The Awakened Man: The Heretic, the Anarchist, the Rebel
By Asanga Angya
()
About this ebook
THIS BOOK IS THE ANSWER TO THE ESSENTIAL QUESTION OF SELF-EXPLORATION
Given that by now you have probably read all the versions of „handbooks about self-knowledge & personal development", you are probably wondering if there is anything new, yet unseen, that can be offered to you at all.
If you take a little time to read this book, this text will show you the key to the crucial problem that has followed human beings since the beginning of civilization, and nowadays maybe more than ever.
This book is the answer to the essential question of self-exploration: how to de-mask the internal network of psychological self-delusion, and the nature of social manipulations, which do not allow us to know, realize and live our original, Transpersonal Nature.
The author made unique blend of his formal philosophical education with the lifelong exploring and practice of spiritual disciplines from East and West.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Asanga Angya (b.1967) philosopher, religiologist and writer, was raised and educated in Europe, where he graduated in Philosophy and Religious Studies. Since 1990 he has been working in print and electronic media and has published numerous essays in the field of philosophy and spirituality, psychology and art. He is the author of a few spiritual books and scientific screenplays, which were made into films.
For over two decades he has explored traditional Eastern and Western ways of self-knowledge as well as the practice of Vedanta and Zen meditation in comparison with the modern teachings of depth psychology. Some insights and observations from these studies are summarized in this collection of short insights.
Related to The Awakened Man
Related ebooks
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Integral Worldview: The Secret to Healing Ourselves and Our World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSovereignty: The Empirical Path of Odhinn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All Life Is Yoga: Truth and Falsehood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow Can Non-duality Help Me Now? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Intimacy of Not Knowing: Finding Your Truth With Zen Koans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll Life Is Yoga: Constant Remembrance of the Mother Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSigns Along The Path To Awakening: Anything is possible with love. The healing of humanity lies within you. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Road to Enlightened Duality: Reflections on Impermanence, Beauty, and the Path of Transformation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing Beyond the Pose: Using Yoga as a Compass to Orient Your Life Toward Happiness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Less Dust the More Trust: Participating In The Shamatha Project, Meditation And Science Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Cares? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Meditation The Reality That Is Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLondon Calling: Jalu Rises In The West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney to Enlightenment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Handbook of Ordinary Heroes: The Bodhisattvas' Way Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThere Is Only One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmazing Ageing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUltimaya 1.0: The Trouble with the Wishes of Leopold Stokes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll Life Is Yoga: Life and Yoga: The Great Secret Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gateless Barrier Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Life and Yoga Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Definitive Guide to Awaken Your Hidden Potential and Purify Your Spirit – Extended Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime for the Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImagination Unknown Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYearning for the Father: The Lord's Prayer and the Mystic Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Bagels to Curry: Life, Death, Family, and Triumph Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTibetan Meditation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diary of Darkness and Light: A Dark Retreat Adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Diabolical Voice: Heresy and the Reception of the Latin "Mirror of Simple Souls" in Late Medieval Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Buddhism For You
The Art of Communicating Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Chakras for Beginners: a Practical Guide to Heal and Balance Yourself through the Power of Chakras Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Buddhism For Dummies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Approaching the Buddhist Path Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/530-Day Meditation Challenge: Exercises, Resources, and Journaling Prompts for a Better Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tibetan Book of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Peace Is Every Breath: A Practice for Our Busy Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buddhism for Beginners Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Real Magic: Creating Miracles in Everyday Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Buddha's Guide to Gratitude: The Life-changing Power of Everyday Mindfulness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lotus Sutra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Collected Letters of Alan Watts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walking Meditation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Zen of Recovery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What the Buddha Taught Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East (Volume One) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThink Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Awakened Man
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Awakened Man - Asanga Angya
Asanga Angya
THE AWAKENED MAN:
THE HERETIC, THE ANARCHIST, THE REBEL
Copyright © 2017 by Gordan Pandža
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-953-328-354-8
E-book published in 2017 by
BULAJA NAKLADA
www.bulaja.com
Asanga Angya
THE AWAKENED MAN:
THE HERETIC,
THE ANARCHIST,
THE REBEL
(Eastern Wisdom in the light
of the Western Psychology)
Insights into the Path to Self-Knowledge:
An Intimate View on Tantra, Zen Buddhism and Vedanta
under the eyes of Jungian psychology and Gurdjieff Work
Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.
Heraclitus of Ephesus: Fragments
The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own Shadow. The Shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.
