Richard Rose writes in his booklet on meditation:
“The ultimate aim of meditation is to go within. Going within means to find Reality by finding the Real part of ourselves. It does not mean merely playing around inside the head with random observations which we have discussed as being important to understanding the natural mechanism of man’s mind.”
“When we begin to meditate in the attempt to go within we should simply observe our self. We cannot really do it simply. It is a very profound task or attempt.”
He also writes in that booklet of the levels of meditation, of which “Going Within” is the 4th level. The instruction given is: “Employ whatever necessary.”
What does it mean to “go within”?
It’s not a place, and you don’t really “go” anywhere. It refers to the direction of one’s attention.
What is it that you do to “go within”?
Life is basically an experience. Experience is a continuous stream. We can categorize our experience as “inner” and “outer.” Inner experience refers to the totality of our individual reaction to outer experience — and on another level to inner experience itself in a spiraling, even “tail-chasing” process so the line between inner and outer is blurred — and ultimately may prove to be a false distinction, i.e. all experience is external….
Going within means a shift in the object of seeing or listening, of one’s attention from the perceptions and events swirling around us to the seeing or listening to our reactions to life’s experiences.
What determines those reactions?
We engage ceaselessly in evaluating whether our sense of self is affirmed or diminished. The former is pleasure. The latter is pain.
Which reaction is dominant for you? What is its source?
What fills your attention most of the time?
I believe that fear of death develops in concert with the development of identity, for the simple reason that intellectually we know that the body is mortal and therefore cannot be the vehicle that will ensure survival of that identity. The escape mechanism is to disassociate from the body, place oneself anterior to it and take possession of it, as it were. But since there is no hard proof, there is this core knowledge of the lie, and our lives become an incessant, doomed-to-fail effort at proving the independent existence of that identity by attempting to magnify it through experience.
What is the motivation for shifting your attention away from external experience to look at inner experience? Or said another way, what motivates you to examine what is occupying your attention?
The primary motivation is whenever experience diminishes the sense of self. It is not really motivation since the shift is a reaction. If looking at the internal experience of reaction is painful, the automatic reaction is to shift the attention away either by engaging in rationalizing analysis or by engaging in alternative mental or physical activity.
What result do you expect from “going within” as you conceive it?
Consciousness versus Awareness: definitions
The dictionary defines the words “consciousness” and “awareness” as synonyms, and each word is used in the definition for the other. The definition for both words depends on there being an object to which consciousness or awareness applies. This implies that there must be a subject who possesses the attribute of consciousness. One is either conscious of something or not. In this sense the words are verbs and denote action by an individual being — even if that action is itself either automatic — or an unconscious action!
Students of the esoteric have this concept that “God” or the “Source” is pure “awareness.” They conceive this awareness to be a possession or attribute of God’s, just as they perceive it to be an attribute or possession of their own self — or one that can be acquired. Realization is conceived as adding god-like awareness or consciousness to this same personal self. This all stems from an egocentric point of reference that places their ego anterior to everything else. Seekers of enlightenment have this idea that they will become god-like, or one with god, or attain this god-like awareness, and so there is the presumption of personal immortality and eternal ego consciousness.
Let’s see how this would apply to God, Supreme Being or Transcendental Awareness:
What is the object of this consciousness or awareness? What is God aware of?
If God’s awareness is without object then, how is God alive according to our concept of being? Does God know that he’s alive?
Does the knowledge of “being alive” require an identity? Would you be alive without your identity? — Without your body? Without your mind? Without — YOU!?
If God is all-knowing, what does he think about?
If God is beyond all thought, what occupies his attention?
If God is the object of his own attention, how long is God’s attention span?
If God is beyond time and exists eternally, then how could God not be eternally bored with himself?
If you believe in your own immortality, or even the possibility, what will the object of your attention be for eternity?
Can you imagine yourself, your identity with all its history, as the object of your consciousness for eternity — with no ability to alter that history? Is that realization? — Or the definition of Hell?
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I distinguish between the two words consciousness and awareness.
For me, consciousness is personal and temporary; awareness is impersonal and timeless. Consciousness is the experience of individuality, and awareness is that which powers it. The “experience of individuality” is motion on a background of immobility — a whisper that cannot alter or penetrate the silence. Consciousness is a point. Consciousness is the point at which the un-manifested intersects the manifested. Awareness is boundless.
Awareness is consciousness without an object, unless you wish to say that awareness is its own object.
How then does an individual become aware of that which is anterior to that individual? The question seems a contradiction — indeed a Koan!
The short answer is by “abandoning the ego-centric position” — another paradox. The verb abandon implies action by the ego, which action itself would reinforce the supremacy of the ego’s position. Therefore it is said that the ego is taken from you or dropped. When one “gives up” or “expires” it is not a voluntary action but a spontaneous acceptance or natural consequence….
The process is negative or subtractive. The end result is not created by the process.
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– Bob Cergol
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