It seems that every generation produces a few unusually clear voices that call us back to our essential, undivided nature. Rupert Spira is such a voice, and the collection of essays in these two volumes are his songs, his hymns of remembrance and celebration.
We are repeatedly challenged to investigate the apparently dual reality of a separate-inside-self and separate-outside-world. When we carefully observe our actual experience, the common-sense distinction of self and other dissolves like a line drawn through the air. Once the apparently separate self, which is a process of seeking and resisting, is clearly seen through, it loses its foothold in both our thinking and feeling. An apparent veil thins and eventually dissolves, revealing what is always already here: a Presence which is both the witness to and the substance of all experience. We recognise this seamless, intimate knowing of ourself, both with and without form, as love.
In many ways the contemplations in this book follow a similar approach, exploring a single theme with gentle but somewhat relentless devotion. In fact, even now there is some reluctance to commit to the form of a finished book something whose nature does not lend itself readily to the written word. I would prefer the form of music, which dissolves as soon as it is uttered, leaving its true content as a formless perfume in the listener’s heart. This book is a meditation on the essential nature of experience, taking us on a journey into its heart. It is inevitable, therefore, that there is a certain amount of repetition. For a mind that seeks new ideas, stimulation or entertainment, this repetition may seem frustrating at times, but for one who seeks the heart of experience it will not be experienced as such. Instead, we may see these contemplations as an ever-deepening exploration of experience, giving way in time to an immersion in its essence. In this exploration layers of subtlety and meaning are uncovered, but we never rest for long on any particular formulation. Each new understanding dissolves the previous one, only to find itself being dissolved in time. In fact, the potency of words which attempt to explore and express the nature of experience lies in their dissolving quality rather than their ability to formulate something that cannot accurately be put into words. It is in this spirit that I hope this book will be read.
Introduction: The Search for Happiness
If we were to conduct a poll of all seven billion people living on earth, asking what they most wanted in life, almost all would answer, ‘Happiness.’ Some may not answer as directly as this, saying instead that they want, for instance, an intimate partner, a family or more money, but all these are desired only for the happiness that they produce. In fact, most activities are undertaken with a view to obtaining happiness.
However, after some time, although we may still possess the desired object – whether it is a physical object, a relationship, an activity or a mental state – the experience of happiness that it seemed to produce begins to fade. This alone should be enough to indicate that happiness is not a result of the acquisition of objects, relationships or states. If happiness were related to objects, then as long as the object remained, happiness would remain. Instead of receiving this simple message, we simply discard the object that once seemed to produce happiness and seek another one in its place, in the hope that it will redeliver the happiness that is now missing. In fact, this pattern of seeking one object after another in an attempt to secure happiness, peace or love is the basic pattern of most people’s lives.
Either our search in the conventional realms of work and money, food and substances, or sex and relationships will increase to an obsessive level, resulting in various degrees of addiction, or we will turn our attention away from the conventional field of possibilities and begin a spiritual search.
The spiritual search is usually undertaken as a result of the failure of the quest to secure happiness, peace and love in the conventional realms of experience. Instead of happiness, which seems to be available only in fleeting glimpses, we now seek a permanent state of enlightenment. In fact, our search for…
We are given a glimpse of that same happiness, which we now call awakening or enlightenment, but just as we previously mistook the acquisition of objects and relationships for the source of happiness, we now confuse these new states of mind for enlightenment. These brief glimpses, like the previous moments of happiness, are soon eclipsed by the…
For some this failure is experienced as a time of despair or crisis. There are no further directions in which to turn and yet the search has not been brought to a satisfactory end. The usual means of bringing the search to an end, or at least avoiding the discomfort of it, through substances, activities and relationships or subtler meditative states of mind, may have temporarily numbed it,…
In either case a new doorway may open up, the only one that has yet to be explored. Who is this self that is in almost constant search of happiness, and what is the nature of this happiness? This is the moment when the prodigal son turns around. This book starts with this turning around. It is a…
In this book ‘happiness’ is synonymous with peace, love, beauty and understanding. † In this book ‘object’ refers to anything that is experienced in the mental, emotional or physical realms, including all…
Our True…
Who Or What…
All we know of the mind, body and world is our experience of them, and experience is utterly dependent on the presence of our self, whatever that may be. Nobody has ever or could ever experience a mind, body…
Let us start with our self, for everything depends upon this. What do we know about our self for certain? In order to find this out we have to be willing to lay aside all we have learned about our self through others or our culture and to rely only upon our own intimate, direct experience. After all, experience must be the test of reality. The first thing we know for sure is ‘I am’. This simple knowing of our own being – so simple and obvious that it is usually overlooked – turns out to be the most precious knowledge that anyone can have. I may…
What is it that knows or is aware of our being? Is it ‘I’ that knows that I am, or is ‘I’ known by someone or something other than myself? It is obviously ‘I’ that knows that I am. The ‘I’ that I am is the very same ‘I’ that knows or is aware that I am.
If someone were to ask us, ‘Are you present?’ we may pause for a moment and then answer, ‘Yes.’ In that pause we refer to our intimate and direct experience of our self, and from that experience comes the certainty of our answer. In that pause we do not refer to thinking, feeling or perceiving; we refer directly to our self. It refers to itself.
In this book our self is also referred to as ‘aware Presence’ or simply ‘Presence’, or as ‘Consciousness’ or ‘being’. Most simply this aware Presence is known as T. Whatever we may choose to call it, it is just the intimacy of our own being – Awareness’s awareness of itself – which is the most obvious, familiar and direct knowledge that anyone has.
This forgetting or overlooking
of our most intimate being, although apparently such a small thing, in fact initiates almost all of our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships and turns out to be the source of all unhappiness.
It is thought that seems to obscure this simple knowing of our own being and makes it seem that our self is something other than the presence of Awareness.
The history of humanity, on both the individual and the collective scales, is the drama of this loss of our true identity and the subsequent search to regain it.
From ‘I, The Body And Mind’ To ‘I, Aware Presence’
What qualities does our self, this aware Presence, possess other than simply being and awareness? The fact that our self is present and aware is beyond doubt. However, to this simple knowing of our own being we normally add many attributes. In this book we proceed very slowly, referring only to our direct and intimate knowledge of our self, adding attributes, if any, that truly come from experience – that is, from our self’s own experience of itself – rather than from any belief.
I am obviously not a sound or a sight; I am whatever it is that is aware of the sound of traffic or the sight of the buildings or landscape. These sounds and sights come and go, but I, aware Presence, remain. For this reason we know that I am not a car, a building or the landscape.
