'The eye altering, alters all.' -- William Blake
States of mind are closer to home than any place we can point to on a map. Yet we insist on trying to make home 'out there' only. Our bodies appear to be dynamically integrated with 'out there' and we identify ourselves, not merely with, but as these bodies. When these bodies die, we think we are dying and we do not go gentle into that good night. When we were born there was no 'me' around to gloat over the triumph of arriving, but we seldom take that into account. That 'me' kicked in some time later and has been taking itself very seriously ever since, often wondering how the body manages to survive sleeping through the night without 'me' running things.
A dog is not aware of itself as a dog, yet it IS a dog. We are, generally speaking, not aware of ourselves as pure, formless subjectivity-slash-awareness, yet that is what we (and all dogs) are. Our human and doggie forms are but phenomenal aspects of awareness.
If a dog knew its dogness as different from catness or humanness, it would have a choice about whether or not to enact dog-like behavior, or perhaps feign catness to get closer to Tabby's food bowl. We humans exhibit a self-aware, reflective consciousness which, among other more noble pursuits, equips us to lie, cheat, steal and break each others' hearts. One has the sense that we are badly misusing tools that could be employed in far more enlightened ways.
We know that we are human and mortal, but most of us have no clue that true self-awareness confers far more than knowing assets and limitations or recognizing our type on an Enneagram chart. Few of us, it seems, realize that awareness of being aware means we are not one hundred percent identified with or defined by mind-body limitations. In fact, those very limitations may turn out to be habitual mental errors that we make and reinforce with one another on a daily basis. 'Mind forged manacles', Blake called them.
Consider the wild proposition that, along with cats, dogs and galaxies, we emanate from beyond being and non-being, from a state that, while indescribable, we might provisionally call Timeless Presence, a.k.a., where we, in truth, live and move and have our being.
We appear to be born.
I say 'appear to be' because, in truth, we never leave the non-local isness of Timeless Presence. How could we leave it? It's the only 'place' where awareness/experiencing is possible and awareness, being timeless, doesn't go anywhere. The phenomenal aspect of awareness, on the other hand, i.e., all the things of which awareness is aware, come and go with all the staying power of dreams.
Death makes the timeless beatitude of aware presence obvious, which is perhaps its greatest gift, but perhaps we can also relax into it here and now by recognizing uncontrived, non-conceptual awareness as the primary action, function and reality of our lives, always present regardless of misguided efforts to track it down or make it go away. An old Buddhist take on it goes, "It (naked awareness) is so elusive you can never grasp it and so swift you can never outrun it."
Naked awareness is so subtle it can behold space and light. It doesn't need a brain to do this. All brains arise as phenomenal aspects of this awareness. Forgive me for waxing somewhat repetitive here, but these insights go so counter to our learned conceptual fixations and assumptions that it helps to approach them from as many angles as possible. Dzogchen teacher, Jackson Peterson, writes of this awareness:
"Its nature is empty of material substance and fictional subjective and objective concepts, primordially so."
If you truly want to know who you are, relax into this present awareness that always does the looking, always notices the knowing, always experiences the experience. Give up trying to own it, control it or hammer together a belief system based on it. Phenomenal appearances and the knowledge arising therefrom unfold without in any way affecting that which is aware.
'That which can be forgotten is not the eternal.' -- Nisargadatta.
'Everything can be forgotten.' -- Swami Deep Sleep Ananda
As stated like a mantra on this site, you cannot look for that which is doing the looking. That, by the way, is also doing the looking through a dog's eyes, which is why the Buddha said, "All beings possess Buddha nature." Buddha nature is not a big separate Self, superior to all tiny, fretful selves. It is, as Rupert Spira notes, non-local, dimensionless, completely the mind's comprehension. Thanks to it, all living beings are aware of being alive. Without it, no awareness, no life, no nothing, Just this hinting at one of the humorous paradoxes of existence: Awareness can never be known and without Awareness, nothing can be known.
"I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative eye any more than I would question a window concerning a Sight. I look thro' it & not with it."
-- Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment
* * *
"Those who study the Dharma in order to awaken are not interested in the Dharma. They are interested in awakening." - Vimilakirti, cited by Robert Thurman, Uma's dad.
