Completeness and Fullness of the Matrix of Perception (Part 1)

9th October 2007, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

 

During these meetings together, we could give a few more touches to the canvas that, one might say, we are painting together. I have told you that there are several languages depending on the level of consciousness of the audience, and there are three levels of advaita; some time ago we spoke about them. This division takes its roots from India, it is rather ancient. I want to start from that point, where we finished last time, at the Inlakesh Festival, with those who stayed for Alaken. This is not a conceptual level; this is the level of your consciousness that allows speaking about some things so that it weren’t a formality for you. I’d like to start from that level, however, during the time that you were living your life you could “fall asleep”, and you might not still be in the place where we finished. In this way seminars and intensive workshops help to quickly drive up energy, intensity, to some level and then start some topic. These topics came up in my seminars in other cities, because I was looking over them myself.

 

When you are identified with something, doesn’t matter with what, at a certain level of consciousness this identification evokes a feeling of being bound. And here two aspects have importance – identification with something, and the level of self-conscience. Because, for example, an animal doesn’t feel itself bound; it is identified with the body, but it is not self-conscious enough to feel psychological problems in this. As regards ego, it does exist in an animal as self-identity of oneself as some object. But it doesn’t have such clarity of self-conscience that could lead to psychological conflict. The same thing with little children, they don’t feel themselves bound. If a child evolves in a normal way, then starting from some moment his/her self-conscience reaches the level where he/she begins to be aware of one’s boundness caused by identification. In the beginning, one has identification with the body, but no need to seek for something, to free oneself from limitedness. Some people don’t have this need until the end of their life. The limits they live in are natural for them or rather they put up with them. And only those people who reach a higher degree of refinement cannot tolerate this. From this moment, the question about freedom arises. Then the one starts to seek for freedom and he finds writings or masters who tell him or her: “Freedom is in the absence of identification”. There appears a concept of freedom. How does it appear? As consciousness about myself being bound and disagreement to this. And here is an intermediate stage of psychological evolution – between animals and seekers. Animal is not aware of itself being bound; a person when normally developing can be aware of oneself being bound, but he can put up with this, and say “yes, I am bound, but everyone lives like this”. The next level is feeling that “I don’t agree to this, I don’t want it to be like this”. There is created a conception of freedom as a reaction to the feeling of being bound and disagreement to it. There starts the search for freedom and a person gets this information – you are bound because you are identified. Then a question arises – identified with what? With anything, with any feeling, emotion, ideology, energy. Master says: “Boundness is in identification, freedom is in non-identification”. Identification is connected with an object; we cannot be identified with something that we don’t see or feel. So freedom is in not being identified with a feeling of any kind.

 

For a person who is unable not to be identified, “I” is something he’s identified with, and God or Truth or Freedom – is “not I”. There appears a division: I – not I.

 

Master says: “Be a Seer.  You don’t feel that you are a Seer now, but you are a Seer and there is your freedom.”  And we begin to try to be seeing, observing and to not identify with whatsoever.

 

Let us assume that you managed to do this and you are a Seer, and everything you see is not you. Ii.e. you are free from what you see. What you see doesn’t impact you as a Seer. Sometimes it is called realization or enlightenment. But is it really so? If you are a Seer who sees something and is free from what he sees, then your freedom is relative. Now I am the Seer and what I see is not me. Duality remains. Even the freedom of a Seer is relative. When I used to be a body, freedom was “not I”. Now I am a Seer, and the body is “not I”. “I – not I” remained. Here is no advaita.

 

If we consider movement, it is always relative, i.e. something is moving in relation to another thing. If there is no another thing, in relation to which I move, I cannot be aware of it. If there is no another, in relation to whom I move, I cannot be conscious of the movement. So there is duality in movement.

 

Freedom also requires duality, i.e. I am free from something, from the body, from thoughts, from feelings. The feeling of boundness requires duality, but the feeling of freedom requires duality as well. In such a way - I am bound with something and free from something. This builds a subtle form of conflict, a conflict of division – “there is something that is not I”. If you become more refined you feel that there is no completeness here, something is incomplete in this position of an observer, there is still some form of duality.

 

Consequently, which step is to be taken from this Seer?  The first thing to understand is that before one takes a step out of it, there should be taken a step into it. One cannot jump over these steps. Now I want to speak about what goes further, “after” the Seer. Few people speak about this, because human doesn’t know oneself as Seer. As we have already looked over the whole picture, except for this part, I can admit that sometimes you know yourself as Seer.

