PRESENCE: VOLUME TWO

First paperback edition published October 2011 by NON-DUALITY PRESS

© Rupert Spira 2011, 2012
© Non-Duality Press 2011, 2012

Cover images by Caroline Seymour
Cover design by Rupert Spira

Rupert Spira has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.
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Pure intimacy
Parted by thought
Becomes a self and world

Introduction: The Seamless Intimacy of Experience

In 1998 I was staying with my friend and teacher, Francis Lucille, and we were talking about the nature of experience. At one point a dog started to bark in the distance and I observed that it seemed a fact of experience that the dog was outside, separate and at a distance from myself.

Francis said to me, “Shut your eyes and place your hands on the carpet.” I placed my hands on the carpet and he asked, “Now where does that sensation take place?” That was all he said.

At that moment it suddenly became clear that the sensation of the carpet was inside me, that is, inside this perceiving consciousness, appearing in exactly the same place as my thoughts and bodily sensations.

On opening my eyes the carpet appeared to be outside again. However, I reasoned that the carpet was only one thing. As a sensation it seemed to be inside but as a visual perception it seemed to be outside. Well, which was it? It couldn’t be both.

In this way I explored and experimented with my experience, always with the same question in mind, “What is the real nature of this experience?” I didn’t want a rational response, couched in the non-dual terms that had become so familiar over two decades of seeking. I wanted direct experience.

I would sit for hours refusing the conventional labels that thinking superimposes on experience, allowing experience to reveal itself as it is. As time went on it became more and more obvious that all experience takes place inside consciousness, that is, inside myself, whatever that is.

In due course I came to see in an experiential way that if there is nothing outside experience there can be nothing inside, for inside and outside are two sides of the same coin. One cannot stand without the other. Experiencing simply remains, neither inside nor outside, and the totality of this experiencing is permeated with, inseparable from and ultimately made out of consciousness, our self. In fact, it is misleading to have three words, experiencing, consciousness and our self, for that which is always one.

Nothing extraordinary happened except the falling away of the concepts with which we normally describe our experience and with which we artificially fragment experience into a perceiving subject on the inside and a perceived object, other or world on the outside.

Over a period of time there were many revelations about the nature of experience, each one seeming to penetrate more deeply to its core and, as a result, the old belief systems with which experience had been shrouded for so long were slowly dismantled.

During this time the fabric of the separate inside self became clear and with it the so-called separate outside world. The separate self was revealed as a dense and intricate network of resisting, fearing, avoiding, seeking and conceptualising. In other words, it became clear that the separate self is not in fact an entity but rather an activity that appears in consciousness.

And as a natural corollary to this understanding, it became clear that all we know of an outside world is sensing and perceiving which, although seeming to take place outside, in fact takes place within consciousness, in exactly the same place as the resisting and seeking that characterise the separate self. In both cases, whether I looked inside or outside, it became clear that there is only the seamless intimacy of pure experiencing itself.

In other words, it was clearly seen that consciousness pervades all experience equally. No part of experience is any closer to or further from consciousness than any other part. In fact, there are no parts to experience. It is one seamless, intimate whole permeated by and ultimately made out of consciousness.

All that changed was that a centre or location where thinking, sensing, perceiving, feeling, loving, acting etc. takes place was no longer imagined. The continual reference to a personal self fell away and with it the imaginary distance, objectivity and otherness of the world dissolved. Only experiencing remains... direct, intimate, vibrant and friendly.

The title of my first book, The Transparency of Things came to me as a way of trying to indicate that all our so-called objective experience—the body, world, things and others—is made out of the same transparent, open, empty, luminous substance as the consciousness in which they appear.

The current title, Presence, goes a step further. There are no ‘things’ there in the first place to be transparent or otherwise. There is simply aware presence, ever-present, knowing, being and loving itself, sometimes resting, as it were, in the knowing of its own being and sometimes simultaneously knowing, being and loving itself in and as every minute gesture of the apparent mind, body and world.

As far as trying to share or communicate this experiential understanding, it is legitimate and in most cases necessary to have the freedom, sensitivity and flexibility to begin at any point along the apparent paths of understanding or love, depending on the perspective of the question, and to explore the nature of experience from there, taking the presumption that is concealed in the question as a starting point.

Most of what is said in this book has been prompted by a question, because without a question there is little impulse to formulate what cannot truly be formulated. As such, what is said here will, in most cases, start from the underlying presumption in the question and go from there to as direct a formulation of the nature of experience as is possible in the given circumstance.

However, it may not go there in one leap. It may involve an apparent process in time in which we move slowly, intimately and carefully from our presumptions, whether they be in the form of beliefs or feelings, to our direct experience. How long we take and how directly we go depends on the nature of the resistance of the dualising mind that is being engaged in this conversation. We may go straight from there to the reality of our experience in the shortest and most direct way, or we may proceed slowly and even not quite complete the full exploration, leaving that to be completed by the one who is asking the question.

In this way, the reality of our experience is refracted into as many formulations as there are questions, none of them being absolutely true but each one tailored with love and understanding to the presumptions that are concealed and expressed in the question.

So our conversations are like a dance, intimately, subtly and lovingly following the dualising mind in all its abstract, convoluted and erroneous beliefs, dancing with it for as long as it wishes to dance; never trying to replace one concept with another that is deemed to be absolutely true, but all the time using concepts to dissolve the hardened shell of abstract thinking in which our experience seems to have been imprisoned, thereby leaving the raw reality of experience naked, as it were, shining in and by itself.

In this way, we avoid the pitfall of responding to all questions with the same absolute truth (as if the absolute truth could be accurately expressed by any formulation) which, although seemingly unassailable, may simply be one more refuge for the sense of a separate self—the refuge of non-dual perfectionism. Above all, this freedom from the new convention of non-dual perfectionism leaves it abundantly clear that the reality of experience cannot be adequately formulated by the mind and the little imperfections in every phrase are repeated reminders of this.

In fact, words are the least part of what is being communicated here. However, being confined to this written form they may temporarily assume more importance than they deserve. Rather, it is the experiential understanding from which the words come that is their true import, and this leaves open the possibility of a wide variety of expressions and formulations, including even those that may seem to condone the apparently independent existence of objects, entities, things and the world, if needs be.

Any teaching that mechanically asserts and reasserts the same absolute truth as a blanket answer to all questions is, at best, dogmatic and, at worst, dubious. The true non-dual understanding is like an explosion—it cannot be contained in any form. It is always uprooting any attempt of the mind to catch it, tie it down, package or control it. This explosion may or may not be fierce. It may just as well be a gentle almost imperceptible dissolving.

My hope is that these words will be like drinking a delicious old wine. We take small sips with long pauses in between and the wine percolates into the mind and body, pervading and dissolving them as it goes. Such are the words of the teaching. It is the after-taste that truly matters. Long after the words have gone, the silence from which they originate and with which they are saturated resonate in the mind and body, drawing them into itself.

The Primacy of Presence

Experience is all that is known or could be known. So let us start here. Where else could we start? What is the reality of this current experience?

There are these words and all the other apparent objects of the mind, body and world, that is, thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. And there is ‘something’ present which is seeing these words and experiencing whatever else is being experienced in this moment. This ‘something’ is experiencing the tingling sensation we call our feet; it is hearing the sound of rain; it is knowing our thoughts.

Whatever it is that is experiencing the current amalgam of thoughts, sensations and perceptions is undoubtedly present and is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘being’, and undoubtedly knowing, experiencing or aware and is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’. Above all, it is what we know and experience our self to be and therefore it is known as ‘I’.

Every experience is, as it were, lit up and simultaneously known by our self, this aware presence. Without it no experience is possible. Our self is the knowing or experiencing aspect in every experience. It is also the being or existence aspect of all experience—the ‘amness’ of the self and the ‘isness’ of all seeming things.

Experiences are changing all the time but experiencing is present throughout these changes. Would it be possible to experience the absence of this experiencing? No! In order to claim legitimately that experiencing was absent, its absence would have to be experienced and, by definition, experiencing would therefore be present.

Would it be possible to experience the beginning or end of experiencing? If we claim that experiencing begins or ends, something must be present there experiencing its beginning or ending. If we stay close to experiencing, which is always now, we see that it is only abstract thought that claims that it begins and ends. It is, in fact, ever-present.

Does experiencing change when the particular characteristics of experiences change? No! It is present consistently throughout all changes. Therefore, experiencing itself cannot be made out of something that changes, such as a thought, sensation or perception.

Everything that is known or experienced is known by or through our self, aware presence. In time, this presence is understood to be the only substance present in experiencing.

Our self, presence, is the most intimate fact of experience. It pervades all experience. It is what we refer to as ‘I’. It is what we intimately know ourselves to be or, more simply, it is the knowing of being. Our being is not known by something or someone other than itself. It is known by itself. The ‘I’ that I am is also that ‘I’ that knows that I am. However, ‘I’ does not know itself as something, as an object. It is the knowing of itself. It knows itself simply by being itself.

Presence, consciousness, awareness, our own being, is the primal and essential ingredient of experience. It is that which makes all experience possible and knowable. In time we discover that this presence is the only ingredient of experience. As such it is not an ingredient, something that experience is made of, but rather it simply is experience, all alone.

Is our self, our own being, ever not present? Prior to the arising of thought, there is no experience of time, in which our self is either present or not. Even during the appearance of thought there is no experience of time but only the appearance of time. However, even now our self is not present in the present moment. It is the present; not ‘now’ a moment in time but eternally, timelessly ever-present now.

Would it be possible to experience the absence of our self? What would know or experience such an absence? That one would have to be both present and aware. In other words it would be our self, aware presence. Would it be possible to have an experience without our self? Is any part of experience not utterly permeated with that which knows it? Do we know of anything that exists apart, separate or independent from our self? No!

All apparently objective qualities of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell are known or experienced by our self and, therefore, although undeniably present, our self itself cannot have any objective qualities. All objective qualities are known by our self, but our self is not made out of an object.

All experience is pervaded by experiencing or knowing. This knowingness is present throughout all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions irrespective of their particular characteristics. Presence, our self, is this transparent unchanging knowingness in all experience.

If we remove all that is perceivable from the perceived all that remains is our self. That one, which is the intimacy of our being, is eternally present throughout all experience, lending its own reality to all things. In fact, the apparent reality of all things, all experience, belongs to our self alone. All that we love in objects, others and the world is their reality, and their reality is our reality. We love our self alone. It is not a personal self, a me, that loves this being. It loves its own impersonal being. All experience is only that.

Our self has no objective qualities so how do we know that it is limited, located or personal? It cannot be known, seen or felt objectively, so how do we know that it resides in the body or mind? We do not.

The mind, body and world are constantly changing in our experience and are often not present. However, our self is ever-present throughout all experience. It is the experiencing element that runs throughout all experience. It can never be known as an object because it is the knower of all apparent objects.

However, it never ceases to know itself. Nothing new needs to be added to experience to become aware that our self is always being and knowing itself alone, not ‘always’ in time but eternally now. Knowing or experiencing is its nature. Knowing or experiencing is not what it does. It is what it is. Therefore, it is by definition always knowing itself.

As knowing is its nature, simply being itself is the knowing of itself. And as it is ever-present, it is always knowing itself. In fact, it knows nothing other than itself.

The appearances of the mind, body and world are known by it but our self does not need any of them in order to know or be itself. It knows itself without the need of any light other than its own. In fact, there is no light other than itself.

Our self needs the mind, body and world like the screen needs the film. In other words, it doesn’t! However, unlike the screen that is simply present, relatively speaking, our self is a knowing or aware presence. Just by being itself it knows itself. It knows itself in all experience. It never ceases to experience itself.

Whatever is known or experienced in every experience is its knowing or experiencing of itself and this absolute intimacy of itself with all apparent objects and others is known as love. In other words, experience is not just made of awareness and presence but also of love. These three are one.

All we have ever longed for resides in simply abiding as this aware presence knowingly.

Knowledge and Love are One

In this investigation into the nature of experience we simply take our stand knowingly our true self of aware presence, irrespective of the particular characteristics of experience. We remain knowingly what we always already are. We always are only this presence but sometimes fail to notice that this is so.

What is it that fails to notice this? Our self cannot fail to know itself just as the sun cannot fail to illumine itself. It is only a thought that imagines that our self is not known and that something else— like a body, mind or world—is known. With this thought alone, our self seems to contract inside the body and mind and objects, others and the world seem to be projected outside. As a result, intimacy is veiled, love is lost and seeking begins.

However, all this is only for thought. Our self only knows the intimacy of its own being and all experience is that. The apparent veiling of our self and the corresponding disappearance of peace, happiness and love is always for thought, that is, always for the imaginary inside self, but never for the real and only self there is.

First we notice our self, then we stand knowingly as that self, then we see that there is only our self. And what is it that sees this? Our self. In other words, our own being abides in its eternal nature of peace, happiness and love and no longer loses itself to the apparent objects of the body, mind and world.

The more our self is noticed, the more its qualities are revealed in our experience. The mind, body and world, which once seemed to veil it, are now seen to shine with its light. We give to our self the attention we used to give to the world and the objects that once seemed to limit or obscure it are now seen only to reveal or express it.

Just as in a physical object, at a relative level, all we see is reflected light, so in reality all that is experienced is made of our self, aware presence. The only difference is that the sun’s light is seen by something other than itself whilst it is our self that experiences itself in all experience. It is not known by any other light.

Nothing objective can touch, change, affect, move, alter, destroy or manipulate our self, aware presence, in any way, just as the image in the mirror cannot affect the mirror. Our self is intimately one with all experience just as the mirror is one with the image when it appears and yet we are entirely independent of all appearances just as the mirror is independent of the image.

In fact, we are not ‘intimately one with’ experience for there are not two things there in the first place—our self and experience—to be intimate with each other. There is just pure seamless intimacy— no inside self and no outside object, world or other.

To begin with, as we take our stand knowingly as aware presence, the mind, body and world recede into the background. When the presence and primacy of our self has been established, objects come close again, closer than close. They dissolve into our self and reveal themselves as none other than the shape that our self is taking from moment to moment.

In fact, to know an apparent object of the mind, body or world, that apparent object has to dissolve into our self, awareness. That is the way an object is known, by dissolving in awareness. To know anything its apparent ‘thingness’ must dissolve in awareness and become pure knowing.

However, it is not that an object that was once real in its own right dissolves into awareness but rather that the object is understood to be only the knowing of the object—it was never anything other than that in our experience in the first place—and the only substance present in knowing is awareness, our self. So it is the apparent ‘objectness’ of an object—its ‘outside-ness’, its ‘not-me-ness’, its ‘something-ness’—that dissolves.

This dissolution is known as the experience of love. It is the dissolution of all the apparent boundaries that seem to keep an object, other, person or world, at a distance or separate. Love and knowledge are, in fact, one and the same.

The Innocence of Experience

Whatever it is that is seeing these words is the substance of these words. Whatever it is that is seeing the carpet is the substance of the carpet. Whatever it is that is feeling the chair is the substance of the chair. Conventional wisdom suggests that whatever it is that knows any experience is distinct from the existence of whatever it is that is known. It postulates a separate ‘I’ that knows and a separate object, other or world that is known.

In reality, there is no separate, inside ‘I’ and no separate, outside object, other or world. There is no experience of a world, person, object or other as such, that is, as an entity in its own right independent and separate from our self, awareness. This separation of the knowing subject from the existence of object, is a concept made only of the thought that thinks it.

In reality our self, awareness, and the existence or being of an apparent object or other are not two. They are seamlessly one. The knowing of a tree and the existence of the tree are made out of the same stuff. This understanding is a common experience. In fact, it is not an experience. It is all that is ever experienced. It is experience itself. Experience is not a collection of objects known by an inside self. ‘Experience’ is just another name for our self, awareness. All seeming things are only our own infinite being.

In the experience of an apparent object, other or world, the dualising mind (which is the thought that seems to separate the knowing subject from the known object) is not, by definition, present. The mind appears as a thought after the event to which it refers. Take any experience. By the time thought has risen to name it, the experienced that is being named has vanished. Therefore, thought can never touch experience itself, although it is made out of it. Experience itself is always pristine, free, untouchable, unknowable by thought, pure intimacy, vibrant, alive.

The world that thought imagines is not the real world of experience but an abstraction that masquerades as the real thing. The real nature of experience can never be found by the mind and yet it is all that is ever known. This and every experience is shining with that reality alone.

Thought misinterprets this seamless intimacy of experience and creates a knower, owner or ‘haver’ of the experience—the separate, inside self—and a known, owned or ‘had’ object of experience—the object, other or outside world. This utter intimacy of the knower and the known is a well-known and familiar experience. It is what is referred to as peace, happiness, love and beauty. In fact, it is all that is ever happening but it seems to be veiled by dualising thought.

Peace, happiness and love are simply the names we give to the dissolution of the apparent distinction between the knower and the known, between the subject and the object. We all know this from our relationships. Love is the dissolution of everything we conceive and perceive our self and the other to be. It is an experience of the absolute oneness of our shared identity. In fact, our identity is not shared. There are not two entities there in the first place to share it. It is, I am, all alone.

When we say, “I fell in love,” we literally mean that we fell out of the conceptual straitjacket in which we had previously resided, into love. In fact, we never fall out of anything because we were never truly located as a separate inside self or entity in something, such as a body, in the first place. The separate entity is simply the prisoner of thought.

When we fall in love, or indeed when we love, we simply recognise our self to be and to have always been this transparent presence in which there is no room for an object, other or person. Of course, when the dualising mind re-emerges from this non subject-object experience of love, in which it was not present, it recreates the apparently loving subject and the apparently loved object and says, “I love you.” However, the apparent ‘I’ and the apparent ‘you’ are fabrications of the mind, made only of the thought that thinks them.

With this appearance of two apparent things (a knowing subject and a known object) our natural identity of ever-present, transparent, infinite presence is veiled and with it the innocence and intimacy of all experience, which is known as peace, happiness or love, is lost. We seem instead to become a separate, limited, inside self, searching in a world that is now believed and felt to be outside, separate and ‘other,’ that is, searching in the realm of situations, objects and relationships for the peace, happiness and love that have been lost.

At some point our search collapses and we turn round, as it were, and look towards this one who is in search. However, it is never found. All that is found is the only self there ever is, aware presence, the simple knowing of our own being, unqualified by any of the limitations that thinking seemingly superimposes upon it.

And what is it that recognises this aware presence? Only that which is aware and present could do so. In that simple recognition, aware presence or awareness knows itself and, by the same token, is realised to be always, only knowing itself.

When we return to our self in this way, the apparent entities of the person and the world dissolve, leaving only the innocence and intimacy of experience, which is known as peace, happiness or love.

If we now take our stand as this love and look again at the apparent objects of the mind, body and world, we find that there is no substance present there other than the love that we intimately know ourselves to be, that is, that knows itself to be. We drop out of the world as a separate entity and re-enter it as love, this utter innocence and intimacy of experience.

The experience of beauty is the same. It is the collapse of the apparent separation between the object or world and our self, or rather the recognition that there has, in fact, never been any such separation. When we walk out into a landscape and are melted by its beauty, this is what is happening. Thinking comes to an end and our own being tastes itself as it is. That is the experience of beauty. It is never an object that is beautiful. It is rather that all objects shine with the light of our own being.

Likewise, ‘understanding’ is the name that is given to this realisation when it is revealed through the dissolution of a line of reasoning and ‘love’ is the name we give to it when it is revealed through the dissolution of feeling or emotion. In other words, all these words refer to the death of the separate, inside self and with it the dissolution of its corollary, the outside object, other or world.

Peace, happiness, love, beauty, understanding all refer to the same transparent, ever-present, infinite reality of experience.

The Pure ‘I’ of Awareness

Awareness is our primary, ever-present experience. Before we know anything else, we know ‘I am’. And what is it that is aware of ‘I am’? Only that which is both present and aware could be aware of anything. In other words, it is this presence of awareness that I am, that knows itself. That is our most ordinary and intimate experience. It is never not known.

The idea that there is a mind independent of thinking, a body independent of sensing or a world independent of perceiving, is a belief. The mind itself is limited so it can never know whether or not such a belief is true. The mind, body and world are never experienced as they are normally conceived to be. Our only experience of them is thinking, sensing and perceiving. Thinking, sensing and perceiving are modes of knowing or experiencing and the only substance present in knowing or experiencing is our self, awareness.

Awareness is simultaneously their substance and their knowing, the being of them and the knowing of them. The pure light of our own self, awareness, takes the shape of thinking and, as a result, seems to become a mind; that takes the shape of sensing and seems to become a body; and that takes the shape of perceiving and seems to become an object, other or world.

In fact, it is not sensing and perceiving that make up the body and world. It is thought that superimposes ‘body’ and ‘world’ on the pure intimacy of sensing and perceiving. In fact, we cannot even say that ‘sensing’ and ‘perceiving’ make up the body and world. Even ‘sensing’ and ‘perceiving’ are subtle superimpositions on experience. Experience itself is too intimate and seamless ever to become a mental object (sensing and perceiving) or a physical one (body and world) known by a separate subject. All these labels are for the separate self that thinking imagines us to be, never for our true and only self that always is and knows only itself.

However, this projection of an outside world always remains within our self although such is its nature that it seems to take place outside. As a result of this apparent division of experience into an inside and an outside, our self, awareness, is imagined to remain on the inside as a separate, limited, located ‘me’ and everything that seems to be on the other side, the outside, becomes an ‘object’, ‘other’, ‘world’, ‘not me’.

At first, awareness seems to become the pure subject of experience, the witness, which knows or experiences the object—the mind, body and world. Witnessing can be seen, therefore, as a subtle superimposition that is conferred upon awareness by the primary division of experience into two, into a subject and an object. With a further act of imagination, this witnessing awareness is believed to reside inside the body and with this belief another, denser superimposition is conferred upon awareness by thinking.

First, the pure ‘I’ of awareness, which pervades all experience intimately and equally, is subtly contracted into the witnessing ‘I,’ which is conceived at a distance and separate from the mind, body and world. This witnessing ‘I’ is then further reduced in the imagination into the thinker, apparently located in a mind. That is, it is conceived as ‘I’ the thinker, ‘I’ the mind. Finally it is imagined that the mind is located inside the body and with this belief awareness is imagined to reside inside, in fact to become the body, that is, ‘I’ the feeler, ‘I’ the doer.

That is, the pure ‘I’ of awareness is seemingly reduced into ‘I’ the witness and then further reduced into ‘I’ the separate inside self. And everything that is left over, with which awareness has not been identified, is conceived as the ‘object’, ‘other’ or ‘world’.

In this way the intimacy and seamlessness of experiencing is divided into two apparent things—an experiencer and an experienced, a subject and an object. The subject becomes a witness, then a mind, then a body. The object becomes the world and all others. Awareness seems to become located, limited and personal and the ‘object’, ‘other’ or ‘world’ seem, simultaneously, to become separate, outside and distant.

This separation between the knower and the known, the experiencer and the experienced, the thinker and the thought, the feeler and the felt, the doer and the deed, never actually occurs. It is imagined with the thought that thinks it.

What is sometimes known as self-enquiry simply proceeds in the opposite direction. It starts with the apparent separate self that we think and feel ourselves to be and simply stays with it. In staying with our self, it is gradually, in most cases, relieved of all the progressive layers of superimposition with which the mind has seemingly wrapped it.

To begin with, the separate self that thinking imagines us to be is realised as the witness of the separate self. That is, even when we think and feel that we are a separate self inside a mind and body, we are in fact always only the witness of the mind and body. Now we simply stand as that knowingly, whereas before we stood as that without realising it. We mistook ourselves for a separate, inside self.

As we remain as this witnessing self, it loses its sense of limitation and locality for all limits and locations are witnessed by our self. That is, it loses its ‘witnessing-from-a-distance’ quality. The witnessing self and the witnessed objects of the body, mind and world dissolve into each other and only one single seamless substance remains. What we call that substance no longer matters because there is nothing left to compare it with.

In other words, the witness cannot stand alone. If we truly take our stand as witnessing presence of awareness and look at the objects of the mind, body and world, we do not find any distance or separation between our self, this witnessing presence, and the objects of the mind, body or world that it witnesses. In fact, we do not find two entities there, a witnessing awareness and a body, mind or world. We find only the seamlessness of experiencing utterly one with or pervaded by the intimacy of our own being. That is, it only finds itself.

Awareness now no longer knows itself as the witness of all seeming things. It knows itself as their substance. But it is not the substance of something. Our only knowledge of an object, other or world is made of knowing or experiencing—in other words, we only know knowing, we only experience experiencing—and the only substance present in knowing or experiencing is our self, awareness. There is just our self knowing itself.

Experience is seamless, made out of our own pure self alone. It is only thinking that superimposes successive layers of limitation on our self. However, awareness does not become pure as a result of this process of returning to our self. The process is only for the mind just as the apparent limitation of our self is for the mind alone. Our self is always only ever pure aware presence, seemingly limited, obscured or sullied by imagination alone.

In other words, we do not cease to be a separate self and become the witness and likewise we do not cease to be the witness and become pure awareness. It is only thinking which seemingly reduces pure awareness to these apparently successive stages of limitation and localisation. And it is only for thinking that these layers of ignorance, or the ignoring of the true nature of experience, are removed. For our self, awareness, no such thing ever happens.

Awareness is always only ever knowing, being and loving itself. It simply now stands revealed as it is, to itself. It is always the same self.

So, as we proceed back along this projected path, in the opposite direction from which it arose, it is understood that our only knowledge of the mind, body and world is thinking, sensing and perceiving. And if we look more closely at the nature of thinking, sensing and perceiving, we find that there is no substance present there other than our self, awareness.

The mind, body and world do not become awareness as a result of this. They have always only ever been what they eternally are. However, now they are known and felt as such. They are reclaimed.

As William Blake said, “When the doors of perception are cleansed everything will appear as it truly is, infinite.”

Aware presence realises itself as the totality. Only Presence truly is.

Awareness and its Apparent Objects

Q: You comment that awareness is observing appearances as though there are two things, one, awareness and, two, appearances. Does not this admit an element of duality albeit one that is subtler than is conventionally the case?

The suggestion that there are two apparent things, one, awareness and, two, appearances or objects is said to one who believes him or herself to be a separate self, located in and as the body, looking out at a world of objects that are considered to be separate from and independent of themselves, awareness.

In this case, the terms in which the question is expressed (that is, the belief in a separate entity, object or world that have independent existence) are granted provisional credibility in order that we may proceed from what seem to be the facts of experience. In this way an attempt is made to really connect with the questioner’s felt experience rather than take refuge in what may seem to some like an ivory tower of non-dual perfectionism.

So, we start with the conventional formulation that I, inside the body, am looking out at an objective and independent world of objects. This is a position of dualism, that is, I, the body (the subject), am experiencing the world and others (the object). From here our attention is drawn to the fact that the body (sensations and perceptions) and the mind (thoughts and images) are, in fact, experienced in exactly the same way as the world (perceptions). In other words, it is seen clearly that the body/mind is not the subject of experience and the world the object, but rather the body, mind and world are all objects of experience.

We then ask what it is that knows or experiences the body/mind/ world. Whatever it is, is what we call ‘I’. ,And what is this ‘I’? It is obviously not the body/mind because at this stage the body/mind is understood to be experienced rather than the experiencer.

What then can we say about this knowing or experiencing ‘I’? It cannot have any objective qualities because any such qualities would, by definition, be appearances or objects and therefore known or experienced. However, this ‘I’ is undeniably present and aware. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as aware presence, awareness or simply presence.

At this stage the awareness that I am is said to be ‘nothing’, ‘empty’ or ‘void’ because it has no observable qualities. I am transparent, colourless presence. I am nothing conceivable or perceivable. I am present and aware but am not-a-thing, nothing.

From this point of view awareness is sometimes described as the witness of the appearances of the mind, body and world. I, awareness, know all appearances but am not made out of anything that appears. This position is still dualistic for there is still a subject (my self, awareness) and an object (the body/mind/world). It is, as it were, a halfway stage. It is one step closer to a truer formulation of the nature of experience than was the previous one in which the body/mind was considered to be the subject of experience and the world was considered the object. However, upon closer exploration, this idea of the witness is also seen to be a limitation, superimposed on awareness by a mind that still believes in the separate existence of objects.

It is valuable to make this distinction between awareness (the knowing or experiencing subject) and the appearances of the mind, body and world for two reasons:

One, is that it establishes that there is something in our experience that is not an object and yet is undeniably present and aware. In other words, it establishes the presence of awareness and that this is what we are. And two, it establishes not just the presence but the primacy of awareness. That is, it establishes that for any object of the body, mind or world to come into apparent existence, our self, awareness, must be present first, so to speak, as its background.

It establishes that first and foremost we stand as objectless, transparent presence or awareness that illumines and knows all appearances of the body, mind and world. That is our ever-present experience whether it is recognised or not.

Now we can go further than this. If we explore this awareness that we intimately know ourselves to be, that is, that knows itself to be, we discover that there is nothing in our experience to suggest that it is limited, located, personal, time or space-bound, caused by or dependent upon anything other than itself.

Now what is it that could know that awareness is not limited, located etc? Only that which knows or is aware, and is at the same time present, could know this or indeed anything else. In other words, only that which is aware and present could know awareness. Therefore, it is awareness alone that knows itself to be unlimited, unlocated, independent, uncaused. This recognition of our own impersonal, unlimited, ever-present being is sometimes called awakening or enlightenment. It is the most simple, obvious and intimate fact of experience but usually overlooked as a result of imagining our self to be something other than awareness, such as a thought, feeling or sensation.

Now we can look again at the relationship between awareness and the apparent objects of the body/mind/world that appear to it. How close are the body, mind and world to this witnessing presence of awareness? How close is the world to the knowing or experiencing of it? If we look simply and directly at our experience we find that, whenever an object appears, there is no distance between our self, awareness, and that apparent object. They are, so to speak, touching one another.

Now we can go further again. What is our experience of the border between them, the interface where they meet or touch? If there was such an interface, it would be a place where our self ended and the object began. However, we find no such interface in experience. There is no place where we end and our experience of the world begins. There is no border there. Therefore, we can now reformulate our experience in a way that is closer to our actual experience. We can say that objects do not just appear to this awareness but rather that they appear within it.

At this stage awareness is conceived more like a vast space in which all the objects of the body, mind and world appear and disappear. Previously we considered our self to witness all appearances from a distance but now this distance has collapsed and everything is experienced as being intimate. It is no longer just our thoughts and feelings that are experienced inside our self but also sensations and perceptions. However, this is still a position of dualism, a position in which this vast knowing space is the subject and the body, mind and world are objects that appear within it, rather like objects appear in a room, relatively speaking.

So, we again go deeply into the experience of the objects of the body, mind and world and see if we can find in them a substance that is other than the awareness that knows them or in which they appear. It is an exploration in which we come to see clearly that the body, mind and world are made of thoughts, sensations and perceptions; thoughts, sensations and perceptions are understood to be made of thinking, sensing and perceiving; and the only substance present in thinking, sensing and perceiving is understood to be our self, awareness.

In other words, there is nothing present in our experience of an object, other or world other than the knowing of it and knowing is only made of awareness, our self. In fact, we don’t know our knowing of an object; we just know knowing.

However, even in this formulation there is still a reference to a body, mind and world, albeit one known by and simultaneously made out of awareness. It is still a position in which the body, mind and world don’t just appear within awareness but as awareness. That is, they are known to be made out of that which knows them. They are experienced as being made out of our self, awareness.

However, in this formulation we are still starting with objects, even if we concede that they are made out of awareness. But if we look closely we find that awareness, rather than objects, is our primary experience. So now, if we start from actual experience, that is from awareness, we find that it is awareness that takes the shape, as it were, of the mind, body and world. Awareness takes the shape of thinking and appears as the mind. It takes the shape of sensing and appears as the body. It takes the shape of perceiving and appears as the world, but never for a moment does it actually become anything other than itself.

At this stage we not only know but feel that presence or awareness is all there is. That is, it knows itself as the totality of experience. This could be formulated as, ‘I, awareness, am everything’, or simply ‘Awareness is everything’. At the same time, we recognise that this has, in fact, always been the case although it seemed previously not to be known.

So, we have moved from a position in which we thought and felt that I am something (a mind and body) to a position in which we recognised our true nature as aware presence and which we expressed as ‘I am nothing, not-a-thing’. Then we come to the experiential understanding that I am not just the witness, the knower or experiencer of all things, but am also simultaneously their substance. In other words we come to feel that I am everything.

However, even this is not quite right, although it may be a truer formulation of our actual experience than the ones we previously suggested, for what is this ‘everything’ that is being referred to? We have, by this stage, already realised that there are no objects, others, selves, entities or world that are ever actually experienced, as such. So it does not now make sense to say that awareness is the totality of all non-existent things. There simply are no things for awareness to be the witness, substance or totality of.

How could we express this? We cannot! Language collapses here because understanding has literally burst out of the conceptual framework that it is designed to contain. However it is still legitimate to try! Instead of saying that awareness is everything, we could say just that awareness is. But even then, what is this awareness that is being conceptualised as being present? To conceptualise awareness as such is to make implicit reference to something else that is not awareness. It is to ascribe to awareness a name or form in contrast to other names and forms and, as such, to suggest a limitation. So, we could just say, ‘is ‘ or ‘am’. However, such a word on its own is meaningless. Words can go no further. We fall silent.

If we were at a meeting now rather than writing and reading, there would probably be a long period of silence. In fact, as the meeting went on we may notice a subtle shift from experiencing periods of silence that punctuate the conversation, to experiencing periods of conversation that punctuate the silence. And in time it may be seen clearly that the words, whether spoken or written, do not, in fact, punctuate or interrupt silence but rather that this silence is ever-present and the words are simply a modulation of it.

In other words, we may discover that true silence is not simply an absence of sound and thought but rather the presence of awareness that pervades and yet is prior to both sound or thought and their absence. Even that is not quite right because in experience there is nothing prior. ‘Prior’ requires time and time is only in thought. Experience is eternally now.

However, such are the limitations of language and if we are to speak about these matters we have to be willing to accommodate them. So we find ourselves again using the same terms that have evolved to describe the abstract and conceptual conventions of dualistic thought. We find ourselves again speaking or writing about that which cannot be truly spoken about and which, at the same time, is the one thing that truly deserves our words because it is all that truly is.

So, to summarise, we move from the formulation, ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’; from ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’; from ‘I am everything’ to ‘I am’ or ‘Awareness is’; from there to simple ‘I’ and from ‘I’ to... we truly fall silent here.

What has just been described above could be seen as a series of stages in the progressive unfolding of understanding from the belief that experience consists of a succession of objects—the body, mind and world—to the understanding that experience is only awareness eternally knowing and being itself alone. However, it would be a mistake to think that an entity passes through these apparent stages or even that experience itself undergoes a series of transformations. Such a position would only be the case if our initial assumption of the separate and independent reality of entities, objects, others and the world were true.

Rather, having arrived at the understanding that there is only awareness or presence, it becomes simultaneously clear that this has, in fact, always been the case, even if it was not noticed. So, looking now from this new perspective of presence, we see that what was an apparent unfolding of understanding from the point of view of the separate self was, in fact, an apparent dissolution of ignorance from the point of view of the mind.

In other words, instead of starting with the apparent reality of entities, objects, selves, others and the world, and looking towards awareness, we now take our stand knowingly as awareness and see how the mind, arising within awareness, has built up a series of abstract and conceptual beliefs that confer apparent reality, solidity and independence on objects, others, the world etc.

As we abide knowingly as awareness, that is, as it stands knowingly as itself, un-seemingly-veiled by the abstract concepts of the dualising mind, we discover that it is not a void, an emptiness. It is not ‘nothing’. It is only referred to as ‘nothing’ at times, in contrast to the belief in the reality of ‘things’. From that point of view it is nothing, not-a-thing, in contrast to ‘something’.

However, from the point of view of experience, it is fullness itself—full of itself alone. This fullness is known as love for there is no room there for any other. In other words, we could say that love is the substance of all seeming things and, once it has become clear that there are no real things, as such, we could simply say that love is.

The movement in understanding from ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’ could be called the path of wisdom or discrimination. The movement in understanding from ‘I am nothing’ through ‘I am everything’ to simply ‘I’, could be called the path of love.

The Imaginary Centre of Perception

There is no distance between the body, mind and world and our self, aware presence, in which they appear.

The sound of the wind or the image of the moon is as close and intimate to our self, aware presence, as the tingling of our face, the sensation of our breath or our most private thought or feeling.

No experience of the body, mind or world appears with a ‘me’ label attached to it. The thought ‘this is me’, or ‘this is not me’, is added to the experience of sensing and perceiving as an afterthought. It is not intrinsic in experience itself.

Take the sensation of your hands. Without reference to thinking, is there any knowledge that this sensation is ‘me’? Does it come with a ‘me’ label attached to it? Does the sound of the wind come with a ‘not me’ label attached to it? Are they not both just raw experience, raw sensation and perception, not even ‘hand’ or ‘wind’ let alone ‘me’ or ‘not me’?

It is with the thought ‘I am this, I am not that,’ that the seamless intimacy of experience is apparently divided into ‘me’ and ‘not me,’ into ‘I’ and ‘other.’

However, even that thought is as impersonal as the sound of the wind. And the sound of the wind is as intimate as that thought.

Even the thought, ‘I am this sensation, the body, but not that perception, the wind’, is just a thought that bears no relation to our actual experience. It has no actual power to divide the seamlessness of experience. It seems to do so but that doesn’t make it actually so.

It is, in fact, impossible to divide the seamlessness of experience. The thought that our self, this aware presence that is seeing these words, is located in and limited to a separate body, is itself simply a thought that appears in unlimited presence, just like the sound of the wind.

Is there actually an experience of a border between what is considered to be the inside of our self and what we consider to be the outside?

The skin, which seems to house our self, awareness, is in fact simply another sensation or perception that itself appears in awareness, along with all other sensations and perceptions.

It is not the body that contains awareness and separates it from the world, but rather our true body, awareness, that contains the body, mind and world.

See clearly that the breath takes place in this vast open space of awareness, not in an imagined, confined body. The breath and the body are both sensations. One sensation does not appear in another sensation but rather both appear within awareness, in the same place that the wind appears. That ‘place’ is the placeless place of awareness.

It is only a concept that says the breath is ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and takes place on the inside, and the wind is ‘not me’ and ‘not mine’ and takes place on the outside.

The border between the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’ is imagined with the thought that thinks it. Without this concept there is no ‘me’, no ‘not me’, no inside and no outside. The limited physical body is simply one more appearance within awareness.

Is there any experience of a centre or a location from which any experience is known? Where is the sound of the wind being heard? Where is the sensation of the breath being felt? Where is the sight of the moon being seen?

And if the answer is ‘here’ or ‘there’, see clearly that this so-called location is, in fact, not a location at all. It is simply another sensation or perception that is experienced in exactly the same ‘place’ as the sound of the wind, the sensation of the breath or the sight of the moon.

The sound of the wind, the sensation of the breath, the sight of the moon and the apparent location in which they are supposedly taking place, do not in fact take place in any place. The sound, the sensation, the perception and the apparent location all take place in placeless awareness.

Is there an experience of a centre or a location from which or in which our thoughts are being perceived?

Is there any actual experience of a ‘me’, an entity, that is doing the thinking? Or is thinking just appearing in awareness like the sound of the wind, the sensation of the breath and the sight of the moon?

And if there seems to be a ‘me’ entity present, a centre of experience, is there a place from which that experience is being perceived or is that experience itself also not simply appearing in unlocated awareness?

See clearly that thoughts, images, feelings, bodily sensations, sounds, sights, textures, tastes, smells are all appearing effortlessly in placeless awareness.

In order to resist what is present and seek what is not present we must first imagine ourselves to be a separate, limited centre of perception, located in and as the body. We must first take up a position from which to have a resistance. With this thought alone the separate inside self is imagined. The apparently separate self is that imagined position.

However, see if there is, in the seamlessness of experience, a separating line that divides it into a ‘me’ on one side of the line and a ‘not me’ on the other side.

If we think that we find such a line, is this apparent dividing line not itself simply another thought, image, sensation or perception, appearing in awareness? In other words, it is not truly a dividing line but only a thought or image of such.

And if we do not find a real dividing line that separates experience into two fields, a ‘me’ field and a ‘not me’ field, then stay with the seamless intimacy of the current experience and see if it is possible to find a point, a centre, a single location where you, ‘I’, is located, a place from which the totality of experience is known or perceived.

See that if we find such a centre or location for our self, the experiencer, this centre is itself simply a seamless ‘part’ of this current experience. In fact, there are no parts to experience. Experience is pure seamless intimacy.

See that such a centre is appearing like every other thought, image, sensation or perception, in our own intimate, impersonal, borderless awareness.

See that the ‘me’ is itself an expression of the seamless totality but that it has no independent reality of its own. It is itself the shape that this seamless totality takes from time to time, but it never actually divides anything from anything.

See if anything truly changes if we stand up and move around. In fact, there is no entity that stands up and moves around. No one came into this room and no one sat down. That is just an interpretation of thought.

Awareness is the only substance present and it never gets up or moves around. There is just sensing and perceiving and they are utterly, intimately one with our self, awareness.

It is thinking alone which abstracts parts, objects, entities, selves and others from the intimate seamlessness of experience and constructs an image of a person moving around in space and time, being born, growing old and dying. However, the person, space, time, birth and death are for thought not for experience.

In reality there are just new sensations and perceptions arising in and as placeless Presence, although even that is not completely true.

It is only a thought that says this experience is new. Experience is too utterly, intimately itself to be able to step back and say such a thing about itself. Only a thought compares the present with an imaginary past, thereby creating the old and, therefore, the new.

Every thought image, sensation and perception is fresh and now. The labels ‘old’ and the ‘past’ are thoughts that appear now. And because there is no ‘old’ and no ‘past’ there is no ‘new’, no present moment and no future.

Experience itself knows nothing of the past or the future, the old or the new. It only knows the timeless intimacy of the now.

Only an imaginary object could be old or new. Experience itself is always fresh, intimate, vibrant and alive. It is always now and here, not ‘now’ in time or ‘here’ in space but rather ever-present and dimensionless.

Experience itself cannot step away from itself as a separate subject, in order to know itself as a separate object. Objects are for thinking, not for our self.

Even to talk of sensations is too much. That is just a stepping-stone in the deconstruction of our experience. In reality, sensations and perceptions are only sensations and perceptions from the point of view of thinking. In fact, thought is only thought from the point of view of thinking. Experience, that is, our self, knows no such things.

Our self is too intimately seamless, one with all experiencing, to know itself as ‘something’ such as a mind, body, other or world. It just knows the intimacy of itself.

This absence of otherness, object-ness, self-ness is love itself. It is what we are and all we know.

All such thinking truly dies if we go to the heart of experience. In fact, thinking cannot go to the heart of experience. It can only go to an imaginary past or future. It can never touch the present. It is always too late.

The separate entity we imagine ourselves to be cannot reside in the present. It can only make its home in the imaginary past or future. It can only reside in time and space but never in the eternal and infinite presence of the here and now. It simply dies when it tries to go there and that death is love.

The fact that experience may be peaceful or agitated, pleasant or unpleasant, changes nothing. The particular characteristics of experience do not implicate the seamlessness of experience. They do not make it more difficult to see that there is no separating line, nor a perceiving centre, in our experience. Their particular character doesn’t in any way effect the fact that our experience is always one seamless intimate totality without separate parts, objects, entities, selves or others.

In fact, ‘peaceful’ or ‘agitated,’ ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant,’ are again only interpretations, superimposed by the mind onto experience itself, which is as it is, neither peaceful nor agitated. And in order to interpret experience in this way, thinking has to first abstract a separate entity from the seamlessness of experience and imagine, as a result, a limited, located point of view from which experience is evaluated or judged as such.

Experience itself does not know agitation. Only the mind knows agitation and the agitation it knows belongs to its own activity alone.

See clearly that experience is like a seamless piece of cloth with no separate parts, entities, places, times, objects or selves anywhere to be found—just our self, awareness, seemingly taking the shape of this and this and this... and sometimes not taking any shape at all... colourless, silent, luminous, knowing itself, being itself and loving itself.

The Imaginary Birth of the Self and the World

There is no separate entity that experiences and there is no object, person, mind, body, world or other that is experienced.

The mind, body, world, people, places, objects and entities are all abstract conceptions that are superimposed by thinking onto experience itself.

There is only experiencing from moment to moment and this experiencing is one ever-present seamless whole.

From time to time this ever-present seamless totality, out of its infinite creativity and freedom, takes the shape of thinking, which goes something like this: “I, the seamless totality, am not the seamless totality. I am this little fragment, this little cluster of bodily sensations, and everything else that is not this fragment, is not me.”

With this thought the apparently separate inside self and the apparently separate outside world, including all ‘others’, are simultaneously born.

From this moment onwards the world becomes the known, the experienced, and ‘I’, which has apparently contracted into a tiny location somewhere behind the eyes or in the chest area, becomes the knower, the experiencer, the thinker, the feeler, the chooser, the doer.

The ever-present seamless intimacy of pure experiencing gives birth to two apparent things, a subject and an object. Experiencing seems to become the experiencer and the experienced. However, this separation never actually takes place. It is a virtual birth.

If, as a result of this imaginary separation, objects are considered to be real, aware presence will be conceived as their witness. However, if we take our stand as this witness and go deeply into the experience of the apparent object, other or world, we do not find anything objective there. We find only knowing, only aware presence. That is, aware presence finds or knows itself.

As objects lose their apparent object-ness in clear seeing, so aware presence loses its apparent witness-ness and stands revealed as pure awareness alone, pure presence.

Presence is so utterly and intimately one with every appearance, it says ‘Yes’ so unreservedly to every experience, that it is also known as love.

Love is the name we give to experience when it is relieved of the conceptual superimposition of ‘otherness’. It knows and loves itself alone. Love is precisely the experience that there is nobody or nothing else present in experience that could love or be loved. We never love a person or an object.

Love is the dissolution of the ‘I’ that loves and the ‘other’ that is loved. It is the collapse of relatedness and the dawn of intimacy.

In love the ‘I’ that I am, the ‘you’ that you are and the ‘it’ that it is, are recognised as modulations of the same being. In love all is dissolved in that, revealed as that.

This ever-present seamless totality knows itself, is itself and loves itself simultaneously in every appearance of the mind, body and world. And when there is no expression, it simply abides in and as itself, the transparent peace of our true nature.

It is only a thought that apparently 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.

‘Me’ and ‘the world’ are co-created 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 is the forgetting of the seamless intimacy of experience. Its two faces are ‘me’ and the ‘object’ or ‘other’. However, whatever the appearance of the coin, it is only made of aware presence, our self, 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 loved, 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 our self, aware presence. In fact, experiencing is not ‘made out of’ aware presence. It is that. There is only that.

The idea that there is something other than aware presence is simply a belief. This ‘something’ that is considered to be other than aware presence is utterly non-existent. It is never found in experience. It is only found in imagination.

What could or need be done to something that is non-existent? What could or need be done to that which is ever present?

Every part of experience is utterly saturated with this presence. No part of it is any closer or further away from presence than any other part. No part of experience is more or less permeated with this presence than any other part. In fact, there are no parts in experience.

‘Presence’, ‘experience’, ‘I’ and ‘love’ are all synonyms for the seamless not-two-ness of what is.

From time to time thought seems to condense presence, as it were, into a bodily sensation and presence seems, as a result, to become located in time and space. However, this seeming limitation of presence, is only an idea, a thought. It is imagined.

As a result of this imagining, ‘I’, aware presence, seems to become ‘me’, a body. And everything ‘I’ seem not to be, becomes ‘you’, the other, object or world. Thus the apparent self and the apparent world are born of this forgetting.

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

We Were Not Born

Conventional thinking tells us that our self, aware presence, is born into a ready-made world that is independent and separate from it. What evidence do we have for this? What evidence do we have that the awareness that is seeing these words appears in the world or that it appears in a mind or a body?

The first experience that we have on waking in the morning appears to our self, awareness. Awareness is already present in order to experience that first experience in the morning. Likewise at birth, awareness is already present to experience whatever our first experience is.

Have we ever had the experience of awareness appearing? Of course, we have the concept that awareness appears at birth or that it appears first thing in the morning, but is that an experience?

In order to claim legitimately that something appears, awareness must be present prior to that appearance, in order to claim the appearance of that thing as an actual experience.

So what about the appearance of awareness itself? If we claim that such an appearance actually occurred as an experience, something would have to have been present to experience that appearance. That ‘something’ would have to have been present and aware, but that is precisely what awareness is, that which is present and aware.

It is impossible to experience the appearance of awareness. We are that awareness to which such an appearance would occur.

We have no experience of a beginning to the awareness that is seeing these words. We have no experience of its birth. We have no experience that we, awareness, are born.

Likewise, in order to claim legitimately that awareness dies, something would have to be present to experience its disappearance. Have we ever experienced the disappearance of awareness?

If we think the answer is, ‘Yes’, then what is it that is present and aware to experience the apparent disappearance of awareness? Whatever that is must be aware and present. It must be awareness.

When we are born or when we wake in the morning, we have the experience of the appearance of objects. When we die and when we fall asleep at night, we have the experience of the disappearance of objects. However, we have no experience that we, awareness, appear, are born, disappear or die.

That is, awareness has no experience of its own appearance, beginning, birth, duration, disappearance or death. All such are ideas superimposed by the mind upon awareness. However, this superimposition never actually happens. It is only imagined.

So, our experience is that awareness is ever-present—that is, awareness’ own experience of itself is that it is ever-present—and that the objects of the apparent body, mind and world come and go within it.

However, even ‘coming and going’ is a concept. The only substance present in any experience is awareness and awareness does not come and go. ‘Coming and going’ is imagined by the mind and superimposed on the ever-presence of awareness.

Nothing truly comes and goes. From where would it come and to where would it go? And what would ‘it’ be? What would it be made out of that is not already present, here, now, as this awareness?

Nothing ever comes in or out of existence. Awareness eternally is and that is the substance of all seeming things.

So, in reality there is no waking up in the morning, no falling asleep, no birth and no death, and no entity who passes through any of these apparent states.

All these times, places, events, entities and occurrences are only thought and they all ‘take place’ in the placeless timeless, dimensionless presence of awareness.

All experience is only the ever-present now. Nothing but that is known. So experience cannot be new because it is never old. It can never even be ‘now’ because it is never ‘then’.

The mind simply cannot go to the ‘place’ of experiencing. When this is seen clearly the mind dissolves and that dissolution is love.

The appearances of the mind, body and world are made out of perceptions. How long does a perception last? How long does an image of the world last? How long does a bodily sensation last? A moment? No! Nothing lasts in time for there is no time present for anything to last in.

It is awareness, in which these perceptions appear, that is substantial and ‘lasting’. Perceptions themselves are fleeting and insubstantial.

However, awareness is not everlasting in time. It is ever-present, eternally now. Time seems to last in it but even that is not true, because there is no duration in awareness. Time is imagined with the thought that thinks it. Likewise space.

How could time take place in that which is timeless? How could space exist in that which is without dimensions?

Even the appearance of an apparently solid, durable object is made only out of fleeting and insubstantial perceptions strung together conceptually to produce the semblance of a solid, lasting object.

However, objects do not, in fact, even last fleetingly. How could something appear even fleetingly within that which has no dimension or duration? There is no ‘lasting’ in experience. Experience is eternally now.

An object is made out of the same ‘stuff’ that thinking and feeling are made out of. It is made out of experiencing and the only substance present in our experience, that is, in its own experience, is awareness.

This does not disprove the possibility of the world being made out of something other than experiencing; it just shows that we have no such evidence of such a world.

However, in order to discover what such a world might be we first have to divest it of all that is imparted to it by the mind and the senses.

Divested of all the sense perceptions that the mind imparts to the world, all that remains of the world would be formless presence or being. Anything else would be perceived and therefore would belong to the perceiving faculties rather than to the world as it truly is.

All seeming things, divested of the names and forms that our thinking and perceiving faculties superimpose onto them, stand revealed as infinite presence, that is, pure being without boundaries, borders, limits, location or dimensions. That is, all seeming things are infinite and eternal.

And is not pure being or presence, without limit and location, our self? For there cannot be two infinite presences, because if there were two such presences, each would have to be limited. And if they were limited, they would not be pure presence, but would rather be an apparent object.

And for whom would that object be? Only for awareness. In other words, awareness would be their witness and their substance.

In other words, whichever way we look at it—whether we see the world as simply made of perceiving or whether we grant the world some reality independent of perceiving—it comes to the same thing. There is only being, and the aware presence that we intimately know our self to be—that knows itself to be—is identical to that.

What evidence is there that the world exists in-between two perceptions of it? What evidence do we have that the world exists when it is not being perceived or that the body exists when it is not being experienced?

In fact, even when the apparent world is being perceived, in other words, even when perceptions are seemingly present, the world does not ‘exist’ as such, as it is conceived to be, that is, it does not ‘stand out’ on its own, independent of consciousness. How much less so when it is not being perceived? Out of what would it be made at such a time? In what form would it exist?

Of course, thinking tells us that the world and the body continue to exist when they are not being experienced but we have no experience of such a world or body. And indeed, it is only thinking that tells us that the world and the body exist, as such, when they are apparently being perceived or sensed.

Experience itself knows no such thing. It is too intimately itself to be able to step out of itself as a knowing subject and, as a result, to know an object, other or world. Experience itself knows only pure, seamless, intimate, unnameable experiencing.

In other words, the apparent absence and presence of the world and the body, as such, are superimpositions upon awareness. The world and the body borrow their seeming substance and apparent continuity, their seeming reality, from awareness.

It is not our experience that awareness is a fleeting, insubstantial appearance within the ever-present reality of the world. It is our experience that the world is a fleeting, insubstantial appearance ‘upon’ or ‘within’ the ever-present reality of awareness.

However, even that is not quite true. It is only said in reference to the deep belief in the reality of objects. In fact, there is nothing ‘upon’ or ‘within’ awareness. What would such a ‘thing’ be?

Nor is anything ‘fleeting’. Only thinking knows apparent fleetingness. Experience knows nothing of time. It is too full of itself alone to know itself as something. It only knows itself, dimensionless and timeless.

To imagine awareness as a dimensionless but nevertheless space-like container is just a stage to enable us to see that there is no outside, that everything is intimate, close, ‘one with’.

From this point of view experience is conceived as objects appearing in awareness. However, our only knowledge of objects is the experience of sensing and perceiving which in turn is made out of awareness alone.

Sensing and perceiving, however, do not appear in awareness. They are awareness. And what is it that knows awareness? Only itself. In other words, experience is only awareness knowing itself.

However, even to know experience as ‘sensing and perceiving’ requires an abstraction. It requires a thought that could separate out a knowing subject from the whole and thereby seem to know an object.

Experience itself is far too intimate for that. It only knows its own seamless intimacy. It only knows love. In other words, experience, love and our self are one.

Here the idea of awareness being a vast container of all experience has dissolved in favour of a more accurate, but not completely accurate formulation: nothing appears ‘in’ awareness. There is only awareness knowing and being itself eternally.

Again the mind may try to take another step towards the heart of experience but finds that it simply cannot go there. It takes one more step and... effortlessly dissolves.

Right there, experience stands shining as it is.

Love is the Fabric of Experience

We all know that ‘I am’, and the ‘I’ that ‘I am’ is also aware that I am.

In other words, our self, presence, is both present and aware. This aware presence that I am knows its own being. However, presence doesn’t know its being in an objective way, as the mind seems to know an object, but rather it is the knowing of itself.

It is simultaneously the knowing of its own being and the presence of knowing or awareness.

Have we, that is, has presence ever experienced or could presence ever experience the absence of itself, the absence of presence? What would be present to know this absence?

We, that is, presence, cannot know its own absence, because it would have to be present in that knowing, as that knowing. Therefore, there is never an experience of the absence of presence.

Into what could Presence disappear? Into that which is nonexistent? How could that which is disappear into or become that which is not? What would become of its presence? It would have to ‘go’ somewhere.

And from what would presence appear in the first place? If presence was not present, what would there be? Non-existence? But non-existence cannot be. Therefore, non-existence is non-existent. In fact, non-existence is only a concept. Only Presence eternally is.

And if presence is ever-present and everything is that presence, can anything disappear? No thing ever ceases to be because no thing ever comes into existence.

The substance or being of every apparent object is only presence and presence eternally is.

There is only one substance, substantial, immutable, unmysterious, never not known, never not experienced, never not being itself, never not present.

It is this one substance that seemingly takes the shape of all appearances without ever being or becoming anything other than itself.

However, from the point of view of itself, which is the only real point of view, this presence never takes the shape of anything. Water is too close to itself to know itself as ocean or wave. ‘Ocean’ and ‘wave’ are for thought. For water, there is only water.

Whatever is known is presence knowing itself. Whatever is, is presence knowing itself, being itself and loving itself. Presence cannot cease to know or be itself.

Even in profound ignorance, presence is knowing and being only itself. That is, it is loving itself. Therefore, there is no real ignorance.

There is no forgetting, no remembering, no losing or finding. Presence is never bound and never liberated. Forgetting, remembering, losing and finding, ignorance and liberation, are for thinking, not for presence.

Presence is never veiled from itself. And therefore there is no real unveiling of reality. There is no self-realisation for presence because all that is real in any experience is already our true self of aware presence. The unreal is never experienced.

There is no enlightenment for presence, because our self, aware presence, is already and eternally the light of knowing that illumines all seeming things. And anything that may seem to obscure this light is only made out of the light of knowing. It is that in which, through which and as which all seeming things are known.

There is no awakening for presence because presence is always already awake in itself.

There is no death for presence for presence is all there is and that which is never ceases to be.

How can this be known if it is not known? By seeing clearly that it is always known. It can never not be known.

That which is not known is not knowable. Such a ‘thing’ is an idea only. And that which is known is always known.

So any movement or progress is always from knowing to knowing, which is no movement or progress at all. Movement and progress are for the mind, not for presence.

Right here these words and whatever else is being experienced in this moment are known, but there is no other substance to this experience other than its knowing. That is, its being or its substance, is its knowing of itself.

There is no knower of this experience and nothing that is known. There is just the knowing of it, which is simultaneously identical to being it. And this identity of knowing and being is known as love.

Love is the fabric of all experience.

Everything is Folded Back into Presence

This book is about knowing, being and loving what truly ‘is’, not what ‘seems to be’. An effort is always needed to love what ‘seems to be’ and an effort is always needed not to love what truly ‘is’.

The subtle effort not to love what truly ‘is’, is known as the ‘separate self’. And that which is not loved is known as the ‘outside world.’

The ‘separate self’ and the ‘outside world,’ as they are normally conceived to be as separate entities in their own right, are two inseparable faces of the same unlovingness.

What we call the outside world is simply the absence of love. In love the separate outside world, including all apparent others and objects, and the separate inside self dissolve leaving only the seamless intimacy of pure experiencing.

There is no relationship in experience. A relationship would require at least two entities or objects. In the absence of these apparent entities or objects there is love.

Love is the collapse of all boundaries and separation that seemed to keep entities and objects apart and related.

In other words, the death of the separate self and love are synonymous. This is why love and death are often closely associated in art and literature.

The ‘separate self’ and the ‘outside world’ appear, as such, when love and understanding are ignored or seemingly veiled by the arising of dualistic thinking. They are made only of the apparent forgetting of presence.

However, this ignorance of love is also ultimately an act of love itself. Therefore there is no true forgetting, no true ignorance.

