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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3786, Sunday, January 24, 2010, Editor: Mark
Editor's note: Dennis Waite has rewritten his book The Book of
One: the Spiritual Path of Advaitai, improving and adding new
material. The new edition is due out in April. Here's the new
version of the bit that I quoted yesterday:
ahaMkAra means the making - kAra - of the utterance `I' - aham
- but, in practical terms, it describes the process by which the
real Self is identified with something in creation. In order to
communicate meaningfully with others, we have to use the word `I'
but most of us do not think that we use it merely as a
convenience. We believe that it refers to something unique about
us as an individual; something concrete that could be pointed to
or picked up, except that, if asked exactly where or what this
`thing' is, we begin to find it difficult to define. Moreover, we
believe that we are separate, autonomous entities that do and
think things in our own right. Effectively, we mis-take ourselves
for something limited. It is this single act that is the root of
all of our problems. As soon as we attach the basic feeling of `I
am' to anything at all, we create duality because if `I am
something' (e.g. a woman), I have simultaneously defined
something that I am not - a man.
It is as though an actor becomes so identified with the role that
he is acting in a play that he goes around in his day to day life
thinking the thoughts and feeling the emotions that might be felt
by that role and entirely forgetting that he is an actor, merely
pretending to be the role in the play. There is no reason why he
should not play the part of a murderer in the matinee performance
and a lover in the evening; who-he-really-is has nothing to do
with either.
In an analogous manner, Advaita says that the Self actually has
`nothing to do with' the world - is totally unaffected by it.
What happens is that the process of ahaMkAra identifies
the Self with something in creation and that `something' is bound
by the laws of creation. Thus, whilst it seems as if our real
Self is bound, subject to misery and death, it is not really so.
It is only the body that dies.
Don't worry if these ideas appear to be rather far-fetched. Just
let them rest for the time being, rather than throwing the book
out of the window. We'll return to them in more convincing detail
later... and the window will still be there
If the body-mind is an object, a personal and limited collection
of mentations, there must be a witness to which it appears. This
witness is usually referred to as consciousness or awareness. If
we investigate what we are, it becomes clear that it is this
awareness that is precisely what we call "I." Most
people identify this witnessing consciousness with the witnessed
mind, and in doing so they superimpose the personal limitations
of that mind onto consciousness, conceptualizing it as a personal
entity. When we make a deliberate attempt to observe this
witness, we find an unusual situation: Our attempt seems to fail,
due to the subjective nature of consciousness, and the inability
of the mind to recognize something that is not objective; but
mental activity, made up of the current train of thoughts and
sensations, seems to stop for a moment. Although this
"stop" doesn't leave any memories at the level of the
mind, this non-experience generates a strong feeling of identity
and an ineffable certitude of being that we describe using the
words, "I" or "I am." After a while, the ego
resurfaces with the thought, "I am this body-mind,"
projecting once again the space-time limitations of the personal
entity onto the limitless "I am." The limitlessness of
the "I am" can't be asserted from the level of the
mind, but remains with us as an "aftertaste" when the
objective world reappears.
Having been informed of the presence of this witnessing
background, and having had a first glimpse of our real self, a
powerful attraction, which brings us back again and again to this
non-experience, is born. Every new glimpse reinforces the
"perfume" of freedom and happiness that emanates from
this new dimension. As our timeless presence becomes more and
more tangible, our daily life takes a new turn. People,
distractions, and activities that used to exert a strong appeal
to us are now met with indifference. Our former ideological
attachments become weaker for no apparent reason. Our focus on
investigating our true nature intensifies without any effort on
our part. Higher intelligence sets in, deepening our intellectual
understanding of the truth and clarifying our ontological
questioning. Many personal conflicts and antagonisms are reduced
or resolved.
