Religions and the wisdom traditions have various means to help us stay there when we get there, but they tend to be external.  Moral codes, commandments, restrictions, vows of obedience and service, all are simply to facilitate staying present.  The disciplines enforced in monastic settings, regular prayer or meditation, poverty, silence, celibacy and seclusion etc. have the same purpose.  If you are prohibited from entering the secular world, you can stay free of its entanglements, at least in theory.

Monasticism suits some, but most of us are not interested in a monastic life. What’s more, if we are dependent on restrictions to stay present, we only have conditional enlightenment, [dependent on maintaining the ideal external conditions].  This is true whether monasticism takes the form of an actual monastery or just the adoption of ascetic vows. There is also a greater problem with the monastic solution which is that is that it takes awakened people out of the larger society where they are needed.

What we all need is some way of staying present in everyday life, some way of enduring the difficulties of growing up, making a living, getting together and breaking up, and dealing with parents, children, friends and lovers without being plunged into Self-forgetfulness. In this age when even driving to work can try the composure of a Buddha, something more than sheer determination is needed to stay present.

Even more to the point, we need some way of dealing with our inner demons.  We have to release the traumatic memories, belief systems and attachments that keep us asleep.  We have to dissolve our temptation to deny, distort and suppress the reality of who we are, or rather who we are afraid we are.  We have to let go of all those things that take us out of the experience of true identity.  Because we can’t get there from here, or more accurately, here from there.

Omnius teaches the attainment of Original Perception as a new way of resolving the difficulties of staying awake in our self and in the world. Original Perception is a new definition of enlightenment; perhaps even a new form of enlightenment.  Buddhism in general holds that right posture, right breathing and right mindfulness are a means to enlightenment, but Soto Zen holds that they are enlightenment, at least when they are being manifested.  In the same way Original Perception is a means to enlightenment, but also it is an advanced state of enlightenment, level II enlightenment!

What is original perception?  In one way it is simple and in another way it is a vast subject. We are not only conscious; we are consciousness.  Whether we think of ourselves as God consciousness, Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness, universal consciousness, higher consciousness or just consciousness: it’s all the same.  The differences are all words.

Most of the time this consciousness is conscious of…  It is conscious of the outside world with all its sense impression of people, things and happenings. As we awaken it also becomes conscious of our inner world as well,with all its images, beliefs and feelings.  In this, it is a sort of witness, a witness to both outer and inner forms, with the understanding that both are its own.

However there is a stumbling block that all of us who are on transformational paths have to deal with.  That is the ever-present tendency for the witness to lose perspective on itself and re-identify with that which it is witnessing. To the extent that it does that, we re-enter our fears, our ambitions, our doubts, our delusions, our abilities, our shortcomings, our bodies, our appearance, our sicknesses, our personalities, our roles and so. When we lose perspective, lose the experience that we are consciousness witnessing, and instead identify with what we are conscious of…. we also lose the experience that as consciousness we are God, Christ, Buddha, Self, Beingness, Oneness, etc.

So the first thing we do in an Omnius clearing circle is a meditation called the witness meditation, in order to remind ourselves once again of what we are and to prepare ourselves for the work we are about to do.

While being conscious of is easily experienced and easy to understand, what we neither readily experience nor readily understand is that we are also conscious through or from…  we are conscious through or from ourunconscious mind.  This unconscious mind is the repository of invisible memories, beliefs, attachments, and tendencies to distort knowing, all of which make up the whole of our identity. These unconscious contents act as perceptual filters that come between the witness and what it is witnessing.  Because they are invisible they create delusion.  They distort and falsify both what is and who we are. Our unconscious is who we are!  It is our real self and that is just why it is unconscious!

We can’t see what we are, that is why the unconscious is unconscious.  In the same way that an eye can’t see an eye, i.e. see itself, an “I” can’t see an “I”.  Since we can’t see ourselves, there is no good way of knowing to what degree we are in delusion.  There are, however, ways of knowing when we are in delusion and there are ways of sweeping the unconscious clear of the perceptual filters that create these delusions.  PsychoNoetics, the Omnius Method of Transformative Release, is a way of using pure intention to release these unconscious forms that act as perceptual filters.

In practice, the PsychoNoetics is deceptively simple. Whenever we experience ourselves becoming emotionally upset or contracted we also suspect ourselves of having perceptual filters in place. Then, at the earliest possible opportunity, we perform a clearing, sweeping our unconscious free of any forms that have come up in relation to whatever it is that is the occasion for upset.  Now I am not saying that anytime we become upset it is because we have a perceptual filter in place.  Some things are upsetting just as they are, in the present, without the aid of a perceptual filter.  But it does no harm to perform a clearing and it is remarkable how great percentages of upsets resolve or at least clarify and lighten up when we do it.  What is more, although some things are genuinely upsetting, how they are upsetting is frequently relative to who we think we are, to our self-perceived identity.  For instance, identical circumstances can seem very different from the viewpoints of someone who sees themselves as a victim and someone who sees themselves as a victimizer.  So even things that have a strong upetting potential become transformed as we transform ourselves.

The other point is that clearing is more or less permanent.  When we get upset and do a release cycle, we sweep our unconscious clear of the contents through which we are interpreting what is happening and therefore creating the issue in question.  Gradually, over time, we free our unconscious of deeper and deeper levels of form.  The result is a gradual increase in psychic energy, well-being, clarity and most of all, a feeling of being emotionally grounded, imperturbable, being able to stay present though all manner of circumstances, good and bad.  In this way the practice of PsychoNoetics is self-transforming.  As we clear the upsets we experience in our daily lives, we gradually undergo profound and permanent self-transformation.  We get to approximate the state of original perception, which is also level II enlightenment.

Original perception will be invaluable in our private lives, but there is more reason than that for dedicating ourselves it its attainment. The world has gotten psychologically much more demanding and complex. Everywhere we turn we encounter messages, messages about who we are, what we should be, what we should think and what we should want.  Most of those messages are meant to manipulate us into doing something, usually for somebody else’s profit.  There is more to want, more to avoid, more to filter and more to discern.  And in the midst of it all, there is a dearth of good models left to guide us. Most of the leaders of our government, schools, churches, and corporations are struggling to stay afloat in the same maelstrom we are in, pursuing to same false goals, avoiding the same false fears, perpetuating the same system.  To the degree that we attain Original Perception, we will be able to see the truth behind these messages, and our world desperately needs people who can see the truth.

Be one of them!

Dr. Jeff Eisen