One of the hardest things for the apparently separate self to understand is that there is no real ignorance. In fact, it cannot be seen by the separate self because that apparent self is the denial of this very understanding.

Only when the apparently separate self and the apparently outside world are dissolved in love and understanding does it become clear that they never existed in their own right to begin with.

It is never possible to love a person or an object. Love is defined precisely by its unconditional quality. How could an intermittent object be the giver or the receiver of something that is ever-present?

Love is the name we give to the experience of ‘being one with’ or, more accurately, simply ‘being one’ or ‘knowing no other’.

Even if we accept provisionally that objects exist in their own right, no two objects can appear at the same time. The mind may conceptually split experience into a multiplicity of objects known by a subject but in reality there is only ever one experience or object present at a time.

Therefore, one object has no relationship to another object. How can an object have a relationship with a non-existent object?

Every apparent object has a relationship only with the awareness in which it appears. Awareness is the knowing element in all experience.

And how close is the knowing element in any experience to the experience itself? Closer than close! They are one and the same thing. What else is present in experience other than the knowing of it?

When an object is seemingly present it is utterly intimate with, inseparable from and one with the awareness that knows it. This inseparable intimacy is known as love. So to be an object, to know an object and to love an object are identical.

Therefore, we cannot even say that an object has a relationship with awareness. Experience is too intimate to admit of two entities between which there might be relationship.

Love is the dissolution of illusion of relatedness.

To know an object (if we provisionally concede that awareness can ‘know’ an object), awareness ‘becomes’ that apparent object and in ‘becoming’ that seeming object, it is known as love. It is the utter intimacy of giving its entire substance to all appearances.

However, awareness doesn’t know and love an appearance as something other than itself. If we go deeply into the experience of whatever is known or loved we find no substance there other than awareness itself. Therefore, awareness doesn’t just know and love an object, it is that object, and being that apparent object or other is the experience of knowing and loving.

For anything or anyone to be known or loved its apparent ‘something-ness’ or ‘someone-ness’ must dissolve.

At this point it doesn’t make sense to talk of an object or other because ‘object-ness’ and ‘otherness’ have collapsed into awareness. And with the collapse of the apparent object, the witness-like or container-like aspect of awareness collapses with it.

So, we cannot say that awareness knows, loves or is anything other than itself. Every experience is simply the experience of awareness knowing, loving, being itself.

Love is never a relationship. In fact, it is the collapse of relationship. It is the natural condition of all experience.

If we forget this, the ‘separate self’ and the ‘outside world’ come into apparent existence as separate entities and objects. As soon as awareness is remembered, everything is folded back into it.

Presence reclaims the world, takes it back into itself.

All We Ever Long For

Q: You sometimes describe the end of seeking as the experience of love or happiness but calling it that sometimes sets up another seeking pattern, another idea about what form this moment should take.

Love and happiness seem to come and go like everything else. Thinking that love or happiness should be present in difficult or unhappy moments just makes me want to change the current situation and long for something else—in other words it is just more seeking.

I write this because the desire to love and be loved has been such a trap for me in the past. For years I believed it was that love I was looking for and part of me still wants it. In fact I’m sitting here crying about this now.

Love, peace and happiness are simply the words that are used to describe the dissolution of all resistance and seeking, the collapse of separation and otherness, that is, the taste of our true nature, its taste of itself. They are non-objective in the sense that they do not have any objective qualities. As such, they are not experiences of the mind or body although they impact on them.

Seeking and resistance veil our true nature, aware presence, and therefore veil the love, peace and happiness that is inherent within it or rather that is it.

As a result of forgetting our true nature of aware presence and imagining ourselves instead to be a separate inside self, we set out in the world looking for love in relationships, peace in situations and happiness in objects.

This seeking is, by definition, uncomfortable—it is the activity of suffering which defines the separate inside self. In fact, there is no separate seeking self. The apparently separate self is the activity of resisting/seeking.

When the relationship, situation or object is found, the seeking comes temporarily to an end and in this dissolution our true nature shines, that is, aware presence tastes itself, as it were, for a brief moment (actually it is a timeless moment, because the mind is not present there).

That timeless moment is what is known as love, peace or happiness. It is also known as beauty and understanding. That is our true nature knowing itself as it is, un-apparently modified by the sense of an inside self.

When the mind rises up again, it misinterprets this non-objective experience of love, peace or happiness, during which it was not present, and attributes it to the relationship, situation or object.

With this re-appearance of subject/object thinking, love, peace and happiness are again veiled and thinking sets out again in search of a new relationship, situation or object, hoping to re-enact the experience of love, peace or happiness that it mistakenly believes was produced by them.

However, it is not the relationship, situation or object that produces the love, peace and happiness. It is the cessation of the resisting/seeking thought which enables the underlying love, peace and happiness that is inherent in our true nature of present awareness to shine. That is, the cessation of resisting/seeking allows our true nature to know or taste itself as it is, un-apparently-veiled by the activity of resisting/seeking.

Therefore, love, peace and happiness are not something that come and go any more than our self, aware presence, comes and goes. However, they are sometimes seemingly veiled.

So, it is inevitable that if we consider ourselves to be a separate inside self, the search for love, peace and happiness in the realm of relationships, situations or objects will be unavoidable. In fact, the separate self is the search for love, peace and happiness.

However, sooner or later we have to see that what we long for is not to be found in the realm of objects. It is simply the knowing of our own being.

Allow your focus on relationships, events and objects to relax. See that your self, your own being, is present quietly shining in the background of all experience. That is peace itself. That is the abode of love and happiness.

Don’t think of love, peace and happiness as experiences of the body and mind. They are transparent. Even in the midst of difficult or unpleasant circumstances this aware presence that you are is quietly shining in the background.

Become acquainted with it. It is what we most simply and intimately are. It is all we ever truly long for. It is that alone which is sought in all relationships.

That one is free of the sense of distance or otherness and hence is known as love; it is imperturbable and hence known as peace; it is free of the sense of lack and therefore known as happiness.

But most simply it is known as ‘I’. Be that. Make friends with it. Live with it. Love it. Rest there.

The love you describe is not love. It is a state of the mind or body, however subtle. True love does not arise, it does not come and go and it cannot be found in the world. It cannot be found at one moment and lost at another. It has nothing to do with relationships or others. In fact, love is precisely the dissolution of all otherness or relatedness.

Every appearance of the mind, body and world is constantly changing. What is it in your experience that does not change? There is one ‘thing’ alone in your experience that does not change. That is you. That is the love you seek.

You will never find it because you already and always are it. Not ‘always’ in time but eternally now. Therefore, seeking it is the very denial of its presence. In seeking it, you compel it to seem as if hidden or lost.

It is your self, aware presence, that does not change. You are that for which you long and your longing is this very presence of love itself, thinly veiled by the belief that it is absent, that it is an object that can be lost and found.

In other words, the love you seek is present right here in your longing. However, your longing for it as an object in the future, however subtle, veils its presence in you, as you.

“Lord, Thou are the love with which I long for Thee.”

Let every direction toward which your longing flows, dissolve in this understanding and the love that is at its heart will remain.

Whatever is not present right now is not worthy of the name ‘love’ and is likewise not worthy of our desire. Forget it. Whatever is not present now, even if it is one day found, will, by definition, one day disappear.

Why go for something temporary? It can never fulfil you. Let go of everything that can be let go of, everything—and anything that appears can be let go of—including all your, my and everyone else’s ideas about love.

In fact, as soon as we look for what is present, it is gone. We cannot focus on or even think about what is truly present. We can only think about an object, about the past, about the future. In other words, we can only think of a thought.

Thought can never know or find the one thing that it almost constantly seeks. It can only dissolve in it. Thinking dies as it turns towards love, like a moth in a flame.

Ironically the one thing that is sought in all intimate relationships is this death of the sense of one’s self as a separate entity. This longing for love in intimacy is the longing for this death and, if one shares this love with an apparent other in an intimate relationship, that apparent other shines as a beacon of love and light in one’s life. However, that is not necessary. This light and love are shining in all things.

The true object of all desire is only this death.

Let the mind dissolve in the understanding that it simply cannot go to the place of love and yet, like a fish in the ocean searching for water, it is already swimming in it.

Let everything pass by. Remember William Blake: “He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy.”

The ‘winged life’ is love itself. It is apparently destroyed by our looking for it as an object, by ‘binding’ our self to an object, which means to the past or the future.

Let go, let go, let go. Let your tears be the river into which everything you know is offered up, all your longing, everything.

Someone once asked Mother Meera if it was okay to offer everything to God or whether only positive things should be offered and she replied, “A child offers its mother a snail, a stick or a stone; the mother doesn’t care what is offered; she is just happy to have been remembered.”

Offer everything. The love you seek is all that will remain behind.

The Many Names of God

Q: I like the metaphor, in The Transparency of Things, of the paper on which words are written. When my attention is turned towards the paper on which the words are written, I become aware of it, whereas I was not before, although the paper was always there and the words could not exist without it. However, now I see the words and the paper together. Likewise, the things in the world cannot exist without that which is, the ground of all things.

Yes. In fact, when the paper on which the words are written is pointed out, we become aware, not of the paper, but of the fact that we are always aware of the paper.

Previously, we thought we were aware of the words alone and unaware of the paper. Now we see that we are, in fact, aware of the paper all along.

However, when we first notice the paper there is a tendency to think that we suddenly become aware of the words and the paper. This is true but only half true!

There are, in fact, no words as such, that is, existing in their own right, independent of the paper, entitled to their own label ‘words’, as opposed to ‘paper’. There is, in fact, only the paper that takes the shape of or is coloured by the words without ever becoming anything other than itself.

The name ‘word’ is, in fact, just another name for the paper when the paper seems to have become something other than itself.

Likewise, ‘person’, ‘other’ or ‘world’, are names that thinking gives to awareness when it imagines that experience is something other than awareness. As a result of this imagining, the ‘person,’ ‘other’ or ‘world,’ seem to become objects that are distinct from awareness (just as the words are conceived to be distinct from the paper) and awareness seems to become a limited, located subject.

Moreover, it seems that the experience of objects precludes the experience of awareness, that is, awareness’ knowing and being itself, just as in seeing the words we are, to begin with, seemingly unaware of the paper.

However, just as an examination of the words shows that the paper is always seen and that the words are made only of paper, so a close exploration of the experience of all apparent objects of the mind, body and world reveals that they are all made only of awareness.

So, if all apparent objects of the mind, body and world are made only of awareness, it no longer makes sense to speak of objects of the mind, body and world, for there is no substance there other than awareness. In other words, we no longer start with objects and trace our way back to awareness but rather it is seen that there is, in reality, only awareness and that objects as such are a partial or distorted view of awareness.

From the point of view of awareness, which is the only real point of view (and which is, of course, not really a point of view), there are no objects. We cannot even say there is experience, as such, for to do so we must first step back from or out of experience and look at it from a ‘point of view’. That point of view is the imaginary inside self. In the absence of this point of view, there is just pure, unnameable, seamless intimacy.

The object, other or world only comes into apparent existence when we take up the imaginary point of view of the subject. However, the point of view of the subject, the separate inside self, is an imaginary point of view and, therefore, the objects that it apparently knows or sees are equally imaginary.

In other words, it is the mind that seems to know objects. Awareness only knows itself.

First we think that there are only objects, that is, only the body, mind and world. Then we realise there is only our knowing of objects but not the experience of actual objects themselves. However, if there is only the knowing of objects we cannot say that we know objects, as such, but rather that we only know knowing. And what is it that knows knowing? Only knowing! Knowing is only awareness. Therefore all that is known is awareness knowing itself.

Starting now with awareness we can say that all apparent objects of the mind, body and world are the names and forms that thinking superimposes onto awareness itself.

If we now abide as awareness, all apparent objects of the mind, body and world dissolve and are revealed as awareness alone.

However, if awareness seems not to be present, in other words, if we have, through thinking, seemingly lost our self in objects, then we may trace our way back, as it were, to the presence of awareness.

Seeing oneself as the witness of all apparent objects of the mind, body and world is the first stage of this tracing back of experience to its source.

However, if we truly take our stand as the witness and contemplate experience from there, the subtle suggestion of a distinction between the witness and the witnessed is seen to be non-existent and, as a result, dissolves into pure experiencing. In fact, it does not dissolve into anything. It is simply seen to be only pure, seamless, ever-present experiencing, whose nature is only awareness.

Therefore, the names we give to the objects of the body, mind and world are, in fact, just other names for awareness when it seems to become something other than itself. They are the many names of God.

However, these names are not just a sign of ignorance. They are a sign of ignorance only if they seem to veil awareness and the peace and happiness that are inherent in it. Once it is seen clearly that awareness is never veiled and that there is nothing other than awareness, these very same names are understood and felt to indicate, express and celebrate the very same awareness they once seemed to obscure.

Hence our tradition of Christian names in which the one self is denoted by many names. My first teacher told a story in which one of his close students named his son Narayan. He did this because in India Narayan is one of the names of God and every time he spoke or heard the name of his son he wanted to be reminded of God.

Likewise, whenever we hear our name being called, it is God in us that is being addressed. And when we answer ‘Yes,’ it is God in us that is responding, ‘I am here and I am you!’

Is the World Within?

Q: What is meant by “the world is within?”

The phrase, “The world is within,” is said to one who believes that the world is outside of him or herself. And in order to believe that the world is outside one must first consider him or herself to be an individual entity that lives inside the body.

In other words, this is said to the one who believes in duality, that is, in the existence of a separate inside self—the subject ‘I’—and a separate outside object, other or world.

However, if we look towards our self, towards this ‘I’ that knows or experiences the world and which is imagined to be located inside the body, we do not find any objective qualities there. However, what we find is undoubtedly present and knowing or aware. That is, we find aware presence or awareness.

And what is it that finds or recognises this awareness? Whatever it is, is both aware and present. That is, this awareness knows itself.

Having seen clearly that awareness cannot be found as an object, it becomes clear that it cannot be located either in or as the body, for only something with objective qualities could be located inside another object, just as a table is located, relatively speaking, inside a room.

Likewise, something that has no objective qualities cannot be limited for a limit is, by definition, an objective quality.

So instead of thinking, “I, the body/mind, experience the world”, we realise that “I, this unlocated, unlimited presence of awareness, experience the body/mind/world”.

Now, if we look closely at the experience of the body/mind/world we find that it is made only of sensations, thoughts and perceptions and that all sensations, thoughts and perceptions are inseparable from awareness.

We have already seen from our own intimate, direct experience that there is no boundary to awareness and we therefore have no experience of anything outside it.

At this point it becomes clear that our only experience of the world, that is, the current perception, appears within awareness and hence the saying, “The world is within”. At this stage the phrase, “The world is within”, is true and replaces the less true belief that the world is outside.

However, although it is true in relation to the previous position in which the world was considered to be outside, it is found, on looking more deeply at our experience, to be untrue.

Although the world may be felt to appear within us, there is still a distinction between the world made of perceptions and the awareness in which it appears. In other words, there is still a subtle duality.

However, if we go deeply into the actual experience of these perceptions, we find no substance there other than perceiving, and if we go deeply into perceiving we find only awareness itself. That is, it finds or knows only itself. At this stage the phrase, “The world is within you”, is seen to be untrue and may be abandoned.

It becomes clear that it was a mistake to start with the world and to think of it arising within awareness. We only started there because of the initial presumption that the world is outside and we wanted to engage that presumption on its own terms.

In reality, there is nothing else in the experience of the world other than awareness itself and there is no inside or outside of awareness. Nothing arises inside or outside awareness nor is there anything present in awareness other than itself which could rise up within it.

So we start with awareness which is our primary and, in reality, our only experience and see that it is this awareness that takes the shape of perceiving and, as a result, seems to become a world, but never actually becomes anything other than itself, just as a computer screen seems to take the shape of numerous documents and images but in reality always remains simply the screen.

And what is it that experiences awareness seemingly taking the shape of all experience? Only awareness!

That is, it is awareness that is always, only ever knowing and being itself, and all seeming objects, others and the world are simply modulations of this knowing presence.

At this stage, having previously seen that the world is not experienced outside our self, it is similarly understood that the world is not experienced inside our self either but rather that there is just awareness knowing and being itself, with no inside, outside, object, world, other or self ever actually found or experienced as such.

There is just awareness knowing and being itself, seamlessly intimately one with all experience. And because there is no possibility of any ‘two-ness’ or ‘not-awareness-ness’, there is no possibility of the presence of an entity or self to feel a sense of lack, need, separation or otherness.

For this reason experience is not just awareness knowing and being itself but also loving itself. That is, experience itself knows only complete intimacy, not-other-ness.

All the apparent objects of the mind, body and world are made out of the intimacy of awareness, out of love.

It is for this reason that William Blake said, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time”.

However, even to say that experience is only awareness knowing, being and loving itself is not quite accurate and, as the mind searches for a word or a phrase that would adequately express the nature of experience, it dissolves in the impossibility of the task. It is like a candle that naturally burns itself out.

The Shadow of the Separate Self

Q: I understand in theory that I am consciousness but in my actual experience I feel that what I am is specifically connected to this body. I feel that I am limited, located and separate.

The ‘I-am-only-the-body’ feeling is the root cause of all suffering. This feeling thrives on inadvertence. It cannot stand being clearly seen. It is like a shadow that vanishes when a light is shone on it. In this case clear seeing is the light.

First, see clearly that you are the aware presence in which these words and whatever else is being experienced in this moment are appearing.

Now see clearly that all we know of the body is a sensation or cluster of sensations and, if our eyes are open, a visual perception appearing in this presence.

At least for the time being, separate out this presence from the sensation. See clearly that sensations flow through presence in the same way that the sound of the car that just went by flowed through it.

In both cases presence remains intact, unchanged in any way by the appearance and disappearance of the sensation or the perception that appeared in it.

Presence is therefore entirely independent of the sensations and perceptions that appear in it, although the sensations and perceptions are entirely dependent on it.

However, after the sensation of the body and the perception of the sound, a thought appears that says, “‘I,’ this presence, am the sensation of the body but am not the perception of the sound.”

This is, in fact, not true of our experience because the sensation to which the thought refers has already vanished and yet presence is still present to witness this new thought. In other words, this new thought identifies presence with something that is no longer present, that is, with a fleeting sensation.

How can presence be a sensation, if it remains after the very sensation with which it is supposedly identified, has vanished?

In this way, the belief in being a separate entity that is exclusively associated with the body is created as an afterthought, that is, after the fact of sensing or perceiving. It is not present during the sensing and the perceiving itself.

It is thought alone that collates one series of sensations and perceptions—the body—and identifies them exclusively with our self, aware presence, thereby creating an apparent ‘I’, and that collates another series of perceptions and out of them imagines an apparent object, other or outside world.

It is with this thought alone that an imaginary line is drawn through the seamless intimacy of experience, thereby dividing one part of it from another—‘I’ the body and ‘not I’ the object, other or world.

We normally think that the skin is the container of all bodily sensations. However, bodily sensations are not housed within the contour of the skin. The skin is, in fact, simply another sensation and one sensation does not appear within another sensation. All sensations appear in our self, aware presence.

We normally consider that ‘I’ am the envelope in which all bodily sensations are housed. However, this ‘me’ is an imaginary contour, made out of thought, which is drawn around a cluster of sensations.

Everything inside this imaginary contour is considered to be ‘me’ and everything outside it becomes ‘not me’, which is simply another name for objects, others and the world.

How can ‘I’ be this contour, this thought? ‘I’ am not a thought or a sensation. ‘I’ am that to which or in which thoughts and sensations appear.

The separate inside self and the separate outside object, other or world are two sides of the same coin. The coin is ignorance—the ignoring of the true nature of experience.

It is with this thought alone that our self, aware presence, is apparently identified with and limited to a cluster of sensations.

Presence appears, as a result, to assume the qualities of the body. That is, it seems to become limited, located and separate. In this way the separate ‘me’ is seemingly born. However, this contour is nonexistent as an actual experience. It is made only out of thought.

Try to find this contour as an actual experience. Where is the line in our actual experience between this bodily sensation and that perception of the world? Is it made out of anything other than the thought that thinks it? And even if we do find something that seems to be a good candidate for such a dividing line, is it not itself simply another appearance within presence?

Once this investigation of experience has been carried out, the belief that we are a body is irreparably damaged if not immediately destroyed. However, the feeling of being a body is more pernicious and lingers in spite of our understanding to the contrary.

However, if we keep returning to this exploration of our actual experience, it becomes more and more obvious that we are aware presence itself and that this presence is not identified with a body and has no inherent limitation or location.

Nothing else remains to be done once this exploration has brought about this understanding. We simply remain as this aware presence and the mind, body and world are gradually and effortlessly realigned with it, although we may cooperate with this realignment.

In fact, we have always only been that even when we believed and felt ourselves to be otherwise. However, now we abide there knowingly.

If it seems that this is forgotten, we just return to this exploration and re-establish the truth of the matter for ourselves, in our own experiential understanding. This naturally and spontaneously returns us to abiding knowingly as presence.

As time goes on, deeper and deeper layers of experience are subjected to and colonised by this experiential understanding and become as it were permeated and saturated by the peace, happiness and love that are inherent in presence.

In fact, all experience is always only permeated and saturated with presence whether we know it or not, but now it is known and felt as such.

The Amness of Self is the Isness of Things

The sensation of the wind on our face is one single sensation. However, thinking conceptualises it as two. Thinking fragments this single sensation into two apparent objects, the wind and the face. In fact, it is one. We could call this new sensation ‘windface.’

The division of ‘windface’ into wind and face is a conceptual division that seemingly divides experience into a face, ‘me’, and the wind, ‘not me’, As a result the ‘person’ and the ‘world’ seem to become two distinct and independent entities or objects.

In this way the seamless intimacy of experience is fragmented into two apparent parts—an inside self and an outside object, other or world—which are imagined to be joined together by an act of knowing, feeling or perceiving. Hence we say, “I know such and such”, “I feel the wind”, “I love you” and “I see the tree”.

However, in the seeing of a tree for instance, there is no seer and there is no seen. There is no inside ‘I’ that sees and there is no outside ‘tree’ that is seen.

The ‘I’ and the ‘tree’ are concepts superimposed by thinking onto the reality of the experience, which in this case could simply be called ‘seeing’.

It is thinking alone that divides the seamless intimacy of experiencing into a subject and an object, into an ‘I’ that sees and a ‘tree’ that is seen. However, awareness, or ‘I,’ and the reality of the tree are not two separate experiences. They are one.

‘I’ and ‘tree’ are one experience in the same way that the wind and the face are one experience. There is never a subject or an object of experience. There is always only seamless intimate experiencing. Or we could say that the apparent ‘I’ and the apparent tree share the same reality, are the same reality. It is only a concept, an idea, which apparently divides them.

However, this division between the seer and the seen, between the experiencer and the experienced, never actually happens. Separation is an illusion. It is never actually experienced.

In other words, I don’t see a tree. In the experience of seeing, I am the tree. I am its reality. The only substance present in our experience of the tree is seeing and seeing or, more generally, experiencing, is awareness, our self.

The awareness that is seeing and the reality of that which is seen are not two separate things. They are one and the same.

We should say, “I am tree-ing”. That is, “‘I’, awareness, is treeing”. The amness of ‘I’ and the isness of ‘tree’ share their being.

The amness of self is the isness of things.

The apparent mind, body and world is ‘I’ mind/body/world-ing.

All the great religions are founded upon this realisation. For instance in Christianity the saying, “I and my father are one”, means precisely this. It means that ‘I’, the awareness that is seeing these words or experiencing whatever is being experienced in this moment, is one with whatever is being experienced, that is, it is one with the reality of the universe.

The Sufis say, “There is only God”. The Hindus say, “The Atman (the apparently individual self) and Brahman (the ultimate reality of the universe) are one. The Buddhists say, “Nirvana and samsara are one”.

This is not an extraordinary experience, known only by a few enlightened sages. It is the direct, intimate, immediate experience of each of us, although it may not have been noticed.

In fact, the knowing of this unity between ‘I’ and the ‘world’, is a very familiar experience. It is known as beauty. When we are struck by the beauty of an object or landscape, all that keeps us at a distance or separate from that object dissolves and in that timeless moment, timeless because the mind is not present there, we realise our identity with the apparent object.

The experience of beauty is the dissolution of the apparent ‘objectness’ of the object and the ‘subjectness’ of our self, leaving only the seamless intimacy of experiencing.

Of course, when the mind returns it recreates the separate inside self and the separate outside object, other or world and we think and feel, as a result, that ‘I’ see the ‘landscape’. Thinking now attributes beauty to the landscape and in that moment beauty is downgraded from a revelation of the eternal nature that pervades all seeming things into a relative quality of the mind that belongs to some objects and not others.

In that moment, time and distance or ‘otherness’, which is another name for space, are created and the true experience of beauty is again veiled.

When the same dissolution between ‘I’ and an apparent other is known, the very same experience is known as love. Happiness, peace, humour and intelligence are all names that are given to the experience of this direct recognition of the seamless intimacy of experience. In fact, all the names of the mind, body and world refer ultimately to this one reality.

It is for this reason that love, happiness and peace are said to be unconditional, absolute. They depend on nothing. They are interwoven into the fabric of all experience.

Once the ‘I’ and the object, other or world have been conceptually separated from the seamless intimacy of experience, love, happiness, peace, beauty etc., which are inherent in all experience, seem to become veiled and, as a result, the seemingly inside self embarks on a search for them in the apparently outside world.

The resolution of the search, which is known as peace, happiness or love, always involves the recognition that experience is not divided into two parts—‘I’ and ‘other’, ‘me’ and the ‘world’—whether or not it is actually formulated in these terms. Likewise, suffering always involves the forgetting or ignoring of this simple, primordial fact of experience.

Happiness is simply the unveiling of this ignorance. It is not a new experience. It does not come and go. It cannot be given or withdrawn. It can only appear to be forgotten and remembered or recognised. It is like the keys under the papers. They seemed to be lost but are, in fact, always there.

In the experience of peace and happiness the inside self and the outside world dissolve. In the experience of love, the one who loves and the one that is loved dissolve.

In fact, our only experience of the world and all others is made only of knowing, so we could say that in the experience of peace and happiness, the apparent otherness or outsideness of the world is dissolved in our experiential understanding that there is always only knowingness or awareness. That is peace, happiness, love and beauty.

However, it is only the mind that thinks that peace, happiness and love seem to be lost and seem to be found.

Presence never loses itself.

Reality is Not Mysterious

Q: It seems that reality is completely mysterious, beyond the grasp of the mind. Is there anything the mind can do to approach it?

The fact that the mind is asking this question already betrays the belief in the mind’s ability to do something to approach the truth. So, even if the response is that there is nothing to be done, this would simply add a layer of belief that there is nothing to do, on top of the deeper feeling that there is something to do. However, the problem lies in the first statement, that reality is mysterious.

Reality is not mysterious. It is present, here, shining in this current experience. It is substantial, intimate and immediate.

Implicit in the idea that reality is mysterious is that it is somehow not being experienced now. It is considered that what is being experienced now are words, chairs, walls, fields, trees, sky, bodies, thoughts etc., and that reality is concealed behind this current experience and is veiled by it.

It is considered that the mind cannot know reality but that it can know things. It is considered that chairs, walls, fields, trees and sky are known by the mind but that reality is beyond that and unknown. However, the mind knows nothing. It is known. Words, chairs, walls, fields, trees and sky are not known by the mind. Our only knowledge of them is the mind.

The mind in the broadest sense is simply this current thought, image, sensation or perception. It is the mind itself that postulates something called a ‘tree,’ which exists independently and which is perceived by the mind.

However, we have no experience of a tree outside the mind. In fact, we don’t even have the experience of a tree within mind. The so-called ‘tree’ is, in fact, just one brush stroke in the total field of seemingly objective perceptions. We never experience the brush stroke by itself. There is only the totality of the canvas from moment to moment, with no separate parts.

The concept of an ‘individual tree’ is, of course, experienced, but that to which the concept refers, the so-called ‘tree,’ is never experienced, as such. This does not invalidate the concept of a tree. However, it invalidates the belief that there is something in our actual experience that corresponds to the concept.

So, we come to see clearly that the ‘tree’ is simply the concept of the tree. The concept of a tree is an abstraction. It is an idea that is supposed to correspond to a part of the current objective experience, a visual perception, and yet even that perception of the tree is never experienced, as such. There are always other elements in the field of vision.

However, even to say there are other elements is also an abstraction. There are no elements. There are no parts to the current experience. There is only the seamless totality from moment to moment.

Now, if we allow this totality to present itself just as it is, we find that it is not made of separate thoughts, sensations and perceptions. It is one seamless experience of thought/sensation/perception.

And if we look closely at our experience we see that this kaleidoscopic object is, in fact, no object at all. It is, in fact, only made of thinking/sensing/perceiving.

And if we look closely again and ask ourselves what is the relationship of thinking/sensing/perceiving to our self, the aware presence that illumines and knows it, we find that there is no part of the experience that is not saturated and permeated with our self.

Even that is not quite right, for there is no ‘part,’ no ‘thing,’ to be saturated or permeated. It is not like a sponge saturated with water. That is just a manner of speaking.

Rather, there is only this aware presence taking the shape of experiencing, that is, taking the shape of thinking/sensing/perceiving, seemingly metamorphosing into a body, a mind and a world, without ever being or becoming anything other than itself.

Even that is not quite right. Our self, awareness, does not take any shapes. It is always only itself. All these different statements are attempts to break down the straightjacket in which thinking has imprisoned experience in an attempt to reveal the reality of experience itself in an experiential way.

As such, each statement is, in a sense, more refined or closer to a true expression of reality than the one it replaces, but ultimately none are true. They are all simply evocations of reality.

All that is ever experienced is awareness. And it is awareness that is experiencing awareness.

There is nothing mysterious about that. The mystery is always for thought, never for our self. It is thought that has postulated the separate existence of objects, made out of something other than our self, called matter.

