From Dreaming to Absolute Consciousness
Paul Muller-Ortega on the Siva Sutras
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
The Hindu cosmographic form, the Sri Yantra
A yantra is a Hindu geometric and cosmographic form, a construct depicting the character of the cosmos, of which the Sri Yantra is one example.
Other versions of the Sri Yantra could have other colours or none, but the structure is always the same.
The Sri Yantra may be seen as evoking the relationship between the various aspects of human consciousness,
the expression of ultimate, divine consciousness and the relationship between human and ultimate consciousness.
The Sri Yantra is particularly closely aligned with Srividya, a school of Hinduism intimately affiliated with the school of Kashmir Saivism to which the Siva Sutras discussed below belong.
I would like to share my fascination with an exquisite piece of writing by Paul Muller-Ortega on relationships between dreaming and various states of consciousness.
What is the scope of possibilities represented by the mysterious experience of dreams?
These run from jumbled mixing of experience to insights into the future, among the more conventional range of reports of dreams.
Muller-Ortega presents another perspective on dreaming, an unconventional one, in which, through dreaming, one may enter into an appreciation of ultimate reality, the underlying character of existence.
Here is how he puts it-
"For most of us, to dream is to partake of the evanescent, to float nightly in images of unreality, shards of memory, bizarre and frightening episodes that may yield without warning to beautiful and alluring scenes.
...
The ordinary dreamer withdraws from the outer world coiled into the oblivion of sleep. In the dream, the dreamer is completely self-enclosed and thus capable of creating whole, if temporary, worlds of experience."
He goes on to state that-
"The dreamer's posture of self enclosure precisely parallels the self reflexive stance of the absolute consciousness".
Self reflexivity is a sensitivity to one's own consciousness, used in this case with reference to the idea of a consciousness that underlies existence.
Muller-Ortega narrates the story of the Indian sage Vasugupta, 9th century C.E., who is described as experiencing in his dream an understanding of the manner in which this absolute consciousness sees itself.
Vasugupta presents this insight in a sequence of aphorisms known as the Siva Sutras or theAphorisms of Siva because they describe the absolute consciousness in terms of the Hindu God, Shiva.
A quality of Asian thought I find remarkable is the movement between anthropomorphic depiction and conceptual abstraction.
This is demonstrated in the description of the deity Shiva in the Siva Sutras in terms of sublime and paradoxical ideas about consciousness and cosmic development.
Muller -Ortega presents one of these in his description of the first of the aphorisms which he states may be translated as Consciousness- Self.
I love this.
Focus your attention for on your awareness.
Observe your awareness of yourself, of your mind, of your body and of the world beyond your body.
Close your eyes and focus on your awareness of yourself.
To me, this awareness of myself is like a throbbing unseen flame that makes possible awareness of everything else, an appreciation I gained from reading Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India in his presentation of the ideas of the Indian philosopher and mystic Ramana Maharshi and practising Maharshi's exercise of concentrating on one's self awareness.
May the Siva Sutras be described as working out implications of this focus on consciousness in terms of the cosmos?
May the Sutras may be understood as demonstrating a conjunction between human and cosmic being in terms of consciousness?
Particularly marvellous about them is their magnificent linguistic compression and puzzling crypticness even as the language is dazzling in its force.
Muller-Ortega is responding, in the foreword, to Mark Dyczkowsi's marvellous translation of and commentary on the Siva Sutras, The Aphorisms of Siva : The Siva Sutra with Bhaskara's Commentary, the Varttika. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1992.ix-xii.
Also posted on
Kashmir Shaivism blog
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment