Awake, Refined and Causal: Conditions of Awareness

The main neuroelectric catagories most often investigated in science (Beta, alpha-band, theta-bandwidth, delta-band) exemplify categories of waking, dreaming and sleeping through which we pass every day. Though all brain states are typically
normally active throughout the day, beta-band motion is chief the gross state. alpha-band and theta-bandwidth emerge as we become calm and dozy, and delta-band surfaces as we fall into profound, dreamless sleep.

In subjective terms, on some level we travel through and experience a field of mind as we move through the sleep cycle, ranging from the gross, to the subtle to the completely non-obvious. Beta-bandwidth motion is experienced as a palpable, dense mode of conscious awareness, whereas alpha-band and Theta simultaneously emerge with a less dense form of awareness in which lucid imaginings and a feeling of yielding come to the surface. This is a world in which long ignored memories come into view and the obvious laws of nature disappear. Finally, the self spectator—the “I”—departs as delta-bandwidth motion emerges in profound, imageless sleep. In this form of awareness, there is no self-identified witness, no one efforting with the world, no self-consciousness who is exultant or gloomy; there is only accord and repose. Revealingly, this form of awareness is fundamental to our continuous strength and welfare, as it deeply restores our innate aptitude for recuperation and renewal.

Remarkably, the teachings of certain Buddhist and Hindu institutions also reveal a range of mind that spans from the obvious, to the subtle to the completely non-obvious, each level occupying its own figure—gross, subtle or very subtle (i.e., causal). In addition, the gross essence is confined inside the not so obvious texture and the not so obvious figure within the causal energy, so that the advent of the non-self-identified perceiver is universal potential. Stated succinctly, these co-arising state-body manifestations embody elements of ourselves that we can cultivate, authorizing more of our untapped ability to manifest.

This teaching of a tripartite self (with corresponding characteristics and conditions) is evident in Buddhist, Hindu and even Christian doctrines, though the particulars of the doctrines contrast from tradition to tradition. The Trikaya doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism describes the character of an unfettered person, comprising three qualities: 1) a formed material essence which occurs in time and space; 2) a physique of luminosity; and 3) a never-ending Actuality figure, the emodiment of the enlightenment principle. The Hindu philosophical tradition of Vedanta delineates these three bodies as the gross body, the subtle body and the causal energy. And the Christian tradition acknowledges these three forms/categories in its principle of the Trinity—God in three persons: Father (very subtle