Carl Gustav Jung:
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
CONTENT
A SHORT SUMMARY OF THIS HANDBOOK IN
SEVERAL POINT
FOREWORD
70 triggers for Awakening or a short guide for demolishing
lightly adopted dogmas and taboos
PROLOGUE
Though he carries the Wise man on his shoulders, the fool will ask the blind man for the Way
1. THE PHANTOMS OF THE INNER THEATRE
1.1 Infinite beginnings – the game that blooms from within itself
1.2 The man without a strong-point, or being rid of the
ambition to be something
1.3 The uprooted I and the world of dead objects
1.4 The phantoms of the inner theatre: ego, non-ego and
super-ego
1.5 The Shadow – the psychic reservoir of the degraded
1.6 The revenge of the rejected Shadow
1.7 The ego is a Son of a bitch, and the Shadow is his mother
2. WHO IS THE PHANTOM DRAGGING ITS CORPSE AROUND
2.1 The ego – a dream from which we can(not) wake!?
2.2 Forgetting oneself means unconditionally accepting
one’s Self
2.3 The ego as reference center of all relations or center of the circumference-less circle
2.4 Unmasking the Great Illusionist by refusing to pay him any attention
2.5 The Great Master of All Illusion
2.6 The idol of all idols and surrogate of all surrogates
2.7 Who is the phantom dragging its corpse around?
3. FROM DEAD MECHANISM TO LIVING SELF
3.1 The consciousness between observation and action – two faces of a hollow medallion
3.2 Essence and Personality as light and screen
3.3 The root of ignorance and suffering is in the oblivion of the True Self
3.4 From dead mechanism to living Self
3.5 The split ego and the fatal attraction to
the unconscious
3.6 The undivided self-identity of consciousness that is freed of relations
3.7 Who am I or the traveler in search of his authenticity
(the Buddhist and Vedantist Path with
Neuropsychological commentary)
4. THE AWAKENED MAN: THE HERETIC, THE ANARCHIST, THE REBEL
4.1 The door we went out through are the same ones we
must come back through
4.2 How can we step out of the psychological trap called the double-bind?
4.3 The path to presence – sailing the unstable winds
of change
4.4 All that we can become is nothing compared to that
which we truly are
4.5 The Awakened Man: the Heretic, the Anarchist,
the Rebel
4.6 The bridge to the other bank: where there is no distance between being, knowing and doing
4.7 He who searches finds nothing, until he loses the One
who searches
5. FREEDOM BEYOND THE MIND AND TIME
5.1 Identification and consciousness – the two sides of the dynamic tapestry of the mind
5.2 Getting out of time means getting out of the ego/mind
5.3 Reality is pure consciousness/energy
5.4 Insight into the Original Nature is nothing but its
self-mirroring
5.5 Where does the cloud of ignorance disappear to when
it is no longer supported by our attention?
5.6 The tragicomedy of the walking paradox: the duel
between Consciousness and will
5.7 Awoken Reality or the blink of actualization
6. HOW TO LOOSEN THE JAWS OF THE DOG THAT HAS FIRMLY BITTEN INTO THE FOG
6.1 The struggle for power: the dominant and the submissive patterns of energy economy
6.2 No one can own the one who appropriates nothing
6.3 Existence is simply a struggle for energy
6.4 The will for power over the object of desire
6.5 How to loosen the jaws of the dog that has firmly bitten into the fog?
6.6 The instinct to clutch to something: A fool hanging
over the abyss of dilemma
6.7 The four types of transformation of the mind – four
paths to True Power
7. THE PASSAGE THROUGH THE DECEPTIVE VEIL OF ILLUSION
7.1 The passage through the deceptive veil of illusion
7.2 Cultivating consciousness is beyond reason and
intellect’s strategies
7.3 Wisdom is consciousness plus action
7.4 At the height of the search the seeker recognizes
himself in the Sought after
7.5 The lens of the mutual mirroring of the internal
and the external worlds
7.6 Master of one’s own captivity
7.7 The struggle of our lives – the battle against the
Grand Inquisitor in us
8. AN EMPTY COCOON FROM THE START
8.1 Where there isn’t room for two
8.2 Being one’s own labyrinth and door to freedom
8.3 A quantum leap from a regulated to an
unpredictable regime
8.4 The mind is the architect of all divides and the border it creates
8.5 The Self and the ego or the Prince and the Pauper
8.6 An empty cocoon from the start
8.7 Creativity and contemplation arise from an intelligent
space
9. WHO IS IT THAT HARNESSES US IN
ITS PLOUGH SO THAT WE TILL THE LAND
OF ITS ILLUSIONS
9.1 Spare parts have no individuality or autonomy
9.2 The world is a marketplace and the ego a never
satisfied merchant in it
9.3 Neither from the outside nor from the inside, or the
middle path to balance
9.4 Who is it that harnesses us in its plough so that we till
the land of its illusions?