Now what about the mind, which most of us consider to be identical with our self? The mind consists of thoughts and images. In fact, no one has ever experienced ‘a mind’, that is, a permanently existing container of all thoughts, images, memories, fears, hopes and desires. The existence of such a container is itself an idea. We do not know a mind as such; all we know of the apparent mind is the current thought or image.
And what about a thought or an image? Can a thought or an image know or experience something? Can a thought see or an image hear? Can a thought see or understand these words, or are thoughts seen and understood by our self? If we stay close to experience, using only our actual experience as a test of truth or reality, we will see that the body and mind do not know or experience – they are known or experienced. See clearly that it is not ‘I, the body and mind’ that is aware of the world but rather ‘I, this aware Presence’ that is aware of the body, mind and world. The discovery that our self is not essentially a body or a mind, but is in fact the aware being or Presence that knows or witnesses them, has radical and profound implications.
The first step in this consideration is the discovery that we are this aware Presence and to see that it is this Presence that knows or witnesses the mind, body and world. The second is to be that, knowingly, instead of imagining that we are something else, such as a body or a mind. We do not become this witnessing Presence as a result of this exploration; rather, we notice that we always only are that and now we abide as that knowingly.
Our Self Is Without Location Or Limit
Our true self is known in a more intimate and direct way, simply through being. In fact, we discover that the only way to know our self is to be our self and not to mistake our self for any kind of an object.
At some point there may be a spontaneous collapse of the attempt to find oneself as an object in the body or mind. In this collapse, the seeking mind comes briefly to an end, and in that moment – it is, in fact, a timeless moment – our self glimpses or tastes itself as it is, pure aware Presence, unconditioned by any of the beliefs or feelings that thought superimposes upon it.
Can we find any limit to our self, aware Presence? The mind may imagine limits, but do we actually experience any? It is our self, aware Presence, that knows or experiences whatever is known or experienced. So the question may be rephrased by asking if our self, aware Presence, has any experience of itself being limited. To begin with, the imagined limits that the mind superimposes upon our self may seem so obviously true as to eclipse our actual experience.
If we return again and again to our self in this way, looking always for any quality that actually limits it, it becomes clear that our self has never experienced any limit within itself. Aware Presence always experiences itself as being without limits, though this experience is usually eclipsed by the beliefs that the mind superimposes upon it.
The discovery of the unlimited nature of our self, like all understanding when it actually takes place, is always sudden. In fact, it is timeless because the mind is not party to our self’s own experience of itself, and without the mind there is no time. However, it may not always be immediate. It may take a period of contemplative and sensitive exploration of our experience to come to this understanding. This realisation may have dramatic and immediate effects in our life. The mind may even be quite confused when its own belief systems no longer seem convincing but have not yet been replaced with a new interpretation of experience. However, this experiential understanding may just as well go almost unnoticed for a while, in which case the mind will gradually become accustomed to our newly discovered experience of our self.
The Forgetting Of Our Essential Being
It is like mixing oil and vinegar and producing one single substance, salad dressing. However, when the salad dressing is allowed to settle, the oil and vinegar separate and we realise that they only seemed to be one homogenous substance. The investigative and contemplative exploration of our experience that we are engaged in here is the settling out of these two qualities – the qualities that are innate in our essential being and those that properly belong to the appearances of the body and mind.
Our Self Is Birthless And Deathless
Have we changed and grown old as the body changes and grows old? Was it not our self, this very self that is present now, that was aware of the infant, the child, the teenager and the adult in all their forms and throughout all their changes? When the body and mind disappear during sleep, does our self disappear? Who is present to witness such a disappearance? That one must be present and aware. Our self has no experience of its own disappearance. Who would be present to witness and claim such a disappearance? Only our self!
The Eternal And Infinite Nature Of Our Being
The experiential understanding that our self, aware Presence, is without limits or location is not a special kind of knowledge that needs training or education. It is obvious, intimate and well known to everyone, prior to anything that the mind may or may not know. It is an experiential knowledge that is independent of how intelligent or otherwise the mind may be, or of how old or young, well or sick the body may be.
In the intimacy of our own being, which is prior to thought, there is no time. In fact, our self is not prior to thought; without thought, there is no time present during which our self could exist. Even with thought
The Only Self There Is
There are not two selves, a separate one and a real one. The real self is always the only self there is, although it has become so entangled with thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions as to seem as if it were another kind of self – one that is limited, separate, located and inside. There is no such limited self. Our true self of Awareness
never becomes a separate self, any more than a screen becomes a landscape when the film begins. In ceasing to invest attention and identity in the objects of the body and mind, our being is gradually divested of these accretions. Whatever we give our attention to flourishes. Whatever we give our attention to becomes our reality. In giving attention to our self of aware Presence, attention is relieved of its direction, focus or tension and stands revealed as Presence itself. The one that is looked for stands revealed as the one that is looking.
As a result of this disentanglement, our self returns to its natural condition of open, empty, transparent Presence, and the peace and happiness that are inherent within it begin to percolate through all appearances of the body, mind and world. The body and mind begin to express these qualities of openness, emptiness and transparency, and even the world begins to express the friendliness that is a reflection of the intimacy of our true self
The Nature Of Peace, Happiness And Love
Our Essential Being Is Peace Itself
Our being is like that. It seems to have taken on the qualities of the body and mind, but in reality it has not. Before the appearance of the body and the mind our self ‘was’ exactly as it is now and as it ‘will be’ when the body and mind die. The ‘was’ and the ‘will be’ are this very now, the only now there is.
Our self witnesses all agitation but cannot itself be agitated. This absence of resistance or agitation is known simply as the experience of peace. Our self is inherently peaceful. Our inherent peace does not depend upon the nature or condition of appearances. Peace is not a quality or attribute of out self. It is our self. It can never be parted from our self, just as the inherently peaceful quality of space cannot be parted from it. We are peace itself.
This peace is ever-present, sitting quietly behind and within every thought, feeling, sensation or perception, open and available at every moment, simply waiting to be recognised. Whenever we long for peace, it is in fact the peace of our true nature that we are longing for, although sometimes we mistake the peace of our true nature for a peaceful state of the mind, body or world. We all know that peaceful states of the mind, body and world do not last and do not deliver the depth of peace that we truly desire. Only the peace that is inherent in our true nature can put an end to the longing that initiates and sustains so many of our activities and relationships. The longing for peace is itself the peace of our true nature, thinly veiled by the ‘I, the separate, inside self thought and feeling. When this longing is divested of time, that is, divested of the past and future into which it projects an imaginary self, it stands revealed as the peace that is ever-present within our own being, quietly shining at the heart of all experience, simply waiting to be recognised. To mistake the peace of our true nature for a peaceful state of the mind or body simply postpones the realisation of the peace that is inherent in the simple knowing of our own being as it truly is.
