Back to Homepage

Unified Field Awareness and Unified Field Theology

To perceive an object with awareness is to perceive it in its place - in the surrounding space in which alone it stands out or ‘ex-ists’. But awareness is not something that merely exists ‘in’ us, bounded by our bodies. We ourselves exist in awareness in the same way that objects exist in space. Both the physical space we sense around our bodies and the psychic spaces we sense within them are subjective spaces – the spaces of awareness within which we are aware of things and without which we could be aware of nothing. We exist in awareness – inner and outer – in the same way that the elements of our outer and inner world can only be experienced in spaces – inner and outer. All space being essentially subjective, there is essentially only one space from which we emerge and in which we exist - the unbounded space of the Divine Awareness. Christianity understood this through the principle that ‘The Kingdom’ is both outside us and inside us. Buddhism understood it through the principle that form and the formlessness of space are inseparable. Kashmir Shaivism understood it through the principle of Shiva-Shakti. Shiva – the unbounded, bodiless space of divine awareness (akula) in which every body exists, and which embraces the totality (kula) of bodies that make up the “embodied cosmos” (Muller-Ortega) or Shakti of Shiva.

All awareness is awareness of things sensuous, bodily. Even the most abstract of thoughts has its own ‘body’ – its own sensuous shape and form. But the awareness of things bodily, including our own bodies, is not itself anything bodily, but is something essentially bodiless – like the formlessness of space. How then do bodily things form themselves in the first place? Because formless awareness that we perceive as empty space is not in fact empty but is a fullness of formative potentials. Such potentials – all potentials – only exist in awareness, and do so as potential shapes and forms of awareness. Formless awareness gives birth to form from these potentials. As the formlessness of space it shapes itself into bodily forms. Shakti is very power and process of actualisation of these potentials – the bodiless, formless awareness of Shiva giving form to itself into countless bodily shapes. We are such bodily shapes of awareness. As such we are not only formed from divine awareness space. We exist in that space as we exist in space itself. And that space exists within us just as we exist within it. We are each a unified space or field of awareness, our bodies a mere boundary between the awareness we exist within and the awareness that exists within us. To perceive an object with awareness is to perceive it in its place - in the surrounding space in which alone it stands out or ‘ex-ists’. But look around at people – people you know and people on the street – and you will see something different. You will see from their bodies – indeed from the very look on their face - that they do not sense themselves as existing in awareness, just as they do in space. They feel their awareness as something that exists only within their body’s fleshly boundaries – where even there it may be contracted to the narrowest of spaces in their heads. Spiritual ‘enlightenment’ is nothing but the decontraction of the sensed awareness space in which we exist and which exists within us – its outer expansion and inward expansion or ‘inspansion’. The bounded inner space of awareness was named by the Greek word psyche, the Latin anima, and the Sanskrit jiva. The outer space by the Greek word pneuma, the Latin spiritus, and the Sanskrit akasha.

Every religion has its sacred places and spaces. Buildings are erected in such places to mark out and bound the sacred spaces within them. The word ‘temple’ (Latin templum) means such a consecrated inner space. A building such as a temple is also a shaping of space, one which lends a specific quality both to the space within it and to the space of the landscape or cityscape in which it is set. The dome of St. Peter lends a different quality to the spaces within and around it to that of a Gothic cathedral, a Buddhist stupa or a Hindu temple. The same principle applies to the objects set within such holy spaces. They also, like the objects in our own homes, lend a specific quality to the space in which they are set and have their place. Is there anything at all that can truly unite all religions, given the quite different quality of the awareness spaces they shape in such specific ways - through their languages and images, rituals and sacred places? The only thing that could unite them in essence would be a unified field theology of awareness - one which recognises the embrace of divine awareness in space as such. The essential religious philosophy or ‘theosophy’ of The New Yoga, like that of ‘Kashmir Shaivism’, is such a unified field theology – comprehending the unity of outer and inner awareness space, of ‘The Kingdom’ outside and inside, of pneuma and psyche, of formlessness and form, of potentiality (dynamis) and its actualisation (energeia), of akula and kula, of Shiva and Shakti. Unified field theology, by virtue of offering a unified field theory of awareness and its expression as energy and matter, also unifies spirituality and science, psychology and physics. But being a unified field theory of awareness the heart of such a unified field theology must be unified field awareness as such. Through The New Yoga each individual can come to experience themselves as existing within divine awareness as within space. Similarly, they can come to experience that divine awareness within them - as their body’s very inwardness of soul. By uniting the spatial fields of their awareness with one another, they can not only realise a state of decontracted and divine awareness for themselves - they can also unite their own fields of awareness with those of others. Conversely, it is by cultivating and experiencing field-resonance with the awareness of others that they can truly realise themselves – living in and out of unified field awareness that unites them with one another, inwardly and outwardly. Hence the New Yogic practice of pair meditation as field-resonation with the awareness of others. For it is above all “Where two or more are gathered in My Name” that the unified field awareness that is the very essence of divinity – under whatever name - can be most deeply felt, most broadly expanded and most powerfully embodied.

A unified world religion cannot be achieved through ecumenical dialogues or doctrinal disputes, nor can it take the form of some eclectic or ‘syncretic’ religion. Neither theological liberalism and heterodoxy nor conservative orthodoxy and ‘inquisitions’ bear any relation to the type of genuine meditative inquiry required to research, rethink and refind the common source and essence of religious practices and symbols - in all their different historical and cultural forms. This common source and essence can only be found in the direct experience of unified field awareness. What the world requires now is a new world religion of the sort hoped for by Hermann Hesse one based on a newly thought theology. This can only be a unified field theology which, whatever its historic roots, is based on a renewed experience of the divine as the foundational and unified field awareness in which all worlds arise and all beings dwell - as it dwells within them. The true body of the human being is a unified field body of awareness uniting three fields of awareness – a field of exteriority manifest as our awareness of the physical space around us, a field of interiority which we feel as the spacious inwardness of our own soul - and the field of unbounded interiority into which our own inwardness of soul leads. This field of unbounded interiority is also the all-surrounding field that constitutes the soul world as such – that which lies behind all that we perceive in the exterior space around us. It is within this field of unbounded and all-surrounding ‘interiority’ that all seemingly ‘exterior’ spaces of awareness - all space-time worlds – first open up. Our unified field body is the singular field-boundary of awareness uniting all three fields. Yet precisely as this very boundary it is itself essentially boundless – a unified field awareness.

  Unified Field Awareness & the Unified Field Body