I see... thanks for the explanation.
By the way is this 'Form is Emptiness' (especially the
highlighted parts):
http://itisnotreal.com/subpage22.html
Awareness
of the Void
At some point, either before or after the initial
enlightenment experience—at least in my tradition—you must become
absolutely certain that you are not your body.
All that you know is consciousness. Think about it. Everything
you experience, your body, the world, thinking, memories, science,
history, dreams, other people--all happen in your consciousness. If
something happens outside of your consciousness, such as a storm
while you slept, or Lincoln’s assassination, you only know about it
if someone, or something within your consciousness tells you. That
learning occurs now, within your present consciousness. Of course,
you can also infer something happened by after effects, such as wet
ground implies there was rain. Yet, even that inference is a
thinking, a speculation, and it occurs in your present
consciousness. All memory about the past and thinking about the
future, occurs in your now consciousness. Thus, all knowing and
experience occurs now. It is then obvious that you need to
experience and understand now-consciousness.
If all that you know or experience is consciousness,
then you too, at least for argument’s sake, are
consciousness. Your consciousness is not limited by body,
mind, world, time or space; all these occur within your
consciousness as objects of that consciousness.
Even the intangible, the invisible, and the hidden, such as an
atom, or gravity, are known only by inference from present
experience in your now consciousness. The inference to the
unobserved, such as the existence of an atom, or a gravity wave, is
a mental process occurring within your present consciousness too.
Atomic physics, cosmology, and all of science becomes a set of
inferences about hidden and non-hidden objects and forces, derived
from simple acts of perception conjoined with a set of mental
functions we call inference or logic, which are also happenings in
now consciousness.
So what is this now-consciousness? Intellectually understood it
is called mind. Others would call it imagination. It is all mental
stuff. This, of course doesn’t help understanding one whit except
that it is a pointer that helps you get before the concept that the
body it real, and by real, I mean as having its own, autonomous
self-existence. Its existence is imaginary, mindstuff.
I must admit my own evolution appears idiosyncratic. That is,
for many years before awakening, I was conscious of an almost
palatable emptiness or Void. When I described it to someone else,
he ascribed it to seeing God.
The only persistent mention I see of it is in Mahayana, where
the Void’s meaning is explained according to differing schools, and
Vajrayana Buddhism, such as the Tibetan Kargya school. It is only
in the latter that I see much description of the experience of the
Void (as opposed to the theory of the Void), or the mention that
the essential quality of mind, mental space, is that of clear
light.
The clear light experience is found when the mind is quiet, and
the light of consciousness, which is always there, rather than a
background awareness, becomes the foreground awareness. That is,
the light becomes a more compelling experience than any object
within mind. The screen, so to speak, becomes more important than
the play of images that make a movie.
How to get to this place is explained further on another page on
this site, but it is so important that it is worth repetition.
When at first we look within, rather than at an object in the
world, we only find darkness. However, as our ‘inner eye’ ‘adjusts’
to the darkness of the mental space within, the darkness gradually
gives way to an inner light. It is like entering a darkened movie
theater. The eyes have to acclimatize before they see the reflected
light from the movie. That inner light illuminates a mental world
of emptiness, or void. Many years of looking leads the inner
emptiness to expand, and the light to illuminate it ever more
brightly.
Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists call this clear, self-illumined
Void our true nature. Our true nature is nothingness, this
nothingness-emptiness, which is absolutely clear, is illumined by
its own light.
At first, this light appears different from physical light. It
is less clear, less intense and less ‘grabbing’ of attention.
However, over the years, its intensity grows and its manifested
forms change. Color patterns and shadows dance and fill its
radiance. An inner movie of insubstantial forms plays to its one
audience. Eventually the meditator discovers that the inner light
and outer physical light are the same. They arise out of the basic
functioning of vision consciousness itself. Of course there is
sound consciousness and that is described in many other
sources.
Knowing this inner Void of light and peace leads to dramatic
changes in one’s belief systems. For example, no matter how hard
you look, no matter how long you look within, and that within
becomes a clear, light, Void, you cannot find an I.
With your eyes open, operating and functioning in the world, you
may act like a me, and even feel like a me if you turn your
attention to yourself. However, if you stop and look within, eyes
open or closed, trying to pursue the I, whether it is a thought or
a feeling, you cannot find it. Even if you turn even further inward
to look for the one who is looking, you will find the same
self-illumined emptiness only. That’s it. That’s all you’ll ever
find looking within.
Looking within and abiding within, means getting to the
non-experiential state lying beneath (or before) thoughts, feelings
or sensations.
All that you find is nothingness, a lighted void. While this
experience may not change you radically, you do begin to wonder who
is it that exists, and what is the nature of that existence.
