Welcome to part two of dialogue 13 with A.H. Almaas, where we continue to explore the knowing side of being itself and where mind comes from. Welcome to Deep Self, Society, Spirit life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists. With Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

And that pure translucency of pure awareness. I call it pure awareness instead of pure presence. There's no knowing of what we are aware of. There's awareness of everything without knowing what we are aware of.

There's no knowing of existence even.

It's just that space, no knowing of existence. There's just awareness, awareness, aware of itself as awareness. But it doesn't know it is awareness. When you are purely in the experience, there isn't really, you know, knowing, it is awareness. It's just awareness. In fact, I mean, that's the reason why some meditators talk about how they go to meditation and they go to. It's non conceptual, they come out of it. They don't remember what happened, they don't know how long it's been. Because you need concept to know, you need knowing. If you get to the space, there's no knowing. There's no knowing of time, no knowing space, no knowing how long or short. I mean, you come out of it, you just feel fresh and clean.

So how do you remember it?

Well, I mean, first of all, it's a good question. When we are in pure awareness, how do we know it's pure awareness? Awareness itself doesn't have knowing. And in pure awareness, and completely pure awareness, I call it the nameless because you can't name it. Because there's no knowing of any kind. But you know, calling it nameless, giving it a name in some sense you can't help but give. You know, even calling it nameless, it's giving it a name. You see what I realized at some point, first of all, awareness. For a while I don't know what I was experiencing. It was just awareness of everything without knowing. I'm aware of everything, just awareness. And at some point I recognize, I know it is pure awareness because in some place in it, knowingness, a sliver of knowingness shows up in some part of the expanse, right? Some small region of it manifests the presence which has knowing and that knows the awareness. Then there has to be knowingness to know awareness. But knowingness means something about the next dimension. Dimension present has to be present. You see, in most spiritual teaching you don't differentiate these two dimensions. They have pure awareness and pure being together. That's I think what Sakshan does has pure presence and pure awareness as inseparable. One dimension, this teaching. They appear two dimensions. They can be unified, become one, convergent dimensions. So awareness that knows itself then, because there's being, but it's also aware of everything.

And you talk about the experience of awareness as having this sense of an incredible freedom or a. You talk about, and I quote you, stupendous clarity and inconceivable transparency. A vast expanse, transparent, lucid and bright.

Like that.

I like it. Yes, I love it.

I imagine you can have some experiences then.

A little. Yeah, and that's right. It's nice.

You have some experience meditation. When that happens, it's total freedom.

Of course.

You see, there's a freedom in pure presence and there's a freedom in pure awareness. However, the freedom increases. Like it gets another degree of freedom and pure awareness than it is. Because it's free concept. And it's not. I mean, pure presence is freedom too. It's free, open, transparent, fresh, new, you know, it's completely now has a sense of now ness in it. Pure awareness. There is no such thing as nowness, you see. But there is. But you see, the transparency and the freshness and translucence and all of that. It's a pure awareness. But they need to be knowing to even talk about it. And the experience itself, it is translucent, but. But you won't remember it to say it. To say. But you can experience it and say it at the same time. That means presence is somewhat available.

So an experiencer has to be there in some sense.

Yes, the experience has to be there. But I'm not talking about the experiencer. I'm talking the mention of knowing has to be there. Now, something you alluded to, John several times, which is the needs of the individual soul. Because you cannot have experience of any kind. Knowing or not knowing, being or without a being. You know, we don't know if God knows itself without any organization. You know, like when people say, how does God know itself? Nobody knows because nobody there. So for us to know being, there has to be an individual being. Because always the knowing of being is by an individual being or through an individual being. So I don't agree with Advaita Vedanta that the world is superimposed in it. It's not superimposed in it. It is manifested from it. Pure being, a pure awareness manifests. It forms itself into the form. Take forms, you see, and these forms. That's more closer to take the form. It's called display or displays the world.

Some distinctions here, Hameed. So you're saying that your experience echoes, for example, think of Kashmir Shaivism with its Shiva manifesting or Shakti actually manifesting. And you're disagreeing. You said with Advaita Vedanta that the world is a superimposition. But my understanding is that is that it's more that the experience of the world as separate from Brahman, as distinct, as reified, is the result of a superimposition.

Yes, that's true. That's true. But they do say, however, that the individual mind is the exposure they call a convenient fiction. And I'm saying it's not a fiction, it's true. Being manifest, individual being not a fiction. A being doesn't need fiction to know itself. It knows itself through truth, through reality. So that is my main disagreement with Advera Vedanta. I love Advaita Vedanta. But when they say that part about illusion. The world is an illusion. It's an illusion when you see it as separate. But the world can appease without being separate. And then it's not an illusion. It is the expression of reality, the expression of truth.

