Standing As Awareness

by Greg Goode

  So your presence is not interrupted, but the experience of the body as an object is interrupted?

  Right, because the body is not experienced at that time...

  So the body cannot define what you are. Because you are present when the body is not.

  I see. I never thought about it that way, but it’s true!

  This is an example of how you come to realize that you aren’t a person. You come to see that you aren’t defined by the components of the person. You see how they are intermittent appearances, while you are never absent. Deeply seeing this will shed the notion that you are the person. That notion will make as much sense as believing that you are a pair of jeans.

  Ah, yes! Where can I go from here?

  Look for the mind as well. Other than a succession of thoughts, can you find the mind at all? Test the findings against your experience, not against a theory about what ought to be the case. Do you really experience the presence of the mind? If you can’t find the mind, then how can the mind be what you are? This investigation can be carried out with every candidate, every component that you think might be you. See what happens. This is self-inquiry – finding out who you truly are.

  How Are Objects a Block?

  You’ve written that the notion that physical objects are external is a block to nondual inquiry. Can you say more about that?

  Using objects in everyday activities does not block your inquiry. You can actually put on your clothes in the morning or drink a cup of coffee and do inquiry at the same time. But it is a block to take objects literally as external, independent, solid chunks of reality separated from yourself. If you regard objects as separate, then you regard yourself as separate. This sense of separation is based on these unwarranted object-beliefs, and gains a false conviction from kinesthetic experiences and the feelings of bodily muscular contractions. In truth, however, the body is not separate. It is unlimited and infinitely light, as awareness. The body is not in space, it is infinitely more subtle than space. It is awareness itself.

  But we tend to think in spatial, physicalist terms, and use these terms widely. The spatial concept of physical separation tends to serve as the paradigm for all our notions of difference. We tend to experience “difference” as spatial. This makes us think of two aspects existing on opposite sides of unbridgeable spatial gaps. Examples include feeling cut off from reality (as in “it’s out there, we’re in here”), feeling cut off from other people, feeling separated from our goals and the objects of our desires, and feeling ourselves to be divided in various ways: heart from mind, mind from body, conscious from subconscious, worldly from spiritual, etc. We almost feel as though these things occupy different places. And all of these feelings make us experience ourselves as all alone, vulnerable, and perishable.

  But isn’t this the way things really are?

  No. You never experience spatial externality or independence. Instead, you merely accept a story about it. This can be demonstrated. Try this: Shut your eyes. Now try to just listen... air-conditioning sounds... hushed conversational sounds... clinking silverware and coffee cup sounds... diner sounds. But there’s no evidence of an external air conditioner or cup appearing as such. In fact, the sound is the only appearance. In this moment, outside the sound, you don’t have evidence of a true external air-conditioner or cup.

  But where is the sound itself located? The sound is not on the outside or inside. It’s not on the left, right, north or south. There is no dividing line between the sound and you. Of course there might be a story line that makes an existential claim about the sound. This story line might say that the cup is physically located “outside.” But notice that this “outside” is not evident in the sound itself.

  This is the same for all the senses. Try this with vision. Place two similar coffee cups in front of you. Now, attend to the visual evidence alone. Two cylindrical patches of white, with Formica-beige between them... No line between the colors and you... No evidence in the colors of being “out there” ... There is no evidence of yourself being an observer “in here.” Nevertheless, based on these colors and their change over time, we conclude that there are objects external to us. We accept a story that these objects are separated from us. But there’s no support for this story in the visual evidence itself.

  OK, so are you saying there are no cups or people?

  Not independent from experience. Not as separate from you. It is not your experience that things exist in and of themselves, apart from experience. Think about the way you experience a cup. It is not apart from seeing or touching or thinking. Seeing, hearing, touching and thinking are never present without awareness within which they arise. It’s all awareness all the time. And awareness is the very nature of you.

  You never experience an unexperienced cup. You might think you do experience a cup that is in itself an unexperienced object. This is what classical Western science has taught. Heisenberg began to show how experience itself conditions the supposed object of experience. Experience is always in the makeup of anything experienced. There’s never experience of something existing apart from experience. So this whole notion of independent existence can be dropped as incoherent and productive of feelings of separation.

  So, what’s left?

  Experience, which is always whole and non-separate. And when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything other than experience, then it won’t seem like there’s a real thing called experience either. Existence/nonexistence, being and non-being will stop making sense and will drop away, no longer serving as partitions. You’ll never feel cut off from the world again.

