The states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep are only such from the perspective of an apparent entity in one of those states. From the perspective of consciousness itself, which is the only true perspective, it is always in the same condition, accessing a spectrum of its infinite possibilities in the form of various states but never entering any state itself, just as a screen is always in the same condition irrespective of the programmes that are playing on it.
Because the laws of physics are looser in the dream state than they are in the waking state, corresponding to the degree of relative relaxation of consciousness, events that would be considered magical from the point of view of the waking state are quite possible in our dreams. For instance, in a dream consciousness can localise itself in and as a body on the streets of New York one moment and be in Paris, in and as another body, the next.
Likewise, due to the fact that all finite minds are precipitated within the same field of infinite consciousness, and that each finite mind is without a clear boundary, communication between minds, as well as between states in any one mind, is equally possible. Telepathy, synchronicity and intuition are all examples of the normal boundaries of the waking state becoming relaxed and the boundaries between finite minds becoming correspondingly looser.
Such experiences are embarrassing inconveniences under the materialist paradigm, but they occur too frequently to be dismissed. They are only strange from the materialist point of view, which considers the evidence of the senses in the waking state to be the ultimate arbiter of reality. Indeed, Einstein is supposed to have said that common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.
From the point of view of the consciousness-only paradigm, in which all experience is understood as a contraction and relaxation of consciousness in the form of the finite mind, there is nothing extraordinary about such occurrences. Indeed, they are to be expected. In this model it is no stranger for there to be communication between minds at a distance than it is for objects to be connected in physical space. The physical space that apparently connects objects is a pale reflection at the level of the finite mind of the true medium in which all experience appears and through which it is connected: consciousness alone.
Finite minds are localisations within a single field of infinite consciousness, with no distinct boundaries between them, or between states within any one mind. When minds are informed by the same frequency of vibration, they experience a shared world. When a mind does not share a particular frequency with any other mind, the resulting experience is private.
At the deepest level all minds are connected because they are all precipitated within the same field of infinite consciousness, and the varying degrees of connectedness that we feel with one another or with animals, objects and nature are the degrees to which our minds are transparent to this shared medium. Love is the word we use when we feel this shared medium with other people and animals. The same experience is referred to as beauty in relation to objects.
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The body is an appearance of mind, which is itself a modulation, colouring or conditioning of infinite consciousness, so the death of the body entails the dissolution or unravelling of a particular configuration of mind. However, there is nothing to suggest that the underlying forms and energies of mind, which previously condensed to appear as the body, may not remain in a looser configuration when the body disappears.
The disintegration of a whirlpool leaves a residue of ripples in the river in which it was localised long after the whirlpool has lost its specific form, and this residue may form the basis on which a new whirlpool coalesces downstream.* In the same way, the forms or energies of mind that coalesced to form the appearance of a body in one lifetime may remain present in consciousness after the body has disappeared, and there is nothing to suggest that these residues may not coalesce ‘downstream’ and appear in the form of a new body, and thus in another life.
This ‘new body’ – which is a new appearance of mind – will bear traces of the forms that were present in the previous body for the simple reason that the energies that were released when the latter disintegrated will go into the formation of the next as it takes shape. This phenomenon gives rise to a theory of reincarnation that is consistent with the consciousness-only model, without making a concession to the idea of a reincarnating entity or self.
The same model also explains why elements of the waking state remain present in an altered form in the dream state. It is our common experience that the emotional and psychological residues of the waking state remain in consciousness when the waking-state self and its world disappear in sleep, and form the basis of the subsequent dream. These residues coalesce in the dream state to form not only the character of the dreamed subject but also its environment, that is, not only its internal but also its external experience.
In this way, what was present as thoughts and feelings inside us in the waking state may become our outside environment in the dream state. For instance, one with a fearful disposition in the waking state may find herself being chased by a tiger in the dream state. The tiger is an outward manifestation in the dream state of the fear that was within her in the waking state.
The waking state is only a narrow segment of the activity of mind, through and as which consciousness brings a segment of its infinite potential into apparent existence. As consciousness relaxes, its field of focus widens and, as a result, it has access to a broader segment of its own infinite field of possibilities. Whether we call this broader field of mind the collective or personal unconscious, altered states, drug-induced states, out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences, there is obviously much more to mind than is ordinarily accessible during the waking and dream states.
