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From Dreaming to Absolute Consciousness

Paul Muller-Ortega on the Siva Sutras



Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge

Preceding image :

The Hindu cosmographic form, the Sri Yantra.

A yantra is a Hindu geometric and cosmographic form, a construct
depicting the character of the cosmos, of which the Sri Yantra is one
example.

Other versions of the Sri Yantra could have other colours or none, but
the structure is always the same.

The Sri Yantra may be seen as evoking the relationship between the
various aspects of human consciousness, the expression of ultimate,
divine consciousness and the relationship between human and
ultimate consciousness.

The Sri Yantra is particularly closely aligned with Srividya, a school of
Hinduism intimately affiliated with the school of Kashmir Saivism to
which the Siva Sutras discussed below belong.

I would like to share my fascination with an exquisite piece of writing
by Paul Muller-Ortega on relationships between dreaming and
various states of consciousness.

What is the scope of possibilities represented by the mysterious
experience of dreams?

These run from jumbled mixing of experience to insights into the
future, among the more conventional range of reports of dreams.

Muller-Ortega presents another perspective on dreaming, an
unconventional one, in which, through dreaming, one may enter into
an appreciation of ultimate reality, the underlying character of
existence.

Here is how he puts it-

"For most of us, to dream is to partake of the evanescent, to float
nightly in images of unreality, shards of memory, bizarre and
frightening episodes that may yield without warning to beautiful and
alluring scenes.
...


The ordinary dreamer withdraws from the outer world coiled into
the oblivion of sleep. In the dream, the dreamer is completely self-
enclosed and thus capable of creating whole, if temporary, worlds of
experience."

He goes on to state that-

"The dreamer's posture of self enclosure precisely parallels the self
reflexive stance of the absolute consciousness".

Self reflexivity is a sensitivity to one's own consciousness, used in
this case with reference to the idea of a consciousness that underlies
existence.

Muller-Ortega narrates the story of the Indian sage Vasugupta, 9th
century C.E., who is described as experiencing in his dream an
understanding of the manner in which this absolute consciousness
sees itself.

Vasugupta presents this insight in a sequence of aphorisms known as
the Siva Sutras or the Aphorisms of Siva because they describe the
absolute consciousness in terms of the Hindu God, Shiva.

A quality of Asian thought I find remarkable is the movement
between anthropomorphic depiction and conceptual abstraction.

This is demonstrated in the description of the deity Shiva in the Siva
Sutras in terms of sublime and paradoxical ideas about consciousness
and cosmic development.

Muller -Ortega presents one of these in his description of the first of
the aphorisms which he states may be translated as Consciousness-
Self.

I love this.

Focus your attention for on your awareness.

Observe your awareness of yourself, of your mind, of your body and
of the world beyond your body.

Close your eyes and focus on your awareness of yourself.



To me, this awareness of myself is like a throbbing unseen flame that
makes possible awareness of everything else, an appreciation I
gained from reading Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India in his
presentation of the ideas of the Indian philosopher and mystic
Ramana Maharshi and practising Maharshi's exercise of
concentrating on one's self awareness.

May the Siva Sutras be described as working out implications of this
focus on consciousness in terms of the cosmos?

May the Sutras may be understood as demonstrating a conjunction
between human and cosmic being in terms of consciousness?

Particularly marvellous about them is their magnificent linguistic
compression and puzzling crypticness even as the language is
dazzling in its force.

Muller-Ortega is responding, in the foreword, to Mark Dyczkowsi's
marvellous translation of and commentary on the Siva Sutras, The
Aphorisms of Siva : The Siva Sutra with Bhaskara's Commentary, the
Varttika. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1992.ix-xii.

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