  

2. DNA-Code based repetitious prioritization of conceptual context
 
This is a huge problem for all sentient beings, because during their internment in physical (DNA or equivalent–based) embodiments the laws of reproductive procreation and survival of the fittest cause innumerable repetitive imprints of destructive competition for personal survival (albeit unwittingly of one’s personal DNA) and sensual attraction towards similar (unwittingly DNA) forms of the opposite sex for reproductive survival of the like DNA Coded embodiment.  This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the DNA embodiments were all that one consisted of, but the fact that the imprints occurring not so much in the DNA embodiment itself, but rather in one’s other non-DNA embodiments, ie  in subtle mental and spiritual embodiments, wherein the physical survival environment and sexual reproduction processes are simply completely irrelevant and totally unnecessary, but wherein these worldly concepts, deeply engrained and habituated from periods of physical embodiment, simply whirl on and on during periods of non-physical embodiment, driving all manner of turmoil, craving, fear and suffering, without the least basis in factual condition or reasoning, is indeed the great tragedy and loss of potentially great peace and harmony in and between beings, not only of these subtler embodiments, but even in and between beings in physical embodiment as well.

3.  One Concept leads to yet another concept

Here the simple momentary attractions and aversions lead to more complex hopes and fears which in turn lead to more complex conceptual what if’s which take on the full panoply of a soap-opera, without a single event even having taken place outside the imaginative confines and constructs of one’s conceptualizing mind.  Incredibly we spend an inordinate amount of time in exactly this mode, and it simply continues to keep us enthralled far from discovering the wonderful nature of our consciousness awareness being.  
 
4.  Concepts and conceptual contexts arise as “Other”

Even though it might seem that if we “know” that our true nature is consciousness-awareness, then by thinking about it we should be able to come to know it directly, this simply doesn’t work.  Awareness identifies first with the concepts these thoughts develop and never has a chance to rest in consciousness, or doesn’t recognize it if it does and simply returns to the cage of conceptual thinking, the cage of ego conceptualization, the cage of “other”.  

As long as these and the entire host of problems associated with unwitting conceptualized mental processes flood consciousness-awareness, awareness is not free to discover, and identify with, its own fundamental nature.  

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