Two of Asia's most revered spiritual traditions, Buddhism (Buddha Dharma) and Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma) disagree profoundly about the ultimate nature of Self and God, and have for millennia. Republicans and Democrats didn't make this deadlock contentiousness thing up out of thin air. We've been doing it for thousands of years. Maybe it works like this -- years ago I studied with a Sufi teacher. One day, overcome with emotion, a student in the class blurted out, "We're all One! I just know it!" The Sufi teacher replied, "Of course we're all One. Now, how are we different?"
William Blake wrote, "Opposition is true friendship" and, equally affronting to New Age magical thinking, "Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence." Realization of the interpendence of these contraries renders them transparent, no longer obscuring present awareness that is not a function of dualistic thinking at all.
Our differences and contentions are as much a part of what is as dew drops on a lily leaf or giant steps on the moon, and as empty. Blake's 'progression' is a via negativa, similar to the neti, neti (not this, not this) discriminations of Advaita designed to end suffering by pointing out the suffering inherent in clinging to anything as ultimately binding, including notions of selfhood. Contraries may be necessary to human existence, but human existence as constituted by contraries may not be necessary.
William Blake wrote, "Opposition is true friendship" and, equally affronting to New Age magical thinking, "Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence." Realization of the interpendence of these contraries renders them transparent, no longer obscuring present awareness that is not a function of dualistic thinking at all.
Our differences and contentions are as much a part of what is as dew drops on a lily leaf or giant steps on the moon, and as empty. Blake's 'progression' is a via negativa, similar to the neti, neti (not this, not this) discriminations of Advaita designed to end suffering by pointing out the suffering inherent in clinging to anything as ultimately binding, including notions of selfhood. Contraries may be necessary to human existence, but human existence as constituted by contraries may not be necessary.
The Outside of Mind
Blake expressed as essential among poetic imperatives....
"To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration..."
In dialog with a visitor, the 20th century Indian sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj, asks the man to remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self on the outer, suggesting that the outer person would be wise to be receptive to the inner. The visitor tries to make a case for the outer man, for surely the outer plays a role in the process of awakening. Nisargadatta responds that the outer has little control over the mind's thoughts and feelings for the outer person IS the mind. The inner is upstream and superior to mind. The outer would be well advised to heed what comes from within. At this point, the visitor asks, "How are we to distinguish the inner from the outer in actual experience?"
Nisargadatta replies...
"The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory."
Is it possible to divest oneself of the rotten rags of memory and live wholly by inspiration? Surely, we need at least a totebag of memory rags to pay the bills, show up for work and get our tax returns in on time. Most likely, it's not an either-or issue. Gurdjieff spoke of the utility of earning a living with one hand tied behind one's back. I strongly suspect he would've been using the other hand to beckon the Daughters of Inspiration. A life spent immersed entirely in the necessities and exigencies of memory is not a life that prepares one well for the profound transformations that face all sojourners through this relative world, the passing away of the body being one of note.
Note on the post title "The Outside of Mind"... I don't mean to suggest that it is outside in the same way that your neighbor's Volvo is outside. Rather, I offer the notion in the Nisargadattian sense that EVERYTHING that can be seen is OUTSIDE. Period. Inspiration can flash forth from the Unmanifest, but once it flashes as a thought, insight, form or whatever, it's now outside. The Unmanifest, meanwhile, is indescribable, so we usually pretend it doesn't exist.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
-- Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Ego is the psychic face of the immune system. It represents life coping with mortality the way a real estate agent copes with selling a property. Ego seems necessary in order to acquire turf in the domain of experience, even if trusts get violated and you end up buying a lemon.
Space, Time and others of that Kantian a priori ilk, had to go to a lot of trouble to make storyland sufficiently attractive to seduce Souls into making stuff up based on egocentric motives; selling each other bills of goods, living out the consequences of going for a womb with a view.
Yet, you can ignore the property grab frenzy of embodied existence and go to the source at any moment; to the beginning that has nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with who you are prior to buying a plot called personal history in the land of living with death in mind.
Your hair can stand on end when you get a feeling for how this moment of finding yourself present spills out of sheer wonder. I use that word only because what it actually feels like makes 'wonder' seem a toned down descriptor. And we must maintain some sense of decorum, mincing at the threshold of Absolute Presence.
The big problem is that right next to the innocent, ever new tree of life at the center of your lot in life, that black clad bastard stands. The one who usurps. How he ever got there and how he blocks your freedom is never made clear. But you know him well. He is the one Blake calls The Accuser, being that within you which forces you to do what it condemns as sinful.
