You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

“states of Consciousness” Philosophical Concepts and the Virtue Trap / 257
occurs, the I am appears, and makes you believe you are, yet
YOU ARE NOT.
“Even innumerable means cannot reveal Siva [THE
SUBSTANCE]. Can a jar reveal the Sun? Pondering
thus, “one” gets absorbed immediately in Siva [THE
SUBSTANCE].” (Singh, Vijnanabhairava, p. 21)
No technique, which by its very nature must contain an
“I” and an “awarer,” can reveal or guarantee the realization
of THAT. All paths, techniques, approaches, or processes
must be done by an “I” and, without the proper enquiry
and understanding, paths can lead only to more techniques,
approaches, processes, paths, and explanations about why
they do and do not work, all of which must be discarded.
Even “awareness,” the product of an “awarer,” also is only
“condensed” consciousness. Knowing this alone, one is freed
from the trap of an “awarer” gaining or imagining itself as the
source or the origin of consciousness. If an “awarer” continues
believing in itself or “another” as a source of consciousness,
then it can also believe in not only the concept of source or
consciousness playing a game to know itself (in Sanskrit,
leela, or the Play of God), but may also believe in the deluded
concept of an evolution of consciousness; or even a “person”
who works on or with their own or another’s consciousness
by which they or “I” will get something. Obviously,
this implies that there is an “I” and an “it” that is made of a
consciousness that is separate and different from consciousness
since consciousness does not evolve or expand; there is
only an illusion that it does. It is only the veil or illusion of
a separate substance called an “awarer”—awaring— awareness,
which is part of the mirage, which deludes itself into
believing in the concept of an evolution of consciousness,
not pure consciousness (as THE SUBSTANCE). In this way
the evolution or expansion of the awareness of consciousness