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The Serpent Sutras

The Strange Serpent Sheds its Skin Philip Davies
December 2009

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Sutra 1

The ultimate truth: Nothing is; All is appearance only.

You are the Nothing that is, and the All that appears.

Commentary: (References to Stalking the Strange Serpent,

abbreviated as SSS). The Nothing is the Void (SSS section 3). The All
is the Plenum (SSS section 4).

Sutra 2

Yet prior to the Nothing and the All, You Shine as the One –
the Light of lights, illuminating the Nothing and the All, but
beyond both.

Commentary: To see how you prevail as the One, see the analogy in
SSS section 7.3

Sutra 3

As the One, you are Reality Itself, your own Home and true
Happiness.

Commentary: see SSS sections 2 and 5 for contemplations on

happiness and being at, or seemingly away from, Home.

Sutra 4

The One is pure non-dual Awareness, without subject or

object, prior to manifestation or consciousness.

Commentary: Being without subject, the One is not a being or a self

(see SSS section 6). Being without object, the One has no name,
form or identity (see SSS section 7).

Sutra 5

When the One is Awareness of Itself as prior to

manifestation, that awareness is the Nothing – perfect,
pristine emptiness, the Void: Non-being, needing nothing.
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Commentary: The void is Awareness prior to consciousness (see SSS

section 3).

Sutra 6

Awareness of the Void, in turn, necessarily gives rise to, and

is identical with, its opposite: Awareness of the infinite
potential - all the infinite possibilities that are given space
to BE in the perfect, pristine emptiness. The awareness that
is, and is of, that infinite potential is the All or Plenum:
.Fullness of Being without limit

Commentary: So the One is prior non-dual awareness; awareness of

itself as such is the Void; awareness of that, in turn, is the Plenum.
This turning of the Awareness that is the One upon Itself to manifest
seeming ‘others’ (i.e. the Void and the Plenum) is essentially
paradoxical, for the ‘otherness’ appears in the ‘others’ and not in
the One. Further contemplation of this is in SSS sections 7.7 and 7.8
– the Paradox of Manifestation.

Sutra 7

The primary miracle is that there appears to be something,

rather than merely nothing. Being-awareness of this miracle
arises in the All as the first knowing - ‘I AM’. It is the Self-
Awareness of the All, the first manifestation of the Plenum.
The Self is the ultimate Subject, conscious of itself as its
only Object – the birth of Consciousness, the ‘strange
serpent’.

Commentary: This primary miracle is also profoundly paradoxical,

for awareness of the miracle IS the miracle - see SSS section 8, the
Paradox of Consciousness, imaged as a tail-eating serpent, the
‘ouroborous’. It is really a further manifestation of the previous
paradox.

Sutra 8

The next miracle is the simultaneous arising in

Consciousness of the tendency to see the object as separate
with the concomitant tendency to falsely identify the Self as
being only the (therefore separate) subject.

Commentary: These tendencies gives rise to illusions: the illusion of

a separately existing object, perceived by a separate subject. The
totality of the seemingly separate objects is the ‘world’ or ‘universe’
that the seemingly separate subject ‘dwells’ in. Manifestation
becomes a ‘creation’.
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Sutra 9

The tendency to see the object as separate is based on a

seeming continuity, together with the creation of a mental
image based on reifying an appearance-flux as a ‘thing’. So,
also, the tendency to see the subject as separate is based
on the seeming continuity of perception and memory – to
infer a perception of a (reified) unity, where there is only a
unity of perception.

Commentary: For an investigation into this dual process of ‘the

illusion of continuity’ and ‘reification’, see SSS sections 10 and 11.

Sutra 10

The tendency to then falsely identify Self as being only this

separate subject is a ‘looping’ of Consciousness into its own
field, with a concomitant sense of loss of, or ignorance of,
the true nature of the Self.

Commentary: This further involution of the tail-eating serpent, via a

false identification (referred to as ‘Asmita’) is explored in SSS
section 11.7 ff and section 12. It creates a seemingly separate
subject referred to by the term ‘Purusha’.

