Self-realization is simply coming to realize something that is already the case. It is a falling away of the added-on concepts about your Self - the imagination called "I am a body", "I am thinking".
So any effort to reach this is an effort to change experience - simply because right now is IT. Experience doesn't need to change. Only the idea that there is a separate, finite body-person which is experiencing a world changes naturally, when that false belief falls away.
So it's not a change of the world, not a change of the behavior or condition of the body or mind. It is noticing that world, body and mind are experience. And you are that which is experiencing, right now.
So notice this. Notice that the only quality you can give yourself is experiencing - noticing - observing - watching - cognizing - feeling - knowing. If we talk of a world - in other words - the subject vs. the object - then you must be the subject, yes?
So what is the subject, right now? What really is it? What is it's content? What is it's nature?
The subject of any and all experiences is empty - it is not locatable - it has no attributes. It is not another thing in experience. It is not definable in terms of starting and ending, either in space or time. It is simply HERE. It is a presence. You are clearly HERE but that subject is not findable.
That subject is not a thing from which you are knowing - it IS the knowing - it is like an open space or capacity. It is a mysterious, unexplainable, indescribable presence by which the world, body AND mind are known. Is this not blindingly obvious?
But because it's unknowable - the mind has to create imagination for it. It has to project something upon that subjective presence, simply because the mind can't deal with the unknown, the unfindable. It's scary. It's unsettling. Like wandering into a dark room - the lights must come on.
But there is no light which can illuminate the subject - it cannot become objectified. It IS the light by which the world, body and mind are known.
It is always there - overlooked. It is not findable but it is always obvious and present. It's YOU. The presence or activity of knowing.
The subject of all experience is always awareness. See if this isn't the case.
5 comments:
I find I want to think about the empty subject, to know it like I might know a place but this cannot happen. Very frustrating. It would seem there is nothing to do. One cannot anticipate it or precipitate it.
Before you came to this view, this awareness I wonder what you would have thought of your statement "Is this not blindingly obvious" No doubt afterwords it was obvious but before? Perhaps like us it was not.
Sometimes I sit quietly and I try to be aware of what is seeing, what is the space that all experience is occurring in but at best see only a lessening of content, a quietness, a smaller sense of me, yet still there.
Jeffrey,
There is nothing to do. You ARE the subject. The subject is already evident and obvious because there is a knowing going on. That's what the "subject" means - that which objectifies - that to which the object appears. That's YOU.
The body appears. It's objective. Thoughts appear. They are objective. That subject-ivity doesn't appear. It's not an object, yet you KNOW it's there because knowing is happening.
Therefore we can only say, with absolute certainty, that the subject IS the present knowing. Not the body. Not thoughts. Therefore nothing is required of the world, body or mind. Nothing needs to change. Nothing needs to be done. Simply realize that you aren't what you took yourself to be, a limited object, an experience called "body-mind".
You are that subjective presence, that immediacy of obvious knowing.
To say "I AM" is to confirm this subjectivity. It is to confirm your own Being. Being IS Knowing.
Then see that there is nothing outside of knowing - why? Because knowing is experiencing - experience is "known" - yet this equation is merely a way of thinking or describing - the description asserts the reality of two things - the knower (as a thing which knows) and the known.
Is that experienc-ing truly apart or separate from experience? Are they two things? Aren't they the identical reality?
Have an honest look - see if that supposed separation between the two is real or actual, or if it's assumption or imagination.
Pranam,
Your every word resonates within me. I can feel the grace. Thank you.
Subramani
Pranam, my friend.
love to you
randall
Dear Randall, this time something quite hit the nail on the head, so as to say. A peaceful loving presence has engulfed 'me' after I read this. Thanks a lot my friend. Keep posting these beautiful pointers!
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