The Radical Shift from Delusion to the Real

This triad becomes the initial paradigm for one who enters the field of sadhana. In that field, if one is in ego-consciousness, one is in a state called avidya. Now, “avidya” is usually translated as “ignorance”, but really it means “delusion”. And one’s sadhana is to attempt to shift from delusion to, let’s just say, the Real. But what’s important to understand is that it’s the same Aham that is in avidya or in vidya, or in both simultaneously—the same Aham. It’s the same Aham (the same “I”) that liberates itself from its own self-created delusion the moment it shifts from avidya to vidya (which we would tend to call the moment of awakening or illumination or enlightenment or liberation or return to the truth of one’s Real nature—one’s Buddha Nature, one’s Shiva Nature, one’s God-consciousness—as you wish). The Real is beyond all signifiers, all concepts, all beliefs; and all beliefs are within the construct of that which is delusional because it is a construct—it’s artificial, it’s unreal, and it is a self-projected dream. But if one is not lucid in the dream, then one tends to believe that one’s own thoughts are true and that one’s projections are reality. And if one is in that state, that is what is called ignorance.

Now, because it’s the same Aham, the Aham in truth is always Real, because only a Real Aham could go into a delusional state, right? If there wasn’t something Real, there would be nothing for the delusion to hold on to. So the delusion is an expression of possibilities of manifestation that create different flavors of experience, different intensities, different kinds of enjoyment that the individual Aham creates in order to experience that delusion. It then becomes attached—even addicted—to its enjoyments, even though its enjoyments always are also a form of suffering. So the cost of moving from avidya to vidya is the letting-go of the enjoyment of one’s suffering, which is what most delusional characters in the dream cannot do. They don’t have free will in the dream to awaken. But the Real Aham can awaken—only the Real, and that’s the problem.

So the delusion is made up of a character, a delusional character that you believe you are. Therefore, if the Aham is going to get the character to wake up out of its delusion, it has to give it courage to do that. When it has courage, sufficient courage, it will make the leap. And when the character makes the leap, then what is realized is that the Aham (the Real “I”) was always all that there ever was, and nothing really ever happened at all but the courage for the character to come out of its delusional shell that it thinks protects it from further trauma and keeps it in balance or able to cope with all of the challenges of life. As long as the character doesn’t realize that there are far more resources available if you are in your Real Self than in a tiny sliver of that that has distorted its own nature and believes negative beliefs and has attitudes that are self-sabotaging, then it’s very difficult to give it courage. But it is the act of your Real Self giving your character the courage to become Real that is what we call grace.

Now, once you’re in a state of grace, then another two paradigms actually occur. One is that you realize that what you are is Sat, which we can define as the light of consciousness. And we use “the light” metaphorically, but it is also more than a mere metaphor. The light of consciousness emanates from the Self and from the Self’s Chit, and the Chit is the Self’s intelligence. The intelligence has the power to form the light into a dream, a field of dreams. This world is made of the light of the infinite intelligence, the Chit of the One Self. That’s all that we are in, is a light show, and these forms are made of frozen light—collapsed quantum wave functions. And the thoughts and feelings and sense of identity of the persona that inhabits the form are made up of collapsed qualium wave functions—qualities, or gunas, we could say.

Some characters have more tamasic guna, some have more rajasic guna, some have more sattvic guna. These are basically expressed as activity (even hyperactivity) if you’re too rajasic and you’re a workaholic or a play-aholic or whatever, but you’re running away from yourself into activity. Or you’re very tamasic and you want to space out and either black out or lose touch with what you consider reality because it’s too aversive and you simply want to destroy your consciousness, at least momentarily, in order to be free of your own mind. The only way you can do that is by knocking yourself out in one way or another—or spacing out or going on the internet and passively absorbing something, some external input—or watching a movie and vicariously identifying with some hero or superhero and falling into a reverie or fantasy state rather than being in wakeful presence. Or you can be in that sattvic state. The tendencies of one or the other will determine the trajectory of one’s karma and one’s destiny as a character in this illusory world.

But if you are already in the awakened Sat Chit Ananda, then your bliss comes from the fact that the intelligence is able to now perceive and express itself in the dream field in its divine nature. It’s able to bring the light and see the light in every being, even if they are in darkness to themselves, and to emanate peace and joy and love, and to be able to bring the bliss of the Real into the dream field for the awakening and the redemption of all beings who choose to resonate with that vibrational frequency.

So that’s what we could call the Aham in the transcendent state…