 

There comes a question – how can we transcend the limits of this relativity? At the stage of identification, the method that works is “I am not the body”,.  Iit is needed in order to pull your attention from identification with the object into the subjective component, into the Seer. At some moment, you get into the Seer. But later on, this method becomes a kind of a trap, because you see something as being not you. When you get into the Seer, you can connect the Seer and what is seen, you understand that what you see is not different from you, that it is you also. But this understanding is of completely another level. At the moment when you know that what you see is you, you also know yourself as a Seer. If you are what you see and the one who sees, then the concepts of Your boundness and limitedness cannot emerge, and the concept of freedom either, because there is no another one. At this moment, limitedness comes to an end and freedom comes to an end, and there remains only thusness. You cannot say “I am free”, but in the same way you cannot say “I am bound”, because for the feeling of boundness and freedom there is needed something that is not you. If you are the one, how can you say I am bound or free? Therefore you have to understand that the method of denying works only until you identify with the form, and are not conscious of the Observer. As soon as you have been conscious of the Observer there comes the opposite – I am the body, the mind, and all the rest. Thus you turn back this loop in a positive way. After this – where is boundness and where is freedom? At this moment you are transcendent towards these two concepts. This is the step of closing the loop, the loop of trinity: the Seer, the seen and the process of observing can occur only when you have realized the Seer, when you have truly lived him, and without losing him, you have again reunited with the universe perceived by you. And later, when this cycle of reunion has taken place, you will internally, intuitively, know that this appearance – the seer, the seen and the process of observance – is born by the single substance, by the single force. That is why I want to say that the Witness by itself is only a stage; otherwise the words of Buddhas “nothing ever happened, there is no freedom, no boundness” aren’t clear at once.. They become clear when you move through all this inner algorithm, first from the form into Being, into “I am”, then into I, then from I into the Being, and from the Being to the form. This is what Buddha says – form is emptiness, emptiness is form. You understand that the Seer as emptiness and the form that is reflected in this emptiness are the one event. Matrix becomes united at this moment and you are the trinity – Seer, the seen and the process of observing. If you have internally done this, you can no more be bound, because there is no other. Otherwise, the other for the Seer is the world, and the other for the world is the Seer. This is being experienced as a form of perception.

 

There are several levels of traps for Consciousness:

1) identification with form, the feeling of being bound;

2) identification with the Being, with “I am”, with Light or the sattvic form of the mind, the Creator;  

   

3) identification with the Seer.

 

All these levels carry a subtle form of division. In the attitude of a person who is identified with the body there is a feeling of boundness, fatalism, predestination. If you enter into the light component then there appears the element of creativity, the ability of light to respond, to create. This is called the Creator or God. It is a feeling that you can produce something from yourself, something not from the past, but from the Present. I.e., this is the constituent of creation. This thing also can be identified with; it can be lived as you.

 

Later on, if you get into the Seer, there appears the feeling that you don’t intervene, you do nothing. In the perception of a person identified with the body, there also exists a feeling of doing nothing, but this is a feeling of a mechanism having no influence on anything, he is only an instrument, and everything is predetermined in his life. You also do nothing in the Witness, but you are free there, free in doing nothing. Between the man and the Witness there’s the energy of Light or Being that creates the element of creation, an ability to create, to make an action that is not connected with the predetermination of the matter and potentially able to produce something, unlike the Witness that produces nothing, but only reflects what is happening. You have to pass these stages as your experience.

 