Happiness Is Inherent In Our Being
Happiness is not a state of the mind or body, although it is often mistaken for such. Of course, pleasant experiences of the mind and body come and go, but happiness itself has nothing to do with pleasant experiences. Nor is happiness a quality that we have or an experience that comes and goes. It is the innate lack of resistance or dissatisfaction that is the natural state of our self. It is not something that can be separated from our self. It is what we are.
The longing for happiness that characterises most of our activities is only a longing to taste the happiness that is inherent and ever-present in our true nature and that has been temporarily eclipsed by our rejection of the current situation, our rejection of this, now. This perpetual longing for happiness – which can, by definition, never be fulfilled because it denies the very happiness that is present in our own being now – condemns us to an endless search in the future and thus perpetuates unhappiness. It is for this reason that Henry Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’
LOVE IS THE NATURAL CONDITION OF ALL EXPERIENCE Returning to the metaphor of the space of the room, see that all the objects in the room are at an equal distance from the space in which they appear. Everything – the table, chairs, carpet, curtains, windows, books, your body – is equally close to the space. The space is ‘touching’ them all. It is no closer to one object than another.
Thoughts, feelings, images, memories, sensations and perceptions are all known by our self. Everything appears to our self, aware Presence, and if we look closely we never find any distance or separation between our self and any appearance, just as there is never any distance or separation between the image and the screen. The daffodil in the foreground is no closer to the screen than the mountains in the background. Our self is like that with respect to all appearances. It is intimately one with them, ‘touching’ them equally. Every experience is illumined or known by our self, and that knowing is intimately connected to whatever is known – they cannot be separated.
The discovery that peace, happiness and love are ever-present within our own being and completely available at every moment of experience, under all conditions, is the single most important discovery that one can make. Normally we consider our self to be a limited and separate entity, a body and a mind, born into a pre-existing world, moving along in time, negotiating circumstances in an attempt to secure the peace, happiness and love for which we long, continuously growing older and destined eventually for death. However, our essential nature is pure being itself – aware Presence – that neither resides in nor is dependent upon the body and mind. It doesn’t come or go; it was not born and does not die; it is eternally present now, and peace, happiness and love are its very nature.
The imaginary, inside self is created by this veiling of peace, happiness and love and, once created or imagined, is condemned to an endless search, in a non-existent future, for something that cannot, by definition, be found there. This is the tragedy and comedy of the human situation.
The Eternal Now
All experience takes place now. ‘Now’ is normally conceived of as a fraction of time sandwiched between the two endless expanses of the past and future. The now is considered to be a moment of minute duration – hence the phrase, ‘the present moment’ – moving along a line of time. The now is undoubtedly known or experienced. But what about time? Time is the duration between two events. For instance, there is apparently a duration of twenty-four hours between breakfast this morning and breakfast…
The time at which breakfast this morning is believed to have taken place and the time at which it is believed breakfast tomorrow morning will take place are both imagined. They are never experienced. When the actual experience of breakfast takes place, it is now, and when the thought about breakfast takes place it is also now. We truly only know now; we never actually know a past or future. If we don’t actually know a past or future, how can we know time? We cannot! And if we do not know time, how do we know that the now in which this current experience is taking place is not the same now in which all experience takes…
Try to step out of the now. Try to take a step out of the now into the past by one second. Can you do it? Try to step one minute into the future.…
What is the now made of? The now is ever-present, and so it can only be made out of something that is also ever-present. What in our experience is ever-present? The mind, the body, the world? No, only our self! The now is our self. We are not present in the now – we are the now. The now is not a container that holds our self along with everything else. It is our self, eternal Presence. What motive is there for our self to avoid the now – not our self, a body or a mind, but our self, aware Presence? Prior to thought there is no motive in our self. Even during a motivating thought, the motive is only that thought. All motives are for thought, never for our self. Thought alone believes that a motivating thought is a motive for our self, but the self that has a motive is an imagined self. That imagined self doesn’t have a motive; it is a motive – a movement of resistance or seeking, away from the now into an imaginary past or future. The true and only self is inherently free of any motive, plan or purpose. It is that for and out of which all motives, plans and purposes are ultimately made. We are pure peace and happiness, which know no resistance to the now, nor any desire to replace it. It takes thought to resist the now and seek to replace it with a better situation of its own imagining. Prior to that thought there is no motive to leave the now, to seek peace,…
Now, what is it that could forget the presence of our self? Obviously not our self, because our self cannot ‘not know’ itself. It is the knowing of itself. What other kind of self is there that could forget the eternal nature of peace and happiness which is our true self, aware Presence? Only an imaginary one. And that is exactly what the separate self is. The imaginary self is made out of the thought that imagines it. It is an imaginary, thought-made self which imagines that peace and happiness are not present now, in the current circumstance. If peace and happiness are not present now, where might they be found? Only in the ‘not now’. Time is the name we give to the imaginary place that is ‘not now’. In fact, time is the theatre of the separate, inside self, a sort of playground where the resistance and seeking that are…
When it is truly seen that this now is the only now there is, this resistance and seeking activity of the separate self collapses. With the collapse of resistance and seeking, the separate self itself collapses, for the separate self is not an entity that seeks but rather the very activity of seeking. If we understand experientially that this now is the only now there is, and that all the peace, happiness and love that could ever be are present right here and now, in this…
When this is seen clearly the imaginary separate self and its search for peace and happiness dissolves. This dissolution may be…
the body and mind. The body and mind, which have for so long served an imaginary entity, now find themselves relieved of this make-believe tyrant. As a result, the resistance and seeking that were enshrined in our thoughts, feelings, gestures, postures, behaviours, activities and relationships begin to unwind. This unwinding may be accompanied by the release of tensions and contractions in the body and mind, which may…
In most cases this re-orchestration of the body and mind takes place gradually, but occasionally the change is dramatic. As a result of such a dramatic change the body and mind may become disorientated and the loss of the familiar structures in which we invest our identity may result in fear and even panic. At this point the desire to return to the old habits of thinking and feeling as a source of security may be strong and, if succumbed to, will allow the imaginary self to assert itself again. However, if we have the courage and the love to remain in the openness and unfamiliarity of this new landscape, the fear will subside, leaving us in our true nature of peace and happiness. In time, the residues of the separate self are…
Eventually, the whole structure of the body/mind returns to its natural state of openness and ease. It no longer serves the insatiable demands of the imaginary inside self and no longer makes impossible demands on an imaginary outside world or other. Such a body/mind is free and spontaneous, responding to the requirements of the…
If some knowledge from the past is required, it is made available. Whatever is needed in each moment is provided, no more, no less. For instance, ideas that contain the past and future may be provisionally adopted if required…
when a friend asks us how long our flight took, we may be puzzled for a moment. The journey didn’t take time. It is now all the way. ‘Nine hours’, we reply with a smile. The ‘nine hours’…
Enlightenment could be defined as the absence of resistance to what is, the total intimacy with whatever is taking place without any desire to reject or replace it; so intimate that there is no room for a self to separate itself out from the whole, to stand apart and look at the situation from the outside, to judge it as worthy or not worthy, good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable; so intimate that there is no room, nor any time, in which a separate self could take refuge inside the body, so that it finds itself without boundaries or borders, pervading the whole field of experience; so intimate that there is no ‘me’ on the inside and no object or other on the outside, but only seamless, intimate experiencing; so intimate that there is…
We cannot, nor need we, practise being our self. We are already aware Presence, intimately one with all experience. In fact, we can…
For decades we have been practising being a separate, inside self, rehearsing its lines and roles, until it has become second nature to think, feel, act and relate on behalf of such an entity. However, this entity is entirely the product of imagination. It is thought alone that does all this. Our relationship to all appearances of the body, mind and world is the same…
Is experiencing made out of something other than our self? How much distance is there between our self and the experience of the moon? Is it millions of miles away or is the experience of the moon – which is all we know of the moon – intimate, close, one with our self?
