Christianity and the pre-Judaic religious traditions of the
East.
The Shiva Sutras are the foundational scripture of the
Hindu Tantric tradition of ‘Kashmir Shaivism’. The first
aphoristic ‘thread’ or ‘Sutra’ that appears in them is a single,
finite word in Sanskrit. Yet this is a word that makes an
extraordinary statement – an ‘infinite statement’. The word
is ‘Chaitanyamatma’. What this one word says is that the
awareness of an aware being (‘Chetana’) is itself the
essential ‘nature’, ‘is-ness’ or ‘self’ (‘Atman’) of that being –
the ultimate reality behind the word ‘I’. ‘Chaitanyamatma’
can be translated both as a statement (‘Awareness is the
Self’) or simply as a compound noun – ‘Awareness Self’.
Either way, the message is the same. This is that ‘Being a
Self’ means not only ‘Being Aware’ but ‘Being Awareness’ –
identifying with Awareness as one’s very Self or ‘I’. The self
as ‘ego’ takes the dual form of a subjectively experienced
‘self’ and/or an objectified self – its account of itself as part
of its experienced world. The Awareness Self, on the other
hand is ultimately identical with Shiva – that ultimate or
divine awareness that embraces all selves, including the
limited ego, all things and all worlds. Both as subject and as
object of awareness the egoic ‘I’ has its source within that
Self which does not ‘have’ awareness but is awareness – a
universal field of awareness. The little word “I” can thus
not only give expression to the individual as an isolated ego
but as a singular centre of this field – a “singularity of
awareness” which expresses its entirety.