Question:

Didi, Advaita teaches that the body-mind-person operates per a pre-determined script. Standing as awareness, ingrained behavior patterns (with spouse and teenage son) have slowly changed. If the change in behavior patterns had been pre-scripted, standing as awareness would need to be pre-scripted. So, how is standing as awareness or identifying with body-mind a choice? I am so puzzled by this paradox. Please help resolve.

Answer:

Is everything predetermined, including Spiritual Seeing?

All happenings are projected through mental forces of cravings and aversions reinforced with due attention. Craving = ‘I want it. Aversion = ‘I do not want it’. At the time of projection, an intense desire becomes the force itself, armed by the power of attention. The higher the intensity of desire, the more tangible the manifestation. The locus of the projection, as well as the perception of the projected, is identical.

One who projects the event himself perceives the event after a time-lapse. He is the determiner as well as the perceiver. When one takes the stand of the doer, he is the determiner of the change. When one takes the stand of the experiencer, he is the perceiver of the change. Taking the stand of Awareness is a natural happening, even for those enamored by doership & experiencership, although seldom recognized. And when coincidentally recognized by the ignorant, it is brushed aside as an illusion.

Stand of Awareness can only be mastered after spiritual Shravana, Manana, Nidhidhyasa [Comprehension, Contemplation, Assimilation]. The Direct Seeing that ‘I am the creator, ‘ ‘I am the creation,’ and ‘I am the perceiver of the creation,’ is non-negotiable. Acknowledging that the ‘brush asides’ were wrongly labeled as illusions is vital. The realization of the sudden stand of Awareness being a spontaneous return of the impersonal expansion to its natural state is essential. This is Stage One of ‘Truth Recognition’.

As one experiments and explores ‘Abiding as the Awareness’, his understanding of the ‘Self’ expands from the person to the impersonal totality. This impersonal totality consists of the person, the person’s ‘doing’, the person’s ‘experiencing’, and the spontaneous return to the ‘impersonal expansive state’.

Until the recognition of the impersonal expansion remains unsteady, it is given the label of Witness Consciousness. That is a stepping stone for the seeker who keeps shuttling between ‘assuming the stand of the person on account of habit’ and ‘recognizing the natural state of impersonal expansion’. When the complete realization sets in, the impersonal expansion is perceived as made of nothingness. But until complete realization is attained, the stepping stone is essential. Another understanding at this level is of Chidakasha, the collective Witness Consciousness. This enables the recognition that there are multiple peepholes in this collective Consciousness through which the Waking, Dreaming, and Sleep Worlds are experienced. This stepping stone recognition satiates the seekers’ curiosity and enables doubt-free movement on the path.

The stepping stone concepts are not fully true because the Witness Consciousness is a form of illusion, too. It is merely a concession made to enable the sincere seeker to keep chugging on the path from the Dvaitam level of understanding of a person to the Advaitam level of impersonal expansiveness. The Witness is like the boat one takes to cross the river. Once the shore arrives, one must exit the boat.

When the seeker attains Stage Two of ‘Truth Recognition’, he sees that there are no two [Advaitam]. There is no question of the ‘Other’. There is no question of a ‘Creation’. There is no question of an ‘I’ & ‘You’. Thus, there remains nothing like multiple witness consciousnesses. There is only SatChidAnanda, the totality.

• • The totality has the power to pretend to be an illusory part [body-mind-person] or another illusory part [Witness Consciousness].
  • The Totality has the power to rest in its true natural state of fullness.
  • The totality is beyond the ideas of free will and pre-script. It has the power to be both as well as none.

Above all, the totality projects only when there is a perceiver. Hence, the idea of a pre-script applies when there is a perceiver and not when there is none. Even recent scientific theories of Quantum mechanics speak about the same in Schrodinger’s equation and Double Slit experiment – When there is no perceiver, there is no solid projection.