Are alertness and awareness the same? Sadhguru clarifies that attention is a psychological process, while awareness is an existential dimension. He speaks about coming awake on higher dimensions and deepening the penetration of our perception.

Questioner: Attention. How does attention come into…?

Sadhguru: Attention is just mental alertness. Mental alertness and awareness are two different things. Awareness is purely life. What level of intensity your life is functioning, that is the level of awareness you are. But mental attention, you can put it on and put it off. Your aliveness you cannot… you cannot put it on and put it off; it’s on. What is the level of intensity is all there is, but mental attention you can close it, isn’t it? You can turn it on; you can turn it off. Isn’t it so? You can pay attention to something; you can withdraw your attention from something. Is it so? So that’s a different dimension. That is the act of the mind; that is again not reality. It is just attention of the mind; it is the act of the mind. Mind can do many things but it’s of a different dimension. It is psychological; it is not existential. We’ll leave it there; we’ll… Oh, more questions! Oh!

Questioner: Using my senses am I being aware or am I perceiving something? Can I say fourth fourth dimension is awareness

Sadhguru: That’s exactly what we went through just now. What’s your name, I am sorry?

Questioner: Kavitha.

Sadhguru: Hum?

Questioner: Kavitha

Sadhguru: Kavitha? We just went through that. You didn’t pay attention.

Questioner: I did. I didn’t understand.

Sadhguru: Hum?

Questioner: I didn’t understand, little confused.

Sadhguru: Okay, see right now are you awake?

Questioner: I am awake.

Sadhguru: First are you alive?

Questioner: Yes I am.

Sadhguru: Yes. Next are you awake?

Questioner: I am awake.

Sadhguru: How awake?

Questioner: Quite awake.

Sadhguru: Awake enough. Awake enough to hear what I say; awake enough to see where I was sitting; awake enough to know that this many people are around you. Yes?

Questioner: Right.

Sadhguru: Now that you are this awake, you are perceiving all these facts which are around you. You know this many people are around you. You know I am speaking. You know I am sitting here. All these things you’re perceiving. How, through what?

Questioner: Through my eyes.

Sadhguru: Through your sense organs. Not only through your eyes, through your ears and certain amount of other senses also working. So through your five sense organs you are perceiving right now. Because you are at a certain level of wakefulness, you are perceiving what is around you. At least the physical around you, yes?

Questioner: Yes.

Sadhguru: You don’t know what is happening in the person who is sitting next to you, isn’t it? You do not know what’s happening in this man’s mind; you do not know what’s happening in that man’s heart; you do not know what’s happening in his energy. You don’t know all these things but at least the physical reality you have perceived, you are wakeful to that point. Suppose you feel little drowsy, then you find you don’t know what I am talking about. Did it happen?

Questioner: It happens sometimes.

Sadhguru: Suppose you feel little drowsy, what’s happened? – Your wakefulness has come to a lower grade. Because your wakefulness has come to a lower grade, do you see I am talking but you are not perceiving? Yes or no? Ears are still open, isn’t it? Nobody plugged it. Sound is definitely going and hitting the eardrums. Isn’t it so? What I speak is anyway going and hitting the eardrums or no? It is, but still you are not perceiving because your wakefulness has gone one level lower that it is right now. So if it can get lower, you can also get it higher, isn’t it, logically? So if your wakefulness move into higher and higher dimensions, if it has to get there, you have to crank up your energy. If your energy, life energy moves into higher levels of intensity your wakefulness moves into higher dimensions of wakefulness. As your wakefulness moves into higher levels of dimensions, higher dimensions, your perception becomes clearer and clearer and the penetration of your perception deepens. Once the penetration of your perception deepens, it changes the very quality of your experience. Right now you sit here, there is just a man sitting next to you. Suppose your wakefulness becomes such, everything that’s happening within him you know right now, now your experience of sitting here is very different, isn’t it? Yes or no? Does it make it clear? Now if you try to raise your wakefulness, it’ll not happen; if you try to increase your perception it’ll not happen; if you try to widen your experience it’ll not happen. The only thing that is in your hands is you can crank up the intensity of your life energies. You can only work on raising the voltage; you cannot work on increasing the light, can you? Even physically, can you try to increase the penetration of light? But you can work on raising the voltage, isn’t it? If you raise the voltage all these other things will naturally happen.