Imperience: Understanding the Heart of Consciousness

By Erik Knud-Hansen

Imperience: Understanding the Heart of Consciousness presents a brief, contemporary version of timeless spiritual knowledge and intuitive insight into supreme being. It does not, however, endorse any particular supreme being or spiritual tradition—including any rites, rituals, beliefs, dogma, or intercession—as essential to enlightenment. Whether we are persons of faith or no faith, spiritual practitioners or not, we can benefit from understanding the fundamental nature of mind and matter and the core principles that govern them. This understanding supports us to look within our own minds to see firsthand what is true. Because consciousness itself has no material reality, it cannot be experienced objectively, only imperienced directly within our own being. Imperience is how we sense conscious awareness and awaken intuitive insight into the dharma (truth) of nonduality and the very heart of consciousness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504344487

Erik Knud-Hansen

Erik Knud-Hansen became devoted to spiritual practice in 1972, beginning years of intensive meditation, monastic training, and helping to establish several retreat centers. As a teacher in the Buddhist lineage since 1985, he shares ways of awakening reflecting the primary traditions in which he trained—namely Buddhism, Taoism, and Advaita Vedanta. Contact Erik at www.erikknudhansen.com

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Copyright © 2015 Erik Knud-Hansen.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-4447-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4449-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4448-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015918813

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/01/2019

Contents

Author’s Note to the First Edition

Preface

Introduction

Glossary: Words Pointing the Way

Part One: The Domain of Absolute Consciousness

Part Two: The Relational Being

1.   The Material Body

2.   The Feeling Life

3.   The Mental Life

4.   Consciousness

5.   Perception

6.   Intention

7.   Emotion

8.   The Personification of Life

9.   Karma, the Principle Law of Mental Conditioning

10.   Birth and Death

11.   Reincarnation and Rebirth

Part Three: A Spiritual Life

1.   Morality and Ethics

2.   The Spirit of Surrender

3.   Prayers, Rites, and Rituals

4.   Spiritual Materialism

5.   Relating to the Social World

6.   Voluntary Simplicity and Hermitage

7.   Inner Hindrances

8.   Attitudes of Awakening

9.   Meditation and Contemplation

10.   Mindfulness of Body, Breath, and Being

11.   Concentration of Mind and Absorption States

Part Four: Understanding the Heart of Consciousness

1.   What’s in a Name?

2.   The Illusion of Time and Space

3.   Understanding Spiritual Imperience

4.   Imperience … Awakening the Heart of Consciousness

About the Author

Author’s Note to the First Edition

D uring the past forty-five years of studying, practicing, and teaching meditation for the purpose of awakening intuitive insight into the nature of consciousness, I have observed countless ways that the beautiful heart of spirituality is corrupted by views and concepts that may mean well, but often result in unnecessary sectarian divides, intolerance, animosity, and even warfare in the name of religion. It is unlikely that cultural hatred will change unless individuals see through the ideologies that divide them. For the sake of peaceful reconciliation and compassionate reflection, I would like to offer a brief but comprehensive view of this field that provides a way of understanding spirituality that a person of any persuasion might find helpful in clarifying his or her own foundational beliefs as well as recognizing the common good in others.

Imperience: Understanding the Heart of Consciousness pertains to the divine, universal nature of absolute consciousness and how to know for oneself, from the inside out, the heart of supreme being. By design, this book is not about anyone’s personal experience or life story. In this book, I describe each foundation of our being and how it relates to absolute consciousness. Because a comprehensive, unified view of the absolute is nondual by nature, everything points in the one direction and may sound repetitious at times. This feels right because some people will naturally relate to some aspects more easily than others, and there is value in understanding how they all fit together and function as a whole.

Because spiritual development is ultimately intuitive and not just about beliefs, understanding core principles can be useful guidance in any language or religious interpretation. We don’t have to agree with any particular description in order to awaken conscious awareness, but we do need to know how to look inside our own minds if we are to see our true nature for ourselves. Spiritual awakening has less to do with the content of our stories than understanding the screen of consciousness on which they play.

For those who have never considered spirituality in this way before, please don’t be dissuaded by how abstract this may sound. There is a reason why spiritual traditions generally have two very different aspects to their practice and teaching. One is about living socially in the relative world, providing wise guidance to nurture love and compassion in our daily lives. The second aspect relates to our intuitive journeys into the depths of mind to see firsthand the nature of absolute—or divine—consciousness. This requires a different set of skills and conditions than apply to the relational world. When we comprehend the unique, nondual relationship between these two aspects, we can employ wiser strategies for nurturing both.

