Wednesday, August 04, 2010

TWO MYTHS: LEVELS OF WITNESSING AND LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

F.: To seekers at certain steps on the "path," the teaching is that there are two types or levels of witnessing. Similarly, some speak of levels of consciousness or "higher vs. lower consciousness" or "God-consciousness" and "pure vs. impure consciousness."

Even Maharaj offered the pointer to one seeker that there are two levels of witnessing, but the approach was used ultimately to distinguish between the distorted and illusory and dualistic "subject-object witnessing" vs. the only real (but rare) witnessing that there is, namely, pure witnessing.

Likewise, to assist some seekers at certain points on their "journey," there can be talk of "the pure consciousness vs. the impure consciousness"; however, seekers farther along the "path" are offered the understanding that

(1) there is only one level of witnessing because only one of the two that are discussed is real; and that

(2) there is only one form of consciousness - the pure consciousness - which can be blocked, or not.

[Recall that when Louise moved into her present cottage, the former occupant had left the window overlooking the garden in a dirty, contaminated condition, blocking any chance for seeing clearly. When she cleaned the contaminates away, she did not turn impure glass into pure glass. The glass was glass before the purging and the glass is glass now after the obstacles to seeing clearly have been removed. The same applies to consciousness.]

Thus, advanced seekers can come to the understanding that "levels" of witnessing are a myth and that "varying forms" of consciousness are a myth (as referenced in this reaction to the pointers offered in the previous series):

FROM A SITE VISITOR: What about Christ-consciousness?

F.: Christ-consciousness and God-consciousness and higher-consciousness are all concepts generated by false ego-states. If studied objectively, it would have to be asked, "What does Christ-consciousness even mean?"

Does it mean that one is a religious person / persona that claims to be conscious throughout the day of what Christ would have him / her do? Since there is not and never was a personal "Christ" ("The Christ" originally being a title meaning "The Messiah," a title which some now think was a name or surname), that would be a delusion-based claim.

Or does it mean that there is some "higher" form of consciousness and that "The Christ" had that higher level and that his followers can attain that level, too? Or does it means that one is conscious of the teachings of the one referred to by some as "Christ"?

It's all nonsense that is based in the belief of things personal, including the belief that "The Christ" was a person rather than a title misused to refer to a speck of temporarily-manifested conscious-energy. The fact is, there are many types of energy, and one type happens to be consciousness, but the very word "Advaita" (meaning, "not two") makes clear that there are not two (or more) forms of consciousness, nor are there two (or more) forms of witnessing.

To understand the "not real vs. real" distinction is to know that there are not two parts being debated in either category. There is only that which is real, and the Realized do not give any credibility to mirages and images. It would be, as Maharaj noted, like discussing the child of a barren woman. There's nothing to discuss. There is only the Real, period, which can be discussed...and nothing more.

Therefore, there is either (a) witnessing that sees that which is real or there is (b) the illusory type of "seeing" / misperceiving that leads persons to believe that they are seeing what is real when they are not seeing the real at all; similarly, there is either (c) the pure consciousness or there is (d) the pure consciousness that is blocked from seeing the Real, from seeing the Truth.

Blocked by? By false ideas and false beliefs and false concepts, all set in place in the fiction-filled "mind" via the distorting processes of programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation.

Maharaj taught that the perceived cannot be the perceiver. That which is perceived in the mirror is not the perceiver. The witnessed is never the witness unless the consciousness has been unblocked completely and the Pure Witnessing (a.k.a., "The True Self") sees ItSelf, yet even that is temporarily manifested.

If one can affirm that (A) "I would still be me, even without my arms and legs and even if I have a heart transplant and even if I have a lung transplant," and if one can answer the question,

"Who / What is making that observation and that affirmation?" by answering (B) "It is I, the pure consciousness, the Pure Witnessing, that knows ItSelf and knows that Self is beyond the physical body,"

then only is it clear that what is perceived (in this case, a space formed by temporarily-combined elements that is reflected in a mirror) is not the perceiver (the Pure Witnessing that can distinguish between form and substance).

At that same point on the "path," it becomes understood that in Reality there are no dualities at all, including no dualities of witnessing and no such dualities as a "higher vs. lower consciousness" or as "God-consciousness vs. non-God-consciousness" or as "Christ-consciousness vs. no consciousness of Christ" or "pure consciousness vs. impure consciousness."

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

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FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
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CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute)
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