Dear Keith,
Keith: When I have the lightening-quick thought to choose suffering, then I am defining who and what I am all about by my own authority, not the universe’s.
Rupert: ‘You’ as an entity do not choose the lightning-quick thought to have suffering, any more than you choose the lightening-quick appearance of that siren outside, or the itch on your leg or the bird that just passed the window.
There are no separate entities or objects anywhere to be found in experience. Even from a materialistic point of view the universe is one vast web of interconnectedness. ‘Stir but a wing and you stir a star.’
The separate entity and its corollary, the separate world, are concepts, not experiences. If we provisionally admit the existence of cause and effect (that is, if we are talking at the relative rather than the absolute level) we have to admit that the totality chooses every minute appearance, such as the breath you just took, the thought that you or anyone else just had, and my cat stretching on the floor.
In other words, the non-existent entity has no authority. It is simply a thought and a feeling that appears from time to time.
The ‘I/ego’ gets its way by creating in real time a scenario of suffering and then ‘I/ego’ suffers because of it.
The ‘I/ego’ is simply a thought that appears to be substantiated by feelings in the body. It has no other substance than the thought that thinks it. It neither creates suffering nor itself suffers. It issuffering. If we consider it to be real, then our suffering seems very real. If we have the experiential understanding that it is non-existent, then suffering is non-existent.
However, it is misleading to associate ‘I’ and the ‘ego’. ‘I’ is the name we give to what we intimately know ourself to be – the knowingness or experiencingness that runs through all experience – whilst the ego is simply a thought that appears from time to time.
Consciousness just gets way backed out somewhere and loses its being until the ‘I/ego’ has its way with you.
Consciousnessseemsto get backed out somewhere. That is, the thought that exclusively associates consciousness with a body seems to veil the true nature of consciousness from itself. This is the experience known as suffering.
However, it is not the ‘I/ego’ that decides when to cease ‘having its way with you’. The ‘I/ego’ decides, chooses, does, thinks, creates, enjoys and suffers nothing.
What is it that decides this? In order to answer this question we have to first believe that ignorance has a cause and can therefore be terminated. But when we look for this ignorance, we do not find it. How can something that is non-existent have a cause or be terminated?
However, we can only legitimately say this if we know that there is no separate self and therefore no ignorance or suffering. If we feel we are suffering, then we very much feel that we are a separate self, and that separate self, by definition, seems to be doing, choosing and thinking. If this is the case for us, then as that apparent entity, the very best thing we can do is to investigate the nature of this entity that we believe and, more importantly, feel ourself to be.
* * *
How come just knowing this is not enough and it takes so long?
If we truly know this in an experiential way and not just an intellectual way, it is enough.
Why does it take so long? Because of that very question. With that question we create the very time that we then lament. And with the creation of time comes the separate entity with its entourage of objects, others, the world, cause and effect, and so on. See that the separate entity and its entourage are non-existent and the idea that this takes so long will vanish.
That is the short and direct answer. If you think and feel, however, that you are a separate entity (and there is no judgement in that), then the following answer is tailored to that belief.
Knowing this (if by knowing you refer to an intellectual knowing) is not enough because we don’t just think; we also feel and perceive. Our experience doesn’t just consist of mind, but the body and the world also. If our experience only consisted of thinking, then as long as all the thoughts were in line with the true nature of our experience, we would always be happy.
However, if all our thoughts were in line with the non-dual nature of experience and yet we continued to feel in terms of being a separate entity, then whenever feelings or bodily sensations were present, there would be a conflict.
Likewise, if we continued to consider that objects, others and the world (that is, perceptions) were outside of our self and made out of something other than our self, then our intellectual knowing would be of little value whenever perceiving was present.
Your question is pertinent. It pin-points a situation that is true for many of us: ‘I knowthat I am not separate but I feelthat I am’. This is often the reason why it seems to ‘take so long’. Many teachings address the belief of being limited and located, but few address the feeling of being such.
In fact, the larger part of ignorance is the feeling of separation, not the belief in separation, and therefore ignorance, and the suffering that attends it, persists long after we seem to have a good intellectual knowledge of the non-dual teaching.
So to the apparent one who thinks that he is not present as an entity and yet feels that he is located in or as the body, I would say, explore your feelings; look there for any evidence of separation.
