SELF-KNOWLEDGE

(An Eighth-Century text by Adi Shankara)

"I am composing this treatise on Self-Knowledge

for those who are purified and peaceful,

calm of mind, free of craving,

and desirous of Liberation." (1)

THE JOY IS NOT IN THE OBJECT

The business of life is the business of happiness. Because we feel limited with respect to happiness, everyone every minute is fully engaged trying to attain greater happiness. When I take a job, fall in love, read a book, eat a meal, go to the dentist, pray or meditate, I expect the activity and/or its results to make me feel better than I do at the moment. No matter how good I feel I can always imagine a state of greater happiness. If I’m feeling miserable, my actions will be calculated to remove or lessen the misery, a situation I view as an increase in happiness. When a better state is inconceivable, I refrain from activities that might compromise it. An investigation of the world’s tropical beaches reveals countless people, flat on their backs, content as clams, not moving a muscle.

Everything we do is for the sake of happiness. Some accumulate money, not necessarily for itself, but for the happiness it supposedly brings. Others seek happiness in life-threatening sports which produce a "high," an aliveness beyond the "normal" state. We ingest chemicals, pills, drink, and drugs to change our state of mind for the better. Belief in God is never intended to make one miserable. Nobody gets married to suffer.

At first glance activities seem to produce happiness. I jog, garden, meditate, or ski and feel happy. But if happiness were in an activity the activity should produce happiness for anyone performing it. Giving away millions makes philanthropists happy. Letting go of a dime is anathema to a miser. A granny who knits for fun will not take pleasure in bungee jumping.

Can happiness be achieved getting and possessing certain objects? A man divorces his wife because she seems the cause of his misery but before the ink is dry on the divorce decree she finds herself in the arms of another - who sees her as his darling bundle of joy. A steak makes a carnivore happy, a vegetarian unhappy. In spite of this fact we work overtime to get happiness through objects and activities.

Some try to attain happiness through the mind. Poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals find happiness playing with thoughts and ideas, feelings and emotions. Professionals subject their minds to years of discipline with the conviction that intense and sustained happiness can be found in knowledge.

An tiny minority, "spiritual" questers, try to find happiness by disciplining themselves in prayer, meditation, chanting, breathing, or "processing" to achieve altered or "high" states of consciousness.

The psychological world believes happiness can be attained by removing psychological barriers: disturbing experiences and memories, self-limiting concepts, and unforgiving thoughts lodged in the subconscious mind.

LIMITATION OF OBJECT HAPPINESS

Both approaches, the physical and the psychological, share the belief that through self-effort certain objective and/or subjective factors inhibiting happiness can be changed, resulting in greater happiness. Conventional wisdom supports this view and, to be fair, the kernel of truth it contains probably accounts for the universal attempt to get happiness by changing objective and subjective factors.

Why do we feel happy when we achieve a goal or obtain a desired object? According to spiritual science all human activities are motivated by a separation from our natural state of happiness, a separation that gives rise to two apparently contradictory instincts, Fear and Desire, both of which extrovert and disturb the mind, producing many positive and negative emotions. Beneath every desire a fear lurks, behind every fear a desire. If I don't get what I want I'll be unhappy. Avoiding what I don't want makes me happy. So the fear of unhappiness is just the desire for happiness. These two forces, attraction and repulsion, attachment and aversion, likes and dislikes affect every aspect of our lives.

The myriad fears and desires playing in the mind, both subtle and gross, stem from a deeper need - the need to be free of fear and desire - the need to be fulfilled or happy. When I say I want a new car or a new lover I don't actually want the object. I want the happiness apparently tied up with it.

REMOVING THE WALL

If happiness or unhappiness doesn't come from objects, it has to be coming from me.

If true, why does it seem to come from objects?

Because the attainment of desired objects or the avoidance of feared objects temporarily removes the wall of fear and desire separating us from the Self, the source of happiness. When the dam bursts our lives are flooded with happiness, from the ecstasy of love to the satisfaction in a cup of coffee.

At the time of the removal of a fear or desire the mind associates the happiness with the object, rather than with the removal of the subjective limitation. That human beings are universally attached to and frightened of objects, physical, emotional, and intellectual confirms this poorly-appreciated truth.