There is no separate subject that stands back from experience and knows it from a distance. Experience is far more intimate than that. Experience is the knowing of itself. It
The ultimate purpose of the body/mind’s activity is to find happiness or, if we are spiritual seekers, to find enlightenment, which is the same thing. But our self is already that for which the mind is in search.
The Origin Of The Separate Self
The Essential Form Of The Separate Self
The essential form of the separate self is a thought that imagines that our self, aware Presence, does not pervade all experience intimately and equally but rather just pervades one little part of it, this cluster of thoughts and feelings here called ‘me, the body/mind’.
What we call this one substance doesn’t matter, for there is no longer anything else to contrast it with. However, whatever the substance of experience is, it is made out of our self, and hence Awareness and Presence are good names for it. This intimacy and lack of separation or otherness is also known as love. It is the natural condition of all experience.
At this moment, something other than Awareness seems to come into existence. Instead of feeling that our self pervades all experience equally, we now feel that our self just pervades this little fragment of experience, the body and mind. In this way our self, Awareness, apparently contracts inside the body and mind, and the world and all others seem to be projected outside. This is the primary division of experience into two apparent entities – the self and the world – that veils the natural condition of all experience – love. For this reason, the imaginary inside self is always on a mission to secure love in the imaginary outside world.
In this way, our experience of the world always reflects and confirms our understanding: if we think we are a limited, located, inside self, then the world and others will seem to reflect that belief back to us. They will seem separate, distant and other. Above all, they will be seen either as a source of peace, happiness and love or a threat to it and, as a result, our relationship with them will always be one of attraction and repulsion, seeking and resistance. When it becomes clear that there is no separate, inside self, the very same world confirms this new understanding in our experience. This is the magical nature of the world: it seems to confirm both the belief in duality and the understanding of non-duality
The thought that imagines our self to be contracted within and limited to the body and mind is a fragile entity, a belief made out of the alliance between our self, aware Presence, and a network of bodily sensations. This exclusive mixture of our self with the qualities of the body and mind results in a pseudo-separate self that seems to be both aware (because it is essentially made of our true nature of Awareness) and limited (because it seems to share the limited characteristics of the body).
That is, the separate entity feels that it is essentially fragile and vulnerable – because the body and mind are made of thoughts, sensations and perceptions that come and go – and, therefore, subject to disappearance and death. Thus, the fear of disappearance or death, and the subsequent need for psychological survival, are the essential ingredients of the imaginary self. In order to allay this essential fear, the inside self seeks to substantiate its fragile nature with further beliefs, feelings and associations. These include our memories, hopes, failures, successes, achievements, ambitions, and feelings such as fear, guilt, inadequacy, worry, anxiety and regret, as well as physical attributes. As a result, the separate, inside self grows into a complex structure made of thoughts, feelings and sensations, thereby developing an identity that has depth, weight, meaning, size, location, purpose, age, nationality, history, destiny and so on. All these mixed together are like a densely woven fabric – each strand by itself almost nothing, but woven together becoming a seeming whole that gives the impression of meaning, solidity and durability. This colourful woven fabric becomes our identity; however, this identity is a fake, made of nothing but little coloured threads of thought, feeling and sensation all interacting with one another, interweaving around an empty centre. When we look inside, we find only emptiness, space, transparency, our self. And what is it that ‘sees’ our self, that recognises this transparent Presence? Our self, aware Presence, is the only one that is aware and present that could ‘see’ or recognise this empty, transparent Presence. When we look inside, towards this apparently separate self, a moment comes, and it is always a timeless moment, when our self recognises itself.
Peace And Happiness Are Not States Of The Body Or Mind
Peace and happiness are not states of the body or mind. All states of the body and mind, however pleasant, appear and disappear in Awareness. Peace may be thought of as an absence of a sense of agitation or resistance, and happiness as the absence of a sense of lack. This absence of the sense of agitation, resistance and lack is our natural condition. It is inherent in our true nature of aware Presence.
This takes the form of a network of tensions in the body that seems to house the sense of separation and indeed impersonates a separate, inside self. Over the years this tension becomes chronic and is enshrined at all levels of the body, expressing itself in our postures, gestures, movements, activities and relationships.
All objects of the body and mind are temporary, and yet everyone seeks permanent peace and happiness. Hence the vast majority of humanity is seeking for permanent peace and happiness in a temporary object – a state of the body and mind – and hence the search for peace and happiness, of which the spiritual search is simply a refinement, is destined to fail. Most of humanity is in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction, seeking something that cannot be found in the form in which it is conceived, and thus trapped in a cycle of dissatisfaction, punctuated by brief moments of respite. Because this respite is misinterpreted as a state of the body and mind, the cycle is perpetuated ad infinitum. As a result, most people live in a more or less subtle state of conflict that plays itself out in friendships and intimate relationships, in addictions to substances and activities, and, on a larger scale, in activities that threaten our species and the planet itself.
The Separate Self Is An Activity, Not An Entity
The process of resisting and seeking which constitutes the experience of unhappiness or suffering is an activity of thinking and feeling. The separate self is not an entity; it is this very activity of resisting and seeking.
Peace and happiness are synonymous with the dissolution of the imaginary self.
It is for this reason that the imaginary self can never find the peace and happiness that it seeks. Its very activity of seeking prevents the peace, happiness and love that are ever-present just ‘behind’ the seeking thought from being known or experienced. However, nor can the imaginary inside self cease seeking. The separate self is unhappiness itself.
