Introduction The Intuition Of Happiness
In order to fulfil the desire for happiness, most people engage in a relentless search in the realm of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. This search also takes the form of resistance to whomever or whatever is perceived to jeopardize our happiness. Thus, seeking and resistance are the two main impulses that govern the thoughts and feelings, and the subsequent activities and relationships, of most people. The activities of seeking and resisting are an inevitable expression of the sense of lack or suffering that underlies them. However, most of us never question the origin of our suffering, so busy are we escaping the discomfort of it through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. If we do question it, we usually attribute it to the absence of the object or experience that we seek or the presence of the situation we are attempting to avoid and, as a result, never fully trace it back to its original cause.
However, although the acquisition or avoidance of the object or situation puts a temporary end to the suffering that underlies it and, as a result, brings about a brief moment of happiness, it does not uproot it or bring it to a permanent end. It simply masks it.
Henry David Thoreau referred when he said that most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’. Many people spend their lives managing this despair more or less successfully, medicating it with substances, numbing it through the acquisition of objects, avoiding it through exotic or meditative states of mind, or simply distracting themselves from it with activities and relationships.
The turning of the mind away from the objective content of experience towards the source or essence from which it has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer. It is the ‘inward-facing path’ – sometimes referred to as self-remembering, self-enquiry, self-abidance or the way of surrender – of which the Direct Path that is explored in this book is the culmination.
It is the process that is described in the story of the Prodigal Son, in which the son leaves the security and comfort of his father’s kingdom, explores all the possibilities that the world, or objective experience, has to offer in terms of pleasure and satisfaction, and eventually realises the futility of his search. Finally he turns around towards the source of happiness – symbolised here by his father – which was, in fact, always available to him but seemingly out of reach due to his exclusive fascination with the drama of experience. In this giving up or turning around, we cease being obsessed with our suffering and become interested in the nature of the one who suffers. We turn away from the objects of experience and investigate the nature of the one who experiences.
Peace and happiness are not, as such, objective experiences that the mind has from time to time; they are the very nature of the mind itself.
Imagine the sky as a uniform expanse of grey cloud on an overcast day. At some point a small patch of blue opens up, and soon numerous other small patches appear, each seemingly unconnected from the others and each appearing and disappearing in the expanse of grey cloud. One could be forgiven for believing, at first sight, that the natural condition of the sky was the unlimited expanse of grey cloud and that the patches of blue were limited, temporary appearances within it. It is only when the blue patches are investigated that it becomes clear that they are, in fact, windows onto the ever-present expanse of blue sky in which the grey clouds temporarily appear and disappear.
However, if we make a deep investigation of the nature of the mind, that is, if the mind investigates its own essential nature, travelling back through layers of thought, feeling, sensation and perception until it reaches its own essential, irreducible reality, it will always find peace and fulfilment there.
Happiness, like the patch of blue, appears at first to be a temporary experience that occurs from time to time, but when investigated turns out to be ever-present and always available in the background of experience.
As such, happiness is not a temporary experience that alternates with unhappiness. It is not the opposite of unhappiness, any more than the blue sky is the opposite of the clouds. Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue sky, so unhappiness is the veiling of happiness.
Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed. We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know unhappiness as an objective experience.
My first teacher, Dr. Francis Roles, once said to me, ‘The truth needs to be reformulated by every generation’. It is my hope that this book reformulates the Direct Path for those who travelled to the East, intellectually if not physically, but found it difficult to extricate the simplicity of the non-dual understanding from the wealth of exotic concepts in which it was shrouded, as well as for a new generation of truth seekers who are not burdened by previous religious and spiritual teachings.
Chapter 1 Knowing, Being Aware Or Awareness Itself
All objective experience is known. We are aware of our experience. It would not be possible to have an experience without knowing or being aware of it.
The known always changes; knowing never changes.
Knowing or being aware is in the same relationship to all knowledge and experience as an aware screen would be to a movie. Unlike a conventional television screen that is being watched by someone sitting on a sofa, the aware screen of pure knowing or being aware is watching the movie of experience that is playing upon it.
Knowing or being aware is not inaccessible, unknown or buried within us. It is shining clearly in the background of all experience, just as it could be said that the screen is clearly visible in the background of a movie. However, just as the screen tends to be overlooked during a movie due to our fascination with the drama, so knowing, being aware or awareness itself usually remains unnoticed due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the objects of experience.
Knowing or being aware is not dependent on the particular conditions or qualities of experience. It shines equally brightly in all experience, irrespective of however pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, right or wrong experience may be, just as a screen is equally evident throughout all movies, irrespective of their content.
