The Final Word

The three scientific perspectives discussed in this website (physics, neuroscience and quantum theory) provide us with a limited framework for understanding the mind, consciousness and awareness.  They are rooted in the materialistic view of the world.  They do not tell us anything about the nature of consciousness itself.  Jung offers us insight into our human condition; in particular our capacity to use symbols to illuminate the path.  But he ultimately resides in the dualistic view of conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche.  To find the non-dual view we need to explore the Eastern traditions which take from the finite to the infinite; the mind of appearances to the ultimate emptiness of all phenomena, the infinite mind: 

 “And just as no thought or perception within any apparently individual, finite mind ever acquires a separate status of its own but is always only a modification of the single, indivisible mind in which it arises, so no individual mind ever acquires a separate, independent status of its own within individual consciousness but is always only an individual modulation of the single, indivisible consciousness in which it appears and out of which it is made.”

Spira, Rupert.  The Nature of Consciousness:  Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter.  Sahaja, Oxford 2017. P 123.

Knowing consciousness remains a work in progress.  But understanding that awareness underpins consciousness and recognising the mind is the contents of consciousness is somehow liberating.  To let the seeker subside and just be present and allow the river to flow unimpeded by obscuration.

 “I do not negate the world.  I see it appearing in consciousness.  Which is the totality of the known in the immensity of the unknown.”

Nisagaratta, Sri Maharaj, quoted in Bergonzi, M.  Free Falling Into Unknowing, Non-Duality.  SAND 2015.