This thought veils the true nature of experience that we now believe to be mysterious and not known. However, for our self, aware presence, there is no mystery. Reality is all that is ever known.

Reality is staring itself in the face. It is waving in the tree-tops, singing in the birds, glowing in the sky, babbling in your thoughts, rumbling in the traffic, crying in the child. It is calling out to itself in every minute nuance of every experience, ‘My love, my love, my love!’

So, in reality, it is the trees, sky, thoughts, traffic, etc. that are mysterious. In fact, they are so mysterious that no one has ever seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelt them, as such. It is objects—the body, mind and world—that are truly mysterious, so mysterious, in fact, that they are nowhere to be found.

Reality is the only thing that is not mysterious. It is so well and intimately known! And as reality, awareness, presence, our own being, is all there is, nothing is mysterious.

However, that of course does not mean that it can be known or framed by the mind. For the mind that believes its own abstract conceptions of reality to be true, that believes in the reality of cars, people, houses, chairs etc., reality itself seems abstract, conceptual and mysterious.

What is real for awareness is abstract and utterly mysterious for the mind and what is seemingly real for the mind is utterly nonexistent for awareness.

However, the mind’s point of view is only legitimate from its own point of view!

In fact, it is simply the arrogance of thought that thinks reality is mysterious. It is the mind saying, “I know things but I do not know reality”.

But the mind knows nothing. It is known. And in the knowing of whatever is known, awareness is knowing itself, being itself and loving itself, simultaneously.

There is only reality knowing, being and loving itself eternally.

Nothing else truly is.

Awareness Always Knows Itself

Q: Is it true that we cannot be aware of awareness?

It depends what is meant by ‘we’. If by ‘we’ is meant the mind or the person, the answer is ‘No, we cannot be aware of awareness’. However, the mind and the person are not entities that can be aware of anything.

Whatever it is that is aware of anything, such as a mind or a person, is what is referred to by the word ‘awareness’. It is obviously awareness that is aware. So the question could be rephrased, ‘Is it true that awareness is not aware of itself’?

The suggestion that awareness is not aware of itself is an expression of fundamental ignorance.

Inherent in the statement that awareness is not aware of itself is an acknowledgement of the presence of awareness. The statement acknowledges that awareness is present but suggests that it is not experienced or known, that is, that it is not experiencing or knowing itself.

However, if awareness is not experienced, how can we legitimately claim that it is present? We cannot legitimately assert the presence of something that is not experienced. What knowledge of its presence would we have outside our experience of it?

The claim that awareness is present comes from direct experience. Simply ask yourself the question, “Am I aware?” The answer, “Yes”, comes from the experience of awareness knowing itself.

If this were not the case we would be able to deny its presence. Ask yourself the question, “Can I legitimately deny the presence of awareness in this moment? Can I deny my own being”? No! Awareness is required to hear the very question about its own presence. I can never experience my own non-existence. In other words, non-existence is always a concept, never an experience.

However, let us take it further. Let us assume for the time being that, as the question suggests, awareness is not aware of itself. There is obviously some experience taking place in this moment, for instance the sight of these words and whatever other thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions that are being perceived. There is something that is being experienced, whatever the particular character of that ‘something’.

We do not need to know what that ‘something’ is. In fact, we do not know what anything truly is. But we know that there is experience.

Now, if we claim that we are not experiencing awareness, that is, that we are not experiencing or knowing our own being, but that we are experiencing something—these words or whatever—then, by definition, these words (and whatever else is being experienced) cannot themselves be awareness, which we claim is not being experienced.

So, in effect we are claiming that awareness is present but is not being experienced and that these words are also present and that they are being experienced.

In short, we are saying that in this current experience there are two things, that is, awareness and these words. However, is this current experience one or two experiences? Experience and awareness are one.

When the witnessed object is thus seen to be no object at all, its apparent reality vanishes, leaving awareness, its real reality, the witness, alone. However, the witness cannot stand alone. It, by definition, requires the witnessed.

So, with this experiential understanding, the subtle superimposition of ‘witnessing’ onto awareness, dissolves, and awareness is left all alone, as it eternally is.

It is for this reason that it is sometimes said that awareness is the witness and substance of all seeming things. If we still believe in the apparent reality of things, awareness is conceived as their witness. But when the apparent reality of things collapses, witnessing collapses with it and only substance is left. However, it is not the substance of something. It is just substance, just reality.

Each time we explore our experience in this way we are, whether we realise it or not, clearing part of the jungle of dualistic thinking. Our old beliefs cannot stand the light of this understanding. They simply collapse as a result of being clearly seen for what they are, that is, they collapse because they are seen to have no experiential basis.

And with the collapse of these beliefs comes the exposure of all the feelings that relied on them for their existence. There is no experiential or conceptual support for these feelings any more. The beliefs upon which the feelings have fed for so long have dissolved, and as a result the feelings too, in time, dissolve. They die of exposure to the light of understanding.

This has a profound effect on the quality of the appearances. The filter of dualistic thinking and feeling which we superimposed onto sensations and perceptions, that is, onto the body and world, is withdrawn, and as a result the body and world, which in fact have always only ever been what they truly are, are now actually felt as such.

And just as our previous experience of the world perfectly conformed to the beliefs and feelings that we entertained about it, simply because it was, as it were, projected through them, so our new experience also perfectly reflects this new experiential understanding.

In short, the world becomes friendly, intimate, vibrant, loving. And as the realignment of thoughts, feelings and perceptions with our experiential understanding continues and deepens, the world becomes more and more transparent.

So, it is not that we do not experience awareness. It is rather that we, that is, awareness itself, only experiences awareness. It experiences nothing other than itself.

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that we do not experience an object, world, body or mind, as such.

Experience is always only this present awareness and its ever-present knowing of itself in and as the seamless intimacy of this, and all experience is its loving itself.

If we look deeply into our experience we find that, far from awareness being unknown and objects being known, it is awareness that is, in fact, all that is ever known, and that which we previously considered to be known, that is, the world, others and objects, are in fact never known, as they are normally conceived.

That which knows is awareness and all it ever knows is itself. It is not possible for awareness to know or experience anything other than itself.

Awareness not only knows itself, but always and only knows itself, throughout and in between the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. In fact the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are like modulations of one substance, like an eddy or a current within the ocean of awareness.

It is sometimes said that the experience of awareness knowing itself is a non-objective experience. However, this is a half-truth spoken to those who deeply believe in the real existence of objects.

To say that awareness is non-objective suggests that there is something else that is objective. It is to suggest that objects are real in themselves. However, there are no objects as such and no subject.

There is no subjective experiencer and there is no object that is experienced. There is only experiencing from moment to moment and the substance of this experiencing is only awareness.

The mind, body and world are projected within awareness and made only out of awareness, and yet they are projected in such a way as to seem to be both separate from and made out of something other than awareness.

Awareness not only creates whatever it imagines—it also has a veiling power by which the true nature of its creation is concealed and projected in such a way that it seems to be other than itself. The tool through which it seemingly creates and veils is what we call ‘mind’.

However, the mind is only a mind from the illusory point of view of a mind. There is no such thing in reality.

This veiling power is sometimes called ignorance, because it is the apparent ignoring of awareness. Awareness, as it were, veils, ignores or forgets itself by taking the shape of the thought that imagines it is absent.

However, even this shape is only an expression of awareness knowing and being itself. Therefore, awareness is never truly veiled and therefore there is no true ignorance. However, the illusion of ignorance is very powerful.

It is this veiling, ignoring or forgetting which allows the mind, body and world to appear as outside, separate and other, that is, which allows them to appear real in their own right, that is, independent of awareness. In this way they seem to appropriate the reality which properly belongs to awareness alone.

This veiling, ignoring or forgetting is synonymous with the apparent birth of the separate self and separate world. It is also known as suffering or unhappiness. It is the veiling of the happiness which is inherent in the simple knowing of our own being.

However, just as our self, awareness, has this veiling, ignoring or forgetting power, it also has a revealing or remembering power, with which it comes to know again, to re-cognise or to remember its own nature. In fact, ‘mind’, ‘body’ and ‘world’ are simply the names that the mind gives to awareness when it seems not to be known.

However, it is not that at one time awareness is veiled by objects and at another time knows itself. It is rather that from the point of view of awareness, which is the only real point of view, awareness is always knowing itself—it is the ever-present knowing of itself—and from the point of view of thinking, awareness is sometimes known and sometimes unknown. So, this apparent forgetting or unknowing of awareness is for the mind, not for awareness.

In the presence of apparent objects awareness knows itself as each of these apparent objects. That is, it knows itself taking the shape of experience from moment to moment. However, in doing so it never knows anything other than itself. It only knows ‘something other’ from the point of view of thinking.

When each of these apparent objects disappears, it disappears or merges into awareness. In fact, it was never anything other than awareness in the first place. At this point awareness simply continues to know itself as it always does. This is known as the experience of love, peace, happiness, beauty or understanding. These are some of the many names given to awareness when it knows itself unmediated through the apparent veil of objectivity.

Experience is one ever-present, homogeneous, substantial, self-knowing, self-luminous, self-loving presence. It is always only ever itself, and always only ever knows itself.

There is No Real Ignorance

Q: What is the cause of ignorance?

In this question, there is a presumption, as in all questions about a cause, that there are at least two things, one, a cause and, two, its effect, ignorance.

In other words duality—and the diversity and multiplicity that are implicit in it—is inherent in the question about cause, in the question, ‘Why?’

Duality, as we have seen, only exists as an idea in the mind. It has no real existence outside the thought that thinks it. The belief that duality is real is what is referred to as ignorance. By ‘ignorance’ is meant the ignoring or apparent veiling of the true nature of reality.

Therefore, the question ‘why’ or the question as to the cause of ignorance, presumes the very ignorance about which it asks and which is found, upon investigation, to be non-existent.

So, to the question, ‘What is the cause of ignorance?’ we can only answer, ‘The very question about ignorance itself.’ Ignorance is created and given seeming existence with the thought that thinks it. It has no other cause.

However, all thoughts are known. All that is known is knowledge. Knowledge is made of knowing. And knowing is made of our self, aware presence.

Therefore, even the thought about ignorance is, in fact, made only of our self, aware presence, and is therefore not really ignorance at all.

Therefore, we cannot even say that ignorance is created by the thought that thinks it because the ignorance that is referred to is at all times utterly non-existent.

Even if we provisionally accept that ignorance is real, it is still not possible to find a cause for it.

In such a case, the cause for ignorance cannot be ignorance itself because ignorance is the effect for which we are seeking a cause. Therefore, the cause for ignorance in such a case must be free of ignorance, that is, true knowledge.

However, in this apparent ignorance for which we are seeking a cause, true knowledge is, by definition, not present, because ignorance is defined as the lack of true knowledge. How then could true knowledge give rise to something that is not itself, not made out of itself? An effect must contain the cause within it, as bread contains flour. How, therefore, could reality give rise to unreality?

At the absolute level there is only aware presence and the nature of aware presence is to be and to be aware. Aware presence cannot ‘not be’ and it cannot ‘not be aware’.

Awareness and being are ever-present. All there is, is aware presence and it is itself and is aware of itself eternally. Awareness cannot be ignorant of itself.

Therefore, ignorance at this level is also a concept. It is equivalent to saying, while watching a film, that the screen is not present and, as a result, asking, “What is the cause of the absence of the screen?” Even if the image is one of blackness, nothingness, it is still made of the screen. Therefore, ignorance is never an experience. It is simply an idea.

It is for this reason that advaita does not really answer the ‘Why?’ question. It is not an avoidance of the issue. It is the dissolution of the issue in understanding.

All answers about the cause for ignorance that acknowledge the existence of ignorance may pacify the mind temporarily but they do not take us beyond the mind. Such provisional answers generate beliefs and these beliefs in time turn into a religion, in this case an advaita religion.

However, understanding destroys these false beliefs once and for all and with their destruction the mind’s armoury is slowly dismantled until all that is left is open unknowing. When we know that it is not possible to know anything objective with absolute certainty, we cease to look for knowledge in the wrong place and, as a result, the only thing that is truly known shines in all experience.

Nothing Ever Disappears

Nothing ever disappears. How could something that is, become ‘is not’? How could existence become non-existence? Where would the substance of existence go if it were to disappear? Where would its isness, its being, its presence, go? Into what would it vanish?

What is it that disappears when an image on the screen disappears? The substance of the image is the screen and the screen does not disappear. It simply takes the shape of the next image.

This may seem hard to understand only because we believe that when a so-called object is present, it is present as an independent object. We think that the memory of the apple is imaginary but that when the actual apple is present it is real as an object.

It is true that the memory of the apple is only an image in the mind. However, we fail to notice that when we see the actual apple it is, in fact, also only an image. All we know of the apple, in that case, is seeing. And when we touch the apple, we only know touching; when we taste it we only know tasting; when we smell it we only know smelling.

We never experience the actual apple as it is conceived, that is, as an object in its own right with its own independent and separate existence.

Therefore, there is no difference in our actual experience between the substance of the apple that appears in memory and the substance of the actual apple that appears in ‘real time’, Our only knowledge of both is made out of mind—out of seeing, tasting, touching and smelling—and the substance of mind is only awareness.

That which is truly present as the so-called apple is, in fact, only awareness itself. There is no other substance in experience other than awareness and that never disappears. That is our ever-present experience whether it is realised or not.

How could awareness experience its own absence or disappearance? It is our own direct, intimate, immediate experience that this ever-present always-hereness that we are, is the sole substance of all experience. In fact, the apple, the object or indeed the world, as such, are simply the apparent forgetting of this simple fact of experience.

However, this forgetting takes place in the mind alone. Presence never truly forgets itself.

If we take our stand in the mind, then the peace and happiness that are inherent in our self, aware presence, seem to be obscured.

Who is the one that takes its stand in the mind? The mind! Only thinking imagines that imaginary one! The imaginary inside self is only real from its own imaginary point of view.

Presence is only seemingly veiled by this imagination but is never actually veiled. It is the ever-present knowing of itself alone.

Pure Unclouded Awareness

Q: Our nature is pure unclouded awareness. Love is not a definable thing. It is beyond the realm of our habitual thoughts-feelings-actions. However, our thoughts-feelings-actions originate within this awareness. How would you define in a quick simple statement, the core essence of this teaching and the way to get there?

The essence of this teaching is precisely the pure unclouded awareness that you cite.

Without a question, there is no teaching. There is only this pure unclouded awareness, knowing-being-loving itself. However, it is not owned or known by someone.

A question is like a bucket that is dipped into this ocean of pure unclouded awareness. What comes out is intimately and uniquely tailored to the shape of the bucket.

When the answer is heard it resonates with the same pure unclouded awareness in the apparent hearer. That is, aware presence recognises itself.

At this stage the bucket dissolves and only pure unclouded awareness, remains. There is no teacher who answers and no student who hears. Nor is there any formulated teaching or fixed point of view or attitude from which the responses come.

It is precisely because the water is fluid and transparent and has no form or colour of its own that it is able to flow into each bucket and, as it were, take up its unique shape.

This is how that teaching works at the level of words—pure silence ‘flows’ into the question, acclimatises itself to it and finally dissolves the question into itself.

The teaching is not the words that are framed in response to a question. The words are just the packaging. The teaching is that from which the words come.

The only reason pure unclouded awareness takes the form of a response in words is to dance with the form that it took in the question.

In fact, a true question that arises in the heart compels this pure unclouded awareness to appear in a form that will correspond with it. That is why a sincere desire for a friend or a teacher will always compel this pure unclouded awareness to appear in human form.

Pure unclouded awareness is simply responding to its own desire, and in this sense the human teacher is a devotee of pure unclouded awareness every bit as much as the apparent student or friend.

The dance that ensues may be long or short but in the end both the thoughts that make up the question and the thoughts that make up the response dissolve in the true answer, which is their source and substance.

In this dissolution the teacher and the student lose their apparent separateness and find themselves as one in love or friendship.

What is the way to get there? Stand up and try to take a step towards yourself. In which direction do you turn? Try to take a step away from yourself. In which direction do you go?

The standing up, the trying to take a step, the search for a direction, the realisation there is none, the encounter with a teaching or teacher and the silence that remains are all part of ‘the way to get there’.

When the ‘there’ dissolves, the ‘here’ is revealed. When the ‘here’ dissolves, our self, aware presence, stands alone.

The Burnt Rope

Q: I have heard it said that there is sometimes an initial awakening followed by a process of stabilsation. What is this referring to?

There is no personal, separate entity anywhere in the universe at any time. So, there is no question of a separate person awakening and even less of this imaginary ‘me’ becoming stabilised in this realisation.

However, although awareness is always only knowing itself, there is a timeless moment when awareness recognises itself knowingly. And there is also a subsequent process in time whereby the old patterns of thinking and feeling are gradually realigned with this self-recognition.

There is a moment when it becomes obvious that we are this presence of awareness and that this presence is without limitation, was not born, cannot die and never moves, changes or is affected by any appearance, irrespective of the character of that appearance.

With this experiential understanding it becomes obvious that there never has been a separate inside self, located in the body experiencing an outside world. And by the same token, when we discover that the apparent subject within the body is a pseudo subject, so we discover that the apparent object, other or world outside the body is a pseudo object.

In other words, when we discover that there is no subject we simultaneously discover that there are no objects.

This clear seeing of what we are is instantaneous—in fact, it is timeless—and once it is our own experience it cannot be taken away. However, it is usually followed by an apparent process in time where the residues of ignorance, that is, the residues of ignoring what we truly are and believing ourselves instead to be a separate, limited self, which have deeply conditioned the body and the mind, in most cases for decades, unwind slowly in the light of this understanding.

Ignorance, at the level of the mind, consists in the belief that our self, aware presence, is located somewhere in the body, for instance behind the eyes. Once this core idea about our identity has taken root, most subsequent thoughts about ourselves contain this belief at their origin.

Once this belief has been uprooted by clear seeing, the foundation of all subsequent psychological thoughts, which were previously founded upon it, no longer have any credibility.

Such thoughts may still appear from time to time, simply out of habit or inertia, and initially may look identical to those that were present when the belief in a separate entity was still active.

However, they are very different. Their heart has been removed. In this case the thoughts that seem to betray a belief in the separate entity are simply habits of the mind. They are empty. There is no self in them. There is only the carcass left.

In time this habit of thinking on behalf of a separate entity shows up less frequently because it is no longer substantiated by the belief that such an entity is real.

A similar process takes place with our feelings at the level of the body, although it may seem to take longer for this understanding to infiltrate the body because ignorance is more deeply rooted there.

For years the body is considered to house the separate self. At an early age we come to think and feel that this cluster of sensations called the body is ‘me’ or that ‘I’ am located somewhere inside it. Through lack of clear seeing we really think and feel that there is experiential evidence for the existence of a separate self inside the body.

In fact, the body even adopts various postures, attitudes and behavioural habits that are consistent with the belief and feeling that ‘I’ am somewhere inside it. These attitudes are enshrined at the muscular and even skeletal level. For instance, an attitude of fear and resistance may cause us to stand in a stooped or defensive posture, which will, over time, shape our muscles and bones.

The clear seeing that there is no separate self residing in the body is instantaneous but that doesn’t mean that the contractions in the body that developed as a result of this belief vanish instantaneously. They do not!

There is an apparent process in time during which these residues of ignorance at the level of the body are gradually dissolved. And just as the body once expressed the belief in our identity as a separate entity, so it now begins to realign itself with the new understanding and feeling of our self as unlimited, unlocated presence. And in time our activities and relationships naturally and effortlessly begin to express this new experiential understanding.

So there is an unfolding that takes place in the mind and the body after this self-recognition has taken place. However, this unfolding is not an unfolding of a separate self towards freedom or liberation. It comes from freedom and dissolves the residues of the sense of being a separate self, in the mind and the body.

How does this realignment take place? What do we do if we burn the toast when making breakfast? We just open the window! In time the residues of smoke and the smell of burning are naturally and effortlessly dissipated into the surrounding transparent air.

It is the same here. We simply abide knowingly as this open, empty transparent presence and welcome these residues of feeling, moving and acting on behalf of a separate inside self without any agenda. We offer the density of the separate self to the openness and transparency of presence and allow them to be infused with its substance.

As the mind and body become more transparent they naturally and effortlessly begin to express the love, freedom and intelligence that are inherent in our true nature of impersonal, unlimited presence.

Enjoyment, enthusiasm, creativity, friendship and humour are just some of its expressions.

In India they liken the situation to a rope that has been burned in a fire. Although the rope still retains its shape and appearance, if it is touched, it disintegrates. It is empty. It has no substance. Its inside has been burned out.

In this case the belief in the separate self is the inside, the substance of the rope. Understanding is the fire. The shell is the habit of thinking and feeling that remains for some time.

These habits of thinking and feeling and, of course, the activities and behaviour that spring from them, have been laid down over a period of many years or decades. They are the conditioning that forms the reservoir of tendencies that go into the make-up of our character.

Not all of this conditioning is dependent on the belief in and feeling of being a separate entity. However, many of those aspects that are dependent on it may have been laid down very early in our lives and, as such, are embedded deep within the structure of the body and mind.

It takes time for these deeply ingrained habits of thinking, feeling, reacting, relating and behaving to percolate up into the light of awareness.

After this self-recognition has taken place we no longer have a vested interest in keeping these aspects of our character concealed. We no longer resist them and therefore they tend to manifest for a time more than they used to. However, it would be a misinterpretation to think that such behaviour is a display of ignorance. It is simply the surfacing and discarding of the residues of ignorance at the level of the body and mind.

Conversely, it would be a misunderstanding to condone any old obnoxious behaviour with a mantra of, ‘It all happens to no-one’. That is pseudo non-duality.

It is for each one to see whether these habits of feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a separate, inside self betray the belief in a separate entity or whether they are simply old residues that are working their way out of the system. Neither of these possibilities is a problem.

The only problem would be to appropriate the ‘It all happens to no-one’ mantra thereby using the non-dual teaching as a defence mechanism to perpetuate the sense of separation.

The True Revolution

All experiencing is utterly intimately pervaded by our own self, aware presence. However, when we imagine that only one little part of it, this little body part, is pervaded by myself but not all the rest we find ourselves with a problem. What are we going to call the other part, the part that is not pervaded by myself, the ‘not me’ part?

If we now call this body part ‘me’ what are we going to call the ‘not me’? And what could this other part be made of. It is no longer thought or, more importantly, felt to be pervaded by the intimacy of our own being so it must be made out of something else. ‘Matter’ is the name we give to this ‘something else’. It is the name we give to everything that is ‘not me’.

Our self is pervaded by alive, aware presence, and so this substance called ‘matter’ is conceived as not being pervaded by the intelligence or love that are inherent in our self. It is conceived as dead, inert, separate from and other than love and intelligence.

However, no one has ever found this stuff called matter. Over a hundred years ago the painter Paul Cézanne, said, “A time is coming when a single carrot freshly observed will trigger a revolution”.

Has this time come and what is the revolution Cézanne was suggesting? How long will it be before a scientist stands up and admits that this stuff called matter has never been found and, more importantly, could never be found because there is nothing that is not utterly intimately pervaded by awareness? In fact, there are simply no things, as such.

This is the revolution Cézanne was suggesting and was trying to draw attention to in his work. If its implications are considered it will revolutionise every aspect of our lives: intimate relationships, commerce, ecology, business, employment, education, politics... everything.

However, let us be sure that what we are saying is experiential, not just a new non-dual philosophy.

Close your eyes and place your hand on your chair. Our only knowledge of the chair is this new sensation. In fact in this new sensation we do not experience a hand and a chair. There is hand/chair. It is only thinking that abstracts and conceptualises a hand and a chair from the intimacy and seamlessness of pure sensing.

Now what is this new experience made of? The mind says that the hand is made of flesh and bone and that the chair is made of an inert substance called ‘matter’, but in experience all we know is sensing. Now what is sensing made of? Is there any dead inert material there or is sensing intimately utterly pervaded by knowing, by awareness?

Open your eyes and look at the wall in front of you. Our only knowledge of the wall is seeing. There is nothing there other than seeing. Now how far does seeing take place from our self? Does it take place ten metres from our self or is it utterly, intimately one with our self?

What in our actual experience is the seeing made of? Is there any substance present in seeing other than the intimacy of our own being? Is it solid, dense and inert or is it made only of knowing or awareness?

Now imagine the moon. Do we have any knowledge of the moon other than seeing? And how far away is that seeing? Millions of miles or right here in the dimensionless intimacy of our own being?

Try to find anything that is at a distance from or separate from our self, not our self as body because that body is only made out of sensing, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching etc., but our self this aware presence.

See clearly that the mind, the body and the world are never actually found as such, that is, as they are imagined to be. All we know is experiencing and experiencing is utterly intimately one with and made out of our self, awareness.

The mind, the body and the world are illusions as they are normally conceived to be. However, that does not mean that experience is an illusion. Experience is real and its reality is the awareness that we intimately know ourself to be, that is, that intimately knows itself to be.

Conceptualising Consciousness

From Consciousness’ own point of view, if it can be said to have a point of view, it is too close to itself, too completely itself, to know itself as any kind of object.

To know anything as an apparent object, there has to be a subject located at a distance from it and therefore, by definition, something other than it.

To know an apparent object or other, we have to separate our self out from the seamless totality as an experiencing subject, a centre or location within the seamless totality, from which all seeming objects, others, events etc. are known or experienced.

This is the way we normally think that the objects of the mind, body and world are known. That is, they are apparently known in relationship.

However, for consciousness which is all there is, there is no other ‘one’ that can stand back and look at experience. It is neither the subject nor the object of its own experience. This does not mean that it is unknown. It is unknown in the way we normally think that knowing takes place, that is, it is not known in relationship.

However, consciousness is knowing. That’s what the word consciousness means: the presence of that which is conscious, aware, knowing—the knowing of being or the being of knowing.

However, consciousness doesn’t know itself as something. It is the knowing of itself. It is knowing in identity, not in relationship.

Consciousness’ way of knowing itself is to be itself and its being itself is so utterly intimate, seamless and complete that there is no room there for an ‘other’.

The only way consciousness can seem to know something that is ‘other than itself’ is to take the shape of thinking and, as such, imagine itself to be a limited, located entity, a centre of knowledge, experience or perception, thereby giving rise to the possibility of other limited, located entities.

In other words, thinking first imagines that consciousness is limited to and located within the body and then, as a natural corollary to this belief, it imagines an outside world, object or other that is separate and distant from this imaginary subject.

It is with this imagining that the world, others and objects seem to come into existence as separate individual objects with a reality of their own. The appearance of an apparent object is the natural and inevitable outcome of the belief that consciousness is the subject.

And it is with this imagining of consciousness as a separate entity, that its own fullness, imperturbability, innocence and intimacy are seemingly veiled and, as a result, that a sense of lack, incompleteness, of having appeared and therefore of the possibility of disappearing, of disease, of loss, etc., arise. For by imagining consciousness as an entity, thinking imagines it to be less than completeness, less than totality, less than fullness. In short, consciousness seems to become mortal, limited and located in time and space.

In thinking of consciousness in this way, an imaginary relationship is set up between ‘I’—the apparently limited consciousness that the mind imagines the real ‘I’ of consciousness to be—and all others, objects and the world.

As such, the mind sets consciousness apart from the totality—it imagines it as a limited, located separate entity—and takes a position of “‘I,’ this imagined entity, do not like this”, “‘I’ want that”, ‘‘I’ feel a lack”, “’I’ am sick”.

All these ideas are inevitable corollaries to the belief in being a separate self and the ultimate cure for them is simply to go to the reality of experience and, as a result, cease believing oneself to be such.

In fact, one doesn’t need to stop believing it. Rather, the belief simply falls away when it is seen to be untrue, leaving Consciousness as it is, alone.

However, at this point we cannot really say it is ‘alone’ or ‘one’, for both need the reference ‘other’ or ‘two’ to have any meaning.

Even to call it consciousness is too much. It was only necessary to conceptualise consciousness in the first place as an antidote to the concept of objects, entities, others and the world. In the absence of these, the concept of consciousness is redundant.

There is only the seamless totality of experiencing, too utterly intimately itself even to know itself as any kind of an object.

In this state, which is simply the natural state of being, what we call consciousness and what we call experiencing are identical.

It is only when the mind arises and seemingly fragments the seamless intimacy of experience into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects that consciousness is conceptualised as the subject.

At first it seems to become a subtle, unlocated, limited and witnessing consciousness but, as the conceptualising process intensifies and the reality of experience is correspondingly veiled, this witnessing consciousness is further condensed in the imagination into an apparent mind and a body.

Prior to the arising of mind, consciousness is too completely full of itself for the dualising mind even to get a purchase—there is simply nothing for it to get hold of. And when the mind does arise it has to manufacture an object in order to legitimise its own existence.

However, even when the mind is seemingly present, consciousness doesn’t actually know itself as an object. An object is only an object from the point of view of the mind. From consciousness’ ‘point of view’ it only knows itself. It cannot and does not know anything other than itself. And strange as it may sound, that is all that is ever experienced including this very experience right now.

Water only knows itself as water. It is the mind that says ocean, wave, river, tears, rain, cloud or puddle. Water knows nothing of such things. At the same time it is the substance of all such things but, in being so, is still only ever water and only knows itself as water.

Love is one of the names we give to this recognition. It is simply not to know an other.

Beauty is another of its names. It is not to know an object.

Happiness is another. It is the absence of lack or fear of there ever even being the possibility of lack, due to consciousness’ total saturation of itself in itself, eternally.

Peace is another of its names because there is nothing other than itself that could come in ‘from anywhere’ and disturb it from being itself.

Presence Finds Only Itself

Q: I read somewhere that you say the experience of a separate self and the outside world are two sides of the same coin, that they are inseparable. I understand that there is no separate self but the outside world seems very real. Objects, people, places seem very real.

‘Seems’ is the operative word. It is necessary to distinguish between what ‘seems to be’ and ‘what is’.

Your description of the world as being ‘outside’ implies that there is something inside. That ‘something inside’ is the separate self, the counterpart to the separate world outside.

In this case the separate self has not been seen to be truly nonexistent and therefore the world, as such, has not been seen to be similarly non-existent.

The separate self and the outside world are the inside and the outside of ignorance, the ignoring of reality.

They are both illusions superimposed onto the reality of experience.

Without the labelling by thought, we have no way of knowing what anything truly is. In fact, even with the labelling of thought we do not know what anything really is but we think we do!

Without thought there is no experience of an inside or an outside, a ‘me’ or an ‘other’. Without thought, there is no ‘here’ or ‘there’, no ‘now’ or ‘then’, no ‘this’ and ‘that’.

Without thought, there is just the utter intimacy of experiencing, so completely full of itself as to permit no other, no time, no lack and no need.

It is thought alone that seemingly divides experiencing into the realms of the mind, the body and the world.

These are the three realms of apparently objective experience, in which the reality of experience is seemingly veiled from itself by dualising thought.

However, the mind, the body and the world are only illusory as apparent objects, as seemingly ‘other’. There is a reality to the experience of the mind, body and world, but the only substance to that reality is aware presence, just as when we look at an image on the screen, we do not really see trees, fields, hills and the sky. We always see only the screen. The screen is their reality.

And what is it that knows the reality? It knows and simultaneously is itself. The reality of experience could not be known by anything other than what is real.

Q: But I can touch this table. I am seeing this chair.

You do not touch the table and you do not see a chair. There is no you, no table and no chair.

‘You’, ‘table’ and ‘chair’ are simply concepts superimposed by the mind upon seamless, objectless, ever-present experiencing.

If this is not clear, we could take an intermediary step and say that there is only sensing, touching and seeing, as long as we understand that this is only provisionally true.

The only substance present in ‘you’, the body, is made out of sensing. The only substance present in the ‘table’ and the ‘chair’ is perceiving or seeing.

In other words, it becomes clear that all we know of the body, table or chair is experiencing. The objects themselves are never actually found.

What we thought was an object, body or world is seen to be made only of experiencing. The mind superimposes the ‘experienced’ and the ‘experiencer’ onto pure experiencing. And if we look at experiencing itself all we find there is aware presence. And what is it that ‘finds’ or recognises presence? Only itself.

That is, we could say that mind appears to fragment and diversify presence into thinking, sensing and perceiving and then further fragments thinking, sensing and perceiving into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of physical objects that are apparently known by a separate self.

However, the separate self is not just a belief. It is also a feeling. It is not just the concept of being an entity. It is the feeling that ‘I’ am this body and/or ‘I’ am in this body.

And with the feeling that I am inside this body comes the feeling that everything I am not, is outside this body. That is to say, that the world is outside me.

‘I am in the body’ and ‘the world is outside and separate from me’ are not two different feelings. It is one feeling, one line drawn through the seamless intimacy of experience, that separates the ‘me’ from the ‘not me’.

It is impossible to have the ‘me’ without the ‘not me’, and it is impossible to have the ‘not me’ without the ‘me’.

One belief/feeling apparently separates the oneness of experience into two, into ‘me’ and ‘other’. One belief/feeling apparently separates experiencing into an experiencer and an experienced.

The mind seemingly separates presence into someone that knows, ‘I,’ and something that is known, the ‘world’. Unhappiness, which is simply the veiling of ever-present underlying happiness, is the result of this artificial separation.

Imagine going to an Imax cinema where we are given a special pair of three-dimensional glasses. Without the glasses the image appears in two dimensions on the screen as normal, but when we put on the glasses it seems as if the film is taking place all around us in the entire space of the cinema, and that we are situated within the three dimensional image, under the sea with the fish or on the plain with the lions.

If we take off our glasses at some point we will see all the children in the cinema (and some of the adults!) stretching out their hands trying to catch the fish. But they grab only empty space.

It is exactly the same with the world. When we try to catch it, to hold it, to see what it is made of, we find only the empty space of presence.

We are like children grabbing at the fish, thinking that the fish are real and trying to touch them. But when we look clearly at our experience, we find nothing objective there and, by the same token, nothing subjective.

Presence, as it were, puts on the mind, which as a result, appears to project a world outside of itself. But the mind is itself made out of the presence from which it seems to be separated.

The world is separate from presence in the same way that the sky is separate from space, that is, in no way at all.

Thinking seems to objectify, divide and fragment the seamless intimacy of experience, creating an apparent multiplicity and diversity of thoughts, objects, selves, others and the world.

Thinking creates the appearance of time out of timeless presence and this appearance is called the dream state.

Thinking creates the appearance of space and objects out of spaceless presence and this appearance is called the body and the world, that is, the waking state.

But when we ‘stretch out our hand’, as it were, and try to find time, thought, space, a body, an object or a world, we find only presence.

Presence finds only itself.

The Fabric of Identity

Q: I understand that the separate entity is simply a belief but I still feel located in the body.

The conviction that we are a separate and independent entity has two aspects. It is composed of a belief and a feeling.

The belief in separation is really the tip of the iceberg. Most of the apparent separate ‘I’ is made of feelings that have one essential feeling at their origin: that ‘I’, this unlimited aware presence that is seeing these words, is located in the body and/or as the body.

The actual experience of the body comprises a cluster of sensations plus visual perceptions, strung together by a concept that weaves them into the apparently complex organism that we think of as our body.

However, no such organism is ever experienced as such. The sensations are experienced. The visual perceptions are experienced. The concept of the body is experienced. But the body to which the concept refers is never experienced, as such.

In fact, even that statement is only relatively true. It is true in relation to the previous belief that we truly experience a body. However, in the face of a deeper exploration of experience, this statement itself will be found to be limited and only relatively true.

The actual experience of the body is very simple. Close your eyes for a moment and see that it is experienced simply as an amorphous cluster of sensations.

All unhappiness has, at its origin, the exclusive association of our self, aware presence, with this cluster of sensations.

In fact, in most cases we no longer even realise that these two have been mixed up. Presence and bodily sensations have been mixed up together for so long into an amalgam of identity that many of us now feel simply that ‘I’ is the body, period.

This apparent mixture of our self, aware presence, and a cluster of sensations requires one thing only for its survival. Obscurity! As long as it remains obscure, unseen, the feeling of separation and the unhappiness that is its inevitable corollary are inevitable.

All that is needed is to look at it clearly with no agenda. We do not look at it in order to get rid of it. We simply look at it out of interest. What is this separate inside self that thinking imagines us to be? The exclusive mixture of our self, aware presence, and the body cannot stand this passive and disinterested contemplation.

The feeling of being a body is like salad dressing. As long as it is constantly agitated it appears to be one homogeneous substance, but as soon as it is left alone, the oil and the vinegar separate naturally.

The single ‘I-am-the-body’ entity is, in fact, not single. It is made of presence plus the body. The disinterested contemplation of the ‘I-am-the-body’ entity is the settling of the salad dressing, the discrimination between presence and the body object.

See clearly that, when our eyes are closed, the so-called body is simply a cluster of amorphous sensations appearing in unlimited aware presence. These sensations are not identical to presence. They appear in it. When our eyes are open, a perception is added to this appearance that seems to substantiate the solidity and depth of the body. If we now touch the chair with our hand, a tactile sensation is added to the mix.

Each of these sensations and perceptions is woven together by the mind into a fabric that seems to be solid and permanent. However, our actual experience is that each of these sensations and perceptions is fleeting and insubstantial.

It is the aware presence in which they appear that gives them apparent substance and continuity. They borrow their apparent permanence from presence, from awareness.

We think that the body is solid, lasting and substantial and that awareness is fleeting, impermanent and insubstantial. Our actual experience is the opposite. It is consciousness that is ever-present and substantial whereas the body is an ever-changing flow of fleeting, impermanent and insubstantial sensations and perceptions.

The identity that we attribute to the body in fact belongs to awareness.

The ‘I am’ that is inherent in awareness is bestowed by thinking on a cluster of sensations and becomes, ‘I am the body’.

In fact, the ‘I am’ never becomes anything, it just seems to become a body. And as an inevitable and simultaneous corollary to this self-contraction, everything that the body is not, becomes everything that ‘I am not’, that is, the world.

The mind creates a veil of apparent objectivity that is spun within awareness and made only out of awareness and yet which seems to limit and locate our self, awareness.

As a result, awareness seems to take up residence inside the body and the world seems to become distant and other.

In our passive and disinterested contemplation, the ‘I am’ and the body separate like oil and vinegar. It is not that the ‘I’ returns to awareness. It is rather that it is relieved of the superimposition of thinking and stands revealed as it is.

The ‘I’ is relieved of its ‘insideness’ and ‘meness’ and the world is relieved of its ‘outsideness’, its ‘not-meness’. Inside and outside, me and not me, collapse and only our self, awareness, remains.

Utterly Intimately One

At a certain point we no longer think or feel that we are an individual entity existing and moving about in time and space amongst other entities.

Time, space, the separate entity and its counterpart, the world, are all superimpositions upon our real nature.

We think and feel that we are a limited, separate entity only because we have forgotten our real nature.

As soon as we remember or recognise our true nature, time, space, the separate entity, things, objects, others and the world all collapse back into the source from which they seemingly arise.

In fact, they never really collapse because they never truly arose to begin with. Rather, they are seen for what they are, the ever-present reality of being, insubstantial as appearance, real as being.

Imagine that we are watching a car chase on a screen and that the chase is being filmed from inside one of the cars. Even in ordinary life, when watching such a film, our body can become quite animated and disturbed as we feel that we are travelling inside the car, hurtling through space, narrowly missing other cars, buildings and people.

At the end of the chase we become aware of the tensions in our body that have been created as a result of identifying ourselves with the point of view of the camera. Long after the chase is over, indeed sometimes long after the film is over, these residues of feeling in the body may remain.

However, at a certain moment in the film, and this moment is always available, it becomes obvious that we are not in the car moving at terrific speed, narrowly missing other objects.

It becomes clear that the fate of the car is not our fate. In fact, it becomes clear that there are no cars, no people, no road and no buildings. There is just the screen.

Once we realise this we realise simultaneously that it has always been the case. It was only our forgetting of this obvious and always available fact of experience, that precipitated the feeling that we were located inside a car, moving at great speed, in danger at every moment.

We realise that all this commotion is simply a play on the screen, not in ourselves.

And simultaneously we realise that what is considered to be time, space and causality for the characters in the movie is, for the screen, simply its own ever-presence.

Does the screen ever become animated by the movement and the story of the film? Does the screen move when the cars move? Does the screen get excited or disappointed? Does it appear or disappear? Does it change or move as the image changes and moves?

The screen gains or loses nothing by the outcome of the film. It is not animated by the images nor does it share their apparent qualities. At the same time it is the very substance of the image.

Likewise, it is the forgetting of the true nature of our self that precipitates the thought and feeling of being a separate entity moving around in a separate and outside world.

Like the screen, our self, awareness, is already all it could ever be. It stands to gain or lose nothing by the appearance of the body, mind and world, whatever their condition. At the same time it is their very substance.

Just as the screen seems to take the shape of the image in the film, so awareness seems to become limited by the body and the mind. However, none of the apparent qualities of the body and the mind pertain to awareness. At the same time, once we have conceded a level of relative reality to the body and the mind, we can say they are made out of nothing other than awareness.

What is it then that changes and moves? The screen does not change and move because it is the one ever-present background and substance of the movie. Nor do the cars change and move because they are non-existent as such.

It is only an image that moves and changes. However, without thinking, even this image would not move and change, because change and movement require memory and memory is simply a current thought.

As soon as we forget our true identity as awareness and become exclusively identified with a part of the totality of whatever is appearing, separate entities and the world are simultaneously born and, with them, their first offspring, time and space.

The intimacy of experience is fragmented into a subject and an object, into a ‘me’ and an ‘other’, into a person and a world, and time and space are simultaneously created to house all these apparent entities.

The forgetting of our true identity and the apparent reality of the individual and the world are the same event.

From this moment onwards the individual that we imagine ourselves to be and the world seem to acquire a reality of their own. We forget that their reality is only the reality of awareness, just as we forget in the film that the reality of the cars, people, buildings and chase are always and only the screen.

However, awareness is never truly obscured just as the screen is never obscured. It is only obscured by our believing it to be so. And our believing it to be so, makes it seem so.

At every moment, the knowledge that awareness is the sole background and substance of experience is available, just as the knowledge that, in fact, we are watching only the screen is always available.

Nothing needs to be done to effect this change other than the clear seeing that it is always already the case. However, whatever it is that needs to be done to effect this clear seeing, needs to be done. What ‘needs to be done’ is called the search for happiness and it is inherent in the belief that we are a separate entity travelling in time and space.

As soon as we notice the screen, we cease to feel that we are located in the car travelling at great speed and in constant danger.

Similarly, as soon as we reclaim our true identity as awareness, which simply means to notice what we always already only ever are, we cease to think and feel that we are a separate entity that was born and will die, that travels through the waking state, that enters a dream state and then falls asleep.

We no longer feel that we are an entity that is doing, choosing, feeling, thinking, becoming, suffering, enjoying, achieving, sensing, perceiving, growing old, dying etc., etc. Above all, we no longer think and feel that we are an entity that is located in time and space, moving through life from beginning to end.

We realise instead that we are this ever-present, substantial, homogeneous, unmoving, unchanging presence. We think and feel that we are present, or rather, presence itself, not located in time and space, but rather here and now. Not ‘here’ a place and ‘now’ a time, but rather this dimensionless ever-presence.

It becomes clear that mind and matter are not the essential ingredients of experience. Likewise, that time and space are not the ultimate container in which our lives take place. Mind, matter, time and space are all part of the image. But the image is made out of awareness. Awareness is the true dimensionless container of all our experience.

We could say that entities, objects, people, events move through us but even this is not true. There are no entities, objects, people, events, just as there is no car tearing across the screen.

There is only the screen appearing as the cars, buildings, houses and people. Likewise there is only our self, aware presence, immobile and unmovable, unchanging and unchangeable, made out of nothing but itself, taking the shape of all that appears without ever being or becoming anything other than what it eternally is.

In fact, experience doesn’t take place in awareness. Experience is awareness. Awareness is the substance of itself alone. It is its own content.

Our self, awareness, never goes anywhere or does anything. This becomes the felt and lived reality of our lives. It is pure peace. Awareness stands silent and immobile, unmoving, unchanging. We are the presence from which every object derives its apparent existence.

As the dervish, who has been turning around and around, suddenly feels still and silent and sees clearly that it is rather the world and all others that are turning around him, so we feel that we are one solid block of silent awareness, shining in its own light as every minute detail and gesture of life and experience.

Everything is intimately one with our self. Everything is intimately our self. No event is greater or smaller than any other event. Nothing is more or less significant than anything else. Nothing is more or less intimate than anything else. Greatness and smallness, significance and insignificance, are for the mind, not for awareness.

For awareness, a falling leaf is no greater or smaller an event than an earthquake, just as a falling leaf or an earthquake in a film is of no greater or lesser importance to the screen. Neither is of any importance to the screen.

That does not mean there will not be an appropriate response to each event, perhaps a smile in one case, perhaps intense action in another. However, both are equally the shape that awareness takes. Both reveal awareness in equal measure.

When we wake up in the world as a person, we truly fall asleep. When we forget our self, the peace, happiness and freedom that are inherent within our self, are seemingly veiled. We seem, as a result, to become a person who enjoys and suffers, and the world seems to acquire its own reality and becomes an abode of pleasure and pain.

Likewise, when we return to our self, which we have never in reality for a moment left, when we awake to our self, the person and the world fall asleep. They disappear, as such.

We stand eternally motionless and silent, watching ourselves taking the shape of every minute detail of life, utterly and intimately one, fully giving our substance in love to every appearance.

We Never Lose a Friend

All apparently objective experience is made of mind, that is, mind in the broadest sense of the word, to include all thinking, imagining, sensing and perceiving.

All we know of objects, others or the world comes through mind, that is through thinking, imagining, sensing, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

All these qualities belong to the mind. We have no evidence or experience of objects, others or the world apart from or outside of mind.

Nothing objective remains of the current experience if we remove the mind from it.

Where does the mind appear? In awareness. And what is the mind made out of? The awareness in which it appears. There is nothing else present out of which it could be made.

It is not even quite right to say that the mind appears in awareness, because this gives the impression that the mind appears in awareness as a piece of furniture appears in the space of a room.

A piece of furniture is something new that is brought into the room from outside and it is made, relatively speaking, out of something other than the space of the room.

However, the mind, that is, thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions, is not brought in from outside. Where is there, in our experience, that is outside awareness, from where the mind could appear?

Prior to the appearance of mind there is only awareness. When the mind (including all thoughts, images, our body, objects, others and the world) appears, the only substance present, out of which it can be made, is awareness.

However, if the mind is made out of that which is already present prior to its appearance, nothing new can be said to have appeared when the mind appears. How do we even know the mind appears? Who says so? Only the mind.

There is only awareness prior to mind. There is only awareness during the appearance of mind and there is only awareness when the mind subsides.

However, that also is only relatively true. We have already seen that time is utterly non-existent as an actual experience. Where then is ‘prior’, ‘during’ and ‘after’? In other words, where is the time ‘before’, ‘during’ or ‘after’ this current experience? Only in the current thought.

Likewise, when the mind changes, for instance when one situation disappears and another appears, awareness remains present and unchanged throughout.

There is only awareness prior to the first situation, during its appearance, during the second situation, after it disappears and so on, throughout all situations ad infinitum.

Again, that is only relatively true—it is said to establish the presence and primacy of awareness. It is truer than the conventional formulations of experience that imply the absolute reality of time and space but, upon further investigation, it is found to be not completely true.

There is ‘always’ only awareness. Not ‘always’ in time but rather ‘ever-present now’. There is no other substance present in any situation.

If we take our stand in or as the body there seem to be a multiplicity of objects, people, places, situations and events. If we take our stand in or as mind there seem to be a multiplicity of ideas and feelings.

However, if we take our stand as awareness, which is, in fact, where we always stand whether we know it or not, there is always only one substantial, ever-present, homogeneous, immovable, immutable reality.

Nothing comes or goes. Nothing moves or changes. Nothing is ever lost. Awareness is prior to and within all seeming things.

In fact, there are no things nor any place or time, past, present or future, in which apparent things can exist. There is only awareness itself.

If we take our stand knowingly as awareness then we see clearly that all we could ever be, become or achieve is already fully present ‘at every moment’. It is ever-present.

All that ever happens is made only of awareness and awareness is ever-present. The question of being, becoming or achieving anything other than awareness is not a possibility. In fact nothing—no thing—truly ever ‘exists’ or ‘happens’.

With this understanding the question of purpose or meaning in life loses its validity.

In order to conceive of meaning or purpose we must first imagine ourselves to be separate and independent from awareness. Meaning and purpose are only for that imagined one. And, of course, that one is only a real entity from its own imagined point of view.

Awareness is already all it could ever be. It cannot become anything else, nor can it cease to be what it always is.

However, if we take our stand in or as the mind, there will always be purpose, meaning, becoming and achieving.

As a concession to this point of view it could be said that the highest purpose and meaning is to come to this experiential understanding of the seamless intimacy of life.

There are not two things. There is only awareness. There is nothing for it to be or become that it is not already.

Experience consists of only one substance and this substance is always fully present, fully known. It cannot not be known. It is the knowing of itself alone. It cannot know anything other than itself.

Even in ignorance, that is, in the apparent ignoring of the true nature of experience, there is nothing other than awareness knowing itself. Therefore, there is no real ignorance.

Purpose and meaning always need an other, a future, a process. But awareness is all there is. Things move and change only from the point of view of the mind. And the mind is only real from the point of view of the mind.

From the point of view of awareness nothing moves or changes. In fact nothing—no thing—is. “All things seem but cannot be.” There is only awareness, our self, presence.

There is no question of doing or not doing, of achieving or not achieving. Awareness is the only substance present in experience. Where could it go? What could it become? Into what could it disappear? Out of what could it arise?

In order to speak of coming and going, appearing and disappearing, doing or not doing, achieving or not achieving, bondage or liberation, we must first imagine ourselves to be something other than awareness, that is, we must first imagine ourselves to be a body and/or a mind.

Nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing is born or dies, nothing appears or disappears. It is only the mind that claims all these things, but the mind itself is made only out of the immovable, changeless, birthless, deathless presence of awareness.

If we take our stand in or as the mind, we seem to become separate entities, moving, changing, growing, becoming, appearing, disappearing, enjoying, suffering, searching, finding, being born and dying.

If we take our stand knowingly as awareness, we know our self as the one immutable, substantial reality in all experience, ever-present, consistent, homogeneous, without beginning or end.

That which is present when we are face to face with a loved one is only this presence. Their image, sound, touch, taste or smell is made only of this presence. When our loved one dies or leaves, this presence remains as it always is, fully present.

Whether we remember them or not, that out of which they were made when they were present with us is still ‘here’, still staring itself in the face.

This presence is the substance of all relationship. In fact, it is the absence of relationship. There are not two things, two people, to be related to each other. There is only knowing in identity.

There is only presence knowing itself from moment to moment. It is known as Love. We never lose a friend.

Abiding Knowingly as Presence

Q: What effect does this understanding have on our everyday lives and in what way does it contribute to humanity?

A very profound effect! If we think and feel that we are a limited, separate entity, this fundamental belief will dictate most of our thoughts, feelings, relationships and activities.

If we look at all the problems facing individuals, couples, families, institutions, communities, races and nations, there seem to be innumerable causes for each problem. On a relative level this may be true but, if we trace back the causes of all psychological conflict and suffering to their essential origin, we always end up with the core belief in the existence of a separate entity endowed with freewill, choice, freedom, etc., moving around in a world of time and space.

Just as the belief in and, more importantly, the feeling of being a separate entity in a separate, outside world is the single fundamental cause for psychological conflict and suffering, so the experiential understanding of the true nature of our identity is its remedy.

Prior to this understanding most of our thinking, feeling, acting and relating revolves around the central belief that what we are is a limited, personal consciousness born into a body, evolving through time and space and destined for death.

A life based on such a belief is one of an almost constant search for peace, happiness and love, punctuated by moments of rest and fulfilment. After these moments of brief respite, the old habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a separate entity reappear and the apparent entity is again propelled into a search for objects that will supposedly fulfil the sense of lack and allay the sense of fear that are inherent within it.

However, with the clear seeing or understanding that the awareness we know ourselves to be is impersonal, unlimited and ever-present and is not only the witness but also simultaneously the substance of all experience, the belief in being a separate entity and all its attendant thoughts, feelings and activities slowly, in most cases, die down.

As a result of this, the agitation at the level of the mind, and the tensions in the body that depended for their existence on the belief that what we are is a limited separate entity, dissipate.

All the other thoughts, feelings and activities that were characteristic of a particular body and mind tend to continue. However, now that the body and the mind are no longer labouring under the dominion of a demanding, fearful entity, their energies are liberated and made available to express, share, communicate and celebrate the love and intelligence that are inherent in this new understanding.

How this sharing takes place will vary enormously from one body/mind to another but the essential communication will always be the same: loving, friendly, creative, enjoyable, enthusiastic.

All psychological problems rely on the apparent presence of the separate entity, so when this entity is seen to be non-existent all our psychological problems evaporate. There may still be practical problems but these will be dealt with as best as is possible given the prevailing circumstances and will not generate suffering.

Now that we are no longer serving the dictates of an imaginary and tyrannical entity, we may well find that we have a great deal of time and energy on our hands—the separate entity is a voracious, insatiable master!

If we make a deep exploration of our true nature we find that peace, happiness and love are inherent in it. In fact, they are not qualities that are inherent in it. Rather, they are the names we give to awareness when it recognises itself. For this reason, thoughts, feelings and activities that come directly from this experiential understanding, unmediated by an imagined separate entity, tend to express these qualities.

Even if we are simply open to the possibility that awareness is not limited, located and personal, we can explore and experiment with this possibility in our lives.

Go deeply into your experience and establish yourself in the experiential understanding that you are this aware presence, and see from there that is no evidence that this presence is either limited, located or personal.

If there is no evidence that presence is limited, located, personal or temporal, we cannot be sure that the one we are speaking to over the phone, across the checkout counter, in our intimate partner or in our friends is not the same presence that is truly our own self.

We cannot know with the mind whether this is true or not, because the mind has no knowledge of that in which it appears.

However, we can know it in experience. Having lived for so many years under the presumption that awareness is limited and located, try living the opposite possibility. Treat all others and animals as this very presence that you intimately know yourself to be. Allow all your activities and relationships to flow from this understanding.

And having understood that there are no objects—that our only knowledge of objects is perceiving and that perceiving is made out of awareness—treat all apparent objects also as this very presence that you are.

In other words treat everything as yourself and see how the universe responds. After all, the universe appears in conformity with our beliefs.

If we are truly concerned about peace in the world, the highest service we can render that world and our fellow beings is to investigate and explore the reality of our experience, to stand knowingly as that reality and to live a life that flows from that experiential understanding, that is, to live a life that flows from love and understanding.

In time, if we truly take our stand as presence, the belief in the reality of a person, object, other or world gradually, rapidly or, in rare cases, instantaneously, dissolves. We find ourselves spontaneously, effortlessly and peacefully at the heart of experience and the activities of the mind and body naturally express this stance.

If we stand knowingly as presence we see presence everywhere. That is, it experiences only itself. In fact, it is always only experiencing itself but it is now no longer apparently obscured by the convolutions of the dualising mind.

Everything that comes from this experiential understanding delivers it, whether or not it is couched in correct non-dual terms and whether or not it even tries to express it in words.

Presence Breathes Out the World

Presence never moves, does or becomes anything other than itself. If we take our stand as aware presence, knowingly, we truly feel that we do nothing and go nowhere. All doing and going are for the mind alone.

For presence, which simply means in our actual experience, there is no time, just timeless presence in the same placeless place, the ever-present timeless now. But it is not aloof, remote, static, because it gives itself intimately and utterly to every appearance of the mind, the body and the world.

A character in a film may grow up, get a job, have a family, travel the world, grow old and die, but the screen doesn’t do any of these things. The screen is the entire substance of the character’s life, and yet at the same time it always remains itself without moving, doing or becoming anything.

When we take our stand as presence we know ourselves as the reality of all experience, the ‘I’ in all seeming people and the ‘it’ of all seeming things.

We do not think or feel that we are a person thinking, feeling, doing, choosing etc., going towards the truth or away from it. We have taken our stand as presence and understand and feel that the mind, including all thinking, sensing and perceiving, proceeds from and unfolds within our self.

It is like breathing in and out. As presence breathes out, as it were, it creates the appearance of mind within itself, made only out of itself, and the mind contains or, rather is, all images, thoughts, sensations and perceptions. As presence breathes in, it folds the appearance of mind back up within itself.

At no stage does presence ever forget that it is itself. It never goes out of itself. It never truly confers its own reality upon an object, and yet it is its own reality that gives apparent existence—apparent standing-out-as-an-object-ness—to all seeming things.

The apparent forgetting of presence is only as real as the actor who seemingly forgets himself in order to play the role of Hamlet.

Presence remains itself, abiding in and as itself. It is ever-present, at home within itself, as itself.

The particular character of each perception no longer has the power to deceive the mind into thinking that presence is anything other than itself, and therefore no longer has the power to veil the peace and happiness that are inherent within it.

The mind can no longer be persuaded into thinking that presence is an object, entity or world. In fact, it cannot be persuaded that anything is an object of any kind. Nothing can take Presence away from itself. Where would it go? Where could it go?

Nothing need be resisted or feared any longer because it is seen clearly that nothing could ever have or indeed did ever have the power to rob presence of itself. The fear of being diminished or of disappearing, and the need or desire to be aggrandised in any way, dissolve. The natural condition of peace, happiness and freedom is revealed.

It is seen that nothing can threaten or harm presence, so the subtle rejection of the current situation that characterises the separate entity disappears, and with the disappearance of the ‘No’ we find a ‘Yes’ within ourselves that is intimately, unreservedly present at the heart of all experience.

This ‘Yes’ is love.

Devotion

Q: Is there a place for bhakti or devotion in this approach?

To be truly devoted means to give our whole self to the object of our devotion at all times. Therefore, the only object worthy or even available for such devotion or love must be something that is always present, for we cannot give ourselves completely to something that is intermittent.

Therefore, there are no true objects of devotion because all objects are intermittent. Only awareness is ever-present and, therefore, only awareness merits true devotion. And what could give awareness this devotion? Obviously an intermittent object such as a body or a mind cannot render devotion to something that is present when it is not. Therefore, only awareness is able to impart this devotion to itself.

So, it is only awareness that can be truly loved and it is only awareness that can truly love. However, awareness does not love and is not loved. It is love.

So, the highest form of love or devotion is simply to abide as awareness, knowingly. Any other sort of devotion would be the devotion of an imagined entity towards an imagined object.

However, the imagined entity that looks for a direction in which to turn and for something to turn towards, does not realise that the ‘attention’ it is ‘using’ for this purpose is already the consciousness that it seeks. It is like a current of water searching the ocean for water.

“Lord, Thou art the love with which I love Thee.”

Every object or direction which appears as a possible recipient of the mind’s devotion is an object that it has created within itself and cannot therefore be the true object of its devotion. Any object is simply more mind.

As the mind searches for a direction in which to turn, it is, without knowing it to begin with, tracing itself back to its source.

Finally, having explored all directions, it comes to a dead end. It comes to the knowledge that there is no known direction in which it can turn nor is there an object worthy of true devotion. In short, the mind cannot know what devotion is.

With this understanding the mind falls silent, which means it dissolves, and what is revealed is devotion.

Devotion is what we are, not something we do.

The investigation within the mind for the true object of devotion is sometimes known as self-enquiry. It is a concession to the mind that thinks it has the capacity to direct its attention at will towards an object.