Knowing or being aware is the essential, irreducible element of experience. It is fundamental to experience. It is that element of experience that cannot be removed from it.
Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only stable element in experience.
Knowing or being aware is the medium upon which or within which all experience appears. It is that with which all experience is known and, ultimately, it is the substance or reality out of which all experience is made.
Although knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, in the sense that a thought, feeling, sensation or perception is an objective experience, nevertheless we are aware that we are aware. Therefore, although knowing or being aware has no objective qualities, it is at the same time known.
Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed and yet more evident than the most evident of things’.
There are no prerequisites for the recognition of knowing or being aware. To recognise the experience of knowing or being aware does not require a particular qualification or level of intelligence. No effort is required to recognise the experience of knowing or being aware, any more than an effort is required to see the screen during a movie.
The experience of being aware is independent of whatever we are aware of.
It is not necessary to change or manipulate experience in any way in order to notice the background of simply being aware.
Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The peace and happiness for which all people long reside there.
This search tends to abstract the experience of being aware from the intimacy and immediacy of experience and give the impression that it is unknown, mysterious and unfamiliar. It implies that the knowledge of awareness or consciousness is an extraordinary experience that may be found in the future.
Enlightenment or awakening is not a particular experience or state of mind that may be achieved by practising hard enough or meditating long enough. It is the recognition of the very nature of the mind. There is nothing more familiar or better known than the simple experience of being aware.
The common name for the experience of being aware is ‘I’. I am aware of the thought of my friend. I am aware of the memory of childhood. I am aware of the feeling of sorrow, loneliness or shame.
As such, ‘I’ is the knowing or aware element in all knowledge and experience. ‘I’ is awareness itself. So we could rephrase the question ‘What is it that is aware of being aware?’ as, ‘Who or what is it that knows that I am aware?’ Is it I who am aware of being aware, or is the experience of being aware known by someone or something other than myself? It is obviously I who am aware that I am aware. That is, it is ‘I, awareness’ that is aware of being aware.
Just as the sun illuminates itself, so awareness knows itself.
Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.
Chapter 2 The Nature Of Awareness
Just as a screen is never agitated by the drama in a movie, so being aware or awareness itself is never disturbed by the content of experience.
This is not a fragile peace that depends on the relative calm of the mind, body or world, but an inherent peace that is always available in the background of experience, prior to and independent of the mind’s activity or inactivity. It is, as such, the peace that ‘passeth understanding’. Nothing that takes place in experience enhances or diminishes the experience of being aware or awareness itself, just as nothing that takes place in a movie adds anything to or removes anything from the screen. Being aware is never aggrandised or demeaned by the acquisition of knowledge or the occurrence of any particular experience. It needs nothing from and fears nothing in experience. It stands neither to gain nor lose anything from any particular experience. Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus, its nature is happiness itself – not a happiness that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of all states, circumstances and conditions. It is for this reason that, when asked if there were a single message that he would like to impart to his students, J. Krishnamurti replied, ‘I don’t mind what happens.’
Knowing, being aware or awareness itself is the essential, irreducible essence of the mind prior to its conditioning in the form of objective experience. It is, as such, unconditioned.
If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognised as the subjective witness of all objective experience.
Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects.
In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience.
This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’.
In the form of the mind, awareness moves without moving.
Just as the screen is coloured by a movie but is never stained by it, so awareness is coloured by experience but is never tarnished or sullied by anything that takes place within it. Pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is always in the same pristine condition.
Just as the screen is utterly defenceless against anything that happens in a movie and yet is never destroyed by the activity that takes place upon it, so awareness is completely open or vulnerable to all experience and yet, at the same time, unharmable and indestructible.
Thus, our essential nature of knowing, being aware or awareness itself has no age. It is for this reason that as we get older, we feel that we are not really getting older. The older we get, the more we feel that we have always been the same person. The sameness in ourself is the sameness of awareness.
However, when the character in a movie is born, the screen is not born; when the character in a movie grows old, the screen doesn’t age; and when the character in a movie dies, the screen doesn’t die or disappear.
Awareness never experiences its own appearance or disappearance, its own beginning or ending, its own birth or death. In order to claim such an experience, awareness would have to be present prior to its own appearance, beginning or birth and after its own disappearance, ending or death.
The finite mind imagines that awareness disappears in deep sleep, but in awareness’s experience it is the finite mind that disappears in deep sleep, leaving awareness all alone. Deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness of absence.
Just as nothing happens to the screen when a character in a movie becomes sick, so nothing happens to awareness when the body falls ill. It is for this reason that to know one’s true nature of pure awareness is the ultimate healing.
Chapter 3 The Overlooking Of Our Essential Nature
Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.
