continuum of consciousness
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~
namasté
As I read the śiva sūtra-s again (and again) a greater appreciation of the expansion of consciousness grows in my understanding.
It seems to me when many talk of consciousness and its higher states, one tends to look at it as higher or lower. The notion of layers that may look like this:
______________
______________
______________
One goes from one ~state~ to another. This is stimulated by people's ideas of going in-and-out of various levels of awareness; some may use the term transcend, and this suggests a downward movement, no different then ~submerging~ into more refined levels of consciousness.
Yet the more I consider this and connect the dots of what I have been taught and studied ( and on occasion experienced), it seems much more linear in nature looking more like this:
>_______________________________>
It is my POV and appreciation that consciousness runs from differentiated to undifferentiated. That is, from the differences humans find in the world around them to that of a universality of undifferentiated wholeness that a realized-being would experience. One could say it is from fragmented consciousness to unfragmented.
What are the fragments ? That of diversity of wake, dream and sleep states to an unfragmented state that is considered śivavyāpti.
This word śivavyāpti is śiva + vyāpti. Śiva is that wholeness of consciousness. We have a wonderful definition for śiva based upon the root śī defined as 'in whom all things lie'; vyāpti is defined as pervasion, omnipresence , ubiquity, full, inseparable.
So,śivavyāpti is the pervasion of which all thing lie within the Being of śiva. Even differentiated/fragmented consciousness of the human condition - there is no place it is not. Hence this line of consciousness runs from fragmented >_____________________>unfragmented, a continuum.
What can we undersand about this model if we take to be a reasonable proximity to the truth ? It suggests that along the way of this line there are various experiences of awareness one may have as consciousness moves ( expands, unfolds) to this level śivavyāpti.
For this we will take up a few ideas in the next post...
You are welcomed to offer your opinion on this model and perhaps compare and contrast different views of thought if you wish.
praṇām
Last edited by yajvan; 15 May 2012 at 10:45 PM.
यतस्त्वं शिवसमोऽसि
yatastvaṁ śivasamo'si
because you are identical with śiva
_
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