Dear Rupert,
Thanks so much for your response. Of course, what is being expressed is confined to the limited language and nomenclature that is inherently embedded in the milieu of dualistic thought and its relativistic allusions. That’s a given, but thanks for pointing that out.
However, in the traditions such as Mahamudra and Dzogchen, we know that the fruit is only as sweet as the richness and nourishment inherent in the ground from which it comes. In this case, the ground is the view. So we must be perfectly precise in our understanding experientially of that view from which everything of benefit flows.
My issue is not one of language, regarding the questions that I placed before you. It is a matter of view. And what you have expressed in more than one place is not what I would call a defensible view; rather, your view leaves some room for others to misunderstand the fundamental nature of being. So please clarify this point on view. For instance, you say awareness or consciousness pretended to be and then forgot that it had done so.
That certainly is not a view that even you would ascribe to, right? Awareness or being doesn’t pretend anything, nor does it forget what it is doing. What is your view then, if that was only metaphor, as misleading as it appears? I am holding you accountable on this point. Why would you say such a silly thing? How does that help anyone? You made quite a point about that in the video. Your point was?
Secondly, you comment that awareness or consciousness is simply observing the various arisings, as though there are two things: one called awareness or consciousness and the other called arisings. Why would you posit such a dualistic notion in an effort to share the wisdom of non-dual experience? Enquiring minds would like to know. Again, the spirit of my enquiry is to be able to fully understand your view, and for others to share in that understanding.
Please understand that I love what you write and express but am having a real issue with these points that you use often. Your comments on these exact points would be greatly appreciated. And I am very happy to have you here, sharing your unique perspective on the nature of reality and experience, so thank you for your time and effort.
Love,
Jax
Dear Jax,
Jax: You comment that awareness or consciousness is simply observing the various arisings, as though there are two things: one called awareness or consciousness and the other called arisings. Why would you posit such a dualistic notion in an effort to share the wisdom of non-dual experience?
Rupert: For this reason: This is said to one who believes him or herself to be a person, located in and as the body, looking out at a world of objects that are considered to have an existence that is separate from and independent of their being known.
The terms in which such a person expresses his or her question (that is, the belief in a separate entity, separate bodies, objects made of matter, a world that has independent existence, and so on) are granted provisional credibility in order that we may proceed from what, to this person, seem to be the facts of the current experience.
In other words, we start with the conventional formulation that ‘I’, inside the body, am looking out at an objective and independent world of objects. This is a position of dualism, that is, ‘I’, the body (the subject) am experiencing the world, objects and others (the object).
From here our attention is drawn to the fact that the body (sensations) and the mind (thoughts and images) are in fact experienced in exactly the same way as the world (perceptions). In other words, the body-mind is not the subject of experience and the world the object of experience, but rather the body-mind and world are all objects of experience.
We then ask what it is that experiences the body-mind-world. What is it that is referred to as ‘I’? It is obviously not the body-mind, because at this stage the body-mind has been seen to be the experienced rather than the experiencer.
What then can we say about this perceiving ‘I’? It cannot have any objective qualities, because any such qualities would, by definition, be objects and therefore experienced. However, it is undeniably present and it is undeniable conscious or aware or knowing. For this reason, ‘I’ is sometimes referred to as consciousness, awareness or knowing presence.
* * *
At this stage the knowing presence that I know myself to be (that is, that knows itself to be) is conceived of as being ‘nothing’, ‘empty’ or ‘void’, because it has no objective qualities, which could be formulated by saying simply, ‘I am nothing’. It is the position of the witness.
This position is still one of dualism in that there is still a subject (knowing presence) and an object (the body-mind-world). Yet it is one step closer to a truer formulation of an understanding of the true nature of experience than was the previous formulation, in which separate entities were considered to be existent and real.
If we explore this knowing presence that we know ourself to be, we discover from direct experience that there is nothing in our experience to suggest that it is limited, located, personal, time- or space-bound, caused by or dependent upon anything other than itself.
Now we look again at the relationship between knowing presence and the objects of the body-mind-world: How close is the world to our knowing of it? How close is the world to ‘experiencing’? We find that there is no distance between them. They are, so to speak, ‘touching’ one another.
Now we can go deeper. What is our experience of the border between them, the interface where they meet or touch? If there was such an interface, it would be a place where consciousness ended and the object began. We find no such place.
Therefore, we can now reformulate our experience based upon our actual experience, not just theoretical thinking. We can say that objects do not just appear tothis knowing presence but withinit.
