James Oroc, an expert in the psychedelic Bufo toad and the author of Tryptamine Palace, stated in an interview that he had the experience of becoming “consciousness without identity.” Since others sometimes report this, it is extremely likely that some of the ancient Maya shamans also had this experience. In this way, it might be said that this experience can lead to a very deep awakening: the direct, personal discovery of the true, fundamental self - the One Awareness. Your normal personal self is what Oroc calls “identity.” When you see beyond that, you discover by direct experience that your true self is pure awareness. This is the primary experience of “being,” not the typical relational experience of subject (self, awareness) witnessing an object (phenomenon). You know this because you are this! And you intuitively know that your awareness is the One Awareness.
What you think of as your personal consciousness is
simply the One Awareness looking out through your own eyes! This is
happening to you right now and it has been happening to you your
entire life! What was created when you were born was not a new
personal consciousness but a new viewpoint from which the One
Awareness experiences the world! Your true self is the One Awareness,
not the sentient being you have considered yourself to be all your
life.
Now,
not everyone who uses the chemicals from the toad awakens to this new
understanding of the self, which is a core ingredient of what some
people call “enlightenment.” Yet the people that don’t
wake up to the true self often still wake up to the idea that there
is a greater spiritual reality behind our ordinary physical reality.
This is like waking up or being born into a spiritual world. This is
why it can be said that the unfolding of this spiritual understanding
has three births. Let’s take a look at them.
Your
Three Births
Astronomically,
the first rebirth is the daily sunrise. This is just the sun
reappearing to us in our physical world. Likewise, with our physical
birth, each of us also appears in our physical world. Both the
astronomical rebirth and the biological birth are very common. One
happens every day, the other happens to everyone. With this birth,
some people take on a materialist view of reality. Since they haven’t
had any spiritual experiences, it makes perfect sense for them to see
the world devoid of an unseen creator God or any spiritual aspects at
all.
The
next stage of development is when the materialist has a personal
experience that is beyond the explanation of their current
understanding. This could easily come about through the use of the
chemicals from the Bufo toad. With this new understanding, the
physical world is seen as a denser expression of a more energetic yet
unseen spiritual world. The flow of this spiritual energy gives rise
to what comes into existence in our physical world. These spiritual
energies can often be felt by people who work on tuning in to them.
The
final stage unfolds when you realize that you are pure awareness -
the One Awareness - and that you are not the combination of your
body, mind, soul, personality and personal awareness. This
re-identification as the One Awareness is the deepest shift that a
human can go through. When you are born, you get an apparent
identity. When you awaken to this understanding, you are reborn in
the most profound way possible. Very few people have this happen to
them yet I think that it happened to at least some of the ancient
Maya shamans and that they intentionally created the triple rebirth
metaphor and placed it on top of the astronomy of 2012 for the
express purpose of helping people understand these three stages of
spiritual development.
So
the three stages of spiritual development are:
1) your start with a
materialist’s view
2) your shift into a
spiritual understanding and
3) your awakening to
your true self as the One Awareness.
See
how simply the astronomical rebirths connect to the spiritual
rebirths?
Your True Self: Your Pure Awareness
Your
“personal self” may be your body, your mind, your
personality and even your soul but your true self, your fundamental,
unconstructed self, is the awareness that perceives everything that
you experience. Your
awareness is the buried treasure hidden within the personal self; it
is the kingdom of heaven within you.
Honest scientific research into subjects such as out-of-body
experiences, near-death experiences and past lives all point to a
nature of reality that is profoundly different from what is commonly
believed. Our amazing awareness itself is not even visible to us and
yet we know it exists because we experience the world through it!
Mainstream
science holds that the material qualities and chemical processes of
the body and the brain give rise to our awareness. In other words, in
this view, the material world is the foundation of reality and
awareness is an aspect that comes forth from it in order for all
sentient beings to be alive and aware. In this view, our awareness
depends upon the body.
But
what if it’s the other way around? What if awareness is the
foundation, the building block, of everything?
Our
common daily experience shows us that there is a link between our
body and our awareness. In addition to that, past-life research shows
us that while there is a relationship between our awareness and our
body, the body is not the source of our awareness. The true nature of
the self is beyond the body. Out-of-body experiences also support
this understanding. And the same thing holds true for our soul. We
are not our soul and that is not where we find our eternal self. We
are our awareness, which exists before our soul and holds our soul.