However, none of these states of mind, however ordinary or extraordinary, ever take place outside consciousness. Nor is it quite right to say that they take place within consciousness, as if a state of mind were one thing and consciousness another. All states of mind are modulations of the ever-present, underlying reality or original nature of mind, pure consciousness itself.
Everything there is exists in and as a modulation of consciousness, although not everything there is always appears in the narrow focus of the waking-state mind. Even now, if I were to draw your attention to the tingling sensation at the soles of your feet, you would suddenly seem to become aware of that sensation. The experience was, in fact, already in consciousness but, due to the exclusive focus of your attention on these words, seemed to be obscured by them.
The tingling sensation was in consciousness all along, but not in the narrow field of the waking-state mind until it was pointed out, at which point attention shifted to the sensation, thereby illuminating it. The experience was always present but previously unknown, just as a torch in a dark room illuminates objects that are already present but were previously unseen. In this way, the focusing of attention brings a segment of the total field of consciousness into view at any one time by excluding all other possibilities. Consciousness rises in the form of attention precisely for the purpose of collapsing its field of infinite possibilities into a single actuality.
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This mechanism accounts for the phenomenon of memory under the consciousness-only model. Consider the situation when somebody’s name is on the tip of your tongue. ‘On the tip of my tongue’ means ‘I know it but I don’t know it in this moment’. In that moment, where is the friend’s name? If we know it, it must be in consciousness, the only ‘place’ where any knowledge or experience can reside. The reason we feel that we don’t know it is that at that moment the waking-state mind has no access to that information. It is in consciousness but outside the limited compass of the waking-state mind.
Moreover, the harder we try to think of our friend’s name, that is, the more we focus on it, the more it eludes us, until we intuit that to remember the name we must relax the focus of attention rather than concentrate it. We feel that the name is there but we don’t have access to it, and our intuition is correct. The name is there, just outside that small part of the field of consciousness that has been brought into focus in the form of the waking-state mind. As the waking-state mind relaxes, so its focal field widens, allowing a larger segment of the field of consciousness to come within its compass. And sure enough, as the mind relaxes or defocuses, contents that were previously outside its sphere are now experienced within it…‘Sophie!’
The name Sophie doesn’t appear from somewhere outside consciousness. It is always in consciousness, the only place it is possible for anything to be. Nor does it move from one segment of consciousness – the unconscious – to another – the waking-state mind. The name always stays in the same place, the only place it is possible to be, the placeless place of consciousness. As the mind relaxes its self-contraction it encompasses more of the field of infinite consciousness, in the way that an inflating balloon has increasing access to the space into which it is expanding. As a result, what previously seemed to be outside mind is now experienced inside it.
Mind conceptualises this experience as memory, and conceives the apparent distance between the name that was unknown and the name that is now known as time. However, both the previously unknown name and the name that is subsequently known appear in the same dimensionless consciousness, for which all experience is now. Thus, time is not validated by memory; memory, in the form of thought, creates the illusion of time. It is the activity of consciousness, in the form of the apparent expansion and contraction of mind, that makes what is eternally present now appear as a succession of events in time.
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A physical object is an experience of mind – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling – not an object made out of matter. In order to experience an object, infinite consciousness collapses into subject–object relationship, experiencing the apparent object from the limited perspective of a subject. An object is, as such, a crystallisation of the broader medium of mind in which it appears, and it is for this reason that the apparently solid object retains and expresses the vibrational qualities of the field out of which it emerges. It is like an imprint from the larger field of mind onto the waking state.
This is perhaps most obvious when we listen to music, in which the form of the music – sound – is a direct transmission of the field of mind out of which it emerges. But the same is true of objects that appear in a more solid, concrete form, such as physical works of art. A work of art brings into the focus of the waking state, from the broader, shared medium of mind, knowledge that is normally inaccessible to it, and makes it available to humanity.