Then, at some point, the ego is reabsorbed into our witnessing
presence, which reveals itself as the eternal beauty, absolute
truth, and supreme bliss we were seeking. Instantaneously, we are
established in the certitude of our primordial immortality. This
sudden revelation of our non-dual nature can't be properly
described through words to someone who is still under the
illusion of the duality of subject and object. Such a person will
understand those words in relative terms, as an objective
experience. It is the only kind of experience he can conceive.
How is it possible to convey the feeling of absolute happiness to
someone who only knows relative experiences? Given any relative
experience, no matter its intensity, there is always the
possibility of an even more intense experience. But this is not
the case when we are referring to the bliss of our true nature.
How is it possible for someone who knows happiness only in
relation to objects to comprehend the autonomy, the
causelessness, of this bliss? How is it possible to convey the
non-localization and the timelessness of this unveiling to one
who only knows events in space-time; its absolute certitude to
one entangled in relative truths; its divine splendor to one for
whom beauty is a relative concept?
If we say that our universe, with all its richness and diversity
- the apples in the basket, the loved ones around us, the
Beethoven quartet on the stereo, the stars in the nocturnal sky -
at every instant emanates from, rests in, and is reabsorbed into
our selfrevealing presence, our words still fail to adequately
describe the immediacy of this unveiling.
They fail to do so because they still convey the notion of a
transcendental presence from which this universe emanates as a
distinct entity, whereas such a distinction is nowhere to be
found in this unveiling. Our self-luminous background, which is
the common thread of the dialogues in this book, constitutes the
sole reality of all that is.
- Francis Lucille, from Eternity Now, from the
StillnessSpeaks.com site
From Geo:
I must repeat how much I apreciate your intent in driving one
back to the source!
There is such a strong drive to conceptualize, to try to
"understand".
Thanks Scott!
From Scott:
Hi Geo. Glad the pointers are helping. Yes, it can be very
helpful to just allow thoughts to rest more and more and be only
with present, non-conceptual space. This is a radical, direct
approach.
As this unchanging, unmoving empty space is seen to be what you
are, it becomes obvious that the intellect and all the
conceptualizing has no separate existence from the space.
But unless and until this radical empty awareness is introduced,
this inseparability very often remains elusive. For many (of
course not everyone) until this basic ground of presence or
awareness is recognized as the stable unchanging source, the mind
just continues to put different pieces of the puzzle together,
sort of running on a treadmill, not really going anywhere, but
rather just getting different configurations of thought. Some of
the configurations are clearer than others, relatively speaking.
For example, a post-modernist philosophy or an integral framework
or a particular teaching may be a clearer configuation or
conceptual framework. But to see that even those things are
coming and going within a boundary-less space is real freedom.
It's not about denying mind or any mindstuff but rather seeing
first what is here, prior to thought, emotion, experience,
sensation, and other appearances. As this basic formless space
reveals itself, everything is seen to be inseparable from it.
I don't want to give the impression that this is true for
everyone or that this is the only path. It certainly is not. It's
just been my own personal experience. And I have seen it help
many others.
For me, the value of a pointer is not in how clear it sounds
conceptually, but in the extent to which it provides or reveals
actual freedom, unconditional love, acceptance, compassion and to
what extent it reveals one's actual identity beyond the limited
sense of "me and my story."
- Scott Kiloby, from AOStudyGroup
Q. Is this source that you turn to see, the ultimate subject,
your real nature?
A. Be very careful. The subject that can be seen is not your
home-ground. What is sometimes called the ultimate subject is
nothing other than silence, sunyata, emptiness of images. This is
consciousness, the light behind all perception. The subject that
is talked about is still in duality, the subject-object
relationship.
- Jean Klein, from: Who Am I? The Sacred Quest
The world is full of remedies,
but you have no remedies until God
opens a window for you.
Though you are unaware of that remedy now,
God will make it clear
in the hour of need.
- Rumi, Mathnawi II: 682-683, version by Camille and Kabir
Helminski, from Rumi: Daylight, posted to Sunlight