‘The Beginning' and 'Beginnngs'

... I feel, that The Awareness Principle, is a real NEW restart – maybe a new restart of “history” as such  itself!  Jiri Krutina

The concept of a ‘NEW restart’ is a very interesting one.  It raises the whole question of how we understand ‘Beginnings’ or ‘Re-beginnings’.

This is where Heidegger comes in, because he saw his entire work as a transition to ‘Another Beginning’ in Western thought and history, by which he meant something like a ‘New restart’.  

He saw Germany as the womb of this ‘Other Beginning’ and ‘Other Thinking’, but we need to understand the name ‘Germany’ also as a centre and symbol for Europe and European culture as as a whole.

In  this context, the place of Slavic cultures and languages in the European tradition becomes an important question – a question discussed in some depth, although only in relation to the Russian language and Russian thought, by Alexander Dugin. See his book called Martin Heidegger – The Philosophy of Another Beginning. It gives a very good overview of Heidegger’s thinking – also in its historical context and in relation to questions of translation.

Is ‘The Awareness Principle’ the ‘Other Beginning’ that Heidegger saw his work as preparing the way for?  I believe it is.

This does not mean that Heidegger’s ‘question of Being’ – the question of why there is anything at all rather than nothing and what it means for anything to ‘be’ – can simply be transcended by ‘The Awareness Principle’ - only explored and experienced in an entirely new way from an entirely new starting point - ‘another beginning’.

That beginning is of course Awareness itself - understood as a primordial and transcendental field of subjectivity, one that is not itself a being, one that both contains and releases the power and thrust of infinite potentialities for being, and of infinite possible beings.   

There have been earlier attempts to affirm consciousness as the primal ‘beginning’ and essential nature of all that is – all beings. Those found in the Seth books of Jane Roberts are, in my view, not just the most recent but by far the richest.  

“In the beginning, there was not God the Father, Allah, Zoroaster, Zeus or Buddha. In the beginning there was, instead ... a divine psychological gestalt – and by that I mean a being whose reality escapes the definition of the word ‘being’, since it is the source from which all being emerges.”  

Seth, Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfilment Volume 1

Here Seth even indirectly acknowledges Heidegger’s fundamental ‘question of Being’. In the same book he also speaks of a “divine subjectivity” - adding that it is “as present in the world of your experience as it was before the beginning of the universe.” He goes on to say:

“I used the term ‘before the beginning’. In the deepest of terms, however, and in ways that scandalise the intellect ... the beginning is now. [The] critical explosion of divine subjectivity into objectivity is always happening.”

And in an earlier passage he says:

“You are as close to the beginnings of the world as Adam and Eve, or as the Romans, or as the Egyptians or Sumarians.”

The idea of a beginning that is “always happening” –  and that at all moments, ‘past, present, and future’ - is a truly radical one. It offers us a radically different perspective to the idea of ‘another beginning’ i.e. a ‘second’ beginning that both returns to and re-begins a ‘first’ one. The Awareness Principle is such a ‘re-beginning or “restart of history” - but above all in the way in which it allows us to attune to that ‘beginning’ through which the manifestation of Awareness in all things, at all times and in all eras of history, is always happening - and that in an infinity of possible ways.  

“I am making all things new.”  Revelation 21.5 (My favourite Bible quote)

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“In the beginning...”

Was there also - ‘in the beginning’ - any historic philosophy that first affirmed a divine subjectivity or consciousness as the ground and inner nature of all things?

My answer is that there was not and cannot have been an ancient or ‘first’ philosophy of consciousness. That is because the very need for such a philosophy would only occur as a result of a long historical period during which humankind had  lost its earlier and totally wordless experience of the nature of consciousness. The history of philosophy is the history of this loss.

It is only today - in our own historic era - that a pressing need for a philosophy that reflects humanity's native ‘pre-historical’ experience of God as a divine subjectivity – and not as a divine being or ‘subject’ - has become so acute and pressing as to demand such a philosophy.