Carl Jung called this shared field of mind the ‘collective unconscious’, which is a somewhat misleading term in that it implies that the contents of this field lie outside consciousness, which is not the case. It is, rather, the collective field of consciousness which lies, for the most part, outside the compass of the waking-state mind and makes itself known to the individual mind through dreams, images, intuitions, and so on.
The content of this broader, shared medium of mind belongs to everyone, that is, to the consciousness that informs all finite minds, but in order to manifest as an object of knowledge or experience it has to be filtered through the prism of a particular mind. Shakespeare describes this process: ‘And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’* Each finite mind brings a segment of infinite consciousness, ‘airy nothing’, into actualisation, thereby giving its otherwise unknowable, formless reality a local name and form.
The function of an artist is to bring into the field of the waking-state mind knowledge that comes from the broader medium of mind in which it is precipitated but to which, under normal circumstances, it has no immediate access. The result is a work of art that inspires humanity to a life of love, beauty and understanding. As such, the artist is a function, not a person. It is the function within humanity that serves to restore the balance where separation, despair, conflict and hostility have eclipsed the light of love and understanding that lives in each of our hearts. Art is remembrance.
I first recognised this when, as a ceramic artist, I would visit museums around the world and explore their collections of early pottery. Long before I was able to rationalise experience as I am doing now, I would frequently feel an uncanny familiarity with a particular bowl or jar, a sort of visceral intimacy that expressed itself in simplistic terms such as, ‘I know the person who made that bowl’, ‘I made that jar myself’ or ‘These are my friends’. I was experiencing what the French poet René Char called ‘the friendship of created things’. I was recognising the broader field of mind that I shared with the bowl or jar, of which my body and their forms were, as it were, partial representations. Indeed, it was something about the visual image of the bowl or jar itself – my only experience of which was a perception in and of the mind – which had the power to draw my mind away from the objective aspects of experience, through subtle layers within its own field, at least some way ‘back’ to its formless source and essence.
Seen in this way, such an object becomes, as it were, transparent, delivering to one’s intimate experience the broader field of mind of which it is a temporary, local expression, and at some point dissolving the finite mind in the source of pure consciousness from which it emanates. This apparent merging of the field of the perceiver with the field of the perceived is the experience known as beauty. In fact, it is not a merging of two fields but rather the dissolution of apparent distinctions within the essentially indivisible field of their shared continuum. Such is the function and power of art, the power that some objects have to draw attention from the finite to the infinite. In this way, the experience of beauty is a communication of truth, an intervention of reality into the world of appearances.
The same experience can be felt between people and with animals, only in this case it is referred to as love rather than beauty. It is only in the narrow segment of consciousness known as the waking state that minds, and therefore people, seem to be separate from one another. However, if minds were truly separate from one another, the experience of love, or even friendship, would not be possible. Love is the experience of our shared reality. It is no coincidence that people value love above all else.
A person is not an object made of matter; a person is an activity of mind, a field of experiencing. A person, in the conventional sense of the word, is how that activity appears from the perspective of another finite mind, how the object looks from the perspective of a subject. From the inside, none of us has the experience of being a solid, well-defined object. We know ourself rather as a field of knowing or experiencing, vibrating within itself in the form of all thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving, but never actually condensing into a solid, permanent object or self.
This field of knowing or experiencing is always tending towards the dissolution of its limitations, the dissolution of any force that would tend to capture, suppress or limit it. The longing for freedom, love, peace and happiness that lies in the hearts of all apparently separate selves is only the longing for this dissolution. Friendship is both a catalyst for and an expression of this dissolution.
The term ‘satsang’ – from the Sanskrit sat, meaning ‘being’, and sangha, ‘community’ – has been downgraded by the contemporary Neo-Advaita movement to indicate a talk in which a speaker informs students. Originally the term had a deeper and subtler meaning, suggesting that the sharing of being is the vehicle of this dissolution. In the New Testament, the same understanding is expressed by St. Matthew, ‘For when two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.’ In this gathering, the shared essence of each of our minds is magnified and shines as the experience of love.
