Stages Of Knowledge For Becoming Aware

The brain is ever endeavouring to learn, comprehend, understand. It is being flooded with information that it processes at astonishing speed. Processing data implies prioritising the data and assigning meaning to it. Interpretation of data requires a highly developed intellect. Data is ubiquitous. Right from the radio waves emitted by celestial bodies from a few million light years away, to the feel of our clothing against our bodies, we are being bombarded by data. Intelligence is the skill and speed with which to scan incoming data, compare it with the existing database, discard the unimportant part and also store the useful new data for future reference. Apples fell even before Newton discovered gravity, but Newton processed the same data witnessed by others in a different way. He discovered a force which till then was not known. This realisation was abstract intelligence at a sublime level, where his conclusion was not a mere deduction, or just analysis. Analysis would be a synthesis or jugglery of already known facts but where the summation leads to a ‘greater than’ phenomenon - that is where awareness transcends intellect, analysis and reasoning. Science is essentially related to a spatio-temporal grid. It is seemingly restrained by the confines of cause and effect. Any theory has to be reinforced by experimental verification and then ratified by adding the attributes of repeatability and predictability, mediated by measurable parameters, which again are slaves of tangibles governed by the senses. Sense organs can navigate the intellect only within the ‘waters’ of the tangible. Once it touches the shores of the intangible the sense organs are powerless. The realms of the intangible may be delved into only by awareness, which is supra-sensory and out of the spatio-temporal Cartesian grid. The reason why this aspect of knowledge is termed as “realisation” is that realisation implies knowledge which is already there but which we are unaware of. The knowledge of the form shifts focus to awareness. Awareness is independent of subject-object bifurcation. Reasoning, deduction and investigation are meaningless tools which only obfuscate. The knowledge of the manifest is a stepping stone to enhancing awareness. By knowing what you are not, you get to know what you are. If you cannot fathom the manifest, then you cannot even dream of the unmanifest. The journey to realisation involves travelling over a diverse terrain. Each distinct terrain requires a commensurate vehicle. The vehicle of reason used to traverse the terra firma of tangibility needs to be abandoned when one has to take to the aerial journey of enhanced awareness. For this journey one has to travel very light, against the gravity of reason, logic and sensory perception into the realm of consciousness. The only navigation system being the guidance of the guru. Most perceive the guru to be in a particular form and person. But the guru is a tatva or principle. It could manifest in any form. It only requires the disciple to be in a state of conditioning before it reveals itself. Consciousness can be conditioned and adulterated by desires, vasanas. But awareness supersedes all and is the dwelling or source of the supreme being. This awareness is bliss, joy bereft of any duality, form and shape. In this state all derivatives of consciousness like space, time, form and appearance melt into just “I am”.

(The writer is a consultant neurosurgeon.) drdeepakranade@gmail.com