Ten of us today, first of all we watched a video showing the unknowable external world and the mind dimension. This left everybody confused and unwilling to accept that reality. My feeling is that there is no external reality at all. This non dual experience is all there is.
Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and
Religion
Science and religion often seem poles apart–and in
many ways they are. But I believe the two can, and will eventually,
be united, and their meeting point will be human consciousness.
That we are conscious beings is the most obvious fact
of our existence. Indeed, all we ever know are the thoughts, images,
and feelings arising in our consciousness. Yet as far as Western
science is concerned, there is nothing more difficult to
explain. Why should the complex processing of information in the
brain lead to an inner personal experience? Why doesn’t it all go
on in the dark, without any awareness? Why do we have any inner life
at all?
This paradox–the undeniable existence of human
consciousness, set against the absence of any satisfactory scientific
account for it–suggests that there may be something amiss with the
current scientific worldview. Most scientists assume that
consciousness emerges in some way or other from insentient matter.
But if this assumption is getting us nowhere, perhaps we should
consider an alternative worldview–one found in many metaphysical
and spiritual traditions. There, consciousness is held to be
an essential component of the cosmos, as fundamental as space,
time and matter.
Interestingly, expanding the scientific model to
include consciousness in this way does not threaten any of the
conclusions of modern science. Mathematics remains the same, as do
physics, biology, chemistry, and all our other discoveries about the
material world. What changes is our understanding of ourselves. If
consciousness is indeed fundamental, then the teachings of the
great sages and mystics begin to make new sense.
Those who have penetrated to the core of their minds
have frequently discovered a profound connection with the ground of
all being. The sense of being an individual self–that feeling of
I-ness that we all know so well but find so hard to define–turns
out to be not so unique after all. The light of consciousness that
shines in me, is the same light that shines in you–the same light
shining through a myriad of minds.
Some have expressed this inner union in the statement
“I am God.” To traditional religion, this rings of blasphemy. How
can any lowly human being claim that he or she is God, the almighty,
supreme being? To modern science, such statements are nothing more
than self-delusion. Physicists have looked out into deep space to the
edges of the universe, back into “deep time” to the beginning of
creation, and down into “deep structure” to the fundamental
constituents of matter. In each case they find no evidence for God;
nor any need for God. The Universe seems to work perfectly well
without any divine assistance.
But when mystics speak of the divine, they are not
speaking of some supernatural, supreme being who rules the workings
of the universe; they are talking of the world within. If we
want to find God, we need to look into the realm of “deep mind”–a
realm that science has yet to explore.
When it does, it may find it has embarked upon a
course that will ultimately lead it to embrace spirit and–dare we
say it–God. To the scientific establishment, rooted in a material
worldview, this is anathema. But so was the notion of the solar
system four centuries ago.
Nondual Psychotherapy and Working Through the
Separate Self Contraction
Many
therapists have awakened to similar insights as mine: they have
moved beyond the illusion of the separate self. Hence, there
has been a swelling growth of nondual therapists practicing nondual
psychotherapy in which the illusion of the separate self existence is
challenged as a pivotal part of therapy. Prendergast (2003) pointed
to transpersonal psychologists who mapped out nondual awareness as a
rarely experienced state at the pinnacle of self-realization.
However, a new generation of clinicians and teachers are
beginning to see how accessible nondual awareness is in
psychotherapeutic work with clients. Nondual awareness is at
the heart of countless pathways to enlightenment through disciplines
including Hindu Vedanta, most schools of Buddhism and Taoism,
mystical Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It refers to the
understanding and direct experience of fundamental consciousness that
underlies the apparent distinction between perceiver and perceived.
Transpersonal therapists embracing the nondual tradition can simply
rest in presence as Prendergast (2003) made clear:
They realize, at least to some degree, that they are
not limited to being a “therapist” (although they may function in
that role), or even a “person.” Their locus of identity is either
resting in or moving toward unconditioned awareness, or Presence. The
result is the emergence of a natural simplicity, transparency,
clarity, and warm acceptance of whatever arises within themselves and
their clients. Since they increasingly do not take themselves as some
“thing,” they also do not take their clients as objects separate
from themselves. They understand that there is no separate mirror and
someone mirrored; there is only mirroring. (p. 3)
Prendergast (2003) further observed that embracing
nondual awareness adds a depth dimension to existing schools of
psychology. Psychotherapy typically involves working within the
horizontal dimension; the evolution of phenomenal life in time and
space. Nondual awareness refers to what is formless and exists
outside of time and space thereby adding a vertical dimension. In
addition, Prendergast (2003) observed that it is not so much that
nondual therapists integrate being but instead are absorbed by it,
and thus presence is enhanced, the effects of which can be
contagious, “When we are in the Presence of an individual who has
awakened from the dream of “me”, we can sense an
unpretentiousness, lucidity, transparency, joy, and ease of being”