It's also God.

It is the face of God.

So you're suggesting something sounds closer to Aurobindo, who. Who also was concerned about the implication that this is all just illusion and rather wanted to recognize its fullness, its. Its beauty, Manifestation, presence, et cetera.

Yeah, and that's why he had many different levels of consciousness to. So and Kashmiri Shaivism does that too go different levels and for different levels of manifestation, where the manifestation can get smaller and more discriminated and all that. But to bring in something that John said, we talk about the logos, what Kashmir Shaivism called Shakti, I call Logos connected to the Greek logos. Later, another meeting which means what makes things manifest? The property in true nature that manifests things. Because if you just took pure awareness, you know, it's just there. How does manifestation happen? You see, there's a talk about display. And Mahamuda talks about manifestation manifest. But there's a process there. There's a force there that does that. And that usually I call the logos. And we want to spend that a meeting by about it. You know, it's a very profound dimension of our true nature.

Amit, I want to quote you something because I love it so much. It summarizes so much. You say when you introducing pure awareness, as you point out this ultra simple pure awareness, you say that as the ground pure awareness pervades, constitutes and transcends all Forms. There's a lot in that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, all the boundless dimension, including divine love and pure presence and pure awareness and other. They all transcend all form because they're formless. They're dimension of formlessness. But I talk forms as five dimensions, which, you know, I don't know. It's a good or bad. Many teachings don't differentiate them that way. They just talk about the ground and the forms. One thing I want to sort of connect the two dimensions, the pure being and pure awareness, which is. You know, how many of the spiritual teachers talk about how mind is the problem. Mind is in the way. We need to be free of mind. Of course, that was made very explicit and distinct by Krishnamurti. If you remember, he was against mind. Mind is the enemy. And he is right. Except not completely, because. Because we're seeing he two levels of mind. When we talk about pure presence, that is knowing, I mean, he talk about stillness. Well, he knows stillness. What's that? It's mind. You know, it's knowing. If it's knowing, it's mind. You know, mind basically means knowing. I mean, as long as there's no. There is mind. It's just not the ordinary mind as the basic mind, which is what the pure presence shows. That there is such a thing as mind that is not an obstacle, in fact, is needed for realization. Without it, there's no realization. I mean, what I remember. Gurdjieff brought that point distinctly when he talked about stupid saints. Do you remember that? Stupid saint, meaning that somebody who is but doesn't know, he is like he's realized, but he doesn't know it. There is no knowing. So he calls a stupid saint. He can't teach, can't do anything. He just pure and simple and has all the qualities of realization, but not useful for anybody, but they live in peace. He called them stupid saints. I don't know if there are many people like that, but I think some of us, sometime once in a while, we are stupid. Satan says we are a being and not knowing it cause this. That would be good. But the thing I'm pointing to here, mind is not an enemy. Knowing is not an enemy. It's beautiful. The obstacle is the reified, conceptual, representational mind. If we take that to be reality, the knowledge of that mind to be reality, that's the obstacle.

So the trap is more an unskillful relationship to mind or attitude or understanding of mind rather than mind itself.

Yeah. So meaning it's not knowing that is the issue. It is the Reified knowing, it's not even, you know, there are different levels of how ignorance develops. First there's pure awareness. There's no concept, no knowing. Then pure awareness manifests the concept of being and knowing being, that is the first concept. Then from that emerges other concepts. The concept of love, concept of peace, concept of space, and all the way to concept of an apple house, all of that, all these are inherent, manifestation of reality. They're all have mind in the sense there is knowing. However, then those can be. Each one of those can be isolated in the mind, our individual mind, and remembered and made into a category. We call a mountain or an ocean as a category and that is reified, made separate from everything else. The ocean has nothing to do with the earth. With the mountain it is just an ocean and ocean. Water is water, you is you, I am me. We are two different things. That is a reification of the concept of you and me. And the reified concepts is the mind not as an obstacle.

Can I say something here, Hameed? I think it's very liberating. What you just said is that in your teaching the mind is not the enemy and the individual is not the enemy. They're both accepted and they're part of divine reality, if I understand it.

Exactly, exactly. So wait, that's something.

I mean that is amazing, but we.

