Dearest Rupert,
At your convenience would you please explain to me how, if I am you, consciousness insists on using the camera of this body’s eyes and not the camera of Rupert Spira’s (or any other body-mind’s) as my consistent point of reference. This enigma still escapes me – or is this my mind grasping at what little time it has left?
Nisargadatta used that wonderful metaphor of waves on the vast ocean and opened my eyes to the truth of manifestations in the noumenon. But is it just the volition of consciousness to identify with individual bodies (exclusively) as it sees fit in order to re-awaken to itself? Obviously it is. Does one eventually, on fully realising that one is awareness and awareness alone, eventually shift perspective entirely? Can I expect to experience watching what was once considered ‘my body’ walking down the street towards me/awareness one day?
Also, is self-realisation essentially realising that we are deep sleep or absolute peace, thus allowing us to clearly see that what was once seen as separate body-minds (and buildings and trees and every damn thing else) bobbing about the earth are really just ‘warts’ growing off the face of consciousness, ever emerging and being re-absorbed, like one big ocean matrix of light emerging and descending back into itself?
As the miracle of oneness blossoms, such crazy questions as these pop in from time to time. I hope not to be a bother but in all honesty I have no one else with whom I can even remotely discuss such things.
Sincerely,
Kevin
Dear Kevin,
Kevin: Would you please explain how, if I am you, consciousness insists on using the camera of this body’s eyes and not the camera of Rupert Spira’s (or any other body-mind’s) as my consistent point of reference.
Rupert: ‘I am you’ means that we are the same consciousness and that all thoughts, sensations and perceptions arise in that. Consciousness uses Kevin’s, Rupert’s and all others’ cameras from which to look. The view from each camera is limited, but that doesn’t imply that the one who looks is limited. We mistakenly superimpose the limitations of the camera onto the real perceiver, consciousness, and believe as a result that consciousness is limited.
The reason that our experience is seamless and consistent is that consciousness is seamless and consistent. It has no separate parts in it and never ceases to be or know itself. This indivisibility and ever-presence of consciousness is interpreted, at the level of the mind, as the consistency of appearances. The apparent consistency of the world is a pale reflection of the only true consistency, the Indivisible Ever-presence of consciousness.
However, consciousness doesn’t look out through our eyes. Such an idea would suggest that consciousness is located behind the eyes, in the head, seeing, hearing, and so on. Consciousness is not located in the head, or indeed anywhere else. The eyes, the head, the world, others and objects all appear in consciousness, and are so intimately one with it as to admit no distance at all. In fact, appearances are so intimately one with consciousness that there areno appearances existing in their own right. Rather, consciousness is the sole substance of all experience.
* * *
Nisargadatta used that wonderful metaphor of waves on the vast ocean and opened my eyes to the truth of manifestations in the noumenon. But is it just the volition of consciousness to identify with individual bodies (exclusively) as it sees fit in order to re-awaken to itself? Obviously it is.
In order to have volition, consciousness first has to take the shape of the mind. So volition is for the mind, not for consciousness. Having said that, the mind is only made of consciousness and in that sense alone can it be said that consciousness has volition. It would be more accurate (although, like all statements about the reality of experience, not completely accurate) to say that it is out of the freedom of consciousness that the mind arises and takes the shape of the thought that exclusively identifies consciousness with a body.
However, even if we admit this provisional statement about the volition of consciousness, it cannot be said that consciousness chooses to exclusively identify with a body ‘in order to re-awaken to itself’. On the contrary, consciousness ‘chooses’ to exclusively identify with a body for precisely the opposite reason, that is, to taste what it is like to seemingly forget its own ever-presence and seemingly become, as a result, a separate person.
Consciousness does not need a mind or a body to know itself. Simply by being itself it knows itself. It cannot notknow itself, and even when it seemsto know something other than itself, such as a body, mind, object, other or world, it never in fact ceases to know or be itself. It is the arrogance of the apparent separate entity to believe that its apparent presence is necessary for consciousness to be known. It is like saying that the appearance of the image is necessary for the screen to be seen.
Does one eventually, on fully realising that one is awareness and awareness alone, eventually shift perspective entirely?
Yes. However, it would be more accurate (but not completely accurate) to say that there is the absence of a perspective rather than a new one. This absence of perspective enables us to take any provisional perspective as the situation demands, without being identified with any of them.
Experience is simply no longer filtered through the distorting lens of the apparent separate entity and is experienced, as a result, as it is. It is always being experienced as it is – consciousness always only ever tasting its own being in all apparent names and forms – but only seems to be otherwise due to the apparent presence of separate objects and entities.
* * *
Can I expect to experience watching what was once considered ‘my body’ walking down the street towards me/awareness one day?
No, the body does not walk towards awareness, because awareness has no location. Does a man in a film walk towards the screen? He is already made only of the screen. He could not walk either towards it or away from it. Where could he go or what could he become that was not already made of the screen? In fact, there is no such man walking around. There is only the screen.
It is the same here. The body and all other apparent things are already made entirely out of consciousness. Everything, including your body and all so-called others, objects and the world, is already taking place in you and already only made of you.
There is only consciousness, knowing, being and loving itself in and as all apparent names and forms, and sometimes without name and form. However, ‘name and form’ is only ‘name and form’ from the point of view of ‘name and form’. For consciousness, there is always only itself.
Is self-realisation essentially realising that we are deep sleep or absolute peace, thus allowing us to clearly see that what was once seen as separate body-minds (and buildings and trees and every damn thing else) bobbing about the earth are really just ‘warts’ growing off the face of consciousness, ever emerging and being re-absorbed, like one big ocean matrix of light emerging and descending back into itself?
Yes, but why ‘warts’? This suggests some subtle negative agenda with manifestation. But yes, one seamless ocean and all apparent things like currents within the ocean.
As the miracle of oneness blossoms, such crazy questions as these pop in from time to time. I hope not to be a bother but in all honesty I have no one else with whom I can even remotely discuss such things.
Rupert: I am very happy to discuss these matters with you, Kevin. It is a pleasure!
With love,
Rupert
