THE OVERLOOKING OF OUR ESSENTIAL NATURE
Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.
Be aware of being aware.
Although the experience of being aware is not something that we can be aware of objectively, the non-objective experience of being aware is undoubtedly known or experienced.
If someone were to ask us to list the contents of the room in which we are currently sitting, few if any of us would mention space amongst our list of objects, because the space cannot be seen in the same way that a table, chair, book or laptop is seen. And yet, at the same time, we cannot legitimately claim that the space is not being experienced.
Like empty space, relatively speaking, being aware or awareness itself has no objective qualities or features. It is on account of its non-objectivity that the experience of being aware or awareness itself is usually ignored or overlooked.
Indeed, most people go through their entire lives without ever questioning who or what it is that knows or is aware of their experience, or how experience comes to be at all.
In my meetings in Europe and America I have asked thousands of people if they were ever asked by their parents, teachers or professors who or what it is that knows or is aware of their experience, and not a single person has yet answered in the affirmative.
It is hard to imagine a landscape painter spending her entire life painting in nature without ever noticing the light that, relatively speaking, illuminates or renders visible the landscape. And yet most people fail to ever notice or consider the awareness or consciousness that reveals or renders knowable all knowledge and experience.
Most of us are so fascinated by the content of experience – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions – that we overlook the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known.
We neglect the simple experience of being aware that remains ever-present and changeless in the background of all experience. We ignore awareness itself. We overlook the simple knowing of our own self-aware being.
In other words, we have forgotten who or what we essentially are and have mistaken ourself instead for a collection of thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations and perceptions.
Due to this ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of our essential nature – the experience of being aware or awareness itself – we have allowed our essential, self-aware being to become mixed with the qualities and, therefore, the limitations of objective experience.
Just as a screen becomes mixed with the qualities of the objects in a movie and seems, as a result, to become a landscape or a forest, so eternal, infinite awareness becomes mixed with and lost in objective experience and seems, as a result, to become a temporary, limited awareness – the finite mind, separate self or ego. That is, we forget who we really are.
In other words, the mind believes that awareness shares the limits and, therefore, the destiny of the body. This apparent mixture of awareness with the properties and limitations of the body results in the separate self or ego that most people believe and feel themselves to be.
As such, the separate self or ego is an inevitable corollary to the forgetting, overlooking or ignoring of the true and only self* of eternal, infinite awareness, or, in religious language, the forgetting of God’s infinite being.
In spite of this, our true nature of eternal, infinite awareness is never completely forgotten or eclipsed by objective experience. However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.
When I say, ‘We neglect the simple experience of being aware’, I do not mean to imply that ‘we’ are one entity and the experience of being aware is another. That is just a manner of speaking. The ‘I’ that is aware – to which we refer when we say ‘I am aware’ – is the same ‘I’ that knows that I am aware.
The ‘I’ that is known is the ‘I’ that knows. The sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated.
Only awareness is aware of awareness. Only being aware is being aware of being aware.
Therefore, the ‘we’ that overlooks the experience of being aware, or the presence of awareness, is awareness apparently overlooking or forgetting itself.
It is the self-aware screen of awareness, upon which the drama of experience is playing and out of which it is made, that becomes so intimately involved with the objective content of its experience that it seems to lose itself in it and, as a result, overlooks or forgets its own presence, just as a dreamer’s mind loses itself in its own dream at night.
However, knowing, being aware or awareness itself is never truly obscured by experience, just as the screen is never veiled by a movie. Just as the screen remains visible throughout a movie, so knowing, being aware or awareness itself knows itself throughout all experience.
Whether we see a landscape or a screen depends on the way we see, not what we see. First we see a landscape; then we recognise the screen; then we see the screen as a landscape. First we see only a multiplicity and diversity of objects; then we recognise the presence of awareness; then we see awareness as the totality of objective experience. This is what the Sufis mean when they say, ‘There is only God’s face.’