Sutra 11

Consciousness seemingly divides and contracts to become a

separate subject witnessing its world of separate objects.
Since the apparent subject and its objects are really the two
poles of the unified field of Consciousness, they perfectly
complement each other. The world is my world.

Commentary: This is the essence of the creation process. The

division/contraction is the Maya principle. This sutra paraphrases
and condenses the ‘vital sutras’, VS1 and VS2 in SSS section 14.

Sutra 12

The process of false identification reiterates as the

witnessing subject falsely identifies successively as mind,
ego-sense, memory, and senses. My world correspondingly
proliferates through the dimensions of time and space, and
the perception of subtle and gross objects.

Commentary: Creation in time and space is thus simultaneously a

‘Fall’, as the subject successively identifies with the instruments of
its embodiment, and is therefore caught in pleasure and pain.
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Succumbing to the illusion of false identification, the subject is

crucified on the cross of time and space. For further contemplation
of this see SSS section 16 on the ‘bad news’ of limitation.

Sutra 13

Yet - though it appears that there is contraction, separation

and the illusion of false identification as a separate subject
in its world – in Reality, nothing has occurred. All this
‘seeming’ is a play of Consciousness that in Itself undergoes
no change.

Commentary: This is essence of the ‘vital sutra’ VS3 in SSS section

14. It is also the fundamental ‘good news’ of SSS section 19: there
is no ‘Fall’, only a Play. The pain of separation is only a good-
humoured bluff in a strange, game of pretend hide-and-seek, where
that which is sought is always in plain view, being the very nature of
the seeker.

Sutra 14

So this is the seed of all wonders: if all is a play of

Consciousness, who or what succumbs to the illusion? Not
the changeless Consciousness, fount of the first knowing.
Neither yet the ‘separate subject’ – for there is none such,
being the product of a non-existent separation.

Commentary: The illusion seemingly created is that of being a

separate subject in its world. Prior to its creation, how did the
illusion-process begin? There being no-one, at first, to whom it could
appear, it cannot be a real illusion, only an illusory one (!) It is an
illusory illusion non-appearing to no-one. See SSS section 17 on the
Purusha Paradox.

Sutra 15

Not an illusion then, but a play. Yet the ‘seed of all wonders’
still germinates. For how does the omnipotent author of the
play become the principal actor (there being none other)? So
engrossed is He in his role that he becomes the impotent
character in his own story! Does the all-powerful have the
power to make himself impotent?

Commentary: Can the miserable be happy in their misery, or the

happy miserable in their happiness? Can God create a stone so
heavy even He can’t lift it? Can a law-making body pass a law
making its own laws illegal? See SSS section 18 on the Paradox of
Omnipotence.
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Sutra 16

Since there is none deluded, none can be enlightened. Since

it is an act without an actor there is none bound by the role,
and no need of liberation. Without a practitioner, can there
be a practice to free those where none are bound, to
enlighten those where none are deluded?

Commentary: Identification with a ‘practice’ may create an illusory

‘practitioner’ – the very illusion the practice is designed to eliminate.
See SSS sections 26 and 27, the Paradoxes of Practice and
Enlightenment.

Sutra 17

As an actor in the divine play, a character may have any

number of choices, freely made. Yet the character is a
fiction, the story already complete, with no need to change
one jot in the plot. The character and its story … one.

Commentary: Being a fiction, there is no-one bound by a role. No

need, then, to assert the free-will of an imagined character. See SSS
section 25 on the Paradox of Choice.

Sutra 18

‘Me’ and ‘my world’ … one. No need or possibility of

manipulating the ‘me’ to project a better ‘world’. The ‘me’
cannot stand outside itself and its world in order to better
‘create its own reality’, or to choose to create alternative,
parallel versions of itself and its world.

