What you are looking for is what is looking. What you are seeking is what you already are, so it is the very search itself that is the problem. You are present and aware right here and now as you are reading these words. Pause for a moment, and just notice what is taking in these words there on your side of this screen or page. Aren’t you seeing out of boundless aware emptiness, a single edgeless eye or window right there where you are actually seeing from, on present evidence; which means, without resorting to thought or thinking in any way?
Have a look there for yourself, don’t just take any one’s word for it. What are these written words appearing on, what are they appearing in, so to speak? Isn’t there an awareness of them? If I am aware of these written words, then obviously I am not these words. Similarly this hand that is writing these words, isn’t that appearing in this impersonal awareness as well?
One may say, my hand, my body, my mind, my hat, my car, or my coat. Am I my hand, my body, my mind, my hat, my car, or my coat? Of course not! Isn’t it self-evident that these ‘apparent’ things, right up to and including the entire universe from Brahma to a clump of grass, are appearing in this impersonal awareness? I am not in the body, the body the mind and the world are in me as this impersonal awareness. Everything, literally everything is in awareness, awareness is not in objects, persons or things. This is what this expounding, this discussion, expression, or pointing out is all about; and that is to draw your attention back to this awareness that in fact you have never left or been away from even for the briefest instant.
You see awareness is not an object, it is not a thing, it doesn’t stand out in any way, it is changeless and Omnipresent and it is no thing to the acquired mind of memory – and the mind doesn’t want to know about no thing, this ever present awake, aware no thing that this awareness ever is. The mind finds this boring and immediately wants to move away from THIS into what it is familiar with, which is the mental concept of time – past, present, and future. It doesn’t want to pause, full stop, look back, or contemplate from whence or what it has arisen, and how it came to have this dualistic discursive nature or capacity. There is the inbuilt fear in the mind that if I do pause or stop this incessant thinking and ruminating then that will be the end of me, and it will be too; however if this inquiry is pursued and persisted in earnestly, then there is the joyous life changing discovery that I am still aware and present even if there is no thinking taking place.
Am I awareness in a body, or am I a body in awareness? Not only am I in fact a body in awareness, but all bodies and everything else is in awareness, there is nothing and no one outside of this space of knowing that this awareness is. Is there anything outside of space, if so what would it be in? It would have to be in space wouldn’t it? Aren’t you this space-like awareness?
This being the case the world then depends on me, and not the other way around, as the so called common sense view would indicate. From this self-shining, self-existing, self knowing, ever-fresh, ever-new, non conceptual presence awareness where the actual seeing is taking place from, the common sense view or understanding turns out to be utter nonsense, ignorance, and illusion, or what we call Maya in Advaita, which is the truth of non duality.
Before there can be any God, I have to be there first and foremost. Before any concept of a God or a so called higher power can be brought in I have to be there prior to this! If awareness is no thing at all, a cognizing-emptiness, which we liken unto space, as space-like awareness; then can any limited thing ever touch it, destroy it, or affect it in any way at all?
Isn’t this why it is pointed out by Lord Krishna in the Indian Scripture entitled “The Bhagavad Gita”, that in fact ‘the sword can’t cut it, the fire can’t burn it, the wind can’t dry it, and the water can’t wet it’; simply because it contains all these so called things, they don’t contain it, and they never can contain it as they are utterly insubstantial “appearances” that are seemingly appearing and disappearing in this space of knowing.
The very contents of this space-like awareness are in fact nothing but the awareness itself appearing as other than itself, just like the images that totally cover the reflecting surface of a mirror. The reflections in the mirror have no substance or independent nature of their own and are in fact nothing but the mirror surface itself. Form can be nothing but emptiness, and emptiness can be nothing but form. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Can something come from nothing or no thing, which this non conceptual awareness ever is? The obvious answer is no, something can not come from nothing or or no thing. This being the case nothing ever happened. The world being appearance only has never been created, nothing is ever created and everything as such is this unborn presence awareness. This awareness is unborn, unceasing, and unoriginated, it had no origin at all, it simply is, ‘as it is’, full stop! THIS ever-present unqualified immediacy. Can you negate it? In fact everything, literally everything is unborn, non conceptual awareness.
If this awareness is unborn, can you die, when in very fact you are not unaware at any point whatsoever? Are you unaware right now? Well obviously not! You can’t get away from the directness and simplicity of this actuality of non duality. There is only THAT non dual Absolute. Not two! Not two, now or ever. There never has been two, and this is the very ignorance that is being exposed here – “me”, “I”, and the imagined other. This duality, ‘I’ and other than I is imaginary and illusory, or what we call Maya in Advaita, a social convention necessary for practical functioning but without any substance or independent nature of its own separate and apart from this non dual, non conceptual awareness. This presence awareness is Absolute. Can you add anything to THIS Absolute, this ‘glassy essence’ as Shakespeare referred to it? Can you take anything away from it?
As long as this false identity, this body-mind entity, Mr or Mrs so and So is entertained and taken to be some ‘thing’ real and permanent, and not seen to be false; in other words, not seen through, then your psychological suffering is going to continue endlessly. It was pointed out to me very clearly by Nisargadatta Maharaj, that the person I had all along taken myself to be was ‘the child of a barren woman’. Now a barren woman never had a child in the first place, so whose son or daughter are you, for heaven sake? You are not what you presently take yourself to be, you are not the body or the mind, so find out who and what you truly and ever are. Wouldn’t that be wise or imperative? All other knowledge apart from Self-knowledge is pure ignorance or illusion because it is happening in a dream, which is time. You are then like a dreamer who is trying to change the dream, which is an impossibility, simply because the dream never happened, it only ‘appeared’ to. When you wake up from the night time dream, what happens to the characters that appeared in your dream? They immediately disappear because they were imaginary, just like this present character that you are now taking yourself to be in this waking dream, he or she also is imaginary. Are you prepared to go that far, or to see this for yourself? Unless you are, I suggest that you forget about non duality all together and just carry on with your goal oriented endless seeking.
As long as there is another, there must be fear, bound to be. “Hear O Israel, I am the Lord thy God, there is none other!” Not two. Just see, who did this suffering ever happen to? Well as a matter of fact it happened to “me” you say. And this fellow here is telling you from direct seeing-knowing that there is no “me”, and there never has been a “me”. Where is this “me”, the so called person, and where is the world that he or she appears in when you are in deep sleep? There is nothing there at all in deep sleep, yet awareness is still present and operating there as the breathing and respiration continues on unabated.
Reality has never changed at any imaginary point in time, and it can be said here with total and full conviction that in fact, I am That!
The Great Word or mahavakyas of Hinduism – I am THAT, Thou are THAT – or similarly with the greatest statement from the King James bible – I am That I am. The THAT we are using here for the want of a better word refers to the Supreme Reality, the Noumenon, the unmanifest, the unborn Buddha Mind. All these terms are only concepts, they are not the no thing, the Absolute itself, as it cannot be limited and no word or concept can encompass it; they are only pointers to what can never be negated, and that is this ever-present unqualified immediacy.
I can say this with full and total conviction, now ask yourself can you say this also? If not, why can’t you say and know this truth with full conviction? Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free! It will not set you free unless you know it. If THIS is true why don’t you know it? Give up this timidity, re-cognize your true nature, and roar like a lion. See that you are a loin and not a sheep, the miserable human being that you appear to be over there in your mirror each morning.
You are not over there in the mirror, you are here on this side of the mirror – THIS boundless aware-emptiness that the mirror and everything else is appearing in. Give no attention to what you should do from morning to night. Just pay attention to this; you are not the body-mind. I am beyond time and life. The life of the universe depends on me; I don’t depend on the universe. I am untouched by the five elements. Apparently it seems like I might be rolling in actions, but there is no action for me. As this awake, aware no thing or emptiness here at the very core of my ‘being’, I have never moved an inch or changed in any way at all. Nothing sticks here, and nothing ever will, how can anything stick to boundless space-like awareness or consciousness? So it has no space(volume) and no time(duration) because it is spontaneous. THIS is spanda, a throb, or somewhat of a movement, the very livingness itself, an endless movement without beginning or ending.
An incessant flash of ‘I’- Consciousness, which is the very godliness of you, that is eternal life, you can be aware of it, hear it, sense it, so to say, that is ‘aham spoorthi’. The sparkling of truth devoid of ‘I’ is the greatest austerity, and the one who is aware of his divinity, while in the body, is in a state of bliss beyond description, transcending bondage and liberation. This is here and now. If there is no volume and no duration in this limitless space of knowing can there be a path to it? Is there any path in space? No there is not, there is only THAT Absolute, and this is the beauty, the immediacy, the truth that is non duality, the “what is” that we are pointing to.
Similarly, to remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship. You will never get peace of mind, because the mind being time-thought is constantly moving and vibrating in the pairs of opposites – good, bad, happy, sad, pleasant, painful, loving, hating, etc, and there is nothing wrong with that, as that is its nature to move and vibrate. Peace is when the mind is not, and that is the peace that passes understanding. You can’t understand or grasp Nirvana or peace. THIS silence and stillness at the very core of your being is always present, Omnipresent as a matter of fact, but you are ignoring it by constantly fixating on the thinking process, one thought following another thought endlessly like a dog chasing its tail.
The indication is, keep your front door open, your back door open, let thoughts come and go, but don’t serve them tea! Don’t get involved with them! Thought is useful as a tool, you can use it when needed and then let it go, drop it altogether, let thought be free to go where it wants to. That is what it means to be thought free, and there is always going to be thoughts as long as the vital breath is flowing; let the thoughts be free to return to the no thing that they have arisen from, let them go, release them fully, don’t hang on to them trying in vain to change, alter, modify, correct, or improve them.
If you get involved with the thoughts trying to improve or change them, then instead of you using the thoughts, the thoughts are then using you, which is what generally happens and this then causes all the unnecessary psychological suffering that human beings are riddled with. All we are saying here is that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Once you get a glimpse of your true nature stay there for eternity, don’t dwell out on the periphery only, where that limited human being with all its misery and suffering ‘appears’ to be. Without that presence of awareness which we seem to be ignoring, and which is ever-present, one would not even be able to lift a finger. Acknowledge or re-cognize this unquenchable light in oneself, this light of awareness that lights every man or woman who comes into the world. This light of awareness is the very light of life that doesn’t know death. Life is living on life and is thus ever-increasing, there is no death in life as such, this life that is the natural state is everlasting life, the resurrection that is eternal life here and now, ever-fresh, ever-new. I am, is the way, the truth, and the life everlasting.
Life is spontaneous, as it is beginning it is ending, and as it is ending it is beginning again, therefore it never truly begins or ends and so it is timeless and eternal. Eternity is right here and now for there is no beginning or ending in this timeless now moment. A thousand light years has a beginning and an ending but this Omnipresence has no beginning or ending. This unborn awareness has no volume and no duration, so it is timeless and space less, This is it! Ah, This.
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This is simply stunning Mark. Thank you.
Absolutely beautiful.
The ‘keeping the front and back door open so that thoughts can pass through and not stop for a cup of tea’ anaology I found very useful. Thanks Mark.