In order to interpret/misinterpret one
has to superimpose a set of learning, belief system, training
etc. Basically we work ourselves into a state of excitement
and frenzy.
What if the person has no
knowledge or belief system and yet had a "direct touch" of the
Buddha ? There is no knowledge or conceptual framework for
such misinterpreting - there is only clarity beyond
knowledge.
Lots of people who have no spiritual background, like Ramana
Maharshi and Eckhart Tolle (and I'm sure many others), have a
direct glimpse and yet stays at the I AM stage. (Stage 1 and 2 of
Thusness's Six Stages of Experience)
It's not just a matter of belief system or training -- whether
you have a background belief, or system of spiritual thought, or no
system of spiritual thought... (unless one has a strong
understanding of Anatta and Emptiness) the experience will most
likely be misinterpreted due to the deep dualistic and inherent
view that is planted deeply in our minds, not just over the years
of conditioning in this lifetime, but for countless lifetimes. The
bond of the 'Self' is subtle, and almost 100% of the waking and
dreaming time affecting the way we perceive reality (in terms of
subject/object, perceiver/perceived relationship). We are unable to
perceive the truth of 'in the seen only the seen, in the heard only
the heard, never a seer/hearer'. We always relate to experience
dualistically. And after certain glimpses we will still always sink
back, relate back, to a Self, a Source, a 'center', 'witness',
'purest state' or a background reality not knowing there is no
observer apart from observed and all appearances are equally the
Source/Witness and there's nothing to choose. You should read this
article to understand how Karmic Propensities work: The Spell of Karmic Propensities
The way everyone (before deep non-dual and emptiness insight)
perceive is dualistically and inherently -- whether spiritual or
non spiritual people, whether they have previous spiritual training
or not. And when someone without the right views and understanding
and practice and gains an initial glimpse of awareness, it will
almost certainly be distorted.
It also depends on how one glimpses awareness. For Eckhart Tolle
and Ramana they experienced their pure sense of existence - I AM,
through dissociating from all thoughts and the body as 'not me' and
then realising the remaining consciousness as being the 'purest'
and the 'most ME'. Because of this, they experience Consciousness
as being dissociated from all phenomena. And as Longchen said at
this stage there is an erroneous concept that 'there is a relative world make up of
thoughts AND there is an 'absolute source' that is watching
it' and that The I AM stage person will make attempts
to 'dissociated from the relative world' in order to enter the
'absolute source'. whereas However, at Non-dual (& further..)
stage understanding, one have understood that the division into a
relative world and an absolute source has NEVER occcured and cannot
be... Thus no attempt/effort is truly required.
They do not know that what they experienced is only an aspect of
consciousness and not the entirety of it... and when they reify it
into an Ultimate Subject, Witness, Atman, that's the problem. When
Non-Dual realisation dawns, its seen there is no 'purest'
consciousness because ALL phenomena are equally consciousness, and
hence the "I
AM" is not more "ME" than a passing thought, a passing sound, a
moment of sensation when the feet touches the ground. There is no
Self apart from phenomena arising and passing. As Zen Master
Hui-Neng and Zen Master Dogen said: Impermanence is
Buddha-Nature.
People like J Krishnamurti, Byron Katie, Douglas Harding and
some others are different -- though these people mentioned have no
previous spiritual background or training prior to their awakening
(actually JK had years of spiritual background with the
Theosophists though I don't think Theosophy taught nondual and also
JK could not find his experience compatible with Theosophy
teachings) they have nondual experience and does not see
Consciousness as a background reality, a watcher or I AM apart from
phenomena.
For example Byron Katie, who also have no previous spiritual
background, wrote of her awakening experience which is nondual (as
in stage 5 kind of nondual) and hence she does not see
separation:
Less than two weeks after I
entered the halfway house, my life changed completely. What follows
is a very approximate account.
One morning I woke up. I had
been sleeping on the floor as usual. Nothing special had happened
the night before; I just opened my eyes. But I was seeing without
concepts, without thoughts or an internal story. There was no me.
It was as if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes.
It was looking through Katie's eyes. And it was crisp, it
was clear, it was new, it had never been here before. Everything
was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up
from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstasy.
It was intoxicated with joy: totally greedy for everything. There
was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was
its very own self. For the first time I — it — experienced the love
of its own life. I — it —was amazed!