Almost everyone at one time or another believes happiness comes from giving and\or receiving love. As long as the love object gives and\or receives according to the subject's special needs, everything is fine, but as soon as the object stops cooperating the love dries up, at which point the removal of the object is thought to make us happy. Why does the love dry up? Because the idea that it was coming from the object acted like a switch in the mind which erected a wall between the mind and the Self, effectively cutting off contact with one’s own unlimited reservoir of love.

That switch, the belief that the joy is in the object, can as well pull down the wall. For example, loneliness often causes us fantasize about an ideal someone who we wish would come into our lives and remove our unhappiness. When reality presents an approximation of our fantasy, the dam holding our own limitless inner ocean of love breaks and love wildly cascades into the mind, giving the experience of happiness. Because the process is unconscious and takes place instantaneously the love seems to be coming from the object, or an interaction with the object - but the object is only a catalyst, a trigger, that activates the inner switch.

Let’s argue that since everyone's innermost nature is happiness/love the joy is in the object, in this case people. It is, but since people invariably impose conditions on their love we can't count on another’s love to make us happy. To avoid this trap I should understand that though love is one, I can only count on it when I’ve realized it's my nature. To do that I must sacrifice the fears and desires separating me from my own happiness/love. For example, people feel happy in deep sleep because objective and subjective limitations, mental and emotional activity, are absent.

OBJECT[1] HAPPINESS NOT PERMANENT

If you can’t accept that happiness and unhappiness aren’t inherent in objects, I think you’ll agree that object-related happiness is impermanent. If permanent happiness were attainable from objects the desire to have the same or another object would never arise. Conversely, were permanent happiness attainable by the removal of an object (remember, this includes states of mind, bad feelings about oneself or the world, for example) we would never have to remove that object again. But experience shows that desire for and fear of objects continue, often increase, with their possession, enjoyment and renunciation. I may want more of what I want, less of it, or something else altogether. One day I may even crave something that previously made me miserable. The satisfaction of my desires and the removal of my fears does not leave me permanently happy. For example, people who have associated happiness with a certain object, say a drug or alcohol-induced state of mind, try to achieve that state over and over, until it no longer yields pleasure. Nobody was ever permanently satisfied by a successful sexual encounter - or any other apparently happiness-producing object. In fact happiness-bringing objects often suddenly become unhappiness bringing objects.

The confusion about the nature of happiness and unhappiness with reference to objects suggests that the question of happiness and unhappiness must be centered on me, the subject.

Am I whole and complete and therefore immune to the pull of objects, or am I an incomplete being, one desperately in need of things to complete me? Having eliminated objects as the source, a confusion still exists about my nature, prompting further analysis. When I think about it I can see that sometimes I'm happy and sometimes unhappy. After careful consideration I can confidently conclude that happiness is natural to me because when I experience it I always cling to it. And when I’m unhappy the reverse is true: I try feverishly to rid myself of it.

Therefore, if I'm happy by nature, don't consistently experience happiness, and know it doesn't come from objects and activities, how would I attain it?

Vedantic texts like Atma Bodh are addressed to those who are convinced that objects and activities will not bring lasting happiness. This conviction leads to a state of mind, referred to above as “ peaceful and free of craving,” (for objects) from which an inquiry into the nature of the Self can be conducted. Without an inquiry the riddle of one’s true identity will not be solved.

Another of Shankara’s texts, Vivekachoodamani, The Crest Jewell of Discrimination, provides a detailed list describing the qualities and qualifications that ensure success in Self Realization, the first of which, discrimination,[2] is defined as “a firm conviction that the Self alone is real and that the phenomenal world is unreal.”[3] For “phenomenal world” read “objects. ” Objects are pursued precisely because they’re thought to be real. The self-confidence and self-esteem arising from the ability to separate the joy from the object is the cornerstone of a qualified seeker’s psychology.

Discrimination leads to dispassion,[4] “the desire to give up momentary enjoyments” a quality expressing as a healthy feeling of indifference to the triviality and impermanence of existence. Not a cold uncaring state as one might suppose, it is a feeling of spaciousness that insulates the mind from the little pinpricks of life and enables one to confront tragedies with equanimity.[5] Because curiosity is its hallmark, the dispassionate mind encourages the seeker to ask pertinent existential questions and set out patiently in search of answers. Dispassion inclines the mind toward an ironical, objective and humorous view of oneself and others.

