Consciousness is our primary experience. It is ever-present.
Consciousness takes the shape of thinking and imagining to appear as the mind. It takes the shape of sensing to appear as the body. And it takes the shape of perceiving to appear as the world.
The idea that there is a mind independent of thinking, that there is a body independent of sensing and that there is a world independent of perceiving is simply that: an idea.
The mind, the body and the world are concepts that are never experienced as such.
The mind, the body and the world are nothing other than thinking, sensing and perceiving. And thinking, sensing and perceiving are nothing other than consciousness.
Consciousness is simultaneously the substance of thinking, sensing and perceiving and its knowing.
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Consciousness projects itself, as it were, through the faculties of thinking, sensing and perceiving, and seems to become an object, an other, a world.
However, this projection always remains within itself, although it seems to take place outside of itself. Consciousness seems to remain on this side of the projection as ‘I’, and everything that seems to be on the other side, the ‘not me’ side, becomes an ‘object’, an ‘other’, the ‘world’.
Consciousness seems to divide its own oneness into ‘I’ and an object, ‘I’ and an ‘other’, ‘I’ and the ‘world’. Consciousness then seems to become the knower, the experiencer, the thinker, the feeler, the doer.
It seems to become located, limited and personal, and the ‘other’ or the ‘world’ seems, simultaneously, to become the known, the experienced, the thought, the felt, the deed. This is the apparent birth of the separate self and the object or world. They become the twins of oneness.
However, in reality this birth never takes place. This separation between the knower and the known, the experiencer and the experienced, the thinker and the thought, the feeler and the felt, the doer and the deed, never actually takes place.
Through this imaginary separation, thinking is divided into a thinker and a thought. Feeling is divided into a feeler and a felt. Knowing is divided into a knower and the known. Action is divided into a doer and a deed. Experiencing is divided into an experiencer and the experienced.
Oneness is divided into a subject and an object. ‘I’ and ‘am’ separate. Consciousness becomes the self, the subject. Being becomes the world, existence, the object.
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However, if we proceed back along this projected path, in the opposite direction from which it arose, the mind, the body and the world are reduced in our understanding to thinking, sensing and perceiving. And if we look more closely at the nature of thinking, sensing and perceiving, we find that it is always only consciousness.
The mind, the body and the world do not becomeconsciousness as a result of this. They have always only ever been what they eternally are. However, now they are known and felt as such.
Consciousness, whatever it is that is experiencing this current experience, realises itself simultaneously as the substance of this experience.
Consciousness and being, which were never really separated, reunite. Oneness prevails.
Consciousness knows itself as the unlimited, impersonal presence which is taking the shape of every limited and personal appearance of the body, mind and world.