The first thing, as Gurdgiev said, realize that you are robots, that yourself you can do nothing. He was asked: “Does one have the free will?”; he answered, “Yes, but only that one who has attained a definite level of his I”. This is the level of Light or the Creator. The Universe is created by the Creator, but if you are identified with the Creator, you can say “I” from his part. And you experience this as your ability to act, to create. You don’t become almighty, certainly, because the instrument where this realization happened has got limited capabilities. And if this body doesn’t possess some certain siddhas, then the Conscience is not able to produce something special through it. In order for the miracles to happen, the body should be built in a certain way. But the manifestation of creative abilities is possible in any body; this is the possibility to create not from the past, which gives an ecstatic feeling. This refers to the question if we can do something here. It depends on who you identify yourself with. From the point of the Seer you do nothing, he reflects, that’s all. The body can do nothing either, because it is conditioned by the past and its actions are predetermined. “Can” appears only in the layer of being, in the Creator’s layer. But it is possible to hang on there, you can identify with it and not be aware of the Seer. Then you have your own sorrows, they are called the sorrows of creation. They are unavoidable because you are not whole; you are identified with a certain fragment of life. This force requires to be expressed and if you cannot express it in a full way and at the same time you are identified with this energy, there appear sorrows. These people can’t relax in that they don’t manage to express something, because they don’t know their Seer. And one can “relax” only in the Seer who observes all this. But when you get into the Seer you get into the state of impartiality or indifference, because what you see is not you. And this indifference won’t be conceptual, but actual, your energy will be flowing in a different way. For example, it is seen that a mechanical person has his energy flowing in a certain way. We may compare with animals: the simpler is the species, the more repeatable are the movements. If the creative energy starts flowing, it is noticeable in a person. In the same way the energy emerging from the identification with the Seer is the energy having certain quality. But there is no integrity either, although there is a feeling of freedom. And such energy manifestation looks like unharmonious in this three-dimensional world, where the body lives. One of the variants of identification with the Seer is some yogis who are sitting immovable in the caves for many years. The energy is blocked in such bodies, because there is a negation “I am not this”. When you negate something this makes the flow of prana interrupted. For instance, if you negate God, you don’t experience him, you interrupt the flow of attention to this event. It is the same here – first you were moving through the method “I am not this”, but then it becomes a trap for you. It helps not to be identified with what is bound, but what is bound is also I. It is necessary to understand that what is relative is also I, there is no another. And this is a certain state, I want you to feel this. Many Masters stop in the Seer in their dialogs. But negation of all that you see doesn’t allow you to finish the loop, and you get into the trap of the Seer.

 

Ramana Maharshi told that there used to be several levels of Understanding in India. In yoga, energy is moved up, gradually reaches sahasrara and there comes enlightenment. But Ramana told that this is not enlightenment. Enlightenment is when this energy comes back to the heart. What does this mean? If we consider chakras in kundalini-yoga, adjnya is the body of the Creator or Light, and sahasrara is connected with the Seer. So, when the energy comes down into the heart, the Seer and the seen are connected in a single act of perception. And Ramana Maharshi says that it is yet not enlightenment when the energy is in sahasrara, the energy should go down into the heart. Heart for him meant “Self” . These cycles are not conceptual, and I want that you, being conscious of the Seer, could go out from Him into Being, and from Being into form, into understanding that this is also you. And then you cannot say “I am free”. This “I am free” language is not the language of an enlightened. A common person says ”I am bound”, the one identified with the Seer says “I am free”. It is his feeling, but “I am free” is a comparative language. Provided this loop is closed by a person, he won’t call himself free. That is why, when Papaji was asked what freedom is, he responded “Freedom is slavery”. This kind of freedom is a refined form of slavery.

 

I would like you to internally look through this moment. In fact, you can look through it only by passing from one dimension to another; this is the shift of the point of self-consciousness – from the form to the Light, from the Light to the Emptiness, from the Emptiness to the Light, from the Light to the form. You are all three components at a time: you are in service as the body, you don’t have the suffrage, you do what the God does through you. But you are this God that does something. That’s why one-level language doesn’t work here. Advaita says that you are not the doer. And who is doing everything here then? There is the force of life that is doing, but actually you are this force… Why dividing this? The question of doer or not doer ends up here also. Everything ends up in the collapse of the opposite concepts: doer - not doer, freedom-limitedness, etc. Because being the body you are not a doer, being the Seer you are also not a doer, but there is a space of luminousness, of the Being that is creating everything here. And this is also you. That is why the question “am I doing or not?” becomes absurdity. Both doing and not doing at the same time. The same way with freedom. In the end all this comes to a stop when there appears comprehension that all these concepts require division into “me and the other”.

