The Wonder of Awareness.

We have found that thoughts and sensations constitute the person. But does the person constitute the whole of the 'I'? Can we separate self from the ideas, the perceptions and the memories which it holds? We know that there is an 'I' of some sort for it is our own thoughts that come into being and not another's. A thought is always somebody's thought! It has a personal background. Also, the expression "I" is unique inasmuch as it is the only term in every human language which can not be literally used to stand for a class or group. Thus the meaning of terms 'horse' and 'house' can refer to any or all of a million horses or houses in existence whereas the meaning of 'I' must always be referred to a single individual alone. He who speaks to another may legitimately speak of himself as 1' but the person who is being addressed may not also speak of the first man in the same way. Hence whoever uses this term does not ordinarily understand by it what another person using it will understand.
 

Although the "I" changes from instant to instant we feel somehow that it knows itself indirectly through its thoughts, acts and experiences, and that something remains constant and stationary through all these changes. If in one sense, there is a continuity between what we once were and what we now are, then this persistent core must be a deeply buried mental one. What is this mysterious core? Can the "I" know itself directly?
 

Hume the metaphysician burrowed beneath his flux of multitudinous sensations in the hope of finding a definite and constant self lurking there but reported failure. He found only his own thoughts, varying from moment to moment, but no thing worth calling self. How could he have succeeded? For he overlooked that which made his burrowing possible, that out of which the very birth of his sensations became possible and upon whose hidden existence he unconsciously formed the thought of a self’s possible existence. The fact that he could examine his own thoughts showed that there was something in him which was itself deeper than them, for it could not simultaneously be both the owner of the thoughts and the thoughts themselves, both the examiner and that which was examined. What is this 'something'? It is, it must be a still deeper 'I' which although usually ignored, must matter most of all. And this, when traced through the conventional confusions and unconscious processes which habitually surround it, is nothing else than that intangible principle of awareness itself whose own existence makes the existence of all the multiple items of awareness itself possible.
 

Those who would treat this principle as a sort of froth formed on the surface of matter, who would define it in terms of the physical brain alone and who would arrogate to a little fragment of bone-shielded flesh the whole marvel of consciousness, imagination, reason, memory and judgment, need to be reminded of Bacon's warning that Nature is to be interrogated and not interpreted. "Hic Deficit Orbis" ("Here Ends the World") was the inscription which ancient geographers put on their maps at the Pillars of Hercules, situated at the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. "Here Ends the Mind," says the modern materialist, pointing a cocksure finger at his brain.

Let him explain then those rare but authenticated cases in the annals of surgery where large portions of the brain have been cut out by operation or crushed to pulp by wounding or eaten up by disease—portions containing those nervous centers which, every physiological student is taught, give birth to or control the psychological functions of thought, sensation and memory—and yet the patients have continued to think, feel and remember like normal human beings. Let him also explain why, when the marvellous structure of the eye of a corpse continues to make retinal pictures of the scene before it and when consequently on his materialistic theory there ought to be a corresponding excitation of the brain, there is surely no awareness of the scene at all?
 

Begins discussion of mentality disengaged from the body idea, detached reasoning or disembodied reasoning.

With what faculty does man dream of distant continents at night and with what faculty does he picture them in imagination by day? Is it not with the mind and does this not show that it can embrace the most distant places? At what point of the universe dare he say that any object, however distant, is outside his mind? Just because he is capable of thinking of the entire universe, of embracing the most distant star within its operation of knowing, we are entitled to say that mind is everywhere. It is like space of which nobody can say where it ends. Space is indeed the form which mind takes. But this is the same as saying that mind is formless. Mind occupies no definite position in space for the simple reason that space itself is its own production. Although all the thoughts which have existed in our mind and which still lie there latently are beyond counting, we know that we can use the phrase 'in our mind' only in a metaphorical sense. If the thoughts had ever been there in a spatial sense they would have needed a very-large place to accommodate them! What does this imply? There is no length and breadth for a thought and consequently no real length and breadth for the mind holding it. Whatever we do theoretically for the purpose of intellectual analysis and communication, we cannot actually divide the mind from the thoughts which it holds. All are one. Thoughts are only phases of consciousness. Consciousness is only a phase of mind. Mind is outside the limitation of any particular place. It is not really flesh-tied, but our belief about it is.
 

Now the fact that such a double nature can exist during dream should warn us that it may exist also during wakefulness and that the waking self may be no less a mental construction than the dreaming one; that there may be a spectator behind it of whom— because of our temporary identification with this waking man, tbere is no consciousness; and that this relation may likewise be a concealed one.

We learnt from our studies in dream and sleep that these do not exhaust the whole existence of mind. They are not its only possible states. Deep sleep despite its unconsciousness hints at the existence of a still deeper mental layer within the 'I' but beneath the personality. The mystery of self can consequently yield up its furthermost secret only when man also becomes conscious of what he is in this deeper part of his being.

Causal Analysis

When we think of the wakeful world, it is not seized as a whole because, as our object of present attention, it is separated from ourself and placed right against us in thought. When we think of the dream world, it is not as the waking self contemplating the dream self, but as the mind divested of its personality altogether. Thus an understanding of the simple experience denoted by the words, "I dreamt," raises us to the level of a witness and clear above that of the personality. The waking self sets itself up as the criterion of existence and therefore speaks and thinks as though it has itself dreamt and slept. But that which brought both dream and sleep about is entirely beyond its control and consciousness. If the personal self as ordinarily known in waking did not originate dream and sleep then another 'mind' must have done so and this second 'mind' must be related to it somehow. This is the deeper mind we seek, which itself neither dreaming nor waking nor sleeping, watches the production of these phenomena in its offspring, the person.

