Pure Awareness and the Ultimate Mystery

Sometimes I wake up from sleep with or following a dream. Initially, it is a “feeling” and is non-specific to a person called Balu.  It is felt in the awareness of a person whose identity is not clear. The clear personal association with Balu comes in a fraction of a second later. At that point, it is felt in Balu,  based on his stored memory and recall with clear association to his current location (in his bed, in his house, in Wilmington etc) and associated with happiness or sadness.

Is this initial non-specific  awareness what  Ramana maharishi refers to as the “transient I” and Nisargadatta Maharaj refers to as “Pure Awareness”?  Is this what Buddha refers to as Bhija Vignana (seed consciousness)?  Is this what is meant in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad when it says “ Where is the music of the flute without the basic note  of the flute; where is the rhythm of the drum without the basic sound of the drum?”

Once I can latch on to that basic awareness, I see that without that Basic Pure Awareness, I cannot even be aware of my awareness.  It is ON that Pure Awareness that

All perceptions are received and processed

All feelings are generated and felt

All concepts are formed and acted upon

All ownership ideas come in

Memory is formed, stored and recalled

Desire and energy to act are generated

And Imaginations take flight          And thus an “I” is created.

An impermanent “I” based on an impermanent, inter-being called the body, infused with a mysterious “life principle”, generates that sense of Pure Awareness in its unreliable but exquisite brain.

Life force is the Mystery.Awareness is the Foundation.Physical body is the material base.

For someone else to know the “I” of me,  my physical live body alone is adequate, even if the brain is in coma or asleep. But for me to know that “I am”, pure basic awareness is absolutely essential.

 I am That mystery that I am aware of. Mystery of life, on which pure awareness depends, is the ultimate MYSTERY.