CONSCIOUSNESS vs. AWARENESS

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CONSCIOUSNESS vs. AWARENESS

Understand then, that it is this conscious presence that you are, so long as the body is there. Once your body is gone, along with the vital breath, consciousness also will leave. Only that which was prior to the appearance of this body-cum-consciousness, the Absolute, the ever-present, is your true identity. That is what we all really are. That is reality. It is here and now. Where is the question of anyone reaching for it?

-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Foreground and The Background

To further illustrate, consider the view from a window of the apartment I often used during my visits to Tuscany:

In the foreground of the scene, preparation is being made to harvest crops; a new house is being built; some people are driving to work; down the road to the right, people are waiting to catch the local bus to the mercato in nearby Villafranca; someone in a white van approaching from the right is making a delivery.

In the foreground, drivers are conscious of obstacles and intersections and traffic signs and lane markers. It appears that there are do-ers and it seems that they are doing. In the background there is a portion of the landscape that is covered with trees;

then, farther in the distance are mountains and then beyond the mountains there are clouds; finally, the open sky is beyond all of that. Beingness, rather than doingness, is the case in the background.

Now, you’re invited to (a) determine the ways in which the foreground might represent consciousness manifest and (b) determine what the background might reveal about Awareness. 

Next, for purposes of illustration, take the foreground in the scene to represent the I-Amness and the background to be the I AM THAT-ness. Take the foreground to represent consciousness and the background to represent awareness.

Note that consciousness involves being conscious of (something) so consciousness is always, ultimately, about duality: “this” is conscious of “that.”

(Thus, the seeker who thinks he / she is fully realized and is the unicity because he/she knows the “True Self” is mistaken. There is no self, no Self, who, no Who. That seeker might be realized, but THAT, which truly is, is beyond self-ness, Self-ness, beingness, non-beingness, and even “Self”-realization. Reality is beyond “conscious of-ness” and is therefore a state of zero concepts and zero awareness. In that “state,” awareness is not even aware.)

But all of the happenings in the scene’s background of unicity (as well as all of the supposed happenings that are occurring via the manifested, dualistic consciousness in the foreground) are only possible because of the energy of the sunlight breaking through the clouds in the background.

Without that background energy manifesting via plants, nothing in the foreground could happen. (As Szent-Gyorgyi said: “What drives life is . . . a little electric current, set up by the sunshine.”)

Consciousness could not happen except for the background of awareness, but awareness IS, whether consciousness is manifested or not and whether consciousness of “this” or “that” happens or not.

At the atomic and sub-atomic levels of matter / energy as “clouds” and “mountains” and “trees” in the background, awareness IS. Yet there is no “one” that is conscious of anything. So it is when the temporarily-manifested conscious-energy unmanifests and is subsequently “re-absorbed” into that field called “The Absolute.” 

Note too that in the foreground, many things seem significant: a delivery must be made on time; people must be at work on time; and food must be purchased in the mercato and consumed in order for the consciousness to remain manifested in the physical space.

In the background, however, it is clearer that everything is merely cycling and nothing matters at all: clouds come and go; mountains that had formed will someday crumble; and trees that are rising will one day fall.

So it is when abidance happens as the Absolute: what happens will happen, yet “the insignificant” is never misperceived as “significant.” “The foreground of consciousness” begins to unfold in the same way as “the background of Awareness.”

That leads to peace every day. Any faulty perceptions of the type that result in the insignificant being considered significant only happen via the warped consciousness, via the assumption of personas, and via the emotional intoxication that personas generate.

The Unicity Beyond the Apparent Multiplicity

To continue with the discussion of the scene described, the doingness in the foreground is marked by consciousness and a sense of duality. Persons unaware of the unicity believe that they are conscious of some “vast multiplicity” of things: houses, roads, crops, intersections, buses, mercatos, etc.

Being in the actual background of the scene, which includes trees and clouds and mountains and sky and sunlight, there is no sense of duality. Why? There is no “one” to be conscious of anything, yet there is awareness. In what way is “awareness without conscious of-ness” present in the background? 

Observe that there appears to be a variety of “cloud” formations, but see that “the clouds” are not The Real. What is “real,” for the sake of this example, is H20.

A series of two hydrogen atoms are conscious of an oxygen atom, but there is no “one” that is present to be conscious of anything. Consciousness (that is, pure, non-personalized, universal consciousness) is just happening, so even though the talk of things manifested (clouds, tress, etc.)

Awareness is not dualistic in its nature. It is in that fashion, therefore, that the manifested, re-purified consciousness can remain manifested for a time but can function as awareness . . . can abide as the Absolute.

The H20 can manifest in various “forms” or “spaces” which persons try to separate by using such labels as “rain, rivers, lakes, clouds, vapor, water, snow, snowmen, snowballs, snow cones, snow flurries, snowflakes, snow piles, slush, ice, steam, pools, waterfalls, streams, fog, ponds, hail, drizzle, floods, mist, swamps, oceans, seas,” ad infinitum;

however, it’s really all one thing, all H20, merely appearing to be different. (See why persons live in the delusion of duality? See why persons are not “in the world” and why “the world” is in them . . . in their wrongly-perceiving “minds”? See why they take what they think they see to be real and how they try to support “differentiation” through labeling?)

Similarly, consciousness can manifest via the spaces labeled as “plants, animals, humans, birds,” etc., and though it’s really all consciousness manifested, it appears to the non-realized to be multiple and different things.

For any perception of rain, rivers, plants, or animals to happen, conscious of-ness must happen first, and as a result of inaccurate suppositions rooted in distorted perception, the illusion of duality manifests.

As with the “atoms as clouds,” whereby awareness can happen without any “one” being conscious of, so it is as the Absolute. Awareness is, even though there is no “one” to be aware of; thus, awareness involves no duality.

In both the foreground and the background of the scene, everything is merely happening; however, in the foreground where consciousness has been corrupted, consciousness takes itself to be something it is not.

Meanwhile, Maharaj said, “The background of awareness never changes.”

That misunderstanding leads persons to believe that they are making things happen and that they are seeing separate things. Persons are taking themselves to be “do-ers,” are lacking an understanding of the unicity, and are, therefore, strapped with delusional thinking generated by an illusory “mind.”

To be continued.

Please enter into the silence of contemplation.

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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "god," the "Son of god," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.

THE EXPLANATION

If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.

Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of god in the past was of a weak god, an absentee god, A Santa Claus-type god, a mean, punishing, vindictive god, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring god whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."

The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a god that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").

Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring god,' any supposed god that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'god' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.

"That is, a non-narcissistic their god / their goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'god' and focus on the 'god as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you." 

Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:

"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 

"Heaven and earth shall fade away."

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 

"Heaven and hell are not geographic places

but are states of mind, nothing more than

concepts dreamed up by men."

--Pope John Paul II 

"There is no hell."

--Pope Francis, the current pope

in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,

a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record

teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.

[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.

And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?

Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?

The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)

With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.

The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.] 

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