That is why, at no point in the past history of philosophy was anything like ‘The Awareness Principle’ ever consistently and thoroughly given expression as a philosophy.   

The philosophy of The Awareness Principle is present in all aspects and dimensions in the Seth books, but not as a philosophy. Instead it comes through these books only as an extraordinary new ‘teaching’ or ‘transmission’- one which essentially offers a new translation of countless important dimensions of humanity’s lost inner knowing.

Other, centuries-older or ancient teachings of consciousness - such as the ‘Immaterialism’ of George Berkeley or ‘Trika Shaivism’ - cannot be seen as either the ‘source’ of The Awareness Principle or identical with it. Like many earlier philosophies or spiritual teachings they only hint in its direction – and that only in part and not in a fully consistent and elaborated way.   

These earlier traditions and teachings are therefore best seen as anticipations of The Awareness Principle – reaching for and towards it rather than being its ‘foundation’ in the past. And, in general, it is of great importance to think both the history of thought and history itself in a new way – as something more fundamentally rooted in the future than in the past. 

That is because, in terms of our current understanding and experience of time (terms that are themselves limited) all that we think of ‘having been’ ( the so-called ‘past’) is just that through which all that is ‘yet to come’ (the future) first reflects the  light of the future and reveals itself to us  - like the leaves of a tree reflect the light of the sun and the sky towards which it grows and reaches.   

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The Awareness Principle as a new beginning...

“… we do not repeat a beginning by reducing it to something past and now known, which we may simply affect and imitate. The beginning must be begun again, more radically …” 

Martin Heidegger

Every radical beginning is also a new beginning - because it reveals new aspects of that ultimate beginning which is “always happening”.  

From this point of view however – and despite all my books and writings on it – almost no beginning at all has yet been made in bringing out further the philosophical depths and practical ‘soul-scientific’ potentials of The Awareness Principle.

Just to present this Principle as a skeleton set or tantra of philosophical ‘theses’ or ‘sutras’ - or as a skeletal philosophical ‘system’ - is not enough to make such a beginning. 

A true beginning in offering even a basic understanding of The Awareness Principle (and all my texts on it)  would need this Principle to be placed in its own personal, cultural, historical and philosophical context of emergence. It is this context or field of emergence - out of which The Awareness Principle first arose - that is its true  ‘beginning‘, what came ‘before’ it.

This context of emergence is also a con-text: a set of co-texts. These con-texts or co-texts are not sources but form a constellation of  ‘coordinate points’ within which the entire historical place and meaning in of The Awareness Principle - as a new Soul-Scientific Philosophy - can first be located.  

The four most important coordinate points in this constellation of con-texts or co-texts are:

1. All the SETH books of Jane Roberts,

2. The ‘Dialectic Phenomenology’ of Michael Kosok - and its co-texts in both Marx, Hegel and ‘Phenomenological Science’.

3. ‘The Question of Being’ and  the work of Martin Heidegger - as the necessary ground and transition to ‘Another Beginning’. 

4. Elements of the Indian ‘Trika’ and ‘Kaula’ traditions of Kashmir Shaivism – as reinterpreted through ‘The New Yoga’.

It would take a lifetime just to explore in full depth the relation between The Awareness Principle and any one of these principal con-textual ‘coordinate points’ – for example the thinking of Martin Heidegger.

As for books - THE book on The Awareness Principle has yet to be written - or even begun! 

The one that comes closest to it (no, not The Awareness Principle but The Qualia Revolution) does not even use the term ‘The Awareness Principle’! And this is also a book that cannot in any way be reduced to a bullet point summary or set of ‘sutras’.  

Apart from this book, it is only in much shorter books of mine such as Event Horizon that both the core of The Awareness Principle and more than one of its 4 major ‘coordinate points’ – its 4 major con-text or co-texts of emergence – has even begun to be brought out.  

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Pragmatic questions:

At the moment the starting point or beginning for a ‘re-start’ or new beginning is no more than a large set of essays and/or essays compiled and put together in book form – but none of which alone can ever give full expression to their context and co-texts: to those books and essays as a whole.