In trying to be as accurate as
possible, I am using the word “it” for this delighted, loving
awareness, in which there was no me or world, and in which
everything was included. There just isn't another way to say how
completely new and fresh the awareness was. There was no I
observing the “it.” There was nothing but the “it.” And even the
realization of an “it” came later.
Let me say this in a different
way. A foot appeared; there was a cockroach crawling over it.
It opened its eyes, and there was something on the foot; or there
was something on the foot, and then it opened its eyes — I
don't know the sequence, because there was no time in any of this.
So, to put it in slow motion: it opened its eyes, looked
down at the foot, a cockroach was crawling across the ankle, and …
it was awake! It was born. And from then on, it's been
observing. But there wasn't a subject or an object. It was — is —
everything it saw. There's no separation in it,
anywhere.
All my rage, all the thoughts
that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world,
was gone. The only thing that existed was awareness. The foot and
the cockroach weren't outside me; there was no outside or inside.
It was all me. And I felt delight — absolute delight! There was
nothing, and there was a whole world: walls and floor and ceiling
and light and body, everything, in such fullness. But only what
it could see: no more, no less.
Then it stood up, and
that was amazing. There was no thinking, no plan. It just stood up
and walked to the bathroom. It walked straight to a mirror, and it
locked onto the eyes of its own reflection, and it understood. And
that was even deeper than the delight it had known before. It fell
in love with that being in the mirror. It was as if the woman and
the awareness of the woman had permanently merged. There were only
the eyes, and a sense of absolute vastness, with no knowledge in
it. It was as if I — she — had been shot through with electricity.
It was like God giving itself life through the body of the woman —
God so loving and bright, so vast — and yet she knew that it was
herself. It made such a deep connection with her eyes. There was no
meaning to it, just a nameless recognition that consumed
her.
Love is the best word I can
find for it. It had been split apart, and now it was joined. There
was it moving, and then it in the mirror, and then it
joined as quickly as it had separated — it was all eyes. The eyes
in the mirror were the eyes of it. And it gave itself back again ,
as it met again. And that gave it its identity, which I call love.
As it it what it is. People name things a wall, a
ceiling, a foot, a hand. But it had no name for these things,
because it's indivisible. And it's invisible. Until the eyes. Until
the eyes. I remember tears of gratitude pouring down the cheeks as
it looked at its own reflection. It stood
there staring for I don't know how long. looked in the mirror, the
eyes — the depth of them— were all that was real, all that existed
— prior to that, nothing. No eyes, no anything; even standing
there, there was nothing. And then the eyes come out to give
These were the first moments
after I was born as it, or it as me. There was nothing left of
Katie. There was literally not even a shred of memory of her — no
past, no future, not even a present. And in that openness, such
joy. “There's nothing sweeter than this,” I felt; “there is
nothing but this. If you loved yourself more than anything you
could imagine, you would give yourself this. A face. A hand.
Breath. But that's not enough. A wall. A ceiling. A window. A bed.
Light bulbs. Ooh! And this too! And this too! And this
too!”
All this took place beyond
time. But when I put it into language, I have to backtrack and fill
in. While I was lying on the floor, I understood that when I was
asleep, prior to cockroach or foot, prior to any thoughts, prior to
any world, there is nothing. In that instant, the four questions of
The Work were born. I understood that no thought is true. The whole
of inquiry was already present in that understanding. It was like
closing a gate and hearing it click shut. It wasn't I who woke up:
inquiry woke up. The two polarities, the left and right of things,
the something/nothing of it all, woke up. Both sides were equal. I
understood this in that first instant of no-time .
So to say it again: As I was
lying there in the awareness, as the awareness, the thought
arose: It's a foot. And immediately I saw that it wasn't
true, and that was the delight of it. I saw that it was all
backward. It's not a foot; it's not a cockroach. It wasn't true,
and yet there was a foot, there was a cockroach. It opened
its eyes and saw a foot, and a cockroach crawling over the foot.
