Advaya - Our Identity

This liminal space is about the on-going evolution of our identity or mind-set (Skt. advaya).  Endeavouring to know the habitual tendencies; acculturation, that has been laid down over a lifetime, or several lifetimes, is just the starting point. 

At SAND Conference in Umbria Italy in July, 2019 I listened to a number of speakers who seemed to capture the impact of membership of our tribe, or tribes, on the development of a personal worldview.  Whilst we might feel that we have a singular and established identify, it is always in transition.

In a fascinating presentation at SAND 2019, Professor Mauro Bergonzi (who taught Religion and Philosophy of India at the Università degli Studi di Napoli for 30 years); “The Bottomless Ground of our Identity” made the following observations:

1. The whole must be cut into pieces to be known.  This is a process without beginning or end.

2. The idea that identity is fixed is flawed.  The mind and body are like a river in constant flow.

3. The concept of consciousness and the contents of consciousness are separate.  Consciousness is a light that shines by itself.  It exists prior to thinking.

4. What we think of as our personality is the contents of consciousness.

5. It is impossible to observe change without a static point to observe from.

6. Identity forms as a selective process of integrating some experiences and crystallizing them into ourselves and not others.

7. When we withdraw our attention from emotions they become a dance of energy.  The ego disappears.

8. The energy that spins the universe is the same energy that powers ourselves.

9. We feel incomplete in and of ourselves and seek completeness.  But we can’t become whole without passing through the substrate.

Bergonzi, M.  The Bottomless Ground of Our Identity.  SAND Italy 2019.

As we approach the substrate something amazing things begin to occur.  Those structures that we thought of as fixed begins to seem less rigid.  Everything pushes back and we become aware only of awareness itself.  And what happens when we let awareness itself go.  We pass through the substrate into the unknown (Skt:  avijnata).