The separate self cannot experience peace, happiness and love. It can only die in it. Like the moth and the flame, the separate self we imagine our self to be becomes the flame as it touches it. At that timeless moment, seeking/resistance comes to an end, and with it the imaginary inside self. All that remains is the flame in which the imaginary self has been consumed. All that remains is our essential being. In fact, we don’t become anything. Rather, our identity – which is always only the same aware Presence whether it is recognised or not – is relieved of the beliefs and feelings that have been superimposed upon it and seemed to turn it into a separate, limited entity, and is returned to its natural condition, in which there is no sense of resistance or seeking. All that remains is the seamless intimacy of experiencing, where there is no time present in which a thought may rise up and separate out an inside self, thereby creating an outside object, other or world. Right there in that timelessness, shining at the heart of all experience, simply waiting to be recognised, lie the peace, happiness and love for which we long.
When the body and mind wake from deep sleep in the morning, they emerge saturated with the peace of our true nature. In most cases, however, the appearance of the mind in the morning initiates a new round of resistance and seeking. The imaginary inside self is created anew with this rejection of the now, and again ventures out into the ‘far-off country’ – the imaginary world that is outside, separate and at a distance from itself – seeking the peace that was present in sleep and is now veiled by the very desire for it.
Some so-called spiritual traditions institutionalise this longing in a more refined form and perpetuate it with subtler forms of seeking and practice, thereby perpetuating the imaginary self and the unhappiness that is inherent within it. Sooner or later, through an excess of suffering, through intelligence, or for no apparent reason at all, it becomes clear that what we long for is veiled only by the longing for it.
This is not a new or strange feeling. On the contrary, it is familiar; we have always known it. It is more like recognition. It feels like home.
Happiness Is Never Absent
Our self, aware Presence, is similar. This open, empty allowing, this absolute ‘Yes’ to all seeming things, is what our self is, not what it does. Awareness only knows ‘Yes’. Without the arising of thought within it, there is nothing present that could say ‘No’ or resist the current appearance or situation. Prior to the arising of thought, there is no seeking, no rejection of the current situation or wanting it to be other than it is. In fact, without the arising of thought, experience is too intimate even to be known as ‘something’, such as a body, mind, world or situation. There is only the indescribable, pure, seamless intimacy of experiencing. In this intimacy there is no room for any sense of lack, and therefore it is known as happiness; there is no room for resistance, and therefore it is known as peace; there is no room for separation or otherness, and therefore it is known as love.
Our self is downgraded from the open, empty space of aware Presence to a limited object, and our essential nature forgoes its inherent qualities of peace, happiness and love. It seems instead to take on the qualities of objects: limited, subject to disappearance and change, and ultimately destined to die. However, peace, happiness and love never truly disappear; they are always available at the heart of every experience.
The happiness and love are, in fact, always being felt, but modulated through the prism of the separate-self thought they are experienced as a state of longing or desire. Hence even the agitated states of longing and desire are an expression of our innate happiness. Even hatred comes from love. The tension and agitation of the body or mind are temporarily relieved as a result of this dissolution of the separate self, and a wave of peace, lightness or joy may flow through them as a result. These waves are just the after-effects of the transparent and timeless experience of happiness and peace, which is not itself an experience of the body or mind.
It is rather like waves breaking on a beach and gradually erasing the sand drawings that the children have left behind. With each wave, part of the drawing is erased, but it may take many waves to wash it away, depending on the depth of the lines. Likewise, the residues of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate, inside self leave scars in the mind and, in particular, in the body. These may take some time, several years in some cases, to be truly permeated by the transparency, openness and lovingness of our true nature.
Desiring The End Of Desire
Once this whole mechanism of the veiling of happiness and love, the subsequent search for them in the imaginary outside world, the collapse of this search and their eventual unveiling has been clearly seen, a profound change is initiated in our life. Objects, others and the world are no longer approached with the same demands and expectations and, as a result, our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships are relieved of a tremendous burden. However, it would be a mistake to think that all desires were expressions of the belief and feeling of separation. They are not. There are two essential types of desire. One is initiated by the ‘I, the separate, inside self thought and always seeks to acquire happiness and love through an object, situation or person. The other proceeds directly from our being, unmodulated by the sense of separation, and it expresses, shares and celebrates itself in the world of form, that is, through objects, activities and relationships. The first kind of desire goes towards happiness and love; the second comes from it.
The Failure Of The Search
The longing for happiness and the fear of death are, in fact, two aspects of the same syndrome. The syndrome is the imaginary inside self. Future generations may one day diagnose this SSS – Separate Self Syndrome – from which the vast majority of humanity suffers and which is the main cause of most psychological unhappiness.
This may feel at first like a return to our self, but in fact there is no return. Who is there to return? The one that would return to the true self is an imaginary self. We have never for a single moment been anything other than our true self. That is, it has never for a moment been anything other than itself.
It is not even ‘our’ self. There is no ‘me’ for that self to belong to. It is impersonal. All that has happened is that our essential being has been divested of the layers of belief and feeling that were superimposed upon it.
With this understanding the inside self is clearly seen to be and to have always been utterly non-existent. The exotic name for this understanding is enlightenment or awakening, but it is more simply the knowing of our own being, its knowing of itself. It is the end of ignorance, or the ignoring of our true nature.
The body and mind are very good servants; they do what they are trained to do. For decades they have been trained to serve an imaginary inside self, and the vast majority of most people’s thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships are devoted to fulfilling the voracious demands of this imaginary self. When it becomes clear that there is no such self, the belief in it is no longer fuelled, but the old habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating on its behalf will inevitably continue for some time. So, although the experiential understanding that there is no separate, inside self brings one chapter to an end, another chapter begins: the colonisation of the body, the mind and even the world by this experiential understanding.
The belief in separation, and the numerous ways this belief has manifested in our thoughts, succumb relatively quickly in most cases to our new experiential understanding, but the way we feel the body and perceive the world usually takes much longer. The sense of a separate self has been laid down over many years, in most cases, as layer upon layer of feelings in the body. It takes time, courage and sensitivity for these layers to be exposed to the light of understanding and for their density and ‘me-ness’ to be dissolved. Likewise, it takes time for the world, with its apparent solidity and otherness, to yield its sense of ‘not-me-ness’ and stand revealed as a modulation of the light of our own intimate being. For so long our being has assumed the characteristics that properly belong to the body and mind – local, temporal, limited, solid, subject to birth and destined for death. Now that this exclusive association has been abandoned, the body and mind and even the world begin to be permeated by the qualities that are inherent in our self. They become progressively more luminous, open, empty, transparent and peaceful in a never-ending dissolution of all form into Presence. Everything begins to shine with the light of our own being. This is the meaning of the transfiguration in the Christian tradition.
