About my new book "What It Means to Be Consciousness"
Finally! My new book, WHAT IT MEANS
TO BE CONSCIOUSNESS: A SERIES OF SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS AND EXERCISES, is out
now on Amazon. I have written, revised and perfected it over the last two
years, slowly and thoroughly. Apart from its content, I also care greatly about
clarity of presentation and literary style, and I do believe that the final
product reads beautifully – even if I say so myself. In truth, this book has
been in the making for decades. For almost as long as I can remember, I have
been concerned with questions of consciousness, Reality, Being and Divinity –
of what ultimately Is and what ultimately matters. But it was my own life
experience, both wonderful and at times inexpressibly terrible – and interpunctuated
by some extraordinary realisations – which taught me more than any of my
studies. If in the end I have arrived at insights similar to those of other
spiritual thinkers, it is surely because the truth lies in the very Being of
all of us, where it is waiting to be recognised and realised.
For many years I had taken notes – in notebooks and on loose sheets of paper – to capture my evolving insights on these matters. Even so, for a long time it had not occurred to me that I should write a book on spirituality. Then, a good two years ago, I thought that it would be a good idea to write on some spiritual topics in the form of blog posts and articles, so as to begin sharing some of my ideas. But no sooner had I written a few pages when, sitting at my computer one evening in spring 2020 and without any forewarning, I suddenly felt an extremely strong pain in my upper abdomen. The pain was accompanied by an equally extreme nausea, and a few seconds later I passed out. When I regained consciousness, I found myself lying on the floor – for a while I did not know where I was, nor even who I was. I subsequently had considerable health problems, which, fortunately, over time have lessened. We know that we have to die, but the incident made clear to me that death can come very suddenly and unexpectedly.
Before this episode, I somehow had always assumed that there would always be a future in which to accomplish my work. But now I realised that such a future might never have happened. And so I kept writing with purpose and urgency – and above all a sense of responsibility towards a greater Reality and for the benefit of others – since the subject, Reality itself and our role in it, is of supreme importance, and since I believed that what I had experienced and understood was worth saying and would otherwise have remained unsaid. With hindsight I realise that I have not done so one day too soon, for I have reached an age where the peak of my powers is no longer ahead of me and my body gets more easily tired. Perhaps it required a dramatic incident to jolt me into action, and perhaps what happened to me was more than merely accidental. Certainly I called on inspiration from higher powers while writing the book.
I have loosely organised the book’s chapters in parts. PART I sets the scene and introduces some general ideas. PART II concerns itself with how to overcome the negative emotions that so often cloud our awareness. PART III goes further and explores the attitudes which characterise a pure spirit. PART IV seeks the meaning of life in Reality itself. PART V hypothesises what the Divine might be like. The book then closes with a chapter on how to live in the world. Interspersed with these chapters the reader will find a number of AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTERMISSIONS. These are descriptions of sometimes dramatic experiences that have one thing in common: their degree of consciousness – and therefore of Reality – exceeded that of the ordinary waking state. Whatever else these experiences may mean, they seem to me to be proof that Reality can be more conscious than we ordinarily know it, and that it can be more self-conscious at that.
While those who are sceptical of the outlook presented in this book will be inclined to dismiss such experiences as aberrant episodes whose significance can be sufficiently explained in terms of the world as we know it, no one who has ever had similar experiences or realisations will think so: for it is the most Real they have known, an awakening to a much greater and deeper consciousness. If such experiences can sometimes be terrifying and overwhelming, it is perhaps because they represent sudden irruptions of consciousness that are too great to be accommodated by our small human consciousness. Could it be that our evolutionary future (if we should survive as a species despite our destructive tendencies) will be characterised by higher levels of consciousness and a radically different way of Being? Will it disclose a type and intensity of meaning which presently we do not even suspect of being possible?
Since life has always been a mystery to me, I have never quite known what to do in life. And so I have often been lacking the single-minded drive which, in any field of endeavour, is necessary to achieve great things. But how could I have done so when I was all too aware that the worth of any attainment in life depended on the answer to the question what LIFE ITSELF is? For if life is no more than the passing affair it commonly appears to be, then whatever we may gain will soon be lost again. Only if this is not so, only if LIFE is more – infinitely more – than our limited, temporal perception of it, will life ultimately be worth living. Only then will it have ultimate meaning. To discover the answer to this question is not, however, a matter of lazy beliefs or wishful thinking. Quite the contrary: it requires us to descend into the very depth of our Being, to eventually realise that which lies beyond existence and non-existence. It requires a radical letting-go and letting-be.
I am, by nature, a very sober, reflective, and logical person. And I am also a deeply passionate person: not a superficially emotional one, but someone who cares profoundly about Reality – about what ultimately Is and matters. And so I am a spiritual philosopher, concerned with consciousness, God and Being. With sheer, absolute, boundless REALITY AS SUCH. I will not rest satisfied with lesser answers, or with those who are motivated by something lesser than the love of REALITY ITSELF. Perhaps I have come closer to my calling in life; or – at least to me – it feels that way. Perhaps my peculiar combination of talents, concerns and realisations is also of help to others. In that case I will certainly not have lived in vain.
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