At the level of the waking state, our bodies and minds appear to be separate, as do the characters in a movie. But just as characters in a movie are modulations of the same indivisible screen, so our waking-state minds and the bodies that appear in them are energetic emanations from the same indivisible field of mind whose nature is infinite consciousness.
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A question that is commonly asked after encountering this approach is, ‘If everything appears in the same consciousness, and I am essentially that consciousness, why am I not aware of everybody else’s thoughts and feelings?’
Although each finite mind experiences only its own contents, it is at the same time precipitated within the shared medium of infinite consciousness, of which it is a cross-section or partial view. Each of our finite minds brings a segment of infinite consciousness’s potential into actuality. As such, each of our minds could be considered a sphere or field that emerges in a shared, self-aware space, focusing the potential that exists unmanifest within it.
When two spheres overlap they share the overlapping part of their content; that part of each sphere that does not overlap with the other is particular to that sphere alone and is experienced as its own private content. Thus it is possible for all minds to be precipitated within the same field of consciousness and for some of their content to be shared – what we call the world – and some of it to be private – that is, thoughts and feelings.
Just as each of our thoughts, sensations and perceptions is the product of a single mind, there is nothing to suggest that each of our minds is not itself the product of a single consciousness. In other words, just as there is a consistency to all our own thoughts, sensations and perceptions precisely because they are all a product of the same finite mind, it is not unreasonable to expect that there will be a consistency across finite minds – the experience of a shared world – simply because they are all the product of the same infinite consciousness. That is, it is the fact that consciousness is shared between minds that accounts for our experience of a shared world. The world is shared because consciousness is shared!
Moreover, although there is an obvious correspondence between some of the contents of our own minds – for instance, there is clearly a connection between the thought ‘What is two plus two?’ and the answer ‘Four’ – there is no obvious correspondence between other such contents, such as the thought that we are currently having and the memory of last year’s summer holiday. Likewise, it is to be expected that large areas of our experience may overlap considerably with other minds with whom we are in close contact, for instance, family, friends and neighbours; to a lesser extent with those with whom we are not in contact, for instance, someone living on the other side of the world; and not at all with those with whom we have no contact whatsoever, such as a frog or a snail.
However, just as the apparent disconnection between the elements that appear in a single mind never compromise the integrity of that mind, so the fact that some minds do not share their content – for instance, two people living on opposite sides of the earth – or the fact that two people in close proximity cannot know one another’s thoughts, doesn’t prove or imply that the ultimate reality of each of these minds is not the same shared medium of consciousness.
All there is to the finite mind is consciousness, but there is much more to consciousness than the finite mind. This is often misunderstood in contemporary expressions of non-duality, which mistake the non-dual understanding for solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only the content of ‘my’ finite mind exists; it is a form of insanity. In the non-dual perspective it is understood that only consciousness is, and that everything appears in, is known by and is ultimately made of that very consciousness.
Thus the consciousness-only model does not preclude an apparent multiplicity and diversity of minds, but recognises that this apparent multiplicity and diversity doesn’t actually multiply or diversify consciousness itself. In just the same way, each of our finite minds is capable of a multiplicity and diversity of thoughts and perceptions without compromising its single, indivisible status. In other words, an apparent multiplicity and diversity of minds is only such from the limited and ultimately illusory perspective of one of those apparent minds. Just as the thought or perception that each of our minds is now experiencing is only a fraction of the total possibilities that exist within that single, indivisible mind, so each finite mind is itself just a fraction of the total possibilities that exist within single, indivisible consciousness.
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Instead of imagining objects and people made out of matter that supposedly exist outside the field of consciousness, know and feel that all that is experienced is a vibrating field of mind, which is itself a modulation of pure knowing or consciousness itself. This vibrating field of mind appears in the form of objects and people on the outside, and thoughts, feelings and images on the inside, including the appearance of our own body.
It is reasonable to infer that other people’s experience appears in the same way as our own, that is, as a single field of vibrating mind taking the forms of thinking, feeling, sensing, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. When I say ‘other people’s experience’ I do not mean to suggest that people have experience. People are experience! Only consciousness ‘has’ experience. Only consciousness is experience. These vibrating fields of experiencing are all precipitated within the single, dimensionless field of pure consciousness, like numerous clouds precipitated within the same empty sky. The only stuff present in the clouds is the sky itself. The clouds, as such, give the sky a temporary name and form.