However, this is not a process of the mind going towards its source, although it may appear to be so to begin with. It is rather, the dissolution of the apparent mind in its source. How could a mind go towards awareness? In what direction would it go?

Only something that is not the source could dissolve in its source, so the idea of the dissolution of the mind in its source is part and parcel of the mind’s belief that it is something other than its source. In other words, the idea of a source from which something emerges is a dualistic idea which itself ‘dissolves’ upon understanding that there is no independent entity, mind or object.

It is rather the source itself, awareness, which gradually reclaims the mind.

In taking the shape of mind, awareness appears to become something other than itself. It appears to become separate, other and outside. At the end of every perception, awareness folds the mind back up within itself and, as a result, ceases the apparent veiling of itself with its own creativity.

However, even that formulation is not quite right: the mind has no other substance other than awareness, so there is nothing there to be dissolved.

When an image that seems to veil the screen fades, leaving only the screen in view, does the image really dissolve?

The image is only made of screen and the screen does not dissolve. However, by seeming to become something other than itself (the landscape), the screen seems to become hidden and the subsequent fading of the image seems to reveal the screen.

Likewise, the mind is an appearance within awareness, made only of awareness, but has the capacity to appear to veil the awareness out of which it is made.

In self-enquiry the mind fades like the image on the screen, leaving only the background of awareness in plain view.

It is not the mind that undertakes this process, any more than it is the image in the landscape that is responsible for its own dissolution. The mind does nothing. The mind is not an independent entity with the capacity to do or not to do anything.

In fact, it was always only awareness that was in plain view, simultaneously the background and the foreground.

The Arch Impersonator

The ‘I’ thought is like a filler that the mind comes to rest upon when it is not occupied with creative, loving, enquiring or practical thoughts.

As soon as these creative, loving, enquiring or practical thoughts are finished, the mind creates a pseudo self, a pseudo doer, a thinker, a feeler, who claims the credit for the previous activities.

This imagined separate self becomes the default position for the mind, like the screen saver on the computer screen, which is there to obscure the apparent dullness of the blank screen when no other documents are open. The screen is considered to be dull only from the point of view of the images, because it is the complete absence of everything that it knows, that is, the complete absence of objects.

However, the screen in itself is not an absence. It is presence. In fact, it is the sole substance of the apparent images. It is an absence only from the point of view of the mind.

Likewise, from the point of view of the mind, which knows only apparent objects, awareness is a boring nothingness. It does not know and cannot know that awareness is, in fact, its own substance. To avoid this apparent nothingness of awareness, the mind creates a pseudo presence, a pseudo identity, the separate inside self, which impersonates the true presence of awareness.

This pseudo self gives the mind something to be busy with in between other thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions. This pseudo self seems to become the background of our experience, apparently always present, running between and within all other perceptions. It is the arch impersonator.

As our exploration of the nature of experience deepens, it becomes more and more obvious that the pseudo self is not the permanent background of experience but that it is rather one of the innumerable changing faces of experience itself. It is seen clearly that the screen saver is not the background and substance of all the documents, but is simply another document or image.

At this stage the apparently inside self is understood to be an object rather than the subject of experience and, as a result, it ceases to be the default position of the mind, in between all other thoughts and images. It is understood to be simply another thought or image.

The screen saver, which was created to prevent the apparent dullness of the screen ever having to be experienced, is removed and as a result the screen itself becomes visible.

This is the moment of awareness recognising its own being and no longer seeming to veil itself with the mind. It is the cessation of ignorance, the cessation of awareness’ apparent ignoring of itself.

This timeless moment is the recognition that awareness is not a blank emptiness, not a nothingness as the mind had previously conceived it to be, but rather the fullness out of which the apparent fullness of the mind is made.

In fact, from this perspective it is the separate inside self that is truly empty, a nothingness, a non-existent thing.

The default position now becomes the screen itself, not the screen saver. That is, our default position becomes awareness itself, rather than the separate self. And it becomes more and more natural for the mind simply to come to rest in its own source rather than manufacture a separate inside self in between its activities of thinking, sensing and perceiving.

The Apparent Forgetting of Our Own Being

Q: The question of choice and personal doership in this exploration of experience arises frequently. I’m struggling with the conflict between myself as the doer versus the non-doer.

Our apparently objective experience comprises thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions.

Only one object can appear at a time, so it would be more accurate to say that at any moment there is one thought/image/sensation/ perception present. See clearly that there is only ever one appearance present at a time, just as there is only ever one image present on a TV screen at a time.

It is thinking alone that splits the current experience into a multiplicity of objects, such as words, hands, table, walls, sky, etc, just as it is thinking that imagines the single TV screen to comprise houses, people, cars, the street etc. However, in our actual experience there is only ever ‘one thing’ appearing at any moment. Later it will be seen that, in fact, there isn’t even one ‘thing’ present; there is only presence, present to itself.

This ‘one thing’ that seems to be present is a seamless whole just as the image on the screen is a seamless whole. It is only thinking that draws imaginary lines around parts of the image to create an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects.

Now take the current appearance, this current experience, and see that the entire appearance is permeated with the awareness that knows it, just as the entire image on the screen is permeated by the screen on which it appears.

In other words, see that awareness does not permeate one part of the current appearance any more than another part, just as the screen does not permeate one part of the image that appears on it any more than another part.

Everything is equally permeated by and saturated with awareness. In fact, there are no separate parts in experience, any of which could be more or less permeated by awareness. There is just one seamless whole, just as there is only one seamless, indivisible image on the screen.

No apparent part of experience is any closer to or further away from awareness than another. In fact, there are no parts to experience that could be at varying distances from awareness.

When anything appears it is so utterly and intimately one with the awareness that knows it that there is not the slightest room for any distance or separation from it. In fact, there is not even an object, other or world, as such, there to begin with that could subsequently be divided in parts.

It is thought that rises up and imagines that awareness does not equally and intimately pervade all experience. This thought veils the presence of awareness and, as a result, divides experience into two parts—one part, the body and mind, that is considered to be permeated by awareness and becomes, as a result, the separate inside self, and another that is considered not to be pervaded by awareness and becomes, as a result, the separate outside object or world.

With this thought the reality of awareness is no longer felt and understood to be the essence of all experience—both our self and the world—but is considered to be the reality of only our self.

Thought now imagines that this separate inside self, which is an illusory thought-and-feeling-made self, is autonomous. It becomes the knower, feeler, perceiver and doer.

It is this imaginary self that now has to invent a reality that belongs to the world. In other words, the separate existence of the world, that has its own independent reality apart from awareness, is only considered true and real from the imaginary point of view of the separate inside self.

In other words, objective reality is created by the subjective self.

And having created an apparently real world (by forgetting the true and only reality of awareness), it is thought again that divides up this world of its own making into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of parts, one of them being the separate inside self.

Having imagined a separate inside self and a separate outside world of objects and others, thought then locates this separate inside self at the centre of experience and positions all apparent objects and others at varying distances from it, some close and others far.

Hence time, space, objects and causality are all apparently created in thought.

However, it is a thought alone that first imagines a world made of parts and then decrees that some parts are permeated by awareness and others are not.

It is as if the screen were to say, if it could speak, that some parts of the image are one with the screen and others are not. But what exactly would those parts of the image that do not appear on the screen appear on?

And what exactly would those parts be made out of if they were separate from the screen? What other substance is present there, in the image, apart from the screen, out of which such a separate part could be made?

That part of the seamless totality of experience that thought considers to be permeated by awareness is called ‘me,’ and that part of the totality that is considered by thought not to be permeated by awareness is called ‘not me.’

That part of the totality that is considered to be ‘me’ is the thinking, feeling and sensing part, that is, the mind and body. And that part of the totality that is considered to be ‘not me’ is the perceived part, that is, objects, others and the world.

It is as if the screen were to think that it, the screen, is only present in one little part of the image that is appearing on it, just one little person, but not all the rest, not the others, the trees, the fields, the sky, the cars, the buildings... etc.

In other words, the apparently separate entity and the apparently separate world are simultaneously co-created in thought by an imaginary division of the seamless intimacy of experience.

Now what relation does all this have to the question about ‘the conflict between me as the doer vs. the non-doer’?

The doer and, while we are talking about it, the thinker, the feeler, the chooser, the lover, the decider, the enjoyer, the sufferer etc., etc., is considered to be this little separate entity that thought has artificially created within, and divided from, the totality.

This doer is not an entity. It has no separate reality of its own. It is simply the thought that has exclusively associated our self, awareness, with a little cluster of sensations.

However, our experience is one seamless whole. It is not comprised of separate parts, one part acting on another, one part giving and the other receiving, one loving and the other loved, one part dictating and the other part dictated to.

So, ‘the conflict between me as the doer versus the non-doer’ is an artificial one. It can never be resolved at the level on which it appears because the entities around which it revolves are non-existent. There are no selves, entities, parts, objects or others, as such, anywhere to be found in experience.

There is simply experiencing—thinking, sensing and perceiving—whose entire substance is made out of the awareness that knows it.

And when there is no thinking, sensing and perceiving, the essence of experiencing remains as it always is, awareness simply being/knowing/loving itself.

In other words, thinking, sensing and perceiving appears in awareness as a current appears in the ocean, a modulation, as it were, of its own substance.

However, from the point of view of the separate inside self, experiencing comprises many things—people, cars, buildings, houses, trees etc.—but from the point of view of awareness, which is, in fact, just the point of view of our own experience, there is just ‘one thing’.

And what is that ‘one thing?’ It is itself! Awareness doesn’t see or know objects, others, the world, as such. It sees or knows only the pure, nameless, intimacy of experiencing. That is, it knows itself alone.

Only an imaginary inside self knows an imaginary outside object, other or world. Awareness knows no such thing.

To know an object is to seemingly not know awareness and to know awareness, that is, in awareness’ knowing of itself, no object is known.

It is only thinking that apparently knows objects, others, the world. However, thought’s point of view is an imaginary one. Thought only has a legitimate point of view from its own illusory point of view. It is like one part of the image on the screen having a point of view.

Therefore, there is only one legitimate point of view, which is not a point of view, because it is not viewing the whole from any particular vantage point. It is the whole already. Being itself is the way it knows itself. It doesn’t know itself in subject-object relationship.

In fact, it doesn’t know itself in relationship. It knows itself in love, which is the collapse or absence of all separation and relatedness.

So, how is it possible for thinking to imagine its illusory point of view? It first has to deny or forget the existence of awareness. Or, to be more accurate, thinking rises up and seems to obscure the awareness in which it appears, just as the three-dimensional image seems to veil the two-dimensional screen.

The moment thinking does this, the reality of experience, awareness simultaneously being, knowing and loving itself, is seemingly forgotten and, as a result, an imaginary reality made out of something other than awareness, called ‘matter,’ can be imagined.

‘Objects’, ‘others’ and the ‘world’ are simply the names and forms that thinking gives to the apparent forgetting of our own being, awareness.

And conversely, as soon as awareness remembers or recognises itself, so to speak, by ceasing to arise as the dualising thought that appears to obscure its own reality from itself, the apparent objectivity or otherness of the world and the apparent subjectivity of the self collapse, and experience is known for what it truly is, pure awareness alone. It recognises itself.

That recognition is the experience of peace, happiness, beauty or love.

The Natural State of Openness and Transparency

Q: I am noticing now that there seems to be an egoic backlash happening since ‘seeing’ happened—lots of emotional pain coming up, things hurting that haven’t hurt for a long time, lots of anger, fear, everything uncomfortable. It feels like there is a wrestling match going on inside. How is that possible?

That is a very good sign! This egoic backlash that you describe is to be expected (in some cases) and welcomed.

Imagine a deep, dark well in whose depths a number of creatures live in a state of slumber. At noon every day, when the sun is directly above the well, these creatures wake briefly and rise to the surface towards the light. As the sun passes, darkness again fills the well and the creatures return to their previous slumber at the bottom.

The sun, in this metaphor, is our self, aware presence. The well is the apparent person and the creatures are all the dark, uncomfortable feelings that you describe.

Under normal circumstances, much of our thinking and activity is undertaken in order to avoid having to feel these dark, difficult feelings. However, as we begin to take our stand as aware presence, these habitual strategies of denial and avoidance are revealed. Hence your description of emotional pain that been buried for a long time, coming to the surface.

As we take our stand as aware presence we find that we no longer have any agenda with the mind, body or world. For this reason these dark feelings are now free to surface unsuppressed and to be fully felt.

These feelings are the old residues of ignorance at the level of the body. They are habits of feeling that result from our old identification with the body, that is, from taking ourselves to be a limited entity. Although it takes a moment to see that we are the clear space of aware presence, it takes time for the body and the mind to become realigned with this experiential understanding.

If we subscribe to these feelings we immediately seem to become an apparent person again. However, we should not resist them with will power or discipline. In fact, these feelings want us to get busy with them, avoiding them, getting rid of them, suppressing them or attending to them in one way or another, because it is precisely this activity of avoidance that keeps them alive.

There is only one thing these feelings cannot stand and that is being clearly seen for what they are.

Having understood this, there is no need to be moved by them. Welcome them lovingly into yourself. Allow them to arise, to display themselves fully, to recount their old story and to vanish in their own time. Remain knowingly your self, aware presence, throughout.

These feelings rely on our having an agenda with them. Every time they are met with our welcoming openness, as opposed to our resistance, we rob them of their power. That is, we rob them of their apparent power to veil our being, aware presence. In time their ferocity will diminish because they are based on an old story that is no longer believed—the old story of a separate self.

However, it is important to be sure that there is no agenda with them, that we are not welcoming them in order to get rid of them. The feelings you describe thrive on this kind of subtle agenda.

Once it has been clearly seen that the separate self around whom these feelings revolve is utterly non-existent, their heart has, as it were, been removed. Only waves of innocuous bodily sensations remain.

In due course, those feelings that were dependent for their existence upon the belief in a separate self will die down. They die of clear seeing and neglect.

Once the mind and body are no longer presided over by the apparent separate self, they gradually return to their natural state of openness, transparency, sensitivity, availability and love.

Our True Security

Q: In exploring our direct experience, I often wonder how much we can trust it. When one sees a mirage in a desert, if not aware of such a phenomenon, one would consider it to be real. Similarly, are we not limited by the human senses and consciousness in our discovery of truth? I know that is all we have but wonder to what extent we can use it and base our conclusions on it.

You are quite right to suggest that nothing that appears within the mind, the body or the world can be completely trusted or relied upon. However, consciousness and being are absolutely certain.

It is helpful to understand clearly why this is so, by going through the process from which we derive this understanding, because such an understanding would prevent us from ever putting our trust in the wrong place again.

You give the example of the mirage in the desert. Another example is the dream state. During a dream, our experience seems to have the same reality as that of our waking state. However, upon waking we discover that its apparent reality was illusory.

How then, as you imply, do we know that the current experience of the mind, body and world are not also illusory? We don’t! So what then can we be absolutely certain of?

In order to answer this question we have to first understand what it is that qualifies an experience as being illusory. How do we know that the water in the desert or the buildings in the dream are not real? It is the fact that when we go towards these objects or experiences and try to find them or touch them, they are not there. They have disappeared. The substance out of which we thought they were made (‘mind’ in the case of the dream and ‘matter’ in the case of the water) is not present.

In fact, even if we go towards the apparent reality of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ in the waking state, we do not find them.

If ‘disappearance’ is the criterion by which we qualify something as being unreal, then presence without disappearance must be the criteria by which we qualify something as being real.

Whatever it is that is truly present and therefore real, in any experience, cannot disappear, because that into which it would disappear (which must also be present in every experience in order for the experience to disappear into it) would be more real than it.

Therefore, everything that appears and disappears must have a background or a support on which to appear, which is at the same time more real than and inseparable from every appearance. For instance, the screen doesn’t disappear when the image disappears and in that sense it is more real than the image.

Likewise, whatever it is that is real in every experience cannot change, in the sense that water is ‘more real’ than its changing forms of ice or steam. A simple look at our experience tells us this. The reality of experience is ever-present, although the apparently changing forms of experience are always disappearing.

Likewise, whatever is real in any experience cannot appear or be born because that from which it would appear or be born (which must also be present and inseparable from it at the time of its birth) would be more real than it, in the sense that gold is ‘more real’ than an ornament.

Similarly, whatever is real in our experience must know or illumine itself, for if it was known or illumined by something other than itself, that ‘something’ (which would have to be present at the same time as the experience that was known or illumined) would be more real than itself.

Therefore, whatever is truly real and present in our experience must be without appearance or disappearance. It must be changeless, that is, it must be ever-present. It must know itself and be its own cause.

So, we can now simplify our question and ask, is there anything in our experience that is ever-present, changeless, self-illuminating, self-knowing and self-causing?

And the answer is yes, our own being, aware presence or consciousness. Our self is the reality that runs unchanging throughout all experience.

Only this ever-present, changeless and aware self can be absolutely trustworthy. An intermittent object cannot, by definition, be worthy of absolute trust, because on what would we place our trust when it was absent?

Trust or hold onto that self or aware presence alone. However, what could hold onto that? Obviously an intermittent object, such as a personal self, cannot hold onto the ever-present reality of our experience. So, an apparent separate self cannot hold onto aware presence.

Aware presence alone can ‘hold onto’ itself. It is all that is present ‘there’ throughout its own ever-presence. However, it is already itself, so there is no need for it to make an effort to hold onto itself. Aware presence cannot lose itself. It cannot ‘not be’ itself.

Therefore, in order to know that element of our experience that is worthy of trust, all that is needed is to abide as the aware presence that we always already are.

This simple knowing of our own being is the irreducible and indestructible reality of our experience.

That is the only certainty, our true security.

The Recognition of Being

Q: Is thinking a barrier to the realization of one’s true nature?

It is not necessary to be without thought, because what we are is present both when thoughts are appearing and when they are not. Think of thoughts just as you think of the changing weather—they make no difference to your self at all. Just let them float by while you remain your self.

Changing or getting rid of thoughts makes no difference to our self, just as the changing weather makes no difference to you sitting peacefully on the sofa. Our self, aware presence, is always sitting peacefully on its sofa!

Is the self that is to be known different from the self that knows? No! All that is required for the self to be known is the presence of the one self that we already and always are. This self is prior to thought. It knows thought. It is knowing or experiencing these words. No alteration of the mind, just as no alteration in the weather, could make any difference to knowing or being our self.

However, one does not need to think in order to be or know oneself. At best thinking can take thinking to its own end. Thinking can explore and discover that not only it has no knowledge of the fundamental reality of experience but also that it cannot have any such knowledge. ‘I know that I know nothing’ is the best that thought can do!

However, in order to come to this understanding (if this understanding is really true of us and has not simply been adopted as just one more belief), we must first taste the non-objective and timeless experience of our self knowing its own being.

In other words, the line of thinking that culminates in the end of the seeking thought comes from the experience of our true nature. It does not go towards it.

With this understanding the seeking thought comes naturally and effortlessly to an end, not as a result of discipline, effort, suppression, denial or belief, but rather through understanding. There is simply nowhere else for it to go. It just lies down quietly.

So, again, it is the timeless, non-objective experience of the simple knowing of our own being—its knowing of itself—that dissolves thought, not thought that leads to the knowing of our own being.

However, whether or not this cessation of thought takes place, see clearly that you are the knowing or experiencing presence that runs unchanging throughout all appearances of the mind, body and world.

Q: I’ve been operating according to the idea that it is almost impossible to let go of mental patterns that operate unconsciously and that I have to know such a pattern of thinking first in order to let go of it and abide in my true nature.

Leave all those mental habits and patterns alone. The self that is apparently operating, that seems to know these patterns and that would ‘let go of them’ is itself simply one such pattern.

These patterns of thinking and feeling have taken their shape, over the years, from the belief that we are a separate self, without our making any particular effort. In just the same way, as our experiential conviction that we are not a limited, located self deepens, so our thoughts, feelings and subsequent behaviour will slowly, effortlessly and naturally realign themselves with this new understanding.

In order to know our self we do not need to know the mind. No other knowledge than the knowledge that is present right now in this very moment is required to know our self.

What does it mean to know our self? We are our self, so we are too close to our self to be able to know our self as an object. Our simply being our self is as close to knowing our self as we will ever come. We cannot get closer than that. In fact, being our self is the knowing of our self, but it is not the knowing of our self as an object.

To say ‘I am’, (in other words to assert that we are present), we must know that ‘I am’. Being and knowing are, in fact, one single non-objective experience. But we do not step outside of our self in order to know our own being. We simply are our self. That being of our self is the knowing of our self. This being/knowing is shining in all experience.

This experiential understanding dissolves the idea that our self is not present here and now and that it is not known here and now.

And when our desire to know or find ourselves as an object is withdrawn, we discover that our own self was and is present all along, shining quietly in the background, as it were, of all experience. As this becomes obvious we discover that it is not just the background but also the foreground. In other words, it is not just the witness but simultaneously the substance of all experience.

Completely relax the desire to find yourself as an object or to change your experience in any way. Relax into this present knowing of your own being. See that it is intimate, familiar and loving. See clearly that it is never not with you. It is shining here in this experience, knowing and loving its own being. It runs throughout all experience, closer than close, intimately one with all experience but untouched by it.

As this intimate oneness, it is known as love. In its untouchable-ness it is known as peace and in its fullness it is known as happiness. In its openness and willingness to give itself to any possible shape (including the apparent veiling of its own being), it is known as freedom and, as the substance of all things, it is known as beauty.

However, more simply it is known just as ‘I’ or ‘this’.

Who Is?

Q: All these questions about consciousness and the replies given about self-enquiry etc., along with everything else, are all just consciousness either knowingly or unknowingly expressing itself. It all seems so incredibly circular. Could you comment on this please?

It is only circular for the one who believes him or herself to be something other than consciousness and that one is a thought-made entity. It is an imaginary inside self. Consciousness is always in the same place, the placeless place of our own being.

Everything is made of our self, consciousness. That is easy to check in our own experience. Just ask yourself if you have ever experienced or could ever experience anything outside consciousness. Likewise ask yourself if we know or could know anything other than our knowing of experience. In other words, all we know, is knowing. And what is knowing made of? Only awareness or consciousness, that is, only our self.

And what is it that knows knowing? Only knowing! It knows itself. Therefore it is our simple, direct and intimate experience that all that is ever known is consciousness knowing and being itself, and because there is not the least trace of separation, distance or otherness in this knowing of our own being, it is also known as love.

All there is, is knowing, being and loving, seamlessly one, and that is our self. This knowing, being and loving is modulated through thinking, sensing and perceiving and appears as the diversity and multiplicity of names and forms of the body, mind and world.

Once this seamless oneness of consciousness is apparently divided by thought into separate entities, objects, others and the world, then desires, fears, motives, causes, effects, intentions, progress, achievement, failure etc... the whole personal endeavour... becomes very real.

However, they are only real for the separate inside self that thought imagines, just as the troubles of a character in a film are only real for that imaginary character; they are not real for the screen. They are not even known by the screen. The screen only knows itself; the characters are only real for the imaginary characters.

Likewise consciousness never really knows the separate entities, objects, others and world that thought imagines. It only knows itself.

Consciousness is already everything it could ever be. It is one seamless homogenous substance that can never be depleted, added to, changed or moved. It gains or loses nothing from the entire human adventure.

From the point of view of the person there is bondage and liberation, veiling and revealing, knowing and not-knowing, etc. But from the point of view of consciousness, there is only knowing, being and loving itself.

Imagine going to sleep at night. We lie down, fall asleep, dream that we leave home, undertake a great adventure that lasts several years and then return. Then we wake up, only to find that we have been lying peacefully on our bed all along. It was a long, strange, circular journey for the one who seemed to be travelling. But for the one lying on the bed, nothing ever happened.

Q: So much of life would seem to be consciousness knowingly or apparently unknowingly doing lots of things, but in these questions and responses we have consciousness getting very close to exposing its own unknowingness. Indeed it would appear to be the desire of some apparent entities (that is, as consciousness unknowingly) to achieve that very exposure and to become fully knowing.

Yes, consciousness takes the shape of a thought that seems to divide its own oneness into an inside self and an outside world. It is this entity, made only of thought, that goes on the great adventure of seeking. The whole adventure of being a person, the whole human adventure, all takes place in the mind. And what is mind made of? Consciousness.

It is the mind, in the shape of the apparently inside self, that sets off ‘into a far country’ outside its own kingdom, away from home. It wanders around, as this apparently inside self in the apparently world, looking for peace in situations, happiness in objects and love in relationships. The whole adventure is created and enacted within the mind.

And while the mind is doing its thing, searching, achieving, failing, hoping, fearing, doing, thinking, choosing etc., consciousness, our self, is just lying peacefully in its bed. That is, it is just abiding in and as itself.

It is true that the mind is ultimately made of consciousness, but it is the mind that takes the adventure, not consciousness. The screen does not undertake the adventure that is enacted in the fi lm, although the film is made only of the screen.

How does the apparently separate self know what to look for on its adventure? It knows what to look for because peace, happiness and love are inherent in its own nature—it never forgets their taste—although they have been veiled by the very activity of the seeking self.

Sometimes we look back with nostalgia and longing for the happiness and freedom of childhood. But that is just an image. This happiness we long for is not far away in time. It lies at the heart of all experience. It is the presence of happiness itself in this very moment that shines in our experience as the longing for a happiness that seems to have been lost. Right there in the longing for happiness is the experience of happiness itself shining through the veil of the separate self.

Peace, happiness and love are inherent in the simple knowing of our own being. They are the simple knowing of our own being, and because the separate entity is ultimately made out of our own being—albeit thinly veiled by the belief and feeling of separation— this peace, happiness and love shine even in the apparent separate self. Our own being of aware presence is never truly eclipsed.

The search for peace, happiness and love is not initiated by the separate self. Even this search is, in fact, our true self, consciousness, shining in and through the apparently separate self. It is the seat of God in us. Sooner or later, consciousness withdraws the projection of the dualising mind (that is, the projection of the apparently inside self and the apparently outside world) back into itself and, at that moment, it tastes its own nature.

Conversations and contemplations such as these are one of the means by which our self, consciousness, withdraws its projection, as it were, and comes to taste itself again. They are expressed through the mind and for this reason they can be tailored to meet the apparently separate self who is also made of mind.

However, their true substance is not made of mind—they are made out of the silence from which they arise—and that is why they sometimes touch the heart of the apparently separate self whose true nature is also made out of this silence.

Their source is this silent presence and it is this presence behind, between and within the words that is recognised. And who recognises this presence? Only presence can recognise itself. Not presence ‘there’ recognising presence ‘here.’ Just presence, the one presence, recognising itself in itself, by itself, as itself, in the timeless, placeless place of its own being.

Is This the Final Understanding?

Q: Nisargadatta said: “For you, you appear in the world. For me, the world appears in me.” This is one of those statements that, if one gets it, it is the end of story. There is nothing further to get.

If this is the end of the story for you, I respect that and what is said here may not be of interest. However, for those who understand from their own experience that the world arises in them and yet still wonder what the reality of this world really is, then there is more that can be said about it.

The formulation ‘The world arises in me’ is true in relation to the previous belief that the world arises or appears at a distance from and outside of our self (and it was probably in that context in which Nisargadatta said it). However, it is not the final understanding.

There is still a subtle dualism in this statement between the world that arises, albeit within myself as awareness, and awareness itself, just as, relatively speaking, there is a distinction between the objects that appear in a room and the space of the room in which they appear.

Further and deeper contemplation of experience reveals that, in fact, objects do not arise or appear within awareness. Where would such an object arise or appear from, out of what would it be made and where would it go when it disappeared?

The ‘world’, as we know it, is simply the belief that there is something other than awareness. However, if we look for such a world, for something that arises or appears, we do not find it.

Our experience, whether or not it is recognised, is always only of one ever-present, homogeneous, changeless substance, that is both aware and present.

This is all we are, all we know and all we love. We, this aware presence, never move, change, go anywhere or do anything. We are always in our own place, this placeless place of our self.

We simply abide as we are and sometimes this abiding seems to be coloured, as it were, by the taste of tea, the sound of conversation, the image of the street and cars, San Francisco airport, the grey of the London sky, the texture of sheets, the image of a dream, the ‘nothingness’ of deep sleep, an email from a friend...

In this placeless place, nothing appears or arises inside of awareness. There is no world, others or objects, as such.

Our self, awareness, is the sole substance of all (but there is no ‘all’) and every apparent thing is our own self modulating itself in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures, smells etc. but always being only itself.

Having seen clearly that there is no world, object or other, as such, we can then ask what then is our self, awareness, this one substance? However, in order to give it a name we have to objectify it even slightly. We make it a ‘some’ thing and as opposed to ‘another’ thing. We are back in duality.

So, when the idea of a separate, independent world collapses, the idea of awareness collapses with it. If there is no object, there cannot be a subject. If there is a subject, there must be an object. So even in the idea of ‘oneness’, duality is implied. ‘Oneness’ is one thing too much.

And then we realise how wise the early masters were. They didn’t name this understanding ‘one’ or ‘oneness’. They just went as far as saying that it is ‘not two’.

The mind simply cannot go further than this. We end in silence. Not a silence that is an absence of sound but one that is prior to the absence or presence of sound or, more broadly speaking, prior to and beyond the body, mind and world. And yet, when the body, mind and world appear it is only the form of this silence that is truly known.

The concept of our self, ‘I’, awareness, is the first to arise and the last to go. There is good reason for this: it is the only ‘thing’ that is ‘real’ and therefore the only thing that truly merits conceptualisation.

In fact, we realise that all names and words are, in fact, the names of awareness, names that seem to qualify it. Tea, sounds, street, cars, airport, sky... all these are the names and forms of awareness, just as in a film, people, houses, trees, fields and sky are simply the names and forms that we give to the screen. They are always only the screen.

Awareness has no name but is called by all names.

