Describing ONE - Moving Toward a Center, Which is Unknown
Here she is, kiddies:
Describing one’s progress in the world boils down to finding your score in a game you made up according to rules you haven’t quite decided yet. Contradictory impulses abound, warring over you like a mock battle between your immediate biology and something deeper, wiser. The perpetual judge chooses its reactions based on unknown criteria and life moves on, oblivious. Nothing is known. And yet, it is this realization that tends to steer one toward a more thorough examination of said “nothing.” Nothing known thus becomes the goal, a central destination from which things might become clear, might reveal their true coordinates. Consider the cosmologist’s quest for the physical origins of the universe. In order to discover the essential parameters through which all phenomena would be explained, he is forced to look before and before and behind. It is the same with consciousness. A void within a void’s restless potential, it is all we can examine for any type of answer to today’s existential conundrums. And for the most part, “any” type of answer will do... just look at the front page of today’s (or any day’s) newspaper to see what I mean. Increasingly though, it seems, people are waking up to the possibility of perfect consciousness as a means unto true “progress.”
This awakening tends to occur after some sort of world-view-shattering experience, which can arrive in many forms. Regardless of how it comes, its effect is a startling one, not unlike being awakened from a dream. Suddenly things are observable in a new way, as the grand mystery of our ineffable existence comes into focus for what seems like the first time. For me, the experience was like retracing my entire life’s journey up to the present moment, which was a strange reflection of some eternal, earthen form (as I stood in front of the mirror.) I could see and feel so many conscious years’ conditioning of my mind and body, and imagined myself as having just emerged from some murky ignorance, suddenly privy to an ancient and infinite awareness. At first I cursed my stupidity, angry at having been so blind to what I can now describe only as some brief glimpse into the Tao, which had opened up for me like a gleaming vessel of right action. Realizing the futility of this exercise, I got angry at myself again – for getting angry at myself. Before exploding into a recursive fit of self-judgement, I decided to just be still. Immediately my mood changed back to one of grace and compassion. Asking why, I realized that my physical body had become a metaphor of my own consciousness. In this silent, empty space lurked great power and intelligence, which appeared as a solemn expression across my eyes and mouth. My mind steadied itself, reflected in the slow, steady rhythm of my breathing. I realized that I had been feeding my body and mind without ever asking what it is they need to truly live. I am reminded now of a conversation I had some time later (this semester actually) with a fellow meditator. As he complained of hunger, I argued that he wasn’t really hungry, but in fact just addicted to the feeling of having food in his stomach.
“The human body can stay alive without food for weeks,” I told him.
Puzzled, he shot back: “Maybe. But my body does more than just stay alive.”
I think this is the attitude guiding me in the direction I think of as progress: a simple experiment of, given the right food, just how much more could it do? Stretching the metaphor even further, if the body is a byproduct of its environment, could the mind be a byproduct of the body? We must be careful here not to confuse the mind with consciousness. As witnessed across all mystical traditions, consciousness can be wiped clear of the mind. The mind is thus like scratchings of chalk on a chalkboard. Whether the mind is blank or fully active, the chalkboard exists regardless. Assuming this “mind-free” state of consciousness is a state worth reaching, our goal is to somehow prevent the mind from casting its dusty shadows on our inner plane, so to speak. My claim that mind is an artifact of the body is clearly founded in science, but the intuitive framing of this relationship will prove useful for our subjective goals. The mind, like the body, is fed according to how we interpret and react to the unconscious signals that manage to become conscious by piercing the surface of our awareness. For instance, the feeling of hunger arises spontaneously out of unconscious bodily processes, and is interpreted as a signal to obtain food (i.e. react). Likewise, in dangerous situations, an unconscious neurological response in the body influences how we will choose to react. These reactions in turn are the basis of what the mind uses to interpret, or assign a particular reaction to, particular unconscious activities. There is thus a back-and-forth feedback mechanism between biological systems that are separated only by the completeness of our awareness of them. For example, an obese person may interpret hunger as a signal to eat a box of donuts, not realizing that his sugar cravings are occurring only because his body is too weak to metabolize any other form of energy. Clearly, when the body is suffering like this, the mind must work overtime to rationalize a reason for existing at all. Such minds are also evident in drug addicts who deny the harm they are doing to their bodies and ignore the worsening quality of their lives. Most if not all of this mindwork occurs as play between past and future dimensions. The junkie visualizes his next dose and the glutton his next cookie, with all due respect. Obviously, it is not that these individuals cannot reach the clean slate of consciousness, just that their minds have become much more difficult to clear off. We have thus identified the disconnect between awareness and consciousness – it is the mind!
So far I have been describing the interactions between the body, the mind, and consciousness, and how each contribute to a particular state of awareness. These arguments are based mainly on my own experience and what I have confirmed through readings and other interactions as at least quasi-universal in nature. Meditation is a means of returning to pure consciousness in order to promote whole-body consciousness during the active state. This means a state of awareness unhindered by the mind’s plans and rationalizations. For every feeling that arises there is an immediate and effortless reaction – the body has become the mind! No longer is there a need for guesswork in responding to unconscious needs, for they have become conscious. This type of thought may transcend the English language, but it is infinitely more intelligible. Consider Gopi Krishna’s account of kundalini awakening, which touches upon the type of awareness I have been trying to elucidate:
“What my own experience has clearly revealed is the amazing fact that though guided by a super-intelligence, invisible but at the same time unmistakably seen conducting the whole operation, the phenomenon of kundalini is entirely biological in nature.”
Gopi Krishna thus recognizes a super-intelligence that is entirely biological in nature. If the earth bears the body which bears the mind, does the mind bear consciousness? Such a question leads us headfirst into a realm of controversy fueled mainly by semantics, but we can begin to sift through it by separating awareness from consciousness. As in a dream, awareness may be far removed from the myriad of things we are conscious of. One can dream, for example, quite vividly without being aware of much in the usual sense (i.e. standard bodily form, basic physics, etc.) Consciousness remains quite intact, just removed from the aspect of mind that facilitates scrutiny and recollection – i.e. “self-awareness.” Instead, consciousness without mind is an awareness that seems to transcend the physical being and “ordinary” reality. Like I have said before, meditation is an attempt to access this pure consciousness, the practice of which trains the mind to behave in a controlled way, thus keeping the proverbial chalkboard as blank as possible. This allows for direct awareness of any and all of what we can see now is actually “conscious” activity – this ranging from a callous on your big toe to a vitamin deficiency. Usually the mind interferes with such subtle communication, which is why it must be controlled. But what are we using to control it? Clearly the process is one of surrender into deep consciousness – the breath, the heartbeat, metabolic activity; these are all manifestations of the energy that is itself consciousness, a responsive emptiness that out of which arises all things. This sentiment is echoed in the Yoga-Shikha-Upanishad: “The means for (the mind’s) control is nothing else but the life force.”
The Sanskrit texts declare that “the whole adventure of yoga is but a play of the pranic force.” As a scholar, it is tempting to view consciousness solely as an artifact of the developing brain, but certain experiences have made this explanation seem incomplete. Rather, it appears as if the “pranic force,” which can be understood as the reason that anything is happening at all, is no less than a cosmic consciousness bent on expressing infinite forms of beauty and intelligence. At least, these seem to be in the general direction.