It isn’t necessarily a disadvantage to be unfamiliar with intuitive, meditative understanding and practice before reading and engaging this material. On the contrary, it can be beneficial not to carry fixed views, opinions, or preconceptions about it. If you read slowly and reflectively, you will have a much better chance of seeing where these words point and how this fits with your own experience. In this way, intuitive wisdom will awaken and mature, both gradually and at times quite suddenly, revealing the nature of your heart of consciousness.

Peace and Aloha,

Erik Knud-Hansen

Maui, Hawai’i

2015

Preface

O ne afternoon at the home of a friend, a poster on the wall caught my eye. It was a computer-generated picture showing many rows of waves in an unusual, mechanical pattern. The rows were identical and repeated throughout the picture, each row touching the one below it.

My friend asked what I saw, but I didn’t quite understand his question. He suggested I stand closer to the poster and look again. I still saw rows of waves in graphic detail. He instructed me to focus my eyes an inch or so in front of the poster, which took much counterintuitive effort. When I finally succeeded, the waves totally disappeared; instead, I saw three large dolphins leaping in open air. Surprised by the shift, I blinked, which caused my eyes to immediately refocus on the original picture of the waves. When I tried to follow my friend’s instruction a second time, it was even more difficult to see the hidden image since I knew I was looking for dolphins.

My friend explained that the computer-generated picture had three dimensions. The hidden image, located in the third dimension, was invisible to our eyes as long as they were focused on the poster. The dolphins, there all the time, could only be perceived when the eyes focused in front of the picture, not on the poster itself in their habitually conditioned way.

Everyone will see the waves and not the dolphins—that’s our common human conditioning. When we see what is obvious, we usually don’t question what else might be in front of our eyes. In this case, even if by some chance we were to glimpse the hidden image, we would lose it the moment our eyes refocused on the poster. The ordinary picture would reappear, and we wouldn’t even know what had happened. We might assume that seeing the dolphins was an aberration of perception and not real. However, not only is the image real and always there—it isn’t even hiding.

Unless we understood how we saw the image, it would be very difficult to do it again. In fact, the harder we try to see what’s on the page, the more our eyes will lock into the depth perception that makes seeing it impossible. Even though there are several ways to refocus our eyes to see the 3-D image, they all require that we not focus on the obvious picture in front of our face. Hint: in order to see the third dimension, we must try softer, not harder.

Getting a glimpse of what is normally invisible could happen while we are engaged in some sort of prayer, worship, visualization, or anything else that relaxes our minds. If our eyes soften momentarily and we see the dolphins, we might believe that the particular activity we were doing caused the revelation. In fact, it occurred because of the nongrasping quality of our inner being, independent of what we were doing at the time. By softening our gazes, we allowed our focus to shift from the obvious and compelling image before us. If we reflect on this, we might realize that although our ordinary sense perception is limited by habitual use, we can expand it with specific attitudes, knowledge, and techniques. Our efforts, however, must include the effort to relax and release.

This story about the 3-D poster is about a shift in perception—a change from one sense experience to another. If we wish to see divine consciousness, however, we must use a faculty that we already have and use, but which is different from ordinary sense perception. Because consciousness has no material element and cannot be objectified, we cannot directly experience it, but we can indeed imperience it. We only need to understand what this is and how to engage it. We know how to experience the world of sense objects, but how do we imperience the heart of consciousness?

Introduction

Our personal consciousness awakens from the inside out, from firsthand imperience within our own blood and being.

I mperience: Understanding the Heart of Consciousness presents a brief, contemporary version of timeless spiritual knowledge and intuitive insight. It includes a view of absolute reality that can help readers develop a feeling for the nondual nature of consciousness and all beings within it. Understanding this clarifies the aim of spiritual practice and brings us closer to awakening the heart of consciousness.

This is not merely a theoretical description. These pages also include practical suggestions for awakening conscious awareness in both deep retreat and daily life. Through the practices of meditation and contemplative inquiry, anyone can learn to look within and see firsthand what is true.

Part 1 describes the domain of absolute reality and the origins of human consciousness in order to provide a perspective of who we are in relation to the whole of life. Part 2 examines the primary elements and functions of individual relational beings to help us understand the nature of our own minds and bodies. Part 3 offers some practical meditations and reflections on spiritual life that can help guide our journeys. Part 4 illuminates the nature of awakening consciousness.

