*** Read Part 2 ***
This is the second part of my search to find other uses of the word ‘knowingness’, and the final part of the series.
Direct Path
(260 files, 62 MB)
‘Knowingness’ is also a term used occasionally by Direct Path authors. Atmananda Krishna Menon, for example uses it in his ‘Notes’:
1128. WHAT AM I?
Am I the body, senses or mind? No. If I claim to be anything, that must be with me wherever I go. Doing, perceiving, thinking and feeling do not go with me wherever I go.
‘Knowing’ alone is always with me. So I am knowingness or Consciousness alone. I am that always, and I am free. I can only be that which remains over, when the object or active part is separated from the perceiver, perception or percept.
and:
1020. PHENOMENAL KNOWLEDGE
Phenomenal knowledge is the inherent ‘knowingness’ within you, coming out occasionally through the mind or senses.
and, in Note 915, he explicitly equates if with Consciousness:
When under instructions from a Guru you eliminate objects from the knowledge of objects, you stand as pure knowingness or Consciousness itself.
But the logic behind this is debatable. He argues that:
In all your life, you feel you have not changed; and of all your manifold activities, from your birth onwards, the only activity that has never changed is ‘knowing’. So both these must necessarily be one and the same; and therefore knowingness is your real nature.
I already noted in my review of Rupert Spira’s ‘The Transparency of Things’ that he used it. I commented that “there are some ‘neo-like’ statements that did not make any sense to me”! Such as:
“…even in ignoring itself, something is known and that knowing is the Knowingness of Consciousness knowing itself.”
Neo-Vedanta
(50 files, 124 MB)
This is not a good source. Swami Vivekananda does not use the term in any of his 9 volumes of writing. The single reference I found was from V. Subrahmanya Iyer ‘Commentaries of Rajasevasakta (From the posthumous collections of Paul Brunton)’: “The essence of Life that is at the heart of all matter, the simple knowingness, “Non-Conceptual, Impersonal Existence Is, and I Am That,” is absolutely undeniable … and inexpressible.”
Osho
(140 files, 98 MB)
According to Osho, the idea is contained in the Mandukya Upanishad. Having written a book on this (A-U-M: Awakening to Reality’ and read every book available on the subject (except, it seems, his!), I don’t recall encountering it there! He says in his ‘Philosophia Ultima’:
IT IS NOT KNOWING,
IT IS NOT UNKNOWING,
NOR IS IT KNOWINGNESS ITSELF.
The effort is to bring you closer to the inexpressible, so it is trying to avoid all the pitfalls. The first pitfall is that you may think it is knowing – it is not. You may think it is unknowing – it is not. You may think then it is knowingness itself – it is not.
Neo-Advaita
(270 files, 74 MB)
Charlie Hayes quite likes the term. In ‘From I am to I am… with love’, he uses the term 10 times. He says, for example, that:
what we truly are is ALL power, ALL knowingness, ALL Presence. Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience.” And “Oneness IS the Knowingness, and That is NON conceptual, BEFORE language, Timeless Beingness, Endless Peace.
And, in ‘Life after Death’, he clarifies (?): “The knowing that I Am is NOT the Final Knowingness. In THAT – Being ItSelf – there is NO knower of that I Am. There is ONLY Is-Ness – Arising AS – I AM!”
Finally, in ‘Perfect Peace’: “The essence of Life that is at the heart of all matter, the simple knowingness, “Non-Conceptual, Impersonal Existence Is, and I Am That,” is absolutely undeniable … and inexpressible.”
Miscellaneous
(Some 500+ files at around 170MB; 84 teachers) I have this section for teachers that I haven’t been able to slot into any other category, and there are just a few occurrences here. Ed Muzika, for example, in his ‘Autobiography of a Jnani’ (but he is just referring to the awareness we have when we are awake or dreaming rather than sleeping):
Even now, that knowingness disappears for 7-8 hours a day, but that same root consciousness is manifesting as knowingness in someone else, while you continue to exist without knowing. Yet that lack of experience for eight hours does not bother you when you awaken, does it?