  Well, I sure seem to experience this chair, this pencil, this cup of coffee. What is it like not to have any experience of these things?

  Free, light, weightless, uncrowded, unburdened, sweet and peacefully present.

  Like really connected...

  Ah! No, I don’t mean like Dustin Hoffman tried to illustrate with his white towel in I Heart Huckabees – “Everything’s connected!” It’s closer than that, much closer. There’s neither a feeling of connection or disconnection with the chair and pencil. It’s all present, here, now. There’s not an impression of the pencil as something on the other side of some spatial relation.

  No spatial relations. How is that possible in the physical world? I hear you ride a bike. How do you explain that?

  In fact, I ride a bike with no gears and no brakes. It’s called a track bike. The lightness I’m speaking of actually makes the track bike easier to ride than it would have been, even on city streets. By the way, there are many others who ride the same kind of brakeless bikes. I’ve spoken with many of them over the years. Even though they have no interest in these spiritual kinds of inquiries, they often report the same lightness, the sense that everything is hooked in together with you the rider. Everything moves and flows together in a way that is light and free and connected.

  This just doesn’t make sense to me. How light is it if you get hit by a bus!?

  The same! I’ve had accidents, I’ve been hit by cars, other cyclists and skaters. I’ve crashed and had bleeding injuries. I’ve had sprains, damage to the ligaments, and was once not able to ride for 6 months. This is all lightness itself, having zero weight and zero external existence, just like ideas. Injury, damage to the body, pain – they’re all lightness.

  So it’s all in the mind then?

  No, because without an outside, how can there be an inside? It’s more that there’s no border.

  How can someone come to experience this?

  By coming to see that all experience is whole as it is, and not disconnected from you. Experience doesn’t indicate objects outside of experience, so there’s no gap. One key to this is not to associate unpleasantness or pain with disconnection. Allow these to be as they are without making symbols or metaphors out of them.

  Personal Identity

  How does all this talk about physical objects relate to self-inquiry? After all, I don’t think I am a physical object. I also know I a
m not this coffee cup in front of me. But you’ve spoken of not seeing objects, and I want to experience what you experience.

  I experience no edges or borders or limits. I cannot experience a difference between “me” and “you.” Your inquiry will confirm this as “your” experience as well. It is not personal, but global, unlimited. It is already that. That is, inquiry will reveal the lack of difference between a “you” and an “other.” Ironically, the desire to attain this as a personal experience is as close to separation as you’ll ever get – and even then it is not truly separate. The desire to experience what another experiences is based on unsubstantiated beliefs, all of which lead to suffering. Wanting to experience what we project “an enlightened person” experiences is the very feeling of suffering; it’s not the path to the ending of suffering.

  How so?

  When this desire arises, do you feel more together, or more separate?

  Definitely more separate, but wanting to be together.

  OK, let’s look into it. You say you don’t think you are a physical object. Yet you’d like to experience what I experience. This is because you haven’t fully let go of the idea that you are a physical object. You see us as two separate places where experience happens. But if there are no physical objects, then how can there be separate experiencers? You see, there’s no way to make this distinction between experiencers without distinguishing them by physical characteristics.

  This distinction between experiencers depends on a sense that experiencing is rooted, centered and located. And how can you localize something without treating it as a physical object? Other than the concepts of shape, boundary, extension, left/right, here/there, how can one center be marked off from another? You might not have the explicit belief that you are a physical object like a body, but in a subtle way you are still granting independent existence to physical objects.

  I’m not aware of treating experiencers as physical objects. Can you explain a bit more?

  You say that you would like to experience what I experience, correct?

  Yes...

  But you see, any characteristic you come up with that seems to distinguish one “center of experience” from another will be a physical characteristic. Here/there, right/left, this side of the room/that side of the room. Any dividing line is based on physical properties such as line, extension, shape, contiguity to other shapes.

  Yet any shape or line is merely the interface between two colors, which are nothing more than ideas. This is the same for any characteristic. Shapes are nothing other than ideas. Not just visually but even felt shapes like the shape of an arm or coffee cup are ideas. The shape is not apart from the feeling of the shape, and the feeling is not apart from awareness of the feeling. It’s all awareness, all the time. This is how there are no separate physical objects. So how can there be separate experiencers?

  So I can’t be in your shoes, right?

  You aren’t in any shoes, even now. The shoes are in you, which is awareness.