Combined with discrimination, dispassion makes it possible for the seeker to cultivate the powers that ensure a quiet mind, one in which the knowledge “I am whole and complete actionless Awareness” can stick. These powers are described as: (1) shama, “the peaceful state achieved when the mind has detached from the sense objects after a careful consideration of their defects; (2) dama, “returning the active and perceptive organs to their respective (subtle-body) centers; (3) Uparati, “a condition in which the mind is free of the thought of external objects; and (4) samadhana (tranquillity), a state, not gained through thinking, when the mind is constantly engaged in absorbed contemplation of the Self.”[6]

But a discriminating, dispassionate, quiet mind is not enough. Shankar says, “That by which one understands the inner meaning of scripture as well as the words of the preceptor is called faith[7] by the wise. By this alone does reality become clear.”

Nor is a discriminating, dispassionate, quiet, believing mind enough. To successfully tread the path of Self knowledge two additional qualifications are noted. The first, the impatient and burning desire to release oneself from ignorance by realizing the Self,[8] provides the motivation to carry the seeker through the many difficulties encountered on the path. And secondly, Shankara says “Among the instruments and conditions necessary for liberation, devotion is supreme. A constant attempt to inquire into the Self and live up to one’s own real nature is called bhakti, single-pointed devotion.”

When these and other qualities like patience and determination are in full flower one is said to be capable of scaling the sacred heights of Self-Realization.

"Just as chopping wood is the indirect cause

and fire the direct cause of cooking,

spiritual practice is the indirect cause

and Self-knowledge the direct cause of liberation." (2)

Having concluded that happiness is not in objects, that it’s the nature of the Self, I’m free to do nothing. After all, I’m it. What can I do to get me? I am me.

Unfortunately I cannot just accept myself as a complete being. The message has yet to sink into the subconscious - which is conditioned to action. It wants me to believe that I need to “get” enlightened. And so I accept the challenge and resolve to work on my self. I take up religion, therapy or spiritual practice, whatever that means to me. I change my diet, read scripture, go to church, finance the New Age, pray and meditate.

But the resolution to change doesn’t destroy the compulsion to act egoically. I may not be chasing the objects any more but they continue to chase me. People with addictions struggle to break them, often resolving to quit once and for all, but within minutes of the vow, the floodgates open sweeping away big rocklike resolutions as if they were tiny grains of sand.

Nor does the resolution to change free one of ego. In fact, not only does the ego make the resolution, but in so far as it takes up spiritual practice without changing its attitude toward the way it lives, it only saddles itself with new expectations that reinforce its sense of limitation.

And finally since the actor, the ego, is limited, the results are also limited. An endless number of limited results does not add up to an unlimited result - uncaused joy or limitless freedom i.e. the Self.

Spiritual practice is superior to unexamined worldly activity in delivering limited happiness, however, because it slowly breaks down the wall of fear and desire separating us from the Self.[9] Done in the right spirit,[10] it cleans the Unconscious and neutralizes the negative states of mind that make life unbearable and the Self unrecognizable.

Actions don’t do themselves. In fact, action is done egolessly by the Self, but the ego thinks it’s the author. Allowing the ego to believe spiritual practice is the direct cause of liberation is inviting the fox to tend the chicken coop. The purpose of practice is to empty the Unconscious and create a clear conscious mind so Self knowledge can destroy the ego’s limiting “I am a doer/enjoyer” idea.

The spiritual practice business may seem a cruel catch 22. If action won’t free me then I’ll drop out and wait for “Grace” or the miraculous touch of a guru. But I can't get free unless my mind is purified and peaceful. And the only way to achieve a quiet mind is to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

In fact it's not a catch 22. Spiritual practice simply creates the conditions that contribute to the feast, but doesn't "cook the food." The knowledge arising from direct experience of oneself as a non-dual limitless being is the fire necessary for a proper meal, meaning a blissful life free of pain and ignorance. Hard work, spiritual or otherwise, by well-intentioned egos will not produce Realization. Why? Because...

"Action cannot remove ignorance

for they are not opposed.

Self-Knowledge removes it

as light removes darkness." (3)

Ignorance means (1) not knowing that I am a complete, limitless, blissful being and (2) thinking of oneself as incomplete, limited, and inadequate. Ignorance causes me to chase objects or perform actions I believe will complete me. Even spiritual activities won’t complete me because they are also motivated by ignorance.

No matter what I do, I can’t get something I already have. One day a man asked God for a head on this shoulders. God thought about it and said, “In spite of the fact that I’m omnipotent I’m afraid you’ll have to ask for something else. I can give you another fatter head, an additional brainless head on top of the present one, or ten tiny pointed heads facing in different directions. But I’m afraid I can’t give what you already have.”

