Dear Rupert,
When I have knowledge about a perceived object, it means that I am ‘acknowledging’ (or recognising or am aware) that the object has an existence apart from me. Conversely, when I am not aware of an object’s existence, I have no knowledge about it. But I have come across statements by Atmananda and you such as, ‘In knowing an object, consciousness becomes one with that object’.
How can I acknowledge that an object exists apart from me and at the same time be one with it? Also, is the word ‘knowledge’ used as a noun or a verb in this context?
Thank you, once again,
Shraddha
Dear Shraddha,
The two statements you make come from two different ‘stages’ of understanding.
In the first statement, ‘I, consciousness’ is considered to be the subject, witness or knower of the object. This is a half-way understanding which relieves us of the belief that ‘I, the body-mind’ is the subject, witness or knower of the object and replaces it with the understanding that ‘I, consciousness’ am the subject, witness or knower of the object andthe body-mind.
In other words, what we previously considered to be ‘I, the body-mind’ is now understood to be ‘I, consciousness’, and what was previously considered to be a world or an object known by a body-mind is now understood to be a world/object/body-mind known by consciousness.
However, if we make a deep exploration of the relationship between consciousness and the object (world/object/body-mind), we find no distinction between them. This may be expressed as consciousness and the object being one. But if consciousness and the object are one, it no longer makes sense to speak of an object.
In other words, there is no need for two words – object and consciousness – to denote one experience. It is realised rather than there was never an object there in the first place for consciousness to be one with. There is just consciousness.
However, at this stage there is no need even to conceptualise consciousness, for there is nothing to contrast it with (such as an object, world, body, mind or self), and here words fail us. The mind simply cannot go there. We fall silent.
* * *
Shraddha: Is the word ‘knowledge’ used as a noun or a verb in this context?
Rupert: Again, we may first consider knowledge to be an object (and therefore a noun) of which consciousness is aware. However, by exploring knowledge in the same way as we explored the object (body-mind/world) above, we find that it cannot stand alone.
‘Knowledge’ (noun) therefore is understood to be only ‘knowing’ (verb), and the substance of knowing is only consciousness (being).
These two explorations are really one exploration: we never know an object; we only know our knowledge of the object. Knowledge is only made of knowing and knowing is only consciousness. In this way we reduce the object into mind and mind into consciousness, and then realise that there was only ever that.
First of all there seem to be nouns (houses, cars, bodies, people), then there seem to be only verbs (seeing, hearing, tasting ) and then there is only being.
With love,
Rupert
