The Primordial Ground...

by Peter Holleran



”We must think very intensely on what the nature of the One is, and then there is a point at which you let go of anything. But do not think that the discussions of this are pointless, for the One is the only important thing you can discuss in your life - at any time, anywhere - there is nothing more important.” - Anthony Damiani (1)


At the outset I would like to point out that in this article the ideas expressed are not mine but are those of others greater than I, as well as that of the muse that guides my pen. Of myself I could not create articles like this without inspiration from behind the scenes. Anthony Damiani stated succinctly:

"...when you're working out the meaning of the doctrine in all its implications, and you're trying to make it explicit, you'll find that you can't do it under your own power. It's only when the higher power within you, the Overself, starts taking a hand in the game, that you start finding the material you need to answer certain questions, and you find other material to provoke you into asking certain questions, and so this mysterious process keeps going on. When a person is under the surveillance by the higher power, you can almost say the Logos is working its meaning out in that person, and the person will become conscious of that. Everything else is secondary. That's the process that happens....But the interesting thing is that the World-Idea is working itself out and becoming self-conscious in you. That's the amazing thing. And anyone who has experienced that doesn't go around saying "my ideas." (2)

That being said, we shall proceed.

Anthony Damiani argues, a la Plotinus, that someone who has realized his Soul, in Sahaj Samadhi, can then intuit that Soul's "priors," ie., “The Absolute Soul, The Intellectual Principle and The One”, from which it is an eternal emanation, but that one must forever return and be Soul, or, in PB’s terms, the Divine Overself. Realization of the Overself or Soul is itself the realization of non-duality, or Sahaj, according to Damiani. Nevertheless, the Soul cannot be or become the One. Though the One depends on nothing, the triad of eternal distinctions or principles, it is maintained, are real and can neither be bypassed or discounted. Contemporary teacher Adyashanti and many others to the contrary argue that one can in fact permanently realize the One. Which view is more correct? Or are both somehow true, coming at the issue from different points of view? Adya states:

”First, one awakens to personal freedom: the realization that you are formless consciousness itself. As consciousness, you are free of body-mind identity.

[This could be equated with Nirvikalpa Samadhi, or formless absorption in the Witness-consciousness, or I- Am]

“Then, there is the awakening to non-personal freedom. This is the birth of a vast non-personal Love for the whole, for all beings and all things. It is the realization that, you are the whole. Therefore, a freedom that is in any sense personal seems pale in comparison to a love, which is so much greater. This is a phase of surrendering any and all personal attachments to the greatest good, the Self. As self-centered concerns dissolve, a love that is all-inclusive sweeps you up into its arms and into a new life of service, celebration, and love.”

[This might (or might not) with reasonable certainty be seen as a description of sahaj samadhi, the ‘natural state’, 'maha ati', ‘open eyes’, or Turiyatita where there is no distinction between inside and out, and the world is seen to be no different than or non-separate from Consciousness Itself. The subtle distinction between mind and its contents, consciousness and perception collapses into the non-dual state.]

To this, however, Adya posits what appears to be a third possibility:

“Beyond non-personal freedom lies Liberation. A liberated person has transcended any motivations, personal or non-personal. Everything happens spontaneously, free of any sense of being the doer of deeds. The liberated one has association with consciousness but does not dwell there. The liberated one has returned consciously to the ultimate principle, which resides before the consciousness. He or she is the awareness of consciousness. An evolution has taken place in that person."

"Whatever you accept, you go beyond. Liberation is complete acceptance and, therefore, complete transcendence. If you accept everything, you go beyond everything. Going beyond the world, you are free to be in it because you are the world. The knowingness that you are all-that-is, that knowingness itself, is beyond the world, beyond consciousness, beyond all. The truly liberated one has transcended even the oneness of consciousness, as if being in deep sleep but fully awake.”

"The truth is ever new, existing only in the now. The highest truth is beyond knowledge and experience. It is beyond time and space, and beyond beingness, consciousness, and oneness." (3)

This could be our traditional sahaj samadhi or natural state, IF the second example given above does not, in fact, indicate sahaj, but rather is describing what might be considered a form of savikalpa samadhi known as the unio mystica or the sense or feeling of at-one-ment with the all that the medieval saints speak of. Not really the nondual realization which one thinks of as the dropping of the sense of separation, but still a state generating a great feeling of abundant love, albeit with a subtle dualism. It may sound the same as the non-dual realization but is very different.

