Somesh: I am very very happy for you reply.
I want to confirm that awareness is ever experiencing entity. Right?
Sundari: I am not sure what you are saying here. We have been through this – Awareness is not the experiencing entity, the jiva (body/mind) is the experiencing entity. Awareness makes experience possible because without it shining on the mind, the body/mind is just dead meat. Awareness does not experience because to do so, it would have to become something else, which is not possible. This is at the heart of the satya/mithya teaching.
All experience takes place in time and ends. Awareness does not begin or end. The hardest thing to assimilate, yet it is obvious if you think about it, is that since you know the mind and the thoughts in the mind (experience), you cannot be the mind or your thoughts (the experiencing entity or jiva). You are the one who “sees” or knows the mind/thoughts/experience. Reality is nondual so there is just Awareness and thoughts/experience appearing in Awareness. Take thought/experience away and you are left with Awareness. But you cannot take Awareness away. Awareness is always present whether or not experience is taking place in the mind because it does not need objects to know itself. Awareness is the only ‘thing’ that can never be negated. It is always present and never changes.
The main aim of Self-inquiry is discriminating the non-experiencing witness, the Self/Awareness, from the objects, or not-self. I.e., discriminating between Satya (Awareness) that which is real, never changes and is always present, and Mithya (body/mind/experiencer), that which is only apparently real, meaning not always present and is always changing. If you cannot discriminate between your Self, Awareness (non-experiencing witness), and the objects that appear in you (i.e. the experiencing entity), you cannot be free of ignorance – the hypnosis of duality.
You say you have read all of James books. Have you read chapter 2 of Essence of Enlightenment? It is available for free on our website.
Somesh: I don’t understand what actually nondual teaching suggest that all experience take place ‘here’ placeless place, which is called awareness. Please clear me to understand what actually non-dual Vedanta say about placeless place where all experience takes place.
Sundari: How can Awareness, which is the substrate for all life, the subject which makes all objects possible, be in time and place? There is no place that Awareness is not, it pervades every atom of existence and precedes time and space, which are objects known to it.
Perhaps it will help you to examine your own experience.
Your Unexamined Experience
Vedanta is not complicated, but it is difficult to assimilate because duality tricks the mind and reverses the truth. Yet, upon examination of the logic of existence, it reveals to us our unexamined experience, nothing more. You are experiencing your Self/Awareness, all the time because it’s the only option, you are just not aware of it when the mind is under the spell of duality. The trick is to know that you are not the reflection, the experiencing entity. Vedanta is like a word mirror to experience your Self, Awareness, reflected in a pure, qualified mind. You are not the reflection but the source of the reflection, though the reflection is you also. When we are deluded by duality, we are prisoners of the senses. You can override sensory input by asking yourself just a few simple questions:
The first question to ask yourself is: How do you know you exist, experience and are conscious? Has anyone ever told you that you exist, experience and are conscious? No, why not? Because it’s obvious. That you exist and experience because you are conscious is not up for debate. It cannot be denied because you would have to exist and be conscious to deny your own experience. So, to answer this question then, you need only to ask who is that knows you exist and experience, and what is Existence, with a capital ‘E’? The answer to that question is only found through self-inquiry with a valid means of knowledge for Existence/Awareness, which leads us to the next question:
How do I know what I know? You cannot be what you know, can you? What you know is known to you. Who or what is that? If you say it is your mind that knows (experiences) objects, are the objects (your thoughts and feelings) not known to you? Yes. Do they know you? No, they do not. Your thoughts and feelings or any other object you are looking at are not conscious. But you are. The only thing we need to determine is who that ‘you’ is. And then the trick is to live that truth as your primary identity. It sounds simple but is not because Vedanta, nonduality, is counter-intuitive due to the hypnosis of Maya, duality. Maya produces the belief that objects are separate from you, Awareness, the knower of the objects, and that you need objects to complete yourself. Duality makes you identify with the experiencing entity instead of the witness of the experiencing entity, Awareness.
To function in this world, our senses relay information from the Field (our environment) to our mind, which then interprets it through our intellect, thoughts, and feelings. But sadly, the senses are not equipped to know Awareness because they too are objects and the Self/Awareness is the subject. The object can never know the subject because the subject, Awareness, is subtler than the objects. Awareness is the ever-present factor that always knows what we are seeing, thinking, and feeling. Therefore, you cannot be your mind. Your mind is another object known to you.
Even in deep dreamless sleep, when there is no information exchange between the Field and the mind because the mind is withdrawn into the Causal body, Awareness must be present. If it were not, you would not know you slept when you wake up. And, in fact, you would never wake up again because you (body/mind) would be dead. If you accept this—and how can you not—you must agree that Awareness cannot be negated, for two main reasons. Apart from the obvious fact that you could not be here reading this if you are not conscious, there must be Awareness present for you to deny its existence. You cannot step out of, deny, or negate Awareness. It is the one and only, constant, non-negatable, ever-present factor.
The third question is: Who or what is looking out of your eyes? Our vision cannot help but be organized around light. We cannot see anything without light being present. But when we look at an object, we are not aware of the light that makes vision possible. Just like we are not consciously aware of Awareness shining on the mind (which is inert) and shining on objects (also inert) because we are identified with our mind. Awareness is not only looking out of our eyes it is all that is visible and what allows us to see. We could say that Awareness is both light and that which makes light possible. The same Awareness that ‘looks’ out of your eyes, looks out of my eyes, the eyes of every stranger in the street, and every sentient being on this planet because this is a non-dual reality. There is only one Self.
What or how each individual ‘sees’ (their subjective reality) depends on their conditioning, or vasanas, but that does not affect Awareness, which conditions to nothing and sees only itself. The same brain responses that enable us to see a tree or a person as a tree or a person instead of a ghostly swarm of buzzing atoms, also enable us to experience Awareness every time we open our eyes. We just must know who is ‘seeing’ and what we are looking at. That is called discriminating what is real, the nondual Self/Awareness, from what is apparently real, the body/mind. See definition of real and apparently real above.
Please make sure you read chapter 2 of Essence of Enlightenment.
Om Sundari