Doing or non-doing won't wipe out ignorance because the Self is not an attainable object. Action, no matter how enthusiastic and well-intentioned, will not produce something one already has. Nothing can be done because the "object" is you. Only knowledge will reveal it.

SELF NOT KNOWN THROUGH (MOST) MEDIA

Though the Self cannot be accurately described, It can be known because It is us. Always present and accounted for, the Self is the most intimate and essential component of every experience. However, we don’t know It the way we know an idea, emotion, or sense object, aspects of outer reality known through media. Sounds, for example, require ears. Information, stimuli, pass through the ears, enter the hearing center in the mind, and are interpreted by the mind according to past experience. Whatever knowledge we have is dependent on the means through which it comes.

But the Self cannot be objectified so it cannot be known through media. Anyone can read scripture and claim Self knowledge but their knowledge of the Self would be inferential, conditioned by how the intellect interpreted certain words. If the knowledge of the Self isn't mediate, intellectual knowledge what kind is it?

EXPERIENCE VERSUS KNOWLEDGE

Some claim enlightenment can't be experienced, others that it can. If enlightenment is described as an experience, a transaction between subject and object, it is a peculiar kind of experience. Ordinary experience is a straightforward interaction between a human being and the world. If the mind, consciousness with a small "c," the subject, is a gross and limited transformation of Pure Consciousness, how will it fully know or experience Pure Consciousness, the Self in its unlimited form?[11] Just as the senses can't experience the mind, nor the material world the senses, so the mind/ego entity can't “experience” the Self.

According to spiritual science everything is Consciousness, even the material world, an effect of which Consciousness is the cause. But as Consciousness involves itself with itself as matter, its "light" apparently gets absorbed into the object and, on the physical level at least, stops shining. For example, even though light reflecting off my body falls equally on a mirror and the black wall on which it hangs, I will only see myself in the mirror. It also gets absorbed into a mind clouded with emotion and thought, making it unexperiencable for all intents and purposes. It can, however, be “experienced” in a pure mind.

The non-experience school claims the Self is the “light” illumining all experiences. Humans, they say, are two-tiered: existing on one level as a subject interacting with objects, which necessarily means experience, and on another as Consciousness, the "Light" that illumines the subject's experiences. So in scriptural literature you will find definitions of the Self as transcendent, beyond, uninvolved, and unattached to anything, living in its own hermetically sealed world, the shining world of knowledge, unaware of anything other than itself or, as the witness to outer events.

Many in the spiritual world, unaware of this fact, incorrectly believe the ego will experience enlightenment like it experiences everything else. So to save them the grief of trying to "get" a mind-blowing cosmic enlightenment experience, the knowledge people point out that enlightenment is not that type of experience. Mind-blowing blissful cosmic experiences, which come by the grace of God, not individual effort, are simply mind-blowing blissful cosmic experiences, reportable only because they are observed by the Self which as disinterestedly watches non mind-blowing unhappy mundane experiences.

That experience doesn't always lead to true knowledge is another dimension in the "experience vs. knowledge" debate. For example, from the point of view of a person standing on the equator the sun seems to rise in the east and set in the west, but at certain times of the year the same person can stand on the North Pole and experience the sun going around in a circle. Which is true? Knowledge has it that though apparently rising and setting, with reference to the earth the sun is stationary and the earth turns. Similarly, if the Self is experienced in one way at one time, as a blazing light without circumference, for example, at another as a cosmic vibration, which is true? Neither. Knowledge has it that the Self is the Awareness that illumines both experiences.[12]

Another example of the contradictory nature of experience, psychic fact, is that sometimes we experience ourselves as miserable suffering creatures and sometimes as radiantly happy beings. Which is true? Again, knowledge has it that we are miserable suffering creatures when identified with ego and happy adequate beings when identified with the Self. Still, experience can't be discounted because the experience of oneself as a complete happy being is true and corresponds to scripture,[13] even though it’s contradicted by another more common experience.

Finally, the non-experience of enlightenment has tremendous implications in terms of experience. If the knowledge/experience of the Self didn't change experience what would be the point of seeking it? The way the Self realized experience the world is radically different from those whose experience is projected by the samskaras.[14] Or, more accurately, the Self realized enjoy a completely different relationship to samskara-projected experience[15] than those who don’t know themselves to be the Self. Precisely because a limited and painful experience of life becomes unlimited and joyful upon knowledge/experience of the Self do so many seek it.