9.5 The Son of a Bitch’s herostratic victory
9.6 Buried under a pile of emotional corpses
9.7 The world might not be an illusion, but it is mostly
a self-deception
10. HE WHO LOSES HIMSELF ALONG THE WAY FINDS THE TRUE PATH
10.1 When the awakened man loses himself, he finds the
Universe – when a closed barrel loses its bottom, it
finds the Source
10.2 Meditation – the path to the restoration of the unity of Consciousness and its states
10.3 The mind’s unpredictable dynamics and
Consciousness’s spiraling development
10.4 The path to the return to the Source: from the power
given by control to the devotion that gives fulfillment
10.5 The true intelligence is actually the awakening of
consciousness
10.6 Taking responsibility is the only cure for the
unbearable futility of the imitation of life
10.7 He who loses himself along the way finds the
true Path
EPILOGUE
Ten links in taming the Imaginary
AFTERWORD
All teachings and writings are only markers, we must
cross the Path ourselves
GLOSSARY
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE
A SHORT SUMMARY OF THIS
HANDBOOK IN SEVERAL POINT
1. Reality can only be experienced through the core of our being or the Self. But in order to achieve this, first we need to free the core from illusory covers created by the egocentric mind through the speculative, and thus non-empirical interpretations of reality.
2. In order to experience Reality directly, we must approach it with a consciousness that is freed from prejudice and concepts. This is why we need, through meditation and contemplation, to disempower the defense mechanisms of the ego (mechanisms such as projection and transfer, suppressing, control and compensation), and to awaken our true Self.
3. It is important to see that it is precisely the false I or ego that creates social relations, pseudo culture and civilisation, through which it continues to deceive man and to separate him from his true Self. It is for this purpose that the book gives a comparative overview of the Eastern and Western, spiritual and psychological paths to self-knowledge, that is, demasking of the ego and awakening of the Self.
4. Through a comprehensive Hinduist and Buddhist doctrine, the book gives an insight into how the functions of the mind such as projecting (vikshepa) and obscuring (avarana) of the true Being with the cosmic illusion (maya) are functioning at all three levels: cosmological, psychological and ideological.
5. A separate chapter was dedicated to disclosing stereotypical social patterns of the nature of human relations (with partners, family, friends etc.), for which most people do not reliaze that they are unconsciously based on the strategies of „economy of energy", by means of which ego attracts attention, energy and power in human relations.
6. Consequently, the book shows how society’s system and its institutions (political, ideological, mass-media) manipulate the individual, and how the individual, by becoming a psychological individuum, in the process of becoming an individual can free himself from this deceiving society’s matrix. In the first five thematic units the book therefore shows how to disclose the inner network of psychological self-illusions, and in the following five sections it discloses the nature of society’s manipulations.
7. The text continuously shows how a disciplined cultivation of consciousness through introspection and meditation slowly awakens and frees the seeker from the illusory concepts of the mind. The book concisely illustrates the phases through which the seeker goes on the path of the development of consciousness, and exemplifies them with traditional teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, while bringing them closer to a Western reader through the language of Jungian psychology.
FOREWORD
70 triggers for Awakening or a short guide for demolishing lightly adopted dogmas and taboos
Instead of yet another literary-readymade déjà vu,
this book is an invitation to a journey on which you will get the chance to reassess all the defense mechanisms and illusions with which your pseudo-I (professionally known as the ego
) deceives you, preventing you from getting to know your true, transpersonal Nature.
This is not a politically correct book or another self-help manual where you will find comforting messages such as: You are a magnificent human being who deserves to love and be loved! Everything around you is perfect, you just can’t see it! Life can be fulfilling if you fill it with positive thoughts! Etc., etc...
Instead of these miraculous formulas for happiness, success and love (without any unnecessary "how’s and
why’s) here you will read some different messages that you’re probably not used to, such as: Why is your beloved
ego" a son of a bitch that first looks to satisfy himself and that uses those around him primarily as a means of fulfilling its own ambitions? How can you release the desires and ambitions that you’ve furiously bitten down into like a mad dog biting into an indigestible bone, unable to let go of it even though it may cost you your life? Who is it that drags your body around like a corpse, not asking you for permission, direction or even the purpose of the mute loitering you’re wasting your life with?
Answers were attempted to be provided for these and similar politically incorrect questions (which we are rarely faced with because the society, culture and system in which we live do everything to mislead us into thinking that we are privileged
because they exist only for us) in these 70 short and provocative triggers or igniters that serve no other purpose besides undermining all the generally accepted psychological dogmas and social taboos that the system has been deceiving us with since time immemorial for the purpose of its own self-preservation.
