Thank you, Rupert,
You say: ‘If you look closely in your experience, the only thing that is always present, and that therefore merits the title ‘I’, is consciousness’. I accept this completely. However, I am still wanting to understand why there appears to be a relationship (not identity) with a particular body-mind, Greg. I know that other teachers speak of awareness experiencing via a body-mind, or consciousness identifying with a particular body-mind.
I see that Greg is made of awareness. Greg may not be the focus of my attention all the time, but Greg always seems to be here, even when I’m asleep. I also see that these are all thoughts arising in awareness and that they are not ‘me’, or Greg, for that matter.
But is the intelligence or aliveness of consciousness somehow manifesting and experiencing through the form of Greg, or are you saying that there is no such relationship at all? Is my relationship with Greg no different to my relationship with Gordon Brown?!
I would very much appreciate any help, recommended reading or pointers that you may be able to offer to help me resolve this perceived conundrum.
Warm regards and many thanks,
Greg (Australia)
Dear Greg,
Experience does not manifest througha body-mind. The body-mind is a seamless ‘part’ of the current experience.
Check that out: Does the world, that is, the current perception, appear ina sensation (the body) or ina thought or image? No! A perception, sensation or thought cannot appear in or through another perception, sensation or thought. All experience is through consciousness alone.
It is true that some perceptions may seem to be more persistent than others, but their persistence belongs, in fact, to the consciousness ‘part’ of the experience, not the apparently objective part. However, it is only ‘persistence in time’ for the mind. For consciousness (that means, for experience), is it ever-present.
In other words, the only ‘thing’ that is the same from one perception to another is consciousness, not the object. In fact, it is only a thought that tells us, in the form of memory, that this perception has appeared before. The remembering thought does not prove the remembered object.
However, once we have given provisional credibility to objects, time, space, continuity, permanence, repetition, causality, and so on, we are speaking at a level where something other than consciousness is considered to be real.
We simply cannot fit this provisional paradigm into the true non-dual understanding. It is like trying to fit a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional plane, only in this case we are trying to fit the four-dimensional world of time and space into the non-dimensional space of consciousness. It just doesn’t fit!
With love,
Rupert
