EXISTENCE IS IDENTICAL TO AWARENESS
The objective world as it is known from the perspective of the separate self or finite mind is an illusion, but all illusions have a reality to them. In the words of Huang Po, ‘People neglect the reality of the illusory world.’ All that is known of the world is the finite mind; the reality of the finite mind is infinite awareness; and nothing ever happens to awareness. Thus it is said that in the ultimate analysis, nothing ever happens.
No finite object or temporary self ever comes into existence, lasts in time, is moved or changed, grows old, dies or disappears. All apparent objects and selves shine with their reality of eternal, infinite awareness alone. Every moment of experience, irrespective of its content, is infinite, indivisible, utterly intimate awareness, our very own self or being, appearing to itself, in itself, as itself.
All objects are said to exist: a chair exists, a thought exists, an emotion exists. As such, existence is the common element, the shared essence, of all objects. However, existence is not a property of objects, just as the screen is not a property of a movie, nor water a property of a wave. Objects do not have existence. Existence – the isness of all seeming things – belongs to awareness alone, the only ‘one’ that truly is.
Even from the conventional perspective, in which mind is considered to be derived from the body and the body from the world, the essential nature of mind must be identical to the essential nature of the world, just as the essential nature of any part must be identical to the whole from which it is derived. Therefore, the essential nature of our self – the amness that shines as the knowledge ‘I am’, the experience of being aware or the feeling of being – is identical to the isness of all seeming things, the essential nature of the world. Existence is identical to awareness.
This is the radical understanding that is the non-dual essence of all the great religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. Existence is identical to awareness, for awareness obviously is – I am – and the isness of awareness must be the same as the isness of existence. If they were different they would each have to have limiting qualities to distinguish them from each other, and if isness had any limitations it would not be the common element in all apparent objects. It is only from the illusory perspective of a separate self that existence and awareness are divided into an outside world and an inside self.
No object, thing or separate self truly exists, be it made of matter or mind. Objects and selves borrow their apparent existence from the sole reality of pure awareness. Awareness alone is all that truly is. I alone am, and everything and everyone is that! In fact, there are no things or selves for awareness to be the totality of. I am, and all seeming things and selves are that alone; not I, the separate body or mind – there is no separate body or mind – but I, the only ‘I’ there is, infinite, indivisible awareness, God’s infinite, self-aware being. Existence is awareness itself.
Nothing – that is, no thing – exists! The Latin origin of the word ‘exist’, exsistere, meaning ‘to stand out’, implies that objects and selves ‘come into existence’ or ‘stand out from’ the background of pure being or awareness, in the same way that an image appears to stand out from a screen. But no object or self ever comes into or goes out of existence. Indeed, even when awareness, vibrating within itself, assumes the form of the finite mind and seems to become a multiplicity and diversity of objects and others, known from the perspective of an inside self, no object or self ever actually ‘stands out from’ itself. No thing ever comes into or disappears out of existence.
Existence belongs to pure awareness alone. In fact, even awareness does not exist; it does not ‘stand out’ from itself. It is. I am. Awareness cannot ‘come out of’ itself, because there is, in its own experience of itself, nowhere for it to go other than itself, no dimension into which it could venture or extend itself.
Existence is the activity of being; being is existence at rest. The existence that an object or self seems to possess is appropriated from awareness’s being, just as an image borrows its reality from the relative reality of the screen. All that is real in the image is the reality of the screen. All that is real in experience is infinite, indivisible awareness. That means that the entire universe is our self.
How would it be to live all aspects of one’s life in a way that is consistent with this understanding? How would we treat animals, people and the earth? This understanding is the foundation of all morality and ethics. When St. Augustine was asked how one should behave in the world, he is said to have responded, ‘Love, and do whatever you want!’ If we understand and feel that every animal, person and object is our very own self, we cannot go wrong. That is the experience of love. It is the only moral guidance we need.
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There is only awareness, God’s infinite, indivisible being, which shines in each of our minds as the knowledge ‘I am’, the feeling of being or the experience of love or beauty. As such, ‘I am’ is the first form of knowledge. It is the portal through which the world proceeds out of potential in awareness into actuality in finite existence, and the same portal through which the world passes in the other direction as it dissolves into its essence.
The experience of beauty is the experience of the world dissolving into its infinite essence. It is a revelation of infinity. That is why we love to walk in nature, listen to music and experience art. Indeed, it is why we have art in our culture at all.
All existence lies enfolded in potential within awareness itself. Awareness births existence out of its own being by freely assuming the form of perception, thereby collapsing its own infinite potential into a specific form and excluding in that moment all other possibilities within itself. Perception is creation!
This is what William Blake meant when he said, ‘Every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five.’* Awareness itself is an immense world of delight. It is peace and joy itself. It is awareness itself that assumes the activity of the five sense perceptions, thereby enclosing its own joyous immensity in form and appearing to itself as the world. The world is a materialisation of that joy.
That is the world that an artist wants us to see. A true work of art is a condensation of beauty. It is an invitation to see – no, to be – the world. A work of art contains within it the power to effect the dissolution of everything that separates ourself from the object, other or world, and to reveal our self as the immensity that is everything.
We might then ask, why is there a world? The ‘Why?’ question that has plagued philosophers for centuries can never be answered on the terms in which it is asked. The ‘Why?’ question is asked by the mind that believes that its dualistic way of perceiving reality is accurate. It is a question that can only be answered by undermining that assumption at its origin. Without the assumption, it cannot stand. To ask ‘Why is there a world?’ is like asking, ‘Why is the earth flat?’ Only because we believe it to be so! Thought abstracts the world!