The purpose of this discussion is not to weigh in on one side or the other of a weighty spiritual argument, but to show that when talking about the Self, we should have an acute appreciation of the limitation of concepts born solely of experience. And, secondly, because concepts are necessary, we should have concepts that are as close to the truth as possible. Otherwise, false concepts about the nature of the Self, its bodies, and states may deny our inquiry its fruit.

The spiritual world is chock full of undiscriminating seekers who have formed irrational concepts about the Self on the basis of personal experience, uninformed interpretation of scripture, and the words of enlightened or so-called enlightened beings. Without comprehensive and accurate knowledge, Self realization, except in occasional cases, is impossible. In fact Self realization is rare precisely because the Self, which is the nature of everyone, is thought to be a unique experience.

One day a man called his servant saying, "Here's a shovel and bucket. Go to the cellar and empty out all the darkness." The servant did as instructed returning several hours later to report that though he had removed hundreds of bucketsful the room was still dark. "So," said the master, "any ideas?"

"Well," replied the servant, "why don't I just turn on the light?"

"The Self seems limited because of ignorance.

Destroy ignorance and the limitless Self is revealed,

like the sun when clouds pass away." (4)

The belief in my insignificance comes because I take the body-mind-sense complex to be me. I look around and see how small I am compared to the vast and complex world surrounding me. I see six billion other bodies and know I'm a dispensable nobody. My planet, like my solar system, is a fly speck, a meaningless living oddity in an apparently dead cosmos, my modest life span a trillionth of a nanosecond on the cosmic clock. Nothing remains the same; everything rushes headlong into the jaws of death. Without so much as a by your leave, a tiny virus can destroy my life. Is it any wonder I see myself as limited?

Yet some part refuses to accept limitation. As I travel along my path struggling to distinguish myself at peak moments the clouds part, the sun shines through, and my inner voice thunders, “You are adequate, limitless, and whole. You are pure love.”

Something tells me this knowledge should last forever.

My friends and family don't understand, my explanations fall on deaf ears. Undeterred, I start to meditate. One day in the stillness all boundaries dissolve and I again know freedom. I see radiance behind the eyes of people on the street and hear the universal sound everywhere.

And when the experience fades, the memory, a sacred object in my mind, keeps me striving to become something I already know I am.

How absurd! When I see the wind blowing away the clouds obscuring the sun, I can't wait for an inner wind to blow away the misconceptions keeping me in ignorance. But is there such a wind? It seems conscious effort is required. This effort is constant practice of knowledge.

Constant practice of knowledge

neutralizes ignorance

as a base neutralizes an acid,

purifying the individual self. (5)

The individual self is the body-mind-intellect-ego entity, the person we’ve been led to believe is "us." We’re certain this entity is real but it is little more than a reflection caused when Consciousness[16] shines on the bundle of experience-impressions[17] making up our minds. If our experiences have been predominately positive the mind will be peaceful and we’ll think of ourselves as happy people; if our experiences have been positive and negative in equal measure we’re likely to have a confused view of ourselves. If we’ve experienced wounding, betrayal, and abandonment, the mind will be wounded, resentful, and despairing and we’ll see ourselves as miserable beings. The ‘stains of ignorance” are the mental and emotional residue that arise out of an identification with the mind, the past. To experience and consequently know our true, immediate, self-evident nature, the mirror of the mind should be clean and undistorted.

To purify the mind we need to become mindful of Self ignorance by watching our thoughts, monitoring our feelings, and observing our speech. After examining a particular misconception discard it as “not Self.” The verse calls for “constant” practice of knowledge because Self ignorance continually manifests in our consciousness as the four following limiting concepts, major limbs on the tree of non-apprehension from which myriad minor branches grow.

These self-limiting concepts, referred to as “not Self” are:

I AM THE BODY[18]

Our most pervasive and severely limiting concept is "I am the body," the source of much grief - the immense fear of disease, old age and death, for example. Why am I not the body?

First, because it is perceivable, an object of my awareness. I see or feel it, therefore it is other than me. The Self is the perceiver.

Second, because it is insentient. If I were the body the body would know me just as I know it, but the body has no idea who I am. The Self is eternally sentient.