One day the
realization comes that within the entire fabric of your being there
is no I at all. There never has been an I. There is no coordinator.
There is no thinker.
You discover
there are thoughts, but no thinker. There are actions, but no
actor. There are decisions, but no decision maker. There is
movement, but no mover. There is life, but no one who lives. There
are trees, but no perceiver.
Everything
takes place without a perceiver or organizer. Thoughts come and go,
but they are like drops of rain, not something you create and
implement. Everything happens without a central point of
I-ness.
When this
absence of I is clearly understood, your world is turned upside
down. Without an I, there is no other opposed to it. I and other
become one. I am no longer different from my percept, because there
is no longer a me. There is percept, and I am that. There is only
one field of perception, undivided by categories of me and thee, I
and Thou, inner and outer, and I am all that.
With the disappearance of the I-idea, there is the temporary
replacement by the Oneness-idea. You go around saying there is only
One, only One! However, even this Oneness-idea is eventually
overturned because we realize it too, is only an idea. With the
disappearance of the I-idea, all ideas begin to vanish too. Atom is
an idea. Quantum is an idea. Communism and capitalism are ideas, as
is central bank, gross domestic product, integrity, dishonesty,
brain, pancreas, and even Oneness and consciousness. They all
disappear and with them, the existence of that which they
purportedly denoted. The world is not other than mind and mind is
no other than thoughts.
Soon our apparent brains begin to close out random thoughts and
we begin to really look at our direct experience without the
intervention of thought or the guidance of theory and memories of
how things ought to be. The world revealed is vastly different from
the world we thought we lived in.
We eventually discover we are not human beings at all, trapped
in a body doomed to death, but we are everything we experience. We
are the totality of consciousness. Without the I to limit us,
without an I to direct our lives in routines of please and pain
avoidance, we are allowed to expand and take ownership of the
totality of real existence. We leave behind the world of thought
existence.
The inner world and the outer world come together. The inner
world of vast, inner, self-illumined space merges with the outer
world of objects and sense impressions. When you look within you
see the inner light, and when you look without, everything you see
is illumined by physical light. When you walk into a dark room, you
leave the physical light behind, and you see only the inner light.
One day you realize that inner light is always there, even in the
external world of sunlight. One day you realize there is only
light. Sometimes you may call it sunlight, or lamplight, and
sometimes you may call it inner light. However, there always is
light, and that light illumines all, whether an inner fantasy or an
outer tree.
When we are quiet and still, sometimes the inner vastness opens
completely, and we, as discrete sentient objects, as subjects,
disappear completely, to be replaced by our totality of experience
of the world. The boundary between the trees and us disappears, and
we become the trees. We become the sound of the tree blowing in a
breeze. We become the jet plane overhead. Body and mind disappear
completely, and we become the totality of experience, including
portions of body experience mixed in.
We experience we are not the body. We are the totality of
experience. We are the totality of consciousness, which includes
the experience of the body as a part of a larger totality.
Now comes a most important step. We begin to investigate the
body as an object of consciousness, and therefore, like all objects
in consciousness, it too is consciousness. We explore the body as
consciousness, just as we explored the vast, inner emptiness.
Since the vast, inner, self-illumined emptiness is now always
present, eyes open or closed, it is not surprising to see that the
body too has this quality. The body is experienced in many ways. We
can touch it, and be touched by it. We can hear the sounds it
makes. We can taste its skin, and we taste our mouths. We can see
portions of it with our eyes open. We can feel its muscles moving.
We can feel our lungs pulling in air. We can feel a headache or
muscle strain. We can look within, using our inner vision and find
the lighted void that permeates all sensations of touch, taste,
smell, sight, and inner feelings.
We begin to see the body is essentially empty and light, as is
everything else within consciousness, as well as it should be,
because the body too is only another object within consciousness,
and thus is consciousness itself.
Whether there is something that reincarnates into a new body is
a moot point. Speculating about it does not help you know yourself
first hand. Someone who has recognized there is no I can see there
is nothing to reincarnate, except the vast, self-illumined Void.
But, this is everyone’s void, everyone’s true and original nature.
Who can say that this part of the Void is me, and that will
reincarnate?
The same self-illumined speck of void is in everyone and
permeates everyone’s every experience. The void is everyone and
contains everyone. The void is One. As the Prajna Paramita Hridaya
Sutra so succinctly states: Form is no other than Emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form. Feeling, thought, sensation, and
consciousness are also like this. All forms arise out of the Void,
and return to the Void, just as clouds materialize from a clear
sky, and after an hour or a week, dissipate back into the clear
sky.
Perceiving the body and its experience from the inside, with the
understanding that it too is consciousness, changes the body’s
experience. Things no longer happen to it as a passive subject.
Rather, the body and environment are inseparable. One cannot
experience one without the other. In fact, the body is the One
world, and the One world is the body.