The question ‘Why is there a world?’ should be reformulated in the light of this understanding as, ‘Why is there a finite mind?’ There isn’t! The finite mind is only a finite mind from the illusory perspective of a finite mind.
The apparent division of awareness into a self on the inside made of mind and a world on the outside made of matter never actually happens, just as a screen is never divided into parts when the movie begins. It is only from the perspective of one of the characters in the movie that the apparent world she sees around herself comprises a multiplicity and diversity of objects whose reality seems to differ from her own. Likewise, it is only from the perspective of the ego or separate self around whom the finite mind revolves that experience comprises a multiplicity and diversity of objects and minds.
In other words, it is only from the illusory perspective of the ego or separate self that duality – the division of experience into mind and matter – actually happens. From awareness’s own point of view, there is always only its own eternal, infinite, indivisible reality, shining in and as the totality of experience. There is only eternal awareness or God’s infinite being, modulating itself in the form of the finite mind but never ceasing to be or know itself alone.
Why is there duality? There isn’t! What is the purpose of apparent duality? To make us realise that!
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Unlike a single mind, which can entertain only one thought or perception at a time, awareness can assume the activity of an apparent multiplicity and diversity of minds simultaneously. Imagine the single, indivisible field of awareness vibrating within itself, and visualise each of our minds, not as an entity in its own right, but as an opening onto that vibrating field of experience. Each of our minds is like an opening through which infinite awareness knows itself in the form of the world.
At no point does an actual mind come into existence, let alone a multiplicity and diversity of minds. In other words, each of our minds is a temporary limitation of the true and only mind of infinite awareness, just as the space in every building in the world is a temporary limitation of the single, indivisible space of the universe.
To speak of an individual mind, let alone numerous minds, is a concession to thought. There are no separate, discrete minds. Separate minds are only such from the provisional and ultimately illusory point of view of an apparently separate mind. Each apparently separate mind is a vibrating field in and of the only mind there truly is: infinite, indivisible awareness. Each vibrating field is a borderless flux of loosely gathered energies that is in contact with all the other vibrating fields within the larger field of ‘infinite mind’ or awareness itself.
However, as a concession to our desire to think about these matters, we may say that awareness vibrates within itself and appears to itself in the form of the world, which it knows from the perspective of each one of our minds. That is, awareness gives birth to itself in the form of the world and simultaneously collapses into a finite mind or separate self within that world, from whose perspective it seems to be seen or known, just as at night the mind dreams the world within itself and simultaneously collapses into a character in the dream, from whose perspective the dream world is experienced.
This subject–object relationship is the agency of manifestation through which awareness actualises its infinite potential. And just as the mind folds the dreamed world up within itself at the end of each dream, so awareness folds the world up within itself at the end of every perception. Of course, awareness does not do this in time. Time only comes into apparent existence when awareness assumes the activity of thought. In reality, awareness is birthing and dissolving the world within itself in its own dimensionless presence, the eternal now.
The Big Bang did not take place at a moment of time. There is no time at which or in which the Big Bang, or indeed any event, can take place. Time is the eternal now seen through the prism of the mind’s activity. The Big Bang takes place every time awareness collapses its own dimensionless presence and assumes the form of the finite mind. From the point of view of each apparent mind, the world seems to exist outside of and prior to itself, and the Big Bang is considered the moment in time at which the world came into existence. However, from the point of view of reality, nothing ever comes in and out of existence.
There is just awareness itself, being modulated in all forms of experience but never ceasing to be or undergoing any essential modification. Our different experiences are different views of the same reality, each difference due only to the limitations of the mind through which it is viewed. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, ‘That which is never ceases to be; that which is not never comes into existence.’
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Awareness is not the background or knower of experience, although it is legitimate to say so during the early stages of our exploration into the nature of reality. Awareness is all there is to experience, or rather, experience is awareness. There is just infinite awareness, being only itself, knowing only itself, and, because of the absolute non-existence of any distance, separation or otherness in its own experience of itself, loving only itself.
When the Sufis say La ilaha illa la – ‘There is no God but God’ – they do not mean that their God, Allah, is the only true God as opposed to all the other religions’ Gods, as is commonly supposed. Rather, they mean that no mind, person, self, object or world ever actually comes into existence. No thing is a thing unto itself. No thing has its own being. The apparent existence of all objects and selves is borrowed from God’s infinite, self-aware being, infinite awareness, our very own intimate, impersonal self, from whose point of view there is nothing other than itself. That being shines in the mind as the knowledge ‘I am’ and in the world as the experience ‘it is’. The amness of the self is the isness of things.
The mystic explores the amness of the self; the scientist and artist explore the isness of things. To begin with, these two avenues of research seem to take the mind in opposite directions: the first seemingly inwards into an exploration of the nature of awareness, the second seemingly outwards into an exploration of the nature of existence. However, if both parties are courageous and honest enough, and refuse to stop short of the absolute truth of their experience, they will inevitably arrive at the same conclusion.
That conclusion may or may not be formulated by the finite mind as a series of concepts. It may just as well take the form of a piece of music, a painting, a dance, a poem, an act of kindness or simply a smile at a stranger (who in that moment ceases to be a stranger). If it is formulated in words, as in this book, its formulation will only ever be a pale approximation of the discovery to which it refers. But the discovery itself is not an experience of the finite mind or in the finite mind, nor is it known by the finite mind. That discovery is awareness shining in itself, as itself, by itself, to itself, modulating itself in all forms of experience, but never ceasing to be, know or love itself alone.
* From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.