How do you teach cultural things re form and understanding it’s a manifestation of being aware?
A child doesn’t know it’s an infant born into a world as one homogeneous mass and cannot distinguish between its body and its mother’s body. Like a fish in the ocean. After awhile the child begins to separate itself out – the I-thought arises and associates with its body as me entity, beginning of ego. Pre-egoic state (where the ego separates itself from experience) = beginning of NETI-NETI process. = “I’M NOT THIS, I’M NOT THAT.” I am consciousness. A child does this: I’m not this and I’m not that. I thought I was my mother’s body but I’m not. I am this body. Ego begins. Then the consciousness REMAINS STUCK AT THAT LEVEL the rest of the person’s life. That process continues until finally the person says I’m not my thoughts either. I’m not my thoughts. They come and go like my mother comes and goes, my sensations come and go like father.
What cannot be removed? What is with me always? Only BEING AWARE. A further step is the recognition of the ever-present unlimited nature of awareness. Post-egoic realization. If one separates from all things and says I am pure awareness = ENLIGHTENMENT = I-awareness with the body-mind-world. With yoga meditations, coming together with body-mind-world being merged in experience. To the infant and the animal consciousness has completely lost itself to the sea of undifferentiated experience. That’s the pre-egoic state that infants and animals are in. The ego develops by associating itself with the body-mind. Then it further develops itself but when it goes back to look at the things of the body-mind-world it finds they’re made of consciousness. Experience is merged with consciousness in the post-egoic state and consciousness is merged with experience in the pre-egoic state. THIS EXPLAINS THE MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE NEO-ADVAITA TEACHINGS.
THEY MISUNDERSTAND THE PRE-EGOIC STATE FOR THE POST EGOIC STATE. THEY DON’T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE TWO. THEY’RE DESCRIBING A PRE-EGOIC STATE WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS IS MERGED IN EXPERIENCE. IT’S QUITE DIFFERENT. EXPERIENCE IS MERGED IN CONSCIOUSNESS.