Dear Rupert,
You say, ‘The world that is considered to exist independent of perception and of which each of our perceptions is considered to be a single, partial view, has never been experienced. There is no evidence for its existence.’
I can see how the world independent of perception is never experienced, but its effects are, so isn’t that evidence of its existence? For example, if it rains when I am sleeping, I am not experiencing it, but when I wake up the grass is wet and there are puddles everywhere. So rain happened, even if I was not there to experience it. Aren’t the effects of something evidence that it happened? Thank you for offering some clarity on this point.
Dede
Dear Dede,
No, the effects of something are not evidence that it happened, not if experience is taken as the proof of reality. And what kind of a reality would it be that were not experienced?
If we have a dream in which we, as the dreamed character, fall asleep when the grass is dry and wake to find it wet, can we say that, in the dream, there is evidence that it was raining in the dream world while we slept our dream sleep?
Of course, the dreamed character who slept and awoke will think that it rained in the dreamed night, but when we awake properly into the waking state (relatively speaking) we know that there was no rain in the dreamed night. How do we know that it is not similar in the waking state?
This is impossible for the presumed person to understand, because the presumed person and the presumed independent world are two sides of the same coin. They rise and fall together. However, if we take our stand as the consciousness which we intimately know ourself to be and think from ‘its’ point of view, a very different picture emerges, which is in fact in line with our simple experience.
An appearance only proves three things: (1) there is appearance, (2) there is being and (3) there is consciousness.
In fact, there are two other things that every appearance indicates, and they are that being and consciousness are one, and that all appearances are made out of this oneness. Every experience, ultimately, indicates only that.
Experience alone is the proof of reality. The wet grass is an experience but the rain is not. Rain is a presumption, not an unreasonable one, but nevertheless a presumption.
However, we have to understand that even when we experience the wet grass, we are not experiencing an object. There is no ‘we’, the experiencer, and no ‘wet grass’, the experienced. Wetness, greenness and grass-ness are just the colouring of consciousness.
We cannot legitimately believe in the independent existence of objects and then try to fit this belief into a non-dual perspective. It doesn’t fit! We first of all have to dismantle the belief in the existence of objects independent of consciousness. This opens us to another possibility.
This consideration goes to the heart of our deeply held beliefs about the nature of reality.
With kind regards,
Rupert
