Dear Francis,
Thank you, that’s very helpful. But there’s still a grain of confusion, so if I may, let me try a dream analogy.
If I’m dreaming, in my dream there may be a Francis character who appears to be in California, and a Michael character who appears to be in Maryland. In the dream, Francis may say, “The air feels so dry here.” And Michael may say, “The air is feeling so humid.”
So it appears within the dream that Francis is experiencing aridity, and Michael is experiencing humidity. That would seem to be evidence of limited mentations, limited to the minds of Francis and Michael.
But when the dreamer awakes, the truth appears: there was no limited Francis experience or Michael experience. Francis and Michael were not experiencing anything at all. Only the dreamer was having any experience whatsoever, and what the dreamer experienced was simply the APPEARANCE of Francis and Michael having experiences. In truth, there were no such limited experiences (mentations).
So from the dreamer’s perspective, the dream is a solipsistic “reality.” Only the dreamer and its experiences are “real,” and everything else is mere appearance, which is understood as mere appearance upon awakening from the dream.
So if one substitutes “awareness” for “the dreamer,” don’t we have a pretty accurate description of waking reality?
You may have made a related point in answer to another question when you said, “perceptions do not perceive.” In that case the appearance called “people,” as objects of perception, do not themselves perceive. Only the one perceiver, awareness, is doing any perceiving. Everything else is the perceived.
Am I on the right or wrong track?
Love,
Michael
Dear Michael,
You are conceptually on the right track, especially in the last paragraph of your message. It is important to have the right map showing the path to the experience of our true nature. However the acquisition of the map is not the end of the journey, but a useful step of it. The goal of the journey is the experience of the divinity of our true Self, and our subsequent establishment in this wonderful certainty.
One remark, though: the dream analogy is not easily applicable. Here is why: In the dream, there are two characters appearing to the dreamer. Either 1. the dreamer has access to Francis’ mind, feels the dry air outside and doesn’t see Michael, although he can exchange email messages with him, or 2. the dreamer has access to Michael’s mentations, feels the humid air outside and doesn’t see Francis, although he can correspond with him, or 3. he has no access to their minds and only sees their bodies from the outside, but one at a time, since this external witness cannot be SIMULTANEOUSLY inside Francis and Michael, nor can he be simultaneously in California and in Maryland. Unlike the dreamer, consciousness in its pure, timeless state simultaneously contains both Francis and Michael, California and Maryland as potentialities.
Awareness is omnipresent across time, space and minds. Because of the existence of memory, its omnipresence across time is easily graspable by the mind, whereas its omnipresence across space and minds is difficult to conceive from the vantage point of a limited body-mind localized in space.
Consciousness is the timeless and spaceless place that contains, actualizes and perceives all the times, all the minds, and all the places
Love,
Francis
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