A technique is a method or tool to achieve a particular goal. The nature of any technique depends on your goal: some will find it useful and insightful while others will not find it useful at all. There is no “one-size-fits-all” technique. Hence, each seeker has to learn, discover, experiment, modify and persevere to find a suitable technique. Techniques are means, not ends, useful when they work and useless when they don’t. We use a boat to cross a rive and leave it on the other shore when we arrive.
Each technique leads to a change in understanding, a ‘cognitive shift’ so different techniques are used at different stages as one grows on one’s journey. But we need to always keep the goal in mind. What is the goal? It is the direct, immediate recognition of and abiding as Being shining as Consciousness. It is my inherent but overlooked nature: Pure Presence of Being, unconditioned Awareness, complete Fulfilment, permanent Peace, absolute Happiness. This forgetting or overlooking…let’s say ignoring…is call Maya or Isvara in Vedanta.
So we get what we already have by gaining knowledge, which removes ignorance. The gain of knowledge is a cognitive shift in which “That”, which is always and already present, but thought to be remote, is revealed to be “This,” my inherent always present unborn nature, ordinary awareness.
Cognitive Shifts
The spiritual path is a series of gradual shift or insights. In primary school, we play with water, learn to be careful with it and how to swim in it. In secondary school, we learn water is made of two gases, a cognitive shift based on knowledge. But when we drink it, we do not experience it as two gases; we still experience a liquid which slakes our thirst. There is a difference between knowledge and experience.
At university, we gain another level of understanding; knowledge about its atomic structure and the changes in its atomic configuration enabling it to exist as solid, liquid and vapour. But when we drink it, we do not experience atoms flowing in the mouth; we still experience it as a life giving fluid. At the post-graduate level, we gain knowledge of water at the quantum level, another cognitive shift. For each level of cognitive shift, different methods are used to gain and confirm the results of the respective shift.
It is the same with Self-recognition. The methodology used to progressively grow in understanding of our true Self is:
- Karma yoga, the technique of doing action in a certain spirit to purify the mind.
- Upasana yoga, meditation techniques to concentrate and focus the mind.
- Jnana yoga, techniques to gain knowledge to overcome ignorance. Jnana Yoga, which is knowledge yoga, is composed of three stages.
(a) listening (sravana)
(b) reflecting or removing doubts (manana)
(c) assmiliating, meaning living from the non-dual platform (nididyasana)
Techniques (1) and (2) get us to the ‘starting line,’which is to say that they integrate the thinking and the feeling functions, the head and heart, and make the mind ready to progress further. The three stages of jnana yoga lead us to recognize and abide in our true nature, existence shining as consciousness.
Knowledge Yoga (jnana yoga)
“When I am born I think I have only one body and I identity with it.”
Duality
- The first cognitive shift is understanding that there is more than one body. Yes I have a physical body, but I also have an energy body, a subtle body and a causal body, a sub or unconscious mind. These four bodies make up my personality, its qualities and limitations.
- Next we understand the fifth factor, Consciousness, and how it is different from the mind-body person. The mind-body persona is matter, which is inert, changes and undergoes six modifications from birth to death. Consciousness is diametrically opposite matter. The personality is a “who.” Consciousness, the true Self, is a “what.“
- Then we learn to identify as Consciousness, “I am that Consciousness; I am not the mind-body person.” I pervade and enliven the mind-body, causing it seem to be sentient and alive so it can think, speak and act. This knowledge produces a profound 180-degree change, a complete reversal in my definition of myself, from personhood to impersonal Consciousness. I reinforce this understanding with Vedantic meditation, asserting my identity from moment to moment and the continued study of Vedantic texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads.
- Next I recognise the Consciousness that I am pervades and enlivens all life-forms. I see that you are not actually different from me. At this level of understanding I still see two principles, Consciousness and matter. I define myself as Consciousness, the ever-present witness as matter.
Seeming Duality – The Real and the Apparent
- Then I recognise that all forms, animate and inanimate, are merely appearances or manifestations of Consciousness. This means that the inherent nature of everything, the substance or substrate of all names and forms, is Consciousness. Only consciousness is present. The inanimate elements, the sentient beings and the powers that create them is really ever-present unborn Consciousness. It is is-ness, am-ness, beingness. In the twilight a coiled rope may appear as a snake. Humans give names corresponding to forms to distinguish them so we can communicate about them, but we take the names and forms to be real and get lost in them.
Non-Duality
- It is almost over when we come to the understanding that there are not actually two principles. There is only one principle without a second…me. That Consciousness, I am, here and now. It is the reality as which I live life with a mind-body instrument. There is nothing else but Me, Consciousness, one seamless whole, present everywhere, omnipresent, all-pervading. What an expanded vision, an understanding of ourselves, of myself!!!
- When there is no doubt about my nature as non-dual ever-free always satisfied existence shining as consciousness, the teachings that got me there, the means, dissolve into me as water merges into water, light merges into light. I live without breathing.
What about the Teaching?
But wait! There’s more. I am not whole because wholeness implies parts. I am not satisfied because satisfaction implies dissatisfaction. I am not complete because completeness implies incompleteness. I am not present because present implies absence. I am not free because freedom implies bondage. I will not think I have reached the goal because the end implies a means. I am not a knower because knowledge implies ignorance. I am not immortal because Immortality implies mortality.
I will never say it because it is self-evident,
but if asked I speak the truth when I only
say “I am” and fall silent.
These “shifts,” realizations, insights and recognitions are the process that leads to the truth of myself. They are a deepening of my understanding of the relationless relationship between the seeming parts of myself and my essence or “Heart.” To use a physical simile, the recognition matures from the head, through the heart into the bones: “I feel it in my bones”!!
This process is ongoing unconsciously even when the conscious mind is engaged in activities of daily life. Commit yourself completely to Vedanta and you will progress step by step until there are no steps. The Bhagavad Gita guarantees it.
