Sunday, February 13, 2011

What is Looking?

What is the reality of the world? What do you really know?

You know appearance, experience. So the reality of the world is dependent on your particular means of knowing the world - senses - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. If that means changes, the appearance or experience changes.

Is this view of the world absolute? In other words, are there any other means of measurement which provides a different view of the world? Is that different view less accurate? Less correct? No. So your particular means of measurement is never absolute. But we take it as such. We think the world, as it appears, is absolutely the only way. We think a rock as it appears to our particular senses is the absolute correct appearance, the ultimate appearance.

Think about that. If an alien came down and said the rock was liquid, you would think that to be incorrect, because you perceive the rock as solid. But the particular sense mechanisms of the alien may see the rock as liquid.

Which is correct? Neither. Both are relative to the particular means of measurement. So who possesses the absolute means of measurement? Who can see that rock for what it really IS?

If your means of measurement is an atomic microscope, rock is space. Emptiness. A few particles here and there, moving at blinding speeds. That is also rock.

If your means of measurement is mathematics, rock is a field of energy. No form at all. With that means of measurement rock is intelligence.

So what IS rock? We cannot ever say because we are always talking from a particular viewpoint, a particular means of measurement. But we take our means of measurement as the absolute. Rock is a solid thing. Can you see this?

If we look at anything else, we call it how we see it. In other words, we rely on the appearance relative to our means of knowing it. We call it building or car or apple. But we might realize that we are only ever applying concepts based on our limited means, and we are caught up in that conceptual application, we are stuck in that conceptual position. We take the appearance as the absolute representation of what that IS.

So maybe our view of the world loosens up with this recognition. We realize that our particular means of knowing the world is always limited, and that it is only one viewpoint. The rock is also empty. The rock is also formless. The formless intelligence and the solid form are one and the same reality.

Our hold on the world as a solid, separate thing apart from ourselves loosens up. We recognize the limitation - we realize the relative nature of appearance.

So what IS the world? It is simultaneously a world of solid, separate things and a formless intelligence. Yes? Were our eyes made of quantum lenses we wouldn't know of a universe, we would only know of a formless intelligence, a field of intelligence energy.

If the eyes were quantum lenses and we looked at ourselves, what would we see? Where would the knower be found? What would it be that is doing the looking?

Wouldn't it be one formless existence aware of itself?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah. This is a totally central premise. The means of perception define what is perceived.

Another blinder!

Randall Friend said...

Hey Viv... good to hear from you.

Unknown said...

Hi Randall,

Thank you so much for these blogs. They are very supportive for me in pointing the way.
It is all about Awareness watching Awareness, or Awareness aware of itself. Appreciate the sharing of the wisdom.

Gary

Randall Friend said...

Gary,

Hello again my friend.

How do you know awareness? You cannot "know" it for it is the knowing. You can only BE that.

And awareness is another word for "the world". Where is the world located? Only in awareness. Only in YOU. What shape does awareness take? It takes shape as the world, does it not?

When we focus on awareness, we make a distinction automatically. That is ok yet we can then fall into the "divinity of awareness" hole. We need not sanctify awareness. Awareness is not actually some "thing" - awareness and the world are not-two.

This is already the case but constantly overlooked in taking concepts and separation as reality. Yet there has never been a world apart from awareness.

There has never been a "ME" apart from awareness.

What we "call" awareness is nondual reality - yet there is no separate world IN awareness.

Anything you "see" is that. You are already "seeing-oneness".


love
randall