Or Wolfgang Plaschg, in his paper ‘Understanding Reality in the Vision of Advaita Vedānta’ uses it in his translation of satyaṃ jñānamanantaṃ brahma: “Brahman is fundamental (satyam), limitless (anantam) consciousness or knowingness (jñānam)”. This is perfectly understandable, since translating jñānam as ‘knowledge’ does not sound right, given that Brahman does not ‘do’ anything, and that must include ‘knowing’ in the knower-known sense.
Helen Hamilton is a teacher who I categorized as ‘Not Advaita’ in my book ‘Self Seeking’. In her book ‘Dissolving the Ego’, she provides quite a clear description of her usage of the term. She says:
If we look in the dictionary for a definition of ‘to know’ we find that it means ‘to be aware of through observation’ or ‘to have developed a relationship with’. Both of these definitions point to the fact that in us all in Something that Knows everything else but is in fact before and beyond everything it Knows. This Knowing Knows even the universe itself. You are this Knower and this practice is simply to keep attention on the Knowing. What usually happens is that our attention is always on WHAT we Know and not the Knowing itself. Here we are shifting the focus back to the fact that there is always this ever present Knowing here. Keeping attention on the Knowing will dissolve the separate ego or the sense that all you are is the mind and body. This is the end of all suffering.
And after further description of this (effectively meditating), she concludes: “In the end it will be seen that this Knowingness is what you are and all that you know is arising out of this Knowingness. There never was any separate person that Knows; it just appeared that way for a while.”
I guess that this is the sense in which Ramesam is using the term.
And Joan Tollifson uses the term a few times in her prolific writing. For example, in an article entitled ‘The Heart of What Is’, she says:
When we are silent and still, we come in touch with an energetic vibrancy that we might call formless presence, pure consciousness or spirit. No words can capture it. This aware, awake presence feels open, vast, spacious, uncontained, boundless, limitless, empty and immensely alive. It is empty of any place to land or anything to grab onto. It cannot be objectified. It isn’t a ‘thing’ among other things, or an idea to believe in.
It’s our most primal and undoubtable experience, the knowingness of being, the impersonal I AM, and even more subtle and closer than that, it is the eye (I) that cannot see itself, the primordial ground of being, the germinal darkness that remains even in deep sleep, prior to any experience at all, prior even to the first sense of impersonal presence.
She talks about the “impersonal knowingness of being present and aware” or “the undoubtable knowingness of being here now” and I confess that this is the sort of neo-Advaitin way of talking that tends to irritate me. “It’s right here showing up as the taste of tea, the sound of traffic, the knowingness of being present and aware—just this!” could equally well have been written by Jeff Foster.
Conclusion
I am sure that you (or I) could find some faults with this analysis but it does seem quite unbiased and reasonable. I believe I have demonstrated convincingly that the word is NOT used in traditional Advaita. It gained some traction with Nisargadatta but practically no one else. In fact, its usage has only become frequent with Ramesam and his translations of Kuppa Venkata Krishna Murthy and Yellamraju Srinivasa Rao. Ramesam is almost entirely to blame! 😉
I think that my ‘bottom line’ summary is that some teachers use this term to obfuscate or ‘make mystical’ or as an apology for the fact that they are unable to find logical, reasonable explanations, or everyday words, for what they are trying to say. It is certainly true that Brahman cannot be described, but Śaṅkara (and others) have been able adequately to explain Advaita without inventing words that are only destined to confuse rather than clarify the teaching. (Note that i am NOT accusing Ramesam of doing this! I do not doubt for a minute that his intentions are entirely otherwise.)
But I am sure that there will be some comments on all of this, especially no doubt from Ramesam, to whom I apologize for any perceived ‘attack’. I assure him that my aim is purely to clarify and justify my own position and set down the facts of the matter.