Sri Nisargadatta, however, also used similar language to speak of the non-dual realization: he at times said that one returns to the absolute principle before consciousness [elsewhere, however, he says that it IS just pure consciousness]. Contemporary Karl Renz also talks like this, about a principle before consciousness. This seems to be implying a state higher than Sahaj, as it is commonly described. Is this, then, Meister Eckhart’s “primordial ground where distinction never gazed” , a favorite phrase of Adya’s? Is this in fact a greater realization than what is meant by the traditional Sahaj or realization of the Self? Is this what Dattatreya, author of the Avadhut Gita, meant when he wrote,

"Some seek non-duality, others duality. They do not know the Truth, which is the same at all times and everywhere, which is devoid of both duality and non-duality."

The answer is not clear. Both positions have been argued for.

Ramesh Balsekar, disciple of Nisargadatta, does not speak of a realization other than consciousness itself:

" "What does one want to protect? That without which nothing else has any meaning or value: the animating presence of Consciousness, without which you cannot know or enjoy anything. And the best way to protect anything is not to be away from it at all. This is the purpose of spiritual practice - to remain continuously one with Consciousness all the time." (from A Net of Jewels

Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon also spoke of consciousness as the ultimate realization of truth.

PB, without elaborating further, wrote in his Notebooks that Sahaj Samadhi was the highest state attainable by man, but not necessarily the highest state possible.(4) PB elsewhere, in apparent agreement with Damiani, wrote of three degrees of penetration into the Void-Mind, in a similar manner as had Plotinus.

Damiani said that the philosopher sage will remain Soul, resting in Sahaj, even though as Soul he will be able to intuit or catch the emanations of the Soul’s priors, which in the language of Plotinus were ’The Absolute Soul,” “The Intellectual Principle,” and “The One.” But he would not perpetually rest as the One but must return and be Soul.

"The sage unites with his soul and he's permanently soul. He can get a glimpse of the Intellectual Principle but he cannot become the Intellectual Principle. He must return and be soul. He will always be soul. You, I, and everyone else. So the higher glimpse is not your glimpse of your soul [which may be what many experiences of non-duality and satori are], but the soul's experience of the Intellectual Principle. When you achieve identity with the soul, you can get a glimpse of that Void. You can call it the Intellectual Principle or you can call it the Absolute Soul in the Intellectual Principle. It doesn't matter what you call it, because the One, the Intellectual Principle, and the Absolute Soul of Plotinus - those three Primal Hypostases together - can be considered as the Void Mind. But this higher glimpse is distinct from the unity with the soul, the identity with your soul. It is a different kind of experience. You could know many things when you have achieved identity with your soul, but when you have the glimpse of the Intellectual Principle, the only thing you could know is that it is. Nothing else. So, in other words, you could know that God is after you have achieved union with the soul. Before that all you could know are the contents of the soul, and the soul itself."

"They don't have texts available on these things. When PB speaks about what a philosopher sage is, he points out that the philosopher sage is a person who has achieved permanent union with his soul. He doesn't say that the philosopher sage is one who has achieved permanent union with the Intellectual Principle or with the Absolute Soul, but one who has achieved permanent identity with his soul. This soul that he speaks about, this is what he refers to as made in the image of God - in other words, the image of the Intellectual Principle. And this is what the philosopher or the jnani is, he's the soul. He knows that his essence comes from the Intellectual Principle. He knows it, not intellectually, he knows it because his soul is a direct emanation from that, and the soul's self-cognition automatically includes the recognition of its principle - where it comes from."

"So it's true that the glimpse into your soul is of the nature of the Void. It's true. But it's also true that the essence of your soul, even though it is void, and the essence of the Intellectual Principle, which is also void, are distinct. [important point]. Now what is the distinction between these two? When the philosopher sage says to you, "God is," he's not saying that my soul, even though it is cosmic and infinite, is God. He's speaking about the Intellectual Principle, and that's the experience that comes to the philosopher sage. PB even says that if that's all they can comunicate, it is enough. When the individual soul or individual mind has that experience of the Intellectual Principle, that is the announcement he makes, by referring that experience to God. He says that's God. Plotinus goes further and says that in that identity he even achieved mystic identity with the One itself, Mind itself, Absolute Mind, that which is beyond the Intellectual Principle. And he goes on and describes it - (but I don't want to get into that because it's too complicated" !) (6)

For much more on this topic please see PB and Plotinus: The Fallacy of Divine Identity and THE INTEGRATIONALISTS AND THE NON-DUALISTS - 1 on this website.

