Sunday, May 11, 2008

Individuation Of Consciousness

Think of this moment, a moment of waking existence with arbitrary sensory stimuli and random thoughts. Think of the entity that experiences and is beyond what it experiences. Who am I - shorn of chance accretions like name, gender, occupation, race and socio-economic standing? If I am a product of my experiences, it naturaly follows I am a constant flux. But doesn't something pervade this flow of events. The first question is what made me take on individuated existence in a particular moment and at a particular place in the vastness of eternity? Had I been born c. 643 bc in Egypt, I could have been a pharaoh but as it happened I opened my eyes in the 'democratic' chaos of India in 1983. Was it arbitrary? Why wasn't I born a female or say an alien. Why wasn't I an American or say a Bantu? Why wasn't I born in a distant galaxy or in a different universe? Why wasn't i born as a galaxy or as the whole universe rather than a peck of biology on the infinite astronomy? I could have been the whole universe instead of a mere man. And I could have been infinite consciousness rather than merely an individuated sentient being.But the primary question is why at all was it necessary for me to be at all? Existence could have done without me and I could have surely done without existence. I could have done without myself and without ' the other' in relation to which I exist.It seems I was flung into this chaos without any desire on my part. Suppose you open your eyes one fine morning and find yourself a being of bliss with beautiful ideas floating amidst you. Could you have chosen that state of existence? And what about being born as a lump of bones and flesh with a particular band of sensory stimuli to befuddle your nascent mind and to finally program it into constructing a particular cognitive framework and giving it the label of " reality". My reality is surely not your reality nor is the reality of a President the reality of a labourer. And reality changes every moment. But does the knower change with the known? One problem is that analogical thinking is a mental trap and using dissimilar objects or events to explain something is flawed. When somebody says Samadhi is like a river merging into an ocean nothing is known because neither water nor flow has anything to do with expansion of human consciousness. But is the phrase " expansion of human consciousness" any better. Unfortunately not because consciousness isn't a word. Indeed nothing is a word and every word is a mere metaphor for something entire different, nay a label, even less potent than a metaphor which derives from supposed resemblance. The first thing required is liberation from internal language. By internal language I mean verbal thoughts. To say something is beautiful is not to experience beauty for that which can be experienced can never be decsribed but merely indicated. Language is fine so far the experiences described have some bearing to the common stock of human memory or when the mind is equipped to comprehend the experience but a fatal error when that which happens on the cessation of mind or atleast the cessation of individuated mind is to be described. Indeed its a fatal error to describe it at all. And that's what I am going to commit in the hope that the error may inspire a genuine enquiry for the truth that caused it.

3 comments:

KT said...

Aman,

I really love your words ! You're on your you way to ultimate freedom. Please keep going showering us with wisdom...

In Silence...
KT

Aman said...

Thanks for your kind words. I am just a traveller. I read your blog and found it a blessing. The post on Mahamudra of Naropa was really awesome.

KT said...

Then we are both travellers -pilgrims ?- heading, along with others, for the wordless...the nameless...

Yes, this is the right word for Tilopa's song : awesome !

Om Shanti Shanti Om

In Silence...