But there was no name for these things. There were no separate
words for foot or cockroach or wall or any of it. So it was looking
at its entire body, looking at itself, with no name. Nothing was
separate from it, nothing was outside it, it was all pulsing with
life and delight, and it was all one unbroken experience. To
separate that wholeness and see anything as outside itself, wasn't
true. The foot existed, yet it wasn't a separate thing, and to call
it a “foot,” or an anything, felt like a lie. It was absurd. And
the laughter kept pouring out of me. I saw that cockroach
foot are names for joy, that there are no
names for what appears as real now. This was the birth of
awareness: thought reflecting back as itself, seeing itself as
everything, surrounded by the vast ocean of its own laughter.
and
When I try to explain how The
Work was born in that instant of realization, I can analyze the
instant, slow it down, and tell it so that it takes on time. But
this is giving time to an instant that wasn't even an instant. In
that no-time, everything was known and seen as nothing. It saw
a foot, and it knew that it wasn't a foot, and it loved that it
was. The first and second of the four questions is like the
slow-motion mechanics of the experience. “It's a foot” — is
that true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? No. What was
it like before the thought of “foot” appeared, before there was the
world of “foot”? Nothing.
Then the third question:
How do I react when I believe the thought? I was aware that there's
always a contraction, that when I believe any thought I create a
world separate from myself, an object that is apparently “out
there,” and that the contraction is a form of suffering. And the
fourth: Who would I be without that thought? I would be
prior to thought, I would be — I am — peace, absolute joy. Then the
turnaround: It's a foot / it's not a foot. Actually, all four
questions were present in the first — Is it true? — and
everything was already released in the instant that the first
question was asked. The second, third, and fourth questions were
embedded in the inquiry that was there in the experience. There
were no words for any of the questions — they were not explicit,
not thought, not experienced in time, but present as possibilities
when I looked at my experience later and tried to make it available
for people. With the fourth question the circle is complete. And
then the turnaround is the grounding, the re-entry. There's nothing
/ there's something. And in that way people can be held without the
terror of being nothing, without identity. The turnaround holds
them until it's a comfortable place. And they realize that
nowhere to go is really where they already are.
That said even though there is nondual insight, without the View
of Dependent Origination or Emptiness to give rise to the further
insight of non-inherency, the mind is still not able to sync
nondual experience with right views. When insight of
non-inherency/emptiness arises, that is Thusness's Stage 6.
The view of D.O./Emptiness is important and most people think
'resting as awareness' 'being naked in awareness' and nondual
experience is enough -- it is not enough to dissolve our dualistic
and inherent view, see The Link Between Non-Duality and Emptiness.
Hence the View of Dependent Origination is still important even
though it is a raft and ultimately is dissolved (along with all
dualistic and inherent views). The teaching of Dependent
Origination and Emptiness is peculiar to Buddhism.
Krisnamurthi's experience is best understood as such.
Krishnamurti is good. There are two Krishnmurtis. One is J
Krishnamurti, one is U.G.Krishnamurti. Both are good and have deep
nondual insight.
But for this post I suppose you're talking about J Krishnmuarti.
He wrote extensively on non-dual experience.
JK:
You look at this magnificent
tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no
watcher at all. Everything is so intensely alive and there is only
life, and the watcher is as dead as that leaf... Utterly still...
listening without a moment of action, without recording, without
experiencing, only seeing and listening... really the outside is
the inside and the inside is the outside, and it is difficult,
almost impossible to separate them. (p. 214)
................
So we are asking is there a holistic awareness of all the senses,
therefore there is never asking for the 'more'. I wonder if you
follow all this ?. Are we together in this even partially? And
where there is this total - fully aware - of all the senses,
awareness of it - not you are aware of it.... the awareness
of the senses in themselves - then there is no centre - in which
there is awareness of the wholeness. If you consider it,
you will see that to suppress the senses... is contradictory,
conflicting, sorrowful.... To understand the truth you must have
complete sensitivity. Do you understand Sirs? Reality demands your
whole being; you must come to it with your body, mind, and heart as
a total human being..... Insight is complete total
attention....
When this is a fact not an idea, then dualism and division between
observer and observed comes to an end. The observer is the observed
- they are not separate states. The observer and the
observed are a joint phenomenon and when you experience that
directly then you will find that the thing which you have dreaded
as emptiness which makes you seek escape into various forms of
sensation including religion - ceases and you are able to face it
and be it.
- Collection of K teachings from the KFT CDROM
.... and many more similar quotes
from JK can be found off the net.
The use of techniques of
meditating on anatta and emptiness are another superficial
superimposition on "an experience" which without proper guidance
and understanding will lead to harm and damage to the person having
such an experience.
Of course you must know what you are doing, without proper
understanding and proper guidance, one is just doing it the wrong
way and wouldn't lead to what is intended (insight into anatta and
sunyata).
