consciousness is that which we ‘actually’ are, which we ‘only’ are. Everything that we see, know and think about happens through the instrument of consciousness.
It is an irony that all day we are busy with that which we see and know without ever engaging with that ‘through’ which we see and know.
This is the biggest irony of human life, a way bigger irony than any other irony one can conceive of. The day one acknowledges this irony, all pathways open up for spiritual growth.
Doing acts of service, introspection, devotion and the like are ‘spiritual’ acts but in a stricter sense ‘peripherally spiritual’ because all of them involve engagement with the outer rather than engaging with consciousness itself.
Can you this moment – even while you read this article – take a moment to take note of that consciousness or awareness because of which you are able to read this article? That alone is the only spiritual thing one can do. Because it is direct engagement with the ‘spirit’.
Technically speaking, there is a difference between ‘Consciousness’ and ‘consciousness’, ‘Awareness’ and ‘awareness’. The first letter capitalization of all the former terms stands for the Consciousness that is the very root, substratum, stuff of existence itself, including your existence. The same terms without the first letter capitalisation stands for the act of being conscious or aware which is the conversion of Consciousness into the cognitive faculty.
‘Witnessing’ is another technical word freely used in spiritual circles. It is the act of using one’s consciousness/awareness in an impartial/non-partisan/detached way. Witnessing however involves engaging with an outer phenomenon rather than with the inner, so to that extent it is powerful but peripherally spiritual. When witnessing is used to witness one’s own self rather than witnessing something on the outside, it comes full circle and becomes the purely spiritual act.
Engaging with the world without the base of engaging with Consciousness is called being ‘caught up in Maya’. The word ‘Maya’ comes from the word ‘Matr’ meaning ‘measured out’. Maya stands for the ‘measured out’, differentiated (one thing different from another) reality that we see outside of ourselves. While we have a body-mind, we are bound to be immersed in Maya almost all of our waking hours. Nothing wrong with that. It becomes wrong only if we are not firmly convinced of our identity as Consciousness, even while we engage with Maya.
The mistake we make is that we identify ourselves with our limited identity, represented through our human name. This identification with this limited identity is called ‘Ego’. It can alternately be called the ‘sense of separate self’. Once we successfully consider ourselves to be Consciousness, rather than this assumed limited identity, we start making spiritual progress. Any action taken considering oneself to be this limited identity is called ‘Karma’. When one engages with Maya without accumulating Karma, one lives in ‘Moksha’ or ‘Jeevanmukti’. In simpler words, when one engages with the universe considering oneself to be in one sense ‘Consciousness’ itself or in another sense ‘the entire universe’ – rather than considering oneself to be the limited identity defined by one’s human name – does one live totally freely.
