To experience the unfolding of the kayas of the awareness field, the dimensions of awareness, is to experience the manifestation of consciousness in ourselves and in the world around us...it is to experience the unfolding of gnosis, direct perception, as the ground of our being. This is a gifted experience...and at times this gift and manifestation is wrapped in the cloth of excess and saturation. The mystic life is excessive. It is useful to read and hear the lives of yogis ofi the various traditions i.e., The Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography of Swami Muktananda, and The Lion of the Siddhas: the Life and Teachings of Padampa Sangye, The Life of Meister Eckhart, the Life of Ibn Al-Arabi, and the experiences of Namkhai Norbu, Yan Xin the siddha qi gong master, Lama Norhla, Kunsange Dechen Lingpa, Dudjom Rinpoche, Amma, to name a few.
There is a famous statement in phenomenology..."what gives itself,shows itself,what shows itself gives itself". Awareness manifests itself in you in so far as it gives itself in you and in as much as awareness gives itself in you awareness manifests itself in you. The field of awareness manifests awareness itself in us as us. Actually in the manifestation of awareness, awareness creates itself as the body of light in us as us...awareness creates and brings forth awareness in us. The experience of awareness is a gift and not a function of intentionality, of the mind as the noetic noema function ... awareness is not a thought, awareness is an experience of what is given...when asked who is god Swami Muktananda would say god is this fantastic experience that is within you as you.
The divine experience is not a movie, not outside of you, there is no distance, no distance whatsoever, it is your youness that is the place of manifestation.
The sense of subjectivity that takes place within you when you are located in your solipsitic mind, is not the same sense of subjectivity that takes place when you are in awareness of your mind, and the sense of subjectivity that arises out of your becoming aware of your own awareness is not the same sense of subjectivity as in those prior events of knowning. Subjectivity is a floating metaphor. The sense of subjectivity that takes place within the infinite unfolding of the kayas is subjectivity that is pure unbound and unbinding openness of the ground of beingness which is awareness itself...without reference.
As the kayas or as the dimensions of awareness unfold themselves in you as you as nirmanakaya, sambogakaya and dharmakaya, your subjectivity is the dimension. You do not have a kaya, you do not visit a kaya, aham ah I am that...these experiences of subject, experiencer is vastly different then your earlier experience of being a subject locked in the mind or locked in a particular function of the mind...like the affective function or the thinking function...such is the wonder of all wonders..translucent openness as flesh, translucent openness as light, translucent openness as pure potential space..unbound.
The very sense of subjectivity is transformed, disolved and reinvented within these developemental movements. The becoming one with the awareness field is not the simple expansion of mind, actually the mind may expand very little, if at all. The expansion is the vaste expansion of awareness..into gnosis, becoming knowingness...this is a gift that is given...in certain ways the mind never catches up to what has happened.
With each step in this step by step unfolding your sense of subjectivity transforms and is given...by the gift of awareness manifesting. In the begining of your life your mind contained subjectivity, containing awareness like in a bottle or in a vase...as awareness gives itself to you and shows itself to you as you, awareness then contains your mind, and you know less with your mind...with the functions of your mind and more through your unbound openness...ineffableness...and basic faith arises...confidence in your experience.
Since you are the receiver of the gift, the gifting of unbound and unbinding awareness, this gift of awareness with its intensity and ineffability brings forth suffering and bliss. The very fleshing of the luminous awareness in its incessant manifestation in your body stretches the receiver, the recipient, in every way possible. The manifestation of cosmic awareness in your body is excessive and saturating...as event, as iconic radiance, as flesh and subtle body, the saturation of the infinite experience in a finite body mind continium.
The receiver of manifestation is put in the situation of feeling the experience of unbound and unbinding awareness as their own self, their own fragile embodiment. The gift of awareness is not simply given into a subjectivity like a dollar being placed in a bucket, but given as subjectivity... subjectivity itself undergoes the alchemical gifting of self manifestation of gnosis. There is no distance whatsoever..and so the very structures of person are undone and redone.
The receiver of awareness not only receives what awareness gives to him or her , the receiver allows the given to show itself in so far as it gives itself in him or her. Awareness is not grasped it is received. As the receiver receives the gift of awareness, the receiver accomplishes or completes the giveness by transforming the gift into manifestation...according to what gives itself in you shows itself in you.
many thanks to Jean Luc Marion for his inspiration on the phenomena of giveness
