Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 6:20am
Each thing is perceived through knowing.
The self shines in space through knowing.
Perceive one being as knower and known.
Know the knower and the known as one.
Whenever you know something, it is known through knowing. The object comes to your mind through the faculty of knowledge. You look at a flower; you know this is a sunflower. The sunflower is there and you are inside here. Something from inside of you comes to the sunflower. Some energy moves from you, comes to the flower, takes its form, color and smell, and comes back and informs you that this is indeed a sunflower.
All knowledge, whatsoever you know, is revealed through the faculty of knowing. Knowledge is gathered through this faculty. But knowing reveals two things: The known and the knower. The relationship between the two is knowledge. So knowledge is divided into 3 equilateral points: knower, known, and knowing. Knowing is the bridge between 2 points--the subject and the object. Ordinarily your knowledge reveals only the known; the knower remains unrevealed (hidden). Therefore, ordinary knowledge is one-dimensional; it points to the object--the world, matter. You know much about the world, but unless it points back to you (reflection), it will not allow you to know about yourself.
All techniques of meditation are to reveal the knower--the hidden in the shadows. One of the oldest techniques that the Buddha used is self-remembering; he called it samyak smriti--right mindfulness. Whenever you know something, always remember the knower. Don't forget it in the object. Remember the subject. It must not only flow in one direction towards the object. It must flow simultaneously towards both directions, the object and the subject--the known and the knower, matter and mind. When looking at a flower, also remember the one who is looking. Easier said than done! If you try to be aware of the knower, you will forget the flower. If you become aware of the known, the knower will be forgotten. But with some effort and practice to be aware of both simultaneously, right mindfulness is attained.
The Buddha said that your mind is not in a right mindfulness if it knows only one point. It must know both. And only then a miracle happens: if you're aware of both the known and the knower, suddenly you become a third eye--you are neither! The third becomes the witness, a witnessing self comes into being. The knower is your mind and the known is the world, and you become a third point in this bizarre love triangle--a consciousness, a witnessing self.
In the night you sleep and you dream. In the morning, you wake and the dream is lost. While awake there is no dream; a different world comes into your view. You move in the streets and you work in some place. Then you come back to your home, and again you fall asleep at night. Then the world that you knew while awake disappears. Then you don't remember who you are; you don't know whether you are black or white, poor or rich, wise or foolish, young or old, man or woman. You don't know anything as you enter the world of dreams. The waking world is forgotten, it is no more. In the morning, again the dreaming world disappears. You come back.
Which is real? Why do people insist that the dreaming world is unreal? Is it because it disappears when you are awake? If this is the argument, I say that the dreaming world may be more real, because while you're awake you can remember the dream, but while you are dreaming you cannot remember the waking consciousness and the world around it. The dreaming world completely washes away the world that you call real. Your real world cannot wash away the dreaming world so totally; it seems more solid, more real. Of course, a materialist would beg the differ and the critic will always vehemently defend his one-sided belief that his world is real. This arrogant sense of exclusivity is the root of all fratricide.
But Tantra, the Bizarre Love Triangle, says that both are unreal. Then what exactly is real? Tantra says that the one who knows the dreaming world and the one who knows the waking world, he is real--because he is never transcended. He can't be canceled. Whether you dream or you are awake, he is there, uncanceled. The one is always there. That which cannot be canceled by any experience is the Real. This is your Self. It cannot be transcended; you cannot go beyond it no matter how hard you try. The one is always there, actually here, truthfully nowhere. Your denial of your self is the original sin of ignorance. The manipulated suppression of the individual self by organized religion is the antichrist of the human spirit. The witnessing self is the ultimate, the basic ground of consciousness (Buddha's Pure Land).
With mind, di-vision of separation remains. Only with the witnessing self division disappears into oneness, the Unity of Diversity. This is Tantric Sacred Geo-me-try. So try it, experiment with action to reach experience. Understanding without action is an acquaintance of the dis-eased mind in philosophical discussion.
Find an object of desire, any object: look at it with total attention so that the whole world disappears and only the object remains. With focused attention, everything else falls away and the object becomes the world. Concentration is the first step towards meditation. Without it, it will be difficult to move to the knower, because your mind is always diverted, distracted by the phenomena of the world to prevent you from moving inwards, to start becoming aware of yourself--the knower.
In the beginning of meditation, it is difficult. When you shift to the knower, the known will drop out of consciousness. It will become faint, it will go away, it will become distant. Again you will come to the known, and forget the self. This hide-and-seek play will go on, but if you persist, sooner or later a rare moment will come when suddenly you will be in between. The knower, the mind, and the sunflower will be there, and you will be in the middle, looking at both.That middle point, that balancing act, that "man on wire" is the silent witness. You have become both. You are the center of both.They are extensions of you, the very center of being. And this center is just a witness. This is the symbolic meaning behind the Holy Trinity, the three-in-One. The Father is the known world, the Son is the mind knower, and the Holy Ghost is the silent witness.The Holy Ghost is the balanced center of existence. In that center, you are rooted, grounded, silent, blissful, ecstasy, and duality is no more. This is what Hindus called samadhi, what Jesus called the kingdom of God.
Understand this verbally is pointless. You have to take action, make practice, and concentrate until the world disappears. Whenever you move your attention, a world is created, and from wherever you remove your attention, the world drops. So you can create worlds through your attention or destroy worlds through your ignorance (lack of attention). The choice is yours, use the law of attraction or or abuse the call for destruction. The power of attraction is the most powerful force in the universe. That's why people in power suppress this knowledge to selfishly protect the status quo.
Buddha said that this path to our true nature is a middle path. His whole process of mindfulness (return path of self-remembering) is the Middle Path of native intelligence. He says, "Don't leave the world, and don't cling to the other world. Rather, be in-between. Don't leave one extreme and move to the other; just be in the middle, because in the middle both are not. Just in the middle you are free. There is no duality. You have come to one." Those who are worldly are imbalanced, and those who have renounced are also imbalanced in the other extreme. A balanced man is one who is neither; he lives in the middle, not worldly nor otherworldly. He is free to move, not attached to any. He become the golden mean.
To remain in the middle is very difficult. Because in the middle you have to lose your mind. Your mind exists in extremes. It loves excess and hates neutrality. Mind needs the opposite, it needs to be opposed to something otherwise it has no function, no purpose. It dreads indifference which refuses to pick a side in the mortal rules of engagement. If you are neither for nor against, what is left to think? Being indifferent to the extremes is the balancing act which gives you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower and the known, the world and the otherworld, this and that, body and mind, particle and wave. You are both, and simultaneously neither--above both. A bizarre love triangle has come into existence. The Jewish Star of David is 2 inverted triangles, which represent male and female, yang and yin in holy union to radiate life. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols.
Once you gain the third angle and be a witness, you cannot be in misery. Misery means getting identified with something--making a choice, pick a side and suppress the other, afraid of the opposite. Identification is a disease. Just remain a witness, be a spectator--neutral, indifferent, unattached, unconditioned, unidentified. Remain centered in yourself, don't get attached to anything or cling to anyone. Just simply be a witness; whatsoever, you will see it. To what may come, you will cross that bridge. When it comes, when it goes, you will see.
To be a witness is the highest possibility of consciousness. Arising, existing, and dying and you remain just a witness--the all-seeing eye. The Real-eye-zation of the One that pervades the uni-verse and holds the s-Word---SILENCE.
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