Indeed, most people go through their entire lives without ever questioning who or what it is that knows or is aware of their experience, or how experience comes to be at all.
is hard to imagine a landscape painter spending her entire life painting in nature without ever noticing the light that, relatively speaking, illuminates or renders visible the landscape. And yet most people fail to ever notice or consider the awareness or consciousness that reveals or renders knowable all knowledge and experience.
It is hard to imagine a landscape painter spending her entire life painting in nature without ever noticing the light that, relatively speaking, illuminates or renders visible the landscape. And yet most people fail to ever notice or consider the awareness or consciousness that reveals or renders knowable all knowledge and experience.
Due to this ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of our essential nature – the experience of being aware or awareness itself – we have allowed our essential, self-aware being to become mixed with the qualities and, therefore, the limitations of objective experience. Just as a screen becomes mixed with the qualities of the objects in a movie and seems, as a result, to become a landscape or a forest, so eternal, infinite awareness becomes mixed with and lost in objective experience and seems, as a result, to become a temporary, limited awareness – the finite mind, separate self or ego. That is, we forget who we really are.
The ‘I’ that is known is the ‘I’ that knows. The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated.
First we see only a multiplicity and diversity of objects; then we recognise the presence of awareness; then we see awareness as the totality of objective experience. This is what the Sufis mean when they say, ‘There is only God’s face.’ And this is what Ramana Maharshi referred to when he said, ‘The world is unreal; only Brahman is real; Brahman is the world.’ From this perspective, experience no longer veils awareness but shines with it. The known shines with knowing.
This veiling, inadvertence or turning away from awareness is known as ‘original sin’ in the Christian tradition and as ‘ignorance’ in Vedanta. The Hebrew word most often translated in the Bible as ‘sin’ is chata’ah, meaning literally ‘to miss the mark’.
Original sin is, in this context, the missing, overlooking or ignoring of the essential element of experience – awareness or consciousness itself, or God’s infinite being. Thus, in religious terminology to sin is to turn away from God.
With this veiling, ignoring or limiting of awareness and its subsequent contraction into a finite mind, apparently separate self or ego, the peace and fulfilment that are inherent in it are also eclipsed, although they echo within it as a memory for which it longs. This longing for peace and…
Once the apparently separate self or ego has exhausted the possibilities for securing peace and happiness in objective experience, it may be open to the possibility of accessing them within itself. This intuition is the beginning of the separate self’s return to its inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled essence of pure awareness, and is thus the resolution of its search. All that the apparently separate self needs to do to recognise its own essential nature and thus access its inherent peace and happiness is to recognise that its essence of pure awareness is not conditioned or limited by objective…
We cannot direct our mind towards the experience of being aware; we can only direct our mind away from it. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Thus, the highest form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen. This returning of awareness to itself,…
The apparently separate self or ego is like a rubber ball that is being squeezed. All there is to the squeezed ball is the original ball. However, squeezing the ball shrinks it and sets up a tension that is always seeking to expand it to its original, relaxed condition. The squeezed ball does nothing; it is the naturally relaxed state of…
Likewise, the separate self is an apparent limitation or contraction of infinite awareness. All there is to the separate self is the true and only ‘self’ of pure awareness, but its contraction into a finite entity sets up a tension that is always tending to revert to its original, relaxed and natural condition. This pull is felt by the separate self as the desire for happiness or the longing for God. In reality, it is not the separate self that searches for happiness or returns to its natural, relaxed condition. It is the pull or…
Our love for God is God’s…
Chapter 4 The Disentangling Of…
The Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky referred to the apparent process through which awareness recognises its own eternal, infinite nature as ‘self-remembering’, by which he meant not the memory of something in the past that was once known and has since been forgotten, but rather the recognition or knowing again of something that is present and familiar, but seemingly overlooked or forgotten due to the clamour of experience.
Meditation is, as such, the remembering of our self: the pristine, luminous, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled experience of being aware that we always and already are, which runs ever-present throughout all experience, seemingly but never really obscured by thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions.
In fact, our essential, irreducible self, pure awareness, cannot be remembered in the way that an object, person or event is remembered, for only something with objective qualities can be remembered. Nor need awareness be remembered in that sense, for only something that is lost or missing needs to be remembered.
However, if we are lost in the contents of a movie, the screen will seem to be missing or unseen. Of course, the screen is always being seen, although we have temporarily overlooked or forgotten it due to our absorption in the movie.
Only the infinite can know the infinite; only the finite can know the finite.
Just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen, or a current the activity of the ocean, so mind is the activity of awareness. As such, mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest. The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless dissatisfaction.
Meditation is the disentangling of awareness from its own activity.