Meister Eckhart seemed to speak in a manner both wishing and not wishing to get rid of the above mentioned distinctions. In Sermon 52 he said:

"I pray God to rid me of God."

While in Sermon 10 he proclaimed:

"The nearness of God and the soul makes no distinction in truth. The same knowing in which God knows Himself is the knowing of every detached spirit, and no other. The soul takes her being immediately from God . Therefore God is nearer to the soul than she is to herself,' and therefore God is in the ground of the soul with all His Godhead."

He also makes a mysterious statement:

“When the soul enters the light that is pure, she falls so far from her own created somethingness into her nothingness that in this nothingness she can no longer return to that created somethingness by her own power."

In German Sermon 5b, he concludes:

"God's ground is my ground and my ground is God's ground."

Rounding out this discussion of the three Primal Principles, Plotinus wrote:

"The gradation of the One, the One-Many [Nous], and the One and Many [Soul] is eternally fixed, and is an expression of reality."

Similarly, Sri Aurobindo tells us:

" There is an essentiality of things [the transcendant, infinite Spirit], a commonality of things [the universal Spirit], an individuality of things [the individual Spirit]; the commonality and individuality are true and eternal powers of the essentiality; that transcends them both, but the three together and not one by itself are the eternal terms of existence." (7)

Continuing, PB referred to Sahaj as the “awareness of awareness whether thoughts of a world appear or not,” (which he also describes as pure awareness or consciousness itself), as opposed to the the witness-I, which is only “awareness of awareness.” Adyashanti, above, stated that the liberated one is the “awareness of consciousness.” It is assumed here by his terms that "awareness" is not the same as "consciousness".The problem is that if we accept that here by "consciousness" he means "non-dual consciousness", then his position may or may not be the same as that of PB and other's description of Sahaj. What would the awareness of non-dual conscious mean? In addition, Adya states that the Liberated individual is beyond all motivations, personal or impersonal, but does that really mean that such a one is in a state beyond what "non-personal freedom," as described above in his second statement, seems to imply? Is there, in fact, such a thing as "non-personal motivation" or "non-personal doership"? It seems to be a contradiction in terms. Isn't a sage in sahaj samadhi already beyond all motivations? So if the Liberated individual has “returned consciously to the ultimate principle, which resides before the consciousness,” does that really mean something beyond a state of Sahaj, or realization of the Soul, that is stably realized? If so, how does that occur, and how would one know it? The priors of Plotinus possibly seem to suggest a principle(s) beyond or before consciousness, if by consciousness itself we mean the Soul, but they may also simply point to a deepening within consciousness itself.

I suggest that the confusion posed above might be solved if we consider the following writings about Atmananda Krishna Menon's views on the enlightened state. He posits kind of an intermediate state between the Witness and pure Consciousness that may be similar to what Adyashanti refers to as "non-personal freedom":

"There is a quotation which Shri Atmananda made from the poet Alfred Tennyson. It concerns the dissolution of personality into 'the only true life'. And it is relevant to the question we have been discussing, about the dissolution of perceptions, thoughts and feelings into consciousness itself. Here is the passage quoted (from a letter by Tennyson to Mr R.P. Blood, quoted in the book 'Atmananda Tattwa Samhita' which transcribes Shri Atmananda's tape recorded talks):

"... a kind of waking trance, I have frequently had, quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me by repeating my own name two or three times to myself, silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was almost a laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life ..."

Here, Tennyson describes a state which was induced by repeating his own name, the name that represents his individuality. This brought about an "intensity of consciousness of individuality"; and out of that intensity, "the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being". This 'boundless being' is of course the 'all', in your aphorism: "All is consciousness." Shri Atmananda remarked that this 'boundless being' still has a taint in it, because it still implies a conception of some world of things that are added up into an unlimited 'all'. There is still there a sense of things additional to consciousness -- either in a world outside, or brought in from outside.