Third, because it is limited and not constantly present. If I'm the body, why don't I exist in the dream and deep sleep state? I do, in fact, exist in those states - but not as a physical body. Even in the dream state where I may have a body, the dream body is not the same as the waking state body. If I’m the two bodies, there are two “me’s,” an obvious impossibility. In deep sleep I have neither a gross waking nor a subtle dream body. Therefore the body isn’t me. The Self is unlimited and omnipresent.

Forth, because it changes. The Self is immutable.

Fifth, because the body has a shape. The Self is formless being.

Sixth, because the body depends on its constituent parts and the elements. The Self is partless and self-dependent.

I AM THE MIND[19]

At a dinner party the hostess looked down her nose at one of her guests who was, in her opinion, unsuitably attired. The husband, noticing that his wife was miffed, solicitously inquired,

"What's the matter dear?"

"She hurt me," sniffed the wife.

The statement "She hurt me" indicates a confusion of the "me," the Self with mind, the emotional function.

We aren’t our feelings and emotions for the same reasons we aren’t the body.

I AM THE INTELLECT

The third pernicious layer of ignorance is our identification with ideas, thoughts, and ideals. "I'm a doctor, lawyer, communist, capitalist, Christian, Republican, mother, father, gay, black, lesbian, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor, intelligent, stupid etc. are spiritually incorrect statements. The "I" is the Awareness in whose light all ideas are known. The intellect is not the Self for the reasons listed above.

I AM THE EGO

Two technical Vedantic words, jiva and ahamkara refer to different but related ego ideas. A jiva[20] or ego is the Self embodied, a living being. Plants and animals, insects and microbes, as well as humans are embodied beings. This definition says nothing about the views of these egos, what they think about themselves or the world, or how the behave. These embodied beings, you and I, are variously conceived of as “rays” or “emanations” of nameless formless Consciousness, “man cast in the image of God.” The jivas are apparently separate from Consciousness. Just as a wave is the ocean in a limited form, the jivas are said to be embodied Consciousness. Though actually the one Self they seem to be different entities owing to their association with many bodies.

Ahamkara is a compound. Aham means “I” and kara means a notion or idea. So ahamkara is the notion or idea a jiva has about itself. Egos who have no notion they’re one with the Self have a plethora of ideas about themselves. This more reasonable and helpful definition sees ego not as an inherently flawed person but as a perfect being temporarily flawed by an incorrect self-concept - the idea that it is separate from the world, from other beings, and from the Self.[21]

The ego is not the Self because it lives and dies, is a object of perception, subject to change, and limited.

The knowledge of who I am not is only useful until I wake up whereupon it dissolves into the limitlessness of my re-discovered identity.

"The world like a dream

full of attachments and aversions

seems real until the awakening." (6)

We all believe the desires, feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, fears, intuitions, opinions, memories, etc. constantly playing in our minds are real. Though temporarily existent, they are not ultimately real, i.e. substantial and enduring. Reality, the Self, exists in all periods of time, past, present, and future, before the past and after the future, and in all states of consciousness, waking, dream, and deep sleep and beyond. Reality, unlike everything we know, doesn't depend on anything else for its existence nor can it be resolved into anything else.

The inner phenomena projected on the screen of Consciousness as our personal worlds are only a flow of tendencies and short-lived subjective events devoid of lasting meaning - like a dream. In a dream everything seems real to the dreamer. Someone kisses me and I feel love. One of my thoughts in the form of an angry beast bites me and I feel pain. As soon as I wake up, however, I see that, with reference to my present state, it was all unreal.

Self knowledge is waking up from the belief that the waking, dream and deep sleep state “worlds” are real. “World” means field of experience, the experiencing subject and the experienced objects. As revealed in the following analysis,[22] that any or all of these worlds are considered reality is simply an opinion.

THE WAKER, DREAMER, AND DEEP SLEEPER

As human beings we are not one, but three experiencing entities. The first, the waking state ego (See the bottom left third of fig.1.) is Consciousness, the Self shining through the body-mind-intellect bundle experiencing the world of material objects and the world of feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, memories, etc.

Everyone primarily views him or herself as a waker. When I say “me” in common conversation, I am referring to myself as a waking state entity. The belief that I am a waker comes with the conviction that the waking state physical, emotional, and intellectual objects are real, enduring.