There is a glossary to clarify key words since some may be used in a way that differs from other spiritual writings. Words are symbols we use to communicate and convey meaning. If a topic is subtle and profound, our language needs to be especially precise. Our common usage influences the way we understand words, but this can also lead us astray when describing intuitive spiritual principles. If we don’t look deeply into the meanings of the terms we use, understanding becomes self-limited. Even when we use words correctly and believe we understand them, we might miss nuances of meaning that are important for deepening insight.

For instance, mindfulness and awareness are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Mindfulness is a mental activity that engages our attention in observing our experiences as they happen. Awareness is a function of consciousness, a different faculty from our mental lives. Unlike mindfulness, awareness is not an active doing of mind; it is an awakened presence of being. Awareness and mindfulness often arise together and can be difficult to distinguish, but knowing how they differ can be key in understanding the very heart of consciousness.

The words path and way often mean the same thing, but they can also have very different implications. Because we take a path from one place to another, it’s common to speak of a spiritual path as though the goal were somewhere else and apart from us. Divine consciousness, however, is already here and now by its very nature, and it requires no distance to travel and no time to arrive. Even though a worthy path can be useful for spiritual development, ultimately we need not a path to, but a way of, awakening conscious awareness in the present moment. Like the hidden 3-D image described in the preface, we don’t actually need a path to see it; we only need a new way of seeing.

Awakening the heart of consciousness requires no specific material objects, rites, rituals, beliefs, or intercessions. Everything we need already exists within our bodies and minds. We only need to understand how to consciously engage the faculty that awakens us to the divine source. While we have sense bases to experience the sense worlds in and around us, we also have the innate ability to imperience consciousness directly.

Imperience is our umbilical connection to the heart of divine consciousness, the absolute, or God. Imperience awakens the light of awareness and allows personal consciousness to know its source. It is through imperience that we feel unconditional love and compassion in our hearts and can share in the joy of others. Imperience is how we sense our true conscience—how we intuitively know right from wrong—even before thought arises and before we turn to conditioned feelings or outside opinions for guidance and support.

We regard profoundly wholesome qualities of being, such as love and compassion, as matters of the heart, and when they are awake in us, we imperience them throughout our bodies and beings. The depth of these feelings reflects their source in divine consciousness, which we are able to sense most directly and personally in our blood. Because our blood is most concentrated in our chests, we feel love and empathy most prominently there, and that is why we consider these qualities to be matters of the heart.

The heart of divine consciousness is shared by all beings. This book is not to endorse any particular being or spiritual tradition as supreme or any dogma or belief system as essential to the realization of enlightenment. There is actually no specific need for any religiosity or even religion. Whether we are persons of faith or no faith, spiritual practitioners or not, we can benefit from understanding the fundamental nature of mind and matter and the core principles that govern them.

I use terms like God, divine consciousness, the absolute, and the heart of consciousness to refer to the nondual domain of supreme being—not to any unique supreme being. These terms are nonsectarian and inclusive by nature, and they do not represent an exclusive form of spirituality. Once we drop subjective cultural language and conditioning, all names for God consciousness point to the same divine reality, regardless of what we call it or choose to believe about it. It is generally wise and compassionate to understand our own heartfelt connections to source in whatever terms best suit our personal beliefs and temperaments, and embrace other names and expressions of devotion as well, in the spirit of loving kindness, tolerance, and empathetic understanding.

In the relational world, appearances sometimes divide us, but it helps to see the ways our individual self-identities can confuse how we understand our shared relationship to divine consciousness. We typically identify with personal consciousness—our own hearts—and tend to believe it is our true self or soul. However, personal consciousness is our own in a similar way that the air we breathe into our bodies is our own, never separate from the air outside. Our heart’s nondual relationship with the whole makes all beings one with God and one with each other. We can awaken this insight intuitively through our innate ability to imperience divine consciousness directly for ourselves.

Consciousness awakens from the inside out—from firsthand imperience within our own blood and being. Imperience, a natural function of consciousness that we use whenever we are conscious, is strengthened by deconditioning our minds from the unwholesome, self-oriented, mental habits and self-limiting beliefs that cloud it. Intuitive insight is clearest and brightest when our minds are at peace, holding nothing for or against anyone or anything, including ourselves. Even though reports of profound energetic expressions like white light, bliss, and sublime lightness of being get most of the attention in the spiritual arena, subtler awakenings in daily life are also vitally important for developing intuitive clarity.

One way we can sense the subtle spaciousness of imperience at any time is by releasing (not rolling) our eyes softly backward into our skulls, while releasing the sense of I we’re holding behind our eyes. We can feel this more deeply by simultaneously releasing any holding of the breath around our bellies, and allowing our inner being—the heart of consciousness—to gently release and open.

Whether our eyes happen to be open or