Many people who practice meditation begin to identify with the emptiness they see and feel as their "real self," misunderstanding that to be the Absolute, the witness because everything flows from this emptiness and emptiness, or space, pervades all experiences.
But the Void, the inner and outer spaces, are not the witness, are not the Absolute, because the Void itself is experienced and is an object of awareness.
The Absolute is entirely beyond experience, including that of the Void. It cannot be experienced itself. You can only be the witness as a position of sentience, but you can know nothing about it. You cannot feel yourself as a witness, for then it would be an experience of the witness. Anything, any knowledge is within phenomenality.
Now, some say phenomenality springs from noumenality, that it is a reflection of the Unborn aspect of your being. Some call the world the "created," meaning it popped out of the uncreated, noumenal, unmanifest, which they call the "real self."
But why would anyone want to call something unknown and unknowable as their real self? This Absolute, this unmanifest is entirely beyond knowing and experience, including the Void, so why label it and infer qualities and characteristics to it? It is merely the mind trying to grasp something entirely beyond its ken. Leave this philosophizing alone. It does not help in any way to talk about the relationship between the Absolute and phenomenality.
And remember, the Void, the spaciousness, is part of Consciousness and is not beyond it.
The only "reality" is what is presented in experience, including the world, your body, your senses, emotions, thoughts, etc. Even though it flows and changes continuously, it is the only thing we will ever know. We cannot know the Absolute.
Some say look at your experience and find out that which does not change, for that is your real nature. Of course that is the Void, the emptiness that pervades all inner and outer experience. Yet, it is still an aspect of experience, and is not beyond experience. Even this silence is not beyond experience.
Yet, you also are the Absolute. You begin to know this by intuition, then by a kind of inferential knowledge I call apprehension, and then it becomes a certainty once you realize that the Void is not the Absolute.
However, never forget that the you who really counts, is the manifest you, the human living in a world of form and actions. Do not deny this as being you in an attempt to run away from inner conflict, emotions, or the hurt and hate of the world. Embrace that human self.
Realizing the Manifest Self--the Life Force permeating our humanity--and the Unmanifest source from which it arises.
Beautiful exposition!
ReplyDeleteI remember when I first had an experience with recognizing what could be Beyond Consciousness. When the experience was lost, I felt like I wanted to die so I could "get in touch" with the absolute more or less.
Absolutely silly thinking about it. I remember the experience well because the feeling of wanting to die is such an outright rejection of present experience and human-ness that it hurt to the very core to want to be that way. I quickly realized the futility, fortunately.
-Kamran
As long as one still feels the world and all of its goodness and badness then there is work to do to transcend it.
ReplyDeleteThe transcending will make one realize that the body and all manifestation does not really exist, yet the body still appears to do the thing it does without thought, spontaneous action.
Jesus said, "Deny Thyself." The Self that is false, the ego.
One method to transcend all this, is to embrace everything and then all resistance drops away and there's nothing to fight anymore then transcendence begins.
But the work is to transcend everything by quietening the mind diving deeper and deeper until the whole world including the body/mind and all manifestation dissolves into nothingness and remain as THAT.
But the manifested you is also an "experience". Is it not the other way round like as the Absolute enjoy the illusionary play of human existance ?
ReplyDeleteThis is just a mere word games. How can you go beyond the beyond and become neither beyond nor not-beyond?
ReplyDelete