Focusing Awareness of the Present
by Rudra Chakrin
 

There is a clarity of awareness which functions at the back of the human brain as consciousness of the here and now, the living present.  It does not go into the conditioned memories of the past in the midbrain nor does it project the future in the forebrain.  This center of clear awareness at the back of the head is associated especially with the faculty of seeing, of visual perception.  Neurocognitive investigations of the functioning of the human brain have shown the location in general where the brain assembles the information of light and color from the eyes.  The eyes do not see, but bring the visual information that becomes what we see at the back of the brain, which our cognitive faculty then projects in the front hemisphere of our bodily environment, which gives the surrounding world the character of something like a brain-generated holographic movie.

Do you want to go into this incredible subject of neurocognitive non-duality?  If you can keep your attention at the back of the brain with an intense focus, the forebrain (the Future) and the midbrain (the Past) will be mostly quiet, still.  Krishnamurti went to great lengths to describe experiences of greater awareness that he would have with this kind of attention.  Tilopa called this Mahamudra, the Great Position, which in several verses brought out a perspective of natural effortless Superconscious awareness.  This text is preserved in the Kargyudpa Sect of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.  These same Tibetan Yogis call this the process of Lhag Thong, which means Seeing More.  In the teachings of the Naqshbandiyya Order of Sufis, this organ of advanced seeing is called the Khafi subtle faculty, which is one of the five subtle faculties that Dervishes are advised to “activate” and develop.  In the school of the Nagual lineage of New Seers of Mexico as transmitted by Juan Matus to Carlos Castaneda, this kind of practice is called Stopping the Internal Dialogue in order to Stop the World and unfold the experiences of Heightened Awareness or Dreaming Awake.  Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras right from the start points out that the deliberate cessation of cognitive functions will immediately reveal the actual nature of our Spirit-Self, Purusha.  So it should be perfectly clear that there is this extraordinarily important center of Superconscious awakening potentially existing at the back of the brain.  In fact, the Mahayogis of India call it the Lalana Chakra, the Secret Wheel or Vortex of conscious energy of attention, Chitta.  No tradition has an exclusive handle on this center of potential greater awareness of the sheer living present at the back of your brain, but all good teachings about it are useful and inspiring.  Krishnamurti adherents or exclusive followers of course do not like it that people of Ancient traditions and lineages have achieved his level of self-realization and even more and better, but that does not matter for you or I.  Krishnamurti’s particular contribution to all this is welcome and even rather inspiring.  We can take the positive essence of his teaching without having to become trapped in his exclusive and dogmatic anti-traditional ego trip he created around himself over his illusion of being the World Teacher or the most liberated person on Earth.  The old Indian Buddhist Siddha, Tilopa, was far more liberated and superaware than Krishnamurti was ever able to become.  If you want a really impressive example of superhuman heightened awareness, try Tilopa and get yourself out of the Krishnamurti cult.

Now, assuming that you are deeply and sincerely drawn to extended awareness of seeing in the present without the brain activity of the past and future, it might help you to watch the world enter the back of your head from the surrounding front as the seed-syllable, “HUHM” when you inhale, followed by the generation of an objective outer scene from the back with exhalation of the seed-syllable “SUH”.  This “UH” in each seed-syllable rhumes with the U in words like luck or butt.  So the mantra Hamsah (Huhmsuh) of the Indian Yogis is actually a universal cognition of non-duality because HUHM in cosmic language means subjective space or concept and SUH means objective space or concept.  Initiation of early Aryan Yogis into Hamsah was given originally by Extraterrestrial Yogis, in fact.  So this particular important Yoga is actually practiced throughout the Universe by uncountable extraterrestrial practitioners.  In actual cosmic fact, extraterrestrial practitioners are instructed to visualize the SUH outbreathing as also being the expansion of the quantum universe and the HUHM as the contraction of the quantum universe.  Very few of the Yogis of Earth have been intelligent or cosmically knowledgeable enough to sustain this kind of cosmic Hamsah of mental mantra with the watchfulness of breathing, and the poor Buddhists generally never got into the mantra itself because it implies belief in Selfhood, Atman.  Dogmatic anti-mantric ignorance did not begin with Krishnamurti!  And of course the Sufis in general would not touch a Sanskrit Mantra with a ten-foot pole, but have to have something “holy” in the form of an Arabic Dhikr which eliminates the cosmic breath for the most part in order to maintain Islamic neuroconditioning.  So, if you can grasp it, which I doubt, you can do Hamsah breath-watching at the back of your head as a genuine cosmic yoga without danger of becoming an ignorant Hindu or identifying with exclusive Indian Yoga or developing the illusion that Hindu Yogis have all the answers.  Your innate Buddha-nature is not a mere Buddhist and your Shivatma, Godself, is not a mere Shaiva Hindu.  You can go ahead and go cosmic with your cognitive non-duality of perception without having to be either traditional (Hindu) or anti-traditional (Krishnamurti) or New Age (Da Free John).  You can realize extensive awareness of the living present even better by transcending all the sociological turmoil of petty authorities and anti-authorities and quasi-authorities.  You might even become incredibly clear and happy without having to try to prove it to anybody.  It could be your first step to the stars and getting entirely off this wretched planet of proud, ignorant and neurotic believers and disbelievers.

So there is this extraordinary center of potential awareness at the back of your brain where seeing expands beyond the past and the future in a limitless now which is simultaneously both Here and There.  Do you understand this personal opportunity?  When you put a stop to the past and future in your brain, you enter into the vast unknown.  In this state of extended awareness, the brain activity is no longer constricting your consciousness to the pattern of pathetically normal sensory materialistic so-called practical reality.  You can then learn to pick up or lay aside the stupid “practical reality” at will.  You can act normal with your dumb relatives and neighbors, but you are no longer personally trapped in their emotionally disturbed little world of dullness, which is so unbelievably boring and draining.  You can learn to be patient and sweet on the emotional level but ruthless and cunning on the cognitive reality level, which is what the Mexican Seers call Controlled Folly of the art of Stalking.  This gives you psychological support for developing heightened awareness.  It is the path of liberation from superficial pseudo-reality without having to destroy what you personally, physically need on the everyday level.  You leave dull normalcy far behind with your ruthless cunning of pretending to remain normal and stupid, while the dull normals are unaware that you have left because of your patient sweetness.  You then have the awakened heart, Bodhichitta, of a Vajrayana Seer, of Void-Wisdom and Merciful Compassion, which the Sufis call Ruh, Spirit and Qalb, Heart, which they learned from the Buddhist long ago in Central Asia, but will never admit because the Orthodox Muslims would be upset.

So what is it that actually suspends the cognitive functions of midbrain (the Past) and forebrain (the Future)?  It is simply the force of attention in the backbrain (the Present).  That is where the Vast Darkness of the unknown gets lit up.  Armed with non-dual cosmic insight of Huhm-Suh breathing at the back of your brain, there is no limit to your seeing if you will sustain your intent for brain stillness and seeing.

Enough of theory.  Now get on with it directly for yourself and see what happens.  What others have realized is possible for you too.