So, in some ways, we are back where we started, pure experiencing. Everything is simple again. Questioning and contemplating the nature of reality has done its job. It has come to its own end. We find ourselves back on the streets again, so to speak, deeply at the heart of all experience, as love, free to take the shape of all experience and yet independent of all experience.

That is, we find ourselves as love, freedom and peace itself.

The Dissolution of Thought in Its Own Substance

Q: How does memory work and does it not validate the belief in the continuity of objects and the world?

Let us imagine that last night we had dinner in a restaurant. Take any moment during dinner and call that moment, not the memory of the moment, but the actual experience, perception A. Perception A is followed by countless other perceptions and, eventually, let us say the next morning, an image appears in the mind (let us call it image B) that is an approximate representation of perception A. This is followed by a thought (let us call it thought C) that connects image B to perception A. In other words, thought C says that image B is the memory of perception A.

However, when perception A is present, image B is non-existent and when image B is present, perception A is likewise non-existent. What is the connection between a current experience and a nonexistent one?

Now, let us go back to thought C that imagines a connection between image B and perception A. If we look more closely we find that when thought C is present, neither image B nor perception A are present. Both must already have taken place for thought C to appear.

So, in order to connect these two non-existent experiences together (perception A and image B), thought C imagines ‘a vast container’ in which perception A and image B, along with innumerable other non-existent objects and events, are considered to reside.

This vast container is called ‘mind.’ However, we have no experience of a mind other than the thought that thinks it.

Once the idea of mind as a vast container is considered to represent something that actually exists, thought can have a field day! It can populate this imagined container called ‘mind’ with all sorts of imagined experiences such as time, space, memory, objects, people, birth, death, causality etc.

Only one thing is missing in this picture that would account for our current predicament: having created this imaginary world of time, space, causality etc. in thought, we then have to forget that it is all created simply with the thought that thinks it. In other words, we have to forget that it is imagined and imagine instead that it is real.

So, thought imagines that its very own creation is, in fact, not its very own creation but rather that it exists independent of its being thought about. At that moment imagination seems to become reality and reality itself seems, as a result, to become lost or veiled.

That is, imagination and reality change place. Imagination seems to become reality and reality is, at best, imagined or, worse still, considered non-existent.

This forgetting of the reality of experience is known as ‘ignorance’. It is the ignoring of the direct, immediate and intimate nature of our experience. This ignoring of reality is synonymous with imagining the separate inside self and the separate outside world, that is, the subject and the object.

Once we have forgotten that time, space, entities, objects, causality etc. etc. are imagined, they seem to become very real and we, the imaginary people that appear as the result of this forgetting, seem to reap the inevitable consequences of this forgetting.

However, having forgotten that all this is simply a creation of thought, we find ourselves bemused by it, because deep in our hearts resides the knowledge of the reality of our experience. That is, there is no true forgetting.

The strength of our remembering, that is, the strength of awareness knowing of its own being, is never really obscured even by the most apparently ignorant thought.

This bemusement is the experience we know as suffering or unhappiness. It is a conflict between the deep intuition of happiness that resides at the heart of all experience and the beliefs that thought has superimposed upon it.

Having failed to relieve this unhappiness satisfactorily through all the conventional means that are on offer in the realms of the body, mind and world, some of us eventually turn round and question the very construct of mind itself. What is memory, time, space, the separate self, the world etc? All these questions are really the same question and they are all eventually answered by the same answer.

However, that ultimate answer is not just one more construct of thought. It is the dissolution of thought in its own substance.

So, if we trace back your question all the way and refuse to be satisfied with an answer that is yet another construct of thought, the answer is found as this living, non-objective ever-presence into which thought dissolves and out of which it is made.

The dissolution of thought is known as understanding. Understanding does not take place in thought although it may be formulated by it. Hence, the transparent experience of understanding is the identical experience to peace, happiness, love or beauty. It is the experience of our true nature tasting itself, un-apparently modified by the dualising mind.

When the experience of understanding takes place at the end of a question about the relative nature of things—such as the question ‘What is two plus two?’—the understanding that takes place—and which is subsequently formulated as the answer ‘four’—is, like all understanding, a taste of our true nature, its taste of itself.

However, when the mind reappears again, ignorance is reformulated and seems again to veil our true nature. Thus unhappiness is perpetuated.

However, if understanding is experienced at the end of a question about our true nature, our self again tastes itself, that is, it tastes its own transparent nature. However, this time, when the mind returns it has been relieved of the beliefs about our true nature, just as in the previous example the mind had been relieved of the uncertainty of the question, ‘What is two plus two?’ This dissolution of the ignorance of our true nature is the experience commonly known as enlightenment.

This experience of enlightenment is the end of the belief in the separate self and thus brings one chapter of our life to a close. However, it is only the beginning of true self-realisation, which involves the dissolution of the sense of separation in our feelings— that is, in the body—rather than simply in our beliefs.

The experience of enlightenment is, for many people in contemporary non-dual circles, the biggest trap. Having discovered that there is no separate self, all the still prevalent feelings of separation are met with the partial understanding that they appear to no-one.

Hence by far the larger aspect of separation, the feeling of separation, remains intact in most cases and any further investigation of our experience is curtailed by the superficial understanding that all seeking is undertaken by the non-existent separate self.

Hence in our era, the subtlety, depth and richness of the true non-dual understanding have been downgraded and adapted to a culture that is satisfied with quick fixes and superficial understanding, although many people that once subscribed to this superficial understanding are now beginning to realize that their search was numbed but not truly ended by this partial understanding.

Returning now to the dissolution of memory, time, space, the separate self, objects, others, the world etc., we may well still wonder, if all these are simply constructs of mind, made only of intermittent objects that bear no relation to one another, why there is such consistency to appearances. After all it is this consistency that seems to validate the belief in all these concepts.

What appears to be consistency between objects or thoughts is, in fact, a pale reflection at the level of the mind of the only true consistency there is, which is the consistency or, more accurately, the ever-presence of our own being, awareness.

In other words, even in the appearance of intermittent thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions, which are not in themselves consistent, awareness, as it were, leaves a trace of itself, a hint of its own reality.

In fact, all experience is shining with the ever-presence of awareness.

The apparent consistency in time or permanence in space does not belong to the realm of thoughts or objects. It belongs to awareness. The ever-presence of awareness is translated, in the language of mind, as continuity in time and permanence in space.

Time and space are the mind’s way of conceptualizing the eternal and infinite nature of reality. They are hints of the beloved in the realm of the mind.

Does Life Have a Purpose?

Q: Does consciousness have a purpose or plan for all this manifestation?

The idea of a purpose or plan is for thought, not for consciousness.

For the separate inside self that thought imagines, the ultimate purpose of life is love, peace and happiness. That is why everyone seeks them, not realising that the apparently inside self and its inevitable search veil the very love, peace and happiness for which it is in search.

However, love, peace and happiness are inherent in the knowing of our own being. In fact, they are the knowing of being. They are simply other names for our self.

In other words, love, peace and happiness are present as the origin and substance of all appearances, so it cannot be said that the purpose of appearances is to acquire them. They are already present! They are already the entire substance of the thought that seeks them.

It is only a thought that rises up and imagines that consciousness is not present, and therefore that love, peace and happiness are not present. With this thought the seamless intimacy of our own being seems to become two things, an inside self and an outside world.

From that moment onwards the apparently separate self is condemned to searching in the apparently outside world for the lost love, peace and happiness, and makes of this search a great mission, purpose or plan. It then imagines that this purpose or plan must be inherent in consciousness. It is not. It is in the mind alone. The drama in the film is for the image not for the screen.

So, if we think we are a separate inside self, the purpose or plan is to find love, peace and happiness. That search is not something the separate self does. It is what it is.

However, as soon as it becomes clear that we are not a separate inside self, it is simultaneously realised that the ultimate achievement of the apparent self’s purpose or plan is already present prior to and during all appearances, as their origin and substance. It is not achieved as a result of the mind’s projects. It is revealed when the mind’s projects are dissolved. In fact, it is the mind’s projects that veil the love, peace and happiness that are being sought.

The search for love, peace and happiness veils the very love, peace and happiness that are being sought. Searching for love, peace and happiness is like looking for darkness with a torch.

At the same time these projects are inevitable as long as we consider ourselves to be a separate inside self, precisely because this apparent self is the main project!

In other words, consciousness knows itself as the love, peace and happiness that is the source and substance of all appearances whilst, for the apparent person, love, peace and happiness are their destiny.

That is, for consciousness there is no purpose or plan. For the apparently separate inside self there is a purpose or a plan. In fact, the apparent self doesn’t have a plan; it is a plan.

The apparently separate inside self is the search for happiness. Our true self, aware presence or consciousness is the happiness it is searching for.

How could happiness have a plan? It is already that for which all plans are made.

The Seed of Separation

Q: What about being joy, love and peace, collectively? Will you comment on us all realising ourselves as one knowing presence, and/or how humanity as a whole can see its self, actually awakening to being one, no one and many?

The experience of joy, love and peace is the experiential realisation that there is no separate inside self and no separate outside objects, others or world.

It is the dualising mind that first conceptually divides the seamless intimacy of aware presence into two apparent things—one, the awareness part that is considered to reside inside the body and, two, the being or existence part that is considered to reside outside in the world.

This separation of experience into two apparent things gives credibility to the apparent existence of a separate subject inside the body and a separate outside object, which are subsequently fragmented into a multiplicity of people, selves, others and the world.

The same dualising mind then seeks to alleviate the suffering that is inherent in its own fragmentation of experience and, by so doing, simply perpetuates its own illusion and the suffering that attends it.

This approach does not imply that nothing is done in response to a given situation in the world. Once the mind is no longer dominated by and in service to the belief in separation, it becomes a tool in the hand of love and intelligence.

The form in which this love and intelligence is expressed will vary greatly depending on the particular characteristics of the body and mind through which they are expressed.

However, whatever their particular characteristics, the activities that come from joy, love and peace are replete with their origin. They communicate it. The scale on which they deliver depends on the power of the body and mind and the circumstances in which they prevail, but that is not important.

In one it may express itself in the work of an artist, in another as a social activist, in another as a mother or father looking after their family, in another a teacher, and so on, in an almost infinite variety of ways.

However, joy, love and peace are prior to all these activities, not their result. If we make them into a project, we create a future and we commit ourselves to an endless cycle of becoming.

It is not the separate self or humanity that sees the true self of aware presence. It is aware presence that sees the apparently separate self or humanity. In fact, that is not quite true. It is a concession to a belief in independent objects and selves.

Aware presence sees only itself. In order to see an apparently separate self and its counterpart, the apparently separate world, aware presence has first to take the shape of the mind. The apparently separate inside self and the apparently outside separate world are made out of that mind. They are born of an imaginary fragmentation of experience into two apparent things or entities.

In other words, only the mind sees a mind. Only an apparent self sees an apparent self and an apparent world.

This apparent self then tries to relieve the suffering in the world without realising that the suffering that it is trying to relieve is inherent in and created by its view of itself as a separate inside entity, amongst many others, in an outside world.

However, the separate inside self does not suffer. It is the activity of suffering.

This separate inside self cannot cure the problem because this imaginary self, with all of its projects, is the problem. However, the separate inside self is only a problem from its own imaginary point of view.

Without this separate inside self, there is no world, no humanity, no others, as they are normally conceived to be, to save. In fact, there is no problem. And, ironically, it is this understanding that is truly humane and compassionate, that truly helps the world.

Of course, the separate self is often offended when he or she hears this, because his or her own imaginary identity is being exposed. We may even feel frustration or anger when we hear this.

But this frustration is a gift from our true self of aware presence to itself, because it reveals the seed of separation. It is this seed that flourishes as all the various forms of suffering.

Likewise it is the dissolution of this seed of separation that flourishes as all the forms of joy, love and peace. It is here that all conflicts, personal or otherwise, are resolved.

Offering Everything to Presence

Q: You say, “From time to time old layers of identification with the body and mind reappear. Those that are necessary for the functioning of everyday life continue as and when they are needed. Those that are not functional drop away naturally.” Would you please speak of this a bit more?

What is normally described as enlightenment is the experiential understanding that our self is ever-present, unlimited awareness.

This realization may seem to come at the end of a long process of preparation or it may seem to come unexpected and unsolicited. In either case, the patterns of the body and mind that have been rehearsed, in most cases over many years, do not disappear immediately but continue to appear, out of habit, for some time.

However, they are no longer fuelled by the apparently separate inside self that was previously at their origin. They are simply old habits running on momentum. They are, as it were, empty. There is no real entity at their source. How long these habits take to run down varies from case to case.

It is a common misunderstanding to think that, after this so-called enlightenment, everything will be perfect and, as a result, we sometimes lose heart when these old habits appear.

Enlightenment is the end of one process, the process of thinking and feeling ourselves to be a separate and limited inside self, but the beginning of another. It is the beginning of the realignment of the body, mind and world with this new experiential understanding.

If one has been on the path for many years, the body and mind may already be well aligned with this new understanding and, as a result, very little change will take place. For another who has stumbled across this without much preparation, there may be an explosion at the level of the body and mind, with dramatic effects and experiences. These are the ones we normally hear about because they make good stories and, in these cases, there is often a relatively long period of time during which the body and mind are re-orchestrated, as it were, by the new experiential understanding.

However, it is for each of us to see whether such thoughts, feelings and activities of separation have, at their origin, a belief in separation, or whether they are simply old habits of the body and mind winding down. However, in neither case is it necessary to have an agenda with them.

We should be happy when these residues of ignorance show up. They are our true self showing itself those areas of the body and mind that have yet to be colonised by its presence.

There is no need to make a problem of our problems. We simply get used to being presence knowingly. The residues of the separate self can simply be offered to presence.

What does offering them to presence mean? It may mean subjecting our belief in separation, and the feelings and actions that follow from it, to the scrutiny of reason. Or it may mean simply welcoming these uncomfortable feelings, allowing them to take their full shape within presence with no agenda for or against.

In both cases, what seems from the point of view of the apparently separate self to be an offering of the body and mind to presence is, in fact, presence permeating the old residues of ignorance at the level of the body and mind with its inherent nature of peace, freedom and happiness.

As the residues of ignorance at the level of the body and mind drop away, responses to situations will arise in the moment, out of the moment itself, unmediated by the sense of separation. Nothing necessary for the functioning of an ordinary life is lost. All that is lost is the sense of separation, which acts as a sort of lens through which experience is filtered and with which it is manipulated to serve the insatiable requirements of a non-existent entity.

No longer dulled by the sense of separation, the body and mind return to their natural condition—open, sensitive and loving. In response to a situation they become instruments of love and understanding in action. Left to themselves, without the need to respond to a particular situation, they quietly get on with life celebrating their origin at every moment.

Love Only Knows Itself

Q: You once responded to a question with the answer, “Because there is love”. When the essential emptiness of the true self is perceived, peace begins to pervade one’s life, but it seems that the concept of love fails to do justice to this experience. Do you think that love has any reality outside of the conceptual arena?

The answer, “Because there is love,” was given to the question “How do we know that awareness is impersonal”?

The implicit understanding in this answer is that the word ‘love’ is used to point towards the experiential understanding that there is only one awareness or, more accurately, that there is only awareness.

If a number of people were asked if they knew or felt that the awareness that is seeing this very question is unlimited and impersonal, most would answer ‘No.’ However, if those same people were asked if they felt or knew that love existed, most, if not all, would answer, ‘Yes.’ In other words, few people doubt the experience of love but most of us misinterpret it.

The mind in fact knows nothing of love, precisely because it is not present during the experience. That is why we like it so much!

Love could be said to be the dissolution of those boundaries or borders which seem to separate us one from another, that is, that seem to divide awareness into subjects, objects and parts. In other words, it is the dissolution of the dualising mind.

When the mind returns and tries to describe this non-objective experience of love in which it was not present and about which therefore it knows nothing, it misinterprets the experience.

The mind returns saturated, as it were, with the taste of love out of which it has arisen. It retains the perfume of this non-objective experience.

Not knowing where this perfume comes from, the mind manufactures a story to account for the new and happy state in which it finds itself. Out of the seamlessness of experience it imagines two entities, in this case a loving subject, ‘I’, and a loved object, the other, ‘you’, which are supposedly connected together by an activity of loving.

As the shine wears off the mind, it seems that the experience of love is lost. Bewildered as a result of this apparently lost love, the separate self goes out again in search of a relationship that will recover the experience of love, not realising that it is its own presence—the apparently separate self—and its counterpart, the separate other, that veils the love for which it is searching.

Off the apparently separate self goes again, out into the apparent world of objects and others, until it encounters a face that reminds it of the beloved, at which moment the separate self plunges again into non-existence and love tastes itself anew.

So, in answer to your question, ‘Do you think that love has any reality outside of the conceptual arena?’, I would say that love’s only reality is outside the conceptual arena.

Our attempts to conceptualise love (such as I have done here) are feeble attempts, using the abstract symbols of the mind, to point towards the reality of our experience, which is intimately and directly experienced and known by everyone and yet which is completely beyond the capacity of the mind to know, grasp or understand.

In fact, the mind does not even know how to think of love, let alone how to define it. If we try to think of love, we do not even know where to start looking—it is closer than close and yet lies in an unknown direction.

Love only knows itself.

Person, Witness, Substance, Presence

During any thought, sensation or perception there is only thinking, sensing or perceiving taking place. When the thought, sensation or perception comes to an end, the mind immediately rises up again and creates a ‘filler’ thought. This ‘filler’ thought is the ‘I’ thought. With this thought the apparently separate ‘I’ is created and is imagined to have been present during the previous thought, sensation or perception, as its creator and witness.

In this way the dualising mind imagines the true and only ‘I’ of aware presence to be a separate thinker, feeler, chooser, lover, creator, etc. Hence ‘I think,’ ‘I feel,’ ‘I choose,’ ‘I love.’ etc. etc. With this belief, ‘I,’ aware presence, seems to become ‘I,’ the mind.

Likewise, with this ‘filler’ thought the ‘I’ of aware presence is imagined to be a doer and, as a result, seems to become ‘I’ the body. In other words, ‘I the separate self’ is conceived as a reality.

As such, experience now seems to consist of perception A, then ‘I, the separate self’,’ perception B, then ‘I, the separate self’,’ perception C, then ‘I, the separate self’,’ etc. etc.

Each of these ‘I, the separate self’,’ thoughts is considered to be indicative of a permanent ‘I’ entity which supposedly runs throughout every perception and is considered to remain after the perception has ceased.

When the ‘I, the separate self’ thought is seen to be simply a thought that appears from time to time (in other words, that it is simply another perception) and to make reference to an entity which is, in fact, entirely non-existent, this filler ‘I’ thought loses its foundation (the belief that it refers to something real) and dissolves as a result, revealing the aware presence that was underneath it all along.

In other words instead of perception, ‘I’ thought, perception, ‘I’ thought, perception, ‘I’ thought, there is now perception, presence, perception, presence, perception, presence....

As this becomes more our lived experience, the presence that shines between perceptions is also understood experientially to run throughout all perceptions. In other words, aware presence is known to be ever-present and to sometimes ‘take the shape’ of thinking, sensing or perceiving.

So our experience is felt as, ‘I’, presence, taking the shape of the texture of sheets, the morning light, the warmth of water, the taste of tea, the hum of traffic, the voices at work, the perceptions of home, the image of a dream, the peace of deep sleep etc., always changing outwardly, never changing inwardly.

Q: Is it true that, whilst from the ultimate perspective there is no doer, experiencer or world, the sense of a doer, an experiencer and a world is naturally experienced and is not a mistake or a problem to be transcended, but rather impartially witnessed and enjoyed?

If we know ourselves as the witness of the doer and the experiencer then, by definition, we know that we are not a doer or an experiencer. In other words, we cannot legitimately say that we feel that we are the witness and the doer at the same time.

At the moment we know ourselves as the witness, we know, by definition, that there is no individual doer or experiencer. There are just thoughts, sensations and perceptions arising in awareness. The previously imagined doer or experiencer is understood to be simply a witnessed thought or sensation arising, along with all others, in awareness.

And conversely, the moment we consider ourselves to be a doer, a thinker or an experiencer, we cease to have the experiential understanding that we are the witness.

When we know thoughts, sensations and perceptions to be arising in our self, aware presence, we take our stand as the witness. When we know them to arise as our self we take our stand as their substance.

As witness we are transcendent. As substance, immanent. As witness we take our stand as no-thing. This is the position of wisdom. As substance we take our stand as everything. This is the position of love.

These are the two modes of experience: as witness we are the knowing element in all experience. As substance we are the being element in all experience. That is, we simultaneously know the world and are the world.

The conjunction of these two reveals the third element of experience, known as enjoyment in relation to the world and as friendship in relation to ‘others’. In other words, it is known as happiness and love.

So, we could say that we first seem to know our self as a doer, that is, a body, and an enjoyer, that is, a mind. As this apparent body and mind, we seem to know a world.

Upon investigation we find that we are not a body or a mind that knows a world but rather that we are the witness of the body, mind and world.

The ‘I’ that was considered to be a body and mind is now realised to be ‘I’ the witnessing presence of awareness. It is not that the ‘I’ of the body and mind has dissolved or disappeared but rather that it is revealed to be and to have always been the witnessing presence of awareness rather than a body or a mind. In other words, it is relieved of a conceptual limitation.

However, this witnessing ‘I’ still seems to be subtly distinct or separate from the witnessed body, mind and world. Upon closer investigation, we find that ‘I’ is not just the witness but also, simultaneously, the substance out of which the body, mind and world are made. Again, it is not that the witnessing ‘I’ dissolves or disappears but rather that it is relieved of a subtle superimposition with which it was seemingly limited and located.

However, as we go more deeply into experience, we find that ‘I’ as the substance of all seeming things still subtly validates the idea of ‘things’ in their own right, which, upon investigation, are found to be non-existent. At this stage the idea of ‘I’ as ‘substance’ is relieved of its last trace of superimposition and remains standing in and as itself, naked and alone.

What for the mind seems to be a progression from person to witness to substance to aware presence, is, for presence itself, no progression at all. Veiling and unveiling are for the mind. Presence is always only itself.

In ignorance presence seems to come and go in the world. In wisdom the world seems to come and go in presence. In love, all is consumed in presence leaving only pure love itself without any knowledge of objects, bodies, minds, others, selves, entities, things, just pure seamless, nameless, indivisible intimacy.

We Do Not Know What Anything Is

Q: Is it possible to know what the body, an object or the world really is, independent of the mind?

We have arrived at the clear experiential understanding that all that is known of the apparent body, object or world is sensing and perceiving and that our self, awareness, is the substance of all sensing and perceiving. Thinking adds a label to this sensing and perceiving and with that addition, the apparent object, other or world is created.

Such an object is conceived as a thing in its own right. Sensing and perceiving supplies its form; thinking, its name.

Therefore, things, objects, bodies and the world, as they are normally conceived to be, are simply concepts that we superimpose upon the reality of experience. They are never experienced, as such. However, we can go further than that. Not only have a body, object or world, as such, never been experienced independent of sensing and perceiving, but they never could be.

This brings us to a simple but extraordinary conclusion: the ultimate reality of all things, indeed reality itself, is not only unknown by the mind but, more importantly, unknowable. We truly do not know what anything is. In fact, we do not even know if there are such ‘things’ in the first place, to be known.

The mind can only know its own creations. If it imagines that there is something with real and independent existence outside of itself, then that image is simply one more of its own creations. And if it turns round, as it were, to try to find its own essence, it dissolves.

In short, if the mind looks for something outside of itself, it only finds more of itself. If it looks within itself to find its own essence, it dies like a moth in a flame.

Once this is clearly seen, the mind is relieved of an immense bur-den—the burden of knowing. Such a mind is silent and free. It knows nothing but can express everything. It has no fixed positions but can take any position relative to a given situation. The mind does not and cannot know reality and yet, at the same time, is its expression.

As William Blake said, “All things possible to be believed are an image of truth.”

It is this freedom and creativity that lies at the heart of all true artistic expression. The mind cannot touch reality and yet it is saturated in it.

It is for this reason that Blake also said, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”

Likewise, for this reason, there is no end to an artist’s work. If reality were in the mind, there would be an end of art, an end of creativity. There would be something to find; somewhere at which to arrive; the final statement.

But there is not. The ‘productions of time’ flow timelessly from eternity, the ever-present now, simultaneously exploring, celebrating and sharing their own substance, a dance of love and beauty that has no purpose other than celebrating itself. All true art is only for art’s sake alone. It has no other purpose or destination.

So, does this mean that reality is unknown or unknowable? No! If that were so, whatever is known or experienced in this and every situation would be something other than reality. It simply means that the conceptualising mind has no access to reality. But reality has access to itself. Reality knows itself.

It is the knowing of itself. But it is not a knowing in relationship. It is a knowing in identity. Love is the name that is given to this ‘knowing in identity’.

There is nothing other than reality’s knowing of itself. There is nothing other than love. It is also known as ‘this’ and ‘I’.

There is Only Pure Intimacy

Q: When do objects become solid? I think you will say, “When the perceiving consciousness contracts and becomes a thinking subject, a separate I-entity.” In that case, there is a thinking subject (that which sees) separate from the object (that which is seen) but not yet solid objects.

I would not say, “When the perceiving consciousness contracts and becomes a thinking subject, a separate I-entity”, because consciousness never contracts or indeed expands. Nor indeed do objects ever become solid.

Rather I would say that objects seem to become real in themselves, that is, become solid, when dualising thought arises and exclusively identifies consciousness with a fragment, with a body, and seems as a result to contract consciousness into a personal, limited ‘I’,

You go on to say, “In that case there is a thinking subject (that which sees) separate from the object (that which is seen) but not yet solid objects.” However, the so-called physical objects that seem to result from this separation of experience into a perceiving subject and a perceiving object are, by definition, seemingly solid. It is the apparent objectivity that is created by this act of imagination that confers apparent solidity, otherness, separateness and ‘not-me-ness’ upon objects.

However, objects are never really solid precisely because, in reality, there are no objects. Touch any object now, this book or screen, for instance. A new sensation appears. Is that sensation solid? No! There is only the knowing of the sensation and all knowing is made of consciousness. And how solid is consciousness?

The apparent objectivity and solidity of the world, others and objects is the natural counterpart of the apparent subjectivity of the personal ‘I’.

In other words, the apparently separate subject and the apparently separate object always appear and dissolve together. It is their appearance, that is, the appearance of dualising thought, which seems to obscure or veil consciousness, resulting in the apparent reality of objectivity and solidity.

Likewise, it is the dissolution of dualising thought that restores the experience of objects as they truly are, that is, as modulations of our own being, consciousness.

Consciousness is simply the knowing of being, so this apparent veiling of consciousness could be said to be the knowing of something apparently other than our self, the knowing of something other than being.

This ‘something apparently other than being’ is what is known as the separate ‘I’ and the separate ‘object, other or world’. So, objects seem to become real and solid at the moment dualising thought seems to veil the knowing of being.

Therefore, ‘objectness’ and ‘solidity’ are simply ideas that are superimposed by thought onto the reality of our experience.

Let us explore this experientially. How does the idea and apparent feeling of objectness and solidity arise? There is consciousness, transparent, formless, full only of the knowing of itself—pure knowing and being.

This consciousness, having no form, has the capacity to appear as all forms. Consciousness ‘gives itself’ to all apparent forms but loses itself to none of them.

In order to appear as an apparent form, consciousness takes the shape of what we call ‘mind’, in the broadest sense of the word. That is, consciousness takes the shape of sensing, perceiving and thinking.

This is meant in the same sense as it could be said that a screen takes the shape of the image that appears on it, such as a landscape. The screen doesn’t actually become anything other than itself, such as a landscape, but only seems to.

So, now imagine consciousness taking the shape of sensing and perceiving, just as the ocean takes the shape of a current fl owing within it. Water within water.

Sensing and perceiving is made only of consciousness and it is consciousness that knows itself as such. Sensing and perceiving could be said to be a modulation of our own being, a modulation of consciousness.

For our self, that is, for consciousness, being ‘sensing and perceiving’ and knowing ‘sensing and perceiving’ is one single experience, not two.

At this stage the entire sensation/perception is known to be made of one single substance, our self, consciousness. That is, consciousness knows itself, as it were, as sensing/perceiving. ‘Mind’ and ‘matter’ are not yet experiences. Consciousness simply knows itself in and as the intimacy of sensing/perceiving.

Consciousness is too intimately, utterly one with itself as sensing/ perceiving to separate itself out and know itself as ‘something’, as a sensation or a perception, that is, as an object.

Consciousness is both the existence of the sensation/perception and simultaneously the knowing of it.

Now at a certain point consciousness takes the shape of thinking, which is, as it were, another current within the ocean. It is another modulation of consciousness within consciousness.

And because thinking is made only of consciousness it has the possibility of assuming the form of an infinite variety of thoughts. One such thought is the thought that identifies consciousness, which in reality pervades all sensing/perceiving, with just one little part of it, that is, with the little part of it called ‘the body’.

In other words, this dualising thought splits the seamless intimacy of sensing/perceiving into two parts—a ‘body’ part and a ‘not-the-body’ part.

With this thought consciousness, which in reality is the substance of all of sensing/perceiving equally, is imagined to pervade only the body part and not the ‘not-the-body’ part. In other words, the ‘I’ of consciousness, which once knew itself as the substance of all sensing/perceiving, now seems to know itself only as the body.

However, consciousness in reality always only knows itself. It never truly knows anything other than itself. So, to effect the apparent veiling of itself, it first has to take the shape of the dualising mind.

The dualising mind, however, is made only of consciousness and therefore does not truly veil consciousness, any more than the arising of an image on the screen veils the screen. It only seems to.

That is, with this thought, consciousness is identified with the body. However, this identification is apparent only. It never actually happens. It is only believed to have happened. It is imagined. The identification is for thought, not for consciousness. This belief is the ‘separate-I-entity’, the ‘ego’, and its corollary, the ‘world’. It is the ‘forgetting of presence’.

With this thought we have moved from a position in which consciousness is known and felt to be the substance of all experience equally, to a position in which it is believed and felt to be the substance of only the body.

So, if consciousness is believed and felt to be the substance of the body—in other words, if ‘I’ am believed and felt to be the body— what is the ‘not-the-body’ made of? That is, what are ‘objects’, ‘others’ and the ‘world’ made of?

As a corollary to the belief that consciousness is located in and as the body, a new belief is created to account for everything that is now considered to be ‘other-than-consciousness.’ This new entity is called ‘the world.’ In other words, the ‘world’ is a concept that is believed to be ‘everything-I-am-not’.

In other words, the ‘separate-I-entity’ and the ‘world’ are two aspects of the same idea. That idea is the belief that consciousness is veiled or not present.

Now this imagined ‘world’ must be made of something. Thought has already split our experience in two and assigned consciousness to the body, so the world must be made of ‘something-other-than-consciousness’. This ‘something-other-than-consciousness’ is what we call ‘matter’. This ‘matter’ is considered to be solid, inert and dense. It is the opposite of everything we consider consciousness to be.

As a result, when we touch a chair we feel that ‘I’ (this alive being inside the body) is touching the chair (that dead, inert thing outside the body). That is, the chair is experienced as being solid, dense, inert.

However, the experience of the chair is, in fact, the experience of one new sensation/perception. This new sensation/perception is made only of sensing/perceiving and as we have seen, sensing/ perceiving is made only of consciousness. It is a modulation of consciousness.

There is nothing solid, dense or inert about sensing/perceiving. Sensing/perceiving is vibrant, alive—alive with the knowingness and beingness of consciousness. It is the light of consciousness that makes the experience knowable. In fact, there is no other substance to the experience of the chair other than the light of consciousness. It is the aliveness of consciousness that makes the experience living, vibrant, intimate, real.

If we go deeply into the experience of sensing/perceiving that we call the ‘chair’, we find this alive, vibrating sensing/perceiving made only of the knowingness and beingness of consciousness. We find nothing dense, solid or inert there.

Density, inertia and solidity are simply concepts superimposed onto the reality of our experience by the dualising mind. These concepts dull the living, sensitive, vibrating, intimate quality of all experience, which is naturally infused with enjoyment, enthusiasm and love, and reduce it to ‘matter’, ‘objects’ and ‘others’.

In other words, ‘matter’ and ‘solidity’ are only a seeming reality for thought. They are not a reality for consciousness. For consciousness, which means for our self, consciousness itself is the reality of all experience.

Q: However, when I touch a chair I feel a chair and, even if it is not named, it is different from my hand. So that part is not completely clear to me.

Without the naming, there is no difference between the hand and the chair—they are one experience. Even with the naming, they are still one, only they are not known as such. Naming seems to separate them into two distinct objects.

In fact, without naming there is no ‘hand’ or ‘chair’ in the first place that could be either the same as or different from one another. There is only sensing/perceiving. In fact, without naming there isn’t even sensing/perceiving. There is simply the utterly intimate, unnameable reality of experiencing.

Does the hand know that it is a hand? Does the chair know that it is a chair? No! It is thinking/naming that says so. So, in the absence of thinking, where are the hand and the chair? They are nowhere to be found.

In fact, even with thinking/naming, the hand and chair are nowhere to be found, as such, in actual experience. They are not present although they are considered to be so. It is only thinking that makes them seem to be present in their own right.

In the absence of thinking their seeming presence belongs to consciousness alone. In fact, even when thinking is present, their seeming presence belongs only to consciousness. Consciousness is all that is ever truly present and all seeming things borrow their apparent existence from it. In fact, it is not that consciousness is present. It is rather that consciousness is presence itself.

Only consciousness is ever truly present, knowing and being itself eternally, taking the shape of sensing, perceiving and thinking but never being or becoming anything other than itself. The presence of all seeming things properly belongs to consciousness alone.

Place your hand on the chair and see that one new sensation/perception appears. In fact, it is not even a sensation/perception. It is sensing/perceiving—a modulation of consciousness. Water within water.

See clearly that both the apparent hand and the apparent chair are experienced in this one new sensation/perception. But it is only one sensation/perception. As such, is it hand or chair? As hand it is ‘me’; as ‘chair’ it is ‘not me’. But it cannot be ‘me’ and ‘not me’ simultaneously.

See clearly that ‘hand’ and ‘chair’, ‘me’ and ‘not me’ are labels superimposed by thinking onto the reality of our experience. The experience itself, sensing/perceiving, comes with no label attached. In fact, in the absence of thinking, it is not even sensing/perceiving. It is simply ‘experiencing’.

In fact, even to call it ‘experience’ is too much. To call it ‘experience’ we first have to step back, as it were, and see it, name it. But experience is too close, too immediate, too intimate to be seen or named. It is already and only the knowing and being of itself. There is no time present in experience itself in which to step back and look from a distance, and nowhere we could step back to, from where we might look.

The fish does not know when it is in the water. The fish only knows when it is out of the water. In fact, fishes don’t have a word for water!

There is just raw, seamless, indivisible, ever-present experiencing. There is only pure intimacy.

The Ever-Present Reality of Existence

Q: 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 one 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 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.

The substance, reality and aliveness of the body belongs to awareness alone, just as the substance and reality of the image belongs to the screen.

However, 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?

It is sometimes said that things appear in awareness as objects appear in a room, that is, that they seem come from outside and enter. However, there is no ‘outside’ of awareness. Nor is there any stuff outside of awareness that such a thing could be made of.

Nothing comes from outside awareness and enters it. Nor is there any substance ‘within’ awareness out of which an object could be made, other than awareness itself. Awareness is already fully present. No part of awareness comes or goes when an object appears. The totality of awareness is ever-present. Therefore, nothing new appears when an object appears. The substance of all apparent objects is ever-present.

Therefore even ‘appearance and disappearance’ is an idea that is superimposed upon the reality of our experience.

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 ‘nonexistence’ 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 thought that imagines an object appearing from somewhere. But where could that object reside outside of the thought that thinks it? It is nowhere to be found.

The past is made of memory, the future of imagination. Neither have any existence outside the thought that thinks them.

And that thought is itself the shape that our own timeless aware presence takes in the eternal now—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.

Our own being, aware 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 abide as this ever-present aware presence.

All that is ever loved is the reality of experience, which is all there is to experience, and that reality is the only one present there to know, be and love itself, eternally.

Love knows nothing other than its own ever-presence.

Nothing comes and goes. In fact, ‘nothing’ and ‘something’ are not. In the timeless, placeless now-here-ness between these apparent two, lies presence.

Only appearances appear to come and go. Their reality is ever-present.

That which truly is, eternally and alone is.

Addiction and Non-Duality

Q: For a while now I have had some trouble reconciling some of my behaviour with my understanding of the non-dual teaching. The fruits of this path have definitely been self-evident in ways that I cannot describe. However, in a very honest and worldly sense, I have also been struggling with an addiction to lust and pornography.

I obviously feel very conflicted about this. It seems to me that this addictive, lustful behaviour is certainly not in alignment with the truth that non-duality points to. However, when the impulse arises to watch it, my mind creates a convincing dialogue that says, “There is no doer. This is a spontaneous occurrence. Don’t resist this. All is meaningless,” etc.

I then act on the impulse and afterwards the mind rationalises the behaviour with more of this pseudo logic, falsely claiming that it never left awareness. This is, of course, coupled with all sorts of guilt, inadequacy and other afflictive emotions. Common sense tells me that something is amiss.

I have heard many stories of all sorts of so-called sages, holy men and enlightened gurus who rationalise inappropriate sexual behaviour under a veneer of spiritual truth. How do we, as spiritual seekers, avoid this tragic pitfall, especially when we have a deep understanding that this is a path of acceptance and not avoidance?

Your honesty and clarity already point to the freedom in your self that you seek.

Addiction of any sort, be it to inappropriate sexual behaviour, alcohol, drugs, smoking or any milder form of behaviour, almost always has its origin in the belief and, more importantly, the feeling of being a separate, limited, located self.

The most common form in which this belief and feeling of separation manifests is the subtle and not-so-subtle rejection of the current situation—that is, the “I don’t like what is going on” and the “I want something other than what is going on”.

These two attitudes of resistance and seeking—traditionally referred to as fear and desire—are the two faces of the apparently separate self, that is, the ‘resistance to what is’ and the ‘search for happiness.’

In other words, ‘the apparently separate entity’, ‘resistance to what is’, and the ‘search for happiness’ via various objects, substances or experiences, are synonymous.

These three states are, in fact, one and the same state and could also be called ‘ignorance’ or the ‘ignoring of the true nature of experience’.

Therefore, ‘the apparent separate entity’, ‘resistance to what is,’ and ‘the search for happiness’ are incompatible with the experiential understanding of the non-dual nature of experience.

You have seen that clearly and it is that seeing which enables you to avoid the pitfall of pseudo non-duality that you rightly diagnose.

So, let us go to the origin of this ‘resistance to what is’ because if we start anywhere else, for instance, if we were to start with a secondary cause, we would not be going to the root of the problem and, sooner or later, our search will reappear, often in a more virulent form. In fact, the term ‘addiction’ is used precisely to describe this more virulent form of the search that has become chronic and destructive.

The origin of ‘resistance to what is’, is the belief that our essential being, awareness, is limited to and located within a body.

This imaginary identification of our self with an object, the body, creates the apparently separate self. The real ‘I’ of awareness seems, as a result, to become the limited ‘I’ of the imaginary self. That is, we think and feel that we are a body.

This apparently separate self, being made out of an intermittent object, is, by definition, unstable, always threatened with change, decay and disappearance. Hence the fear of disappearance that resides at its heart and its natural corollary, seeking.

The fear comes from the feeling that when this intermittent sensation (the form in which the body is appearing in this moment) disappears, ‘I’ will disappear with it. And the desire or seeking comes from the apparent need to substantiate this fleeting entity we believe and feel ourselves to be, in order to perpetuate its apparent existence.

To begin with this fear and seeking manifest in the most innocuous forms of behaviour, the most common of which is unnecessary thinking, the almost constant mental chatter or commentary that most of us are familiar with.

This innocuous commentary is the simplest form of the ‘resistance to what is’. It is the repetitive background chatter that ensures that attention is almost always diverted away from the immediacy, intimacy and simplicity of ‘what is’. This is the primal addiction.

‘What is’ is deemed too boring, plain and uneventful to be worthy of attention and thinking provides an alternative dream world into which to escape from the boredom or discomfort of the moment.

One honest look at our thinking will show that the majority of it serves no practical, intelligent or creative purpose. It is simply a sort of ‘filler’ that serves to distract attention from the boredom of ‘what is’. The vast majority of our thoughts about the past and future serve only to legitimise and perpetuate this type of thinking and the imaginary self that resides at its heart.

However, precisely because this type of thinking is deemed innocuous (in the sense that it has no harmful effect on the body or on society) it passes, for the most part, unnoticed and is indeed encouraged by our culture in general.

For this reason, it is the most common and effective form of addiction that almost everyone is engaged in, for the most part, unknowingly. And therein lies its efficiency in keeping the sense of separation alive. Hence it is the perfect refuge for the apparently separate self.

As we grow up, this subtle thinking is no longer sufficient to keep the anxiety, dis-ease and discomfort of the sense of separation at bay and we begin to turn to stronger forms of avoidance.

These stronger forms of avoidance are the common forms of addiction with which we are familiar—excessive working, eating or activity, or addiction to money, alcohol, smoking, drugs, pornography etc. etc.

All these forms of addiction are simply strategies of avoidance - avoidance of ‘what is’, avoidance of ‘this’, avoidance of ‘now’, They are the familiar refuges of the sense of a separate self.

Society draws a line, based on whether the addictive activity in question is of immediate danger to itself, as to the legitimacy of each of these activities, thereby condoning some and condemning others.

However, they are, in fact, all simply strategies of avoidance and denial. In fact, each of them is simply a variation of the root avoidance—incessant thinking that revolves around the separate ‘I’ thought.

If we go honestly, as you have done, to our experience, we will always find this thinking and its deeper counterpart in our feelings at the level of the body, underneath or behind all subsequent forms of addiction.

It all begins with ‘I, the body’, That is the root of all suffering, which our addictions seek to alleviate.

If society condemns one form of addiction more than another, for whatever reason, we may be persuaded to change from one addiction to another, but in our hearts this fire of discomfort, avoidance and rejection, and its inevitable counterpart in the search for happiness (which is just another name for addiction), will continue. And we will not truly rest until we have gone to the root of the matter.

To go to the root of the matter means to go to the source of the apparently separate ‘I’, not just the belief in the separate ‘I’ but, more importantly, the feeling of such.

It is only when the whole mechanism of the apparently separate self has been seen clearly in all its subtlety that we are free of it, that is, that ‘I,’ awareness, stands knowingly in and as itself, unapparently-veiled by the belief and feeling of separation.

It is not enough, as you have discovered, to wash a veneer of, “Oh well, everything is equally an expression of awareness and therefore nothing matters” over our beliefs and feelings. This kind of superficial thinking is one of the safer refuges for the apparently separate self.

The sense of separation is a past master at appropriating anything for its own purposes of self-validation and justification, and superficial spirituality is one of its less easily detected forms. Hence the new religion of non-duality. However, that is not your case.

In your case you have seen clearly and honestly that addiction, in this case to pornography, is a symptom of a deeper and subtler malaise—that of the separate self.

You have seen that the mind’s attempts to justify this behaviour with convincing and seemingly watertight non-dual arguments are not expressions of true understanding, but rather the mind’s attempts to manipulate and appropriate the non-dual teaching to validate its own belief systems. This is one of the main identities of the spiritual ego in our era.

In this respect, your analysis of the pseudo logic of the mind and your observation of the process of impulse, action, guilt and justification are spot on. So, what to do?

Go to the heart of the matter—the apparently separate self or the apparent veiling of awareness. They are the same thing.

Explore it at the level of the mind, that is, the beliefs we have that seem to validate the existence of a separate self. Explore your experience and come to your own conclusion. See that there is absolutely no experiential evidence for such a belief.

This conviction will initiate a much deeper exploration of the sense of separation at the level of feelings, which are the true residence of the apparent self.

Without this deeper exploration non-duality remains, in most cases, a belief and, as a result, the peace and happiness that are inherent in the true experiential understanding of non-duality will remain elusive and further bouts of seeking will be inevitable.

The good news about addiction to porn, in contrast to alcohol, tobacco and drugs, is that it is mainly at the level of thoughts and feelings and does not have a lasting effect on the body which, in the case of drinking, smoking and drugs, is often irreparable or, at least, lasts long after the impulse to indulge them has been dissolved.

Having said that, and in order to facilitate the above I would also suggest one simple practical approach: every time you feel the impulse to watch porn, just pause. Even if, to begin with, it is only for half a minute, put a little space between your self and the fulfilment of the impulse. As time goes on this period of time can be extended until you find yourself always as this space.

However, don’t expect this space to be peaceful to begin with; it probably won’t be! Most likely, the impulse (which is, in fact, the bare face of the separate self, the separate ‘I’ in its raw form), on finding that it is no longer relieved or fulfilled, will probably display itself in full force. It will rebel.

Be attentive not only to the thoughts that will try to persuade you that your impulses are perfectly okay, that you will only do it one more time, that it is all an expression of awareness, that there is nobody there doing it, etc., but more importantly to all the uncomfortable feelings in the body that rise up, demanding to be acted upon and relieved.

See that the thoughts all revolve around a separate self that is, when sought, found to be non-existent. It is necessary in most cases to carry out this investigation at a rational level thoroughly, in order to come to this conviction.

If this conviction has not been reached, the apparently separate ‘I’ will still be very much alive in your thoughts and you are unlikely, as a result, to have the resolve to explore your feelings fully.

Relieved of the thoughts which seem to justify the existence of a separate entity, these feelings are exposed for what they are—raw bodily sensations. These bodily sensations are, in fact, neutral. They only acquire their apparent negativity (and hence their need to be avoided with addictive behaviour) when coupled with the belief in a separate self and its attendant story.

Divested of this belief in separation and the ‘me’ story that attends it, these innocuous bodily sensations lose power over us, that is, the power to make us think, feel or act on their behalf.

Being seen clearly is the one thing the apparent self and its entourage of strategic activity cannot stand. There may and probably will be tremendous resistance both in your thoughts and in your body to this gentle, non-interventional but firm approach.

However, once the mechanism of the separate self, both at the level of the mind and at the level of the body, has been truly seen through, its foundation has been removed, and it is only a matter of time before the patterns of behaviour that depended upon its apparent existence for their survival, diminish and disappear.

In the end it is not the exploration that facilitates the peace and understanding, but rather the peace and understanding which allows the investigation and exploration to unfold and, slowly, in most cases, absorbs, as it were, the apparently separate self and all its patterns of thinking, feeling and acting, back into itself.

As we sit allowing these thoughts and, more importantly, uncomfortable feelings to arise, it is important not to have any subtle agenda with them, not to ‘do this’ in order to ‘get rid of them’, That would be more of the same.

Just allow the full panoply of thoughts and feelings to display themselves in your loving and indifferent presence. In time their ferocity will die down, revealing subtler and subtler layers of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate entity, until we come to the little, almost innocuous background thinking about which we were speaking earlier.

This is the sense of separation, the ‘ego’, in its apparently mildest and least easily detectable form. Be very sensitive to this. Be sensitive to the ‘avoidance of what is’ in its subtlest forms. It is the sweet, furry baby animal that later turns into a monster!

As time goes on we become more and more sensitive and we see how much of our thinking and feeling, as well as our activities, are generated for the sole purpose of avoiding ‘what is’, of avoiding the ‘this’ and the ‘now’,

It is this open, un-judging, un-avoiding allowing of all things which, in time, restores the ‘I’ to its proper place in the seat of awareness and which, as a natural corollary to the abiding in and as our true self, gently realigns our thoughts, feelings and activities with the peace and happiness that are inherent in it.

Nobody Has, Owns or Chooses Anything

Q: While allowing the body, mind and world to be as they are, different thoughts arise, some not so savoury and others that might be better left not acted upon. You have said that, once one begins to abide knowingly as presence, responses to situations will flow naturally from there. Some thoughts will engage the body, others not.

Once again the quandary of will and volition plague me. You have said that a response to a situation arises out of the situation itself, with no sense of there being a personal ‘responder.’ This is obviously not an act of ‘will’, Is this akin to a stream flowing into a seeming obstruction and ‘naturally’ rerouting itself as the terrain dictates? Am I seeing this clearly? Is this yet another area where we once believed that the separate entity had control but in reality has none?

Yes, I like your analogy of a stream flowing into an obstruction. However, it is not just the stream that is altered by the obstruction. The obstruction is also altered by the steam.

However, that is only true if we consider the stream and the obstruction to be separate. They are, in fact, one indivisible landscape. ‘Separate parts’ are imagined. That indivisible landscape is only made of ‘separate parts’ from the point of view of one of the imagined parts. From the point of view of the landscape itself, there is always only one landscape, simultaneously acting upon itself and being acted upon by itself.

In other words, our seemingly objective experience is a single indivisible whole, made only of thinking, imagining, sensing and perceiving. ‘Our own’ thoughts, feelings and actions are only ‘our own’ from the point of view of the imagined self that thinking considers us to be. In reality, our thoughts, feelings and actions are an inseparable ‘part’ of the indivisible whole. However, in our actual experience, there are no separate parts, entities or objects.

If we admit provisionally the existence of objective reality, it is one single whole. In order to consider it to be made of parts, all acting upon one another of their own free will, we first have to imagine ourselves to be one such entity. In other words, objects, entities and parts only seem to exist, as such, from the point of view of the imaginary entity that thinking considers us to be.

That apparent entity is simply the forgetting or apparent ignoring of awareness. But awareness never truly forgets itself. It is only seemingly forgotten or veiled from the point of view of thinking.

So, going back to the question about the practical implications of this understanding in life: see that your own thoughts and feelings are an inseparable ‘part’ of the totality at every moment. Nobody ‘has,’ ‘owns’ or ‘chooses’ these responses. They simply arise along with everything else. There is no having, owning or choosing entity there.

Your own thoughts and feelings along with the one who seems to ‘have’, ‘own’ or ‘choose’ these responses are just brushstrokes in the seamless painting of experience. The painting is always one. It is made of brushstrokes only from the point of view of a brushstroke. For the canvas it is one.

Likewise experience is ever-present and indivisible. Division has first to be imagined, before objects, entities, selves, others and the world can seem real in their own right.

As it becomes clear that there is no separate individual doer, chooser, decider etc, so the thoughts and feelings that revolve around this apparent entity and the attendant habits of behaving and relating will appear less and less.

In other words, the thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships that appear will be in line with our understanding. They will express love and understanding rather than the neurosis and anxiety of an apparently separate entity.

There may well be a period during which the old habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a separate entity still continue to appear after the belief in such a one no longer appears. This is a transitional time in which the old habits are slowly winding down.

This could be said to be the transition from a moment of clear seeing or understanding, or several such moments, to more stably embodying the implications of this understanding in all realms of experience.

In such a case these thoughts, feelings and actions are not a sign of ignorance but are simply the residue of ignorance at the level of the mind and body, slowly unwinding, as it were.

So the answer to your question, ‘Is this yet another area where we once believed that the separate entity had control but in reality has none?” is ‘Yes’,

However, it is not that the separate entity once seemed to have control and is now realised to have no control at all, but rather that the separate entity is utterly non-existent. It is simply imagined with the thought that exclusively identifies our self, awareness, with a body.

Once this is seen clearly, there is no longer any question as to whether that non-existent entity has control, choice, free will etc. or not.

Experience’s Experience of Itself

Q: Does consciousness require a body/mind apparatus in order to become a knower/perceiver of the world?

Consciousness does not have or require a body/mind, nor does it experience a world through a body/mind.

It is only when thinking artificially and seemingly divides the seamless experience of the body/mind/world into the body/mind and the world that consciousness, which in fact pervades all experience equally, seems to pervade only the body/mind. As a result of this artificial but never-actually-occurring separation, consciousness seems to become the limited observer, located inside the body/mind, looking out through the senses at the world.

However, the body/mind does not experience the world, but rather consciousness experiences the body/mind/world. The body/ mind/world rises as one single, indivisible experience—not consciousness experiencing a world through a body/mind, but rather consciousness experiencing a body/mind/world.

That is, a single sensation/thought/perception appears in consciousness and thinking alone conceptualises and abstracts a separate ‘body’, ‘mind’ and ‘world’ from the raw data of this singular, seamless experience.

In fact, even the slightly more refined concept of a single appearance, the body/mind/world (or sensation/thought/perception), is a concept that tries to evoke the taste of experience as it is, but refers to something that is never actually experienced as such. However, it is a valid, provisional statement because it relieves us of the belief that consciousness is located inside the body, looking out at a world. It is a step in the right direction.

It is truer than the previous formulation but will, in time, be found to be simply another, slightly more subtle conceptual superimposition upon experience itself.

As we look closer we do not find sensations, thoughts and perceptions, or even a single sensation/thought/perception, that is, we do not find any object or objects, in actual experience.

We could say, again provisionally, that we find sensing, thinking and perceiving or, more accurately, sensing/thinking/perceiving. Again, another step. What we previously conceived as a single, multi-dimensional, physical object—the body/mind/world—is now conceived as a single, multi-dimensional, subtle object—sensing/ thinking/perceiving.

And as we go further, that is, as we look with more simplicity and honesty at experience, even the concept of sensing/thinking/ perceiving falls away and we could say that there is just experiencing, made only of itself. Another step.

And what is it that knows or experiences experiencing? Experiencing! There is nothing outside of experiencing with which it could be known. It alone knows itself alone. However, it doesn’t know itself in the way that dualising thinking normally conceives of knowing, that is, in subject-object relationship.

For experiencing, knowing itself is simply being itself. For experiencing, to know and to be are one.

Now let us go deeply into experiencing. Does it or can it stand back from itself in order to know ‘something?’ No! Experiencing cannot stand back from itself or outside itself in order to know itself as an object at a distance. There is no-where and no-thing outside itself. Only an imagined entity could imagine that it ‘stands back from’ or ‘out of’ experience.

Does experiencing, from its own point of view, take place at a certain place? No, all apparent places would be made only of experiencing. Only an imagined entity, arising within experiencing but imagining itself to be outside of or separate from experiencing, could imagine a place or location where experience might take place.

Does experiencing have any knowledge of itself taking place at a certain time? No, all apparent times would be made only of experiencing. Again, only thinking that imagines an apparent entity that is apart from experiencing, could conceive of something other than the ever-present now, in which experience was seemingly taking place.

In fact, experience is too intimately full of itself to know itself as ‘something’, to know itself in relationship.

Does experiencing have any experience of being made of separate parts, entities, objects or things? No, all of these would only be made of experiencing. Only from the imaginary point of view of a part, entity, object or thing could such a part, entity, object or thing exist. And only from the imaginary point of view of one of those parts could one of those parts be the knower or the centre of experience.

‘Parts’, ‘entities’, ‘objects’ and ‘things’ are names that are superimposed by thinking upon experiencing itself and believed (from the point of view of thinking alone) to refer to something that is actually experienced.

In fact, from the point of view of experience, they are nonexistent. Experiencing is pure seamless intimacy, made of one ever-present substance, made only of itself.

In experience there is no time or space. It is too utterly intimately itself to admit of any distance or otherness. This intimacy, this absence of distance or otherness, is known as love.

Experience would first have to imagine itself to be made of objects, selves, others, things and, as such, forget its own reality, which it knows, as it were, without knowing it, in order to be able to imagine such a time and place.

Does the substance of experience ever appear or disappear? That is, does experiencing ever have the experience of its own appearance or disappearance? No! Into what would it disappear and from what would it appear? Such a place would only be more experiencing. To itself, therefore, experience is birthless and deathless.

Has experiencing ever had or would it be possible for it to have the experience of the absence of, a change in or a cause for itself? No! All such concepts require a thought that would imagine something other than experience’s own experience of itself, which is always only now and this. Only an imagined entity can seemingly know absence, change or causation.

Experiencing itself is ever-present, homogeneous, self-knowing, self-luminous, self-existent, uncaused, unmoving, unchanging. It knows nothing other than itself.

It knows no time or space, no objects or lack of objects, no cause and no effect, no meaning, purpose or destiny, no lack and no becoming. These are all mental abstractions, apparently superimposed onto the ever-present seamless intimacy of experience.

Experiencing itself, from its own point of view, cannot experience any lack or inadequacy. It always only knows its own ever-present fullness—full of seamless, indivisible experiencing alone. Therefore, experiencing knows itself as happiness and fulfilment. It would take the arising of thought and the creation of an imaginary entity that was just a part of experience, for the sense of lack to be conceived or felt.

Likewise, experiencing itself, from its own point of view, can never be threatened and is therefore fearless. It can never be agitated and is therefore peace itself. It knows nothing other than or outside of itself and is therefore love itself. It knows no object and is therefore beauty itself.

Fear, agitation, unhappiness, dis-ease, otherness, separation, alienation, loneliness, despair, hatred, unkindness, cruelty, all these, require first the imagining of an entity that is apart from the whole. With this apparent fragmentation of experience into seeming things, objects, entities, selves and the world, time, space, duration, causation, birth, death, decay etc., become seemingly real. However, they are only as real as the entity that thinking imagines.

Having said that, the incomprehensible beauty of this is that even this imagining is itself only made of experiencing and, therefore, there is no true ignorance, no true ignoring of the true nature of reality.

Ignorance is ignorant only from the imagined point of view of ignorance. Experiencing itself knows no ignorance. It knows only itself.

We do not need to give experiencing a name, nor could we give it a name that adequately expresses what it is. At best, we could ascribe to it the sum total of all possible names and even all possible words. That is the best the mind could do. Or, we could ascribe to it the simplest of all possible names, ‘I’.

However, even all possible names and words would not be adequate. Thinking falls silent even in attempting to look towards this ‘one’, let alone in attempting to name it. Thinking is destroyed in the attempt like a moth turning towards a flame. It turns, and as it turns, it dies. It cannot stand the light of experience.

Having seen this, we can look back at all the attempts of thinking to portray the nature of experience accurately and, whilst we understand that these formulations may get more and more subtle and that

some may seem, temporarily and at a relative level, truer than others, at the same time, we recognise that ultimately none are true.

From the point of view of experiencing (which is, of course, not a point of view), all points of view are made equally out of experiencing and yet none adequately express it.

However, from the position of experiencing itself, thinking is no longer required to approach it, because thinking can no longer get away from it far enough to stand back and ‘have a look’, as it were. Where would thinking go? Where would it take its stand? Only as an imagined entity.

The mind as a separate entity, capable of distinguishing itself, standing apart and conceptualising experience, dissolves in this understanding and that dissolution is the true answer to all questions about the nature of experience.

Everything is too utterly, intimately, immediately, ever-presently only made of ‘experiencing’, to be able to separate out one little part that can turn round and ‘look at’ let alone conceive of something objective called ‘experience’.

Water does not know the difference between ocean, wave, river, stream, cloud, rain and tears—only the mind seems to know the difference. But these differences only belong to water from the mind’s point of view, which is only valid from its own point of view.

In reality, these differences pertain to the mind, not to water. They do not touch the water itself. Water only knows itself and it knows itself just by being itself.

As ‘ocean’, ‘wave’, ‘river’, ‘stream’, ‘cloud’, ‘rain’ and ‘tears’ it is apparent ‘name and form’—as water, it is always only water.

Thinking loses its name and form here and stands revealed as it always only is, eternal presence, knowing, being and loving itself alone, until the next river of words gently bubbles up.

If you would like to enquire about anything that is written in this book, please contact the author through the non-duality section of his website, www.rupertspira.com

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