Dear Rupert,
Before coming into contact with non-dual writings, I felt like a nobody trying to be somebody. What a relief to discover that this incessant trying is not necessary! Now I find the experience to be more like a somebody trying to be a nobody. Trying is still there; it has just taken a more subtle form. I am still missing the clear seeing of this. Could you say something about the knowledge of non-dual teachings verses the ‘seeing’ or actualising of it?
Thank you for taking the time to answer this.
Dede
Dear Dede,
Look directly at the ‘somebody’ that is trying to be this or that. What is it? Where is it? Who is it? Don’t superimpose the correct non-dual answer on top of your experience. Find the answer for yourself.
Where is this somebody? What is it? Look inside the body. What do you find? A few amorphous tingling sensations. Take each of them in turn. Take the tingling in your hands: Is the tingling called ‘my hands’ this somebody who is trying to be this or that? No! Explore the body, not the idea, image or memory of the body but the actual, moment-by-moment sensation of it.
Do you find this somebody that you believe yourself to be in the hands, in the chest, behind the eyes, in a little cluster of sensations? No! Take time to explore your body and see if you can find this somebody there. What do you find? Just fleeting, intermittent sensations. Is that what you deeply intimately know yourself to be, a little fleeting, intermittent sensation?
Now look in your mind. Where is your mind? Can you find a mind? Have you ever experienced a mind? Or do you just experience the current thought or image? See that what we call the mind is simply the belief that there is a great invisible container that houses all our thoughts, images, memories, hopes, fears, desires, and so on. When we try to find this mind, what happens? Do we find it? No!
What we call the mind is simply this current thought or image. How long does a thought or image last? Look at the current thought. Do you find a somebody inside it? Or is this somebody itself a thought that appears from time to time, made simply out of the thought that thinks it?
The more thoroughly we look in the mind and the body for this somebody that we think and feel ourself to be, the clearer it become that this somebody is simply a figment of our imagination. When this is clearly seen, the efforts that this non-existent somebody seems to be making in order to become this or that are seen to be absurd. They simply cease right there, with the clear seeing that this somebody is non-existent.
* * *
Does this mean that ‘I’ is non-existent? No! I am this presence in which the idea of somebody and nobody (along with all other ideas, images, sensations and perceptions) appears and out of which they are all ultimately made.
We do not need to do anything to be this presence. No effort is needed to be it, because we already and always are it. Nor could any effort to be anything other than this presence (for instance, a separate entity) actually change the fact that it is what we always are.
Whether we believe that we are somebody or nobody makes no difference. Both beliefs refer to a non-existent entity. When we try to find this entity it becomes clear that it is non-existent. At the same time, it becomes clear that this presence that we intimately know ourself to be cannot be found as an object of the mind or body.
At this moment the search for our self as any kind of a thing, object or person drops away and we find ourself resting in and as our own presence. Or, to put it another way, we find that our own being is shining at the heart of all experience.
This being is the non-objective but ever-present reality of every experience, hence the phrase that is sometimes used in non-dual circles, ‘nothing being everything’. However, if we appropriate this phrase and try to make our experience as an apparent entity comply with it, we simply compound our frustration.
So I would suggest that you forget this and all other formulations, including mine, and go deeply into your own experience. Be honest and simple. It is not the separate entity that explores. It is the separate entity that is explored. It is this exploration that effects the difference between intellectual knowledge and clear seeing.
To begin with, it may seem that the presence of being shines quietly in the background of all experience, but in time it flows into the foreground and pervades the mind, the body and the world.
With love,
Rupert
