by Greg Goode
26 www.sedona.com/home.asp 27 Ramesh S. Balsekar (1917-2009), a disciple of Nisargadatta 28 H.W.L. Poonja (c1910-1997), a disciple of Ramana Maharshi 29 Both of these works are out of print and not generally available.
An Enquiry into Space
by Kim Lai
“ My friend and fellow direct-path student Neil told me something very important: “Inquiry is not about removing the effects of reality by changing experience. It’s about removing the false assumptions about knowledge.”
Space, the final frontier
Time and Space
Space begets objects and objects beget space. Space must come in to make objects and objects must come in to make space. Therefore, they are both non-existent as such. But it has been proved in other ways also that objects are non-existent. Thus space is an illusion.
—Notes on Spiritual Discourses from Sri Atmananda,
Note 12130
When I was five years old, I saw Return of the Jedi (Star Wars: Episode VI) in the cinema. The film made a very strong impression on me. This cinema session became the cornerstone of several strong interests that are still with me today. One of them is science fiction; after Star Wars, I watched Star Trek and other sci-fi films and shows in my childhood, and I started reading sci-fi novels as a teenager. Later, 2001: A Space Odyssey marked me for life. I love the whole film, but my favourite part is a scene in which a spaceship gracefully drifts in emptiness, and then slowly docks on a space station orbiting around earth. The slow pace emphasizes the immensity of space.
I am attracted to large empty places. Open ocean horizons, mountain tops, and huge warehouses such as the Tate Modern Museum’s Turbine Hall in London make me feel calm, open, available. I probably share this attraction to wide and open space with most people. As much as we love other people, most of us—and particularly city-dwellers like me—feel the need to go to places where the distance between us and surrounding objects or people is as great as possible. We seek large open spaces, and perhaps even space-travel stories, for their peace. They seem to have a calming and regenerative power.
Despite my interest in science fiction and my attraction to empty places, before I became interested in nonduality, and later more specifically in the direct path, I rarely—if ever—thought of space. I just took it for granted. I tacitly accepted the general view of our culture that the three dimensions of space (and time, which could be considered its fourth) are the background of the universe; all galaxies, solar systems, planets, stars, living organisms, or specks of dust exist in space, which has to be there first to support the concrete matter they are made of. Like most of us, I would have concurred with the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of space as “the dimension of height, depth and width within which all things exist and move.” Indeed, this definition is aligned with the basic assumptions of our culture: space and time preexist, and objects made of matter exist within them. Without space, matter could not exist. It would literally have nowhere to stand, no volume to take its three-dimensional shape. We cannot even think of the absence of space. It makes no representational sense.
Everything in its right place
Just as I had not yet started to question space, I was not thinking about awareness very much. Like space, awareness seems like an a priori given: without even needing to formulate it, I operated under the assumption that each human being is an object made of organic matter, including a brain, which generates an awareness—I didn’t know how—which, I believed along with everyone else around me, is personal and unique. Thus awareness and body are considered inseparable: the former is supposed to be a by-product of the latter. I felt that my individual essence—my core, what I really am—was somewhere behind my eyes, in my brain. In this framework, I had no other choice than to implicitly assume I was an independent awareness, enclosed in a body made of matter and occupying space: located at a particular position, with an open view on a pre-existing world. The two assumptions that space exists and that I am located in space feed each other.
How does it feel to occupy a position in space? Well, it feels like my entire experience is happening in space and is informed by spatial relationships. First, I experience space through my senses. I see a world of objects spreading out in space. Colours, sounds, smells, or textures inform me how close or far from me objects are. Additionally, the movements of objects and of my body create changes in perception, such as modifications of the colours I see, which reinforce the sense that materiality is a fact, an unchallengeable given.
Second, I experience my body as an object in space, through my five senses. I can also feel my body and locate the feelings: my head, my chest, and my toes feel like different places. Moreover, I know in which position various parts of my body are. I feel my body’s volume and position in space.
Third, my mind and its content seem inextricably linked with location and spatiality. Although they are not material per se, I feel like my thoughts happen in a particular place, generally in the front part of my brain. Besides, when I think of an orange, I see it in three dimensions: in my mind’s eye it shows up in space.
Furthermore, perceptions are often accompanied or followed by a thought. If I hear a car passing in the street while my eyes are closed, I see a thought-image of a car, which reinforces my knowledge that the sound was produced by an actual car.
Finally, I feel like my awareness is personal and works like a container; objects can be inside or outside of it. If I stand in front of my house, I can see it, because it is inside my awareness. But when I am at work, I cannot see my house anymore, because it is now outside the reach of my awareness. As a point in space, I have access to a limited number of the things made of matter that space contains. Other things that are out of reach still seem to exist, even if their existence cannot be verified through the senses at this very moment.