The Body
The Sense Of Separation In The Body
In many cases the understanding ‘Everything is Awareness, there is nobody here, there is nothing to do’ has been appropriated by the inside self and laid like a thin veneer over our much deeper feelings of separation and unhappiness – hence the new religion of non-duality. To account for the feelings of irritation, sadness, lack, agitation, loneliness and so on that still persist, and to reconcile them with its new enlightened status, the imaginary self, through a convoluted act of reasoning, persuades itself that all these feelings simply arise in Awareness and are made out of it. Happiness and unhappiness are considered equally to be appearances in Awareness with nothing to choose between them. This allows the separate, inside self to remain intact, hidden in the body, subliminally dictating our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships.
The Perception Of The Body
Our actual experience of the body does not correspond to the ideas we have of it. So put these ideas and images aside and go directly to the actual experience.
The total field of seeing is one seamless whole without separate parts, just as a screen is one seamless whole. It is only thought that divides the screen into a multiplicity and diversity of objects – people, flowers, trees, fields, hills, the sky, birds and so on. From the point of view of one of these imaginary objects, all of them, including itself, are real in their own right. But from the point of view of the screen, which is the only real point of view – and it is not in fact a point of view – there are no real, separate, independent objects; there is just the screen. To think that seeing is located in one part of the field is like imagining that the screen is located in just one of the objects appearing on it.
This does not mean that experience is not real. Experience is absolutely real; that is undeniable. All that is denied is the interpretation that thinking superimposes upon experience, which then profoundly conditions the way it appears.
Awareness is the knowing element in all experience, and all we know of the world is our knowing of it.
It is the intimacy of our own being that imparts reality to all seeming things. What we know when we know an object is our self, and it is our self that knows itself. What we love in all others is only our self. That is, it knows and loves itself alone. All desires long for this alone. All friendship celebrates this alone.
Raw, Unfiltered Experience
Awareness is our true body. See that all the sensations we normally consider to be our body are actually free-floating in this limitless, borderless space of Awareness. Awareness is the true body, the true ‘container’ of all things, and everything is made out of its own transparent, luminous substance. What then are these objects, such as the body, that are apparently contained within Awareness? If we go deeply into the sensation of the weight of the apparent body, we find only the experience of sensing there. How heavy is sensing? Don’t think about this; this is not theory. Go to the actual experience, divested of all interpretation. Sensing has no weight. Therefore, it is our direct and intimate experience that the body is weightless. ‘Weight’ is a concept superimposed onto our actual experience by thinking.
All that is needed is to start with direct experience and to remain there, not with a concept, an image or a memory of the body or the world but simply raw, unfiltered experience.
Close your eyes and just go in a childlike way to the raw experience of the body. Simply contemplate your actual experience and, divested of superimposition and interpretation, its nature will reveal itself to itself.
The Ever-Present Seamlessness Of Experience
What are normally conceived of as objects are, in reality, the changing names and forms that are superimposed by the mind and the senses onto the ever-present, underlying reality of Awareness.
The World
Aware Presence is the light that illumines all experience, that makes experience knowable. Because there is no substance to our experience of the world other than the knowing of it, the world is said to be luminous, made out of the light of Awareness or knowing. Aware Presence illumines the apparent world and its light is also the substance of the world that it illumines and knows. The knowing of the world and the existence of the world are made out of the same transparent, luminous substance.
Now take the world, which is normally considered to be at a distance from and made out of something other than our self. For instance, take an object in the world such as
a distant mountain. How far is that mountain from experiencing? Obviously, no distance at all.
Now ask how far experiencing is from your self, that is, from aware Presence. Obviously, no distance at all. If it has been seen clearly that the mountain is no distance from experiencing, and experiencing is no distance from Awareness, then it is clear in our actual experience that the mountain is at no distance from our self.
Perception And The Limits Of Mind
This does not mean that the reality of experience is unknowable. On the contrary, the reality of experience is all that is ever known, although that reality can never be known or described by the mind. It is known by our self, as itself. It is our self. All experience is absolutely real. There are no real illusions. If they were real illusions, there would, by definition, be a reality to them. An illusion is only an illusion from the illusionary point of view of an illusion! Even an apparent illusion is made only of thought. For instance, a mirage is a real experience. It is only an illusion if we think it is made of water. The illusion – water – is for thought, not for experience. Whatever that thought refers to – water – is non-existent as such, but the thought itself is made out of the same substance as all thinking or experiencing. Its reality is the same as the reality of all experience.
This view should not be confused with the more popular and solipsistic view that mind is all there is. Just the fact that peace, happiness and love are very real, albeit non-objective experiences, should be enough to indicate that there is much more to experience than mind.
The creature doesn’t need to perceive the totality of the tree, or nature as a whole, to know its essential reality. If it goes deeply into the nature of just one of the lines that appear in its world, it will eventually arrive at the inescapable truth that whatever the lines really are, whatever the tree really is, and whatever it, the creature itself, really is, are all one. The creature’s mind will never know this oneness, nor need it, because the creature is that. All it needs to know is itself, and in knowing itself it knows the essential nature of the tree, pond, fields, rivers and sky, and whatever else there may be. In knowing itself it knows the reality or essential nature of all of nature. It knows nature’s eternity. And how does it know itself? Simply by being itself, without adding anything to this essential being.
However, in just the same way that the essential reality of a leaf is identical to the essential reality of the tree, or a carrot to the earth, so the essential reality of our self is identical to the essential reality of the universe. Whatever the world truly is, its essential nature is identical to our own innate being, aware Presence. Atman equals Brahman.’ ‘I and my Father are one.’
Nature’S Mirror
From the absolute point of view art has no purpose. There can be no higher purpose in any endeavour than to reveal the fundamental reality of our experience, for everything else is dependent on that while it depends on nothing.
From this point of view, art is simply a song to the absolute, a hymn of praise, gratitude and celebration, an outpouring of love. However, if this seems not to be the case, if it seems that there is something missing, if it seems that whatever we are is somehow separate or cut off from the reality of the universe, then art has a function. When the reality of our experience is ignored, our culture provides various means to reassert the truth or the reality of experience. These are known as religion, philosophy and art.