Of
course we all see that our bodies were born into the world; this is
beyond dispute. But isn’t it also true that both our bodies and
the world are born into our awareness? Our awareness is primordial;
it comes before everything and it plays host to all the phenomena
that we experience. And a mystic intuitively understands that the
Divine Awareness that looks out of your eyes is the same awareness
that looks out of his or her eyes. What is seen is different but the
Awareness is the same. There is only One Awareness, that of the
eternal divine essence.
Imagine
you are the One Awareness and that you are in a room with many
windows. When you look into the world through one of these windows,
you see a certain view. In this way, you have all the experiences of
one particular person. You see what they see, feel what they feel,
think what they think, remember what they remember, dream what they
dream and so forth. When you look through another window, you have
all the experiences of another person. But you are still the same
awareness. If you experienced all of these experiences all at once,
it would be just a mass of color and noise. We might say that our
individuated personal consciousness is what allows the One Awareness
to experience the world without it being a jumbled mess. But is there
really an individuated personal consciousness? What if personal
consciousness does not really exist as such? What if it is really
just the One Awareness looking through a window? The One Awareness
can never be cut into pieces and it does not have any parts. It does
not give birth to new, separate “awarenesses.”
Even
so, it still can be helpful to use the phrase “personal
consciousness” when we talk about ourselves and our
experiences. In this way, perhaps a good definition of personal
consciousness would be that which holds both our personal experiences
and our personal beliefs about the world and about our own self. It
is this collection of beliefs that changes and evolves as our
personal consciousness moves into a higher state. In this process, we
are actually just removing false beliefs and integrating new truthful
understandings. Your awareness simply holds these new understandings.
That which is held does change but that which holds it all simply
exists as the unchanging capacity to hold.
Another
way to look at the “One in All” or the “All in All”
is to imagine that there are billions of hand puppets on earth, all
apparently different people and animals. But when we see beyond the
illusion of separate sentient beings and correctly perceive the full
picture of what is really taking place, we see that there is only one
sentient puppet master with billions of hands animating all of life
and, most importantly, experiencing all of life through all those
different viewpoints. What a miracle! What a mystery!
In
the fullest sense, you are the totality of reality and you are where
it all comes from!
You Are
Eternal Like the Sun
I
think that the Maya personified the sun because you are like the sun.
From our perspective on earth, the sun is born when it rises and it
dies when it sets. But from a perspective out in space, we see that
the sun is never born and it never dies; it is essentially eternal.
Similarly, from the perspective of our ordinary reality, it appears
as if we are born and then later, we die. Is there a different
perspective, a larger framework, that reveals that our true self, our
fundamental unconstructed self, is indeed also without birth or
death? Are we also eternal? As I mentioned before, at birth, you get
an apparent identity. When you re-identify with your true self - your
pure, unchanging, eternal awareness - you are reborn in the most
profound way.
I
think that the Maya used a timeless metaphor on purpose to help you
understand that you, too, exist beyond the boundaries of time itself.
You exist as pure awareness, and time, space, energy and matter are
all created within you. While many people have heard that the world
is an illusion, few people have heard someone say that they
themselves are also an illusion. Yes, indeed! Your personal self is
an illusion!
When
people hear me say that their personal self is an illusion, they
think that I have just said that their personal self is not real. But
remember, all illusions have a reality to them; it’s just that
they trick you into believing a false idea. In this case, there are
at least two false ideas. One is that your personal consciousness
arises out of the biochemistry of your body and brain and the second
is that each personal consciousness is separate from all the others.
Those ideas are completely false.
As
I say in my book, Mystical
2012:
Yes,
it seems like you are a separate, mortal, sentient being but you are
not a being of any kind; you are sentience itself! This is the
formless divine essence! This is what the gnostics focus on when they
say, “Know yourself and you shall know God!”
Many
of us have heard it said, “You are not a human being having a
spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being having a human
experience.” Of course it is wise not to put the cart before
the horse but perhaps you now see why I say that you are neither the
cart nor the horse! You are the awareness that holds both the human
being and the spiritual being! Your eternal nature is looking out of
your eyes right now, shining forever, just like the sun!
The
End
If
you enjoyed this article, perhaps you will enjoy my YouTube playlist
of a public lecture I gave. This narrated slideshow is 48 minutes long in four parts. You will hear my voice but there was no video camera, just an audio recorder. You
can find it here, or watch it below:
