The imaginary birth of the self and the world

The imaginary birth of the self and the world

We are simultaneously the witness and the substance of all experience.

‘I’, which is seeing these words, is also the substance of these words. The experience of knowingthese words and the experience of beingthese words is one and the same experience.

It is only a thought that divides the seamless totality of experience into an experiencer and an experienced. There are no personal entities or independent objects anywhere to be found in actual experience. 

‘I’ and ‘the world’ are co-created moment by moment in imagination. They always appear together and disappear together in that which never appears or disappears. They are two sides of the same coin. The coin itself is presence, this present awareness, which is that in which the current experience appears and also that out of which it is made.

This division of experience into a perceiver and a perceived, a knower and a known, a lover and a beloved, is like a mirage. It never actually happens.

Both the experiencer and the experienced are made of experiencing, and experiencing itself is made out of this present awareness. 

 

*     *     * 

 

What needs to be done to something that is non-existent?

What can be done to the only thing that is ever present?

Every part of experience is utterly saturated with this presence. 

No part of it is any closer or farther away from presence than any other part.

No part of experience is more or less permeated with this presence than any other part.

From time to time this presence seems to condense itself into a bodily sensation. It constructs a wall around itself. It becomes located in time and space.

‘I’, presence, becomes ‘me’, a body. And everything ‘I’ am not, becomes ‘you’, the other, the object, the world. The self and the world are born.

However, this birth never actually takes place. There is no ‘me’, no ‘you’, no other, no object, no world.

 

*     *    * 

 

How could there be a cause for something that is non-existent?

How could there be a cure be for an imaginary illness?

How could there be a beginning, an end or a change in that within which all beginnings, ends and changes take place?

Where could this presence go to find that it was not already there?

What could this presence become that was not already itself?

What could this presence be other than itself?

What could this presence know other than itself?

What could this presence love other than itself?

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