For instance, what is the nature of the seen, independent of the qualities that are dictated by our eyes? If our eyes were constructed differently we would see a different world. For instance, if we had the eyes of an ant or a flea, the world would appear very differently. What is it that the world of the human being, the ant, the flea and all other creatures have in common? If we take away all those qualities that are conferred upon the world by our senses and we remove the abstract conceptual labels of the mind, what remains of the world? If we remove the forms and labels that are superimposed by the senses and the mind upon the world, what remains of that world? Nothing? No, not nothing! Nothing remains that is perceivable by the senses or conceivable by the mind, that is, no thing, not an object. At the same time we know that there is a reality to our experience of the world. Even if it is a dream, nevertheless there is a reality to that dream. That reality is made out of something.
The purpose of art is to give us a taste of this seamless, indivisible intimacy and oneness of experience. The purpose of art is to heal the wound that lies at the heart of the imaginary separate self, the belief and the feeling that what we are is a fragment, a separate, inside self locked up in the body, communicating sporadically and intermittently with an alien and hostile world, in which we feel vulnerable, lost, afraid and, above all, destined for death.
The French painter Paul Cézanne said, ‘One moment in the life of the world passes. To paint the reality of that moment and forget everything for that. To become that moment, to be the sensitive plate. To give the image of what we see, forgetting everything else that has happened before our time.’ To be that moment, to know oneself as that moment, as the totality of experience from moment to moment; to know oneself as the substance of this and every moment and, as an artist, ‘to give the image’; to make something that conveys this understanding, not simply to convey it but to transmit it; to make something that has within it the power to cut through or dissolve our habitual and dualistic ways of seeing and induce this experiential understanding.
The way of the artist is the way of perception, just as the way of the philosopher is the way of thought and the way of the devotee is love. Cézanne said, ‘The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.’
Cézanne said, ‘Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her eternity’
The separate, inside self, which is created by the ignoring of the reality of our own being, has appropriated the true non-dual understanding and is using it as a means of validating and substantiating its own erroneous beliefs.
The World And Awareness Change Places
Or we could say it is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. To begin with, the pieces seem abstract, incoherent and unrelated. However, as we proceed the picture begins to fill in and it becomes easier and more obvious. There are fewer and fewer possibilities. This places us on a straight and narrow track where everything falls into place quickly. It is the same here. All the mind’s objections are met with understanding until a time comes when there are no more objections left. The mind, which constructed the apparent duality in the first place, has deconstructed its own edifice. Those residual bodily sensations that seemed to support the now discredited belief in a separate, inside self and its correspondingly separate, outside objects, others and world are left to tell their empty story and are slowly consumed in the light of understanding. This leaves us on the brink, in openness and unknowing. From here Awareness shines more and more brightly, dissolving within itself any last vestiges of separation and otherness that have lingered out of habit, revealing Awareness shining in and as itself. It doesn’t matter if the dissolution is long and slow, for there is nothing to wait for anymore, nothing to long for, nothing that is lacking and no one to wait. Even our desire for truth or reality somehow loses its fierceness and can no longer really be called desire, for there is no room for desire here, however noble. Our desire is transformed into love. In fact, it was always love, disguised as desire by a thin veil of otherness. It was always only that for which it was seeking.
Can we find any part of experience that is closer to or farther from experiencing than any other part? Is the sound of a bird or the traffic farther away from experiencing than our most intimate feelings? No, our only knowledge of the sound of the bird or the traffic is hearing, and hearing takes place here, not here a location in space, but here in this unlocated intimacy. Thinking divides the intimacy of hearing into a self on the inside that hears and a bird or the traffic on the outside that is heard, but experience knows of no such thing. From the point of view of experience there is only the pure, seamless, indivisible intimacy of itself.
See clearly that matter is a concept, never an experience. It is a concept that was invented by the Greeks two and a half thousand years ago and yet, strangely, scientists are still looking for it! Of course, they will never find it as it is normally conceived, because whatever they find will always be made of experiencing, and experiencing is made only of the intimacy of our own self. The ultimate substance of the universe is the stuff out of which this current experience is made.
The Intimacy And Immediacy Of The Now
Where is the inside self and the outside world in our actual experience? Stay intimately with pure experiencing and see if you find such a self or world there.
Where is the line in pure experiencing that separates an inside from an outside? Search experience and try to find this line.
See clearly how artificial are the ‘me’ and ‘not me’ labels. We have never experienced anything that was not our self, nor would it be possible to do so. And what is it that experiences our self? Only our self! There is only one substance in experience, and it is pervaded by and made out of knowing or Awareness.
The first could be called a position of ignorance. The term ‘ignorance’ is not meant in a judgemental or pejorative sense, but rather in a factual one. It is a position in which our true nature is ignored and, as a result, we mistakenly believe and feel ourself to be a mind and a body. The second could be called a position of wisdom or understanding, in which it is clear that we are the Awareness to which or in which all objects – body, mind and world – appear. The third could be called a position of love, in which it is clear that there are no objects, others, selves or world, but rather the seamless intimacy of pure experiencing, whose substance is Presence, Consciousness or Awareness.
The ‘I’ that is believed to reside in the head has many guises, each one seeming to substantiate and validate its apparent location there: the thinker, the knower, the chooser, the decider, the planner, the memoriser, the judge, the desirer and so on.
Many people have the intellectual understanding that there is no evidence for a personal, limited ‘I’ but then sabotage any deeper exploration of the feeling of ‘I’ in the body by adopting the mantra ‘There is nothing to do’. The feeling that ‘I’ resides in and as the body is by far the larger aspect of the apparently separate self and has a deeper taproot, as it were, than the belief in the separate T. Again, much has already been said about the feeling of ‘I’ in the body, so suffice it here to say that self-enquiry at this level involves an experiential exploration of the ‘me-ness’ of bodily sensations.
In this exploration the deeper layers, such as feelings of fear, guilt, shame, inadequacy and unlovableness, are allowed to surface without resistance or agenda and to slowly reveal the sense of separation that lies at their heart. It is, in many cases, this deeper exploration of experience which distinguishes intellectual understanding from real experience.
These are the only three options that are available to us – ‘I am something’, ‘I am nothing’ and ‘I am everything’ – and we are free at every moment to choose where we stand. Depending on our choice, our experience will mirror whatever position we choose. Experience will seem to confirm our stand. If we believe we are a body and a mind, objects, others and the world will seem to be very real; they will correspond to our belief and seem to validate it. If we consider that we are the open, empty presence of Awareness, to which or in which the objects of the body, mind and world appear, our experience will appear consistent with that position. We will know our self as the detached, impartial background of experience. We will know our innate freedom and the peace and happiness that lie at the heart of all experience.
We can experiment with these three possibilities in turn and see what response we get from the universe. For it is this response, the response that comes in our actual experience, that confirms which of these possibilities is true.
Happiness is the form in which experience says ‘Yes’ to itself when it has been relieved of all erroneous beliefs and feelings.