Sometimes I think it's a shame
When I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain. -- Gordon Lightfoot
Who hasn't known this internal double bind? Without it, would fundamentalism even be possible?
-- Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Ego is the psychic face of the immune system. It represents life coping with mortality the way a real estate agent copes with selling a property. Ego seems necessary in order to acquire turf in the domain of experience, even if trusts get violated and you end up buying a lemon.
Space, Time and others of that Kantian a priori ilk, had to go to a lot of trouble to make storyland sufficiently attractive to seduce Souls into making stuff up based on egocentric motives; selling each other bills of goods, living out the consequences of going for a womb with a view.
Yet, you can ignore the property grab frenzy of embodied existence and go to the source at any moment; to the beginning that has nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with who you are prior to buying a plot called personal history in the land of living with death in mind.
Your hair can stand on end when you get a feeling for how this moment of finding yourself present spills out of sheer wonder. I use that word only because what it actually feels like makes 'wonder' seem a toned down descriptor. And we must maintain some sense of decorum, mincing at the threshold of Absolute Presence.
The big problem is that right next to the innocent, ever new tree of life at the center of your lot in life, that black clad bastard stands. The one who usurps. How he ever got there and how he blocks your freedom is never made clear. But you know him well. He is the one Blake calls The Accuser, being that within you which forces you to do what it condemns as sinful.
Sometimes I think it's a shame
When I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain. -- Gordon Lightfoot
Who hasn't known this internal double bind? Without it, would fundamentalism even be possible?
Ganoosh on Blake
What are you doing at the interface between self and external stimuli? What kind of self can you hope to build out of passive acceptance of the incoming flood of impressions?
Tip of the day: If you see yourself as entirely at the mercy of the external world, you will, out of vital shock and survival anxiety, piece together and fretfully maintain a rigid, judgmental ego, misusing reason to chain yourself to the rock of the literal while forever doubting the outcome of doing so.
Please don't do that.
Take charge. Act on the real. Act on the false. Act to help others, not hinder them. The results will change your life and theirs for the better. Act on the black & white of Yin &Yang and sing the glories of the groundless background upon which they appear. Act. Act. Act! Imagine!
States & Travelers
'THE MENTAL TRAVELER" -- after Blake,
by Nathan Mellot
The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.
-- Joseph Campbell
Since beginningless time, we pass through an infinite variety of states. These states are eternal in the sense that they are always around and are always what they are. They are also, according to Blake, states of consciousness. The one who travels through, inhabits, visits and beholds these states is distinguishable, even from states of consciousness. That one is Alive! States are not truly alive. They are, at best, metaphors of being or of ways of being. Being itself is metaphorical which may be one of the hidden reasons why the verb 'to be' is so irregular in every language. Being is not easily conjured, conjugated or contemplated.
When we enter into or otherwise strap on a state of consciousness that takes appearances at face value, i.e., literally, we experience that state as a solid, physical world. The more stringent and severe the literalizing consciousness, the more this world is governed by butt kicking laws that hedge us in at every turn with necessity, chance, fate and uncompromising cause and effect, all designed to keep us from succumbing to the visionless contractions of literalism. No imagination, no life. The more literal minded we are, , the more difficult and capricious the 'state' becomes and the wider the gap between what we desire to do and what we can do. As Jung's Orcian successor, James Hillman, points out, the deadly thing about the literalist world view is that, by its very nature, it assumes that it is the only valid way to view the world. An opaque fantasy makes life hard, literally. There's the ironic rub.
Campbell's 'labyrinth' is the realm of appearances altogether. No one has a clue as to how or why it appears and still won't long after the Higgs Boson has coughed up its paradoxical secret that in helping to explain everything it only helps to confirm the limits of explanation. As all encompassing as it appears, the labyrinth is, for the alive one beholding it, nothing more than entertainment. In fact, it is more accurate to say that the traveler does not pass through states. States appear unto the traveler, the latter not confined to space-time and therefor hopelessly indescribable. Make that wonderfully indescribable.
To a seeker of truth and wisdom, Ruper Spira (check him out on Youtube) said, "Take a step toward me." The man took a step. Spira said, "Very good. Now take a step toward yourself." The man stood still, his brow knitted, his lips forming a smile as he slowly got the point.