 

What do we arrive at in this approach of unifying of all three components? We arrive at that there is nothing to be done. But this “nothing to be done” is important when you are simultaneously aware of the trinity nature. Attention is such an appearance that could take out one fragment and be aware of it. For instance, when examining the body with your attention you could put it down into the belly; feel the belly, then feel the arms etc. The body is always one, but I am aware of some fragment. With attention you can take out the fragment of what is the form, then the fragment of what is the Being. For example when we practice Tai Chi Chuan you feel the arm, but don’t feel the leg, and when you do feel the leg you don’t feel the arm, and something you are not able to feel at all. It’s the same here, using attention you can feel different levels, for example the Being. And right away here you become to be the Creator and feel “I create”. As soon as you go into the form, you instantly understand that you are a machine. You found yourself in that space and you understand that here everything is structured inside you. The moment you transfer attention to the Seer, you understand, that you aren’t involved in anything, that you are absolutely free, you don’t change. You can see the world like this. And you can feel all the components. For example, when you are really aware of the arms, of the legs, then finally at some point you understand that you are aware of the whole body, of its integrity. And you understand this not only with the head, you experience this. This is the symbolism of WUSHU (Tai Chi) – you start experiencing that the body is an entire system, rather that just knowing that the arms and the legs are joined together. But first you practice the arm movements, then  the leg movements, as you don’t feel the body as a whole.

 

The same is here: first you are aware of your mechanistic nature, then you are aware of the Being, the ability to be a Creator. Then you are aware of the witnessing component, that is free. And then, when you have truly are aware of, not conceptually, you unite all into one single life phenomenon. When you unify this, any existential anxiety finishes, anxiety about “me and God”, “me and Truth”, “me and Freedom”. All other kinds of anxiety may stay. No Master can take your individual psychoemotional component from you. Master can destroy your psychological feeling of separation: me and the other, me and God, me and Truth. For the body there will stay “the other”, for the energy there are always other energy forms, but there won’t be existential “other”.

 

What does this give to you? No religious system whatever could attract you by various Gods. You won’t be able to be involved neither into the ideology of dissociation of life, nor into the anxiety about a necessity to get enlightened. No one could make you doubt as regards your understanding. And this makes you complete existential tranquility, you can’t be manipulated. You can travel to some exotic country simply as a tourist, and not to worship some sacred place or object.

 

But if your understanding is only conceptual, then there could be always introduced an agent of doubt into the conception.

 

Question: - But one has to arrive at this completeness, to learn not to be identified and be in the Seer.

 

Sumiran: - Yes, this is why I say you have to feel these steps. When you start experiencing the creative part of yourself it has its own beauty, you are capable of an action that is vertical. Krishnamurti used to speak about this kind of action. If we throw away this intermediate layer of the Being that is able to respond, to create, and leave only the Seer and the body, then there will be a weird picture. The moment of creativity in life disappears, because the body is a machine, and the Seer is a mirror. And if I only know the machine and the mirror in myself, then I loose the energy of the flow of creation, the ability to create something from nothing, from myself. From what does the universe in Light appear? It creates an image out of itself. Sometimes they say that the universe is the image of God. Light can create something through this body. And this is very important to understand. This brings an element of creativity and beauty into life.

 

We used to come up to the Seer, but later on from the Seer one has to come into the matter as into oneself. But when entering the matter as myself I don’t feel myself being bound by the matter, because simultaneously I am aware of the Seer. I know the body as myself; at the same time I am aware that the Seer is also me. And the one who acts through the body is also me. That is why the body cannot create the feeling of dramatization, fatalism for me, because I carry in myself the Creator and the Witness constituents and being aware of the predetermination of the body, I am conscious of my freedom in the Seer and my creativity in Being. And this gives the complete matrix of experiencing life. Three components in Consciousness are activated at once.

 

And further on all these three components are brought to a single potency that you cannot experience as it is not experiencable. But if simultaneously you live this trinity then automatically you get aware that it is the manifestation of the single force that is called the Absolute. This is a direct insight.

 

When considering this in Christianic terms, then the trinity – the Seer, the seen and the process of observation – are the God-Father, God-Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Absolute is called the Single God or Nameless God. This God is manifested as the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christian mystics say that this God has no name, but as he has to be somehow pointed at, we are going to call this Nameless God. It is That that manifests itself through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

This universe cannot exist another way, not a single universe can exist beyond this trinity – the Seer is needed, the object is needed, the attention is needed. This trinity is the basis for any form of life, and the basis for the trinity itself is the foundation that manifests through this trinity. One of the symbols of this is three elephants on a turtle.

 

You goal is stage by stage to reveal this as a phenomenon in yourself. To experience each stage and unite them into a single matrix. 

