Hunting the 'I', 2: pure awareness in the waking state

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To reach turiya we have first to scrutinize the three states.

In the waking state there is perceiving, thinking,

discriminating, and choosing, liking and disliking, desire

and fear, memory and anticipating, all of them moving

round a perceiving centre 'I' and caused seemingly by

outside objects.

In dream we experience almost the same without outer

promptings, the whole picture, causes and effects,

created by our imagination.

In deep sleep there is nothing; at least we do not remember

anything. But Idendity is not wiped out, otherwise a

Johnson who went to sleep might awake as a Benson.

 

How can we bring this Idendity from deep sleep up into

the waking state? How can deep Silence survive in

turbulent noise?

 

We have to use our control of that biologically acting

mechanism, the brain. We do it more or less automatically

during the waking state.

 

Think of your own room or office. While moving around you

'see' the furniture, because you have to avoid stumbling over

it, but you do not see it consciously; the act of perceiving

is cut short after the initial stage.

 

There is music coming out of the radio or transistor.

Usually it is similar to the aforesaid while you have to do

some work; you hear it, but not consciously; you cut short

the act of listening after the first stage.

 

Somebody might tell you something. You not only hear it

but you are listening attentively to grasp the meaning.

If you are not interested, you register the news to your

memory ... or not... and go on with your task.

You have perceived the event, but it has not made an

impression on you, has not altered your quiet state of

consciousness. You cut it short after the second stage.

 

This attitude of aloofness, of detachment, has to be

kept and practised as often as possible throughout the

day.

 

Because the moment you are perceiving something and

re-acting on it, being interested or emotionally involved,

positively or negatively, you have covered up the silent,

neutral, pure, witnissing 'I' by the reactive aggressive,

personal 'I'.

 

According the sadhana of hunting the 'I' includes the

practice of attention to our own perceiving, with the

purpose of cutting it short just before the stage of

reacting sets in. In practising this kind of detachment

the seeker will soon get a state of pure awareness,

which is no longer 'perceiving'.

 

To 'perceiving' in the customary meaning of the term

belongs 'grasping', i.e., reacting; it has an object and

is an act within time and space.

Pure awareness has no object and is beyond time and

space. It is the highest wakefulness without all the other

characteristics of the waking state.

 

This is one means to carry over the absolute Silence

of deep sleep into the absolute, the pure awareness

of the waking state. Sri Ramana Maharshi named it the

sleepless sleep, the wakeful sleep or sleepwaking.

 

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Lucy Cornelssen: Hunting the 'I', p. 30-32

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