Where it is truly realized that there is nothing outside consciousness, then there cannot be anything that adds conditioning or quality of any kind to consciousness -- neither by sending any influence from without, nor by being brought themselves inside. Without any such addition, there can be no bounds or limits in consciousness; and so there can't be any sense of the 'boundless' or the 'unlimited' or the 'all'. So, according to Shri Atmananda, this 'boundless being' is not the end of the road, but a last remaining stage of transition, with a last remaining taint that dissolves itself into the final end." (Ananda Wood, 2003)

Is the "pure consciousness" of PB and Atmananda, then, the same as the "ultimate principle that resides before consciousness" of Adyashanti and Nisargadatta, or must we bring in PB's description of Absolute Mind in itself to satisfy this dilemma, which, however, PB has said man himself can never know, except through his individual Overself?

I propose that this matter might be cleared up if we rely on the tried and true Upanishadic wisdom of Vedanta. In Vedanta, there is nothing prior to Consciousness. Consciousness is the Self, the All, our eternal yet ordinary nature. It is neither big nor small but is beyond all attributes. It is my contention, therefore, that while Adyashanti undoubtedly knows what he is talking about, he is wrong in his choice of words. Further, PB may be misleading. Let me explain.

First of all, awareness and consciousness are synonyms. Therefore, it is nonsense to say that the liberated one is beyond consciousness, or is the 'awareness of consciousness'. Consciousness is all there is, and it is inherently Self-aware. If that is what is meant by the "awareness of consciousness," then it is all right. Otherwise, how could one be aware of anything or any principle beyond or before consciousness if he wasn't consciousness to begin with? For an exhaustive consideration of this point, please see the book, Consciousness Is All, by Peter Dziuban (2006, Blue Dolphin Publishing, Inc.). Secondly, PB, as I said, may be misleading when he says that the witness-I is the 'awareness of awareness' (which, as already stated, is the same as to say the 'awareness of consciousness'). More accurately, it might be said that the witness is the awareness of consciousness as reflected in a sattvic mind. It cannot be awareness of consciousness, because that would imply something other than consciousness to be conscious. The witness is an impersonal awareness, but still the 'experience' of consciousness or the Self, which implies a subtle dualism, and not yet the knowledge that one IS that consciousness, or the Self. THAT further understanding is liberation. The witness, Vedantist James Schwartz (Ram) suggests (although this may be wrong), is a rarified form of Savikalpa Samadhi in which, once again, one experiences the reflection of the Self in the mind. It is the 'I-I' of Ramana 'ever shining in the intellectual sheath.' It is not Self-realization or Liberation, which is knowledge that one is the eternal, ever-free, ordinary, actionless Self, the One-without-a-second.

According to Schwartz, direct knowledge can come in Savikalpa Samadhi, because you are there, ignorance is there, and the vision of the Self is there, so the akandara vritti (the unbroken 'I-Am the Self' thought) can destroy the ignorance and set you free...if you identify with it:

Experience of the Self is not enlightenment, but it can lead to enlightenment if the intellect can assimilate the knowledge - "I am awareness" - that arises when the attention is turned within and the mind is sattvic." (8)

The problem with any form of Savikalpa Samadhi, however, is that if you are not very dispassionate and do not have at least a rudimentary self-knowledge you will be so overwhelmed by the vision of the Self that you will not grasp its significance and will not therefore be freed.

(I suggest that perhaps the waking state itself can be seen as a form of Savikalpa Samadhi and thus is a primary domain in which for realization to take place. Every perception or experience can be seen as a 'pointer' towards the Self or Awareness, for everything perceived appears in this pure awareness which is what you are. and when inquired into, can reveal the Self. This is not possible in Nirvikalpa or sleep).

On the other hand, says Schwartz, in Nivikalpa Samadhi the knowledge which comes is indirect because it is only after the samadhi ends that you realize that you were 'not there'. This 'not there' inferentially proves your existence as the Self, but it doesn't achieve direct knowledge that one IS that self. One remains ignorant and the ego reconstitutes itself. It is, however, useful for purifying and concentrating the mind and eradicating vasanas.

