The Essence of Nonduality. Rupert Spira at the SAND Conference
I must confess that I do sometimes wonder what happened to the ideas that were prevalent at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century ideas of people like Einstein and sugar and heading turn and Polly and James Jeans and Niels Bohr all of whom understood that mind is inextricably interwoven into the way we into a section of the world into the world itself and as such they placed consciousness at the very heart of reality what took place that caused these ideas to become eclipsed by our contemporary mainstream materialist science.
There may be many answers to that question but one of them I would suggest is this that in the mid 1970s a definition of consciousness emerged. Thomas nagel's definition is an erroneous definition of consciousness which has since become the mainstream in academic circles and which was later substantiated in the yield conceived hard problem of consciousness and now finds itself expressed in the idea of panpsychism what was this definition of consciousness something like this that an Organism can be considered to be conscious or to have consciousness if there is something that it is like for that Organism to be itself now this seems at first sight to be a plausible definition of consciousness but it is predicated on the erroneous idea that it is I a human being or I a human body that I'm conscious or have consciousness and this is the original mistake. The original mistake upon which our entire world culture is founded. My human being or a human body is not conscious nor does it have consciousness only consciousness is conscious only awareness is aware only knowing knows so we could rephrase this definition of consciousness in a way that is in line with the evidence of our experience namely that that is consciousness is that which knows the experience of being itself. Almost simply consciousness is that which knows the experience of being it is not a human being that has experience or knows experience a human being is experienced it is consciousness alone that has or knows itself and this consciousness is knowledge of itself shines in each of our minds as the knowledge I or I am as such the name I is the name that that which knows itself gives to itself so it should be reserved for consciousness alone prior to the arising before before the knowledge I or I am is colored or qualified by experience this pure I am pure consciousness is without limitation and thus infinite and in other words it is infinite consciousness is knowledge of itself that shines in each of us as the simple knowledge I am and being being devoid of any limited qualities this infinite consciousness that knows itself as I or or I am is what is known in the religious traditions as God or God's infinite being and this understanding is in my opinion nowhere better expressed than you in the words of the Sufi Mystic bagliani who said this no one no one sees him except himself please forgive my use of the male reflexive pronoun it's just a unbold linguistic style that that has no significance or implication and I'm just an old fashioned Englishman so I like to use this language so he says no one sees him except himself no one reaches him except himself no one knows him except himself he knows himself through himself and he reaches himself by means of himself alone only he knows him as such I is the name that whatever it is that knows itself gives to itself human beings are not aware dogs are not aware bats are not aware computers are not aware and never will be aware stones and trees are not aware all it is aware is consciousness once it is believed that consciousness is a property of a human being it is only a matter of time before it is believed that dogs and bats and computers and stones have a modicum of consciousness and giving rise to the belief I mentioned earlier in panpsychism but Sam panpsychism is a cul de SAC from which scientists and philosophers will sooner or later have to return unless and until scientists are willing to investigate the nature of their own minds they will never know the nature of reality and without knowing the nature of reality science cannot ultimately contribute to a truly civilized and Humane Society bereft of such knowledge the prevailing materialist paradigm for all its undeniable benefits to society contains within it the destruction of the society the seeds of the destruction of the society whose role it is to serve the growing despair felt by people the conflicts that raged between communities and nations and the destruction of our planet are all the inevitable consequences of the prevailing materialistic paradigm that informs almost every aspect of our culture how is it possible for a scientist or indeed anyone to know the nature of reality everything that is known is known by the mind through the mind their form the mind knowledge of anything will always appear in accordance with its knowledge of itself just as one who wears orange tinted glasses will or will always see orange colored snow and just as the one who wears orange tinted glasses forgets that he is doing so and that imagines that the orange color is the property of the snow itself likewise each of our minds forgets that it is perceiving reality through the filter of its own limitations and imagines that the limit tations of itself our mind is inherent in reality itself how do we know that anything that is known or perceived by the mind is not simply a rare fication or an objective is a shun of the limitations of the mind through which it is known in fact we can be absolutely certain that it is as such there can be no higher end ever know any greater knowledge than to know the nature of the mind through which or knowledge and experience are known how does the mind investigate its own essential nature the essence of anything is that part of the thing that is that cannot be removed from it if the mind removes from itself or even imagines removing from itself everything that is not essential to it thoughts images feelings sensations perceptions etc what remains is its essence that element of itself that can never be separated from it and if each of us performs this experiment for ourselves imagining removing the content of our experience from our minds all that remains is pure knowing or pure consciousness being devoid of any of the limitations of experience this consciousness is unlimited or infinite if we want to build a model of reality should we not start with the primary element of experience it ternal infinite consciousness the one element of our experience that we can be absolutely certain of and only resort to or infer the existence of another material namely matter if we cannot account for everything that takes place in our experience using the consciousness only model and if science is not able to give us a sane model of reality upon which a truly civilized and Humane Society is based then we should look to our poets and artists they are the freethinkers for whom the unity of being has not yet been eclipsed by the apparent multiplicity and diversity of discrete objects and selves each one separate and distinct from the other as the German poet lethal buller said I will not return to a universe of objects that do not know each other as if islands were not the last children of 1 great continent the great artists and poets are those whose minds are free enough and humble enough not to mistake the limitations of their own mind for reality but who realize that what we see is but a symbol of reality a symbol in this case is not something other than reality or other than the reality that it presents it is simply a partial view of that reality which depending on the point of view we take either conceals that reality or reveals it as William Blake said the tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others simply a green thing that stands in the way some see nature some see nature all the ridicule and deformity some scarce see nature at all but for the person of imagination nature is