http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/blog/105/0/
The Question: "You comment that Awareness or consciousness is simply observing the various arisings...as though there are two things: one called Awareness or consciousness and the other called arisings. Why would you posit such a dualistic notion in an effort to share the wisdom of non-dual experience?"
Here is Rupert's answer, worth the time to completely digest.
This
is said to one who believes him or herself to
be a person, located in and as the body, looking
out at a world of objects that are considered to have an
existence that is separate from and independent of their being
known.
The terms in which such a person expresses his or her
question (that is, the belief in a separate
entity, separate bodies, objects made of matter,
a world that has independent existence etc.)
are granted provisional credibility in order that we may proceed
from what, at least appears to this person, seem to be
the facts of the current experience.
In other words we start with the
conventional formulation that ‘I,’ inside the
body, am looking out at an objective and independent
world of objects. This is a position of dualism, that is, ‘I,’ the
body (the subject) am experiencing the world,
objects and others (the object).
From here our attention is drawn to
the fact that the body (sensations) and the mind
(thoughts and images) are in fact experienced
in exactly the same way as the world (perceptions). In
other words, the body/mind is not the subject of experience and
the world the object of experience, but rather
the body/mind/world are all objects of
experience.
We then
ask what it is that experiences the body/mind/world. What
is it that is referred to as ‘I?’ It is obviously not the
body/mind, because at this stage the body/mind has
been seen to be the experienced rather than the
experiencer.
What
then can we say about this perceiving ‘I?’ It cannot have any
objective qualities because any such qualities would, by
definition, be objects and therefore experienced.
However, it is undeniably present and it is
undeniable conscious or aware or knowing. For
this reason ‘I’ is sometimes referred to as
Consciousness, Awareness or Knowing Presence.
At this stage the Knowing Presence that I know
myself to be (that is, that knows itself to be)
is conceived of as being ‘nothing,’ ‘empty’ or
‘void’ because it has no objective qualities, and could
be formulated by saying simply, ‘I am nothing.’ It is the
position of the ‘witness.’
This position is still a position of
dualism in that there is still a subject
(Knowing Presence) and an object (the body/mind/world).
Yet it is one step closer to a truer formulation of an
understanding of the true nature of experience than was
the previous formulation in which separate
entities were considered to be existent and
real.
If we explore
this Knowing Presence that we know ourselves to be,
we discover from direct experience that there is nothing in our
experience to suggest that it is limited, located,
personal, time or space-bound, caused by or
dependent upon anything other than itself.
Now we look again at the
relationship between Knowing Presence and the
objects of the body/mind/world: How close is the world to our
knowing of it? How close is the world to ‘experiencing?’
We find that there is no
distance between them. They are, so to speak,
‘touching’ one another.
Now we can go deeper. What is our experience of the border between
them, the interface where they meet or touch? If
there was such an interface, it would be a place
where Consciousness ended and the object began.
We find no such place.
Therefore we can now reformulate our experience based upon our
actual experience, not just theoretical thinking. We
can say that objects do not just appear TO this
Knowing Presence but WITHIN it.
At this stage Knowing Presence is
conceived (based on experience) more like a vast
space in which all the objects of the
body/mind/world are known and experienced to appear and
disappear.
However, it is still a position of dualism, a position in which
this vast knowing space is the subject and the world is
the object that appears within it.
So we again go deeply into the
experience of the apparent objects of the
body/mind/world and see if we can find in them a substance
that is other than the Presence that knows them or the space
in which they appear.
This is a very experiential exploration that
involves an intimate exploration of sensations
and perceptions and which is difficult to detail
with the written word. It is an exploration in which we come
to FEEL not just understand that the body/mind/world is
made out of the substance that knows them.
However, in this
formulation there is still a reference to a
body/mind/world, albeit one known by and simultaneously made out of
Knowing Presence. It is a position in which the
body/mind/world doesn’t just appear WITHIN
Presence but AS Presence.
But what is this body/mind/world that is appearing as Presence? We
explore experience more deeply again and find
that it is this very Presence itself that takes
the shape of the body/mind/world.
Knowing Presence takes the shape of thinking and appears as
the mind. It takes the shape of sensing and
appears as the body. It takes the shape of
perceiving and appears as the world, but never
for a moment does it actually become anything other than
itself.
At
this stage we not only know but FEEL that Presence or
Consciousness is all there is. It could be formulated as, ‘I,
Consciousness, am everything.’ At the same time we
recognise that this has in fact always been the
case although it seemed not to be known
previously.
So we
have moved from a position in which we thought and felt that
‘I’ am something (a body/mind) to a position in which we
recognised our true nature of Knowing and Being
(Presence) and which we expressed as ‘I,
Consciousness, am nothing.’ And we finally come to
the feeling/understanding that I, Consciousness, am not just the
witness, the knower or experiencer of all things,
but am also simultaneously their substance. In
other words, ‘I, Consciousness am everything.’
Even this is to say too
much, for what is this ‘everything’ that is
referred to? Language collapses here. Instead of saying
‘Consciousness is all,’ we should say just ‘Consciousness is.’
But then what is this Consciousness that is
being framed....again it is to say too much.
To summarize we move
from ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing,’ from ‘I
am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’ and from ‘I am everything to
‘I,I,I....’
We fall silent here.
As we abide knowingly as this Knowing
Presence we discover that it is not a void, an
emptiness. Rather it is the fullness of Love. In
other words, Love is the substance of all things.
The movement in understanding from ‘I am
something’ to ‘I am nothing’ could be called the
Path of Wisdom or Discrimination.
The movement in understanding from
‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything’ could be
called the Path of Love.
The abidance in/as this Love is simply to abide as the Self that we
are and that we know ourselves to be. Love is
known to be the substance of every appearance
and to be solely present throughout all the
apparent stages of its revelation. It is the origin, the
substance and the goal of our enquiry.
Ed: Amen, Rupert.
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