And this is what Ramana Maharshi referred to when he said, ‘The world is unreal; only Brahman is real; Brahman is the world.’
From this perspective, experience no longer veils awareness but shines with it.
The known shines with knowing.
However, as a concession to the apparent overlooking of our true nature, and the loss of peace and fulfilment that attends it, we could say that awareness loses itself in objective experience and, as such, veils itself with its own activity, just as a screen could be said to be obscured by the drama in a movie.
It is for this reason that the Sufi mystic Balyani said, ‘He veils Himself with Himself.’
This veiling, inadvertence or turning away from awareness is known as ‘original sin’ in the Christian tradition and as ‘ignorance’ in Vedanta. The Hebrew word most often translated in the Bible as ‘sin’ is chata’ah, meaning literally ‘to miss the mark’.
Original sin is, in this context, the missing, overlooking or ignoring of the essential element of experience – awareness or consciousness itself, or God’s infinite being. Thus, in religious terminology to sin is to turn away from God.
Likewise, in Sanskrit, the original language of Vedanta, the word avidya is usually translated as ‘ignorance’, ‘misunderstanding’ or ‘incorrect knowledge’. In this context ignorance does not imply stupidity, as in common parlance, but rather the ignoring of awareness, that is, awareness’s apparent ignoring, overlooking or forgetting of itself.
With this veiling, ignoring or limiting of awareness and its subsequent contraction into a finite mind, apparently separate self or ego, the peace and fulfilment that are inherent in it are also eclipsed, although they echo within it as a memory for which it longs. This longing for peace and happiness is the defining characteristic of the apparently separate self or ego.
Thus, the forgetting of our true nature is the source of all psychological suffering, and, conversely, the remembering of our self – its remembrance or recognition of itself – is the source of peace and happiness for which all people long.
Once the apparently separate self or ego has exhausted the possibilities for securing peace and happiness in objective experience, it may be open to the possibility of accessing them within itself. This intuition is the beginning of the separate self’s return to its inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled essence of pure awareness, and is thus the resolution of its search.
All that the apparently separate self needs to do to recognise its own essential nature and thus access its inherent peace and happiness is to recognise that its essence of pure awareness is not conditioned or limited by objective experience. In other words, its essence must be clearly seen. That is, awareness must see itself clearly, and to see itself clearly it must ‘look at’ itself.
However, just as the beam of light from a flashlight can be directed towards an object but cannot be directed towards the bulb from which it emanates, so awareness, in the form of attention or mind, can direct the light of its knowing towards objective experience but cannot direct itself towards itself.
We cannot direct our mind towards the experience of being aware; we can only direct our mind away from it. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Thus, the highest form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen.
This returning of awareness to itself, its remembrance of itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness.
The apparently separate self or ego is like a rubber ball that is being squeezed. All there is to the squeezed ball is the original ball. However, squeezing the ball shrinks it and sets up a tension that is always seeking to expand it to its original, relaxed condition. The squeezed ball does nothing; it is the naturally relaxed state of the fully expanded ball that draws the contracted ball back to its original condition.
Likewise, the separate self is an apparent limitation or contraction of infinite awareness. All there is to the separate self is the true and only ‘self’ of pure awareness, but its contraction into a finite entity sets up a tension that is always tending to revert to its original, relaxed and natural condition. This pull is felt by the separate self as the desire for happiness or the longing for God.
In reality, it is not the separate self that searches for happiness or returns to its natural, relaxed condition. It is the pull or memory of its natural state that calls the separate self back to its innate condition of fully relaxed, inherently peaceful awareness.
The movement of the separate self towards its essence of pure awareness is, from the perspective of the separate self, felt as desire or longing; the pull of inherently relaxed, peaceful awareness on the contraction of the separate self is the attraction of grace.
Our love for God is God’s love for us.
* ‘Self’ in this context does not refer to an entity or ‘a’ self. I am taking the common word for what we seem to be and applying it to our essential, objectless, self-aware being.