KNOWING, BEING AWARE OR AWARENESS ITSELF
All objective experience* is known. We are aware of our experience. It would not be possible to have an experience without knowing or being aware of it. Our current thought, a memory of childhood, whatever emotions or feelings are present, the sensation of pain or hunger, the sound of traffic, the sight of these words or the view from our window are all known or experienced. As such, knowing† or being aware is present in all experience.
Whether we are depressed, lonely, sad, joyful, at peace, in love, anxious, bored, jealous, excited or happy, we are aware. Whether we are thinking, eating, walking, driving, dancing, studying, dreaming or hallucinating, we are aware. Whatever we are thinking, feeling, perceiving or doing, we are aware.
We are aware of whatever is being known or experienced, irrespective of the contents of our knowledge or experience.
Thus, knowing or being aware is the continuous element in all changing knowledge and experience. It remains consistently present throughout the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. No other element of experience is continuous.
In fact, being aware is not continuous in time; it is ever-present. However, as a concession to the mind’s belief in the reality of time, let us say provisionally that being aware is the continuous element in all experience.
All objective experience – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions – appears and disappears, but the experience of knowing or being aware never appears or disappears. It remains present throughout all changing experience, just as a screen remains consistently present throughout all movies.
Knowing or being aware intimately pervades all experience but is never changed by any particular experience.
Thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions have changed innumerable times throughout our lives, but the knowing with which they are known – the simple experience of being aware – has remained the same throughout.
Knowledge and experience are always changing; knowing or being aware never changes.
The known always changes; knowing never changes.
Knowing or being aware is in the same relationship to all knowledge and experience as an aware screen would be to a movie. Unlike a conventional television screen that is being watched by someone sitting on a sofa, the aware screen of pure knowing or being aware is watching the movie of experience that is playing upon it.
Knowing or being aware is not inaccessible, unknown or buried within us. It is shining clearly in the background of all experience, just as it could be said that the screen is clearly visible in the background of a movie.
However, just as the screen tends to be overlooked during a movie due to our fascination with the drama, so knowing, being aware or awareness itself usually remains unnoticed due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the objects of experience.
Knowing or being aware is not dependent on the particular conditions or qualities of experience. It shines equally brightly in all experience, irrespective of however pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, right or wrong experience may be, just as a screen is equally evident throughout all movies, irrespective of their content.
Knowing or being aware is the essential, irreducible element of experience. It is fundamental to experience. It is that element of experience that cannot be removed from it.
Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only stable element in experience.
Knowing or being aware is the primary ingredient in all knowledge and experience. It is the background on which all knowledge and experience take place.
Knowing or being aware is the medium upon which or within which all experience appears. It is that with which all experience is known and, ultimately, it is the substance or reality out of which all experience is made.
It is the knowing element in all knowledge. It is the experiencing in all experience.
Just as the screen never appears as an object in a movie, although it is fully evident throughout it, so knowing or being aware never appears as an object of knowledge or experience and yet shines clearly within all knowledge or experience.
Although knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, in the sense that a thought, feeling, sensation or perception is an objective experience, nevertheless we are aware that we are aware. Therefore, although knowing or being aware has no objective qualities, it is at the same time known.
It is in this context that I refer to the ‘experience’ of knowing or being aware. However, in order to distinguish knowing or being aware from all objective knowledge and experience, it is referred to as the non-objective experience of knowing or being aware.
Knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, but without it there could be no experience. It is that which makes experience possible and yet is not itself an experience.
Knowing or being aware is non-objective, transparent or colourless. It is empty of all apparent objects but full of itself alone. It is, as such, an utterly unique experience. It cannot be known as an object and yet it is not unknown.
It is the most obvious element of experience and yet the most overlooked.
Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed and yet more evident than the most evident of things’.
There are no prerequisites for the recognition of knowing or being aware. To recognise the experience of knowing or being aware does not require a particular qualification or level of intelligence.
No effort is required to recognise the experience of knowing or being aware, any more than an effort is required to see the screen during a movie.
It is not necessary to control our thoughts, sit in a particular posture or practise something called meditation in order to be aware of the experience of being aware. The non-objective experience of being aware is the simplest and most intimate, obvious, self-evident fact of experience.
The experience of being aware is independent of whatever we are aware of. No experience affects the non-objective experience of being aware, just as nothing that takes place in a movie affects the screen upon which it plays.
It is not necessary to change or manipulate experience in any way in order to notice the background of simply being aware. We may be afraid, bored, agitated, depressed, in love or at peace; the experience of being aware remains the same in all cases.
