Is the timeless interval between two things all there is?

Is the timeless interval between two things all there is?

Dear Dan,

Dan: Perhaps you’d agree that the ‘timeless interval between’ you pointed to is thus all that actually is.

Rupert: Yes, exactly. From the point of view of the mind, where time and space are considered to be the background of all experience, experience itself is considered to be a series of objective events or perceptions occurring upon or within this background. From this point of view, presence is conceived as the timeless, spaceless interval between two such perceptions or events.

However, from the point of view of presence, it is itself the background of all experience, and the mind, the body and the world appear upon it or within it ‘from time to time’. In other words, time and space (which are simply ideas) appear within presence, not the other way round.

If we go deeper into the nature of the mind, the body and the world, we find that there is no other substance there than this presence that we are. So, ultimately, we find that our self, this knowing presence, is the substance of all experience, both when objects are appearing and when they are not.

So this ‘timeless, spaceless interval’ is only an interval from the point of view of time and space. In reality, yes, it is all there is.

It is when you make statements like ‘I think it is fairly obvious that if we think we are a separate entity we cannot’ that I get confused. Who is this ‘we’ who thinks that ‘we’ are a separate entity? It seems pretty clear in other of your statements that there is no such ‘we’.

Yes, there is no such ‘we’, ‘I’, ‘object’ or ‘entity’. In reality, the thought ‘I am a separate entity’ is not thought or held by anyone. It just appears in presence, along with all other thoughts. However, if we know this, the belief ‘I am a separate entity’ doesn’t appear. We cannot believe ‘I am a separate entity’ and at the same time understand that there is no separate entity. 

If we claim this, our understanding is not real understanding, but rather theoretical knowledge. In other words if we think we are a separate entity, we by definition think and feel that there is an ‘I’, a ‘we’, present there having that thought. Of course, in reality that thought arises in impersonal presence.

 

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We can’t really hypothesise a ‘presence’ that does things, such as taking shapes. 

Yes, by hypothesising presence that does things I certainly don’t mean to suggest any agent or entity. Such a statement is only made to try to evoke the experiential understanding that it is only this presence that we intimately know ourself to be that is the substance of all things and, at the same time, independent of all things.

All these words – presence, substance, being, understanding – suggest some kind of subtle thing or object, and of course this is not in any way the intention. But we simply have to accept this limitation of words if we are to speak about these things.

What can we say that is absolutely accurate and true? Presence is? I am? Only this? No. All these minimal phrases say one thing too much. What about just ‘I’, ‘am’, or ‘is’? No, even these subtly suggest the possibility of not being.

At this point we fall silent. If we were having this conversation in the flesh, there would perhaps be long periods of silence in between, within and around our words, in which the experiential element of the understanding would resonate. Without that, there is a tendency for these types of conversation to become intellectual, but in general I feel that very much more than this has been taking place in this forum.

 

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Maybe this is a subtle point, but notions of an agent that does things requires a belief in entities.

Yes, it is a subtle but important point. I acknowledge that in reality, awareness does nothing. When the mind, say, asks a question, awareness cannot be said to be asking a question, just as the screen does not do anything when the tiger runs across it.

When I say ‘awareness pretends to limit itself’, or ‘awareness takes the shape of’ or ‘awareness chooses’, I mean that the mind ‘limits’, ‘takes the shape of’ or ‘chooses’. However, awareness is the entire substance of that mind; hence a kind a shorthand when I say, ‘awareness does such-and-such’. It would be very tedious to say every time, ‘awareness is the entire substance of the mind which itself limits, takes the shape of, chooses, and so on’.

I tend to give detailed and therefore lengthy responses, and to include numerous phrases such as ‘as it were’, ‘seems to be’, ‘appear to’, ‘could be said’ and ‘another way of saying’, so as to be clear and to remind us all frequently that these are simply attempts to point towards something that does not readily lend itself to the language of words. 

In this way I also hope not to fall foul of the Advaita police, who are very much in evidence these days, but there is a limit above which this kind of Advaitically correct language becomes tedious.

I recently wrote to a friend to ask him how he was and to send my love. I got a response asking me who exactly I was referring to, who was sending love, how could love be sent, and so on, for God’s sake!

So I rely on a certain understanding and therefore tolerance of the inherent limitations of language when discussing these matters. It is of course legitimate to scrutinise the fine print (as you do) and to demand clarity and consistency (which I welcome) and at the same time to accommodate a liberal use of analogy and metaphor.

With love,
Rupert

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