The absence of thoughts during sleep does not prove the absence of the thinker. On the contrary, it has already been noted that the acknowledgment of their absence indicates the presence of an observing element which is aware of their arising and disappearing. It is unfortunate, of course, that we are not aware of this observational activity until after it has occurred, which means that we know it only by remembrance and therefore at second hand. But sleep, mind, consciousness and the person being what they are, this could not have been otherwise. The wakeful state is simply the natural result of mind projecting a mere fraction of itself as the personal consciousness with the fullest force. The dream state is the result of the same mind projecting the person with partial force. The sleep state is the result of mind withdrawing the attenuated dream consciousness into itself and closing the personal aperture altogether. Then the individual being loses its awareness. But the mind, possessing its own peculiar kind of awareness, does not. The familiar 'I' ceases to exist with its compulsory return to the mind because it cannot absorb what is beyond itself and must instead submit to being absorbed. The onset of sleep is a sign of such complete absorption as the onset of dream is a sign of its half-absorption.

This loss of personal consciousness during sleep is inevitable because the person itself is a nucleus of thought-structures temporarily lit into life along with the world-thought but both thoughts dissolve when their informing principle of attentive awareness is withdrawn. Nevertheless whether the person be asleep or awake, the mind itself does not change with the changing states of its surface being because it is the pure principle which renders possible all those countless acts of awareness that constitute the experience of the other states. After the onset of sleep the wakeful or dream self merges back into this innermost principle and consequently is no longer present to be conscious of anything at all. From its limited standpoint we are quite correct in describing sleep as an unconscious state. But from the broader standpoint of the principle of mind which observes it, we would be more correct in describing it as a state in which there exists a kind of consciousness which is frankly incomprehensible because beyond our finite limits. But we ought not therefore to deny the existence of this consciousness.
 

The present examination of the wakeful self has shown us that it points beyond itself to a principle of awareness which makes possible all conscious experience—and consequently the personal 'I' along with it—but which is itself hidden deep beneath the threshold of consciousness. Why do we miss noting the existence of this principle of awareness? Firstly, because it is a universal one, it cannot be exprienced in the same familiar way in which we experience particular thing' because' what is limited cannot get behind what is unlimited. Metaphysically we may obtain the intellectual and total conviction that it is there but actually we may not ordinarily become conscious of the principle which makes our own consciousness possible. Secondly, because it is itself the principle behind that consciousness, it cannot turn round to look at itself. We are compelled to take for granted that it exists but being itself the subject it cannot also be at the same time an object of our consciousness. This hidden observer eludes our most eagle-eyed introspection because it is totally beyond the introspecting consciousness. We are normally unaware of it not because it does not exist but because it transcends the familiar 'I' himself.

Awareness is not only above and beyond the relative phenomenal experience but is the cause, the principle and reality of relative waking experience an reflective thought. So we operate in a dim and broken apart reflection of a greater reality. Just as waking consciousness can be analyzed into the moment by moment activity of the karmic seeds, so our interior world of thought appears to be continuous and gives a false sense of a continuous "I". To take a stand in the principle which is behind them both is to take these two characteristics, momentariness and continuity and fuse or resolve and transcend them in the Now, the eternal present, through which the activity of phenomena consciousness must pass in order to be known.

When we believe that we are conscious of ourself we are really conscious of a heavy disguise of the powerful complex of thoughts constituting the conscious 'I' which the unknown self puts on and takes off. This deeper self is of course there beneath the disguise but we never know it in its undisguised state. Just as we do not see an invisible gas in the chemical laboratory but can detect its presence by smelling its odour, so we are ignorant of the hidden observer but can detect its presence by noting that something j makes it possible for us to be conscious of the fluctuating states I of the surface 'I. Thinking, being itself a part of the field of our observation, unfortunately cannot break through into the "I" consciousness of the observer which transcends that field. The consciousness which knows cannot itself be included in what is known. It cannot itself be known except as the conscious idea of it, which would be like knowing a man only through a photograph of him. For there can be no knowledge of the comings and goings of the 'I' except by some witness that could be less limited than itself, which could precede it and be its final owner. The 'I' is indeed a symbol which stands for something immeasurably wider than itself.
 

Again, the personal self is gradually changing through the years but the mental principle which informs it and makes it possible for us to be aware of the changing conscious and bodily states, is not affected by this process and remains ever the same. This principle is the relatively permanent element within us and the ultimate basis of all our kaleidoscopic state of. consciousness. To become aware of the arising and disappearing of all those thoughts which make up the totality of the waking self, their witness ~ must be relatively changeless for it is only the striking contrast ' between them and itself which could possibly make it aware of such transience. The constant succession of sensations, the innumerable changes of perception and experience could themselves be evident only to some observer whose own mental permanence and unity must be presupposed or he could not notice the facts of succession and change. The consciousness possessed by the - hidden observer cannot be a fitful one. Being the very principle of awareness, able at any time to shine through its projections, the wakeful or dream selves, it must therefore be an unbroken and unfailing one.