Dear Rupert,
I am Vietnamese. I am deeply interested in searching for truth since about five years ago. I started to read Krishnamurti’s books and then Ramana Maharshi and Maharaj. Grace has been bringing me to your writing. It hit me so strongly with its clarity. I am so grateful to you.
At this stage, I feel quite naturally that everything (including thoughts, sensations, body) appears and is disappears in us as knowing/awareness. But it’s quite difficult to get the feeling that the knowing (we) is also the substance of all objects. How to get the feeling that a table in front of the body is made out of knowing?
I just read your response named ‘Why do negative feelings manifest physically?’ It seems to me that you suggest first we should be certain for ourselves through experiential understanding that we are the unchanging knowing space in which things come and go, and then we can go further to experience that we are also the substance of all objects (the knowing takes the shape of a thought, or a sensation, a table, the object world), correct?
When you say that knowing is the substance of the body and the world, I usually think in the simple way (to verify your saying) that modern physics says, that everything is made out of particles. But even knowing must be there to prove it, therefore knowing is even subtler. By this way of reasoning we can come to the conclusion that everything is made out of us as knowing/awareness.
My question is on the ground of practical level that we can immediately feelwe are everything. (I remember that Krishnamurti says ‘You are the world and the world is you’.) Thanks so much for your response.
Sincerely,
Nguyen Quang Ninh
Dear Nguyen Quang Ninh,
Thank you for your email. Take two experiences, one that seems to be ‘me’ and one that seems to be ‘not me’, that is, an experience of the body and an experience of the world.
For instance, take the sensation of the tingling behind the eyes, which is considered to be intimately ‘me’, and take the perception of the blue sky, which is considered to be at an infinite distance from myself and made out of something other than myself.
Take first the tingling behind the eyes. Ask yourself how far away from ‘sensing’ that experience takes place. No distance at all.
Now ask yourself how far away from your self (awareness) ‘sensing’ takes place. No distance at all. Therefore, how far away from ‘myself’ does the sensation behind the eyes take place? No distance at all.
Now take the perception of the blue sky. Ask yourself how far away from ‘perceiving’ or ‘seeing’ that experience takes place. No distance at all.
How far away from your self (awareness) does ‘seeing’ take place? No distance at all. Therefore, how far away from ‘myself’ does the blue sky take place? No distance at all.
* * *
Now we can go more deeply into it.
Is there any substance present in the experience of the tingling behind the eyes other than ‘sensing’? If there were another substance present there, then when sensing was withdrawn from the experience, that ‘something’ would remain over.
However, if we withdraw ‘sensing’ from the experience of the tingling behind the eyes, the experience disappears completely. Therefore, we know from experience that the tingling is made only of ‘sensing’.
Ask yourself what other substance is present in ‘sensing’ than ‘that which knows it’, that is, awareness. None! See clearly therefore that the tingling behind the eyes is made only out of awareness.
Now take the sky. Is there any substance present in the experience of the sky other than ‘seeing’? If there were another substance present there, then when seeing was withdrawn from the experience, that something would remain over. However, if we withdraw ‘seeing’ from the experience of the sky, the sky disappears completely. Therefore, it is our experience that the sky is made only of ‘seeing’.
Ask yourself what other substance is present in ‘seeing’ than ‘that which knows it’, that is, awareness. None! See clearly therefore that in our actual experience, the sky is made only out of awareness.
We could simplify this and say that every appearance of the mind, body and world is made equally out of ‘experiencing’, and that ‘experiencing’ itself is made out of ‘that which knows it’, knowingness, ‘myself’, awareness, ‘I’.
In this way the body loses its exclusive ‘me-ness’ and become impersonal, like the world, and the world loses its ‘not-me-ness’ and becomes intimate, like the body.
With warm regards,
Rupert
