Rupert,
How do you respond to the idea that there are many ways of ‘falling’ into the knowingness of consciousness? All of ‘us’ have qualitatively different perspectives. Sometimes I feel like I am on the inside looking outside, and sometimes, when I read a passage from your book, I feel like I am on the inside looking inside. Does this make sense?
Thank you,
Joe
Dear Joe,
Once we have given credibility to the idea that there is ‘someone’ who can ‘fall’ into consciousness, it is true that there are as many different ways or perspectives as there are people. The teaching will meet this person exactly where they are and lead them from there, at least to a higher understanding, if not directly to a glimpse of their true nature. It is a way in which an apparent individual progresses along a path towards a goal.
At some stage, however, the entity that is trying to reach a goal of enlightenment has to be questioned. This involves an investigation of this ‘I’ entity at the level of the mind and the body. We could say that the energies of the mind and the body are traced back to their source.
At some point it becomes clear that the separate entity is non-existent as such and that we are and always have been unlimited, impersonal consciousness. As we take our stand knowingly as this impersonal presence of consciousness, the mind and the body gradually become realigned with our new understanding.
So from the point of view of a multiplicity of people, there are a multiplicity of ways. From the point of view of consciousness, there is one way, which is not really a way but rather the abidance in and as itself, and from there to watch, as it were, the unfolding and realignment of the body and mind with dispassionate affection.
* * *
Joe: Sometimes I feel like I am on the inside looking outside, and sometimes, when I read a passage from your book, I feel like I am on the inside looking inside. Does this make sense?
Rupert: Yes, when we feel that we are a separate, limited entity, located ‘inside’ the body, we feel as if we are looking ‘outwards’ towards our goal of happiness and peace, which is deemed to be at some distance from our self.
At other times, on reading certain books, meeting with certain friends, being in certain places, or for no apparent reason at all, this search drops away and we find ourself open, empty, available, without direction, motive or lack. We are exactly where we want to be, a place that has no location and yet is intimate, friendly and familiar.
With love,
Rupert