In the days of old when many had such spontaneous opening and
expansion of consciousness they were considered as nut-cases and
many were thrown into institutions for the mentally deranged.
Even today we could find numerous cases of people, particularly in
the west, with huge ego superimposing their will upon something
that they themselves had no experience nor understanding.
Perhaps and I think far more important is to
first acknowledge, if we ourselves do not have the experience, that
we do not know or cannot make a proper judgement if someone's
experience is valid or not. In this way we suspend judgement -
neither rationalising if it is valid or if it is not. With
such space in our heart and mind then there is a capacity to
understand. If not then what we are doing is merely to sweep
it aside as "something else."
What you said is very right. We must acknowledge everyone's
experience and not dismiss them without our knowledge. If we have
not had transcendental experience, we should not dismiss them as
nut-cases. If we already have certain transcendental
experiences/insights but have not attained the higher levels of
insight, we should not dismiss those that have.
Every transcendental experience is valid in their own ways, and
precious in their own ways. Yes, the majority of people have
distorted understandings of their experience, and there are depths
of insight in everyone's experience which can be correlated to
Thusness's Six Stages of Experience , but
whatever one's experience and insight is valid, important, in its
own ways. Even the initial experience of "I AMness" is important in
its own ways and paves the way for further insights if the person
is a humble, sincere, diligent practitioner.
When Thusness experienced I AMness, and the conviction in the I
AM is very strong, he was still humble enough to enter Buddhism and
investigate the Buddha's teachings and that is why he attained
further insights into No-Self and Emptiness. Even today he say he
says he always keep the mindset that "I have not experienced
everything the Buddha experienced" and hence there is always room
for further progress.
In a non-dual presence the phenomenal world do not
exist
Non-existence is a wrong view. Existence is a wrong view. Both
existence and non-existence is a wrong view. Neither existence nor
non-existence is a wrong view. These are what Buddha calls the four
extremes. One who realises emptiness does not fall into any of
these extremes.
In nondual insight one does not see consciousness as real in
distinction to the world being unreal. He sees no such distinction
at all. The so called maya is in fact Buddha-nature.
As Acharya Mahayogi Shridhar Rana Rinpoche writes in
the article Madhyamika Buddhism Vis-a-vis Hindu Vedanta:
So in the Buddhist paradigm, it is not only not necessary to have
an eternal ground for liberation, but in fact the belief in such a
ground itself is part of the dynamics of ignorance. We move here to
another to major difference within the two paradigms. In Hinduism
liberation occurs when this illusory Samsara is completely
relinquished and it vanishes; what remains is the eternal Brahma,
which is the same as liberation. Since the thesis is that Samsara
is merely an illusion, when it vanishes through knowledge, if there
were no eternal Brahma remaining, it would be a disaster. So in the
Hindu paradigm (or according to Buddhism all paradigms based on
ignorance), an eternal unchanging, independent, really existing
substratum (Skt. mahavastu) is a necessity for liberation, else one
would fall into nihilism. But since the Buddhist paradigm is
totally different, the question posed by Hindu scholars: “How can
there be liberation if a Brahma does not remain after the illusory
Samsara vanishes in Gyana?” is a non question with no relevance in
the Buddhist paradigm and its Enlightenment or Nirvana.
First of all, to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, Samsara is not an
illusion but like an illusion. There is a quantum leap in the
meaning of these two statements. Secondly, because it is only ‘like
an illusion’ i.e. interdependently arisen like all illusions, it
does not and cannot vanish, so Nirvana is not when Samsara vanishes
like mist and the Brahma arises like the sun out of the mist but
rather when seeing that the true nature of Samsara is itself
Nirvana. So whereas Brahma and Samsara are two different entities,
one real and the other unreal, one existing and the other
non-existing, Samsara and Nirvana in Buddhism are one and not two.
Nirvana is the nature of Samsara or in Nagarjuna’s words shunyata
is the nature of Samsara. It is the realization of the nature of
Samsara as empty which cuts at the very root of ignorance and
results in knowledge not of another thing beyond Samsara but of the
way Samsara itself actually exists (Skt. vastusthiti), knowledge of
Tathata (as it-is-ness) the Yathabhuta (as it really is) of Samsara
itself. It is this knowledge that liberates from wrong conceptual
experience of Samsara to the unconditioned experience of Samsara
itself. That is what is meant by the indivisibility of Samsara and
Nirvana (Skt. Samsara nirvana abhinnata, Tib: Khor de yer me). The
mind being Samsara in the context of DzogChen, Mahamudra and
Anuttara Tantra. Samsara would be substituted by dualistic mind.