When we come out of bright sunlight into a dark room, we cannot do anything with the mind to make the objects appear in the darkness. We just stay there and relax, and slowly the objects emerge. Meditation is similar. There is nothing the mind can do to find or know awareness, for the mind is a limitation of the very awareness for which it is in search. Anything the mind does is simply more of its own veiling activity.
Awareness is like the white paper. It is the luminous, self-aware presence upon which or within which all experience appears, the transparent knowing with which all experience is known and, ultimately, the substance or reality out of which all experience is made. The poet Shelley referred to it as ‘the white radiance of eternity’.
Enlightenment or awakening is not a new or extraordinary kind of experience. It the self-revelation of the very nature of experience itself.
The disentangling of awareness from its own activity can be effected by asking a question that invites the mind to trace its way back from objective experience towards its essential, irreducible nature.
That is, seek absolute knowledge of the eternal, infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the experience of being aware or the knowledge ‘I am’, at the very source of the mind itself, prior to all objective knowledge and experience.
Ramana Maharshi referred to this non-process as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’.
During this directionless journey, the mind sinks or relaxes backwards, inwards or ‘selfwards’. As it does so it is, in most cases gradually, occasionally suddenly, divested of its finite, limited qualities and, at some point, stands revealed as pure mind, original mind or infinite awareness.
Mind is the self-colouring activity of awareness. Meditation is the fading or dissolving of this self-colouring activity and the subsequent revelation of the colourless essence of the mind, pure awareness itself.
Chapter 5 The Effortless Path
In fact, all relative knowledge and experience are derived from and are a refraction of this single, non-dual, absolute knowledge, just as the apparent multiplicity and diversity of the objects and people in a night dream are refractions of a single, indivisible mind. In order to shine on the moon, the sun’s light must travel a certain distance through space. But in order to illuminate itself, the sun doesn’t need to go anywhere or do anything. The sun’s nature is illumination. Just by being itself the sun illuminates itself.
Meditation is not something we do; it is something we cease to do. Thus, it could be called self-returning or self-resting.
Meditation is between awareness and itself. It is simply awareness being itself, resting in itself, knowing itself alone: being aware of being aware. This is why it is said in the Book of Revelation, verse 22:13, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega; I am the first and the last; I am the beginning and the end.’
That is, only gradually, in most cases, will it become clear that meditation is what we are, not what we do, and that the separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.
The separate self or ego is like the clenching of the fist. It is a contraction of infinite awareness into an apparently finite mind.
Chapter 6 The Inward-Facing Path
From the point of view of the mind, the knowledge ‘I am’ is an experience within the mind; from the point of view of awareness, it is awareness itself. It is this recognition that is referred to in the Sufi saying ‘I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for myself and found only God.’
In other words, although meditation may seem at first to be an activity that the mind undertakes in order to achieve some new state or experience, it is later understood to be the very nature or essence of the mind itself. Meditation is what we are, not what we do.
Chapter 7 Trailing Clouds Of Glory
Imagine an actor named John Smith who plays the part of King Lear. John Smith represents infinite awareness and King Lear the finite mind or apparently separate self. Just as John Smith and King Lear are not two different selves, but rather the latter simply an imaginary limitation self-assumed by the former, so infinite awareness and the finite mind are not two different entities.
However, it is not King Lear who recognises John Smith. Only John Smith has the experience of being John Smith.
Seeing the reality of infinite awareness is the death or dissolution of the apparently separate self or ego. This is referred to in the Zen tradition as the Great Death. It is represented in the Christian tradition by the crucifixion.
Chapter 8 The Ocean Of Awareness
If awareness were likened to an ocean, thoughts would be the waves that play on the surface and feelings the currents that flow within it. Just as all there is to the waves and currents is the movement or activity of the ocean, so all there is to the mind is the motion or activity of awareness.
With this apparent limitation of awareness comes a limiting of the peace that is inherent within it. It is for this reason that the primary motivation of all apparently separate selves is to find peace or fulfilment. The wound of separation that lives in the hearts of most people is an invitation from the heart of awareness, drawing the mind inwards to the peace and fulfilment that live at its source and essence.
As such, our longing originates from and is made out of the very substance for which it longs. In the words of a sixteenth-century Italian monk, ‘Lord, Thou art the love with which I love Thee.’
The mind that seeks peace and happiness and the heart that longs for love must subside or dissolve in their essence. We must die before we die. In being aware of being aware, there is no room for a separate self. There is just eternal, infinite awareness, resting in and as its own inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled being…knowing, being and loving itself alone. It is for this reason that Rumi said, ‘In the existence of your love, I become non-existent. This non-existence linked to you is better than anything I ever found in existence.’