That is why it may be  that the translation and publication of more or less independent sections or chapters of my books - and/or their re-compilation into new books - might be the next step.

In the meantime I feel it might be helpful if the back covers and content lists of my most important books were translated into other languages – even if some of them might have sections or chapters which are be a bit too difficult to difficult even for readers with a good basic knowledge of English.

It is also just as important – particularly today - that some of my books and essays be targeted at and studied by academic students, thinkers and philosophers as it is that they be publicised for the ‘general reader’.

This is a difficult challenge, given that many academics simply do not consider even reading non-academic publications, or books not published by universities or university professors.  

Perhaps pages and essays from other sites of mine (not just www.theawarenessprinciple.com or www.thenewyoga.org but also www.thenewscience.org.uk / www.thenewtherapy.org.uk might be just as useful content for a new and comprehensive website on The Awareness Principle – and on the principles and practice of Soul-Scientific Research.

Basic question: can practical engagement with The Awareness Principle/Soul-Science be effective without both experiential training and deep philosophical engagement?   

Questions of translation:

Note: in no translation of any of Heidegger’s works is his central German word – Dasein - ever ‘translated’. It is always left in German to be interpreted and understood in context.

Difficulties and questions of translation of specific terms used in my own philosophy (awareness, soul etc.) are not ‘secondary’ questions but philosophical questions in themselves.

They are also questions to do with what unique potentials different languages besides English and German hold within them for both thinking and for ‘philosophy’. Thus it may be that th Czech language, for example, is more directly related to Sanksrit than the Germanic or Romance languages.

Conclusion: A ‘re-start to history’?

The most important thing to remember. There is no beginning and no end to the future inner development, expansion and refinement of The Awareness Principle – both as a primal philosophy of consciousness and as a practical new philosophical science of consciousness.

What has been written about, taught and experienced through it so far simply provides a framework for a work that will take centuries to unfold and expand. For this reason, The Awareness Principle does offer  a potential “re-start to history” – to the history of human thought, the history of metaphysics and of the sciences – and the history and evolution of human life itself.  

So far, however, only the yogic-meditational and medical implications of The Awareness Principle have developed to a sufficient degree for dissemination to just begin to be applied in human life. 

Its implications for the physical sciences – our understanding of the essential nature of electricity, magnetism and electro-magnetism and gravity for example - have barely begun to be explored.

Postscript: Heidegger’s illuminating error:

This is an error that no philosophers or writers on Heidegger that I know of have seen - because they themselves are caught up in this error. On the other hand this an error that - paradoxically and by omission - points the way to The Awareness Principle - as that new beginning in thinking and in history that Heidegger himself prepared the way for.  The error:

·         Heidegger’s failure to question the age-old metaphysical identification of subjectivity or consciousness per se with subjects of consciousness (whether individual, empirical or transcendental).

·         Heidegger distinguishes Being from beings - but he does not match this fundamental ‘ontological difference‘ or distinction with a fundamental ‘epistemological’ distinction: between consciousness per se and ‘subjects’ of consciousness.

·         The result: Heidegger still sees consciousness as the property or activity of a subject, rather than – as in The Awareness Principle - recognising that individual consciousness is but th are individualisations and embodiments of a spacious and universal consciousness field.

·         Heidegger only recognises the limitation of this idea of subjectivity negatively, through his rejection of theological ideas of God as a supreme ‘subject‘ or ‘being‘ – and through Nietsche recognition of the death of this notion (‘God is dead‘).

·         An understanding of consciousness or subjectivity in its spacious or field character is only hinted at through his spatial-metaphorical descriptions of Dasein as ‘the Open’ or ‘the Clearing’

Summary: In Heidegger ‘the question of being’ points the way to ‘another beginning’ based on  ‘the question of consciousness’ - but the way is both pointed to and hindered and obstructed by his failure to question the old metaphysical reduction of consciousness to point-like ‘subjects’ of consciousness – equivalent to the reduction of Being to beings which Heidegger himself questions so deeply and meditatively. (See Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought)