What needs to be done and by whom to know that you are? Who knows I am? Who is this ultimate knower? Because of what are you? How did you come to be; from no being to being and then back to no being again? What was your position and status one hundred years back and prior to conception in the womb, prior to the arising of consciousness? How did all this take place without your permission? Did you choose any of this, and has anything really and truly happened at all? A hundred years back you had no problems. They are there now. Why and how? Until you find it out, your misery will remain intact despite your so-called knowledge of God or Brahman.
You see, once the inquiry begins along these lines all of your acquired conceptual knowledge and certainties begin to unravel and collapse like a house of cards. The false, the body-mind entity or identity simply can’t stand up to investigation and is then seen to be false, dream like and insubstantial like the child of a barren woman. If I am not the body or the mind then what am I? This is what needs to be known and inquired into if I really want to be free of time, and to see that this freedom from the known, which is the dead weight of yesterday and all acquired knowledge; then it is seen that this very freedom from the known is the first and only freedom.
When does time begin? It begins now, presently, and when does it end? It ends now as well. So as it is beginning it is also ending, therefore beginning and ending are only ‘seeming’ to happen in this timeless Omnipresence, this ever-present unqualified immediacy. Time when looked into is thus seen to be nothing but a mental concept, non existent and imaginary like the horns on a hare, water in a mirage, or silver in the mother of pearl shell.
Time is thought and thought breeds fear if it is not understood. Thinking which is the basis of the imaginary thinker and his or her thought, is nothing but a vibration or movement of energy. Notice that in fact you are not choosing your thoughts, they arise spontaneously by themselves and then move on effortlessly as well if they are not resisted, attached to, or fixated on. If you were choosing your thoughts why would you ever have a hateful, fearful, angry, jealous, or unhappy thought? You certainly wouldn’t choose to be that way if you did have any choice in the matter. Who would choose to be fearful, hateful, angry, jealous or unhappy? I know that I certainly wouldn’t choose to be that way if I had a choice.
Thinking is nothing but energy vibrating. Energy in itself is pure energy, all-energy or Omnipotence, and this Omnipotence that is being pointed to is all-power – not mind power, thought power, higher power or lower power, your power or my power, but simply energy suffused with intelligence – Rigpa in Dzogchen – is emptiness suffused with awareness – and, non conceptual awareness, is Dzogchen, ‘The Great Perfection’ – self-existing, self-knowing, self-shining, ever-fresh presence awareness just this, nothing else, and I am THAT! – this limitless activity of knowing.
Just SEE, am I unaware right now? Obviously not, of course I am aware, but that awareness ‘as it is’ is space-like and so is not a thing or an object, and so all apparent things and objects are contained in It, and not the other way round. This space of knowing-awareness contains everything but nothing contains it. The so called things and objects appearing in this space or awareness-emptiness are nothing but the space itself. Form can be nothing but emptiness, and emptiness can be nothing but form. This is the ‘heart’, the ‘Prajnaparamita’ of understanding! “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.”
This emptiness is a cognizing-emptiness, an awake, aware, no thing, that is not perceivable or conceivable yet it ever is. You cannot see energy but you can see its results as the very life or livingness spontaneously appearing as a ‘display’, that is the manifest universe. It has no duration, no time, as it is a spontaneous throb, pulsation, vibration, or what we call Spanda in the non dual philosophy of Kashmir Shavism, and the Shiva Sutras of Hinduism; somewhat of a movement.
In the experience of yogins who do not perceive things
dualistically,
the fact that things manifest without truly existing is so amazing
they burst into laughter.
everything is unobstructed, vivid yet ephemeral,
random, without any reference point.
You perceive, hear, are aware, experience, and feel,
as never before.
“What is this? Are my perceptions by nature those of a lunatic?
Am I in a dream?”
You burst out laughing at yourself!
You cannot negate it, you cannot say I am not, you know that you are, but what you are you don’t know. What you are is inconceivable, unknowable as any thing or object, it simply ‘is’, full stop!
This body and all other bodies are insentient and corpse like, the sentience or life force that animates them, the very godliness of them is the consciousness that is universal, dynamic, and fully manifest, imminent and transcendent. This consciousness is everything there is and the Self, the non dual Absolute is the light of consciousness. Light is life or livingness and there is only life, there is no one who lives a life. This light of consciousness is love-light, the loving to be inherent in all sentient beings and is the ananda or bliss aspect of reality as Sat-Chit-Ananda – Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
“The Self pervades the universe and by its light all this insentient universe is illumined.” See and be this Self alone – non dual One without a second, not two, never two, only THAT! What could be simpler than that? So it is important to realize or re-cognize this Absolute or ground of being. Nothing can be added to or taken away from this Absolute, if it could then it would not be Absolute, so this is the turning point, which is no point at all; the complete turning about, and reversal of the attention one hundred and eighty degrees from looking outward to looking back, to SEE where the actual seeing is spontaneously occurring or taking place from.
To see where you are seeing from is the true seeing – seeing into emptiness – “Seeing into nothingness – this is true seeing and eternal seeing.” Self-realization, according to Ramana Maharshi, “is like gazing into vacancy,” into an emptiness in which even “the thought ‘I am Brahman’ has to vanish.” Realize “There is only my-Self, Consciousness.” Also, “The world you perceive is made up of consciousness: what you call matter is consciousness itself.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
“The Absolute is none of the things of which It is the source; its nature(Nisarga, primordial, fundamental nature being quality less) is that nothing can be affirmed of It – not existence, not essence, not life – It transcends all these. But possess yourself of It by the very elimination of being, and you hold a marvel.” THIS you must come to know!
Now all of this that is being expressed here is just a concept, it is not the reality, the suchness that it is pointing to, however the words expressed may cause something to resonate in the hearer that was always present yet somehow obscured, overlooked or ignored. This so called turning around in the being and beginning to question everything that you have ever known or been told by your parents, teachers and society, and everything and anything you have ever learned from the early age of two and a half years or so and onwards to the present moment. If this very necessary questioning of all of your acquired learned knowledge really begins in earnest and a genuine inquiry follows along these lines, then it will definitely be seen by no one in particular that the false, the “me” of memory, the so called ‘person’ So and So, cannot and will not be able to stand up to this investigation.
It will be like a lighted match thrown into a bale of cotton. It will begin to smolder away continually until the entire bale is consumed. If something is seen to be false and illusory you will not be able to believe in it again. If the “me” is seen to be false, then what must you be and where does that leave you? It leaves you here and now present and aware, so this space-like awareness is what you must be, it is the base of everything and not just a momentary appearance like the reflections that appear in the mirror. The mirror needs something outside of itself in order for things and objects to reflect in it, however this immediacy of unborn awareness has nothing outside or inside of itself, it is self-existing, self-shining, ever fresh, presence awareness, just this, nothing else!
Don’t pretend to be what you are not – this limited time-bound entity. Don’t refuse to be what you are – this ever-present unqualified immediacy, this non dual Absolute or Suchness. On having no head, there at zero degrees from your Self. Not only is there no head there at zero degrees, there are no eyes, ears, neck, body, or mind or anything else whatsoever there in that naked space of all- knowing emptiness. Zen and the re-discovery of the obvious, closer even than hands and feet, closer than your own breathing, closer even than the life-force itself.
Everyone of us is the seeming prodigal son, whom with the father’s permission on coming of age, and receiving an inheritance, has wandered into the far land and having depleted our inheritance there we have now seemingly become impoverished. In the far land, out there on the periphery there is suffering, life and death, but not here at the center, the Heart, the very core of all being. This is the Father’s House, the home that you have never left, and it is not His will that you suffer and die, and His will is your own will. Here in your native land you are the proof of God. See that before there can be any God, you as this space of knowing have to be there first and foremost, you are the First Person, present tense, singular – I am. The world, the universe depends on You and not the other way round. Not seeing THIS you may have very seriously underestimated your Self. See that I am THAT!
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Well spoken Mark
Thank you!