Questioning the notion of space
A few years ago, I became interested in nonduality, and this interest led me to challenge the materialist views of my culture. I went to many meetings and read many books. Space and time were a recurrent topic in the meetings I attended and in the dialogues I read. I heard and read phrases like “there is no time,” “space is only an illusion,” “boundlessness is all there is,” and “everything appears in consciousness, including space and time.” I became fascinated by these ideas. I explored various approaches, and then discovered the work of Jean Klein, Francis Lucille, Rupert Spira, and Greg Goode. I fell in love with the direct path and delved into it: I read Nitya Tripta’s Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda31 and used the experiments in The Direct Path: A User Guide.32
Direct-path enquiry uses sublation, a process that lets the student realize that every object of the world (like an orange or a rock), of the body (like my arm or a feeling in my chest), and of the mind (like thoughts, moods, choices) are nothing but awareness. For example, Experiment 2, “Seeing the Orange,” is intended to show how a simple object like an orange is in fact never experienced objectively, and is nothing more than awareness. After repeating the experiment a few times, I was struck by this very simple point: space is never experienced directly. It is mentioned right at the beginning of the book and does not require a nondual understanding or even the use of sublation. Whether I look at a wall, at the sky, at a computer screen, or at a mountain in the distance, I do not see any space, simply—and quite amazingly—because I cannot see space. All I—and any other life forms equipped with eyes—can see is expanses of colour. As Sri Atmananda puts it in Note 469:
Do you perceive space? If so, with what organ? If you say “with the eye organ,” it can perceive only form. Space is not form.
How mind-blowing to realize that space, the basic premise of material reality, is in fact never perceived directly. I was amazed.
Investigating from the wrong place
I kept inquiring into objectivity and space, with honesty and earnestness, the two qualities Atmana
nda deems necessary for direct-path students. I was interested and motivated, but I failed to realize my most basic mistake: I was bringing expectations into my enquiry, because I lacked clarity on my motivations. In a fascinating group discussion, Greg pointed out that there are two main motives for nondual enquiry. At first, a person might want to reduce, or even eradicate, his or her suffering, and reach a state of bliss, or in other words, be enlightened. This motive—let’s call it motive A—is often the one that draws students to the direct path. It gives momentum to the search, but the expectations it creates soon become counterproductive, because it’s still about acquiring something personal. The second motive—motive B—is to lift the veil of illusion, to know the truth. It stems from a sincere curiosity, and it is free from end-gaining and attainment objectives.
In my case, motive A was dominating. I had an idea of where the enquiry into objectivity and space was supposed to take me. I expected a shift in perception. My expectation was based on things I had heard in nonduality meetings, and things I had imagined: although they question the existence of space and material reality in general, nondual teachings use spatial metaphors too, in an attempt to express an inexpressible absence of limitation. Words such as vastness, openness, and boundlessness are favourites. On the one hand, it seems paradoxical and counterproductive to use the very notions you are trying to debunk as tools in your demonstration; on the other hand, the impossibility of avoiding spatial metaphors, even for the most hardcore materiality-denying Advaitists, shows how deeply spatial notions are embedded in our language. Besides, banning spatial metaphors from one’s vocabulary would only result in creating an affected, pretentious language. It would be as futile as the infamous tendency to speak without using personal pronouns that strikes some nondualists.
My enquiry into objectivity was flawed because, contrary to my belief, it was not honest. I did not know exactly what, but I expected something to happen. I was sure that the irremediable impact of this expected, yet mysterious, change would be a proof that enquiry had done its job. Because nondual teachings were saying that space did not exist, I thought that even the illusion of space had to make way for…something else. In that sense, I was awaiting a change in the perceptual experience of vision: perhaps, for example, perspectives were going to flatten, or colours would glow in a new and permanent way.
Discussions with friends in an online group focused on the direct path helped me to realize that making a shift in perception the condition for considering my enquiry successful was counterproductive, for two reasons.
First, we discussed the difference and implications of motives A and B several times, and I got some clarity on the difference between the two motives, and on my own intentions, from those conversations. I realized that expecting my experience of space would change was an expression of motive A. Besides, this process made me realize that meta-enquiry 33 is important, even if one is earnest. Collective critique and self-critique may allow a student to uncover assumptions, flaws, and weaknesses in his or her enquiry, and to refocus in order to allow the enquiry to be more fruitful.
Second, my friend and fellow direct-path student, Neil, told me something very important: My friend and fellow direct-path student Neil told me something very important: “Inquiry is not about removing the effects of reality changing experience. It’s about removing the false assumptions about knowledge.” Although I had heard statements like this one many times, and although I thought I knew that only the belief in maya—and not the illusion itself—needs to be seen through, Neil’s statement hit home, and I started seeing my enquiry into objectivity and space in a new light.