Need things get settled though, you know, for people, they don't know there is such a thing as basic concept and ordinary concepts, and they don't know that ordinary concept can be reified or not. You can have an ordinary concept without reifying it. You see the moment you reify it, that another level and the mind as an obstacle is the reifying mind that uses concept. But you see, for reification to happen, there has to be concept. In pure awareness. There's no concept, so no possibility of reification. That's why it is feeling of greater freedom. Because pure being, although it is a freedom and it is truth and reality, it has the possibility of reification because there is knowing. It is not. The knowing itself is not the problem, but there's a nascent possibility of thing developing into reification and pure awareness. There is no concept, so there's nothing to reify, nothing to become ordinarily basic or ordinary and reify none. There's no knowing.

And one of the implications of this that you point to amid is that awareness cannot be conceptualized. As is true to a large extent with all phenomena, we really can't do complete justices. For example, Nagarjuna said we cannot do. We cannot. Well, Let me quote someone actually Radhakrishnan, the Indian philosopher who was. Who was also became president of India. He had a beautiful quote. He said the real transcends, surrounds and overflows our miserable categories. Which puts it rather graphically. But you're pointing out specifically with regard to awareness, that because of its very nature, which one can't even say is real or not real, that it absolutely transcends categories.

Well, I just say I understand awareness as Hameed is speaking about as being the space that everything arises in. And I just kind of. I don't know if I grok that or get it or it's a concept, but that's, that's the understanding. And it, it. I don't know, it does something. It liberates me in some way.

Well, I mean, both are true. And the thing is about awareness. I think Nisargadatta Maharaj described it one time in a way more complete, more similar to the way I know it. When he says, as he talks about his realization, many things, but one of the time he says, as awareness, I'm not aware of myself as awareness, I don't know myself. Because awareness doesn't know itself. If it just looks at awareness and no forms, there's no knowing. And that is, I think, very astute and might escape most people when they read it. When he says as awareness, I'm not. I don't know myself. Another word myself, not really. More tells me he really knew pure awareness. Non conservative. No, he wasn't talking just about. He started with I am as you know. But he goes on, he said I am the beginning. And he goes on to just being called the rock of awareness, the awareness that is not aware of itself. So awareness is more fundamental in this sense than pure being because it's, I mean, they're all dimension of true reality. More fundamental in the sense is less conceptual.

A being has knowledge, whereas awareness doesn't.

Doesn't. So knowledge, although we think of it as a good thing, it's. You can be without it for a while at least. You just there and not know that you're there or anything. You're just aware of everything and you can function, do all kind of thing, but everything happens spontaneously, naturally, on its own, without thinking that's possible. And so there is. The freedom is more palpable there than it is in the other dimension, like love or presence. It's freedom. But here freedom is more palpable in the sense that the possibility of reification, the possibility of ignorance is not there. And I mean the knowledge for the possibility of. To be there.

I mean, and you've mentioned freedom several times and just which seems so important. I just want to point to, or invite you to say more because you have a unique. You have so many unique contributions, but one of them is that you point to multiple kinds of freedom.

Yeah. You notice that?

Yeah, I did. I'm intrigued. You keep layering them. It's like, oh, there's more. There's more.

Well, when you experience. When I experience myself as one of the aspects I am the presence of love or presence of clarity or the present peace is freedom. It's free. Presence is free. It is free of anything, any limitation, any suffering and all of that. So that's freedom. To be pure. Divine love is freedom. Freedom, it is itself not contaminated and not constrained by anything. The same thing with pure being. And it keeps getting subtler and the possibility of being ensnared less possible, you see. So that is in the bodily dimension. But I have other dimension where there's freedom comes in other ways. But that takes us even outside of this book, Degrees of Freedom. There are other one who go to what I call the third or the fourth turning. In this teaching, freedom appears independent from the ground of being.

And I hope that before we'll finish, we'll revisit your books Runaway Realization and Alchemy of Freedom.

Where maybe independent from the ground of being.

Yeah, but we are here. We're dealing with the ground of being, ground of awareness and the question of ground. Because if you go third turning, there's no ground. Here we're talking about ground. You see, Mahamudra always talk about ground. Dzogchen always talk about ground. And Vevi Dhan always talk about ground. If you go third turning, a ground is a concept. There's no ground. And then that is scary for most people. For there to be no ground, to be ground. You know, the mind or the soul feels more comfortable with the ground.

What is it like to realize that there's no ground? Is it a liberation or is it scary? Or how did you experience that at.

The beginning is scary, confusing, disorienting. And then at some point I realized it is more freedom. Yeah.

And one of the freedoms you point to amid is the. Is the freedom that comes from transcending conceptual dichotomies. And you point out that as an extension, as it were, of your discussion of. Of your discussion of non conceptual awareness, you point out that most of our experience and understanding of reality is structured by a variety of dichotomies. For example, the manifest, the Unmanifest, spiritual, mundane or concept of being and doing, which I certainly want to get into. But maybe, maybe you'd like to, or certainly like to invite you to talk some about this general idea of our entrapment in dichotomies.