  The desire to have the same thing someone else seems to have makes people think they’re missing something. They’d like to have the same kinds of experiences that they believe an “enlightened one” has. And yet enlightenment is the very lack of separateness in the first place. It’s across the board. As they would say in Zen, it’s just as much in the North as it is in the South. So it cannot be bottled up in one person, leaving the other person without. It can’t be owned.

  This is wonderfully inspiring! At first it makes me feel peaceful, as though nothing truly is lacking. But then I think, how can I better understand this? I don’t really want to think of you and me as really persons, but I still don’t think I have the same experiences you do.

  Is it like you are thinking of us in a kind of abstract way as different centers of experience, but not really located anywhere?

  Yes, that’s it!

  And in some way, you are there and I am here?

  Yeah, something like that...

  You asked how to understand this. It’s not a matter of taking up a new theory, but seeing your present theory as a story taken literally, taken to the bank. Being invested in that story makes you think you are separate and walled off. Without this structure in the mix, there would be no presumption or experience of separation.

  What is that structure you’re talking about?

  It’s the structure underlying the notion of separate centers of experience. We can dismantle the structure by looking at the very notion of “center.”

  I never thought of that. How would you do it?

  OK, let’s look into just what you think this center is.

  OK...

  How are you thinking of a center? What divides one from another? Does it seem like there’s a “here” and a “there”?

  In a kind of soft way, yes. Like your center is over there, mine is closer to here.

  But if there is no body, how are you finding the “here”?

  What do you mean?

  Can something be to the left of an idea? In front of an idea?

  Aaah, no!

  So if you have deconstructed your body in that you see it as nothing other than ideas, then how can ideas be close to other ideas or far from them? How can there be ideas over here or over there? How can ideas surround a center? Can you make any sense of that?

  Not when you put it in those terms...

  Can you put it another way? Can you give sense to the idea of a center without treating it like something related to a physical object?

  No, not right now...

  So can you see that apart from taking these physicalistic words literally, there is simply no way to conceive of separate centers of experience? Hence the supposed difference between “you” and “me” dissolves.

  This is why it is so important to deconstruct the experience of physical objects as objective things, independent of awareness. Our notions of differentiation tend to be based on physical characteristics, such as position or location. Let me ask – to you right now, what is the difference between you and me?

  You’re sitting over there, and I’m right here.

  And this couldn’t make any sense unless you thought of yourself, as well as me, as bodies with awareness inside them. The great Advaitin Krishna Menon said that “what we take ourselves to be is what we seem to see.” If you take yourself to be a body, then the world seems to be made up of physical objects. If you take yourself to be a mind, then the world seems to be made of subtle essences including minds. And if you take yourself to be awareness, then the world is experienced as nothing but awareness.

  But I know I’m not the body – the body changes over time, and I know that I am what watches it, and that I have remained unchanged.

  Yet you feel like you are “inside” the body?

  Yes – I can see things only from this angle. If I were not inside this body, I would be able to travel anywhere, and see anything from any angle.

  Do you feel like you are in any specific location inside the body?

  Hmm, let me see...

  Do you feel that you are above the waist or below the waist?

  Above, definitely.

  OK, do you feel you are above the neck or below the neck?

  Above the neck.

  OK, above the nose or below?

  Above.

  Can you narrow it down any more?

  I feel like I am behind the eyes.

  How big are you? What shape?

  Oh, about an inch wide, maybe round.

  Behind the forehead? On the left, right, or in the center?

  I feel like I’m in the center behind the eyes.

  How far back from the eyes?

  Oh, about an inch.

  OK, we’ve found you!! A marble-sized ball about an inch behind the center of the forehead!

  I guess so (smiling)...

  Now – what is it that this marble appears to?

  What?

  Well, as we talk about this, does the little marble seem to appear as an
image?

  Yes it does!

  So if this image is appearing, what is it appearing to? That is, it doesn’t seem like the marble is doing the seeing – it seems like the marble is being seen.

  Yeah, I understand. The little marble isn’t the seer – it is being seen. I guess it’s just an idea I have of myself.

  Yes, based on a few habitual things, such as the prominence of the visual sense over hearing, taste and smell. Also based on the association that arises over time between thinking of one’s self and the subtle muscular contractions in the forehead region. It makes us think that this is where we are.

  But now, think of the marble image, and that which is aware of the marble image. If you had to place your true self on one side or the other, would you be on the side that is seeing? Or the side that is being seen?