Ramana defined enquiry as 'holding the mind on the Self, which, again, means keeping your attention on the reflection of the Self in the sattvic mind - a state of Savikalpa Samadhi - which at some point or another, inevitably leads to knowledge that one is the Self, ie., non-duality. Schwartz argues that the many years Ramana spent in caves after his famous death experience were engaged in this terminal sadhana from enigmatic fixation on the I-I, aham sphurana, or experience of the Self as reflected in the pure mind, to final identification AS the one Self. For more on this see The Lost Years of Ramana Maharshi.

PB in most places has argued against the fixed notion that there is, in fact, just One Self. He, like Plotinus, was inclined to let the irreducable paradox of Soul as a One-and-many stand, rather than reducing all to the One:

"There is some kind of a distinction between his higher individuality and the Universal Infinite out of which he is rayed, whatever the Vedantins may say. And this distinction remains in his highest mystical state, which is not one of total absorption and utter destruction of this individuality but the mergence of its own will in the universal will, the closest intimacy of its own being with the universal being." (9)

He elaborates further:

"The actual experience alone can settle this argument. This is what I found: The ego vanished; the everyday "I" which the world knew and which knew the world, was no longer there. But a new and diviner individuality appeared in its place, a consciousness which could say "I AM" and which I recognized to have been my real self all along. It was not lost, merged, or dissolved: it was fully and vividly conscious that it was a point in universal Mind and so not apart from that Mind itself. Only the lower self, the false self, was gone but that was a loss for which to be immeasurably grateful."

[Sri Nisargadatta also used this term: “points in consciousness”]

"Without keeping steadily in view this original mentalness of things and hence their original oneness with self and Mind, the mystic must naturally get confused if not deceived by what he takes to be the opposition of Spirit and Matter. The mystic looks within, to self; the materialist looks without, to world. And each misses what the other finds. But to the philosopher neither of these is primary. He looks to that Mind of which both self and world are but manifestations and in which he finds the manifestations also. It is not enough for him to receive, as the mystic receives, fitful and occasional illuminations from periodic meditation. He relates this intellectual understanding to his further discovery got during mystical self-absorption in the Void that the reality of his own self is Mind. Back in the world once more he studies it again under this further light, confirms that the manifold world consists ultimately of mental images, conjoins with his full metaphysical understanding that it is simply Mind in manifestation, and thus comes to comprehend that it is essentially one with the same Mind which he experiences in self-absorption. Thus his insight actualizes, experiences, this Mind-in-itself as and not apart from the sensuous world whereas the mystic divides them. With insight, the sense of oneness does not destroy the sense of difference but both remain strangely present, whereas with the ordinary mystical perception each cancels the other. The myriad forms which make up the picture of this world will not disappear as an essential characteristic of reality nor will his awareness of them or his traffic with them be affected. Hence he possesses a firm and final attainment wherein he will permanently possess the insight into pure Mind even in the midst of physical sensations. He sees everything in this multitudinous world as being but the Mind itself as easily as he can see nothing, the imageless Void, as being but the Mind itself, whenever he cares to turn aside into self-absorption. He sees both the outer faces of all men and the inner depths of his own self as being but the Mind itself. Thus he experiences the unity of all existence; not intermittently but at every moment he knows the Mind as ultimate. This is the philosophic or final realization. It is as permanent as the mystic's is transient. Whatever he does or refrains from doing, whatever he experiences or fails to experience, he gives up all discriminations between reality and appearance, between truth and illusion, and lets his insight function freely as his thoughts select and cling to nothing. He experiences the miracle of undifferentiated being, the wonder of undifferenced unity. The artificial man-made frontiers melt away. He sees his fellow men as inescapably and inherently divine as they are, not merely as the mundane creatures they believe they are, so that any traces of an ascetical holier-than-thou attitude fall completely away from him."

