On Mar 25, 2008, at 5:51 PM, Larry wrote:
As I have heard, UC is recognition of Self in another object (person/place/thing) . . . as UC matures, recognition becomes more frequent and the 'scope' of the object expands . . . till entire universe can be appreciated as Self.
This is how Shankara describes in his nondual stages, from the POV of Unity:
pratyahara : seeing the 'self' in objects of senses and thereby submerging the mind (manas) into consciousness (chiti), dharana wherever the mind goes, seeing Brahman there and holding the mind therein,
dhyana : 'I am the very Brahman by such vrtti remaining without any object of concentration (niralambana), grantor of supreme joy,
samadhi : becoming free of all transmutations (nirvikAra), maintaining the vrtti of being identical with Brahman, then forgetting the very vrtti.
Needless to say, this is quite different from how Patanjali sees things!
However - in BC the fullness of 'inside' and 'outside' collide and that inside/outside or subject/object distinction becomes only a matter of practicality. Also, in BC the Self is gone because there is no sense of anything that is non Self, no inside/outside, no subject/object. Like CC, UC feels very natural and a normal way for a human being to live. However, in BC there is absolutely no doubt that something really big happened, things are really different . . for one thing, you are no longer a human being - and That does not feel natural.
There is a sense that one becomes the center of ones own mandala and all items in the field of awareness are unified elements that have a relation to your "energetic" manifestation of universal chiti.
At the level of unity, thought takes on a very different role. When I hear someone making a claim of Unity, one of the things I'll listen for is how they integrate thought from their nondual POV.
The analogy one of my Bonpo masters gave was it's like watching fish move within water.
