Location: Tampa
Francis, I sit here wondering if I have the trust in my understanding of the state I am. Since about a year the Atmavichara is going on, and my ego is not on firm grounds any more and I have an understanding of homeliness and peace with me. But the distrust and lack of faith swirl around often. When they subside infrequently , there it is, such happiness. Atmavichara, inquiry continues amidst health problems ( brain) and the medications. But it is OK. Then, I decided to do the inquiry on paper. I am tremulously placing this for your perusal. Even if there is no response it is OK. It went this way: “”Let me take a close look, at a single thought and its activity as a typical one of all occurrences, thousands of thoughts, happy thoughts or otherwise. Now let me examine a case of a thought not occurring, or even better, let me look at a remote possibility when there are, or were ever, no thoughts that occurred , not even once. Then this special case of no-thought-ever event contributed obviously to a no-memory or zero-memory state that now cannot report to the body and the mind. If this state, if it ever occurred, must be all observed by me then, even in that state, I am still there not dead but devoid of this or any me-story. What will happen to me then in that case? I am not cognizant of any thing, because there are no thoughts, no memory, but only me! Nothing! Till now, I carried all my memories, all the experiences , since my childhood etc., all needed and contributing to this every day operating me. Now I find this me is not reliable but just a dream, made up of just thoughts! But I still exist beyond these as I am, that cannot be defined by any thoughts, just really nothing!! Only consciousness existing. The one Reality. In this absolute blankness, nothingness, no events are happening, no movement, no time, and is therefore I is eternal. Never born, never to die. Just here now. I was that, always and is that eternally, Tat Tvam Asi. What a discovery!“” But there is lack of trust. But the light in the horizon, the study of Francis response to questions, will cast away the shadows of this distrust. Probably then I will stop having consistent dreams of driving around again and again looking for my lost home!! Ben
Dear Ben,
You are drawing inferences from a hypothetical experience, the experience of pure consciousness. The inferences you are drawing are correct. The lack of trust you are experiencing comes from the lack of real experience, or, more precisely, from the belief in such a lack.
Now, would you say that you know that you are conscious through hearsay, or through direct experience? I presume you will say, as I would, that you know it from direct experience, and not because your parents have told you so and you believe them. If so, what kind of experience are we talking about here?
The first encouraging piece of news is that this experience is available to you, and, even more encouraging, that it is always available to you, at any moment.
The second positive conclusion you may reach is that the certainty that can be reached through this experience is absolute: unlike any conclusion that may be reached from phenomenal experiences, the certainty that there is consciousness is beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The third positive conclusion is that the experience of consciousness itself, of pure consciousness, is available to us, for it is only from the direct experience of consciousness that the knowledge of its existence can be derived with such a level of certainty. Any knowledge derived from hearsay, inference, assumption or belief would leave residues of doubt.
If you examine the three points above in the light of your own experience, you will easily convince yourself of their truth.
Love,
Francis
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