Wake Up Consciousness: A Guide for Spiritual Seekers

CONTENTS

Foreword

There is a great deal of literature emerging in the English world today around the subject of nondual spiritual awakening. These range mainly from the utterances of teachers transcribed from their teaching contexts or written by them, to Western interpretations of traditions from the East. There are, however, very few writers who have both a background in academic psychology and who, themselves, are awakened. And while I may be mistaken about this observation, there are probably even fewer writing in this field in Hungary.

Frank M. Wanderer (a pseudonym created for the English reader) is the one Hungarian voice that has emerged in recent years who fulfills the rare role of both academic and authentic inquirer into consciousness, and this present book is a testament to his achievements in this road less travelled.

Wake Up Consciousness is not a difficult book to read. It avoids academic jargon and speaks plainly and clearly, but more importantly, covers an immense amount of ground in setting forth the nature of awaking and the psychological filters that prevent its realization.

The author shows us precisely how awakening is misinterpreted, and what it really is. And from his scholarly work, provides some evidence for its increasing prevalence in today's world. Moreover, and no doubt from his own direct experience, the author devises a real-time activity to make us see the difference between what we think we are, and what we really are - a most difficult task for writers and teachers of nonduality because of the strong identification with thinking as being the locus of 'me'.

The written exercise to see one's self image, presents a mind-turning visual metaphor to show that we are not the words that make up the image, but the white space of the paper that holds it all i.e. we are fundamentally the pure consciousness in which appearances arise.

This is a wise book, with subtle clarifications made for minds that can easily get lost in abstractions or generalizations. But it is also fearless in its wisdom, debunking with great insight the current seductions of positive thinking, the Law of Attraction, higher levels of consciousness, and the like, where these obsessions are nothing but spiritual materialism in its grossest form.

The author shows us what mindful meditation really is, and how it breaks open the doors of the Matrix to bring us home to what is, but not without first providing insights from the field of psychology into the nature of the egoic structure that resists giving up its hold on the mind. It also echoes the great Krishnamurti's call for the mind to be put in order before we can traverse the pathless path.

I recommend this book as an honest guide to the much needed revolution of consciousness.

Professor Kriben Pillay

Graduate School of Business and Leadership University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban.

South Africa

I.

THE AWAKENING

Awake from the stupor of the identification with your thoughts and desires, and then in the motionless space of Consciousness, the insane, the forever changing world, will be tamed into a wonderful game.

Are you Awake?

Recognizing yourself as Consciousness is independent of all the activities of the mind. This recognition will only come if you have had some experience of the deeper dimensions of Mindfulness.

The Dimensions of Mindfulness

What does it mean to be mindful? When the notion of Mindfulness is mentioned at a conversation, people often tend to confuse it with being awake. Mindfulness is, however, not identical with being awake, since being awake is only one dimension of Mindfulness. It is the outermost dimension of Alertness, its surface only. Three dimensions of Mindfulness may be identified.

The surface, that is, the outermost dimension of Mindfulness is when the focus of attention is open the widest. Being Mindful then means that now, in this very moment, with our eyes closed (or open) you pay attention to the processes of your inner world (bodily sensations, the stream of your thoughts, the shifting of your emotions), and the external world surrounding you (noises, scents etc. from the direct world around you). In such an instant you only focus your attention on what takes place in that very moment.

From the aspect of another, deeper dimension of Mindfulness, it is a quality of your consciousness when you cease to evaluate, qualify and control the experience affecting you at that particular moment (disregard the functions of the mind) and, at the same time, you give up all your desires to control events. You have no expectations in connection with the given moment, you accept what is taking place, without making judgments, what is wrong and what is right for you.

The deepest dimension of Mindfulness is a state of Consciousness the most important characteristic feature of which is the presence of the observing Consciousness, the capability of Sight. In this state of the Consciousness we, as an external spectator, view what is happening inside and around us, and we do not allow these events to take us with them, to affect us deeper. There is a virtual space between you as the contemplating Consciousness and the experiences affecting you. This space enables you to avoid identification with your experience and to look at that experience as an external spectator. Mindfulness is, at the same time.

You Live in a Dream World

Allow me to draw your attention to an apparently surprising thing. If I told you that now, when you are reading these lines, you are in fact asleep, you would certainly believe that I have gone mad.

You are awake, you are concentrating your attention to reading, and you are aware of your environment as well. You can see the furniture of your room, you can hear the call of the birds from the nearby forest. You are also aware of your thoughts and emotions, too. How can anyone claim that you are asleep in this very moment?

Naturally, you, just as everyone else, sleep at night, and yes, sometimes you see dreams while you sleep. But now it is daytime, you are awake, so how could you see dreams?

You Imagine a Whole World Around Yourself

I believe, however, that you do not only sleep at night, but also at daytime. I believe that in your present state of consciousness your greatest illusion is that you think that you are awake. I believe that in your present existence your greatest illusion is when you think that you are alert. What I see is that in your present state of consciousness you are asleep, and at present you are dreaming, and what you see and hear are all parts of your dream.