* * *
A Course in Miraclessays purification is necessary. Is the purification the suffering? Then it says that you can be a happy learner or a suffering learner.
I don’t know A Course in Miracles, but purification is not necessary. Purification of what? Only an object could be purified, and knowing presence is not an object.
Likewise, there is nothing purifying about suffering. The idea that suffering purifies is the same as saying that suffering leads to happiness. This is absurd. Suffering is simply another name for the apparent presence of the separate entity. This apparent entity, by definition, veils the happiness that is inherent in the knowing of our being. Suffering is the veiling of the happiness that is innate within us, not the way to it.
Suffering is at best a warning signal that we have forgotten our true nature and are mistaking ourself for a limited, located entity. That is its function, if it can be said to have a function. Once it has signalled this mistake, it has done its job. If we don’t take the message, suffering continues until at last, sometimes, we turn round. That is, we hear the call from our innermost self, ‘Come back, my love, come back to me, your Beloved’.
That call is, for some of us, the beginning of the end. It is the call of the Beloved, not the efforts of an apparent person, that is at once the original impulse, the journey and the destination.
* * *
So you are saying that we are defined by our apparent suffering, because when I am not suffering I am clearly not myself at all?
On the contrary, there are many moments when we are not suffering, and at those times we are still our self. In other words, our self (whatever that is) is present both when there is suffering and when there is not. Therefore we cannot be defined by our suffering because suffering is not always present and we are!
To take your question further, we might ask, ‘How then can we define our self?’ Whatever qualities we use to define our self must be present whenever we are present. So look in your own experience and ask yourself what qualities are inseparable from the experience of yourself. What do we refer to when we say ‘I’? The first one is obviously presence. I, by definition, am. There is being.
In order to be able to say from experience, ‘I am’, we must know that I am, that is, we must know our own being. To be sure that I am (and we are sure that I am), we must know it, so knowing is also inherent in or inseparable from ‘I’. Therefore ‘I’ is both knowing and present. What else can we say about it?
Normally we add all kinds of accretions to this knowing presence. We assign it a location, a colour, a shape, an age, an gender, a size, beliefs, abilities, characteristics, and so on. However, all these are intermittent, and as ‘I’ is not intermittent, they cannot be qualities that are inherent in our self.
If we look again at this experience of our self, there are other things we can say. For instance, whilst it is undoubtedly knowing and present, we have never experienced its appearance, disappearance, birth, death or change because we, as knowing presence, would have to be there, present and knowing, to register such an experience. Therefore, ever-present, birthless, deathless and changeless are qualities of our self.
Our self is not known by anything other than its own self. It is ‘I’ that knows that I am. The self knows itself by itself. It does not need any other agent, such as a mind or a body, to know itself. Therefore, ‘I’ is self-knowing or self-luminous. Because ‘I’ is the only ‘thing’ that knows itself, it is its own evidence. It cannot be proven by anything other than its own experience of itself.
‘I’, knowing presence, being present and knowing but without objective qualities, cannot move, change or become anything other than what it always already is. It cannot increase or diminish. Nothing can be added to it or removed from it. It is fullness itself and is therefore known as happiness or fulfilment.
It cannot be disturbed, because only an apparent object can be disturbed, and it therefore knows itself as peace. When any apparent object appears, the object is found to be made only out of knowing presence. It gives its own substance intimately and utterly to every appearance. For this reason it is known as love. Although it is always itself, it can take all possible apparent forms, including the form of ignorance, and freedom is therefore inherent within it.
All these qualities may seem to imply that ‘I’ is one thing and not another – for instance, that it is limitless rather then limited – and from an intellectual point of view some may argue that this is an expression of duality. It is not! These qualities, such as changeless, birthless, deathless and ever-present, are given only in response to the implicit belief some of us have that ‘I’ changes, is born, dies, disappears, and so on.
If we superimpose no qualities on ‘I’, such as objective, limited, located, born, subject to death and change, there is no need to counter this with qualities such as non-objective, unlimited, unlocated, birthless and deathless. If we superimpose no qualities onto presence, there is no need to define it in any way. We simply leave it free to be what it is, knowing and being its own self alone, beyond all such defining qualities such as limited or unlimited, changing or unchanging.
With love,
Rupert