 

Q.: - Sumiran, Ramana Maharshi said “contemplate your Self, there is nothing but Self”. Doesn’t this happen by itself – when the man is aware of this Self, everything around becomes Self. Then one doesn’t have to always tell that this is also me. It isn’t natural.

 

S.: -Do you think I always repeat to myself what I am telling you here? If you see yourself as something separate from the other, then all this is being told. When you have completed everything into a single matrix, you say nothing to yourself, and no one says anything to you.

 

Q.: - You sort it out this way – that we need to tell ourselves that I am this, I am this and then that I am That. It is not needed when a man became conscious of the Self.

 

S.: - When consciousness happens, it is not needed then. 

 

Q.: - And how can I get into Self? I ask myself “Who am I?”, there comes a thought, I ask “Whose thought is it?”, “my thought”…

 

S.: - Ramana gave this technique. There are three stages: “I am not this”, “Who am I?”, “I am Him”.

 

Q.: - When the mind starts thinking “who am I?”, it comes to this center and burns up there.

 

S.: - Yes.

 

Q.: - And where is this center? What prevents the mind from seeing this center?

 

S.: - The idea that this is the center prevents to see the center. The center of what?

 

Q.: - Perhaps, the heart? They have to give it some name anyway.

 

S.: - Yes, the mind has to call this somehow. That is why first you have to tell him “shut up”.

 

Q.: - But it doesn’t want to shut up.

 

S.: - If it doesn’t want to shut up, then go seek the center, and when you are tired of seeking it, the mind becomes silent spontaneously. They who cannot get their mind shut up at once, first seek the center for a long time. When the mind understands that the center cannot be found, it becomes silent.

 

Q.: - But Ramana said that there is a center.

 

S.: - At first Ramana said “be silent”. When further questions followed… What do further questions mean? That people didn’t follow the recommendation. Then he said to seek the center. If you want to do something then seek the center.

 

Q.: - I want this attitude that you speak about. 

 

S.: - Then be silent. You have to understand that this attitude is not a conception, ideology, place, experience etc.

 

Q.: - So what is left?

 

S.: - That is left. Look, I am content with what is left and you aren’t. This is the difference. Do you think that I am feeling something special? No. I am completely content with what is. Existentially I am content with it.

 

Not psycho-emotionally. Psycho-emotionally I’d love to go somewhere to a sunny place, to Thailand maybe. But I’m not going to search God there. Neither this Self, why looking for it, if it is here. You simply make up an idea that what you see is not Self. Because sometimes you feel psycho-physical discomfort. But whatever you feel psycho-physically – this is Self.

 

Q: - But you are speaking about the way of attitude to the world. But I don’t have my attitude changed so far. It remained the same. Nothing happened.

 

S.: - This is why first become aware of the feeling of Being in yourself, then become aware of the Witness in yourself. Then unite this. And then this happens. That is you say, why doing it step by step if there is Self?

 

Q.: - No, I am speaking about that you say that when a man finds himself in the Witness, he then needs to get aware that all the rest is also I.

 

S.: - Yes, he needs to. When Ramana is speaking about Self, he is speaking about this force that is manifested in trinity. Witness is not Self, it is one of the aspects in which Self is manifested. And the universe that is seen by the Witness is another aspect of Self. That’s why here is nothing but Self. And if there is nothing but Self, then what to seek here? Who is seeking and what? If the comprehension of this is complete, there comes a halt: it is impossible to search for anything; there is no more psychological freedom or boundness. And the body goes on living its fate. What is the body? It is incorrect to say that the body is me, or that the body is not me – it’s also incorrect. This is a fragment of me. Because the language “me - not me” no longer works. It is strange to proclaim that the universe is me, and the body isn’t, or that the body is me and the universe is not me, it is God. As if God is everywhere except for the body. They say, God is everything - then include yourself in this “everything” and relax. I want you to totally relax. Buddha is beyond everything, it is an indefinable being.

 

What is this evolutionary pyramid created for? So the life through it could become aware of itself. In the Master it says – I know myself. As a rule, Self cannot become conscious of oneself in animals. But a human has a potential. When That that has created all this becomes conscious of oneself in a human, this is an ecstasy. And the whole psycho-physiology of a human celebrates this.

Completeness and Fullness of the Matrix of Perception (Part 2)