Your nighttime sleep is only different from your daytime sleep in that in the night your dreams are less active. During the day you imagine a whole world around you, and you play an active role in that dream. Your personal history takes place in that world, and identifying with that world shapes your personal identity.

At present you are dreaming that, as a part of your personal history, you are reading these lines while you identify with the role of the spiritual Seeker, and you are outraged by what you are actually reading.

The question may arise in you as to why I claim that you are asleep and dreaming now. Well, from the state of consciousness that I call Mindfulness, I can see that you are asleep; you believe yourself to be a separate Self, you are a captive of the works of your mind.

The Reasons of Your Sleep

The reason for you sleeping is that you are not Mindful, only awake. Only one dimension of Mindfulness is present in you. Although you are able to focus your attention on your internal emotions and your environment, in your present state of consciousness you are still powerfully identified with your mind and its functions.

You are therefore drifting on the stormy ocean of your thoughts and emotions day by day, and the space necessary for the emergence of a contemplating Witness is missing from you. You still identify with your thoughts and emotions. These generate the dreams of the Mind, in which you live as a separate self, and try to find the ways of safely navigating your life on the stormy sea.

Experience the Deeper Dimensions of Mindfulness

When you experience the deeper dimensions of Mindfulness you stop and at the same time you exit from your personal history and give up searching. It means that you divert your attention from the world of forms and shapes, and you no longer wish to find yourself in the world of forms.

Stopping is the consequence of a shift of attention within your Consciousness. Stopping does not mean the stoppage of your mind, as you have assumed previously. Some of the spiritual teachings suggest that stoppage is equal to emptying the mind, usually through various, forced exercises. The mind will, naturally, stop, but you will not need to impose it on yourself by spiritual exercises, as it will be the consequence of the shift of attention in your consciousness.

How does this shift take place? It is not something one is able to force or impose upon them; no effort is capable of achieving that. It is an experience that simply happens to you. That is when you experience something from the deeper dimensions of Mindfulness.

This is not something that may only occur to the chosen few. It has happened to almost every human being, including you, a few times. You were not alert enough, that is why you failed to realize what was happening to you. At the moment when the shift of attention is taking place Mindfulness emerges. A space appears in you, you have the ability of seeing, and you may contemplate what is happening to you as an external observer.

Then, like in a flashlight, you see and recognize the reality of your existence, that is, you are not an illusionary small self, but a Consciousness free of forms. That recognition is not the result of the analytical work of the mind, but of a series of realizations inspired by the inner quiet. These realizations can be best compared to seeing (that is why various spiritual teachings refer to such people as Seers) and it works like a revelation. That is what I call the power of Sight.

Though the moments of Sight are rare in the life of a person, they are available to everyone, who is aware of them, alert, and pays attention to them. The level of your Mindfulness is therefore what determines whether the experience is a real turning point in your life, or the Sight is blurred, you fall back to sleep and continue dreaming your personal history.

Sight brings you the experience that stoppage is an inactive moment of the mind the, silence between thoughts. In that silence you experience consciousness without forms, and you may recognize that you are in fact a Presence without thoughts. In the moments of Sight you recognize the activities of mind, and you no longer follow them. You recognize the simple fact that with the help of the mind you are not able to reach beyond the mind.

By experiencing the deeper dimensions of Mindfulness, the capability of Sight, you also recognize that you are fully independent of the mind, you are but a witness of what is happening in and around you. Once you have ceased to identify with your mind, you immediately experience that fact. That is why you should detach yourself from the mind, and stay in the position of the eyewitness. That is the state of spatial consciousness, in which the light of Consciousness, Presence shines out bright.

The Signs of Spiritual Awakening

When you are reading these lines, you are in fact asleep, you would certainly believe that I have gone mad.

You are not Present

What is the evidence for me that you are now asleep, and as a citizen of a dreamland you dream that you are awake?

First, that you are not present. To be present means that you are fully alert, attentive, and conscious in the present moment. Whatever you do, you do that fully consciously; you focus your entire attention on that particular activity.

Or, do you feel free to declare that you are present in every moment of your life?

The case with you (and with the majority of people) is that you are not awake in the sense described above. You are careless most of the time, as a large segment of your attention is bound by dealing with events of your thoughts, events of past and plans for future and your own self. Psychological time therefore displaces the moment of the present, or subordinates it to past or future.

You therefore perform the overwhelming majority of your daily activities mechanically. Your attention only becomes more intensive when you meet someone or deal with something who or that you find interesting, or useful in some way. Or the opposite: the person or thing may do harm to you in some way.

You Live in a Separate World

How deep you sleep may depend on how realistic you find your dreams, how much you identify with your identity embedded in your personal history.

The less alert you are, and the deeper you submerge into your dreams, the more isolated, solitary and individualistic you will become.

Every sleeper–including you–has a separate world, only those who exist in the state of Alertness have a common, shared reality. All those different and separate worlds are created by the mind, which generates the state of separateness: the Ego, which appears as the focus of our identification with our thoughts and emotions. Thus everybody has a separate identity, personal history, individual world view and methods of action.

Sometimes suffering wakes you from your sleep, but then