Abstract

The nature of experience cannot be truly understood unless the form of experience is first seen clearly. “An Introduction to Awareness” is a philosophical journey that takes the reader into the heart of the presence of nondual reality – a reality in which the “spiritual” world and the “actual” world are not separate; in which the “physical” reality of science is a practical yet imaginative construction of causal mechanisms imposed by us upon the spontaneously creative, uncaused, manifestation of Nature – a way of thinking about the world that is useful for manipulating it, yet which is not truly real. This mechanistic way of seeing Reality comes at a great cost; one that we suffer from every day because we see ourselves as causal mechanisms too. We have accepted the mythology of science that asserts that we are separate from what we experience, that the forms of phenomenal existence are the serendipitous concretions of haphazard activity, and that the nature of a thing is nothing more than the mathematical expression of its statistical probabilities – that Nature has no soul. We have allowed this tool of practical reason – science – and this simplification of reality – mathematical modeling – to overwhelm the truth of our presence – this alive presence that we are. This book shows another way to view the world, another way to construct your thoughts about it, in order to realize the wholeness of absolute reality, while still retaining the practical means of living that the modern world has given us. It explains how to use concepts in a way that does not endanger a truer understanding of reality and our participation in it.