The Hindu paradigm is world denying, affirming the Brahma. The
Buddhist paradigm does not deny the world; it only rectifies our
wrong vision (Skt. mithya drsti) of the world. It does not give a
dream beyond or separate transcendence from Samsara. Because such a
dream is part of the dynamics of ignorance, to present such a dream
would be only to perpetuate ignorance.
......................
Now let’s
examine the Relative Truth (Skt. samvritti satya). In Hinduism, the
Relative Truth is the fact that this world is an illusion (Skt.
maya), it has no existence. In Buddhism, Samsara is
interdependently arising. It has relative existence (Skt. samvritti
satta) according to Tsong Khapa or it appears conventionally
according to Gorampa Senge and Mipham. It is like an illusion (Skt.
mayavat). Like all illusions, it appears interdependently based on
various causes and conditions (Skt. hetu-pratyaya). It may be like
an illusion but it is the only thing we have, there is nothing
behind it or beyond it which can be called an ultimate thing or
reality. The Ultimate Reality or Truth or fact in the Buddhist
sense is the mode of existence of this illusion like Samsara i.e.
(Skt. nihsvabhava) empty of real existence. So here too we find two
different parameters to two different paradigms.
This is similar to what Thusness wrote in Stage 6 comments:
With the willingness to let go of
the ‘I’ and ‘Mine’, the ‘emptiness nature’ is clearly understood.
Practice is neither going after the mirror nor escaping from the
maya reflection; it is to clearly 'see' the 'nature' of
reflection.
To see that there is really no
mirror other than the ongoing reflection due to our emptiness
nature. Neither is there a mirror to cling to as the background
reality nor a maya to escape from. Beyond these two extreme lies
the middle path -- the prajna wisdom of seeing that the maya is our
Buddha nature.
The Buddha understands that the phenomenal world is merely an
appearance -- though vividly appearing, it is like a mirage on the
horizon. Like sky flower. Like a rainbow. Like a foam, a bubble. It
is like an illusion, but NOT an illusion. Similar analogies have
been given in Phena Sutta and Diamond Sutra. The heat shimmering
off the road appears to be a pool of water. It appears to be really
a pool of water but is really just vibrating energy. Vivid
manifestation of luminosity -- yet fundamentally empty, without
substance.
Like a red flower that is so
vivid, clear and right in front of an observer, the “redness” only
appears to “belong” to the flower, it is in actuality not so.
Vision of red does not arise in all animal species (dogs cannot
perceive colours) nor is the “redness” an attribute of the mind. If
given a “quantum eyesight” to look into the atomic structure, there
is similarly no attribute “redness” anywhere found, only almost
complete space/void with no perceivable shapes and forms. Whatever
appearances are dependently arisen, and hence is empty of any
inherent existence or fixed attributes, shapes, form, or “redness”
-- merely luminous yet empty, mere Appearances without
inherent/objective existence. What gives rise to the differences of
colours and experiences in each of us? Dependent arising... hence
empty of inherent existence. This is the nature of all
phenomena.
As
you've seen, there is no ‘The Flowerness’ seen by a dog, an insect or
us, or beings from other realms (which really may have a completely
different mode of perception). ‘'The Flowerness' is an illusion that
does not stay even for a moment, merely an aggregate of causes and
conditions. Analogous to the example of ‘flowerness’, there is no
‘selfness’ serving as a background witnessing either -- pristine
awareness is not the witnessing background. Rather, the entire
whole of the moment of manifestation is our pristine awareness;
lucidly clear, yet empty of inherent existence. This is the way of
‘seeing’ the one as many, the observer and the observed are one and
the same. This is also the meaning of formlessness and
attributelessness of our nature.
however will remains. Within such a presence focus could be
brought, by will, to bear on phenomenon. The level of engagement
could be determined by will. One could remain watching but detached
or one could penetrate phenomena wherein insights, deep penetrating
insights would arise. A buddha's omniscience is only upon focus,
unlike the omniscience of theistic religion such christianity.
Focusing does not lead to insights of the nature of reality.
Focusing can lead to concentrative states, jhanas, development of
psychic powers, etc. But not insights into the nature of reality
(of everything as luminous and empty).