Surrendering Everything To Presence
Either we take our stand as this open, allowing Presence or we offer everything to it. The two are, in fact, identical. There is nothing that cannot be allowed or offered – from our most trivial thoughts to our deepest, darkest feelings. We allow everything, offer everything.
As some point we may see this whole strategy of avoidance and seeking and have the clarity and courage to face the feelings that we have been avoiding for so long. This may produce a rebellion in us, where the body will do everything it can to engage our attention again in the activity of suppressing, avoiding, denying and seeking. But if we are courageous and loving we may let this display of energies flow through us without allowing our self to become their accomplice.
Allow Presence to take care of everything. Whatever is present is only present because it is already totally accepted by Awareness. If it were not already accepted by Awareness, it would not be appearing. In fact, it is not just accepted. All appearances are loved by Awareness. As William Blake said, ‘Eternity is in love with the productions of time.’ Love, or pure intimacy, is the only experience that Awareness knows.
How could our true self want to get rid of the sense of separation when it doesn’t even see any such separation? What is it that sees a problem and wants to get rid of it? Only an imaginary self. It is the apparent presence of that imaginary self that turns a neutral situation into a problem to be solved. It is not possible to deal with a non-existent problem. By dealing with problems we grant them reality. Problems thrive on the attention we give them. In fact, they are made out of the attention we give them.
Therefore, to be unhappy and to claim ‘There is nothing to do’ is a contradiction in terms. The separate entity is already a doing, a rejection of the current situation, a search for happiness. It is the activity of suffering and searching. So if, as an apparent person, we think there is nothing to do, we are deluding ourself We are laying a veneer of non-duality over uncomfortable feelings that we have neither the courage nor the intelligence to face. In this case, non-duality has just become our new religion and we are using it to avoid honestly and courageously facing our actual experience.
The true teaching is always spontaneous and can assume a great variety of forms to suit the needs of the moment. The prescription ‘There is nothing to do’ is just one of the possible forms of the teaching. If it comes in the moment as the response of love and intelligence to a particular question or situation, then it will be perfect. But if it is applied as a mechanical answer to all questions then it perpetuates the ignorance that it seeks to relieve. In fact, in such a case it comes from ignorance.
Relieved of the dictates of the tyrant self, the body and mind are now experienced as open, empty, transparent and sensitive, and are available to express, communicate, share and celebrate our being’s essential qualities of happiness, peace and love. For Presence there is nothing to avoid nor any state that could add anything to its
fullness. As such it is the simple experience of happiness. Happiness is simply the knowing of our own being – its knowing of itself – as it is. To abide knowingly as that is pure meditation and, in the end, turns out to be life itself. Happiness is the highest spiritual practice.
The Relationship With A Teacher
How do you see the uprooting or exposure of personal blind spots that seem to block the release into the natural openness of being? Do you advocate a kind of one-on-one teacher/student pointing out that could lead to this type of release? The teacher wants absolutely nothing either for or from the student. He or she has no agenda. The so-called teacher sees the so-called student as him or herself, that is, as Presence. It is this attitude that is primarily, in my experience, the effective agent in the apparent relationship between the teacher and the student.
It is such a relief not to be taken as a separate entity with all the usual demands and expectations that go along with this attitude. We are simply free to be ourself, whatever this means for each of us. Sometimes the relief is small and only noticed as a relaxation at the level of the mind and body, and sometimes it is more dramatic and there are tears and laughter.
Even more potent than these subtler ways of communicating are the silence, love and understanding from which the words arise. If our words come from this silence, they come, as it were, pregnant with it and they deliver their silence straight into the heart of the listener. The listener may not even be aware that this seed of silence has been planted in the heart. It is only later, when it begins to grow in us, that the mind takes note of the fact that something has changed. We do not need to know, in fact we cannot know, how or when this seed was planted. It is like falling in love. Why was it that particular face or that particular smile that stirred this depth of love? Who knows and who cares? And when this love was stirred in us, was it not something that we had always known but had seemingly forgotten?
Do we not recognise this love as the most intimate and familiar thing we know? Do we not know that it is for this that we live, not for the person, but for this love?
The teacher, the teaching, the lover and the child were only the forms that love took to draw the apparent entity back into the heart.
experiences experience? Only experience. It experiences or knows itself. This pure experiencing is what we are. It is pervaded by the intimacy of our being. There is only our self, pure experiencing, taking the shape of the totality of experience but never knowing itself as something other than itself, such as a body, mind or world. The body, mind and world are only such from the point of view of the mind. But the mind’s point of view is an imaginary point of view, like the point of view of a person in our dream or a character on TV. Such a point of view is only real from the imaginary point of view of the imaginary separate self. In fact, there are no points of view. There is just the view, and every part of the view – although in reality the view is not made of parts – is permeated by seeing or experiencing. It is made only of seeing or experiencing. The view sees itself, but not as an
object. It is too close, too intimate, to see or know itself as something, such as a view or an object. Experience is too close to itself to know itself as a body, mind or world.
Some of us may find this complex, abstract and incomprehensible and dismiss it as philosophical rambling. For others it may articulate something we have always known but perhaps never quite brought into focus. Reading these words we may feel that we have written them ourself, so intimately and accurately do they describe our experience. We may find the body, mind and world dissolving in understanding and will know this understanding as love. The mind may attempt to rise up from time to time to know ‘something’, but it will again and again be effortlessly dissolved in this love and understanding.
And as the phone goes, we reach for it knowing that all we could want in that moment is to answer the phone; as our child asks for a bag of crisps all we could want is to buy a bag of crisps; as we wash our face in the morning all we could want is the sensation of warm water on our skin. Whatever we touch, wherever we look, whatever we hear…we bless it with our touching, with our looking, with our hearing, and are simultaneously blessed by it. We find our self at and as the very heart of life, without the slightest motive to resist or seek. We understand the artist’s motive to take up a brush and paint a face, a landscape or a bottle, expressing with every stroke the intimacy, the vibrancy, the aliveness, the love that pervade all experience, that are all experience.
At the heart of all experience is an open door. It is not a door that leads to a refuge that is apart from experience. It leads us so deeply into the heart of experience that experience itself loses its familiar names and forms. We realise that it was, in fact, these familiar names and forms that kept us apart from experience, that veiled the intimacy, the love, that is the natural condition of all experience. The mind simply cannot go through that door. It doesn’t even know its whereabouts. It is safely hidden right at the heart of all experience. At the heart of experience there is a fire that burns all we know, that turns all things into itself. Offer everything to this fire. This fire is the experience of peace and happiness for which all things are destined and from which all things proceed. It is that for which we have longed all our life, and we find it here, shining at the heart of all experience.