Why is there Ignorance?

Why is there Ignorance?

Hi,

I started ‘seeking for the truth’ to what we are about two years ago, as I felt we are more than what conventional religion says and ideas of the self are. I have been trying to practise meditation and do some reading about spirituality, self-realisation, etc., with the result that I understand the concept of open awareness, consciousness, without actually coming to an experiential realisation. 

What I fail to understand is whywe have the ‘I’ thought or the concept of self. Are our brains programmed that way, or is it conditioning? I mean to say, what makes my awareness be the idea of ‘me’ and not someone else? Why is it stuck to my body, feelings, thoughts, emotions if its actually an open awareness? Suppose a baby is without human interaction but somehow manages to grow up. Would he/she still have a ‘me’ concept? If so, where would that come from?

Thanks,
Chandi

 

Dear Chandi,

Why is there ignorance (the ‘I’ thought)? The question cannot by definition be satisfactorily answered. The question ‘Why?’ presupposes the very duality that upon further investigation is found to be non-existent.

So the question ‘Why?’ could be reformulated as, ‘Why is there non-existent ignorance?’ It is a meaningless question in light of the reality of our experience.

The question ‘Why?’ presupposes at least two things: a cause and an effect. Ignorance (or the ‘I’ thought) is considered in this question to be the effect of a cause that precedes it.

However, on deeply investigating the nature of experience we find that there are not two things, or, we could provisionally say, there is only one ‘thing’. (Please understand that the word ‘thing’ is not meant to indicate the reality of anything objective.)

There is nothing other than this ‘one thing’, which we could call presence, which could cause or be caused by anything other than itself. There is only presence.

This is why in India they do not refer to ‘ignorance’ but rather the ‘illusion of ignorance’.

With love,
Rupert

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