All phenomena are already naturally clear but our sense of self
obscures our 'vision' of that natural clarity. As I was telling
Thusness the other day about some of my experience... that the more
the sense of self is relinquished... the more the sense of self
disappears, the more clearly everything manifests -- in its
clarity, 'fullness', naturalness, and spaciousness. Yet this
spaciousness is not like a void -- the more spacious the more clear
everything is. This is nondual experience.
Non-dual experience is not contrived, fabricated, it is not a
state that can be achieved through efforting and will... it won't
come by focusing, but by totally relinquishing all sense of self
into natural, effortless clarity/luminosity. As Thusness
said:
The key point about the
practice of mindful awareness is there is no keeping of the mind on
anything and by not resting on anything, it fuses into everything;
therefore it cannot be concentrated; rather it is to relax into
nothingness empty of self, empty of any artificial doing so that
the natural luminosity can take its own course. There is no
focusing, there is only allowing the mirror bright clarity to shine
with its natural radiance. In essence there is no one there, only
the phenomenon arising and ceasing (according to
conditions), telling their
stories.
As I have written:
Awareness or Buddha-Nature
is not the same as focused attention or concentration. Awareness is
effortlessly happening right now, whether you like it or not, and
whether you are paying attention or not. When causes and conditions
is, manifestation is, when manifestation is, Awareness is.
Naturally, sounds are effortlessly
being heard,
smells are effortlessly
being smelled,
even if the smell or sound is unpleasant and you try to avoid it,
it's being awared. While paying attention to the breath, something
still hears sounds. That is Buddha-Nature. It is the sum of all our
parts, that which sees, hears, feels and tastes all at once as One
Reality. Before you think that this awareness is a 'thing' -- a
Mirror or a Witness, it's not separate -- it's just sound hearing,
scenery seeing, it's not a something tangible (a Mirror or a
Witness) yet is vividly manifesting.
So
as Toni Packer said, "There is no need for
awareness to turn anywhere. It's here! Everything is here in
awareness! When there is a waking up from fantasy, there is no one
who does it. Awareness and the sound of a plane are here with no
one in the middle trying to "do" them or bring them together. They
are here together! The only thing that keeps things (and people)
apart is the "me"-circuit with its separative thinking. When that
is quiet, divisions do not exist."
Joan Tollifson ("student" of Toni), "This
open being is not something to be practiced methodically. Toni
points out that it takes no effort to hear the sounds in the room;
it's all here. There's no "me" (and no problem) until thought comes
in and says: "Am I doing it right? Is this 'Awareness'? Am I
enlightened?" Suddenly the spaciousness is gone—the mind is
occupied with a story and the emotions it
generates."
Judith Blackstone also nicely puts it:
"Nondual consciousness
is not a state of attention. It is experienced without effort of
any kind. It is the mind completely at rest. In fact, there is not
even a sense that the mind is resting, for that is still an
activity of sorts. Rather, one experiences a simple lucid openness
in which the phenomena of the world appear, and through which
experiences such as thoughts, emotions, and sensations move without
obstruction.
There is also a sense
that one's consciousness is pervading all of the content of one's
experience. Rather than an encounter between one's own head and the
objects outside of one's head, as experienced in intentional,
dualistic consciousness states, nondual consciousness is
experienced globally. It pervades and subsumes one's whole body and
everything in one's environment at the same time. "Consciousness is
encountered as something more like a field than a localized point,
a field that transcends the body and yet somehow interacts with it"
(Forman, in Gallagher & Shear, 1999, p.
373).
One of the main
characteristics of nondual realization is that it is discovered,
rather than created, as rigid subjective organizations are
released. Constructivists may insist that nondual consicousness is
itself a conceptual construct. Speaking both from my own experience
as well as from traditional accounts, I can attest that nondual
realization is a process of gradually letting go of one's grip on
oneself and one's environment -- as if opening a clenched fist. It
does require concentrated effort and time to achieve a certain
degree of letting go. But the expanse of nondual consciousness,
pervading oneself and one's environment as a unified whole, appears
of its own accord as a result of this letting go, and continues to
appear, without any effort on one's own
part."
~ "The Empathic
Ground" by Judith Blackstone (a book that Thusness thinks is very
good and recommended me, contains many practical techniques and
pointers to nondual awareness)
When you said that "the witness/watcher is really not separated
from the rest of the world" is the witness/watcher in the world or
the world is within the witness/watcher ? 8-).....