Where am I, and where does everything appear?
In the direct-path inquiries on objectivity, we first look for an object that is performing perception. We try to establish if there is any arising that is doing the seeing (or hearing, touching, tasting, smelling), and we fail to find one. My enquiry into space helped me to realize that there was something really subtle that was not to be missed here. Even though I could not find a colour that was the seer, I was assuming that the sensation behind my eyes was doing the seeing. So even if I could not find an object that was causing and resembling the perception, I was still associating the witness with a perceptual object (a bodily sensation). This feeling of being located in a sensation logically implied a separation and even a distance between me-as-a-sensation and other arisings, and this distance had to be in some sort of space.
Once again, I discussed the matter with fellow direct-path students, and the discussion confirmed my intuition that this feeling—that I was a sensation located in the skull—had to be investigated on its own, as part of an investigation into the body. I was able to set this issue aside and resume my enquiry into objectivity. Locating myself in a sensation in the skull had been derailing that enquiry. The point of the first step of the “world” inquiries—when I looked for me-as-an-object—was that I could find neither a perceiver appearing in or as an arising, nor an objective orange that was causing and resembling the orange-coloured patch.
As this became clearer, I was now able to focus on the next stage of the enquiry and investigate the colour-arising and specifically the notion of its presence and its absence. At this stage, I felt like the colour was appearing in some kind of space. In other words, the core assumption of objectivity was operating: it seemed to me that a colour could exist outside of seeing. If that was true, the colour had to be somewhere else when it was outside of awareness, in some sort of space. Granted, an independent orange-coloured patch is subtler than an independent orange made of matter that causes the orange patch, but it is based on the same assumptions. So I tackled the problem of space directly. I used the enquiry up to the point where I could see that there is no object that causes or resembles the perceptions; but instead of directly moving to the next step (looking for a difference between colours and seeing), I added a stage: I looked for a space in which the colours were arising.
Let me explain. In an everyday sense, when I put two oranges on a table, I can verify that there is an empty space between them. But when I looked at the same setting while considering only colour arisings, rather than “oranges,” I could not find any space either between colours or behind them. Although space is verified thanks to colours (they come first and provide the reference points that allow the three dimensions of space to arise), the opposite is not true: colours as perceived arisings do not need space to arise. In other words, space needs colours to exist. Colours need seeing to arise. And, I assumed, seeing needs a space to arise. But upon examination, this last assumption turned out to be false. When I looked at experience through the direct-path lens, it was much simpler: I found that the succession of colours is continuous, uniform, and infinite. There is no edge, no limit, and certainly no space. This is what “seeing” means in this case: colour arises, without any relationship to a perceiver, to a seeing apparatus, or to a seeing modality, none of which are ever found.
Space opening to somewhere else
Just as they hindered my enquiry into the world, my assumptions about space had consequences for my enquiry into other aspects of experience. Deconstructing objectivity is often the hardest part of this enquiry, and in most cases, once a student has really seen through objectivity, the rest seems easier. I realized for myself that the rest is definitely harder if objectivity has not been deconstructed.
This became particularly obvious when doing direct-path experiments about containment. Their purpose is to check if awareness acts like a container, if it is contained by anything, if it has limits we can establish. I felt drawn to these experiments and did them many times, but without realizing that I was still assuming space was the framework of arisings. During the experiment, I was checking arisings with a kind of invisible hand, to see if they marked a limit; before gaining some clarity about space and objectivity, I did not realize this way of looking assumed that arisings were tangible and within a space, which made the e
nquiry unfruitful. Indeed, the success of this experiment relies on having seen through objectivity, and most importantly, the three main parts of the direct-path enquiry—world, body and mind—are in that order intentionally. Additionally, the most basic steps of an experiment, particularly the simplest experiments on materiality, may require a lot of practice and genuine interest—some motive B—to be fruitful.
Before learning this lesson, I was going through the entire book The Direct Path: A User Guide34 and doing each of its 40 experiments once. To some extent, this technique gave me a taste for the path, a good overview, and even a few insights. But the revelations it brought about, although they seemed deep at the time, were short-lived. This became more and more obvious: deconstructing physicality is paramount; the experiments on the world comes first in the book for a reason. Although I had been warned from the start, I had to find that out for myself, through enquiry and through discussions with fellow students.
As this issue of space settled and stopped bothering me so much, I came to understand that it is not considered very important by teachers, simply because it is only an aspect of objectivity. The real problem I face as a student is not to understand why or how space is an illusion; the main issue is to understand why a “seen” colour makes no sense.