"Only after he has worked his way through different degrees of comprehension of the world whose passing his own development requires, and even after he has penetrated the mystery beyond it, does he come to the unexpected insight and attitude which frees him from both. In other words he is neither in the Void, the One, or the Many yet nor is he not in them. Truth thus becomes a triple paradox!" (10)

Granted, the mind reels and gets overheated with all such talk. Adya simplifies it for us, fortunately, and suggests that, however one views the liberated condition, whatever terminology one uses, the following basic transformation is required:

"This is really a fundamental transformation. That's why I say that we can have a very deep and profound realization of the truth and, in the end, the final real freedom doesn't necessarily come about through a realization. It comes about through a deep surrender at the deepest seat of our being. Of course, most people are going to need a profound realization of their true nature in order to be able to surrender naturally and spontaneously. But it completes itself in a blind and unpredictable release of control."(11)

As the Tibetans say, "don't confuse understanding with realization, and don't confuse realization with liberation."

Adya elsewhere has said that even for the liberated one there is an ever-deepening process, ie., that even liberation is not in any sense "the end":

"The realization of your true nature is the end of not-knowing who and what you are. The belief that you are simply the body-mind mechanism comes to an end, but this is not the end in any absolute sense. It's the beginning of another mysterious unfolding. It's the beginning of something without end. When you awaken, you realize that around that body-mind is presence and space, and you know that you are this infinite presence. This presence is inconceivable, even to those who realize it. You can't say what it is; you just know that it is what you are. It could be called emptiness, consciousness, God, or spirit, but still there's a certain mystery to it all...In the infinite, you have great, ever-deepening realizations, and yet there is simultaneously the sense that nothing is going anywhere. Everything is an unfolding of stillness within stillness." (Summer/Fall 2008 Retreat brochure).

There is no end. Moreover, "the end" is just a concept. The end, that is, "stopping", says Adya, is not the same thing as "cessation." Cessation of what? - conceptual, dualistic experiencing, including a subtle, almost impenetrable dualism created by many teachers through too much adherence to non-dual concepts that lead more to a form of monism than true non-duality. In the example given above by Dattatreya, surely the sage wasn't pointing to something beyond real non-duality, but was merely guiding the reader to the state of what is beyond the concepts of both duality and non-duality. So perhaps, then, there is no contradiction between the teachings we are discussing here. "Pure consciousness", the "ultimate principle before conscious", and the "awareness of consciousness", are, after all, mere words. Nevertheless, they should be wielded skillfully with razor-sharp discrimination like Shankara so as to leave no doubts and lead the disciple swiftly to Liberation. An endeavor in that direction has been attempted here. If I have become a stickler for details I humbly apologize. It is hoped that discriminating readers will respond with much-welcomed feedback and comments.

What we can be more or less sure of is that the ordeal of realizing any one of these stations is profound, requiring much of a person, to purify the mind and ready the aspirant for enquiry, which alone leads to Self-Knowledge. To this end in most cases there must be karma yoga. There must be adherence to dharmic laws. There must be devotion to 'God', guru, or the Self. All of these means thin down the ego and the ego-creating vasanas, and are also a guard against 'enlightenment sickness' after realization. There will be inevitable pain as the heart is cracked open. There will be valleys, peaks, and plateaus. Madam Guyon implied as much when she wrote:

"The life of the believer is like a torrent making its way out of the high mountains down into the canyons and chasms of life, passing through many experiences until finally coming to the spiritual experience of death. From there, the torrent experiences resurrection and a life lived in concert with the will of God while still going through many stages of refinement. At last the torrent finds its way into the vast, unlimited sea. Even here the torrent does not totally come to be one with the vast ocean until it has once more passed through final dealings by the Lord."(12)

Eckhart Tolle said:

"The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure."

Meister Eckhart wrote:

"A man must become truly poor and as free of his own creaturely will as he was when he was born. And I tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just as long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing." (13)

Richard Moss writes in his book, The Mandala of Being (highly recommended):

"The great spiritual tradition that places major emphasis on compassion is Buddhism. If we have - and I don't believe this happens just once - "crossed the ocean of despair" as the Buddha is described as having done, we know how much this journey was not only about courage and hard work but also about grace. Knowing that we have been the recipients of grace - that something has happened beyond our efforts, our understanding, or our insights - creates humility. This humility is what protects us from becoming egotistically involved in grandiosity and self-importance about whatever level of liberation we may have achieved." (14)

