Vinaire's Blog

September 30, 2014

This issue is now obsolete. For latest reference please see: Universe and Awareness and Awareness and Motion.

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Reference: The Creation Hymn of Rig Veda

Of all the dichotomies in this Universe, the most interesting dichotomy is “awareness – no awareness.”

“Non-awareness” is like a curtain. We do not know what is behind that curtain. We only know what is in front of it. When something emerges from that curtain we become aware of it. Until then we may only speculate about what is behind that curtain.

The Universe begins as it emerges from behind the “curtain” of non-awareness.

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Like any dichotomy “awareness – no awareness” may represent two ends of a single continuum that extends to infinity in either direction. The “curtain” is a transition point on this continuum, and not a point of creation.

The “curtain” is a transition point from non-awareness to awareness on a continuum.

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The Universe begins when it transitions from non-awareness into awareness. This does not imply that the universe is created. In fact, we cannot tell whether the universe is created or it has always been there.

The Universe begins as it comes into awareness. This does not imply that the universe is created.

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The state of the Universe “before the beginning” can only be speculated. This would be the case with any idea of a Divine Principle that stands above the Universe. On the other hand, the idea of a divine principle identified with the unity of the Universe may be expressed as Awareness.

The Divine Principle identified with the unity of Universe is awareness.

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The idea, “God created this universe” simply divides the awareness associated with the Universe into awareness of “God” and “universe.” God cannot be excluded from the awareness of the overall Universe. The Universe simply boils down to any and all awareness.

The Universe as awareness includes all speculations, mythologies, and religions.

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The entire Universe evolves from awareness. The Universe has to be aware of itself because that is all there is.

The Universe has evolved from awareness and is aware of itself.

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If you are out in interstellar space with nothing else there, you shall be hard put to decide if you are totally still or moving at the speed of light. In short, you will have no awareness of your motion when there is nothing to compare with.

Non-awareness is absence of relative motion.

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Awareness begins as relative motion. The two cannot be separated. We may say awareness is perceived as relative motion. Since Universe evolves from awareness, it consists entirely of relative motion.

The form of awareness comes from relative motion.

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The relative motion can be very simple, such as, a ripple in water. Or, it can be very complex as the motions inside a watch. The degree of relative motion may be reckoned from “no relative motion,” as numbers are reckoned from zero. This provides an objective view of awareness.

Awareness may be viewed objectively in terms of the simplicity or complexity of relative motion.

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When one is completely free of thoughts, there is still the awareness of present moment. But when one is in “deep sleep,” where hours pass in a blink of an eye, there is little awareness.

There is lesser awareness in “deep sleep” than in a thoughtless state.

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This is a universe of awareness. No part of this universe is, therefore, without relative motion. Nothing in this universe can be totally still as that would imply non-awareness.

Everything in this universe is in relative motion. Absolute static cannot be part of it. 

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Next: The Nature of Awareness (Part 2)

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A filter is a porous device for removing impurities or solid particles from a liquid or gas passed through it. We borrow that word and use it in KHTK in a more general sense as follows.

Filter is a device that is selective in what it lets through. It is designed to block out things that are supposedly unwanted.

A colored glass acts as a filter in that it is selective about what frequencies of light it lets through. It blocks all other frequencies. Similarly, our thinking may act as a filter and it may let only those thoughts through with which there is some agreement. In KHTK, anything that influences perception is looked upon as a filter.

When the viewpoint influences the perceptions of a person it is acting as a filter.

A viewpoint consists of a person’s physical location as well as his mental position determined by  experience, education, thinking and considerations.

A physical location obviously influences the angle from which one perceives. The experiences get stored and interpret incoming perceptions. Education from home, school and culture provides ideas with which to assess incoming information. Thinking makes one associate the data one has in a certain way. Considerations sets themselves as bias, prejudices, fixed ideas, etc., that directly filter one’s perception.

Thus, the world might appear very different to a person from what it actually is. The actions one takes may not be optimum for the situations one encounters in life. This may have a lot to do with the conditions a person finds himself in.

Examining the contents of this filter may help resolve unwanted conditions in one’s life.

The components of the viewpoint are tightly interwoven into each other like many strands in a rope. Mindfulness exercises can help one look at this filter objectively and become aware of hidden influences.

Hidden influences lose their power as they are brought into awareness.

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Please see Ground State of the Universe.

The following is quoted from the book The Tao of Physics.

“The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word [physis] and meant…, originally, the endeavour of seeing the essential nature of all things… The Milesians… saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter, since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the ‘physis’, endowed with life and spirituality…

“Heraclitus [c. 535 – c. 475] believed in a world of perpetual change, of eternal ‘Becoming’. For him, all static Being was based on deception and his universal principle was fire, a symbol for the continuous flow and change of all things. Heraclitus taught that all changes in the world arise from the dynamic and cyclic interplay of opposites and he saw any pair of opposites as a unity. This unity, which contains and transcends all opposing forces, he called the Logos.

“The split of this unity began with the Eleatic school, which assumed a Divine Principle standing above all gods and men. This principle was first identified with the unity of the universe, but was later seen as an intelligent and personal God who stands above the world and directs it. Thus began a trend of thought which led, ultimately, to the separation of spirit and matter and to a dualism which became characteristic of Western philosophy.

“A drastic step in this direction was taken by Parmenides of Elea [c. 515/540 -c. 450] who was in strong opposition to Heraclitus. He called his basic principle the Being and held that it was unique and invariable. He considered change to be impossible and regarded the changes we seem to perceive in the world as mere illusions of the senses. The concept of an indestructible substance as the subject of varying properties grew out of this philosophy and became one of the fundamental concepts of Western thought.

“In the fifth century B.C., the Greek philosophers tried to overcome the sharp contrast between the views of Parmenides and Heraclitus. In order to reconcile the idea of unchangeable Being (of Parmenides) with that of eternal Becoming (of Heraclitus), they assumed that the Being is manifest in certain invariable substances, the mixture and separation of which gives rise to the changes in the world.”

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The unity of the universe is defined by awareness. AWARENESS may be identified as the Divine Principle. Identifying this principle further with a personal God seems to be the result of human bias. Spirit and matter are not really separate. They both are aspects of existence.

Parmenides was looking for a reference point for all change. He simply assumed it to be a Being. But, logically, if the unity of this universe is defined by awareness, then the reference point shall be “absence of awareness.” This is similar to the mathematical view that the reference point for all numbers is zero.

The red herring here is the assumption of a Being, or Cause, as the reference point. This assumption seems to satisfy a human-centric viewpoint. But it does not take into account the consideration that the Being, or Cause, itself requires a reference point.

This problem does not arise when we accept the “absence of awareness” as the reference point.

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