At the I AM stage, Consciousness is seen as a boundless, void
witnessing background container wherein phenomena arise from and
subside to yet the void background container remains unmoved and
unchanged, and Consciousness is distinct from the phenomena.
Consciousness is seen as the 'source' or the 'ground reality' for
everything yet is not everything. Yet the further (nondual) insight
must be that all appearances is already the source -- there is no
other witnessing background or source to fall back to. Everything
is the ground reality. Ground reality is not a container for
everything because everything is the groundless ground.
As Douglas E. Harding said regarding his nondual insight:
Victim of a prolonged fit of madness, of a lifelong
hallucination (and by "hallucination" I mean what my dictionary
says: apparent perception of an object not actually present), I had
invariably seen myself as pretty much like other people, and
certainly never as a decapitated but still living biped. I had been
blind to the one thing that is always present, and without which I
am blind indeed -- to this marvelous substitute-for-a-head, this
unbounded clarity, this luminous and absolutely pure void,
which nevertheless is -- rather than
contains -- all that's on offer. For, however carefully I attend, I
fail to find here even so much as a blank screen on which these
mountains and sun and sky are projected, or a clear mirror in which
they are reflected, or a transparent lens or aperture through which
they are viewed -- still less a person to whom they are presented,
or a viewer (however shadowy) who is distinguishable from the view.
Nothing whatever intervenes, not even that baffling and elusive
obstacle called "distance": the visibly boundless blue sky, the
pink-edged whiteness of the snows, the sparkling green of the grass
-- how can these be remote, when there's nothing to be remote
from? The headless void here refuses all definition and
location: it is not round, or small, or big, or even here as
distinct from there. (And even if there were a head here to measure
outwards from, the measuring-rod stretching from it to that
mountain peak would, when read end-on -- and there's no other way
for me to read it -- reduce to a point, to nothing.) In fact, these coloured shapes present themselves
in all its simplicity, without any such complications as near or
far, this or that, mine or not mine, seen-by-me or merely given.
All twoness -- all duality of subject and object -- has vanished:
it is no longer read into a situation which has no room for
it.
Quotation from Buddha Nature is NOT "I Am":
Like a river flowing into the ocean, the self dissolves into
nothingness. When a practitioner becomes thoroughly clear about the
illusionary nature of the individuality, subject-object division
does not take place. A person experiencing “AMness” will find
“AMness in everything”. What is it like?
Being freed from individuality -- coming and going, life and death,
all phenomenon merely pop in and out from the background of the
AMness. The AMness is not experienced as an ‘entity’ residing
anywhere, neither within nor without; rather it is experienced as
the ground reality for all phenomenon to take place. Even the
moment of subsiding (death), the yogi is thoroughly authenticated
with that reality; experiencing the ‘Real’ as clear as it can be.
We cannot lose that AMness; rather all things can only dissolve and
re-emerges from it. The AMness has not moved, there is no coming
and going.
Practitioners should never mistake
this as the true Buddha Mind! "I AMness" is the pristine
awareness. That is why it is so overwhelming. Just that there is no
'insight' into its emptiness nature. Nothing stays and
nothing to hold on to. What is real, is pristine and flows, what
stays is illusion. The sinking back to a
background or Source is due to being blinded by strong karmic
propensities of a 'Self'. It is a
layer of ‘bond’ that prevents us from ‘seeing’ something…it is very
subtle, very thin, very fine…it goes almost undetected. What this
‘bond’ does is it prevents us from ‘seeing’ what “WITNESS” really
is and makes us constantly fall back to the Witness, to the
Source, to the Center. Every moment we want to sink back
to Witness, to the Center, to this Beingness, this is an illusion.
It is habitual and almost hypnotic.
But what exactly is this “witness” we are talking about? It is the
manifestation itself! It is the
appearance itself! There is no Source to fall
back, the Appearance is the Source! Including the
moment to moment of thoughts. The
problem is we choose, but all is really it. There is nothing
to choose.
There is no mirror reflecting
Manifestation alone IS.
There is no invisible
witness hiding anywhere. Whenever we attempt to fall back to an
invisible transparent image, it is again the mind game of thought.
It is the ‘bond’ at work. (See Thusness's Six Stages of Experience)
(For more information on the difference of the
Witness and No-Self/Non-Duality (the articles also contain clear
descriptions of Stage 5), please also read
Some Writings on Non-duality by Ken
Wilber.)
....continued in the URL