The reason we all seem to share the same world is not that there is one world ‘out there’ known by innumerable separate minds, but rather that each of our minds is precipitated within, informed by and a modulation of the same infinite consciousness. There is indeed one world that each of us shares, but that world is not made of matter; it is a vibration of mind, and all there is to mind is infinite, indivisible consciousness.
It is precisely because the world appears in and is made of infinite, indivisible consciousness that it appears from the perspective of each finite mind to be the same world. It is the same world, because all finite minds are refractions of the same consciousness. It is the sameness of consciousness, which shines in and as each of our minds, that is responsible for the conviction that we all share the same world. In the same way, all the characters in a night dream feel that they share the same world because they are all created by the same dreaming mind.
The sameness of the world is the sameness of consciousness. Our shared world is our shared consciousness. The vastness of the universe is the vastness of consciousness. Each finite mind feels that the world is much bigger than itself, and this intuition is true. There is more to the world than an individual mind, but this doesn’t imply that the world is outside consciousness. When a mind experiences the vastness of the universe, it is experiencing a segment of God’s infinite being from its own limited perspective, and it is for this reason that we feel such awe and wonder before nature.
Materialists use the intersubjective agreement – the agreement that individual minds share their experience of the same world – as proof that there is an independently existing world outside consciousness. However, that is just an interpretation. This intersubjective agreement can also be used to assert the opposite point of view, namely that the similarity of everybody’s experience of the world is an inevitable consequence of the shared nature of our minds at their deepest level.
One might argue that it is not possible to choose between these two opposing assertions, both of which use the same evidence – our shared world – as their proof. However, there is a difference between them. The materialist perspective is not grounded in experience. It requires an abstract line of reasoning that presupposes the existence of a reality outside consciousness, although nobody has ever experienced this, nor could they ever experience it. The materialist point of view asserts the reality of that which is never experienced – matter – and denies that which alone is always experienced – consciousness itself. That is the tragedy and the absurdity of the materialist perspective from which humanity is suffering.
The second point of view – which is not just the spiritual but also the truly scientific point of view – is in line with our experience and so should trump the materialist perspective, which turns out to be nothing more than a belief and, as such, simply a popular religion. For this reason, the materialist perspective should be sliced out of our contemporary world-view with Occam’s razor* and the laws of physics, as a result, should be upgraded to laws that govern the unfolding of mind rather than the behaviour of matter.
For centuries our culture has been dominated by the materialist view of reality. It is not necessary to point out the devastating effects of this view: the extent of suffering and conflict in society speaks for itself. If the human race still exists in five hundred years’ time, hopefully people will look back on this period of materialism just as we now look back on the theories of a flat earth and a geocentric universe that dominated our world culture for centuries. If humanity does not still exist in five hundred years’ time, it will most likely be because materialism prevailed.
Humanity cannot survive the materialist paradigm. If our species, and countless others, are to survive, we will have to replace the matter model with the consciousness-only model. If we want to build a model of experience, we have to start on solid ground, that is, we have to start with experience. If we build a paradigm starting with a belief, that belief will inform every aspect of the paradigm, and everything that proceeds from it will simply be an expansion of the fundamental assumption contained within it.
Experience must be the ultimate test of reality, and therefore the ultimate science must be the science of experience itself. All there is to experience is mind, and all there is to mind is consciousness. Thus, the ultimate science must be the science of consciousness.
The science of consciousness is consciousness’s knowledge of itself. Consciousness’s knowledge of itself – which is the only knowledge that remains the same at all times, in all circumstances and under all conditions and is, therefore, absolute knowledge or truth – must be the foundation and fountain of all relative knowledge.
A culture that is based upon any other understanding is bound in the end to destroy itself, for the ignorance at its heart – the ignoring of reality – will sooner or later rise up and turn people against themselves, their planet and one another.
* This image is borrowed from Bernardo Kastrup.
* William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1597).
* A problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), an English philosopher and theologian. The principle can be interpreted as stating: ‘Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.’