Yeah, that's true. You see, but dichotomies are conceptual. There are no dichotomies, not conceptual. So the conceptual world, especially when you get the ordinary mind based on dichotomy, you know, the way we understand things in ordinary sense, and we need the dichotomy, you know, to understand the short and long and big and small, you know, practically speaking, it's needed. That's why, you know, psychologists talk about it's an achievement, psychological achievement, because it's needed, you know. However, those dichotomy, when we go deeper into our, into our being, when we are this spiritual liberation, those dichotomies can be stumbling blocks on the way.

Any dichotomy such as spirit and matter.

Yeah. Out becomes a dichotomy or dichotomy of being or non being.

For instance.

That's a deep dichotomy. Philosophers deal with it all the time. But that's a deep question. Hopefully we'll get to it in more detail at some point. You know, we're dealing with these two parts about pure presence and pure awareness here and transitioning from one to the other and how they could be both present at the same time as one dimension, which is awareness. Knowing. It is awareness, you see, which is really the basis of the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind has awareness and has knowing. Have you noticed that the ordinary mind, it's aware of its thoughts, aware it's perceived, but it's also that knows what it's aware of. And without them you can't have a mind.

And one of the things you point out, Amit, is that our so called ordinary awareness, actually when we recognize it for what it is, we find that it is a much more profound radical awareness.

Yeah, because awareness is always awareness. So usually in the ordinary experience we are aware, but we don't recognize the awareness for what it is. We only know the function of awareness, which is sensitivity or perceptuality. And that is what the cognitive scientists deal with. All the theories of consciousness, of cognition that the neuroscientists and scientists are dealing with is more the process of perception and recognition of what we perceive. They're not looking at the ontology of it, not looking at the ground. And they don't, they don't claim they're looking at the ground. They don't even conceptualize. There is a ground.

I mean, can I ask you something that's been. Anyway, I want to take the opportunity while you're here. You studied physics at Berkeley, one of the great universities even taught there. And I. When I was in grad school, I Fritjof Capra, I was his assistant. So I became introduced to the world of quantum physics. And I've kind of followed it. And I don't. I don't speak the language of complex mathematics, but I try to understand as much as I can. But it seems that they're in a cul de sac right now in general, because they are ignoring.

The stuff that.

You'Re talking about, ontology, the ground of being, emptiness and fullness and all these things you're talking about. And it seems to me there's. There would be a place. I mean, consciousness. They don't like that either. It's like one quadrant trying to figure out the nature of reality. And it's not working very well. So I just imagine something that would be called, like, integral physics. That takes this knowledge, plus the scientific knowledge and bringing it together in some kind of whole where you would actually have wisdom or more understanding about the nature of what is.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think. Yeah, science as it started as practice, is not attempting to really understand the ground of reality. And it might, at some point recognize it will need to. To keep the progress further. You know, I think that's possible. We don't know will that happen. And as you know, there are many scientists who. Neuroscientists, who have advanced theories of consciousness. Theories explain what consciousness is, you know, like Rajah Pendros, for instance, consciousness and microtubules and quantum processes and neurons. But he admits that we're not close to understanding consciousness. Even though he has a theory and he defends it and all of that. He's humble enough to know that we are at the beginning of understanding things. There's another physicist, Italian, Federico Fagan Eigen, I think his name, who is advancing a theory of consciousness in the last few years. When he talks about consciousness as primary. His theory is that consciousness and will are primary meaning, consciousness and choice are primary and other things. And although he has some spiritual experience, he knows the consciousness. So he trying to make. I don't know if he makes it mathematical because the scientists will not accept it unless he could put it into symbols and mathematics and something that can be verified. But he's trying to do it. So there are people trying to do it that way.

You know, Hameed how far do you think mathematics can take us?