and

"If, as you step back into the Now position, you cannot find the compassion to see others as they are and accept them that way, if instead the old stories keep pulling you out of your beginning and into resentment or hurt, it is because underneath these painful feelings lurks an even more threatening feeling, one of the untamed emotions. Perhaps it is a core feeling of worthlessness, or a terrible sensation of abandonment that has crystalized into a belief...This primal fear will not go away simply because you can recognize the falseness of your you stories. You cannot truly come back to the beginning of yourself until this feeling is fully met and held in the Now....When we begin to consciously face feelings that do not immediately dissipate even when they are no longer reinforced by thought, it means we are uncovering fears that our faith is not yet great enough to allow. We are getting to the root of our present survival structures. This is deep work, the darkest hour before the dawn. But even at the darkest times, the power of awareness abides: we are always larger than what we are aware of. By trusting this truth and resting in the Now of ourselves, embracing anything at all that we feel, we steadily build muscle until we are no longer accepting our limited identities, no longer the victims of our stories about others. More and more, we live authentically in the fullness of our beings." (15)

"It is the ego and its survival project at the helm of our initial, youthful spiritual experiments, and inevitably we are called to spiritual maturity. Since the last thing we are willing to trust without "hope" is a relationship with the untamed fears, we find it difficult to redeem these dark places, and we postpone doing so...After any awakening or any new opening into a state of expansion and new vision, these darker aspects are always the next energies that come forward and ask for our acceptance. If we do not turn away, do not keep burying the darkness over and over again, then we can, at last, rest in the fullness of ourselves, and the limiting conditioning of the fear-hope process no longer enslaves us." (16)

By fear Moss refers to the fundamental fear of non-being, in all its permutations, and by hope, the ego's perpetual hope for survival. In general, both must be faced for higher spiritual realizations to become possible. As Anthony stated, the greatest purgation occurs in the emotional realm. Further, the deepest witholding out of fear, and the 'existential grip" that Adya speaks about, must be let go before realization, liberation, or the Self can be known.

Having detoured somewhat from our original inquiry, the question then remains: can man realize the One, or only the Soul? Is our problem merely one of words? Who is right? Is it Adya, Nisargadatta, and the current non-dualists, or Damiani, Atmananda, and Aurobindo? Further, does the Upanishadic wisdom resolve all of our doubts? Is Consciousness all there is? Or is there a 'pure potentiality', or 'Tao', standing prior to its 'divorce' into a paradoxical 'marriage' of Consciousness-Being, Consciousness-Radiance, Existence-Non-Existence, Presence-Awareness, Emptiness-Awareness, Identity-Relatedness, Shiva-Shakti? Are these better pointers to Reality than 'Consciousness'?

I leave it for those with greater lights than I to answer this question. In the final analysis perhaps the best we can do with this mystery lies not in finding an answer to our questions, but in questioning our answers. To realize that one knows nothing is perhaps the greatest achievement.

[See Bankei Yotaku: Unborn Zen for discussion on the "practise after Enlightenment" and the depth of transformation required for final Liberation.]


A sign of progress


(1) Anthony Damiani (in Stephen McKenna, Plotinus; The Enneads (Larson Publications, Burdett , New York, 1992, p. 712)
(2) Anthony Damiani, Looking Into Mind (Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1990, p. 64-65)
(3) Adyashanti, The Impact of Awakening, by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org)
(4) [Note: What did he mean here: that higher realizations than sahaj were possible by beings other than man, such as alien beings - or perhaps - by gods?]
(5) Anthony Damiani, Looking Into Mind, op. cit., p. 207)
(6) Ibid, p. 201, 206-207
(7) Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 381 (as quoted in: Don Salmon and Jan Maslow, Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness (Paragon House, St. Paul, MN, 2007, p. 335
(8) James Schwartz, How To Attain Enlightenment (Boulder, CO: First Sentient Publications, 2009), p. 175
(9) The Notebooks of Paul Brunton (Burdett, New York: Larson Publications, 1988), Vol. 16, Part 1, 2.200
(10) Ibid, Part 4, 2.142, 2.154, 2.155
(11) Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing (Los Gatos, California: Open Gate Publishing, 2004), p. 154-155
(12) Les Torrents, pt. i. cap. viii.
(13) reference unknown
(14) Richard Moss, The Mandala of Being (New World Library, Novato, California, 2007), p. 293
(15) Ibid, p. 202-204
(16) Ibid, p. 270