imagination itself so we might ask the question what is the nature of the intelligence that has this as its appearance this as its imagination as the poet John Milton said in the religious language of his day dying this universal frame by self how wondrous then consider the possibility that nature or reality is the imagination or activity of the one mind pure knowing or consciousness that assumes the form of each of our finite minds through which it reflects itself into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves William Blake again every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight enclosed by the five senses every bird and by implication every object is an immense world of delight enclosed by sense perception that is appearing through the limit limited faculties of the senses as an object in other words pure delight or joy that is the knowing of being consciousness is knowledge of itself refracts itself through the activities of thought and perception and appears to itself as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves without ever becoming anything other than itself rilke expressed the same idea that he took an apple rather than a bird to explore this dare he said dare to say what apple truly is this sweetness that fast thick dark dense then exquisitely lifted in your taste grows clarified awake luminous double meaning sunny athy real knowledge pleasure inexhaustible the same idea inexhaustible pleasure and knowledge William Blake called an immense world of delight enclosed by sense perception and appearing as the objective world in other words our senses lie to us about the nature of reality and yet contained within that lie is the truth the role of the artist is to use the language of lies sense perception to speak of the truth as Picasso said aren't is a lie but it makes us realize the truth and he went on the artist must know the means whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his of his lies and he might have added that the philosopher or scientist has a duty to humanity to see through the veiling power of common sense and to lay bare its reality of which tense perception is but a limited or partial view remember Einstein who said that common sense was just a series of prejudices that most people acquire by the age of 18 it is to this same understanding that the Sufi Mystic Hafiz alluded to when he said the world is all imagination and yet it is real remember an illusion is not something that is not real and illusion that something that is real but is not what it appears to be all these artists and writers are all representatives of the great tantric tradition in western culture they realized that the mind filters realities and renders it according to its own limitations as such mind is the activity of consciousness through which consciousness refracts itself into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects in themselves thought reflects reality and make it appear makes it appear as time perception refracts reality and makes it appear as space as such time and space are simply how eternal infinite consciousness appears when filtered through the limitations of the human mind they are the illusion whose reality is consciousness A different kind of mind would perceive reality as a different kind of universe depending on its limitations but it would still be perceiving the same reality the only reality there is infinite consciousness or in religious language God's infinite self aware beings let me suggest a model that makes this easier to understand take the analogy of a dream when we have a dream at night we dream that a dream world within our own mind but we cannot perceive the dreamed world directly in order to perceive the dream world we have to overlook the nature of our own mind and enter into our own dream has a separate subject of experience from whose perspective the activity of our own mind appears as an outside world consider that each of us are dreams in the mind of God or the mind of infinite consciousness the only difference between our mind and infinite consciousness is mind is that our mind can only have one localizes itself in its own dream as a single subject of experience whereas infinite consciousness is presently localizing itself in its own imagination as each of our minds we are all the separate subjects of experience localizations of infinite consciousness through whose agency consciousness knows itself as the outside world in other words consider the possibility that just as it's a dream world is what our imagination looks like when viewed from a separate subject of experience within the dream considers that the world that we perceive is the imagination or activity of consciousness which only appears as a multiplicity and diversity of objects themselves from our limited localized perspectives this is what this is what Hafiz referred to when he suggested that the world is an exterior ization often hidden in a reality it's want David Bohn said that reality and its appearance as the world are the implicate and explicate order of the same infinite indivisible whole it is not the world that veils reality the world is shining with its reality as its reality it is belief that fails reality or seems to as instructed daughter said when somebody asked him if it was possible to see God he said yes of course just look around you this this collapse of infinite consciousness into the finite mind in order to manifest its infinite potential is what Ramona mahashe referred to when he said the I thought is the mother of the world he didn't mean of course literally that the thought I creates the world animals and infants experience the world but they don't have the thought I what he meant was this localization of infinite consciousness in the form of the finite mind is the means by which infinite consciousness manifests its potential in form exactly the same understanding is expressed in the tantric traditions which say which says that the universe is an expansion of I prior to the limited the limiting of itself as the finite mind infinite consciousness has no dimensions it is only when this dimensionless presence of consciousness vibrating so to speak within itself assumes limitations and seems to become a finite mind that the world or the universe expands within itself this understanding he's nowhere better he expressed in having said that about German machine that andrick traditions misunderstanding is nowhere better expressed at least not in the West than in Shakespeare's words in A Midsummer night's dream he says this as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown a poet's pen turns to shape them and gives to every nothing a local habitation and a name and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown at poets pen turns to shape them and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name reality is not unknown or mysterious it is the world it is shining as the world it is the world as it is normally conceived that is mysterious so mysterious in fact that no one has ever find found it or will ever find it what we see as the world is the activity of God's mind the activity of God's imagination the activity of infinite consciousness the activity of the essence of our own mind it only appears as a universe in time and space from the perspective of a localized mind our mind has rarefied its own limitations and projected them onto reality we do not think about the world because it exists it seems to exist because we think of it divested of the limitations that the mind superimposes on reality reality shines by itself a single infinite indivisible and utterly intimate whole which ultimately cannot be named for all names refer to things and ultimately there are no things they have a name or can be named as mulyani said otherness for him is him without otherness this absence of otherness is known in common parlance as love the very essence and nature of reality itself of which all of this is its appearance thank you.
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