Dear Rupert,
Consciousness is all there is. Consciousness chooses to experiment with a body and a world with free will. I understand that there is no separate entity in the sense that it is impermanent, and that all those apparent entities take form in and out of consciousness and so are impersonal.
If I know myself as pure consciousness, formless pure light, does that mean that when I quit that apparent entity, that personality, that ego, that apparent me will dissolve completely? If yes, who are all those dead entities that some people have the ability to see and get in touch with and even help transition? This seems to be so real and quite confusing, and what about reincarnation?
Thank you for your great generosity,
Denise
Dear Denise,
If we truly know that consciousness is all there is, this question does not arise. It is more in line with non-duality to be honest about our thoughts and feelings rather than to adopt a new, apparently non-dual belief. No belief is non-dual, including the belief in non-duality.
It is not that the separate entity is impermanent but rather that it is non-existent. The apparently separate entity is a figment of the imagination whether it appears in the waking state, the dream state or an after death state.
That separate entity does not transition anywhere. How can a non-existent entity transition anywhere? Why think of reincarnation? You are not even incarnated, let alone reincarnated! Incarnated means ‘born into the body’. See clearly that the awareness that you intimately know yourself to be in this very moment is not located in or as the body.
Be knowingly that awareness and allow all appearances of the apparent entity and all ideas about incarnation and reincarnation to pass through you.
Who is the ‘I’ the you, that will ‘quit that apparent entity, that personality, that ego’? That one does not have to quit anything; it is already inherently free of the separate entity. And who is ‘that apparent entity, that personality, that ego’ that needs to be quit? It dies or disappears every time the thought or feeling about it ceases. In other words, it is constantly dying.
In fact, it was never alive in the first place. As an entity it is just an object, like a table or a chair. However, if we look for that entity, we never find it. We find instead this presence of awareness, that is, it finds or knows itself. Thatis what is alive in all seemingly alive things. Thatis the light, the aliveness, the ‘experiencing’ in all seeming things and experiences.
Take your stand knowingly as this presence of awareness and see that it never moves, changes, appears disappears, is born or dies.
With love,
Rupert
