Dear Rupert
I am reading that awareness pretends to be a small separate self, and then forgets it is playing a game. This seems an odd thing for pure awareness to do. Sounds like a person! Why should it do this, with all the suffering entailed? Even if it is only apparent suffering, it seems very real!
Thanks,
Lynn
Dear Lyn,
When I say ‘awareness pretends to be a separate self’, I am, in a way, caricaturing awareness. What is meant is that it is awareness that takes the shape of the separate-self thought and by doing so seems to veil its own reality from itself.
Awareness is the substance of this thought, and it is in that sense that I say that awareness pretends to be a separate entity. We could rephrase this, perhaps more accurately, by saying that awareness, out of its freedom, allows itself to take the shape of the dualising separate-self thought.
It is ‘odd’ only from the point of view of the apparent person, that is, from the point of view of the dualising mind. However, it is only the dualising mind that believes that the mind has a valid point of view of its own. This apparent point of view is called the person. The person is only real from the point of view of the person, and yes, from the point of view of the person this pretence is ‘odd’.
It is not just odd – it is wonderful, awful, beautiful, terrible, and so on. All these attitudes are the attitudes of the apparent person. They all make sense from the point of view of the person alone.
But awareness itself is too close, too utterly, intimately one with every appearance, to stand back and judge it as being awful or wonderful. And anyway, what would it be judging? It is always only experiencing its own self. To make a judgement, there must be two things.
Awareness doesn’t create the world as an entity imagines creation might take place, that is, by first conceiving it, then creating it and then enjoying it. For awareness, which means in our actual experience, conception, creation and enjoyment are simultaneous. There is no time to stand back and look, let alone judge!
It is the mind alone that creates the apparent person, judges this creation as being ‘odd’, and then wonders why it has done so!
* * *
Lyn: Why should it do this, with all the suffering entailed? Even if it is only apparent suffering, it seems very real!
Rupert: It is with the very question ‘Why?’ that the mind creates the duality about which it is asking. Right there, in the ‘Why?’ question, we presume a cause A and an effect B. In other words, we presume two things. There is no duality beyond the thought that thinks it.
I know this answer is frustrating for the mind, but it is the truest answer. The ‘Why?’ question cannot be answered on the level from which it is asked. Answers such as ‘It’s all for God’s entertainment’, and variations on that theme, seek to pacify the mind but do not dissolve it.
This answer goes to the heart of the matter. The mind is caught at its own game and spontaneously and effortlessly dissolves as a result.
With love,
Rupert