I have friends who are pure mathematicians. They think that mathematics itself, itself is transcendent activity. And I remember Roger Penn wrote in his book Emperor with no Mind or Thing, he called it 1989. Yeah. He talked about how mathematics comes from Platonic realm. And some mathematicians think that mathematics are discovered because there's a realm of math. And there's a disagreement in the mathematician and philosophers whether mathematics is math is a discovery or is it creation, development of the mind. Well, let's say, for instance, Euclid Theorem, for instance, is not a creation. That is a property of reality. It is true everywhere there is flat space, meaning not warped space. Euclid Theorem can be proven by anybody, you know, anywhere. So in that sense, Euclid Theorem is the Platonic form. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's a big topic. You know, it's interesting to talk with scientists about this, especially the ones who are trying to understand, especially quantum theory. You remember, I mean, one thing, Penrose and Fagan, I was watching dialogue between them. We're talking about consciousness and quantum theory and how quantum theory, quantum mechanics, there's a need for the observer, which means a need for consciousness. It has to be. And that's where Federico comes. He said free will mean you choose to make this experiment, not that one, you know, so he thinks of it as fundamental. Penrose, of course, doesn't agree with that. He thinks there was a collapse of the wave function before there was life, before there was consciousness. So there's a big, deep topic, you know, I don't know whether we could do it ourselves here. We try to understand the spiritual world, you know.

Yeah.

To transition to understanding the physical world from that perspective. Although there are many theories that try to do that. I don't think any one of them is still, you know, is accepted or hold much water yet.

Well, your. Your work certainly has helped me to, I don't know, feel like I'm getting down to, you know, getting down to basic reality more than physics.

Oh, yeah. For exponentially.

Yes.

I appreciate that you do that, that it's helping you get down to basic inexperience, but still doesn't mean I can put it in mathematics. I can't put it in. I tried, actually, years ago.

Yeah.

You said there were too many variables. You just couldn't get it done.

I couldn't find tokens or some mathematician friends say, well, we might find the variable.

I'm glad you can't amid, because I certainly wouldn't understand it.

I don't know. It's possible. You know, I thought at some point I might. I actually I wrote the differential equation, you know, a partial differential equation they call it, except I didn't know what the variable I needed. And now I was dealing with the quantum theory, you know, in a way to now they have the quantum field theory. And I hear that there might be more way of doing it from that perspective, but I don't understand enough to really use it.

Well, let me throw in another perspective, Hameed. And that is for Ken Wilber edited a book Quantum Questions in which he took excerpts from a variety of physicists, primarily quantum physicists, talking about consciousness and of course the great, some of the great founders had spent a lot of time on that, as you well know better than I. But, but I remember Ken concluding that anyone who tries to tie a theory of fundamental reality and consciousness to the latest, latest variation of quantum physics is trying to. Trying to peg the, the trans temporal and the eternal to, to the transient.

So yeah, I agree. I think it's true. I mean at the present time we cannot do it. I don't think it's doable. Who knows how humanity develops in 10,000 years? Who knows? Might find out our physics won't work without taking into consideration something about our true nature. It's possible. I don't know you know what I mean, but I can imagine it, but I don't know it.

It's not functioning that way so far.

No, it's not within my grasp. I don't know the grasp of humanity do that.

Certainly not within mine. But coming down to something I might possibly understand, is there anything you'd like to say amid before we, before he conclude?

Well, we're talking about this time about knowing and awareness and I think these are very important thing. Knowing is fundamental to the universe. Knowing is inherent in our true nature, even though it requires a being like a human being for this knowing to express itself. But that knowing depends on awareness, which is the underlying ground of transparency or thought. General call it empty. Empty clarity as just clarity with no fullness present has fullness. You see awareness, you can't say it has fullness. It's very ephemeral, very light, very completely non substantial. And it is important to realize both are possible. I mean sometimes people were looking for one but not the other. But there's no reason to choose, no reason to accept one or reject the other. There are two sides of the same thing. It can be pure being, completely being. The fullness of reality and richness or could be empty, transparent. Just perception.

Ah, well, that's a very nice thing to leave us with. We can be both. We can be all.

So you think we did it, Roger? We managed just in this chapter for the listeners, or they might be able to access.

Read it. Well, we made a good try.

Yeah.

And sometimes your mind begins to crack with all this stuff and some light gets in. That's how I experience it. So thank you so much. There's a. It's a real teaching and transmission that happens for me.

Hopefully, you know, it is helpful. You know, I mean, I'm thinking if somebody listens to this conversation, they can read those chapters and maybe are able to sort of get into them, you know?

Yeah, indeed. And the chapters we've been discussing today were the final part of chapter 18, which in which we discussed the reification and the way out of reification through inquiry. And then we moved into chapter 19 on awareness and the non conceptual and which we began to touch into pure awareness. And it's. It's incomprehensible or transcendent. No word. I'm trying to find words and of course I'm realizing that no word does it. But. But the non. Non awareness and non conceptual, perhaps we'll leave it at that. And they're very profound chapters and certainly worth deep study. So thank you so much, Hameed.

Yeah. And thank everyone for being here with us and going on this journey.

Good talking with you. Until next time.

Okay, thanks for watching.

Thank you.

Another discussion.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, take care.

You too.

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