Source Text
During this time the fabric of the separate, inside self became clear and with it the so-called separate, outside world. The separate self was revealed as a dense and intricate network of resisting, fearing, avoiding, seeking and conceptualising. In other words, it became clear that the separate self is not in fact an entity but rather an activity that appears in Consciousness.
The title of my first book, The Transparency of Things, came to me as a way of trying to indicate that all our so-called objective experience – the body, the world, things and others – is made out of the same transparent, open, empty, luminous substance as the Consciousness in which it appears.
Any teaching that mechanically asserts and reasserts the same absolute truth as a blanket answer to all questions is at best dogmatic and at worst dubious. The true non-dual understanding is like an explosion – it cannot be contained in any form. It is always uprooting any attempt of the mind to catch it, tie it down, package it or control it. This explosion may be fierce, but it may just as well be a gentle, almost imperceptible dissolving.
Everything that is known or experienced is known by or through our self, aware Presence. In time, this Presence is understood to be the only substance present in experiencing. Our self, Presence, is the most intimate fact of experience. It pervades all experience. It is what we refer to as ‘I’.
Our being is not known by something or someone other than itself. It is known by itself. The ‘I’ that I am is also the ‘I’ that knows that I am. However, ‘I’ does not know itself as something, as an object. It is the knowing of itself. It knows itself simply by being itself. Presence, Consciousness, Awareness, our own being, is the primal and essential ingredient of experience. It is that which makes all experience possible and knowable. In time we discover that this Presence is the only ingredient of experience; it is not itself an ingredient, something that experience is made of, but rather it simply is experience, all alone.
KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE ARE ONE
What is it that fails to notice this? Our self cannot fail to know itself, just as the sun cannot fail to illumine itself. It is only a thought that imagines that our self is not known and that something else – like a body, mind or world – is known. With this thought alone, our self seems to contract inside the body and mind, and objects, others and the world seem to be projected outside. As a result, intimacy is veiled, love is lost and seeking begins.
The more we notice our self, the more its qualities are revealed in our experience. The mind, body and world, which once seemed to veil it, are now seen to shine with its light. We give to our self the attention we used to give to the world, and the objects that once seemed to limit or obscure it are now seen only to reveal or express it. Just as in a physical object, at a relative level, all we see is the reflected light of the sun, so in reality all that is experienced is made only of our self, aware Presence. The only difference is that the sun’s light is seen by something other than itself whilst it is our self that experiences itself in all experience. It is not known by any other light.
This dissolution is known as the experience of love. It is the falling away of the apparent boundaries that seem to keep an object, other, person or world at a distance or separate. Love and knowledge are thus one and the same.
THE INNOCENCE OF EXPERIENCE
AI Summary
Presence, Volume II by Rupert Spira , John J. Prendergast (Foreword) presents key insights from the Taoism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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