What appears or is born when the body appears, and what dies or disappears when the body dies?
In order to answer this question, we first have to know what the body is when it is ‘alive’. The only experience we have of the body is the current experience, so this very experience is the only place from which we can answer this question.
The current experience of the body is a sensation/perception. This sensation/perception is made only of sensing/perceiving, and sensing/perceiving is simply a ‘colouring’ of awareness. There is no substance present in the experience of the sensation/perception that we call the body other than the presence of awareness.
When the body is apparently present, awareness knows and is that appearance simultaneously. But we have no experience of the appearance of awareness. Therefore, awareness cannot be said to be an appearance. So what is it that appears? It must be something that is not awareness. But how could and what would such a thing be?
Whatever an appearance is apparently comes from outside awareness and appears within it. But there is no such substance outside our experience that could come into it, nor is there a place in our experience from which it could come. Therefore even ‘appearance’ is an idea that is superimposed upon the reality of our experience. In fact, the entire substance of all so-called appearances is ever-present.
The substance of all seeming things is the substance out of which this current appearance, including the appearance of the body, is made. That substance does not come and go. In other words, appearance or birth and disappearance or death are concepts, never experiences.
How do we know that something has disappeared? Where is that ‘disappeared something’ now? What became of the substance out of which that ‘disappeared something’ was made? Where did it go? It must have gone somewhere. But something cannot become nothing.
And when something appears, from where did the substance out of which its current appearance is made come from? The appearing object was non-existent before it appeared. But how could something appear out of non-existence? Out of what would it be made?
Have we ever experienced or could we ever experience this ‘non-existence’ out of which things are presumed to come into being and into which they are presumed to disappear?
It is only memory, which is itself simply the current thought, that imagines that something has disappeared, that imagines a past object that ‘was present and is not now’. And it is only imagination that imagines an object appearing from somewhere. But where could that object reside outside the thought that thinks it? It is nowhere to be found.
The past is made of memory, the future of imagination, leaving a timeless, eternal presence ‘in between’ – the ever-present reality of what alone is. Therefore, the past and the future, appearance and disappearance, birth and death, are not.
That which is known in every experience, which is the totality of the experience, is ever-present. The substance of all seeming things eternally is. That which is known or experienced in every moment is ever-present. This presence lends its reality to all seeming things.
To love an apparent other is simply to recognise their ever-present reality. To be in love is to stand knowingly as this ever-presence. All that is ever loved is the reality of experience, and it is that reality that knows, is and loves itself, eternally. Love knows nothing other than its own ever-presence.
Nothing comes and goes. In fact, ‘nothing’ is not and ‘something’ is not. In the timeless, placeless now-here-ness between these apparent two lies presence. Only appearances appear to come and go. Their reality ever is. That which truly is, eternally and alone is.
