06/22/2025
“In the context of a brief reflection on awakening—or, more accurately, on the recognition of consciousness—it is essential to clearly establish the distinction between two types of movement that not only differ in form but also refer to radically dissimilar modes of existence: operative movement and ontological movement. This difference is not merely a question of terminology, nor can it be reduced to a secondary conceptual nuance. It decisively determines the transition between illusion and truth, between the fragmentary becoming of the psychological self and the untimely presence of the real.
Operational movement organizes the entire experience of the self as an acting subject. It is embedded in temporality, guided by the logic of effort, improvement, and achievement. It is articulated according to an economy of means and ends: something is done with the purpose of achieving something else. From this paradigm, the self seeks to transform, improve, cleanse, perfect, or even—in its most sophisticated form—achieve enlightenment. However, in all these cases, the pattern remains the same: doing responds to a lack. All its energy is sustained by an unquestioned affirmation: “I am not yet,” “I have not yet arrived.”
The ontological movement, on the other hand, does not respond to this architecture. It does not involve displacement, it does not postulate direction, it does not trace development. It does not follow the logic of a journey between two extremes. Its character is that of an immediate manifestation of what already is. It does not need to be constructed, accumulated, or learned. It appears—if the expression is appropriate—only when the impulse to obtain is extinguished. It does not arise from the self; it manifests itself precisely when the self ceases to be at the center. It is not a matter of acquiring something new, but of seeing clearly that there is nothing to acquire, since the essential has never been absent. What bursts forth is not a superior version of oneself, but that which has always remained, prior to any search.
This contrast is accurately formulated in a famous proposition by Thomas Aquinas, contained in the Summa contra Gentiles. In Book I, chapter 13, we read:
“Quia omne quod movetur ab alio movetur.”
“Everything that moves is moved by another.”
Beyond its cosmological scope, this statement, considered from the perspective of being, allows us to dismantle the fundamental error that underpins many spiritual quests. If all movement requires an external principle, then that which moves is, by definition, relative, dependent, incapable of sustaining itself. Being, in its fullness, cannot be moved from outside, because there is nothing outside it. That which is by itself does not move, does not progress, does not obey causes. It does not need to become, because it has never ceased to be.
It is here that the core of the misunderstanding that runs through many spiritual practices is revealed: conceiving awakening as an operative movement. Enlightenment is projected as a future goal, the consequence of disciplines, techniques, methods, or successive mystical experiences. It is considered the fruit—gradual or sudden—of a sustained will. However, this way of understanding the process keeps intact the egoic figure of the “I” as agent. As long as this centrality is not dissolved, any experience of awakening will remain trapped on the horizon of the separate self, without transcending it.
Awakening is not the culmination of a journey, but the collapse of the very notion of a journey. It does not inaugurate a new state, but rather disintegrates the figure of the one who believed himself to be the possessor of states. It does not imply becoming something different, but rather letting go of the belief that one is separate from what one already is. It is consummated in the silent, itinerary-less passage from the imagined character to the real presence that has never been absent.
For this reason, the ontological movement does not admit form, method, or model. It cannot be executed: it only happens when the impulse to become ceases. It is stillness that becomes visible at the exact moment when the will to achieve it disappears.
The mistake is to think that fire will arise if the sticks of the self are rubbed harder. But the fire is already burning. It is enough to stop looking distractedly in another direction."
Prabhuji
