the flow of life

I can imagine life as a flow from future through the present to the past. The immediate future is, within an instant, the past. In the process I hardly notice the present. But the present is actually noticed immediately after it is passed to the past invariably as the memory of the last moment. This is so because of the lack of attention. If attention, the focused awareness, is on the present, then things are different. Then the present is a continuous stream.

My awareness is like a magnetic head of a tape recorder or the laser head of a CD player that detects, becomes aware of what is instantly passing before it, as the sound track or video track passes from the future to the past

pure untouched awareness

When no thought, no image, or emotion is present in the mind, is it empty? Is it a vacuum? One may not find it so. Awareness is never felt in pure form. Something is always attached to it. Either it is from the past in the form of memory or from the present in the form of sense impressions. They are seen stuck to the awareness. Awareness is never without an object to be aware of. Can it exist alone without an object, or a sense experience? I do wonder.
Without memory there is no past, and if there is no past, no future can be projected or imagined. Only the present in the form of immediate sense impressions can exist. Who feels the impressions coming through the senses? It is the awareness that feels them. But without the sense impressions or memory, what is awareness? What is it’s nature? Pure awareness without anything to be aware of? Can a live mass of flesh, a blob, with no sense organs whatsoever have awareness? If it can have, that must be pure awareness. That would then also mean that the whole mass of live blob is awareness. Such an awareness will be pure untouched awareness without any impression of past, present or future attached to it. Pure life is thus ‘Pure Awareness’. With no life to apprehend non-life, no non-life can exist.
Therefore, all of us, body, mind, intelligence, universe, everything can be only a big mass of awareness. And, awareness is a movement, a pulsation, a sort of kinetic energy.

what is God and Who is God

What exactly is God? The power, the force, the energy, the intelligence behind this life and existence including the existence itself personified? Well, then it cannot be denied because the life is there before us, before me, to perceive. I am there, and therefore the power that makes it possible for me to exist must be there. When this power is conceived in a certain particular form and name it becomes a particular God.
This power apparently has no craving to continue in existence or to be reborn again and again because it seems to be just there in perpetuity. The need to continue in some form of existence even after death is not that of this god, this power or that of the awareness in Man, me. The need is that of the bundle of memory that has lived so far, and wants to continue.
So, if anything, any subtle residue exists after death, it must be the memory. But the memory of what? All the memory from birth to death? Or a selected portion only? Can memory exist without a body, without the material body? Suppose it does exist by some hitherto unknown phenomenon, what about the memory of any life before birth? Will that also be tagged on along with the memory of the present life? It should be then the memory accumulated from the beginning. And what is the beginning? A primary cell, an atom, a quark, or a boson etc. But that cannot be ‘me’ by any standard or by even the wildest form of fantasy!
The whole of my thought process is now reduced to absurdity, and attracts outright rejection. Thoughts like this can never solve the problem, or find out the truth. Then what can be done? Nothing! Shut up! And leave the God alone. Better surrender to the ‘non-existent’ Reality!
I DON”T KNOW; AND I CANNOT KNOW: THEREFORE I SURRENDER!

focussed awareness and attention

Awareness, I feel within me like a vast spread of sea, calm and placid at one time, and turbulent, restless at other times. Waves, ripples and froth at the surface are part and parcel. But attention usually is on one particular ripple, a particular wave, or a particular group of ripples. Attention is definitely not the same as awareness. It is a part but not the same. Focused awareness is attention, not the entire awareness focused, but a part of the awareness is focused on a ripple or wave. When the attention is not focused it is just part of awareness, disinterested awareness. Attention remains on a wave, say, on an event only so long as there is interest. Otherwise, the ever alert attention moves on from one wave, one ripple, i. e, one event, one thought to the other to settle for a while on each like a restless butterfly.
Awareness is vast like the limitless expanse of the sky. In that space lies everything of the present, past and future. Yet it looks empty because it is infinite. Nothing can exist without awareness, and for the same reason everything is awareness. Attention is awareness, a part of that vast space which seem to concentrate itself to form attention and flit around looking at itself and other parts of the space by focusing. Awareness is just there without moving, uninterested; but attention is forming and moving from one area of awareness to the other, probing, impatient, restless.

The 'See'er

Who sees the world and the universe? ‘I’ see the universe through my eyes? Eye is an equipment, I know. Am ‘I’ who sees through this equipment also not an equipment consisting of faculties of perception, understanding and apprehension? Yes, I am also an equipment, a system of machinery for perception, by somebody, some entity behind it. Who or what is that somebody? My awareness? It is my awareness that illumines my whole system consisting of the senses, ‘I’ and all. And this awareness does not seem to be confined or limited to my body. Sometimes, and sometimes only suddenly I feel that the awareness enclosed inside my body is separated from it and is spread everywhere. Then I am aware of everything around at the same time and the awareness does not appear to be imprisoned in my body, but released to the vast open space outside. Awareness has this quality of not being confined anywhere. The body, shape, voice, thought etc. are mere memory, and lie somewhere away from awareness. Nothing seems to be behind or beyond that awareness which is spread everywhere.
Will it remain so even when my body is no more? Or will that awareness also disappear? If it will disappear, then the present freedom from body is only mind’s play. Is there a way to find out? Or will it become self evident before the end?

drinks, dullness and Truth

I am having ‘a small’. Small as you know, is a term in these parts to refer to a small doze of alcohol. I am having it all alone without company. Is it all right or bad? I don’t know. They say it is always bad, ‘injurious to health’. But doctors are divided. Authoritative medical opinion says that up to forty ml a day is actually good for old people to help circulation. The tonics, Arishtams in Ayurveda system of Medicines, always contain alcohol. But spiritual practitioners, - not spirit practitioners, of course, - say, no, it is never alright unless one is after certain undesirable ‘tantric powers’. I am not after any ‘power’. I just want to know the Truth, the secret behind this life on earth. And drinking is supposed to be bad for finding the truth.
Why? Because drinking dulls the mind. Does it? May not, if it is within limits. Some drugs like ‘Soma’ is supposed make mind more alert and happy. I might not have been able to write this if the drink made my mind dull. The great poet Exhuthacchan would not have been able to write the epic Ramayana in Malayalam unless he had his quota of Toddy. Mind has to be, for sure, alert to think, to know, and to apprehend truth. Has one drink dulled my mind, and reduced my capacity to feel? Perhaps it has. May be while in it I cannot know.
But I do feel fully aware. If one drink can take away one’s mind, or dull it, what place it has in apprehending Truth? Truth cannot be dependant on a transient, impermanent, and fickle mind. So, logically the mind can go to hell, and still the truth can prevail! The awareness is still there without the nuisance of the mind.
Then who apprehends or realizes the Truth? If ‘I’ am not there, and my ego is not there, if the mind is not there, then who feels the truth? The awareness? That means when one realizes, the awareness is aware of the awareness; that is all. What is that to me? Why should I care a hoot? When the feeling of ‘I’ is not there, it is as good as I am dead. Then realization will have no meaning. The whole thing is a futile exercise.
So, ‘I’ have to be there, to feel, to apprehend, to realize the Truth when the time for it comes. Eliminating the ‘I’, or the fictitious ego is therefore utter nonsense. If I have to realize, I have to be there. It is a paradox, an enigma. Any answer?
For the drunken question here, are you asking me find an answer ‘off drinks’?