Fundamental to all is qualities we might call Alertness and Liveliness.
From a Unity perspective, that liveliness stirs alertness and it begins to flow as Consciousness. Consciousness becomes aware of itself and aware of its own existence. From those dynamics, all of creation arises.
I describe this process in more detail here.
From a Brahman perspective, there is no “dynamics of consciousness”. No existence. Alertness and liveliness remain distinct. Not as a duality but simply as 2 subtle “qualities”.
From the alertness we can say Brahman is conscious but not consciousness (flowing). It is simply alert and knows itself. Due to liveliness, there are apparent qualities and an appearance arises. This lively appearance causes an appearance of the appearance. One appearance appears to create another or have effects through liveliness. This process can be said to repeat itself through what have been called kosha (sheaths) or the appearance of layers of creation until the appearance is so dense as to seem solid (aka physical world).
And yet, none of this is happening or ever did arise. But it’s not an “illusion” in the earlier sense of it. It remains Brahman in appearance.
Davidya
Last Updated on June 16, 2016 by
Yes, the models are very tough to come up with for Brahman, due to its pervasiveness and being beyond the dynamics of consciousness.
The feeling of it though, where it is known, is similar to the witnessing phenomenon experienced, where one knows oneself to be the Self, the bright flame of eternal, unbounded, infinite life, while watching the outer world from that perspective.
In a similar way, the dynamics of consciousness up to that point of Grand Unification, or Brahman, now appear as quite small – referential to the Self, which has now been subsumed into Brahman.
There is no separation, though, as might be assumed conceptually, as Brahman fills all of the spaces both big and small, and all beings within the spaces, and all the dynamics between the beings. Comprehensive, though with no special reference to the Self, or any previous state of consciousness. This allows an openness to what comes next, because as you have said, nothing happens.
Nicely put, Jim. Thanks.
I’ve commented on that myself – how there are certain things that remind me of the Self Realization shift. Yet it is going beyond the completion of that process – so quite different also.
But I suspect this is why some confuse Vedantic texts on this with Self Realization. Completely different, but the wording can seem similar.