Dear Rupert,
If we are not thinking while awake, is the experience one of pure consciousness? I assume a cat does not think and it experiences directly. Is consciousness watching the external world through the eyes of the cat?
Rupert is an individual appearance that consciousness takes. When you stand as consciousness, you lose your personal attributes, but you experience consciousness as an individual. Even if you know yourself as the non-personal consciousness you are experiencing, you are watching objects (let us say a TV set). These objects have a purpose in the external world.
Do you recognise these objects as consciousness, or do you just see shapes without any recognition? Does consciousness have memories of events? For instance, all that Rupert has experienced, does consciousness recall it, even though it is detached from thoughts and emotions?
Once your body dies, how will you experience consciousness? When Rupert’s body has died, will you notice any discontinuity in your consciousness? Deep sleep is an absolute blankness, nothingness, in which no events are happening, nor movement, nor time. Is this what consciousness will ‘experience’ eternally (a non-experience) once Rupert’s body has died? Is this absolute happiness?
Consciousnessis one, but Rupert experiences consciousness when in the body, and Francis too, and Eckhart too. When Rupert is in deep sleep, Francis and Eckhart are awake doing different things. And if we assume the three of them are standing as consciousness, it looks like consciousness has different departments with different experiences at the same time.
Kind regards,
Javier
Dear Javier,
Javier:If we are not thinking while awake, is the experience one of pure consciousness?
Rupert:By ‘pure consciousness’ I am presuming you mean the experience of consciousness knowing itself in the absence of all objective appearances. If this is the case, then the absence of thinking would not necessarily mean an experience of pure consciousness, because either sensing or imagining may be present.
So we could reformulate the question as, if while we are awake we are not thinking, sensing or perceiving, is that an experience of pure consciousness? The answer is yes.
However, there is a deeper implication in your question, that when thinking, sensing or perceiving is taking place, consciousness’s experience of itself is somehow impure, that is, it is mixed with something other than itself. This is not the case. Or rather, it is only the case for the dualising mind, which conceives of something other than consciousness with which to contaminate it. From this point of view, yes, thinking, sensing and perceiving seem to colour consciousness, as it were, making it seem that it experiences something other than itself.
From the point of view of consciousness, there is nothing other than itself which could cloud or sully its own experience of itself. In other words, from its own point of view, which is in fact the only true point of view, and which is of course therefore not a point of view, there is only the experience of consciousness experiencing its own pure being.
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I assume a cat does not think and it experiences directly. Is consciousness watching the external world through the eyes of the cat?
You are right to assume that a cat does not think; nor does a person such as Javier or Rupert think.
Nobody has ever experienced ‘a cat’ as such, as it is conceived by the mind. A cat is a thought that abstracts from the seamless totality of experience an object separate and distinct from the totality, existing in its own right. No such independent, separate object has ever been experienced, be it a cat, a person or anything else.
A cat does not know it is a cat. ‘Cat’ is a label given by the mind to a perception. Does a perception know or think anything? Does a thought or an image think? The idea that a cat watches the external world through its eyes comes from the belief that we, as apparent people, watch an external world through our eyes. But no such thing takes place.
Can you find the awareness that is seeing these words behind the eyes, or indeed anywhere? Can you find ‘the eyes’? What is your experience of the eyes? A cluster of sensations? Does a cluster of sensations see? What do you find behind this cluster of sensations? Only one sensation can appear at a time, although the mind breaks this one sensation up into different parts called eyes, arm, leg, nose, and so on.
Nothing looks out through the eyes of either a person or a cat. Perceptions of the so-called external world and sensations of the so-called internal body all appear equally in the same place, in consciousness. Or we could say they are all equally made out of the same thing, neither inside nor outside, but simply as the shape that consciousness is taking ‘in that moment’.
One thought cannot take place inside another thought, sensation or perception. All takes place in consciousness.
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Rupert is an individual appearance that consciousness takes. When you stand as consciousness, you lose your personal attributes, but you experience consciousness as an individual.
Yes, ‘Rupert’ is a label that is attached to a particular thought, image or perception. It is not ‘Rupert’ that stands as or experiences consciousness. Only consciousness stands as consciousness. ‘Rupert’ is an appearance within consciousness.
Even if you know yourself as the non-personal consciousness you are experiencing, you are watching objects (let us say a TV set).
There is no person watching. There are simply thoughts, sensations and perceptions appearing in and ultimately made out of consciousness.
From the point of view of the mind, they are objects. But in fact there are no objects, just as there is no subject of experience. If we think we are a personal perceiving subject, we will think that we experience objects. When the subject collapses, the object collapses with it, leaving only experiencing. And consciousness is the nature of experiencing.
These objects have a purpose in the external world. Do you recognise these objects when you see them standing as consciousness, or do you just see shapes without any recognition?
There are shapes appearing to consciousness and there are the interpretations of those shapes, in the form of thoughts, which also appear to consciousness. As a result of the interpretations, there may be other thoughts, such as, ‘I’d better go to the supermarket to buy some food for dinner’, in which case this thought and the subsequent action also appears in consciousness. However, there is never a personal doer, thinker, perceiver, and so on.
Does consciousness have memories of events? For instance, all that Rupert has experienced, does consciousness recall it, even though it is detached from thoughts and emotions?
One image arises, such as the image of my fifth birthday party. Then a second thought arises which labels that image as a birthday party having taken place so many years ago, at such-and-such a place. This second thought is considered to be a memory of a past event. But at the time it takes place, the past event is non-existent. Only a thought connects the current thought to a non-existent event. Memory is just an idea. It is always a current experience and the event to which it refers is always non-existent.
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Once your body dies, how will you experience consciousness? When Rupert’s body has died, will you notice any discontinuity in your consciousness?
The same as now, that is, by itself, through itself. Consciousnesses does not experience itself through a body now. It does not need a body or a mind to know itself. Its simple being itself, prior to mind, is its knowing of itself.
When this body dies, consciousness will no longer experience the appearance of this body, but it will continue to experience itself. There is never the experience of discontinuity in consciousness. What would be there, in the absence of consciousness, to register its absence?
In fact, that is what happens during deep sleep and at many other moments during the day, when the body is not present as an experience. However, there is no future in which all this will happen. The now never moves. It is always now.
Deep sleep is an absolute blankness, nothingness, in which no events are happening, nor movement, nor time. Is this what consciousness will ‘experience’ eternally (a non-experience) once Rupert’s body has died? Is this absolute happiness?
Deep sleep is not blankness. ‘Blankness’ is an interpretation of the mind, which can only conceive of its own absence as a blank nothingness. But how does the mind know what deep sleep is if, by definition, it is not present there?
Deep sleep is only blank for the mind. For consciousness it is peaceful and happy – that is why we look forward to it and remember it happily. Absolute happiness is the knowing of our own being. It is not dependent on anything other than itself.
Consciousnessis one, but Rupert experiences consciousness when in the body, and Francis too, and Eckhart too. When Rupert is in deep sleep, Francis and Eckhart are awake doing different things. And if we assume the three of them are standing as consciousness, it looks like consciousness has different departments with different experiences at the same time.
Rupert, Francis and Eckhart are not experiencing consciousness. Consciousness is experiencing whatever thoughts, images, sensations and perceptions are appearing, including those that are interpreted as ‘Rupert’, ‘Francis’ and ‘Eckhart’.
Consciousness does not have departments, but as we know from this current experience, in which we are looking at a room in which there seem to be many different things, consciousness has the ability to appear as a multiplicity and diversity of things, and yet remain only itself, one.
With kind regards,
Rupert
