The basis of neti-neti is that the true Self, what you truly are, can never be objectified.
You objectify the world - there is the Sun, the moon, the trees, the birds... in fact if we look closely with openness, these "appearances" are merely sensory perceptions. Every single one of them.
You also objectify that body - feet, legs, stomach, hands, arms - these also appear as sensory perceptions - you SEE the body. This is the core of Douglas Harding's message of "Having no head." The body also appears as sensations - feelings - the sensation of legs, the sensation of hunger, breathing, heartbeat... These sensations are what we call "body" - yet that "thing" is only ever a bundle of sensations and appearances of perception.
You also objectify the "mind" - the thoughts, images, music, memories, imagination, reasoning... these all appear TO YOU - you are AWARE OF these "sensations" that are conceptualized as "mind". They are objects - objectified to you - the Subject.
So then what are you? What is knowing these things? Where is that knowing happening? Does that knowing appear as another object? If it did, it would be known again by something, so that isn't it.
Something is knowing all these objects. That "knowingness" is what you are. It's been called "awareness" or "consciousness" but those are just more words. The function is obvious if we just look. It cannot be seen, cannot be objectified, just as the eye cannot see the eye.
That activity or fact of knowing is what you are. That isn't an object. That doesn't suffer. That doesn't require Peace or Love. That isn't subject to coming and going. That is there in the presence or absence of any of these other objects.
True Self is simple yet amazingly it is overlooked in the focus and identification with objects. That presence of knowing is what makes it possible for these words to be read - the very light by which the body itself is known.
The "I AM" of identification arises only ever as an object, coming and going within the never-changing and ever-present presence and function of the Knowingness that is your True Self.
4 comments:
The slightest grasping by the mind to hold and save those surreal and fleeting eternities, always seems to push them Just beyond reach. Those "Knowings", those "Moments" so full that they shall burst without interpretation, and Always right before "We Get It".........
A moment's passionate realization crumbles back to separation.
I awaken to find, still in my mind, that empty feeling I'd left behind.
I know. I KNOW. I have experienced and I Know, but I can't know all the time and I can't draw pictures of it, or find words for it, so here I am. Vulnerable and exposed, left loving and aching in this walk along the way.
Mark,
"I can't know all the time." This is complete backward to reality.
The "ME" that can't know all the time appears as an thought-object in the formless knowing that is present, "all the time", moment to moment, no change, no involvement in this "ME" or in this constant yet unnecessary intellectual attempt to "know it" or "remember it" or "find it".
That knowing presence is already the nature of all experience - whether that experience is frustration and confusion or perfect clarity. What more is needed - that pristine and shining witnessing Consciousness or immediate fact or function of non-conceptual cognizing, registering, awareness, seeing/knowing - this is what you ALREADY are - it's just pointed out and recognized.
Then the tragic plight of the seeker is seen as just another soap opera the intellect is starring in, another game the Consciousness is playing, another dance or lila the palpable Presence of Totality or God is joyfully doing to itself.
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