Prime Energy - Source Awareness

Above and below spins the orb of luminosity in a perennial field of awareness; today's recipe comes from Patanjali's Yoga-sutra. Patanjali (150 BCE) synthesized a "yogic summary code" on the basis of the essence of extant traditions coupled by direct contemplative experience. He also understood the cognitive and existential roles of Isvara and Pranava (alias "God" and "Word of God"), two prime roots commonly emphasized in religious traditions featuring faith, prayer and worship as the practice for deliverance.

The following passages are translated from the first chapter ("Samadhi-pada") of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, a discourse on the nature and sequences of Samadhi (luminous union of awareness) that leads to the complete resolution and pristine unification of fragmented human awareness.

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atha yogānuśāsanam ||1||

yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ ||2||

tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe ’vasthānam ||3||

"Then, instructions on connection (yoga). Yoga is the cessation of fluctuating awareness. There, pure awareness is understood in its perennial state."

śraddhā-vīrya-smṛti-samādhi-prajñā-pūrvaka itareṣām ||20||

tīvra-saṁvegānām āsannaḥ ||21||

mṛdu-madhyādhi-mātratvāt tato’pi viśeṣaḥ ||22||

"For some, realization is preceded by faith, vigor, mindfulness, mental focus and wisdom. Its nearness is proportionate to the ardor of spirit; specifically, as mild, medium or of the greatest measure."

īśvara-praṇidhānād vā ||23||

kleśa-karma-vipākāśayair aparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣa-viśeṣa īśvaraḥ ||24||

tatra niratiśayaṁ sarvajñatva-bījam ||25||

sa pūrveṣām api guruḥ kālenānavacchedāt ||26||

"Or by fixation on Master God (Isvara). God is a specific kind of sentience untouched by afflictions or residual imprints of action. In that, it is an incomparable seed of omniscience. Unhindered by time, it was also the teacher of the ancients."

tasya vācakaḥ praṇavaḥ ||27||

taj-japas tad-artha-bhāvanam ||28||

tataḥ pratyak-cetanādhigamo’py antarāyābhāvaś ca ||29||

"Its utterance is the living sound (Pranava). By its mutterance, its purpose is understood. Then, awareness becomes inbound and obstacles disappear."

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For the Ancients of East, the living sound was the syllable Oṁ (AUM: ॐ), the voice first heard in perennial emptiness; and it was the sound of the breath of God ("prana") that evolved. In accordance with their desires and methodologies, they sought Prime Awareness in diverse intelligible forms and domains, and ultimately beyond the worlds of names and forms, following the inner breath and voice of God.

For the Ancients of West, this self-same living sound echoed at the dawn of emergence; God contemplated over the void, and Amen ("so be it") — the creation came forth and expanded. "These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation." (Rev 3:14) Amen is a Word from God's heart; therefore say /ɑːˈmɛn/ to feel the breath of God and Word of truth in your heart; /eɪˈmɛn/ is a half-hearted twist of sounds.

For the Moderns of East and West, much of the universality of these ancient teachings are lost in a jungle of obsessive particularity. Since the falling of the Tower of Babel, since the dawn of the Age of Quarrel, mankind has struggled to find unity among their manifold concepts and languages. Religious disagreements are generally a result of superficiality and narrowness of perception. Out of the shadows and into the substance — dig in and expand!

The Banishment of the Watch-Maker

"You can't talk about karma without God, for every law needs a law-maker!" Or so I was told by someone who had read my earlier article discussing universal and Buddhist concepts of karma. Do we really need to have an intelligent designer for each and every minuscule aspect of existence, or does the world turn every bit as well without a cosmic architect?

Despite my sincerest efforts, it just didn't add up in the end.

Foundational Fallacy

It is quite meaningless for someone to just say that every law or principle requires a law-maker. A hypothesis employing deductive analogy is far from a conclusive standard of evidence. Analogy meaning the hypothesis that the principles of our human world would be identical to those of any second dimension, of which we may deduce that just as every law of human world is made by a human maker, so every principle in existence requires an intelligent designer.

Does this make sense? Is it logical? Of that, we have little evidence. Our experiences in the human world may be manifold, but the human world is not an archetype from which to derive and reconstruct any and all higher dimensions of existence. After all, in the human world all things come to an end, and grief is inherent in existence, but the supposed god and his domain are invariably in breach of these fundamental principles.

It is really rather naive to assume that our form of existence would be the only extant form of conscious life, thence creating the myth of how exceptionally rare a coincidence it is that we should exist as we do. This ill-assumed exceptionality again gives rise to theories of intelligent design, and culminate in concluding that the great intelligent designer must be akin in principle to those now considering themselves the created. Ladies and gentlemen, the anthropomorphic creator god is now seated on his throne.

Had god had a sense of humor, two plus two would equal five.

Self-evident Principles

When a man opens his palm holding an apple, the apple falls. Do you need a law-maker for that? The intrinsic properties of the variables bring about a certain conjoint effect by their own natures. Gravity exists in a situation where objects with mass attract each other. Where these conditions don't exist, the said phenomenom does not occur. We happen to be in a place where objects with mass attract each other, hence the apple invariably falls to the ground. Should we shift our location to outer space, for example, the apple would no longer fall owing to different coefficients.

You don't need a law-maker to decide whether 2+2=4 or not. The intrinsic values of two identical variables add up to a combined result of twice their value, automatically and without need for divine design or intervention. Everything is the way it is in the human world because the variables happen to be right for a particular variety of existence. In other conditions, the variables would either create a foundation for a different variety of existence, subject to the effects of the interacting variables, or none at all if their current synergy would be too weak to effect such, in which case they would remain latent pending a change in surrounding effectors.

Moreover, causes and effects require no will of their own to interact. Any given effect is the only possible outcome of the exact interacting causes in the exact environment of variables. Theoretically, knowledge of each intricate aspect contributing to a situation would give a passive observer, who knows the potentials of each aspect, the ability to foresee any given event or series of events with perfect accuracy. Advanced capacity in recognizing variables and patterns is what the ancients called omniscience, while omnipotence was the derived capability for intricate manipulation of variables to effect the desired outcome.

Why would you possibly need a watch-maker, a compassionate watcher, a passionate interventionist or a dutiful maintenance man for any of the above to function as it already does?

The beginningless dance of infinite co-efficent factors

Beginningless Redundance of Creator

The concept of an original law-maker-cum-creator is every bit as flawed in the light of Vedanta as it is before plain logic. The Brahma-sutra states that existence is anadi or beginningless. Beginningless by its very definition indicates that there has never been a dawn of existence where principles of interaction would have first been established, rendering the necessity for a god or a law-maker entirely redundant. If the wheel of existence has been turning without a beginning, the concept of an original creator becomes a paradox by its very definition.

The principle of causality, then, is a beginningless field of coefficient exchange requiring no designer or supreme intelligent coordinator for its functioning. Everything is in a constant state of flux, each factor in motion and shaping the other, two causes giving birth to a new effect that naturally follows. The momentum of each factor escalates its contacted surroundings, giving rise to infinite new causal chains, even as the sum total of energy remains constant. I call it the dance of the universe, as also the great weaving of cosmic fields. If there must be a god, let him be the symmetric caleidoscope of the universe.

Continued: The God Who Created the God Who Created the God »