Dear Nathan,
Nathan: You wrote ‘In time every experience revealed itself to be none other than the shape that consciousness itself is taking from moment to moment. It became clear that that whatever it is that is seeing these words, for instance, is also simultaneously the substance of these words. It became clear and obvious that knowing these words is the same as being these words, that to know the world is to be the world.’
There is a clear sense that all experience and the experiencer are one and the same. Could you now speak about the experience of a door? As the experience of the door and the experiencer are one whole, why the solidity that causes the need to open the door to walk to the other side? It would seem that until the ‘solid’ world becomes ‘pervious’, there is an incompleteness here.
Rupert: The door you perceive in your dream is solid and impervious. Upon waking, its solidity and imperviousness is discovered to have been made only out of mind. And mind itself is made only out of the transparent, luminous substance of consciousness.
See that the same is true of the waking state. Place your hand on something solid and impervious, say, a table or a chair. Refuse the labels and interpretations of the mind. Go directly to the experience. You do not find a table and a hand there. You find a tingling, amorphous cluster of vibrations without density, solidity or weight.
Go deeply into that sensation and see if there is anything present other than sensing. Now go deeply into sensing and see that it is made only of the transparent, luminous substance of presence.
Solidity and imperviousness are simply labels superimposed by the mind onto the reality of our experience. That reality is knowing presence, ‘I’.
But if this process and awareness is complete, this ‘tingling, amorphous cluster of vibrations without density, solidity or weight’ will become other realised and one would not have to open the door to go through. Until such time, this is a level of ‘partially’ experiential theory rather than proven, testable fact.
You are looking for objective proof at the level where objects as such don’t exist. Your question contradicts its premise. How could a non-existent object prove that there is nothing but transparent consciousness? How could an illusion prove reality? Consciousness alone is it own evidence.
Neither the door in the dream nor the door in the waking state can be seen through or walked through, but both are nevertheless made out of the transparent presence of consciousness. And just as the dream door needs to be negotiated in a way that is consistent with the dream state, so the waking state door needs to be negotiated in a way that is consistent with the apparent reality of that state. In neither case, however, do the relative realities of either state contradict or negate the fact that in both states, each door is made out of presence alone.
You continue to superimpose concepts upon your experience and, having mistaken these concepts for reality, look to them for a proof of that reality. You are looking in the wrong place and hence your frustration.
Everything in life is consistent with the experiential understanding that there is only consciousness. If this seems not to be your experience, I can only suggest again that you look more closely.
With kind regards,
Rupert