Sensations become less substantial. They are all permeated by
emptiness. They feel less cluttered, more discrete and clear, but
at the same time, less substantial, and in a sense, less "real." We
often use the term ‘real’ synonymously with hard, tangible, or
especially impactful sensations. However, all sensations now occur
within a simultaneously perceived vast emptiness, which is as real
as the sensations.
The experience is a little like seeing the old pirate hologram
at Disneyland’s Pirate Cove. There is a discrete image of light
with the form of a man, but you can see through the image, as if it
were a ghost. It has an intangible, empty feel about it. So too
become the body’s sensations. They seem less substantial, and less
real, which is good if you are dying a painful death, but bad if
you are having enjoyable sex.
Another result of the constant presence of the Void is that no
experience is more important than any other portion of the totality
of the experience. The body is no more important than the tree.
With increasing freedom from the demands of the world, we can begin
to explore our experience of our bodies more closely. One day we
make the remarkable discovery: we have no bodies!
We realize
that the body, like our sense of I, is only a concept. There is no
central experiencer of the body that coordinates the body’s many
sensations and perceptions. If you look closely at the body,
examine each sensation moment by moment, you will understand
completely, there is no such thing as the inner experience of the
body as a totality. The sense of body totality is a concept
only. Try it, you’ll see this is true. You must
become convinced that you have no body by this direct experience
before you can become free. In fact, this appears to be the essence
of Ramana Maharshi’s experience. He discovered he was not his body.
He did not find realization through self enquiry as he taught
everyone else to do, but through a process where he realized he was
not his body. I call this sort of self-investigation Microanalysis,
and it is a great adjunct to the "Who Am I?" sort of
self-enquiry.
If we look at
our experience of our bodies from the inside, in a careful,
thorough manner, we discover all sorts of things. At any one time
we only experience portions of our bodies’ feelings. Sometimes we
feel a muscle tightness in the neck or back. Sometimes just the
pressure of the chair against the buttocks. Sometimes we experience
the taste in or mouths. Sometimes a tingling sensation on the feet.
Sometimes we feel our heart beating, and sometimes we hear
it.
Though many
sensations may vie for our attention, and reside on the edges of
direct awareness, we actually can only attend to one sensation of
the whole at a time. It is like trying to hold onto two thoughts at
a time-impossible. Just as you cannot think two thoughts at the
same time, you cannot attend to two sensations
simultaneously.
While we can
examine one sensation after another, either randomly, or in a
linear fashion, we cannot experience them all at once. Nor can we
experience the body as a whole, as one complete form. If you think
you do, please examine that wholeness feeling. You will discover
that the experience of the body as a whole, is in fact, an
"enduring" image, a fantasy, not an actual experience of the body
as a whole. We have a body image, imagination, so to speak, derived
from many years of body experience, and this image acts as an inner
cognitive reference map that gives all the random sensations a
meaning within the context of that map, i.e., a banged toe, hot
mashed potatoes in the mouth.
It also becomes clear that the external world has its own
reference map, but that map is still within our imagination. It
then comes as no surprise that they are the same: reference maps of
various dreams.
For example, I will have a sudden slight burning ‘pain’
somewhere. I search through my memories of similar sensations,
until there is a match. I can then declare it a foot pain or a back
pain based on past experience. Back sensations are different from
foot sensations. The body image then gives me a map, and I place
that pain in my body image’s foot. I can then reach down and rub my
foot.
Isolating the spatial location of any body sensation from the
inside is impossible without this body image map. The map is not
itself a sensation or perception of the body. It is an image, born
of experience, and supported by our ideas about our body. In fact,
for most people, the body image grabs more attention than the
sensations, which means we do not experience our experience, but we
experience our ideas about ourselves.
This all leads
up to my initial statement and final conclusion, the requisite
knowledge of awakening: You have no body. The body is only a
concept. There are only scattered sensations and perceptions that
the brain puts together with a body image. There is only One
experience, one field of consciousness, and you are that, the
totality of all that is.
Robert used to say, "You are nobody, No Body at all." The body
idea is very limiting. You are much more than the body and its many
sensations. These all come and go, but who you are essentially,
stays the same: Emptiness, without form, vast like space, lighted
by its own light. But even this emptiness is not you. It is added
to you. Form dissolves into emptiness and both into you.
You are not your body. In effect, you have no body, nor is there
a you to have one. No body, no you. Even consciousness is just a
concept. The vast, self-lighted Void too, is just a concept, a
knowing added onto your emptiness nature. These concepts are both
stepping stones and hindrances to discovering who you are, without
words, images or concepts. About This, nothing can be said, because
that which can be said has nothing to do with you.
Next: Our Mission (http://itisnotreal.com/subpage23.html)