-- Joseph Campbell
Since beginningless time, we pass through an infinite variety of states. These states are eternal in the sense that they are always around and are always what they are. They are also, according to Blake, states of consciousness. The one who travels through, inhabits, visits and beholds these states is distinguishable, even from states of consciousness. That one is Alive! States are not truly alive. They are, at best, metaphors of being or of ways of being. Being itself is metaphorical which may be one of the hidden reasons why the verb 'to be' is so irregular in every language. Being is not easily conjured, conjugated or contemplated.
When we enter into or otherwise strap on a state of consciousness that takes appearances at face value, i.e., literally, we experience that state as a solid, physical world. The more stringent and severe the literalizing consciousness, the more this world is governed by butt kicking laws that hedge us in at every turn with necessity, chance, fate and uncompromising cause and effect, all designed to keep us from succumbing to the visionless contractions of literalism. No imagination, no life. The more literal minded we are, , the more difficult and capricious the 'state' becomes and the wider the gap between what we desire to do and what we can do. As Jung's Orcian successor, James Hillman, points out, the deadly thing about the literalist world view is that, by its very nature, it assumes that it is the only valid way to view the world. An opaque fantasy makes life hard, literally. There's the ironic rub.
Campbell's 'labyrinth' is the realm of appearances altogether. No one has a clue as to how or why it appears and still won't long after the Higgs Boson has coughed up its paradoxical secret that in helping to explain everything it only helps to confirm the limits of explanation. As all encompassing as it appears, the labyrinth is, for the alive one beholding it, nothing more than entertainment. In fact, it is more accurate to say that the traveler does not pass through states. States appear unto the traveler, the latter not confined to space-time and therefor hopelessly indescribable. Make that wonderfully indescribable.
To a seeker of truth and wisdom, Ruper Spira (check him out on Youtube) said, "Take a step toward me." The man took a step. Spira said, "Very good. Now take a step toward yourself." The man stood still, his brow knitted, his lips forming a smile as he slowly got the point.
Red Hot Chiliasm
'The Last Judgment.’ I don't know about you, but I think it'd be tight and righteous if we all agreed not to make any more of them. Judgments, that is. Doesn't mean we should stop using discretion or discernment, but that we could, with great benefit to all, learn how to throw someone out of our house without throwing them out of our heart. That takes skill and the kind of tough love that sincerely means the best for the other.
Meanwhile, back at the Apocalypse, of all takes on the Last Judgment and what it means, I like William Blake’s:
“…whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual."
And while we’re leaning in a Biblical direction, let’s take a look and see if we can find The First Judgment. After all, if there was a Last One ….
Perhaps it occurred right after Eve mistook a talking serpent for someone who knew more than God. She and Adam eat the Granny Smith. God shows up and suddenly Adam feels ashamed because he’s naked. Right out of the blue, Adam judges himself somehow shameful and unworthy because he’s naked. Note that what’s happening is all mental. Physically, Adam is no different; still the same gloriously naked dude. But now that nakedness is judged as ‘not OK’. Adam has drawn a line in his mind, separating what is good and acceptable (Adam in t-shirt and figgy cutoffs) versus what is bad and unacceptable (Adam as God made him – irony intended).
It’s interesting to note that God doesn’t judge him. Adam judges himself as shameful. He creates his own suffering. Sound familiar?
Flash forward eons to a handmade stone house on the Lake of Zurich, where sits Carl Jung who proposes that in drawing lines between good and evil, acceptable and unacceptable, worthy and unworthy, the only truly evil act is the drawing of that line. Jung is, of course, addressing this marvelous insight to mature human beings who can handle the relativity of good and evil without having to kill someone. Current guesstimates are that such beings will exist on this planet in as little as three centuries.
BTW, if you're in the mood to be stunned for a few minutes, Google 'Last Judgment' in Google Images. Rattle my belfry! The massive human effort that has gone into pictorially representing the LJ! It's astonishing, and not a little depressing, how guilt riddled our poor ancestors must've been to pour so much energy into depicting the last act of a Christian vision of the human saga that begins with a tragic fall from grace, climaxes with the brutal murder of the man of love and ends with fiery Armageddon.
Meanwhile, back at the Apocalypse, of all takes on the Last Judgment and what it means, I like William Blake’s:
“…whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual."
