Dear Rupert,
I believe you when you say that the witness is one with all appearances, since some months ago when I was trying to see the seer! Suddenly for a couple of minutes I had this experience that every sound was me, the birds playing on trees were me, the pupils going to school were me, the sound of a door was me, even the breeze was one with me. I was one with all I saw, heard and felt.
My dear Rupert, sorry to ask you this naïve question, but would you kindly show me a way to that realm? I don’t need to attain something or be something. I just want to love everyone and everything, a silent love without any words, just like the moment you put down the ‘I’ thought and join people and the life around you. Then you feel the fragrance of life, no hindrances, no complicated and masked matters, just simple loving being.
With love and gratitude,
Afshin
Dear Afshin,
It is not enough to believe that the witness is one with all appearances. See very clearly that this is always your experience.
Ask yourself, first of all, if you ever have the experience of anything without consciousness, or even if it would be possible to have such an experience. Then see clearly that there is no distance between whatever is known and the consciousness that knows it. Explore your experience and see that all objects appear not just toconsciousness but inconsciousness. And lastly, see that there is no substance to any appearance other than consciousness itself.
You have had a taste of this for a few minutes, but explore your experience and see that it is always so. It is not an extraordinary, heightened experience. It is very simple and natural, closer than you think.
See clearly that as long as there is ‘everyone and everything’, there is a personal ‘I’. In other words, the personal ‘I’ and the world and others always come and go together. They are two sides of the same coin. And this personal ‘I’ cannot love anyone or anything. In fact, it is, by definition, the veiling of the love that is inherent in our own being.
All that is required is, as you say, to put down the ‘I’ thought, that is, to see clearly that you are not a separate entity. Take your stand knowingly as the presence to which, in which and as which all apparent things and others appear.
That presence does not love. It islove. Everything that is done from this place of presence is love itself in action, tailored appropriately to the situation at hand.
If this seems too abstract, then when faced with an apparent other, be open to the possibility that whatever it is in them that sees, hears, feels and thinks is the same as whatever it is in you that sees, hears, feels and thinks. In other words, treat everyone and everything as your very own self.
The response you receive from the situation will be the confirmation of that possibility. Live this possibility and it will turn into reality.
With love,
Rupert