* * *
At this stage, knowing presence is conceived (based on experience) more like a vast space in which all the objects of the body-mind-world are known and experienced to appear and disappear. However, it is still a position of dualism, in which this vast knowing space is the subject and the world is the object that appears within it.
So we again go deeply into the experience of the apparent objects of the body-mind-world and see if we can find in them a substance that is other than the presence that knows them or the space in which they appear.
This is a very experiential exploration that involves an intimate exploration of sensations and perceptions and which is difficult to detail with the written word. It is an exploration in which we come to feel,not just understand, that the body-mind-world is made out of the substance that knows it.
However, in this formulation there is still a reference to a body-mind-world, albeit one known by and simultaneously made out of knowing presence. It is a position in which the body-mind-world doesn’t just appear within presence but as presence.
But what is this body-mind-world that is appearing as presence? We explore experience more deeply again and find that it is this very presence itself that takes the shape of the body-mind-world.
Knowing presence takes the shape of thinking and appears as the mind. It takes the shape of sensing and appears as the body. It takes the shape of perceiving and appears as the world, but never for a moment does it actually become anything other than itself.
At this stage we not only know but feelthat presence or consciousness is all there is. It could be formulated as, ‘I, consciousness, am everything’. At the same time we recognise that this has in fact always been the case although it seemed not to be known previously.
So we have moved from a position in which we thought and felt that I am something (a body-mind) to a position in which we recognised our true nature of knowing and being (presence) and which we expressed as ‘I, consciousness, am nothing’. And we finally come to the feeling-understanding that I, consciousness, am not just the witness, the knower or experiencer of all things, but am also simultaneously their substance. In other words, ‘I, consciousness am everything’.
Even this is to say too much, for what is this ‘everything’ that is referred to? Language collapses here. Instead of saying ‘consciousness is all’, we should say just ‘consciousness is’. But then, what is this consciousness that is being framed? Again it is to say too much.
To summarise, we move from ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’, from ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’ and from ‘I am everything’ to ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’.
We fall silent here.
* * *
Having said that, I would add one thing. As we abide knowingly as this knowing presence we discover that it is not a void, an emptiness. Rather it is the fullness of love. In other words, love is the substance of all things.
The movement in understanding from ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’ could be called the Path of Wisdom or Discrimination. The movement in understanding from ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’ could be called the Path of Love.
The abidance in and as this love is simply to abide as the self that we are and that we know ourself to be. Love is known to be the substance of every appearance and to be solely present throughout all the apparent stages of its revelation. It is the origin, the substance and the goal of our enquiry.
As for trying to communicate this understanding, it is, in my view, legitimate and in most cases necessary to have the freedom, sensitivity and flexibility to take any point along this apparent path of unfolding understanding as one’s starting point, depending on the perspective of the question.
Any teaching that mechanically asserts and reasserts the same absolute truth as a blanket answer to all questions is, in my view, at best dogmatic and rigid and, at worst, rather suspicious.
* * *
You say awareness or consciousness pretended to be and then forgot that it had done so. That certainly is not a view that even you would ascribe to, right? Awareness or being doesn’t pretend anything, nor does it forget what it is doing. What is your view then, if that was only metaphor, as misleading as it appears?
I mean that awareness or consciousness, which is the sole reality of all apparent things, takes the shape of a thought which says something like ‘I am not the sole reality of all things. Rather, I am just the reality of one single body-mind. Everything else is outside myself and has its own independent, separate reality.’
With this thought, which is itself made only out of consciousness, consciousness seemsto become a limited separate entity, located in and as the body, and everything else (that is, the world and all others) seemsto become something other than consciousness. This is the apparentveiling of consciousness, the apparentforgetting of itself, the apparentpretending to be something else. With this apparent veiling, the separate self and the outside world seem to be born.
Once this belief has taken shape, our experience will appear in accordance with our belief. In other words duality (with all its attendant suffering and searching) will appear to be very real.
Whilst it is true at an absolute level that even so-called ignorance is an expression of consciousness, in practice the belief that I am a separate person is incompatible with the understanding that I am unlimited consciousness, the knower and substance of all things.
I would suggest that if we think and feel that we are a separate, limited entity and yet claim that we understand and feel that this is just an expression of consciousness along with everything else, we are deluding ourselves. In such a case I would suggest that we have washed a layer of whatever particular brand of Advaita or Dzogchen we subscribe to over our thinly veiled belief system and, as a result, only buried them more deeply.
With love,
Rupert