And while we’re leaning in a Biblical direction, let’s take a look and see if we can find The First Judgment. After all, if there was a Last One ….
Perhaps it occurred right after Eve mistook a talking serpent for someone who knew more than God. She and Adam eat the Granny Smith. God shows up and suddenly Adam feels ashamed because he’s naked. Right out of the blue, Adam judges himself somehow shameful and unworthy because he’s naked. Note that what’s happening is all mental. Physically, Adam is no different; still the same gloriously naked dude. But now that nakedness is judged as ‘not OK’. Adam has drawn a line in his mind, separating what is good and acceptable (Adam in t-shirt and figgy cutoffs) versus what is bad and unacceptable (Adam as God made him – irony intended).
It’s interesting to note that God doesn’t judge him. Adam judges himself as shameful. He creates his own suffering. Sound familiar?
Flash forward eons to a handmade stone house on the Lake of Zurich, where sits Carl Jung who proposes that in drawing lines between good and evil, acceptable and unacceptable, worthy and unworthy, the only truly evil act is the drawing of that line. Jung is, of course, addressing this marvelous insight to mature human beings who can handle the relativity of good and evil without having to kill someone. Current guesstimates are that such beings will exist on this planet in as little as three centuries.
BTW, if you're in the mood to be stunned for a few minutes, Google 'Last Judgment' in Google Images. Rattle my belfry! The massive human effort that has gone into pictorially representing the LJ! It's astonishing, and not a little depressing, how guilt riddled our poor ancestors must've been to pour so much energy into depicting the last act of a Christian vision of the human saga that begins with a tragic fall from grace, climaxes with the brutal murder of the man of love and ends with fiery Armageddon.
limit of opacity
In poetry that made many of his contemporaries deem him mad and millions later honor him as one of the great visionaries of English verse, Blake referenced a state of consciousness he called 'Satan' and which he defined as 'the limit of opacity.'
Okay, what makes things more opaque? That is, hard to see through, like an iron clad phony alibi?
A modest list:
1. Hindering others: Limiting or restraining the freedom or movement of others makes them more resistant, defiant and impervious to communication .
2. Lying: It erects walls where none exist. It solidifies what is not true. And yet... "A truth that's told with bad intent/Beats all the lies you can invent." -- Blake
3. Generalizing: Opacity as vagueness, things becoming indefinite to the point of...
4. Abstraction: Opacity as the superimposition of the conceptual on the actual, like a non-see-through varnish that turns wood to would.
5. Addiction: Opacity as intoxication and distortion; experienced as pleasurable until the resulting pain and loss of will disclose how opaque and impenetrable the stones of the well into which one has fallen. See also: Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary' his definition of... 'opiate, n. -- an unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard."
6. Single vision: seeing with, not through, the physical eye, convinced that the outer world is all there is to existence -- and, therefor, that what I see with these prescription lens adorned eyes is the measure of what is real. Single vision reifies single, separate observerhood. (reification - to regard or treat an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence).This literal point of view makes the physical world opaque to the endless realms of two-fold, three-fold and four-fold vision that Blake explored, quite alone, while the industrial revolution darkened the skies all around his London flat, producing opacity between earth and sky.
7. Self-centeredness: Northrop Frye offers a brilliant insight into one important aspect of what Blake meant by two very different states of consciousness (here paraphrased)... CHRIST = energy and love flowing toward others... SATAN = energy being sucked from others. Viewed in a certain way, numbers 1 through 6 all involve sucking energy out of other people, substances and the world itself. When I saw Blake's 'Satan' hanging in the Tate in London, I was shocked at how beautiful he was and at how powerfully Blake's imagery drew you to his diamond eyes; to the Pride in them that shouted Eternity stops with Me!
8. Moralizing: Passing judgment and making up lists like this one.
"The Ancient of Daze"
Nirvana and Samsara are not separate. They have never been separate. It is not possible for them to be separate, only to seem to be separate. This 'seeming', ersatz of mind forged super-imposition, is the lie that is a fall in consciousness. Cue the talking snake.
'Seeming', the seam of the warp and the woof
Of all opposites currently on the hoof.
Temporal fallout that seems almost alive,
Devouring each other in order to thrive.
Of all opposites currently on the hoof.
Temporal fallout that seems almost alive,
Devouring each other in order to thrive.