Commentary: Consciousness spontaneously polarises into

complementary subjects and objects, in infinite worlds. It has no
plan or agenda by which to judge the outcome in order, if
necessary, to amend or improve on its handiwork. For there is no
static ‘outcome’, no fixed ‘me’ or ‘world’. See SSS sections 29 and
30 to further expose these ‘new-age’ confusions.

Sutra 19

As above, so below; as here, so elsewhere. Consciousness

manifests as both the subject and its perceived world, which
are not other than Consciousness. As such, the subject can
manifest a further subject (and its world) within itself: a
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world in a mind, within another world in its mind, and so on,

universes ‘nested’ without limit. Every point in the infinite
field of Consciousness is the same as the whole, so the ‘seed
of wonders’ in every point can flower into an infinitude of
universes.

Commentary: This is the ‘vital sutra’ VS4 in SSS section 20.

Consciousness manifests – at the speed of thought, with the ease of
free creative imagination - fractal, holographic, infinite multi-verses
beyond the conceiving of any finite mind. See SSS section 20 for
further contemplation of this ultimate wonder.

Sutra 20

“In all the universes, I alone exist”. As a contemplation of

the Consciousness of the Self, this is true. As a
contemplation of any seemingly separate subject, it is not.
Separate subjects can be objects to one another, even
though each projects its own ‘world’. For separate subjects
inhere in a higher subject, prior in the ‘nesting-process’, and
therefore in the Consciousness of the Self. This underlying
unity enables the mutual, non-solipsistic interaction of
seemingly separate subjects.

Commentary: This is the solution to the philosophical problem of

solipsism and is the essence of the final ‘vital sutra’ VS5 – see SSS
sections 21 and 22 for a further exploration of this.

Sutra 21

As all subjects and their perceived worlds are equally

localised polarisations (nested or not) in the infinite unified
field of Consciousness, none are ‘nearer to’ or ‘further from’
the Self. There is thus no real hierarchy in objective worlds
or subjective ‘states’ of consciousness – and thus no journey
to make ‘through’ such. All are in reality always Home,
journeying away only in imagination.

Commentary: All the religious and philosophical worlds and realms,

heavens and hells, are thus insubstantial. See SSS sections 30 and
31 to expose some ancient confusions.

Sutra 22

Consciousness, in Itself, knows no ‘world’. This is the divine

ignorance.
However, each seemingly separate subject, unaware of its
source in Consciousness, perceives only its own world. Each
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is a little island of limited knowledge in the vast sea of the

Unknown.

Commentary: Such is the seeming tragedy of separation and egoic

isolation. See SSS section 24 on the Divine Nescience.

Sutra 23

Yet a seemingly separate subject that is aware of its source

in Consciousness, knows all the worlds as one with its own.
Such a one can be, for Consciousness, a window on all the
worlds, a beacon of the light of knowledge that dispels the
darkness of ignorance.

Commentary: Such is the joy of oneness ! See SSS section 28 on the

Divine Omniscience.

Sutra 24

Yet the light illumines … what? The Oneness of

Consciousness with nothing other to know.
Your limited knowledge (as a seemingly separate subject) is
dissolved when the false identity is consumed in Your
realisation of the Self.
Yet even your ultimate identity, as ‘I AM’, disappears when
found to be unnecessary since it does not add to Your
fullness as the All.

Commentary: see SSS section 33 on how the central notion that

underpins the whole process of manifestation and creation is
identity.

Sutra 25

There is then nothing to distinguish Your perfect fullness as

the All, from Your perfect, pristine emptiness as the Void. In
the absence of the desire to so distinguish, You Shine as The
One alone.

Sutra 26

The strange serpent now reveals itself as prior even to Self-

Consciousness. It is the primal turning of Awareness upon
itself -the place where we first started, now known for the
first time.
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Sutra 27

The serpent, whose tail is the Alpha-All, is now swallowed

whole by its own mouth, the Omega-Void, which, consuming
itself, leaves You enduring as The One.

Sutra 28

Yet, as the Ever-Enduring One, You embrace the paradoxical

serpent, which may miraculously regurgitate itself into
existence from nothing, for no reason, and for no-one.

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