The waker’s consciousness is turned outward - the Self shining through the senses, mind, intellect, illumining their respective objects. Idealistic metaphysics’ statement that no world exists apart from the perceiver means the Self doesn’t see a world unless It shines through the

THE WAKER, DREAMER, AND DEEP SLEEPER

fig.1

body, mind or intellect, not that the physical world doesn’t exist. Though the material world exists independently of the waker’s perceptions it doesn’t exist apart from Consciousness, the Self.

The waker is a non-stop consumer. The Sanskrit literature describing the waker calls it “the one with thirteen mouths:” the ten senses, mind, intellect, and ego. The physical body consumes the five elements in their various permutation combinations,[23] the mind constantly chews emotion, the intellect eats ideas, and the ego devours any experience it (incorrectly) believes will make it feel whole, adequate, and happy.

The dreamer (lower right third of fig.1), Consciousness turned inward, enjoys a world similar in some respects to the waking state world and radically different in others. In the dream state The Self illumines only subtle objects. Subtle objects are dreams, the samskaras, appearing in the subtle body in pictorial form. Like the waker, the dreamer believes he or she and his or her world is real, and is equipped with dream senses to consume dream objects, a dream mind to emote and feel, a dream intellect to think dream thoughts, and a dream ego to experience the dream life. In the ancient texts the dreamer is referred to as the “shining one”,[24] a term indicating its nature as Consciousness. Dreams appear bathed in light, even though the waking senses are inactive, because the Self, Consciousness, shines through the dreamer, just as it shines through the waker.

The sleeper is called pragna or mass of consciousness. In waking and dream states, consciousness flows either outward and inward but in sleep it looses direction and becomes formless. The sleeper ego is extremely subtle, its presence only known through inference: when we return to the waking state we know we slept well, experienced the Self as limitlessness/bliss. Since the Self is the only other factor in the deep sleep state (there are no subtle or gross objects) It has to be limitlessness/bliss, the object of the sleeper’s extremely subtle ego.

The deep sleep state is free of the waking and dream egos and objects because the samskaras that projected them have become dormant, hence it is referred to as the “seed” state. When the “seeds” sprout, one becomes a waker or a dreamer and experiences the appropriate world

Experience contradicts the view that the sleep state is a void. Sanskrit literature refers to it as “the womb,” because our waking and dream worlds emerge from it. When one wakes up in the morning one’s whole life is neatly laid out, consistent with the past, to the degree that we even remember the same language spoken the day before, suggesting that previous experience had simply entered a dormant state.

These three states and egos are known to everyone and constitute the totality of our experience. An interesting question posed by this analysis is "Who am I?" If I'm the waking ego, which I’ve been totally conditioned to think I am, what happens to me when I become a sleeper? I’ve quite willingly surrendered everything essential to my idea of myself (my body, mind, intellect, and all my physical possessions) to turn into a mass of consciousness and experience limitlessness.

If I’m the sleeper ego, the blissfully limitless subtle being, then why do I sacrifice that status for all the limitations and insecurities of the waking or dream worlds? The dreamer identity is insufficient because I always sacrifice it to become a waker or a sleeper. So my status as any one ego or ego aspect is limited and my true identity open to question.

IF I'M REAL, I HAVE TO EXIST ALL THE TIME

The answer to "Who am I" is that I am not any off these egos or ego states. If I'm real, I have to exist all the time. I can't suddenly be one thing one minute and something else the next. Irrespective of my state, I experience life as a simple single complete conscious being because I exist in the waking, dream, and deep sleep states independent of the waker, dreamer and deep sleeper.

As what?

As the Self, the Awareness, witness to the three states.[25] Outside of meditation, the Self is probably easiest to recognize in the dream state because the physical senses are inactive. The dream is playing on the screen of the mind like a movie. Though physical light is absent and the eyes closed, the dream ego and the dream events are clearly illumined, a phenomenon referred to as “lucid” dreaming. The lucidity is the Self temporarily functioning as the dreamer, “the shining one.” However, identification with the dream ego and its doings prevents us from properly appreciating the dream light, the Self.

The Self is unknown in the waking state for the same reason. Preoccupied with the happenings in our worlds, we are unaware that the sense objects and our thoughts and feelings are bathed in Awareness.

In deep sleep the waking and dream egos are dissolved into their source, the dormant seeds of their past actions, so they aren’t aware of anything external. However, even though one doesn't exist as an externally or internally conscious ego in the deep sleep state one can report a good sleep because a very subtle ego remnant remains, permitting the experience of limitless and bliss.[26]

Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world

seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.” (7)