Just as no particular event in a movie has the ability to obscure the screen unless we allow it to do so, so no experience has the ability to veil the experience of knowing or being aware unless we permit it to do so, in which case it will seem to do so. As soon as we withdraw that permission, the experience of knowing or being aware becomes self-evident.
Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The peace and happiness for which all people long reside there.
Be aware of being aware.
In many spiritual traditions the experience of knowing or being aware is referred to as consciousness or awareness. The suffix ‘-ness’ means ‘the state or presence of’, so the word ‘awareness’ means the state or presence of being aware. The risk of using the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ is that they are nouns and, as such, tend to objectify or reify the non-objective experience of pure knowing or being aware.
In doing so they suggest that awareness or consciousness is a special, subtle kind of experience that can be found or known in the same way that we know objective experience. As a result, many people embark on a great search, hoping to achieve enlightenment, which is conceived as the ultimate experience or state of mind.
This search tends to abstract the experience of being aware from the intimacy and immediacy of experience and give the impression that it is unknown, mysterious and unfamiliar. It implies that the knowledge of awareness or consciousness is an extraordinary experience that may be found in the future.
Such a search is simply a refinement of the conventional search for happiness in the realm of objects and ultimately leads to the same frustration.
Enlightenment or awakening is not a particular experience or state of mind that may be achieved by practising hard enough or meditating long enough. It is the recognition of the very nature of the mind.
There is nothing more familiar or better known than the simple experience of being aware. If someone were to ask us the question, ‘Are you aware?’ we would all answer with absolute certainty, ‘Yes’, and our answer would come from direct experience. It would come from our obvious and intimate experience of simply being aware.
On the other hand, if someone were to ask us, ‘Is consciousness present?’ or ‘What is awareness?’ we might pause and hesitate as to what exactly is being referred to by these words. So please understand that whenever the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’ are used in this book in place of ‘knowing’ or ‘being aware’, they are used only as language dictates.
These words should be understood to refer directly to the obvious, familiar and non-objective experience of knowing or being aware that all beings have in common and that pervades all knowledge and experience in equal measure.
Having noticed that the experience of being aware is our most direct and intimate experience, we may wonder who or what it is that knows or has the experience of being aware. What is it that knows the experience of knowing? What is it that is aware of being aware?
The common name for the experience of being aware is ‘I’. I am aware of the thought of my friend. I am aware of the memory of childhood. I am aware of the feeling of sorrow, loneliness or shame. I am aware of the image of my home. I am aware of the sensation of pain or hunger. I am aware of the sight of my room or the sound of traffic.
In each of these examples, ‘I’ is the name we give to that which knows or is aware of all knowledge and experience. As such, ‘I’ is the knowing or aware element in all knowledge and experience. ‘I’ is awareness itself.
So we could rephrase the question ‘What is it that is aware of being aware?’ as, ‘Who or what is it that knows that I am aware?’ Is it I who am aware of being aware, or is the experience of being aware known by someone or something other than myself?
It is obviously I who am aware that I am aware. That is, it is ‘I, awareness’ that is aware of being aware. It is awareness that knows or is aware that there is awareness. Thus, being aware or awareness itself is self-aware. Just as the sun illuminates itself, so awareness knows itself.
Before awareness knows anything other than itself, such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, awareness is aware of itself. Awareness’s nature is to be aware of itself, and thus its primary experience is to be aware of itself.
The experience ‘I am aware’ is awareness’s knowledge of itself. Hence, our knowledge of ourself is awareness’s knowledge of itself.
Just as the sun does not need to direct its light in any particular direction in order to illuminate itself, so awareness does not need to direct its attention, the light of its knowing, in any particular direction in order to know itself.
In fact, any direction in which the sun directed the rays of its light would only illuminate something other than itself. Likewise, any direction in which awareness shone the light of its knowing would only give it knowledge of something apparently other than itself.
Thus, to know itself awareness does not have to undertake any special activity or direct the light of its knowing in any particular direction. No effort is required for awareness to know itself. In fact, any effort would take it away from itself.
Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.
* ‘Experience’ in this context refers to both our internal experience of thoughts, images, memories, feelings and sensations and our perceptions of an apparently external world, that is, sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. These are referred to collectively as ‘objects’ or ‘objective experience’.
† The word ‘knowing’ is used in this book synonymously with being aware, awareness or consciousness. It does not imply conceptual knowledge but simply the experience of knowing itself, irrespective of whatever is known or experienced.