Why is this book different from most self-help manuals that you have had the chance to read so far? Because it will clearly and above all practically explain to you why all the teachings and methods based on affirmative attitudes and thinking
only work short-term, much like a placebo effect, all until we clean the reservoir of our unconscious mind or our psychological Shadow which systematically sabotages all our conscious efforts like a kind of film negative of our consciousness.
For a conscious decision of the mind (Sanskrit: sankalpa) to blossom and to bear fruit it must be planted in fertile, cleared and cultivated soil, not in a pestilent swamp or a barren wasteland. In other words, our mind or our psychic entity with all its levels (the conscious, subconscious and unconscious) must be purified and evenly developed in order for our decision and spiritual practice (Sanskrit: sadhana) to bear fruit.
All great spiritual traditions (here Vedanta and Yoga as well as Tantra and Zen Buddhism, which are interpreted in the spirit of Jungian analytical psychology, are most often referred to) pay the utmost attention to the process of the purification of the mind, because without that other practices cannot bring lasting progress on the Path to self-knowledge and self-development, no matter how long that Path lasts.
Once we begin this path and start to understand how our psychological mechanism functions, we must necessarily be faced with many painful and abhorrent facts that the system (socio-political, religious or ideological) has hidden from us, precisely in order to protect itself.
Therefore, the first five thematic sections of this book disclose the psychological reasons why an individual deceives himself and constantly postpones being introduced to his original, authentic Self. The next five sections expose the spiritual, evolutionary and civilizational reasons due to which the chain of self-deception continues to weave itself in the large web of universal illusion (Sanskrit: maya) in which everyone is inevitably entangled: individuals, collectives, systems...
As was previously mentioned, this book is not another self-help manual that like some sort of mental face-lifting will outwardly help you polish
your psychological persona’s bumps and curves while inwardly keeping you further unchanged: selfish, self-centered and self-pitying ignorants, who blame others for all your problems.
Instead of yet another literary-readymade déjà vu,
this book is an invitation to a journey on which you will get the chance to reassess all the defense mechanisms and illusions with which your pseudo-I (professionally known as the ego
) deceives you, preventing you from getting to know your true, transpersonal Nature.
For this is not possible to see before peeling off all the layers of psychological mimicry that was taught to us by a society that is based on manipulation and by a culture that is based on mimicry.
PROLOGUE
Though he carries the Wise man on his shoulders, the fool will ask the blind man for the Way
Only those who are afraid of life and who want to control it at all costs shackle their lives to principles and rules, whether they be religious, moralistic or ideological. By overlooking the direct experience of reality beyond principles and rules, they deny themselves the opportunity to experience personal insight, which life is really about.
Perhaps the views expressed here may come across as the fruits of the cynical perception of the world and of life. The matter at hand here is not cynicism, rather the immediate realization that the affirmation of life can only be experienced in its entirety from the very core of one’s being. But this is not possible until the core is freed from the many layers of the egocentric cover woven by illusion.
The aim of this book therefore is to point out all the many and varied illusions that we feed with our unconscious habits, prejudices and identifications. Once illusions are identified and released, anyone can find their own way home.
In this respect, these short and compressed reflections do not require any special schooling; they do, however, require focused attention and are worded in such a way as to open up the problem that is to be considered, to illuminate the shadowed oversights or accentuate the uncritically accepted prejudices which are ready for a deep review.
For the honest seeker will never be satisfied with pre-prepared answers, garnished and served on a kitschy platter, as he knows that the answer that can transform him must come from within. As the classic Taoist Chuang Tzu would say, teachings and praxis are the net with which we catch fish (that is, experience), and once the fish is caught the net can be forgotten. But from personal experience I would add that all fish may not be caught with the same net, and that all fish do not take the same bait.
That is why true wisdom and true art, just like tao and te, can only be that which we create from our inner being. The external products of this process (in the form of books or other works) are but the sandy tiles of the path on which we pass, fragmented traces along the way, which will one day be shaken off our Self like dust off an outworn shoe.
It is important to understand that these insights’ approach is guided by the principle of negative path, as its goal is to bring to consciousness and empower that which we are not in order to awaken that which we are. There are two types of travelers, followers and explorers. For the former, the path he identifies with is the positive path, all he needs is faith. For the latter, the path that must be re-examined is the negative path; research and personal experience is what matters.
Only those who are afraid of life and who want to control it at all costs shackle their lives to principles and rules, whether they be religious, moralistic or ideological. By overlooking the